First Steps
Luke 4:14-21; 1 Cor. 12:12-31a
January 24, 2010
A long time ago … in a galaxy not that far, far away, Time magazine carried a cover story headlined, “God Is Dead.” The story quoted, among others, a young Harvard Divinity School professor named Harvey Cox.
I’ve been reading Dr. Cox’s most recent book this month. I’ve got to confess, that when I heard it mentioned, my first reaction was, “I thought he was dead.”
Well, it appears that rumors of Harvey Cox’s death – and of God’s – have been greatly exaggerated.
Back in 1965, Cox was asking "Is it the loss of the experience of God, the loss of the existence of God in Christianity, or the lack of adequate language to express God today?" that generates the God-is-dead talk.
Today Cox is asking not about the future of God or God-talk, but about the future of faith.
The beginning of a new year, the early weeks of the lectionary cycle of readings, and the occasion of Jesus’ first public sermon as Luke reports it, provide compelling invitation to explore together the future of faith and to ask after first things.
So, to begin with, what does it mean to have faith? Today?
Well, to begin with, having faith does not mean offering intellectual assent to a series of statements concerning the ontological status of Jesus, the nature of his birth, of his mother’s sex life, his super hero powers or a single authorized description of what happened after the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was put to death by Roman imperial authorities.
It bears repeating: having faith does not mean offering your intellectual assent or consent to a series of propositional statements about God, about Jesus, about the church.
Faith is about so much more than that; and it is so much more challenging than that.
Faith is not primarily concerned with what your head believes to be true; faith is primarily concerned with what your hearts trusts. Faith is about what theologian Paul Tillich called the matter of ultimate concern.
Faith, in other words, is not a head trip though it has room for deep reflection and inquiry, for all the questions that confront us and for deepest doubt.
Faith is a whole-body experience and commitment.
Moreover, authentic faith redefines us – takes all of us and makes us new, reclaiming us as God’s own for the world.
Paul understood this in offering up the metaphor of the gathered faithful as the body of Christ in the world.
It takes all of us to make up that body, and it takes all of all of us.
From time to time I’ve quoted an African American woman who called the offering at the gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville some years ago. She said, “Jesus don’t want your five and tens; Jesus wants your twenties and fifties.”
Well, in the same way, Jesus doesn’t want part of you; Jesus wants all of you. Bring your best, the best of who you are, to this body. That’s what faith is all about. Your best, meeting the best of one another, so that together we can meet the needs of all at the worst moments.
St. Teresa of Avila puts it something like this:
Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses his people now.
Paul uses the metaphor of the body to underscore the variety of gifts, of resources, that we share together to give flesh and blood to the words of compassion, love and justice that Jesus speaks. Paul also uses this metaphor to remind us that faith is earthy, gritty, and involves our frailty and brokenness as well as moments of awe and wonder and sublime beauty.
Much of the work of faith takes place not in beautiful sanctuaries such as ours, but in the rubble of Port-au-Prince, the slums of Calcutta, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans – places of deep and desperate need where God is already at work and calling us to be as well.
Of course, most of us have neither the gifts nor calling to work in those place, and that is as it should be because there are plenty of places of need all around us right now, and God is already at work in such places as AFAC, Doorways for Women and Children, the sites of Rebuilding Together, the Arlington Free Clinic, the DC Pride Parade, Arlington Hospital, Whitman Walker or any of the myriad other places that you – that we, together – have gone in ministry and mission over the years.
The first step of faith often leads us directly into such places. Ours are the feet with which Christ goes about bringing healing, restoring hope.
If we take seriously the notion that the church – the whole church – truly is the body of Christ, then we understand how intimately connected we are. As Dr. King put it, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
“Moreover,” as Vinoth Ramachandra says, “if the church is truly the global body of Christ, and the body of Christ is qualitatively present in every local assembly, the way we become truly global Christians is not by detaching ourselves from local commitments in favor of a globe-trotting lifestyle (or spending more time on the Internet!), but rather by seriously engaging with the local as members of a global community that has re-defined our identities.”
None of that effort, that walking with Christ into local food pantries because we understand that we are first and foremost children of the same God – none of that requires intellectual assent to a set of abstractions by which some people have built walls around the faith.
When Tom Hull led our Rebuilding Together crew last spring the homeowner did not ask us to recite the Apostles Creed before we painted, plumbed, and basically restored her house. When we gather down at AFAC each month to bag groceries for our neighbors in need, no one stops us to ask if we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. When we donate to the people of Haiti, the relief agencies will cash our checks without reference to the Westminster Catechism.
Faith is how we live; it is not how we believe. Faith is about the Spirit of the Lord, not the letter of the law. Faith concerns the concrete rather than the creedal.
Faith is about being fully alive. As the great Howard Thurman put it, "Don't just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go and do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
None of which is to say we should be blissfully ignorant in our faithful living. There is content to our faith, and that content has specificity as well. We hope that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts draw us into deeper relationship with God. Words matter. Thoughtfulness is important.
Coincidentally, I think that faith’s first steps and their content form the theme of Jesus’ initial public speech in the text from Luke this morning.
Faith is about the Spirit of God – that same Spirit that upholds Jesus in the wilderness and the one that falls upon him when he returns to Galilee to teach. He does not stand up in the synagogue to teach anything about being “begotten not made” or “very God from very God,” as the council of Nicaea agreed. Nor does he say anything about God “Who is eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible; one in substance and yet distinct in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” as the Heidelberg Confession puts it.
But he does say this:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
Good news! In which authentic faith takes the form of liberation, restoration and mercy.
Ah, but consider that good news and Jesus’ proclamation alongside Paul’s assertion that we are the body of Christ. The Spirit is trying to say something to the church through this ancient set of texts. That same Spirit is trying to say something to the church in contemporary texts like Harvey Cox’s. That Spirit is telling us this: “you are anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and liberation to the oppressed in this the year of jubilee.”
You and me, all of us together, the body of Christ in the world. When was the last time you brought good news to the poor?
As Jim Wallis says, “the coming of the Spirit always has to do with God's purposes of justice, liberation and reconciliation in the world--not just within the believing community but in the world.”
Such first steps require deep trust in the One who calls us and sends us forth into a world that does not share such trust and that often greets authentic faith with soul-killing cynicism. Nevertheless, the essence of our faith is trusting in the One who calls and sends such that we are able to take those first steps.
As William Sloan Coffin often said, “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.”
And we creatures know that what we grow – all those body parts that Paul lists – they do not come from any power of our own. The parts of our bodies – formed in our mothers’ wombs – are not the work of our hands.
Nor are the wings to hold us up when our first steps of faith become leaps. They are gifts of the living God.
By grace alone we have these bodies, and by that same grace we are invited to be, together the body of Christ in the world. Let’s take the first steps together. Amen.
January 24, 2010
A long time ago … in a galaxy not that far, far away, Time magazine carried a cover story headlined, “God Is Dead.” The story quoted, among others, a young Harvard Divinity School professor named Harvey Cox.
I’ve been reading Dr. Cox’s most recent book this month. I’ve got to confess, that when I heard it mentioned, my first reaction was, “I thought he was dead.”
Well, it appears that rumors of Harvey Cox’s death – and of God’s – have been greatly exaggerated.
Back in 1965, Cox was asking "Is it the loss of the experience of God, the loss of the existence of God in Christianity, or the lack of adequate language to express God today?" that generates the God-is-dead talk.
Today Cox is asking not about the future of God or God-talk, but about the future of faith.
The beginning of a new year, the early weeks of the lectionary cycle of readings, and the occasion of Jesus’ first public sermon as Luke reports it, provide compelling invitation to explore together the future of faith and to ask after first things.
So, to begin with, what does it mean to have faith? Today?
Well, to begin with, having faith does not mean offering intellectual assent to a series of statements concerning the ontological status of Jesus, the nature of his birth, of his mother’s sex life, his super hero powers or a single authorized description of what happened after the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was put to death by Roman imperial authorities.
It bears repeating: having faith does not mean offering your intellectual assent or consent to a series of propositional statements about God, about Jesus, about the church.
Faith is about so much more than that; and it is so much more challenging than that.
Faith is not primarily concerned with what your head believes to be true; faith is primarily concerned with what your hearts trusts. Faith is about what theologian Paul Tillich called the matter of ultimate concern.
Faith, in other words, is not a head trip though it has room for deep reflection and inquiry, for all the questions that confront us and for deepest doubt.
Faith is a whole-body experience and commitment.
Moreover, authentic faith redefines us – takes all of us and makes us new, reclaiming us as God’s own for the world.
Paul understood this in offering up the metaphor of the gathered faithful as the body of Christ in the world.
It takes all of us to make up that body, and it takes all of all of us.
From time to time I’ve quoted an African American woman who called the offering at the gathering of Presbyterian Women in Louisville some years ago. She said, “Jesus don’t want your five and tens; Jesus wants your twenties and fifties.”
Well, in the same way, Jesus doesn’t want part of you; Jesus wants all of you. Bring your best, the best of who you are, to this body. That’s what faith is all about. Your best, meeting the best of one another, so that together we can meet the needs of all at the worst moments.
St. Teresa of Avila puts it something like this:
Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world. Ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good. Ours are the hands with which he blesses his people now.
Paul uses the metaphor of the body to underscore the variety of gifts, of resources, that we share together to give flesh and blood to the words of compassion, love and justice that Jesus speaks. Paul also uses this metaphor to remind us that faith is earthy, gritty, and involves our frailty and brokenness as well as moments of awe and wonder and sublime beauty.
Much of the work of faith takes place not in beautiful sanctuaries such as ours, but in the rubble of Port-au-Prince, the slums of Calcutta, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans – places of deep and desperate need where God is already at work and calling us to be as well.
Of course, most of us have neither the gifts nor calling to work in those place, and that is as it should be because there are plenty of places of need all around us right now, and God is already at work in such places as AFAC, Doorways for Women and Children, the sites of Rebuilding Together, the Arlington Free Clinic, the DC Pride Parade, Arlington Hospital, Whitman Walker or any of the myriad other places that you – that we, together – have gone in ministry and mission over the years.
The first step of faith often leads us directly into such places. Ours are the feet with which Christ goes about bringing healing, restoring hope.
If we take seriously the notion that the church – the whole church – truly is the body of Christ, then we understand how intimately connected we are. As Dr. King put it, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
“Moreover,” as Vinoth Ramachandra says, “if the church is truly the global body of Christ, and the body of Christ is qualitatively present in every local assembly, the way we become truly global Christians is not by detaching ourselves from local commitments in favor of a globe-trotting lifestyle (or spending more time on the Internet!), but rather by seriously engaging with the local as members of a global community that has re-defined our identities.”
None of that effort, that walking with Christ into local food pantries because we understand that we are first and foremost children of the same God – none of that requires intellectual assent to a set of abstractions by which some people have built walls around the faith.
When Tom Hull led our Rebuilding Together crew last spring the homeowner did not ask us to recite the Apostles Creed before we painted, plumbed, and basically restored her house. When we gather down at AFAC each month to bag groceries for our neighbors in need, no one stops us to ask if we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. When we donate to the people of Haiti, the relief agencies will cash our checks without reference to the Westminster Catechism.
Faith is how we live; it is not how we believe. Faith is about the Spirit of the Lord, not the letter of the law. Faith concerns the concrete rather than the creedal.
Faith is about being fully alive. As the great Howard Thurman put it, "Don't just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go and do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
None of which is to say we should be blissfully ignorant in our faithful living. There is content to our faith, and that content has specificity as well. We hope that the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts draw us into deeper relationship with God. Words matter. Thoughtfulness is important.
Coincidentally, I think that faith’s first steps and their content form the theme of Jesus’ initial public speech in the text from Luke this morning.
Faith is about the Spirit of God – that same Spirit that upholds Jesus in the wilderness and the one that falls upon him when he returns to Galilee to teach. He does not stand up in the synagogue to teach anything about being “begotten not made” or “very God from very God,” as the council of Nicaea agreed. Nor does he say anything about God “Who is eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, invisible; one in substance and yet distinct in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” as the Heidelberg Confession puts it.
But he does say this:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
Good news! In which authentic faith takes the form of liberation, restoration and mercy.
Ah, but consider that good news and Jesus’ proclamation alongside Paul’s assertion that we are the body of Christ. The Spirit is trying to say something to the church through this ancient set of texts. That same Spirit is trying to say something to the church in contemporary texts like Harvey Cox’s. That Spirit is telling us this: “you are anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind and liberation to the oppressed in this the year of jubilee.”
You and me, all of us together, the body of Christ in the world. When was the last time you brought good news to the poor?
As Jim Wallis says, “the coming of the Spirit always has to do with God's purposes of justice, liberation and reconciliation in the world--not just within the believing community but in the world.”
Such first steps require deep trust in the One who calls us and sends us forth into a world that does not share such trust and that often greets authentic faith with soul-killing cynicism. Nevertheless, the essence of our faith is trusting in the One who calls and sends such that we are able to take those first steps.
As William Sloan Coffin often said, “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.”
And we creatures know that what we grow – all those body parts that Paul lists – they do not come from any power of our own. The parts of our bodies – formed in our mothers’ wombs – are not the work of our hands.
Nor are the wings to hold us up when our first steps of faith become leaps. They are gifts of the living God.
By grace alone we have these bodies, and by that same grace we are invited to be, together the body of Christ in the world. Let’s take the first steps together. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
7:07 AM
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