In the first months that I
arrived as a missionary in our remote missionary outpost in the jungles of Ecuador,
we had our living quarters broken into several times. It was an invasion of our
personal space, it shook us up, and it made us feel unsafe right at the start
of our 3-year missionary term. The
pastor suggested that perhaps that door was not strong enough, so we had a new
heavy-duty door constructed out of heavy wood from the rainforest; we also had
a powerful steel lock put onto the door.
No one will be able to break down this door, I thought. On the morning of Christmas eve, right after
we got our new door, I had just gone to the market to purchase some supplies
for a journey I was going to take to spend Christmas at one of the small
villages in the rainforest. As I opened
the outside door to the building that led to our living quarters, I could see
light coming from the open door to our apartment. I thought to myself – “That’s strange – I know
I locked the door when I left to run my errands.” As I got closer, I was in complete shock at
what I saw. Not only was the door to our
apartment open. Oh no, not just
that. This time, the robbers had taken
the door completely off its hinges. The door was standing in the hallway propped
up against the wall. So much for that
new door that was going to keep us safe & keep the robbers out.
Just as I tried to keep the robbers from
getting into my apartment, the disciples were trying to keep everyone out of
their looked room as well, as they huddled in there in fear. Jesus was their leader and their teacher, but
more than that, he was the Son of God.
They thought he would save them and bring them eternal salvation. Instead, they had just seen him killed in the
most violent and humiliating manner possible – death on a cross. Perhaps they
wondered if they were next, if they would also be killed in the same humiliating
way.
The disciples thought that the walls and
doors would keep others out and would keep them safe. Indeed, we can all erect walls and barriers
to keep others out. Doubting Thomas had
something else standing in his way as well – doubt. Not that doubt in itself is bad. To doubt is to be human. I recently read a quote by Paul Tillich, a
Lutheran theologian and existentialist philosopher, that said: “Doubt is not
the opposite of faith – it is an element of faith.” Yet, if we sit and dwell with our doubts and
refuse to move on, if you use our doubts as an excuse to grow in our
relationship with God and as a barrier in our life of faith, then our doubts
become our enemies. But, if we use our
doubts to help us gain understanding, ask questions, and grow in our faith,
then our doubts can be our best friends.
The important thing is not to have doubts – but rather what we do with
our doubts, how we use them to pursue God and to pursue a life of faith. We
look at where Thomas was at this point in the Gospels – he had separated
himself from the other disciples, perhaps because he was scared and was wanting
to be alone. Perhaps Thomas’ doubts reflected a deep crisis of faith he was
experiencing. We probably can all empathize with Thomas, wanting to be certain
before we believe something, wanting to see it with our very eyes.
As disciples of Christ, we’re called to
walk by faith, to open the doors that lock us in and keep us apart from Jesus. Jesus
tries to find a way to get through our locked doors just as he found a way to
get to his disciples in that locked room. But, we need to do our part to
joyfully welcome Christ into our lives, not keeping him at bay or locking him
out or making it difficult for him to get to us. That same theologians that I
mentioned earlier, Paul Tillich, also has another quote about doubt that I
like: “Sometime I think that it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless,
and doubt to the faithful.” As we
journey through this Easter season, may we think about the ways that we need to
be challenged in our faith, to grow and develop the ways we experience God and
live out our spirituality. What are we
going to do about the doubts and questions that we have? Will they inspire us to journey down the road
of faith, or will they paralyze us and knock us down?
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