God is Not the Answer

Genesis 18.9-15

John 20.24-29

God is Not the Answer

Second Sunday of Easter 

When it comes to this morning’s story about doubting Thomas, well, just call me a doubting Thomas.  That is, I don’t believe the story really happened the way John says it did.  The gist of it, as we just heard, is that Thomas, who was not with the other disciples when they saw the risen Jesus, doubted their story.  And actually, the word “doubt” never appears in this story, or for that matter anywhere else in John’s gospel – the word that is used here is “unbelieving,” or “disbelief.”  So Thomas did not believe that the others had actually seen Jesus, and said the only way he could believe it was if he actually saw and touched Jesus’ crucifixion wounds for himself.  This is the first part of my problem – in every other story about the risen Jesus, he was so transformed by the resurrection that he was unrecognizable.  Luke tells not one, but two different stories of Jesus talking with his disciples after the resurrection, and in both stories the disciples didn’t have any idea who he was, until they sat down at the end of the day to eat, and, as Luke put it, “Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  And John himself tells us that the person who was the closest to Jesus, the one who knew him best, Mary Magdalene, not only didn’t recognize him, but mistook him for a gardener.  Don’t you think that if Jesus still bore the scars of the crucifixion, Mary and the disciples might have noticed?

But the main reason I take the story of Thomas with a grain of salt is that nearly every other witness to the risen Jesus is based on faith, and not on observable, perceptible evidence like flesh and blood.  “Faith is the … conviction of things not seen,” Hebrews insists, and as Jesus himself said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”  In other words, prima facie evidence, to me is exactly the opposite of what faith, at least biblical faith, is all about.  A story about Jesus providing physical, incontrovertible evidence of his resurrection simply does not square with the rest of the biblical story.  The evidence of Jesus’ resurrection is not the kind that would stand up in a court of law – it is based on belief – the inclination of the mind and heart - rather than something you can perceive with the senses.  This is why I don’t buy the story of Thomas sticking his fingers in Jesus’ wounds – it just doesn’t square with anything else in the Bible.  According to our New Testament lesson, Thomas’ doubt was completely swept away by Jesus’ physical presence; but a faith that does not admit at least elements of doubt, is a faith that is not really being honest with itself.

There was an opinion piece in last Saturday’s New York Times that offered an intriguing twist on the subject of the relationship between doubt and faith – it was actually about the relationship between doubt and unfaith, if we can call it that.  William Irvin, professor of philosophy at King’s College, wrote, “Any honest atheist must admit that he has his doubts, that occasionally he thinks he might be wrong, that there could be a God after all!”  Imagine:  an atheist whose doubt actually leaves room for faith.  It is a neat corollary to the kind of faith that leaves room for doubt.

Ronald Knox, a Monsignor in the Anglican Church in the mid-twentieth century, also wrote detective novels and dabbled in doggerel; Knox once wrote this little ditty of a prayer in the form of a limerick:

“O God, for as much as without thee,

We are not enabled to doubt thee,

Help us all by thy grace

To convince the whole race

It knows nothing whatever about thee.”

I don’t think we necessarily have to agree with the last line, that, “the whole race knows nothing whatever about thee,” but the first couplet still entices:  “Without thee we are not enabled to doubt thee.”  Most people don’t consider doubt, especially doubt about God, to be a God-given characteristic.  But I believe it is, and I believe it is essential.  Inasmuch as the human body contains microorganisms or antibodies that in greater abundance would prove toxic, yet at just the right level actually keep other more serious toxins at bay, so the admission that we don’t know everything that there is to know about God and exactly what it means to be faithful can serve to make ours a stronger faith that it otherwise might be.  I would be willing to wager that everyone in this room has room in our faith for doubt, for uncertainty, for an ambivalent confidence that everything we think we ought to believe about God is actually true – including the story about Thomas this morning.  And this is a good thing; doubt is healthy. Questions are good, and the kind of faith that believes it has all the answers, in my mind, borders on the disingenuous.  Where there is no doubt, there is no self-awareness, no self-actualization, and in the end, even a compromised faith.

In 2013 author Kamel Daoud wrote a book titled The Meursault Investigation as a kind of semi-sequel to Albert Camus’ The Stranger.  The book’s protagonist, the brother of Muersault’s murder victim in the first book, has an interesting take on the notion of God: it is his opinion that “God is a question, not an answer.”  God is a question, not an answer.  I like this.  I like this because it often seems we spend so much of life looking for answers, right?  And once we have the answer – or at least once we think we have the answer – what usually happens?  We stop asking the question and go on to something else.  However, if God is not the answer, but rather the question, then the question is the place where you and I live, and we have permission to keep asking, to keep wondering, to nurture a healthy and constructive wonder.  And while it may sometimes be an uncomfortable place to inhabit, it is the question that keeps us seeking, that keeps us growing, that keeps us sharp.  You all have been asking lots and lots of questions in the whole Crossroads process, good questions, constructive questions, critical questions - and that’s wonderful – it means we are moving forward as a congregation.  Because what would happen if we believed we finally found the answer?  What would happen if suddenly we all came to a nice, neat, satisfying conclusion together and said to ourselves, “Whew!  I’m glad that’s finally done!”  What would happen?  We would stop asking questions, we would stop moving forward, and we would grow stale.  And the best part of living in the question is that we don’t always have to know the answer – we are free to admit, “I don’t know,” or, “We’re still figuring it out,” or “I still need to work on that, to pray about it, to try it on for size.”   It’s OK to live with uncertainty – it’s OK to live with doubt – it’s OK to live with wonder – it’s OK to admit there are answers out there we haven’t discovered yet.  It’s OK never to see the wounded hands and feet, but wonder just how the resurrected Jesus can continue to live in our lives, in our church, in our world.  Woody Allen made a wry joke, I think it was in the movie, “Annie Hall.”  He said a relationship is like a shark – it has to keep moving forward in order to stay vital and alive.  And then he said to Annie about their relationship, “I think what we have here is a dead shark.”  Something similar can be said about the church. We have to keep moving forward in order to remain vital and alive.  The minute we stop moving forward – the minute we believe we have found the answer – that’s when we have a dead shark on our hands.  And it is a faithful, lively, critical doubt – living in the question – that propels us forward.  This is why I think it’s helpful to think of God as the question and not the answer – because the question is the place we live and grow and strengthen both our faith and our witness.

Sarah doubted.  Sarah did not believe she could or would ever have a child at her advanced age, and when God suggested she would, she simply laughed.  And that laugh – laughter which gave birth to Isaac – showed that Sarah took God seriously.  Twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich writes the “The element of uncertainty in faith cannot be removed, it must be accepted.  And the element in faith which accepts this is courage… In the courageous standing of uncertainty, faith shows most visibly its dynamic character.”  To live in the question is courageous, dynamic and bold.  This is the kind of church we want to be.

Let us pray.