In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Gospel story from John about Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the upper room, like most stories in the Bible, is very spare on details. It gives no description concerning the size or the appearance of the room, what the disciples were wearing or who was standing where. We are given only the bare essentials. And yet to look at the passage carefully we see that we have two stories set a week apart.

To lay them side by side there are a number of parallels. For example, we are told in both that the doors were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus appears amongst them and offers them the gift of peace. He then shows his wounds. The significant difference is in terms of response to these events. The first group of disciples see and believe and tell Thomas who missed the whole experience. In the second story, Thomas does not ask for something extraordinary. He simply wants to have the same experience as the other disciples.  His first response is doubt which then leads to faith and confession.

In these two brief stories we are confronted then with the relationship that exists between faith and doubt. Now many people would see faith and doubt as being polar opposites. That if you have faith you cannot have doubt. But the relationship depends a great deal on how you define the terms. Which then leads us to the question, what is faith?

In seeking to begin to answer this question, I share with you this story that was told by the New Testament scholar Marcus Borg. Borg was on plane trip and was seated next to a woman who told him that she was much more interested in Buddhism than Christianity because Buddhism was about a way of living one’s life and Christianity was all about believing. Now Borg silently disagreed with her but he went on to write that her statement reflects the most common understanding of the word “faith” in modern Western Christianity: that faith means holding a certain set of beliefs, believing a certain set of doctrines to be true. It is this definition of faith that gave rise to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century in reaction to liberal theology.

Now for some Christians this would mean believing there is a God, the Bible is the revelation of God, and believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for our sins. For others the list would be longer and include creation in seven days, the virgin birth and miracles for example. To ask then if you are a believer would mean do you hold these doctrinal statements to be true. But whether the list is long or short it turns faith into a head trip-whether you believe certain doctrines to be true.

It is this definition of faith that Lewis Carroll poked fun at in 1865 when he wrote Alice in Wonderland. There he portrayed Alice as saying, ‘I can’t possibly believe that!’ The Queen replied, “Perhaps you haven’t had enough practice, Why I have believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

Now to understand “faith” as simply agreeing to a set of doctrines impoverishes the whole concept of faith for it is much richer and deeper than that. And what happens if we have doubts concerning some of the doctrines are we then out of the club? Are we left alone then in our guilt and doubt. Sadly, this is the experience for many Christians, either they keep the doubts quietly to themselves or else simply drift away from the church. For in this definition faith and doubt truly are opposites.
But if we define “faith” as trust, as a form of radical trust it moves far beyond the limits of organized Christianity and its doctrines. Everyone has faith then in something-there is an object to which faith extends, an ultimate concern. It might be the self, a political party or nation as idolatrous as these objects might be.

Faith is intrinsic to being human. Christianity is changed dramatically as well from a head trip to a heart trip. It means trusting in God as ultimate concern. Soren Kirkegaard, the Danish philosopher, said that faith was like floating in a deep ocean.

Maybe you have had the experience of being taught to swim or else you have taught your children to swim. And in that moment when you were standing on the edge of the pool ready to jump in or watching your child stand on the edge there is a mixture of both faith or trust and doubt. The two are not opposites but rather intertwined as if in a dance.

The German theologian Paul Tillich once stated that “the element of doubt in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted… because faith always involves an element of risk. It takes courage to doubt, to reject our idols. Doubt is not the enemy of faith as has been popularily understood but rather its ally.

 Doubt can lead us to a much more mature level of faith if it is entered into in a spirit of courage. For faith is grounded in experience-the experience of encountering the living God. It is a quality of living and at its best it takes the form of serenity, courage and service.

Now let us return to our text with the understanding that faith is not intellectual asent to a series of doctrines but with the knowledge that faith is really about radical trust mixed with the courage to doubt. Thomas while taking a very empirical approach to the whole issue of the ressurection is at honest about his doubt and his faith.

He has the courage to doubt and to say it out loud. Like one of those students in the classroom who is not afraid to ask the question which all the other students are not afraid to ask. And in his encounter with Jesus the doubt of Thomas is not met with judgement but rather with peace, understanding, love and invitation. Thomas is invited to see and touch the wounds and it is in that experience that Thomas is able to make his confession,
My Lord and my God!

Now there is nothing to suggest in the text that Thomas underwent a fundamental personality change as a result of his encounter with Christ. Yes, Thomas’s doubts had been removed by a unique experience shared by the other disciples. But Thomas suddenly did not become a man with no doubts at all, the prototype for certain kinds of Christians today.

For the grace of faith, the grace of radical trust does not displace all doubt. Instead faith gives us the courage to live with our doubts and questions. Certainly in this day and age this is not always easy. Because those of us who define faith as radical trust, as an ongoing quest rather than adherence to a set of doctrinal statements find ourselves being challenged by a type of Christianity that allows no room for diversity and doubt. (We are becoming an endangered species).

And yet I believe there is a place in the community of faith that allows for the courage to doubt, the faith to doubt. Thomas represents that place permanently on our journey from faith to maturity and wholeness as human beings.

THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN.