Doubting Thomas And His Twin
Sermon
Tears Of Sadness, Tears Of Gladness
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter
Several years ago the Episcopal Church launched a creative and clever advertising campaign. One of their ads pictured a young man with a frustrated look on his face because someone had put a heavy piece of tape across his mouth. His mouth had been taped shut; he was unable to speak. The caption, which accompanied the picture, said this: "The problem with churches that have all of the answers is that you can't ask questions."
Unfortunately, there are churches like that, churches which discourage dialogue, squelch questions, and disapprove of anyone who doubts. In one of his books, Lloyd Ogilvie, who is a Presbyterian minister and Chaplain of the United States Senate, recalls a conversation he had with a man named Mike. "I used to be a member of a church," confessed Mike, "but they said it was a sin to doubt - so I left." "Come to my church," Ogilvie said with a chuckle. "It's full of doubters!" Mike went on to say that his former pastor not only discouraged his doubts, but told him that it was a danger to doubt any aspect of the Christian faith and warned him that his doubts would become like a virus which would infect the whole church.1
I wonder whether Thomas - Doubting Thomas as we've come to call him - would be welcome in a church like the church Mike used to attend? Probably not. Any church that says that doubt is synonymous with sin would shun Thomas. How strange, then, that Thomas was welcomed as one of the twelve disciples. How ironic, that Jesus himself picked Thomas - doubts and all! - to be one of his closest followers.
As you may know, Thomas got the nickname Doubting Thomas because of a conversation that occurred shortly after the first Easter. The disciples have all gathered in a house in Jerusalem but Thomas is not with them. Suddenly, the Risen Christ appears to them, shows them the wounds in his hands and side, breathes new life into their deflated spirits and commissions them for the work of ministry. Later when Thomas returns, the other disciples can hardly wait to tell him the good news: "We have seen the Lord," they say. But Thomas replies, "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" (John 20:25). He doubted; he was unable to believe, and ever since we've been calling him Doubting Thomas.
While Thomas has his doubts, he is not the sinner that some people want to label him. In fact, according to theologian Douglas John Hall, "the line between faith and doubt is almost invisible."2 Doubt is not the opposite of faith, as some would have us believe; rather, for many people doubt is an integral part of faith. Down through the years lots and lots of Christians have arrived at the land of faith by means of the back roads of doubt. Consider, for example, Christian writer C. S. Lewis as he is pictured in the popular movie Shadowlands. As a young man, Lewis fought as a British soldier in "the war to end all wars," which we've come to call World War I. During the war Lewis saw his best friend killed. He saw hundreds of other young men maimed and killed, "boys" who should have been attending university, rowing with the crew team, and "... lying on the emerald grass of Oxford's quads, with their heads on the soft laps of the dainty young girls whom they should in normal times be marrying." In utter agony, Lewis cried out to God for answers, "Why?" he asked with tears in his eyes. "If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong?" Yet as Lewis matured, he came to realize that the more he questioned, the more his faith grew.3
Then there is Donald Coggan, who served as the 101st Archbishop of Canterbury. In one of his books he writes: "I am more of an agnostic today than when I was an undergraduate 45 years ago. That would make a good headline in the newspaper, wouldn't it?" he quipped. "Agnostic Archbishop Sounds Off About Doubt."4 What he means, of course, is this - that there are more areas of life over which he would put the sentence, "I don't know," than there were when he was a brash undergraduate. He goes on to add: "In what I believe are the essentials of the Christian faith, I should like to think I am a stronger and deeper believer."5
Or consider Annie Dillard. In her beautifully written memoir, An American Childhood, Dillard describes her teenage struggles with faith when she attended the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Critical of the prim and proper piety of that Presbyterian Church, Dillard writes:
It was not surprising, really, that I alone in this church knew what the barefoot Christ, if ever there had been such a person, would think about things - grape juice, [elders in] tailcoats, [the minister's] British [accent], sable stoles ... After all, I was the intelligencia around these parts, single--handedly.6
But as she looked down from the balcony, she noticed the whole congregation bowing their heads in prayer. Maybe they were pretending to pray, she quipped. But then, she grew critical of her own criticisms. She writes:
I began to doubt my own omniscience ... I was alert enough now to feel, despite myself, some faint, thin stream of spirit braiding forward from the pews ... The people had been praying ... to God, just as they seemed to be praying. That was the fact. I didn't know what to make of it.7
Today, Annie Dillard is an active member of a Roman Catholic parish.
Do you know the name of Doris Betts? A Presbyterian elder, a Sunday school teacher, a part-time church organist, and for more than 25 years a member of the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Betts has written several short stories and four novels. In the summer of 1998 she received the Distinguished Writer Award at the Presbyterian Writers' Guild luncheon at the General Assembly which met in Charlotte. Yet, several years ago she spoke about her struggle with the Christian faith and described herself as a member of the "Tribe of Thomas."8
Scott Peck, the Christian psychiatrist, says that there is no such thing as a good hand--me--down religion. Writes Peck: "To be vital ... our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our own questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality."9 So it was for Thomas, and so it is for many of us. John tells us that Thomas was called "the twin." Presumably, that means he was a twin and had a twin. Although we don't know anything about that biological twin, we can imagine that he's had many twins all across the years, spiritual twins, who tend to doubt, who find it hard to believe. Doubting Thomas had a twin; maybe that twin is someone like you, someone like me!
Those of us who call ourselves twins of Thomas might find hope in a couple of subtle details of the story. First, notice the day of the week that the Risen Christ appears to Thomas. John writes that it is "a week later" (John 20:26). A week after what? A quick review of the preceding verses suggests that one week earlier was Easter, and here it is now, the Sunday after Easter.
Could this be John's skillful way of reminding the reader of the importance of Christian worship - that in the midst of Sunday worship we become more aware of the presence of the risen Christ than we do the rest of the week. This is not to say that people cannot experience the Risen Christ at work or at play, around the conference table or while strolling down the seventh fairway. But it is to suggest that Sunday worship, more than at any other time, is the occasion when we are most likely to sense the Risen One in our midst. It just may be that nothing more glamorous than Sunday worship is the very place where those of us who doubt can discover a faith of our own and eventually exclaim with Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28)!
Another interesting detail of the story is related to the first. John not only tells us that the Risen Christ appeared to Thomas on the Sunday after Easter, he also tells us that Christ appeared in the midst of the community. Thomas was not alone; rather, he was among those who were gathered in Jesus' name (John 20:26). Have you even considered the many ways that the community of faith helps its individual members move from doubt to faith? Think about:
´ the Sunday school teacher who encourages her students to fashion a faith they can call their own;
´ the youth group leader who helps a thoughtful teenager reconcile the theory of evolution with the creation stories in Genesis;
´ the sermon which allows the first--time visitor to reconnect with God after having spent years in a spiritual wilderness.
´ Even the Affirmation of Faith, hardly the most dynamic part of worship, can help us work through our doubts.
In one of her books Barbara Brown Taylor writes about a friend who was struggling with the Creed. Taylor told her that it's important to think of the creed, not in the singular but the plural. When the whole congregation rises to confess what they believe, Taylor says:
I count on [others] to believe what I cannot believe ... right now. When my faith limps, I lean on the faith of the church, letting "our" faith suffice until "mine" returns ... My decision to say the creed at all is a decision to trust those who have gone before me.10
There may be no better Sunday of the year to ponder the relationship between doubt and faith than the Sunday after Easter, when the lilies have begun to wither, the trumpets have been packed away until next year, and the over--flow crowds we experienced last week will not return until Christmas Eve. In the meantime, we have more than enough to sustain us. Not only do we have the presence and support of one another, we also have the belief that when two or three gather in the name of the Risen Christ, he will be with us.
____________
1. Lloyd J. Ogilvie, If God Cares, Why Do I Still Have Problems? (Waco: Word Books, Publisher, 1985), pp. 210--211.
2. Douglas John Hall, Thinking The Faith: Christian Theology In A North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 250.
3. Leonore Fleischer, Shadowlands, a novel based on the film by Richard Attenborough (New York: Signet Books, Publishers, 1993), pp. 8--9.
4. F. Donald Coggan, Christ And Our Crises (Waco: Word Books, Publisher, 1975), p. 20.
5. Ibid.
6. Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), p. 197.
7. Ibid., pp. 198--199.
8.
9. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, Publishers, 1978), p. 194.
10. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 71.
Unfortunately, there are churches like that, churches which discourage dialogue, squelch questions, and disapprove of anyone who doubts. In one of his books, Lloyd Ogilvie, who is a Presbyterian minister and Chaplain of the United States Senate, recalls a conversation he had with a man named Mike. "I used to be a member of a church," confessed Mike, "but they said it was a sin to doubt - so I left." "Come to my church," Ogilvie said with a chuckle. "It's full of doubters!" Mike went on to say that his former pastor not only discouraged his doubts, but told him that it was a danger to doubt any aspect of the Christian faith and warned him that his doubts would become like a virus which would infect the whole church.1
I wonder whether Thomas - Doubting Thomas as we've come to call him - would be welcome in a church like the church Mike used to attend? Probably not. Any church that says that doubt is synonymous with sin would shun Thomas. How strange, then, that Thomas was welcomed as one of the twelve disciples. How ironic, that Jesus himself picked Thomas - doubts and all! - to be one of his closest followers.
As you may know, Thomas got the nickname Doubting Thomas because of a conversation that occurred shortly after the first Easter. The disciples have all gathered in a house in Jerusalem but Thomas is not with them. Suddenly, the Risen Christ appears to them, shows them the wounds in his hands and side, breathes new life into their deflated spirits and commissions them for the work of ministry. Later when Thomas returns, the other disciples can hardly wait to tell him the good news: "We have seen the Lord," they say. But Thomas replies, "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" (John 20:25). He doubted; he was unable to believe, and ever since we've been calling him Doubting Thomas.
While Thomas has his doubts, he is not the sinner that some people want to label him. In fact, according to theologian Douglas John Hall, "the line between faith and doubt is almost invisible."2 Doubt is not the opposite of faith, as some would have us believe; rather, for many people doubt is an integral part of faith. Down through the years lots and lots of Christians have arrived at the land of faith by means of the back roads of doubt. Consider, for example, Christian writer C. S. Lewis as he is pictured in the popular movie Shadowlands. As a young man, Lewis fought as a British soldier in "the war to end all wars," which we've come to call World War I. During the war Lewis saw his best friend killed. He saw hundreds of other young men maimed and killed, "boys" who should have been attending university, rowing with the crew team, and "... lying on the emerald grass of Oxford's quads, with their heads on the soft laps of the dainty young girls whom they should in normal times be marrying." In utter agony, Lewis cried out to God for answers, "Why?" he asked with tears in his eyes. "If a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong?" Yet as Lewis matured, he came to realize that the more he questioned, the more his faith grew.3
Then there is Donald Coggan, who served as the 101st Archbishop of Canterbury. In one of his books he writes: "I am more of an agnostic today than when I was an undergraduate 45 years ago. That would make a good headline in the newspaper, wouldn't it?" he quipped. "Agnostic Archbishop Sounds Off About Doubt."4 What he means, of course, is this - that there are more areas of life over which he would put the sentence, "I don't know," than there were when he was a brash undergraduate. He goes on to add: "In what I believe are the essentials of the Christian faith, I should like to think I am a stronger and deeper believer."5
Or consider Annie Dillard. In her beautifully written memoir, An American Childhood, Dillard describes her teenage struggles with faith when she attended the Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Critical of the prim and proper piety of that Presbyterian Church, Dillard writes:
It was not surprising, really, that I alone in this church knew what the barefoot Christ, if ever there had been such a person, would think about things - grape juice, [elders in] tailcoats, [the minister's] British [accent], sable stoles ... After all, I was the intelligencia around these parts, single--handedly.6
But as she looked down from the balcony, she noticed the whole congregation bowing their heads in prayer. Maybe they were pretending to pray, she quipped. But then, she grew critical of her own criticisms. She writes:
I began to doubt my own omniscience ... I was alert enough now to feel, despite myself, some faint, thin stream of spirit braiding forward from the pews ... The people had been praying ... to God, just as they seemed to be praying. That was the fact. I didn't know what to make of it.7
Today, Annie Dillard is an active member of a Roman Catholic parish.
Do you know the name of Doris Betts? A Presbyterian elder, a Sunday school teacher, a part-time church organist, and for more than 25 years a member of the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Betts has written several short stories and four novels. In the summer of 1998 she received the Distinguished Writer Award at the Presbyterian Writers' Guild luncheon at the General Assembly which met in Charlotte. Yet, several years ago she spoke about her struggle with the Christian faith and described herself as a member of the "Tribe of Thomas."8
Scott Peck, the Christian psychiatrist, says that there is no such thing as a good hand--me--down religion. Writes Peck: "To be vital ... our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our own questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality."9 So it was for Thomas, and so it is for many of us. John tells us that Thomas was called "the twin." Presumably, that means he was a twin and had a twin. Although we don't know anything about that biological twin, we can imagine that he's had many twins all across the years, spiritual twins, who tend to doubt, who find it hard to believe. Doubting Thomas had a twin; maybe that twin is someone like you, someone like me!
Those of us who call ourselves twins of Thomas might find hope in a couple of subtle details of the story. First, notice the day of the week that the Risen Christ appears to Thomas. John writes that it is "a week later" (John 20:26). A week after what? A quick review of the preceding verses suggests that one week earlier was Easter, and here it is now, the Sunday after Easter.
Could this be John's skillful way of reminding the reader of the importance of Christian worship - that in the midst of Sunday worship we become more aware of the presence of the risen Christ than we do the rest of the week. This is not to say that people cannot experience the Risen Christ at work or at play, around the conference table or while strolling down the seventh fairway. But it is to suggest that Sunday worship, more than at any other time, is the occasion when we are most likely to sense the Risen One in our midst. It just may be that nothing more glamorous than Sunday worship is the very place where those of us who doubt can discover a faith of our own and eventually exclaim with Thomas, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28)!
Another interesting detail of the story is related to the first. John not only tells us that the Risen Christ appeared to Thomas on the Sunday after Easter, he also tells us that Christ appeared in the midst of the community. Thomas was not alone; rather, he was among those who were gathered in Jesus' name (John 20:26). Have you even considered the many ways that the community of faith helps its individual members move from doubt to faith? Think about:
´ the Sunday school teacher who encourages her students to fashion a faith they can call their own;
´ the youth group leader who helps a thoughtful teenager reconcile the theory of evolution with the creation stories in Genesis;
´ the sermon which allows the first--time visitor to reconnect with God after having spent years in a spiritual wilderness.
´ Even the Affirmation of Faith, hardly the most dynamic part of worship, can help us work through our doubts.
In one of her books Barbara Brown Taylor writes about a friend who was struggling with the Creed. Taylor told her that it's important to think of the creed, not in the singular but the plural. When the whole congregation rises to confess what they believe, Taylor says:
I count on [others] to believe what I cannot believe ... right now. When my faith limps, I lean on the faith of the church, letting "our" faith suffice until "mine" returns ... My decision to say the creed at all is a decision to trust those who have gone before me.10
There may be no better Sunday of the year to ponder the relationship between doubt and faith than the Sunday after Easter, when the lilies have begun to wither, the trumpets have been packed away until next year, and the over--flow crowds we experienced last week will not return until Christmas Eve. In the meantime, we have more than enough to sustain us. Not only do we have the presence and support of one another, we also have the belief that when two or three gather in the name of the Risen Christ, he will be with us.
____________
1. Lloyd J. Ogilvie, If God Cares, Why Do I Still Have Problems? (Waco: Word Books, Publisher, 1985), pp. 210--211.
2. Douglas John Hall, Thinking The Faith: Christian Theology In A North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 250.
3. Leonore Fleischer, Shadowlands, a novel based on the film by Richard Attenborough (New York: Signet Books, Publishers, 1993), pp. 8--9.
4. F. Donald Coggan, Christ And Our Crises (Waco: Word Books, Publisher, 1975), p. 20.
5. Ibid.
6. Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987), p. 197.
7. Ibid., pp. 198--199.
8.
9. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon and Schuster, Publishers, 1978), p. 194.
10. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 71.
