Sermons

"The Desert of Doubt"

Delivered from the Pulpit of First Congregational Church

of Anchorage by The Reverend Mark E. Long

on May 3, 2009

Lections:  Deut. 1.24-33

                  Rom. 3.1-4

                  Jn. 20.24-29

As I recall my adolescent years in the church, Frederick Buechner was the first person to give me permission to doubt.  He did so by writing these words in one of his books:  "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith."  I found this not only witty but also quite useful to roll off my tongue whenever my challenges to the church became too much for my Baptist brethren.  "Son, (it was usually someone who had enough age on me to say this without being rude) why don't you just accept it?"  I would stand boldly erect and say with the authority of one who has borrowed his conviction from someone greater than himself, "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith."  This would generally send my critic away shaking his head or muttering something under his breath about that boy is surely going to hell.

My trouble was and still is claims for knowledge for which there is no reasonable evidence - no better reason to believe its true than to doubt it.

I am like, well then, why should I believe it.  Basically, I apply the standard known widely since Perry Mason stalked the courtroom on our televisions - "reasonable doubt" - if the evidence to believe something is not greater than the doubt of a man thinking reasonably then side with the reasonable man.

Buechner gave me permission to doubt unreasonable claims but he also said more.  Doubt moves one toward faith.  Doubt is a place to begin the journey toward faith; the faithful were at a time doubters.

This seems to be on first glance the case in this strange story of John.  Thomas was not willing to accept the second hand experience of the other disciples that Jesus was walking around among them.  Who was it?  Who knows, it might have been a ghost summoned out of the disciples' wishful hoping or the product of mass psychosis.  But he needed to see the evidence; Thomas is, after all, a reasonable man.

Thomas catches (unfairly) a lot of historical heat for this over the centuries - "doubting Thomas" - but if you read closely "doubting" Thomas is hardly any different than the other disciples who heard Mary's "good news" - "I have seen the Lord" - and then promptly locked themselves inside a house.

Thomas does no worse upon hearing their proclamation - "we have seen the Lord" - to which Jesus brings the evidence and tells Thomas, "Do not doubt but believe."  That sounds familiar to me except the self-appointed guides of my youth failed to understand the importance to bring the evidence.  Still looking back, I am glad that I didn't know enough to bring that to their attention because one of them would have known how this story ends.

The ending has an ingenious plot twist.  The passage seems to be about one thing but then the last verse makes clear the point of the story has been about the opposite.

After Thomas gets his evidence and exclaims a confession as great as any in the New Testament -"You are the Lord and my God", Jesus says to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me?"  Now this is an odd thing to say given that Thomas' confession of faith comes only after he gets his reasonable evidence - his experience no longer second hand observations.

The puzzled looks that we might imagine on the faces of John's audiences - a bit like yours at the moment - relax when they hear the story's last line:  "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  That's us - they think, and it is exactly what John wants them to think.

John turns the point of the story upside down.  Reasonable evidence sought by Thomas is not essential to faith, says John to his early second century audiences that have only heard the "good news" not seen it up close.  This is enough, better for you even if you have not seen yet believed.

"Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith."  John starts out, it appears to say as much, but then takes a sharp turn and goes in the other direction.  "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."  Just believe, suppress your doubts; believe what you haven't seen, believe what you haven't felt, believe, just believe.

The one called the "Saint of the Gutters" tries.  She tries so hard to believe that no one suspects the dryness of her spirituality outside of Church confidants until Mother Teresa's private correspondence is released by the Catholic Church a couple of years ago.  The reaction is predictable; believers are shocked, shaken and find their doubts catching up to their faith as the modern enemies of the Church taunt them with "I told you so."

If one who stands to receive the Nobel Peace Prize with words reminding the world "that radiating joy is real" can find none for herself three months earlier as she writes "Jesus has a very special love for you . . . but as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear" - what of we lesser mortals?  She speaks of her spirituality as "dryness," "darkness," loneliness" "torture" at a point she even doubts the existence of God and heaven.  Teresa admits to hypocrisy of her public smile as "a cloak that covers everything."

She cries out into darkness:  "Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me?  The Child of your Love - and now become as the most hated one - the one - You have thrown away as unwanted - unloved.  I call, I cling, I want - and there is no One to answer - no one on Whom I can cling - no, No One.  Where is my faith - even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness - My God - how painful is this unknown pain - I have no faith - I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart & make me suffer untold agony."  "So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them - because of the blasphemy - if there be God - please forgive me - When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven - there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul."  Dark thoughts for a future saint.

How did this happen; how did this saintly woman come to live such a contradiction between her public and private life?  The clue, I believe, lies in her proposals to the Church for her single-handed crusade to the poorest of India.  Numerous letters are sent from the self-described "little nothing" to the local Archbishop; little support is received.  Finally and dramatically she reveals a dialogue with a "Voice" - said to be Jesus.  Disturbingly to me the Voice concludes:  "You are I know the most incapable person -weak and sinful but just because you are that - I want to use You for My glory.  Wilt thou refuse?"

Before Teresa had a crisis of doubt, she had a crisis of self-worth.  She is a victim of a worn out, abusive spirituality that leaves the susceptible and sensitive begging to be sacrificed, to follow as closely as possible in the suffering of their Savior.  As I said in a sermon a few weeks ago, unless the voice we hear liberates, encourages healthy outcomes, and loving acts then there is a good chance the voice is not God.  Teresa heard Jesus tell her that she was "the most incapable person" and [he] "wants to use [her] for His own glory" - does that sound like the Jesus you know or would want to know?  Does it sound liberating, healthy, and loving?

Teresa was, I believe, an emotionally sick woman - a self-abused woman - a woman who clung intensely to God not out of love as much as necessity.  God gave the "little nothing" standing in the world but only so to be a living sacrifice.  I only say this for you to consider that her crisis of doubt was a continuation of the self-abuse which she arranged for herself.  Her crisis of doubt should in no way cause you to ratchet up your own.  She asked to be abused and not to be able to feel the one she longed for was an unconscious extension of that abuse.  What could be more sacrificial than to act faithfully toward the lover who rejects you?  It is sadly that simple.

That's my take on Teresa's crisis of doubt, reasonable minds do differ.  But still where does that leave the hope of the average pew sitter who sits quietly with her doubts?  I wanted to say in good company except I realized as I went on that it wasn't good company but unfortunate company.

But there is something for you in Teresa's letters.  Living in the desert of doubt may leave you feeling far from God but that does not mean that the presence is far off.  Trust in God's faithfulness is an act of will, not feeling.  The Spirit is able to live and work in our deserts of doubt if we will understand that much, whether we are sucked dry by doubt or not.  Teresa would not want to admit it because it would (forbid) be giving the "little nothing" some credit, for although she describes her soul as like an "ice block" Teresa realized more of the Spirit in her experience than she let on.  As she put it, "I accept not in my feelings - but with my will, the Will of God - I accept His Will."  Doubt was not for Teresa the ants in the pants of faith it seems privately there was only more doubt.  "Blessed are those who have not seen (or felt) but have come to believe (enough)."  Maybe not what John had in mind either but that was Teresa.

That's how I see it, doubts, misgivings and all.                            Amen.