Faith and Doubt

I Doubt It The Dover Church
April 27, 2014 – Second Sunday of Easter Scripture: John 20:19-31

For about 1,500 years, from the time the Emperor Constantine became a Christian in 313 until quite recently, the way of Thomas, of doubt being a pathway to faith, has been peripheral in the church. Which is odd, considering how many Biblical stories are propelled by doubt, even on the Sunday after Easter where doubt is central to encountering God.
For 1,500 years, the church walked hand in glove with political power. The church was at the center of society and pillars of society were active in churches. You can see it right here in Dover, the church, the town hall, the bank, and commerce. Church leaders were the leaders in politics, business, education, art, music, literature, science, in every field of human endeavor. Christ was victorious. When we sang Easter hymns, we weren’t talking so much about victory over death as our institution having heavy influence in the course of events. We had won. That was taken for granted, not something you doubted.
In recent times, we have seen the rise of fundamentalism and biblical literalism, which, I think, is a response to the disestablishment of the church, the presence of other faith alternatives, the rise of modern critical thinking, and the possibility of living without a religious faith. When people could no longer take the church and Christianity for granted, then some people got scared, dug in deeper, and insisted that doubt was the enemy of faith.
And then there is the unique situation churches like ours. We are unique in that we do not teach our members a list of things we have to believe to be a member here. In days gone by at least, members of all the other churches around us could tell us exactly what they believed about just about everything. But not us. We have always been a non-credal church, which means we don't have one list of beliefs which everyone has to agree to believe in to be a member. Rather than have an authority telling us what to believe, we prefer to find our way in each generation as hear anew God's word and explore tradition. Unfortunately, what once was a finding our way has become a losing our way in many churches. Nowadays when you ask someone in a church like ours what she or he believes about this or that, the answer is usually preceded by a smile, and then, "oh, we're not like that here. You can believe whatever you want."
We like to think of ourselves as being in the intellectual branch of Christianity. John Douglas Hall, McGill professor of theology and UC-Canada and one of my favorite theologians, has called us a “thought-ful” tradition of Christianity. But can we honestly say that it doesn't matter what we believe is thoughtful or intellectually rigorous? I think we've gotten lazy or become fundamentalists about other things for fear of the church going away as so many have all around us, fundamentalist about the by laws and budget, about who's running which committee, about the color for the carpet, about the hymnal, or whether or not the church should take a stand on some important social issue irregardless of what Jesus had to say about it. But have the minister preach a sermon on the virgin birth, salvation by faith or works, prayer, damnation, the meaning of communion, or anything else that people used to and still are killing each other about in God's name, well, "what's the big deal? He can believe what he believe and I'll believe what I believe."
And yet, while we profess that, we still have a lot of verbiage going around which we honestly do doubt or disagree with, things we don't honestly understand or rub us the wrong way. We sing “Faith of our Fathers living still”, “God of our Fathers whose almighty hand”, the “King of Kings” in the Handel’s Messiah, the language of militant conquerors and kings. We talk about things like sin, redemption, confession, evangelism. And we don't give it another thought because it's tradition. But newcomers and outsiders don't know what we're talking about and when they do figure out what our words mean, they don't quite know what to make of us saying one thing and living another.
One of the reasons I became a minister was my desire to help people find a thoughtful, intellectually challenging and defensible, a living faith for the twenty-first century. I wanted to help bring the old New England churches I grew up in and love back to relevancy, to help communicate our take on the good news of Jesus Christ to a new generation of people who can't hear the good news through all the noise we babble that we don't believe ourselves, or what they hear in other churches which is not what we believe.
Before you get incensed that I am suggesting we throw out Christianity, I think you all know me to be a serious Christian practitioner and seeker. What I am saying is I think an exciting and vibrant way forward for us as a church is to become the "I doubt it" church, the church where people feel free to say "I don't know what that means but I don't like the sound of it." And we agree to dig into it, find our way forward, discover what truth is hidden there that tradition sought to hand on to us.
in my work with the confirmation class, we talk about what we believe and what we doubt. Often I find myself saying to a young person who says, "I don't believe this or that," "well neither do I." To which they'll often say, "but what about that song we sing all the time where it says "God is all powerful." Or "what about that story we hear every Christmas?" And then we dig in.
I would like us grown ups to start digging in to our doubts. I think doubt is actually the doorway to new insight and possibility. Thomas put his fingers right into his doubt and found substance. You might think that we cannot emulate Thomas because we live at a 2,000 year historical remove. I would disagree. I have spent the last quarter century figuring out exactly what it is I do doubt, because we didn't talk about doubts in church growing up. I usually knew I hit one when the easy faith answers didn't stack up, like God answers prayers but didn't the one time you really wanted him to for example. And when I can say what I doubt, then I begin putting my intellectual and spiritual fingers into it until I hit bone. Faith in our tradition is not primarily about “knowing the facts.” Rather, our faith is more of a challenge, an inherent challenge “to seek understanding,” as Anselm said. Our faith should give us the tools to grow in understanding. Not to arrive at full certainty, but to grow in understanding and love.
I have repeatedly invited you to share your doubts with me so that I might begin preaching them. Think about it and let me know. I'm sure many other share your doubts: original sin, the miracles, prayer, the truth of the bible, science and faith, by which we probably mean science and the stories of the bible, what Jesus really said about social and political issues whether we want to hear it or not, heaven and hell, is Christianity the only way, and so on. This is following the path of Thomas and living into the great gift of being a church that doesn't insist on a list of beliefs to belong.