The Second Sunday of Easter
April 15, 2007

The Sunday after Easter, in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield, gets no respect. Just a week ago, we were packing them in. Today, the pews are half empty. A week ago, we pulled out all the stops. Today, we’re back to reality. A week ago, the resurrection was front page news. Now, it’s old hat. One week, the church is manic with euphoria. The next week, it’s depressed.

It seems it’s always been this way. For centuries, the day has been dubbed Low Sunday, in case anyone had any doubt. And the luminaries who put together our lectionary way back when decided this was the right time to trot out the one New Testament character who dared to see it see it differently, who dared to see the glass half-empty, the Apostle Thomas.

You remember Thomas. He’s the one who, for some reason, was not in the Upper Room when the Risen Jesus first appeared. He’s the one who, when told by his fellow disciples they had seen the Lord, refused to believe. He’s the one who had the audacity to up the ante. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas said, “and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Thomas was the one who needed proof, tangible, hands-on, palpable, down to earth, concrete, in your face, living proof that his Lord was alive. If it wasn’t something he could see, and hear, and touch, it wasn’t worth the time of day. Yes, Thomas is the star of Low Sunday, good old skeptical, glass half empty, doubting Thomas.

But I say, thank God for Thomas. For while the other ten remaining disciples were apparently content to accept the most stupendous, awe-inspiring, unprecedented, outrageous, supernatural event the world has ever known, Thomas had a few, basic questions. And while the others were willing to believe at face value something that defied all reason, Thomas had a few lingering doubts. And while the disciples had suspended all doubt in order to believe, Thomas dared to suspend faith, in order to doubt.

Let me say that again. Thomas suspended faith in order to doubt. You know, I bet that a good number of you, like me, grew up in religious homes and traditions where doubt was not a prized commodity. As children, our questions and doubts quite often got turned aside, and we were told something like: “Well, that’s just the way it is, and you just have to accept it.” I’d be willing to bet that many of you, like me, somewhere along the way got the message that our questions and doubts were not helpful, or worse still, dangerous.
Perhaps we even got the message that doubt is antithetical to faith. And that the only way to have faith was to suspend doubt, and rid ourselves of the questions.

Maybe you, like me, could not suspend the questions and doubts. Maybe you, like me, could not accept it all at face value. And somewhere in time, you discovered that instead of those questions and doubts being in opposition to faith, they were prerequisites to faith. Maybe you, like me, got even so far as to say within ourselves these questions and doubts are not impediments, but gifts with which to move ever more deeply into the mysteries of our lives. Maybe, we have even dared to say the source of all these doubts and questions, rather than simply arising out of ourselves and our lower nature, come from God.

Thomas, in our our Gospel, could do no other than to question and doubt and refuse to accept at face value. That was his nature. He would not believe until he had exhausted all his questions and doubts. For this reason, the Church had dubbed him the patron saint of doubters. But this is a misnomer. He, much more than this, is an exemplar for all of us. To not fear or evade our questions and doubts, but to embrace them. To accept nothing at face value, if this means we must cast aside our doubts and questions. To let our questions and doubts draw us into a deeper experience of the divine life and our own.
And to cherish our doubts and questions as gifts, and gateways through which we plumb the depths of our life and being.

I’d like to think the story ends in our Gospel at that place where Jesus comes again into the Upper Room and approaches Thomas and says: “Put you finger here into the scars of my hands. And reach out your hand and put it into the scar in my side.”

Jesus met Thomas right where he was, in the midst of his questions and doubts. That is key, I my mind. For if Jesus did this, he could not also tell Thomas “Do not doubt, but believe.” That must have been the early Church’s spin on the whole affair. No, Jesus takes Thomas, with all his questions and all his doubts, seriously. And he will do no less with any one of us, even and especially on this Low Sunday we celebrate again this year.