Beyond Belief

April 16, 2023 + Second Sunday of Easter + Pr. Craig Mueller

 If you had to choose one, would you say you are you a believer? Or a doubter?

Recently, a ten-year old girl told her seminarian father that she no longer believed in God or Jesus. It nearly took the wind out of her soon-to-be-pastor dad. But he did not overreact.

I have a nephew who straddles between being an atheist and an agnostic . . . in family of devout grandparents and with a dad who is also a pastor. Maybe you have similar realities in your family or with your friends. These days those of us who go to church or “believe” can feel like minorities, especially in urban, progressive circles.

In today’s well-known gospel, Thomas doubts, but then comes to believe. The story ends with this verse: blessed are those who have not seen, yet have come to believe.

One reason many people don’t believe—and question their faith—is that a religious worldview no longer makes sense. 

Elaine Pagels is a religious scholar whose specialty is some of the early gospels that didn’t make it into the New Testament. Like the Gospel of Thomas. Pagels grew up in a home where her parents considered religion to be obsolete. Later she became a Christian at a Billy Graham crusade. When her Jewish boyfriend died in a car accident, her Christian friends told her that he was going to hell as an unbeliever. It was then that she left the church. A church she saw as "a club for people spiritually superior to everyone who didn't share their beliefs. Numb, devastated, and alone, I left the church and never went back," she writes.

Elaine did go back, however. Pagels asserts that people turn to religion because we suffer.  Because we need help.

Wounds are the marks of the resurrection that Thomas sees on Jesus’ body. Suffering.

Pagels never imagined how her life would turn out. Her two-year-old son developed a terminal lung disease and died at the age of six, plunging her and her husband Heinz into the depths of grief. Fifteen months later, her husband died in a hiking accident. Elaine was suddenly alone with a toddler and an infant. She could barely grasp her losses, much less maneuver through “those dark, nameless days and months.”

Through study and through reflection, Elaine came to realize suffering is simply part of human existence. Volcanos erupt because that is what they do, regardless of whether anyone in their path is good or evil. To be human is to also face obstacles.

Finally, she came to a sense of peace. The kind of peace that Jesus breathes on his disciples. Elaine concludes that scripture was written to help people deal with what they could not otherwise accept. And she came to realize that there is more to religion or Christianity, than the judgmentalism of her earlier experience.1

Pagels tells her story in a book I and several others I know would recommend: Why Religion? A Personal Story.

But there is still the matter of beliefs. And the creed. You probably know folks who still believe in God and heaven. But the creed? Miracles? The Bible? Religion? The church? Not so much.

And yet after Thomas doubts and then sees the risen Christ and touches his wounds, Jesus says to him: “Do not doubt, but believe.”

For some, saying the creed may feel like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in third grade. Or it may seem atoxic and outmoded document intended to police heresies and guard orthodoxy.3

Years ago, someone asked a well-known Roman Catholic progressive scholar (Hans Küng) whether he had mental reservations when he recited the creed. He replied boldly: “yes, on every part of the creed. And I think every thinking Christian does the same.”

Maybe the problem is the way we think of the word “believe.” “Believe” sounds like giving intellectual assent to a list of doctrines. If you can’t tick them off in agreement, you are not a true Christian.

Maybe if we cannot make sense of the “believe” part of the creed, we can go with the “we” part. We are part of a community that goes back thousands of years. People have sought refuge in this faith.

Some suggest that in our minds we replace “believe” with “trust.” I trust in God, who created all. I trust in Jesus, crucified and risen. I trust in the Holy Spirit, the giver of life, and the energy of the church.

For others, doubts may run deeper than just belief in God. We may doubt that life is fair. We may doubt that our planet truly has a future. We may doubt that we can ever get beyond the racism and tribalism and greed that is rampant in the human condition We may doubt, that when our hearts are broken by tragedy, that we will be able to make it to another day.

Let me say, as your pastor, that doubters are welcome here. In times of struggle, we support one another, even when we wonder what or how we believe.

Another writer gives yet one more way to think about saying the creed. The English word believe comes the German belieben. Instead of beliefs being something we hold to be true . . . belieben refers to something treasured or beloved.

So another way to think the creed: “We be-love God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”4

Certainly, God treasures and loves us. Christ is risen, indeed. This is the good news that even in doubt and despair, new life springs forth. This is the faith into which we are baptized. This is the hope gives meaning and purpose to our days.

All of it is beyond belief. It is about love. And trust. And relationship. And community. And eating and drinking at this table. And the gift of each day. So wondrous. It is beyond belief.

1 https://www.npr.org/2018/11/07/664683874/through-personal-testament-why-religion-explores-belief-in-the-21st-century

2 Elaine Pagels, Why Religion? A Personal Story. Ecco, 2020.

3 Amy Frykholm, “Believe it or not: my struggles with the creed.” The Christian Century. January 26, 2015.

4 Frykholm, ibid.