Homily February 17, 2008
Genesis 12:1-8; Psalm 33:12-22; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
Dear God, our trust is in the presence of you and your Son, as we listen and search our hearts and speak about these words before us today. Amen
Along with the readings this morning I was asked to look at the second question proposed to those being baptized into the community of the church, into a covenant with God. “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?” Then follows the litany of what it means to answer that question in the affirmative. The Virgin Birth, Suffering, crucifixion, burial, descent into death, Resurrection on the third day, ascent into heaven and a seat at the right hand of God. And, to come, Christ’s judgement over the living and the dead. Quite a list to acclaim as one’s belief. Some things earthly, but most, pure mystery.
When it comes to the mysteries I appreciate Archbishop Rowen Williams’ translation thought that Lynn mentioned last week, that the word belief is more accurately understood as trust. When I say “I believe” it tends to be in something provable, but trust is applied to things beyond my understanding. I, for myself, could, and do, say that I believe in the science of evolution, and at the same time I passionately trust that it is the outward sign of God, the Creator, at work. Belief, Trust, words that have a personal meaning deep inside me.
Former Presiding Bishop Edmond Lee Browning writes in his book of meditations “A Year of Days”:
“The term believer is not a very busy one in the Old Testament. In fact its not there at all that I can see. People in the Old Testament do, upon occasion, fail to believe something that God has told them - which always turns out to be a big mistake - but the people of those days don’t seem very often to have envisioned a moment in which one moved from unbelief to belief. Life in God’s community was a given for the people of Israel. The issue they faced was not whether or not to be a member of the community, but how righteously or unrighteously they would live that communal life.”. This is the world we read of this morning in which Abram’s faith was at work .
I find that when I say “I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God” my heart knows that my belief is grounded in what I have learned of the actions and life of Jesus - I would follow as a disciple, because of what I saw him do with and for others - sensing that God was somehow with him. And I would try to learn from him what God wants of me, and act as he acted in the world, knowing that it was the basics of what God wanted for us to live out
.
I also relate to the visit and remarkable conversation that we read about in the Gospel today. Although I would not need the cover of night, I understand the Pharisee’s need to hide his curiosity and respect for Jesus from others in his day. Nicodemus was drawn to Jesus in the same way as the disciples, and Jesus, in turn, knew that there was a way into this man’s heart. But it was hard for Nicodemus to move beyond his literal understanding of spiritual matters, although the seeds were planted. I can nowadays understand Jesus telling him that one needs a transformation from the inside out. But “How can these things be?” also echoes in my mind concerning the mysteries of Christ’s birth and resurrection. We read later, in chapter 7, verses 50-51, that Nicodemus defended Jesus before the other Pharisees - in broad daylight, we presume. And it was Nicodemus who brought the spices to anoint the body of Jesus after the crucifixion. The seeds had grown into faith.
So, in this examination of myself, I find that much of my belief system is grounded in things that took place before the ultimate mystery of the Resurrection. Things that ring true to life on the pages of the Gospels.
In another of his meditations Bishop Browning speaks of the vivid pictures leading to the cross that we can imagine off these pages: scenes of frightened disciples, Judas’s kiss, Peters shame as the cock crowed, brave women coming to the tomb:
“and now (he writes) we see Jesus’ victory over death. Our pictures of these other events are so vivid, but here my imagination fails me. I do not know what the resurrection means. It is a mystery…
“(But) The categories of human history do not contain our God; our God encompasses them. And so we take heart, in a world that can be a very sad place at times. Christ is risen. This is not business as usual. And for us, as for the whole of creation, those who know it (the risen Christ) as well as those who don’t, nothing will ever be the same again.”
As I look at the baptismal vow nothing about my belief in the example set by Jesus in his life here on earth is what I am asked to ascribe to in it. With this wonderful Bishop I have to say, before answering, “It is a mystery”. And I have to look away from my Nicodemus need for proof, and let the seeds grow. I look at the two thousand years that have come and gone since that stable birth, that crucifixion, that resurrection, and I know, in fact I trust, that something happened that did, indeed change the world. And I can answer that Baptismal question - “I believe…” - and live into the mystery.
Bishop Browning sums it up for me in this way:
“…faith is not about that kind of evidence. It is not certified by events in the past, though it is nourished by them. It is certified by events in the present. Although we are the custodians of an ancient and majestic tradition, compiled and preserved by people long dead, each believer can only receive this tradition in light of her own experience. I cannot tell you what to believe.
All I can do is tell you what God has done in my life, and listen to what he has done in yours. That is, after all, exactly what the biblical writers do: they are explaining the action of God in their own times, in their own world, so that we will be encouraged to look for it in ours. It will not be the same - they are two different worlds. But their search informs our search.”
I encourage you to join me in always searching for the moment when we know God is at work in our lives, our world. The moment when you can say “I believe…”
A-men
Bishop Edmond Lee Browning - A Year of Days
“None of us were alive when Jesus walked the earth. If the life of faith were like a court of law, the case for his very existence would be weak: the only surviving disinterested testimony to the events was a reference in the writings of an imperial historian named Flavius Josephus - just a brief comment on what a nuisance the first Christians were. All the rest of the testimony about Jesus has come from within the early Christian community- in a court, it would be seen as less than useful, like an alibi provided by a family member. We are biased. We want these events to be true.
But this is not a court of law. And… (used above)
“Establish some kind of spiritual discipline in your life…and its amazing how quickly you become unable to imagine yourself without it. You begin to see the world through its lens. The ordinary takes on meaning it did not have before - or rather, you begin to see that nothing is really ordinary. A couple of poor people and their new baby in a barn - or the hope of the whole human family. Depends on how you look at it.”
Anne McConney - Episcopal Life
“He told stories, spoke plainly, welcomed everybody, forced his beliefs on no one, and I suspect he laughed a lot.
“And his followers went out by ones and twos and spread the good news to other ones and twos and tens and fifties, and little by little and person by person the world got changed”
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity
“Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Marcus Borg , in his book ‘The Emerging Way” speaks of this as well:
“It is tust and loyalty that transforms us. Beliefs may preceed them or follow them or remain quite unconnected to them.
But beliefs do not save us, do not transform us.
Trust and loyalty do. This combination of trust and loyalty is the centering in God that is the primary meaning of Faith.”