19/7/26
The sin of certainty … The holiness of doubt …
Today I would like to explore the possibility that Certainty is a sin and that doubt is actually a holy thing. This concept should be quite liberating for us, for we all struggle with doubts and we can all fall into the sin of certainty.
My inspiration for this homily is from our second lesson today, where St. Paul is writing to the congregation at Rome. In his letter, he is speaking about Present Suffering and Future Glory.
The present suffering is easy to see and understand. It is the here and now stuff. Visible and tangible. We all get that and can identify with it.
The future glory stuff is a little trickier. It belongs in the time to come, a place we cannot see and experience, but St. Paul assures us that the future glory will be infinitely and indescribably more thrilling and enjoyable than anything we can imagine. So he writes …
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Further, he points out that the sufferings of the present time lead naturally to the glory that is revealed to us. It's as if the two are dependent on the other.
So we get…
We share in his sufferings so that we may also share in his glory.
But this shift from suffering to glory does not happen instantaneously. It’s not a quick fix, a silver bullet. There is some waiting to be done in between times, and waiting, as we all know, can be downright excruciating.
But we ourselves groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies
And while we wait, we are in the dimension of hope and doubt. Every so often, an arrow with a message will pierce our conscious mind, and the message on this arrow is a simple two-word question.
What If?
And our minds and hearts are left to run amok with possibilities and conundrums.
What if this life is all there is? What if … I am not forgiven? What if my muttered feeble prayers and my countless tears amount to nothing, go unheeded and are just the gesticulations of a dotty old priest. What if … all this is folly?
So we wrestle, we doubt, we struggle, and we hope. Some of the finest folk who walk very closely in the presence of the living risen Christ are those for whom this arduous grappling is a part of their very being. They are all the more exquisite and admirable, for they get up day after day and consciously choose to walk this boulder-strewn track.
We are clothed then not just in sparkle and joy and feasting and laughter, but also in dowdy rags of doubt and hope. All of this, the desirable and the hard slog, are who we are. All are essential ingredients in the bread of life where you have to knead it … prove it and then just jolly well wait.
We hope and doubt because we cannot quite see what we are and what we shall be, but in this same cloudy hope St. Paul tells us we shall be saved.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Take out the hope and doubt ingredients, and you are left with the sin of certainty, and we must always consider the possibility that we will frequently get it wrong.
I conclude with something I wrote last year.
Once I went to see the film ’Conclave’. It was the fictitious story about the election of a Pope. Towards the beginning of the film, the Dean who helps to co-ordinate the trickiness delivers a stunning homily to the assembled cardinals, and I believe it is particularly pertinent for our diocese as she seeks a new bishop at this time.
“St Paul said, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians, who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church…is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you, there is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross.
Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty…and no doubt…there would be no mystery … and therefore no need … for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a leader who doubts.
And let him grant us a leader who sins, asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.”