Experience, Faith, and Doubt (Easter 2 B)

“Experience, Faith, & Doubt”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year B)
12 April 2015

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.
Homily Delivered Trinity Parish Church, Ashland, Oregon

8 a.m. Said Mass
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 ; 1 Peter 1:3-9 ; John 20:19-31 ; Psalm 16

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

 take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter.  In the Eastern Church it is called Thomas Sunday. The Gospel reading tells us the story of how St. Thomas came to faith in the risen Lord.   In the West we know him as “Doubting Thomas,” the one who said, "I won’t believe it until I touch it!”  But the Eastern Church remembers Thomas for his confession "My Lord and my God," and says he was the first to publicly proclaim the two natures of Christ: human and divine.  His story tells us about experience, faith, and doubt, and should be a model for all us seekers. 

It really is unfair to call Thomas a doubter among the other disciples.  Just look and see how many doubters are in these stories of the resurrection appearances. 
 
Women disciples in Mark’s Gospel see an angel at the tomb, but run away “trembling with astonishment” and tell no one about it “because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8).    In Luke, as the women come back, they remember words that Jesus had said to them while he was alive, and this gives them the confidence to announce what the angel has said.  But the apostles take it as “an idle tale,” and they do not believe the women (Luke 24:10-11).   In Matthew, when Jesus appears to the disciples after their return to Galilee, “they saw him and worshipped him, but some doubted” (Matt. 28:17).

In Luke, like in today’s Gospel from John, the disciples gather together late evening on Easter Sunday.  Jesus appears to them, but where John says simply that the disciples (absent Thomas) “were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:20), Luke tells more:  the ten other disciples cannot believe their eyes, and think that maybe they are seeing a ghost.  Jesus replies, “see my hands and feet, it’s really me; touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as you see I have” (Luke 24:39).  They still “disbelieve from joy” (Luke 24:41).  It is only when Jesus eats a bit of roast fish that they can believe their eyes (Luke 24:42-43). 

So when Thomas says, “unless I touch the wounds, I won’t believe,” he is no more a doubter than any of the other disciples, or than any of us. 

And that’s the thing about these stories:  they not only retell what happened long ago.  In all of them, we are the disciples, unable to believe what has happened, the love of God, the life of God, just too good to be true.  Jesus’ death, his abandonment on the cross, and his pitiful burial—this all seemed to prove the falseness of the hopeful message Jesus brought.  And so when he shows up again, they doubt their eyes.   

That’s what lies behind the disbelief, the doubting, the not recognizing Jesus in these stories.  We are letting our disappointing experience with life tell us what actually is possible, and so we simply won’t believe the Easter proclamation. 

Yet when Jesus comes the next Sunday evening, it turns out that Thomas doesn’t need to touch Jesus to accept his resurrection after all.  He takes one look, falls to his knees, and declares, “My Lord and My God.”   Fr. Raymond Brown says this is the “Christological high point of the Gospel of John.”  And the Gospel of John is the Christological highpoint of the Bible. 

No wonder the Eastern Church praises Thomas as a model of faith.   The doctrine of the two natures of Christ would not become clear to the Church for another 200 years.  But Thomas’ confession is at its core:  when you look at the face of Jesus you look upon the face of God; if you have seen Jesus you have seen God.  

It is the very fact that Thomas was skeptical that allows him to make the affirmation.  Thomas knows that in this world, dead men do not walk about alive and well once they’ve died.  So it must be God at work in front of him, though he still recognizes the person he knew as his friend Jesus.  So he must simply confess, “My Lord, My God.”

We shouldn’t be ashamed of or feel guilty for doubt today.  Doubt is a healthy part of faith, of integrating the teachings and tradition into our personal lives, of making these stories our own.  

That is why I for one am so happy that we have an active “Seekers’ Forum” here at Trinity, a group that encourages questions, embraces doubt as a heuristic tool, and says it’s okay to wonder aloud about stuff that doesn’t seem to make much sense. 

That’s why I for one am happy that the Church in our age seems to be going through what Diana Butler Bass calls an awakening, a shifting of gears and ways of thinking and living, where  how we can trust matters more than what opinions we subscribe to, where what practices we embrace and follow matter more than the ticking off of obedience to this rule or that on a little or a large list, and where who we belong to and who belongs to us matters more than the organizational labels and titles applied to them. 

I think we often get this story wrong:  when Jesus says “Blessed are you Thomas, because you believed when you saw; but more blessed still are they who do not see and still believe,” we think that this means he is encouraging mindless acceptance of someone else’s word on something and belittling getting our own experience and understanding on it.    Not so.  When Jesus says “believe” here, he means, “give your heart to,” “be faithful,” or “trust.”   Thomas is blessed because he trusts after experience.  Jesus adds that those who can manage trust even before experience, that is, those whose basic default position is trust and openness, have a deeper form of blessedness.

But that doesn’t mean blind submission to authority should trump reason and heuristic use of doubt.  It doesn’t mean that personal testimony and experience are less valuable than taking someone else’s word.   Having one’s own experience, and knowing and understanding mystery and beauty through personal knowledge is a profound real kind of understanding.  Believing someone else’s word for something is a pale imitation.

But note in the story, Thomas does not actually feel the wounds in Jesus’ hands, feet, and side before he gives himself up to trusting the beauty before him.  Jesus appears, says “Peace to you,” and immediately says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands and take your hand and push it into my side. Stop being faithless, and be faithful.”  In response, Thomas does not perform his manual inspection, he simply replies with his “My Lord and my God!”  This, despite Thomas’ earlier stout declaration of what he needed to believe.   

There appears to be two kinds of disbelief:  one a heuristic one, one to help find truth yet unknown, and one an obstinate one, trying to avoid truth.  The word doubt has these overtones:  doubt can mean deny stolidly or it can mean wonder, question oneself. 

As soon as Thomas sees Jesus, he knows, he trusts, and throws himself to his knees.    The issue is the openness of heart, despite the thresholds we throw up. 

Sometimes knowing something by experience can close us to openness and change.   Pain and hurt usually shut us down, and make it hard to trust.  I suspect that is what is at work in Thomas’ earlier “doubt.”  He has been fed a line one too many times, and he knows that when you’re dead, you’re dead.  So he won’t believe the word of the others.  But his distrust is not of Jesus, so when he sees him again, he throws his heuristic scruples out the window. 

It is openness of heart where blessedness lies, where God can grab hold of us and change us, and it is this that trumps experience.   And it in itself is deep, moving experience.     

Earlier in John’s Gospel, Thomas told Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way [to follow you]?”  To this Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.  (John 14:1-7)   In today’s story, when Thomas says, “My Lord and my God,” it is clear that he now knows the Father and sees him through Jesus.   

Thanks be to God.    

In the name of God, Amen.