"How can you believe in God in such a world as this, anyway?" Melvin asked. "I mean it’s crazy. Just look around you at the world. Does it look like a world that comes from the hand of a loving God? No way! No way! It looks like a world gone mad, a world gone out of control. I just can’t believe in God, I tell ya. I can’t believe in God’s so-called Son either. I’ve just got too many doubts about the way this world works. Too many doubts."

Jeanie was beside herself. She did not know what to do. Sunday was only three days away. It was a big day for her family. They had the celebration all planned. It would be just like it was the day that Jeanie’s older sister and brother were confirmed. Confirmation day was a very important day in the life of the Green family.

Jeanie did not want to let her family down. She did not want to let her pastor down either. There was nothing that Jeanie wanted more in the whole wide world than to stand up with her Confirmation class on Sunday and profess her faith in Jesus Christ as her Savior to the whole world. She wanted to, but she just could not. She could not because she just could not find it inside herself to believe that this Jesus person had anything to do with her life. She tried. She wanted to believe it. But it just did not seem possible. It just did not seem possible that Jesus could care for her in any real way. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." She had sung that song as long as she could remember. She sang it but she did not believe it. "Why would Jesus love me?" That was her question. That is what she doubted.

Arnie had a different problem. Arnie was a chemist working in industry. He grew up in the church. He never gave it much thought. He just went along on Sunday with his family. Arnie took church life for granted. He took it for granted, that is, until he went to college. The more he learned about modern science the less likely he thought those Bible stories he had learned as a kid could be true. Jonah living in the belly of a whale? Jesus turning water into wine and performing one miracle after another? The resurrection? The more Arnie thought of it the more he was convinced that these stories just could not be true. Arnie could not bring himself to remain committed to a religion with all of these superstitions, with all of these so-called miracles. Serious doubts had come to fill his head and he just could not bring himself to darken the door of a church any longer.

And Gert. Gert had spent some time in the Peace Corps in Asia. Her time there really opened her eyes to the religious realities of life. Gert had never really spent too much of her time thinking about religion. Most of the folks in her smalltown Texas home were Christians if they were anything. There really were not any alternatives except sheer unbelief. But in Asia, Gert discovered many other ways of worshiping God. The world was filled with religions. Christianity was just one among many.

Gert had some friends who were Christians. Several times they invited her to come along with them to church. Gert would have none of it. Christianity was just one of the ways in which human beings worshiped God. "How do you know your way, how do you know that the Christian way, is the right way?" she asked her friends. Gert just could not buy it that Christianity was the true way, the only way. She had seen too many other religious expressions. She doubted that any religious path was the true and only path to God.

Doubts. Doubts about the truth of the Christian faith. Many of us have such doubts. They come in all sizes and shapes. and what shall we do with our doubts? The gospel story for this sermon introduces us to the disciple of doubt. One of Jesus’ twelve disciples, a man who walked and worked with Jesus throughout his whole ministry, was a doubting man. His name was Thomas. "Doubting Thomas." That is where the expression came from. I would like to call Thomas the patron saint for all doubters. Do you carry some doubts about Jesus and the Christian faith? Fine. Let me introduce you to Thomas, the patron saint of doubters. Let us see how he handled his doubt.

In the story from John’s Gospel, we learn that Thomas brought his doubt to Jesus. Thomas was not with the rest of the disciples on that first Easter evening. The disciples reported to Thomas that they had seen the Lord. Thomas did not believe them. "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe" (John 20:25). "If I don’t see it for myself, I won’t believe it." That was Thomas’s reaction to the witness of the disciples. Thomas represents all kinds of people who want some tangible evidence and proof for their faith.

On the first Sunday after Easter Thomas was with the ten. Once again Jesus appeared to them. "Peace be with you," he said. Immediately he turned to Thomas. Doubting Thomas stood still to the gaze of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus knew his thoughts. Jesus knew his doubts. How will Jesus deal with this doubter? That is a crucial question for all doubters. Jesus spoke to Thomas. "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless but believing" (John 20:27). Jesus accepts Thomas in his doubts. He accepts him and he challenges Thomas to put his doubt aside and believe.

Thomas did believe. "My Lord and my God," he confessed. This confession of the doubter, Thomas, stands here before us as the very climax of John’s entire Gospel. The Gospel that began with the Word, referring to Jesus, that was with God and was God in the beginning, comes to a climax with the confession of Thomas: "My Lord and my God." Out of the mouth of a doubter there came a grand moment of faith. That is the way it is with doubt and faith sometimes. Doubt and faith are really not opposites of each other. Faith, rather, always lives on the edge of doubt. Doubt gives faith its character of risk.

So what are we to do with our doubts? I think it is best to do what Thomas did. I think it is best that we bring our doubts to Jesus. Melvin and Jeanie and Arnie and Gert (all you doubters of the world), come along with your friend Thomas. Bring your doubts to Jesus. That is absolutely the best place to take them. Jesus will not turn you away. That I can promise you. Jesus never turns doubters away. Jesus knows that honest doubt is often the prelude to faith. It was so with Thomas; it might be so for you. Jesus is always ready to receive doubters into his presence. He showed Thomas his hands and his side. He wills to show you what you need to see in order that you might come to faith.

When I say, "Come along with Thomas and bring your doubts to Jesus," I obviously do not mean that you can be in the presence of Jesus’ risen body the way Thomas was. You can, however, be pesent at those places where Jesus has promised to be present for you. Jesus has promised to be present wherever and whenever two or three gather in his name. (See Matthew 18:20.) Jesus has promised to be present whenever we eat and drink in his name. Jesus has promised to be present wherever his story is told.

On Easter evening Jesus appeared to ten of his disciples who were locked behind closed doors. He gave them a greeting of peace. "Peace be with you," he said. He showed them his hand and his side. He commissioned the disciples to tell his story to all the world. "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." That is what Jesus said to them. Then he did something that sounds very strange upon first hearing. He breathed on the disciples. That is right. That is what it says. "... he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ " (John 20:22b-23).

What is this breathing on the disciples all about anyway? To grasp that we need to remind ourselves of the story of God creating the first humans way back in the first book of the Bible, way back in the book of Genesis. We read there that the Lord God formed the first person of dust from the ground, "... and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ..." (Genesis 2:7). The breath of God is the life of God. God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils, into Adam’s being. That life is God’s Spirit.

In John’s Gospel we read that Jesus breathes that same Spirit of God, God’s breath of life, into the disciples. What we read in this story is nothing less than a new creation story. The human race has rebelled against God, the life maker. In its rebellion the human race, therefore, finds itself under the captivity of death. The risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, however, shatters our captivity to death. Jesus rose from the dead. He conquered death’s stranglehold on life. He breathed that new life into his disciples.

And note carefully what happens next. Jesus tells the now filled-with-the-Spirit disciples to proclaim his message of forgiveness and life to all people. "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven," Jesus tells them. "If you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:23). What is important here is the fact that Jesus sees to it that the very life, the very breath, the very Spirit of God will be at work wherever and whenever the story of Jesus is told. Let me say that one more time. The life, the breath, the Spirit of God will be present and working wherever and whenever the story of Jesus is told.

So come along, Melvin and Jeanie and Arnie and Gert. Come along, you doubters, all. Come along with Thomas, doubting Thomas. Come along to Jesus. Come along to Jesus and bring all your doubts with you. Jesus is present, receiving doubters wherever his story is told. So come along as friends share the story of Jesus with you. Come along as preachers preach the story. Come along and read his story once again in Holy Scripture. Come along and be present as he presents himself to you under the forms of bread and wine. Jesus will be present for you. Jesus will embrace you. Jesus is always willing to embrace doubters. God’s Spirit that is present when the Jesus story is told will seek to work the greatest miracle of all within your heart. God’s Spirit is present in the telling of the story of Jesus, seeking to overcome your doubts and lead you to faith.

Do not despair over your doubts. Doubt is a fact of human life. Even one of Jesus’ disciples had doubts. Our doubts do not scare Jesus away. Wherever and whenever Jesus’ story is told, there God’s Spirit is at work seeking to bring doubters to faith. Wherever and whenever Jesus’ story is told, there God’s Spirit is at work on every human heart seeking to plant Thomas’s confession on our lips. Wherever and whenever the story of Jesus is told, God’s Spirit is at work seeking to call forth from you the confession to Jesus: "My Lord and my God."

This birth of faith is not an easy matter. The birth of faith in the midst of doubt is really the birth of a new creation. After all, we do not have the advantage that the disciples had. We cannot walk with Jesus down the dusty trails of Palestine. We cannot put our hands into his wounds. The confession we make to Jesus, "My Lord my God," comes to birth in the midst of our doubts through great struggle. Jesus, in fact, speaks a special word of blessing over all who come to faith in our day and age. Jesus’ special word of blessing as faith comes to birth in us today is: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (John 20:29b).