The Next Big Argument

Sermon preached August 18, 2013

The Very Rev. Dr. Matthew Lawrence, Rector

Church of the Incarnation, Santa Rosa, CA

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three…

The other day I was sitting with some parishioners and we were talking generally about how things are going around the church these days, and I was deeply glad to hear each person reflect on how nice it is not to have any big fights going on in the church these days.  Everyone seems to be pretty happy, knock on wood.  Not that we all agree with one another on much of anything – sitting around that table were a healthy assortment of Republicans and Democrats, gay, straight, male, female, 8 o’clockers and 9:15ers, and 11:15ers – but everyone agreed we didn’t see any big issue dividing us right now – and we all kind of breathed that in and gave ourselves permission to enjoy it.  

I had the same experience with the bishop a few months ago.  We were talking about the state of the diocese and making plans for Diocesan Convention, and I told him how great it was to go to Convention and not spend the whole time arguing about sex.  Great… but also kind of disorienting.  I mean, I’ve been a priest since 1990 and until very recently every single Diocesan Convention was consumed with arguments about homosexuality.  

I asked the bishop, “What are we going to do, now that we don’t need to argue about sex?”

And he smiled the smile of a wise and experienced bishop and he said, “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

And that’s just what I’ve been doing.  It’s been nice, hasn’t it?

But it does make you wonder:  What’s next?  What’s the next big fight going to be about?  

It’s almost like Jesus gave us this list, 2,000 years ago, of Arguments We Need to Have; and we’ve been going down this list, checking things off as we go along.  Let’s see: first we had to fight with our Jewish brothers and sisters because they didn’t want us preaching in the synagogue; okay, well we gave that our best shot…  and then, let’s see, we had to fight over whether or not to let Greeks into our company; then we had to settle the Arian heresy; and then there were the Pelagians; and the Manichees, and all those other heresies; and then we had our fight over indulgences; and we finally got the Bible and the prayer book translated into English, that was a big one and it looks like it’s pretty settled; and then there was slavery; and Prohibition; and the Vietnam War; and Civil Rights – which is still an issue but at least Black people aren’t being stopped from registering at universities by men with guns, so that’s progress; and then there were women wanting to become priests, and now, gay people!  So: that’s it, right?   Are we done? 

I’d really like to think that we’re done.  That we’ve settled every big controversy.  I mean, what’s next?  I really have a hard time imagining what the next big church-splitting argument is going to be over.  Dogs marrying cats?  What?   I have no idea.

When Jesus said, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” – boy, was he right.  I wonder if he had any idea how long we’d be fighting our very own brothers and sisters in his name.  

And truthfully – which one of those issues do we wish we hadn’t had a fight over?  I, for one, am glad the Bible’s in English; I’m grateful we no longer have legalized slavery in the United States; and I’m proud we are a church that tackled the gay issue so courageously, and, I might add, so prayerfully.

So it turns out Jesus was right when he said his message would bring division.  And when he said, “You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but [you don’t know] how to interpret the present time," he was right about that, too.  Because we have no idea what the next big storm is going to be about.

Whatever the issue will be, we know it’s going to start with some self-aggrandizing, self-appointed spokesperson for justice, probably some young person going on about sour grapes, like Isaiah in today’s lesson.  I know this because I have been that self-aggrandizing, self-appointed spokesperson for justice.  Many of us have.  We have seen the same cycle take place every generation since the beginning of time: some kid in his 20’s or 30’s will stand up, just like I used to do 30 years ago, and he will make some kind of uncomfortable speech that no one wants to hear, and we will try to shush him up; maybe even drive him from the church.  And our first objection to him is not going to be that we disagree with him on the merits of his argument; no, we might even agree with him, secretly, but our biggest objection will be that he’s divisive; that he’s too blunt; that he’s hurting the feelings of good people who think differently from him.  And so we will call the police and we will have him arrested for Disturbing the Peace.  Because we love this peace so much; we know how hard-won this peace is; and we who have been through a war or two already will want to just rest, and enjoy the peace, because we will feel that we’ve earned it. 

About ten years ago – I think it was the first Clergy Conference that I had been to here in this Diocese – we were engaging the issue of gay priests, and it was turning into one of those rancorous, difficult debates; I had just made my speech about my brother, who was gay, and about how he had attempted suicide as a young man because he had been taught to hate himself, and I did my usual thing which was to challenge the other clergy in the room to tell me which side of my brother’s life God was on – was he on the side of self-hatred and all the forces in our society that were telling him he was better off dead, or was God on the side of my brother coming out of the closet, and healing from all the self-hate that he had learned, and finally embracing himself as God had created him to be.  I had given the same speech a few times before, but this was the first time in this Diocese.  And then this older priest, who was about five years from retirement, got up.  He started by reviewing all the battles that he had fought while he was a priest; about how he had gone into the South to march with Dr. King; and how he had opposed the Vietnam War and gotten beat up for it; and how he had been a good soldier over the revisions to the Prayer Book, even though he lost a third of his congregation over it; and then how he had come to accept and support and fight for the rights of women to be ordained.  And now he was being asked to take up another banner and fight another war and lose more parishioners and he started weeping and said, “I’m just tired!  I’m tired of all of it!  And I’m just not going to fight any more!”

At the time, I remember I wasn’t very sympathetic to him.  I mean, I could see the pain he was in, and I felt sorry for him, but I remember thinking, Jesus doesn’t give us a pass on these things.  In fact, we make a promise in our Baptismal Vows, that we will strive for justice and peace among all people; and we will persevere in resisting evil.   We don’t say that we’ll strive for justice and peace as long as we feel like it; or as long as we don’t offend somebody; or as long as we don’t lose members.

This is the bad news that comes with the good news of new life in Christ – that we are expected to put justice ahead of peace, and all of it ahead of our own feelings of comfort, even our own well-deserved desire for rest.

But I have to admit that, now that my issue has been settled, more or less; now that my righteous anger has been mollified, I understand that older priest completely.  I can honestly say I dread the next conflict; I want to extend this period of peace and tranquility as long as I can; I’m so old and self-satisfied right now I can’t even imagine what the next big conflict is going to be about.  And I’m far more likely, when the next big conflict comes around, to be on the side of the conservatives, opposing change simply because I prefer things the way they are.  

I say this out loud, so that you can hold me accountable, should you find me digging in my heels against change.  If you see me preferring peace over justice; if you ever hear me say, “But we just can’t take on any more divisive issues right now,” please: do me a favor.  Remind me of my baptismal vows; which today we say out loud for everyone to hear.

In our Baptism, we don’t say we will persevere in resisting evil, as long as we feel like it; we don’t say we will strive for justice and peace among just certain people, as long as they don’t ask too much of us.  That’s the bad news of life in Christ.  We are called to speak the truth, and work for justice, and step out on faith into new unchartered territory, every day, whether we like it or not, whether it serves our interests or not, whether it makes us feel uncomfortable or not.  

But until that next big conflict comes along, threatening to split our church, I propose that we follow our bishop's advice, and just enjoy the peace that we have now.  After all, it’s almost the end of summer.  Some of us haven’t even been to a baseball game this year yet.  Let’s be good to ourselves; let’s enjoy this season of peace.  Life doesn’t have to be all conflict, all of the time.  Even God rested from his labors once in a while.  And so shall we, I pray, and give thanks to God along the way.     

Somebody say…. AMEN.

"Thirsty Camels" - Pentecost, 2013

Pentecost, 2013

 

The other day I was at a restaurant and there were two young people at the table next to me; they were holding hands and leaning across the table toward one another, so that their foreheads almost met; their eyes were locked on one another as if no one else on the planet existed; they would nod in agreement at every observation the other made; and their faces were beaming.  They were drinking in one another’s words like thirsty camels at the end of a march across the desert -- they had what I can only describe as an eagerness of understanding; this kind of Pentecost joy on their faces, as they were connecting with each other.  

You could sense that their love was fresh and there seemed to me to be a measure of relief about them, as if they had waited a long time for one another; finally that loneliness - that long aching loneliness - was over.  

You could almost read it in their faces: here is someone who understands me; finally, someone who is actually interested in me – just as much as I am interested in her.  

It’s a beautiful thing to see, this eagerness of understanding.

It’s no wonder that when we try to talk about how God appearred on the earth, we describe him as “the Word.”   Before there ever was any Bible, we say; before there was even words, or writing, or humans, we say there was the Word; as John’s Gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word,”

and by word he didn’t mean a book; he meant this sacred potential for understanding; this promise of comprehension.  It’s this thing that happens between souls, when they are leaning across a table touching foreheads; or leaning, maybe, across a universe; this Word with a capital “W”; this promise of perfect understanding and of being perfectly understood.  We long for understanding so deeply that when it comes time to talk about God living among us, we call him the Word.  He does what words do, except perfectly: He connects us to one another; and when that happens, we talk about God.

Lately I’ve been aware at how deeply we long for this Word; for this connection.  I’ve been noticing how often I find myself in a room with someone and we’re both leaning forward, foreheads almost touching, drinking in understanding.   Right now we have two beloved parishioners who have come to terms with the fact that they are dying.  You walk into the room of someone who has reached this understanding; you sit beside them and they eagerly take your hand, and your eyes lock, and it’s like entering a cave filled with treasure, overflowing with gold coins and pearls and jewels: they want you to have it.  Here is my life, they say; my precious life.  Here are all of my memories; all of my stories; my loves, my children; my hopes, my regrets, my achievements – mostly just my stories.  Take it, they say; take this treasure.  Understand it, put it in your pocket and share it with others.  

In their eyes there is in their eyes a universe of meaning that they are trying to convey.  

Whenever I visit someone in the hospital, or the nursing home, or a homeless person, or someone in prison, there is this longing for connection.  This level openness that you don’t see so much in everyday life; and people are saying things they maybe never would say if they weren’t so opened up by their circumstances; so aware of the desire to be understood, and to understand.  

Which is why I think Jesus said, in Matthew 25, if you are looking for him, go visit someone in prison; go to the poor and listen to what they have to say; go to the hospital and hold someone’s hand.  That’s where you’ll find him: the living Word.  

In the language of the church, this is what we call pastoral care.  And it’s not just something priests do.  This is something we are all called to do.  We have trained pastoral care visitors, and we would like to train more people for this ministry of presence.  And whether we are trained for it or not, whether we represent the church in this ministry or just ourselves, we are all called into that level of relationship.  As our loved ones fall into trouble, and we run to the hospital bed to be by their side, and see them reach out their hand from the hospital bed, asking for connection – we take it..  

And when we are there, foreheads tilting forward, prayers and words of love being spoken, we know that we didn’t decide to be there; we were led there – by the Spirit of that Word, we were led to that bedside.  We’re like two magnets, who once they are within a certain range of one another, an invisible force draws them together.  We call this the work of the Holy Spirit.

We do that enough times and then we begin to see every relationship in those terms: we begin to trust that Spirit more and more; we let the Spirit draw us into deeper connection with everyone in our lives – our spouse or partner, our neighbor, our children.  Suddenly life seems too short to push those relationships aside; suddenly the Spirit is drawing us into more truth telling, more intimacy, more revelation of God’s Word.

And that’s when we begin to live a Spirit-filled life.  We begin to have the conversations that some people only have on their death beds.  We decide not to wait for disease to open us up to one another – we choose to live our lives on a more authentic level.  

And that’s when the miracles start to happen – because then the Spirit takes over; the Spirit draws people of the Spirit together; the Spirit brings us into new relationships and new connections that are life-giving to us.

And that is how we find ourselves here.  

We didn’t decide to come to church; we might have thought at the time that we were making the decision but in reality we were drawn together by the Spirit.  And as we continue to open ourselves to this Spirit and this Word, we find the Spirit drawing us together in new ways

and a new kind of community begins to emerge;

a community of care;

a community of connection;

a community of mutual vulnerability and trust

and deep love;

a love that has its Source not in ourselves, but in the Spirit that flows among us; that deep well; that living water.

We all drink from that well like thirsty camels.

This is the water that Jesus was talking about in John’s gospel, as he encountered that Samaritan woman – that person so different from him – such a gulf between them, of culture, language, religion, gender, politics – and yet there they were, leaning toward one another, led by the Spirit:

"...Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."

And that’s how this crazy religion was born, on this day of Pentecost so many centuries ago, when all of a sudden, just as Jesus predicted,  a disparate group of people, representing all the different nations and cultures and languages of the known world, leaned in together, made themselves vulnerable to the presence of the Holy Spirit; breathed in the Word of God, and became what we call Christians.

And in that moment, everything that separated us was overcome.  The curse from the Tower of Babel was lifted; finally our universal language was found again; finally our great long loneliness was lifted; and we became like those young lovers I saw at the restaurant; fools in love with God and one another; drinking in that universal language of love.

Pray that we will continue to let the Spirit lead us into ever deeper relationships; pray that we will continue to listen to God’s Word, spoken at the depth of our hearts; pray that we continue to seek to understand, as we are understood, with open hearts and minds.

Amen.

"What's up with the Holy Spirit?"

Easter 5, Year C

April 28, 2013

            I’ve been gone for a couple weeks; I was in Minnesota for a week to see the family, and then I attended a Strategic Planning Conference in Cincinnati with 3 other of our parishioners, where we learned how to develop a strategic plan for this congregation.  Very exciting.  More about that a little later.  And it’s good to be back.

The other day I was sitting in one of my favorite restaurants - the Chinese place on 4th Street.  It has windows that face out onto the street and a little courtyard where there are often a few homeless folks hanging out.  I was sitting there drinking tea and watching the folks come and go on the street; the waiter had just come by and put a plate of chicken and prawns in a ginger plum sauce in front of me; and as I said my prayer and prepared to eat my lunch, I watched as two elderly men - they must have been 70 years old or so - wandered into the courtyard.  They seemed to be good friends; and they looked fairly respectable, clean and sober.  I watched as they went  to the trash container and as one guy held up the lid, the other guy reached in and started rummaging around.  He pulled out a couple of empty soda cans, which he handed to his friend, who put them into a bag, and then he pulled out half a sandwich, inspected it, sniffed it, and then broke it in two and shared it with his friend. 

A few days later I was reading in the Press Democrat about how that big development project for Railroad Square had died.  It started out as a grand vision of renewal for RR Square - a $182 million project - in the words of the article, a "transit-oriented and pedestrian-friendly mixed-use development that would include a food-and-wine center, a 10,000-square-foot retail center modeled after the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and low-income and market-rate housing."  The article talked about how, when the recession hit, and then politics entered in, the project got scaled back more and more, until last week all that was left was a development for low-income housing for seniors.  And so the news was that that project had just been scuttled as well.

The Press Democrat wrote an editorial about this, in which they said that it was too bad the project was terminated because "It would have provided jobs [and] an infusion of government funding in the local economy..."

I agreed with this, but I also thought it was kind of odd that nowhere in the editorial or in the news article, which was filled with quotes from politicians and business people, were any low-income seniors interviewed, or anyone representing low-income seniors.  I thought about those two elderly gentlemen, and wondered what they might have said about the lack of decent affordable housing for seniors in this area.  I thought about the women who find shelter here at the Living Room, and the folks who come here for breakfast on Sunday; I tried to do a quick estimate as to how many of them are seniors, and realized it was probably about a third to a half.  

And yet it never seemed to occur to anyone to discuss this issue from their point of view on this issue. 

It's amazing how your point of view changes depending on who you talk to. 

This morning we hear this great story about Peter in the book of Acts which is an illustration of this whole thing.  It’s a story about how he had a vision that told him it was okay to start eating non-kosher foods; and about how the disciples in Jerusalem heard about this, and they heard about how Peter had been seen eating with Gentiles - and so they called him to Jerusalem and had a little talk with him.  It's like he'd been called down to the principal's office.  

They want to know: "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?"  Because of course for “respectable” Jews at that time, even to sit down at table with Gentiles was strictly forbidden.  And so this reading is Peter's explanation as to why he did it.

This is a very small section of a much longer story - in fact, it might be the longest single story in the book of Acts, stretching from the end of Chapter 9 to the middle of Chapter 11.  It's worth reading the whole story - especially when we know that when a story is that long, it's probably pretty important to the author.  

Without going into all the details of the story, it all comes down to this wonderful moment when Peter is told by the Holy Spirit to follow these guys who come looking for him, who take him to the house of a Gentile - a centurion in fact.  When Peter walks into the house, he finds that it's filled with the centurion's family and friends - a huge assembly of people - who have gathered at the centurion's request to hear what Peter has to say.  And the second Peter walks into the room he says, basically, "Wait a minute.  I can't be here.  I'm not supposed to be hanging out with you people."

But somehow the Holy Spirit keeps him engaged in the relationship; the centurion begs him to stay and talk to them; Peter says, well, okay, I'll give them my stump sermon - which is the sermon that he's given a million times to his Jewish brothers and sisters - and to his amazement the Holy Spirit comes upon the assembly of Gentiles.  Up until that point, apparently, it never occurred to Peter that Gentiles could be seized by the same Holy Spirit that he has been dealing with.  But after that experience, he realizes that all this time, he has been the problem - he, and his religious tradition - and that never again would he accept as a given what his tradition says about clean and unclean.

It's amazing what happens when people from different walks of life start listening to and talking to one another.

It’s good to remember that – unless we come from 100% Jewish families, at some point we were all considered outsiders and unclean.  In Peter’s time, the thinking was that Gentiles could be included only if they entered the community entirely on the terms of Jewish tradition.  Circumcision, kosher dietary laws, dress, grooming, worship, all had to conform to Jewish custom.  This was simply assumed.  And then this liberating thought occurred – first to Paul, and then to Peter: hold on!  It seems that, under Jesus, all things are being made new.  It seems that under Jesus, there is a new heaven and a new earth.  No thing and no person in God's creation is unclean - "What God has made clean, you must not call profane."  

Which is why the next banner that’s gonna hang on that banner out in front of our church is the one that’s going to say, “ALL are welcome…. no exceptions!”

What I love about this is that Peter doesn't understand what is happening, but he trusts in the moment; and when they ask him to speak, he speaks his truth; and when it’s time for him to listen, he listens carefully and deeply.  And that’s when the Holy Spirit descends on them; that’s when everything they thought they knew is turned upside down; that’s when everything that we take for granted: that we are included in the kingdom of God – that’s when that idea first occurred to anyone.   The idea that God’s love extends even to us outsiders; us unclean Gentiles.  That God’s love is so vast that it extends even to us. 

Peter’s like, I don't understand this - I don't even think I approve of this - but it seems I've been led to this place and I need to be open to what God is trying to accomplish.

I know how Peter felt.  As I was going through this divorce process, I was like, “I don’t understand this; I don’t even approve of this; I don’t even think this is right.  But I can’t say No to where the Holy Spirit seems to be leading.  All I can do is to listen deeply, and speak my truth, and listen deeply, and speak my truth, and listen some more… open to wherever it is that the Holy Spirit is leading me and it’s amazing how the Holy Spirit enters into that dynamic.

So as I said, 4 of us were there in Cincinnati, in a beautiful airport hotel at the Strategic Planning Conference.  I think we all thought we’d go there, and they’d give us a little checklist of things we needed to do so that we could plan our future.  

Of course, you know what they say, if you want to make God laugh, make some plans.

But, when we got there we found out that actually what the whole thing was about was entering into sacred conversation with members of the congregation and members of the community.  

And there’s no agenda behind this, except for the idea that we’ve been hearing from a number of people in this congregation that we’ve reached this point, where either we’re going to continue to grow, in which case things have got to be done differently, or we’re going to fall back on old patterns and our membership will decline because we’re unable to incorporate new growth.  So it raises all sorts of questions about how we can learn how to do things differently, so that what we’re experiencing now is not a ceiling on our capacity for growth, but rather the floor from which we can grow further and further.  How do we accomplish that?

It seems to be all about the same thing Peter discovered this morning, which is to be listening deeply and speaking our truth.  And so this is a process that’s going to be going on for about a year, as we engage the congregation and the wider community on some of the big questions that need answered in our life together.  What are the big questions that are going to drive our life together over the next 10 years?  It will be a beautiful and revelatory discussion, I’m sure. 

Nothing new.  We’ve been doing it in this church for 2,000 years; we’ve been doing it in this congregation forever; and it’s just going to continue.  Because the Holy Spirit works that way; and that’s how we learn “What’s up” with the Holy Spirit.

So I ask your prayers on that, and continue to come to this place with open hearts and minds, and praise God for the incredible blessings of this community.  Amen.

Doubting Thomas Has His Day

Second Sunday in Easter

April 7, 2013

            It happens just about every day.  We, or someone we love, goes through a trial or an affliction almost too terrible to bear.  A job is lost;  a marriage breaks apart; there’s a car accident; a bad diagnosis; a death…  We watch loved ones endure weeks and months of suffering; we read the newspaper and hear about unspeakably more suffering; and the question is asked: “Where is God in all this?  

            It’s a fair question. 

And so we turn to the church and we ask our priest, “What, exactly, are we supposed to believe?  Who could possibly be led to believe there’s God in any of this?  What risen Jesus?  What are you talking about?”

And so the questions emerge.  Doubting Thomas has his day.

We might as well call this the Feast Day of St. Thomas – because it’s on this day, every year – the Sunday after Easter Sunday – when we hear the story of this skeptical apostle who needs proof of the resurrection before he will believe.

St. Thomas has gotten a bum rap through the centuries but his question is neither petulant nor arrogant; it is a plea for simple evidence.  Thomas is ahead of his time – he’s an empiricist.  He believes in things that can be seen and observed and tested.  He wants proof.  In that respect he’s no different than the rest of us – except in one very important respect.  Unlike the rest of us, Thomas actually gets the proof he’s looking for.  The risen Christ actually does appear to him and answers all his questions. 

Lucky for him.

“Blessed are those who believe, and have NOT seen.”  That line was written for us – the rest of us, still waiting in that upper room, sometimes left there, it feels, all alone, with our doubts. 

And all we want to know is this: what, dear God, do you want us to believe?  What set of beliefs will make this cancer go away?  Give me something to believe in that will spare my child.  Just tell me what to believe that will make this pain go away, and I’ll do it.  I’ll believe. 

We’re like the father of the epileptic boy in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 9).  His son is having a grand mal seizure as Jesus approaches; he cries out to Jesus, “If you are able to do anything, help us!”  Jesus is insulted.  What do you mean, “If?” he says.  “All things can be done for the one who believes." And the father is desperate and frightened and cries out, "I believe; help my unbelief!"

 I hear it over the phone, and I hear it in hospital rooms and in my office: Just tell me what to believe that will make this burden easier to bear.  And make it true.

            The ancient doctrines of the church say that belief is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  It’s not something you can reason yourself toward; it’s something that comes to you through prayer and the leap of faith.  Which, for some of us, might not be good news.  Some of us would quite naturally prefer reason, which has proven very reliable over the years and has things like rules and logic on its side, as opposed to some invisible and mysterious force that’s widely known to be rather fickle at times, blowing where it will and so-forth.   

I know of many good people who have earnestly prayed for belief and have never received it.  The central character in Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Home, is like that.  Jack spends his life surrounded by good, happily believing Christians, and the whole time he feels like an outsider – the only guy at the party who doesn’t work in the same office.  He would like to believe – in fact, his life is a huge disaster and he knows that belief would help him – but he just can’t bring himself to believe all the old stories, and he can’t figure out what it could possibly mean to say you believe in something you actually don’t.

And then there are people like my dad, who, like many Episcopalians, loves church but has always thought belief in things like the Nicene Creed was more or less optional, and who wasn’t about to renounce his scientific mind in favor of a 4^th century universe.  So when it’s time to say the Nicene Creed, he stands with everyone else, with great respect, but won’t say a thing.

            Belief is not easy – especially in our day and age.  It is hard to know what is required and what, if any, form of belief is even possible. 

Those among us who are in no mind for confusion on this score may not be comforted by the hundreds of scholarly books and theological papers about all this; but still I would encourage anyone with an interest to explore the book Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels.  Her book is an examination of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas - a gospel which, like the Gospel of Judas, never made it into the Bible, and which, indeed, was declared heretical in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries, when all copies were rounded up and burned.  It is only because a few monks at Nag Hammadi hid their heretical library in big clay jars and sealed them up and stored them in a cave, where they were discovered in 1945, that we have these texts at all. 

This is a good thing, I think – to have access to these important early gospels – but it is also yet another source of confusion.  Now that we’ve got these Gnostic gospels back, it’s even more difficult to figure out what we’re supposed to believe. 

It’s exactly this spiritual confusion that the church fathers were hoping to avoid.  I mean, I’m not defending them, necessarily, but when we are howling with grief and looking for a faith that will get us through the night, the last thing we want is confusion.  But then again, by trying to protect us from confusion, maybe the church Fathers underestimated our capacity for faith in the midst of doubt.

The problem that developed with the rise of Gnosticism in the early church was that all these communities sprang up, each of them claiming to have this special knowledge of God, but none of them agreeing with each other; each of these communities completely convinced that they had the truth unlike anyone else; and that all the other communities were in error and were children of the devil; and none of them having anything to point to for their authority except for some gospels that they wrote themselves in the name of various figures in the original gospel stories… and their own direct revelations, which were very compelling but also rather idiocyncratic. 

And so Christianity reached this breaking point – either it would splinter into endlessly varied little spiritual communities that could agree on nothing; or it would come together around a common set of beliefs and survive as a single religion.

Anyway, all of this is very interesting but doesn’t necessarily help us get to our main point.  Because the fundamental issue of belief will never go away with the wave of any theologian’s wand: how can I believe in God, when I’ve just been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer?  How can I believe in God after reading about the refugees in Syria?  How can I believe in God when suicide bombers kill in the name of God? 

None of those questions will ever be resolved by theologians; because the more important question is not what to believe, but whether to believe.  These questions can only be resolved deeply, within your heart, in the place within you that only you and God can find; in that room that only you and God have the key to; in that place of your deepest and most intimate secrets and longings.

I think you know the room I’m talking about.  It’s the place you go to at night, just before you drop off to sleep; it’s the place you go to when your feelings are hurt; it’s the place you got to when you’re most lonely; it’s the place you go to when you’re afraid you will die; or when you’re not sure there’s a good reason to live. 

That’s the place we go to, in prayer.  It’s not a place where reason dominates the discussion.  It’s a place where the soul has a voice – but the voice of the soul is not always the sound of a voice; the soul might sound more like a song; or like a magnetic force; or like a quiet yearning.  And sometimes, when we go to that place, and we can quiet our own thoughts down to a low hum, it might sound like the sound of someone listening.

Prayer begins there – in that still, quiet room, where we realize we are not alone.  The presence we feel there might not be saying anything, but we sense its presence. 

It’s like the upper room where the disciples were all meeting.  At first there’s a lot of commotion and noise; there are opinions flying around, everyone’s talking; there’s a lot of fear and anxiety in the air.

But then we give it time; the room quiets down.  The fear dissipates.  The many voices grow quiet.  And we find ourselves asking our one question; we find ourselves getting down to the truth of it all.  And then we grow quieter still; and we realize: someone is listening.  There is a presence in the room.  It’s as if Jesus has just walked through the wall. 

That’s when all of our questions, which up to that point seemed perfectly reasonable and very important, go flying out the room.  Because here he is.  And in the face of his presence, we fall to our knees, and we have nothing to say but “My God!” 

And that’s the place where prayer really begins.  That’s the place where “I want I want I want” gives way to the deeper heart of prayer, which is basically expressed in the first few words of any prayer in this prayer book: “Oh. My. God!” 

That’s the place where worship really begins.  And that’s the place where belief really begins.  That’s the only place where things like the Nicene Creed make any real sense. 

None of us are alone.  Jesus has been with us, all along, in that room.  Listening.  Waiting.  Silently guiding us in ways we never knew.

He is here, even now, speaking words of peace and love.  He is holding out his hands; he is saying, “Touch me and see: I am risen.”

Amen.