Faithful Doubting
Apr 23, 2009
Rev. Dr. Jay Alanis
Did anyone ever play "show and tell" when you were a kid? This appears to be a generational relic! This morning I have something to show and tell. This red heart with legs cushion was given to me by a five-year-old friend of mine named Rommel. Rommel's dad was an Episcopal priest and a very good friend of mine who sadly died this past January from cancer. Rommel has become my good buddy. This heart is actually a belated Valentine's gift. When I asked Rommel what I should name it, he immediately said: "Hearty!" And so "Hearty" is with me today to remind us that we all have hearts with legs.
The Gospel story for today is a kind of "show and tell" story. It is a resurrection story, and the disciples who were gathered together when Jesus first appeared to them got the benefit of the doubt when the resurrected Jesus appeared to them; all except Thomas who from then on and throughout the centuries gets the bad rap for unbelief. "Seeing is believing" goes the popular quip.
Doubt. It makes a lot of money these days, especially if Meryl Streep has it! In the film by that name she plays a nun who accuses a priest of malfeasance but with no solid evidence. All she has is circumstantial evidence that she cannot prove. The film shows us how we all can have doubts about something or someone and how discomforting it is when one is seeking the truth.
Newsweek came out with an article recently about "The End of Christian America." You may have read it. It appears that U.S. surveys reveal that the number of U.S. citizens claiming no religious affiliation has doubled since 1990, and the number claiming to be atheist or agnostic has doubled. The author points out that while we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced today by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. This follows a historical trend that began back in the 1960's with the "Death of God Movement" endorsed by some Protestant theologians. These held that Christianity would not survive without an orthodox understanding of God. The author points out that religious faith is still relevant in today's culture, but that it has lost her influence to a degree. He argues that this may actually be a good thing because it may reduce the tension between the views of the church and the state.
If you followed the politics of this decade, you may have seen how religion in America shapes public opinion. Sometimes it appears as a tug of war between church and state, or between a version of orthodoxy and its influence on the common good. I'm not ready to dismiss or diminish the role of belief systems in the shaping of the American story. But at the same time, there is no doubt that there is a culture of skeptics that demand proof of God "beyond a reasonable doubt." They may demand proof from us in order to make up their minds on the church.
Skepticism forms a part of the American fabric. We are not a theocracy. There is freedom to believe or disbelieve and freedom to choose or not to choose a faith. We call it "freedom of conscience" and this freedom has religious and political backing. Theologically, we appreciate this perspective in our scholarship. As inheritors of the historical-critical method we place a high value on critical thinking as part of our theological formation. For example, we don't "proof texts" in order to prove the rightness of our convictions, but approach scripture from a place of humility so that our scholarship might have integrity, even if it leads us to a death of God idea.
Years back I used to practice law and in order to prove up a criminal case the jury was instructed to find the defendant guilty by "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." In other words, there was no room for ambiguity. The key to doubt there was that the proof had to be reasonable so that no lingering doubt would remain in the guilt or innocence of a defendant. That's the legal maxim to determine what is fair and just in guilt or innocence. Twelve of our peers from the community get to decide the rightness or wrongness of a conviction.
So, to go back to the resurrection story, if reason or critical thinking is to govern the circumstances of the crime of the crucifixion, then Thomas would not be considered unreasonable for doubting hearsay. Today he would be called a skeptic, or a critical thinker; in fact, he would be an excellent juror. If I were still practicing law I would want Saint Thomas on my jury pool because he wasn't willing to accept the hearsay of the disciples. He wanted the hard evidence!
Thomas had witnessed a violent crime. There's no doubt that the crucifixion of Jesus was the hard evidence for those who were there, so if the disciples tell him that the Lord has appeared to them, I can't blame him for wanting proof "beyond a reasonable doubt." The proof for Thomas, interestingly enough, is the bloody, broken, fleshy, scarred wounds of Jesus. This is the part of the resurrection story that always grabs my attention. Thomas wants to see the hard core evidence of the crime! He knows the crucifixion was a criminal act because his faith had already led him to believe that Jesus was innocent.
I used to work at the Attorney General's office here in Austin a while back when I was in law school. Part of my task was to read the appellate briefs of the inmates on death row. Capital punishment transcripts are never easy to read. As part of my task I had access to the photos of the violent crimes. They are not pleasant to look at. You see the bodies of the victims and learn of the way they died. It's actually quite gruesome, but that was the evidence that I had to look at if I wanted to ensure that justice as defined by the law was applied. It's a sad fact that today Texas leads the nation in capital punishment. Thanks to DNA testing we are now learning that many innocent folk have been exonerated, 14 as of 2005, and no doubt many more since. Some may not have had the benefit of the doubt and we will never know for sure. Those exonerated now bear the wounds of their wrongful convictions for a lifetime.
So the practice of the law is not immune from injustice. Requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not always a safeguard to justice. But the reality is that crimes are committed in our communities and some folks are wrongly convicted. They may end up paying the heavy price for someone else's crime for years on end and even experience capital punishment. We hear echoes of this in the Gospel story. An innocent suffers the wounding of the death penalty for the crime of the guilty.
I have a friend in prison who was a student here some years back. Through tragic circumstances he committed a homicide and is in prison for life. We correspond regularly. I have visited with him in prison and have prayed with him. He prays for me; in fact, he prays for all of us. He has repeatedly asked me to tell you of his prayers for you because he remembers the beauty of this community life, its' vibrant faith and the richness of her worship. His wounding is real and yet he finds grace in the most unlikely of places, in his prison cell where he studies scripture and theology, and where he composes amazing hymns of faith that he often sends me. He reminds me of Henry Nouwen and his testimony of the wounded healer. My own experience tells me that out of our wounds come great insights of faith. My friend probes the depth of faith in the most difficult and unlikely of places, where doubt and skepticism are the norm rather than the exception.
He reminds me of the painting of Doubting Thomas by the Italian master Caravaggio. In it you see Saint Thomas in stark graphic detail sticking his finger inside the side wound of Jesus, as if probing for truth. Thomas sticks his finger into the fleshiness of the scar of the Risen Lord, a fleshy Corpus Christi, as if he were asking: Is God's love truly that self-giving?
Theologian Paul Tillich once said that doubt is actually a sign of faith and that not to doubt is not to believe. He was writing out of his own experience of faith, as if to tell us that it's okay to question God because the wounds of life will often raise the questions. The active love of God in our service to others may cause us to question the wounding of the world. And there is plenty to question all around us: there is homelessness, foreclosures, over-crowded prisons, suicides, hopelessness and despair, depression, loneliness, drug and alcohol addictions, abuses of human dignity. You may add your wounds to the list. In a spirit of Saint Thomas, we may question God about this. We may get downright critical with God, especially when the answers are not forthcoming.
For example, have you ever questioned God about the wounds of the world and the role of the church in her healing? Have you questioned your role? Or have you ever doubted the fairness of God in the crucifixion of Jesus the Beloved. Some have referred to His crucifixion as parental abuse, but we theologians like to couch it in terms of "The Paschal Mystery," or "atonement theory," sort of like cleaning up the wounds of the Crucified so as to make them less offensive and more palatable. We lessen the impact of the wounding so as to lessen the shock to our sensibilities.
Perhaps your questions and insights are not as intense as mine, but lately I have had reason to question the death of a dream known as the community of Lutheran Seminary Program of the Southwest. We all find ourselves grieving the loss and questioning this finality. We heard it on Tuesday evening at the Service of Lamentations and Hope, and we all felt the pain. We feel the wound in us more than we experience the resurrection of the Easter story. I admire the way one student put it: "I am not mad at God right now; I am mad at the circumstances that led to this decision." He was being honest and realistic.
We can also question ourselves so much that we end up in self-doubt. We may ask ourselves: Did we not do enough over the past 30 years to prove ourselves? I say this to address the wounds of Jesus in the text, and to address them as they are mirrored back to me when I read the text. Anything less would be denial and we can all fall into that pit until the wound becomes a boil that needs to be lanced.
What helps me make light of my experience is to place a sign on my office door that reads: "Attention: I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesn't look good either." I'm often tempted to sign it "God" - but my pastoral concern gets in the way. The important thing is that students get a laugh and often laughter provides healing for our wounds! Yet at times faith is indeed dark and the questions may get intense. In those moments, I find it helpful to remember my baptism, daily, and on some days, hour by hour. I find it helpful to remind myself that regardless of my doubts, I'm still a child of God, flawed and wounded to be sure, just like everybody else, not having all of the answers to the mystery of faith, but still loved by God, even when the circumstances change.
The mystics coined a wonderful term for this experience. They call it "the dark night of the soul." This dark night reflects the time of our lives when God seems to be most absent. Saints throughout history have had this kind of dark faith experience. Many often doubted the genuineness of their relationship to God. Mother Teresa of Calcutta doubted her salvation. She doubted the very existence of God and on some days she even questioned the existence of her soul. She often felt abandoned by God.
A listening ear is often a ministry of healing because wounds are not always visible. Sometimes they are emotional, psychic, spiritual, generational, historical, and it often takes a skilled physician to probe the depth of the injury. It is not accidental that in Spanish one of the terms for priest is "cura" or "healer." As the baptized priesthood of all believers we are often the chosen instruments for the healing of others, even in the face of our own doubts. Your testimony of faith may make all the difference in a doubting world.
Rommel's dad and I were good friends for a very long time. "Hearty," a heart with legs, is the evidence of God's love in that relationship. I gave my friend the last rites and was with him when he took his last breath, death being the last wound. I would often visit him on Sundays. On one of those visits I asked him: "Are you angry at God because of what you leave behind, two young children and a young wife?" I wanted to know if he doubted God's love for him and his family or whether he felt abandoned by God. Interestingly enough, he told me that he was not angry, that he knew that God loved him and would take care of his family. What was especially poignant was what he told me: "Now I get to see if everything that I have believed is true!" That was his confession of faith. And that was the blessing of Jesus on the world: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed."
In the end, Jesus does not condemn Thomas for his doubts for He Himself doubted at the Cross: "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" He does not condemn us either, for in His wounding we are healed ... even of our doubts. The evidence is at the table. Any doubt?
