City of Doubt

City of Doubt

A Sermon on John 20:19-31
by Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On The Second Sunday of Easter

April 8, 2018

Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Resurrected Christ, and the Comforter.  Amen.

He is Risen! (He is Risen indeed!)

We still say it because we are still in the Easter season…50 days of celebration… although it feels different today without the brass ensemble, with the wilted lilies, without the crowds of last week…. Today is known as Low Sunday, a week after Easter when we deal with the text that happens a week after Easter, only John tells us about this.

I lament that this is the Sunday many skip because I think this might be the Sunday most of us understand the very most. Resurrection names a reality we desire, this Sunday names a reality we understand….that of doubt.

A few years ago a movie came out and a friend called to say, “I have never seen your life story unfold on the screen before, but this movie is so you and your faith journey.” The movie was titled Doubt and it starred Meryl Streep and Philip Hoffman. If you have not seen it, it’s a worthwhile investment of a few hours of your time…. Everything about the movie is incredible and the theology is the best I have ever seen on screen. 

The movie is about a Catholic church set in the 1950’s, a time of great change for the Catholic church. The story centers around 2 characters: a nun who holds to all the traditions of the church, the systems, the routines, and a faith of certainty. The second character is a priest who is more ready to embrace the newer church system, freer rituals, and whose faith is very much defined by questions.

The movie centers around the tension between these two extremes. Both characters make claims about the other characters action and way of seeing the world, which we as the audience are left to judge ourselves, with very little evidence to endorse either claim.

At the end of the movie, the nun wins out and the priest moves on to a different parish, the church is left in an almost war-torn manner, and the final scene is this nun sitting in the garden which is full of snow as a carol play in the background. She is sitting with a younger nun and suddenly she begins to cry, to weep.

“Sister, what is wrong?” the younger nun asks.

And then this pivotal line….

“I have doubts. I have so many, many doubts.”

The screen then fades to black as the carol continues to play. 

It is a moment of deep honesty and confession. I saw the movie twice in the theater and both times, people stayed in their seats in absolute silence past the credits. No one moved. I immediately knew why my friend had told me this movie was a mirror of my life. 

I am a person who grew up in a church of absolute faith, faith that was factual and certain. I was taught that all of my faith statements needed to end in periods and be uttered with great authority.  The Scripture was sure and certain. Our shared faith was proven and true. Faith was absolute belief. 

I was taught that men were to be pastors and women were to be helpers. I was taught the age of accountability. I was taught the infallibility of Scripture. I was taught creationism and submission and dispensationalism.

And I have to say it all made sense to me because it was a puzzle and all the pieces fit together quite nicely, as long as you did not realize nothing was holding it together and it fell apart at the slightest movement, for example, life and reality.

And then the inevitable happened, life happened as life does and I started asking some questions about faith. Some- many- of the things that well-meaning folks taught me did not make logical sense anymore or science and fact and experience simply proved them wrong. And then when I asked questions, I was never given a satisfactory answer, more often than not I was told to pray harder. 

It was scary and it was difficult. To learn to dance with doubt is not easy. But now I am a person who falls in the camp of “I have doubt, I have so many many doubt… and those very doubts have saved my faith.”

I also know that our church is full of people who utter those same words and share this narrative with me, those are the words and stories I have heard often in my office. How doubt has entered our life….

It can happen in a classroom. You walk into your first college course, you are ready for this moment. And then everything you learned about creation is questioned in a really intelligent manner, with facts nonetheless, and you walk out of the class not sure what you know anymore.

It can happen in a waiting room. Sitting there knowing that the results of this test will define the rest of your life. The nurse calls you back and the results are not good. The questions begin, the why me prayer, and you leave the office unsure of so very much.

It can happen alone in your prayer closet when you realize that you have not had a real encounter with Jesus in such a long time, in fact, it was so long ago you barely remember it. You leave your prayer closet so unsure of so much in your life. It feels like emptiness.

It can happen while trying to discern what our faith means today, the church has certainly not helped us here. To quote John Shelby Spong in his latest work: “Christianity, having recorded its first-century explanation of the Jesus experience in scripture, and it’s fourth-century explanations in creedal statements, then proceeded to make excessive claims for the authority of those explanations, essentially freezing them into their first and fourth century frames of references.” And this poor practice has certainly given us many doubts when the facts of the world seem to rub up against our faith.

It can happen when you look around the world and the state of things, even the state of the church and you just want to throw your hands up and say “I can’t believe anymore.”

We have doubts, many, many doubts.

And I think that is a good thing.

Look at Doubting Thomas. Although I want to make it really clear that I don’t think Thomas was the only doubter, he just gets that label. The beginning of the text makes this just about as clear as it can be, John 20:19 “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear….”

That does not sound like a room without doubt to me. It seems that doubt was probably all over that space.  And maybe that is exactly as it should have been… we are talking about matters of faith here and when it comes to faith, doubt is fairly natural. 

Add on top of that they have just been through a whirlwind of events and feeling. Add on top of that there is a very real fear of violence. And then add on top of that this new story that they are trying to figure out… what it means, why it had to happen that way and then the absurdity of absurdities, how to tell it. As Jon Meacham wrote in an essay last week: “So singular was the proposition that a particular person had been resurrected from the dead and that belief in him would lead to eternal salvation, it would hardly have been the early Christian’s first narrative of choice to share.”

Enter Thomas, who I think is quite brave, the only one brave enough to voice his doubt, maybe the first one to understand that confessing doubt is as sacred as confessing what you do believe (a practice that I think might be quite beneficial to relearn in church today). He’s the spiritual doubter. He’s had all sorts of encounters with Jesus, but he wonders if it is true anymore. He’s each of us who have left our prayer closets wondering if anyone has heard our prayers. He’s each one of us that have thought about our faith and wondered if that could even be true today. He’s each of us that has faced a life circumstance that left us bewildered by God.

After the cross, Thomas is not with the other 10 disciples when they see Jesus. He misses the big moment. The others tell him all about it, what they have seen, what they have experienced, and Thomas well he has this crude reply- I will believe when I can put my hand in his side and when I can see the nail pierced hands.  It’s Thomas’ empty prayer closet moment. It’s his what I know and what this ancient text tells me doesn’t add up anymore moment. It’s his the question feels bigger than the answers I have always known moment.

And note it’s not Jesus he doubts, it’s the testimony of his brothers about Jesus that he is doubting…. I often find our doubts have way more to do with what we tell each other about God and faith more than they do about actual faith. I often have to remind myself that this faith, our faith is a relationship with God who says believe me, not believe in me.

Thomas: “I know I have seen him and felt him before, but right now I feel nothing.”

So what do we do when this happens to us? If you are Thomas and you have serious questions about the spiritual journey right now, can you ask those questions- can you express your doubt?

Ask the questions…. And if you need permission to do so, read the Gospels. Jesus rarely lead us to truth using a propositional statement, a doctrine for instance. Instead, he used questions and stories that left us with questions… Jesus knew that to discover a truth, you had to discover it, you had to earn your way there, you had to walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt.

Express what is in your heart- the anger, the fear, the empty feeling, the outrage..… That is what the spiritual journey is about- to hide your doubts would be acting false. Thomas statement is brave and honest, I often think we should have titled him Truthful Thomas instead of Doubting Thomas.

And look what happens… Jesus shows up in the midst of all that and tells Thomas to touch his side, his hands, and then Thomas cries out “My Lord and My God..’ Which is the first time these two titles have been used together since the resurrection, in expressing his doubt Thomas is also the first one to clearly express his faith.

And maybe that is what it takes, to express our faith we have to start with our doubt. You can’t get found until you name where you are lost. You can’t find your way out until you know where you are. You can’t find an answer until you know the question.

One of the greatest faith insights I have received came in this line: “The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty. And that is madness.” It’s quoted in the worship guide as Anne Lamott, but she often says she stole it from Karl Barth. 

You see our faith is not fact. Facts can be proven, faith can’t. I don’t have faith in gravity (drop something), that is a fact. I can prove it a hundred times over. 

And as a fact, it’s not really a relationship, there is no mystery, no intrigue…. I don't want to further my relationship to gravity, I don’t want to know a lot more about it.

And God is not fact, which is one of the reasons that apologetics has done way more harm than good to our faith. Make God an absolute, a known and where is the relationship?

But God, who can’t be proven, who is relationship and mystery and not fact…. Well, that I am willing to surrender my life to. 

I have faith in God and that includes my share of doubts. In fact, I believe doubt is one of God’s primary languages.

One of my favorite spiritual journeys is that of Sheldon Vanauken, a student, and friend of C.S. Lewis. He was a brilliant academic and the thought of Christianity as truth was too much for him, it did not make sense, but he was attracted to it. Writing about his eventual conversion to the faith, he wrote this wonderfully ironic statement that explains so much of Christianity’s relationship with doubt: “To believe with certainty, one has to begin by doubting.”

It’s why the prayer I quote the most comes from the father in Mark’s Gospel who desperately wants to get it and utters these words: “God I believe, help my unbelief.” It’s the heartbeat of my prayer life and once I settled there, made that home, I have found faith in a whole new way. 

Because sometimes the only way to get to My Lord and My God is to start with exactly what keeps you from uttering those words. 

May you have doubts that led you deeper into your faith. 

Amen and Amen.