Hope Through Doubt Series

April 10, 2019 - Lenten Service

Hope Lutheran Church

Rev. Mary Erickson

Psalm 14; Mark 9:17-29

Hope through Doubt

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Mother Teresa was a giant in the faith. She dedicated her life to her mission in India. There she ministered to the poorest of the poor. She was named a saint by the Roman Catholic church just nine years after her death. If ever there was a saint, it was Mother Teresa!

That’s why it came as such a shock to the world when it was revealed that Mother Teresa suffered from deep and longstanding doubt.

After her death, a book was published. It included several letters she had sent to her spiritual confessors and her superiors. For nearly 50 years, Teresa was tortured by extreme doubt. It’s painful even to listen to the words of her sorrow:

"Where is my faith? – even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. – My God – how painful is this unknown pain. It pains without ceasing. – I have no faith. – I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my heart - and make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me – I am afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy – If there be God, - please forgive me."

St. John of the Cross aptly described the type of experience Mother Teresa had as “the dark night of the soul.” He noted that this period of spiritual dryness will often affect people prior to a period of spiritual growth. But for Mother Teresa, it was like she was walking through a perpetual Garden of Gethsemane.

Martin Luther suffered from doubt, too. He had a German word for it: Anfechtung. It just sounds awful! There is no single English word that captures it. It encompasses doubt, tribulation, and affliction. For Luther, it was a torturous doubt that he stood outside God’s mercies. God had turned a cold shoulder to him.

What do we do with doubt? First of all, it’s comforting to know that we are not alone in doubt. We’re not the rare outsider for experiencing doubt about our faith. Doubt is the norm.

In fact, doubt can serve a productive purpose. Theologian Frederick Buechner had a lively name for doubt. He called it the “ants in the pants of faith.” Doubts, he said, keep our faith awake and moving. Doubt stirs the pot.

For one thing, doubts help us test our faith. Like ice in the early winter, we want to test it before we put our full weight on it. Doubt helps us assess whether our faith will support the full weight of life’s trials and burdens. Especially when we are young, we need to go through a period of testing our faith. We were brought up in the faith because that’s what our family does. But as we mature and become independent, thinking adults, we need to consider whether we claim this faith as our own.

So doubt can serve a productive purpose. But mostly, doubt is troubling. We doubt the nature of God’s character. We doubt how valued we are by God, if God even hears our prayers. We question whether this faith thing is just a figment of our imaginations.

Mark includes a story about a certain man with a serious ill son. To our modern ears, it sounds as if the son suffers from seizures. But in Jesus’ day, the manifestations of a seizure were misunderstood. They surmised that an evil spirit had possessed the victim.

The father approaches Jesus about his ill son. He tells Jesus that he’d asked Jesus’ disciples to cast out the demon, but they weren’t able to. When the boy is brought before Jesus, he’s gripped by a seizure. The father makes a plea to Jesus, “If you are able, please do something to help.”

“If you are able.” You can hear the father’s longsuffering in his comment. “If you are able.” How many times had he asked for help? How many people had he approached for assistance, only to be disappointed? Jesus was his latest and last hope.

Jesus picks up on the comment. “IF you are able!” Jesus redirects his thoughts about God, “ALL THINGS can be done for the one who believes.”

The father then makes a profound statement. “I believe; help my unbelief!”

How that statement sums up our own wrestling with doubt! Faith is there. We believe. But it wavers from the undertow of doubt. And sometimes, the current of that undertow is so great, it shakes us from our feet.

The classic children’s book Dr. Doolittle tells the tale of Dr. Doolittle, a British veterinarian. He has an exotic array of animals and learns how to speak to them in their own animal languages. Among his menagerie is a Pushmi-pullyu. The animal looks like a two-headed llama. The two ends of the animal have a mind of their own. On occasion, they oppose one another. A tug of war is the result.