Doubt

Jack, a parishioner of mine long ago, showed up at my office. I invited him in and before I could say a word, he said, “Judy just had me served with divorce papers, and when I couldn’t reach her on the phone, I ran home. She’s cleaned out all her stuff and she’s gone. She left a note saying she’d call me tonight. This is all my fault.”

Frankly I have to say it has been rare in my experience that anyone really thinks a divorce is their fault, much less all their fault, so I was caught a little off guard. Based on our previous visits and a brief conversation or two I’d had with Judy, I thought I could honestly say there was plenty of fault or responsibility to go around. “Jack, what makes you think that?” His answer was heart-rending. “I’ve prayed and prayed that God would save our marriage and now she’s left. Obviously, I just didn’t have enough faith so God’s letting it fall apart.”

Jack, like so many other people, read Jesus’ remarks to Peter, “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt,” as he drags Peter up from the water, and applied them to their situation. I believe Jack and others who think they have too little faith is truly a dramatic misunderstanding of the nature of faith and of God. The message from this passage isn’t “if he’d had enough faith he could have walked on the water.” And the message to us isn’t “if we each had enough faith we could overcome our problems in astonishing ways.”

When Jesus uses the phrase, “little faith,” he’s describing a mixture of courage and anxiety. We’ve all felt that, haven’t we? Way back in 1972 when my bishop tapped me for a totally different kind of ministry than I had been doing—moving me from the parish to the campus—I remember feeling excited and sacred. I called my good friend more senior than I with whom I’d worked and asked him if he thought I could “cut it,” that is, do the job and do it well. There was a part of me that was supremely confident. But there was a part of me that was supremely unsure at the same time. Been there?

There’s another point to make. The word “doubt” Jesus uses when asking “why did you doubt,” means “why were you skeptical,” or “why did you vacillate,” not “why didn’t you believe.” The skeptic or vacillator is not an unbeliever. Unbelievers have no doubt or uncertainty—they are sure in their unbelief. It is only the believer who has moments of uncertainty or feel skeptical or wavers. Peter believes, but for a moment, the feel of the strong wind is the dominant experience rather than the feel of the water on the bottom of his feet. He has a kind of “what am I doing here” moment. My clergy friend asked me, “What makes you wonder whether or not you can do this.” Just as Jesus might have said to Peter, “what made you wonder whether or not you could take another step on the water?” I answered my friend with, “I don’t know. Maybe just the fact that I don’t know a single thing about campus ministry.” “Really,” he said, “you don’t know how to care about people?” I was stunned. “Well, when you put it that way.”

Peter’s faith was not demonstrated by his being able to walk on water. Faith is being willing to cry out to Jesus when we are being battered and sinking and expecting his strong hands to comfort and sustain us.

Storms batter and sometimes boats sink. Disease hurts and takes lives. Terrorists bomb subways and buses. Insurgents kill liberators and patriots and innocent bystanders. Wives decide to stop trying and leave marriages. This is the fabric of life. To understand faith as a quantifiable something which if you somehow having enough of will cause God to make spectacular exceptions to the weave of this fabric is problematic, at least. Even Jesus, when asking for the apparently inevitable outcome of his ministry—his painful death—to be set aside by saying, “let this cup pass from me,” he only did that in the context of also praying, “but not my will, but yours.”

God’s permissive will allows bad things to happen as a part of the natural order. But God’s ultimate will is that all things will be reconciled to him. That is the point of the Incarnation and all that followed. I think this story is not about Peter, but about the reality that Jesus is there when we are in need.

What I said to Jack that long ago day doesn’t matter. It did to him, but I think the message today to us is this: our Lord is not continually judging our every action and deciding if our faith is in good shape or not. However, our Lord is aware of our every action and does care whether or not each action is loving, kind, just and merciful. We confess because we know we don’t always demonstrate the faith and hope we have, nor respond to the grace we’ve received. Some times, we slip under the water. When we do, we just need to remember it is not a permanent condition and Jesus himself is there to restore us to wholeness and to enable our faithful witness to resume.

Peace,

Jerry+