Faith After Doubt

 John 18:33-37  (CEB)

Pilate went back into the palace. He summoned Jesus and asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me?”

Pilate responded, “I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”

Jesus replied, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here.”

“So you are a king?” Pilate said.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”

When I thought about doubt --- I always thought it was a matter of belief.

If I believed the “right” things --- I could not have doubt.

And if I didn’t believe the right things --- I would be run out of the church.

And on top of that --- I was taught that removing someone from the faith community for incorrect beliefs (what is called excommunication in some circles) was not cruel. but necessary.

Because that was just a part of following the rules and those that threatened the rules needed to be removed like a cancer.

I tried to believe correctly

I hung on for as long as I could --- sometimes it seemed like I was just barely hanging on by my fingernails.

But slowly, doubts began to grow the more seriously I read and studied the bible.

I struggled with the reality of at least two --- very distinct and different creation stories.

But what probably pushed me over the edge was when I began studying the birth stories in detail.

Raymond Brown’s now classic, commentary The Birth of the Messiah opened the flood gates to doubt.

And then along came Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan --- and their works finished me off.

I was forced to synthesize my doubt and try to build a new coherent theology based on my faith AFTER doubt.

What Borg and Crossan, and later McLaren helped me realize was that it wasn’t of utmost importance (eternal importance) that I BELIEVED the stories as FACTUAL --- but to learn to read beyond the text --- some might say to read between the text or behind the text.

To grasp the meaning each individual story carried

Not only to the early church, but to me

To learn to let the stories breathe in me

The word McLaren uses --- is to let the stories “animate me”

And that made sense to me.

It wasn’t of eternal importance if the story took place exactly like it is written, but what was important was what the story is trying to teach us --- teach me

McLaren writes:

The meaning was the hidden treasure, the hidden pearl, the spirit of the story hidden in its letters and words and punctuation.  Whether I considered the stories factually accurate was never the point; what actually mattered all along was whether I lived a life pregnant with the meaning those stories contained.

Today is Christ the King Sunday --- the last Sunday of the year --- next Sunday will be the first Sunday in Advent

It is fitting that we end the year with a statement of allegiance to the one who reigns over us. 

We declare our ultimate allegiance not to a nation, not to a denomination or even a particular church, --- not to an ideal or dream, but to a person. 

Do I need to repeat that again?

Because I imagine if we look at our allegiances we do not align very well with that statement.

Our faith is to be all about a relationship with Jesus of Nazareth, whom we have experienced as the Messiah or the Christ.

Jesus is the one who reigns over us, the one in whom we find our identity and our being. 

But when I read this story of Jesus and Pilate --- I must admit --- I have my doubts whether it actually took place the way the author of John reports it.

I could go into a lengthy argument about my doubts --- about concerns the way the story is recorded --- but that is just an exercise of missing the point.

The point is --- why --- why was this story preserved and passed down to us today in this way --- and why has it become the cornerstone of the concluding Sunday of the Christian year --- the culmination of all we believe.

Not because Pilate actually declared that Jesus is King of the Jews but because we are being called to look at what we honor and hold above all others.

Is Jesus most important? --- Is Jesus the King of our lives? --- Do we put Jesus first? 

or are the Colts?, 

or the Pacers, 

or Butler, IU or even Duke basketball?

Does Jesus reign over us --- or do our investment accounts?

If we focus on the literalness of the story and not the meaning --- it is much easier to create rationalizations (that a lot of us are all doing right now in our heads).

But once we take the meaning to heart --- everything changes.

I have mentioned the name Rachel Held Evans many times to you over the years.  Her influence on my life has been profound --- and she has led me to a variety of other biblical scholars and theologians who are not afraid to wrestle with the doubts in their faith journey.

What attracted me to Rachel Held Evans was her vulnerability.

She NEVER claimed to have figured it all out

And she was unafraid to share her struggles.

I want to pause for a minute and share a piece of my worldview.

One of the greatest gifts that my older brother gave me was to open up the possibility of participating in High School Debate --- I have no idea what attracted him.

About three or four years ago --- my debate coach (George Stege) showed up here on a Sunday morning (you want to talk about a humbling experience)

And before the pandemic we were reconnecting in a wonderful way.

What debate taught me was to look over, under and behind an issue.

That nothing --- in reality --- is black and white.

Following High School --- I went off to college and studied History and Political Science.

The history department had hired a number of professors who were black-listed during the McCarthy era.

The Political Science department was extremely conservative and ideologically aligned with Ronald Reagan.

Both viewpoints can’t be right --- can they?

What I learned from that experience has shaped my life --- and that is that ideology is not linear --- with the extremes at polar opposing ends

Instead, it is much more like a globe

And the far right and left are a heck of a lot more similar than either wants to believe

That experience taught me to doubt --- to not take things for granted --- but to try and understand the meaning.

I also learned to try and listen and, too not only see but also understand, other points of view.

I don’t always agree with them --- but I try my darndest not to make it into a wall that separates us

Rachel Held Evans in a blog post wrote:

David Kinnaman explains in his enlightening book, You Lost Me, one of the top six responses among young adults is that they left the church because they didn’t feel like their pastors, mentors, and friends took their questions about faith seriously. 

“Young Christians (and former Christians too) say the church is not a place that allows them to express doubts,” writes Kinnaman. “They do not feel safe admitting that faith doesn’t always make sense. In addition, many feel that the church’s response to doubt is trivial and fact-focused, as if people can be talked out of doubting.” 

As I’ve said on multiple occasions, most young adults I know aren’t looking for a religion that answers all of their questions, but rather a community of faith in which they feel safe to asking them.  A good place to start in creating such a community is to treat young adults like the complex human beings they are, and to take their questions about faith seriously.

I don’t think it is simply young people who wrestle with questions and doubts about faith.

Moreover --- I am convinced that doubt does not need to be the end of faith.

Instead, it offers to us a re-birth into a new kind of faith.

A faith that expresses itself in radical love.

In the Letter to the Galatians, crusty old Paul sums it up nicely when he told them:

“The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love!”

My hunch is that most of the people in Galatia started doing what we often do --- the WHAT ABOUTS

What about the non-observant?

What about the gentiles?

What about the . . . you can fill in the blank.

But Paul says emphatically:

“The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love!”

Faith after doubt acknowledges that we don’t have it all figured out --- but that LOVE is the only way to treat each other.

We seek to live in harmony with one another.

Brian McLaren closes his book with a beautiful benediction based on the beatitudes, that I want to end with today:

Blessed are the curious, for their curiosity honors reality.

Blessed are the uncertain and those with second thoughts, for their minds are     still open.

Blessed are the wonderers, for they shall find what is wonderful.

Blessed are those who question their answers, for their horizons will expand forever.

Blessed are those who often feel foolish, for they are wiser than those who always think themselves wise.

Blessed are those who are scolded, suspected, and labeled as heretics by the gatekeepers, for the prophets and mystics were treated in the same way by the gatekeepers of their day.

Blessed are those who know their unknowing, for they shall have the last laugh.

Blessed are the perplexed, for they have reached the frontiers of contemplation.

Blessed are they who become cynical about their cynicism and suspicious of their suspicion, for they will enter the second innocence.

Blessed are the doubters, for they shall see through false gods.

Blessed are the lovers, for they shall see God everywhere.

Is Jesus first in your life?

What does that look like to have Jesus as our King?

Are you willing to fall in love with Jesus?

Paul would tell us quite simply

“The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love!”

Faith After Doubt: It's A Labor of Love

 John 11:32-44 (CEB)

When Mary arrived where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

When Jesus saw her crying and the Jews who had come with her crying also, he was deeply disturbed and troubled. He asked, “Where have you laid him?”

They replied, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus began to cry. The Jews said, “See how much he loved him!” But some of them said, “He healed the eyes of the man born blind. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”

Jesus was deeply disturbed again when he came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone covered the entrance. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”

Martha, the sister of the dead man, said, “Lord, the smell will be awful! He’s been dead four days.”

Jesus replied, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believe, you will see God’s glory?” So they removed the stone. Jesus looked up and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. I know you always hear me. I say this for the benefit of the crowd standing here so that they will believe that you sent me.” Having said this, Jesus shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his feet bound and his hands tied, and his face covered with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”

I always figure I am connecting when I get comments both praising my sermon series and others “concerned about it.”

It is clear that many of you have connected because you have your own questions --- as I have posed mine and my willingness to wrestle with God.

But I have also been told that sharing doubts makes some people uncomfortable because people prefer to follow those who are strong and confident.

I will tell you --- I am strong and confident in my doubts . . .

And from my very first Sunday with you, I have tried to be as open and honest with you about my faith, my struggles, and the direction I believe God is calling Meridian Church to go in.

I can assure that I don’t suffer from what theologian Peter Enns calls: The Sin of Certainty.

My life, and my faith are lived in shades of gray.

But I know that even though I have lots of questions --- I don’t walk this path alone.

As the Psalmist says: 

The Lord is my shepherd.

    I lack nothing.

He lets me rest in grassy meadows;

    he leads me to restful waters;

        he keeps me alive.

He guides me in proper paths

    for the sake of his good name.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley,

    I fear no danger because you are with me.

Your rod and your staff—

    they protect me.

We have walked through three of the four stages of faith as identified by Brian McLaren in his book, Faith After Doubt.

Simplicity

Complexity

Perplexity

Today we will look at the fourth stage

McLaren writes:

When I first began developing this four-stage schema, I called this final stage Humility.  The name seemed fitting because for me, Stage Four involved a sense of embarrassment about my earlier arrogance and naivete.  But it seemed even more arrogant and naïve to say one had reached a stage of Humility. I toyed with calling it Maturity . . . Commitment . . . Solidarity, Integrity and . . . Second Simplicity.  In the end, though, Harmony felt like the right name, primarily because it resonated with the new dimension of non-discriminatory love that became possible at this stage.

If you are familiar with Father Richard Rohr, you know that in his book Falling Upward, he describes the second half of life, in which we focus on filling up the container we created in the first half of life --- with meaning --- he too calls this Harmony.

For Rohr, there are two stages of life ---

Rohr suggests that the most significant difference between the two stages is that in the second half of life we become capable of non-dual seeing and thinking --- which is the way that contemplatives and mystics encounter the world.  

We learn to hold binaries in larger unities, 

to gather paradox and tension in a larger embrace, 

to welcome diversity without division, 

to hear difference without dissonance.

Dualistic thinking is the necessary work of Stage One – Simplicity

Good --- Bad

Like --- Dislike

Right --- Wrong

Male --- Female

Us --- Them

As we move into Stage Two --- Complexity --- we retain our dualistic thought process --- but we make it more complex

While there is absolute good and bad there are also variations of the two 

60/40   30/70 etc.

We struggle trying to understand the shades of gray

In Stage Three we see so much complexity that we begin to question if there was any reality to the dualism of stage one simplicity.

We begin to recognize that those who taught us dualist thought often had an agenda

The tragedy of it all is those dualisms can be used to bring harm

Dehumanization

Violence

Genocide

Destruction of God’s creation --- the earth

McLaren writes:

Finding ourselves deep in Perplexity, and feeling disillusioned with our naïve dualisms and pragmatisms, we face a stark and terrifying choice.  Will we become cynical nihilists, seeing through everything with our x-ray eyes so that meaning, purpose, value, reverence, and wonder become increasingly, then utterly, invisible?  For many people, the cynicism is the only intellectually honest opinion they’re aware of, so they surrender the search for meaning and they surrender to perpetual Perplexity, all dressed up in critical thinking with nowhere to go.

But for many of us that is not enough

Somehow, we become convinced that there has to be more than the perplexity of Stage Three thinking.

Whether it is through mystics or saints

Wise teachers

Poets

Pilgrimage or mystical experience

“In one way or another, [we] catch a scent, a faint music, a hint of an undiscovered country beyond Perplexity.”

McLaren used that term “undiscovered country” which comes from a scene in Hamlet, and in that scene it refers to death.

The illusion is somewhat fitting here, too, because there is indeed a kind of dying involved with passing through Perplexity into Harmony.  You might call it a death to ego or pride, as we relinquish our right to judge, to know, and to control.  You might call it a death to privilege, superiority, or supremacy, as we realize that all of us ultimately share in the human condition, and anyone who claims otherwise is either naïve or hypocritical. (McLaren p.96)

If you were to try and describe faith in this stage of Harmony --- it would be: 

a humble reverent openness to mystery that expresses itself in non-discriminatory love.

In this stage of spiritual growth --- we begin to look at the world differently.

• We begin to see things without the obsessive dualistic judgments of Simplicity

• Without the pragmatic analysis that is almost compulsive in Complexity

• Without the deconstructing suspicions of Perplexity

If I was to describe the first three stages --- in a nutshell --- it would be using the tools at our disposal to try and be in control over what we know.

As we began to wrestle with Perplexity --- we began to doubt our own cynicism --- which is such an important hallmark of Perplexity.

We doubt our own doubts

McLaren puts it this way:

Our naïve certainty, excessive confidence, and obsessive deconstruction began to burn away in a self-consuming blast furnace.  We finally descended to a point so low that instead of looking down on everything, we had to look up at it from a humbled position of under-standing, you might say, and in do doing, we became capable of encountering something without needing to control it.  Rather we were able simply to see it, and perhaps even to see it with love.

One of my early experiences with Harmony was forced on my a few years following 9/11.

I was reading John Updike’s book Terrorist and simultaneously working with an interfaith group that sent medical supplies throughout the world.

I was in many ways --- through Updike’s novel --- forced to confront my xenophobia, and I began to be able to see, particularly my Muslim neighbor as a neighbor and not as a threat.

I was able to work through all the labels and prejudices that were a part of my character

Now before I sound good and self-righteous --- It didn’t last

But it gave me a glimpse of what was possible

But when I am honest with myself --- there was another glimpse of Harmony that happened even earlier.

Sometime around 1995 I participated in a mission trip to the non-touristy areas of Jamaica --- we were working, helping to restore a church in the Southern foothills of the mountains that run across Jamaica

One evening, and I do not remember how or why --- I went for a hike away from the home that we were staying in --- and trekked up one of the hillsides by myself.

Over the years I have often be told that I don’t have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders --- it is a problem I have had my entire life --- even as a teenager.  

I was always that “serious kid”

That night --- I especially felt the weight of the world --- I am sure that is why I went off by myself.

I have never really seriously wrestled with my call --- what I have wrestled with is “am I living out my call as I am supposed to?”

That night --- I was wrestling.

I felt I was at one of those crossroads in my life.

As I sat there, off in the distance --- way up on the Mocha Mountains --- I could see massive conveyor systems moving large quantities of bauxite from the hillsides to the plants.

I had never seen anything like it in my life

The conveyor belt was all lit up

It was a huge operation

I have to tell you I was mesmerized by it --- and must have gazed at it for a long – long time as I asked God --- what did God want of me?

But at some point --- my gaze shifted skyward --- and being out in the middle of nowhere --- with almost no ambient light (the bauxite mines were a long way off) --- the heavens opened up to me.

The milky way filled the sky and I was suddenly very small

Small in relationship to the mines I saw off in the distance

Even smaller in relation to creation

And I heard God speak to me

Not an answer

But that same reality I feel when I read the 23rd Psalm

The Lord is my shepherd.

    I lack nothing.

He guides me in proper paths

    for the sake of his good name.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley,

    I fear no danger because you are with me.

Harmony

I am not there yet --- I am still becoming,

But the strengths and weaknesses I have worked though on my spiritual journey have prepared me for learning to live in Harmony.

I chose this scripture, today, because it speaks to me of this journey of faith that we are on.

The simplicity of believing that if Jesus had been there --- Lazarus would never had died.

The complexity and perplexity of seeking pragmatic explanations for his death and current predicament.

And the love --- the radical love that Jesus demonstrates.

In two weeks, I am going to finish this series (at least for now) and help you to glimpse what this radical love looks like it.

And most importantly --- how we can live that love.

McLaren writes:

Doubt is the doorway to love . . .Doubt prepares the way for a new kind of faith after (and with) doubt, a humbled and harmonious faith, a faith that expresses itself in love.