"Faith and Doubt ”

An Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

If I ask youⁱ what is the opposite of hot, you would say… COLD.

The opposite of wet is… DRY.

Day? … NIGHT.

Love? … HATE. We automatically think that love and hate are opposites. But psychologists and other experts contend that the opposite of love is not hate but rather apathy.ⁱⁱ The emotion of hate has been referred to as “love turned upside down.”ⁱⁱⁱ And the opposite of emotion – whether it’s love or hate – is apathy, indifference.

And if I ask what is the opposite of faith, you would say… DOUBT? Again, it is automatic to think of faith and doubt as opposites. After all, if you look up “doubt” in a thesaurus,^iv you’ll see “faith” listed as an antonym.

But in the Easter story, we see that doubt is not the opposite of faith. Rather, doubt is a prelude to it. In all the Gospel accounts of the Easter story – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – there is doubt, and lots of it. Mary Magdalene and the other women do not believe the words of the angels who tell them the news of the resurrection; they must see the Risen Christ for themselves to believe.

And when the women then tell the disciples what they have seen, the disciples don’t believe their words. Even though they have been with Jesus during his Galilean ministry; even though they have heard him preach and teach and seen him heal and perform miracles; even though he has told them repeatedly that he would die and rise again on the third day, Jesus’ disciples are complete skeptics when it comes to the Resurrection. Skeptics, that it, until they see the Risen Christ for themselves.

That encounter takes place in this morning’s Gospel lesson from John, the evening of that first Easter Day. Ten of the disciples are huddled together in anxiety and fear, behind locked doors in a room somewhere in Jerusalem.

It is hard for us to imagine how they must have been feeling. The man they called the Messiah has been crucified, and now his body is missing from the tomb. Some have been saying that Jesus is alive again, but there are also rumors that his body has been stolen. The disciples may believe there is now a price on their heads. And so they have huddled together, not only in fear of the religious authorities, but also with guilt over their own faithless words and actions; the last time some of these men saw Jesus, they were glancing back over their shoulders as they ran in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the Risen Christ appears in the room with them, saying “Peace be with you!”

As I mentioned, only ten of the twelve disciples are gathered in that room on that first Easter evening. Two days earlier, Judas Iscariot watched as his betrayal led to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion and – filled with remorse – Judas hanged himself.

And the other missing disciple is Thomas. Where is Thomas that Easter evening? We don’t know, but whatever his reasons, he misses this dramatic experience of the Risen Christ. The disciples later tell him, "We have seen the Lord!" but like the women who didn’t believe the angels’ words, and the disciples who didn’t believe women’s words, Thomas is unpersuaded. "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side,” he says, “I will not believe it." He has seen Jesus die, and the eyewitness testimony of his ten close friends is not enough to convince Thomas; he must have a personal encounter with the Risen Christ to believe that Jesus is alive again.

And so, Jesus makes a return appearance the following Sunday – repeating the whole Easter evening scene for Thomas’ benefit. And rather than chastising Thomas for his doubt and disbelief, Jesus affirms Thomas in his doubting and helps him move beyond it to faith. Jesus invites Thomas to do what he needs to do in order to be convinced – to see and touch for himself the marks of the nails that prove the figure before him is the man who has been crucified. When Thomas places his fingers in the wounds of Jesus – when he has an experience of the Risen Christ – he exclaims “My Lord and My God!” In doing so, Thomas is the first to speak the truth that has been revealed on the cross: that Jesus is Lord and God.

It might be surprising to realize how Jesus’ followers doubt when they are first told of the resurrection, because we tend to think that doubt is a negative, especially in the context of faith. But for faith to be honest and mature, it must be examined and tested. Doubt has been called “the skeleton in the closet of faith,” and for each of us to have a faith of integrity and truth, we need to bring our doubts of the closet. Doubt is not the absence of faith, but rather stands in tension with faith. Doubt challenges faith to move to a deeper and more honest level.

As poet Kahlil Gibran observed, "Doubt is pain, too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother." It is interesting imagery to refer to faith and doubt as twins, for Thomas’ Greek name is Didymus, which means "twin.” That nickname may be metaphorical because Thomas embodies so clearly this dual nature of faith and doubt. Maybe Thomas actually does have a twin. Or perhaps he's called Didymus because we are his twin, for Thomas’ story is our story, too. It is certainly mine.

During my childhood, my parents made sure that I received a solid religious education, and I was brought up to believe certain fundamental religious truths, including the existence of God, and God’s embodiment in Jesus Christ. These foundations were laid and expanded by active involvement in the United Church of Christ of my childhood, to include not only Sunday School, but also enriched classes on Tuesday afternoons, as well as participation in the choir and the junior and senior high fellowships. As a young child, I had no reason not to believe these teachings, and I embraced them readily, without question or examination. But as I became a youth, my simple and accepting childhood faith was confronted by real life.

When I was 11 years old, my parents divorced; up until that time, I had thought that as long as I was a good girl, God would reward me with a happy life. But the God of my expectations seemed powerless to keep my family together, and the first seeds of uncertainty were sewn in my adolescent heart. As I became a teenager, the teachings of Sunday School seemed increasingly flimsy and simplistic when challenged by the Viet Nam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and the tragedy at Kent State, and those adolescent seeds of uncertainty blossomed into full-fledged doubt. I questioned the existence of God, the reality of Jesus Christ, and the relevancy of the Bible; I did not know who or what I believed in, nor did I make much of an effort to find the answers.

In the ensuing decades, however, I have reconstructed my faith and re-formed my theology belief by belief, I and have made my faith my own as it has been confronted by real life. It can be in our loneliness and desperation, in the most heartbreaking moments of our lives, that we can find God, that we can finally recognize the face of Jesus, that we can experience the living Christ. And that’s what happened during the illness and death of two of my husbands. My faith is now sure, solid, unwavering and authentic not in spite of my doubt, but because of it.

I suspect that at one time or another, many of you -- like Thomas, like me -- have had doubts about matters of faith. We have questions about God, Jesus, the Bible, the Christian faith. We want to know: Is God really there? Why is there so much evil in the world? Why do loved ones get sick and die? It’s natural for us to have these kinds of questions – we’re wired to inquire, to think, to sort out things. And rather than being faith-less, these questions are stepping stones to faith. As one preacher puts it, “Doubt is like a front porch; all of us go through it before we get into the house of faith.”^v

Thomas uses his doubts to test the truth of what he has been told, and he discovers the meaning of the Risen Christ in his life. But where does Thomas’ story leave the rest of us – generations, through the ages, who were not there, who will never have the opportunity to lay eyes or hands on the person of Jesus?

The late preacher, theologian and activist William Sloan Coffin once defined faith as “being seized by love,”^vi as the state of being possessed by the love of God.^vii No, we will never be able to touch the person of Jesus, but we can all experience that love which seizes us and will not let us go, that love which offers us grace, forgiveness, healing, wholeness and new life. The One who offers that love, the Risen Christ, says to all of us, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.”

Times of doubt do and will come for all of us, as they came for Thomas. But just as growth can come through pain, so can faith come through doubt. And our doubts and questions can lead us to a deeper, stronger, and more lasting faith.

My prayer is that each of us has the courage to face and give words to our doubts so that we can, on our own and for ourselves, come to faith as Thomas did, and may our confession of faith renew and transform us into the Easter people God calls us to be. Amen.