Faithful Doubting

The Second Sunday of Easter (Year A, RCL)
March 30, 2008

The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector

There is a prayer that speaks of acquiring a wise heart, a sound mind, and a righteous will.^[1] These words, although never assuming that they bear a common sense for all – for meaning, as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder – nevertheless express a common human longing for wisdom, soundness, even rightness that is at the heart of the quest for truth. Truth in which one can believe and on which one can stake one’s life.

Who among us in our life’s pursuits, verily, in our pursuit of life does not yearn to know what is true? And who can know what is true without knowing how it will be found? And who can know that it has been found without frequently, even constantly entertaining, risking doubt?

As Pilate, concerning Jesus, proclaimed to the crowds, so, regarding Thomas, I declare to you, “Ecce homo,” “Behold the man”^[2] – for Thomas, in his faithful doubting, is my model human being, verily, my model of being human.^[3]

Thomas was a faithful doubter. Faithful in questioning. Faithful in refusing to accept the testimony of others of a “truth” outside of his own experience. Faithful in his soundness of mind, in his knowing what would constitute proof, therefore, truth for him: “Unless I see…unless I touch” – in other words, unless I experience – then “I will not believe.”^[4]

Thomas, the faithful doubter, is more the patron saint of St. Mark’s than St. Mark. We, in our communal ethos, proclaim no one gospel, no one truth that all must believe in order to belong. Rather, we encourage, even urge each of us to name and claim our own truth. However, as much as I regard as important the quest for individual truth, sometimes I long for us to behold a larger, corporate vision that we all can believe.

It is here, too, that Thomas’ witness is instructive. Thomas was faithful in far more than his doubting. For Thomas didn’t doubt simply to prove that he had a point of view, but rather to find truth. Thomas easily could have dismissed his fellow disciples’ witness, “We have seen the Lord” as a collective sympathetic hallucination stirred by their loss and longing. Thomas easily could have denied it all and continued on his path of singular, solitary grieving.

But no, a week later, having rejoined his sisters and brothers – having chosen to put their testimony to the test of his doubt, under the scrutiny of his questioning to see if there was a truth with a larger “t” than his own reality, to see if there was a truth more than individual, but also relational, verily, having chosen to question, to challenge his own doubt – Thomas was there. And in being there, he saw for himself what he wanted, needed to see. And in seeing, he believed. And in believing, he staked his life on it. According to one legend, Thomas proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ as far eastward as India, there being martyred at the point of a spear.

I treasure our now historic and still important mission of the individual pursuit and discernment of truth. Yet, in my post-sabbatical life with you, I hold out to you a vision of our corporate engagement in the work of love and justice in the world. A vision of our finding a way to do that in which we all can believe. Believe enough to stake our lives on it. Stake our lives on it enough that we, like our true patron saint Thomas, will be willing to go out into the world to proclaim even to point of death.

[1] For those who Influence Public Opinion, The Book of Common Prayer, page 827.

[2] John 19.5

[3] The gospel passage appointed for the day is John 20.19-31.

[4] John 20.25