Second in mid-week Lenten Series on "They Responded to Jesus"
March 12, 2002

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When I was 13 years old, I remember asking my pastor a question in confirmation class. We were talking about death, and our discussion was more than merely intellectual, for one of the kids in our class had died just a week before of leukemia.

I remember the pastor saying that "Sometimes we can't understand God's will, and we just have to accept it." That really bothered me! I had my doubts! So, I asked my questions. I asked, "If God is loving, why would a loving God do such a thing? I doubted! At least I doubted the answer I was given. Unfortunately, my question and my doubt were speedily dismissed? I was told that doubt was not permitted. The whole thing felt a little to me like the pastor was covering something up with such a trite response! Maybe he was even covering up his own doubt!

Is doubt something that we are not permitted to express? Are we afraid to doubt? Are we afraid God will break, or that we will discover we have been living a grand illusion? Just as I hear the doubt in the father's voice in our Gospel I've seen doubt and I've heard doubt in your voice and mine!

I've seen it and heard it at desperate, troubled times in your lives. I've heard it in your voices! I've heard it in my own! I've seen it in your faces! I've seen it in my own! You know what? If we read our bibles, the faces of doubters pop up all throughout. They are all over the place!

Job, in the Old Testament, doubted what his friends were telling him about God in the midst of his enormous agony. In the grip of a "faith crises" Job cries out,

"How can I answer (God)...? Even though I am innocent...(God) crushes me... and multiplies my wounds without cause... (God) mocks my calamity...God covers his eyes..." (Job 9)

When ancient old Abraham and Sarah heard from God that they were to have a baby in the nursing home, they snickered a cynical laugh in God's face! They doubted!

When God approached Moses to be the leader that would free the people from their bondage to the Egyptians, Moses thought it was a bad idea and doubted it could be done!

When the angel of the Lord came to Mary and told her that she was going to have a very special baby, at first Mary said, "No way! It's not possible! I'm a virgin!"

Thomas, convinced that his best friends were seeing delusions said, "There is no way I am going to believe Jesus is alive unless I touch his nail scarred hands and place my hand in the stab wound in his side."

We hear doubt in the voice of a desperate father who brought his sick son to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief"

Doubt has touched the lives of some noteworthy Christians as well. Racked with terrible grief on the death of his beloved wife, C. S. Lewis, Christian apologist writes,

"What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is... 'good'? Doesn't all the evidence suggest exactly the opposite?"

One father said to me on the tragic death of his infant child, "This is God's version of a random drive by shooting."

A mother angrily said in response to someone trying to comfort her with the thought that her dead baby was "safe in God's arms," "God has enough babies!" she said, "Why does God so selfishly want mine?"

Doubt in God; doubt in a loving God; doubt in a God who cares is always shadowing our steps and following us wherever we go. Frederick Buechner says that doubt is inevitable, especially if we read the Bible alongside the morning newspaper.

Maybe the most important question we can ask on this day is, "Where does the road of doubt lead?" If we find we are on that road, and are traveling that road, where will the road of doubt take us? What is doubt's destination?

Edna Hong in a little book entitled, "The Downward Ascent" speaks of a time when she and her husband went into a network of tunnels underneath an ancient German castle. She expressed how afraid she was to go down there for fear they would get lost in the maze of subterranean tunnels, and never be heard of again.

Is that what frightens us about doubt? Are we afraid that we are traveling on a road of no return... a forbidden road that might lead to:

- atheism... lead to total unbelief? - or worse yet, lead to cynicism - a life of bitterness?

- or even worse than that, are we afraid we might:

- discover that we are ALONE in this universe?

- discover that there is NO GREATER LOVE than just the feeble love we are able to muster?

- discover that there is NO GREATER LIFE than what we can see and measure and eke out on our own?

- discover that there is NO GREATER PURPOSE than our own self devised schemes?

- discover that there is NO GREATER HOPE for anything permanent... anything lasting... or anything eternal... that the grave truly is our final resting place... a road to nowhere... a road to oblivion!

Is this what we fear the most? Is this what scares us when we travel on this road? But yet, if we're honest, it is a road we travel, at least some of the time. Let's face it! There are going to be times we doubt... times when we call God into question.... scream in God's face... curse God's name... and wonder if God is even there at all!

I'll say two things about DOUBT

FIRST, doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt doesn't mean that you have necessarily lost your faith. One theologian defined doubt this marvelous way: He says, "Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith!" Sincere and honest doubt... (not "convenient doubt" that is a cop out) but sincere and honest doubt... the kind of doubt that raises serious questions, and then just as seriously seeks some answers... that kind of doubt can be the catalyst that causes our faith in God to grow... and to change... and to be transformed. That kind of doubt can live side by side with faith.

I can honestly say that the God I believed in when I was 13 years old has long since been dead! The God I knew then no longer exists for me now! Why? Because I doubted that's why! My doubting caused me to question, and my questioning caused me to probe deeper and seek greater understanding, looking for new answers, when the answers I had been given were not sufficient!

Needless to say, the clothes I wore when I was 13 years no longer fit. Those clothes have long since been discarded. It's no different with our faith. If I am wearing the same "faith clothes" at 55 that I was wearing at 13, it means I haven't grown, and something is terribly wrong!

THE SECOND THING IS the road to doubt is not a road to oblivion, but a road to Jesus! Of course, we want to be certain! We want proof!

But this is the thing: the kind of proof that we tend to want, scientific, empirical proof that would silence all of our doubts -- would not really get to the fearful depths of our emotional and spiritual needs - that kind of empirical "proof" would not really do anything much to us at all!

FOR WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW is not just that God exists -- is not that behind the steely brightness of stars there is some kind of a cosmic intelligence that got the whole show going -- is not some kind of an explanation of why! Those are not the things we need... those are not the things that will touch us, and fill us and heal us at our places of deepest need!

Rabbi Harold Kushner tells this story: "

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water's edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away form the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle. I realized they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives... We spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Sooner or later, a wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build. When that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh."

WHAT WE REALLY NEED TO KNOW is that in the face of everything; in the face of our hurts, fears, pains, sorrows, griefs, addictions, passions, and doubt is that there is a God who is right here with us; holding onto us with wounded hands and with an embrace that will not let us go!

Empirical proof of God's existence will never satisfy us!

Simple explanations are not going to heal our wounds.

Correct doctrine is not going to lighten the burden of a heavy heart. What we are really after is the miracle of God's presence, and God's undying love. And that is the miracle, I believe, that we get - in Jesus - in his cross; His tomb; and His empty grave.

You see love is something that can only be received in faith. The couples who come here and look into each other's eyes, and make these mighty promises of love and faithfulness to each other - well, even so and finally - those promises of love can only be given and received in faith. Even standing there, holding onto each other, looking into each others eyes, those promises can only be received in faith. Only living together and growing together in a lifetime of committed loving can those promises of love be "proved" to be valid. We don't ever enter into that kind human commitment without faith

It's no different with God! Jesus Christ stands before us here this evening. He shows us his wounds. Those scars remind us he can really touch us where we hurt, grieve, fear and hate the most! He's ready to give us everything he can possibly give:

- a LOVE that loves you far beyond your capacity to love yourself!

- a PURPOSE for living that is far beyond any purpose or life you have ever been able to develop on your own.

- a HOPE that is stronger than every grief... every disappointment... every loss... a hope that has the audacity to say there is no ending we can experience that cannot be made into a new beginning.

Christ doesn't give simple explanations, or provide unquestioned proof... but offers only his undying love. Jesus once told Thomas and the other disciples,

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. . . for through believing you will have life in his name."