FAITH: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

How quickly the joyful elation of Easter morning slips away from us. All too easily we let go of the exuberance and excitement of the resurrection. God’s victory over death! In all honesty, is there really anything else in the world that compares with that good news? How can we let go so easily?

Indeed, our belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the core element of Christianity. The essential message of the Gospel is so simple. If we believe that Jesus Christ was killed and that through God’s grace was raised up on the third day - Easter morning - then everything else about our faith can be described as details. Of course, this is not to discount the reality that we spend our whole lives seeking to discover how these details shape and form us.

The details of our faith are many. Certainly the list includes how we read scripture, how we interpret the 10 Commandments, how we apply the gospel into the reality of our daily lives. Make no mistake, these things are not unimportant, they just are not the central point of our faith. Such things are not unimportant details, but they are nonetheless details. For, without the resurrection, the rest of these things would not apply to us.

It is our belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ that defines us and constitutes us as his disciples. On this core belief everything else about our faith is built. This has been true since the church first took shape in the years and decades after his death and resurrection. If we look closely at each of the four gospels in scripture, despite their obvious differences, they each seek to instill and encourage our belief in God’s power over death - through the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection. It is all about his resurrection.

The things Jesus taught were important. The things he did were important; encouraging children, accepting publicans, eating with tax collectors and prostitutes. What he said about the nature and intentions of God were important. However, none of these teachings or ethical imperatives would have lasted 2,000 years if he had not been raised from the dead. The resurrection is the very core of our faith. It is what makes the details important.

Our evangelist, the writer of John’s gospel, knew the centrality of the resurrection for our faith. Immediately after Mary encounters the risen Jesus in the garden in the early morning hours, the scene changes in the Gospel and we are in a locked room with the disciples huddling fearfully together wondering what will happen next.

The risen Jesus suddenly appears to them. The narrative is clear; it is HIM, he even shows them his mutilated hands and lacerated side. It is the same Jesus they had watched die on the cross three short days ago. They must decide, “Do they believe?” They decide. They believe.

He talks with them. He gives them the peace. He grants to them as the community of faith the power to convict and forgive people of their sin. They believe it is Jesus.

HE IS ALIVE! It is all about the resurrection. However, there is one among them who happens not to be there that night - Thomas. Later, after Thomas rejoins the others he is confronted by their excited account of this resurrected Jesus. It is fantastic news, beyond belief really. Back from the dead? No one comes back from the dead. Jesus was dead Thomas had seen it all with his own eyes.

And so now, he was not going to believe their news of a resurrected Jesus. Just as he had seen him die with his own two eyes, he had to see him with his own two eyes to believe he was again alive. He was not taking their word for it.

In most interpretations of this text, Thomas’ reaction at the news of Jesus’ resurrection is interpreted as negative doubt. We even have a saying which is attributable to this gospel account. We call someone “a Doubting Thomas” who casts doubt on some issue. Moreover, in this interpretation Thomas is often depicted as someone who was weak in faith and understanding. Because of this weakness, he questioned the disciple’s interpretation of what they saw.

However, I want us to carefully look at this verse 25 where Thomas is replying to the Disciples. His reaction to their news may indeed be negative, but perhaps not for the reasons we commonly assume. What does it actually say? Is it surprising to see that it does not say he doubted them? Perhaps the old adage “a doubting Thomas” is unfairly assigned to this erstwhile disciple.

Staying closely with the text, it does say that unless he sees the holes in his hands, unless he can place his hand into the spear hole in his side, HE REFUSES TO BELIEVE! This is a very different thing than to say that he doubted it. Thomas did not doubt the resurrection. Thomas refused to believe it. There is a real and categorical difference between the two wordings.

A week later, the disciples are again gathered and this time Thomas is with them. Jesus again appears and immediately the Lord goes to Thomas. Jesus offers Thomas the very opportunities Thomas had requested. The text is delightfully unclear whether Thomas actually touched Jesus. Did he or didn’t he? We will never know for sure.

What happens next is the really critical part of the story for us today. It is the next thing that literally jumps off the page and confronts us with the very core question of our faith. Jesus says to Thomas, “Do not be unbelieving anymore, but believe.” While the NRSV translates the Greek word here in verse 27 as “doubt”, there is equal justification given its context and usage in other places to translate the meaning not as “doubt” but as unbelief. Given that Jesus is really talking about belief or willful unbelief, the translation “Do not be unbelieving anymore” is preferable to “doubt’. So, then, Jesus does not say to Thomas to avoid having doubts, doubting is an inherent part of having faith. Do not willfully have unbelief.

Thomas then professes his faith in the risen Jesus saying, “My Lord and my God!”

You see, the common understanding of this story is that Thomas had doubts about the resurrection and that Jesus chastised him for having doubts. However, that interpretation is not consistent with the actual text. Jesus indeed chastised Thomas for his willful unbelief, but not for his doubts. This is a very different thing than to say that doubts are unacceptable.

The story of how Jesus treats Thomas in this gospel has no intention of creating or fostering the illusion that we can wipe out doubt from our lives of faith. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to encourage us to believe in the resurrection THROUGH our doubts, to avoid willfully doubting the resurrection.

The point is that Thomas was not a bad person because he may have had doubts everyone has doubts about the resurrection. He can only be faulted for his willful unbelief when confronted by the testimony of the other disciples. Doubt is an inherent element of faith. Faith without doubt is called scientific certitude. As such it is, then, something categorically distinct from faith.

Scripture recognizes that faith and doubt are the two sides of the coin we call our lives. They go together. Faith in the resurrection is not something we can possess like a new car or a scientific fact. Faith is an experience of life, and life is never cut and dried. A resurrection faith is something we experience, it is not something we can abstract and quantify.

The word faith can be used in at least two different senses. It can be used as a noun, and it can be used in the sense of a verb; something we do. Faith used as a noun is static, it is dead. Faith used as a verb is dynamic, it is vibrant, it is alive.

The great English poet Tennyson wrote, “For nothing worthy proving can be proven, nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise, cleve ever to the sunnier side of doubt.” The resurrection cannot be proven in the sense that we can prove gravity or other laws of physics. The resurrection of Jesus Christ can only be experienced. Given the inescapable character of doubt, we are called to embrace it and to surround it with faith.

Tennyson also wrote in another place, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.” When we doubt something we are driven to discover the truth of the matter. Claiming a resurrection faith in the one hand, while still holding the reality of doubt in the other, is what Tennyson was talking about.

To grapple and struggle with doubt is not sinful. The Bible never calls doubt sinful. What the Bible does call sinful is our willful unbelief in the face of the witness and testimony of others who have experienced the resurrected Christ in their lives.

Do not despair when you doubt, it is a part of faith. Jesus never chastised anyone for doubting, only for willful unbelief.

In a way Thomas represents all of us, when others give witness to the power of the resurrection at work in their lives, how do we respond? Do we engage in willful unbelief, or do we acknowledge our doubts and then allow our faith to swallow up our doubts. At one time or another in our lives we will all be confronted by someone else sharing with us the good news of the resurrection, may we allow our doubts and our faith - two sides of the same coin - to conquer the threat of our willful unbelief. Through God’s amazing grace, so may it be for us. Amen.

Reverend Marc V. Mason

2^nd Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2006

Trinity Presbyterian Church

Travelers Rest, SC