I have a confession to make. I have my doubts. Everyone does, I believe. When I hear a new thesis, idea, proposal, assumption, my very first instinct is to poke holes in it. Are you like that?

OJ is innocent. I doubt it.

There are nukes in Iraq. I doubt it.

Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I doubt it.

The Texans are going to win the Super Bowl. I doubt it.

President Obama will fix the economy. I doubt it.

Mr. Romney will fix the economy. I doubt it.

My religion coincidentally happens to be the only one that is right. Everybody else is going to burn in hell for eternity…

Wouldn’t you agree that sometimes doubt is a good thing? There is a time for doubt. And there is a time for hope. You know what? Every great and interesting person I have ever known or read about had doubts. Most of the spiritual giants had doubts.

Mother Teresa had doubts. In their book Mother Theresa CEO, authors Ruma Bose and Lou Faust write: “Mother Theresa’s letters to her spiritual father, written in confidence, give us a rare glimpse into her deepest thoughts. She laid bare her internal struggles as she pursued her vision to serve the poorest of the poor. These letters show her questioning her faith and feeling tremendous doubts, distance from God, and spiritual isolation.” Yet look at her life! What a little powerhouse! How can such faith and such doubt coexist in the same person? Could it be that the engagement of those polar opposites of doubt and faith create in us a kind of nuclear explosion of possibility?

St. John of the Cross spoke of the dark night of the soul. La Noche Oscura del Alma is a poem written by the 16th century Catholic mystic. He describes the kind of spiritual crisis that takes place in the journey toward spiritual enlightenment. As we grow closer to God, our old childish prayers and beliefs seem hollow, shallow. They no longer work. There is a feeling of emptiness, of being abandoned by God. It is a time of doubt and sometimes despair. The spiritual mystics considered this dark night not a curse, but an essential part of the spiritual journey, in which one is stripped bare of the old and clothed with something utterly new. The dark night of the soul is not something to be feared, but the wilderness through which we must pass in order to break through to the Promised Land. It is symbolized by the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale. The belly of the whale is the dark night of the soul. It is the place of death, and rebirth.

Martin Luther experienced doubt, and his own dark night of the soul. He called it his Anfechtung, a word that is translated temptation, tribulation, trial or affliction. It is an overwhelming sense of despair. Luther felt that to doubt God was sin. However, it was his doubt of the absolute power the Roman Church claimed over things spiritual and temporal, that led to the Reform of the church, and led him into a new understanding of faith, or rather an old one. In the environment of Medieval Scholasticism and emerging Renaissance humanism, Luther questioned, doubted the church’s power over life and the afterlife, doubted sale of forgiveness, doubted the old systems of power. This led to the breakthrough insight that faith was at the heart of everything. Luther claimed his Anfechtung, his spiritual trials or afflictions, turned out to be of great help to him. He said Anfechtung is an absolute ingredient for a “true theologian.” (LW 34:279-288)

When have your doubts led you through darkness, to a new place of enlightenment?

Jesus doubted. On the cross the gospel writers reported that he cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” from Psalm 22. Jesus, our very model of perfect trust in God, experienced Anfechtung in the Garden of Gethsemane, in his trial and in the final moments of his earthly life. If Jesus doubted, isn’t it logical to expect that we will too?

Thomas doubted. Can you blame him? The over-zealous disciples find an empty tomb and immediately start jumping to conclusions. Some of them even claim the resurrected Jesus has appeared to them. Thomas wants to believe. He really does. But he’s too smart, and it’s all too good to be true, like a fairy tale: too much to hope for. Do we dare hope in something we cannot see?

Hope

What is hope? And for that matter, what is faith? Faith is not absolute knowledge. If I put my faith in you, it’s not because I know absolutely for certain you’re going to come through for me. Faith requires a leap. That’s what trust is. I choose to believe in you. I choose to put my trust in you.

Hope is not absolute knowledge. Right? We know the past, but we can only hope for the future. I know I was alive yesterday. I don’t know if I will be alive tomorrow. I hope I will be alive tomorrow, but there is no way I can know for certain. We can’t see the future. That’s what hope is. There is an element of imagination to it.

Here’s how Paul puts it in Romans 8, one of my favorite chapters of the Bible:

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:24-25

We hope for what we cannot see. We cannot see beyond the grave. We cannot know all the mysteries of the universe.

All we can really do is trust. Jesus invites us to imagine that there is more to life than meets the eye.

There is a kind of arrogance that says, “Nothing can exist except what I can experience, or prove.” Humility says, “I am small, mortal, finite. This life is bigger than I can even imagine. There must be more than I can see with my limited perspective.” Jesus doesn’t say much about it, just, trust me. It’s going to be okay.

And so we are left with two options:

1. We can believe that life is pointless. You live for a few years and then you die, of cancer or something. So, “Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” There is no God. There is no justice. There is no punishment for evil, or reward for good, so go, do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. Grab all the gusto you can get, for yourself. Live “Me first.” Live only the Law of the Jungle, because, that’s all there is. Sound like fun to you?

2. Or you can live a life of hope. Hope says life has purpose and meaning. God created the universe in love. Although there is sin and evil in the world, there is also profound beauty and joy. In the end faith, hope and love are going to win the day. You can believe there are things more important than getting the most money, or being the most successful. This life is just the tip of the iceberg, a hint of something greater. Faith is a foretaste of the feast to come.

Living in hope

The first option leads to despair. The second option leads to hope. Which is true? Place your bets. Which worldview would you like to bet your life on? Despair or hope? Hope makes you live life in a different sort of way. The current Pope put it like this: One who has hope lives differently. (Pope Benedict XVI)

Try this:

One day there will be no major wars going on… I doubt it, but isn’t that a dream worth working for?

One day there every person in this world will be able to eat every day… Maybe not, but isn’t that worth hoping for?

One day malaria will be a thing of the past. Just watch.

You see, if you have hope, you live differently. You act differently.

I used to worry that I would not find the right person to marry. But I did. And then I worried that I wouldn’t find the right job, a job that challenged me and gave me great joy, but I did. As a young pastor making little money, I worried that we would not have enough to live, but we did.

What if you just trusted God with your life, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health? Jesus says, “Do not worry about your life, what you eat, what you drink what you will wear… Look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air… Don’t worry… Don’t worry… Seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.” What if you trusted God with your whole life? 100%? In life and in death? That’s faith.

Wouldn’t we give generously, serve joyfully, embrace lovingly, live exuberantly? This is what Jesus is offering us today. When you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are invited to be in Christ – to be in the world as Christ is in the world, joyfully, sacrificially, recklessly. I invite you to live in hope, because hope breeds hope.

There is a great story in the middle of Mark’s gospel, the ninth chapter, in which a man brings his suffering child to Jesus. Jesus invites the man to trust, to believe. The man cries out in tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” It is possible for faith and doubt to coexist. We know, because it does in us, all the time. We live in this dialectical paradox.

So , my friends. If you have doubts, welcome to the club. Even Jesus had his dark night of the soul. If you have questions, so do I. If there are things you don’t understand, it’s okay. That’s what it means to be human. Changing religions will not get rid of your questions. Wrestle with the questions, but wrestle joyfully. Engage your doubts, but engage them joyfully. Embrace your dark night of the soul, knowing, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou are with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Enter your dark nights with joy and with hope, trusting the promise that new life always awaits us on the other side, as does the one to whom we cry: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace

where there is hatred, let me sow love

where there is in-jury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope

where there is darkness, light

where there is sadness, joy

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console

to be understood as to understand

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.