Daring to Doubt – Daring to Believe
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
April 18, 2004
John 20: 19-31
Thomas Long, New Testament Professor, preacher, shares this story from his ministry: “My first church was in rural Georgia. I was fresh out of seminary, eager to be a good pastor to my first parish. I was in graduate school at the time, commuting out to the church on the weekends…On my first visit to the church, I found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, I was told, by the local sheriff. ‘The sheriff?’ I asked. ‘Why?’
“’Well, things got a little out of hand at the board meeting last month, folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The sheriff came out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.’
“I was that new preacher and that story sort of typified my time at that church. I would drive out there each Sunday, just praying for a miraculous snowstorm in October that would save me from that so-called church. I spent a year there, a year that lasted a lifetime. I tried everything. I worked, planned, offered, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meetings were more than I could take. It was tough and I was glad to leave them behind. ‘You call yourself a church?’ I muttered to myself as my tires kicked up gravel in the parking lot on my last Sunday among them.”
Long continues, “A couple of years later, while visiting at Emory seminary in Atlanta, I ran into a young man who introduced himself and told me he was now working at that church. My heart went out to him immediately. Such a dear young man, and only 23!”
“’They still remember you out there,‘ he said.
“’Yeah,’ I said glumly, ‘I remember them too.’
“’Remarkable bunch of people,’ he said.
“’Remarkable?’
“’Their ministry to the community has been a wonder,’ he continued. ‘That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free daycare center is going great. There aren’t too many interracial congregations in North Georgia.’
Says Long, “I could hardly believe what I was hearing. ‘What happened?’ I asked.
“’I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘One Sunday things just sort of came together. It wasn’t anything in particular. It’s just that, when the service was done and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things just fairly took off after that.’
Concludes Long, “I tell you what I think happened. I think that church got intruded upon. I think someone greater than I knocked the lock off the door, kicked it open, and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, and forgiveness. And now they are called, ‘church.’”
It’s just one week after Easter, but I confess to you that it already seems to me that Easter happened months ago. So much build up and preparation, so much effort to get ready, all the choirs working on music, focusing on five worship services in four days – and I have to attend every single one of them! Then Easter is over and for most of us it is back to business as usual – work, the household chores, the presidential campaign, taxes were due. Even for preachers it is hard to sustain the joy and enthusiasm of Easter once Easter is over, once the memory gets further and further away. There are responsibilities, the tasks of life, start filling the calendar once again. Now I have to start attending to all those things I said I would do “after Easter.”
How to sustain the enthusiasm and hope of Easter? How to keep the faith, the hope, the vision? It’s not only our issue. It was an issue for the early church; many have said it was one of the central problems confronting the author of the Gospel of John. Many scholars believe that John is the latest of the Gospels, written right near the end of the first century. Not too many eyewitnesses were left then; Jesus had been gone for a long time; there hadn’t been a second coming. One theologian says, “John’s problem, which is a continuing problem for the church, was how to encourage people in the faith when Jesus was no longer around to be seen or touched. The story of Thomas gave him a way to do that. By detailing that reluctant disciple’s doubt, John took the words right out of our mouths and put them in Thomas’ instead, so that each of us has the opportunity to read the story and think about how we do – or do not – come to believe.”
Amy Hunter, a poet and Episcopal lay leader, writes, “Five years ago I had emergency surgery. My sister, a professor with final exams to give, was getting married in less than a week. Yet she drove from New York City to Massachusetts in a snowstorm to see me in the hospital. No phone call would reassure her that I was alive. She had to see me with her own eyes.”
Which reminds me of the story of the little girl who had a bad dream and cried out in the night. Her mother went to her and attempting to comfort her, said, “Don’t be afraid dear, God will always be with you.” To which her daughter replied, “I know that Mommy, but I want somebody with some skin on.”
Certainly she speaks for Thomas and I suspect for many of us when it comes to our faith in these days after Easter. How do we put some skin on it? What can help us to see it with our own eyes?
When the other ten disciples told Thomas that Jesus was alive after his crucifixion, when they exclaimed, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas refused to believe it. And so he has come to be known, of course, as doubting Thomas, the antithesis of a person of faith. I’m sure volumes of sermons have been preached on the theme: “Don’t be like Thomas. Believe! Don’t doubt!” I have probably preached a number of them myself.
And yet, was it doubt that fueled Thomas’ demand to see Jesus? Or was it love? Amy Hunter points out that Thomas was really no more of a doubter than the other disciples. Recall that when the women first tell their story of meeting the risen Christ, the disciples don’t believe them. They keep themselves locked up in that room hiding out. And so later when they tell Thomas they have seen Jesus, he just asks for the same assurance that they had received. In Hunter’s words, “Thomas wants proof. And he wants Jesus. When Jesus again appears to his disciples in the closed room, Thomas is there. And far from rebuking Thomas, Jesus offers to meet his conditions. ‘Put your fingers in my hands, touch my side.’ The Gospel gives no report of Thomas following through with these gruesome actions (I guess it will be up to the next Mel Gibson film to show us that!) but he probably did not feel any need to at that point. The personal encounter with Jesus makes Christs’ resurrection real to this follower…Mary can’t experience the resurrected Jesus for the disciples, and the disciples can’t experience Jesus for Thomas. It is faith, not doubt, that holds out for one’s own experience of Jesus.” You might say that in this story Thomas first dares to doubt and then he dares to believe.
But where does that leave us? This story would seem to leave us out – all of us who were not there, who will never lay eyes or hands on the concrete person of Jesus. We are outside the circle of that story, we have been outside by two thousand years! What about us who have never seen him in the flesh? “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” It’s almost as if Jesus is speaking over Thomas’ shoulder as he says that, looking to the rest of us...as if he is inviting us into the circle as well. Perhaps seeing is not necessarily superior to believing. But how does the story become alive for us – how does Christ become alive for us? How do we begin to put some skin on it?
I think back to the story with which I began. Do you remember what Thomas Long said? “I think that church got intruded upon. I think someone greater than I knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open, and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit and forgiveness.” A group of people was reminiscing about the history of their church, its ups and downs, the high points and the valleys of despair. One of them said, “When I think about all this church has been through, the trouble we’ve had, I think the fact that we are still here, still here in this place as the church is a great testimony to the power of God. If God hadn’t wanted us to be here, we sure would never have made it. But here we are.” Another person added, “We,may be the only evidence that God raised Jesus from the dead on Easter.” We may be the only evidence.
In John 20, we meet Thomas and the others; and a pitiful group it is. Timid souls hanging on to one another, cowering behind a locked door, scared to death, hoping that no one in town will know they are there. This is a group of people – this is a church – with absolutely no future. Except that, when it gathered, Christ pushed through the locked door, threw back the bolt, and stood among them. Into this void, this doubting, hopeless group, a word was spoken – “Peace be with you,” – a spirit given, and even the doubters dared to believe. To a church that had nothing, Christ gave everything – spirit, mission, forgiveness, peace.
Yes, we have our doubts. Perhaps that is why it has been so easy to condemn poor Thomas over the years – his story comes just a little too close to ours. We have our doubts but we don’t need to be afraid of them. Frederick Beuchner has said; “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith, they keep it alive.” Every Sunday morning in our adult class we are not afraid to raise our doubts. We can dare to doubt but, like Thomas, can we also dare to believe? Can we dare to believe that Jesus still comes, yes even to the likes of us, still speaking his word of peace, still giving gifts of mission and forgiveness, still commissioning us to give these same gifts to the world in his name? Do we dare to be a part of Christ’s risen life on earth? Like Thomas, do we want Jesus? Do we want to experience his life in our life, behind whatever locked door we may hide? Let us not be afraid. Let us dare to believe, and let us dare to keep pushing ourselves to live as a church; as a people – a community – formed from nothing less than the creative breath of Christ; a people created out of nothing who have been intruded upon by the living Christ, who even now stands among us.
We have seen the Lord. In the flesh? Probably not. In the story? Possibly. In our life together? Absolutely!