This was my sermon (not exactly since I ad lib while preaching):
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you, our Rock and Redeemer. Amen.
I had a professor in college who had a collection of sayings. By senior year, the religion majors had them all memorized. For example, he had standard greetings and dismissals for each class period. He would literally greet us the same way at the start of the class, and then he would send us on our way with the same words of dismissal. The last class period of the week he had a slight variation of his dismissal that was adjusted to encompass the upcoming weekend. Four years ago I could recite the words with him, but today I cannot recite what he said. Instead, I remember one other saying that he used less routinely. This saying affected how I approach talking about faith and certainty, and it continues to shape how I interact with others.
“Think you may be wrong.”
What a profound statement. It left marks on numerous students because it challenged our desire for certainty. We were student who craved the right answers, who did not want to doubt, who wanted the proof and the chance to always be right.
“Think you may be wrong” caused us to stumble a bit in our pursuit of having the right answers and to never doubt ourselves. We opened ourselves up to respect that others may be right if we are wrong. We let go of the certainty as we recognized that we may have the wrong answers and that another, even one we don’t like, may have the right answer. We opened ourselves to doubt, but in a good way. Because the focus was not on finding the right answer, but being open to the questions and to the pursuit of truth. Even if we were and are wrong, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that doubt and questioning are part of learning.
Think you may be wrong.
Doubt was liberating because we were able to question what we thought to be true, while we looked around us to find out what else might also be true and good and right. What else was more true and right. Doubting ourselves was a good thing because it kept us from being too self-righteous.
But in today’s text we encounter a story where doubting others is not looked upon as a good thing. Doubt here gets a bad name, and has had a bad reputation for centuries.
Doubt is more than respecting that others may be right. Doubt is deeply connected to faith and belief. Jesus blesses those who believe without seeing, those who do not doubt the words of their friends who tell the story of the risen Christ, those who do not see and doubt but do not see and believe anyway. Jesus blesses those who do not doubt.
But maybe there is more to doubting Thomas. Maybe he is more than the disciple who doubts. He hears the stories that his friends are telling him, stories of seeing Jesus who had just died but was raised. His fellow disciples share their stories of how they saw Christ and rejoiced.
And he wants to see. His words of doubt are also filled with his desire to see the Lord for himself, not just because he doubts what his friends saw but because he too wants to see. He wants to see Jesus.
The text tells us that Thomas declares that he will not believe unless he sees the risen Christ. He wants to see Jesus again. He doesn’t want to miss out on the opportunity and be the odd man out.
He gets lucky. A few days later, he and the other followers have gathered together when Jesus shows up, greeting them in peace. Then Jesus, knowing what Thomas had said earlier, tells him to look and touch, tells him to not doubt but to believe.
And Thomas’ reaction is startling. He does not look to his friends and say, “You were right! I don’t know why I doubted your word.” He instead looks at Jesus and makes a confession. His doubt is transformed into announcing that Jesus is the Lord and God. He sees Jesus and his response is to say, “my Lord and my God.” He makes a faithful confession.
So what do we learn from doubting Thomas?
First, doubt is not always evil but is always real. Doubt exists and cannot be denied. I think part of the reason we read about doubting Thomas every year after Easter is because we understand the challenge of believing what we have heard but not seen.
As Christians, we are an Easter people. We are a people who gather together to worship Jesus as Lord and God, Jesus who died but was raised again. We gather together in spite of the doubt that is real and often rampant in our world where we are trained to doubt, where we are raised to be skeptical of anything that we do not see with our own eyes, to question when we do not have proof. Our world is full of doubt.
We understand Thomas’ doubt. We live his experience. If we are not the one doubting, we know of others who doubt. Doubt is real and is always present in the church. Especially right after Easter, when we ourselves have the same desire to see the proof that Jesus is risen. Doubt is real.
But doubt is not the end of the story. Doubt ends up in a faithful confession. We question the truth of what we read, and then we take the leap into believing. We show our faith by confessing Jesus is our Lord and God without seeing. We do not get the luxury of always seeing Jesus with his wounds and scars.
But we stand in a long line of people who have clung to the promise, who choose to believe the story despite not seeing with our very own eyes. Doubt does not stop us from confessing who Jesus is.
We are an Easter people. Doubt is not the end of the story; death is not the end of the story. Despite the fact that we may or may not have seen the risen Lord, we believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and showed up to people.
We gather together this morning not to ignore doubt, but to make the leap to confess that Jesus is Lord and God. We gather together to celebrate Christ’s triumph over death. Despite the fact that we do not see, we choose to believe.
We cling to the blessing that Jesus gives to those who believe without seeing.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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