St. Paul’s
United Church
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Faith Worthy of Doubt – Rev. David Mundy
1 Peter
1:3-9
John 20:19-31
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
During Holy
Week, the most significant period of the Christian year Maclean’s Magazine
published a cover article with an artist’s impression of Jesus. The caption on
the cover was Jesus Has An Identity Crisis. The article itself was a mishmash of
scholarship proposing a different “take” on Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.
Instead of being divine, the writer offered,
Jesus was a human and only a human who lived and taught and died but was
reinvented by his followers and others who were part of the early Christian
community.
There is a
lot of this going around these days. In the same week the Toronto Star newspaper
published a similar article which interviewed a couple of authors of new books
carefully timed to coincide with Easter. This one suggests that Jesus hadn’t
intended to start a new religion.
The apostle
Paul is often the villain in these exposes of the “bad” Christianity which
makes Jesus divine – you know, the Christianity of the past two thousand years
which seemed to work fairly well for a lot of people. The new and “good”
Christianity often reduces Jesus to a swell Jewish guy who goes around saying
nice things to the people of his day. It’s hard to imagine that this “Jesus
Light” would inspire his followers to the point of risking their lives to share
the Good News or how it would create a new religion which would have such staying
power, but there it is.
There are
even people interviewed for these articles, including a United Church minister,
who wonders whether we need Jesus at all in order to be loving and
compassionate people in the world. While she represents a minuscule group in
our denomination she gets plenty of attention because she is controversial and
therefore newsworthy.
Isn’t it
strange that during a week when we are encouraged to accept Christ as the Risen
Saviour there is so much put in front of us – we could even say gets shoved
down our throat --which glorifies doubt? I have mentioned to you before that
the word doubt has its origins in an old word which means “in two minds.” This
two-mindedness about Jesus seems to have become the spirit of our age, as
though it is a form of faith rather than an adjunct of faith.
This
morning is the Sunday following our celebration of the resurrection of Jesus,
the living Christ, the firstborn of the dead to use the apostle Paul’s phrase.
This morning we are reminded that we didn’t invent doubt about Jesus Christ in
the twenty first century. If we were listening carefully, we heard that it
began on the very first Easter Sunday.
Every year
this second Sunday of the Easter season reintroduces us to a story of doubt
from the gospel of John. We all know about “Doubting Thomas,” or at least we
think we do. Certainly the expression “doubting Thomas” has become part of our
vocabulary, even though the disciple Thomas was in many respects a passionate
and faithful follower of Jesus. What we do see in this gospel is that he had a
brain and he wasn’t willing to take things for granted.
At the Last
Supper Jesus let his band of disciples know that he is leaving them and that
they will know the way where he is going. Thomas says “not me — I have no
idea where you’re going and an explanation would really help.” Jesus
doesn’t give him the answer he was probably looking for but he does take him
seriously.
Then on the
evening of the day when the empty tomb was discovered Jesus appears to all the disciples
except for Thomas who is not present for reasons that aren’t explained to us.
When Thomas hears about this apparition, he is doubtful. His response always
strikes me as very modern, but it is probably just human nature in any age.
Thomas asks for visual and tactile proof that the Jesus who was executed three
days before was alive again.
It’s
interesting that this story is only in John which was the last of the gospels
to be written -- at least a couple of generations after Jesus’ death. It makes
sense that the further the believing community was removed from the events of
Jesus’ last days and his resurrection, the more there were questions about what
actually happened.
As we
heard, Jesus did not scold Thomas for his scepticism. Instead he invites him to
touch his wounds before saying that there would be a special blessing for those
who do not see and yet believe.
Do we have a faith worthy of doubt? That may seem like an odd question, yet if we are Christian believers who respond to our story with our minds as well as hearts, with our intellects as well as our emotions, then we need to be able to test even the most cherished tenets of our faith. The Christian author and pastor, Frederick Beecher is sure that doubt is essential for believers, ““Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”
We have
been created with inquiring minds and it is essential that we use them in every
aspect of our being, including our faith in Jesus Christ. Yet we have been led
to believe, at least by some zealous believers, that unless we have a faith
that is all sharply defined edges with no room for ambiguity we are not real
Christians.
Why is
that? If we stop to think about it, we expect that doubt will be part of other
aspects of our lives. In science we speak of testing hypotheses, which is a way
of saying that whatever has been supposedly proven, the door must be left open
for revision
If you read
at all about the history of medicine, as an example, you will discover that
horrific practices were carried out on people in centuries past, presented as
the best science of that era. It was only by questioning and testing that progress
was made.
In criminal
prosecutions we make provision for reasonable doubt and the premise that the
accused are innocent until proven guilty.
We need to
understand that while doubt in our lives of faith shouldn’t be glorified it is
a natural response to the uncertainties and inequities of life.
Every once
in a while I meet someone who is a bit belligerent about religion and rhymes
off reasons for doubt or unbelief as
though they had just invented them.
Sometimes there is a look of triumph as though I will probably be
crushed by the weight of their intellectual processes. There seems to be an
assumption that Christians and followers of other religions are rather naive
people, subject to what we sometimes call “blind faith.”
When this
happens I’m actually tempted to tell them the fifty different reasons I
experience doubt, even though my Christian faith has endured and even
flourished despite those doubts. While I will spare you the full gamut of my
own questioning, I will freely admit that I am often rattled by the suffering
of those who have done nothing to deserve it, and try to comprehend how a God
whose love is revealed in Christ seems to abandon the innocent.
I also
constantly wonder why people of supposed faith are so lacking in basic compassion
and charity toward others. After the tsunami in Southeast Asia there were
Christian leaders who claimed that this was a sign of God’s displeasure toward
those who were affected, even though many were Christians themselves. And how
can persons cry out “God is great” as they are killing and maiming unsuspecting
victims?
More and
more I ponder why supposed followers of Christ can be so lacking in basic
generosity and so unwilling to do make the necessary changes in lifestyle which
will benefit the planet.
I
appreciate the way Os Guinness describes the value of doubt for Christians:
Doubt acts as a sparring partner both to truth and error. It keeps faith
trim and helps to shed the paunchiness of false ideas. Like a terrier, doubt
worries at weak ideas until they escape reinvigorated or collapse exhausted. It
is the nature of doubt always to be questioning, challenging, inquiring,
cross-examining . . . to a healthy faith, doubt is a healthy challenge.
For all
that I do personally experience doubt I realize that it is the vehicle to get
me somewhere, not the destination. It is the Risen Christ who is the
destination, the fulfillment of my journey of faith. Over time questioning has allowed me come to a much greater respect
for those who come to God through other religious traditions. Questioning has
made room for those who are not like me or who don’t share my approach to many
aspects of faith. Questioning has
allowed me to see Jesus of Nazareth as a human being as well as the Saviour.
Yet in the
end it has always been Christ who has the One who lifts the lamp so that I can
find my way through the darkness. Today with the candles lit around us we can
celebrate that it is Christ, crucified and risen who illuminates the faith of
each one of us. It can be a matter of taking what the 19th century
theologian Soren Kierkegaarde described as the “leap of faith.”
When our
children were young we camped in a provincial park where there was a popular
and heavily used jumping rock which was probably ten metres from the top to the
water line. Our son, Isaac was eleven or
twelve years old at the time and he would stand on the shore and watch as older
young people leapt out into the void and plunged into the lake. After a couple of
days of observation he realized that no one was maimed and no one drowned. We
walked together to the top and he peered over the edge. Then he announced that
he wanted to jump himself. It seemed to take an eternity for him to measure how
many steps before he threw his body into space. Back and forth he went – and
then he was gone! He hit the water and disappeared, only to resurface. Thank
God I didn’t have to jump in after him.
Easter does
continue in our hearts and minds and we can experience the joy of Christ, alive
with us. In our other reading today we were encouraged in this way.
Although
you have not seen him, you love him,
and even
though you do not see him now,
you
believe in him
and
rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,
for you
are receiving the outcome of your faith,
the salvation
of your souls.
Our faith
is worthy of doubt and of conviction. Amen.