In today’s passage Jesus has told the disciples where to meet him for the last time. They worship him on the mountain when they see him, he passes on his authority to them, he commands them to make disciples of all nations, he tells them to baptize in the name of the Trinity, and he promises to be with them forever. All these are familiar and fundamental parts of our faith.

Before today, I had never taken in the words that come right after “they worshiped him.” The crucial phrase is this: “but some doubted.” Some doubted! Right here among all these orders and promises, when they are looking right at the risen Jesus for the last time, not everyone believed what they saw and heard.

We could think of “but some doubted” as an easily overlooked minor detail of the story until we remember the Resurrection appearances and the role of doubt in the very different Gospel of John. Doubting Thomas is no minor character in John 20:19-25.

So many of us have been taught that if we are to be Christian we must accept what we have been told. Many Christians’ measure of faith is really a measure of our capacity to believe without questioning. I remember my terror as a child as I would pray, “Please God, make me believe so I don’t go to hell.”

But in the account in Matthew and the story in John, serious doubting is going on. Neither narrative condemns the doubters. This passage may comfort those of us who have been traumatized with respect to our inability to believe what we are told. Doubting is human. It is one way we grow in our ability to see the truth, and God put this capacity for doubt in us.