Thomas

It’s the Sunday after Easter, which means we’re remembering an Orthodox tradition that’s been celebrated for centuries. During the first week of Easter these Christians remembered the trick that Jesus played on the devil, tricking death on Easter morning. These Christians would play practical jokes and laugh and tell funny stories in memory of the joy of this season.

It’s also the case that for centuries Christians have remembered the story of the disciple Thomas the Sunday after Easter.

And every year I’m miffed that poor Thomas gets singled out among all the witnesses in John to be stuck with the label “Doubting Thomas.” Part of my frustration stems from my stalwart belief that words matter. And the word doubt never appears in this story.

Thomas, unlike the other disciples was not present when the back-from-the-dead Jesus shows us and breaths the Holy Spirit into them. Every other person has had the chance to touch the risen Jesus, everyone but Thomas. And then when all the followers are together, Jesus shows us.

Which is awkward because Thomas is incredulous upon hearing from his friends the news that Jesus is alive. His words are emphatic. “I will never, ever, ever, ever believe that unless I personally, with my own hands touch the nail marks in his hands.”

There are two categories presented in the story of Thomas: belief and unbelief. There’s belief that his friends are telling the truth, belief that something is pushing on the boundaries of what he thinks is possible. And then there’s disbelief, which is actually more like a form of belief – a belief that God will only work out for Thomas if God fits into certain categories and fulfills a certain set of guidelines.

It’s not really about doubting. It’s not an indictment on those who are troubled or questioning or unsure. Because that happens with almost every person who encounters Jesus in the Gospel of John. The whole Fourth Gospel is a parade of very human characters who understand just a little, or get it half way right, or sort of think they know who Jesus is, or just get the whole things wrong.

The pattern of John goes like this: someone hears something about Jesus, but it isn’t enough. They have to experience Jesus. They need more. And Jesus meets them there. It’s never about them, or their belief. What we hear over and over again in John is that faith isn’t something we come to on our own. It takes many different forms and in every single one doubt is part of the mix.

This week I read an interview of the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor. She was asked about the role that doubt plays in her faith. Does she ever doubt? “Here’s the way I presently live with doubt,” she told the interviewer, “Doubt often brings me to poke at what I believe, and when it topples, I realize that was an idol. And so doubt and disillusionment have been the divine gifts that have led me deeper into who God is.”

Taylor helped me get a better sense of the faith of those in the Gospel of John, the lives we’ve been winding through these past 12 weeks. It’s not that these people who encounter Jesus have got it wrong. It’s not quite so simple as that. Maybe a better way to think of it is that they’ve got all these blocks, all these ideas and expectations. And they’ve put something together, a structure they think makes sense to them.

And then Jesus comes along and each time, with each person he knocks it down. And in the place rebuilds it into something that they couldn’t have comprehended on their own. He rebuilds it with the same pieces — the hopes, the expectations, the Hebrew Scriptures, the words he tells them. But without the doubt to knock it down, to spread out the pieces, they would keep on believing in something of they made up.

 

Doubt has also been a sign to me of the bigness of my faith. I look at the devastation and terror of this world and I know that fixing all of that will requires something bigger than what I can imagine. I need something so great, an answer so awesome that it pushes on what is believable. I know my faith in God is big enough, that my belief is big enough, when it’s big enough to elicit doubt.

I keep a list of a tattoos I will never get, and near the top are the words of the theologian Tertullian — “it is certain because it is impossible,” which is another way of saying, “It is so extraordinary that it must be true. Who would have made this stuff up?”

Tertullian wrote these words when he was in a huge fight with this group of people who thought that there was no way God could show up in human form because people are gross. And the definition of God is the opposite of gross stuff, the opposite of human stuff. To say that God gets into human life – this is not a great claim if you’re trying to use logic to prop up your religion.

In fact, if you are planning to start a world religion of your own here is a piece of advice: make sure your God isn’t a person. It’s better to have that person only appear to be human, or to take away all the human stuff from their life. As an expert in religion, I highly recommend making your God super godly.

Instead, Christianity makes this very silly claim that God becomes a human person in Jesus, just like you and me, for no other reason than love.

We believe a lot of foolish things in the church. Like the parts about miracles and angels and people coming back to life after they’ve died. All of that is outside nature, outside of our rational mind.

But the most foolish thing we believe is that love moves everything. The most foolish thing we believe is that you were created for no other reason than love. We believe, with absolute conviction that you do not need to do anything to be loved. We are utterly convinced that when you are confused and you can’t quite get your beliefs in line, when your head and your heart collide, that Jesus is making a way to you. We believe that you are never reduced to the worst thing you have done and that you never have to earn your way into a great reward. We believe that you are loved, without exception, without reason.

That is ridiculous! Because everything else around us tells us a different story. We are taught to believe day in and day out that we are what we earn, that we will never be good enough, that good things come to those who work hard, that we have to look out for our own, that family comes first, that you are responsible for your own destiny, that there isn’t enough to go around, that only the strong survive.

I believe in this foolish Gospel because every true story, every world that I have ever wanted, every time I have sensed wholeness and freedom it is when I have fallen into the foolishness of God’s senseless love.

You are loved. I would venture that, for some of us, that’s harder to believe than the dead returning to life.

 

One of my favorite phrases in the church is “I confess.” We have confessions of faith, we confess that we are sinners. For me, it has a different tenor than saying “I believe.” I actually do believe, even with my edges of doubt. But it’s confessing it, the doubt and the faith all mixed together, that seems to matter more. When I confess I’m saying “this is what I signed up for, the life I’m going to pursue, the God and the story I’m going to trust. I trust it enough to say it out loud even though you are looking at me like I am a fool, which I am, because love is a foolish bet to place in this life. But that’s how I’m going to go about it, even if it kills me, which it very likely might.”

That’s a bit of a mouthful, but I think that’s what we mean when we say that we confess Jesus as the Son of God, or that we confess Christ crucified. We confess that a foolish love has got into us, has got hold of us, and we’re going to see where it takes us next.

Confessing reminds me of all those people we met in John – the woman at the well, Simon Peter, Martha, Nicodemus, Thomas – all the people whose lives went in the direction of love before they really knew what they were doing, because love reached in to find them, and love held them fast.

If you’re thinking, “slow down, lady. I’m not quite ready for that,” that’s okay, too. Hang around here for a while and you’ll get a chance to see what it’s like, this life of love. We make each other mad and then have to say we’re sorry. We try to figure out what love looks like even in the trickiness of a divided political climate. We ask each other to pull it together because we notice someone is getting hurt. We show up at each other’s houses with candles and bread and casseroles. We show up in prisons with birthday cakes and on the streets with signs and in the preschool with a guitar and in the hospital with carrots. And we confess that we are hopelessly wound up in an incomprehensible, senseless love.

And maybe sometime, you’ll start to see that it’s true, this nonsense about not having to earn love, this nonsense about being created for love. We’ll still be here, telling that story over and over and over again, the story of God’s love in Jesus, the story that says over and over again: you are loved, you are loved, you are loved.