Among the treasures and artworks on display in the Hammond Castle in Gloucester is a very interesting woodcarving. It was created in Germany in the 1400′s. It is a picture of Jesus and his disciples, all ten of them. . . ??!! . . . that’s right there are two missing from the picture. Guess which two they are? . . .
Along with Judas, the disciple Thomas is simply omitted by the woodcarver as if he never existed – the 15th century equivalent of airbrushing or photoshopping, I guess! Not a great thing, I would say, to be classed alongside Judas and written out of history. . .
Why was Thomas omitted? Well because he has, through the centuries of Christendom, come to be known as “doubting Thomas.” And apparently his doubts caused at least one Christian artist to remove him from the family portrait – the relative “from Missouri, the ‘Show me’ state!” :)
There are quite a number of people who feel that Thomas has gotten a bad rap over the centuries, and recently there are many voices challenging his nickname – urging 21st century believers to humanize and reclaim Thomas – and welcome him back into our faith family, acknowledging that he is, in his doubting, not so very different from the rest of us.
Some say that Thomas – also called Didymus, the Twin – is our “twin,” yours and mine, because we also have doubts. One preacher claims him as her “Cousin Thomas” and declares: “Like Thomas, I want truth. I don’t want a faith of smoke and mirrors.”
BUT like the German woodcarver, we are sometimes fearful of acknowledging our doubts. And we are sometimes reluctant to bring our doubts to church.
I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me: if I come to church now (soon after a death, especially) I’ll just sit and cry. And I’ve begun to say: “Well from where you sit you just can’t see how many other people are crying, too.” Or: “You know, Church is one of the best places for crying.”
Sometimes people are afraid to bring their doubts – or their questions – to church. In the process of growing, teens are frequently made to feel that their questions are unwelcome or inappropriate and as a result become disaffected or alienated from the church. Sometimes they never return to Church – or to faith.
(That’s why it’s so important and wonderful that we have leaders in this church who model honesty and make a safe place for kids’ questions.
We don’t want to bring our doubts to Church or let them show. . .Why?
Is it because the institutional Church has so often responded to criticism with retrenchment, defensiveness, and rigidity -and has been so inhospitable to change?
Is it because we somehow feel that by doubting we are not living up to the standards set for us? That there is something wrong with us when we question God or when our faith “fails” us?
Is it because we don’t want to rain on anyone else’s parade or disappoint them?? Someone along the way has theorized that people in the pews don’t question their preachers, even when they disagree, because the preacherseems to believe what she’s saying, and the laity don’t want to spoil it for her! – any more than that German woodcarver wanted to “spoil” the beautiful and harmonious picture of Jesus with his friends. Who wants to be the fly in the ointment, or the skunk at the garden party?
I think there is truth in all of those possibilities, but this story of Thomas, which is told every year on the Sunday after Easter, reminds me of the need for Christian community to be a place where questions, doubts, struggles can be shared. Otherwise what is Christian community for?
We don’t acknowledge our doubts because we’re afraid that we’ll find ourselves alone – that our questions will make us unacceptable.
I remember including in a sermon once, a very long time ago, something of my own faith journey. It was a fundamental crisis of faith that began when I was in middle school and my mother was hospitalized with schizophrenia. Why did my mother have to suffer so terribly with mental illness her entire adult life? I didn’t spend the entire sermon talking about this – but tried to let people know that I am not without my questions and doubts, not immune to struggles of faith.
Following worship, a Church member approached me – a woman who was very prominent in the Annual Conference leadership. She said: “You’re
not supposed to have doubts – you’re the minister!” It stung – and I felt rejected, discounted, rebuked. I haven’t let it get in the way of further self-revelation since then – but I did learn to be somewhat cautious in choosing my times, places and people.
And of course the irony is that if we leave your doubts, questions and struggles at the door then we’re really “not all here!” And our faith can’t grow to maturity. And we’re not being truly genuine with one another – just trying to make it look good – which leaves us sometimes feeling that loneliness we were trying to avoid in the first place. We can end up going away with the same heartache, or crisis of faith we came in with.
So let’s welcome Thomas back into the picture – the Bible doesn’t leave him out! John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus comes back to that locked room for Thomas, because Thomas needs him, needs to encounter him firsthand – face to face – in order to know that he is real.
There’s room for Thomas at the table – there’s a place in our family for Thomas – there’s safe space for questions, for doubts: Come on in, Thomas. Your questions are welcome here.
QUESTIONS OF THE MIND.
One of the things I so value in my own experience of Church is that questions were not ruled out.
I expect that has a great deal to do with the convictions of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, that human reason had to be a part of the Christian equation. This is not surprising since John Wesley lived and worked during the Age of Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century, and he was a reformer (not a defender of the ramparts).
Scripture, Christian tradition, our experience – and our reason – were the 4 sides to every question of theology or ethics, as Wesley taught. What we know as the “Wesleyan quadrilateral.”
I never felt that I had to check my brain at the door of my church and the adults around me were supportive and loving and receptive to my questions.
Noted mathematician and linguist Alfred Korzybski once commented: There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”
Thomas comes straight out with his questions: No Lord, we DON’T know where you’re going! … Is it really You, with the scars of what you suffered?
It is important that we acknowledge our human doubt – the questions of our minds about the important teachings of our tradition. We need to wrestle with them, engage and test them – sometimes we have to say “No” before we can say an authentic “Yes.”
Come on in, Thomas – your questions are welcome here.
QUESTIONS OF THE HEART.
I think Thomas asked to see Jesus himself, because he needed that firsthand encounter. He wouldn’t settle for a secondhand faith, for someone else’s answers to his question. He needed his Friend, his Teacher.
And I think it was a demand made from heartache. One scholar calls him not doubting Thomas, but “conditional” Thomas. . . because essentially Thomas is saying that IF the conditions he establishes are not met THEN he will definitely not believe – thus requiring God to respond to his terms.
But he didn’t do this to be spiteful or annoying or just plain ornery – he did this because he was heartbroken. He had watched the Roman military pound spikes into those precious, life-giving hands and spear Jesus like a fish. How was Thomas going to know, really know, that Jesus was really alive – and not just a figment of his friends’ imagination? not some wishfulthinking, or dream arising out of grief and need? Thomas was traumatized on Good Friday, and just hearing other peoples’ tales of resurrection a couple of days later wasn’t going to do it for him. In order to get past his grief, outrage and heartbreak, he was going to have to encounter the Risen One himself.
Huston Smith, student and teacher of world religions, talked with Bill Moyers a few years ago about Faith and Reason. He mentions a Sufi teaching which says that there are 3 ways to understand fire: one can hear about it (there’s this thing called fire that leaps around) – one can see it – or one can get burned by it.
Thomas needed to get burned in order to be healed. He needed his own encounter with the risen Christ before he could put the painful past behind him and move forward.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There are a lot of us who could say the same. Thomas IS our cousin – or maybe closer than that, our twin brother!
So, come on in Thomas – your questions are welcome here.
QUESTIONS OF THE SOUL.
There are many, many thoughtful and honest Christian men and women – historic and contemporary examples like Martin Luther and Mother Teresa among them – who tell us of dry and lonely periods when they had a hard time believing or trusting or finding the way forward. Author Mary Gordon declares: It’s very important to experience doubt. . . I think faith without doubt is just nostalgia.”
These times have been described by believers as : “the Spiritual flu” – or the “desert” – or the “dark night of the Soul.”
Theologian Paul Tillich in his book The Courage To Be makes it clear that a thoughtful and mature faith requires courage.
One pastor reflects on Tillich this way:
“It takes courage to affirm oneself as a person of faith when so many of our friends and family members have abandoned faith as an antiquated and irrelevant mode of being in the world. It takes courage to trust in God and the grace of God’s presence when life seems marked by death, despair and misfortune. It takes courage to believe in what we cannot see, to trust in what we cannot touch, to affirm what we cannot prove. This courage does not rest on our strength alone, but on the same God who continually calls us, loves us, and redeems us, walking with us every step of the way.
(Kristin Johnston Largen)
Tillich himself said: “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”
So come on in, Thomas. Your questions are welcome here.
Of course we know that Thomas’ expressing his doubts was not the end of his story, nor do his doubts sum up his life. In fact Jesus does come to him and offers his very real wounds for Thomas to see and to touch- and Thomas then is convinced, naming Jesus in that breathtaking, knee trembling moment “my Lord and my God!”
Thomas’ doubts were not the end of the story. Just ask our Christian brothers and sisters in India.
There are 3 – and only three – basilicas in the world which were built over the tomb of an apostle: St. Peter’s in Rome – St. James’ in Compestella, Spain – and the Basilica of St. Thomas in Madras, India. The annual Christian pilgrimage to St. Thomas Basilica is this month and next. . .and tens of thousands of people will go – with doubts of their own, I expect – taking their hopes for healing. They won’t leave them at the door!
Doubting Thomas became Believing Thomas, and Risking Thomas, and Missionary Thomas and Saint Thomas. He is known as “The Apostle of India” and “Father of Indian Christianity.” Even today you can walk through the streets of Chennai and find families whose ancestors were baptized by Thomas between his arrival in 52 A.D. and his martyrdom in the year 72.
“The answer to our questions of doubt does not come in the form of a “why.” It comes in the form of a “who.” It is that One to whom we bring ourselves, doubts and all – questions and all – today. . . and, I hope, as long as we live.