Coming to Faith
John 20:19-31[1]
Faith is not easy. It never has been. And it’s certainly
not easy in this day and time. In a skeptical world that demands proof of just
about everything, faith is something impossible to prove. How do you prove
something so inward, so personal, and so mysterious? It
can seem nearly impossible to get a firm grip on faith.[2] Living a life of faith can leave you feeling like you’re
hanging in mid-air at the end of a rope, and you have no idea what that rope may
be attached to![3] After all, how can we ever be certain about things like salvation, the afterlife, and eternal
destiny? Those are matters of faith. The plain truth is that faith is not easy.
It never has been!
Yet we live in a time when many of us want “easy” answers
to all our questions. Especially our questions about faith. I’ve never found
that helpful. For me, the questions I’ve had about faith have always been as
real as my faith itself. In fact, I would say my questions have played just as
significant a role in shaping my faith as anything else. But it’s not easy to
face those questions. In fact, it can be positively frightening. It can leave
you wondering whether there’s some “line” out there you may cross over in the
process of asking your questions, and find yourself lost and alone, without a
hope or a prayer left in the world! Whether we want it to be so or not, faith
simply is not easy. It never has been!
I believe our Gospel lesson for today addresses this issue.
It recounts the familiar story about “Doubting Thomas.” In our lesson, Thomas,
one of Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe that Jesus was alive
after his death on the cross. Refused to believe! No matter what the others
told him, he simply would not accept it. Unfortunately, this incident 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.” Jesus told him, “Do not be
faithless, but believe.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Thomas found
that having faith in the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t easy for him, at least at
first!
But in fact, if you look at the way Thomas is depicted in
John’s Gospel, he was by no means “faithless” in his relationship with Jesus.
Quite the opposite. 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 much like Thomas was “faithless.”
And it’s important to note that Thomas was absent the first time Jesus appeared
to the apostles. While the others were hiding in fear behind locked doors,
Thomas was out there somewhere. We don’t really know where he was or what he
was doing, but he wasn’t hiding with the others!
I think it’s entirely appropriate for us to wonder why
Thomas didn’t believe the report that Jesus was alive. I think it’s appropriate
to wonder whether he may have had a good reason for that! I wonder whether it
was his devotion to Jesus that made the pain of his death hard for Thomas to
move past. I also wonder whether it was because he’d seen some of the others
falter in their faith, especially Peter who had denied knowing Jesus, and he
wasn’t prepared to rely on their word alone. What Thomas said was, “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” (Jn 20:25). Thomas, one of
Jesus’ hand-picked apostles, refused to believe!
Whatever the reason
for Thomas’ “doubts,” a week later Jesus appeared to them again. This time
Thomas was there, and Jesus invited him to see for himself that what the others
had said was indeed true. When Jesus appeared to them, he let Thomas see the
wounds he still bore on his body. He invited Thomas to do just exactly what he
said he would need to do to believe: he invited touch Jesus’ wounds. Jesus
overcame Thomas’ apparent “faithlessness.” And in response, Thomas made one of
the strongest confessions of faith contained in the Bible: he called Jesus “My
Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28).
It’s a fair question to ask what it takes to convince
people in this day and time to put their faith in the message we proclaim: that
Jesus died and rose again to bring us all new life. I don’t pretend to be able
to answer every question we might ask about how that was even possible. But I
think that our questions can help us come to faith. Asking questions can help
us make the faith that we have been taught by others into our own faith. Many
of us here today know by experience that pursuing our questions can be the path
to deeper faith. It’s not an easy journey to take, but coming to faith never has
been easy.
I would have to say that the context in which you set out
on this journey makes all the difference in where you wind up. Having the
support and encouragement of a family and a faith community plays a crucial
role. We have role models who have shown us how faith has made a difference in their
lives. Our role models didn’t have answers to every question. But if you’re
like me, those role models had a faith that was real. By living out their faith
in the push and pull of life, they shaped my faith and encouraged me to
continue the journey. Our families and our faith community give us all the
support we need to continue coming to a faith that is real for us.
Faith is not easy. The truth is that it never has been
easy. I would say faith boils down to a choice: choosing to look at life from
the point of view that God’s love creates at least the “possibility of goodness”
in this world.[4] In some
respects, we only find faith by having faith. It’s very much like setting out
on a journey without even knowing where you’re going, like Abraham and Sarah
did. Today is the day when we celebrate a group of our students who are in a
sense “setting out” on their faith journey. I would be shocked if they all
didn’t still have questions. Maybe a lot of questions. Because this isn’t the
end of the journey for them. It’s another step along the way. Just like them, “coming
to faith” is something we’re all continually called to do. As we face
challenges and opportunities that we could never have expected, if we are going
to respond with a faith that is both true to life and true to who we are, we’ll
need the courage to wrestle with our questions honestly. As we do that, as we
continue the journey of faith, life will always challenge us to “come to faith”
in new ways. Because faith is a journey, it’s not going to be easy. But it’s
always worth it.
[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/27/2025 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 15, where he speaks of faith as longing
for “a reality beyond reality.”
[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Dogmatics 2.1:159,
where he describes faith as feeling as if we are “suspended and hanging without
ground under our feet.”
[4] Cf. Keith Ward, God: A Guide for the
Perplexed, 209, where he defines faith as “committing ourselves to the
continual possibility of goodness.”
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