(Preached at St Paul's Kay Street, Washington DC, on Easter 2)
“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20. 27
A man is walking down the road with a penguin. He meets a policeman and says: “I’ve found this penguin and I’m not sure what to do with it.” The policeman says: “Well take it to the zoo. It’s just across the road.”
The next day, the policeman bumps into the same man, still with the penguin. He says: “So what happened at the zoo yesterday?” The man says: “We had a lovely time thanks. We’re going to the cinema this afternoon.”
Now you probably don’t believe that story. And there’s nothing wrong in doubting its authenticity.
The human ability to doubt, to distinguish fact from fiction, is part of our self-consciousness. It’s part of what makes us human. We are always critical observers of the world.
When I left my Baptist theological college 30 years ago, I was young and very certain of what I believed and of what I knew; but rather uncertain of who I was.
Thirty years on, I’m much more confident about who I am (and who I am not), but far less certain about what I know. (That’s probably why I’m an Anglo-Catholic Priest today!)
So today in this Easter season, when we think about the post-resurrection appearances of our Lord, I want us to think for a few minutes about this appearance of Jesus to Thomas.
He is always remembered as ‘doubting’ Thomas, although this is a little unfair. We don't forever remember ‘denying’ Peter; nor the beloved disciple as ‘streaker’ John.
And I don’t mean thoroughgoing scepticism - doubting everything as a view of life.
Like the man who is on his first parachute jump. The instructor says: "you just jump out of the plane, the chute automatically opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you." The man is sceptical. "What if the chute doesn't open?" "No problem. You pull the emergency chute cord. Another parachute opens, you land in that field - there'll be a nice cup of tea waiting for you.
The man jumps. Nothing happens. He pulls the emergency cord. Nothing happens. As he plummets to earth he's muttering to himself: "Bet there's no cup of tea either..."
This scepticism is almost part and parcel of our postmodern society, but it shouldn't stop us from believing; it should only alter our attitude to believing.
Now when I say: 'we all doubt', I don’t mean ‘unbelief’. Whether we believe or not is an informed decision of the will. It is a rational choice.
No, I mean, just letting hard questions float around in our mind. We all doubt in that way.
Questions like: “Is God really there or have I just fooled myself?”
Questions like: “Why do such bad things often happen to good people?”
Questions like: “Am I really called to be a priest?”
And a host of others.
Why do we doubt? What’s behind it?
Well, sin - distrusting God - is at the root of many of the problems of our human condition.
Questioning is not a sin. Distrust of God is. It’s the ancient sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden. 'Has God really got the best intentions for us in this Garden? Is he really good? Or is he selfishly holding something back from us?'
As long as we struggle with sin - and we will always struggle with sin - we will struggle with the doubt of whether God is really good. How can we look at our hurting world and not doubt his goodness sometimes?
To compensate for this we may often fall into another sin - the sin of certainty. For the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.
It is our doubts that unite us. Our convictions divide us.
Which of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have convictions - but it does mean you should hold them with a degree of humility.
We all know the sort of person for whom there are only two positions on all subjects – theirs; and the wrong one!
Listen to Luther’s ‘doubter’s’ prayer:
Dear Lord,
Although I am sure of my position,
I am unable to sustain it without thee.
Help me, or I am lost.
And here we acknowledge another factor leading to doubt: human frailty - our limitations in grasping the infinite. And our temptation to think we know it all. We know better than God. Job and Ecclesiastes and good St Thomas remind us of this.
Until, like Thomas, we meet the risen Christ face to face, we will always be those who walk by faith, and not by sight. We will always need to ‘keep on believing’, despite the doubts. “Happy are those who have not seen me” says Jesus “ and yet believe”.
Tennyson put it rather well in The Ancient Sage:
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore be thou wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.
They are by nature prone to look on the gloomier side of most things. They lie awake at night worrying about everything.
(Like the man who wrote to the IRS: “I can’t sleep at night so I’m enclosing the $5,000 I forgot to declare. PS. If I still can’t sleep I’ll send the rest.”)
I’ve never spent a lot of my time absorbed in metaphysical angst. But I have friends who are constantly plagued by stuff that goes on in their head. St Thomas may have been such a man.
That sometimes-tormented priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was certainly such a man. He pleads with himself in one of his poems:
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet…
Soul, self; come poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile…
And how do we call off thoughts awhile? That's another subject, but we have to recognise that some personalities are prone to be plagued, tormented, by doubt.
We read the account from John's gospel today, but Luke gives us another reason for Thomas’s doubt in his gospel. And indeed this reason may be behind the doubt of all the disciples, and all of us who have followed them in choosing to believe.
“... they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement…” (Lk 24.41)
At the heart of our faith is something almost too incredible to believe. Thomas dared not believe it. And every time we consider the risen Christ, it’s as if Jesus says to us again: “See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.”
As we shall say in the mass in a few minutes:
This is the mystery of faith:
Christ has died
Christ is risen
Christ will come again.
The late John Betjeman, a former poet laureate, reflecting on the mystery of Christmas, clung on to that faith, although he hardly dared to believe it:
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things...
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
(Christmas)
We always hold on to our faith, through doubt. It is the safe way to believe, and allows us to explore our faith with humility and proper confidence.
I said I would tell you two stories, and so here is the second – and a very different story from the first. It is a true story.
I visited an elderly lady some years ago, Elsie, who had just come out of hospital in my home town in Shoreham- by-Sea on the Sussex coast. Southlands Hospital was a dilapidated, run-down old 1930’s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war. It was a dump!
Elsie had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?
“I ask you Father” Elsie said, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and he asks me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”
This is proper confidence! This is the Resurrection hope of those who have not seen, and yet believe.
May you know this hope and confidence this joyful Eastertide, and always.
“See my hands... my side; stop doubting and believe.” John 20.27
