Room for Doubts and Questions? --- Sermon for Easter 2B (John 20:19-31)
I like St. Thomas. He’s a realist who isn’t afraid to ask questions. He’s an empiricist who embraces the principle of “seeing is believing.” So, when he heard that Jesus had risen from the dead and appeared to the other disciples, he was skeptical. He wanted to see and touch Jesus for himself.
While his skepticism led to an unfortunate nickname of “Doubting Thomas,” Thomas didn’t ask for anything that the other disciples hadn’t already received. The others believed Jesus rose from the dead because he appeared to them. Remember that Jesus’ male disciples didn’t believe Mary Magdalene’s testimony until he appeared to them. So Thomas was in good company when he made his demands.
Modern folks also struggle to make sense of Jesus’ resurrection. As the eighteenth-century skeptic, David Hume reminds us, resurrection isn’t an everyday occurrence. Even if we embrace the biblical message of resurrection, most of us follow Hume’s skepticism when it comes to other strange ideas and beliefs, like the existence of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster! In the age of social media, with its accompanying scams and disinformation, having a bit of skepticism is a good thing. Remember that just because you read it on FaceBook doesn’t mean it’s true! It doesn’t even matter if your best friend is the one who shared the latest “news.”
I’m glad John includes Thomas’s story because it allows us to wrestle with our own questions and doubts when it comes to matters of faith. While there are many things we take by faith, it’s okay to have questions and doubts. The church should be a safe place to ask our questions and wrestle with the big issues of the Christian faith. Hopefully, you find this church to be that safe place because not every church is a safe place to wrestle with matters of faith. Many people, especially younger people, have found churches to be narrow-minded and judgmental and unsafe. To avoid getting hurt they avoid religious communities.
On this Second Sunday in the season of Easter, as we ponder Thomas’s story, perhaps this is a good time to acknowledge that we all have questions about matters of faith. Not only does the preacher not have all the answers, he has his own sets of questions.
While I’ve never thought about walking away from my Christian faith, I know many who have. Maybe I’ve stayed in the church because I’ve been fortunate to find conversation partners who gave me safe harbor to deal with my questions. The truth is, my faith has evolved over time. Where once upon a time my theology was rather narrow, today it’s much broader. The truth is, my faith continues to grow and evolve because the more I learn the more I discover I have more to learn.
A few years back I wrote a book titled Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots, in which I share part of my own journey that began in the Episcopal Church of my childhood. That faith community left its mark on me, as did my youthful Pentecostal period, along with the evangelicalism of my early twenties. Then there’s the Disciple part of me that includes my ordination in 1985. Over the years other pieces of what I call “spiritual DNA” have been added to my spiritual identity. While I am comfortable with my faith, like Thomas, I have questions that require answers. As I discover the answers to these questions, new strands of spiritual DNA are added. Even though I remain a fully committed Disciples of Christ pastor, spending much of my retirement hanging out with Presbyterians has added new strands of spiritual DNA! I expect that what is true for me is true for you!
In fact, every time we gather as a community of faith, new strands are added to our spiritual DNA. They can be positive or negative strands, depending on the situation at hand. While I hope they’re all positive, for many people their spiritual DNA is full of negative elements. That is unfortunate.
Although we can read Jesus’ appearance to Thomas as a good scolding for not believing the testimony of the others, I would rather read it as an invitation to address his doubts and questions. When we read it this way, we receive assurance that God is comfortable with our questions. Remember that Jesus never called his questioning disciple “Doubting Thomas.”He simply offered himself to Thomas so that Thomas could get his bearings. Thomas responded with a confession of faith in Jesus: “My Lord and My God.” As we bring our questions and doubts to Jesus, might we join Thomas in making our own confession of faith in Jesus, our Lord and our God?
While Thomas got the opportunity to see and touch the risen Christ, something most of us will never get to do this side of eternity, we have the testimony preserved in the Gospels. Jesus told Thomas that those who believe without seeing will be blessed. With that in mind, John tells us:
Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name (Jn. 20:30-31).
On this first Sunday after Easter, as we continue celebrating the resurrection of Jesus by singing Easter hymns, Thomas’ story serves as an invitation to bring our questions and doubts to Jesus so we can wrestle with them together as members of the body of Christ. As we wrestle with our questions, we derive a blessing from God. Not only do we receive blessings, we get to share them with others.
We hear this invitation to put our trust in Jesus during challenging times. There are wars abroad and political, cultural, and religious strife and division at home. Nevertheless, it’s possible that we’re also living at a time of spiritual awakening. Diana Butler Bass writes about this spiritual awakening in her book Christianity After Religion. In that book, Diana suggests that old patterns of faith, which she calls religion, are giving way to new spiritual patterns as people seek a place to belong spiritually. As they seek this place of belonging, they discover new patterns of belief and behavior that are rooted in spiritual practices and experiences such as prayer and table fellowship. We don’t have to get all our doctrinal ducks in a row before experiencing spiritual renewal. It’s not that our beliefs don’t matter, because they do. However, what we believe about God emerges out of our experiences of God’s presence in our lives. We can still bring to church our intellectual questions about matters of faith, but we don’t have to find the right answers before we belong to the community of faith. In fact, we may never find answers to all our questions, but we can experience God’s presence in a loving community of faith that embraces our questions and doubts, even as we learn how to love our neighbors because God first loved us. As Diana writes: “Spiritual experience initiates the well-lived life; the well-lived life confirms the nature of one’s spiritual experience” (p. 126).
While Thomas got his wish to see the risen Jesus, that’s not the end of Thomas’ story. While this is the last we hear of Thomas in the New Testament, Tradition suggests that this encounter made a big difference in Thomas’ life and ministry. Tradition suggests that Thomas heard a call to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to India. Even today, many Indian Christians trace their spiritual heritage back to Thomas. Whether or not Thomas actually went to India, this tradition reminds us that even when we have our doubts, we can do great things in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now that we’ve heard the story of Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ, let’s go back to the start of today’s reading from the Gospel of John. According to John, Jesus’ followers are hiding out on the evening of Jesus’ resurrection. After Jesus shows the disciples his hands and his side, the disciples rejoice at the sight of their Lord. Then Jesus gives them a commission and something more. Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (vs. 22). Then Jesus breathed on them the Holy Spirit, empowering them to carry with them a message of forgiveness. While Thomas wasn’t with them when Jesus gave the disciples this commission and breathed on them the Holy Spirit, I believe that he ultimately did the same for Thomas. I also believe Jesus does the same for us as well. That is true even if we have questions and doubts that still need to be addressed!
So, with our questions in tow but filled with the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus has breathed upon us, let us go forth into the world so that we can share the good news that Christ the Lord is risen from the dead!
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Acting Supply Pastor
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
Easter 2B
April 7, 2024
Image Attribution: Iványi-Grünwald, Béla. Thomas Touches Christ's Side, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56120 [retrieved April 6, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iv%C3%A1nyi_Doubting_Saint_Thomas.jpg.
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