Doubts and Closed Doors
March 30, 2008
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31
Finally, a Biblical person we can all relate to. Thomas was way ahead of his time – he could be at home in our era couldn’t he?? No fooling him, not Thomas, no way. So it’s hard to know why we seem to not regard Thomas more highly – to describe someone as a “doubting Thomas” is usually not a term of respect. And yet, we should understand that Thomas is among the more dedicated and committed of the disciples. After all, the other disciples were hiding behind locked doors, afraid, Thomas alone was confident enough to be out and about.
Earlier, in John 11, Jesus had gone to Bethany, outside Jerusalem, to raise Lazarus from death, although Jesus knew that going near Jerusalem could be dangerous to him. Let’s look at that passage, in John 11, starting at the 7th verse: Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, they were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" And then after explaining that he will go to Lazarus: Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Thomas was that dedicated, that he would volunteer to go with Jesus, whatever the consequences.
Later, during the Last Supper, when Jesus was talking with the disciples about his coming death, Thomas spoke up again. Turn to chapter 14: Jesus says, “"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Thomas cares enough about what Jesus is saying to ask questions. That’s what we do when we care – we try to learn more.
But unfortunately, too many church folks get too nervous about doubts – their own, other people’s, their children’s, their parents’, their minister’s – and so our faith becomes a “don’t ask don’t tell” proposition. If we don’t ask the questions we need to ask, we will never have a faith that we’re ready to talk about. It’s that simple. One writer, Miguel de Unamuno, has in fact said, “A faith without doubts is a dead faith.”
Some folks assume that being part of a church means signing on to everything that is said in the church – as I’ve listened to the news reports over the past two weeks, reporting on Sen. Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, there seems to be an assumption that everyone in a church agrees with everything the pastor says. You’ll be glad to know that I am suffering from no such illusions. I won’t tell you how to think about Barack Obama, or any of the other candidates, but I do want to talk a little about Trinity United Church of Christ and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
When I was in seminary, in 1996, I was required go to worship someplace that was a cross-cultural experience, so twice, I gathered up our sons who were 6, 9 and 12 at the time, and off we went to worship at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side.
It is a church that most folks here would respect – very active in all kinds of local social ministries: feeding the hungry, helping with tutoring, etc. The music was amazing, and the preaching was dynamic. We were warmly welcomed, and I found the services inspiring. Later, in 2002, Rev. Wright was one of the preaching leaders at a respected preaching conference I attended – the Festival of Homiletics, which I will be attending again this spring. I’ve made copies of his sermon tape from the Festival of Homiletics in case any of you are interested in hearing it – just ask me on your way out. It’s a dynamic sermon, though probably theologically a little more conservative than is my style.
I understand why folks have been offended by some of what we’ve heard that Rev. Wright has said in the sermons and in the newsletter articles that have been publicized. Some of it is offensive to me, too. But Rev. Wright has been a renowned preacher for decades, and I don’t think I have to agree with everything someone says or does to be able to learn from them.
Besides, we’re not supposed to be unthinking followers –church should be a place to asking hard questions, for challenging assumptions. This is some of what the confirmation class has been learning over the past ten weeks. This is why they were each required to come up with their own statement of faith – a very difficult task – and this is why it’s not a failure when someone decides not to be confirmed at the end of the confirmation class. After all, confirmation isn’t an end point – it’s a beginning. James Fowler is a writer who has written the classic work on the development of faith, in his book Stages of Faith, describes how we grow into an adult faith – one that nourishes and guides us.
The first stage is called RECEIVED FAITH – and during this period in the faith, we first learn “how to do” faith, how to say the prayers, how to behave in church and so on. Our faith is what we have been told or shown that faithful people do. It is during this stage that we develop the habit of faith. While this received faith is typical of children and young teens, many adults have never moved beyond this stage. Some people let their faith stay here behind closed doors, because they are afraid to be open to questions.
The next stage is SEARCHING FAITH, and it is typical of late adolescence. However, for various reasons many adults never venture into this stage, and some younger youth are already there. This is why one of our confirmands could write a statement of faith that began: “God is God and you either believe in him or you don’t, and I personally don’t know for sure yet.” This student apparently feels the question is worth working on, because they are joining the church today. Searching faith is where people ask the questions that feel risky, that challenge their faith, questions like: why do I believe this? Would God really do this? Searching faith is when we begin to look at the faith we received without blindly accepting it. During this time, our faith moves from habit into our head. Adults who have never let themselves search sometimes find themselves in this stage when life circumstances challenge them beyond what their received faith can bear. So we hear questions like “why did God let this happen to me?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” These are searching questions – while they take us out of our comfort zones, they may lead us into a deeper faith.
This is where Thomas was in much of what we have a record of – he is asking questions, deciding how he should act in light of what he is learning. And so Thomas is doing what each of us needs to do – and notice that Jesus honors this search. Jesus comes to Thomas with what Thomas needs. There is some scholarship that believes that Thomas is the one that the Apostle John refers to as “the disciple Jesus loved”. Other scholars have speculated that Thomas was called “the twin” because of his close relationship to Jesus. What we see is that allowing oneself to explore the challenges to our faith is not a sign of a lack of faith. It is in fact a sign that we care enough about our faith to make sure we can claim it with depth, with integrity, and with commitment.
And that is the final stage of faith, which Fowler calls OWNED FAITH. It is typical of adulthood, but can come earlier. This is where you end up after asking the questions around “What do I really believe?” This is the confession of faith we hear from Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” And if you’ll notice, we don’t hear this confession from the other disciples, who didn’t go through such a questioning time. We do see questions from Peter, who challenges Jesus earlier in his ministry, and who denies him and then becomes a pillar of the early church. And Peter writes the letter we read today, a letter that describes the joy that can accompany owned faith. Peter wrote: “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy….” This is faith that has moved from habit to head to heart…this is the faith than can shape our lives. We have a sense of centeredness – it doesn’t necessarily mean all our doubts have been answered. What it does mean it that we have grown to a point where our faith is no longer limited by our ability to answer questions. Owned faith can live with the questions and doubts, because over a lifetime, they continue. They energize faith – doubts are certainly an important part of my faith. This is why I have been receiving training in spiritual direction – so that I can help people follow their own path in faith, alongside their questions. I am inspired by Douglas John Hall, who writes, “...Probably most of us who have felt theology to be our vocation have known ourselves covertly, if not openly, to be persons who do not ‘believe’ easily! As Jürgen Moltmann has written, ‘We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God.’”
I believe the biggest obstacle to faith is fear of the questions. We’re afraid of where the questions will lead. But asking questions is how we grow.
How can you tell if you’ve moved beyond childhood received faith?? Well, I’ll give you a simple rule – if your faith comforts you but never challenges you; if your faith assures you that you’re right and never leads you to rethink your habits, your actions, or your beliefs; if your faith helps you to care about folks you know, but not about those beyond your church or neighborhood; if you have the habit of faith, but not the joy; and above all, if asking or hearing questions makes you nervous …then you are probably still resting in the faith you first received.
When someone tells me that they’re having questions or doubts, I always want to say, “Great!! You’re letting your faith interact with the complexities of the real world; you’re caring enough about your faith to let it grow with you!” This searching can be hard, and painful – like working a muscle. The stretching and work will eventually make a muscle stronger, but the initial response is pain and a desire to stop. It can feel like an injury, but it’s just hard work. Likewise, the first glimmerings of doubts and questions can be painful…and hard to watch. If you love someone who is searching, trust that God is part of their journey.
The great confessions of faith that have come to us, confessions such as the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession, the Barman Declaration written in response to Nazi tyranny, and many others were written to affirm the faith that emerged from wrestling with tough questions. And faith is where Thomas’ doubts led him – he asked the questions, Jesus came to him, showed him his wounds, and Thomas made the most basic confession of faith: My Lord and my God! Let us never stop asking questions, let us never hide from our doubts, let this be a community that welcomes uncertainty and conversation, let us be a community where we can grow. Amen.
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: 1 Peter 1:3-9, John 20:19-31
Finally, a Biblical person we can all relate to. Thomas was way ahead of his time – he could be at home in our era couldn’t he?? No fooling him, not Thomas, no way. So it’s hard to know why we seem to not regard Thomas more highly – to describe someone as a “doubting Thomas” is usually not a term of respect. And yet, we should understand that Thomas is among the more dedicated and committed of the disciples. After all, the other disciples were hiding behind locked doors, afraid, Thomas alone was confident enough to be out and about.
Earlier, in John 11, Jesus had gone to Bethany, outside Jerusalem, to raise Lazarus from death, although Jesus knew that going near Jerusalem could be dangerous to him. Let’s look at that passage, in John 11, starting at the 7th verse: Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again." The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, they were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?" And then after explaining that he will go to Lazarus: Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him." Thomas was that dedicated, that he would volunteer to go with Jesus, whatever the consequences.
Later, during the Last Supper, when Jesus was talking with the disciples about his coming death, Thomas spoke up again. Turn to chapter 14: Jesus says, “"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Thomas cares enough about what Jesus is saying to ask questions. That’s what we do when we care – we try to learn more.
But unfortunately, too many church folks get too nervous about doubts – their own, other people’s, their children’s, their parents’, their minister’s – and so our faith becomes a “don’t ask don’t tell” proposition. If we don’t ask the questions we need to ask, we will never have a faith that we’re ready to talk about. It’s that simple. One writer, Miguel de Unamuno, has in fact said, “A faith without doubts is a dead faith.”
Some folks assume that being part of a church means signing on to everything that is said in the church – as I’ve listened to the news reports over the past two weeks, reporting on Sen. Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, there seems to be an assumption that everyone in a church agrees with everything the pastor says. You’ll be glad to know that I am suffering from no such illusions. I won’t tell you how to think about Barack Obama, or any of the other candidates, but I do want to talk a little about Trinity United Church of Christ and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
When I was in seminary, in 1996, I was required go to worship someplace that was a cross-cultural experience, so twice, I gathered up our sons who were 6, 9 and 12 at the time, and off we went to worship at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side.
It is a church that most folks here would respect – very active in all kinds of local social ministries: feeding the hungry, helping with tutoring, etc. The music was amazing, and the preaching was dynamic. We were warmly welcomed, and I found the services inspiring. Later, in 2002, Rev. Wright was one of the preaching leaders at a respected preaching conference I attended – the Festival of Homiletics, which I will be attending again this spring. I’ve made copies of his sermon tape from the Festival of Homiletics in case any of you are interested in hearing it – just ask me on your way out. It’s a dynamic sermon, though probably theologically a little more conservative than is my style.
I understand why folks have been offended by some of what we’ve heard that Rev. Wright has said in the sermons and in the newsletter articles that have been publicized. Some of it is offensive to me, too. But Rev. Wright has been a renowned preacher for decades, and I don’t think I have to agree with everything someone says or does to be able to learn from them.
Besides, we’re not supposed to be unthinking followers –church should be a place to asking hard questions, for challenging assumptions. This is some of what the confirmation class has been learning over the past ten weeks. This is why they were each required to come up with their own statement of faith – a very difficult task – and this is why it’s not a failure when someone decides not to be confirmed at the end of the confirmation class. After all, confirmation isn’t an end point – it’s a beginning. James Fowler is a writer who has written the classic work on the development of faith, in his book Stages of Faith, describes how we grow into an adult faith – one that nourishes and guides us.
The first stage is called RECEIVED FAITH – and during this period in the faith, we first learn “how to do” faith, how to say the prayers, how to behave in church and so on. Our faith is what we have been told or shown that faithful people do. It is during this stage that we develop the habit of faith. While this received faith is typical of children and young teens, many adults have never moved beyond this stage. Some people let their faith stay here behind closed doors, because they are afraid to be open to questions.
The next stage is SEARCHING FAITH, and it is typical of late adolescence. However, for various reasons many adults never venture into this stage, and some younger youth are already there. This is why one of our confirmands could write a statement of faith that began: “God is God and you either believe in him or you don’t, and I personally don’t know for sure yet.” This student apparently feels the question is worth working on, because they are joining the church today. Searching faith is where people ask the questions that feel risky, that challenge their faith, questions like: why do I believe this? Would God really do this? Searching faith is when we begin to look at the faith we received without blindly accepting it. During this time, our faith moves from habit into our head. Adults who have never let themselves search sometimes find themselves in this stage when life circumstances challenge them beyond what their received faith can bear. So we hear questions like “why did God let this happen to me?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” These are searching questions – while they take us out of our comfort zones, they may lead us into a deeper faith.
This is where Thomas was in much of what we have a record of – he is asking questions, deciding how he should act in light of what he is learning. And so Thomas is doing what each of us needs to do – and notice that Jesus honors this search. Jesus comes to Thomas with what Thomas needs. There is some scholarship that believes that Thomas is the one that the Apostle John refers to as “the disciple Jesus loved”. Other scholars have speculated that Thomas was called “the twin” because of his close relationship to Jesus. What we see is that allowing oneself to explore the challenges to our faith is not a sign of a lack of faith. It is in fact a sign that we care enough about our faith to make sure we can claim it with depth, with integrity, and with commitment.
And that is the final stage of faith, which Fowler calls OWNED FAITH. It is typical of adulthood, but can come earlier. This is where you end up after asking the questions around “What do I really believe?” This is the confession of faith we hear from Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” And if you’ll notice, we don’t hear this confession from the other disciples, who didn’t go through such a questioning time. We do see questions from Peter, who challenges Jesus earlier in his ministry, and who denies him and then becomes a pillar of the early church. And Peter writes the letter we read today, a letter that describes the joy that can accompany owned faith. Peter wrote: “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy….” This is faith that has moved from habit to head to heart…this is the faith than can shape our lives. We have a sense of centeredness – it doesn’t necessarily mean all our doubts have been answered. What it does mean it that we have grown to a point where our faith is no longer limited by our ability to answer questions. Owned faith can live with the questions and doubts, because over a lifetime, they continue. They energize faith – doubts are certainly an important part of my faith. This is why I have been receiving training in spiritual direction – so that I can help people follow their own path in faith, alongside their questions. I am inspired by Douglas John Hall, who writes, “...Probably most of us who have felt theology to be our vocation have known ourselves covertly, if not openly, to be persons who do not ‘believe’ easily! As Jürgen Moltmann has written, ‘We are not theologians because we are particularly religious; we are theologians because in the face of this world we miss God.’”
I believe the biggest obstacle to faith is fear of the questions. We’re afraid of where the questions will lead. But asking questions is how we grow.
How can you tell if you’ve moved beyond childhood received faith?? Well, I’ll give you a simple rule – if your faith comforts you but never challenges you; if your faith assures you that you’re right and never leads you to rethink your habits, your actions, or your beliefs; if your faith helps you to care about folks you know, but not about those beyond your church or neighborhood; if you have the habit of faith, but not the joy; and above all, if asking or hearing questions makes you nervous …then you are probably still resting in the faith you first received.
When someone tells me that they’re having questions or doubts, I always want to say, “Great!! You’re letting your faith interact with the complexities of the real world; you’re caring enough about your faith to let it grow with you!” This searching can be hard, and painful – like working a muscle. The stretching and work will eventually make a muscle stronger, but the initial response is pain and a desire to stop. It can feel like an injury, but it’s just hard work. Likewise, the first glimmerings of doubts and questions can be painful…and hard to watch. If you love someone who is searching, trust that God is part of their journey.
The great confessions of faith that have come to us, confessions such as the Nicene Creed, the Westminster Confession, the Barman Declaration written in response to Nazi tyranny, and many others were written to affirm the faith that emerged from wrestling with tough questions. And faith is where Thomas’ doubts led him – he asked the questions, Jesus came to him, showed him his wounds, and Thomas made the most basic confession of faith: My Lord and my God! Let us never stop asking questions, let us never hide from our doubts, let this be a community that welcomes uncertainty and conversation, let us be a community where we can grow. Amen.