The Reverend Mike Riggins 8/6/23

Why Do We Doubt?

Genesis 32:22-31
Matthew 14:13-21

The story of Jacob wrestling with God and receiving his new name Israel splits

in two the story of his feud with his brother Esau. His family is out in the desert,

crossing the Jabbok River under the cover of darkness, only because he has heard his

brother approaches. With an entourage. For all Jacob knows, Esau could very easily

intend him deadly harm. Yet before we learn how their meeting goes, we read of this

wrestling and naming. Why? Commentator Gerhard von Rad writes, “The most

obvious answer may also be correct: Jacob's life happened in precisely this order.”

Bernhard Anderson adds, “This interlude in the broader story must convey something

so important the author of Genesis could not put off telling it any longer.”

Jacob's two names help us understand. Jacob means “deceiver”. Israel means

“struggles with God”, or maybe, “God struggles with him.” Jacob, the man who has

cheated his brother out of his inheritance, the deceiver, has now struggled with God

and won a blessing. If indeed the “man” with whom he wrestled was God, then God

meant for Jacob to keep struggling until he won the blessing. He already has eleven

children, ten sons and two daughters. He will have two more sons. Those twelve men

will go on to father the twelve tribes of Israel. In this moment, Jacob/Israel cannot

know this for sure. But he does know that God has chosen him, for some reason. .
 Our episode from Matthew also has an important back story. The passage

begins, “Now when Jesus heard this...” The “this” is news of the death of his cousin,

John the Baptist. At the urging of his wife, King Herod, tired of John's outing of his

corruption and infidelity, has ordered John beheaded. Jesus hears this and just wants

peace and quiet. He wants to pray. He cannot escape. People hustle around the

northern end of the Sea of Galilee and meet him on the far shore. Still others come

out from the villages. In the same circumstances you or I would heave heavy sighs.

Matthew tells us Jesus “had compassion on them...” When it grows dark he insists his

disciples feed them. When they point out they lack the means, he performs the

miracle of the feeding of more than 10,000. What's that you say? Matthew lists only

5,000? Look again. He lists 5,000 men, plus women and children.

So we have two biblical stories with two implausible events. Jacob wrestles

God to a tie. Jesus multiplies five loaves and two fish to feed thousands. Do you buy

either one? Do you think they happened the way the Bible says they did? Or do you

doubt their truth? Let us be honest. We all doubt. Some of us doubt a great deal.

We doubt miracles because by definition they break the natural order of things. We

doubt because it somehow seems smarter, more sophisticated. We doubt because

we are afraid to trust that there is a God, or if there is, that God loves us. It just seems

safer not to stick out our necks, not to base our lives on faith.

In his song, I Wonder what would Happen the great Harry Chapin asked, “If we

say there's no one out there do we say we're going nowhere? Can we avoid the
question, 'Is this all that is here?'” In fact we cannot avoid the question. Oh, we try.

We stay busy. We try not to think too long or hard about it. But the question just sits

and waits for us to come back to it. Most of us do, sooner or later. Somebody we love

gets terribly sick. A movie plot line gets us to muse on the meaning of life. Somebody

we respect asks us how our walk with Jesus is going. Any of a hundred things can

cause us to ask, “Is this all that is here?” All but a blessed few of us carry some doubt.

Nothing sinful, nothing wrong with that. What matters is what we do about it.

Jesus' feeding of the thousands is one of only about a dozen events that appear

in all four of the Gospels. The others are all extremely important things, like his

crucifixion and resurrection. Commentators believe this makes the miraculous feeding

extremely important in the eyes of the Gospel writers, as well. On its face it reads like

a standard case of an ancient hero performing a thing beyond the power of mere

mortals. Hercules captures the Cretan Bull and presents it to King Eurytheus. Castor

tames the supposedly untamable horse of his half-brother's father, Zeus. Cassandra

of Troy utters an endless string of true prophecies—but the gods have decreed that no

one will believe a single one of them.

We read these ancient myths and roll our eyes. In this Post-Modern Era,

characterized by skepticism and doubt, we think we know better. Maybe a super-

strong man accomplished a few tasks that later became exaggerated into the myth of

Hercules. But he could never have done all things the lore claims he did. Maybe a

man named Castor was good with horses, but his twin brother Pollux could not have
had a different father, as the myth insists. Maybe a Trojan woman named Cassandra

could see the future with uncanny accuracy. But why would the gods care? Are there

any gods, really?

When we read the Bible with the same skepticism we apply to these ancient

myths we miss its point. The Bible contains a number of genres of literature:

prehistoric lore, saga, law, stories based on historic events—but not truly “history” as

we like to think of it, as objective and accurate. (In fact, I would submit that very little

modern “historical” writing is objective or accurate.) The Bible also contains poetry,

laments, prophetic oracles, Gospels, and personal letters from several apostles. In

order to take the Bible seriously we must take care to read each genre as it requires.

The Gospels were written by men who knew many stories about Jesus of Nazareth.

Whatever we might think, they clearly believed in him as the Son of God. They wrote

to move others—like us—to believe, too.

When we read the Gospels, including their miracle stories, we must try to read

them as they were meant to be read: as documentation of the wholeness of Jesus.

His power, his compassion, his love, his obedience to God. All of it. No matter how

much we may doubt, we owe it to ourselves to read the Gospels and to ask for the

faith that helps us better understand what they are trying to tell us. They are telling us

this: Jesus was real. He was the Son of God. He came into this world to save us from

ourselves. He expects to come back. Can we avoid the question? No, we cannot. Is

there a God? Is Jesus God? I believe so. May you, as well.