Imagine with me for a moment that you are once again a child at play. You are running around, playing in a large field with friends and siblings. What are you playing so hard at? Soccer? Frisbee? Having a catch with your dad? Playing tag with your sister? You feel quite free, don’t you, as if the world is yours, as if the games will only stop once you are completely out of breath or take enough time to catch fireflies?

What if, all of the sudden, something changed? There is still a field on which you are free to play, but there is a cliff on one side that is cutting off that freedom. You may continue playing, but the first time your baseball rolls near the edge, you tiptoe as close as you dare and peer over. It’s pretty far down. In fact, you can’t tell if that blackness is the bottom or simply void. Do you continue playing? Some may think that the stakes have just been raised and life is suddenly a lot more exciting than it ever has been before. Now playing has risks, and only the most adventurous are up to the challenge. Everyone else hangs back pretending to be tough and play for a little bit longer, but reality quickly sets in as you wonder whether or not you will be able to stop, or if you will go tumbling off the edge the first time your soccer ball goes sailing off.

You must, with one decision, grow up. You can stop playing altogether or continue to play, knowing, and sometimes ignoring, the risks. Life is not so easy and not nearly as fun anymore. But what if one day, when you went to look at what had been your playground, you discovered that a fence had been built? A great big, tall, sturdy fence. You could still see the edge of the cliff behind it, but you became acutely aware that there was no way you or any stray soccer balls were getting through it. I hope that you would begin to play again just as freely as before. At this point you once again have the luxury of being as free as a child, yet now you also have the knowledge and experience of someone who has enough worldly wisdom to know you’d rather stay within the fence.

The trouble often comes when we try to acknowledge the world outside the fence while at the same time being as content as a child at play within the fence. When we are encouraged to have child-like faith, we usually think, “Okay, yes, that does work for the kids, but what about all of the worldliness I’ve seen? What about all of the pain and anger and sickness and frustration?” The truth is that we have seen part of what makes up that darkness and we cannot convince ourselves that it isn’t there. We would be self-deceiving if we did, and God does not ask us to ignore those things anyway. What he does ask us to do is acknowledge the fences of grace he has built for us. We do still feel the weather inside these fences, but we do know that we cannot and will not fall off the cliff as long as we acknowledge that the fences are there for our protection, rather than to limit us.

So we give recognition to this outside world yet once again have the opportunity to live freely. We live more freely within the fences than we ever could have without the fences. And we cannot escape the grace; it instead provides our protection from falling into too much worldliness. In The Catcher in the Rye, the main character, Holden Caulfield, describes an image that keeps floating through his mind: “I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye …” Jesus spends a lot of his time doing the same thing, standing with arms wide open, ready to catch those who want so badly to fly but do not realize what will happen with that first leap. But even when we run right past Jesus, ignoring his open arms, we run right into the fence of grace. God has put up the great fence of grace as an added safety feature.
Our child-like faith comes from living within this grace and experiencing new freedom that comes from such living. We must begin to live our lives with purpose and to look for God in all that we see, just as a child looks for hard evidence of God in his or her world. God does not ask us to ignore our pain or the issues we face, but still to explore the world with great eagerness, appreciating all of creation, looking in wonder at the world around us in order to catch new glimpses of God’s goodness.

Consider Thomas, the disciple whom we casually refer to as “doubting Thomas.” Throughout the gospels, Thomas is the eager one who becomes excited once he knows why in addition to what’s going on. He took the missions Jesus sent him on quite seriously, but he was also very enthusiastic. He enjoyed living within the grace of God because he knew that this grace gave him the opportunity to question and doubt. He even took those doubts right along with him as he spread the gospel. He knew that Jesus wasn’t asking him to be perfect, but rather using him because of his doubts and imperfections. So rather than “doubting,” a better label for Thomas is “the one who exemplified childlike faith.” Just like a child, Thomas wants tangible proof of the events going on around him, and throughout the book of John he asks Jesus to explain the purpose of the disciples’ missions. It’s not that he doesn’t want to minister to the world around him but that he wants to do everything with purpose. He doesn’t want to just hear an answer but rather wants to see, hear, and feel for himself so that the truth that belonged to someone else can become his own. Thomas is rewarded with experiences that others do not have and a richer faith than most because he wants to know things for himself.
While we often refer to the apostles as a collective group, each one had his own personality. Jesus needed someone like Thomas to hold the others accountable but also to be a big supporter of their work. Thomas was probably one of the apostles asking the most questions when Jesus taught in parables because he wanted to make sure he understood things clearly. We as Presbyterians often take the same approach. One of the reasons we do not do as much evangelism as other denominations is that we will never claim to have any authority on Jesus’ teachings or any other part of the Bible. Instead, we acknowledge that we are still searching for answers and wrestling with our own doubts while at the same time trying to proclaim the gospel through our actions more so than our words. While we wrestle with faith, however, we persist in our faith by continuing to show God’s love through our actions.
It is because of Thomas’ persistence that the apostles stopped trying to dissuade Jesus from going to heal Lazarus in John 11 (John 11:16). Thomas is also the one who asks the question in John 14, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” which prompts Jesus’ very clear guidelines: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:5-6). What sounds like a statement of doubt from Thomas actually effects clear guidance to Christian living, guidance for all God’s children who are seeking him and the way to him, as well as Jesus’ own declaration that he embodies both truth and fullness of grace. We, as Christians, must have both. The following verse continues Jesus’ response: “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:7). This statement plays into the idea of needing to see to believe. Those who have childlike faith seek proof of what they’re asked to believe, and we understand that Jesus is the greatest proof of God because he is God.

While we don’t see Jesus with our own eyes, we do see proof of him all around us when we look for it. Thomas, however, did get the type of proof of the resurrection that we all wish we could have been present for. Thomas’ exclamation, “My Lord and my God!” when he touches Jesus in this morning’s gospel lesson reveals his desire both to believe the disciples and to believe in the resurrection. He doesn’t just say, “Oh, okay, you other apostles were right,” but rather shows the hope he had. Thomas was once again excited to go wherever Jesus wanted him to, but he needed an explanation of sorts before he would let his enthusiasm fly, and Jesus’ appearing to him provided all the explanation he needed. He knew, however, that he needed to see Jesus in order to believe for himself. His doubt was, therefore, a necessary step to his assured belief.

The church should be full of Christians who seek questions rather than answers, mystery instead of solutions, and wonder instead of explanations, and the acts of Thomas allow us room to question and to seek out the truth as we understand it. Jimmie often says in church that this is a place where questions are welcomed, and I am glad for that. In addition to that, however, I hope that the people who have attended this church for fifty years have questions just the same as newcomers. I would much rather attend a church with people who admit they have questions than with people who claim to have all the answers.

So how do we, as Christians who are full of doubt, exercise our freedom to doubt and explore God? The solution to the question of balance between acknowledging the boundaries of God’s grace, exploring freely within those boundaries, and asking questions in pursuit of God is in this passage from Peter’s first letter to the believers scattered throughout Asia Minor. He writes, “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). We go on a childlike pursuit of God so that our curiosity is not ever quenched simply by receiving a response from another person, but at the same time we must realize that Jesus leaves Thomas with a beatitude: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29b). We enjoy the grace and freedom that God provides us with so that we can explore as children do and come to believe as Thomas did.