“Doubting F-I-Y-O-N”
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
2nd Sunday of Easter – April 15, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 2:14a, 22-32/1 Peter 1:3-9/John 20:19-31]

Neil Swanson, one of my predecessors, and I have something in common. We’re the only two associate ministers of this church ever to become its senior minister. Neil left First Church to become the first full-time executive secretary of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and then continued for many years in pastoral ministry. Along the way he wrote a number of books one of which was entitled Dear Fiyon: Letters on . . . how to pray effectively. Fiyon, f-i-y-o-n, stands for “fill in your own name” and the little book on prayer is good and still available in our church library. I bring Neil to mind so I can steal “Fiyon” this Sunday as we talk about Thomas the Apostle, dubbed “doubting Thomas.” I believe that all of us can be “doubting fill-in-your-own-name” at different times in our lives and I want us to understand that doubt, in itself, is not a bad thing.

Let’s talk about Thomas. He and his brother responded to Jesus’ call, left their nets and their families to follow this wandering Rabbi. Three years later Thomas’ world collapsed around him and then his friends came to him saying that the Master, the one he’d seen put to death, was actually alive. He didn’t buy it. He saw him die and people who die just don’t come back, despite what he’d seen Jesus do or heard him say. His friends bubbled with excitement about the Risen Lord, but Thomas was skeptical, to say the least.

Thomas told his friends, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in his side, I will not believe.” He announced that the only reality is that which he can touch and see – what some would call facts, evidence. Thomas wanted proof. Thomas wanted something demonstrable to him; the witness of others was not enough for him. Thomas had his own standard for belief and, at least at this point, it doesn’t include community attestation. I think that Thomas actually came from the part of Israel called Missouri – he certainly wanted to have things shown to him! As a result, over the centuries, his name has been applied to anyone who manifests a skeptical attitude – another reason I have titled this sermon “doubting F-I-Y-O-N.”

A week later Thomas’ demand was met when Jesus appeared in the midst of the gathered disciples and spoke a word of peace to them. Jesus immediately turned to Thomas and said, “Put your finger in my side. Do not doubt, but believe.”

“Do not doubt, but believe,” that is a tall order Jesus gave Thomas. There was Jesus, risen from the dead, in the glorified body that allowed him to do amazing things, like walk through locked doors, and Thomas just couldn’t bring himself to believe. Know what, we’re still in the same situation and we still have to come to where Thomas was, and it’s all right to be there. Otherwise, would we really be who we are – without a doubt? Haven’t we all been “Doubting Fiyons”?

For some reason we have the idea that unless our faith and our understanding are without questions, without a doubt, then we’re somehow defective. If we can’t be “just simple believers” then somehow we’re spiritually immature. Well, I’m sorry, because I’ve been a believer pretty much all of my life and I just don’t see it that way. I think Jesus told Thomas not to doubt, but to believe because Jesus knows that we can’t believe unless we’ve first doubted. Plato said that the “unexamined life isn’t worth living” and I hold to the idea that the unquestioned faith isn’t worth believing.

Let me give you an example. I was going through files, trying to clean them out, which – like getting rid of books – is a Sisyphean task for me! Anyway, I came across the prolegomena I had written for my first systematic theology class when I was a senior in college. Wow! What a mess! Had I been the teacher I would have made that thing bleed with red ink! And here when I wrote it I was sure that I had it down – Aquinas, Luther, Calvin had nothing on me – but I didn’t! And that’s the point, we can always grow.

The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote to a young protégé:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them . . . the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. [Letters to a Young Poet]

You see our doubts allow us to grow into our faith; and our questions become the sources for our answers. So we need to live our doubts, live our questions, and then we will live our faith.

When Jesus encountered Thomas in that upper room there was an invitation to experience and I’ve seen no more vivid depiction of it than “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas,” the masterful painting by Caravaggio. Caravaggio shows Jesus holding open his robe and exposing his wound and Thomas bending forward, finger probing the wound while two other apostles stand watching. Jesus is serene, loving, Thomas’ brow is wrinkled and he looks uneasily, almost disbelievingly, at the wound. Jesus literally invites Thomas into his wounds and the experience changes Thomas. But Caravaggio doesn’t really tell the story, because Thomas never does probe the wound, he never gets the flesh and blood demonstration he demanded. Rather, he stands before the Risen One and proclaims, “My Lord and my God.”

I like what theologian and storyteller John Shea has written, “This demand for physical verification is misplaced. Jesus is not a resuscitated corpse and resurrection is not a return to earthly life. However, there is irony in what he wants. The only way he will see the Lord is if he enters into the wounds. But these wounds are not available for his intrusive probing. These wounds are ones that Jesus shows to people so that they may receive God’s life and realize his true identity. The criteria for knowing the ultimate truth about Jesus are the same after his death as before his death. The person must go beyond the physical level and open himself or herself to the communication of divine life and recognize Jesus as God’s incarnate presence. This is spiritual knowledge; the type of knowledge most people think is too subtle and evasive.” [The Relentless Widow: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers, p. 110-111] Shea is telling us that when we open ourselves to the deep knowledge of God, when we open ourselves trusting God and moving from doubt to faith, then we can know and understand at a new and deeper level. Thomas did that and cried out, “My Lord and my God.” He opens himself to Divine life, he does touch the depth of eternal truth and he is drawn into the life of God through the Son who has “become as we are, save for sin.”

Thomas confronted with the Risen Lord, hearing his voice and his invitation, opens himself to know and professes faith, but what about us? I’m not sure that many of us will have an encounter with the Risen Christ in quite the same way Thomas did. Jesus responded to Thomas’ confession, “Do you believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.” There is the promise for us, and the hope, that we’ll open ourselves to Divine knowledge deep within us and, as Jesus said, know the truth and the truth will make us free.

Now that’s where the Church, the community of faith gathered in covenant relationship, comes into play. The Church provides the forum, the playing field as it were, where we can begin to live the doubts and deepen in faith. The Church is to be the place where I can open myself without the fear of someone whacking me, belittling me, or scoffing at my questions, or my doubts. It is when I am here in worship, or here in fellowship, or here in study, that I am safe to be who I am – warts, doubts, and all. It is here that I can meet the living Lord.

The Church, then, is where genuine mutuality is found in abundance. Because we’ve come to trust God we can trust one another and now we are enabled to love one another deeply from the heart. When we’re showing love for one another then the Church is really present and the Lord is present, animating his body, which is the Church, showing us the way to live. That experience of the living, loving presence of God is precisely what emboldened the once frightened and hidden disciples to go our and speak their faith with boldness. Each of them had been “Doubting Fiyons” who saw the Lord, responded to his invitation to renewed life and were transformed. These once fearful, scattered followers were accused of having “filled Jerusalem with your teaching” and that teaching would soon spread. It spread because the love they experienced, the nurture they knew opened them to that spiritual knowledge which made them different and drew others to want to know and to share that same knowledge. Perhaps this is what the Church must recover to speak to our hurting world – the reality of God’s transforming love and presence?

Thomas was only able to really come to believe once he was back with the community of the apostles. It’s no different for us – we need each other if we’re going to accomplish the goal of belief and of living community. Working with the community of faith is where we can heal our doubts and other wounds as well. But, it only happens if we remain connected with the community of faith, we have to keep on keeping on if we’re going to accomplish the goal.

I would venture to say that all of us have reasons to give in to our doubts and our fears – all of us could easily be “Doubting Fiyons.” There’s probably not a person here this morning who hasn’t dealt with, or is dealing with, illness, brokeness, problems with relationships, employment problems, nagging doubts of one kind or another, just name it. All of those feelings are real, and all of them can only be dealt with in a loving community – like this one. You see sisters and brothers, when we experience those hurts or feel those feelings we begin to wonder “where is God in all this?” We ask, “Where is God in my suffering?” The truth is: God in Christ is there. That’s the point of the Incarnation, the enfleshment, God knows us from the inside out, including all of our weaknesses and our sufferings. We have to look, but God is there; right there in the midst of those hurts, that suffering, showing us his wounds and drawing us from our woundedness to healing through them. If we open ourselves we will see the Lord loving us through the down times, the hurts and the wounds in our lives; loving us through the words, the actions, the presence of a loving Church, which is his living body and continues his presence.

Fred Craddock is a man possessed with remarkable faith, delightful wit, and a real ability to preach. He wrote a little brochure for preachers and in it he says, “You will have a time when you will lose your faith. Don’t panic. Let the faith of the community carry you until you recover.” There’s truth there for all of us, not just us preacher-types. We may come up against stuff that will challenge and test us, but if we stay connected to the Church and let this community carry us along we’ll recover, and without becoming “Doubting Fiyons”. It might take a while, but it will come, and soon we’ be helping to carry someone else, which is as it should be.

I believe that Jesus’ words, “Do not doubt, but believe,” are an invitation to a lifetime of growth in the community of faith. It begins as we are made part of the Church through baptism. It continues as we enter more fully into that fellowship as a covenanted member of a particular Church. The growth is sustained as we are nourished by breaking the bread of the Word and are fed at the Lord’s sacramental table. We need to remember what Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus is talking about us – fellow Fiyons. He is talking about those of us who have not seen who walk by faith and not by sight – as we’ll sing at the close of the service – and yet know that our Lord is here, always with us. We know that it is here, surrounded by fellow Fiyons, that we feel the breath of the Spirit and know that God is with us, that we are loved, and that we are the Church – and that we can know without a doubt.