Believing in doubt: Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

Lent is normally a somber, reflective occasion, as we prepare for the joy of the Easter sacrifice and Resurrection. Not normally the time to be telling jokes. But I’m going to be a bit different and start off by telling one. It goes like this:

Jesus is subbing for Peter at the Pearly Gates.

A Roman Catholic dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Catholic says, “Well, the Pope says...” and Jesus says, “No, I wanted your answer. Sorry...”

A Protestant dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Protestant says, “Well, the Bible says...” and Jesus says, “No, I wanted your answer. Sorry...”

An Anglican dies. Jesus says, “I have one question to decide whether I should let you in: Who am I?” The Anglican says, “Well, you are Jesus, the Christ,” Jesus says “Very good!” And the Anglican continues, “...but on the other hand...”

The reason I tell this joke is because it highlights a central aspect of what it means to me to be a Christian: doubt. Gnawing, constant doubt, about everything. We Anglicans tend to question everything, we question authority and don’t take someone else’s word for it. We reject Biblical literalism, just as we reject slavishly following an overmighty Pope or other leader.

This brings with it an advantage, of course, of being liberated from these things. We aren’t burdened with slavishly following Biblical literalism or the latest utterances of Benedict XVI. But if we want to be honest with ourselves, it has a drawback: We are left spending our lives searching for answers, and our belief is constantly being tested and challenged, and thus evolves and changes over our lifetimes. Another old joke goes, ask three Anglicans what they think the Church is, and you’ll get at least five answers. Other Christians may accuse us of building our church on sand, because we as Anglicans or Old Catholics are so reluctant to accept outside authority beyond the barest necessities, and we keep asking questions.

Today’s Old Testament reading contrasts the experience of Israel with our own. Judging from the reading, the Israelites had no doubt that God was there, because He was constantly talking to their prophets and interacting with them directly. God today seems to be harder to spot. We today are plagued by this, constantly searching for evidence that God really loves us, or that God even exists. Bad things happen like the earthquake in Haiti, or the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and our faith is sorely tested. We look for signs of God, and when God doesn’t quite turn out as we expect, we are frustrated and disappointed. Some of us give up entirely, rejecting the whole exercise as a waste of time.

But here, in this doubt, is the seed of our true foundation. It is in this doubt that the rock-solid foundation of our faith lies. Like the singer of the Psalm, we say to God, “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.” We trust in God and places our hopes in Him because our faith is constantly tested by the fire of doubt. We trust Saint Paul when he tells us, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”, and further, that “no one who believes in him will be put to shame”.

The thing is, if one relies on outside authority, that person is be making it too easy for themselves. They are taking a shortcut. That person has to constantly line up daily events or personal experience and see what their authority has to say to them about it. In a sense doing this is not a test of ourselves, but a test of God, to see if God really lives up to what that authority tells us God said. When God fails that test, as He inevitably will, it somehow becomes God’s fault.

But we don’t serve any authority but God Himself, and we certainly have no authority to question or test God, though it is of course tempting to believe that we can. As Jesus told the devil in the Gospel, “worship the Lord your God, and serve only him”. And in particular, Jesus admonished the Devil by saying, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” To think that we mere human beings can dare to test God or limit God or make God do what we want Him to do in any way is impossible. It is sheer hubris; it is folly. It is temptation of the Devil himself, who promises us the same false rewards that he promised Jesus. The “reward” of allowing our arrogance to get the better of us and to place ourselves above God is to be enslaved by our worst instincts. The temptation of certainty is what leads people astray to fundamentalism in any form, whether it is Biblical fundamentalism, ultramontane Catholicism, militant atheism or any of the other isms out there. That temptation is as evil as they come, and leads directly to war, conflict and despair.

We must be humble enough to admit that our own worldly authority might get it wrong, or that we ourselves get it wrong. Just as we must not test God by laying claim to infallibility, whether it is of a Pope or of the Bible itself, we must also be very careful not to lay claim to infallibility for our individual selves. It is through the deepest humility and self-denial that we come to experience the real divine presence that is God. Only when we are ready to renounce all preconceptions and preconditions are we ready to experience God directly. We have to play by God’s rules, not our own. Thy will be done.

On a lighter note, Casey Stengel, baseball player and legendary manager of the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, put it in his unique way: “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” We can certainly take that to heart by rephrasing it a little, “Never make assumptions, especially about God.” We have to let God define us and not the other way around, and that is the most important thing about learning how to let our faith grow on its own, rather than succumbing to the temptation of forcing the issue or of taking shortcuts. Thy will be done.

Lent is a time of testing our faith. We prepare ourselves for the triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter by spending these forty days reflecting on what we believe, and how we came to believe it. This is particularly true for our catechumens, Michelle and Jon, who are working their way towards baptism. Ideally, when we prepare for this, we fast. When we fast, we should do it not just to give up something because someone told us to. Once again that’s just following authority for the sake of following authority. Instead, we should fast because it is a way to strip down our selves to the barest essentials. To remind ourselves that we need nothing but God Himself. To reject the temptation of short-term rewards. To understand that we must be ready to give up anything and everything, just as Jesus gave everything He had when He stretched out His arms on the Cross. Above all, to understand, to see ourselves as part of the greater whole, and our place in it.

When we test our faith in this way, it is tempered, hardened, polished. It becomes something more solid than rock, harder than steel. When we are ready to test our faith to the utmost, to wear our self-doubt willingly, we come to dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and abide under the shadow of the Almighty. When we deny our own pride and hubris, and all pride and hubris around us, the door to God is opened in our hearts and the fire of the Spirit storms in. God can then work through us to save this world of ours. Each of us can become the hand of God working in our world, as an integral part of the body of Christ. It is when we seek rewards least that we gain the greatest reward of all.

When we confess our faults, our fallibility, we come to the point where Paul says in today’s Epistle: “For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” This is why Confession is part of each Anglican service: as a reminder to deny ourselves, to accept we are flawed, to accept that only together can we overcome those flaws. We confess our faith together that God is there for us. We come together as a Church to reinforce one another in our faith, to give one another strength on the journey, to leave no one behind. We come together as the Holy Church to make the world new, with God’s help. And that nagging bit of doubt and restlessness, the thirst for knowledge, the will to know God, is the seed in our hearts to help get us to the Kingdom of Heaven itself. And best of all, we know that at the end of Lent, we are ready to personally experience the triumph over death by Jesus Christ in the Easter Vigil, gaining strength from it year after year.

Remember the joke I told at the beginning? It’s true: All you have to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven is to recognize Jesus for what He is, and do so out of your own heart. Lent is here, so that we can learn to see Jesus all around us, including in ourselves; at the end of Lent, like the disciples at Emmaus, we recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread at Easter, when we come together as one to share – and then the door to the Kingdom of Heaven is wide open, so that we can come into the land that the LORD our God is giving us as an inheritance to possess. Amen.

The voice from the whirlwind: Sermon for the Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child, Proper 24, Year C

Job 38:1-7,34-41, Psalm 104:1-9,25,37c, Hebrews 5:1-10, Mark 10:35-45

Marcus and Dana (Note: Names changed for their privacy), as a father myself, I’d like you welcome you to the select elite of mankind: parenthood. We’re here today to give thanks for the safe birth of your first child, Daniel, and I can’t tell you how happy I am for you. Now, as a welcome to that elite of mankind, I’d like to give you a little bit of a heads-up: Parenting, as you no doubt know by now, is not always fun and games. Children can be difficult, even maddening. A friend said of his son that »he’s going from the ›terrible twos‹ straight on into the I’m-going-to-freakin’-kill-him threes«.

One of the ways your child will also certainly drive you crazy is with a one-word question. My daughter has discovered this question lately. That question is, »WHY?«

The child will pester their parents, wanting to know this or that, until it in variably ends in a sequence of »why« questions with no end other than the parent gritting their teeth and saying »just because« or »because I said so, now go to bed«.

The thing is, as childish and innocent as that question is, it is still gnawing at us even as adults. We still don’t really know »why«. We grope around such questions, asking why we’re here, why this Universe even exists. Science, of course, tells us all about the how, but it falls silent on the why.

In today’s readings, Job finds himself in exactly the same spot. He asks God that question, »why«, and gets a magnificent booming voice from the whirlwind. Yet what I think is fascinating about this is that God does not give Job simple answers. Instead, God answers with a serious of questions. Each answer opens up a new question. Life, as Job learns, is a never-ending sequence of questions, and only God has the fullness of knowledge and wisdom. Only God has all sides of the truth. We mere mortals are confronted with our basic human limitations: We only see just so much of the puzzle. We try our best to connect the dots, but ultimately final answers will elude us. We are reduced to children asking their parents, »why?«

So the question is, how do we find God? How do we come into that direct personal experience of God? Job had the whirlwind, Moses had the burning bush, Elijah the chariot of fire. They had the luxury of at least directly experiencing God. But what about us?

Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, gives us a clue. Jesus overhears people sending the children away, because they are (to the adults) being such a nuisance. But Jesus rebukes them, and says, »Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.«

As I grew into being a father, over time that line has resonated with me more and more. Because I came to recognize that children hold the secret. I see God in the eyes of my children. In particular I am reminded of a favorite story from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which I’d like to retell now:

One day some old men came to see Abba Anthony. In the midst of them was Abba Joseph. Wanting to test them, the old man suggested a text from the Scriptures, and, beginning with the youngest, he asked them what it meant. Each gave his opinion as he was able. But to each one the old man said, »You have not understood it.« Last of all he said to Abba Joseph, »How would you explain this saying?« And he replied, »I do not know.« Then Abba Anthony said, »Indeed, Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ›I do not know.«

Abba Joseph, in other words, humbly accepts his humanity for what it is. He cannot and will not know everything. The thirst for knowledge is one that will never be quenched. Each question we ask of God, or of science, opens up new ones. We will keep asking »why« until the ends of our days.

But what Abba Joseph and Abba Anthony both also know is that they can put their trust in God that all will be well in the end. God is infinite knowledge, infinite love and infinite compassion. When we see terrible things happen to us – whether it is the death of a child, or a natural catastrophe that kills millions – our first reaction is naturally to blame God, to get angry with Him, to demand answers. But God answers us from the whirlwind: »Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, ›Here we are‹? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together?« Who indeed but God Himself, and none other.

We must avoid the hubris of thinking we have all the answers, or even can have all the answers. We must accept that as terrible as things may seem, God really does love us, and it is all worth it in the end. To a child, sometimes parents may seem cruel, heartless, spiteful. They don’t understand why we have to ruin their fun by taking away the markers they used to decorate your antique lamp, or what’s so terrible about tearing out the pages of Mommy’s favorite book. Through those negative experiences, though, we all learn. As Paul says in the Epistle, »Although Jesus was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered«. Children figure out pretty quickly that their parents know more than they do, and accept what their parents have to teach them, because they know the love that is there.

We must learn to love God and one another as a child loves – with simplicity, trust, open eyes and open hearts. We must remind ourselves to come into the presence of God through the sacraments of the Church, so that we can reconnect with that real presence, with the grace of God. Rather than intellectually seek God, we need to feel God. And the means to do that is frequent prayer and experiencing the sacraments of the Holy Church.

Indeed we went to great lengths today to have the Eucharist as part of this service. Rev. Feldes agreed to fill in for our priest today, who is on sabbatical, because Rev. Feldes and the Anglican rector in Berlin sensed how important the Eucharist is to us. And it is doubly important because of what we celebrate today – thanksgiving for the birth of a child. The word Eucharist itself means »thanksgiving«, and what better way to give thanks for the birth of Daniel than by communing with God in the most blessed of sacraments. For that reason I’d like to thank Rev. Feldes for making the trip from Berlin so that we could do just that.

Thus, Marcus and Dana, when your child asks you »why« over and over and over again, accept it with love and learn to see the divine in yourselves, but especially to see the work of God in your child. As today’s Psalm ends, »O LORD, how manifold are your works! in wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.« The voice from the whirlwind assures us, all will be well, there is a plan, and the Kingdom of Heaven awaits us all: it is there for the taking. Amen.

God the builder: Sermon for Proper 18 (14th Sunday after Pentecost), Year B

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146, James 2:1-10,14-17, Mark 7:24-37

The doctrine of »justification« is one that has divided Christians at least since the Reformation and the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. »Justification« is a theological term that basically defines at what point are we »just« in the eyes of God – that is, when are we fulfilling the Law as God foresaw, when are we being truly faithful in the fullest sense of the term, and when are we free from sin.

Martin Luther and the Protestant reformers, of course, changed the emphasis by insisting on the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith alone. The principle of sola fide essentially says that without faith, no amount of good works will save you: Faith in God and Jesus Christ are absolutely necessary for being pardoned of our sinful nature. According to them, works are therefore irrelevant.

The thing is, neither of the two extremes – neither Catholic doctrine of faith and works, nor the Protestant doctrine of sola fide – really manages to tell the whole story as succinctly as today’s readings from the Epistle of St. James and from the Gospel of St. Mark.

In the Epistle, James says point-blank, »What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ›Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,‹ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.«

In the Gospel, we see an example of Jesus living this to the letter. Jesus is of course the Son of God. He is free of sin, and by definition filled with grace – by definition as »justified« as it gets. Yet Jesus spends much of his time healing people and comforting them. Indeed that is the central aspect of His ministry as shown in the New Testament – in a time where there was no such thing as doctors or nurses or clinics or hospitals, where sickness and disease were rampant, Jesus went around making a difference. Jesus didn’t need good works, because Jesus Himself was free of sin – but it was because of His totality of grace that He performed those good works in the first place. The two ideas are absolutely inseparable.

Our good works are the necessary consequence of our faith. When we accept Christ as our Savior, we explicitly recognize our place in the Holy Church of God – that we are part of a communion of believers, but just as importantly members of the human race, itself a gift of God’s creation. God’s power and love permeate all aspects of Creation, and it is by that power that life itself exists and flourishes. It is also that power, that grace, that moves us to be there for our fellow man. A faith that is »strictly personal« is a faith that is totally hollow and without meaning. On the other hand, a faith that moves us to care for the needy and sick, the unemployed and the outcasts, indeed also for those having a crisis of faith themselves – that kind of faith is the sort that truly justifies our existence.

There is another aspect to this that is important, however, and that is the power of prayer. I think many people get confused about what prayer is for and what it’s all about, and what our place is in Creation. When our prayers don’t appear to be answered the way we imagined it, we blame God for not doing as we asked. When things don’t happen as we would like, we get angry with God. Some even turn away from faith entirely – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the statement »I can’t believe in a God that…«

That attitude, however, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what prayer is, and what we are, and why we are here. God did not just create the world for us: God created the world with us and by us. God created us to with the ability to help ourselves. God created us as part of His Creation, as His tools as part of His great plan.

When some people pray, they do so in expectation of some supernatural result. Maybe it’s to ask God’s hand in making sure the right lottery numbers are picked. One imagines the hand of God reaching down and changing the numbers on the balls as they’re drawn out of the bin. But God clearly doesn’t work that way. In the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t say »my will be done«, but »Thy will be done«: we learn to surrender our will to the greater purpose, learning to see that even when things don’t go the way we want, it still all works out in the end. Prayer is the means by which we receive grace. From prayer comes the grace and the inner peace that we need to stop worrying and start doing.

God made us so that we can complete the great plan. Our own fallen nature, our own sinfulness, is the powerful motor that drives us on. We want to do better, we want to change, we want to transform: It’s all part of the human condition.

So when we pray, we do so not to ask God’s invisible hand to do something, but to gain grace and strength from experiencing God to do what we have to do. It is from our faith that we gain entry into that experience of God so that we are motivated to do good works in the first place. We acknowledge our sinfulness, and analyze our mistakes so that we can do better. We open up the gates of our hearts to let God in, and the power of the Holy Spirit fires us on to do more in God’s name. By experiencing God, by tapping into the love of God that permeates our Universe, we experience the totality of humanity. And when we see humanity’s suffering and troubles, we want to make it all better.

The amazing thing is that thanks to God’s grace, we are able to make it all better, even if it takes generations and thousands of years. Not only that, God’s grace is free for the taking – we only have to ask for it in prayer. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, »ask, and you shall receive«. To see the results, one only has to look and see the progress of the last five thousand years of human history. When we do work to change the world for the better, we call that »social justice« – we build a just society. Like James says, »If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.« It is through working for »justice«, by caring for the naked and hungry, that we find »justification«. If faith doesn’t motivate someone to do work for justice, it’s not really faith at all, but rather a kind of idolatry, a distraction from the true path. When we walk that path, we build that world of justice because of our faith. Meanwhile, we can hardly blame God for the state of the world, because it’s our job to change it in the first place.

In the end, what today’s lessons reveal is that each and every one of us plays a part in that great pageant of history, as part of God’s plan. God is like Bob the Builder: God asks us, »can we fix it?« and we reply in faith, »yes we can!«

The revelation is that we are the custodians of Creation. We are the tools of God. By God’s grace, experienced through prayer, we become the hand of God itself. And that is the faith that moves mountains. Amen.