Faithless?
John 20:19-31[1]
I think there are all kinds of reasons why people keep their
distance from Christian faith. In many cases, it’s not necessarily the faith
that keeps them away, but the church! In some cases, I’m not sure I blame them.
In view of the way some Christians justify their faith, it’s no wonder there
are many who don’t want to have anything to do with it. For some, “faith” is simply
a matter of maintaining a tradition from their childhood. Of course, tradition
can be a good thing as long as it’s more than just a matter of keeping things
the way they were. For others, “faith” is more a conclusion based on evidence that
“proves beyond a doubt” what we believe is true. Like many, I find the words
“faith” and “proof” to be at odds with one another. Don’t get me wrong—I
believe, and I do so joyfully. It’s the “proving beyond a doubt” that I don’t
get.
It’s amazing to me the evidence some people think proves beyond a doubt that their faith is true.
Some people point to supernatural, miraculous experiences as their evidence. In
fact there are shrines all over the world that claim to house the evidence that
proves faith beyond all doubt. The church across the street from one of my
previous pastorates was called “The Shrine of the True Cross,” because they
believed they had an actual piece of Jesus’ cross. And that was a crucial
factor in their faith! Others point to a higher, infallible authority; sort of
a “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” approach. For some this infallible authority resides in
a particular church. For others, infallible authority resides in the Bible as
God’s word. But at the end of the day,
in my opinion, all these efforts fail.
Faith isn’t something you can “prove beyond a doubt,” any more than love
or hope or mercy.
As I mentioned last week, embracing faith in the resurrection of
Jesus from the dead can be challenging for some of us. That shouldn’t come as a
surprise, because it was challenging even for Jesus’ disciples, even for those
who were closest to him! In our Gospel lesson for today, Thomas, one of Jesus’
hand-picked apostles, refused to believe without proof. No matter what the
others told him, he simply would not believe.
Unfortunately, this incident has earned him the nickname “Doubting
Thomas.” As a matter of fact, when Jesus addressed Thomas, saying, “Do not
doubt, but believe” (Jn. 20:27), the word translated “doubt” should probably be
rendered as “faithless” (as the King James Bible does). Jesus told him not to
be faithless, but to believe.
But actually Thomas was by no means “faithless” in his
relationship with Jesus. Quite the
opposite was true—he was one of Jesus’ most diligent and devoted followers. When
it became clear that Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem to die, it was
Thomas who said to the others, “let us go, that we may die with him” (Jn.
11:16). That doesn’t sound like Thomas was “faithless.” I wonder whether the
intensity of Thomas’ devotion to Jesus made the pain of his death particularly
difficult for him to move past. Perhaps he had seen some of the others waffle
in their faith, and wasn’t prepared to rely on their word alone. Like many
today, Thomas may have had good reasons for his difficulty in believing.
Whatever the reason, a
week later Jesus appeared to the apostles again. This time Thomas was there and
Jesus invited him to see for himself that what the others had claimed was
indeed true. He let Thomas see the very
wounds that he still bore on his body. He invited him to do just exactly what
Thomas said he would need to do in order to believe: to touch his wounds. He
overcame Thomas’ apparent “faithlessness” and accommodated his need for more
than the word of the others. And in response, Thomas made one of the most
exalted confessions of faith in Jesus contained in the Bible: he called him “My
Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28).
But Jesus’ approach to faith was not one that generally endorsed
seeing the evidence in order to believe. He said “blessed are those who have
not seen, and yet believed” (Jn. 20:29).[2] This
is consistent with what we know of him elsewhere. The multitudes kept coming to
him and asking him for some kind of miraculous sign in order that they might
believe that he was who he claimed to be. But Jesus refused those who only
wanted him to prove himself to them. I think he knew that any so-called “faith”
that depends on some kind of proof constantly needs more evidence. Those who
look for evidence are always looking for more evidence, and never truly find
their way to faith.
In a very real sense, faith is a choice; a choice to look at life
from the point of view that God is making all things new rather than that death
is the ultimate reality.[3]
But that kind of choice isn’t something you can prove. Faith is a response to
our experience of something beyond us, something that perhaps even strains our
ability to understand or even imagine. Some of us need help to get over the
obstacles we face with faith. Whether it’s the love of a community, or a sense of
God’s presence, or the feeling that Jesus is calling us by name, most of us
need something to help us make that choice. And making the choice of faith is
not something you do once and then you’re done with it. Like any relationship,
“the decision to trust … has to be made again and again.”[4] So
it is that we are called by Jesus to continually make the choice not to be
faithless, but to believe.
[1]
©2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/8/2018 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus
Christ, 226, where he points out that even those who had seen had to make
the transition to believing without seeing.
[3]
Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the
Perplexed, 209, where he defines faith as “committing ourselves to the
continual possibility of goodness.”
[4]
Douglas John Hall, “Faith: Response in Relationship,” in The Living Pulpit 1 (April-June 1992):14-15.
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