July 2, 2006

Clay Nelson

The Feast of St Thomas the Apostle
     John 20:24-29

This sermon about Doubting Thomas got off to a good start. When Glynn told me I was preaching tonight, I doubted it. I thought he was kidding. Why would he want me to preach my kind of sermon to this very faithful and devoted congregation — the remnant of St Thomas', Freeman Bay. He said because I'm the resident expert on doubt.

He's right. I'm a strong believer in doubt. Like Frederick Buechner I believe “doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

So Thomas is my kind of Apostle. His demand for verification that Jesus had indeed visited his colleagues has tagged him as history's most well-known skeptic. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Right on Thomas!

Later in the passage the resurrected Christ indirectly admonishes him for a failure of faith in spite of his being the first to declare Jesus God. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Let me put my first doubt on the table. I not only doubt that this interchange between Thomas and Jesus ever happened I am certain of it. But it does say a lot about the faith of Johannine Christians living in Ephesus at the beginning of the second century. It is a faith I would will argue that has little value today for “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

What would you think if I told you that while riding the ferry this morning a dolphin spoke to me and warned me that aliens were approaching from outer space? The dolphin wanted me to be the spokesman for all humanity. I must convince the aliens not to destroy earth. I can see you are sceptical, but I assure you it happened. Others on the ferry saw it, but as they don't speak dolphin, they didn't hear the message. Now at this point you have a number of choices that include calling the Mental Health Crisis Team stat or believing me?

As I have no evidence and what I shared does not fit with what you know about the world, my reporting it doesn't make it so. As a result I expect the men in white coats to appear any minute putting an end to this homily. However, if some of you have experienced conversations with dolphins and believe you have seen UFO's, you might be ready to help me save the planet.

I would argue that the doubters among you are no better than Thomas. You want some evidence to support the unbelievable before you buy in. Failing that you will dismiss me as a crackpot. Does that mean you have a lack of faith? No, it means you haven't taken leave of your senses.

Beliefs are serious business and while in our tolerant society we tend to say each to their own, I'm not sure we should. Some beliefs are somewhat benign. In my family we had to be very careful about not blowing Santa's cover as my mother was a strong believer or so she said. It didn't hurt anyone that she maintained this strong belief, in fact I probably reaped the benefit of her belief in what I found under the tree Christmas morning.

Some beliefs are quite positive. That many believe that all people are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has made the world a better place than it might have been otherwise.

However, many beliefs are dangerous and destructive. That there are Muslims willing to act on their belief that martyrdom guarantees them the good life with 70 virgins in heaven has had devastating results for humanity.

Nazi belief in the superiority of the Aryan race was all the justification they needed to commit genocide for a good cause in good conscience.

Christian belief in a better life in the world to come has had a particularly negative effect on the environment which they have been told they were given dominion over but would not need after the Second Coming. It is merely a stopover on a journey to better place.

Beliefs have another problem. They change with experience and knowledge. Beliefs about the earth being flat changed with Columbus. Beliefs about the earth being the centre of universe changed with Galileo. Beliefs about humans being created during a seven day creation changed with Darwin. About the only beliefs that don't change with more information are religious dogmas.

Therefore, not all beliefs are created equal. Those which threaten survival of the species; those that perpetuate injustice and blind us to compassion: those that perpetuate ignorance must be challenged. It is a moral imperative. We must challenge them on the Thomas principle. We must see and touch. Faith without reason does not bring happiness or prevent suffering, the bottom-line of living an ethical life.

As Christians we are free to challenge the destructive beliefs of others, but not without first examining our own and judging their consequences.

Let us look quickly at one: Thomas' declaration of Jesus being his Lord and Saviour, the first of the apostles to do so. However, this is not his belief statement but the early church's about 70 years after the crucifixion. The image of Jesus being Lord and Saviour made sense in their world. They needed rescuing from a harsh and brutal Roman occupation that had already identified Christians as excellent scapegoats for persecution. The idea of a divine Jesus impervious to death who would eventually save them had understandable appeal. But is that what Jesus believed about himself? There is no evidence of this. That the early church reported it is not evidence. The downside of this belief is expressed well by Sam Harris in his book The End of Faith. “It is not enough that Jesus was a man who transformed himself to such a degree that the Sermon on the Mount could be his heart's confession. He also had to be the Son of God, born of a virgin, and destined to return to earth trailing clouds of glory. The effect of such dogma is to place the example of Jesus forever out of reach. His teaching ceases to be a set of empirical claims about the linkage of between ethics and spiritual insight and instead becomes a gratuitous, and rather gruesome, fairy tale. According to the dogma of Christianity, becoming just like Jesus is impossible. One can only enumerate one's sins, believe the unbelievable, and await the end of the world.” [1]

Would Thomas doubt the words the church put into his mouth 1900 years ago as if nothing had changed since then to re-evaluate them? I hope so, for his example is what will redeem our faith. Faith without reason deprives us of its benefits. Demanding to touch and see will bring out the hidden Jesus in each of us.

[1] Harris, Sam, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and Future of Reason. W. W. Norton & Co. New York: 2004, p. 204.