April 13, 2015
Recently, during a Saturday morning talk that I was giving, many of the people in the room encountered a crisis of faith. Let me explain the situation. In order to be a good host, we had supplied coffee and bagels to go along with the morning lecture. I was the one who was responsible for doing the shopping, so I thought bagels with a nice spread might be appreciated. I purchased some cream cheese and, since not everyone likes cream cheese, I also bought some margarine. It was the name of the margarine that led to this crisis of belief amongst many of those in the room. The name of the margarine: “I can’t believe it’s not butter.”
Well, I can’t tell you just how controversial the purchase of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” would be. The questions came flying. “If it’s not butter, what could it possibly be? “And did we want to know?” “If we can’t believe THIS isn’t butter, what can we believe in?” Actually, for those who have ever had the product “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” it’s not really THAT hard to strain your belief. It is a very tasty spread, to be sure, but it’s not exactly stuff you’d find in a dairy farm. This point was not missed on the people attending the morning talk and they let me know about it. Laundry detergent have taken to the billboards promising us a better … us.
And so, betrayed once again by the advertising specialists from Madison Avenue… yet another door locks inside of our hearts.
In life, of course, a fantastically-named margarine is not the only thing that will lock a door inside of our heart. It’s not the only thing that will lead us to approach life with an increase of skepticism. So many of us have had wonderful dreams for our lives … dreams that ended up being dashed upon the rocks of reality. The loved one whom we thought would be with us always and are now gone. The life partners we desperately hoped for but never met. We all had experiences that have led us to approach life a bit more skeptically. We’ve all had experiences that have led us to approach God more skeptically. We’ve all had experiences that have locked more than one door in our heart.
The Apostle Thomas, like all of the other disciples, had a lot of reasons to have doors locked within his heart. He had been following this man Jesus, a man who held every promise to be the Messiah… the one who would free his people from oppression … the one whom the Scriptures seemed to indicate would be the fulfillment of the promises God had made … and it had all ended with the most vicious form of execution conceived by mankind.
And now Thomas is presented to us as someone to be judged for being a doubter? No way man – he’s just keeping it real.
We, like Thomas, have our own doubts with various locked doors within our own hearts often confronted with simple pieties such as, “Let go and let God.” “Open your hearts!” “Have faith!” Pieties that often fall short when confronted with the various experiences of broken trust from some of the people in our lives. Slogans that don’t seem to address the nagging questions many bring with us. Anyone who takes their spiritual life even remotely seriously will at some point start asking at least a few suspicious questions about the Almighty.
Where does that leave us? Do we just spend our lives mired in suspicion and lack of trust? Do we just keep the doors in our hearts locked against not only others around us but also from any notion God, let alone a lived experience of God in our lives? Or on the other side, do we sit around and feel guilty for experiencing these very legitimate questions in our lives? Do we sit around and feel guilty for these very real doubts that we experience. Are we really supposed to live our lives spaced out and ignorance and naïveté? It’s quite the spiritual dilemma – what do we do?
St. Thomas helps give us a good example. In the midst of his doubts, in the midst of his questions, and even in the midst of his fear, he did the only thing that was asked of him: he just showed up. At the end of the day, that is the only thing asked of us and our faith, that we just show up.
In the Gospels, we hear that on that first Easter evening, the disciples were gathered in a place where the doors were locked. And yet Jesus came in anyway. A week later the doors were locked again. And Thomas could’ve left town after all the others in the group seemed to be loosing their marbles with the tall tale he was hearing about Jesus’ Resurrection. Thomas could’ve separated himself from the group, especially since the disciples were being hunted down. But no, he didn’t. He just showed up. Despite the doubt, despite the fear, Thomas showed up. And when Thomas showed up, Jesus came in, despite the locked doors.
We all have reasons not to show up for God in our lives. We have been hurt in the past and too many doors in our hearts are locked. Show up anyway. We have prayed and have not appeared to hear an answer right away. Show up anyway. This faith thing does not appear to make sense for anyone with a rational mind. Show up anyway.
It may not be our job to unlock all of the doors of our hearts. It may not be our job to answer all of the legitimate questions that we have. Those jobs are too big for any of us. But it is our job to show up. Because when we show up, Jesus will be able to address any of the doubts of our mind, Jesus will be able to walk through any of the locked doors of our hearts. Because when we show up, God shows up, even if we are not ever fully able to believe that it’s not butter.