Space for Skeptics--January 17, 2024

Space for Skeptics--January 17, 2024

"When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’" [John 1:47]

Jesus can work with doubters.  Jesus can make room in his circle of disciples for people with wobbly trust and questionable faithfulness (after all, he regularly calls his hand-picked twelve apostles "you of little faith" and knows that they will all scatter by the time he gets arrested). The ones Jesus has the hardest time getting through to, however, are the ones who are so self-confident in their certainty (or pretend to be) about their rightness that they have no room to let Jesus surprise them, challenge them, or stretch their thinking and believing.

But skeptics?  Jesus can definitely make space for skeptics.

This might be the first major surprise in John's Gospel, as Jesus' budding ministry begins.  He has been introducing himself in public over the first section of what we call Chapter One, and as we saw earlier this week, sometimes his invitation is met with immediate enthusiasm.  To Philip, there was simply the call, "Follow me," and Philip not only signed up right on the spot, but immediately went and told his ol' buddy Nathanael about Jesus, too.  Nathanael, on the other hand, had dismissed Jesus out of hand from the beginning:  "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" he bluntly questioned.  So you might expect Jesus to shake the dust off of his sandals and walk away from Nathanael; any one of us might have simply decided to take our toys and go home in the face of that kind of rejection.

But Jesus is different.  He doesn't give up on Nathanael, even though Nathanael has pre-emptively dismissed Jesus out of hand.  Jesus doesn't demand that Nathanael abandon his skeptical demeanor, nor does he demand an apology or some kind of show of greater faith.  In fact, Jesus actually commends Nathanael for being a straight-talker rather than a sycophant. That's worth noticing.

When Jesus says, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit," it's not a comeback or an insult or a criticism.  It's actually something of a compliment.  There's a hint of a play on words here, too--calling Nathanael an "Israelite" calls to mind the great patriarch Israel, who had first been known by the name Jacob and who had a reputation for being a liar, a schemer, a trickster, and an all-around deceitful guy. (Jacob was, as our confirmation class students often call him, the "Loki" of the book of Genesis.)  And even though Nathanael has duplicitous Jacob/Israel for an ancestor, at least Nathanael can be honest with Jesus.  He brings his doubts right out into the open, and he feels no need to couch his questions in pious pleasantries or pretend spiritual certainties.  And instead of telling Nathanael that he has failed for having such flimsy faith, Jesus says basically, "Now here is something I can work with--here is someone who can be honest enough with me that I can have a great conversation with him!" Jesus is not afraid of our doubts, and he is not threatened by our questions.  He makes space for the skeptics, and he makes it safe for us to be honest, rather than pretend at playing church.

I wonder what it would do to our life as church if we were willing to trust Jesus on that, too.  I wonder what would happen if we invited people's questions, and instead of thinking it's the church's job to have a pat answer ready to erase all doubts, if we could live together in the ambiguity of real life.  Because the thing is, real life raises all sorts of questions that don't lend themselves to easy answers.  And all too often, in the name of being good little P.R. reps for God, Respectable Religious folks have tried to turn Christianity into a perfect theological system without any mystery, paradox, or tension, and the Bible into a neat little answer book for every problem. And in that kind of religion, there's no room for doubts, because there's always a pre-packaged answer ready for sale and consumption.  But that's just not how Jesus operates. 

Jesus is prepared to hear from people who are unsatisfied with spin-doctored sound-byte answers, because he knows the heartache, tragedy, and chaos of life in the actual world. To watch people on the news killing each other all over the world, or to see cancer or addiction wreck a life, or to recall the horrors of the Holocaust or the Killing Fields and to ask why such terrible things happen if God is real and good and able to stop it, these kinds of questions do not lend themselves to answers that start with, "Here's a Bible verse that explains it all away." In response to our deepest doubts and our thorniest questions, Jesus welcomes us--and all the people we know in our own lives and social circles who really wrestle with how to believe in God in a world with this much rottenness.  And he says to those honest struggles, "Now here is something I can work with."

There are people in our lives going through really difficult times, and for many, the last thing they want is an empty platitude or vague generality about how "it's all God's plan" or "This was meant to happen."  Instead, they need to know that we--and God--hear their hurt, and that we will not dismiss it or shrug it off with a Bible verse.  They need to know that it is safe to be honest, raw, and unfiltered with God.  Jesus shows us that it is. 

Maybe all we need to do ourselves is to believe trust that Jesus knows what he is talking about and let him create the space for skeptics that we are so often reluctant to allow.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to bring our questions and doubts, and the courage as well to let others bring them, too, without needing to silence them with trite answers.