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Sermon - Faith and Doubt - 23rd April 2006
St Alban’s 7am, 8am and 10am
Some fundamentalist faiths insist on the superiority of faith to reason and experience. Rather than wrestle with the difficult questions, they advocate blind faith: faith that does not grow and faith that is not critical. This is a faith bound up in doctrines and texts, and so the fundamentalist mind is besieged by the outside world of ideas and experience, where there are many shades of grey, confronting and unanswerable questions. Such a faith relies on guilt and blind adherence to insulate their followers from the danger of honestly confronting one's own doubts and beliefs.
But this is not just a phenomenon in fundamentalism. Many Christians believe that their faith must be impenetrable: there can be no room for doubt. Often church people carry a burden of guilt because they have doubts about the Christian faith. They are also extremely relieved to hear that there is nothing wrong with that; that it is quite normal, and that even priests and bishops and archbishops have doubts!
Doubt is a healthy part of human reason. Failure to doubt or question things would be extremely naïve, irrational and sometimes quite dangerous. Doubt in itself is not a bad thing. Left unchecked however, doubt can be paralysing, disillusioning and debilitating.
Doubt is also a vital part of the faith journey. Faith that is considered, developing and maturing requires dialogue with reason and doubt just as it requires trust in God. If we pretend we have no doubt or if we fail to explore our doubts and fail to come to terms with them our faith is irrational and we are not entirely honest with ourselves or God. If we think of doubt positively, as an agent for critical reflection on our beliefs and faith, then it can play a significant role in bringing us to a closer union with God and of deepening our faith.
In our Gospel lesson this morning, we see Thomas in his moment of doubt. Unless I see the marks of the nails on his hands, unless I put my finger into the place where the nails were, and my hand into his side, I will not believe it. When we doubt with Thomas – when we doubt God's love, power, reality – we are not alone. God does not abandon us. We not only see Thomas in his moment of doubt, but we see him confront his doubt and grow in faith. Just as Jesus appeared to Thomas and satisfied his doubts, we must trust and allow God to speak to us to carry us through our times of doubting. Jesus did not condemn Thomas for his lack of faith – but rather, gave him what he needed to believe. Our faith does not have to be doubt-proof or mind numbing for it to be effective.
Rather, doubt works with our faith to mature it and deepen it. We must not walk away from faith when we have doubts, but we must allow Christ to meet us in our doubt – as he met Thomas – and to trust him to journey with us. We need to be more aware of the ways in which Christ meets us in our doubt – the ways in which he shows us his marks, his flesh, so that we might believe. For us, as people of the Resurrection, that encounter is a sacramental encounter with the risen Lord. We encounter the wounds and flesh of Christ in each other, seeing Christ in each other as the members of his body, incorporated into his flesh through our baptism. And, as a Eucharistic community, we know that Christ makes himself present to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist, in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Christ also meets us in our doubt as we encounter signs of resurrection in the lives of those around us and as we experience this in our lives.
Doubt is not the end of faith. Doubt is not incompatible with faith. Doubt can be formative: maturing our faith and bringing us into a closer dependence on God and his presence with us and our sacramental encounter with him.
Thomas may be the disciple best known for his lack of faith – but in the end we must remember that Thomas was the disciple who gave the clearest and strongest declaration of faith: greeting the Risen Christ "My Lord and my God!". Amen.