Doubting is the moniker we give to Thomas, and I have to wonder if once again the Church is attempting to water down, sanitize and make clean something that underneath the surface could deeply transform us in some way we would have never expected. In this day and age when doubt has become the new faith, is doubting an appropriate way to describe what Thomas was doing or feeling? I say doubt is the new faith because it is, and as Episcopalians we probably relish in that idea. Sit down with a bunch of people who call themselves Episcopalians and one will inevitably hear that the Church is good because it lets people ask questions, it allows people to have doubts. We have believed all along, as Episcopalians that one has the right to ask questions, to doubt as Thomas doubted. Thomas is kind of our unspoken patron Saint. Thomas allows us to believe that we can live a life of faith steeped in the questions we have about God and God's activity in the world.
But I want to ask us to look a little closer at this text and wonder with me about the moniker Doubting. Thomas himself does not say to the Disciples who tell him they have seen Jesus, "I doubt it." He says specifically, "I do not believe you." He has no qualms in telling them all that they are lying, all 10 of them, each and every one of them comes to him saying we have seen Jesus, not to mention the women. In this day and age ten people corroborating the same story would put us in a place we call beyond a reasonable doubt. Thomas is not a simple doubter who demands evidence, Thomas is a person who simply does not believe, he does not trust his own friends, he does not, to put it succinctly, love them enough to believe them.
This is a two edged sword I believe, on the one hand, it is pretty damning to have his sort of unbelief. To flat out deny the truth in the face of people who were speaking to him about their experience and probably even looked transformed in some way as well, you don't see Jesus appear out of no where and remain the same. We are talking about some serious heights and depths here in terms of Thomas' doubt. It was clearly unbelief. If someone had this kind of unbelief in our Church we might throw them out, or simply ignore them or somehow shun them from our midst. It's true, someone with such a passionate disagreement when the entire community speaks the same truth is more than a simple prank or April Fools joke, this guy needs to go.
The other edge of the sword is that it is interesting that he did stand his ground so clearly and with such great passion. There is something commendable in that. His doubt, his unbelief was rooted in something that he believed strongly. Clearly he had come to some sort of conclusion about what the future would hold for the new Christians and was holding fast to that idea or vision of the future. He had made plans and was out acting upon them unlike his comrades who had remained locked in the upper room. Maybe that is why he did not believe them; maybe that is why he denied so completely the individuals he had called dear friends. He had made a vision and a goal out of the desperation and the fear that resulted in the death of their beloved Jesus. He was acting on his own inspiration and his own call, a call he believed Jesus had given him. What were these others doing?
I like this idea a lot; Thomas had the courage in the face of the people who had just killed Jesus to be out in the world doing something, creating something, carrying on Jesus' ministry. Thomas, of all the disciples, was the one who had made plans and executed those plans to carry on the work of Jesus. How else might you describe his outright hostility to the disciples in the upper room? I think he probably felt the same way as Jesus did, aghast that these men, ignorant men, had shut themselves away from the world, a world that Jesus had clearly told them they needed to engage, love and transform. The way the world will know we are Christians is by our love, not our invisibility.
Thomas' passionate unbelief is something that we might want to consider as we live out our lives of faith, and we may want to consider changing his moniker as well; Doubting Thomas does not truly grasp the passion, the zeal, the innovation that this man might have had at his core rather than mere doubt. I think we should call him Thomas the Innovator, or Thomas the Creator, or Thomas the Doer, maybe even Thomas the unbeliever or Thomas the denier. There are a couple of ways that we tend to see doubt in our culture today. First as anathema, something we should never have or know if we call ourselves Christians. This is not something many of us embrace. Second, doubt is a dispassionate expression of our own disagreement, disconnected from the belief of Jesus and the resurrection, or at best, timidly supportive of an idea we have no intention of standing up for. The ten disciples were this kind of doubters, even after the first appearance of Jesus they were still locked in the upper room, safe from the hostile world. Their doubt was more a doubt that was rooted in fear and immobility; it was about indifference and apathy, which often tends to be how we doubt as members of mainline denominations. Just let the majorities decide for me, I am fine with what every one else is doing.
The other kind of doubt is a spectrum from belief to unbelief. It is a spectrum that we all walk and often find ourselves journeying back and forth from unbelief to belief and back again. Doubt is a journey, it is something we do, and not something that describes us. I think most of us would claim this is where we land when thinking about doubt and what doubt is. Indeed, I often say, doubt is not the opposite of faith, fear is the opposite of faith, and doubt is only the threshold to belief. Without doubt, without questions, we cannot deepen and broaden and raise our faith. Doubt, like the betrayal of Judas, is an integral part of who we are as Christians.
But let's go back to doubting Thomas and look again at this idea of what it was that Thomas was doing outside of the upper room away from the disciples. Could it have been that in the absence of Jesus Thomas was the only one with the courage to be in the world, continuing the work of Jesus? Could it have been that Thomas was formulating a vision of mission and setting it into motion? Maybe it was a vision he felt he had to do out of obligation, maybe his work in the world was empty, cold and not at all fruitful. Maybe it was his plans, his vision and his mission that were bereft of belief. Could it have been that the appearance of Jesus to Thomas was less about making Thomas into a believer and more about filling him more completely with a hope and passion and of course the Spirit for the work he was doing. Was jesus really saying, do your work, carry out your vision continue my mission with passion, with zeal, with joy and with spirit, for that is the only way love will reign, even people as dense as these other ten disciples will see the Good News in your work if you only carry it out first in love, not out of obligation and dispassion.
Jesus went to Thomas directly; Jesus sought Thomas out in the midst of all the disciples in that room. Jesus wanted to affirm what Thomas was doing, while also chastising him for not loving his neighbor, loving his friends, loving his enemies. Thomas' character, our character, Thomas' mission, our mission requires love and peace to be carried out, without either, our work is nothing but sowing the seeds of unbelief. May we all have the misdirected passion of Thomas and be as open as Thomas was to receiving the Spirit and receiving new direction from Jesus as love guides us in the mission and work we do.
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