June 09, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
You and I, in community with one another, share a quest that requires an energetic and spirited effort – it requires intention and thoughtfulness and downright hard work. And always, it is a shared quest. So much has changed and much is changing in and around us. It has not become simpler but more complex; not easier but more strenuous. That is why baptism is a communal event – one in which we promise to support the one being baptized and his or her family to do what it requires a whole community to do: nurture and challenge and strengthen.
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Sermons @ Trinity
May 10, 2009
How we got this way
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
I want to read you a paragraph
from a book entitled “Lost Christianities”
by the historian Bart Ehrman.
He writes:
“In America today, Christians new in town sometimes find it difficult to choose the right church. If they are Episcopalian, do they prefer high church or low church? If Methodist, socially liberal or ethically conservative? If evangelical, large and technological-ly sophisticated or small and intimate? Should it be a Bible-preaching church or a liturgically oriented church? Politically active or spiritually focused? Strong music program or thoughtful sermons? Should it have a solid social ministry? Active youth group? Vibrant outreach program? The questions go on and on for those concerned about such things.
Imagine the choices facing Christians in the second century. Which is better: the Ebionite church or the Marcionite? Gnostic or proto-orthodox? A church that believes in one god or twelve or thirty? A church that accepts the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke or the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary? A church that believes God created the world or that the world is a cosmic mistake? A church that adheres to the Jewish laws of Kashrut, Sabbath observance, and circumcision or a church that condemns these laws as inspired by an inferior deity?
It makes the choice of a good music program pale a bit by comparison.” (p. 135).
Further on,
writing about the obliteration
of the vibrant theological diversity
that defined Christianity
for its first several centuries,
he writes:
“But only one form of Christianity…(orthodoxy)…emerged as victorious, and it is to this victory that we owe the most familiar features of what we think of today as Christianity.
Now there are a lot of historians
and a lot of biblical scholars
and there is nothing they like more
than to debate, disagree and argue their points.
But what is not debated
is the fact that prior to the victory of orthodoxy,
Christianity was a pot full of ideas and beliefs
boiling up a theological stew
that was marvelously thick and varied.
There was no such thing as “Christian.”
There were Christians and they could disagree with one another
as vehemently and sometimes as violently
as Muslims and Christians do today.
But zoom ahead a millennium or so
and many of us grew up in churches
that taught us “other people” –
those who went to other churches –
were not really “Christian”
or were not Christian “enough.”
You see, we have a problem.
It is not a “Christian” problem per say
but it looks like that,
and sometimes smells like that,
and sometimes acts like that.
But it is really a human problem.
There are millions of people
who would be ready to kill other people,
people they don’t even know,
simply because those people do not believe
in the “American way of life.”
There are millions of people
who are ready to kill
or marginalize
or imprison
or simply exploit millions of other people,
because they are not the same race
or ethnicity
or nationality
or from the same part of the world.
So the victory of orthodoxy
that despoiled the bloom on the rose of Christianity,
is not inherent in religion,
it is part of some biological dysfunction
our species has not yet figured out how to heal.
But my point is this:
we are living in a time,
a time of radical and sweeping reformation,
when diversity of beliefs
and breadth of vision
is being restored to Christianity.
Orthodoxy is not going away,
nor does it need to go away,
but its power to control is crumbling everywhere.
Orthodoxy,
which is the idea that there is one,
right and correct belief or doctrine of Christianity,
is simply one idea among many.
Most of us were taught some version of
Christian orthodoxy and told it was the only version of Christianity that was Christian.
But orthodoxy,
regardless of who is espousing it –
whether it is the pope in Rome
or the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria,
or the Fundamentalist preacher on Television –
is just one idea among many.
And the fact is,
those who are orthodox are certainly welcome
to proclaim their vision of Christianity,
it is just that they are not welcome
to try and exert control to define it.
Now here is the thing…
Our moment in history
has been a very long time in the making.
That is how human history works –
change and transformation come along
and we think it is sudden
but in fact,
it has been baking for a long time
and most people just didn’t notice.
For example ,
King Henry XIII is claimed or accused
–depending on how you want to look at it –
of founding the Anglican Church,
from which Episcopalians were spawned.
But while Henry did break away from the pope –
over power and treasure really –
it was his daughter Elizabeth who came to really shape the English Reformation Church.
Now if your eyes are glazing over
because I am talking about history,
hold on!
This sermon is winding its way back to you.
You see, after Henry died his other daughter, Mary, became Queen and took the country back
to the Roman Catholic Church.
There was violence of course.
Then Elizabeth became queen
and the Protestants returned,
and there was more violence of course.
Then a new idea popped up.
It seemed like such a radical idea at the time
but in fact,
to us it seems like an obvious idea.
Elizabeth determined that
one country could host more than one religion at a time.
Dah! But at the time it seemed astounding.
So now,
five-hundred years later,
we are about to discover that one religion
can stand to host
many more ideas and beliefs and practices in it
than we have been able to imagine
since the victory of orthodoxy
some sixteen hundred years ago.
Now some of you might object that Christianity,
since the Protestant Reformation,
has always held lots of different beliefs.
But if we look around
and listen to the different churches,
there is far more diversity in style of worship
and in how those churches are organized
than there is in theology –
or their ideas about God
and Life
and Creation.
We are not like they were
in the first three centuries of Christianity…
But we are growing more different,
more and more and more different.
As the diversity of beliefs and opinions grow
some people and churches
are tightening up and hardening their boundaries.
Give me that “Old Time Religion”
they seem to be asking,
where true and false
and right and wrong are fixed.
Meanwhile,
others are moving in the opposite direction
and raising more questions
and wondering if there are any
hardened or absolute answers at all?
This sermon is coming closer to home now,
just so you know…
even though it may not seem like it.
But first…The Ethiopian Eunuch.
I love that story of the Ethiopian Eunuch.
I mean, come on, how great is that story!
There is this serendipitous encounter
in which the Ethiopian
just up and asks to be baptized.
We do not get the nuances of the story
but the whole thing is a metaphor…
symbolic of something.
You see,
it seems clear from the story
that the Ethiopian is what was called
in the Judaism of his day,
a “god-fearer” or proselyte.
There were people who studied Torah
and would have liked to have become Jews
but because their mother was not a Jew,
they could not become a Jew.
The Judaism of that day
had no means by which to make someone Jewish
if they were not born Jewish.
Those who wanted to be,
and who studied and learned and lived by Torah,
were called Proselytes or God-fearers.
The Ethiopian had two marks against him however.
First of all,
he was a Gentile
so he definitely couldn’t be a Jew.
But he was going to Jerusalem to worship God,
so clearly he desired to be a god-fearer.
However,
he was also a Eunuch.
Someone who had had his genitals
re-arranged so to speak,
and because of that,
he was considered unclean and cursed.
So now that we know these details
that paint the background of this story,
we can see what the real point is.
There was nothing whatsoever
to prevent the Ethiopian from being baptized.
Sure,
at the drop of a hat,
there at a puddle alongside the road,
you can be baptized and become one of us
no matter who you are.
There was no test of orthodoxy.
There was no physical requirement or limitation.
There was no ethnic boundary.
You’re in!
That is the point of the story.
Think about it.
Circumcision was the mark of the covenant:
the brand of relationship with God.
You had to be circumcised,
marked on your genitals if you were male,
in order to associate with one another…
in order to eat together.
Well…knowing what we know about Jesus,
do you think he looked up his companion’s robes
to see if they were circumcised
before he agreed to eat with them? I don’t think so.
Jesus ate with anyone.
He ate with the high society and powerful.
He ate with the outcast and marginalized.
He ate with his peers.
He ate with women and children and tax-collectors
and prostitutes and revolutionaries,
and all sorts of folks he wasn’t supposed to eat with.
He touched people he wasn’t supposed to touch.
But even though we know that about Jesus,
what did we do to baptism?
We made it a new kind of circumcision.
You had to be baptized
before you got to go to heaven.
You had to be baptized before God would love you.
And if those ideas are not bad enough,
we said you have to be baptized
in a certain way,
at a certain age,
with certain words
if it was going to be a real baptism.
In other words,
we have turned Jesus’ whole shtick inside out.
Baptism somehow
came to be about holding the right beliefs,
and having the correct opinions
and saving us from a special hell designed for all those who do not believe correctly.
But the power of orthodoxy,
to control the boundaries of Christianity,
has now decayed
and crumbled
and thanks be to God.
What that means for us,
for you and me,
is that there is no one to prescribe
the boundaries or substance of faith for us.
There is no one here,
or elsewhere in the church,
who has the power or authority to judge you
or dictate to your conscience.
Hear that please.
There is no one here
or elsewhere in the church
who has the power or authority to judge you
or dictate to your conscience.
But as always,
freedom arrives on the wings of responsibility.
You and I,
in community with one another,
share a quest that requires an energetic
and spirited effort –
it requires intention
and thoughtfulness
and downright hard work.
And always, it is a shared quest.
So much has changed
and much is changing in and around us.
It has not become simpler
but more complex;
not easier but more strenuous.
That is why baptism is a communal event –
one in which we promise to support
the one being baptized and his or her family
to do what it requires
a whole community to do:
nurture and challenge and strengthen.
The days of coming to Church for a private faith,
and a private experience are blowing in the wind.
