PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

First Corinthians 4:1-5                                                           "Faith" / "Faithfulness"

Sermon May 25, 2008:  People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

 

            There are a lot of miracle stories about the Celtic saints—Aidan, Patrick, Brigit, Non, Cuthbert and St. Columba.  These are hero stories that served to move the ancient Celtic peoples away from their old religions and into Christianity.  The stories have their roots in events that actually happened, but as they've been told and retold the magic has almost overwhelmed the history.  St. Columba was an Irish Christian who established a monastery on the Island of Iona off the Scottish coast in the 500's; and Iona became the jumping-off point for Christian missionaries to Scotland.  There's a story about St. Columba while he was preaching to the Picts in northern Scotland.  In his journey he came to the Ness River.  A tragedy had just occurred:  a local man had been swimming in the bay when a monster of some kind attacked him and killed him.  But St. Columba needed to cross the river, and the cable boat was on the opposite shore.  He asked one of his companions to swim across and bring the cable boat over, and he did.  Nessie went after this swimmer, too; but St. Columba frightened her away.  Now who is the hero of this story?  It was told about St. Columba, but his companion who risked his life to help Columba was the real hero.  Who was this man?  Well, his name has come down to us:  Lugne Mocumin.[1]  Never heard of him!  But you have known people like Lugne Mocumin.  In fact, it's the Lugne Mocumins of our lives that have inspired us—not so much by their words but by their lives, the spiritual path they have walked in your sight.  What I want to say today is this:  Christianity is a "Way" of life, not just a set of ideas. 

 

            Yes, Christianity proclaims a set of ideas, teachings, an interpretation of our spiritual experience; but listen to what Paul wrote in the First Lesson:

 

 

Paul isn't talking here about doctrine, or teachings, or the theological debates he was constantly involved in:  he's talking about how he lived.  Now Paul was a lot more famous than Lugne Mocumin, and we can name a lot of widely-known, "great" Christians whom we preachers hold up as examples of how to live.  But who can be anything like Paul?  or John Wesley?  or Albert Schweitzer?  or Dag Hammarskjöld?  We tell the stories of these "great" spiritual leaders, and they can inspire us; but what really counts is when somebody you know back home can say, "It's a small thing to be judged by others.  I don't even judge myself.  I let God be the judge."  And she lives her life as if it were a sacred path she's walking, a spiritual journey through the middle of your life—a journey taken by a completely obscure, unknown person who has figured out the truth of Christianity:  that it's a "Way" of life, not just a set of ideas.  Such a person can actually claim Jesus' promise,

 

 

 

Doctrine gives structure to our thoughts about God, but doctrine without a life lived is superficial:  "faith without works is dead."  In the Beatitudes Jesus pronounces a blessing on what people do, on how people live their lives, not on what they think.  "Blessed are those who mourn"—this isn't about ideas, this is about living through loss.  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness" isn't about making rules and laws and preventing people from making their own choices:  this is about your life lived in the midst of a messy moral world, desiring more clarity about our own choices—this is about living in the real world.  "Pure in heart" is about relationships, not about private individual perfection.  "Peace-makers" are people living in the middle of a war, or a family argument, or a business engaged in competition.  Jesus' Beatitudes are about what happens to you as you live your life, not about your philosophy.  Christianity is a "Way" of life, not just a set of ideas.

 

            There are a lot of ideas in the Bible, but if you get close to Jesus and listen to his teaching, what you hear is a call to follow a "path," a "Way" of life, a "practice" in the arts of living well.  So what I'm saying is that the spiritual foundations of Christianity are about a "Way."  A lot of younger and middle-aged people in our time have decided to leave church behind and be "spiritual but not religious."  This is true of both Protestants and Catholics.  What these people seem to desire is a life-road to travel, a spiritual discipline that's like a "map" for their life-road.  Twenty years ago the novelist Carlos Castaneda published a series of books that captured the imagination of a generation—an upscale California yuppie goes down into the Sonora Desert of Mexico and becomes the disciple of a Native American shaman, a holy man with real spiritual power.[2]  In each book the disciple learns new things about spiritual powers, but mostly he learns that spirituality is about walking a life-road, a "path," a "Way." 

            What my generation has failed to see, or has not been taught, is that at its core Christianity itself is precisely that kind of life-road.  Before it was called "Christianity" it was called "The Way," which means "the road."[3]  So as Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem with his disciples, he says:[4]

 

 

And the whole middle section of Matthew, the middle section of Mark, and the middle section of Luke are about being on the road with Jesus.  One thing I have tried to teach my children is that there is nothing true in other spiritualities that can not be found in Christianity:  and this idea of the spiritual path is the beginning-place for understanding that. 

            For example, the central word in Christianity is "love."  Jesus told his disciples (and us) in the upper room on the night of his betrayal, "Love one another as I have loved you."[5]  Christian love is not just a feeling; the kind of love Jesus was talking about is a pattern of deeds, a loving life-story, a spiritual path that each one of us is called to walk; and we have to start new each morning.  So Christian "love" is not an idea, it's deed.  It was on purpose that Jesus didn't fill in the specific things you have to do in order to be loving, because every day, in each new situation, what love calls forth from us is different.  It's a creative journey—this Christianity is.  So I say Christianity is a "Way" of life, not just a set of ideas. 

 

            Now even though Jesus commanded us to love instead of giving us rules, this spiritual journey, this "Way" of life has a shape.  As a person lives the Christian "Way" each of us discovers in our bones what that shape is—how it works, what it's like.  Different people describe it in different words—after all, even the story of Jesus is told four different ways in the Bible.  But I want to share with you one way to describe the shape of this life-journey.  I've worked out seven bits of wisdom about the journey.  You may think of one more, or five more, but this is my map of the journey with Jesus.

            First is the wisdom of "reciprocity"—expect life to give back what you give it.  Jesus said, "What a person sows, that will they also reap."  He said, "Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?"  He wasn't talking about rewards in the next life:  he was talking about how to live here and now.  Expect reciprocity, therefore, "Do to others as you would have others do to you." 

            Second, he urges "unity of heart."  Proverbs said it this way:  "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."[6]  Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters."  "Make the eye single, and the whole body will be full of light."  Most of us go through life with two things going through our minds—the good, and the practical; the just, and the way everybody does it.  Jesus says you can't make much spiritual progress until you "make the eye single."  That's a spiritual discipline. 

            Third, Jesus elevates the value of "community."  "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst."  As one modern writer put it, "The only real alternative to 'me' is not 'you' but rather 'us.'"[7] 

            Fourth, we need to be aware of "the complementary nature of experience."  Jesus told his disciples at one point, "The one who is not against us is for us," and at another time "the one who is not for us is against us."  That could get confusing if it just stays in the realm of ideas; but if you have lived very long you know exactly how this works:  one is the complement of the other like light is the complement of darkness.  Just expect it. 

            Fifth is "self-knowledge," or to put it in spiritual terms, "self-forgetting."  Jesus said, "The one who would save his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life for my sake will find it."  Clutching my goals, my dreams, my success, my years in this world is precisely the definition of "sin."  Sin is turning away from God and to my own self-triumph.  If you push this to its limit it actually becomes "the unpardonable sin":  it's unpardonable because the person never stops and turns around and returns to fellowship with God.  But to live by self-knowledge is to discover real humility and joy. 

            Sixth is "grace."  Many times when people tried to get to Jesus to ask for help his disciples would block them, and in every case Jesus would say to his disciples, "Let them come to me."  As Jesus and his disciples were almost in sight of the walls of Jerusalem some mothers brought their children out for him to bless, and the disciples tried to make them go away; after all, the war of liberation was about to start, and that's no place for children.  But Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God."  Children don't earn anything:  they receive.  Jesus was saying that God's grace to you is full and wide open.

            And the seventh thing on this map for the journey, as I have outlined it, is what I call "purgation"—that is, sometimes (not always)—sometimes you learn and grow from bad things that happen to you.  Paul was recognized as an apostle and a great leader, and that recognition set him up for pride; but he wrote,[8]

 

 

God doesn't fix everything.  God didn't fix it when Jesus was arrested, tried, convicted and crucified.  God didn't step in and prevent Christians from being martyred.  Bad things happen in a world like this, but sometimes a person on the spiritual journey discovers that God is pulling from the other side of the rope as hard as he can:  you have something about yourself purged, purified and made better, wiser, stronger, more blessed.  "Purgation" is the word for it.  And this is why the church needs to stop and think twice and three times before advocating assisted suicide to relieve suffering.  It isn't always, but it can be a journey of the spirit. 

 

            Christianity is a "Way" of life, not just a set of ideas.  You have to live it to comprehend its depth.  So Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth and said, "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.  I do not even judge myself. ….  It is the Lord who judges me."  And that means grace for the journey.  But it IS a journey—a spiritual "Way"; and the real "saints" you've known, who have taught you the faith and faithfulness, like Lugne Mocumin swimming Loch Ness in faith and faithfulness—they've all known it's a journey, a "Way."  He has called you to put your foot on the path.

AMEN