Stumbling Blocks of Faith: Chasing Trends

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Psalm 131

November 25, 2012

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.

            I was thinking about our topic for today on trends and decided to do a little bit of research. So I spent time looking back at clothing and car fashion from the 1950s to the 1990s. I’ve put my results on the last page. Take a look at how things have changed. 

            Looking at these fashion trends, the thing that becomes really clear whenever you trace any kind of trend—fashion, cars, movies, books, home decorations, ideas—is that to be human is to be trendy. We are humanicus trendicus. I made that term up, but it sounds good.

            We humans are always looking for something new. I realize that some people resist everything new, but the thrust of human progress is always towards the new, whether it’s in fashion, cars, ideas, or political and religious beliefs. Seeking “the new” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s led to the many, many areas of real progress, whether it’s to warmer and more comfortable clothing, the eradication of slavery, Civil Rights, giving women the right to vote and become pastors, the invention of new technology, and so much more. But embracing the new brings with it a lot of problems, especially on the spiritual level. 

            The main problem with spiritual and religious trends is that they tend to lead us to do one of two things: First, they cause people to give up traditions that give depth to life and connect us to deeper wisdom. This is a really, really important thing in my mind. We are always too quick to think that people of ancient times were ignorant and naïve, and that we, in our times, are so wise and sophisticated. You can see this really clearly among those who declare themselves to be “spiritual but not religious.” They are quick to kick out the ancient and the old, especially religious rituals and worship, seeing them as archaic, anachronistic, and just plain too old to teach us anything. What they do is treat all religions like a Sunday brunch.

           

            Think about the last time you went to a big ole Sunday brunch, perhaps down at the Sheraton in Cranberry. What was there? Eggs, sausage, pancakes, Belgian waffles, danishes, doughnuts, brownies, salad, beans, ham and roast beef, rolls, butter, and so much more. Now, what did you eat? My guess is that you didn’t eat the salad, green beans, and ham. You probably loaded up on the tasty stuff. That’s the way those who often reject religion act. They pick and choose from different religions, putting on their plates the stuff that they find tasty, while ignoring the stuff that may be more nourishing. The result is that it can lead the spiritual but not religious to become ironically shallow, even as they think it leads them to become deep.

            You can see a similar problem in churches that get rid of the past to only embrace the present and future. Many contemporary churches are like this. I don’t want to be too critical because they do a lot of good, but often they are so focused on following cultural trends in music and performance that they become shallow.

            There’s a great video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys4Nx0rNlAM) that was put our by a contemporary church associated with Andy Stanley’s NorthPointe church in Atlanta. The video pokes fun at how shallow contemporary worship can be if the focus is only on entertainment and performance. In its satire, it does hit the point home. I encourage you to follow the link and watch the video. Ultimately it shows that we Christians can be just as guilty of following trends as non-Christians, and that there are a tremendous number of Christian trends that can lead us to shallowness.

            A second thing that trends can do is to lead people to dig in their heals, even against trends that are good and lead to significant progress. Throughout history people have dug in their heals against what feels to them like trends, but were actually something that was leading the world to a better way of living. Religious people dug in their heals against Christianity at first, believing it was just a trendy new religion. Roman Catholics dug in their heals against the Reformation, even if it was trying to lead people back to a deeper relationship with Christ. Many Christians dug in their heals against the abolition of slavery, the granting of Civil Rights, giving women a equal place in society, and so much more. A wariness of trends can actually lead people to stubbornly resist what God is doing, and what God is moving us toward.

            When it comes to spirituality, faith, and religion, what leads to growth is keeping a foot both in the past and in the future. We grow, not by chasing or resisting religious trends, but by balancing ancient wisdom with contemporary insight. This is very much in keeping with the Presbyterian tradition. Presbyterians believe in something that John Calvin triumphed: reformata semper reformanda. This means “reformed, always reforming.” This means that the church was transformed and reformed in the 1500s during the Reformation, but it continues to seek God’s voice and guidance to engage in ongoing reformation. We always have to be renewed in the face of a changing culture, but we do so by also remembering where we have come from and holding onto that which is good.

            At Calvin Church, we’ve always tried to maintain both our past reformation and the future need to be ever reformed according to God’s guidance. Our approach here is to try to keep a foot in the past and in the future

            The essential question is when do we change and when do we remain the same? I think that part of the answer comes from Psalm 131:

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.

            The key is not getting caught up in trends or in defending the status quo. It’s in resisting the need to either be a vanguard for the past or a warrior for the future. It’s in keeping a balance, and making changes from a place of calm, quiet, and humility. We change because we’re called to do so, not so that we can keep up with others. We stay the same not because we have to do what we’ve always done, but because we know that some traditions are really important and nourishing for the soul. We stay calm, with a quiet soul, so that we can follow what God wants.

            Ultimately this is what it all comes down to: being in a place where we can hear and follow the call of Christ.

            Amen.

 

Stumbling Blocks of Faith: Hurry Scurry

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Matthew 6:25-34

November 18, 2012

“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.

            Years ago the famous Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, said something that’s not only deeply profound psychologically, but also theologically, biblically, and spiritually. He said, “Hurry is not of the devil. Hurry is the devil.”

            I can’t think of a better summary of our passage for this morning than this one. Jesus says, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” In essence, Jesus is saying, “Slow down. Remain calm. Don’t get caught up in ‘what ifs.’” Don’t be in such a rush to do this and that because when you do, you create the conditions in which we become easily pulled off of our center in God.”

            Still, the problem is that we do worry, and we worry about so much: We worry that we won’t get there on time, that we won’t have enough time, that we won’t finish in time, that we won’t start on time, that we won’t end on time, that we’re running out of time, that we aren’t scheduling enough time, that nobody appreciates our time, that we can’t be in two places at the same time, that people demand too much of our time, and that everyone around us—from kids to work to friends to church—demand too much of our time.

            We are a worried bunch, and how we respond to the demands on our time determines the extent to which we not only worry, but in the end the extent to which we are open to God.

            There’s a way of life that Christ calls us to that has to do with how we use our time, but it is incredibly hard for modern Americans. We Americans are the busiest people in the developed world. Studies consistently show this. And almost as an underscoring of this point, when I got up this morning I found an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that read pretty much like a background study for this sermon. The op-ed piece, “Relax, take a vacation, be more Canadian,” written by Charles Kenney (a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development), says that Americans work the hardest and have the least amount of leisure time of any country in the developed world. His statistics show that we are marginally more productive as a result, but our long hours significantly reduce our ability to do well in the other parts of our lives such as family life and personal life. I would add also, our spiritual lives. We may consider ourselves to be a Christian nation, but in a lot of ways we violate Christ’s teachings to become more balanced and centered.

            We've created an Americanized Christianity that isn't able to see how non-Christian we often are. We've created a Christianity that sees success as having to do with quantities such as wealth, size, and popularity, rather than with qualities such as centeredness, generosity, and love. We've created a Christianity where what seems to matter is how busy and productive we are. For example, you remember the phrase, “idle hands are the devil’s playground”? I don’t think that this phrase really reflects the view of our passage for today. In fact, I think this phrase would be more apt: “centered, praying hands are the angel’s playground.”

            A large part of the Christian faith has always been about taking time reflection, prayer, contemplation, and for activities that slow us down so that we can think about life and about what matters. This does not mean that we're not allowed to be successful, productive, or active. It means that were called to root our success in first listening to God. And the fact is that when we are always in a hurry, we can't listen to God very well.

            One of the things I’ve been talking about in our mystics class is a way of life that has been lost among modern Christians. It’s a way of life grounded in prayer, contemplation, and centering as a foundation to our doing. It’s the kind of life Jesus lived. When we think of Jesus, we tend to think of him as being incredibly busy. He was always going here or there to heal, teach, preach, or do. He traveled miles and miles to do his ministry. It seems like he was so BUSY,… except he wasn’t always. Because we read the gospels with American eyes, we miss the fact that Jesus took a lot of time for rest, reflection, and recreation (with the emphasis on re-Creation).

            After he was baptized by the Holy Spirit, he didn’t go off on a work junket. He went into the desert, which, in the ancient Jewish tradition, was a place for fasting, prayer, and centering in God. He was constantly going off to a place to pray before and after preaching, teaching, and healing. In fact, some of the most important things he did were in the process of going off to pray. The sermon on the plain in Luke takes place because Jesus is going off on his own to pray, and turns around to preach to folks in order to get them to leave him alone. Imagine that,… preaching to get people to go away. He walks on water after the disciples take off without him when he was off on his own to pray. When he faced crucifixion, he went off to the garden to pray. He was able to let go of his worries because instead of rushing off to do something, he wandered off to pray.

            Gordon MacDonald, a well-known evangelical preacher, said that he learned the lesson on centering and prayer as the foundation for work when he visited Switzerland thirty years ago. While hiking in the meadows he noticed farmers cutting grass for hay with scythes. They would but for ten minutes, and then sit down for five minutes. They consistently repeated this pattern. He wondered, “wouldn’t they be more productive if they just kept on cutting?” He got his answer while talking to another farmer. They weren’t wasting time. When they stopped, they were sharpening their blades and restoring their bodies. They were actually more productive by stopping than they would have by continuing.

            In a similar way, our taking time for centering restores and sharpens us for the rest of our lives. But we worry that this time is unproductive. I discovered how true this is through a story a friend of mine told me. He’s a Lutheran pastor, and he said that early on in his ministry he had a practice if starting his day with 30 minutes of prayer in the church sanctuary. One morning the secretary interrupted him while he was praying, and told him that one of the members wanted to speak to him. The pastor told her that he’d be done in ten minutes. The secretary came back and said that the man was insistent that he be met NOW. The pastor said that he told her to wait for another 5 minutes. The man was so upset with the pastor that he brought it up as an issue at the next church council meeting, telling the council that they needed to do something about this because the pastor “should pray on his own time. On church time his responsibility was to be available when members needed him.” My friend learned his lesson—pray at home. But that’s an awful lesson to learn, and one that’s not rooted in the gospels, nor in our passage for today.

            The Christian life isn’t about busyness, it’s about openness, and we cannot be entirely open to God if we are too busy. That’s the whole point of Sabbath. The ancient practice of taking a Sabbath day was to have a day where absolutely no work is done. They ancient Jews took it a bit overboard, criticizing Jesus for healing on the Sabbath because technically it was work, no matter how miraculous it was. Still, there was an understanding that we need time for centering to make sure that we are grounded in God.

            We are called to be active, but to be active with a base—a foundation. This foundation is time spent in rest, reflection, and recreation. Do you have this kind of foundation?

            Amen.

Stumbling Blocks to Faith: Ritual, Gate or Prison, by Rev. Connie Frierson

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Mark 7:1-16  -  The Tradition of the Elders

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me; 
in vain do they worship me,
   teaching human precepts as doctrines.” 
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’

 Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’

 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’

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Stumbling Blocks to Faith, Ritual: Gate or Prison                        ~  By Rev. Connie Frierson

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        Does your faith have a leading edge?  I started thinking about sharp and dull because I am about to host a thanksgiving gathering for the singles group at my home.  So I will have to carve a turkey for about 30 people in my home.  I need a sharp knife. No one wants turkey that has been bludgeoned into pieces. Heck if I really mangle it I would be better off just using my fingers. Pulled turkey is not the same, as beautifully carved turkey but it would do ok. Maybe we should just throw the whole ritual of Thanksgiving out.  How about we just hunch around the stove tearing off bits with our hands and scooping up gobs of mash potatoes with our fingers?  The great symbol of plenty, the carved turkey, part of our thanksgiving ritual can just go hang. Throw out the old ideas. Go with what is easiest. We could reduce the holiday to the lowest common denominator. Heck, let’s reduce every holiday to it’s lowest common denominator. 

         Or maybe instead of this rant I just need to get the knife sharpened.  Guess what?  Our faith is in need of sharpening. Because if our faith isn’t sharp it will fail us when we need it.  God won’t fail us but our awareness and vision can be dull. Faith that is as dull as a butter knife faith isn’t useful. We need a faith that can cut through the tough things in life. So how do we do this? How do we get a faith that works? One of the ways is to sharpen our religious practices. We need to make our rituals have an edge that touches our hearts and grows our spirit.

         We sharpen our faith by sharing together in practices that have meaning and reality to them. When we practice something with transcendent meaning long enough it becomes ritual.  And ritual can be sharp or it can be deadly dull.  A ritual can be an invigorating dip into God’s reality or it can be tepid bath water. Ritual, religious practice, is meant to wake us up. Ritual is supposed to be like a glorious sun rising that makes us jump out of bed and live.  But too often ritual is a routine, humdrum alarm clock and we hit the snooze button and drift back to our spiritual sleep. How we practice worship is meant to be a gate that helps us pass through the concrete and ordinary and see God’s presence in everything.  But too often we see ritual as a prison that stifles real God experience.

         When I talk about ritual what am I referring to?  Think with me about what we do that is a ritual: The Sacraments of Communion and Baptism, Markers of life transitions, like Marriage and Funerals and Confirmation, Ordination of clergy and elders and teachers, Commissioning of mission trips, Chants, Prayer of Humility, Healing prayer, the laying on of hands, Seasons of our year; Advent, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, Daily devotions, lighting of candles, colors of the season, surrounding ourselves with symbols.  It’s all ritual, all symbol. It all has the potential to enrich our lives or be meaningless drivel.

         In our scripture passage today you have one of hundreds of instances where Jesus shows us how we get ritual wrong.  Here the Pharisee’s turned the small rule into and idol, a false god and ignored the great transcendent purpose. Lord knows I am all for hand washing.  Jesus was for hand washing. But when the small rule gets in the way of truly having a clean life and loving heart then it has to be put in its proper place.  This is one instance but there are others. For example in Mark 3, a man comes to Jesus on the Sabbath with a withered arm. Jesus heals him and restores him. The Pharisees criticized Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus embodies the real purpose of Sabbath to restore. But the small rule is all the Pharisee’s see. Jesus draws the anger of the religious establishment. So much so that the Pharisees went away and started planning his death. In Luke 18, Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee stands ceremonially in the temple and recites all the religious obligations he has fulfilled. But the tax collector stands in the back. He cannot even raise his eyes to heaven but he offers real confession and humility.  In the end the tax collector is the one who leaves the temple with a right relationship with God. Rigid adherents to the letter of the law imprisoned the Pharisee’s minds. What Jesus wanted was for the law and the tradition to open them up to spiritual reality.

         So the question is, “Is Jesus anti-ritual, anti-symbol?”  Of course not. Jesus was a Jew!  He worshiped in the synagogue. He read scripture in the temple. He feasted on feast days. He traveled to Jerusalem, even as Luke writes, as a boy to celebrate Passover. Jesus was baptized. Jesus preached with symbol after concrete symbol to open us up to the way God is.  Like this.  The Kingdom of God is like a woman searching for a lost coin, the kingdom of God is like a seed’s sown in the rocks and the road and the weeds and the field and the good earth. God’s love is like the shepherd that forsakes everything to find the lost lamb or like the father overjoyed at the return of the prodigal son. Jesus was all about using the real stuff of our life to show the spiritual reality. Jesus understood our need, indeed our craving, to have the ordinary stuff of our life lifted up and reveal the profound.

         We are physical beings.  We spend our days inside these bodies, moving around through space, eating and drinking and searching for a love, creating families and making a living. God has used ritual from the beginning to get us to see the sacred in the world while we do all those work-a-day thing.  We are beings who need ritual to open us up to spiritual reality. A good religious practice is like this.  Here is some living water.  It is the best, the sweetest most life giving water in the universe.  Drink this and you can live your life aware of God in everything.  Great let’s get some.  But you don’t have a cup. You are stumped. You can try to cup your hands around it but it leaks out pretty fast. You end up with a puddle, not a drink that can satisfy your soul.  God is gracious enough to let us have some sips of this water just by standing out in the rain with our mouths open.  This is like the wonderful sense of God we get when we see something beautiful in nature.  We are in awe and we stand in that rain of holiness with our mouths open.  But then we have to wait for it to rain again.  Ritual can hold the holy long enough for us to get a good long drink. But we can’t turn the cup into the holy thing. The holy is just what the cup is holding. We also can’t look at the cup, find a chip not to our liking and toss the cup away.  We seem to always be tipping from one end of the extreme to the other.  We either throw the cup away or we worship the cup.

         Religious practices, rituals, have some important jobs to do.  It allows us to put the transcendent into a form we can more easily grasp. Rituals say what we are doing, what we are promising and how we are noticing God in the world. Ritual slows us down and makes us pay attention so we can savor and deepen what God is doing.  Rituals usually involve some silence to allow and encourage deep contemplation or appreciation or praise or gratitude. Ritual is personally meaningful but also interpersonal.  We do communion, baptism, marriages and funerals, Christmas and Easter together. It helps to bind us together in a shared experience. We become witnesses to God in our own lives and in each other’s lives. Rituals help us to mark and emphasis and celebrate important transitions.  If something is changing that change needs to be honored, recognized and blessed.

         So how do we open ourselves up to the best practices and avoid the bland routine dullness?  First value our religious practice enough to give it proper time and attention.  Slow down.  Savor the symbol and the meaning.  But the most important step is to always ask the question, “What is God hoping to show me in this?”  Everything we do in ritual in the church is meant to be a gesture that points to God.  Look God is here!  Pay attention God’s spirit is present, here!  

         When we practice a sacrament and a rite well, with attention to God’s spirit it will be both familiar and new.   When I experience communion it is dearly familiar but often with a different emphasis each time.  Sometimes I am struck by the God’s love in inviting me to this table. Sometimes I experience the pang of knowing that Jesus suffered. Sometimes I sense God calling me to grow into someone who offers a life for others.  Sometimes I am struck by the unity of all the dear faces that share this holy meal with me.  Sometime I am just struck by the wonderful smell of that homemade bread. There are a hundred other shadings of meaning and transformation God can use to speak to each of us. 

         Our religious practice is meant to open us up to God. They aren’t meant to be a prison for our mind. They are meant to open us up not only when we do the ritual but also when we walk from here into our everyday life.  So don’t just stand around in the in the rain with your mouth open. Though that is great every now and then. But open your mind, heart and spirit to experience God’s presence routinely, regularly and with a wide-awake intention.  

Amen.

Stumbling Blocks of Faith: Judging Others

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Matthew 7:1-5

November 4, 2012

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

            There are a series of statistics I can’t get out of my head. I think about them a lot because they have to do with what people think of me,… and of you. These statistics pop up into my head whenever I read our passage for this morning. But they also pop up into my head whenever I talk with someone who tells me that they are spiritual but don’t see the need for church.

            I heard one such statement this past week when I visited a woman in drug and alcohol rehab. She said that one of the things they had told her was that “religion is for those avoiding hell, while spirituality for those who’ve been through hell. It’s a nice phrase, especially for those who have an aversion to religion. The only problem is that the statement has very little truth to it, especially for Presbyterians. Our theology is not one that teaches that going to church, being part of a church, or doing religious stuff gets us out of hell or even into heaven. We believe we’ve already been gotten out of hell by Christ’s forgiving death on the cross. We are not a people who avoid hell. We are a people who respond to God’s love by sharing God’s love, and religion is something we practice to open us up to God’s love. Religion doesn’t keep us out of hell. It trains us to share heaven.

            Still, I completely understand why people, and especially non-Christians, might quote that phrase. Religion does not have a good name with younger generations, and a lot of it has to do with how we act towards non-Christians. We are not well regarded in our culture among the non-religious. David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, two evangelical Christian researchers studied the perspectives of non-Christians between the ages of 18 and 30, and what they found was surprising. They wrote about their findings in a book, UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters. I know that I’ve shared these statistics before.  Here’s what they found:

• 91% believe that Christians are antihomosexual.
• 87% believe that we are.
• 85% believe that we are hypocritical.
• 70% believe that we are insensitive to others. 

            These statistics are what people think about you and me, and the fact that 87% believe we are judgmental, especially in the face of our passage for today, is really sad. And the problem is that they aren’t wrong in thinking this. Many Christians ARE judgmental. I’m not necessarily implicating members of our church because I’ve found that the members of Calvin Church tend to be very supportive of differences. Still, we are Christian, and what people think of Christians in general is also applied to us.

            The fact is that many Christians are quick to judge those of different religions, different races, different ethnicities, and different nationalities. For instance, how do Christians typically talk about Muslims, Buddhists, and people of other religions? How do white Christians tend to regard African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others? In fact, many Christians are incredibly judgment toward Christians who don’t seem to be the “right” kind of Christian.

            Why are people, especially Christians, judgmental like this? It has to do with human nature. At our cores all of us feel fragile, insecure, and at the mercy of forces larger than us. We don’t admit our fears. We don’t act like we’re afraid. But we all have secret anxieties, and one of the ways to deal with them is to find subtle and not-so-subtle ways of making ourselves feel safer and more secure. Judgment of another is one of those ways. We feel stronger whenever we can place someone else in the category of being weaker, dumber, less moral, in the wrong group, or of the wrong. The fact is that we always feel better about ourselves whenever we can relegate someone else or a group to a status worse than our own. The basic gist is that even if I don’t like much about myself, if I can find someone in a worse position, then I will end up feeling better about myself.

            All of this has to do with the way our minds work. Our minds play tricks on us by convincing us to judge another so we can feel superior. Let me give you an example: A number of years ago an American man attended a very prestigious international conference.  Delegates from all over the world gathered together to try to solve the world’s problems.  At dinner, he was seated next to a Chinese man.  Not knowing any Chinese, the American sat there not knowing what to say to his dinner partner.  When the drinks came around, he leaned over to the Chinese man and asked, “Likee drinkee?”  The Chinese man sipped it, nodded his head, and grinned.  As the first course came, he leaned over to the Chinese man and said, “Likee soupee?”  The Chinese man grinned and nodded his head.  When the main course came, the man leaned over and asked, “Likee fishee?”  Again, the Chinese man grinned and nodded.

            After dinner the guest of honor was introduced with all sorts of accolades over his accomplishments and deep understanding of the issues.  With that, the Chinese man got up, went to the podium, and delivered an incredible speech in perfectly fluent English.  He was articulate, witty, and tremendously insightful.  After he finished his speech, he sat back down at the table, leaned over to the American, and said, “Likee speechie?” 

            Unfortunately, so many of us judge others, like the American man of the story, without even realizing it.   We Americans, even though many of us say we are a Christian nation, have created a culture of judgment. We judge so often that we don’t even realize it. For example, I’ve seen the wealthy judge workers as beneath them, and workers judge the wealthy as snobs. I’ve seen Christians judge Muslims, Muslims judge Jews, and Jews judge Christians.  I’ve seen Evangelicals judge Protestants, Protestants judge Catholics, and Pentecostals judge evangelicals. Whites judge blacks, blacks judge whites, both judge Hispanics, Hispanics judge Asians, and Asians judge whites. Men judge women, women judge men, and both sexes wonder why God would do something as cruel as making us have to live together. Heterosexuals judge homosexuals, leaving no one for homosexuals to judge. The old judge the young, the young judge the old, generation lines up against generation until we find it hard to worship together. Christians judge atheists, and atheists judge Christians. And it all goes round and round in a cycle that never ends as we pile on judgment on top of judgment on top of judgment until no one is safe from our judgments.  And one thing is certain: even though our passage says that we will be judged by God using the same standards that we judge others, God is merciful because if it was left up to us no one would be saved.

            So, how do we overcome our judgmental nature? One thing that helps is something the 6^th century mystic and monk, Dorothoeos of Gaza, said: “The root cause of all these disturbances, if we are to investigate it accurately, is that we do not accuse ourselves…  We remain all the time against one another, grinding one another down.  Because each considers himself right and excuses himself, as I was saying, all the while keeping none of the Commandments yet expecting his neighbor to keep the lot!  This is why we do not acquire the habits of virtue, because if we light on any little thing we tax our neighbor with it and blame him saying he ought not to do such a thing and why did he do it—whereas ought we not rather to examine ourselves about the Commandments and blame ourselves for not keeping them?”

            Basically he says that to overcome our judgmental nature we have to learn to diminish ourselves and raise up others. We can start by questioning ourselves every time we catch ourselves judging others. Ask, “Why am I judging this person? Is it for something I’d judge myself on? How can I see what’s good instead of what’s wrong in her or him?”

            C.S. Lewis talks about this. In his book, The Great Divorce, he deals with the question of judgment—about who’s right and who’s wrong. The book is about heaven and hell. In it, residents of hell get to take day trips to heaven to see what it is like. The main character gets a tour of the outskirts of heaven by a guide. They discuss who was right and who was wrong when it came to all of our theological and religious battles, and the guide says, “That’s what we all find when we reach [heaven]. 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.” In essence his point is that whenever you judge, you’re wrong. Whenever I judge, I’m wrong. It’s not till we let go of our judgments that we begin to live.

            There’s a larger point: Whenever we judge another for anything, we harm our souls. We tear our souls apart, just a little bit. And the antidote is to catch ourselves whenever we judge, and to find a way let the judgment god so that we can let God’s love in us flow

            Amen.

Stumbling Blocks of Faith: Passionlessness

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Hebrews 7:23-28

October 28, 2012

Furthermore, the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.

            When you look at the state of your faith, what kind of faith would you say you have? Is it one that makes a difference in your life, or one that just is in your life? Is it the kind of faith that leads you through difficult times, or one that leaves you in difficult times? Is it a faith of passion, or a faith of apathy? Whether you know it or not, the Presbyterian way of faith is meant to be a faith of passion because it was a faith born out of passion. The problem is that we don’t necessarily have that same kind of passion that the originators of our tradition did.

            The great irony for us today is that we honor and revere our American soldiers who fight for our freedom as a country, but we have very little appreciation for those of the Protestant Reformation who died to protect an even greater, more important freedom—the freedom to read Scripture and to let it shape our relationship with God. Without that freedom, this country never would have become a democracy it is today. The fight for the freedom to read Scripture literally changed the world, and the folks of Scotland who risked their lives to create what became the Presbyterian Church were a large part of it.

            Let me take you back to Scotland in the mid-1500s to show you what I mean. For a long time the Protestant movement had been growing in Scotland, and was vying with the Roman Catholic Church. Many Protestant reformers had been cropping up throughout Scotland, but few as powerful as a man named George Wishart. Wishart preached throughout Scotland, urging his fellow Catholics to read Scripture for themselves and discover the freedom of faith that came through this practice.

            As Wishart preached, a young man named John Knox stood before the pulpit, claymore sword in hand, ready to defend Wishart against any who might try to kill him for his words. The claymore was a popular sword among the Scottish. It was the kind wielded by William Wallace centuries before as he fought for Scottish independence. The claymore was a fearsome, two-handed sword that struck terror in those facing it because it was so powerful, yet so light.

            The year was 1545, and Wishart, Knox, and their followers were moving through Scotland, preaching in each town they passed through. They were on the run with the soldiers of Cardinal David Beaton, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Scotland, hot on their tails. They were wanted men, and so in every place they preached the Reformed faith they converted many, and they faced many others who wanted to kill them. 

            Killing had been the way the Roman Catholic Church had dealt with these reformers for years. Archbishop Beaton had executed Patrick Hamilton, one of the earliest preachers of reform in Scotland eighteen years earlier. Hamilton had been invited to a friendly theological debate at St. Andrew’s castle. He went, hoping to make his point heard. He didn’t expect the kangaroo court he faced, nor to be burned at the stake.  Beaton was brutal with the reformers, hoping to crush them by force, and now his attention was upon George Wishart. 

            Eventually, Wishart was captured, and as Archbishop Beaton reclined on cushions in an overlooking balcony, he watched the brutal execution of Wishart in the castle’s courtyard. Soon afterwards, a gang of reformers stormed St. Andrew’s and brutally killed Beaton, taking over the castle. They then asked John Knox to become their chaplain. Eventually the French, who were determined to keep Scotland Roman Catholic, blocked the port with their ships and took over the castle. They captured Knox, and sentenced him to serve as a galley slave rowing ships back and forth through the English Channel.

            Knox served as a galley slave for almost two years until his release was secured. How would being a galley slave have impacted your faith? Would you have complained that a good God wouldn’t let this happen? Would you fall into despair? Knox became even more passionate about the Reformed faith he had learned from Wishart. After his release, he went to Geneva, Switzerland and studied with John Calvin, eventually, returning to Scotland with his heart afire, ready to spread this new Christian faith. He did so, but often under the threat of death. His prior experiences didn’t diminish his faith by making him more fearful. It deepened his faith and made him unafraid of death. Through his efforts, Scotland eventually became a cradle of Reformed faith, what we call Presbyterian faith, and through the faith of the reformers of Scotland the faith of the world changed. 

            It’s hard today to imagine the passion these men had for their faith. They didn’t just engage in mild speculation about what was right and what was wrong, the way we might discuss religion today. They were willing to die for their faith. This is so hard for us to understand today because we live in post-Reformation times. In our culture, because of the freedoms secured by men like John Knox, we have the freedom to worship where we will and believe what we want. We can worship here, in a Roman Catholic church, in a Buddhist temple, a Jewish synagogue, or a Muslim mosque. Back then they were willing to die for this privilege. They faced an entirely different world. 

            The Presbyterian tradition was created as a passionate response to the Roman Catholic Church that had become apathetic. That tradition had become a tradition of rules, rituals, and requirements. This was not the Roman Catholic Church of today, which was changed by the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church of Knox’s day made faith and salvation a matter of doing the right things, giving to the right places, and obeying the right rules. The Church had corrupted the message of the Gospel, teaching people that all that mattered was the Church. The Church was Jesus Christ in the world. There was no individual faith. There was only obedience and obligation to the Church. As a layperson, you had no right to read scripture for yourself, have your own ideas, and serve God in your own way. The Church was all that mattered. And people like Hamilton, Wishart, and Knox were willing to die for the freedom to live their faith and their commitment to Christ in a new way. 

            What was it about the ideas of the Reformed faith that captured their hearts and minds so much? There was a lot, and it is impossible to go into all of them in the confines of one sermon. Basically there were three issues that captured them: the sovereignty of God, authority of scripture, and the priesthood of all believers. Let me talk about each one and share with you what they meant for them and for us today. 

            The first idea that truly captured these early reformers was the idea of the sovereignty of God. What does that mean? It means that God alone is good, and God is the only one who matters. To truly understand this you have to insert yourself back in to the context of the 1500s. The Church saw itself as Christ’s embodiment in the world. The Church was Christ, and therefore the representatives of God on earth. What the Church said through the pope and its bishops was considered by the Church to be the Word of God. The reformers like John Knox, John Calvin, and Martin Luther did not believe that. They believed that we each had a right and an obligation to go straight to God and surrender our lives to God alone. God was the one who mattered, not the church. Or at least the church didn’t matter in the way God did. The church could shape us and help us draw closer to God, but it could not save us. Going to church was a response to God. We go to church because we need a community of faith to keep us accountable to God, but even more to nurture our faith as we go straight to God. The church connects us with God through prayer, worship, and love. 

            The whole point of the idea of sovereignty of God is that God saves us because God loves us, and this love isn’t connected to our good deeds. It is connected to God’s grace and love. We don’t merit salvation. God just gives it to us as a gift. God has chosen us to be saved and spend eternity with God simply because God loves us. God is all that matters, God is our center, and God loves us. So, we need to respond to God with our lives and share that love with others. 

            The second idea of the Reformed faith that captured Knox and the others is the authority of Scripture. Why is this so important? Again, remember what the Church of the time taught. It taught that it was the authority, not the Bible. So they could make up theologies and beliefs that ran counter to Scripture. So, even if Scripture (and specifically Paul) says that we are saved by God’s grace, not by anything we merit, the Church felt free to tell everyone that they were really saved by giving to the Church.

            The Reformers believed that Scripture should be the authority, not the Church.  And they believed that it was the duty of every person to read scripture and to hear directly from the Bible what God wanted. What captured the reformers’ passions? It was the rights of everyone to let God be the lord of their conscience, not the church. They wanted to give everyone the freedom to discover God for themselves. 

            By the way, this is why preaching is so important in the Presbyterian Church. Preaching is a measure and reflection of this freedom. It was the belief of the reformers like Knox that in each time of worship Scripture should be read so the people could hear it, and then it should be made clear through preaching. It was the right of everyone to hear scripture explained, taught, and explored. This is why preaching is so central to the Presbyterian faith. It also marks the difference between pastors and priests.

            A priest always presides over a sacrifice. A pastor is a shepherd and guide. In the Catholic faith, the central part of the church service is the Mass, which they see as being a mystical reality in which the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is renewed through an unbloody sacrifice. In other words, the Mass is a re-sacrifice of Christ on the altar—what we call a communion table. The priest presides over a sacrifice, just as Jewish priests and priests of other religions preside over animal sacrifices. Pastors, instead, are teachers trained to understand Scripture and to help us understand it. We do not need to make a sacrifice in worship because we believe Christ already was sacrificed once and for all 2000 years ago, and he doesn’t need to be sacrificed again. As our passage says: “Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself.”

           

            Sometimes we people take for granted how central preaching is to the growth of faith. For example, there once was a man, a grouchy, grumbly man, who belonged to a particular church. One evening at a church dinner, as the people sat around the table and discussed events of the church, the man blurted out, “I just wish we didn’t have to hear all these sermons! I’ve been coming to this church for thirty years, and I can’t remember one blasted sermon. It’s all a waste of my time!” Everyone sat in stunned silence. How do you respond to a statement like that? Eventually, his wife smiled, took his hand, and said, “Yes, yes, dear.  I know, I know. Still, we’ve been married for forty years, and I’ll bet you can’t remember one of those dinners I cooked for you every night for those forty years. But they’ve kept you well-fed and healthy. It’s not whether you remember the sermons. It’s how well you’ve digested them that matters.” 

            The Scottish Reformers were willing to die for our right to hear God’s word, to digest it, and to have our lives be transformed by it. 

            The third idea that captured the passions of these reformers was the idea of the priesthood of all believers. You may have heard of this. It is the idea that comes straight out of our passage for this morning, which tells us that since Jesus is the high priest who has been sacrificed for our sin, we no longer need to have a priest mediate between God and us. We can go straight to God. We are our own priests in the service of the high priest Jesus Christ. In other words, we have the power to offer a sacrifice to God on behalf of ourselves, and that sacrifice is ourselves—our sin and our lives. As part of the priesthood of all believers in Jesus Christ, we can offer ourselves as a sacrifice to God, and Jesus mediates on our behalf to the Creator. 

            The ramifications of this are that we do not need to go to a priest for confession. We can go straight to God. We can be forgiven by God directly. Now, does this mean we should never confess our sins to a pastor?  According to John Calvin, not exactly. Calvin said that while we can take our sins directly to God through Christ, there are times that confessing to a pastor or member of the church is the best way because it just helps us spiritually to know we’re forgiven. Other times it is better to confess in front of the whole church community. The point, though, is that no matter how we confess to God it is a direct confession. 

            The larger ramifications of this are that our devotion in prayer should always be to God, and because we are part of the God’s priesthood, we have a right and a calling to serve God throughout our lives. We are called by God to serve in love, and calling we can discern for ourselves in prayer. And this calling to serve God comes to us no matter what age we are or situation we are in. Being in the priesthood of Christ means being a person of prayer, devotion, and service. 

            Ultimately, these three ideas—sovereignty of God, authority of Scripture, and priesthood of all believer—has a simple message:  That we’re all called to form a Scottish form of faith—a faith of passion that leads us to devote our lives to God.

             Do you have that kind of faith?

            Amen.