Episodes
Sunday Apr 22, 2018
Believer
Sunday Apr 22, 2018
Sunday Apr 22, 2018
Believer
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, April 22, 2018, the third Sunday after Easter. Polyphony sermon series.
Texts: Psalm 119:64-74, Acts 5:12-21
Describing the process of an infant learning to communicate with the sounds of her voice, author Kathleen Norris writes, “Eventually the rudiments of words come; often ‘Mama,’ Dada,’ ‘Me,’ and the all-powerful ‘No!’ An unqualified ‘Yes’ is a harder sell, to both children and adults. To say ‘yes’ is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Not being quite sure of what we are doing, or where it will lead us, we try on assent, we commit ourselves to affirmation. With luck, we find that our efforts are rewarded. The vocabulary of faith begins.”[i]
It’s easy to make things more complicated than they are. And when we are talking about God things can really get out of hand. So I love Norris’s reminder that faith—at least its vocabulary—begins with simply saying “yes.” We “try on assent” and “commit ourselves to affirmation” and this risky leap of faith is done in the context of relationship. We all know something about this. Someone says “yes” to me—am I willing to respond with my own “yes?” Someone reaches out to me in relationship, will I affirm that action and that person by reaching back? Such a move will change your life, will lead to new experiences—and to places you’d never imagine. Through the experience of human relationship, we learn about love, trust, commitment, friendship. We also learn the pain of betrayal when our trust is broken, we learn the frailty of our own constancy when we fail to be a good friend or partner, we learn the heartbreak that follows when one we have loved deeply must be released into the arms of death. These experiences teach us about real love and commitment and help us identify what and who is worth risking our “yes” for.
Folks have often said that Jesus is God’s “yes” to us and to the world—that is to say, Jesus is God’s affirmation of us and the sign that God believes in us even with so many good reasons to just pack it in. God, it seems, loves us and is determined to hang in there with us even when we’re at our worst. God, it seems, continues to reach out to us to offer encouragement, friendship, correction, and guidance along our journey. God evidently will forgive us time and again to help us live and love more freely, wisely, and lovingly in relationship with others. That is the Gospel, the good news of this life we share as followers of Jesus.
Kathleen Norris says, such news, such love, such a God “is not readily understandable.” I imagine many would find that an understatement.
One of the great perversions within the Church is the teaching—either explicit or implicit—that if you have doubts you’re supposed to pretend you don’t, that if you struggle with teachings of the faith or with issues in your life, then you don’t really belong in the Church. I can think of nothing further from the truth. Sadly, there are those who stay away from the life-giving experience of Christian community because no one has ever convinced them that they don’t have to have all the answers—or that they don’t have to blindly go along with what they’ve heard or been taught about the Church, about Jesus, about the Bible. Also, sadly, there are those who have been part of the Church for years who have never felt it was OK to admit what they don’t understand. And so they never ask their questions and so they are never able to develop or deepen their faith.
Every week you hear me say “no matter what you believe or doubt” you’re welcome to come and bring it! And even though I say that pretty much without fail, I imagine there are still folks who struggle to trust that their doubts and beliefs are really welcome. There are plenty of good reasons for this difficulty.
Norris writes, “The word ‘belief’ has been impoverished; it has come to mean a head-over-heart intellectual assent. When people ask, ‘What do you believe?’ they are usually asking ‘What do you think?’ I have come to see that my education, even my religious education, left me with a faulty and inadequate sense of religious belief as a kind of suspension of the intellect. Religion, as I came to understand it, was a primitive relic that could not stand up to the advances made in our understanding of human psychological development or the inquiry of higher mathematics and the modern sciences.” She goes on to share “When I first stumbled upon the Benedictine abbey…I was surprised to find the monks so unconcerned with my weighty doubts and intellectual frustrations over Christianity…I was a bit disappointed—I had thought that my doubts were spectacular obstacles to my faith and was confused but intrigued when an old monk blithely stated that doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow.”[ii]
This is quite different from what lots of folks will imagine or experience of the Christian perspective on doubt and belief. So many who write Christianity off do so because they think, as Norris did, that it requires them to believe ridiculous things. Others reject or abandon the faith because they get a taste of a form of Christianity that is so narrow and legalistic that there is little or no room for questions, for freedom to explore the depths of a wondrous God, for space to wrestle with themselves in the safety of divine love. Some Christian tribes do emphasize strict adherence to their understanding of the Bible or theological concepts as a requirement to be counted among the “believers.” This more legalistic approach can lead to a great deal of fear and guilt that you aren’t thinking right or feeling what you’re supposed to feel or doing the right things. It can end up feeling like a very dysfunctional—if not abusive—relationship. But the word most often translated “believe” in the Bible—pisteuo in the Greek—is not defined as only what you think or as blind surrender to a questionable relationship
Pisteuo means several things including “thinking to be true,” “place confidence in,” and “entrusting or being entrusted with a thing.” One resource says, “The verb πιστεύω works two ways like the English verb ‘commit.’ If you commit yourself to someone, then you are entrusting yourself to them… At the same time you are supporting them. The two sides are really the summary of a covenantal relationship.”[iii] (“I believe in you”…) Kathleen Norris says that “at its Greek root, ‘to believe’ simply means ‘to give one’s heart to.’ Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.”[iv]
What I want to suggest today is that to be a “believer” doesn’t mean you are without doubts or that you’ve sacrificed your critical thinking. To be a believer doesn’t require you to pretend you understand things that baffle you or to act in ways that challenge your sense of integrity. A believer is one who as a result of thinking there is something somehow True about the Gospel message, places confidence in God, and entrusts their heart to God. A “believer” is simply one who—in one way or another—has been drawn to the love of God and has decided to say “yes” to the journey.
The book of Acts in the Bible is the story of the people who first risked saying “yes.” The lives of those who traveled with Jesus had a first-hand experience of what it feels like to be perfectly loved and forgiven. Lord knows the apostles had asked questions, had doubts, missed the point, failed spectacularly in trying to do what Jesus did. And yet because Jesus believed in them and didn’t give up on them and loved them, they kept walking the path, kept trying to follow and to learn. They witnessed the wonders of the risen Jesus who appeared to them, proving they didn’t need to be afraid, even of death. Their changed lives and the story they had to tell and the power of love that flowed from Holy Spirit through them was powerful and healing. It must have been amazing to see them, these simple, uneducated people—without title or standing in the community—risk so much (even jail!) to share their story and to care for those whom others ignored or cast out. This is what the apostles did and, through them, other people learned of the good news of God’s love and mercy and meaning and came alongside to travel the way of Jesus.
An angel (literally messenger) of God comes to the rescue of the imprisoned apostles and relates this charge: “Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.” Notice, the angel doesn’t set them free to go and tell the “rules” or the “ideas”…they’re encouraged to tell the whole message about this life.
“This life” is the life they had been given—a life of loving and just relationship with God and other people, a life that is meaningful and purposeful. It’s a life that says “yes” to love, that says “yes” to compassion, that says “yes” to forgiveness, that says “yes” to vulnerability, that says “yes” to risk and trust and generosity and solidarity… For centuries it is this life that has drawn people to embrace the Christian spiritual path. That path is well-worn and there are sign posts along the way in the form of spiritual practices, theologies born out of the crucible of experience, prayers, songs, and stories, all resources to help you grow more strong and free, more wise and kind, to help you discern the ups and downs, twists and turns of this life. We are encouraged to bring our intellect and questions to all of it, to engage the resources and words and images of our faith with the curiosity of an explorer and the wonder of a child.
What if we perceived a “believer” not as someone who has all the answers but who trusts God enough to sit in the ambiguity and frustration of the questions? What if we perceived a “believer” not as someone who thought a certain way, but rather as someone who lived a certain way, as someone who loved a certain way? What if being a “believer” is a willingness to entertain Spirit as a companion along your journey, to make yourself available in the spaces where Jesus reportedly shows up (along the margins, among the poor and disenfranchised, with the sick and grieving), and to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty that is guaranteed when we stumble into places like this one?
What if? I don’t have all the answers. Thanks be to God.
[i] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 1.
[ii] Ibid., 62-63.
[iii] http://www.torahtimes.org/NewTranslation/concordance/pisteuo_definition.html
[iv] Kathleen Norris, 62.
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