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Mother Teresa and doubt
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 16th September 2007
Revd. Matthew Vernon
"In my soul I feel just terrible pain of loss – of God not wanting me, of God not being God – of God not really existing."
Words of Mother Teresa in 1959
• (from the new book of her collected letters Come be my light.)
"Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The child of your love – and now become as the most hated one – the one You have thrown away as unwanted – unloved. I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on Whom I can cling – no, No One. Alone …. I am told God loves me – and yet then reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul."
Harrowing words.
And yet reassuring for those of us who doubt too.
In her lifetime, Mother Teresa was the patron saint of Calcutta's poor.
She inspired us and millions around the world.
Now, 10 years after her death, we can recognise in her something of our own doubting, conflicted selves.
The apparent depth of her spiritual suffering is terrible, but it should come as no surprise that she doubted.
She was human.
Her way of life seemed super-human.
Her years of spiritual emptiness make her life all the more incredible.
She continued to serve the poor and dying of Calcutta despite her internal suffering.
She understood how odd her situation was: the woman acclaimed as a "living saint" struggled with her faith.
She chose to suffer in silence, believing that to go public with her struggles would focus the attention on her rather than Jesus.
"If I ever become a saint," she wrote, "I will surely be one of 'darkness'.
It should come as no surprise that she doubted.
For doubt is part of the journey of faith.
Despite popular perception, doubt and faith go hand in hand.
Doubt is faith's friend.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith, certainty is.
Certainty is the sin of bigots, terrorists, and Pharisees.
Even more evangelical writers like Alister McGrath acknowledge that "Doubt is our traveling companion in the wilderness, dogging our steps as we journey. It may withdraw for a season; its absence, however, proves temporary. Doubt is a lingering presence on the journey. We have to learn to cope with it."
If you have doubts about aspects of Christian faith, if you sometimes wonder whether God exists, you are not alone.
How do I know this?
Because I have those doubts too.
I was fortunate enough to visit the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's sisters, in Egypt when I lived their.
In Alexandria, the sisters run an orphanage for severely disabled children who have been abandoned,
• sometimes literally on the rubbish tip.
It is a beautiful place.
Not in terms of architecture, but in terms of love, compassion and spirit.
I visited the Sisters on Wednesday mornings to help them look after the children.
Every time I left wondering how the Sisters were able to do that full time:
• 24/7.
Just as Mother Teresa doubted, it should come as no surprise if we learned that her sisters doubt too.
The close link between faith and doubt is well documented in the great spiritual writings of Christianity.
You may be familiar with some.
St Ignatius of Loyola is famous for his Spiritual Exercises that still help many people.
He called the feeling of God's absence 'desolation'.
"One is completely listless, tepid and unhappy and feels separated from our Creator and Lord."
There are saints who seemed to enjoy a stress-free spiritual life, suffering little personal doubt.
St. Francis de Sales in the 17th century said that he never went more than 15 minutes without being aware of God's presence.
He didn't live in modern Hong Kong!
These saints are more the exception than the rule.
It was St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystic of the 16th century that gave a name to this common experience:
"The dark night of the soul"
The time when someone feels completely abandoned by God;
• when even the most ardent believers doubt God's existence.
Such experience is often described as being like a desert.
For no apparent reason prayer becomes empty,
• familiar words and rituals lose their meaning,
• church becomes boring,
• and faith suddenly seems a ridiculous charade.
Something seems to be sapping the energy of our faith and we feel dried up.
It is normal to have that kind of experience.
In fact, the spiritual greats suggest it is inevitable:
• an inevitable part of the journey of faith;
• of reaching maturity in faith.
Their advice is to hang on in their and see it through.
The Catholic author, Flannery O'Connor, wrote
• "I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe".
• "What people don't realise is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe."
This is a heavy topic and can seem a bit depressive.
But it's actually encouraging.
We can let go of the notion that we are meant to believe in God absolutely all the time.
It frees us from feeling we have to believe in a certain way to be a proper Christian.
We are free to explore and question and doubt.
God doesn't depend on our believing in God.
God doesn't need us to defend God.
Nice though it is to imagine that we are crucial to God's plan, God can manage quiet nicely without us.
Whether we believe in God or not, doesn't actually affect whether God exists or not.
God's love for us, God's mysterious, unfathomable love, does not depend on us feeling loved all the time.
Which is the other lesson from Mother Teresa's experience.
Holiness is about how you live and who you are, not what you believe.
Some forms of Christianity seem to say that authentic faith means feeling a spiritual high the whole time, or at least during worship.
Churches call themselves "spirit filled".
• which really means energetic and uplifting worship.
They seem to guarantee a spiritual high every service.
A kind of spiritual orgasm.
This kind of faith is "a big electric blanket".
You might have a similar high at a pop concert or a football game.
That's not to belittle those things at all.
Just to question what people are actually feeling.
As we saw last week, large crowds are dangerous and Jesus was wary of them.
The problem is our feelings are fickle and malleable.
They depend on how much sleep you've had and whether you people are going along with your view of the world.
Mother Teresa reminds us that the focus should be on living to serve other people,
not on whether we feel intimate with Jesus or not.
Her holiness is revealed in her extraordinary life of service;
• her spiritual maturity is shown in the depth of her doubting.
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