Entertaining Doubt

Waddyathink?  Did Jesus rise from the dead?  Too flippant a way of asking the question?  How dare one even ask; people have been burned at the stake for even speaking of such…DOUBT.

Some walk right past the tomb, never entering.  Mystery has a way of troubling us, so most of our society doesn’t even spend time thinking about this.  For them, Easter is about clothing sales and candy.  But those of us who have listened to the story of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the tomb, I think of three ways of living with it.

Faith

Some consider it true and live believing, considering the resurrection a tenet of their faith, something that makes them who they are.  I can’t write much about this without study; I’m not one of these.  I think of the Crusades, of the holocaust, of ways this kind of certainty can decompose into dehumanizing exclusiveness and elitism.  The image above of Meryl Steep in the Film Doubt reminds us of this example of the devil in certainty.  

Hope

I suspect that many apparently untroubled by doubt might more honestly rely on hope.  Accepting unknowing and uncertainty, a lot of us, if we were to speak honestly, consider the resurrection a possibility, and perhaps even long for it to be true.  Or we might long for what seems to us to be an untroubled, unquestioning faith.

Love

Some who have entered the tomb have walked so far away from it or are so wearied by considering its truth choose not even to spend time thinking about it.  The pious believers might consider them heathens.  But these, and I know so many of them, who spend no time considering the validity of such dogma, occupy their lime by simply loving.

Struggling with Dogma and Doubt can distract us from loving lives lived in real moments.  On the other hand, letting in the twilight of mystery can guide us in uncertain steps of toddlers’ feet to the truth that resides in our humanity, in our deepest center of meaning.

I pray not that we invite Jesus into our hearts these days after Easter, but that we entertain doubt.  

It’s in season.  All that Jesus does in Scripture these next weeks helps us to respect the truth of this so that we may step beyond it in a direction toward our truth, our best reckoning of Truth that is God.  And that God is Love.

Pisteo in Christus Resurrexit

I believe that my wife is a treasure to me.  But when I fail to act on that belief, what does it say about me as a husband?  And if I believe that Christ rose from the dead, but that belief doesn't impact my life choices, what does it say about me as a Christian?

As we leave church on Good Friday we stand like Lazarus, facing the exit from our tomb of doubt.  The possibility that faces us outside is the Easter Mysterium, the rising from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.  In The Case for God Karen Armstrong makes a distinction that can serve us well as we confront the stone imprisoning us.  She names the stone Credo.

Credo, the Latin “I believe” gives us the word “creed”  a statement of belief that we can accept…or break into sects or religions over, or as in the Crusades, use as a reason to kill.  Credo entered the Latin Vulgate Bible in translation from the original Greek pisteo which means not claiming or holding a belief, but being impacted by it.

So as we encounter this week the real stretch that Easter is, perhaps we can spare ourselves the intellectual flagellation of doubt, and look instead at our lives lived in response to the possibility that this might be true, that death does not really matter.

Can we be pistons, the things inside our car engines that are propelled by the explosion of the gasoline in our cars that is ignited by the spark?  Can our lives be similarly energized by the spark of the Spirit that we feel in even considering the possibilities that we see laid before us this week? 

A song goes through my mind.  It’s not a church song, but one that makes me think of my wife when we were dating.  It’s Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”.  Kathy was only 10 in 1957; I was just 11.  But ten years later, she’d become the spark of my life, and she’s sent me ever since.   Are we willing to let God who lives beyond death send us?   What a ride!