Sermon ~ Doubting Like Thomas

Doubting Like Thomas

April 11, 2010

Rev. Deborah Hasdorff

 

                  This week’s scripture lesson is one of my favorite Bible stories.  It is the story of the disciple Thomas, who somehow missed the first appearance of Jesus after his resurrection to the disciples.  The other disciples told him that they had seen Jesus, and he had been resurrected.  But Thomas responded with words that ring across the ages, words that echo the doubts of many thinking people.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

                  I want to see it to believe it. 

                  A week later, the disciples again find themselves locked in a room, afraid of persecution or arrest.  Although the scripture tells us that the doors to the room were locked, Jesus appears, standing in their midst.  His first words were “Peace be with you.”  But then he singles out Thomas, and demands that he step forward. “Put your finger in my wound, see my hands, reach out and touch me.  Do not doubt, believe,” Jesus demands of Thomas.  And with those words, Thomas immediately recognizes Jesus, and says, “My Lord and My God.”  And Jesus responds, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.”

                  The beauty in this story for me is in Jesus’ love for Thomas – even in his doubt.  By Jesus’ compassion for Thomas, Jesus acknowledges that deep faith requires perseverance, it requires attention to both the head and the heart, and it takes time.

                  There are people who do not need to see to believe.  People who have heard the old, old stories and imprinted them on their hearts.  I remember some of the old German congregational churches in Washington State that I served as interim pastor.  In each of these churches, there was a pew of older women, often in their 80’s, who knew their bible better than I ever will.  Faith had been a constant in their lives; it had been proven true over time.  These women never seemed to be engaged in doubting, questioning, analyzing, or criticizing their faith.  In their minds there was much that was just a mystery.  And in their minds it was just true.

                  These women had a simple faith.  And I don’t mean that in any kind of a derogatory way.  They had a strong faith, and enduring faith, a tested faith, and a scripture based faith.  Sometimes I wish I could have that kind of faith.  But for me, faith has always started in questions, doubts, things I thought I had to believe in order to be a Christian.

Here’s a short list:

                  Noah and the Ark

                  The Parting of the Red Sea

                  Joshua and the Walls of Jericho

                  David and Goliath

                  Mary and the Virgin Birth

                  The literal bodily resurrection of Jesus

                  The Pentecost Event

All of these Bible stories or teachings were things I questioned and wondered about.  They just didn’t make sense with the way I saw the world working.  And when I became a teenager, the questions became about God. 

             Why does God allow suffering?

Did God really approve of the killing of all those people from the other kingdoms in the Old Testament?

How can we know if God exists?

Does God act in history?

Big questions.  Big doubts.  I was in many ways like Thomas – answer my questions and I will believe.  Show me God how this all makes sense!  And when I shared my doubts with other questions, what I often heard in response was, “Why can’t you just believe?”  There are some of us – many of us – who get caught in the doubts.  And there are many churches out there that discourage the questions, and many Christians who become offended when their first answer doesn’t solve my doubt.

                  But I have come to accept that I am a person who relies heavily on my brain, who uses reason and logic to solve many of the dilemmas of life.  I have to ask my questions, and express my doubts, and then I can usually find a way to believe.  For me, faith has become an ability to live the questions, to stand in the uncertainty, to hold on to what I know is true, and to focus on what it is I do believe.  It is so much easier to articulate what it is we do not believe – but mature faith is speaking about what we do believe.

                  The dilemma of this liturgical season is resurrection.  That is why we read the story of Thomas every year after the story of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter.  Like Thomas we wonder: Did Jesus literally become resurrected?  Or did someone move the body, or steal the body, or take the body of Jesus away for a proper burial?  What exactly did the disciples see when they say they saw Jesus after his death?

 

                 Over the years I have learned some things that have helped me to make sense of resurrection.  First, the biblical notion of resurrection comes from Jewish apocalyptic literature.  Resurrection is not understood to be resuscitation or reanimation of the body.  Instead, resurrection is a complete transformation including body, soul and mind.  In Daniel, resurrection is described as “to shine like the stars,” and in Mark, it is “to be like the angels.”  Resurrection is understood to be not an individual act, but a corporate act, to occur at the end of history.  Jesus’ resurrection is best understood by these definitions as an act of God, whereby God takes Jesus into God’s own eternity.  Secondly, it has helped me immensely to understand the construction of bodily resurrection as a reaction of the early church against the predominant Greek and Roman culture.  There was at that time a prevailing paradigm of a split between body and spirit, with the body being understood as evil, and the spirit, mind, or soul, as good.  The early church emphasized the inherent goodness of the body as God’s creation, and insisted through the doctrine of the bodily resurrection that all that we are, body, soul, mind, and spirit –all is a gift from God.

                  For me, resurrection is still an open question – a mystery I continue to ponder.  I still live its question; I continue to wonder about how it might have happened.  But theologically, I know that resurrection is truth.  Resurrection faith is our assertion that life is strong than death, that love is stronger than hate, that hope is stronger than despair, that justice will overcome evil.  I take great comfort in the word of St. Paul to the church in Rome, that there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God.  There is no tragedy, no difficulty, no disaster, not loss, no sin, no doubt, no mistake, no human act, that God cannot redeem.  That is resurrection faith, and that is what I know, body, mind, spirit, and soul to be truth.

 

                  The author Louise Erdrich beautifully describes the tension of living in the paradox of faith and doubt.

I go through a continual questioning.  And I think that is my assurance that if I was to let go of my doubt, that I would somehow have surrendered my faith.  My job is to address the mystery.  My job is to doubt.  My job is to keep searching, keep looking.  When I think about my version of what a God is – and I keep changing it, right now I think of this creator as a great artist – we don’t understand works of art when we see them.  They’re – the greatest works of art are – we see them through a glass darkly.  We don’t understand them.  They’re very difficult for us to understand.  So with this great work of art in which we’re all participating, this great artist has made beauty and terror and death and cruelty and humor and mystery part of who we are.  Everything is a part of this mystery.

Did the resurrection actually happen?  I would have to say I don’t know.  Is it true?  With all of my heart, mind, soul, and body, I know that it is.

May God guide us as we continue to live the questions—and hold tight to what we know is true.  Amen.