Doubt Indeed
April 7, 2024 Second Sunday of Easter
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
John 20:19-31
“Doubt Indeed”
Douglas T. King
What do Emily Dickinson, John Calvin, Moses, Anne Lamott, Augustine, and Pope Francis all have in common? They are all, both well known for their faith but also for their willingness to name their doubts. Pope Francis once said, “Who among us—everybody, everybody!-Who among us has not experienced insecurity, loss and even doubts on their journey of faith?”
In an interview in America magazine, the pope said doubt is an essential part of faith. “If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him…” Augustine said, “If you think you have understood God, it is not God.” Voltaire once quipped, “Doubt is an unpleasant condition but certainty is absurd.” I say, God cannot be seen through the sieve of our certainties."
Doubt and questions are good things. Doubt and questions invite us forward to continue to explore what we do indeed believe in deeper and more nuanced ways than a facile acceptance of the Christian faith ever will. And there is no greater example of this than our story of Thomas this morning. His doubt and questions reveal a critically essential element of who Jesus Christ is and how God chooses to love us.
I believe Thomas wanted to specifically touch the wounds of Jesus to ensure that they had not been lost in the resurrection. He is less concerned about the halo around Jesus' head than he is about the scars on Jesus’ body. Thomas wants to know that Jesus has not left behind all remnants of his humanity. He realizes that this resurrected God would not be their teacher and leader if he transformed completely beyond all that made him human. Thomas wants to know that Jesus remembers what pain is. Thomas wants to know that Jesus still knows what it means to bleed. Suffering has not become a mere concept but continues to be a part of who Jesus Christ is that will not be washed away in the divine waters.
When Thomas sees the wounds, he knows. He knows that not only has Jesus conquered death, but he has carried humanity with him into the victory. When Thomas sees the wounds he knows that not only is this indeed the man that lived the pain of crucifixion but that this God understands the pain of each one of us. When Thomas sees the wounds, he knows that the resurrected Jesus has crossed a boundary carrying pain and suffering with him, and has thus created a space beyond pain and suffering for all of humanity. Jesus makes real the words of the theologian John Carmody, "Pain is crucifying but penultimate."
Thomas may have doubted and demanded proof before he would believe that Jesus had indeed arisen, but he is the first to recognize the implications of what it all means. When the other disciples see the risen Jesus they say nothing, but when Thomas sees the wounded Christ he cries out, "My Lord and my God!" Thomas recognizes Jesus’ divinity not by any shining symbol of holiness but by seeing the wounds, the marks of suffering. Perhaps it is only in recognizing the depth of the human suffering Jesus continues to carry, that we can truly believe God is in our midst.
Now that the glories of Easter morning are a week old, we need to hear this. We, the ones who are bumped and bruised by what life brings us, need to recognize that our God too carries the scars that come with living and loving in this world. This is a message we can carry beyond our festival worship moments; a message we carry when hurtful things happen and we wonder if anyone cares or can even understand the hurting we feel; a message we need to carry with us when we see the brokenness in our world; when those we love become seriously ill and the future is fearful and unknown; when depression muffles the blessings of our life and we cannot find hope. We have a savior who has borne his own set of wounds and continues to carry them even in the midst of resurrection victory.
This faith of ours calls us to believe that the way in which our all-powerful God chose to defeat the powers of sin and death was by becoming a single, mortal, vulnerable human. And to be human is to walk through this world broken in one way or another. In a sermon about the death of his son, the preacher William Sloane Coffin quotes from the end of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, "The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places." As Christians we believe that we cannot find the strength to which Hemingway refers on our own. Rather, it is through the ultimate victory Christ achieved, a victory won from the place of ultimate weakness—his own human suffering, that we gain strength.
Our God knows who we are and what hurts us in a deeper way than we can imagine. Does it stop the hurting? No. Does it protect us from being hurt in the future? No. What it does is promise us that God knows the territory of our pain and our weakness. Experiencing immense physical pain? Our God has been there, on the cross, and still there every time one of Gods’ children becomes a victim of senseless violence or a patient of some senseless disease. Feeling lonely and misunderstood? Our God has been there, that day in Jerusalem when his friends abandoned him and the crowds mocked him, and still there every time one of us feels misjudged. Feeling exhausted and beyond your means? Our God has been there, that night in Gethsemane when he threw himself down begging God to relieve him of his burden, and still there, every time one of us feels we cannot possibly get out of bed to face another day. Feeling a dull low ache of disappointment in the world? Our God has been there.
This is what made the entire resurrection real for Thomas. Jesus chose to join us in our existence and our pain. And what is more he did not leave the real memory of that suffering behind upon returning to the Godhead. Not only has our destiny and our relationship to God been forever changed by the resurrection, but God has been forever changed as well. The wounds of the cross remain a part of God, a mark of God’s humanity, and a reminder of the suffering that comes with living. And we have Thomas’ doubts and questions to thank for revealing this to us.
This may not be the kind of news that creates the brass-induced crescendos we reveled in last week. But this is the kind of news we can carry in our hearts; for the difficult days of the death of loved ones; the isolating moments of illness; the scary times before surgery. This resurrected Christ of ours is no distant spectator but a God who loves enough to hurt with us in human form and continues to do so. The wounded-ness of God did not end on the cross. Without God’s ability to continually experience our mortal suffering firsthand through Jesus Christ our continuing reconciliation with God would not be possible.
Thomas had what the poet Christian Wiman calls honest doubt. “Honest doubt, what I would call devotional doubt, is marked, it seems to me, by three qualities: humility, which makes one’s attitude impossible to celebrate; insufficiency, which makes it impossible to rest; and mystery, which continues to tug you upward—or at least outward…”(Wiman, p. 76)
Do not discount the value of the doubts you may carry. May they lead you to continue asking good questions about what you believe and what we believe together. Thomas’ doubts and questions showed us that Jesus Christ continues to know our pain firsthand. In this season of Easter as we celebrate resurrection, may our doubts and questions lead us to grow in our faith and understanding of the power of God’s love to both carry our every pain and defeat our every mortal limitation.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Wiman, Christian, My Bright Abyss, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
New York, 2013.
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
John 20:19-31
“Doubt Indeed”
Douglas T. King
What do Emily Dickinson, John Calvin, Moses, Anne Lamott, Augustine, and Pope Francis all have in common? They are all, both well known for their faith but also for their willingness to name their doubts. Pope Francis once said, “Who among us—everybody, everybody!-Who among us has not experienced insecurity, loss and even doubts on their journey of faith?”
In an interview in America magazine, the pope said doubt is an essential part of faith. “If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him…” Augustine said, “If you think you have understood God, it is not God.” Voltaire once quipped, “Doubt is an unpleasant condition but certainty is absurd.” I say, God cannot be seen through the sieve of our certainties."
Doubt and questions are good things. Doubt and questions invite us forward to continue to explore what we do indeed believe in deeper and more nuanced ways than a facile acceptance of the Christian faith ever will. And there is no greater example of this than our story of Thomas this morning. His doubt and questions reveal a critically essential element of who Jesus Christ is and how God chooses to love us.
I believe Thomas wanted to specifically touch the wounds of Jesus to ensure that they had not been lost in the resurrection. He is less concerned about the halo around Jesus' head than he is about the scars on Jesus’ body. Thomas wants to know that Jesus has not left behind all remnants of his humanity. He realizes that this resurrected God would not be their teacher and leader if he transformed completely beyond all that made him human. Thomas wants to know that Jesus remembers what pain is. Thomas wants to know that Jesus still knows what it means to bleed. Suffering has not become a mere concept but continues to be a part of who Jesus Christ is that will not be washed away in the divine waters.
When Thomas sees the wounds, he knows. He knows that not only has Jesus conquered death, but he has carried humanity with him into the victory. When Thomas sees the wounds he knows that not only is this indeed the man that lived the pain of crucifixion but that this God understands the pain of each one of us. When Thomas sees the wounds, he knows that the resurrected Jesus has crossed a boundary carrying pain and suffering with him, and has thus created a space beyond pain and suffering for all of humanity. Jesus makes real the words of the theologian John Carmody, "Pain is crucifying but penultimate."
Thomas may have doubted and demanded proof before he would believe that Jesus had indeed arisen, but he is the first to recognize the implications of what it all means. When the other disciples see the risen Jesus they say nothing, but when Thomas sees the wounded Christ he cries out, "My Lord and my God!" Thomas recognizes Jesus’ divinity not by any shining symbol of holiness but by seeing the wounds, the marks of suffering. Perhaps it is only in recognizing the depth of the human suffering Jesus continues to carry, that we can truly believe God is in our midst.
Now that the glories of Easter morning are a week old, we need to hear this. We, the ones who are bumped and bruised by what life brings us, need to recognize that our God too carries the scars that come with living and loving in this world. This is a message we can carry beyond our festival worship moments; a message we carry when hurtful things happen and we wonder if anyone cares or can even understand the hurting we feel; a message we need to carry with us when we see the brokenness in our world; when those we love become seriously ill and the future is fearful and unknown; when depression muffles the blessings of our life and we cannot find hope. We have a savior who has borne his own set of wounds and continues to carry them even in the midst of resurrection victory.
This faith of ours calls us to believe that the way in which our all-powerful God chose to defeat the powers of sin and death was by becoming a single, mortal, vulnerable human. And to be human is to walk through this world broken in one way or another. In a sermon about the death of his son, the preacher William Sloane Coffin quotes from the end of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, "The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places." As Christians we believe that we cannot find the strength to which Hemingway refers on our own. Rather, it is through the ultimate victory Christ achieved, a victory won from the place of ultimate weakness—his own human suffering, that we gain strength.
Our God knows who we are and what hurts us in a deeper way than we can imagine. Does it stop the hurting? No. Does it protect us from being hurt in the future? No. What it does is promise us that God knows the territory of our pain and our weakness. Experiencing immense physical pain? Our God has been there, on the cross, and still there every time one of Gods’ children becomes a victim of senseless violence or a patient of some senseless disease. Feeling lonely and misunderstood? Our God has been there, that day in Jerusalem when his friends abandoned him and the crowds mocked him, and still there every time one of us feels misjudged. Feeling exhausted and beyond your means? Our God has been there, that night in Gethsemane when he threw himself down begging God to relieve him of his burden, and still there, every time one of us feels we cannot possibly get out of bed to face another day. Feeling a dull low ache of disappointment in the world? Our God has been there.
This is what made the entire resurrection real for Thomas. Jesus chose to join us in our existence and our pain. And what is more he did not leave the real memory of that suffering behind upon returning to the Godhead. Not only has our destiny and our relationship to God been forever changed by the resurrection, but God has been forever changed as well. The wounds of the cross remain a part of God, a mark of God’s humanity, and a reminder of the suffering that comes with living. And we have Thomas’ doubts and questions to thank for revealing this to us.
This may not be the kind of news that creates the brass-induced crescendos we reveled in last week. But this is the kind of news we can carry in our hearts; for the difficult days of the death of loved ones; the isolating moments of illness; the scary times before surgery. This resurrected Christ of ours is no distant spectator but a God who loves enough to hurt with us in human form and continues to do so. The wounded-ness of God did not end on the cross. Without God’s ability to continually experience our mortal suffering firsthand through Jesus Christ our continuing reconciliation with God would not be possible.
Thomas had what the poet Christian Wiman calls honest doubt. “Honest doubt, what I would call devotional doubt, is marked, it seems to me, by three qualities: humility, which makes one’s attitude impossible to celebrate; insufficiency, which makes it impossible to rest; and mystery, which continues to tug you upward—or at least outward…”(Wiman, p. 76)
Do not discount the value of the doubts you may carry. May they lead you to continue asking good questions about what you believe and what we believe together. Thomas’ doubts and questions showed us that Jesus Christ continues to know our pain firsthand. In this season of Easter as we celebrate resurrection, may our doubts and questions lead us to grow in our faith and understanding of the power of God’s love to both carry our every pain and defeat our every mortal limitation.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Wiman, Christian, My Bright Abyss, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
New York, 2013.
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