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June 6, l999
A surgeon and an epidemiologist (a doctor who studies the causes of disease and epidemics) were standing on a river bank when suddenly a body came floating by. The surgeon quickly jumped into the river, hauled the body ashore, and began administering CPR. A few minutes later, a second body floated by. This time the epidemiologist jumped in the river, hauled it ashore, and did CPR. When a third body appeared, the surgeon again jumped into the river, but the epidemiologist took off running.
"Where are you going?" shouted the horrified surgeon. The other doctor yelled back, "I'm going to find out what's going on upriver."
Our texts from Genesis and Romans call us way, way up river to original sources, not to study pathology, but to discover the well spring which gives rise to our faith.
Faith is a word used freely within the church. What do you mean by faith? The founder of Reformed Protestantism, John Calvin, said faith is a sure and certain knowledge of your salvation. Martin Luther said faith means trust - personally relying on God.
Well, which is it? Is faith a matter of knowing? A matter of believing? A matter of trusting? A matter of hoping? Is faith something we get, something we have, or something we do? Our Confirmation group is at this hour at the Jewish Synagogue, from where I just came, and both our group and the Jewish Confirmation group are embarked on an upriver exploration to discover what their faith is. For Christians we must go up river to our Jewish sources.
Protestant Christianity has from the first emphasized the centrality of knowledge about our faith. As it worked out there is little difference between Reformed Calvinism and Lutheranism in the high regard both hold for rigorous thinking about the faith. But lapsing of so many confirmation kids away from the practice of their faith suggests that a high degree of the mental mastery of doctrine does not guarantee faith.
I have enjoyed working in higher education a couple of times in my career. My first job in ministry was as a campus minister at California State University for two years; and I taught also two years at West Point. I love the sometimes serious academic conversations and the spontaneous bull sessions that spark academia. But intellectuals tend to think they can come to God head first.
Saint Augustine, arguably the most influential Christian thinker over the thousand years between the Apostle Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas came to know Christ first as an intellectual. The dialogues he wrote in the early years of his conversion trace his development as almost entirely intellectual - a journey from one school of thought to another, using his mind to purify his life by a progressively higher consideration of the divine. And why would God not give us the exquisite creation of the mind if we were not to use it to pursue His truth as best we can.
But in his middle years when Augustine came to write his CONFESSIONS OR TESTIMONY OF HIS FAITH Augustine moves beyond his beautiful rationalistic understanding of the truth of Christianity into accepting the scriptural and Pauline understand of the grace of God pushing against his strong will to overcome him with love.
In his CONFESSIONS, Augustine, while not abandoning his brilliantly intellectual defense of the Christian faith, references more personal events which promoted his conversion. Some of these are "feet first" supports to faith like his beloved mother's prayers for her son's conversion during his wanton years; and the loving friendship of a mentor bishop.
My experience is the response to God's grace needs to be the whole person - intellect, will and emotions moving feet first in response to God's call.
From Genesis we heard the Lord promising Abraham that he would make a great nation of his offspring, that he would bless Abraham, and Abraham would forever be a blessing to other peoples. And then the text states: SO ABRAM WENT.
SO ABRAM WENT! The story wastes no words: God calls Abram, God makes promises, and Abram responds. ABRAM WENT FEET FIRST! The simplicity and directness of this encounter and of Abram's response is in stark contrast to our self absorption about faith. Why do we make faith in God so complex? Our many credentials and degrees do make us more sophisticated in our approach to God than our spiritual ancestors, but they also create a smokescreen of intellectual pretense.
In Father Abraham, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have their father figure. It is the stepping out of Abram which sets the course for those faiths as contrasted with the cosmic religions of Asia.
When Abraham acted with his feet first he altered forever human understanding of time and of our spiritual destiny. With Abraham's feet first response to the divine call, the world ceases to be held in the great equilibrium of the cosmos and its harmony, first propounded in Egyptian and Indian religions, and brought to its final expression in Buddha's focus on the blissful now achieved by removal from time and destiny.
In Abrahamic religions the future is something new; it is not the return of the past. Time is not circular; time is linear. As God's creation, the world is aligned towards the future where the Kingdom and the fulfilment of creation beckon. The past is the reality which can never be brought back; the future is the potentiality which can never be caught up with; and the present is the interface at which the possibilities of the future are realized or neglected.
SO ABRAM WENT. There is no suggestion that he sat under his tent's flap to consider for a long while the promises of God, impossible though they were, and thus to be tempted to slide into eternal meditation, thinking it over. He simply got up and went. His faith led with his feet…his mind and feelings would follow where his feet took him in his journey of faith.
Way, way upriver, Abraham is the model for our spirituality and he is the forerunner of the Christ. In our exposition from Romans, the apostle Paul states that Abram's faith in God accounted him righteous and this, says Paul, is the example for Christians. Why? Because faith is the basis for inheritance. Despite his infirmity and the incredible demands placed upon him by God, Abram, HOPING AGAINST HOPE, GOT UP AND WENT. He trusted in the promise of a divine inheritance.
Paul goes on to remind us that the inheritance, which initially was of land and racially defined for the Jews, was expanded and universalized through Jesus to be the spiritual inheritance available to everyone: through Abram's faithful response to God, divine grace passes to Jews and gentiles alike.
Jesus showed a similarly uncomplicated and complete trust in God, even to the cross, and his approach to others was a "feet first" urging. When he met Matthew and so many others, he simply said: "Follow me." And they did. Feet first!
SO ABRAM WENT. He simply went and the more he stepped out the surer became his step and his way. Is God inviting you to go feet first toward Him?
Why do we make it so hard? Why do we hold back from the love of God. For is not our choice in life this: Either God is for us or we are alone. Either Love is at the center of human truth or we are abandoned. Faith can be helped by intellectual considerations - that's why we study the Word and sit through so many sermons. But faith can't be calculated or carefully weighed for it is a response to a God who is beyond our calculation and whose love is without limits.
So many wonderful faith stories like those of Abraham and Paul and Augustine and, towering above them all, the story of Jesus whose faith was perfect. They all put before us God's actions for us: God sees us, calls us, heals us, and saves us. God draws near; it is God who waits to have a meal for us. It is God who offers this symbolic meal of his love represented through the Christ and the bread and juice symbolic of his life given for us.
When we go back and back to the sources of our faith, way way up river where the waters first flow and life begins and the springs of faith bubble forth, we do not find disease and death and disillusion. We find a gracious God who longs to feed us and who is with us.
Last summer in London Nancy and I enjoyed the newest nt Lloyd Webber Rice musical "Whistle Down the Wind." It is a retelling of the Christ story set in Louisiana in the l920s. A group of children indoctrinated in the fundamentalism rampant at that time in the rural south discover a charismatic stranger hiding in their barn. They have been brainwashed to expect the Second Coming of Jesus anytime in their lives and so they conclude this stranger is Jesus come to help and lead them. They give him food, companionship and security for he is an escaped convict.
But the stranger knows his capture is imminent and that the children will be taken from him by their parents. In the song we shall now here, "No Matter What" the children pledge their faith to the stranger. Let us hear this song of a simple faith in the Boyzone version as we prepare to receive God's bread and wine for us.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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