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Faith and Doubt

FAITH AND DOUBT

THE SON OF GOD MASS

Today the sermon is going to be delivered by the choir, David Mislin on organ, and Aaron Kruziki on sax. You can read in David's program notes how this setting of the Mass explores themes of faith and doubt in its interplay of words and music.

FAITH AND DOUBT

THE SON OF GOD MASS

 

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Today the sermon is going to be delivered by the choir, David Mislin on organ, and Aaron Kruziki on sax. You can read in David's program notes how this setting of the Mass explores themes of faith and doubt in its interplay of words and music.

 

BELIEVING WHAT YOU KNOW AIN'T TRUE

For my part, I would like to offer a brief comment on the themes of faith and doubt. Mark Twain defined faith as "believing what you know ain't true." That isn't my definition of faith. I do not believe that faith and doubt are opposites but that they coexist in all of us. The writer, Mark Collins, describes it pretty well. He's a young man who goes to church every week. His friends are skeptical about this. "But what about doubt?" they ask.

 

DOUBT, AN EVERPRESENT COMPANION

Collins answers: "Doubt sits next to me in the pew. With his feet propped up on the kneeler, he reads the bulletin during the sermon. He picks his teeth with a torn corner of the hymnal. Sometimes he snores. But every Sunday when we pass the peace, I turn and shake Doubt's hand. His grip almost breaks my knuckles. I envy those who are seated far away from him, but I choose to come back each week, knowing Doubt will find me wherever I am."

 

FAITH COEXISTS WITH DOUBT

I do not define faith as believing in the unbelievable. The theologian, Marcus Borg claims that giving assent to certain beliefs or creedal statements is only one aspect of faith. You can still be a Christian and have doubts about the parting the Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the presence of God, even the very existence of God. The humorist, Calvin Trillin started his journalism career assigned as Time magazine's religion writer. He felt it was a bad match. Trillin tells how he got out of it by prefixing everything with "alleged." "I'd write about the 'alleged parting of the Red Sea' and even the 'alleged Crucifixion' and they finally let me go."

 

FAITH IS NOT SOMETHING WE HAVE, BUT SOMETHING WE DO

Doubts are reasonable, even unavoidable. Faith need not crumble under attacks of doubt. It was one of Christianity's most revered saints who coined the phrase, "the dark night of the soul." Faith is not a carefully constructed system of beliefs but a way of life. It encompasses trust, fidelity to God (to God, not to claims about God.) It is better imagined as an orientation of one's whole life. In the earliest stages of Christianity, this new movement was called "The Way." That is what faith is-to be a traveler on the way. It is not something we have, but something we do.

 

As we listen to The Son of God Mass with its pleas of "Lord, have mercy" and "Grant us peace," balanced with the praise of the Sanctus and the Gloria, we enter into the natural dialectic of the Christian life.

 

Faith and doubt together in one lovely work of art. The writer, Andrew Sullivan puts it well, "I have had serious moments of despair and doubt and disbelief. But I have never let go. Or rather, as I understand it, I have never been let go of."

 

God is faithful.

 

Even in our deepest doubts, we cannot go where God is not.