Does History Get in the Way of Faith?

Listen to the Audio Version

1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

Paul! That filthy, stinking liar! What do you make of a man who would willingly dupe all of those people in Corinth, and, by extension, all of us today? He had to be a liar, right? How else would you explain his preposterous claim that Jesus, after being horrifically crucified, was resurrected? How else to explain his claim that Jesus appeared to Peter, then to the eleven apostles, then to 500 people (many of whom were alive when Paul wrote to the Corinthians), then to Jesus’ brother James, then to the eleven apostles again, and then to Paul himself? Has to be a liar, right? Human logic says so. God can’t possibly be stronger than the rules of Creation that God created when God created Creation, right? God isn’t powerful enough to overcome the laws of the universe, right?

A lot of people must think Paul lied because Jesus’ resurrection is a huuuuge sticking point for them. Many of these people have no problem with Jesus as having been a great man, mystic, or prophet, but the idea that God could overcome the laws of physics to resurrect Jesus seems ridiculous to them. I certainly used to think this way, back when I was much more mature ☺. When I went into seminary I struggled with the resurrection. I had so many doubts. It took a long time before I was able to say, “You know, I’m not sure all these people would have been such fanatical followers of Jesus if he hadn’t been resurrected. If the resurrection was false, wouldn’t he be pretty much be as well-followed today as John the Baptist is, which is to say, not at all?”

The resurrection is a problem for many. For example, a number of years ago I received an e-mail from a visitor to Calvin Church after the Easter service. I had preached on Jesus’ resurrection during the service. The person asked me, in a very polite way, whether I really believed in the resurrection. I said that I did, and I explained why. The response I got back was that the person was disappointed in me because I had seemed like such an intelligent, open-minded person. How could I then be naïve enough to believe in the resurrection? As far as he was concerned, this was a major flaw in my thinking. Suffice to say that he didn’t come back to Calvin Church after that.

So why do so many of us modern people have a problem with Jesus’ resurrection? I have a theory. Simply put, I believe that modern history and science get in the way of truth. We are very sophisticated in our thinking today, but with that sophistication comes some blinders. The main blinder is that we have a tendency to compartmentalize both our thinking and truth. What I mean by that is that we have a tendency to continually compartmentalize truth into categories, and as a result we get caught up in constant either/or thinking. You can see this everywhere in our culture. For instance, we think in rigid compartments such as:
• Republican or Democrat
• Scientific truth or religious truth
• Biology vs. chemistry vs. psychology vs. physics vs. religion
• Black or white or Hispanic or Asian or something else
• Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist
• Atheist or Religious

We’re so used to thinking in compartments that we don’t even realize how much we do it. There is a huge advantage of thinking in this way. The advantage is that it allows to separate things into categories so that we understand detail so much better. Our compartmentalization has led to huge advances in science and technology, allowing us to become world leaders in science and technology. The downside is that it has decreased our understanding of life, God, and the universe beyond the universe.

We may be more sophisticated scientifically and technologically than the people of Jesus’ day, but they were much more sophisticated than us in their ability to see life as a whole and as holy. People of Jesus’ time didn’t compartmentalize. They weren’t stuck in either/or thinking, but could maintain a both/and mindset. The temptation is to think that in their naivety they just weren’t very logical. If we think that way, we aren’t very logical. Where do you think modern, western logic was created? It was created in Greece through the writings of great philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Now think about the people Paul was writing to: the Corinthians. Where was Corinth? In Greece. These people understood logical thinking. But they also understood that logic only went so far, and that there were mysteries that transcend human logic. So, for example, they weren’t caught up in seeking only historical truth, a truth based on the truth of “what happened.” When they spoke about what happened historically, they combined it with myth as a way of also showing what God was doing in history. They weren’t just seeking historical truth. They also wanted theological truth. They wanted to tell what God was doing in history. They didn’t compartmentalize. They integrated. But we are stuck in compartmentalization.

Think about some of the ways we compartmentalize today. For example, we tend to see the world as divided into the secular and the sacred. Where is the sacred? In church on Sundays, right? Where’s the secular? Everywhere else at all other times. That’s not the way people of Jesus’ day, and especially the early Christians, saw they world. They saw this world as a God-permeated world. They understood that there is no place that isn’t also bursting with the sacred.

We also tend to divide heaven from earth. We see heaven as the place of God, and the earth as the place of humans. We think that we only enter heaven when we die. That is not how the ancients saw it. They understood that we can live in the kingdom of heaven here on earth. They believed that when we live a life that is open to God in every part, we can live simultaneously on earth and in the kingdom of heaven in this life. From their perspective, there’s no separation between heaven and earth unless we cut heaven off from earth.

They also didn’t separate the ideal from the real. I hear so often people saying that religion is too idealistic, and that we have to live in real life. Neither the early Christians nor the Jews believed this. We can criticize the Sadducees and the Pharisees for a lot of things, but they did not separate the ideal from the real. They strove to bring the ideal and the real together. So did the early Christians, except in a different way. They weren’t focused on living out ideal laws in everyday life. They wanted to become open to God in everything, to let God become alive in them, so that God would allow the ideal to become real. As a result, they believed that Jesus was incarnated in everyone. They weren’t hung up on whether or not Jesus was resurrected so much as they were hung up on how to let the resurrected Christ become alive in them.

It wasn’t just the early church who believed this way. This way of seeing life has persisted throughout Christian history, but we have to constantly be reminded of this. For example, look at the words of St. Patrick’s great prayer, written in the 5th century. It conveys so much how the resurrected Christ can come alive in us today:
May Christ be with us,
Christ before us,
Christ in us,
Christ over us.
May your salvation, O Lord,
be always ours this day and forevermore….

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

If this doesn’t convey the idea of the resurrected Christ becoming alive in us, of heaven being united with the earthly, of the ideal becoming on with the real, and the sacred permeating the secular, I don’t know what does.

Patrick isn’t the only one who experienced the incarnation of the risen Christ in the world. George Ritchie also experienced this. I don’t know if you remember George Ritchie, but I’ve spoken of him before. His story is a remarkable one. Until he died in 2007, he was a prominent psychiatrist in Virginia and Alabama, gaining respect from colleagues around the country. But it was his experiences in the Army during World War II that gave him international renown. In 1941, when he was twenty years old, and a new recruit in the Army, he contracted pneumonia, which progressed to the point at which he died and was clinically dead for over twenty minutes. He had an experience in death in which he came face-to-face with Jesus, who then led him through an experience of hell, the future, and then of heaven. He wrote about these experiences in his book, Return from Tomorrow. This experience changed his life, leading him to live a life of love.

What I find really interesting about his story, and what connects with what I’m saying here, is what happened a few years later. He ended up being an Army medic in the follow-up operation to D-Day during World War II. At one point he was tending to a sergeant major named Jack, who had lost his leg by stepping on a land mine. Ritchie was amazed at how, when he visited him, Jack cared more about Ritchie than his own condition. Over the next few weeks Ritchie saw Jack caring for the other soldiers around him, even though he was hurt much worse than most of them. Ritchie also saw something strange about Jack. Jack’s face looked so familiar, but Ritchie couldn’t quite place him. Where had he seen him before? After a week or so he finally figured it out. The sergeant major seemed to have the same face as Jesus, even though their faces were completely different.

Months later Ritchie was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp to help the victims recover. He noticed one particular man, a Jew, who seemed to be in better health than the others, and who spent all his time helping the others. He discovered that this man had been in the camp longer than all the others, yet there was also something familiar about him. Again, Ritchie realized that this man, too, had the face of Jesus. Over time Ritchie discovered something else that was fascinating. If he chose to look with spiritual eyes, he could see the face of Jesus in people all around him: the concentration camp victims, the other soldiers and officers, the townspeople, and even in the German prisoners. He saw Jesus everywhere. He realized that Christ was incarnated in everyone and everything, and if he chose to look for Jesus in the faces all around him, he would see Jesus. What he discovered is very similar to something Mother Teresa used to say: that she saw the face of Jesus in the poor. She wasn’t just saying this. She meant it. She saw Jesus in the poor because she also understood what Paul was saying: Christ is everywhere. The point of all this is that we get so caught up in the question of whether or not Jesus was resurrected that we miss an even larger possibility, which is that Christ is incarnated in the world everywhere.

Let me close by opening you to possibilities this morning. Can you go beyond the more simplistic thinking to mystical thinking? We’ve all heard that Jesus died for our sins. I don’t have a problem with that belief, although I think there are other ways of understanding Jesus that take us waaaaay beyond this basic idea. Jesus not only died for our sin, but he died because of sin and forgave anyway. Jesus didn’t just die for sin. It was human sin that killed him. It was the sin of people who were religious but didn’t really want to hear God’s word and voice. So, in their sin, they killed him. And Jesus’ response: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Take a step even further. Jesus lived and was raised to break down barriers between God and us. The point of the resurrection was that God knew that there were barriers of misconception, guilt, and selfishness that separate us from God by causing us to cut God out of life. God wanted to overcome those barriers through Christ, so God broke down the barriers of sin and death through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. God showed us to that whatever barriers we think are there, they aren’t.

Go even further. Jesus was raised to let his Spirit enter and act through us. This is what we learn through the story of Pentecost. Jesus ascended into heaven and the Spirit of Christ descended into his followers. The Spirit became part of everyone who was open to it, and the Spirit still is part of us if we are open to it. The point is that Christ’s Spirit can become alive in us. Christ’s resurrection wasn’t just about forgiving sin. It was about opening us to the possibility of living with the Spirit, and letting the Spirit become alive in and through us.

Finally, Jesus was raised to unite us in body, mind, and soul with God. God wants to be united with us in everything and everyway. Jesus came to show us that way by saying that just as Christ is in us and we are in Christ, that the Father is in us and we are in the Father. There is a kind of divine union that’s possible with God.

The point is that when we get caught up in the question of the resurrection, we miss the possibility of everything else. Are you stuck in the debates, or are you able to open to what’s beyond the debates, to the truth that lives beyond history?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Thomas Merton

Listen to the Audio Version

Psalm 46
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the Lord;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
"Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Psalm 131
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great
and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.

Why do so many Christians only form a deep faith after going through some sort of terrible pain, loss, or struggle? It’s a theme that I see so often throughout Christian history. I see it here at Calvin Church. For example, I look out in this congregation, and I see something very different from what most people might see by looking at our congregation. I think that some people would look around and think that everyone here has it all so together. They’d look at how you are dressed, how you stand, and how you talk, and they would conclude that this is a place for perfect people, not for those who are struggling and hurting.

When I look out at you, I see something very different. I don’t see perfect people. I see wounded people trying their best to let God in, people trying to let God lead them to better ways of living. I see people who have cancer, who suffer from depression, who are going through a divorce, or who are single parents raising children. I see people who have lost their jobs or are worried they may lose their jobs. I see people who struggle with addiction, a number of whom have gone through rehab. I see people who have children who are addicted—some who’ve gone through rehab four or five times, and others whose lives are spinning out of control leaving their parents powerless to stop the decline. I see people who have done things in their lives they are neither proud of, nor are willing to share with others. I see people whose parents have died, brothers or sisters have died, spouses have died, or children have died. I see people who struggle, but have a hope that God will lead them to better ways. I’ve pretty much described about 70% of you in my last few sentences. I see this much more as a hospital for sinners than as a country club for the perfect.

In a lot of ways you all are so much like the great Christians we’ve been talking about during Lent. For example, Benedict of Nursia, who is considered the father of the monastic movement, lived during a time in which the western Roman Empire was crumbling all around him, causing everyone to struggle in poverty. Hannah Whitall Smith wrote about faith despite the fact that her husband was a constant adulterer, leaving her to raise children by herself. John Calvin’s mother died when he was six, his father was austere and overbearing, and he was ill most of his life. Hannah Hurnard struggled with a speech impediment and other ailments most of her life. And St. Francis was imprisoned for a year in a dank cell, and suffered with tuberculosis as well as hepatitis and trachoma throughout his life. All had their struggles, and all sought God throughout their lives.

When I think about our star for today, Thomas Merton, I see a man who fits this profile of people of deep faith perfectly. And he shows us that no matter how much we struggle, we can find God if we are open enough.

Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915 to a New Zealand artist father, and an American Quaker mother. They moved to France because Merton’s father wanted his art to be inspired by the places of his favorite artists, such as Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh. Thomas Merton was bright and gifted from an early age, but he also had to struggle through a tremendously unstable childhood. Due to the outbreak of World War I in 1916, his family moved to Long Island, where he lived with his grandparents. About age six his mother died. His father then left for several years to travel throughout Europe, pursuing his art, and leaving Thomas and his younger brother, John Paul, to be raised by grandparents. You can imagine that Merton grew up feeling a bit lost.

When he was ten, his father came back to get him, and they moved to France, where Thomas lived for several years. These were inspiring years in which Thomas drank in the French joie de vivre. At age thirteen, Thomas and his father moved to London, and Thomas attended school there, quickly gaining a reputation as a bright, precocious student. Then his father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Soon afterwards, he died. Thomas was left feeling adrift.

He continued his schooling in Britain, and afterwards attended Cambridge University, one of the world’s great universities. Thomas never really settled in there. He spent as much time partying as he did studying, and after a year decided to take time off from school.

Never very religious, Thomas was pretty much an agnostic bordering on atheist. He didn’t think much about God. The seeds of change came when he spent several months in Rome, where he was exposed to some of the great churches and cathedrals. He had a special attraction to them, even if he didn’t think it was spiritual or religious. He would go into a cathedral and sit for hours, immersed in the silence and the atmosphere. He still didn’t think about God much, but he did think about the architecture and the impact it had on him, wondering why the stillness affected him so.

Soon it was decided that he would move back to the U.S. and attend Columbia University, studying literature and writing. At Columbia he had the opportunity to learn from some truly great professors, and he blossomed. It was also at this time that he secretly became a Roman Catholic. Despite his drinking and partying, he secretly attended mass every Sunday. Sometimes he would go with a hangover, but he went anyway. Then he decided to join the church, and secretly (from his friends, who were agnostics and proudly so) attended the catechism classes. Eventually he let everyone know that he had joined the church, and that the life of faith was important to him. His friends were dumbfounded. How could he, so bright and aware, be duped by the opiate of the masses? They were dumbfounded because many of them were Marxists. Merton himself became a communist for at least one party meeting. The meeting was devoted to a discussion of who didn’t attend the last meeting, and why. Merton realized that he couldn’t be a communist if this is all they cared about.

After graduation he got a job teaching literature at St. Bonaventure University in Olean, New York. While there he slowly sensed a calling to join a religious order—to become a monk or a friar. He even went so far as to approach the Franciscans at St. Bonaventure about entering the novitiate (a training program for monks-to-be). They initially accepted him. Then he got cold feet, worrying that he hadn’t come completely clean about his previous life. So he went back to the abbot and told him in detail everything about his life. You know the old joke about the man who gave his confession, and it turned the priest hair white? I think Merton’s story had that effect on the abbot. The abbot got back to Merton and told him that they no longer had space for him. Merton was crushed.

Speaking to friends, he was told about a Trappist monastery (part of the Cistercian order) in Gethsemane, Kentucky. So on December 10, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, and exactly 27 years before his death, Merton joined the Abbey of Gethsemane, becoming a novice, and then a monk.

In the monastery, Merton thrived. His abbot saw in him a unique gift for writing, and so encouraged Merton to write about his own spiritual life and insights. The first book he wrote was Seven Story Mountain, a memoir of his early life until his conversion. When it came out in the last 1940s, it changed many lives. This wasn’t the story of a saint. It was the story of an all-too-human man who lived as much of us have, yet who chose a life devoted to God. Over the course of 27 years, Merton wrote close to fifty books, many of which transformed Christianity. He was a monk who lived in silence in a small hermitage, spending his days praying, worshiping, and writing, and from a small abbey in Kentucky, Merton changed the Christian world.

During this time, churches of all denominations had become very functional. The focus had become on doing good deeds for Christ, going to church out of obligation, doing all the right things and looking like the right kind of people. Merton changed this by writing about the spiritual life—the importance of solitude, silence, prayer, personal reflection, discernment, and commitment to a life of spiritual growth. Many people have written about these things over the years, including me. But Merton was the first to really recover this focus on prayer and spirituality. He not only influenced other monks, nuns, friars, and sisters, but he influenced Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Evangelicals. And he did it simply—by writing about his own personal struggles, while also sharing basic insights into life gleaned from time spent in prayer and contemplation.

Some of his greatest books are books such as The Wisdom of the Desert, Thoughts in Solitude, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Life and Holiness. He was criticized by many Protestants for being merely a “person of prayer” who wasn’t on the front lines of ministry. Yet his writings allowed those same Protestants to reconnect spiritually with God in the midst of ministries that they had pushed God out of.

Thomas Merton made his own life a spiritual laboratory of prayer, and out of that he shared with others what he had learned. Let me close out this sermon by sharing with you two of the greatest gifts he gave back to Christianity. He led Christians back to meditation and contemplative prayer.

What is meditation? For Christians it is reading scripture or spiritual writings in a slow, prayerful, reflective, and open way that opens us to what God has to say to us through them. When we meditate on a piece of writing (we can also meditate on nature, life, and events, but often Merton’s focus was on scripture) we read it slowly, and then mull it over, reflecting prayerfully on what it says to us about life, God, and ourselves. We think about what the writing means, how it calls us to change our lives, and how we are to apply these insights into our lives.

Contemplative prayer is different (it is similar to what the Buddhists call “meditation”). Contemplation means sitting in silence with God as we let go of thoughts, agendas, emotions, insights, concerns, anxieties, and everything else. We simply sit with God in openness and stillness. It is the embodiment of our passages for this morning, where we hear,
Be still, and know that I am God!...
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

Merton believed that it was in solitude and silence that we hear God most clearly. He believed that our lives developed a deeper connection with God when we stilled, calmed, and quieted our souls. What I want to do for the rest of this morning is to introduce you to some of his thoughts, and in the process lead you into meditation and contemplation. First, I want to share with you this quote, and I’d like you to meditate on it. It’s from his book, Thoughts in Solitude. Read it slowly and then spend time reflecting on what God is saying to you through it about your life:

To keep ourselves spiritually alive we must constantly renew our faith. We are like pilots of fog-bound steamers, peering into the gloom in front of us, listening for the sounds of other ships, and we can only reach our harbor if we keep alert. The spiritual life is, then, first of all a matter of keeping awake. We must not lose our sensitivity to spiritual inspirations. We must always be able to respond to the slightest warnings that speak, as though by hidden instinct, in the depth of the soul that is spiritually alive.
mnm

Finally, I’d like you to experience a bit of contemplative prayer. Sit in a comfortable place with both feet on the floor, hands in lap, and everything else put aside. Let go of your thoughts, worries, and agendas. Let go of everything, including the need to experience God in this time. Just sit with God. Create space just to be with God and to let God in. Close out this sermon just sitting in silence, and as thoughts come, let them go. Close this sermon out just by being with God. Do it for just two minutes, and see what being still can do.

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Francis of Assisi

Listen to the Audio Version

Matthew 6:25-34
March 29, 2009

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, "What will we eat?” or "What will we drink?” or "What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

Francis was two years away from death. He was in terrible pain and terrible health. He suffered from tuberculosis, malaria, possibly hepatitis, and he could barely see because of his trachoma—an eye infection that inflames the underside of the eyelids, causing tremendous pain and sensitivity when opened. He had devoted his life to serving God, and this was the thanks he got—to be in constant pain, an old man at only age 42. How would you respond if you were he? Would you be happy or bitter? He responded the only way he knew how. He started to write a song of praise to God.

You are probably familiar with the thoughts he wrote down, since his words were the basis of one of our best-known hymns, “All Creatures of Our God and King:”

All creatures of our God and King

Lift up your voice and with us sing,

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Thou burning sun with golden beam,

Thou silver moon with softer gleam!
O praise Him! O praise Him!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This famous song, which Francis called “Canticle to Brother Son,” expressed perfectly his faith. He wasn’t bitter. He was awe-struck. Despite his pain, illness, and suffering, he found joy throughout his life. His condition didn’t deter him. He was going to find God in everything, everywhere, and at every time.

When Francis died two years later, it became apparent that in twenty short years he had transformed Christianity. He died in his favorite little church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, which was only two miles from the little church where his mission all began, the church of San Damiano. After he died, thousands came to see his body, where they saw for the first time the marks that Francis had first received two years earlier, marks that he had tried desperately to hide from others—the stigmata.

Two years earlier he had awoken one morning to find holes pierced in his feet, hands, and side, just like Jesus. And these were wounds that never quite healed or went away. He was embarrassed by them, thinking that people would interpret them as signs of pride that he had given to himself to make himself seem special. To hide them he began to wear shoes rather than sandals, and wrapped bands of cloth around his hands. Soon after his death hundreds reported miracles and healings after praying in Francis’ name. Within two years, the pope, Gregory IX canonized Francis and made him saint, which was a rarity in a process that typically takes decades, generations, or even centuries to happen.

St. Francis was a remarkable man. He was born rich and strove to be poor so that he could serve the poor. He gave up life in grand house to live under the stars. He was a nobody who ended up transforming everybody, including bishops and three popes: innocent III, Honorius, & Gregory IX. He changed Christianity forever. This is not what anyone had expected of Francesco di Bernardone as a child, teen, or young adult. Let me tell you a bit about St. Francis.

Francis was born of a wealthy Italian merchant, Pietro di Bernardone and his French wife, Pica. He was born as Europe was beginning to emerge out of the Dark Ages. For almost 400 years Europe had been in a fugue. Then, as the beginnings of the Renaissance emerged, the feudal system started breaking down, and a middle class of merchants and craftsmen was emerging. Francis’ father was one of these merchants who was becoming very wealthy from the trade of cloth. The result was the Francis received one of the best educations of the time, learning to speak French and Latin, in addition to the medieval Italian and dialect of Assisi he already knew. Also, Francis was accustomed to traveling with his father around Europe purchasing fine fabrics, so he was becoming worldly for that age.

Francis was accustomed to a life of wealth. As he grew through his teenage years, he became best known for being a partier, spending much of his time drinking, playing cards, and chasing women. He was being groomed by his father to also become a cloth merchant. And Francis wasn’t half-bad at it, although his heart was only half in it.

His life changed as events in Europe changed. With the death of the emperor of Germany, who was also the emperor over most of Italy, a power vacuum arose. The small cities of Italy began to vie for power. Perugia, a small city fifteen miles from Assisi, and its traditional enemy, wanted to subdue Assisi under their authority. So the men of Assisi prepared for battle. The idea of battle for a valiant cause inspired Francis. He had heard wonderful tales of King Arthur and the knights of the round table, and Francis wanted to become one of these chivalrous knights. So off he rode to war, dressed from head-to-toe in mail-link armor, shield, sword, and adorned with a red tunic. From all accounts, Francis fought well but was eventually captured and thrown into the dungeons of Perugia, which were crafted from the dank, sewage-filled ancient catacombs of that city—a remnant of Roman times. Francis languished in prison for over a year. It was probably there that he caught tuberculosis. Normally the Perugians would have killed him along with the other captives, but his armor and tunic saved his life. The Perugians looked at its quality and realized that he was from wealth. They decided to ransom him to the Assisians, along with about fifteen other prisoners. It took almost a year to negotiate terms for their release.

When Francis was released, he was very ill, but also changed, although it took another year or more for the change in his soul to really take effect in his mind and body. On the outside he looked like he always had, and he acted like he always had, but away from everyone else he cultivated a secret life of devotion to God. It started with prayer. He began to pray, and even secreted away to some caves on Mt. Subasio, outside of Assisi, where, in solitude and silence, he sought God’s guidance.

Also, his attitude toward the poor, and especially toward lepers, changed. He had always feared the poor and been repulsed by lepers. The lepers of his day were secluded and were forced to wear gray rags from head-to-toe. When they begged, they could not come within 20 feet of another person, and would have to leave their bowls on the ground and step away. In addition, if they were traveling, they had to carry wooden clappers to clap as they walked, warning others that lepers were approaching. Francis was revolted at the sight of them, yet he now became fascinated with them.

On a particular trip to Rome, he decided that he wanted to know what it was like to be poor. So he traded clothes with a beggar, and spent three days in Rome begging on the street. When he returned home, he secretly took money and food and gave it to the lepers. Also, he spent time visiting a small, run-down church in the hills named San Damiano.

Still, on the outside Francis looked and acted like the old Francis. He was still the life of the party, dressed in fine clothes, surrounded by men and women. When another battle was ready to be waged between Assisi and Perugia, Francis signed on. On the eve of battle, Francis heard God’s voice in a dream saying to him, “Re-build my church.” He thought the voice was referring to San Damiano, so he promised to give to the church when he returned. The day the army was to set out, Francis heard the voice again while he was awake, asking him which is more important to serve, the master or the servant. Francis responded, “the master.” The voice responded, “Then why do you go out to serve the servants.” Francis interpreted this to mean that he was not to go battle, but was rebuild the church of San Damiano.

A few weeks later, while his father was traveling, Francis stole the inventory of cloth from his father’s warehouse, sold it, and took the gold to the priest of San Damiano. The priest didn’t trust that Francis was serious, so he refused the gold. Francis, not knowing what else to do, threw the sack of gold up onto a high windowsill, where it remained for months.

When his father returned, he was furious, and demanded that Francis return the money. Francis refused. His father then locked him into the basement for a month or more. His mother finally released him, and Francis returned to San Damiano to continue working on the church. Pietro, looking for help to recover his money and drive sense into his son, went to the local bishop, Bishop Guido (bishops at the time also had the authority act as judges where church and local issues intersected), asking for a trial to get his son to return the gold. Francis showed up for the trial and did something startling. He walked into the courtyard naked, put down his clothes in a pile before the bishop, placed the sack of gold atop it, and declared that he was no longer Francis, child of Pietro de Bernardone, but Francis, child of God. Despite the crowd’s shock, the bishop sensed that he was witnessing something special. He decided at that moment to support Francis in whatever he was planning to do. He recognized that this young man had become a man of deep faith and willingness to serve God.

From that moment onward, Francis lived life as a beggar. He begged each day for his food, trusting in God’s providence for his life. He devoted himself to the work of rebuilding the church of San Damiano. He also began to preach about God’s presence and love in the world. There was something different, something authentic, about Francis’ preaching. He not only preached a simple faith of trust in God and God’s love in the world, but he used everyday examples culled from everyday life. People felt like they were really hearing God’s word when Francis spoke.

Soon others were coming to him, asking if they could join him. Some were his partying friends, recognizing a call in their lives to join Francis, ome were strangers. Francis and his followers completed their work on San Damiano, and set about rebuilding another church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, about two miles away. In the meantime, Francis also dedicated himself to a ministry of caring for lepers, not only finding food for them, but tending to their wounds.

Slowly Francis’ fame spread. More and more men asked to be his followers, and even women approached him about starting an order based on his ministry. Francis approached the bishop and the pope, and asked if he could start an order based on his vision of living according to God’s providence and caring for the poor. He was granted permission, and so he created an order of friars for men, sisters for the women (under the guidance of Clare, who eventually became St. Clare of Assisi after her death), and a lay order for those committed to work and family life, but seeking to contribute to the work of Francis and his followers.

Francis lived a life of miracles. For example, there is a report that Francis, when dealing with a leper who had lost all hope in God, took water filled with herbs, and bathed the hands and body of the leper, while kissing the leper all over. Afterwards, the leper’s hands, feet, and face healed, and the disease no longer spread throughout his body. Francis is also said to have been able to talk with animals, especially birds, who followed him as he travelled. It is also said that at his death, a particular raven, which had become Francis’ companion, had followed the procession of Francis’ dead body from Santa Maria degli Angeli to San Damiano, before dying itself.

Francis was a man of peace, who believed that God wanted peace among all people. Thus, Francis sought to be a knight of peace, substituting faith for fighting. For instance, while Francis remained captivated with the vision of the Crusades his whole life, he sought a new Crusade of peace. Looking historically at his age, he was born around the time that Jerusalem fell back into the hands of the Muslims. Early in the 12th century, the Christians had captured the Holy Lands and held onto it for about eighty years. Then the Muslim sultan, Saladin, recaptured the Holy Lands. After he died, his brother, Al-Kamil, became sultan and ruler of the Muslim empire gathered under Saladin.

During the fifth Crusade of 1221,in which the Christians tried to recapture the Holy Lands through Egypt, Francis felt the call to join the forces. Being God’s knight, he believed in the power of conversion, and that he was called to convert the sultan of the Muslims, Al-Kamil. Francis landed in Egypt, joining the troops as they laid siege to the Egyptian city of Damietta, a city in the Nile Delta.

Francis tended to the hurt, sick, and wounded, and when the Crusader army suffered a massive defeat, saw his opportunity to convert the sultan. Accompanied by one of his followers, he walked out of the Crusader camp, across the battlefield, and toward the Muslim camp. He was immediately captured and almost killed on the spot. Looking at him more closely, the soldiers finally concluded that a man so simple, so prayerful, and so filthy was no threat to the Muslim army. They took him to Al-Kamil. For three days, Al-Kamil spoke with Francis, and even summoned his own theologians to engage in talks. Apparently he was much taken with Francis, and told Francis that he was inspired by his apparent holiness and faith. He also told Francis that despite Francis’ inspiring talk, that he could not become a Christian because he would lose both is position as sultan and his life. Francis was returned to the Crusader camp, but before he was, Al-Kamir gave Francis the right to walk through any Muslim lands to preach, without threat of beating, imprisonment, or execution.

After wandering the Holy Lands for a while, Francis returned to Assisi, where he returned to his ministry to the poor and sick. By this time Francis himself was terribly sick, and the tachoma, the disease of the eye that he probably got while in Egypt, progressed to the point that he could hardly see. Still, his infirmity did not prevent him from ministering. He became an inspired example not only for the Christians of his time, but even for us today. Francis helped Christianity recover its core and foundation of love of God and of God’s creation, the need to care for the poor and hurting, and the need to serve God in everything.

So what was it, specifically, that Francis emphasized. First, Francis rejected materialism, and emphasized a concern for the poor and creation. I’m not sure how Francis would consider our culture today. He would certainly look at our excesses and ask why we cared so little for the poor and the environment. Francis believed that we should care for all creation: animals, plants, and people. He did not see a distinction between them. He believed that God had blessed us all, and that we had an obligation to return thanks to God by caring for all creation.

Second, Francis believed in constant prayer, faith, and humility. He believed that God created us for a relationship with God, and that relationship of love could only be manifested through out constant prayer, willingness to act in faith in everything, and a humility that recognized the greatness of God and the smallness of us.

Finally, Francis believed that we all had a constant calling to restore the church, and the primacy of faith, to life. He believed that neglect of faith and the church destroyed the soul of the individual and of the world. He saw faith and worship as intricately linked. I believe that he would look at those today who say that they are spiritual but not religious as fooling themselves. He would say that a spirituality that is not practiced in worship and a community is self-indulgent and selfish. He believed that a thriving church could give rise to a thriving faith, and that at thriving faith could give rise to a thriving church.

Few people have had the impact Francis had in such a short life. Francis influenced thousands to put God first in an age of growing materialism. He restored the emphasis on concern for the poor by becoming poor. He restored an emphasis on prayer and service by living a life of prayer and service.

The question I’d like to leave you with is this: what can you learn from the life of St. Francis?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Hannah Hurnard

Listen to the Audio Version

Matthew 10:26-31
March 22, 2009

So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

I want to introduce you this morning to a woman who is, perhaps, one of the greatest Christians you’ve never heard of. As you know, during this season of Lent we have been offering a series on the “stars” of Christian faith. We’ve focused on stars such as Benedict of Nursia, considered the father of the monastic movement, Hannah Whitall Smith, a 19th century Quaker, and John Calvin, whom you should have heard of.

This morning I want to focus on a woman who came out of nowhere in the 1950s to write a book that has transformed millions. Her book, Hinds’ Feet on High Places, was The Shack of her age. If you haven’t heard of The Shack, it is a wonderful book that teaches about faith through the conversations between a broken man and God. The author of that book, William Young, came out of nowhere, as did Hannah Hurnard.

Looking at Hannah’s life, no one would have expected her to write a great book, especially a Christian one. You see, early in her life she struggled with Christianity and Christian faith. She was born in England in the beginning of the 20th century to Quaker parents. She grew up with a lot of phobias, as well as a stammer that embarrassed her throughout her life. Her parents had a strong faith, and were very active in their church, often going to worship services all day Sunday, as well as in mid-week. Hannah went to services with her, but she just didn’t feel the passion that others around her did. She was their fervor, and wished she had it, too, but she struggled with her faith.

Her struggles culminated in a long-lasting experience when she was 19. There was a weeklong revival taking place in the town of Keswick, and Hannah’s father wanted to spend all day, everyday, at the revival. Hannah just couldn’t stand the idea of doing nothing but church, all day, everyday. Church did nothing for her. She didn’t experience God in her life, and so worship had no impact. So she begged her father to not make her join them in the revival. Instead, her father negotiated an agreement: she would join him for worship in the morning and evening, and spend the rest of her day on her own.

Unexpectedly, she encountered God. Sitting in worship on evening, she kept looking at the fervor that others had in worship, and noticed the dullness she felt inside of herself. That bothered her because she felt like she was missing something. So she prayed to God that God would open her up to an experience of God. She went home, and not knowing the Bible at all, or where to start, she opened it at random and started reading. The story she read was of Elijah making a sacrifice to God on Mt. Horeb. Hannah realized that God was calling on her to sacrifice her heart, mind, and soul to God. And so she made a sacrifice, giving her hear to God, even if she didn’t know what that meant.

After doing so, she felt the first real sense of peace in her life. She felt called to reach out to others like her, to reach others who were afraid. So she committed her life to God. In 1932 she moved to what would become Israel, and was a missionary to the Jews for fifty years. Then, in 1955, she published her groundbreaking book about the transformation of faith that can lead us from being “much-afraid” of everything and living in fear, to becoming a person of faith who can do anything God calls us to do. The book was based on her experiences of transformation. What I want to do this morning is to share with you the story she wrote, which is about the transformation of the main character, Much-Afraid.

The story is an allegory. What that means is that it is written much like a fairy tale, with simple characters and a simple plot, but everything in it represents aspects of real life that are very complex—aspects that are so complex that they are hard to talk about in a more straightforward way. The fact that it is an allegory causes many people to miss the whole point of the story when they read it. It takes a willingness to look beyond the apparent to understand the power of allegories. Allegories require that people spend time reflecting deeply about what they’ve read. Unfortunately, we are in far too much of a hurry to read slowly. But if we do read slowly, it’s amazing what we can discover and discern.

The story begins with Much-Afraid, who lives in the Valley of Humiliation. This is a very real valley of life where people interact in ways that leave them feeling hurt by others. Much-Afraid feels very hurt in her life. Physically she is plagued by a crippled walk and speech impediment, both of which represent our own weak-kneed faith and sin. Much-afraid is like us. She lives her life in fear, worrying about the future, about the past, about what others think of her, and about the bad things that are always ready to tear her pitiful life apart. She is a member of the Fearing family, which represents the family of fears that always plagues us. Among those in her family are Craven Fear, Coward, Gloomy, Self-Pity, Pride, and Self-Loathing, all emotions that plague us. She is due to wed Craven Fear, and she knows that once she does she will live in the grips of fear for the rest of her life. How much is she like us? We all live in constant fear, even if it is a fear that we push aside. We are afraid of the future, of the economy, of our co-workers, our bosses, our families, of conflict, failure, and so much more. We are members of the family of Fearings.

What Much-Afraid wants more than anything else in life is to strike up enough courage to follow the Great Shepherd, who is Jesus, to the High Places where she can be transformed. The High Places stand for God’s kingdom, and inherent in it is the idea that when we truly begin living in God’s kingdom, it has the power to transform us, to reshape us so that we become people of love and grace. The High Places are the place of transformation, yet as much as she wants to go there, she is afraid. What if she follows and the Shepherd lets her down? What if she follows and good things don’t happen? How often have we asked similar questions? What if we commit our lives to God and God doesn’t come through?

She goes into a deep personal struggle with herself and her family. What should she do? Finally she does decide to set out to the High Places, trusting that the Good Shepherd will take care of her. But to do so she must undergo a mighty struggle between the pull of fear and faith. This is the spiritual struggle each and every one of us has in life. Will we give our lives to God in faith, or will we let our fear of the future, of God, of being disappointed, and of being considered weird pull us away from God? Much-Afraid decides to go in faith, but her faith is weak. She could pull way and go back to her Fearing family at a moment’s notice. Again, we are like that. Even when we act in faith, fear stalks us.

After a struggle with her family, who threaten to tie her up and force her to marry Craven Fear, she escapes and meets the Good Shepherd (Jesus). She has lots of expectations of the journey. Like many of us with an immature faith, we expect that the path the Shepherd leads us on will be easy. Many of us believe that the path of Christ should be a pleasurable one. Why not? We’ve given God our life? We believe in God, so shouldn’t God reward us by making life easier? That’s the way Much-Afraid thinks. She expects her life to get easier immediately. She imagines that now that she has committed herself to the Great Shepherd, all her problems will go away. The truth is that the path of spiritual transformation is difficult, and it never goes as we expect it to go. She expects an easy path from that moment on, but she is in for a surprise.

If we had written the book, I’m sure many of us would have a definite idea of where the path should lead. Perhaps she would be led to a pleasant path through meadows. Perhaps we would give her a nice, easy path with a gradual climb. Best of all, we might give her a path that leads to a tram, which would whisk her quickly to the top. That’s what we would script for ourselves. That’s not the path the Shepherd has for her or us.

While she can see clearly the straight path to the top, the Good Shepherd tells her that she must take the path to the left, which leads straight into a desert. Much-Afraid is crushed. That’s not right! How could God lead her into a desert? There must be some mistake. The Good Shepherd assures her that it is no mistake. The desert isn’t just a place in this book. The Bible constantly talks about the desert. In fact, most of the great figures of the Bible are led into the desert: Abraham, Isaac, Moses, the Israelites, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul. The desert is a mystical place in the Bible where we learn lessons we cannot learn anywhere else. The desert is also highly symbolic of life, of those times where we feel dry and lifeless, where we struggle to find joy, where life is difficult. But the desert also is full of transforming lessons. What do we learn in our deserts, in the experiences of life where we struggle and God seems absent?

First we learn that faith blooms in the desert and dies in a garden. This is almost always true. The people with the weakest faith are often the people with the easiest lives. The people with the deepest faith are often the ones who have gone through severe difficulties in life and have learned to trust in God despite these difficulties. Also, in the desert we learn to let go of stuff that doesn’t matter. We learn to trust God. We learn what’s important and what isn’t. When we live our lives in gardens, we learn to take everything for granted. Take time to reflect right now: what have your deserts been, and what did you learn in them?

Next, the Shepherd leads her out of the desert and onto Lonely Shores by the sea. This is a gloomy, rocky place where she is left alone to struggle with her feelings of loneliness and self-pity. Much-Afraid discovers that there is much to learn as we grapple with loneliness. First, we learn that we have to overcome self-pity if we are to grow spiritually. So many of us, when we struggle, pity ourselves. But when we are immersed in self-pity we also lose sight of God. Spiritually deep people learn that it is okay to be alone, because in solitude we learn who we area. We learn how not to be defined by other people. We learn that we become stronger in solitude, both in faith and in the ability to handle life’s turmoil. Again, take time to reflect: what have you learned in your struggles with loneliness?

Soon she is led out of the desert and away from the shores, and she is led to stand beneath sheer cliffs, which she is told she must climb. Looking at the cliff, and at her infirmities, she breaks down crying. How could she possibly overcome that obstacle? How could she, as crippled and disfigured as she was, possibly overcome that? Again, fear grips her. She has to struggle with her fear of what might be, and decide between faith and fear. When she finally decides to trust in the Shepherd. When she does, she is shown a path up the cliffs that she never saw on her own. Also, she is tied by a rope to companions who help her, pulling her forward and upward whenever she feels week. The climb is difficult, but not anything like what she anticipated. Soon she overcomes the cliff because of her trust in the Shepherd. Again, she learns lessons from her experiences.

For example, she learns that we cannot overcome steep obstacles by ourselves. But to discover this we have to overcome our fear of failure and of pain. When we accept God’s help, we can overcome anything. The question for you to reflect on is, are you willing to rely on God to overcome insurmountable obstacles?

Getting to the top of the cliff, she finds herself in a thick forest shrouded in fog. The path before her is obscured. In addition, there are storms along the way that scare her. Much of her time is spent sitting in a small cabin in the woods, dealing with boredom, but in the midst of it she finds comfort. Walking along the path, a path like the path of our own lives, which is unknowable, she learns trust. She learns the same lessons we have to learn if we are truly to follow Christ in our life path.

She learns what we learn in our shrouded forests, when we have to walk forward, not knowing what path lays ahead. She learns that we can’t always see that path ahead of us, no matter how much we might pray for clarity. She learns that we have to struggle with uncertainty and ambiguity in the spiritual life. Spiritually immature people think that growing spiritually means becoming more certain about God, life, and our place in it. Actually, growing spiritually often means we simply become more accustomed and comfortable with the ambiguities of life. She learns that we have to struggle with resentment and learn patience. Often we resent God for not making our paths clearer, for not giving us signs. The problem isn’t with God. It’s with us. We are so impatient. The question I’d like you to reflect on is, when your path in life is uncertain, are you willing to be patient and trust God?

Finally, Much-Afraid comes closer to the High Places. She can see them clearly now. She feels like she is finally out of the mists and deserts and shores. But then the Good Shepherd does something unexpected. Instead of sending her straight up, he points to a valley and tells her that the path leads through the valley. Much-Afraid is furious. How can he do this when she is so close? Is he just tormenting her on purpose? Is this all just a cruel joke? Once again she is forced to make a decision of faith—will she trust in the Shepherd, even though it seems like she is being led once again away from the High Places. He decides to trust and follow, and in the Valley she learns again.

She learns that even when we are following God, we may face troubles and difficulties. We may end up in depths of valleys of grief and pain. Just because we follow God doesn’t mean that life will be easy. People close to us will still die. We will still get ill. We may lose a job or get divorced. We may struggle with depression. Following God doesn’t take this stuff away, but it can transform it if we trust in God even though we walk through the darkest valleys. When you face loss in your life, are you willing to trust God to lead and heal you?

Her journey is nearer to the end than she believes. After coming out of the Valley, she is led to an altar, where the Shepherd tells her she is to sacrifice her false self, her fear, her Much-Afraid-ness, to him. She is afraid of the pain the altar entails, but she does it anyway, and the result is that she becomes transformed. She learns the paradox of Christ, which is that if we are willing to lose our lives, we save our lives. The question for you is, are you willing to sacrifice what you hold dear so that you can become someone much better, someone much greater, in God’s way?

She is transformed, and finally makes it to the High Places. And it is a wonderful place. She can see life from God’s perspective. She understands everything now. And she is given a new name: Grace and Glory. She is no longer crippled, but now has the feet of a deer that can jump from place to place with grace. She speaks clearly, especially about God and God’s love (this is a reference to Hannah Hurnard’s experience, who found that when she read from the Bible aloud, or spoke to people about God, she no longer had a stammer). She is transformed in ways that we would never expect, in ways that are even more wonderful than she imagined.

She also learns something important about making it to the High Places, about living in God’s kingdom. She learns that to live in the High Places means to leave them and to return to the Valley of Humiliation to serve the Shepherd. What this means for us is that the more we are willing to grow spiritually, the more we are called by God to share God’s love with a world stuck in pain. We become humble and learn that it’s what God wants that matters. And we learn God’s song, which is sung by water in the book. To be more precise, Grace and Glory notices that as the water flows from the springs on the mountaintops, and flows over massive waterfalls, rushing to the valleys below, it sings a song. Here’s what the water sings:

From the heights we leap and flow,
to the valleys down below.
Always answering to the call,
to the lowest place of all.

The lesson of the water is that the higher we go, the lower we are called to serve. She is sent back to serve those who are as she was: Much-Afraid. The question I want you to reflect on is this: are you willing to strive for a high spiritual life that leads you to live a life of serving others?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: John Calvin

Romans 9:16-26

So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call "my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call "beloved.' "And in the very place where it was said to them, "You are not my people,' there they shall be called children of the living God."

Have you ever wondered why we are called “Calvin” Presbyterian Church? According to what I read in our records, we were given the name in the late 1950s. Before then we were the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church. We were given the name because in the 1950s we had a reunion of two Presbyterian denominations, which then put our church and Park Presbyterian Church in the same denomination. That meant we couldn’t be the Harmony and Zelienople Presbyterian Church, since there was another Presbyterian church in our denomination several blocks away. So the presbytery gave us a new name, and, voilá, we became Calvin United Presbyterian Church. When we had a reunion again of two more Presbyterian denominations in 1983, we became Calvin Presbyterian Church (USA).

Now, what you don’t know is that our name has bugged our music/youth director, Bruce Smith, for some time now ☺. He has told me repeatedly that we should not be named after dead white men. Of course, after I preached this sermon one of our members told me that perhaps we could wait 50 years and rename it the David Bruce Smith Memorial Presbyterian Church☺☺! At any rate, Bruce has lobbied hard to rename the church after our qualities, rather than after John Calvin.

I don’t us to debate Bruce’s thoughts this morning, but I did think that it might be worthwhile to talk about who this man is that we are named after. We are named after John Calvin. So, what was so special about him? You’ve heard of him, but do you know what he did and why he is so revered among Presbyterians and millions of others who are part of the Reformed tradition? In truth, learning about Calvin will tell you a lot about who we are and why we are the way we are.

Calvin is important because his ideas shaped much of the “Reformed” movement, which was a Christian movement begun in Switzerland in the middle of the 16th century, and that spread throughout the world. You probably don’t realize how many denominations emerged out of the Reformed movement. All Presbyterian churches are Reformed, as are churches that are part of the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church of America, the Christian Reformed Church, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Christian Missionary Alliance, the non-denominational evangelical movement, and so many more. The numbers of Reformed Christians worldwide rivals the Roman Catholic Church.

John Calvin was born in France in 1509, and his name was originally Jean Cauvin. He later Germanized the name to John Calvin after moving to Geneva, Switzerland. We tend to think of him as a contemporary of Martin Luther, the great German reformer, but he never actually met him and was 26 years younger. In many ways, Calvin was part of a second wave of reformers.

As a young boy his father wanted him to become a priest. His mother died when he was six years old, and so he grew up with a very strict and domineering father. Calvin became a chaplain in the cathedral of Noyon, France when he was around 13. That sounds awful young to us today, but when the life expectancy is only around 40, 13 doesn’t seem so old. As a chaplain he mainly did small tasks during the mass, but it also made him something of a semi-priest. In his late teens his father sent him to both the University of Paris and the University of Orleans so that he could study theology. As the reformation movement grew, and as things became much less stable in France in the religious world, Calvin’s father decided that his son should study law, not theology. Calvin, though, loved theology much more then law, and was especially taken with reading the Bible. His law studies helped him to develop a very disciplined and logical mind, which you can see reflected in his Institutes of Christian Religion, a massive volume that discussed everything from sin to grace to predestination to the structure of the church. Despite being trained as a lawyer, Calvin remained a theologian, even publishing theological books as a student.

Eventually, in the late 1520s, he quietly declared himself to be a Protestant, and decided to leave France. France had become a dangerous place for Protestants. Unlike Germany, where the king protected Protestants, or Switzerland, where the city-states of Geneva, Bern, Basel, and Zurich had declared themselves independent of the Roman Catholic Church, the king of France had instituted harsh repressions of Protestant activity, including the translation of the Bible into French. Violators could be persecuted, imprisoned, beaten, or even executed. Calvin set out to go to the city of Strasbourg, where he sensed there would be great openness to his ideas, but French soldiers blocked the way. Instead, he went to Geneva, a city of 10,000 on the end of Lake Geneva and near the border with France.

Calvin hated Geneva, and for the most part Geneva hated him. Having been ordained as a chaplain in France, it was logical for him to become a pastor, especially when you take into account his theological and biblical backgrounds. So Calvin became a pastor in Geneva, but it didn’t take long for Calvin to wear out his welcome. Calvin had very strong opinions, especially in writing. Face-to-face he was very accommodating, but in print and preaching he could be personally critical of those with whom he disagreed. The issue that tore apart his relationship with the Genevans had to do with communion. Calvin was adamant that communion should be celebrated every Sunday, and whenever the Word of God was preached. He believed that the tendency of the Swiss to have communion only periodically both went against scripture, and was done only because they saw weekly communion as “too Romish,” or too Catholic. Calvin didn’t believe in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, meaning that not everything the Roman Catholic Church did was to be considered evil. So he argued vociferously for weekly communion. The Genevans, in response, made life difficult for him as they criticized his preaching, theology, and personal habits.

Three years later he gladly accepted an invitation by the church in Strasbourg to become a pastor there. It was in Strasbourg that Calvin found an audience for his ideas. He was warmly accepted, and their acceptance of his ideas caused Christian reformers in Switzerland, Germany, and France to take notice. After three years there, the church in Geneva decided that all was forgiven, and asked him to return. Calvin was reluctant, but to him following God’s calling was much more important than doing only what he wanted. So he returned. He never quite fell in love with the Genevans, but he spent the rest of his life there. It was from Geneva that his fame really spread, and he influenced millions through his writings.

So what were the ideas that Calvin cared about, and that became central to his theology and faith—that became central to our theology and faith? Calvin had very definite opinions about church life and how the church should be structured. While I certainly could offer more detail on his ideas, his ideas about church life could be split into seven different areas.

First, Calvin believed strongly that the Roman Catholic Church of the time was no longer grounded in scripture and had substituted a thousand years of human tradition for it. He believed that in scripture, and especially in Paul’s letters, we can find clear guidance on how the church should be structured and what it should believe. For instance, he believed that everybody should have the right to read scripture for him- or herself, while the Catholic Church restricted that right for clergy and those in religious orders, and banned the translation of the Bible into common languages. Calvin also believed that the church had stopped being grounded in scripture, which is Divine authority, and had been ruled too much by the pope and the College of Cardinals, which were a human authority.

Second, he believed that the church needed to get back to being grounded in God’s Word. This sounds a lot like number one, but it’s a bit different. He believed that scripture, not the teachings of the church, should guide everyday life. He saw the Catholic Church’s teachings as being overly concerned with the preservation of the institution than with guiding people to God.

Third, he believed in equality between the clergy and the laity, and that the church should be a democracy, GROUNDED IN SCRIPTURE AND THE SPIRIT, in which clergy and laity lead people to live in God’s grace. So, he did not believe in a hierarchy in which popes, bishops, and clergy were above laity. He believed that clergy and laity were equal in faith, but that we had different tasks. Laity were to lead the church in practical matters. Clergy should lead the church in spiritual matters. And the two should work together to bring together the spiritual and the practical in the life of the church and daily life.

Fourth, he believed that the church should be a l’escole de Dieu, or a “school of God.” He saw that as being the church’s primary function, even through worship. He believed that religious, theological, and spiritual learning was a lifelong task, and that whenever a person says, “I’ve made it so I don’t need to learn anymore,” he or she is simply wrong. He did not believe that what we learn in church saves us. Salvation was in God’s hands. He believed that because we are saved, we should respond to God’s love and grace by learning all we can in order to draw closer to Christ , become more open to the Spirit, and discover how to serve God in life. If he were alive today, and witnessed so many people who believe themselves to be spiritual but not religious, he would probably be perplexed. He would wonder how people could expect to be self-taught in spiritual matters in much the way we would be perplexed with a person who claims to be the equivalent of a college graduate despite being self-taught. His question would be, “How do you learn about God without a place that teaches about God?”

The result of point number four leads to his beliefs about point number five, which is that pastors are primarily teachers and preachers, and pastoral visits should be focused on restoring people to a right relationship to God. You can see this belief reflected in the robe I wear each Sunday morning. My robe isn’t a liturgical robe like priests wear in the Roman Catholic or Episcopal traditions. It is an academic robe, much like what your professors in college wore on your graduation day. In fact, the three stripes on the sleeve of my robe are “doctor stripes,” which say that I’m a doctor. To be a doctor literally means to be a “teacher.” So my role, at its core, is to teach you. My task, according to Calvin, is to spend my days learning so that I can teach.

Sixth, Calvin believed in ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. Knowing that you don’t read Latin, let me translate: “the church reformed, always being reformed.” He believed that the church of his time had been transformed and reformed beyond the Roman Catholic Church, but that as Christians we have to always be open to continual reformation. In other words, there’s never a point at which the church is in the “right” place. It needs to adapt, change, and be transformed and reformed in light of cultural and historical changes. What does that mean on a practical level? It means that as a church we always have to change and adapt to how our culture changes. It’s the reason why Calvin Church has changed so much over the years. When we adapt what we do, we are literally following Calvin and becoming Calvin’s Presbyterian Church.

Finally, he believed that worship should revolve around teaching scripture and leading people to live lives in which they respond to God’s Word in every part of life. In other words, there’s a reason why I try, when I preach, to stay with what the passage for the day says, rather than just saying whatever I want. It is in being grounded in scripture that we become sure we aren’t just creating our own religious beliefs.

So, on a personal level, why should Calvin matter to us 500 years later? What does he have to teach us on a personal level, beyond what he says about church? There are four basic lessons we can get from Calvin that havve to do with how we live our lives:

1. Life is a labyrinth, and only God can lead us out. Calvin believed that life is incredibly confusing and complex, and that when we live it alone in our own way, we get lost. When we get lost, only Christ and the Spirit can lead us out. The answer to life’s labyrinth is to become open to God in everything so that God can lead us to live the right ways. Through a combination of prayer, scripture reading, and worship, we can discern God’s guidance and calling in life, and they can lead us to the right kind of life. Calvin believed that too many people ignore God, and it’s for that reason that their lives fall apart.
2. We need to give our hearts promptly and sincerely to God. Calvin believed that the way out of the labyrinth started with giving our hearts completely to God. This concept, which is so difficult to explain, was so central to Calvin that he drew a symbol for it and made this symbol his personal seal. You can see an example of it on the cover of this sermon, along with more contemporary versions.
3. Knowledge and experience of God go together. Calvin believed that the person who didn’t care about learning about God could not experience God. A disciplined program of learning, that includes reading scripture daily, is central to learning about God, discovering where God is working in life, and learning how to serve God. But Calvin didn’t just believe that scripture alone could teach us. We needed to read anything that teaches us about God (within limits) because that learning leads us to experience God, and we need to learn from people who know God.
4. We need to trust completely in God’s grace and mercy. I think that if Calvin were alive today, he would be confused by the question so many evangelical Christians ask others, which is “Are you saved?” He didn’t believe we could know for sure whether or not we are saved. Instead, he believed it’s all up to God, and our task in life is to simply trust in God’s goodness, grace, and mercy. He believed that God was a good God, and that God makes decisions based on love, so we don’t need to fear whether or not we are saved. Instead, we are to trust that we are saved, and to live our lives in response to God’s grace. As the apostle Paul said in our passage for this morning, “So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”

So, as we close on Calvin, let me pose four questions for you from John Calvin—questions that, depending on how you answer them, may determine how well you live your life:
1. To what extent do you let the Spirit and Christ lead you in life?
2. Have you given your heart to God?
3. How committed are you to learning about God?
4. To what extent do you trust God?

Amen.

Stars of the Faith: Benedict of Nursia

Listen to the Audio Version

Matthew 7:24-27


"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!"

It’s too bad that most of us aren’t more into history. I used to find history to be a very boring subject, but in my adulthood I’ve found that history is incredibly helpful not only in terms of understanding the people of long ago, but also in understanding ourselves today. Much like a counselor looks into our past to understand our present, understanding history helps us to look into the past to both understand why we are the way we are. At the same time, it helps us to see what we may have lost in the process of becoming who we are.

During Lent, we will be doing a sermon series that digs into our Christian past to look at the history of Christian faith through the eyes of some of the greatest Christians of history. We are calling this series, Stars of the Faith. We want to really emphasize what great Christians of our past have to teach us about living lives of faith in the present.

The first star I want to focus on today is one whom I’m sure most of us have forgotten: Benedict of Nursia. We come by our memory lapse about Benedict honestly. As Protestants, I’m not sure that most people recognize Benedict’s greatness because his greatness lies in the fact that he started a movement that most of us see as either outmoded or irrelevant to modern Protestant faith. You see, Benedict is seen as the father of the monastic movement, and we Protestants don’t have much use for monastic life. We mostly see monks, nuns, and friars in one of two ways. Either we see them as being incredibly special, able to reach spiritual heights we can’t because we are too normal, or as being incredibly misguided, following a path that’s disconnected from real life. I think that if we take either view, we miss what Benedict has to teach us about faith and life.

To begin to understand Benedict, we have to start with Benedict’s times. Benedict was born in the small town of Nursia, which is about 100 miles east of Rome. He was born in 480, A.D., four years after the date that many people consider to be the “fall” of the Roman Empire, although to say that the Roman Empire ever “fell” is not quite true. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476, but the Eastern Roman Empire never really “fell.” It sort of merged in the 15th century into the Ottoman Empire when the whole region became Muslim and the last Roman Emperor, Constantine XI, gave up the city of Constantinople. In 476, though, the last western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustus, gave up Rome to the Ostragoths, who were a Germanic tribe that attacked from the north. The whole period of the 4th and 5th centuries pretty much were a history of one Germanic tribe after another attacking the Italian peninsula and Rome. Many of the names we give to bad people today come from the names of those tribes, such as the Bar Bars (Barbarians), Huns, Vandals, Goths, and others.

During these times, the economy of the western Roman Empire plunged into disarray. Some people became incredibly rich, but many slipped into constant and abject poverty. In fact, the continual attacking of Rome and the Italian peninsula by the Franks and Gauls, into the 6th and 7th centuries, led Europe into the Dark Ages. Poverty gripped the region, and life expectancies plummeted. Benedict was born into the midst of that.

His father was wealthy, and being wealthy he sent Benedict to a school in Rome to be educated. What Benedict learned did not lead him to live a life of wealth. While in Rome he saw the ravages of a declining land. He saw moral standards fall apart as greed, lust, gambling, and selfishness took over. Having had enough of it, he renounced his own wealth and decided to become a Christian hermit, which was a growing movement at the time. He moved to the region of Subiaco, 60 miles to the east of Rome, and there moved into a cave, where he lived for three years as a hermit. He spent his time disciplining his life and devoting his days to prayer and the search for wisdom. He was actually following an old Christian tradition that started several centuries earlier in the deserts of Egypt, as hermits went into the desert, imitating Christ’s 40 days in the desert, to wrestle with their demons and to learn wisdom. Benedict wanted to be purged of his demons.

Over time, people discovered Benedict and began to seek him out for his wisdom. Eventually several of them approached him and asked him if he would start a monastery for them. Benedict reluctantly did so, but after a year the monks hated it and him. After years of living an austere life, he was too harsh on them. They had sought a life of prayer and wisdom. He gave them a life of austerity much like his own. The legend, which probably isn’t true, is that they tried to poison his wine in order to get rid of him, but when he said a prayer of blessing over it, the jug shattered, exposing their plan. At any rate, Benedict was happy to be free of the monastic life to return to life as a hermit. It didn’t last long.

Eventually others asked him to start another monastery, and having learned from his past experiences, he did so in a new way. The first monastery he built was at Monte Cassino, which still exists today, despite having been partly demolished during World War II at the Battle of Monte Cassino. From there he started eleven other monasteries. After his death, the movement he spawned continued, and several centuries later the Roman Catholic Church created the Benedictine Order.

So why should we care about all this? The history is mildly interesting, but how does this impact modern Christian life? Benedict matters because of what he can teach us. What made Benedict unique is that he did something for his monasteries that no abbot or leader did before him. He created a detailed rule that guided the details of the monastic life. Before him, monasteries took on the personalities of their leaders. They could be austere or opulent. They could be places of purity or corruption. Benedict wrote down 73 rules to guide monastic life. Looking at them, they are very detailed in some ways. But their impact is that they gave structure to monastic living, a structure that has helped monks and Christians for centuries to grow closer to God.

The Rule revolved around four basic issues: worship, prayer, commitment, and community. Benedict wanted the monks to have regular times of worship, and he wanted worship to have an order that opened them to God’s word and life. He wanted them to bring prayer into everything. He wanted them to become committed to a life for God in everything. He wanted them to have a stable communal life. Another aspect of “the Rule,” although not stated in it, is the motto of the Benedictine movement: ora et labora, or “prayer and work.” They believe that prayer and work should go side-by-side. Here is a list of all 73 rules for you to look at:

1. Different kinds of monks and their customs
2. The qualities of the abbot
3. The counsel of the brothers
4. The instruments of good works
5. Obedience
6. Silence
7. Humility
8. The Divine Office at night (Matins)
9. How many psalms are to be said in the Night Offices
10. How the Night Office is to be said in the summer
11. How Matins is to be celebrated on Sundays
12. Lauds--celebration
13. Lauds--ordinary days
14. Night Office on Saints’ Days
15. The seasons during which Alleluia is chanted
16. The Day Office
17. The number of psalms said in the Day Office
18. Psalms--order to be chanted
19. How the Office should be performed
20. Reverence at prayer
21. The deans of the monastery
22. How the monks are to sleep
23. Excommunication for faults
24. The measure of excommunication
25. Grave faults
26. Those who meet with the excommunicated without leave of the abbot
27. The abbot’s care of the excommunicated
28. Those who do not change their ways despite much correction
29. Readmittance of departed brothers
30. Correction of youths
31. The cellarer
32. Property and utensils
33. Private ownership by monks
34. The appointment of necessities
35. Weekly kitchen service
36. Sick brothers
37. Old men and children
38. The weekly reader
39. Food apportionment
40. Drink apportionment
41. Dining hours
42. No talk after Compline
43. Late-comers to the Divine Office and meals
44. How the excommunicated are to make satisfaction
45. Mistakes in the Oratory
46. Offenses in other matters
47. Sounding the Hours of the Divine Office
48. Daily manual labor
49. Observance of Lent
50. Brothers who work at a distance from the oratory or are traveling
51. Brothers who do not go far
52. The oratory of the monastery
53. The reception of guests
54. The receipt of letters and presents
55. Clothing and shoes
56. The abbot’s table
57. Artisans and craftsmen
58. The admission of new brothers
59. Sons of noblemen or of poor men offered to God’s service
60. Priest who would live in the monastery
61. Reception of pilgrim monks
62. Priests of the monastery
63. Rank in the monastery
64. Election of the abbot
65. Provost of the monastery
66. The Porter of the monastery
67. Brothers sent on a journey
68. When a brother is asked to do the impossible
69. No one shall presume to defend another in the monastery
70. No one is to presume to strike another
71. The brothers ought to obey one another
72. The good zeal monks should possess
73. All perfection is not herein attained

Looking at the list, you may not see all its significance, but you can see much of it. For instance, look at how much time is spent focusing on worship. Benedict thought that worship should be at the center of life. Is it for you? Also, look at how much attention he spends on food, drink, and living arrangements. He believed that monks should have a healthy diet, that they should have comfortable beds, and that there should be a connection between their spiritual and physical lives. Centuries later the movement became overly focused on austerity and suffering, but not under Benedict. He emphasized hospitality, sharing, compassion, forgiveness, zeal, and much more. His rule was focused on monastic living, but in a way that emphasized balance between work, prayer, learning, eating, rest, and service. What does it have to teach us who are not monks?

I believe that it teaches us how to live in difficult times. We are living in a time of absolute uncertainty with a brittle and shaky economy, two wars, the threat of terrorism, and fear of the future spreading all over the place. What are our foundations? Benedict’s rule brought stability in a time of crisis. What keeps us stable?

What are the rules of your life? How seriously do you take worshipping God? How important is prayer for you? How deep is your commitment to a life of faith—a life lived for God? To what extent do you live in community with others who also seek God? What’s the Rule for your life? Do you have one?

I want you to do something as you finish this sermon. Normally I get to do the thinking for you, but as we finish this sermon I want you to do the thinking for yourself. Take time to use the last page here to create your own rule. I’ve put down three questions for you to start the process. Is God calling you to create a rule for your life to counter our age of confusion?

Amen.

Setting a Rule for Life

List the areas of your life that seem chaotic or out of balance.










List what you can do to bring these areas more into balance.










On another sheet, write down a rule for your life.

Living a Disciplined Life

1 Corinthians 9:24-27
February 15, 2008

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I discipline my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

What would you say is the greatest sports event ever? For me it is very clear: the 1980 USA Olympic ice hockey win against the Soviet Union and the eventual winning of the gold medal. If ever there was a David and Goliath event, this was it. It would be the equivalent, in today’s terms, of a college-aged team of all-stars from Canada beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in football. Who could imagine such a thing?

If you are old enough to remember, the USA ice hockey team went into the Olympics with a team comprised basically of college hockey players in an era when very few Americans were even making it to the NHL. Only one person in the world actually believed that this team could win a gold medal, and that was the coach, Herb Brooks. He knew that for the Americans to win the gold medal they had to beat the Russian team, which was the best ice hockey team in the world. I don’t mean that they were the best team outside of the NHL. They were the best team in the world. They had a goalie, Vladisak Tretiek, considered to be the best goalie in the world even by NHL players. They had a center considered to be perhaps the best center in the world, Valery Karlamov. What made them the best team was that it was comprised of players who would have been stars in the NHL, had they been allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Instead, they were all forced to serve in the Soviet army by serving their commission as members of the Soviet hockey team. They were by far the most talented team ever assembled. They skated and passed better than any team in the world, and their system was designed to hold onto the puck for most the game and beat you with high percentage shots. They were so good that before the 1980 Olympics they had beaten an NHL all-tar team 6 to 1, making the NHL players look incompetent in the process.

To beat the Russians, Herb Brooks devised a plan. He believed that the USA team could beat the Russians by combining an NHL style of game with the Soviet style. The players would skate, hit, and shoot like NHL players, taking the game to a high tempo, but he would also have them pass, move, and control the puck the way that the Soviets did. One other thing: he believed that if his team was the best-conditioned and mentally toughest team ever, he could beat the Russians at their own game. Thus, what made the USA team able to achieve greatness was their determination and their discipline. They didn’t have to be great players to be a great team. All they had to do was to be the most disciplined, hardest skating, and committed team.

There was one particular event, in the lead-up to the Olympics, that gave the USA team the needed grit and determination to eventually beat the Soviets, and it wasn’t even planned. They had an exhibition game in Norway against the Norwegian national team. The Norwegians were not a very good team, and it was expected that the USA team would blow them out. Instead they played a lackluster game, tying the Norwegians 3 to 3. Some of the players were so disinterested in playing the game that in the third period, instead of focusing on the game, they were talking on the bench about which women in the stands were the best looking.

By the end of the game Herb Brooks was furious. The players went to center ice to shake hands with the Norwegian team, and then skated for the exit off the rink. There they found the assistant coach, Craig Patrick, blocking the exit. He told them to get back on the ice. “What for?” the players asked. “You’ll see,” said Patrick. Brooks told the to get on the goal line. He told them if they weren’t going to work during the game, they could work now. He had them do a spring cycle (goal line to blue line and back, to the red line and back, to the far blue line and back, to the far goal line and back. These are sprints designed to burn the lungs and the legs out. When the finished the springs, Brooks sent them on another cycle. And then another. And then another. In-between he chastised them: “What makes you think you can just show up and beat a team? You don’t have enough talent to just show up and beat a team!” Again he sent them on a cycle. “You either work to win, or you can go home!” He sent then on another cycle. “When are you gong to learn that the name on the front of your jersey is more important than the name on the back!” He sent them on another cycle.

The rink manager, who wanted to clean the ice and go home, sent a message to Brooks that he wanted to leave. Brooks told him to leave the keys. In anger, the rink manager shut off all the lights. That didn’t deter Brooks. Under the dim glow of emergency lights, Brooks sent them off again to another cycle. Then another. Then another. By now some players were starting to throw up. Brooks continued to lecture them, trying to get the message across that what they were trying to do was uncommon, and that if they were going to be successful, they could not be common men. It went on and on until finally, Mike Eruzione, the captain, shouted out something stopped it all. Ever since the training camp months before, Herb Brooks would periodically ask a player to introduce himself by saying his name, where he was from, and what team he played on. They would say things like, “Mark Johnson, Madison Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin,” or Neal Broten, University of Minnesota.” Eruzione, finally getting what Herb Brooks hoped he would say, shouted out, “Mike Eruzione, Windsor, Massachusetts, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”

Eruzione finally understood Brooks’ message: To be a team we have to be willing to have the self-control, discipline, and determination to do whatever it takes to achieve our destiny. When I watch this movie, I see so much in common with the lesson the apostle Paul tried to teach in our passage. Paul describes the work of faith as being similar to the work that an athlete goes through. To grow in faith, we need determination and discipline. Otherwise we end up going nowhere.

Now I don’t want to pretend that to be a great Christian means to do endless wind sprints, but there is a lot that is in common with the experience of the 1980 Olympic ice hockey team and growing as a Christian. Let me share with you three lessons I learn from both the experience of the 1980 USA ice hockey team and from Paul.

The first lesson is the lesson of commitment and community. The reality is that just like in sports, nothing good happens without commitment, but here’s the rub: we live in a commitment-averse culture. People worry about commitment. They worry about what happens if they make a commitment and things don’t work out. They worry about making a commitment and finding it was the wrong one. They worry that making a commitment will bind them and keep them from being free. When it comes to religion and church, so many people worry that committing to a church means giving up independence, self-identity, and personal beliefs. The problem is that just as no team can do well without commitment, no individual can truly do well in faith without commitment. Faith needs commitment to do well, but it’s not just a commitment to a set of principles. It’s a communal commitment. One of the lessons that Christianity, as well as every other world religion, teaches is the importance of commitment to a community. To say that we are spiritual but not religious is a contradiction of terms to every major religion because faith is always both individual and communal. Without a commitment to community we become self-focused, creating our own faith while ignoring what a community has to teach us. It is in commitment to the community that we learn to love others. It’s in commitment to community that we find opportunity to love others. And just like on a sports team where commitment to the team is the beginning of success, so commitment to a community of faith is the beginning of real growth in faith.

Second is the lesson of self-sacrifice and perseverance through difficult times. This is much like commitment, but takes it a step further. In the incident I described above, any of those players could have quit at any time. But if they had they would have been robbed of the opportunity to do something truly great. It would have robbed them of the chance to become better. There are many people who believe that if we have faith nothing bad should happen to us. That’s a promise found nowhere in the Bible. What the Bible does teach is that if we persevere through difficult time, keeping our faith despite our pain, God will make us better. God will make life better. In order to persevere, though, we need to be willing to self-sacrifice. We need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around “me,” and that to persevere through tough times means letting go of me so that I can follow Christ through the bad times and to be transformed through them. Ultimately self-sacrifice and perseverance leads to transformation. The U.S. players understood both concepts, and it’s what gave them to strength to overcome such long odds.

Finally, there is the lesson of learning. To be an athlete means to be a constant learner. There is no great athlete who does not devote his or her life to learning more and more about his or her craft. The USA players were constant learners, even if they didn’t want to be. Herb Brooks demanded that they learn a new system that no one had seen before. He demanded that they learn both an NHL-style of play and a Russian style. He demanded that they study film and understand the tactics of the opponent. He also demanded that they meticulously learn how to be better players through refining their technique. Just as athletes must learn, so must we if we are to grow in faith. We are called to learn by reading scripture, by reading spiritual books, and by coming to church and listening to sermons and taking the adult education classes. To grow in faith means to learn more about God and life with God. If we aren’t willing to learn, we can’t grow in faith.

When we’re called to live a Christian life, we’re not called to do it recreationally or on the side. We’re called to be like athletes who work hard at it, who are willing to commit to it, are willing to sacrifice for it, are willing to do what’s necessary for it. It’s when we do these things that we discover the rewards of a life lived with Christ.

Amen.