Faith & Doubt
John 6: 56-69
Through the written word and the spoken word, God help us to hear your living Word, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
“This is a difficult teaching? Who can accept it?”
After a series of teachings on the bread of life—including Jesus feeding people and Jesus telling everyone he is the bread of life and all who eat his flesh will have eternal life—we reach a point when folks are ready to jump off the bandwagon. The feeding was great, the teachings were still interesting and promised eternal life, but now people are challenged by Jesus offering His flesh in place of the manna of their ancestors.
The Jesus movement is in full force… then Jesus starts to get more radical and more out there than people were expecting. For some it is too much! The mysterious and metaphorical flesh-eating sets people over the edge. Plenty of folks leave the movement.
The apostles, however, plan to stay with Jesus. Even the one who will later betray Jesus sticks around.
When Jesus asks, “do you wish to go away?,” I love Simon Peter’s response.
He says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
In other words, Simon Peter speaks on behalf of the twelve and says to Jesus— ”We have nowhere else to go. You are promising eternal life and we believe you to be the Son of God.”
What I particularly like about his response is that Peter never says “we have no doubts or questions.” He never says “yes, the message is entirely clear.” No, Peter says they “believe and know” with the implication being that they believe enough to continue following Jesus. They believe enough to not go looking for an alternative.
Many of the people following Jesus were unable to accept Jesus’ teachings and stopped following. There were likely others who were confused, but still interested enough to follow. They had seen Jesus’ deeds and teachings and knew something important was happening. I am sure there were folks with questions and even doubts who were still willing to follow.
Here we are 2000 years later. The followers of Jesus and those who spread the Jesus movement, eventually becoming Christianity, were probably the same sort of mixed bag we see from the beginning. Surely there were people who followed for a while and then felt like the message was too much, too out there. Then others with questions, concerns, and doubts. And likely some who whole heartedly believed every word.
If I were to guess, the people in the middle category, the people with questions but with enough faith to continue, were likely the majority and are much of the reason we practice Christianity today.
Here is the thing about Christianity—it doesn’t actually make complete and total sense all of the time. Most of our faith defies logic and eludes scientific explanation. That’s why we need faith and belief. Christianity is not based in hard facts. It is confusing at times. We have questions, and doubts.
Being Christian, being a faithful follower, being a disciple does not require that we have no questions and no doubts. It simply requires that we have enough faith to stick around, to keep following, and to keep learning. Being a follower of Christ requires that we believe enough to wrestle with our questions and doubts. It requires that we are curious enough to listen to the Word of God and to grow and learn in the process.
So in response to the early followers, I say, “yes, this teaching IS difficult. AND we can accept it.” It is difficult to understand and explain God coming to share in our human nature and live and die as one of us. It is difficult to understand God offering of God’s flesh for us to eat. And difficult to understand how that flesh offers eternal life. These are the sources of centuries long debates and arguments.
And trust me, reading the essays upon essays of theologians engaged in these arguments is hard as well!
It is hard to fathom that we, and so many others around the world, gather at a table to eat of bread and simultaneously eat of the body of our Savior. It is difficult because it requires us to think about the mystery of God. We have to imagine something so much bigger than ourselves. We believe that this is the bread of eternal life.
And some days it just feels like bread. And what does eternal life look like anyway…
Yes, it is a difficult teaching, and we don’t have to accept it overnight and without question. Christianity is a lifetime of work. It is a lifetime of discovery. A lifetime of building and deconstructing and reconstructing and rethinking. Christianity is not passive belief—now that’s a challenging teaching! Christianity is not passive.
It is an active sort of belief. A belief with many facets and room for movement and exploration. A belief followed by action. A belief that motivates and guides.
I took a Christology class in seminary. Christology is the study of Christ, in the same way that theology is the study of God. The class included reading many ancient and modern thinkers who debated exactly how Jesus took on human form. Did God change form? Or did God put on a human skin suit? It included debates about whether Jesus could actually be born of a woman and progress through normal childhood developmental stages. And debates about the meaning of the cross. Basically, there is way more than a semester’s worth of interesting material around Christology.
And that class left me with more questions than answers. I know our doctrinal answers about Jesus and even those still leave room for questions. I had days in that class when I thought to myself, “how in the world do I believe any of this?”
The beauty of it was that I had a chance to wrestle with my understanding of Jesus. At moments, I felt closer to Jesus in my questions than I did in my certainty. My questions got me in conversation with Jesus. My questions made me pray. And my questions made me want to follow more closely.
This was formalized wrestling. It was guided and graded, I might add.
Your wrestling may or may not happen in a classroom.
It might happen standing by the hospital bed of a loved one, when you are asking God how this could be happening? How can our all-loving God let this happen? Where is God now?
It might be sitting on the bus when you finally have a few moments to think by yourself. Where is the stillness and peace God promises? Where can I find God in the slog of everyday life?
It might be on a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Or on the best day of your life. In the moments when God feels furthest and when God feels surprisingly close.
It might be a time of life transition—a new job, a move, a new school year, a challenging new diagnosis, a marriage or divorce, or child on the way. Transition makes us ask all sorts of questions as we notice new things and make discoveries about how we relate to God and to others.
Wherever and whenever you wrestle with God and wrestle with your belief… I hope you do it. I have you give yourself the chance to doubt and to question.
Many people have been taught that a “good Christian” won’t doubt. Many people are or have been in environments where they were not allowed to question. There is one way and you have to believe it and follow it every single moment. I hope that you feel room to explore your faith here. I hope that classes, prayer groups, worship, and informal fellowship all feel like places where you can bring your whole journey with Christ to the table. The ups and downs and everything in between is welcome.
© 2021 The Rev. Adelyn Tyler
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas