All About Doubt?

John 20:19-31

April 18, 2004

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Jesus and Thomas

²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin^£), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The Purpose of This Book

³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But 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.

When I mention the names of certain disciples to you, what is the first thing that you think of for each? 

Judas.

I’m sure most of you who are familiar with his name are thinking, “betrayer.”

Ok, what about: Peter?

That’s probably not as unanimous is it?

If I heard the name of that apostle, the first word might come to my mind could be, “rock” or maybe even “denier.”

How about: Paul?

“Evangelist?”  Or maybe “Maverick.”  I think of him that way because he, like Jesus went against the grain and broke many of the rules of his day.

Now, how about: Thomas?

That’s probably another one of those easy ones, where most of us would say the same thing.  For most people Thomas is always “Doubting Thomas.”

But is that fair?  Is that an accurate way of thinking about Thomas?

What we don’t remember about Thomas is what we see if we read from eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John.  There it says that when Jesus heard that Lazarus had died and he wanted to go to save him and help his sisters Mary and Martha, he was entering into a dangerous situation.  You see in order to help his friends, he would have to return to Bethany, a place on the outskirts of Jerusalem from which Jesus had only a short time before escaped, moments before being stoned to death.

In the midst of the danger, the disciples chirped, “Rabbi, your enemies were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”

To this Jesus replies, ““Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him… Lazarus is dead. ¹⁵For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”

The disciples were all afraid of what would happen to Jesus AND to themselves.  But not Thomas, who we erroneously call “the Doubter.”  Thomas responds to Jesus’ explanation of why they must go, but turning to his fellow disciples and urging them with the brave statement, “Then let us go so that we may die with him.”   It showed a great deal of courage yet we don’t remember him for it.  If we remembered him in this way we wouldn’t call him “Doubting Thomas,” we’d call him “Courageous Thomas.”

Unfortunately history has remembered him for this other scene, which we have read this morning.  

The resurrected Christ made an appearance to the disciples in a home in Jerusalem. Thomas was not present and when he heard about the event he refused to believe it. Maybe along with being a disciple of Jesus, he was the first follower of the modern day school of cynicism. Maybe the news simply sounded too good to be true. In any case, Thomas said: “Unless I feel the nail prints in his hands I will not believe.”[1]

While we can condemn Thomas for much, we can applaud him for his for his honesty and his courage and his intellectual integrity. He was honest, refusing to pretend to believe something that he really didn’t. He knew the claims being made about Jesus were of ultimate significance, and he cared enough to hold back, to not just go with the crowd, but to express his doubt, and to challenge his friends.

This is a man who spent three years of his life as a disciple of Jesus. He was the one who dared to ask questions when he didn’t understand.

But regardless of the doubts and concerns he courageously expressed, he nevertheless maintained the course Jesus set for him. Tradition says that he was the first missionary to India.[2]

Doubt for Thomas wasn’t the end, it was only a step in a courageous journey.  Doubt is only natural, for many unavoidable and inevitable.  Surely, doubt can be a dead end or a ditch in which our journey through life can come through a halt.  However, if negotiated through successfully doubt can be a very important place to learn something too.

A doubtful 15-year-old girl once experienced a miracle during a weekend youth retreat. Quiet, reserved, shy, brilliant and troubled: that's how some described her. All weekend her hollow, lifeless eyes searched for answers to gnawing questions that had eroded her life and spirit and made her appear dark and despondent. But then something happened: Her eyes became more restless and alert. She was searching and she somehow knew she was close to something.

The group had spent the weekend on the theme "Discovery" and had talked about discovery of self, of others, and of God. And as another 15-year-old shared the pain of her older sister's recent suicide, a dam broke and water, like baptism, washed a face that hadn't cried in a very long time.

Later on that evening, the group did a Bible study around Luke 9 where Jesus lays the challenge: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." When the leader asked the group what that sounded like -- a commercial, a Sunday school lesson, a parent laying down another rule -- the young girl with the tear-stained face responded: "It sounds to me like something worth giving my life to."

That leader of that youth retreat later said "I sat with Thomas that night in the form of a 15-year-old girl and we shared some bread and wine in the presence of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

Out of the struggle with honest doubt, a faith can be reborn, and new life can begin.[3]  And the faith of someone who doubted so profoundly, is inevitably so much more passionate than that of the rest of us.  It has been tried, it has been tested, it has seen the darkness of fear and it has survived

And frankly, if we’re hoping to truly experience our faith, we must have first suffered some doubt.

There is a parable about a wild goose shot down by a local hunter. Only wounded in one wing, he landed safely in a barnyard. Naturally the local turkeys and chickens were quite startled by this sudden visitor from the sky. As they became more comfortable with this stranger, however, it was only natural to ask about what they had seen but never experienced: “Tell us what it’s like to fly.”

“It’s wonderful!” said the goose, who told story after story of his flights. “It’s beautiful to soar out in the wild blue yonder! Why this barn looks only an inch high and all of you look like tiny specks from such a distance. First you fly high and then you can glide and enjoy the astonishing scenery.”

All the birds were quite impressed by the goose’s stories. Later they asked him to tell more stories about flying. Soon, it became a weekly event for the goose to entertain all the barnyard birds with his stories. They even provided a little box for him to stand on so everyone could see him better.

But the strangest thing happened, or maybe I should say … never happened. While the domestic birds very much enjoyed hearing about the glories of flight, they never tried to flew themselves. And the wild goose, even though his wing healed, continued to talk about flying but never actually flew again .…

If we’ve not experienced doubt, or more truthfully, never admitted that we’ve experience doubt, if we’ve never faced our fears or asked the difficult questions, we’ve not likely ever experienced the power of God’s grace and mercy to heal our doubt or lift us up out of our fear and pain.  We’ve never actually spread our wings and tried to launch off the ground that faith that comes from Christ. [4]

Those who doubt, those who have the courage and the integrity to ask questions are those who will see change, change in their lives, in their faith and in their direction.

This is true even in the business world.

In the late 1800s, no business matched the financial and political dominance of the railroad. Trains dominated the transportation industry of the United States, moving both people and goods throughout the country.

Then a new discovery came along—the car—and incredibly the leaders of the railroad industry did not take advantage of their unique position to participate in this transportation development. The automotive revolution was happening all around them, and they did not use their industry dominance to take hold of the opportunity.  Over the years, probably more than one historian has pointed out the reason: The railroad barons didn’t understand what business they were in. One such historian says "they thought they were in the train business. In fact, they were in the transportation business. Time passed them by, as did opportunity. They couldn’t see what their real purpose was." They failed to ask themselves any of the difficult, courageous, foundational questions.[5]

Thomas asked such questions, and he got a bad reputation for it.  In fact, we should all have some of the doubt of Thomas.  We should all have some of that courage.  Otherwise, we lose our faith, we forget how important God has been to us and we lose our connection to the mercy and grace of Goe.

There’s a story about a family who has a 2 1/2-year-old daughter and expects another baby. They do all they can to soften the displacement she might feel.  They tell her that the baby is a gift from God and is coming to them from heaven.  When the baby comes, they encourage the 2 1/2-year-old to hold and help change the baby. Everything is fine until one day they try to put the daughter to bed. She says, rather frantically, “I want to see baby.”

“Well, of course, darling, we’ll take you to see the baby.”

“No — alone.”

“No, Mummy or Daddy will go with you.” “No! I want to see baby alone!” She’s distraught.

Finally, they let her go. She bends over the cradle and says, “What is God like again?  I’m forgetting.” [6]

We too, forget about God.  And far worse than that, we are afraid to ask the questions, to face the doubt and to look for God’s answers in our lives.

Thomas had to see the holes in Jesus’ hands and to feel the depth of the wound in Jesus’ side to believe what had happened, to believe in the true depth of God’s grace.

We too are invited by God and by Jesus himself to ask the questions that will help inform our faith, that may create and define the gaps that God’s grace will fill and that will rejuvenate and restore our hope in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen