Often in Error, Seldom in Doubt
Scripture: Matthew 16:13-20, 69-75; John 20:19-29
Sermon by George B. Wirth
First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta

February 20, 2000

 

Introduction

In the winter of 1950, during the crisis in Korea, President Harry S. Truman, his wife Bess, and Clement Atlee, Prime Minister of Great Britain, attended a musical concert at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. All 3,500 seats were full as Margaret Truman, the President and First Lady’s daughter, came on stage to begin her performance.

 

She sang a program that night which included selections by Schumann, Schubert and an aria from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. She drew waves of applause and was called back for four encores. One person in the audience, a music critic named Paul Hume from The Washington Post, was not impressed, and the next morning, as President Truman opened the paper to read the review, this is what it said:

 

Miss Truman is a unique American phenomenon with a pleasant voice of little size and fair quality. She is extremely attractive on stage...yet she cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time...and there are few moments during her recital when one can relax and feel confident that she will make her goal, which is the end of the song...

 

Later that morning Harry Truman wrote a letter in response to the review and sent it to the Post. This, in part, is what it said:

 

Mr. Hume: I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay!” ...Someday, I hope to meet you. When that happens, you’ll need a new nose and a lot of beefsteak for your black eyes.

(From Truman by David McCullough,

Simon and Schuster, 992, pages 827-829)

 

History has shown that Harry Truman was one of America’s greatest presidents. He was a man whose practical wisdom, sound judgement, and undaunted courage, led to decisions that helped to save the free world, but, when it came to his own daughter, Harry Truman, the father, was a man often in error, yet seldom in doubt!

 

 

Part 1
According to our gospel lesson from Matthew 16, the disciple Simon was perceived in much the same way. When Jesus came into Caesarea Philippi, asking His friends and closest followers “Who do people say that I am?” Simon was the first to step up and speak out, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” So Jesus blessed him and gave Simon a second name, saying, “You are Petras, Peter the rock, and on this rock I will build my church...” (Matthew 16:17-18)

 

You see, Simon Peter was a man of faith, a disciple of deep conviction, a person who was often in error yet seldom in doubt, the one follower of Jesus who vowed never to betray or to deny Him (Matthew 26:35).

 

And all these centuries later, most of us might want to be more like Simon Peter - faithful, loyal, courageous, committed to Jesus - except, we know what happened at the end.

 

When the chips were down, when the soldiers came, when the arrest was made and the accusations began, Simon Peter, standing at a distance, overhearing the false testimony against Jesus, said once, then twice, and again a third time “I do not know the man.” (Matthew 26:74)

At that moment, Simon Peter, the rock, often in error, seldom in doubt, made the one error, the great mistake that knocked him down and almost out.

 

God only knows what you or I would have done in the same situation. But the truth is, God does know about those moments when we have failed to live up to our faith, when we have not practiced what we preached, when we have fallen away from following Jesus and betrayed the people who counted on us.

 

It happened to Gordon MacDonald. He was pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts, the largest Protestant Church in New England, and then became president of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. He had written a best selling book, Ordering Your Private World about how to live in conformity to the will and way of Christ.

 

But his private world fell apart and broke into pieces when he had an affair with another woman. MacDonald resigned from Inter-Varsity, withdrew from public ministry and spent more than a year with his wife Gail at their summer home in New Hampshire. They prayed together, studied the Bible together, sought spiritual direction and received counseling from trusted friends and Christian leaders. And as the forgiveness and healing power of Christ brought that couple back together, Gordon MacDonald was given a second chance. After serving a small congregation in New York City, he was called to return to Grace Chapel in Massachusetts and welcomed home with open hearts and open arms. Subsequently, he wrote another book, this one entitled Rebuilding Your Broken World and in the introduction, this is what he says:

 

I am a broken-world person...for the rest of my life, I will have to live with the knowledge that I brought deep sorrow to my wife, to my children and to my friends

and others who have trusted me for many years...As Gail and I rebuilt our broken worlds...the process...centered on the acts of repentance, forgiveness, grace and chosen new direction of performance. And it has provided us a costly love that has bonds of steel.

(From Rebuilding Your Broken World by Gordon MacDonald, Thomas Nelson Publishers,

Nashville, Tennessee, 1988, page xvii)

 

This book was written in 1988 and ten years later, someone gave a copy to the President of the United States. Ever since then, Gordon MacDonald and two other pastors have been visiting and counseling with Bill Clinton at the White House, seeking to help him and Hillary Clinton rebuild their own broken world.

 

Christian friends, the Bible says that All have sinned and fall short of the glory of god. (Romans 3:23) In other words, we are often in error and without a doubt, each and every one of us will suffer some kind of brokenness in our journey through life. If that is where you are today, then you have come to the right place at the right time to hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, He is in the rebuilding of our broken world business. He offers forgiveness to those who have betrayed someone they love, healing to those who have been hurt and need to regain their trust, reconciliation to those who have strayed apart and restoration to those who want to find their way back into the heart of God.

 

That is what Simon Peter discovered after the resurrection of Jesus, as the Lord appeared to him and the other disciples by the Sea of Tiberius. Three times Jesus asked him, Simon, do you love me? Three times he answered, Lord, you know that I love you. And having made his confession of faith, Simon Peter was set free to begin again. So it can be, for you and for me, today.

 

Part 2
Now there was another disciple, Thomas, who also had a second name, Thomas “Didymus,” which in the Greek means “the twin,” but which we in the church have translated as Thomas “the doubter”, Doubting Thomas, because he was the one who questioned the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

 

John sets the scene in chapter 20 of his gospel:

 

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were because they were afraid, Jesus came and stood among them, saying “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord...

 

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So they told him “We have seen the Lord!” But Thomas said “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and put my hand in His side, I will not believe.”

 

Because of those words, we have labeled him “Doubting Thomas,” but I think we have been too hard on him, and before we close this sermon, I want to tell you why.

Two weeks ago, on a Sunday night, Barbara and I went to see the play “Shadowlands” at the Alliance Theater. As you may know, the play is about C. S. Lewis, one of the towering giants of Christianity in the twentieth century, who fell in love with an American poet named Joy Davidman. C. S. Lewis married her, knowing that she was sick with cancer and would probably die soon thereafter.

 

They enjoyed one year of marriage, including a glorious honeymoon trip to Greece. But the cancer came back, and in 1961, Joy Davidman Lewis died.

 

As the play “Shadowlands” so poignantly and painfully portrays, C. S. Lewis was devastated and sank into a depression. In real life - not in the play, but in real life - out of his anguish and sorrow, Lewis wrote a book entitled A Grief Observed, and this one paragraph tells the undeniable truth of that experience:

 

Where is God? When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him...and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting...on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so at once...what can this mean? Why is He so present...in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?

(From A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, Harper Collins Publishers, 1961, pages 17-18)

 

Now I can’t say this for certain, but I believe that Thomas felt the same way after Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. It wasn’t just doubt that blocked his faith but also grief and depression which sank way down into his soul and locked the doors of his mind and heart shut (even though the risen Christ had come through the doors of the Upper Room and appeared to the other disciples).

 

Could it be that Thomas and his soul mate C. S. Lewis both had the courage to admit their doubts, to struggle with their grief and to show us all that our belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus will surely take us to the height of joy and the depth of sorrow and lead us to an eternal love that will never let us go? If that is so, then we are faced with and must embrace now a reality/mystery so deep that even when we can’t feel it, or touch it or see it, it is still true. Jesus said to Thomas “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed.” I think Jesus was talking about us. Often in error? You bet we are, but, together with Peter, we have been forgiven by Jesus Christ. Seldom in doubt? Probably not - most of us have more doubts than we are willing to confess. And yet with Thomas, we are held fast and forever by the grace of God who has promised to be with us always, in this life and in the next.

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.