Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 18, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The 20th century produced two giants of Protestant theology--Karl Barth and Paul Tillich. Their approaches to understanding the faith were very different. They were both geniuses, and they both have had significant influence on the Christian thought, Protestant and Catholic, that came after them. They are both giants of the faith, but they disagreed about a lot and weren't at all shy about saying so. One thing they disagreed about a lot was whether or not doubt is consistent with faith. Barth was famously quoted a saying: "Would someone tell Paul Tillich that faith is inconsistent with doubt?" or words to that effect. Barth insisted that faith is the opposite of doubt. Tillich thought that doubt was inevitable for modern people and that it was in fact part of the life of faith, not incompatible with it.

As some of you know, I consider myself to be in many ways a disciple of Paul Tillich. I can't say the same about Barth, although a lot of what he had to say is worth listening to. I am a disciple of Tillich when it comes to the issue of doubt. I think that if we are honest with ourselves we all must admit that at times we doubt. We doubt the reality of God, the centrality of Jesus, and other foundational aspects of the Christian faith. One of my favorite Gospel verses, to which I return time and again, is the one where the father of a boy possessed by a demon says to Jesus: "I believe. Help my unbelief." Mark 9:24 Karl Barth would not have approved.

I've mentioned before that the story of "Doubting Thomas," which raises for us each year on this second Sunday of Easter the issue of doubt, hits me pretty close to home. I suppose that's true in part because I share this Apostle's name. It's also true in part because like the Gospel's Thomas I am a twin; but I think it goes deeper than that. I think this story touches me primarily because the issue of how we know the things of faith, and how we deal with doubt, are issues that fascinate me intellectually and, more importantly, challenge me existentially. How we know is the issue the story of Doubting Thomas raises for us, and it raises it in a surprisingly modern way, or so it seemed to me when I read it again in preparation for today's service. Let me explain.

The expressions of doubt, or rather not so much doubt as outright disbelief, that I hear most frequently come from people whose worldview has been established, whether they know it or not, by Enlightenment rationalism and scientific, philosophical materialism. These people simply do not believe in the reality (a word I much prefer to "existence") of anything that cannot be observed, quantified, and tested through the senses of the human body and the strictly logical facilities of the human mind. If you can't see, hear, smell, taste, or feel it, or if at least scientific method cannot discover and demonstrate it, then, for them, it isn't real, it doesn't exist.

They are the Thomas of this morning's Gospel story. Like them, Thomas was a philosophical materialist. If couldn't discern it with his ordinary human senses, he wouldn't believe it. He says: "Unless I see the wounds of his hands and touch the wounds of his side, I will not believe." He wasn't being unreasonable. He didn't demand confirmation by all five senses. Two would do, sight and touch. Two would do, but he needed proof, and proof meant to him something worldly, something, sensory, something material. His friends told them they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. Now I grant you, that's a pretty unbelievable statement. So it's not too hard for us to understand why Thomas wasn't about to take anybody's else's word for it. And he wasn't going to believe it based on anything short of confirmation by the usual means by which we perceive the physical, material world.

We get that, I think; but we have a problem. Jesus isn't available for us to see and touch. The risen Christ wasn't there when Thomas made his famous statement that has usually been interpreted as doubt, but he showed up one week later for Thomas to see and, if he had needed to, to touch. That's not going to happen for us. John's Christ knew that we would have this problem. That's why he says to Thomas: "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." Thomas believed because he saw. For him, seeing was believing. That's not an option for us. We are among those who, if we are to believe, must do so without seeing. For us, believing has to be something other than seeing.

And yet, for us modern people, it's sometimes very hard for believing to be anything other than seeing. Truth for us tends to be scientific truth, that is, truth that can be confirmed by the normal senses and by the rational operations of the mind. In the Thomas story, however, Jesus is inviting us to a different kind of truth, a different kind of knowledge. He invites us to a truth and knowledge based not on knowing in the usual sense but on believing.

OK, but what does that mean? What does it mean to believe? Just what is Jesus inviting us to? Well, first let me tell what he is not inviting us to. Because we tend to think that truth means knowing facts, we usually think that belief means that we take as true facts for which there is little or no empirical evidence. We can't "prove" it, so we have just to believe it. That's what belief usually means, both to people outside the church and to people in the church. That's not what I mean by belief, and I don't think it's what Jesus meant.

In his book The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg gives us several other ways of looking at what it means to believe. He suggests several, but the most important of them, I think, is what he calls "faith as trust." In this way of thinking, faith, or belief, means trusting in God. It does not mean trusting in the truth of a series of propositions about God. In this understanding, belief is "trusting in God as our rock and fortress." We "trust in God as the one upon whom we rely, as our support and foundation and ground, as our safe place." In this understanding, we do not believe things about God, we put our trust in God. We live in the confidence that no matter what happens we are ultimately, existentially safe because we have put your trust in God. Even though we die, we are safe because we trust in God. In our story from John Jesus said: "Have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Try hearing it this way: "Do you trust in me because you have seen? Blessed are those who trust in me although they have not seen."

That's us. We have not seen, and yet we can trust that God loves us and is with us throughout our lives and even in and beyond our deaths. We can't prove it. The presence of God can't be examined under a microscope. We can't find God as a substance, or even as a particle, somewhere in our bodies. Maybe for some that means that God isn't real. For us it does not mean that at all. It does not mean that for us because we have seen the fruits of trusting in God in our own lives and in the lives of others we have known. We know that when we put our trust in God we aren't talking about believing facts. We are talking about a way of living that brings peace and joy. We are talking about surrendering our fears and anxieties to the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Then, in that trusting, we find calm and courage for living. We find inspiration for ourselves and for others. We find life as God intends it to be.

And maybe at the same time we doubt. You see, when you understand faith not as believing facts for which there is little or no evidence but as trust, then the opposite of faith is not doubt. It may be fear, for example, but it is not doubt. In this understanding, doubt gets to be a problem only if it interferes with our trust in God. Yet I know that I can trust despite doubt. I might need proof to believe facts, but I don't need proof to trust God. All I need to do is to do it. So, Dr. Barth, with all respect, you were wrong. No one needed to tell Tillich that doubt is inconsistent with faith. He knew that faith isn't about believing facts but about trusting in the unfailing ground of being, which is God. So go ahead, Thomas. Doubt all you want. Doubt, and trust in God. Amen.