Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue

Texts: Revelation 1:1–19 and John 20:19–31

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

Christians who attend a church dedicated to Saint Thomas should understand more than most that doubt is no danger to faith. I do not mean dogmatic doubt, the elevation of doubt to the level of conviction, so that doubt becomes, as it were, a new item in the Nicene Creed. (“I look for the resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come, and I believe in doubt too. Amen.”) Nor do I mean skeptical doubt, the defiant posture that clings to suspicion so strongly that evidence can never answer the doubt that is posed. Doubt as a posture needs doubt to stay around: it is vitally important, skeptical doubt says, for us to ask questions; hence we must resist to the end any appearance of an answer. No, not as dogma, not as skepticism is doubt a concomitant of faith. It rather comes upon us unbidden, as the question that wants an answer, the question that in honesty cannot be ignored. One might say: I’ve been praying for God to heal my aunt’s Alzheimers, and she just gets worse, and I start to doubt if my prayers have any point. Or: I’ve always tried to help people as I could in my life, but lately these such-and-such misfortunes have happened to me, and no one seems to help, not even God. Or: they told me when I was in high school that I had such extraordinary gifts, and so I went to college and grad school, then I rose quickly in my profession, and everyone thinks I’m doing very well, it looks like that all around, but honestly I don’t know. My life feels like a bag full of empty air, and there doesn’t seem to be a God who cares.

If only—we think perhaps in our pious moments (however fleeting they might be)—if only I were a saint. Then I wouldn’t have these doubts. A saint would keep praying for her aunt; she wouldn’t worry and falter, and her prayers would work. A saint would know that God was caring for him in his misfortunes, even if no one else was. A saint would trust unquestioningly that things will turn out for the best in the end. A saint would know, always, that God was there, that Jesus really rose from the dead, that God has a plan for every human life and that at the end the entire history of the cosmos will be made right and every being will join in the praise of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If only I were a saint, then I’d always know these things.

They said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord.” He knew who they meant. The Lord had given thanks—it now seemed so long ago—on that mountainside, for a lad’s five loaves and two fish. When the crowd later grumbled and drifted away, Peter had said, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” And when the blind man had recovered his sight, and gone through successive interrogations at the hands of the authorities, and been cast out, he was asked if he believed in the Son of man; and he said, “Lord, I believe.” And the sisters of Lazarus who had died spoke to him from their heart, each saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”; yet still Martha said, “Yes, Lord; I believe.” And at the supper—just last week!—Simon had challenged him: “Lord, do you wash my feet?” and again, “Lord, where are you going?” And he himself had said, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.” Thomas knows very well whom they mean by “Lord”: they mean the one who fed 5000 and healed the blind and raised Lazarus, the one in whom so many said so often . . . they had believed. The one who passed away; the one who died. It is impossible that they had seen him! Thomas knows, and Thomas doubts. “We have seen the Lord.” Sure, Thomas answers, and I’m the Easter bunny. Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails—and so forth—I will not believe.

A week later Jesus appears, and Thomas does believe: in fact, he believes more deeply than any of the others. They had said, “We have seen the Lord,” but Thomas says, “My Lord and my God.” It is not unreasonable to think that because of his doubting, Thomas comes in the end to a stronger faith.

There exists, however, a truly serious danger to faith—not doubt, but what Saint John calls the demand to see signs. Often in the gospel unbelievers say to Jesus, “Show us a sign, and then we’ll believe.” Was this what Thomas was doing—laying down the conditions upon which he would believe? It cannot be so—for then he would not have come to faith. Why, then, does Thomas insist on seeing the wounds?

It is, first, the normal and reasonable incredulity that recognizes the stupendousness of the news about Jesus’ resurrection. If it is true, as you and I will say in just a few minutes, that “on the third day he rose again,” that is the most important datum of history, not just the history of humanity, but of the universe. Nothing is more spectacular, nothing is more worth knowing, than that Jesus Christ was dead as a doornail on Friday and alive again on Sunday. You don’t just take on a belief that’s that important like you would say, Gosh, I can’t wait to get my hands on the new Apple iPhone. Saint Thomas knows what it would mean if it were true.

Insisting upon the wounds, Thomas insists upon evidence of material continuity. The wounds authenticate that the Jesus who is risen is the same Jesus who suffered the hammerblows and the whip and the thorns, and is thus the same Jesus as the one Thomas lived with for the last three and heretofore most exciting years of his life. And what Thomas saw then, you could see today, if you were taken to the heavenly court. The focal point of heaven, the locus where all the infinite lines of time and space converge, is the Lamb who was slain, the Alpha and the Omega, who would say to you, as he said to Saint John the Divine, “I died, and behold I am alive for evermore.”

The demand for signs is the real danger to faith, and it is related to the widespread superstition that if only I can get things arranged perfectly, then everything will be all right. And so the last thing I need to do today is to ask you to look around you. We are surrounded by signs. Look at this Temple—hear this music—participate in our great liturgies: these glorious signs that millions of people would love to see, they are our everyday blessing. May I take you “back stage,” as it were? After a service, it often happens that some of us will be talking about the 5 or 6 things that went wrong in the service—such conversations are not unknown to have occurred even in coffee hour—so we’re talking, and someone will say, “And the candle was crooked.” And at once comes the reply: “That does it; the whole mass was invalid!” It’s our little joke, but the reason we find it funny is that we know our temptations. We are tempted to think that if we can get everything just right—the polish, the actions, the words—if we do everything exactly as we’re supposed to, then our faith will work—then God will come to us.

That way lies magic, superstition and idolatry. It’s trying to make God dance to our tune. It’s much worse than doubt. And of course it’s utterly futile. We think we’ll be happy if things are perfect. And since they’re never perfect, we’re never happy.

Christian faith has content: basically, the tenets of the Nicene Creed. That’s what we believe. But as the Creed so carefully says, we believe in God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Thus propositional faith becomes existential. In the strongest sense, faith is letting God take your life into his—and that’s where real life is. Which is why the most important thing that happens in the liturgy is something I haven’t yet mentioned. The most important thing that will happen this morning occurs when we forgive the sins of those who have sinned against us. In the miracle of forgiveness, magical thinking dies, doubt gives way to action, and faith brings us to life.

Doubt Is Okay, but Beware of Magical Thinking