Sermon given at St Michael and All Angels Church on 4/23/2017

Doubt

“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

How many of us would have said the same thing?  How many of us have doubts about our faith?  In his book Jesus, the Son of Man, Kahlil Gibran has a brief chapter on Thomas and he describes doubt as this, “Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”

Think about that for a minute, “doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.”  When I read the passage it spoke to me about my own pain, my own doubts, whether it is about my faith or me.  Doubt is indeed painful and lonely.  How does your own doubt make you feel? 

Do you doubt your abilities, do you doubt the direction of your life, or do you doubt you will be forgiven for your sins.  Doubt is a powerful and debilitating emotion or paradoxically it can be good if it changes our path in life.  Doubt can keep us from realizing our potential, our God given gifts.  Doubt can also be good, when it makes us question the direction or meaning in our life.

I have my own doubts, one of them being the doubt that if I made this sermon twenty minutes long any of you would remain awake.  Be still and know that I am God is great for meditation but not so great for preachers. 

I don’t want you to be still.  I want you to fidget in your pews, to question, to think, to doubt.  Because if you doubt, then you will ask questions, and if you are asking then you are seeking, and Jesus tells us, “seek and you shall find.”

Doubt can lead us into despair and despair can lead us to make drastic decisions that affect not only ourselves but others as well.  But if we embrace our doubt and acknowledge it as part of our shadow self, then we can see that it is a natural part of our existence.

When we are children we want to believe, we take everything at face value and believe everything our parents tell us.  That is faith.  I think we are born with open and loving hearts, then the world instills doubt, and we lose our innocence.  Once again I will quote from Gibran, “Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.”

Yet, if faith resides in us as some secret knowledge then why do we have doubt?  Is doubt really the lonely twin of faith?  Perhaps, and let me throw this out there, perhaps God wants us to have doubt.  Now Jesus admonished Thomas to believe, but he did not punish him for his doubt.  Indeed, he showed him the truth. 

And I believe that doubt drives us forward.  With doubt comes a choice.  Without doubt, I believe we become complacent.  Jesus said seek and you shall find.  However, Jesus did not say that the truth would be easy to find.  I don’t think we can ever stop seeking God.  God wants to be found. 

The journey to find him can be a lifetime experience of pain and joy, of gladness and sorrow, of doubt and of faith.  All are part of the puzzle, all are pieces of God, and when we realize that God is all things, and that we are part of God, and God is part of us, the journey becomes more exciting, more meaningful, and we come to the realization that the truth is there, waiting and wanting to be found.

Last year the Pope, a man I admire, had this to say about doubt,” Everyone experiences doubts about the faith at times - “I have” many times, but such doubts can be a sign that we want to know God better and more deeply.”

“We do not need to be afraid of questions and doubts because they are the beginning of a path of knowledge and going deeper; one who does not ask questions cannot progress either in knowledge or in faith.”

Faith can be exhilarating, freeing, and comforting.  Now Thomas had faith in Jesus long before this.  In fact, earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples he is going to Lazarus.  The disciples were afraid because the people had been ready to stone Jesus when he previously visited Lazarus and his sisters.   But Thomas, alone amongst the disciples showed his devotion by saying to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Now if you have a questioning mind you might ask, “Where was Thomas during the crucifixion?  I have no answer for that.  Perhaps when encountering the real thing Thomas, as well as all the disciples but the beloved one fled and hid.  Certainly, later in his life Thomas lived up to his pledge, as he died a martyr in India.

The Apostle Thomas ventured to India to preach to the Jews who had small colonies on the east coast.  Eventually he converted many High Caste Hindus and was martyred with a spear.  The story is very interesting and I would ask you to do some investigations of your own.  The Mar Thoma Syrian Church in India claims as its heritage that is was started by Thomas the Apostle of Christ in the year 52 and the church is part of the Anglican Communion.

So, what caused Thomas to change his mind and believe?  Jesus came back and did as Thomas asked.  When he showed Thomas the wounds he said, “Put your finger here; see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it into my side.  Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God.”

Then Jesus says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Those passages pretty much sum up the relationship between faith and doubt.  Thomas wanted to believe, but desired proof; perhaps because he loved Jesus so much he wanted to see him again.  When Herod, the Priest and Scribes, and others demanded that Jesus prove he was the Son of God, he would offer no proof.  But when his apostle asked, he freely gave proof.

Ask and you shall receive, demand and you may be met with silence.  Ask with love and you shall receive, demand with wickedness and you shall probably receive nothing.

Poem by the Reverend Ted Loder, a Methodist Minister, and a man who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.

God … are you there?

I’ve been taught,

And told I ought

To pray.

But the doubt

Won’t go away.

Yet neither

Will my longing to be heard.

My soul sighs

Too deep for words.

Do you hear me?

God … are you there?

I will leave you with this collect from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer.

Living God,

For whom no door is closed.

No heart is locked,

Draw us beyond our doubts,

Till we see your Christ

And touch his wounds

Where they bleed in others