THE DOORWAY OF DOUBT
April 3, 2005
Texts – Psalm 16
John 20: 19-31
His name is synonymous with it – Thomas . . . Doubting Thomas. Time was when we applauded it. “I’m from Missouri,” Harry Truman used to say; “Show me!” He was nobody’s fool, and we loved him for it. Times change; nowadays we look askance at it.
Do you remember the movie by that name, “Nobody’s Fool”? It starred Paul Newman playing the part of a man named Donald Sullivan (or Sully). At age 60, Sully was “divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man’s wife, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable – all of which he stubbornly confuses with independence.” Sully was insistent on remaining nobody’s fool. Time and time again, however, the defining characteristic of this independence was displayed by Sully’s tendency to go off on what he called “stupid streaks.” Freedom, for him, turned out to be the freedom to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, over and over and over again.
It’s a fun movie. If you’ve not seen it, I heartily recommend it. At one point in the film Sully and his arch-nemesis (a man much younger than he) have a conversation. You’re “60 years old and still getting crushes on other men’s wives,” his antagonist says. “I hope that when I’m your age, I’ll be a little bit smarter than that.” Sully replies, “You sure are off to a slow start.”
Nobody’s fool . . . Show me . . . Doubting Thomas. What they all have in common is a stubborn insistence to find our own way through this world. What everybody else proclaims to be true remains suspect in our eyes unless and until we actually experience it to be true for ourselves. “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails,” Thomas said, “and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” [John 20: 25] Show me.
It is not necessarily a bad thing. At its best it reflects a questing spirit, searching for a truth which is strong enough to carry the weight of a whole life. Build your life only on platitudes and quotations from the Readers’ Digest and you are building on sand (often times quick-sand). We are not asked to do that here.
“Do you promise now to consider seriously the fact of God,” we ask those who come to join our faith community; “. . . not in blind faith, but with honesty and openness?” We don’t assume there are ready answers to each and every one of life’s predicaments or dilemmas. Indeed, truth to tell, we are suspicious of the pat answer and the memorized quotation. We expect – no, we demand – the right to think for ourselves. In the words of the Apostle Paul, we believe each person must “work out his or her own salvation with fear and trembling, (confident that) God is at work in all of us, both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.” [Philippians 2: 12-13]
Doubt, you see, is not so much an obstacle to faith as it is (or can become) a doorway to a deeper and more meaningful life of faith. That is certainly what it turned out to be for Thomas.
Though he initially refused to go along with his friends in their belief that Jesus had risen from the dead, he became an even stronger proponent of Christ’s new life after he had experienced it for himself. His journey took him far beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire with its Greco-Roman culture to southern India and the Jewish community at Goa. From there he preached the gospel throughout the Indian sub-continent for over twenty years, laying the foundation for the Mar Thoma Church which continues to this very day.
“Doubting Thomas” became “Mar Thoma,” which means “Saint Thomas” . . . nobody’s fool, even though he begins with “Show me.” But notice one other thing about this story. Yes Thomas refuses to go along with the crowd. Yes he insists on making up his own mind based on his own experience, not just the testimony of others. But he does all of that without cutting himself off from the community of women and men who have become his family of support and friendship over the years. He does not “ride off into the sunset,” alone in his disappointment and grief and anger. He stays connected. He hangs in . . . and therefore he’s there with them, eight days later, when the Risen Christ appears to them again.
Any why? Why does he ‘hang around’? Is it because he’s weak? Afraid to be alone? Hardly. Thomas stays because the spirit of independence within him is so strong that he has the courage to doubt even his own doubt. Walk away now, I think he said to himself, and you’ll never know if what they say is true or false. Cut yourself off now ... go your own way now ... ride off into the sunset now, and you will remain forever stuck in the place where you are now.
Obviously I’m not just talking about Thomas anymore; I’m talking about you and me and all of us. There is not a single one of us here who has all the answers to all the questions all of the time. We are all, in Sully’s words, “slow starters.” We are all seekers after the truth. Yes, we are at different places on life’s journey, but there is a bit of the spirit of Thomas in each of us, just as there is a bit of the spirit of Peter and James and John and Paul . . . and Mary Magdalene and Salome and Martha. No one “gets it all.” “Now we see in a mirror dimly,” is the way the Apostle Paul put it; “one day we shall see face to face; now we know in part, but one day we shall understand fully even as we each have been fully understood.” [I Corinthians 13: 11] In the meantime, three things are of utmost importance: faith, which means trust in God and in one another . . . hope, which is the conviction that there is more yet to be revealed . . . and love, which binds all things together in perfect harmony.
“Nobody’s fool” . . . Is that what you want to be? My guess is that’s true of all of us. Oh some of us are off to a slow start, but we’ve all learned along the way that there’s more to this world than first meets the eye. “God is at work in all of us,” sometimes in amazing and even miraculous ways. Thanks be to God! Amen.