Happy are those who (sermon)

We walk by faith and not by sight: unlike the Epistle of John, I declare to you what I have NOT seen but happily choose to believe anyway. You may be seated.

Forty years ago when I first retired from the Navy, I had my own consulting business, with Canadian and Australian defense industry clients.  And I remember that excusing themselves to go answer a phone call or on a short errand, my Australian associates would say, “I won’t be a minute,” which was always the start of something far longer than a minute. Well, this morning I won’t be a minute, but I want to talk briefly of doubt, and of one of The Twelve, Thomas the Apostle, the Holy Saint whose story we just heard, Thomas, who had to see in order to believe, and of whom in Christian lore, we know perhaps more than any other of The Twelve except Peter. Although our Easter Season Good Book Club in Acts may introduce us to more. But Thomas: Thomas who sanctified Doubt as a foundation of believing - - opening Christian faith even to me, the chief of doubters. I have more questions than Lewis Carroll’s trusting oysters who faithfully followed the Walrus and the Carpenter down the briny beach to their doom - -


I am neither blind nor sufficiently gullible or naive to believe all that is set before me even from the “seers” of the ancient ages, or I should say especially from them, because I know them, and their history. So in today’s gospel, Doubting Thomas blazed the trail for me, and there are things I am “iffy” about, and always have been, and on the Myers-Briggs personality test, I am a Thinking not a Feeling person, all the more so coming out of a “mainline” theological seminary and in uninterrupted studies ever since; but I’ll bite, despite what you may think, I am not one who crosses his fingers at certain phrases of the Nicene Creed, I say the whole creed in good and clear conscience even though parts of it are not from the Bible but from strange old men, bishops and emperors of the fourth century AD. If you want to know more about that, enroll in our Wednesday evening EfM program.

But “Doubting Thomas,” my namesake and patron saint, and my hero because he had the courage, the guts, to scoff at incredible, hysterical reports, what others told him they had seen, a man returning from the grave; Thomas was ἄπιστος a no-faith, “a-pistos,” (is the NT Greek word), he was not-believing, he had to see for himself even though a week later Jesus admonished him (and therefore us down through the Christian ages), “Happy (the gospelwriter’s NT Greek work is μακάριοι, which we misunderstand if it’s translated “blest” or “blessed” and we erroneously think “holy and sanctified,” when all it means is “happy, satisfied, content.” So, “‘happy’ are those who have NOT seen and yet have faith in Jesus.” Happy, I think naive, even a bit simple (Matthew 18:3, “Unless ye turn and become as παιδία, little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom), but in any event content, happy to accept it and go on about life, because faith is a struggle for Thomas and me. 

For Abraham, faith was trusting obedience. To me, faith is not knowledge, never certainty, faith is not knowing, but letting myself have confidence in things unseen; even after having dug into it intellectually for more years than I care to count.

In class at seminary one morning, our New Testament professor told us that he was the ultimate skeptic, but that on this one thing, “Christ is Risen!” he had long ago deliberately decided to lower his guard and accept it on faith, and not only to acclaim it by his words and his life, but to believe it with all his heart and soul and mind and strength. That was intellectual honesty before a stunned classroom of gullible seminarians; and it showed me that if Thomas was ἄπιστος not even ὀλιγόπιστoσ a “little-faith” but ἄπιστος, a “no-faith” as Jesus calls him in today’s gospel, and my NT professor a skeptic, then I, Doubting Thomas 1.1, I am not lost, but saved. Saved!

Why am I saying these things, confessing my heart out? Because today is the Second Sunday of Easter, and every year on this day we read this gospel. In fact, it’s so “traditional” that we call today Doubting Thomas Sunday. Why is this gospel so important to be read and heard? I don’t know, I do not know; maybe because it opens the window for your own caution, skepticism, doubt, dis-ease with your faith - - opens God’s window to let your caution be swept away by the Wind of God, and to welcome your own doubts as a living part of your nevertheless faith. 

“Happy are those who have not seen and yet come to believe,” the Savior promises. And so - -

  • happily I’m letting it be that way for me, Doubting Thomas 1.1, 
  • happily because Easter means “Jesus loves me, this I know,” 
  • happily I invite you to join me; 
  • happily starting with the Nicene Creed, as we stand.

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Sermon preached in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church on the 2nd Sunday of Easter, April 8, 2018. The Rev Doubter Tom Weller, speaking. Text: John 20:19-31.