“Doubting Thomas” as a Patron Saint for All
When it comes to religious life, St. Thomas often gets viewed through a suspicious lens. We often view doubt as a weakness or moral failing, but what if doubt is viewed through the lens of wonder and curiosity? How can doubt actually be a sign of deepening faith, as we engage with the Spirit in our lives and seek to grow?
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
Glimpses of Grace on Spotify
Transcript
So Saint Thomas is one of my patron saints, I have to tell you. I understand him. He understands me. I was first ordained on the feast of St. Thomas, which falls on December the 21st. The winter solstice right at that point of the year, which is a common time to ordain people as deacons as we’re studying to go forward and be ordained as priests. And I always think that’s the perfect ordination date because it sets you up for what is Hopefully a long life of struggling. It sets you up and it sets the bar at exactly the appropriate place which is confusion and doubting. Which unfortunately is the word that’s been attached to Thomas.
We don’t think of Thomas without thinking of what? Doubting Thomas, “poor doubting Thomas, clueless, didn’t get it.” That’s one way to read it. We’re gonna spend a little bit of time this morning unpacking this text to dig into it and see what might actually be there underneath what we commonly hear and know.
So Thomas, of course, was one of the twelve. We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t there. Years back when I was first a priest, I gave a sermon on this text and I told someone, I said, “what if they sent Thomas to go get the food? And while Thomas was gone, Jesus appeared at an unopportune time and now we have interpreted this all to mean Thomas somehow Is the one behind the eight ball, when the whole time he went to get the food?” And there was a person who met me on the front steps and said, “that is not appropriate.” Which gets to the other point of how we read this text, right? We don’t like apostles who doubt in the same way we don’t like a Jesus who’s too human. Because we like things certain, clear, and clearly defined packages and boxes that we know where things are and we know where to find them, we know what to expect. But the truth of our lives is that who lives in a space like that? If you do, raise your hand.
So there’s this great film that’s going around right now called Conclave, if you’ve seen it. The book was great. The film was great. And there’s a line in that film that actually touches on a deep truth of our faith. And here’s the deep truth of our faith: the opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty. And here’s why. Because certainty immediately leads us to grasp tightly and think that we have it all figured out and the next step from that is that we can control it. That’s where our egos go immediately in that space. But being the humans who we are, we struggle. We wrestle. If faith is about certainty, then I’m sorely lacking. I don’t know about you.
So texts like this invite us to spend time and wonder just what is being invited out of our own lives, out of our own experiences, and how do we bring all of who we are? All of who we are into this space to have it acknowledged. Because look what actually happens in the story. Jesus comes back. Jesus comes back and encounters Thomas who, exemplifying the deep truth of who we are, wants to touch, wants to feel, wants to have some encounter with the living Christ and wants to know that all of the things that he has heard from others, second-hand info, he’s not satisfied with that. He wants and needs a certain level of assurance that enables him to touch and feel. And we all need that. We all need that. We all need those moments in our lives where we have something just beyond an idea that someone handed down to us that might have worked for them. We all need those moments in our lives where we can feel in our bodies the truth of what has been told to us and the truth of what we’ve yearned for so often.
But the temptation is when we read this, because of the world that we live in, to somehow project onto Thomas that Thomas failed. I don’t think Thomas failed. I think what Thomas did is actually to give Jesus a moment to have one of the most incredible teachings that Jesus has. Which is this tension that we have in ourselves. What it means to know.
When we were in college, we had a friend of ours who had this great conversion moment in his life when he first got to school, which was wonderful. And I was sitting with him one night and he came over and he said, “you know, I’ve been thinking about this. The Bible says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can do anything.” I said “okay, where are you going with this?” And he said, “right now, if I had faith the size of a mustard seed, I could climb up on top of the dorm and step off and just land on the sidewalk.” At which point I said, “you go first. You go first.”
So we have this tension in us and it’s all around this question of how do we know? How do we know? How do we know? Do we know with our heads? Or do we know with our hearts? Where do we know from? What is the posture that we’re standing in? Now the curious thing when you look at this text, and you actually dig into it, is that a choice was made to put those two words, to write that line that way. Do not doubt but believe. A choice was made to translate that that way. But here’s what the words actually said. The word is used is pistis in Greek, which does not mean “faith” in the terms of just thinking things through and rationally signing on a dotted line somewhere and thinking that all the questions that we have are somehow all pushed to the side now. That’s not what that means. The word pistis, this means “trust.” Trust.
So what happens when you hear it this way? Rather than hearing that line, “do not doubt, but believe,” what if we hear it this way?
“Do not have mistrust, but trust.”
“Do not be in this feeling of scarcity, but be in a posture of receptivity. Be persuaded. Be confident.”
That shifts it in us out of our heads and into a deeper space where we can wrestle and we can see that we do yearn, we do want to know. Something within us needs to know.
Saint Augustine said our hearts are restless. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, oh God.” There’s something in us that yearns for that deeper awareness. Here’s where we see it. If you turn to page 308 in the prayer book in your pew. I’ll show you where we see it.
When we baptize, every time that we baptize, we have a prayer that we end with at the end of that particular part of the service. On page 308. And we have a series of things that we ask the Spirit for. A series of focus points that we look at. And what we don’t ask for is this. We don’t pray that the spirit may give the person who we are baptizing absolute clarity at all times. We don’t say, “oh, Lord, let them always be clear. Let them always be certain. Let them never have any doubt. Let them never wonder. Let them always know.”
What we do pray for is this. Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sins and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, oh Lord, in your Holy Spirit. And here it is. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart. The courage to will and to persevere. A spirit to know and to love you and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.
In that light, curiosity becomes a virtue. Curiosity becomes a virtue. Wonder becomes something to cultivate and nurture. Asking, seeking, wrestling, striving, struggling, that all becomes the core foundation of who we are. And how we understand our walk of faith with God. And the other side of that is that we know that God always meets us where we are. God always meets us where we are waiting and listening.
So as we go further into this Easter season, that’s the deep vein that we’re trying to tap. That’s the deep Easter that we’ve talked about. This space of wonder, of being curious, of listening, of cultivating an awareness of the spirits present. Trusting that God is always with us.
Amen.