Series C
Thomas the Doubter
Easter
2
Today is Easter
Sunday. Last Sunday was Easter Sunday and we pulled out the
trumpets, pulled out all the stops on the organ, pulled out the
panorama of Easter lilies, and pulled in the crowds to celebrate the
resurrection power of God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the
dead. But the Spirit of Easter Sunday continue today. For
Christians, every Sunday is Easter Sunday. In fact, every day is an
Easter day. Easter is every day in which we are freed from the power
of pessimism and death. Easter is every day when there is a rebirth
of goodness and gladness in our hearts because of the living
presence of Jesus Christ. Easter is every day when there is a
renewal of springtime in our minds and hearts. Easter day is today.
Easter day is every day. Easter is not merely one liturgical Sunday
of the year, and so we shout, CHRIST IS RISEN, and the congregation
shouts back, “HE IS RISEN INDEED.”
It always amazes me
that at the very heart of the Easter gospel, when the mightiest act
of God is occurring, when Jesus has just been raised from the dead
by the power of God, when the blaring trumpets of Easter have
exploded in celebration, that there is doubt. That there is plain,
old fashioned doubt. On such a grand occasion as Easter morning, you
would have expected the disciples to have been filled with awe and
adoration. But the Bible tells us on that first Easter morning,
there was doubt. I would like to share with you four examples of
doubt found in the Biblical resurrection stories.
For example, we
know the story of Mary Magdalene and how she came to the tomb early
on that first Easter morning. The morning darkness was beginning to
give way to the morning light, but she was told by a messenger that
Jesus was not there. Suddenly, miraculously, the risen Jesus spoke
to her, saying her name, “Mary.” She turned and it was Jesus.
They spoke a few words and then Mary ran to tell the disciples what
she saw. And what was the disciples initial reaction? “There goes
Mary again. Excitable Mary. Emotional Mary. Hallucinating Mary
again.” The first report of Jesus’ resurrection and there was
doubt lingering in the disciple’s minds.
A second example.
Later that night, the disciples were huddled together in
their large upper room, and suddenly, miraculously, Jesus appeared
to them. The doors were shut; the drapes were drawn; the widows were
closed and the disciples were scared spitless. And what was the
disciples’ reaction to Jesus suddenly appearing to them? Did they
fall down on their knees in adoration and praise? Did they hit each
other on the shoulder and say, “Hey, just like we said. Hey, we
knew he would come back. Hey, we won the bet. We knew he would come
again.” No, the first
disciples were startled. They were afraid. They thought they were
seeing a ghost or a hallucination. Jesus asked them, “Why are you
having all these doubts? Why are all these questions in your
mind?” … So you see, at the very heart and core of the Easter
message, there is doubt. Plain, simple doubt.
Third example.
Doubting Thomas wasn’t there in the upper room with the other
disciples that night. Doubting Thomas wasn’t there. … Have you
ever been to a party or a ball game or a concert and the next day a
person comes up to you and says, “You should have been here last
night. That was a fabulous Sonics game. Or, the Mariners won last
night in the ninth. Or, you should have been at that Neil Diamond
concert last night.” So it was with the early disciples. “You
should have been here last night, Thomas. You missed something else.
You missed it. You missed a great party. Jesus came back to us and
he was alive.” And what was Thomas’ reaction? “I don’t
believe it. I don’t believe it. Until I see the holes in his hands
and wrists and side, I won’t believe.” He didn’t go along with
the crowd. He didn’t vote with the ten disciples. He stood alone
against the crowd and expressed his doubts and incredulities. …So
once again, you see doubt on Easter.
The fourth story.
It is one more example of doubt being at the core of the Easter
story. We finally come to the last resurrection appearance of Jesus.
We come to the very last resurrection appearance of Jesus and he was
on the Mount of Ascension. Jesus was ready to leave this earthly
existence. Jesus had just told his disciples to go into all the
world and make disciples of all people. This was their last great
moment together. This was their last time together. This was their
last goodbye to each other. And the Gospel of Matthew says, “Some
believed but others doubted.” And so ends of the Gospel of Matthew
on that old sweet song of doubt.
On the one hand, we
experience the grandest event in human history when God raised Jesus
of Nazareth from the dead; and within that story of that exquisite
event, we see the lurking of doubt in the shadows.
And so today, we
are going to take a good hard look at doubting Thomas. Doubting
Thomas has a certain appeal to all of us because Thomas is an honest
person and honesty is attractive. Thomas did not believe just to
believe. He wasn’t the kind of person who blindly accepted the
faith without question. Thomas questions, doubts, thinks, ponders.
He has a challenging and inquisitive mind. We find two moments in
the gospels where we meet Thomas and on both occasions he was
inquisitively asking questions: For example, one time Jesus was
teaching about going to prepare a place for them, a heavenly
mansion. It was Thomas who scratched his thoughtful head and asked,
“Jesus, we don’t know where you are going and we don’t know
the way.” Thomas did not understand what Jesus was saying and so
he asked Jesus the questions. None of the other disciples raised
their hands and expressed their curiosity. Thomas did. And the
second story about Thomas is the gospel story for today when ten
disciples expressed wonder and amazement that the resurrected Christ
had revealed himself to them, but Thomas didn’t go along with the
crowd and say, “OK, that must be true. You all said so.”
Instead, Thomas expressed his reservation and doubt: “Unless I see
him with my own eyes and touch his wounds with my own fingers, I
will not believe.” … Thomas was not the kind of person who would
rattle off the creed without thinking of what he was saying, e.g.
“I believe in the virgin birth, descended into hell, ascended to
the right hand of the father, the only Son of God, the same
substance with the father.” Thomas would not rattle of those
statements without thinking them through.
We are like Thomas.
We, too, have doubts and express those doubts and inquiries. We have
questions about God, Jesus, the Bible, the Christian faith. We have
big questions such as, “Is there a personal God?” or “Is Jesus
the only Son of God? Is there no validity to the other world
religions?” or “How do we know the Bible is true?” or “Why
is there so much evil in the world?” Or we often have personal
questions such as “Why did I get this heart attack? Why cancer?
Why did the child die so young? Why am I and my family having all
these troubles?” So we are like Thomas: we also have questions and
we often express those questions. We don’t hide them.
We are like Thomas
in another way. We too want proofs and signs. We would like God to
prove that God really exists, that there is truly another dimension
to existence. We are like the person in the rock opera, JESUS CHRIST
SUPERSTAR, who sang: “Jesus Christ, if you’re divine, turn my
water into wine. Prove to me that you’re no fool, walk across my
swimming pool.” We
would like God to work some miracles in our personal lives so we
could more easily believe. We would like God to rearrange the stars
up in heaven to spell out, “I exist” preferably in English as a
sign that there really is a personal God who personally cares for us
and our lives.
So today, we are
going to closely examine Thomas and the role of doubt in our faith.
Point number one
for all those confirmation students who no longer have to take notes
but still appreciate clarity. All Christians, sometimes during our
lives, we have doubts, questions and skepticisms. That is the way
that God wired us: to ask questions, to inquire, to think, to sort
out, and during our lifetimes, we will have many questions for God.
And there are times in our lives that we ask more questions than
others. I have also discovered that there are a variety of
personalities in this world and a variety of religious personalities
and some Christian personalities have much more doubt and many more
questions woven into that personality than others have.
The other day, a
young person came to my office, and wanted to talk about the
Christian faith. This person told me that if he became a Christian,
he no longer would have doubts and questions. I tried to explain to
this young man that he was being rather foolish; that Christians in
various time of our lives have more questions than at other times.
But he persisted in the illusion that once a person became a
Christian, doubts and questions and skepticism would fade away.
One particular
theologian has been helpful to me. His name is Henry Drummond who
makes a distinction between a doubter and an unbeliever. I have
found his distinction between a doubter and unbeliever helpful and I
hope this distinction may be helpful to your life as well. Let me
explain. A doubter is a person who searches for God and the godly
life; the person is on a journey, a quest, a search to find God and
the love of God. Not an unbeliever. An unbeliever isn’t searching
for God but for the pleasures of this world. An unbeliever is not
searching for God or the god question or the love of God but for
situations in life which will bring happiness. A doubter is a person
who has a thousand questions for God; questions about life, love,
God’s existence, purpose, the divinity of Christ and many other
questions. No the unbeliever. An unbeliever isn’t asking questions
about God, the divine dimension. The unbeliever is apathetic to God
and the God question does not really come up in his or her daily
life. A doubter struggles with God and struggles to live a godly
life and struggles to find the purpose of life, but not an
unbeliever. An unbeliever simply struggles to pay the bills, find a
spouse, find a job, find a house. That is all. And so there is an
enormous difference between an honest and questioning doubter and a
secularized unbeliever who does not struggle with the God question
and the divine dimensions of life.
All Christians, a
sometime during their life, sometimes more than others, some
personalities more than other, will doubt and question God.
Secondly, doubts,
questions and skepticism often lead to deeper faith and larger
faith. Let me give you some illustrations of this. As you know, we
pastors teach confirmation to your kids and some of your kids can be
at a phase in their lives that they “bug” us and this is normal.
Some kids bug us because they chatter too much and need their lips
sewn up. Other kids bug us because they are a little more snarly and
rebellious and refuse to do their homework. And still other kids bug
us because they have thousand and one questions about God, Jesus,
the Bible and every aspect of the Christian faith. One of the worst
kids in my memory was a kid named Duane Anderson who had thousands
of questions about God, the Bible, Christ, etc. That was some twenty
years ago now and I feel that there is justice that he is preaching
in a church this morning as a pastor of a congregation in Spokane,
Washington. The thousands of questions and doubts that he had as a youth were leading him to a deeper understanding of the
Christian faith. And that is what doubts and questions often do:
they lead us to a deeper and larger
faith.
Centuries ago,
Copernicus doubted that the earth was the center of the universe and
Christians round him were using the Bible and quoting the Bible to
prove that the earth was the center of the universe. His doubt of
their reading of the Bible lead him to a larger and deeper
understanding of the Christian faith.
Centuries ago,
during the time of Columbus, certain Christians were using the Bible
and quoting the Bible that the earth was flat and had edges and if
you sailed too far, your boat would fall over the edge off the
earth. Columbus doubted the Christianity he had been taught, and his
doubts led to a deeper and larger faith.
I personally
believe it is important for many but not all Christians to outgrow
their Sunday school theology. Not their faith in Jesus that they
learned before they ever went to Sunday school. But some Christians
still have a theology and thought pattern about God and the Bible
that reflects the wooden literalism of Sunday school years. Such
Christian people occasionally try to force their Sunday school
theology, not only on their children but on me. In my life, I am
grateful that I have had other Christian teachers who have led me to
a theology that, from my point of view, is deeper and wider than the
theology I learned in the basement of the church in Jackson,
Minnesota, so many years ago. The childlike faith in Christ that I
learned before Sunday school is still the most important thing I
know in life.
I would like to
share an autobiographical sketch for a moment. I have been taught
not to do this, but I will. I was born into a Christian family, was
baptized as an infant, and grew up in the faith. My mother and
father were sporadic church members. In ninth grade, my parents were
having troubles with the family business and each other; and at
Bible camp, I experience a conversion. My doubts went away for three
years, but my doubts fully blossomed and flowered when I was in
college. I took several courses in Comparative Religion,
Anthropology and Psychology. I became a walking question mark about
God. No matter what it was about God, Christ, the Bible and the
Christian faith, I questioned it. The essential question was this:
did God create man or did man create God? I basically answered that
question with “man created God.” With Sigmund Freud and his
book, THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION, I concluded that man created God
so that we humans would feel more secure with our mortality
in our time here on earth. As I finished college, I was still a
walking question mark, but thought that I still wanted to be a
pastor. Yes, I know that was weird, but I wanted to be a religious
social worker or a religious psychologist. I was required to write a
paper for the seminary and tell them my beliefs. I did. I told them
I had lots of questions about God and Jesus, didn’t really believe
in them but as symbols, but I wanted to come to the seminary and
explore these questions. The seminary turned me down and sent me a
rejection slip. I was surprised that the seminary had some standards
and so I wrote the paper again, using the right buzz words that
would get me into the seminary. It worked. I got into the seminary and studied hard the knotty questions of my
life: God, Jesus, the Bible, the miracles, virgin birth, the
resurrection, evolution, and every other question that was bugging
me. I don’t know how it happened but over time, the Holy Spirit
got into me in such a way that my questions and doubts were
addressed if not answered and my doubts and questions began to fade
into the woodwork, like a scar in a tree fades over time. I believe
that my questions and doubts and skepticism led me into a deeper and
wider faith.
In
other words, today I am standing before you as a pastor who is a
recovered skeptic. That is important. Not all Christians are
recovered skeptics. Their faith was wonderfully simple and pure
throughout most of their lives. Not me. I am a recovered skeptic and
this is important. By analogy, if you are having troubles with
alcohol, it is important to be in conversation with a recovered
alcoholic. A recovered alcoholic knows the nuances and subtleties of
argument of an alcoholic. He knows their thought patterns and habits
and weak points. So also with a recovered skeptic. I believe that I
can deal with many people in our society who are skeptical about
God, Christ, the Bible and the Christian faith. I sense I know their
arguments, their logic, their reasoning, and I can be helpful in
that situation.
That
is also true of Thomas. Thomas, too, was a recovered skeptic. Thomas
was enormously skeptical of the news he heard about the resurrected
Christ and he voiced his skepticism. At the close of the story,
Thomas falls on his knees and says, “Christ, you are my Lord and
God.” I believe that the story of Thomas is a story of a recovered
skeptic.
Point
three: Jesus and the
Bible says: Thomas, stop doubting and believe.
There is a time in all of our lives where God says to us,
“It is time to stop your doubting. It is time to move past your
doubting. It is time to believe and experience the power of
belief.”
In
the Book of Job, Job went on doubting, complaining and questioning
God for thirty eight chapters and God finally got tired of Job’s
doubting and said, “Be quiet Job. I am tired of your wailing and doubting. Be
quiet and believe.”
As
a recovered skeptic, I have discovered that there comes a time in
life where we begin to doubt our doubts, question our questions, and
become skeptical of our skepticisms. We start to understand that our
doubts, questions and skepticisms are a phase of our life and that
we actually become fixated with our questions, doubts and
skepticisms. That was true of me. I had become fixated on my doubts
and questions for about ten years, and I called that reason, but it
wasn’t reason but only a phase in my life where I was a walking
question mark. I discovered that Christians can become fixated on
their Sunday school theology and not move beyond it; and I also
discovered that a person can become fixated on their doubts and not
move beyond them. I gradually discovered that my doubts and
questions were becoming a waste of time and waste of life and waste
of intellectual and spiritual energy. These questions and doubts
were beginning to fade like a knife carving made into the bark of a
tree. They weren’t so important to me anymore.
At
the same time, I became aware that there is power to believing as
Jesus wanted to believe. That there is a power to believing that is
not weighed down and slowed down by doubts and questions. Jesus said
to many people, “Great is your faith.” He said that a hundred
times in the Bible. He never once said, “I commend your for your
great questioning.” There is power to faith, power to move
mountains and carry momentous burdens. Jesus said that: ‘If you
have the power of faith and do not doubt, you will be able to move
mountains, do great works of love and move mountainous burdens.”
I
thought of my heroic examples of great faith. Mother Theresa of
Calcutta. What faith shone through her. Dr. Mark Jacobson of a
hospital in Tanzania. Aseneth Omwega at Lutheran World Relief in
Nairobi. And when I look across the faces of this congregation
today, I see so many of you who have deep faith, who have grown past
your doubts, grown past your questions, grown past your skepticism
and I see how powerful your Christian love is today.
Yes,
there is great power in a life that believes in Christ, loves in
Christ, walks in Christ.
And
so we come to the end of the sermon and the end of the story of
Thomas. Thomas, after all that questioning and doubting and
skepticism, came to the time when he fell on his knees and he said.
My Lord and My God. Words of a recovered skeptic. And those are my
words as well. Amen.
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