March 30, 2008
A Sermon of The Rev. Dr. Christian Brocato
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts bring us ever closer to You, Oh God, the Rock of our Salvation. Amen!
I have to admit that when I see a gospel passage for preaching that is as familiar as this one, I'm terrified. It's like preaching on Christmas or Easter. Everyone knows the text. Everyone has heard it many times. So, with that kind of familiarity, what can someone say that is new, that is worth hearing, that is going to be meaningful?
Early last week, I was talking with a colleague at the College where I work and shared that I was preaching this weekend. She asked on what, and I responded, "The Doubting Thomas Story." Her immediate response was, "Oh, I love that one." She who rarely darkens the door of a church loves the story of doubting Thomas. See, what I mean?
As I began thinking and praying about this week's scripture readings, especially the gospel passage, two things came to me that really somewhat surprised me: One, the Psychology of Fear; The other, the Psychology of Doubt. I think the easy way out of talking about Doubting Thomas is to simply say that we all have doubts from time to time. There's no question about that. But, that which is perhaps behind the doubt is more crucial to an understanding of the doubt and why the doubt, itself, is so important. In Thomas' case, I think that behind the doubt was also fear, a deep-seated fear, a kind of fear that you and I can relate to on several levels.
Fear is a destructive and energy robbing emotion. We all experience it in different ways. Some of us in very big ways. Sometimes even crossing a street in the midst of rush hour traffic can cause us anxiety, especially when the 'good' drivers in greater Boston forget to stop at crosswalks. Sometimes, when we're between jobs, fear can set in that involves all sorts of self-perception issues. The fear of not finding a new job can help cause a kind of destructive doubt in our ability to spring-back. Just ask anyone who has been unemployed for a year or two.
At other times, we experience fear when we know something is wrong with us, and we put off going to a doctor to be checked. In our contemporary experience, we have also come to know a different kind of fear: the fear of terrorism and war that not only stems from 9/11 but also by a kind of momentum of fear that is now perpetuated for a variety of reasons.
Fear plays an important role in our life. If nothing else, it can cause stress, and severe stress can cause strokes, heart attacks and other great emotional and/or physical problems.
Fear must surely have gripped the Apostles at Jesus' death. We know that all but John fled the scene of the crucifixion and went into hiding. After all Jesus had been for them, after all he had shared with them, after all the promises he had made to them, they saw him in the final minutes of his life being led like a lamb to the slaughter, as Isaiah tells us, led to the cross to suffer and die.
It occurred to me early last week that Jesus' public ministry spanned only three years. Now, in my book, a relationship of three years, no matter how intense and wonderful it might be, isn't really that long.
The disciples had walked with Jesus, had seen him work many signs and miracles, had seen him raise Lazarus from the tomb, and the list goes on. But it was Thomas, who said that the disciples should accompany Jesus when he was summoned because of Lazarus' impending death, a clear demonstration of Thomas' commitment to Jesus.
In the three years of the disciples' relationship with Jesus, he had instructed them on ways of living life, on ways of encouraging others to live life, on ways of bringing life to others through their prayers, their preaching, their healing. But the biggest thing of all was that Jesus said he would rise from the dead on the third day and that after his death, his disciples would one day be with him forever in paradise.
Last week, we celebrated in this place the magnificent Festival of Easter beginning with the Great Easter Vigil and then with the three Services on Easter Sunday. All four were truly wonderful manifestations of the faith of our community, a faith that is clear and joyous, a faith that can celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in liturgies that are powerful manifestations of so many people giving of themselves to bring others joy.
Leslie reminded us last week that Easter is so important in the Church that the Easter Season lasts for 50 days all the way to Pentecost. We are also reminded that the church celebrates Easter each and every Sunday of the year, each and every time we gather around the Word of God and the Table of the Lord.
But we come together week after week, oftentimes stressed, oftentimes tired, oftentimes with fear in our hearts, oftentimes with such fear that we are blinded by that fear and then doubt the power of God's presence in our lives to be with us, to be for us, to be deep within us, to transform us. On Maundy Thursday, I preached that we were called to walk with Jesus from his last supper into the Garden of darkness, fear and stress, and beyond the Garden to his arrest, imprisonment, his death on Good Friday and finally into the dark tomb in which his body was laid. I suggested that Jesus knows very well our fears, our doubts, our darkness, those things in our lives which cripple us from being who we are call to be, those things in our lives which if we could give them over to God, we just might be more capable of seeing God more clearly and following God more nearly. But what those doubts that just might keep us from doing that, doubts that are often fueled by our fears?
Do you have doubts in your life? Are there times in your life that you feel a kind of doubt that is overwhelming? Do you think it's strange that religious people in church rarely talk about doubt, especially their own doubts? Oh, it's very easy to talk about Thomas and his doubt but not so easy to talk about our own doubts. What about your doubts? What about my doubts? I firmly believe that our doubts help make us human beings.
I have to admit that I have never really doubted that God exists. However, there have been times in my life when I doubted that God really cared, that my prayers could a difference, that God was really at my side.
The Presbyterian minister, Frederick Buechner, has a great definition of doubt: "Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubt, you are either kidding yourself or you're asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep us awake and moving." "Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep us awake and moving."
If we look at the lives of many holy people in the church, we can see that there is some truth in the fact that claims that doubt seems to increase in power as the saints of God increase in saintliness. Take for instance, Edwina Gateley who was born in 1943 in Lancaster, England.
As a young adult, she decided she was called to be a missionary. So, she organized trips to Uganda in the 1960's. By the late 1970's, her work known as the Volunteer Missionary Movement had sent hundreds of lay missionaries to twenty-six countries. She eventually came to the United States and worked with women in the streets of Chicago.
However, at one point in her life, she said to God, "I have been faithful and you weren't. I have pursued what I believed to be evangelization, and you didn't do anything"... She went on to say that "I could not understand what this God was doing. How far do you go in pursuit of the Good News ... I was numb with grief."
Have you ever been numb with grief? Is it possible that Thomas in John's gospel was numb with grief? After all, he had not seen Jesus, and others had claimed to have seen Jesus the week after his resurrection. Perhaps, Thomas feared that he might not see Jesus, a kind of numbing fear? Perhaps, Thomas' fear enabled him to doubt that Jesus was truly present to him when he encountered face-to-face.
Jesus experienced numbing fear. Jesus struggled in the Garden of Gethsemane, and we know that on the cross he called out, "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" Jesus' doubt was transformed into his resurrection. Thomas' doubt was transformed into the confirmation of his faith in Jesus when he cried out, "My Lord and my God."
Thomas was courageous. His fear and doubt were honest. He may have doubted but he never gave up hope.
For me, one of the miracles of Christ's resurrection is that through it all, through the ups and downs of our lives, we continue to hope. We continue to hope beyond the fears, the doubts, the stress, the anxieties of our lives because the Resurrection of Christ is the hope of eternal life made real, made manifest, made present for all to know, to understand, and to believe.
We are here today because we look for that hope to be made real, manifest and present in our lives. We are here today because God has called his to be together as a community of faith renewed and invigorated by the celebration of Easter, the event in salvation history that takes our fears and our doubts and nails them to the Tree of Life for all eternity.
Christ is risen, truly risen, and because of that fact, we, too, can rise out of the darkness of all the things that hold us back in our lives into the marvelous light of Resurrection Joy!
Amen!