According to the Christian lectionary (a guide that provides suggested readings from the Bible for each Sunday of the year), this year’s season of Easter does not end until May 19. As I wrote in an earlier column, “Easter matters.” Those who put together the Christian lectionary thought so as well; the season of Easter includes seven Sundays.
Can we limit the season of Easter to seven Sundays? I think not. Once you embrace the message of Easter, that Jesus was executed and has risen from his tomb, the time limit for Easter is gone. Every Sunday, even every day, is an Easter day. Because He lives, you and I are offered “. . . life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 NRSV).
For most of us who grew up in the Christian faith, believing the Easter story is easy. We heard the story in Sunday school, from the pulpit, and we’ve read it from the gospels. We’ve heard; we’ve read; and we believe.
What if we had not grown up in the Christian faith? Would we find the story of Easter easy to believe? I don’t think so. I grew up in the Christian faith. I’ve been faithfully attending church all my seventy-five years and seeking to follow Jesus for sixty-six of those years. Despite this, doubts still pop up, leaving me asking if this story of Jesus can really be true.
Such doubts once bothered me. They no longer do. Doubts are what they are. I’ve never gone looking for doubts; they just rise to the surface of my mind. Is the Jesus story really true? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Is Jesus really the Son of God?
Was Mary really impregnated by God and not her soon-to-be husband? Those questions (doubts) and hundreds more have been and are part of my pilgrimage of faith.
Today doubts still arise, though not so much about the big stuff—who Jesus was and is and what he asks of us. I’ve settled the major issues. I believe Jesus was/is the Son of God.
I believe he died on a cross and that he rose from the dead. I believe life in all its fullness is offered to those who embrace Jesus as Lord. I believe that embracing him as Lord will often lead to hardship; but that even in times of hardship, life shall be full.
Today I find myself at peace with my doubts, but it is not because I can prove all I believe. It is because I have put my trust in Jesus as revealed to us in the Gospels and his Spirit’s abiding presence.
My belief is a matter of faith.
Because doubts still pop up, I’m grateful for Thomas, the disciple who demanded more than the word of other disciples that the Risen Jesus had appeared to them. He needed, so he thought, to see Jesus for himself. (See John 20:24-31)
Has my faith overcome all the doubts? No, not if by “overcoming” one means that there are no more doubts. Doubts still arise. When they do, I cling to what I know . . . I cling to Jesus whom I have seen through the eyes of others, including Thomas. Because of the reports of others, I have seen Him with the eyes of faith. Even so, doubts still arise for me.
Perhaps the difference is in how I respond to the doubts today versus how I did as a young man.
As a younger man, I sought to silence the doubts by trying harder to believe and by searching for greater proof.
Today, I submit my doubts to my faith. I allow the doubts to push me forward in my quest for better understanding. When such fails to happen, I throw the doubts back toward God, and I cling to what I know/believe—that which is at the core of my faith.
What is at the core of my faith? God is the Creator behind all that is. Jesus was/is God Incarnate—dwelling among us, once in bodily form and always through his spiritual presence. God is love. Apart from communion—prayer and daily living—with God, I am unmoored and adrift without meaning. I am a better man for having embraced Jesus and his teachings than I would ever be apart from having done so.
So, to doubts, I say, “Throw your best punch. Your best may occasionally rattle me; but nothing you throw my way can shake the unshakeable portion of my faith—I am of God . . . God abides with me . . . I shall return to God.”