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Embracing doubt
Alice M. F. Townley
March 30, 2008
John 20:19-31
UUMC
You know I spend too much time hanging out in the pediatrician’s office when
I can quote her magazine’s. An article titled, “After God Left: Embracing
Doubt,” in the February issue of Real Simple, caught my eye. In it
Alison Smith writes, “I lost my faith in God while sitting on the laundry hamper
in the upstairs bathroom of my childhood home on July 28, 1984. I was 15 years
old, and my big brother Roy, had died in a car accident the day before. . .
.Losing Roy was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me. Losing God was
the second hardest.”
Allison and her family had been devout Catholics, daily worshipping, praying,
and reading the scriptures. Alison continued, “[After that] God was silent, I
spent a lot of time standing in the backs of churches on those days, watching as
the congregation sang and prayed and thinking, I remember faith.”
A fresh breath came for Alison many years later as a fellow writer told her
about her interview on doubt with the mother superieor of a cloistered
Carmelite convent.
“The mother superior of a Carmetlite convent has doubt?”
“Great doubt. She says she struggles with it every day.” It’s the hardest
part of her life.
Alison recounted, “I owned a number of books about the lives of saints. I
had occasionally flipped through them and read the stories of powerful faith.
Wholly, passionately, uncompromisingly, they believed. Or that’s what I had
noticed; I had read them to remind myself of how much I had lost. After I got
off the phone with my friend, I reread those same stories. But this time I paid
more attention to one crucial detail: Nearly all the saints had gone through a
period of struggle—a “dark night of the soul.” They all doubted. All around
me, the great believers had wrestled, and I had not seen it.
I started to take a closer look at my doubt. It’s given me many gifts . . .
sometimes when I think something is ending, it’s actually just beginning.” (pp
65-68, Alison Smith, “After God Left: Embracing Doubt, Real Simple,
February 2008)
Do we dare confess in church that we have places within us that have ever
doubted? This morning’s gospel, is for us, and the mother superior, and Alison
Smith. The gospel ushers into the world of the disciples one week after
Easter. On a quick reading, it appears Thomas was the only one who struggled.
When we read and re-read more slowly, we see all of the characters, first
responded to the resurrection with fear and disbelief. This gospel lesson
should be renamed from “doubting Thomas” to the “doubting faithful.”
Mary had run to tell the disciples the good news--but they thought it was an
idle tale. They doubted her story. Look at the disciples, they were huddled
behind locked doors. It doesn’t say which of the disciples were there, I
imagine it was both the men like James, John and Peter, and the women like,
Joanna, Martha, the Samaritan woman, and all of their children. They came
looking for a safe place to be together and pray, sing. They came to tell their
stories, and wonder where would they go from here? No where. Gone was hope.
Gone was all they had believed in. Gone was all that they had given their lives
for. Gone.
Long before his death, Jesus had been preparing his disciples for his
departure. He had gone over, then over again, his commandments to love one
another, to be bold, to trust him, to be the branches to his vine, to feed on
the Bread of Life, to be ready to follow him at all costs.
They were supposed to be the ones walking confidently out into the world,
full of the Holy Spirit, announcing the Easter triumph of God. Look at them
hunkered down, cowering, hoping that nobody in town will know that they're
there. Here --just after hearing about Easter--they are scared, disheartened,
and defensive. The room with the locked doors became like a tomb.
Then through these bolted shut doors, uninvited, the Risen Christ appeared.
Did he scold them? Did he ask what they believed? Did he wait until they
passed a limus test? Jesus saw them there, in their tomb, and he said, "Peace
be with you," showing them his pierced hands and feet and reaching out to them
from his death to their death. Peace here is the peace that passes
understanding. The peace that only Jesus can give. It is the peace that comes
with being in the very presence of God. He said again, "Peace be with you."
Then Jesus breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, his own spirit, the
resurrection spirit. In his breathing, they received the gifts Jesus longed to
give them—Life. (Take a deep breath with me.)
Unfortunately, Thomas was missing. He responded to the disciples just like
they had to Mary. Giving the disciples a taste of their own medicine. “I need
to see him myself. Need some proof.” After all--he had believed once. And he
did not want to be disappointed again. He needed to protect his heart.
But the disciples were somehow offended. They had failed to convert on their
first attempt. “How dare he not believe us.”
Week later the disciples were gathered again behind shut doors. This time
Thomas was with them. Jesus came again, and gave them the blessing, "Peace be
with you."
Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out
your hand and put it in my side. ‘let my pain and your pain touch.’ Do not
doubt but believe.”
What is this word translated as “doubt”? The RSV and King James use the
word “faithless.” The New Revised Standard Version use the word “doubt.” The
Greek word here in John is apistomai. It is usually translated as asking
questions of God, searching for God, desiring to be sure. It is also used as a
"to be" verb. There are eight other Greek words commonly used for doubt, and
this is not one of them. I think a better translation is searching. In
other words, "Stop your searching Thomas, I am right here. I have been
searching for you." I am with you when you are sure of things, and I am with
you when you are sure of nothing.
Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
Take a deep breath with me.
Jesus blessed Thomas who saw and believed, and blessed those who have not
seen and yet have come to believe.
At my interview for a hospital chaplaincy course at Rex Hospital in Raleigh,
North Carolina, the head chaplain, Nancy Osbourne, asked me, "Alice, I know you
are a person of faith, now tell me some of the times you have doubted."
I couldn't think of anything significant enough for her--Nothing as shaking
as the disciples or Alison Smith. "I guess I just don't have any then." To
be honest, I thought that doubt would threaten my faith--and then I might loose
it. I equated doubt with faithlessness.
What she knew, and I would later discover, is that in the terror of tragedies
I would encounter among the people in those hospital halls --I would either
learn to cry out to God—“Why?!” or become so numb that I too would die.
In the searching and crying out to God, I became more open to God. Sometimes
there were no answers to my demanding questions--but there was presence--and
through the struggle, my faith grew. Embracing doubt is not a dead end, but yet
another place to breath. Another place to experience the risen Christ.
Poem by Ann Weems
Somewhere between the hurt and the heart must come the decision to reject or
cling to the faith.
Somewhere among the Why me?s and the anger and the screaming No!s and the
soft incessant sobbing,
Somewhere in the aching persistent pain and the hopeless helpless nights,
Somewhere between the loud horror of what has happened and the quiet terror
of silence comes
A turning away---or a reaching out.
Somewhere between power and powerlessness comes the covenant cry
and you either answer or you don't
and you either live or you die.
"Therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live." --Ann Weems
Take a deep breath.
Like many in our era, Kathleen Norris left the church in her late teens,
when her doubts about the faith overwhelmed her. She thought doubts were only
an obstacle and not a doorway. She was gone for 20 years. She has written
about how God came through her bolted shut door, and how she came home to
church. Let me read to you from, Amazing Grace.
"For a long time, even though I was attracted to church, I was convinced that
I did not belong there, because my beliefs were not thoroughly solid, set in
stone.
When I first stumbled upon the Benedictine abbey where I am now an oblate, I
was surprised to find the monks so unconcerned with my weighty doubts and
intellectual frustrations over Christianity. What interested them more was my
desire to come to their worship. I was a bit disappointed--I had thought that
my doubts were spectacular obstacles to my faith and was confused but intrigued
when an old monk blithely stated that doubt is merely the seed of faith, a
sign that faith is alive and ready to grow. I am grateful now for his
wisdom and grateful to the community for teaching me about the power of
liturgy. They seemed to believe that if I just kept coming back to worship,
kept coming home, things would eventually fall into place." (62-63, Norris,
"Belief, doubt, and sacred ambiguity," Amazing Grace)
Jesus comes to us at University UMC--over and over again. Through worship,
holy scriptures, singing the hymns and listening to the music, through the
breaking of bread at the communion table--or even the Wednesday dinner table,
through the words of others and our own inner nudges. Jesus keeps coming to us
over and over again. Breathing on us. And saying, “Peace be with you.”
Thomas was searching Jesus out. He wanted to be sure. And the grace is that
Jesus came searching Thomas out --and the disciples, and Alison Smith, the
Mother Superior, Ann Weems, Kathleen Norris —in their places of struggle. Not
just once, but repeatedly. And Jesus searches us out. Wanting to give to us
the gift of his breath. The gift of presence. The gift of Spirit.
So, Whatever happened to Thomas--tradition says that he ended up carrying the
gospel to India, where there still exists an order known as Christians of St.
Thomas of India. Thomas became so strong in his faith that he became a
Christian martyr. Was doubt a dead-end for Thomas--no! It became a doorway
into a relationship with the living Christ.
What will happen to us? That all depends. Will we run from our doubts
because we fear that they lead to a dead-end? If so--we will grow isolated and
stale--and eventually hit the dead end. Or will our doubts--that is our search
--be a doorway into deeper relationship? God help us choose the second. And
the good news is that the Living Christ comes to us even when the doors are
bolted shut.
Breathe
Alleluia and Amen. |
