I've Got My Doubts

Halloween is coming up this week, which inspired me to find what could be considered one of the “spookier” texts to be found in the Gospels. The 20th chapter of John has no lack of ghosts and graveyards. It begins with an early morning trip to the tomb of Jesus, it is still dark outside and yet Mary Magdalene goes anyway. Can’t you just picture the scene playing out in a movie theater? A dark, starless sky with a bare glow of moonlight--just enough to give the mist swirling about the ground an eerie luminescence. And there’s Mary, breathing heavily, carrying a single candle whose flame is flickering and fighting against the occasional breeze. She stumbles over and around rocks and crags as she makes her way alongside a massive rock wall out of which numerous caverns have been carved. Each cavern is sealed with a massive stone, but she knows what lies inside each cave. Darkness and the dead.

A sound.

Was it a voice crying out from inside one of the tombs? Or was it the wind howling through the rock? Uncertain, Mary turns her head to check over her shoulder, she’s had this weird feeling that someone has been watching her the entire time. As she turns her head, her foot catches a loose rock and she stumbles, tumbling to the ground, her candle extinguishes as it bounces off the hard packed dirt. Stinging from the fall, Mary gathers herself and looks up as moonlight pushes through a hole in the clouds overhead, a single beam softly illuminates the wall of tombs in front of her. “That can’t be,” Mary gasps. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark, she tells herself as she climbs carefully to her feet. It looks as though one of the stones used to seal the tombs up ahead has been rolled aside, leaving the deep, dark recess of cavern behind it exposed, like a mouth, puckered and blowing the wind. It chills her to the bone. She makes her way slowly towards the tomb as her eyes adjust...not only is she certain that the stone has been rolled aside but...she stops in her tracks and looks around her to make sure she’s where she thinks she is. “That’s Jesus’ grave…”

Someone in the back of the theater shouts, “Don’t go in there!!!”

And as if she hears that voice, Mary turns and sprints away.

Spooky stuff right?

Long story short, turns out Jesus has risen from the dead. Mary is the first to see him and learn this news and she passes it on to the other disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord”. So they’ve already been told this when we pick up the reading at verse 19:

19 It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.”

24 Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the Twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord!”

But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.”

26 After eight days his disciples were again in a house and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe!”

28 Thomas responded to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”

29 Jesus replied, “Do you believe because you see me? Happy are those who don’t see and yet believe.”

30 Then Jesus did many other miraculous signs in his disciples’ presence, signs that aren’t recorded in this scroll. 31 But these things are written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son, and that believing, you will have life in his name.

While ghosts and graveyards are creepy, I believe this text contains something that is even more frightening to people of faith: doubt. Skepticism is scary. Uncertainty is unsettling. Not knowing knots up our stomachs, doesn’t it? And just like with everything else that frightens us, we have a tendency to vilify doubt and view it as a threat--an evil force lurking in the shadows of our soul, seeking to do us in. Doubt is the enemy of faith. So we, seeking to be good people of faith, spurn it, scorn it, shun it...we fear doubt. And this is tremendously problematic.

When doubt is the enemy, diversity becomes frightening. When doubt is the enemy, differences seem dangerous. When doubt is the enemy, politics become increasingly partisan. When doubt is the enemy, division feels safer than discussion. When doubt is the enemy, put downs become protection. When doubt is the enemy, compassion is compromised. When doubt is the enemy, vulnerability is exploited.

...what’s that thing Jesus told us we should do to our enemies?

We miss the point of the Gospel if we read the story of “Doubting Thomas” and think, “shame on him for doubting.” After all, he got the same message from the disciples as they had received from Mary earlier that week, “I have seen the Lord!” And what do the rest of the disciples do when Mary has told them all that she has seen? They cower behind closed doors in an upper room somewhere. They don’t go out looking for Jesus. They don’t feel safe out in public with all the political turmoil going on, particularly the persecution targeted towards those who claim to be followers of Jesus. We’d also be missing the point of the Gospel if we then thought, “Well, shame on all of them for hiding.” And before that, Mary, when she is told by the angels that Jesus has risen, continues to weep, not believing, or not fully understanding what they have said to her. We’d be missing the point of the Gospel if we said, “Shame on her for not trusting the good news!” We’re just setting ourselves up to feel ashamed when we, inevitably, have doubts about our own faith. The point of the Gospel is an encounter with the good news of Jesus Christ, which in this story occurs in three places: at the empty tomb, unencumbered by death and sorrow; in the upper room, unencumbered by closed doors and fear; and the third places is in the hearts and minds of those to whom Jesus appears, unencumbered by doubt and misunderstanding. The good news is that even if we are in a place of sorrow or fear, unable to fully understand the Gospel, unwilling to fully trust it, it still shows up for us. We cannot hide from it.

When Jesus shows up, he doesn’t shame or scorn Mary or the disciples. In the midst of their fear, in the midst of political turmoil, and in the midst of violence, Jesus shows up saying “Peace be with you. I have forgiven you, and now I’m sending you to forgive others.” Just another way of saying, “You have made doubt an enemy, but I want you to love your enemies.”

Peace and forgiveness and grace do not eliminate doubt, but they do make it less frightening and less dangerous. Prior to Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, you can sense a rift forming between him and the rest of the disciples. This is just human nature. We distance ourselves from those with whom we disagree, from those who believe differently than us or from those who don’t believe. When we learn to accept and love our doubt, we give ourselves the gift to step out in faith. Doubt isn’t a damnable deformity of faith, doubt is the agent of discovery that helps us form our faith. We weaken our faith when we demand certainty of it. And it is not a strong faith, but a weak one, that attacks others for their insecurities. When we take up the commission of Jesus to accept our forgiveness and extend it to others, we are freed from the “we’re right, they’re wrong” mindset, and we become enabled to seek the truth together, a truth which I believe has fallen somewhere deep within the chasms of doubt that separate us.

Nickel Creek wrote a song called “Doubting Thomas” which contains this wonderful line, “Can I be used to help others find truth when I’m scared I’ll find proof that it’s a lie?” This touches me on a deep level. I can’t tell you how many Sundays I stand behind this pulpit unsure of what I’m saying, desperately grasping for the gospel while feeling my faith slip away like sand through clenched fingers. It’s typically on those Sundays, when I feel most ashamed of the message I’ve preached, that someone comes up and tells me it was exactly what they needed to hear that morning. It’s in those moments, full of doubt, shame, disbelief that I can relate to how Thomas must have felt to have Jesus appear before him and say, “Peace be with you.”

Last Sunday, I preached about struggling, then went on to unload some of my own personal struggles with the session in our meeting that afternoon. Do you know what they did with my doubt and shame? They embraced it, and said, “You know Aaron, your openness and honesty and willing to be human alongside us is one of the things we love most about you.” And I heard the voice of Christ whisper, “Peace be with you.”

There’s one thing I’m certain of. It’s that each of you has your own doubts that you struggle with. I don’t know what they are, but this is my prayer for you: wherever you stand in sorrow, wherever you hide in fear, whatever doors you have closed for protection, wherever doubts and depression assail you, may the presence of God make a surprise appearance there. May you receive the Holy Spirit. May the peace of Christ be whispered to your soul. And may you trust the promise that plants your doubts in the fertile soil of forgiveness and pours holy water upon them until they grow into a beautiful faith. May you be filled with joy!