Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, August 22, 2010
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Like many of you, I have family members who have diligently put together family histories, or family trees. Amidst the details of births and deaths, marriages and children – there are often noble stories of trans-oceanic travel, starting new lives and businesses, success in the face of hardship and a general, overall family pride. While on sabbatical in Scotland 6 years ago, I had a chance to read up on some of the more ancient Boyd family history. While at what used to be known as the “Boyd Castle” I learned that ancient forebears had gotten deeply in debt, that father and son had fought on opposing sides during the Jacobite war; the result being the beheading of the son and the forfeiture of the castle. Of course, this little fact isn’t the first thing one reads in the family or clan history. It takes some digging to find this less than stellar example of misjudgment and loss.
In that same spirit, it is always amazing to me that at the climactic moment in a sacred gospel about faith we have this revealing story of Thomas and his doubt. This gospel, more than any other, has what in theological terms is known as a high Christology – a strong belief in the supremacy of Jesus as the Son of God. At the core of the gospel’s theology is the power and reality of the resurrection. Chapter 20, from which today’s text comes, is a critical first chapter in the heart of this gospel message. As we begin this amazing exploration of life and death, we see Thomas boldly claiming he doesn’t believe. While Thomas gotten a lot of flak over the centuries, what is amazing to me is that the author has included the story in the first place. Surely there were other stories, other conversations he could have included. In his own self-described purpose, the author says the stories are here to help people have “life in his name.”
It’s inclusion underscores that the religious life has always included doubt; a reminder that there have always been those still trying to piece this whole Christian faith together. In fact, how many of us grew up in the church and have had, or are in, a period of confusion or doubt? The fact that the pattern is so common suggests that it is part of life.
What can be aggravating, however, is that so much that purports to answer our questions or calm our doubts in fact seeks to find another way to state an answer to a belief that we can’t get our head around. In anticipation of remodeling and moving my office, I’ve been cleaning my bookshelves. Last week, I was once again at Half Price Books waiting to sell my old books. As I browsed the religion section, I saw a couple of books on the subject of doubt. When I looked closer, I realized the books were not celebrating or affirming or making room for doubt. Rather, they professed to answer all the questions that lead to doubt. You’re missing the point, I thought. What those of us who live with doubt need is not someone pressing on us harder to make us believe, telling us why we should believe, telling us why THEY believe. What we need is a faith that has enough spaciousness to hold our doubt – for as long as necessary.
As a pastor, I am continually confronted with people whose lived experience of Christianity has not included such spaciousness. I’m continually reminded as I listen to stories that many have had similar experiences to my book experience. Doubt makes others nervous. Doubt invites all kinds of advice. Doubt increases the anxiety of many around us who call themselves people of faith.
Today’s Phoenix Affirmation reads, we celebrate the love of God by claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts, recognizing that faith and science, doubt and belief serve the pursuit of truth
One of the things that jumps out at me in reading this statement is that the topic of doubt is connected with the question, ‘what is the goal of the religious journey, the spiritual life?’ Is it to answer our questions? Is it to have a coherent, airtight set of religious beliefs? Is it to learn all the rituals, prayers, or rules of one’s faith? According to this affirmation, it is rather to ‘claim the sacredness of life’ and to ‘seek truth.’ Questions, doctrine, rituals, prayers, or rules may serve in the pursuit of truth – and as such they can be useful and helpful. They can open our hearts to the sacredness of our lives.
Elaine Pagels, noted religion scholar and author of Beyond Belief, writes about her own return to church as an adult, in the wake of her young son’s terminal illness. Having left the church of her youth because she could not accept its rigid belief systems, she now found herself within a congregation that expressed itself differently… “a community that had gathered to sing, to celebrate, to acknowledge common needs, and to deal with what we cannot control or imagine.” (p. 4)
As a scholar of religion and one accustomed to matters of the head, Pagels writes about Christian stories that flow from the heart, from early Christian history, including an account of Tertullian: “a Christian spokesman of the second century, [who] writes that, unlike members of other clubs and societies that collected dues and fees to pay for feasts, members of the Christian ‘family’ contributed money voluntarily to a common fund to support orphans abandoned in the streets and garbage dumps. Christian groups brought food, medicines, and companionship to prisoners forced to work in mines, banished to prison islands, or held in jail. Some Christians even bought coffins and dug graves to bury the poor and criminals, whose corpse otherwise would lie unburied beyond the city walls…” (p. 7, 
“In the face of plagues, when others ran from the sick, the Christian community sought them out, and cared for them. Death was not to be feared and so they risked their own lives to care for others.”
That you may have life in my name! Does not this kind of care and attention lift up the sacredness of life more than a doctrinal statement? Does not this behavior speak to the truth of life as it is really lived?
For too long, it seems, we have been seduced into thinking that faith is about beliefs. The affirmation reminds us that for progressive Christians, faith is about opening ourselves to the sacredness of life, and the pursuit of authentic, life giving relationships – with one another and with the Holy One.
Just last week I began driving a new/used car that has a manual transmission. I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between manual and automatic cars, or even between different manual cars and how they work. I’ve been able to teach a few people over the years. One of the patterns I’ve recognized is that often a novice stick shift driver begins with no confidence, learns a few things and then gains confidence. However, the second time out, or the first time someone pulls up behind them on a hill, for example – they freeze, seemingly losing all skill and confidence – and stall time after time. While they have learned how to manage the clutch, the brake and the accelerator – they quickly begin to doubt what they have learned. Unforeseen mistakes, nervous anxiety, new situations can easily throw their new found confidence into a tailspin.
What I have come to see, however, is this dip into doubt about their skills is an important part of the learning. It keeps us humble, it helps us pay attention, it reminds us we aren’t yet an Nascar or Gran Prix driver. While this same trajectory can happen with automatic cars, there is nothing quite like the lurch, screeching tires and dead engine to quell our confidence in a nanosecond.
Is this frustrating? Of course. Is it at times embarrassing? Maybe. Can us catch us by surprise? Probably. Does it mean we aren’t still on a learning curve towards successful driving? Absolutely not, as long as we remember it’s part of the process. The biggest mistake would be to suggest or expect that someone learning this tricky skill for the first time would never experience what seems like a setback – even though it’s part of the process.
Somewhere in our collective religious upbringing, we’ve had people or institutions akin to the overbearing driving instructor who says you have to learn it all today and if you ever stall the car, if you ever forget which pedal to push when – you are not a real driver.
Somewhere in our collective religious training and exposure, someone has suggested doubt is wrong, that science is at odds with faith. Whether or not we embrace the idea of a doubtless faith journey in our heads, someone or some institution has left an abiding impression on our hearts.
What I love about today’s affirmation is that it is now time to LET THAT GO. It’s time to embrace the sacredness of our lives – suggesting again that to do so does not mean all is directed, ordained, or willed by God, but that there is NO place in our journey where God – however visible or real God feels at the time – isn’t present.
It is time to let go of the notion that doubt is wrong, and ask what are we learning from our doubt? How is it part of the learning process, the journey of our heart?
It is time to let go of the entirely silly notion that faith is at odds with science and ask how matters of science or a scientific approach to life illuminate our sense of the sacred; and how an embrace of the sacred illuminates a scientific view of life.
Those of us who enjoy family genealogy know that the beauty is that on each limb of the family tree, there are new bits information and new characters to be discovered. Each new find helps us understand a bit more who we are and how we have been shaped. So it is with the life of faith. So much to be discovered and uncovered. The path of learning and growing includes years of faith and years of doubt, the wonders and dead ends of science, matters of intellectual intrigue and matters understood only in the spaciousness of our hearts. Through all of this, we learn more and more about our God, our relationship with that God, and our particuliar path of sacred living. Thanks be to God.
Scripture Text: John 20:24-31: Jesus and Thomas
But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘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.’
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Phoenix Affirmation
Claiming the sacredness of both our minds and our hearts, recognizing that faith and science, doubt and belief serve the pursuit of truth (Winton Boyd)
