Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 8, 2011

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.

He’s just not about to believe it. Thomas doesn’t believe it. Yes, the others who said they have seen the risen Lord were his friends. Yes, they like he had left the lives they had known to follow Jesus. It’s not that he doesn’t trust them exactly, but Jesus was dead. That he knew. That was a fact. Perhaps Thomas had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, or perhaps he’d seen Jesus’ body after it had been taken down from the cross. Or maybe people had just told him that Jesus was dead. If so, that at least was something he could believe. People die. That’s a fact. The Romans crucified people, that was a fact too. Thomas had no doubt that Jesus was dead; but that he was alive again? That was too much of a stretch for Thomas. That one he couldn’t believe. He knew what it would take to make him believe. Let me see and touch him, wounds of the crucifixion and all. Then I’ll believe, he said. Only then will I believe.

We call him “Doubting Thomas.” Yet it isn’t so much that he doubted as that he just didn’t believe. He just didn’t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. He was an unbeliever. In Russia the way people ask if you believe in God is just to ask “Are you a believer?” Thomas would have to answer that question “No,” at least with regard to Jesus’ resurrection. Thomas didn’t believe, and the Christian church has told people for a couple of thousand years now that not believing in Jesus, including not believing in his bodily resurrection, gets you condemned to torment in hell for eternity. Especially in our Protestant branch of Christianity the faith has been seen as being so much about belief that even doubt about Jesus has been condemned as a sin and as a threat to the doubter’s eternal salvation. In conservative Christian circles even today, so I’ve been told, people are afraid to express any doubt they may have about God or about Jesus. In those circles doubt is something to fear, doubt is something to run from; and so doubt becomes something to hide, something to deny even when it is very real and very troubling in a person’s mind and soul.

Christianity so considers doubt to be something negative, something dangerous even, that calling someone a “Doubting Thomas” is to pass a negative judgment on that person, or so I’ve always sensed. Once, when I was eighteen, or maybe it was when I was eleven, and we were traveling in Europe, my father got into a conversation with a stranger. I think it was on a boat crossing the English Channel, or on a train in France, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but I remember my father telling this stranger that my name is Tom. Then he said “He’s a Doubting Thomas.” I was sort of surprised by that statement, although at the time I certainly wasn’t very religious, whether it was when I was eleven or when I was eighteen; and I sure didn’t take the statement as a compliment. It even stung a little, so much had I internalized, even at that relatively young age, the notion that doubt about God and about Jesus Christ is a bad thing. Of course, if there ever was a Doubting Thomas in our family it was actually Dad himself, although of course his name wasn’t Thomas. Perhaps he was projecting his doubt onto me. In any event, I still remember this incident today so many years later. In our tradition accusing someone of doubt packs a wallop.

For a great many Christians, then, Thomas is the epitome of doubt or even outright unbelief, and even doubt, not to mention outright unbelief, is a very bad thing. So I was a bit surprised as I reread the story of Thomas this year—he comes up in the lectionary every year—to notice how Jesus actually reacts to Thomas and his doubt. I mean, if the Christian faith is about belief, and if doubt is the fundamental Christian sin that it has been presented as being, you’d expect Jesus to come down hard on Thomas. You’d expect Jesus to condemn Thomas for his doubt and to demand that he simply believe. The story of Thomas appears only in the Gospel of John, and, unlike the other three Gospels, the Gospel of John is all about the importance of believing in Jesus Christ. Unlike the other Gospels, in John that’s pretty much what Jesus is all about. So if, especially in John, doubt is such a dangerous and un-Christian thing, you’d expect Jesus to condemn Thomas for his doubt but good.

But what does Jesus do? He knows that Thomas has said that in order to believe that Christ is risen he must see Jesus and see and touch the wounds of the crucifixion so that he knows that it really is Jesus he’s seeing. Jesus, so far from condemning Thomas and his doubt, shows Thomas the wounds of the crucifixion and invites him to see and to touch. He offers Thomas the proof Thomas has said he needs. In John’s story it turns out that just Jesus’ offer is enough to convince Thomas, and he confesses Jesus as his Lord and his God; but what I want to focus on here isn’t it Thomas’ reaction to Christ’s offer of the proof Thomas had asked for but Christ’s reaction to Thomas.

Jesus doesn’t condemn Thomas. Jesus doesn’t demand that Thomas just change his mind and believe. He doesn’t attack Thomas for his unbelief. Rather, he meets Thomas where he is. He meets Thomas in his doubt, and he offers Thomas what Thomas needs to overcome his doubt. He offers Thomas what Thomas needs to overcome the doubt that was keeping Thomas from connecting with the risen Christ and through the risen Christ connecting with God. Jesus doesn’t judge. He doesn’t blame. He doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t reject. Rather, he meets Thomas where he is and as he is, and he seeks to restore Thomas’ relationship with him and with God by doing what Thomas needs him to do. Yes, John does have Jesus say “Do not doubt but believe,” but that’s John; and no one denies that the life of faith is ultimately about belief. So I don’t think that little tag really contradicts my point that Jesus is not condemning Thomas’ doubt but meeting him in it and reaching out to him.

That’s how it is with Jesus and Thomas, and here’s the important thing. That’s how it is with Jesus and us too. That’s how it is with God and us too. God seeks always to restore our relationship with God whenever that relationship is damaged or broken. There are of course a great many things that can damage or break our relationship with God. Doubt is one of them to be sure, and how many of us can honestly say that we never have doubts about Jesus Christ? How many of us can honestly say that we never have doubts about God? I can’t, and perhaps you can’t either; but here’s the good news. Jesus’ reaction to Thomas tells us that God doesn’t condemn our doubt or condemn us for having it. Rather, God reaches out to us in our doubt, being present with us in our doubt, seeking through gracious presence and actions in our lives to break through our doubt. Just as the risen Christ did with Thomas, God meets and accepts us just as we are, doubt and all. God responds in the same way to anything else that may be damaging or destroying our relationship with God too. That’s just how it is with God.

God doesn’t condemn our doubt, so doubt isn’t something we need to fear; but I actually think there’s more to it than that. I think doubt has its virtue. After all, what we’re talking about here is God, and God is more than anything else mystery. We know that our finite human minds can never truly comprehend the fullness of the infinite God. Yet people of faith so easily become convinced that they, and only they, actually have “the truth” about God. People who have no doubt that they have the truth about God are dangerous. The late unlamented Osama bin Ladn may be an extreme example of that truth, but he is an example of it. He had no doubt that he, and pretty much only he and people who agreed with him, had the truth about God. So he killed people. Lots of people. Most Christians don’t kill people who disagree with them, although far too often they have; but they have through the centuries pretty consistently engaged in religious and cultural imperialism, condemning other faiths and their adherents and telling them that they had to convert to Christianity in order to be saved. People without doubt about their beliefs about God are, I think, actually the dangerous one, not people with a healthy doubt, a healthy humility about the absolute truth of their understanding of God.

The story of Doubting Thomas tells us then that the Christian tradition has gotten it wrong about doubt. Doubt isn’t a sin. Doubt doesn’t endanger our immortal souls. Doubt is a natural part of the life of faith since, after all, we’re talking about God; and we can never truly have certainty about God. A healthy doubt that engenders in us a healthy humility about our understanding of God is actually a very good thing, a necessary corrective to the arrogance that comes from too much certainty about God. When our doubt is healthy, when our doubt is grounded in humility, when our doubt is an expression of our understanding that our knowledge of God is and always must be partial and incomplete, then, I believe, God welcomes our doubt and is pleased with us for having it.

So we are people of faith, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t people of doubt. In the Gospel of Mark a man cries out to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24 Belief and unbelief go together in a healthy life of faith. The risen Christ didn’t condemn Thomas for his doubt, so let us not condemn ourselves for our doubt or others for theirs. It isn’t a sin. It can even be a virtue. Amen.