Living the Good News: Learning Trust

We’ve nicknamed him “Doubting” Thomas, but he was no different from the others. The women at the tomb, the disciples when they ran to tell them, …none of them believed the news until they saw Jesus… Luke tells us that the disciples did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. That Peter ran to the tomb, saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. Matthew tells us the women heard the news and hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, when suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. And when he met the disciples in Galilee, Matthew tells us that even when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. The oldest ending that we have for Mark leaves us with the women fleeing the tomb, trembling and bewildered. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. A later addition fills out the end of the story with Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene and the others not believing, and then appearing to two disciples and the others not believing, and then finally appearing to the eleven. In John, Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene, and then to the disciples except Thomas, and then a week later, Thomas is with the disciples when Jesus is with them again. Over and over again, Jesus met them where they were, and then they believed. All of this to point out that doubt is not an outlier. Doubt is our natural response to unbelievable news.

Jesus was crucified. Dead. Buried. That’s the way the world works. For his followers, it is cause for mourning and hiding. Hopes dashed, fear raised. They were living behind locked doors, waiting for the coast to be clear, and returning to their lives before they started following Jesus.

Jesus raised from the dead. Alive. That is not the way the world works. They couldn’t understand it, couldn’t process it, bewildered. I looked up synonyms for “bewildered” to try to get closer to their state of mind:  puzzled, perplexed, confused, disoriented, confounded, baffled, discombobulated…but the one that stood out to me as most helpful in describing their state – they were befogged. Only when they saw Jesus, when Jesus met them where they were, did the fog clear. Only when Thomas looked down and saw Jesus’s blood on his finger did the reality become clear.

The good news for us is that doubt is part of faith, and Jesus meets us where we are. In fact, Frederick Buechner calls doubt “…the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” And Jesus knows we will have doubt and tells Thomas and the disciples, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

When we have doubts, or when someone shares with us that they have doubts, the good news is that Jesus meets us where we are…and Jesus calls us to meet others where they are.

Letting faith become stronger than doubt is a lot like teaching a child how to float on their back. If you are going to teach someone to float, they are going to have to trust you. Trust is the also the first step in faith development. From the time a baby is born until he or she is about 2 years old, they are learning whether or not the world is trustworthy and the first teachers are their caregivers. When I cry, someone responds and my needs are met. I am fed, changed, and held. That trust, once learned, can be extended and placed in other people and things.

When we taught the kids how to float in the pool on their backs, we relied on their trust in us to let them learn that they could trust the physics of water displacement. It did no good to explain Archimedes’ principle to them when they were toddlers. We had to meet them where they were. We had to acknowledge their fear. We had to reassure them. First, we just held them in the water. Then, we held them in our arms while they were laying back. Then we held them farther away from us. Then, we held them with just our hands under them. All the while, we were coaching them, listening to their fears, reassuring them, patiently teaching them how to relax their muscles. Then, we had to transfer the trust they had in us to the water. Slowly, we would move our hands so that there was a little space, a layer of water, between them and our hands underneath them. Still there, until they saw for themselves that they were floating.

Doubt is like that instinct we have to take back control of our muscles in the water, to react to the feeling that we might sink. It goes back to how our nervous systems are wired. We are made to have both an instinct to be in control, to assert our independence AND a need to learn to depend on others, to live in relationship, to experience the flourishing of life that happens in community. In the same way that we know that being able to float is able to be explained with physics, faith is not without reason. We study Scripture, we hear the accounts of those who saw the risen Christ, we learn the history of God’s faithfulness, and we have our own experiences of God’s presence and care and of the community of the church. Yet, faith requires trust.

It requires seeing Jesus’s risen body. You are now Christ’s Body, available to be seen in the world. We are the evidence. Recent research on church in America shows that people who don’t go to church see the impact of the church and report that they appreciate that church is helpful to their community. It’s like they can appreciate the reality of Archimedes’ principle, they can see WHY things float. They can see that faith produces good works and more abundant lives, but they aren’t willing to test it.

Why? Because, young adults report that they see the church as untrustworthy. They are looking for people who are authentic. The expectation that when we come on Sundays we “put on our Sunday best” is off-putting to people who are 14-34 years old. When we put on our best clothes, and our best behavior, and our best attitude, they wonder whether we are who we really are?  When we were teaching our kids to float in the pool, it only took one time of them feeling like they were sinking before we had undone hours of building trust. The same thing happens in hospitality when someone walks through these doors. Just getting up and coming to Farmington, if this isn’t your church home takes getting past fear and anxiety, taking a risk. How do we meet people with open arms?

And while we have our arms out, how do we share our wounds? Are we open about God raising us, giving us strength to break free from temptations that would kill our bodies or our spirits, about God healing us from brokenness? Are we authentic about our lives, or do we try to present a put together, image of perfection? Over and over again, I would tell the kids how hard it was for me to let go and float. Because in sharing my own struggle, they were able to accept their own. We are not able to bring anyone to faith if we say we have no doubts or struggles or wounds.

Faith is a process, a lifelong journey. It is not a one-time declaration. We are all helping each other learn to float. At times, we will all experience being befogged. The Good News is that Jesus meets us where we are and gives us what we need, that we may believe. And we are to live the good news, to embody it. We are now the Body of Christ, alive in the world, called to meet people where they are and give them what they need, that they may believe.