Acts 9:1-6
March 18, 2010
Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’
I want you imagine for a moment that you are Paul, or Saul, as he was known at the time of his conversion experience. You are a highly trained rabbi. For most of your life you have been considered brilliant, and your family in Tarsus (a port city in the southeast of modern-day Turkey) had sent you to Jerusalem to be trained as a rabbi. You have studied with the greatest Jewish minds of the time, and you are zealous for your faith. You are very aware of potential threats to the Jewish faith, and you recognize that this new movement, The Way (which was the name for Christianity in its early years), is a genuine threat. The Jews following the teachings of this supposedly resurrected Jesus are winning converts from traditional Judaism, and especially from your own tradition, the Pharisees.
You’ve already done what you can to stamp out this movement in Jerusalem. For example, you were an approving participant in the stoning to death of Stephen, a man who was preaching this gospel of Christ, and who had attracted a number of converts. You didn’t take part in the actual stoning, but you did watch everyone’s cloaks during the stoning so that they wouldn’t be stolen.
So you get permission from the Sanhedrin, the very council that arrested and tried Jesus on charges of blasphemy several years before, to travel to Damascus, find these followers of The Way, and to bring them back in chains to stand trial in Jerusalem. You are on the road to Damascus, and you feel powerful. You know you are right and righteous. You know that you are doing God's will in defending Judaism and the law. As you travel to Damascus, you feel confident. You smile to yourself at how pleased both God and the Jewish authorities will be with you. Suddenly an excruciatingly bright light blinds you. And you hear a voice: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" In that moment you find out that most of what you had believed in was wrong. You find out that you have not been serving God, but you've been persecuting God and God's followers. How do you deal with knowing that you’ve been tragically and devastatingly wrong?
Let me put that question to you today? How well do you deal with finding out that you were wrong? Do you ever even put yourself into a position to find out whether or not you are wrong about what you believe? Or are you always right?
I’m going to say something that may be a bit controversial—not in a political way, but in a faith way. Basically, I believe that the secret to having a really deep faith is finding out that we are all wrong. In fact, Christianity is a faith of wrongness. What do I mean? I’m saying that the stronger our absolute beliefs are, the more likely it is that we are wrong. If this story about Paul teaches us anything, it teaches us that.
Let me take a step back and explain what I mean. Let’s look at Paul as our guide. Paul had a basic psychology that is part of so many religious people’s psychology. So many of us have a basic need for certainty, clarity, and stability. We don't like the unknown. We don't like the feeling that we don't really know what will happen to us when we die. We don't like the feeling of not knowing for certain whether or not we are saved. So we turn that uncertainty on its head and seek out certainty. We create a theological system that assures us of our salvation, as well as of God’s approval.
The problem is that this certainty is always somewhat false. The need to be certain comes out of a basic spiritual insecurity. If we are at all honest with ourselves, we all know that we have this insecurity working in us. We all have a need to be sure of our salvation, of our view of the way the universe works, and of what God wants of us. It’s this need to sure and right that’s given rise to every branch of Christianity. The fact is that each denomination, sect, or movement of Christianity is an attempt to be right. It doesn't always start out that way. Often a movement in Christianity starts out as an attempt to correct a problem, such as the Protestant movement in the 16th century. That was an attempt to correct a flawed theology that said that the power to be saved is up to church, and if we give money to the church, that assures us of our salvation. The Protestant movement was trying to move people back to a faith based on God's love and grace, not on works. But very quickly people identified with their own movement. Soon the Lutherans felt they were saved and no others. The Calvinists felt they were saved and no others. The Mennonites felt they were saved and no others. This continues today. So often the newer movements of Christianity are convinced that they are saved, and not others. Their belief doesn't emerge out of confidence. It emerges out of spiritual insecurity. And that leads to actions like Saul's, who felt he had to stamp out any movement that could lead to doubt among the faithful.
I struggle with people who need to be right, but that’s probably because I am part of a tradition that doesn’t worry so much about rightness. Rather, it worries about relationships—with God and with others. I consider myself to be part of the mystical tradition of Christianity, which has the distinction of being the only movement of Christianity that has never really cared about being right. This does not mean I'm not a Presbyterian. I am that, too. I'm a Presbyterian because I believe it is the right tradition for me. The combination of Presbyterianism's focus on using the intellect in faith, and on the freedom to seek God in our own way, is powerful for me. But I'm also part of the mystical tradition, which has always cared much more on how to form a strong relationship with God rather than on trying to be right. I've followed it because I believe it is a tradition that leads to a much more mature faith. Let me give you an example of what I mean by sharing with you some thoughts of great mystics of the past, thoughts that really reflect a mature faith, the kind that Paul learned after his experience of Christ.
David Steindl-Rast, a Dominican monk, who wrote a wonderful book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, says, "To have faith does not primarily mean believing something, but rather believing in someone. Faith is trust. It takes courage to trust. The opposite of faith is not disbelief, but distrust, fear. Fear makes us cling to anything within reach. Fear clings even to beliefs. Thus, beliefs can even get in the way of faith. In genuine faith we hold our beliefs firmly, but lightly. We trust in God, not in our particular understanding of God. That is why people of deep faith are one at heart, even thought their beliefs may differ widely. When beliefs become more important than faith, even small differences create insurmountable barriers."
Look at this passage, and see what phrases stand out for you. Several are important to me. For instance, he says that faith means believing in someone rather than in something. To me this is a huge difference from the way so many Christians think. So often our faith is in particular beliefs about God rather than in God. Our faith is in beliefs about how the world works, about how we should be, and about how God should be. Steindl-Rast is saying that our faith really is in God as God is, not as we want God to be. This is a major statement because we often develop a faith rooted in what and who we think God is, not in God as God really is. We tend to recreate God in our image, believing that God values what we value, believes in what we believe in, and acts the way we want God to act. We form an image of God, and develop a faith based on that image. Steindl-Rast is telling us that a real faith is in God as God is, which means a faith in God who is a mystery to us. And when we trust in God as God is, not as we want God to be, then we are truly having faith in God. It's a result of this that we learn to hold our faith firmly, but lightly, knowing that we could be wrong about much we believe in about God.
Forming a faith in God as God is is much like a marriage. If you are married, how well do you really understand your spouse? And what is it that you love about your spouse? Is it your understanding of your spouse, or your spouse her- or himself? Real love is not in what we believe about our spouses, but in our spouses? If you focus too much on trying to figure out your spouse, or in trying to recreate your spouse, it actually kills your relationship.
Let me share with you another quote that comes from C.S. Lewis, from his great book, The Great Divorce. The book is about the afterlife, and about people in Hell who are able to take trips to heaven. When they get there, family members and others often meet them in heaven, and they try to convince them to believe in God and to join them in heaven. We get to witness one spirit, the brother of a woman, who is trying to convince her to join him in heaven and to discover how wonderful it is. She is reluctant because she is still angry at God for the premature death of her son. The spirit of her brother tries to tell her that much of what she believes about God was wrong, and that if she would accept God’s love as it is, she would discover how happy her son is now. And here's what we hear of the exchange. She says,
“Oh, of course. I’m wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.”
“But of course!” said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled. “That’s what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.”
This is such a great quote because in it Lewis communicates an idea that Saul had to learn, which is that much of what we believe is true isn't necessarily true, and that we often are so wrong about God—God's intentions, God's love, and God's presence in our lives. We argue so much in life about what's right and what's wrong, and what Lewis is telling us is that whenever we get to the point where we accept with humility that much of what we believe in is wrong, we get to the point at which we are truly able to form a deep relationship with God as God is. In other words, when we hold our beliefs, but accept the possibility that they are wrong, that’s the point at which we start to become seriously open to God.
John Calvin also talked about this difficulty in knowing what is ultimately right in a very famous phrase of his. He said, “In essentials unity. In non-essentials liberty. In all things charity.” What’s interesting about this statement is that Calvin never quite listed what the essentials were. He recognized that there were some beliefs that Christians should hold dear as essential beliefs of our faith, but he knew that if he made a list of them, people would then use these beliefs as weapons against each other. He left it to us to get a determine together what the essentials should be, and he thought that list should be somewhat small. I believe that he would say that belief in one God, in the goodness of God’s grace, in the Trinity, Christ’s death and resurrection, and the power of the Holy Spirit would all be essentials. After that, there are many things we can disagree about, for example about the virgin birth, Jesus’ miracles, and some of the laws of the Old Testament. His belief was that if we disagree, we should have the liberty to disagree and not hold each other to absolutes. And he expresses this in his last phrase, “in all things charity.” He is saying that because we don’t always know truth, we should treat each other with charity and love when we are in disagreement over beliefs.
Finally, I want to share with you something that was said to me by a professor of mine at Duquesne University. Her name is Carolyn Gratton, and she told us one day in class that, “the mistake most people make is in thinking that as we grow spiritually, we are able to live more in certainty. What we find is that in reality we become more and more comfortable with ambiguity.” I think these words are profound, for they speak a deep truth. People of deep faith find that as they grow in faith, they are more accepting of the world as it is, people as they are, and God as God is. They become more comfortable with God as a mystery, and of our beliefs as providing only limited help in understanding that mystery.
Ultimately, all of these mystics remind us that what matters is not rightness or righteousness, but relationships. So, if a relationship with God is the key, what’s the role of belief? Theological beliefs guide us to a better relationship with God and each other. They give us pointers. They help explain our experiences, and they teach us how to forge a stronger relationship with God.
What Paul found in his experience was that before experiencing Christ, he was always right because he had the right belief. He was always right because he always did the right thing according to the law. He always believed in the right things according to scripture. Yet his experience of Christ led him to discover how wrong he was in his rightness. It taught him to relax his grip on his beliefs, and to make room for a relationship with God through Christ. He let go of his belief in law so that he could make room for love.
Where are you when it comes to beliefs? Are you always right, or do you reserve the right to be wrong. The test of our beliefs, in the end, is whether they lead us to love God, or to love something else
Amen.
