Easter 2C: Deepest doubts are the royal road to deepest faith

A refection on the story of doubting Thomas, written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA.

www.tarsus.ie

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane (D08 F8NW)
27 April 2024
Doubting Thomas
John 20:19-31

Welcome
As we know, being a person of faith is a challenge in our day — a challenge to become a believer and a challenge to remain a believer. It is easier for faith to slip away, as has happened to many of our friends and family. Given the times we live in, it might even be tempting to think that it was somehow easier for earlier generations.

Topic
The suspicion that it was easier before and harder now is addressed by today’s Gospel story.

Steps
The Gospel of John was written about two generations after the ministry of Jesus, late in the first century ad. The community for which this Gospel was written was under considerable pressure, externally and internally. The internal pressures are familiar: tensions, divisions, individuals “walking away”, even groups splitting off. The external pressures are also familiar: a message in considerable contrast with the surrounding hostile culture. In those far off days, the main issue was the imperial cult — emperor worship — impossible for early Christians, who proclaimed Jesus as Lord. The “worship”, so to speak,  of power and force (the “empire”) has not at all gone away, something we are sharply aware of again in our day. Again, it could be easy to suspect that it was all somehow easer for generations before us.   

The gospel writer’s response is today’s well-remembered story. Doubting Thomas moves from a position of stark resistance to faith to an extraordinary confession of faith, equally stark: My Lord and my God, the highest confession of Jesus on the lips of anyone in this Gospel. Part of the message is not to be afraid to name our doubts and to own them, even to “inhabit” them. Is there a God at all? Is Jesus the person Christians claim he is? What is my experience of prayer and spirituality? By what values shall I choose to live? The word of today’s gospel is encouraging: deepest doubt is the royal path to deepest faith.

Two examples, one ancient, one contemporary, may help. St Augustine of Hippo, living as the Roman Empire declined, resisted and resisted, both existentially and intellectually, until finally, a highly emotional break-through took place. Reflecting later, he expressed it with poetic force:

You called, shouted, broke through my deafness
You flared, blazed, banished my darkness. (Confessions X.27)

It doesn’t always have to be as emotionally charged as that. RS Thomas was a priest and a penetrating poet of searing honesty, one who wrestled with God. He could write of both doubt and epiphany. One of his epiphanies is captured in a poem about the outdoors, hiking across a moor:

The bright field (by RS Thomas)

I have seen the sun break through
 to illuminate a small field
 for a while, and gone my way
 and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
 of great price, the one field that had
 the treasure in it. I realise now
 that I must give up all that I have
 to possess it. Life is not hurrying
 on to a receding future, nor hankering after
 an imagined past. It is the turning
 aside like Moses to the miracle
 of the lit bush, to a brightness
 that seemed as transitory as your youth
 once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

The turning aside is the key: taking time, taking time to take in. It can be anything — nature, a new baby, falling in love, a moment of forgiveness, sense of loss, music, poetry — all fleet glimpses of "the more” to life. Such fleeting glimpses are flashes of eternity — the mysterious, sometimes elusive presence of God. When I own those moments of epiphany (like RS Thomas), when I own the hungers of the heart (like Augustine), I begin to see life in full colour, no longer the grey quotidian but a thrilling adventure of epiphany and love, meaning and purpose. To turn aside takes also courage — a choosing to look and to look again.

To go back to our Gospel story: there is even a little bit of politics involved. The Roman emperor, when the Gospel was composed, was Domitian, who built the stadium bearing his name underneath Piazza Navona in Rome. His preferred form of address was: Dominus et Deus noster — our Lord and our God. Low self-esteem was not an issue for the august Caesars! For Christians, there was a direct contradiction: “Jesus is Lord”!  The high theology of John had practical, political implications, especially when it came to worshipping Caesar, shaping not just what people said but how they lived. 

But the climax of the story is not Thomas’ journey, impressive as it is. The climax is in the ‘beatitude’ which follows: Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.

Conclusion
This final beatitude of only two in the Gospel addresses the later generation, wondering if it is somehow at a disadvantage. The answer is a resounding ‘no’. On the contrary, Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.’ It was true then and it is true today.