One More Word

Sermon

Does God have a sense of humor? The platypus, Venus flytrap plants, and Oregon weather in the “spring” are strong indicators this may be true. Pastor Laurie alluded last week, during Joys and Concerns, to the old Church tradition of observing the Sunday after Easter as Holy Humor Sunday. The premise being, resurrection is God’s cosmic joke, that love has the final word over death. So in the spirit of another tiny joke, I took it upon myself to add one more word to the Lenten preaching series on fancy theological words. The word I chose, however, is not humor. The word is doubt.

Doubt is not usually something people admire. We prefer decisive, strongly held convictions. Some people see doubt, especially in religious matters, the way they see Clark Griswold’s sketchy cousin Eddie: not what one would slip into one’s résumé when applying for the position of Pope. And yet, 20th century theologian Hans Kung writes that “Doubt is the shadow cast by faith.” His point is that the faith worth staking one’s life on is never cut-and-dried, irrefutable. In fact, he claims, “There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt.” There’s something inherently hopeful about that. That little sentence about doubt as faith’s shadow has gotten me through some of my worst times.

Which may explain why I’m a little proprietary about doubt¸ as if I have the Pacific Northwest distributorship. When people are dismissive of Thomas, sneering doubting Thomas, I want to stick up for the guy. He is, after all, the one of all the disciples to gasp, upon encountering the resurrected Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” In my kinder moments, I pretend that’s the joke today—labeling as a doubter the one who can see the Divine with such clarity when no one else can. Thomas, at least, wasn’t locked in a room for fear of the authorities. The others are there, not just the Sunday after the crucifixion, but a week later, after actually seeing the Resurrected One. Thomas is not in lockdown. That first Sunday, he’s out somewhere—maybe he went out for coffee or was picking up the dry cleaning, maybe he was sleuthing to see if what the women said about an empty tomb was true, but he was out. The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s fear. Was Thomas fearless that he went out, or just willing to act as if? Was he acting out of a conviction that life must go on? Or was there a growing sense in him that “love is stronger than death”?

And Thomas’ protestation that he needed to see and touch the Resurrected One–! Maybe that wasn’t so much doubt as it was a good memory. The whole city had just witnessed another episode of state-sponsored violence. Who could blame the disciples for locking the door? When the sheer fact of your skin color or your ethnicity is enough to indict, try, convict, and condemn you to torture and execution, people learn some life-preservation skills. Don’t go out after dark, stop all the way at the stoplight, don’t run in public, don’t eat with sinners, and don’t go up against Empire. No one challenges Rome’s peace-keeping methods and lives to tell of it. The arbitrary arrests, the mutilated bodies left on the crosses as examples for the populace, the execution-as-public-drama. It isn’t doubt that leads Thomas to declare, “Unless I see . . .” It’s a good memory. Dead is dead, and Rome doesn’t want anyone to forget that.

I’m not advocating doubt for the sake of doubt. There are doubts that limit and constrict us, keep us from acting. And there are doubts that allow for the possibility that God will act. If you want to talk about doubt that limits, look at the story I told the children today from 2 Kings 7. The king’s official was rational, devoid of doubt. Jerusalem had been under siege so long that no amount of treasure could purchase a bite to eat. And here was that pesky prophet Elisha, asserting that by the very next day, food prices would plummet to the point where even the poorest would be feasting. Doubt in that case was rational, but it also kept the official from joining in the festivities. God must have a great sense of humor, because it’s four lepers, misfits with nothing to lose, who act in spite of their misgivings to become God’s agents. They stake their lives on what the official could only doubt, and thus they are the ones to save Jerusalem.

Maybe in our challenging times doubt has a purpose. Can doubt be a spiritual practice? Rachel Held Evans, Tish Harrison Warren, and Nadia Bolz-Weber have built their ministries on publicly wrestling with doubt. Calling into question the assumptions they were taught. Wondering about their own motives. Unflinching honesty about their own practices and beliefs. A passion for building community where it’s safe to question. Last Sunday, Tish Harrison Warren wrote in The New York Times that she does indeed doubt, and she doubts her doubts and has doubts about having doubts about her doubts. What these Gen-X and Millennial women express is the zeitgeist of our times. That might make Thomas the patron saint of our age, expressing as he does both real doubt and FOMO.

There are things worth doubting, things you’d be naïve to not wonder about. That your second grade teacher was right about you never learning to draw. That Europeans were ordained by God to conquer and colonize the New World. That economic disparity is due to some sin on the part of the poor, that wealth is the sign of a superior being. That the planet was given to us to use up so Jesus can come again. There are things easy to doubt. That we’ll be able to make reparations for the racial sins of this country’s past and come to a true racial reconciliation. That we will be able to turn the tide of planetary destruction and live sustainably as stewards of creation. Not to mention doubts about a God who would tolerate so much war, who would allow babies to die in said wars, who would allow pandemics. I have doubts about the future of Churchianity. And I’ve also got doubts about my cooking skills and the cleanliness of hotel rooms and whether I can manage my dog well enough that my neighbors won’t call noise control.

Doubt is everywhere. We question everything. If we didn’t question things, the Enlightenment and modern medicine would not have happened, Orville and Wilbur Wright would have stuck with bicycle repair, and women would still not have the right to vote. The point is to not be bound by doubt. Twelve Step groups tell us to act as if. Paul Goodman meant the same thing when he famously wrote, “Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!” Goodman argues for tiny and temporary victories, and for the possibility of partial victories in the absence or even the impossibility of total victories. Start living that way now! Doubt all you want, doubt to high heaven. But act as if your doubts do not have the final word.

Rebecca Solnit, who writes and blogs about hope, says that “hope is an embrace of the unknown.” And she rejoices in that. Although the ever-accelerating rate of change in our world is officially now beyond human comprehension, Solnit claims that “in uncertainty lies the power to influence the future. Now” (she says) “is not the time to despair, but to act.” Act as if. So all those doubts you’ve got? Good news! They are your primary qualification, the necessary skill set, for influencing this brave new world into what we dream it to be!

I think we can learn a lot of practical skills regarding doubt from our friend Thomas. His doubts were based in sound memory—the torture and execution of his teacher. His claim to need to see and touch asserts that to get too invested in this so-called “resurrection” might be to dismiss what Rome and the religious authorities did to Jesus. He’s not ready to forgive yet. Steeped as he is in Jewish theology, truth and reconciliation need to happen, reparation needs to be made, before he can forgive. His demand for proof is an act of integrity. Resurrection that doesn’t acknowledge the past is a far too pat and convenient resolution, bordering on cheap grace. To speedily forget the past—that past—would be flimsy. Thomas needed that memory to come to a place of hope. It’s easier to plan for the end of the world rather than to remember the past with enough vigor that the future can move beyond those sins. That’s hope. Eleanor Roosevelt claims that “in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.” Hope as the “smart” thing, memory as what informs and transforms our doubt! Thomas’ memory of the events of Thursday evening and Friday didn’t keep him from making room for the possibility of God’s action. What if it’s true? What if Jesus’ words of blessing to Thomas mean this: that which is dead may be dead to us, but we are not dead to it. “Blessed are those,” Jesus says, “who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” What if God holds on to us, not the other way around.

I’ve accompanied one of my directees for six years, through her checkered career in various seminaries and as she discerned a call to ministry. She has not quite made peace with Churchianity. She has questioned and doubted everything associated with Church teachings. And now finally, she has come to a place of peace and a sense of purpose. This week she told me that she doesn’t know what she believes, but she knows who she believes. And that’s the point. She believes in God, she says, “because there is no viable alternative.” Have your doubts! But know that which is dead may be dead to us, but we are not dead to it. And that’s enough.