Beyond A Doubt

Scripture: Luke 24:36-43

Two themes have historically occupied our thinking on the Sunday after Easter. Those themes point us in very different directions; indeed, they may even strike us as being fundamentally inconsistent. This explains why preachers usually make the wise decision to talk about one theme or the other. Today, I want to depart from this tradition of good judgment by looking at both of these themes in order to explore what we might learn from considering them in relation.

Now, I can imagine why this approach might make you uneasy. So I will labor to remain mindful of an old story you may know. A little boy who was attending a church service noticed that the pastor, before he started preaching, would remove his watch and place it next to the outline of his sermon. One Sunday the boy turned to his father and asked “Daddy, what does that mean?” His father responded, “Unfortunately, son, it doesn’t mean anything at all.”

I think it perfectly appropriate to begin with a joke, because humor relates directly to our first theme of the day. For centuries, Christians have honored the Sunday after Easter as “Bright Sunday,” a day of joy and celebration and laughter. The early church used the Latin phrase risus paschalis—the Easter laugh—to capture the idea that, through the resurrection of Jesus, the Lord played a trick on the devil and on death itself and thereby prevailed against them.

This theme allows us to sustain some of the buoyancy we experience on Easter Sunday, which tests our assumptions about organized religion by managing to be both the holiest and the happiest day on the Christian calendar. A delightful New Yorker cartoon by Barbara Smaller captures a bit of this joyful spirit. Two girls are clinging to their overflowing Easter baskets and chatting with each other. One says, “I like the Easter bunny. I find him less judgmental than Santa Claus.”

This theme does not just get at something that is deeply comforting; it gets at something that is deeply true. In an introduction to his brilliant translation of the Iliad, classics scholar E. V. Rieu observes, “In the end, one is forced to the conclusion that Homer could not help seeing humor both on earth and in Heaven. He found it in the very texture of reality. And I hope that he was right.” Perhaps, like me, you are quite sure that he was right.

Opportunities for laughter are not just pervasive; they are redemptive. A good laugh can reawaken us—resurrect us, if you will—from sadness and self-pity, from despair and depression, from fear and fretfulness. How often in life have you discovered that you were just one unexpected, unrestrained, throw-your-head-back laugh away from a completely different state of mind? And laughter is the original form of viral communication. Charles Dickens wrote, “It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”

So it is appropriate—I would argue, essential—for us to pause on at least one Sunday to share in and to thank God for this amazing gift. Anne Lamott once described laughter as “carbonated holiness.” In that spirit, there is probably no better Sunday to take that pause than as an exclamation point toward the end of our holiest of seasons.

As I mentioned earlier, though, there is a second theme that occupies our thinking on the Sunday after Easter. It does not seem to fit very well with the first. It is the theme of doubt.

Of course, we encounter that theme throughout the scriptures. Over and over again, Jesus talks with his disciples about the amazing things that faith makes possible and, over and over again, they reveal their skepticism. But this questioning takes on a particularly poignant quality in these post-resurrection passages, when the truth stands fully revealed before disciples who continue to demand more evidence.

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite experiences was when my sister, Sandy, would take me to visit an incredible magic shop located near her apartment in Chicago. The shop catered to professional magicians, as well as amateurs like myself, and was filled to the rafters with all manner of colorful, mystifying, attention-grabbing clutter. In those days, almost all of my lawn mowing money ended up in the cash register at Magic, Inc.

The man who worked behind the counter, Jay Marshall, was a famous magician who could dazzle you with an unsettling casualness. He would demonstrate a trick; amazed, you would instantly agree to buy it; and then, and only then, he would show you the secret. Seeing how the mystery worked—getting a glimpse behind the curtain—changed everything. It moved you from wonderment to understanding.

These post-resurrection passages show us how differently faith works than any other experience in our lives. It seems that, no matter how much God shows us, we still hesitate, we still ponder, we still question. To borrow that wonderful phrase of E. V. Rieu, it appears that doubt—like humor—is woven into the very texture of our reality. And it visits us even on the heels of the most stunning demonstration of power and love and grace in all of human history.

In my view, however, it would be the height of arrogance to expect it to be otherwise. After all, how could we possibly claim total certainty about the ways of God? We cannot even claim much certainty about the ways of the average seven-year-old.

Perhaps you know the story of the kindly pastor who was strolling down a neighborhood street on a sunny weekend afternoon when he spied a small boy on the front porch of a house, struggling to reach the doorbell. Touched by the child’s failing efforts, the pastor decided to help. He strode up to the porch, gave the doorbell a long and firm push, and then turned to the boy with a smile. “Now what?” the pastor asked. The boy responded, “Now we run like crazy!”

So it turns out that these two themes actually do have some things in common. We human beings are hard-wired for laughter—and also for doubt. Either of them may spring upon us at any of life’s twists or turns. And—and here’s the critical point—we will find that we need both of them but also must move beyond both of them.

For all the reasons I’ve mentioned, we need laughter. It is a sacred tonic. But, then, we need to use the refreshment it offers to get back to the other work that life presents to us and that God has set aside for us.

We also need doubt. To quote again from Ann Lamotte: “I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me—that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.” In other words, we can have no capacity for faith unless we also have the capacity to question, to puzzle, to wonder, to long for a glimpse behind the curtain and for some insight into the greatest secret of them all.

But, in the end, we will have to move beyond doubt. To take a phrase from chemistry, doubt is an unstable element. It cannot last. Its composition demands its eventual dissolution. After all, it is in the nature of our doubts that we must come to doubt them, too. This is, if you like, a little joke that God has played on the structure of skepticism.

The doubting of our doubts may not seem like much conviction. It does, however, leave a little room, enough room, for faith to work. In the beginning, that faith may be no bigger than a mustard seed. But someone once assured us that this is all we need to move a mountain.

A horse, a cheeseburger, and a skeptic walked into a bar. The bartender looked at the horse and said “Why the long face?” He turned to the cheeseburger and said “Sorry, we don’t serve food in here.” And then he glanced in the direction of the skeptic and said “Let me know when you’ve made up your mind.”

So laugh; doubt; laugh at your doubts; doubt your doubts; believe; repeat. This is the dance of faith. This is the tapestry of life. It is a beautiful thing.

Amen.