Acts 5. 27-32;
Revelation 1.4-8;
John 20.19-31
DOUBT! What a thing
THOMAS doubted, but so did they all.
It’s fairly clear that all the accounts of the Resurrection are
full of how incompetent and disorganised the disciples are.
We hear of Thomas’ doubt today, forgetting all about the how the
disciples dismissed the women’s tale of an empty tomb as nonsense (Luke 24.11).
It was just Thomas’s bad luck not to have been there when Jesus
appeared to the others. But, even if his doubts were no deeper than those of
the rest, Thomas will always remain “Doubting Thomas”.
For those of us who find it all very difficult, and make a lot of
mistakes…he will always be our patron saint.
“I never have had one doubt,” wrote John Henry Newman, reflecting
on the “perfect peace and contentment” he had enjoyed since his admission into
“the one fold of Christ”
Evangelicals make much of “assurance”. “Blessed assurance,” they
sing, “Jesus is mine.” The same Evangelical confidence rings out in Timothy
Dudley-Smith’s great hymn, “Thine be the glory”. “No more we doubt thee,
glorious prince of life” we sing, and while we sing it, we mean it!
Some of my more earnest friends tell me that I shouldn’t have any
doubts. They tell me that it will
make me unstable (it’s a bit late to warn me about that).
So there appear to be TWO ways to live faith – either in the
belief that I won’t have any doubts at all, or in the belief that doubt is bad
and damaging.
There is, however, another way! From this perspective, doubt is not the enemy of faith.
Certainty is the enemy. It is all
about holding both your beliefs and doubts with integrity and in a balance.
The prophets of this third way were two poets, Tennyson in the
19th century and R. S. Thomas in the last. The profound insight of Tennyson’s
In Memoriam is that uncertainty and religious commitment are not incompatible.
Doubt and faith can and do coexist.
Tennyson knew that “calm despair and wild unrest” can be “tenants
of a single breast” – as he said.
There lives more faith in
honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half
the creeds. (he said that as well)
It is impossible to be certain, but it is possible, as Job did, to
turn in the right direction.
I stretch lame hands of faith,
and grope,
And gather dust and chaff,
and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger
hope.
For R. S. Thomas, faith and doubt are inseparable. Prayer becomes:
. . . leaning far out
over an immense depth, letting
your name go and waiting,
somewhere between faith
and doubt,
for the echoes of its arrival.
“Waiting”
Thomas also questioned whether prayer actually works
He is that great void
we must enter, calling
to one another on the way
in the direction from which
he blows.
“Migrants”
Back to Doubting Thomas — In the reading we hear he is granted, as
were the others, the opportunity to see and touch the risen Lord.
Jesus says to him: “Be unbelieving no longer.” (Thus, correctly,
the Revised English Bible; the New Revised Standard Version’s “Do not doubt” is
a mistranslation.)
This is an invitation to trust and obey — not a promise of
certainty. Thomas’s response is to worship the risen Lord. Does that conclude
his doubting? Possibly, but if we are half as complicated creatures as it seems
we are, maybe, on many a Monday morning, he is still “Doubting Thomas”.
And on this second Sunday of Easter, we can see the aftermath of
the great festival of Easter – it took weeks to arrive, and it departed quickly
– but do we REALLY understand what it really means?
I read in the newspaper that the press officer at a major supermarket
chain got in trouble in Holy Week for getting the theology behind her company’s
seasonal campaign a bit mixed up.
The unfortunate employee first put out a press release saying that
the supermarket’s range of Easter eggs and other seasonal products was part of
the traditional celebration at this time of Christ’s birthday. She quickly
amended it to say that the eggs represented Christ’s rebirth, before a final
version vaguely guessed that it might have something to do with death and
resurrection.
To be fair, of all the Easter mysteries we observe this this one
may be the hardest to unravel: why we commemorate the death and resurrection of
the most important figure in human history with bunny rabbits that lay
chocolate eggs in spring gardens.
To be fairer still, despite the stick she took for it, her
changing explanation was not such a bad stab at interpreting the significance
of the Easter story. Of course Christians believe the central point about the
Triduum — the three sacred days that began last night with the Holy Thursday
commemoration of the Last Supper and conclude triumphantly on Easter Sunday —
is that it marks both a death and a rebirth.
And just as sure as you can’t have Easter Day without Good Friday,
you also can’t have a Christian Festival without a great deal of confusion.
As the world marches onward to a more secular understanding of the
mysteries of faith, Christians are being left behind in the struggle for a
platform to explain the importance of our faith. No Wonder Christians doubt! If only I could persuade them that doubting is not the end
of the world (or even the end of faith), it is merely part of the journey!
DOUBT! What a thing
If I had one wish, I don’t think I would wish to have ‘no
doubt’. I don’t think I would wish
to get a letter from God, explaining everything about life, love, war, justice,
relationships, money, greed, guilt, happiness, hatred and all the other
things.
I think that part of the Technicolor journey through life is all
about looking for certainties, and not actually finding them. It is all about us considering,
thinking, praying, hoping – these are the processes that have given us the
greatest music, art, literature and poetry in the history of humanity.
So what about St. Thomas the Apostle? Well, many of the ancient texts are attributed to him. It seems that after a shaky start, he
really set about moving forward in the ‘building the church’ stakes. It is reported that he witnessed the
assumption of Mary into heaven; he then left to spread the Gospel.
Reports have him evangelising Syria and Persia, then he travelled
as far as Western India, then to Southern India. Indeed the various denominations of modern Saint Thomas
Christians ascribe their unwritten tradition to the end of the 2nd century and
believe that Thomas landed at Maliankara in AD 52
In great controversy, it is held that St. Thomas then travelled to
Paraguay, Peru, and Ecuador to evangelise the Mesoamerican civilisations
there.
I couldn’t even begin to speak about the writings of Thomas, and
the generations of Christians who have grown up in all corners of the world in
Churches and Traditions dedicated to St. Thomas.
If this is the product of DOUBT, then I will be praying for more
doubt for myself…
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