Our Incredulous Faith June 12, 2005 A sermon by The Rev. Dr. Alan Kelchner Danville Congregational Church United Church of Christ
Genesis 18:1-15 The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on since you have come to your servant. So they said, Do as you have said. And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes. Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. They said to him, Where is your wife Sarah? And he said, There, in the tent. Then one said, I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure? The LORD said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, and say, Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old? Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son. But Sarah denied, saying, I did not laugh ; for she was afraid. He said, Oh yes, you did laugh. 1
Susan and I recently made some new friends. One day last week, one of them asked me, So, Alan, what do you do for a living? Uh-oh, I thought, here we go. I told him that I was pastor of this church, as well as a seminary professor. And then I hastened to add several remarks, about how open-minded and inclusive we are here at Danville Congregational Church; so that he got the message that I wasn t one of them. Susan chimed in as well, to make it clear that we are not the kind of Christians that you seem to hear so much about these days. Well, our new friend picked right up on this; and he soon began a diatribe on his own, about those people who are so divisive and judgmental, and how they are eager to impose their idea of Christianity on the rest of us. Yes, we agree, we said. And we all nodded and commiserated together, thus sealing our friendship. In this past week I also had two conversations with members of our church, each of whom spoke to me of their discomfort in talking about their DCC church involvement with their extended family, or with their co-workers. These days, it seems as though it s almost embarrassing to be a committed Christian. And that is primarily because a certain kind of Christianity, a more fundamentalist Christianity, has taken over the playing field. Which leaves Christians, like you and me scrambling to explain how we are not like the Religious Right, forcing public schools to teach creationism in place of science and evolution; nor do we go around harassing bewildered young women who are seeking an abortion. Nor are we like the Catholic Church hierarchy, forbidding divorce and birth control, covering up priestly misconduct, and actively fighting the use of condoms - even in AIDS-ravaged Africa. No! All that stuff you read about it the paper - that is not the kind of Christians we are. 2
In addition, we don t tend to wear our religion on our sleeve, nor do we tend to wear a WWJD bracelet on our wrist, that reminds us to ask ourselves, What Would Jesus Do? Although, it s a great question. What would Jesus do these days? I suspect Jesus would be appalled to see what conservative Christians in the U.S. Senate are doing: using the Terry Schaivo case for political gain. And that Jesus would be appalled to see children of God who happen to be gay or lesbian excluded and ostracized by their fellow Christians. And so you and I have become the sort of Christians who feel that it s incumbent upon us to make a special effort to be welcoming toward gays and lesbians, welcoming toward those whom many of us regard as victims of the last acceptable prejudice in polite society. Yes, Christians like us are usually pretty clear about what we are opposed to, and the things we don t believe in. But, what do we believe? Today, on our Annual Meeting Sunday, as we officially begin the second 50 years of the life of Danville Congregational Church, I want to suggest that we reflect a bit on the essence of our common faith, our common understandings. My hope is that all of us understand that we are not simply everybody s welcome, anything-goes Christians, who don t really believe in much of anything. No! The truth is that this church stands squarely in the midst of a long and honorable tradition of Christian faith and ethics and theology. And we need to claim that history, claim the tradition and the beliefs that have shaped us. Now, I do want to give you a little warning here, as I start in, and let you know that I will be using the L-word quite a bit today. I know that the L-word has fallen out of favor in political circles these days; but we are not talking about 3
politics today. I have no doubt that in this room there is a good, healthy mix of political persuasions: Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Libertarians, the Green Party, and plenty of us who would describe ourselves as independent. However, in terms of theology, just by the fact that you are here in this room, and are a willing and cheerful participant in this church, I am going to make a basic assumption: I am going to assume that you are a liberal Christian. And here comes the L-word: a liberal Christian. Let me remind you that, before it got mixed up in politics, liberal was a word that had a wonderful reputation - in education, for instance, with liberal arts and a liberal education. Liberal comes from the same root as the word liberty, meaning freedom. You see, if we can just separate it out from politics, liberal is such a wonderful, positive word! It implies abundance and generosity. According to the dictionary, to be liberal means to be generous, open-handed, and broad-minded. And, I m emphasizing this word a bit, because liberal has had a particularly distinguished career in theology. Liberal theology has a long and lively history; in fact, it has greatly influenced the evolution of American society and culture. Liberal theology was the dominant religious perspective in this country for more than a hundred years - in the 19th and 20th centuries. And even though, right now, in our time, a very different kind of theology is in ascendancy, that fact is that we liberal Christians are not going away. Our voice will continue to be heard! But, I am getting ahead of myself here. First of all, we need to figure out what liberal theology is. And the place to 4
start, as always, is with the Bible. So, let s take a look at today s scripture reading, which Donna just ready for us.. We continue the saga of Abraham and Sarah, who are in many ways, the original Jews, the mother and father of the whole Jewish race. And I have to confess, that of these two, it is Sarah who strikes me as being more interesting; she s the one with whom I identify most readily. Abraham, of course, is wonderful, with all his blind trust and faith in God. It seems like whatever crazy thing the Lord tells him to do, no matter what it is, Abraham just nods and goes along. But, Sarah! You ve got to like Sarah: she has some spunk! She tends to push back a little. Now, you may recall from last weeks reading, that Abraham and Sarah were natives of Mesopotamia, in what is now modern-day Iraq. Abraham received a call from God to leave his home, his native land, and travel far across the vast desert, to the land of Canaan. God promised that, in this new land, Abraham would become the father of a great nation, who would become the people of God. So, Abraham and Sarah packed up and set off. Eventually, they settled near what is now Jerusalem. Today s passage picks up this narrative, but only after many, many years have passed. And, frankly, things haven t turned out too well. Most disappointing of all is the fact that Sarah was never able to have a child; and now she is too old to have children; because, as the Bible delicately puts it, in verse 11, it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So, when Sarah, standing outside the tent, overhears the three visitors saying to Abraham that she is going to bear a child, she laughs. And she says to herself, After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure? 5
Which is a pretty interesting response. Notice, she doesn t say, Am I going to have a child? Or, Will I have to deal with diapers and toddlers in my old age? No, what she says is, Shall I have pleasure? And I don t think she is talking about the pleasures of motherhood... And so, she laughs. Sarah knows that these three mysterious strangers are some sort of divine messengers; but the message they have to deliver is sheer craziness; and so, Sarah laughs. It s the kind of laughter that says, You ve gotta be kidding! This is incredulous laughter, skeptical laughter - which, in this case, seems to be a perfectly reasonable response! At the end of today s reading, there is this wonderful exchange, in which Sarah denies laughing, because she s afraid that she has offended God. No, no - I didn t laugh, she says. Oh, yes you did, says the Lord. You can almost see the finger shaking. But it seems that the Lord is having some fun with this, too; because, in the end, the child is named after Sarah=s involuntary outburst. The baby is named Isaac, with means, laughter. A couple of chapters later, in 21.6, Sarah says, God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. For who would have thought that I would nurse a child in my old age? So now, dear friends, I want to lift up to you Sarah as a role model for the kind of believer who refuses to take things at face value. She models out for us a certain kind of faith, an incredulous faith, that is willing be skeptical and to ask questions and to seek further evidence. This skeptical sort of faith, incredulous faith, is typical of us liberal Christians - who are certainly open to spiritual experience and sacred truth - but who want to understand divine truth in the light of reason, and data, and personal experience. 6
As much as possible, you and I want our faith to fit with all the rest of our learning s and understandings about the world. This is one of the hallmarks of liberal theology. Other sorts of Christians are willing to separate theology from science or psychology or philosophy; but not us. We want to make it all fit together, so that we don t have to check our minds at the door when we come to worship; and so that no question is off-limits; and so that no faith assumption is so sacred that it cannot be challenged. Now, what this inevitably leads to is that we liberal Christians are willing to have faith without certainty. We have learned to live with truth that is incomplete, openended, and still in process. So, we are quite comfortable in having faith without certainty. That s why it s called faith, right? But you know as well as I do that there are many, many religious people for whom this is not the case, for whom certainty and absolute truth are required. The view of William Sloan Coffin is that conservative Christians want to be spared the insecurity of uncertainty; and thus they engage in what psychiatrists call premature closure. Coffin says that too many people misuse faith as a substitute for thought. But we liberal Christians would say that faith is what makes good thinking possible. Faith makes rigorous, clear thinking possible. Paul Rasor has written an excellent new book entitled, Faith without Certainty. He says that there are four basic themes of liberal Christianity, four main ideas. I want to go over them briefly - because I think this is the heart of our common faith. The first one is mediation. We seek to mediate between 7
the sacred and the secular. That s because we liberal Christians believe that our faith must not stand apart from the secular world; that it has to be connected with the fields of science, art, literature, and contemporary culture. From its earliest beginnings, among Congregational ministers in the 18th century, liberal theology has sought to be a Third Way, between religious orthodoxy on the one hand, and secular humanism, on the other. We have sought a Third Way, a middle path, that asks science and culture to take religion seriously, and that asks religion to take science and culture seriously. A second attribute of liberal theology is flow. This means that reality inevitably involves movement and change. Everything is in flux, in process; and everything is connected to everything else. This is an organic view of the world, and it stands over against a mechanistic, analytical worldview. Liberal theology does not accept a static view of truth as being unchangeable and immutable. Now that doesn t mean that there is no such thing as truth; it simply means that we are aware that all knowledge is shaped by culture and experience, and thus our understandings will continue to change and evolve over time. Liberal theology therefore does not accept hierarchies or rigid boundaries. We liberal Christians refuse to see the world as being black-and-white, in dualisms like good and evil, the saved and the damned, natural and supernatural. We tend to see the world in terms of continuums rather than dualisms, because we recognize a fundamental continuity and connection in all things. A third aspect of the liberal religious mind-set, which you will no doubt recognize, is individual autonomy. For many religious people in the world, authority is primarily located 8
in external sources, such as the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Mormon. Or, it is located in the ministry, priesthood, bishops. Or, it is found in church creeds and doctrines. However, we religious liberals tend to be profoundly suspicious of authority. And so, even though we respect our scriptures and our clergy, we also believe that nothing is true simply because an established authority says so. We liberal Christians believe that all people have a right to think for themselves, and make their own judgments. Another major difference is that conservative Christians tend to emphasize human sinfulness and moral failure, while we liberals tend to see human nature in more positive terms. While Calvinism emphasizes human depravity, liberal theology contends that each person is a child of God, created in the image of God, and that each person has a spark of the divine within. This more elevated view of human nature has led to the fourth aspect of liberal Christianity, which is an emphasis on ethics and morality. As you probably know, Catholics don t have Sunday School, and churches in Europe don t have Sunday School. Sunday School is an American Protestant Liberal Christian invention. In 1837, a Congregationalist minister named Horace Bushnell wrote a book called Christian Nurture, and Unitarian minister named Henry Ware wrote The Formation of Christian Character. Their revolutionary idea was that young people are not suddenly saved by Christ one day; so much as they are nurtured into the Christian faith, and nurtured toward personal morality and Christian character. Thus, religious education is not just about learning the right doctrines; instead, the primary goal of Christian education is character formation and personal growth. We liberal Christians tend to see religion as a means to develop human potential. 9
Liberal theology is also well-known for its emphasis on social ethics. We believe that we are called by God to help make the world a better place, to work with the poor and those in need. And we are not only to provide services to the needy, but also to help to change things and improve social and economic structures, in order to create a more just society for all. And so much more could be said about that, but I ll stop there. Dear friends, my hope is that these ideas resonate with you; and that perhaps this may help us to understand a bit better, what sort of Christians we are. For you and I are the inheritors of a proud tradition of faithful, thoughtful, courageous Christians, who have dared to ask questions, dared to think outside the box, and dared to have an incredulous faith. May we, like them, be people of faith without certainty, and yet people of deep conviction. May we be among those who trust in the gentle, restless, ever-flowing, spirit of God. For Jesus sake. Amen. 10
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