Reasonable Doubt

Mark 9:14-29

JOHN 20:24-29

Long before I considered ministry, I considered several other careers. Among the leading contenders when I left for college was Law. All the top colleges in my search had pre-law programs and law schools. My mom and I spent hours when I was in high school watching JAG, the TV drama about US Navy and Marine lawyers who fought for justice in and out of the courtroom. It’s not really a surprise that many former lawyers and law enforcement types eventually become ministers. In fact, lawyers make up the largest percentage of second career students in most mainline seminaries. The same strong inclinations that lead people to want to serve others and help the oppressed, to stand on the side of right, lead people to both careers.

After my freshmen year at Chapel Hill, I served in the District Attorney’s office in my hometown for part of the summer. The woman who served as DA, and still does, is one of the toughest and most fair-minded people I’ve ever known, as well as one of the strongest advocates for abused women and children. Under her leadership and prosecution, DUIs in our county were reduced significantly and became a model for other counties in our state. I learned much from her and the ADAs in her office in that summer. And while I learned I did not want the law for a career, I also learned a deep appreciation for both conviction… and doubt.

During this time, my love for law, for reason and for films that explored these concepts, grew exponentially. In particular, I grew to love the film 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda. The film takes place in its entirety in a small jury room. It’s the story of 12 men deliberating on a trial, the jury for a young immigrant boy accused of murdering his father. It’s a blistering summer day, many years before air-conditioning would be installed in criminal courts buildings. Many members of the jury are eager to convict immediately and leave the stifling room. Henry Fonda is at first the lone voice that challenges them to reconsider all the evidence and discrepancies. Has the prosecution truly met their burden of proof? Can all their reasonable doubts be laid to rest?

Among the many wonderful lessons I learned in the District Attorney’s office was that doubt was not merely the enemy of the prosecutor, that force to be defeated, but it was and is that force which can set free an innocent person. In our everyday lives, one’s reasonable doubt can prevent making a bad decision or from trusting an incompetent or dangerous person with an important task. And in court, that same reasonable doubt can save someone’s life. A doubt born of prejudice, distrust, sentiment or whim can be quite harmful or toxic. Seeds of doubt can grow. It is that kind of doubt we fear and rail against. It’s what gives doubt a bad name.

In the recent film Inception, the main protagonist plants a seed of doubt in his wife’s dreams in an attempt to pull her back to reality. This doubt grows so strong, that she eventually believes it completely, at the cost of her own life. Doubt can indeed be powerful. It can be a powerful enemy or a powerful ally. And so we must always consider whether it is reasonable or unreasonable, lest we write that doubt off as baseless, or write ourselves or others off as faithless. We do that with Thomas, don’t we? Thomas is the doubter, right? Surely none of the other disciples. Even Peter gets a chance at redemption in our story.

But is Thomas really the bad guy? We know from history and tradition that he went on to have a highly successful ministry. But was he the only doubter? I don’t believe so. We’re all fairly familiar with the story of the Great Commission in Matthew. Therefore as you go, make disciples of all nations and baptize them! But that passage starts… in doubt. Look at the picture for a moment. You’ll see this passage as we usually find it translated in our English Bibles… And when they saw him they worshiped him but some doubted.

Many scholars, my seminary professor Francis Taylor Gench among them, suggest this is not just a poor translation, but perhaps an incorrect one. I’ll throw the original Greek up there with it. I’m sure you notice the lack of the word (meh-ree-koi). No?

For the non-Greek speakers in the room, meh-ree-koi is the Greek word for SOME. You see, the first translators assumed that SOME of the disciples were worshiping Jesus… and SOME were doubting. But there’s a problem here. The word SOME isn’t even there! When you read this verse without it, as it was originally written, suddenly you have disciples who are worshiping AND doubting at the same time! In other words… And when they saw him they worshiped him AND doubted! I don’t know about you, but I take DEEP comfort in that. Here is a group of followers, the men and women who knew Jesus… who were witnessing him raised from the dead… who witnessed him eat with them… who witnessed Thomas (who was JUST… LIKE… THEM) put his hands in the wounds… the people who had more reason to believe in the resurrection than anyone else in history… and these people… still… had doubts. And these people… worshiped anyways… and we… can… too.

These followers, these disciples had far less reason to doubt than us! They were eyewitnesses. They were THERE. They saw him die and saw him alive again. Spoke to him, touched him, ate with him. And yet they had reasonable doubts. Up until that moment, they’d not had a whole heck of a lot of experience with insurrections and executions, with messiahs and resurrections. One’s first experience with such a miracle is, I’m guessing, hard to get one’s head around. And don’t we too have reasonable doubts?

Here now, two thousand years later, many generations removed from the eyewitnesses, separated by language and culture, historical evidence, archaeology and a host of other influences, we have a boatload of reasonable doubt arriving in our hearts and minds every day. But the story of the disciples is not of their doubt, reasonable or otherwise, but about what they do in spite of it, or perhaps because of it, strengthened by it. They doubt AND worship. They go forth and do make disciples of all nations. They are our brothers and sisters and our ancestors of faith. We are their legacy in the Holy Spirit.

They were not people without flaw. We see them screw up over and over in scripture. They were not people of permanent resolve. They abandoned Jesus in his hour of greatest need. And even in the face of the Easter Christ, the messiah raised from the dead, they still had doubt. A believer is not someone devoid of all doubt, but a person whose reasonable doubts guide them to deeper faith, to continually question and to relate to those who waver or those who do not yet believe.

In our Mark passage, we read of the man whose son is ill. This man believes. He is not a faithless man. He is a man with doubts. His is not a story of conversion or coming to faith. His is a story of faith that is challenged, faith on the rocks, faith that is shaken or strained by years of his son’s torment. This is a faith many of us relate to. He does not ask Jesus to help his belief… but to help his unbelief. And Jesus does.

The story of the Good News in which we believe and the Good News we share is not that we move from doubt to faith or that doubt is the opposite of faith or that faith removes ALL doubt. It is that faith can exist in spite of doubt and alongside reasonable doubt. The Good News is that reasonable doubt can lead to even deeper faith. Think for a moment about your own doubts, your own questions. Do you think that any of them are new or unique? Do you think that any of them is not shared by someone else? The basis of any support group is that those who face the same struggles share the same fears, the same worries… the same doubts.

A church is not just a group of people who share the same beliefs, but a community of people who share the same doubts. Faith communities gather not just to do the same things God calls us to do, but because of our shared failings and sins. We gather to strengthen our beliefs as we ask God and one another to help our un-belief. As Christians, we don’t just gather to learn, but to grow. Here in faith community, we don’t just gather for Christian Education, but for Spiritual Formation. We face not only our ignorance, but our doubts. Ignorance is lack of knowledge, not the enemy of it. You cannot learn until you know what knowledge you lack. You cannot grow in your faith until you know what you doubt.

I challenge each of you to consider your doubts and to consider that maybe some of them are quite reasonable. I challenge you to consider that maybe you could grow in your faith if you truly face these doubts. Maybe you doubt the biggies like the resurrection or the creation. Maybe you doubt God loves you or that God loves your enemies. Maybe you doubt your salvation or the authority of scripture. Whatever it is, I challenge you to really face it, to embrace it, to wrestle with it. And I encourage you that you need not face it alone. Someone else has faced this doubt. Someone else currently does. Pray, question God, question others… call John or Pattie here at the church or at home ;-). And then… listen. Because just like understanding, faith cannot grow if you do not listen. How foolish would a student be who yearned to learn about medicine and went to school with questions and curiosity, but never read a book or listened to a professor or fellow student? And so we are equally foolish if we do not seek the voice of God in prayer, in scripture, in our faith community.

So consider your reasonable doubts. Face them. Embrace them. And grow. Adam walked each day in the Garden with God, listening to his instruction. And what does our God require… but to do justice and love kindness… by walking humbly with our God… listening.

Let us pray…