The Rev. John Shuck, a Presbyterian minister from Tennessee, writes, “We live in a universe that is 13.75 billion years old. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. It is a pale blue dot in the suburbs of a galaxy that is one of billions. Humans have evolved through a process of natural selection. We share a common ancestor with all of life going back to single-celled organisms from perhaps three billion years ago. It is an incredible universe that science is unfolding before our eyes. Yet religion with its ancient creeds and symbols is still in a pre-modern era.
All of the symbols and doctrines of faith from creation to eschatology including a supernatural interventionist deity called “God” are products of a pre-modern era where humanity was “created” around 6000 years ago in a garden in the midst of a geocentric universe over which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost could be imagined as real entities existing in real time and space. These doctrinal foundations are little more than poetry today.”
Shuck wrote these words in a letter to officials of the United Church of Canada who are at present examining one of their ordained clergy members, the Rev. Gretta Vosper, pastor of the West Hill United Church in Toronto, to determine if she should be defrocked for violating her ordination vows. Vosper preaches that the way we live is more important than what we believe. Well, in the interest of complete disclosure, Vosper also says she is an atheist and she took the Lord’s Prayer out of worship services at her church – all right, maybe not a politically smart move, but ….
But, here’s the thing ….. today we heard from the Hebrew Scriptures “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor” and “Do not rob the poor,” and from the Christian Scriptures of the Book of James that faith must be revealed or demonstrated in action for “faith without works is dead.” It seems to me that some of Vosper’s ideas completely harmonize with Holy Scripture.
Episcopal religion commentator and author Diana Butler Bass writes “Although Western Christianity would eventually be defined as a belief system about God, throughout the first five centuries people understood it primarily as spiritual practices that offered a meaningful way of life in the world – not as a neat set of doctrines, an esoteric belief, or the promise of heaven. By practicing Jesus’ teachings, followers of the way discovered that their lives were made better on a practical spiritual path. Members of the community were not held accountable for their opinions about God or Jesus, rather, the community measured faithfulness by how well its members practiced loving God and neighbor. Not offering hospitality was a much greater failure than not believing that Jesus was “truly God and truly human.” Early Christians judged ethical failings as the most serious breach of community, even as they accepted a significant amount of theological diversity of belief.”
She continues “Typically, belief entails some sort of list – a rehearsal of ideas about God, Jesus, salvation, and the church. What to believe? If I am slipping, do I hold on tighter or let go? If I no longer believe, am I still a Christian? Am I spiritual, but not religious; am I an agnostic, an atheist? Now-a-days, Bass says, “Christianity is moving from being a religion about God to being an experience of God.” After all, the Nicene Creed was written some three centuries after Jesus taught his followers to love God and their neighbors.
Rachel Held Evans in her book Searching for Sunday, quotes Lauren Winter who recounts this story in her memoir Still. It is the story of her friend Julian. When Julian was twelve years old she was preparing to be confirmed. She told her father that she wasn’t sure she could go through with the service because she wasn’t certain she believed everything she was supposed to believe, at least not enough to make a promise before God and her congregation to believe those things forever.
Her father told her, “What you promise when you are confirmed is that this is the story you will wrestle with forever.”
But what if we change the question from “what do we believe” to “how do we believe?” And, how do we behave? If we ask how do we believe and how do we behave we come full circle back to the warnings of James. Christian faith and good works are integrated and not separate. James makes a theological point that becomes for us a starting place. That starting place is agape love which enables us to bear one another’s burdens under the most trying of circumstances. James’ radical challenge comes straight from the bible of Jesus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” James makes a distinction between a dead faith – faith without works, and a living faith that is always accompanied by works.
There’s good news. We are at a hopeful place in our searching this morning. If we are asking provocative questions and welcoming challenging answers, we are being truthful and the Bible tells us the truth will make us free. Our Christian Church has much of which to repent and much more to celebrate. I embrace it all as I have for as long as I can remember. It is my home; it is where I belong. The Episcopal Church gives me spiritual practices that offer me a meaningful way of life in the world. This is the story I will wrestle with forever. How about you?