“Doubt is Okay”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year B)
12 April 2015
Second Sunday of Easter (Year B)
12 April 2015
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.
Children’s Homily Delivered Trinity Parish Church, Ashland, Oregon
Children’s Homily Delivered Trinity Parish Church, Ashland, Oregon
What do you think about that story we read in the Gospel?
Can anybody retell it?
I wonder what I would say if I were
Thomas and the others told me Jesus had come back from the dead.
I wonder what you would say.
What does Thomas want to see before
he’ll believe them?
Some people say Thomas was a
doubter.
Is doubt good or bad?
Why do you think God put us together
in such a way that we wonder about things, and ask questions, and try to make
sense of things?
Do you think doubt can help us be
careful and avoid danger?
What are things we don’t doubt?
Knowing things because they happened
to us, because we saw them, or because we were there—that’s more sure than
trusting someone else’ word, isn’t it?
But sometimes, our experience can
tell us to not believe things even if they are true.
Years ago, my wife and I lived in
Africa. One day when we were driving in
our car, she laughed and laughed. I
asked what was wrong. She said, “I
thought I was seeing things that weren’t there.
Yesterday, I looked and saw a little goat on the top of a tall
stonewall, and then the car drove on and I couldn’t see it. I knew it couldn’t be there, so I must have
misunderstood. But just now, I saw what
had happened. We went by the back of
that tall stonewall, and from the back, it isn’t so tall. The little goat had climbed there from behind
to eat the grass growing between the stone bricks. I laughed because I was so silly not to
believe my own eyes!”
What can’t Thomas believe?
What does he say will make him
believe?
But when Jesus comes the next week,
what happens?
Do you think Thomas was wiser than
the other disciples thought he was?
Does Jesus want us to trust our
hearts and minds as well as our eyes?
In the name of God, Amen.
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