Despite the fact that there is a TV show where this happens, supposedly, most people that I know have not gotten married at 1st sight. I know there are many reasons why people might do that, including arranged marriages, but for those of us who spent time getting to know our spouses before heading to the altar, we know that building trust takes time. For anyone who remembers those early stages of dating in particular, that foundation of trust is often built upon many, many questions. It can be seemingly simple questions like what the other person’s favorite color or flavor of ice cream is, or they can be the deeper questions that begin to uncover their values and what they are hoping for in their future to make sure you two are well aligned regarding the big decisions in life. This trust-building process happens in other relationships too, but it will look slightly different depending on how we are relating to the other person; friend or spouse, coworker or stranger.
Now, I’m not about to say that our relationship with God is the exact same as it is when we are navigating a new romantic relationship, thank goodness for that because I had to hear enough songs growing up that made Jesus sound a bit too much like a creepy, stalker boyfriend, but I do think that it can be helpful to understand our relationship with God as just that, relational. There are so many examples of relationships that our brains file away to help us make sense of what it means to be in relationship with God, including our families and our friendships. And, this matters because we are all going to have a different relationship with God because we all live different lives, in various contexts, with differing identities. I can’t stand up here and tell you exactly what your relationship with God is supposed to be like because you and I do not have the same experiences. I can only share about my experience and help share the Scriptural and historical experiences of others as they have been passed down to us through stories and hymns.
And, we trust that this diversity is a beautiful gift from God, as we are given many differing testimonies about faith in Scripture! This doesn’t make one right and the others wrong, just as we don’t say that only one Gospel is correct and the other three are wrong and should be disregarded. But, they all tell us different aspects of peoples’ relationship with God and how they understood that and communicated it to others through their preaching and teaching. And, this also means that, since the very beginning of our Scriptural accounts, it has been like playing a millennium spanning game of telephone!
Peter, Paul, and the other disciples shared what they heard and saw, but we also know that much of our religious history was told orally for centuries before it was ever written down, and then translated into hundreds of languages and versions. All of this can make it complicated to figure out what it means for us to be in relationship with God today. Especially in our current setting of Christian nationalism, it can feel even more difficult to sift through what is from God and what is a human agenda that is twisting Scripture and our desire for relationship with God for its own gain.
To all of this, I will remind us that doubt is not an absence of faith but is in fact an integral part of it. Like in the development of a relationship, asking questions is part of the process of building trust and making our faith our own instead of what someone else has prescribed for us. I will also remind us that God can handle our questions. Human leaders, however, can often struggle when they are questioned, especially about their teachings regarding faith, because they want us to just take them solely at their word without doubting or questioning anything. Personally, I find that behavior suspicious. We are not the first faithful Christians in history to ask questions of God and about what God is doing or seemingly not doing. Lest I need to bring up again the fact that Peter, the one whose testimony we hear today in Acts (Acts 2: 14a; 22-32), you know, the rock of the church, was frequently questioning and pushing back against what Jesus was saying and doing! So, our questions do not bother God; in fact, our questions and frustrations are a sign of our active relationship with God because we would not be spending that energy on those activities if that relationship wasn’t important to us, we would simply walk away.
I know that Thomas always gets a bad rap, even being given the nickname “Doubting Thomas,” but I think that does a disservice to all of us when we dismiss him or judge him because of that (John 20: 26-29). We all have periods in our life when we are going to be like Thomas, wanting some tangible evidence of God’s presence with us, especially when we are grieving or in pain. Our periods of doubt will ebb and flow, but, for many, they are heightened during periods of grief and distress, which completely makes sense. When we are most shaken, we want something solid to see and hold onto; Thomas is no different today. After all, his friend and teacher just died in a horrific manner a few days ago and he is still trying to process that reality; of course it is hard for him to believe the others when they say that they saw Jesus (John 20: 24-25)!
All of this points back to the way that our faith is not just something static on paper, but it is active, alive, and is constantly growing and changing as we relate to God differently throughout our lives. At some points, we’ll have our doubts, especially as the world around us feels chaotic and out of control, and at some points we will sit with others while they wrestle with their own questions. This is a beautiful part about our relational faith, that it stretches out to those around us who we are also in relationship with as we explore these different aspects of our faith together. Our faith is both communal and personal, as we trust that God loves the whole world, and that because of our varying life experiences and identities, we will all relate to God differently at the same time. Once we recognize that, we are able to see why it is so important to our faith that we all get to share the stories and experiences with God, so that our hearts and minds are opened to even more ways of understanding God. And, how asking our questions and wrestling with our faith can help us all to grow more along the way too. So, may we embark on that journey together, as we risk the courage to ask the questions and sit in the discomfort of not always getting the answers, as we keep developing our relationship with God.
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Sunday April 5th, 2026 Worship