Sunday, August 12, 2007

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost

August 12, 2007

In his letter to the Hebrews, Paul begins with this statement; ”Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Let’s talk about this thing called faith this morning.

Each of us here today most likely have faith in modern technology to help us get through our days, get us where we're going, keep us warm, comfortable, fed and entertained? And, despite the problems that naturally accompany anything with moving parts, we have grown to have great faith in these devices.

But let me ask you this: Would you fly in a plane that was run by a computer that was programmed beyond the intellectual control and comprehension of any human being?

Your immediate response is most likely is "No," but, guess what? We fly in such planes all the time. The old saying that a computer is only as smart as the person who programmed it is no longer true. It hasn't been true since 1987 when computer scientist John Holland discovered that he could let computer programs evolve.

Such programs turned out to be better than those of human programmers, but they were also beyond our mental grasp. We are already flying on airlines that run on software that no human mind or human pilot can understand, much less control. We are creating things that behave as if they're alive, things like organically grown networks (like the Internet), things like computers writing their own software (like on airplanes). What faith we have in technology!

That is how faith works. When I turn on a light switch, I have faith that the light will come on. I don’t have to understand electricity to have such faith. All I need to know is that yesterday when I threw the switch, it happened. But, if I want to understand electricity, I would need to have faith that it wasn’t just a weird theory. I would need faith that it worked.

Many philosophers and theologians have suggested the idea that faith is the basis of all knowledge. One example is St. Augustine of Hippo. One of his key contributions to philosophy is the idea of "faith seeking understanding" What Augustine is claiming is that , faith must be present in order to know anything. In other words, one must assume, or have faith in the credibility of a person, place, thing, or idea in order to have a basis for knowledge.

We see this most clearly in the way children learn. For their early years, they place their faith in their parents. They are not intellectually developed enough to understand how things work, or what they should do. So, they put their faith, their trust, in mom and dad. From that foundation of trust, they can then begin to understand the world around them.

Faith seeking understanding.

Now, when we bring the idea of faith into contemporary Christianity, we run into a problem. Unfortunately, the word “faith” has become understood by many Christians as a synonym for “belief.” Consequently, the test of being the right kind of Christian has become that you hold the right set of beliefs.

I think we need to sort out this confusion. Seekers of God begin with two basic questions. The first is “Is there a God?” That question requires a yes or no answer. To ‘have faith” is to answer yes to this question. The second question is “What is God?” That is a question of belief, and the answer is going to be complex, and always inadequate. Beliefs are intellectual expressions of our faith.

Another way we can define religious belief is to say that belief is what we predicate of God. Most of you probably remember learning about predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives. They are the noun or the adjective that follow the verb in a sentence. For instance, if we say “Jesus is the Son of God”, Son of God is the predicate nominative, or the belief we are stating. I we say “God is good,” then “good” is the predicate adjective, or the belief we have about the character of God. These are both belief statements.

A faith statement would be “God is.” Nothing more. God exists. That is all we have to say yes to if we desire to begin seeking understanding, of growing our relationship, with God.

Faith has an absolute quality that belief does not. Either you have faith, or you don’t. Either you answer yes or no. There’s no such thing as partial faith.
Beliefs, on the other hand, tend to shift depending on the time in history we are in and the cultural setting of the belief system. It also varies according to the abilities of the person. A child’s beliefs will not be the same as an adult.

Beliefs are important, don’t get me wrong. It is our beliefs, our understanding built upon our faith, that guides our actions. But we can allow a diversity of understandings within our community. It is our faith in God that unites us.

Christianity is not built on intellectual ideas. It is about having a relationship with the living God. Much like children have faith in their parents, we begin by placing our faith in God. And the first step in establishing such a relationship is to say yes to God. Over time, if we nurture our relationship with God, the understanding will grow as well.

It is our faith in God that is our greatest treasure. And where our treasure is, there our heart must be also.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

August 5, 2007

Jesus told a parable that strikes at the soul of our age. A parable so close to our culture that we cringe just a bit upon hearing it. A man gains so much in the way of material goods that he begins to worry about it. He wonders, "How shall I protect my investments? How can I get a better return on my goods. Where shall I put the abundance and the extra that I have?"

Upon making plans to keep all that he has and store even more, the man in Jesus' story breathes a sigh of relief only to hear a final summons;"This very night your life will be required of you...then whose will all this be?"

"So it is," Jesus says, "With those who store things up for themselves, but are not rich toward God."

You probably recall the old routine from a Jack Benny program (at least some of us will recall this) - where Benny is confronted by a robber who pokes a gun in his ribs and says, "Your money or your life!" Jack Benny does not answer right away and the thief angrily says again, "I said... your money or your life!" There is a longer silence and the thief becomes really angry as he shouts, "Why don't you answer me. I said your money or your life!" Benny finally answers, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking.

Sometimes, we are all a bit like Jack Benny, aren’’t we? We are so hungry, so full of indiscriminate desire. And we are so worried that there will not be enough, so we store our treasures, like the man in Jesus parable.

And sometimes, if you are like me, I get so caught up in worrying about the future, that I forget to really live in this present moment.

As the poet William Wordsworth put it;

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Is there more to this life than just getting and spending? Do worldly treasures really satisfy our deepest desires?

What do we really want?

Sometimes, it seems as if we know that something is not quite right in our lives; and so we try to fix it; we try to fill that hunger for the illusive “something more.” What often happens is we end up living for some future destination. We are just one more promotion, one more new car, one more dream home, away from nirvana. When some of these dreams become concrete realities, we are surprised to find they don’t satisfy our deep, unnamed longing. Something seems missing, or maybe broken inside, and we just can’t fix it.

In some religions, like Buddhism, the teaching is that the purpose of religion is to get you over your wants, to help you to get rid of your desires, that longing for the elusive something more. Complete detachment is their goal. Open to everything, but attached to nothing.

Christianity is different. We don’t try to quench all desire. Passion is a good thing, if directed properly.

The Confessions of St. Augustine begins with this line: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rest in you.” Augustine did not eliminate his passion. He redirected it. Only God’s love can satisfy us, because it is for that relationship of love we are created. Nothing else can ever satisfy the depth of our longing for God.

The Psalmist, in Psalm 42, expresses our deepest longing this way:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.

What do we really want? We want to love, and be loved. And we learn what love is through our relationship with God. That relationship is our heart’s desire. All other love flows from it.

May we recognize that the love of the living God is our heart’s desire. And then may we allow the gift of God’s love to flow out from us into the world.