Are We The Twin

I should first apologize for not writing anything for awhile. Needless to say, things got busy. This post is the transcript of a sermon I preached this last week at Belle View Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA. It was a good morning, and I think a pretty good sermon. I had hoped to have audio for it, but my recorder crashed five minutes into the sermon. So, all you get is the text. I pray you all have a good week, and look forward to getting back in the swing of things.

“Are We The Twin?”

John 20:19-31

Faith and doubt. Did you know that the majority of people will strongly believe something negative about a public figure without much evidence, yet continually doubt positive affirmations regardless of the support? Faith and doubt. We have total faith that people are as bad as we always believed they were anyway, but constantly doubt whether something good is real. Faith and doubt. We just “know” that our pursuits and endeavors will come to fiery end, but doubt that we make a real difference in the world around us. Faith and doubt. Obviously, most Americans see the world as a place for caution where we should always question, because we fear the world turning upside down on us. Yet, things that work exactly as planned leave that anxious feeling in our stomach as if the other shoe is about to drop. Faith and doubt. 

It sounds exhausting, to say the least. Yet, it happens so quickly and with such regularity that it can be difficult to see the world in any other way. We have developed habits that are the closest thing to automatic responses outside of the urge to take a breath. Doubting what we see has grown into a natural part of our lives. It takes effort to to have faith in something. It’s why Christian culture, at least that which I grew up in, mocked doubters as lazy, painted skeptics as intellectually dishonest, and agnostics as those unwilling to make commitments.

Faith and doubt. The Church struggles to talk about faith and doubt together. We idealize faith, and the Scriptures give us a “Hall of Fame” of faith’s greatest models. We command people to have faith, we debate the essence of faith, and we struggle to express or “live in” to our faith. We spend so much time talking about faith that we rarely, if ever, confront or express real doubt. I don’t know what it was like in this church, but as a child and teenager, we never stopped talking about or trying to enhance the strength of our faith. It was part of every class, or Bible study.

Faith and doubt. When doubt did become a topic, it was addressed with equal parts fear and loathing. I remember a pastor talking about doubt as “the principal weapon of the the enemy” when preaching about how the thief comes in the night. Doubt would sneak up on us when we least expected it. As a youth, we were told that doubt first manifested itself in the lives of those who were complacent in their faith. It came in the good times, those times when you didn’t pray as much because you didn’t feel there was anything wrong to worry about. And because you had allowed doubt to creep in, we were told that is why the bad times happened in the first place. Looking back, doubt was a convenient way to blame the victim for struggles of life. Doubt is always the opposite of faith. It was the Lex Luthor to the Superman that is faith. It is the darkness to the light.

Doubt became this boogey man that was always waiting to pick you off if you strayed from the narrow path of faith that had been laid out by those who taught us. It was the justification for why people did not express or speak of their faith exactly the same way we did. Those with different theology were just people unfortunate enough to fall to the trap of doubt. It took me years to figure out what was going on. I had spoken the same words and affirmed the same principles. Only after I experienced real tragedy and began to ask questions did it dawn on me. Doubt was how we kept things in order. As I struggled through my own experience of how the world was not quite as fair as I had believed, I was being told to “let go of my doubt and have faith.” It happened one day when I was pastoring an international church overseas. 

Faith. My wife and I had been married for just a few months and taken this position as co-pastors of an English-language church in Bali. Before we left, we knew we would be there for only a few months. The church did not have the financial ability to support ministers for long tenures, and it wasn’t connected to any specific denomination or missions organization. But we thought it would be an adventure. We didn’t have kids, very little debt, and so we threw caution to the wind and moved halfway around the world. Now, we weren’t totally without reason. When we returned, she was going to start seminary, and I was sending out resumes all over trying to find a place to serve. While we were living this part of our adventure, we were going to prepare for the next part. We dug into our ministry with deep faith and fell in love with the most diverse group of people you will ever meet. On any given Sunday there were half a dozen nationalities and languages meeting in our small church, and all of them had made a conscious choice to worship in English. It was a beautiful, creative time where I truly felt we were living in the present what the Kingdom of God would look like in the future. 

Doubt. There is a day in the Revised Common Lectionary that comes during Eastertide, every year. At the end of the Gospel reading in John 14, Jesus tells the Disciples, “do not be afraid.” As our time overseas had marched toward its predetermined conclusion, I was not getting anywhere in terms of finding a place to serve when we returned. We were going to be homeless, without income, and left to the generosity of our families. While that is a steadfast bedrock for both of us, it was not how we had pictured our adventure, nor was it the hope on which I had staked my call. I knew, and still know today, that I was called to be a servant in God’s Church, yet I was not seeing where we were to go next. We were both doing everything we could to keep the stress to ourselves. That week, as I prepared for the sermon, the only think I knew to do was to lay out my own fear and doubt. I wanted to start a conversation among the church about how difficult it can be to follow the command of Jesus, and not be afraid. That day at the pulpit, I struggled and for sure, it was not one of my best delivered sermons. 

As the service ended and we had the time of response, I sat at this small table we had set up to the side of the worship area. It was meant to signify that this time of invitation was an opportunity to start a conversation. A member of the church from South Africa, a man of deep devotion…which means we argued a lot about how best to articulate faith and doctrine, came to sit at the table. He put his hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort and give me support. He looked directly into my face and he told me, “You need to have more faith.” Something in me broke at that moment. I was almost completely overwhelmed with a flood of emotion that I was not prepared to sift through. I was angry and offended. I had been struggling with these feelings of inadequacy and doubt for months, knowing that I still had faith that my calling was to ministry, but not seeing the path of where to go next. Later, he and I would talk about that moment, and I was able to truly express my frustrations and anxieties to him in a way that was able to communicate that there was deep faith still in my heart. Then, he was able to tell me of his own struggles of doubt that he had also been hiding.

We learned, together, in that moment, something that Christian mystics had been talking about for centuries. Faith and doubt are not opposites. They are compliments. 

Faith and doubt. These two parts of our lives co-exist in all of us. They happen all the time when we make decisions. Is this the best investment for my future? Is this the best time to change my practice of living? We know on the one hand that we are being given a great opportunity, but we also doubt whether this opportunity is really for us. 

One of the things I have always lamented about the Gospel text for today is that some Bibles put in the title “Doubting Thomas” before this story. In truth, I don’t really like titles in my Bible anyway. Editors added them in recent decades, and I question not only their veracity as ways to understand the text, but how they break up the thoughts and message. However, that is something best discussed in a long Bible study. For today, let’s just focus on Thomas. This story is one that we know pretty well, or at least we have heard it read in church often enough that it’s familiar to us. That can be one of the problems with Bible passages like this as well. We feel familiar with the text enough that we don’t really read it that often.

This text is more dramatic than I tend to give it credit. It is set on Easter Sunday. Already, the community that had followed Jesus were busy. Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the Beloved Disciple had already gone to the tomb. Mary had an encounter with someone she thought was a gardner, but was in fact the risen Jesus. She had already told the other disciples of her experience, in essence being the first person to share the Gospel of the risen Christ. All of this happens just before we pick up in verse 19. 

Faith and doubt. The Disciples, sans Thomas, are gathered in a locked room, presumably hiding for fear of their being implicated with Jesus and crucified when the Christ appears and shows them his hands and side. Then Thomas shows up afterwards, and asks for the exact same thing they other disciples had already experienced. However, he is the one who is labeled as doubting. There are so many things in this small passage to talk about. In John’s Gospel, this is the arrival of the Holy Spirit, this is the Great Commission, and this is the place where doubt and faith meet. John’s Gospel has been telling us all the way through that the Disciples don’t get it. They don’t get it when it comes to the place of children in the Kindom of God. They don’t get it when it comes to the need for miracles. They don’t get it when it comes to Jesus’ rejection of violence and surrender to crucifixion, and they don’t get it when it comes to the resurrection.

Faith and doubt. Thomas appears two other times in John’s Gospel as a character where his words are recorded. Once he is shown as courageous, offering to go and die with Jesus, and another time he is shown as theologically astute, asking good questions about how to follow Jesus when he is speaking cryptically of where he is going. In a way, I guess it goes to show that one, seemingly negative incident can brand you for life. The text doesn’t even tell us if Thomas put his hand in the wounds that Jesus offered, but there is a painting that depicts it, and so for many that is the image in our imagination. The people of the Gospel text watched everything they hoped for, but didn’t fully understand, come to ruin in the most painful and gruesome way they could have imagined. 

Then, 2000 years later, this group of know-it-alls come along and brand Thomas a “doubter.” We start with his doubt of the other’s witness that Jesus has risen. From there, the entire story is colored by Thomas’ doubt. Jesus offers words of blessing for those “who have not seen, and yet believe.” It should be an assurance for those who read the text that they are a blessed people because they believe without seeing, yet instead, it is seen as condemnation of those, like Thomas, who want to see. We turn this text of the miracle of the risen Christ into a zero-sum game about what it means to have faith. Ultimately, we label Thomas a “zero” because he saw, and believed. However, that’s not what the text tells us. Jesus asks him if it required sight for him to believe, and then proclaimed those who believe without seeing as “blessed.”

Faith and doubt. What does it matter if we pack these preconceptions about Thomas in this passage? Thomas still doubted before he had faith. I believe it helps us understand what we mean when we say we have faith. If anything, this passage teaches us what faith really is because Thomas and the Disciples had it at the end of this passage, and they were looking right at the risen Christ, yet we also have it, and we have never seen Jesus in the flesh. At least, I haven’t. Maybe you have. Regardless, the true measure of faith is not the ability to believe in something you can’t see. Faith is not like believing in the Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four. Something that is there, but you just can’t see. 

Faith is so much more. The Quaker theologian, D. Elton Trueblood, said, “faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.” No one would disagree that at the end of this chapter, everyone involved has faith that God has raised Jesus to conquer death. Yet, they were given visual proof of his resurrection. Even Paul will see Jesus on the Damascus road, which will lead him to faith. Faith is so much stronger than something that just starts the life of one devoted to God. Faith is less about someone’s need to close their eyes, and more about how we stand on the promises. 

Faith and doubt. There’s one part of this we story from John we haven’t talked about yet. When Thomas is introduced, we are told that he also called “the Twin,” but we aren’t told why. This is the second time in John’s Gospel that the reader is told that Thomas is “the Twin,” but we are never told with whom he is a twin. Are they identical or fraternal? Why is it important for the reader to know that Thomas is a twin? Are they playing tricks on the Disciples by switching places with each other from time to time? 

What if “twin” has a bigger meaning? Maybe, we are the twin. I told you one of my stories of doubt. I’m fairly certain, that though I don’t know any of you, you could also share stories of doubt. Life is just too hard sometimes for there to never be doubt. I’ve heard doubt in the hospital rooms where I served as a chaplain, in the pews of the churches I’ve served as a pastor, on the streets where I’ve been a citizen, and in the quiet when my own voice of doubt starts to push against the silence. There’s more doubt now than I can ever remember. And in all that doubt we find Thomas’ twin, begging to see the risen Jesus. 

It’s in the voice of those who are saying, “that group over there, they are taking away our stuff.” It’s in the violence that breaks out because we think we have to fight to hold onto this illusion that our lives are fine, or that we already possess some “dream”. It’s in the voice of the preacher who realizes their church is getting smaller, getting older, and that the things they imagined ministry was going to be like…are not happening, and so they lash out at those people or this generation. It’s in the voice of the millennial who has become disillusioned because the church they grew up in is not big enough for their questions, or thinks they are too lazy and entitled to be important.  Those are the voices saying, “Unless I can touch…I will not believe.”

Doubt. It’s been three years since I served, with my wife, that church in Bali. In those three years, I’ve moved across the country, but have never served in God’s Church which I know I’m called to. And there were days when my doubt threatened to swallow me whole. I wanted so badly to touch and know that God was close. I am Thomas’ twin. I’ve heard my friends, my wife, remind me that I am called, but I did not believe. They all testified to what they had witnessed, and yet, I still doubted. If we are to call him “Doubting Thomas” then I am “Doubting Will.”

Faith. But I am also one of the ones that Jesus has called “blessed.” Because I have not seen, and yet I believe. It may not be the grand image of the prophet who pronounces, “Thus saith the Lord,” but I am here. I am here because I have faith in the promise of the Risen Christ. The one that breathed and said, “receive the Holy Spirit.” The one that said, “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace…take courage; I have conquered the world.” It’s my trust without reservation. It’s the only way I know. I was told, and I put my trust in the telling. It can be difficult to imagine that faith and doubt can reside so close together. We imagine that the contrast between one place and the other is stark. That the line is bold on the pavement and so easy to see. 

Faith and doubt. I remember a story I read once when preparing to teach spiritual formation at a church I was serving. It was from the mid 1990’s and the Orthodox church that had existed in the former Soviet Bloc countries was coming out of hiding. An American journalist has been sent to interview one of their Patriarchs, or leaders. It was an in-depth interview of how this man had maintained his faith while hiding from governments that wanted to harm him. At some point in the interview, the journalist asked the Patriarch to describe his prayer life. Obligingly, the man told the journalist a prayer he had said often, and the journalist was a little surprised. I can’t remember what the prayer was exactly, but it had been very simple. Much too simple for such a person of deep faith, or so the journalist thought.

The Patriarch looked at him patiently and said, “We need not over-complicate it. Prayer is just talking to God.” Then, the Patriarch said something that really energized me. “Often, we imagine that the acts we do for God are complicated. And so, we get caught up in trying to figure out ‘how’ we are to do something. The difficult part, though is not in the ‘how,’ but in the ‘doing.’”

Faith and doubt. I often imagined that one was so different from the other. They were talked about as if it were like crossing a river and burning the bridge behind you. Now, it seems that the hard part is not in “how” I believe, but in the believing. “I” am the twin. I’m the one who has cried out to touch the hands and the side. I’m the one who didn’t believe the testimony of those who love me. But I’m also blessed. Because I, like you, am one who has not seen, and yet has believed. Amen