The Trouble with Jesus
by Constance Hastings
Holy Doubt
April 5, 2021
Could it be that faith is not actually a fully convinced mindset? Could it be that to truly have faith an element of doubt, perceptions that rest in possibly not as much as possibly so, is necessary? Do faith and doubt exist not as opposites but as integral parts of each other?
The door was locked. The women had told them they’d been to the tomb, but Jesus’ body was not there. Instead, Mary Magdalene ran and found them with her message, “I have seen the Lord!” The disciples gathered, but still they locked the door. Likely, they had doubted her. Mary Magdalene had once been possessed with demons, so the story around her goes. After the trauma of three days ago, it would be easy to think she had relapsed into her old sickness, seeing what was not really there. Doubt was rational.
Rational except when the door of it was blown off. Despite the bolt holding it shut, a locked door was of no consequence when suddenly Jesus in the flesh was among them. “Peace be with you,” he said, showing them his scarred but fully healed hands and side. What had never been done before, what could never be explained with rational proof, had happened. His demise by brutal execution was now secondary to this new life that reversed death and its finality.
Joy doesn’t adequately express what happened to these friends who had hunkered down in fear for their lives. Certainly, they were thrilled to see Jesus alive again. But would they have reacted in ecstasy if they had in the least believed that Jesus would do as he had told them, die and return alive in three days? Instead, their doubt had slammed into their faith.
They weren’t alone. Thomas, one of the original twelve, wasn’t with them that night. When told Jesus was alive, he wouldn’t buy it. Furthermore, he wouldn’t accept just an appearance but declared he had to actually touch Jesus’ hands and sword-pierced side to believe it had happened. No ghost was going to change his mind.
Jesus delivered eight days later. Again, despite locked doors, Jesus appeared to the disciples, this time including Thomas. Like before, Jesus greeted them, “Peace be with you.” Peace: don’t be afraid. Peace: this isn’t like anything else you or the whole world has ever known. Peace: prepare to have all your assumptions and expectations reversed. Peace: lean in, accept what I have done. “Peace be with you.”
He invited Thomas to touch him literally in his points of pain. Jesus knew this was the place where Thomas’ doubt as well as so many others’ questions have had to pause, sort out in mind and soul if this could be. Only by fully accepting Jesus’ death can there be as well an acceptance of resurrection. One won’t have significance without the other. Faith must be linked with doubt for the two to become belief.
Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” He was the first to declare the divinity of Jesus Christ, not just as one who is a Savior whose death and resurrection bought a ticket to heaven, but as ruler over all that life may bring to us and all in life that needs reversal, even as we wrestle with our doubts.
Jesus acknowledges to Thomas, “You believe because you have seen me.” But there are those who perhaps have even more of a blessing than a physical revelation. To those who did not know him then and even more so to all the world that will come later, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Blessed are those who have not had the benefit of miracles and heavenly revelation. Miracles help some, but those who “come to believe” without them very likely have the greatest miracle of all, the miracle of a faith that has acknowledged doubt.
Jesus blessed all those -- from Thomas up to now -- who have managed to believe without the benefit of direct experience; all those, that is, who have managed to come to a faith that is not the opposite of doubt but which lives with doubts and yet still finds a way to believe.
It is in the not knowing how God does what God does that faith is centered, stretched and filled. But it usually starts with some honest doubt. Honest doubt leads to honest belief because the journey of faith is just that, a journey where we come to believe.
John 20:19-29
Before Jesus even got into town, they lined the road, spreading a carpet of coats and shouting, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” Expectations were high. If only he had come to fulfill them....With too much popularity and too many attacks on the powers-that-be, Jesus wasn’t making it easy on himself. Sooner or later, someone was going to put a stop to this. As it was, it wasn’t just one.
It’s hard to allow the less attractive parts of ourselves be exposed, let alone the parts which stink, with warts, bunions, and fungus embedded in the nails. Equally difficult is to accept it from one of whom we think so highly, even worship.... Worse yet, maybe they know us better than we think, better than we know ourselves. Their goodness shouldn’t be sullied with our mean stuff, the secret knowledge of ourselves.
Why does God have to come so close?
The Trouble with Jesus: Only by witnessing a power often misunderstood, not a parade, might people realize his purpose.
Judas wasn’t your best guy. Why you brought him in, we’ll never understand. How he ever became treasurer for your disciples’ accounts must have happened with mastered manipulation. As it is, though his intentions weren’t the best, he may have had a good point here. And saying it might have been the mic drop of the night.
Frequently when Jesus was teaching, those of ill-repute were in the crowd, tax collectors and “other notorious sinners.” Reputations are made by who your friends are. True, so why did Jesus seem to prefer, maybe even have a better time with the likes of these? He answers with parables about what gets lost.
The Trouble with Jesus is he advocates for more time by grace while not denying judgement.
The Trouble with Jesus is how he knew what was coming and still went straight into it. He'd call out Herod for the fox he was even as he sobbed over the rejection he'd meet.
All heroes have an antagonist, one who pushes hard against the best parts of who you are and what your purpose is. Fitting then, God’s beloved Son would meet the total antithesis of who he was before he even got out of that hot place, a kind of hell.
The Trouble with Jesus means our treasures are most dear to God when they are the ashes of our lives. Whatever upholds justice and love of neighbor is what God desires.
Any who have ever had a mountaintop experience will tell you, it’s nothing that can be planned, arranged, or scheduled. Spiritual encounters come out of the blue, filled with insights, revelations not previously perceived but somehow needed and relevant to a moment or period of life. And they never last. If anything, they serve as touchstones reminding of the source of that power, power greater than oneself in God who was, is and will always be.
