Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
6.24.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Readings: Galatians 3:23-29; 1 Kings 19:1-15a
Over the past year, there’s been a striking new trend in American publishing.
There are always new books sweeping across the barren wasteland of American popular literature, but they usually fall into familiar genres. Like, for instance, high on this week’s New York Times Bestseller list is a book rather effusively entitled THE MILLIONAIRE MAKER’S GUIDE TO CREATING A CASH MACHINE FOR LIFE, by someone with the equally effusive name of Loral Langemeier. She is, apparently, a Millionaire Maker, which would not be difficult if you have the secret to making a machine that would crank out the cash for the rest of your life. I’d always been told that printing up your own money was illegal, so I guess she’s not talking about that kind of machine. One wonders what her marvelous machine might look like, and I have this crazy hunch that it probably looks a whole bunch like a book entitled THE MILLIONAIRE MAKER’S GUIDE TO CREATING A CASH MACHINE FOR LIFE.
Then there are books about people who have contributed in unusual and exciting ways to the world stage. There’s the recent book on Albert Einstein, which explored his peculiar genius and insights into the structure of the universe. Then there’s the another book compiling and heavily editing the diaries of Ronald Reagan, in which the former president shares insights like “Getting shot hurts.” There’s always so much to learn from biographies.
But into this pattern of bestselling books has come a new type of book...the atheist diatribe. Several times in the past year, these books have surfaced, and they’re increasingly spending time at the top of the publishing charts. Their authors claim that not only can you not prove the existence of God, but that the very act of faith is the source of all evil in the world.
This week, the number three bestselling hardback nonfiction book in America is God is Not Great, written by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens writes columns for several magazines, and is perhaps best described as a professional polemicist. That means...and this is his self description, not mine...that his career involves getting drunk and then writing bitingly cruel things about people. Back in 1995, for example, he wrote a book entirely devoted to attacking the life and works of Mother Teresa. Devoting your life to selflessly caring for orphans instead of being a professional character assassin? How pathetic. His book, which is mostly devoted to taking verses from the Bible and saying creatively rude things about them, is probably not worth reading.
Earlier this year, the book in question was Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion. Dawkins is a genetic biologist by profession, who has a deservedly stellar reputation within his field for advancing our understanding of how genes propagate themselves. He’s convinced that faith is a bad thing, because it requires us to believe in things that can’t be seen and touched and rationally verified. Dawkin’s book...as difficult as it is supposed to be...may well be worth reading, although I personally am waiting until it can be gotten at my local library. I don’t particularly feel like spending money on it, for some reason.
One of the primary things that the new militant atheism shouts at people of faith is that you can’t point to one place in the universe that is empirically provable to be God. They demand that we be able to prove God’s existence in the same way that you prove the existence of a rock or a tree stump. They demand that we use the tools of human reason to prove God, in the same way that you prove a particularly complicated equation. In other words, they insist that you should be able to know God without faith.
Taken together, today’s scripture readings show us that expecting that shows no understanding of what God is and how we are to relate to God. The first of the stories comes to us from 1 Kings, which is part of the great historical narrative that includes first and second Samuel and first and second Kings. Our narrator takes us to a moment of trial for the great ancient prophet Elijah. Elijah lived and proclaimed in the northern kingdom of Israel sometime between 870 BCE and 850 BCE. It was a strange time in the Northern Kingdom. The Southern Kingdom of Judah was weak, even though it contained the city of Jerusalem. Israel was at the height of it’s power as a nation, after King Omri established it as a real military force in the region. Elijah preached against the sins of the dynasty that Omri established, and particularly made himself unpopular with Omri’s son Ahab and his wife Jezebel. After routing the prophets of Ba’al, Elijah hears from Jezebel that his life is forfeit, and he flees into the wilderness.
There, after being opened to God’s presence and word, Elijah hears that God is going to pass by. He hides himself in a cave, and there are a series of tremendously powerful events. There’s a devastating wind that smashes rocks...easily an F-5 on the Fujita scale. But that isn’t God. There’s a temblor, but we don’t hear enough to know where that stands on the Richter scale. But God isn’t that, either. There’s a raging wildfire...but that isn’t God. Then, there’s something else. In many bibles, what follows is called “a still, small voice.”
That’s a beautiful way to express the Hebrew, but it doesn’t really capture the strangeness of what Elijah experiences. The oldest texts of the bible tell us that what comes after the fire is kol demamah dakkah, which literally means “the sound of absolute silence.” It’s the sound of no sound, which is a kind of strange thing to say...a bit like one of those peculiar paradoxical zen teachings like “show me your original face before your mother and father were born” or “what’s the sound of one Presbyterian clapping.”
But Elijah knows enough about God to know that God approaches us in those moments of stillness, those moments when all else seems absent and our world grows hushed with anticipation. So he wraps his face in his mantle as a sign of humility and respect, and goes out into the presence.
Someone who knew less about the nature of God..or who thought that God acts in ways that we can measure like everything else in creation...with scales and yardsticks...would probably have rushed out at that first moment. But they wouldn’t have experienced anything other than wind and earth and fire.
That’s because God is not experienced in the same way that we experience the rest of creation. Atheism...which rejects anything that you can’t see or touch or smell...just can’t wrap it’s head around the idea that there are things that must be *trusted.* As todays passage from Galatians indicates, it is faith that is the first and most essential way that we bring ourselves to know and understand God.
Our rational minds are a gift from God. They are a blessing and an essential part of the way we were created. The insights and benefits of science and the other fruits of reason are things to be valued and respected. But we can’t use reason and science to find our way to God, any more than we can use our hands and our feet to climb our way to heaven.
Instead of hopelessly digging for God in the rocks or poking around for God in the deep glories of the heavens, we’re better off learning the lesson that Elijah knew so well. Wait, and find a place and a moment when the storm and rumbling and fires of this life have passed. Wait for those moments of stillness that are filled with the sound of silence.
Then listen.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
An Actionable Faith
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
06.17.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Readings: Luke 7:36-8:3; Galatians 2:15-21
It’s been said that it doesn’t matter what you believe, just so long as you believe. Faith is what counts, and the nature of that faith is more or less irrelevant.
That’s a wonderful thing, I suppose, because it requires that we tolerate one another. We’re a part of a society that makes acceptance of other peoples faiths a core element of our lives together as a nation. If you want to be a Wiccan and go out into the woods and caper about under the light of a full moon, you can. If you want to believe that aliens are going to come to the earth in 2012 and set up an embassy in Jerusalem, you’re entitled to that. If you keep a sacred donut on a small altar in corner of your bedroom, that’s your prerogative. Mmm. Donut.
The challenge for all of us, though, is that just believing in something isn’t enough. That belief needs to be somehow rooted in what is real. Yes, belief involves mystery and a willingness to open yourself to things that you don’t understand. But that doesn’t mean that just believing something makes it real. Just because you’re certain of yourself doesn’t mean that you’re right. I might believe in my heart of hearts that I could still fit into the pants I wore in my senior year in high school. And who knows? With an industrial crane and large amounts of WD-40, it might even be possible. But faith alone just won’t do it.
In another nexus between pants and faith, there’s recent expression of belief expressed in a courtroom in this very city. Judge Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge, is absolutely certain that he’s standing up for the rights of every single person living in the Washington Metro area. He believes in his heart that businesses take advantage of consumers, and that it’s about time that someone...namely him...needs to stand up for them.
So after his drycleaners temporarily lost his pants, he took them to court for $54 million. For. A. Pair. Of. Pants. This case has gotten worldwide media attention, because it just seems so utterly insane. How could anyone come close to thinking that a pair of pants...even a very nice pair of pants...are worth as much as a nice little castle in the south of France? This is plainly just a cynical grab for cash, right?
As the case went to trial this week, what’s been most striking is that Pearson seems completely oblivious to how wrong he is. He genuinely and authentically believes that he’s right. He’s the champion of the little guy, even if he’s trying to milk a PowerBall Lottery winnings worth of wealth out of a small Mom and Pop business. He’s completely convinced in his heart of hearts that he’s defending the law, even though his approach to the law has united two mortal enemies: the American Bar Association and organizations that oppose out of control lawsuits. Hearing his testimony, and watching him cry what appear to be real tears over the perceived destruction of his life, there’s no doubt that he believes in himself and what he’s doing.
But believing in yourself and your own rightness is not really faith. It can transform us, but that form of transformation is inevitably a change for the worse. It bears no resemblance to the faith that is described by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Galatia.
That letter, a portion of which we’ve heard today, was most likely written sometime in the mid-50’s CE. It was written at a point in time when the boundaries between the new Jesus movement and the synagogue were still very blurry. What did it mean to be a follower of the way that Jesus of Nazareth had proclaimed? What did you have to do? Paul, who’d established the church in Galatia, was not alone among the early Jesus followers. As the message of his life and his teachings began to spread, many of the people who embraced him as the promised messiah of Israel argued that he was exactly that: the one who had been promised as the new anointed one of Israel.
To follow Jesus, these folks argued, you had to first embrace all of the laws and customs and practices of the people of Israel. You had to keep kosher, staying away from the bacon double cheeseburgers and at least some of the sushi. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. You had to keep the laws of ritual purity. For the guys, it meant that becoming Christian required one further step after baptism. Not a big deal, really...just sit still while I sharpen these scissors. Don’t flinch...unless you really want to join the Ladies Guild.
But the Apostle Paul argued furiously that this was entirely beside the point. Jesus was something far more than just the anointed king for one people or for one nation. The laws and purity rituals that defined that people weren’t what was important. It was faith that was important. We are justified not by our own actions, but instead by faith.
What Paul meant by that has been the subject of debate for centuries. First off, though most translations tell us that we are justified by faith in Christ, the Greek words that Paul actually uses are dia pisteus Christou Jesou, which can also mean “the faith of Jesus Christ.” Paul’s emphasis may not be our own faith, but the faith of Jesus himself. That puts a slightly different spin on it. Suddenly, it’s not our own believing that matters, but what it was that Christ believed. The King James and some of the more literal translations take that approach, but theirs is definitely the minority report.
Secondly, if we read it with the majority of translations, this passage has given serious headaches to anyone trying to determine what it means to live life in accordance with Christ’s teachings. Are we justified by faith alone? Paul seems to say so. Then...well...how does that effect how we act in the world? Are the actions we undertake essentially meaningless. If it is belief or faith that makes the difference, then how does what we actually do matter? That’s why there’s a great argument that’s been rumbling around Christianity for centuries. Do we, with the letter of James, say that faith without works is dead? Or do we stand with Paul, and condemn those who focus too much on actions and not enough on faith?
But that imagined divide between faith and action isn’t a real thing. In today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we hear Jesus talking about faith and it’s saving power. When a Pharisee condemns Jesus for permitting a fallen woman to wash his feet, Jesus responds with a parable and a stinging rebuke. The woman’s actions show her faith and her trust in who Jesus was, while the Pharisee just sits there smugly and stands in judgment over her. Jesus doesn’t go into a long theological discourse about faith and works. The two things aren’t separated out.
That’s Paul’s intent, too, because faith isn’t just something we believe. When we have faith, it’s a thing that we live out. Faith transforms and directs all of who we are..our feelings, our thoughts, our actions...our whole lives. What we believe profoundly effects how we live. It guides and changes and directs the reality of who we are, and the whole world knows what we believe by seeing it. If we believe in ourselves and in our own righteousness...or that a pair of pants is worth years of anguish and millions of dollars...then the world can see by our actions who we serve.
If we have faith in the faith that moved Christ to give his whole life for us, then we’ll live our lives in a totally different way. Our trust in him makes us part of His reality, and guides us to work to both spread the good news and to bring comfort to the afflicted.
06.17.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Readings: Luke 7:36-8:3; Galatians 2:15-21
It’s been said that it doesn’t matter what you believe, just so long as you believe. Faith is what counts, and the nature of that faith is more or less irrelevant.
That’s a wonderful thing, I suppose, because it requires that we tolerate one another. We’re a part of a society that makes acceptance of other peoples faiths a core element of our lives together as a nation. If you want to be a Wiccan and go out into the woods and caper about under the light of a full moon, you can. If you want to believe that aliens are going to come to the earth in 2012 and set up an embassy in Jerusalem, you’re entitled to that. If you keep a sacred donut on a small altar in corner of your bedroom, that’s your prerogative. Mmm. Donut.
The challenge for all of us, though, is that just believing in something isn’t enough. That belief needs to be somehow rooted in what is real. Yes, belief involves mystery and a willingness to open yourself to things that you don’t understand. But that doesn’t mean that just believing something makes it real. Just because you’re certain of yourself doesn’t mean that you’re right. I might believe in my heart of hearts that I could still fit into the pants I wore in my senior year in high school. And who knows? With an industrial crane and large amounts of WD-40, it might even be possible. But faith alone just won’t do it.
In another nexus between pants and faith, there’s recent expression of belief expressed in a courtroom in this very city. Judge Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge, is absolutely certain that he’s standing up for the rights of every single person living in the Washington Metro area. He believes in his heart that businesses take advantage of consumers, and that it’s about time that someone...namely him...needs to stand up for them.
So after his drycleaners temporarily lost his pants, he took them to court for $54 million. For. A. Pair. Of. Pants. This case has gotten worldwide media attention, because it just seems so utterly insane. How could anyone come close to thinking that a pair of pants...even a very nice pair of pants...are worth as much as a nice little castle in the south of France? This is plainly just a cynical grab for cash, right?
As the case went to trial this week, what’s been most striking is that Pearson seems completely oblivious to how wrong he is. He genuinely and authentically believes that he’s right. He’s the champion of the little guy, even if he’s trying to milk a PowerBall Lottery winnings worth of wealth out of a small Mom and Pop business. He’s completely convinced in his heart of hearts that he’s defending the law, even though his approach to the law has united two mortal enemies: the American Bar Association and organizations that oppose out of control lawsuits. Hearing his testimony, and watching him cry what appear to be real tears over the perceived destruction of his life, there’s no doubt that he believes in himself and what he’s doing.
But believing in yourself and your own rightness is not really faith. It can transform us, but that form of transformation is inevitably a change for the worse. It bears no resemblance to the faith that is described by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Galatia.
That letter, a portion of which we’ve heard today, was most likely written sometime in the mid-50’s CE. It was written at a point in time when the boundaries between the new Jesus movement and the synagogue were still very blurry. What did it mean to be a follower of the way that Jesus of Nazareth had proclaimed? What did you have to do? Paul, who’d established the church in Galatia, was not alone among the early Jesus followers. As the message of his life and his teachings began to spread, many of the people who embraced him as the promised messiah of Israel argued that he was exactly that: the one who had been promised as the new anointed one of Israel.
To follow Jesus, these folks argued, you had to first embrace all of the laws and customs and practices of the people of Israel. You had to keep kosher, staying away from the bacon double cheeseburgers and at least some of the sushi. Rule of thumb: if you don’t know what it is, don’t eat it. You had to keep the laws of ritual purity. For the guys, it meant that becoming Christian required one further step after baptism. Not a big deal, really...just sit still while I sharpen these scissors. Don’t flinch...unless you really want to join the Ladies Guild.
But the Apostle Paul argued furiously that this was entirely beside the point. Jesus was something far more than just the anointed king for one people or for one nation. The laws and purity rituals that defined that people weren’t what was important. It was faith that was important. We are justified not by our own actions, but instead by faith.
What Paul meant by that has been the subject of debate for centuries. First off, though most translations tell us that we are justified by faith in Christ, the Greek words that Paul actually uses are dia pisteus Christou Jesou, which can also mean “the faith of Jesus Christ.” Paul’s emphasis may not be our own faith, but the faith of Jesus himself. That puts a slightly different spin on it. Suddenly, it’s not our own believing that matters, but what it was that Christ believed. The King James and some of the more literal translations take that approach, but theirs is definitely the minority report.
Secondly, if we read it with the majority of translations, this passage has given serious headaches to anyone trying to determine what it means to live life in accordance with Christ’s teachings. Are we justified by faith alone? Paul seems to say so. Then...well...how does that effect how we act in the world? Are the actions we undertake essentially meaningless. If it is belief or faith that makes the difference, then how does what we actually do matter? That’s why there’s a great argument that’s been rumbling around Christianity for centuries. Do we, with the letter of James, say that faith without works is dead? Or do we stand with Paul, and condemn those who focus too much on actions and not enough on faith?
But that imagined divide between faith and action isn’t a real thing. In today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we hear Jesus talking about faith and it’s saving power. When a Pharisee condemns Jesus for permitting a fallen woman to wash his feet, Jesus responds with a parable and a stinging rebuke. The woman’s actions show her faith and her trust in who Jesus was, while the Pharisee just sits there smugly and stands in judgment over her. Jesus doesn’t go into a long theological discourse about faith and works. The two things aren’t separated out.
That’s Paul’s intent, too, because faith isn’t just something we believe. When we have faith, it’s a thing that we live out. Faith transforms and directs all of who we are..our feelings, our thoughts, our actions...our whole lives. What we believe profoundly effects how we live. It guides and changes and directs the reality of who we are, and the whole world knows what we believe by seeing it. If we believe in ourselves and in our own righteousness...or that a pair of pants is worth years of anguish and millions of dollars...then the world can see by our actions who we serve.
If we have faith in the faith that moved Christ to give his whole life for us, then we’ll live our lives in a totally different way. Our trust in him makes us part of His reality, and guides us to work to both spread the good news and to bring comfort to the afflicted.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Kentucky Fried Wisdom
Trinity Presbyterian Church of
06.03.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Readings: Psalm 8; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; John 16:12-15
Life sure does change. As the heat hangs heavy in the air and summer descends around us like a great mound of sweaty socks, I vaguely recall that the coming of summer was a time of great joy. When I was a kid, this was pretty much the time when all of the teachers had finally given up. The year’s basically over. The testing is done. Summer would press in to the fabric of our regimented days, and suddenly we’d be having assemblies, watching more “educational” films, having more assemblies, doing field day. Even if you technically had three more weeks of school, it was summertime, and the livin’ was easy. But we don’t always live as children. We have to grow up.
During the college years, sure, you work. But you also travel, and do plenty of nothin’. But now...now that I am suddenly and inexplicably a grownup...and a parent, summer takes on a whole different dynamic. The kids are around, and need to be shuttled from camp to swim team to playdates. All those blessed hours in the day when they were off learning have suddenly vanished, and you’ve got to figure out how to keep them distracted enough that they don’t decide to start disassembling your car mid-way through the first week. As the summer wears on, it grows more and more tempting to let them just run wild, to let them live outdoors hunting squirrels and descending into that feral animal state that...quite frankly...most little boys seem to prefer.
And nowadays it seems like you have to keep them active…keep them moving…so that they don’t disappear into their DS or their Wii for the entire summer. All you’d have to do is set out a big bucket of fried chicken at the beginning of each week, and they’d be happy as clams…and come out the other end missing sixty IQ points and weighing as much as a small beluga whale.
Fortunately, there are countless things to do. You can drop your bundles of joy off at soccer camps and swim camps and computer camps. You can trundle them off to playdates, or turn them over to relatives. Better yet, you can fill their mornings with educational opportunities. They can take trips to the zoo, or to one of the countless museums that fill our area. Once you’ve run your way through those options, you can schedule in a road trip or two. Somewhere educational, like going up to
For those parents who are struggling to come up with new ideas for summer outings, there’s a new option in town. It’s a bit of a drive, but it guarantees that your kids will be learning things that they won’t learn...well...anywhere else. It’s the new
Now you might be thinking...well...what about the fossil record? Or geological strata that indicates that human beings and dinosaurs never co-existed? Or the carbon dating that tells us that the fossils of dinosaurs are billions of years old? Irrelevant. The folks at the
They’re also making other assertions that they say are based on the Bible. Did you know, for instance, that Tyrannosaurus Rex was originally a vegetarian? Ken Ham, the founder of this Museum, is happy to explain why. We know that no creatures ate meat in
Yes...it’s a museum about creation that completely ignores the witness of creation. This is, of course, meant to be a defense of the Bible against the pernicious influence of science. The only problem with that is that it...um...doesn’t really seem to jibe with the witness of Bible, either, not if you read what it actually says. Let’s take a look at some relevant passages. This morning, we’ve read three different passages from Scripture.
The first was the eighth Psalm, which we all read together at the very beginning of the service. This is one of the many Psalms ascribed to King David, and is a hymn that praises God for the immensity of God’s creation. The theological focus of this hymn is amazement, sheer wonder that the God who could create a universe so vast and immense should care for we human beings in our smallness. It rejoices in the majesty of God and the awesomeness of his works. Looking into the endless fastness of space, at the stars and the glory of the heavens, the Psalmist expresses awe that God should have placed so much trust in us to be stewards over creation.
There’s no fear that somehow the size of the universe...or it’s age...or any of the humbling reality of the vastness of spacetime...should be any threat to our faith. That the scope of creation is beyond our easy grasp is seen...right here in scripture...as yet another affirmation of the power of God.
The second passage comes to us from the great ancient collection of Hebrew Wisdom literature, the Book of Proverbs. In Proverbs, Wisdom is seen as more than just the ability to make a correct decision, like buying 25,000 shares of Apple stock the week before the first iPod was sold. Wisdom in seen as something more than that...as either an angelic being created by God or as a manifestation of God’s own creative power. Wisdom both witnesses to and is part of God’s act of creating the universe. Much of this is expressing the nature of God the only way you can: through poetry and images.
Today’s passage from Proverbs affirms what we’ve heard from the Psalmist...that God’s creative power ordered and made the the universe. Wisdom, which is the knowledge of how the world works and how we are to live in the world, is a central part of that. God’s creation and the knowledge of it are woven up together, as part of God’s plan for us and for our world.
The third passage, from John’s Gospel, comes from the final talk that Jesus has with his disciples before his arrest. In it, Jesus explains that the Spirit of God still has much to say and speak in this world. There is much yet to teach, and much yet to learn about the truths of this world and of our purpose in it. This is picking up a vital theme from John’s Gospel, which reminds us again and again that when Jesus leaves, the story doesn’t end. There’s much left to know, and much left to learn.
Taken together, these three passages tell us that we don’t need to fear the size and age of the universe, which only bear witness to the creative power of God. They tell us that knowledge of that universe and how to live in it is blessed by God. They tell us that Christ taught that there is still more to learn and know about him and the creation he came to redeem.
But none of that wisdom and none of that teaching would be found in the Creation museum. Instead, the universe is constrained to something easily grasped, something that does not challenge. The knowledge of creation is rejected as somehow corrupting, and replaced by an approach to the Bible that betrays both the purpose of Scripture and the magnificence of God’s work. The idea that there may be new teachings for which we are going to gradually become aware of is rejected.
I don’t doubt that the
Yes, it is simple, simple enough to be grasped and consumed by a child. But we don’t always live as children. There comes a time when we must set aside childish ways.
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