Doubt and Certainty

            After the resurrection, Jesus went to Galilee.  On a hill, he summoned his disciples.  All of them went to him, but there is a wonderful statement in that passage from Matthew 28.  It says, some doubted.  Some doubted!  That sounds almost incredible to me.  These are the same people who were in the upper room when Jesus appeared to them, showed them his wounds and was obviously alive and risen from the tomb.  That some could doubt after all of this is somehow remarkable. 

            Doubt is a part of faith.  I have known this all of my life.  They are often stated as opposites, but the real enemy of faith is certainty.  Doubt is what moves us to faith.  When his fellow disciples told Thomas about Jesus appearing to them, he said that unless he put his fingers in the nail wounds in his hands and his hand in the wound in his side, he wouldn’t believe.  He has been called “doubting Thomas” ever since.  In that case, I’m “doubting Rodge”.  It isn’t easy to believe in the resurrection;  we’ve never seen one; but the gospels testify to the reality of Jesus rising from the dead after his cruel crucifixion.  His rising from the dead tells us that our own lives will be eternal.  That also is not an easy concept to believe.  Again, we’ve never seen one.  The greatest gift that our Lord gave to humankind is the truth of resurrection.  That when we die, our lives are not over; that we will simply continue to live as one of God’s created beings forever.

           I know that most of you have been to a number of funerals?  The absence of the loved one who is the reason for the service is a reality.  The people who have been left behind fill the pews and the members of the family weep and are comforted by others.  The prayers and the homily all remind us of the goodness of the person who has died and we all come to understand the importance of the life that has been lived and why we miss the deceased.  I have stood in the aisle next to a casket at funerals and have wished that I could somehow do a resurrection like Jesus did in Bethany when Lazarus died.  I wish that I could do this for the benefit of the people mourning.  I would love to give them something to erase the loss from their lives.  I have never been able to do that, but I have been able to comfort those people with love and understanding.  That is to me what faith is all about. 

            When it comes to certainty, there are a lot of examples that we have seen.  I remember George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to keep a black student out, so absolutely convinced that his white skin gave him privileges that those people of color couldn’t claim.  I listened to Franklin Graham’s prayer at the 9/11 memorial service that blamed all Muslims for that tragedy and he made my stomach turn.  I’ll never forget Pat Robertson’s grinning claim that he had turned a hurricane away from the Virginia coast with his conjuring.  These folks have attracted crowds because of their claims of certainty.  When I listen to Jesus’ apostles talking about their faith, the only certainty that emerges is after they have seen the risen Christ.  Their eyes simply glow with the knowledge that this brings to them about resurrection and life in eternity with God. I have had times of certainty in my own life.  As I remember them these were times when I was sometimes spectacularly wrong.  I hope that my ability to doubt remains strong in my life.  It feeds my faith.