April 7, 2013

Clay Nelson

Easter 2     John 20:19-31

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When I was a teenager most of my education happened after school. My classroom was our kitchen. My teacher was my father who also doubled as the family cook. He would come home from his day job as a university professor and begin preparing dinner. I was his sous chef chopping or peeling whatever he required. The class began whenever I would make some pronouncement about a topic with all the certainty and arrogance a teenager can muster for his opinion. That was not much ammunition against a man who was a scientist who also had degrees in philosophy and psychology. But he didn’t argue with me or tell me I was wrong and why. What he did was debate by asking questions. My answers would simply lead to new questions causing me to rethink my earlier position. This would go on through meal preparation, dinner and sometimes well into the evening. By the time I went to bed, my certainty in a particular position had been replaced by an awareness of numerous positions on the topic and what the pros and cons of each were.

What I didn’t understand at the time was I was being schooled in the Socratic method, which wasn’t so much about what you know but how you think about what you think you know. What he gave me was the gift of critical thinking. With that gift comes both humility and doubt.

While Dad was a scientist and a sceptic he was also a person of faith. As a family we went to church weekly and at the same time I was being schooled in the kitchen he was the Sunday school superintendent. So it is not surprising that my religious background was one that made generous allowances for doubt as a legitimate approach to understanding and belief. I was exposed to a model of thinking which kept cynicism in check while encouraging the kind of critical thinking — an unwillingness to suspend disbelief — that might bring me to an acceptable expression of my faith. I came to cherish my doubts, feeling free to ask hard questions and keep on asking them. That has refined and changed the questions I ask as my understanding of my faith continues to develop. At the heart of the matter, faith and doubt go hand in hand. They live in the same apartment building. Their mothers are cousins. Or in the words of Paul Tillich, “doubt is always present as an element in the structure of faith.” [i] Let’s unpack doubt’s relationship to faith a little further.

In his essay Dynamics of Faith Tillich’s first line is “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned…” Faith is not a statement of factual belief, but rather a state of being in which we acknowledge our ultimate concern to our selves. This could be faith in God or in the All Blacks or any number of intangible but powerful entities. Whatever it is, faith promises total fulfilment and demands total surrender.

He says that an act of faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite. So faith is a matter of relationship, ours with whatever we consider to be the ultimate. The human heart seeks the infinite because that is where the finite wants to rest. In the infinite it sees its own fulfilment.

But since we are finite, with all our human limitations, there will always be an element of uncertainty in faith. There is an unbalance between the finite “us” and our infinite “ultimate concern.” We are grasped by our ultimate concern, but it works beyond our limitations. That’s where our uncertainty comes from; that inability to know absolutely what the outcome will be.

In a movie I saw recently one character equated doing improv theatre to life, “We make it up as we go along, but it always begins with, “Yes.” [ii] Her point being something happens in life and it is up to us to respond but how we do depends on what we say yes to. Our ultimate concern shapes how we make up life, but that doesn’t mean we know how it will come out. Uncertainty is what keeps improv theatre and life both interesting. In Tillich’s terms we have uncertainty in the midst of our faith, with full awareness that there is risk involved, which requires courage. For Tillich courage means affirming our selves in spite of all we know about our finiteness and limitations. The aspect of faith that allows us to accept uncertainty is courage. So we must embrace our doubts, explore them with honesty and integrity and a dash of courage. One of our responsibilities to one another at St Matthew’s is encouragement – which of course, literally means to give courage to one another.

When we have faith in something, we put the whole meaning of our life into it, we base all your actions on it. That’s what Tillich means by ultimate concern. When we have faith, we have posited the meaning of our life in that faith. If we are wrong then the very meaning of our life is threatened. But we cannot ever be sure our faith stance is the true meaning of our life. We can’t help to doubt it. Our faith can overcome it. We can continue to hold to our ultimate concern, but doubt persists.

Let me try to explain the difference between belief and faith. I can believe that God exists, but if I haven’t put my faith in God it really doesn’t matter if God exists or not. Without putting my faith in God is like believing that pigs can fly, but then I wake up and see they don’t have wings. No big deal, it really doesn’t matter. Life goes on. But if faith in God was my ultimate concern, if I based my life and all my actions on faith in God — and then I found out it was all a fraud, the meaning of my very life would be threatened.

There is nothing that can be done about this existential doubt. Everything we have invested our lives in, everything we put value in; everything we think worthwhile could be a huge hoax. And yet we manage to have faith, to have ultimate concerns, to vest our lives with meaning despite our doubts. We understand that anything solid casts a shadow. They always have, which finally brings us to Thomas, who I like to think of as the first progressive Christian. I’ll explain why shortly.

Thomas wasn’t here last week. He missed Easter. Not because he is indifferent when it comes to religious questions. He is one of the inner circle. He took all of this very seriously. He dedicated his life to a worthwhile cause. He is trying to walk the talk. He has given his heart to something. He has found his ultimate concern that has gripped him and changed his life. How could he not be devastated by Jesus’ brutal murder. No wonder he didn’t show up right away.

But he does come back a week later when, as the story goes, he encounters the risen Jesus, which is why we hear this Gospel every year a week after Easter. John’s account of the timing of Thomas’ returning to the upper room is a reflection of the early church’s practice of gathering each Sunday to await Jesus’ return in glory.

When the disciples told Thomas that Jesus had stopped by to breathe on them with the spirit, that is to give encouragement, he was understandably sceptical demanding evidence. While he doubted, he didn’t disappear. He didn’t sink into cynicism or despair. He remained faithful to his quest for knowledge and understanding. He was not satisfied by other people’s accounts. He wanted to know by experience. He wanted his religion to be his own. He wanted to touch the truth for himself, and until then, maybe even in spite of himself, he would not believe. He approached his ultimate concern critically. He was not simply an unbeliever who turned away from possibility. He was a searcher who valued his doubts until his own experience overcame them. He remained in religious community. He came to worship and brought his doubts with him and allowed the community to encourage him until he found something that he could believe for himself. That’s what makes him a progressive Christian. We have little use for creeds and doctrines. We refuse to accept the beliefs of others without question. They mean nothing until we experience the infinite for our selves. 

So if it didn’t happen for you this week; if you didn’t touch your faith with your own hands, come back next week. Struggling with our doubts in supportive company develops the courage and wisdom to cope with a life we have to make up as we go along.

[i] Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith, HarperCollins ebooks: 1957, p.24

[ii] Liberal Arts