Sunday, January 5, 2025
The Second Sunday in Christmastide
1.
I fell asleep early New Year’s Eve—not that I intended to. But I’d pulled up a Bob Dylan playlist on Spotify, lay down on the bed with my headphones on, and just drifted off. My daughter and I had just been to see the new Dylan bio pic and we’d been talking that night about the stunning relevance of so many Dylan tunes, so many Dylan lyrics to the world we’re living in these days. So I fell asleep listening to “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changing” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Songs Bob Dylan wrote sixty years ago!
I remember pulling off the headphones when the playlist rolled over a second time: “How many years can a mountain exist / before it is washed to the sea? / And how many years can some people exist / before they’re allowed to be free? / Yes, and, how many times can a man turn his head / pretending he just doesn’t see?” And I slept a little bit, fitfully I guess, as 2024 turned toward 2025.
And I awakened early New Year’s Day, as so many of you did, to devastating news out of New Orleans, and online details of a troubled Army vet who drove his car through a crowd and killed 15 on Bourbon Street overnight. And I have to tell you this morning. News like that, violence like that: it just sucks the energy, the hope right out of me before the day (heck, before the year) has even begun. Might have been Lewiston, Maine. Might have been Orlando, Florida. Might have been Las Vegas or Newtown or Pittsburgh. On New Year’s Eve, it was New Orleans. How in the world can we continue to kill one another like this? How in the world can we stoke such contempt, such violence in our human hearts? Can God truly exist, truly and creatively exist, in the midst of such madness?
I guess the topic, then, is doubt. The topic this morning is doubt. Is it possible to believe in God, and nevertheless doubt the power, the relevance, the certainties we may have taken for granted in the early days of our faith journeys? I want so much to believe in a God of mercy and kindness, a God who desires human companionship and gratitude, a God who partners with us to build communities of justice and respect. But I wake up New Year’s Day, I scan horrific pictures from another American catastrophe, and I have to wonder if love truly can (as Paul says in his letters) believe all things, bear all things, endure all things. Do all things really work together for the good for those who trust God? I have to wonder if despair overwhelms mercy and kindness more often than not. And where is God in all this? And such doubt weighs like a heavy stone in my heart.
Maybe you know something about all this. Maybe you doubt too.
2.
If you do, if you too find doubt an occasional companion on the spiritual path, or even a persistent, nattering nuisance, I commend to you the words of the great 20th century mystic Simone Weil—who said, “He who has not God in himself cannot feel God’s absence.” Let that sink in a bit. “She who has not God in herself cannot feel God’s absence.” In a sense, faith is itself a doorway in our hearts to doubt. One who is moved by God’s radical blessing and unbendable love is sometimes simultaneously shattered by sadness and injustice. To sing God’s praise—as we do in our gatherings every Sunday—is not to deny our weariness or even our skepticism. It is however to make ample space for grief and longing, for uncertainty, in the very shelter of our deepest faith. “He who has not God in himself cannot feel God’s absence.”
And so, and so, it may well be that faith and doubt are inevitably partnered in our human hearts. Feels that way in mine. It may well be that doubt, insecurity, even bewilderment make faith possible, make faith vibrant and holy and real. Our tradition, in fact, insists on it. And I think you know this too. By virtue of your own experience.
In the most challenging moments around a loved one’s death—you sense a promise that doesn’t eradicate all doubt, but reconciles it with hope, with love. In a conversation with a friend who questions everything you believe and why you believe it—you find a mutual respect, a persevering respect, that gladdens your heart just the same. And in a campaign for peace, seeking reconciliation among adversaries—you hear a hymn that doesn’t render doubt meaningless, but ennobles the effort with courage. “We Shall Overcome!” Faith and doubt. Doubt and faith. Partnered in our hearts.
You see, those who live only in regions of certainty and clarity are often the very ones who lack empathy and forbearance. Beware their ironclad convictions. To be certain of all truths is to be callous more often than not to the pain or uncertainty of others. Inaccessible to mystery and grace. But doubt--doubt makes faith, faith. In the Old Testament, Abram leaves all things familiar to go to an unseen land, to follow an unnamed deity, to create with Sarai a family to bless all families. Doubting as they go. Doubting as they go. But believing just the same.
And Jesus, of course, in his own hours of agony, crying out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!” Doubting the love, the presence, the promise to which he’s given his life. I mean, there’s no other way to hear this cry. Jesus embodies—in his own life, in his own struggle—the bewildering, befuddling, bedeviling doubts that keep the rest of us stirring at night. “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!”
And all the while—in his restlessness, in his doubting—addressing the One he loves. Calling out for the One he loves. Right there at the heart of all that violence. Right there where despair is most compelling. Believing in the only love, the only power that could ever bear him across the threshold. And unite him to the dreams and aspirations of his friends. In a sense, his longing for God, his aching for God’s absence—stirs in Jesus a still more intimate sense of God’s tenderness and grace.
3.
There is no way to make sense of those fifteen deaths in New Orleans Tuesday night. There is no way to justify those deaths (or the deaths of dozens in Lewiston last year, or the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza over the past year and a half): there is no way to justify cruelty or genocide as part of God’s bigger plan, or necessary losses for a higher purpose. We must not turn away from such suffering; and Christ himself requires not just sympathy but costly discipleship. Which necessarily means beating our swords into plowshares. A church that rationalizes brutality as a human necessity has lost is soul.
But it is possible that doubt itself drives us to risk something more lasting than retribution, something more compelling than hate, something more promising than despair. Or, as the wonderful preacher Frederick Buechner once said: “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” Isn’t that something? “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” To be awake to the opportunities before us is to doubt even as we believe. To be alert to our own precious calling is to question everything we take to be sacred and holy and true. By faith, then, by a gift of spirit against all odds, by a sense of divine presence at the very heart of our pain—we can and we will join generations of saints who have lived to praise the God of Love, who have given their lives to heal broken hearts, who have found grace and beauty in a fragile and sometimes maddening world. “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep it awake and moving.” Tell your friends!
The good news, friends, is that you don’t have to figure this out. You don’t have to wrestle your doubts to the ground, and then overcome them by sheer will, and then rise up of your own strength and prowess. You don’t have to conquer your doubts at all. What we do here, what we do together is prayerful, discerning and courageously loving. Doubt and faith go hand in hand. And that’s really what church—and this church, in particular—is all about. You all heard Antony last week. In community, we meet one another’s doubts with love, we face one another’s biggest fears with patience and kindness. And in offering all of this to God, in bearing all of this honestly, we are blessed with the kind of belief that resists certainties, but bears instead the deepest and most resilient kind of hope. We don’t worship together to prove ourselves most faithful, or most Christ-like, or most worthy of God’s grace. We worship together to draw courage from one another, to discover God’s blessing even and especially in our seasons of sorrow. We become the church through our believing and our doubting, and the two are always in play, always in play in our human hearts.
4.
In the poetry of John’s prologue, these verses we’ve read this morning, we’re reminded that the earliest Christians found in Jesus not just a great man, not just a wise and loving soul—but the Light, the Grace, the Word that brings all life, all creation, all humanity into being.
But John’s wisdom is worth considering, I think. For in Jesus, these first believers found one who is not dead set against doubt, but willing to voice it, even embrace it. In Jesus, these first believers discovered a Spirit who finds doubt not just honest, but true to the challenges of living in a Godly world. In Jesus, the church has always met One whose love and kindness persist through darkness and light, through joy and sorrow, through every unknown and every great epiphany. One who can grieve fully and soulfully, and one who can rejoice and celebrate with the best of them. And it’s that love, we have always believed, that stirs at the very heart of the universe, that dances in the beginning of all beginnings, that weeps for the sadnesses and losses of our lives, and moves us to heal, to repair and to make right what is wrong. Love makes the world go round. Not certainty. Not rigidity. But love. The kind of love we’ve always found in Jesus.
So I invite you, my friends, to lean into your doubts over these next days, over these next weeks. Don’t despair for the doubts. But dare even to welcome them. In the face of this week’s news, let’s grieve for those who’ve died senselessly in another American tragedy. And let’s bravely wonder how it is these terrible things keep happening in a world created for human joy, for human communion and for praise. And let’s speak to one another bravely and openly of our most intimate uncertainties, and our bewilderments, and even our despair. For the One who’s love we share makes space for all of this—and then calls us to love, and to care, and to pray, and to build something holy, something life-giving, something dear, together.
Because we live with so many unknowns, because we live “between certainties” (go see "Conclave"!!)—faith is the gift that moves us to reverence when reverence seems dubious; faith is the light by which we see human dignity and human kindness even in the most troubled hearts; faith is the commitment through which we decide to give our days to making peace with adversaries and opening doors to strangers and spreading tables of abundance. Faith is so much more than certainty; it’s God’s persevering devotion to you and me.
Let that faith—dancing with every doubt—let that faith live in us!
Amen and Ashe!
1.
I fell asleep early New Year’s Eve—not that I intended to. But I’d pulled up a Bob Dylan playlist on Spotify, lay down on the bed with my headphones on, and just drifted off. My daughter and I had just been to see the new Dylan bio pic and we’d been talking that night about the stunning relevance of so many Dylan tunes, so many Dylan lyrics to the world we’re living in these days. So I fell asleep listening to “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changing” and “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Songs Bob Dylan wrote sixty years ago!
And I awakened early New Year’s Day, as so many of you did, to devastating news out of New Orleans, and online details of a troubled Army vet who drove his car through a crowd and killed 15 on Bourbon Street overnight. And I have to tell you this morning. News like that, violence like that: it just sucks the energy, the hope right out of me before the day (heck, before the year) has even begun. Might have been Lewiston, Maine. Might have been Orlando, Florida. Might have been Las Vegas or Newtown or Pittsburgh. On New Year’s Eve, it was New Orleans. How in the world can we continue to kill one another like this? How in the world can we stoke such contempt, such violence in our human hearts? Can God truly exist, truly and creatively exist, in the midst of such madness?
I guess the topic, then, is doubt. The topic this morning is doubt. Is it possible to believe in God, and nevertheless doubt the power, the relevance, the certainties we may have taken for granted in the early days of our faith journeys? I want so much to believe in a God of mercy and kindness, a God who desires human companionship and gratitude, a God who partners with us to build communities of justice and respect. But I wake up New Year’s Day, I scan horrific pictures from another American catastrophe, and I have to wonder if love truly can (as Paul says in his letters) believe all things, bear all things, endure all things. Do all things really work together for the good for those who trust God? I have to wonder if despair overwhelms mercy and kindness more often than not. And where is God in all this? And such doubt weighs like a heavy stone in my heart.
Maybe you know something about all this. Maybe you doubt too.
2.
 |
| Simone Weil |
And so, and so, it may well be that faith and doubt are inevitably partnered in our human hearts. Feels that way in mine. It may well be that doubt, insecurity, even bewilderment make faith possible, make faith vibrant and holy and real. Our tradition, in fact, insists on it. And I think you know this too. By virtue of your own experience.
In the most challenging moments around a loved one’s death—you sense a promise that doesn’t eradicate all doubt, but reconciles it with hope, with love. In a conversation with a friend who questions everything you believe and why you believe it—you find a mutual respect, a persevering respect, that gladdens your heart just the same. And in a campaign for peace, seeking reconciliation among adversaries—you hear a hymn that doesn’t render doubt meaningless, but ennobles the effort with courage. “We Shall Overcome!” Faith and doubt. Doubt and faith. Partnered in our hearts.
You see, those who live only in regions of certainty and clarity are often the very ones who lack empathy and forbearance. Beware their ironclad convictions. To be certain of all truths is to be callous more often than not to the pain or uncertainty of others. Inaccessible to mystery and grace. But doubt--doubt makes faith, faith. In the Old Testament, Abram leaves all things familiar to go to an unseen land, to follow an unnamed deity, to create with Sarai a family to bless all families. Doubting as they go. Doubting as they go. But believing just the same.
And Jesus, of course, in his own hours of agony, crying out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!” Doubting the love, the presence, the promise to which he’s given his life. I mean, there’s no other way to hear this cry. Jesus embodies—in his own life, in his own struggle—the bewildering, befuddling, bedeviling doubts that keep the rest of us stirring at night. “My God, my God, why have you betrayed me?!”
And all the while—in his restlessness, in his doubting—addressing the One he loves. Calling out for the One he loves. Right there at the heart of all that violence. Right there where despair is most compelling. Believing in the only love, the only power that could ever bear him across the threshold. And unite him to the dreams and aspirations of his friends. In a sense, his longing for God, his aching for God’s absence—stirs in Jesus a still more intimate sense of God’s tenderness and grace.
3.
There is no way to make sense of those fifteen deaths in New Orleans Tuesday night. There is no way to justify those deaths (or the deaths of dozens in Lewiston last year, or the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza over the past year and a half): there is no way to justify cruelty or genocide as part of God’s bigger plan, or necessary losses for a higher purpose. We must not turn away from such suffering; and Christ himself requires not just sympathy but costly discipleship. Which necessarily means beating our swords into plowshares. A church that rationalizes brutality as a human necessity has lost is soul.
The good news, friends, is that you don’t have to figure this out. You don’t have to wrestle your doubts to the ground, and then overcome them by sheer will, and then rise up of your own strength and prowess. You don’t have to conquer your doubts at all. What we do here, what we do together is prayerful, discerning and courageously loving. Doubt and faith go hand in hand. And that’s really what church—and this church, in particular—is all about. You all heard Antony last week. In community, we meet one another’s doubts with love, we face one another’s biggest fears with patience and kindness. And in offering all of this to God, in bearing all of this honestly, we are blessed with the kind of belief that resists certainties, but bears instead the deepest and most resilient kind of hope. We don’t worship together to prove ourselves most faithful, or most Christ-like, or most worthy of God’s grace. We worship together to draw courage from one another, to discover God’s blessing even and especially in our seasons of sorrow. We become the church through our believing and our doubting, and the two are always in play, always in play in our human hearts.
4.
In the poetry of John’s prologue, these verses we’ve read this morning, we’re reminded that the earliest Christians found in Jesus not just a great man, not just a wise and loving soul—but the Light, the Grace, the Word that brings all life, all creation, all humanity into being.
In the beginning there was the Word;If you’re keeping score, we’d probably want to call John’s particular take a “high” Christology. Maybe even the highest kind of Christology. And there are others.
The Word was in God’s presence,
And the Word was God.
The Word was present to God from the beginning.
Through the Word all things came into being,
And apart from the Word nothing came into being.
In the Word was life,
And that life was humanity’s light—
A Light that shines in the darkness,
A Light that the darkness has never overtaken.
But John’s wisdom is worth considering, I think. For in Jesus, these first believers found one who is not dead set against doubt, but willing to voice it, even embrace it. In Jesus, these first believers discovered a Spirit who finds doubt not just honest, but true to the challenges of living in a Godly world. In Jesus, the church has always met One whose love and kindness persist through darkness and light, through joy and sorrow, through every unknown and every great epiphany. One who can grieve fully and soulfully, and one who can rejoice and celebrate with the best of them. And it’s that love, we have always believed, that stirs at the very heart of the universe, that dances in the beginning of all beginnings, that weeps for the sadnesses and losses of our lives, and moves us to heal, to repair and to make right what is wrong. Love makes the world go round. Not certainty. Not rigidity. But love. The kind of love we’ve always found in Jesus.
So I invite you, my friends, to lean into your doubts over these next days, over these next weeks. Don’t despair for the doubts. But dare even to welcome them. In the face of this week’s news, let’s grieve for those who’ve died senselessly in another American tragedy. And let’s bravely wonder how it is these terrible things keep happening in a world created for human joy, for human communion and for praise. And let’s speak to one another bravely and openly of our most intimate uncertainties, and our bewilderments, and even our despair. For the One who’s love we share makes space for all of this—and then calls us to love, and to care, and to pray, and to build something holy, something life-giving, something dear, together.
Because we live with so many unknowns, because we live “between certainties” (go see "Conclave"!!)—faith is the gift that moves us to reverence when reverence seems dubious; faith is the light by which we see human dignity and human kindness even in the most troubled hearts; faith is the commitment through which we decide to give our days to making peace with adversaries and opening doors to strangers and spreading tables of abundance. Faith is so much more than certainty; it’s God’s persevering devotion to you and me.
Let that faith—dancing with every doubt—let that faith live in us!
Amen and Ashe!
