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Where was Thomas?
The doors were closed tight, locked to the world, as they hid away. It was the same day that Mary called Magdalene met Jesus in the garden. She had run back, told the disciples she had seen the risen Lord.
And they were behind locked doors.
I wonder if they believed Mary. If they didn’t and that’s why they were behind closed doors. Or if they did believe her and they were afraid of what that would mean the powerful would do.
Tuesday morning Bible Study thought the disciples didn’t believe Magdalene. So, Jesus showed up, inside a closed room, and proved Magdalene’s testimony true.
THE CAVE OF DOUBT
Once there was a tiny convent in the middle of the woods. In the convent there lived a young novice.
But there was one thing about that tiny convent that always bothered her. On the furthest back wall, out past the prayer garden, there were two great wooden doors that said ‘KEEP OUT!’ She had been told from a very early age that the doors led someplace dangerous and that she should never go near them.
One day she was in the prayer garden when she saw one of the nuns coming out of the doors. Only this time she’d forgotten to lock them behind her. So, unable to contain her curiosity, the novitiate went through the doors. They led her to a small area surrounded by walls except for the mouth of a giant cave. When the novitiate went to the mouth of the cave, she discovered that it was deep, dreadful, and dark. And somewhere in her soul she almost felt as if the cave was whispering to her.
Frightened, she ran back into the convent. That night, she barely ate, barely slept. All she could think about was the cave and her guilt at disobeying the nuns’ orders. That morning, after prayers, she went to the reverend mother and confessed what she had done.
“It’s probably time to tell you about the cave. That cave is called the Cave of Doubt. It is a dark and dangerous place. We keep it locked up because many who wander into it never come back out. We have considered walling it off completely but it does serve an important purpose. Even good nuns sometimes have questions.
Questions about life and God and faith. Questions we are afraid, too ashamed to ask each other. They’ll go into the Cave and call out their question and an answer will come echoing back. But, the echoes come back as faintest whispers. In order to hear them, a sister must step several feet deeper into the cave. So the more questions she asks, the further and further into the darkness she goes.
Most play it safe and ask one question, maybe two, so that they can still see the light behind them. But many sisters have gone into the cave and never returned.
Maybe they lose track of the light and find themselves lost forever.
So now you know. The Cave of Doubt is an unavoidable part of our life of faith together.
There will be times when you have to ask a question, but don’t ask so many that you become irretrievably lost.”
The young novitiate tried to put the cave out of her mind. But that one experience with the cave haunted her so much that she kept them under her mattress and she never used them, out of fear of what might happen if she did.
But as she grew in her faith, that tiny convent started to feel very cramped.
She had questions.
Questions she dare not ask any of her fellow sisters. Questions which nonetheless needed answers.
So she went to visit the Cave of Doubt. When she stood at the mouth of the cave, it still seemed dreadful, deep, and dark. She trembled as she felt a whisper, she couldn’t quite make out, beckoning her deeper inside. But she stepped into the cave and, as she walked a few steps into darkness, the faint whisper she could feel became a voice that she could hear. It said, “Tell me what you wonder…”
The nun called out into the darkness, “Does God hear me when I pray?”
Then she felt a faint whisper once more, and stepped deeper into the darkness so that it would become a voice that she could hear.
That this question led to more questions. And these questions led her further and further from the light and into the black night of the cave. As she asked each question, she found courage to ask more. Pretty soon the mouth of the cave behind her had become only a faint point of life.
She looked behind her and realized she was on the verge of going too far. But she had more questions. Questions that needed answers. Answers she couldn’t return to her tiny convent without. So she thought, “If I keep walking, then I only need to turn around when I’m finished and I’ll walk back toward the light. And so she asked her next question then stepped into perfect darkness.
She kept asking and asking and it felt like maybe the whisper was leading her in zig zags and circles. Suddenly she realized…
She’d lost her way. She was lost. She didn’t know whether she was on the precipice of a dark pit or inches from the jaws of a terrible monster. The only thing she knew was that she was alone and that she may never see her family of nuns again.
In this moment she longed for their stories, the soft silence of her prayers, and their simple life and work together. She had ruined everything by letting her curiosity get the better of her.
She’d been a fool to let her wonder lead her so far into the darkness. But now there was no going back. This was her life now. If she never saw the light of day again at least she would have answers.
So she stood up and shouted another question. Then she followed the whisper to a voice. Again and again she dared to ask. Questions she would never ask her Sisters. Questions she hardly admitted to herself.
She just kept asking and going further and further until she could think of no more questions to ask and then— she saw it.
A tiny point of light. She must have somehow got turned around and here she had come full circle! So she ran toward the blinding light.
She ran until she was finally out of the cave. But she wasn’t back where she had started at all.
She was on a hillside overlooking a great big convent. As she looked down, she could see smiling happy nuns enjoying their life together. She saw vast grounds, a great big chapel, libraries full of books, fields, and vineyards. Outside its walls were villages full of people which the nuns went to every day to serve and teach. She ran down the hill and knocked on the door of the convent. To her surprise she was greeted at the door by a familiar face. It was a nun who had disappeared into the cave many years before. In fact, behind her, in the convent, were the faces of countless other nuns who had gone missing over the years.
The nun at the door smiled and said, “Welcome home, sister, I see you’ve just passed through the tunnel of faith!”
~ Danny Nettleton – https://substack.com/home/post/p-188902156?source=queue
Not to micromanage a parable, but I am…
Anne Lamott has chronicled the meanderings of the heart as well as anyone, and as she famously puts it, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”
It seems like that covenant was trying to create certainty around fear. I had family that told me to be careful in seminary because a lot of people lose their faith. And now I think some of that is because some folks are never given the chance to step into the cave and ask their questions.
And Thomas wasn’t there. We call him Doubting but he just wanted what the disciples already had gotten. And he wasn’t locked away in the room.
Maybe he was out getting dinner for everyone. Maybe he was reaching out to some contacts to see what he could find out.
Wherever he was, he wasn’t locked up in fear. He might have been afraid but it didn’t keep in that room.
Maybe you remember Thomas from when Lazarus died Jesus said he was going toward Jerusalem, even though they were certain it would lead to Jesus’ death. Thomas was the one who said, let’s go with Jesus and we can die with him.
We didn’t read when Jesus said, you know where I’m going and Thomas said: no we don’t!
I like Thomas. He’s committed, he’s all in, he’s honest. He’s wholehearted.
It’s a word that doesn’t come up often. It’s in a traditional prayer of confession. It’s in Brene Brown book, and Rachel Held Evens, both Episcopalians, that pray traditional prayers of confession.
Wholeheartedness means that we can be doubtful and still find rest in the tender embrace of a God who isn’t threatened by human inconsistency. Wholeheartedness means that we can ask bold questions, knowing that God loves us not just in spite of them but also because of them— and because of the searching, seeking spirits that inspire us to want to know God more deeply. Wholeheartedness means that we can approach the throne of grace in the confidence of the God who made us, the God who redeemed us, and the God who accompanies us.
-Rachel Held Evens–Wholehearted Faith
I think Thomas was wholehearted. Willing to say the uncomfortable thing, willing to say he didn’t know or he didn’t understand, willing to follow completely but not blindly.
And there is a vulnerability in that, in being fully committed. In saying I don’t know. In asking what might be the silly question
There is a vulnerability in showing up anyway.
At its best, faith teaches us to live without certainty and to hope without guarantee. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” wrote an anonymous biblical author, “the conviction of things not seen.” At its best, faith teaches us to take risks.
-Rachel Held Evens–Wholehearted Faith
We don’t know what Thomas believed about what Mary had said that morning, about the missing body of Christ, but he had faith enough to risk going out into the world and he had faith enough to keep coming back to his community. And faith enough to ask for what he needed, what everyone else there had gotten.
And Jesus show up there. 8 days later so, there’s a lot of faith there too, that he didn’t just take off but he stayed, and faith of his community who must not have been so insufferable about their experience with Jesus that it didn’t run Thomas out.
Jesus showed up. Was present in his need. In Thomas vulnerability to be uncertain. To have both faith and doubt–as Ann Lamont implies we can have.
And Thomas was sent and went forth and thrived. He told everyone about the Christ he traveled with and the Christ who rose. Tradition tells us that he took those stories of Jesus to India and started the church there. I wish we had more stories of what it was like for Thomas. Did he doubt again? Probably. Even the seemingly most faithful today have doubts. Mother Theresa’s journals document a lifetime of doubt. But it didn’t stop her. And I don’t think it stopped Thomas.
Because Thomas wasn’t, we aren’t sent forth to believe, but sent like Jesus was sent, who was sent by God into the world because of love, with love, for love, Because God loved the world Jesus was sent not to judge the world but to bring liberation, deliverance, and eternity and abundant living. And that’s how we’re sent into the world too.
Not sent to be certain, or judging, but in faith and love. And sometimes that will come with doubt, questions, and those will leave us feeling raw and vulnerable about our… humanity. But we can come to Christ, and to each other with all of those, wholehearted, half-heartedly, hearts on selves, wounded and scarred. And we will hold each other in love.
For better or for worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and then there are seasons when hold on to hope for me when I’ve run out of hope. They are the old lady next to me in the pew and the little kid behind me who recite the entirety of the Apostles’ Creed on my behalf on those Sundays when I cannot bring myself to say all those ancient words wholeheartedly— Is this what I really believe? They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page, because they would make even my most foulmouthed friend blush.
-Rachel Held Evens–Wholehearted Faith
There’s something about Christianity— and by that, I mean the venerable, beautiful story that has Jesus at its center— I just can’t shake.
Even on the days when I’m not sure I can believe it wholeheartedly, this is still the story I’m willing to be wrong about.
-Rachel Held Evens–Wholehearted Faith