No Doubt



No Doubt John 20:19-31 May 1, 2011
Sometimes today is called “Low Sunday”: the Sunday after the excitement and pageantry and crowds of Easter. That’s humanly inevitable, for we can’t genuinely keep up that level and pace forever. While we are still singing the great hymns of Easter, the Lectionary and our tradition appropriately make this “Quiet Sunday.” Doubting Thomas makes his annual appearance, always a little ironically on cue the week after we proclaim our greatest faith in the loudest ways – through music, preaching, affirmations of faith, loud hosannas and hallelujahs. Thomas quiets us down, for unless we really doubt, we have no real faith. What is loudest about Easter is that no doubt is allowed. I must admit that I figure we need to push faith vigorously forward on that great day, but many a church noisily declares that “no doubt” is allowed on any occasion. To have a doubt is to show un-Christian weakness, to be faithless in a world that desperately needs faith. The belief that because we have the word of God we should insist upon having no doubts is a cardinal principle of too many church people. Unfortunately, such thinking demonstrates very poor understanding not only of the Gospel, but also of the way God thinks. They are loud, however, and drown most of the rest of us out, intimidating us by their absolute certainty. We end up suppressing our quiet doubts, embarrassed to let them see the light of day. We need to hear our quiet doubt and faith a little more distinctly. We are still marching in calendar step with the Gospel, though the story resumes last Sunday night with the paranoia of the disciples shutting tight all the doors in their refuge. Being witness to a resurrection is no guarantee of respect and safety, and the disciples were not far off in their fear because they were probably in greater danger now, for not everyone is happy when someone comes back from the dead. The disciples were viewed suspiciously due to their political character, the fact that they were supporters of one more Galilean revolutionary who wanted to overthrow the Roman peace. Resurrection was a political act of outrageous proportions. I wonder what political ramifications resurrection would exert today? Which candidate would you not like to see resurrected tomorrow? Jesus was just there, standing in the middle of them. Peace be with you, he warmly says, making sure that they know he is not a ghost or mirage. He shows them his hands and his side with their cruel scars. He breathed on them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Spirit and breath are the same word back then. Thomas missed the meeting, and so did not catch Jesus’ breath. Later on, Thomas caught up with his colleagues and they told him everything, but Thomas just exploded at all this hype. They talked about the wounds Jesus had shown them, and Thomas blustering, wanted to feel with his fingers those grossest of wounds before he would buy into such a story. It was not Thomas’ doubt that drove him to such words, but his faith. Thomas gets this bum rap, but the other mentions of him in the Gospels show one of the most faithful and courageous of disciples. When Jesus wanted to go back to see the dying Lazarus in the region where the authorities had tried recently to stone him, Thomas was adamant, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.” Moreover, hindsight shows that Thomas was a keeper, reportedly going to Egypt, Syria, and India with the Gospel. He may have had a reputed lapse of doubt, but in the long run we are encouraged that our doubts too have a faithful future. All those Christians petrified of having any doubts don’t understand faith. Because his faith was so deep, Thomas wasn’t going to trivialize it on some whimsical dreams and illusions of the other bereaved disciples. His faith needed to be real, not some wishful thinking, so the high standards he demanded were both utterly physical and spoken with a rhetorical edge and bite that made clear to the others that his faith was not just about pretty words. Exactly a week later, today, they were all together again, but paranoia was still deep and creeping and all doors were shut tight. Peace be with you, Jesus said as he appeared. He invites Thomas to touch him, “Do not be faithless, but believing.” I don’t think even Jesus understood, yet Thomas needed no further evidence and went further than anyone else had ever done, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus is not just a good teacher, he is God himself, a statement that can only be made with the strongest and deepest of faith. You can’t argue or debate this, only believe it. Jesus’ immediate response is the question for the rest of us, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” How do you and I believe in something and someone so important without seeing him? If you do not have any doubts that you don’t investigate and ponder, then in what do you have faith? I know lots of Christians shout loudly about the wounds of Jesus, but how many want to touch them, touch their own wounds and deal with them? Or is our faith strongest behind closed and tightly shut doors that keep doubts outside? We doubt because we have been wounded one way or another and it is only through grappling with those doubts and scars do we emerge with a faith in something real. Anyone who is not afraid to doubt will never lose his faith. Insisting upon a faith that harbours no doubt has no boats in its harbour. I don’t know if any of you ever saw the daytime TV program, Queen for a Day? I used to watch it whenever I could in elementary school. Four women were interviewed about what they would most desire or need that would make their lives better. The fourth and last one inevitably was a real tear jerker and the audience applause would determine the winner. In 1958, I would have been in Grade 4, Lili Jacob appeared on Queen for a Day. She did not want a washer or dryer or a holiday, but $500.00 to have a plastic surgeon remove a tattoo from her arm. The tattoo was the number A-10862 etched into her flesh at Auschwitz. She won and had the tattoo removed, but of course she never forgot her wounds much greater than a blue tattoo. But by removing that number she was witnessing to herself and others that faith doesn’t avoid doubt, but goes right through it. Ernest Hemingway, another person usually not thought of as a theologian of faith and doubt, wrote in A Farewell to Arms, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Jesus is among the broken and did not hide it. Even resurrection displays its wounds and doubts. Thomas, in his brokenness, doubted mere words in order that he might believe in the most important thing. Preached by Robert Kitchen Knox-Metropolitan United Church Regina, Saskatchewan