Sermon: Faith and Doubt

During the Season of Advent we keep hearing about “waiting and watching,” “expectancy,” and “anticipation,” being prepared. And we read the expectant prophecies of Isaiah which, in general, are poetries of hope (poetries of wild and visionary hope) which originate from desperate situations (of exile) and, of course, we prepare for what has become the most popular Christian festival of the year (Christmas). 

Speaking of “expectancy” and “waiting” there is a very important, and fascinating, theological point to be highlighted; regarding the expectancy of the early church. By “theological point,” I mean a “word on God,” an attempt to try and speak about God. 

And that is that the very early church appears to have expected the Second Advent of the Risen Lord, and, with such imminence – even within their own lifetimes, perhaps. 

“Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” (James 5.7 f.) 

What is potentially embarrassing about this is that a dramatic, and cosmic,  Second Coming didn’t happen within their own life times  and as the centuries went on didn’t happen in a dramatic and cosmic way, at least This could make the very early church, and even the apostles themselves, look like a deluded people.

I was fortunate enough once to be in a theological reflection group with a mental health chaplain. This issue came up about the possible false eschatology (the possible false expectancy) of the early church. I said that I didn’t like the idea that the early church had held such an imminent expectation because it made them look a bit bonkers. And when I tried to enter into a very sophisticated and elaborate explanation (that it was an issue of imminent language and that they may not have really held such an imminent expectation) he stopped me and just said, 

“Well, perhaps they were a bit bonkers – and what’s wrong with that.” 

But this sort of ambiguity and uncertainty is a “field day” for those who wish to discredit the church as a suspicious organisation and discredit faith as wrong-headed (some kind of pathological disorder). 

Because those who are not blessed with the knowledge of faith and can only misunderstand faith; they do have a tendency to presume that if doubt can be introduced into the “equation of faith” then belief in Christ will start to fray at the edges; and inevitably all come “undone” and the great edifice, so thought, of Christendom will crumble for ever. 

What is presumed here, and with disastrous results, is that there is no place for “doubt and uncertainty” within the gift of faith. What is presumed here, and with disastrous results, is that faith is about effort, and needs a lot of effort, and hard work, and maybe even deception, to keep it going. 

So, what place do we have within the gift of faith for doubt and uncertainty? How much doubt can we cope with? 

We don’t often think of John the Baptist as a figure of doubt but where we meet up with him in today’s reading he is imprisoned and he is asking a very authentic question: 

“Are you the one who is to come. Or should we expect someone else?” (Matt. 11.3) 

From within the darkness of his imprisonment, his earlier assertion, “Look, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” is being severely tested (John 1.29). 

It is not hard to imagine that from within the darkness of his imprisonment there may be doubts creeping around him. 

But wrestling with uncertainty is not at all the end of faith, rather, it is the seed-bed of mature and authentic faith. 

Because it is good questions un-asked that stifles the spirit. 

These words, of doubt, from Mother Teresa, dating to 1958, have now been made famous: 

“My smile is a great cloak that hides a multitude of pains. People think that my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing, and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew…I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.” (Mother Teresa) 

These words, surely, cannot be interpreted correctly as the outing, the uncovering of a charlatan. Not at all, she was no charlatan. Surely they are to interpreted from within the apophatic spiritual tradition, which Mother Teresa was thoroughly familiar with as a monastic. For, within the apophatic spiritual tradition it is acknowledged that one’s feelings can be misleading. Within the apophatic tradition wrestling with doubt, and overwhelming darkness, is understood as the authentic work of God in the soul. 

This is exemplified by another Saint John, Saint John of the Cross the Spanish mystic, who like Saint John the Baptist was also imprisoned. And in his imprisonment he wrote poetry. Poetry about the work of God in the soul through the way of negation, which is “the dark night of the soul,” – the way of attaining union with God which, actually, feels at the time like groping in the darkness. 

“To reach satisfaction in all

desire satisfaction in nothing.

To come to possess all

desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all

desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all

desire the knowledge of nothing.” (St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Ch. 13) 

This is the way of not speaking (about God), of not knowing. Within this tradition it is recognised that all that could ever be said about God can only ever be a hinting at, a hinting at the reality. And anything said about God is limited by the language in which it is said. The infinite simply cannot be fully comprehended or defined. 

I will finish with a quote from Karl Rahner who wrote of the primordial nature of faith, the normality of faith as an everyday part of human life: 

“And even if this term [God] were ever to be forgotten, even then in the decisive moments of our lives we should still be constantly encompassed by this nameless mystery of our existence…Even supposing that those realities which we call religions…were totally to disappear…The transcendentality inherent in human life is such that we should still reach out towards that mystery which lies outside our control (Karl Rahner, “The experience of God today,” Theological Investigations XI.)