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June 6, l999
"Feet First…No Matter
What!" (Genesis 12:1-9)
A surgeon and an epidemiologist (a doctor who studies
the causes of disease and epidemics) were standing on a
river bank when suddenly a body came floating by. The
surgeon quickly jumped into the river, hauled the body
ashore, and began administering CPR. A few minutes later,
a second body floated by. This time the epidemiologist
jumped in the river, hauled it ashore, and did CPR. When
a third body appeared, the surgeon again jumped into the
river, but the epidemiologist took off running.
"Where are you going?" shouted the horrified surgeon.
The other doctor yelled back, "I'm going to find out
what's going on upriver."
Our texts from Genesis and Romans call us way, way up
river to original sources, not to study pathology, but to
discover the well spring which gives rise to our
faith.
Faith is a word used freely within the church. What do
you mean by faith? The founder of Reformed Protestantism,
John Calvin, said faith is a sure and certain knowledge
of your salvation. Martin Luther said faith means trust -
personally relying on God.
Well, which is it? Is faith a matter of knowing? A
matter of believing? A matter of trusting? A matter of
hoping? Is faith something we get, something we have, or
something we do? Our Confirmation group is at this hour
at the Jewish Synagogue, from where I just came, and both
our group and the Jewish Confirmation group are embarked
on an upriver exploration to discover what their faith
is. For Christians we must go up river to our Jewish
sources.
Protestant Christianity has from the first emphasized
the centrality of knowledge about our faith. As it worked
out there is little difference between Reformed
Calvinism and Lutheranism in the high regard both hold
for rigorous thinking about the faith. But lapsing of so
many confirmation kids away from the practice of their
faith suggests that a high degree of the mental mastery
of doctrine does not guarantee faith.
I have enjoyed working in higher education a couple of
times in my career. My first job in ministry was as a
campus minister at California State University for two
years; and I taught also two years at West Point. I love
the sometimes serious academic conversations and the
spontaneous bull sessions that spark academia. But
intellectuals tend to think they can come to God head
first.
Saint Augustine, arguably the most influential
Christian thinker over the thousand years between the
Apostle Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas came to know Christ
first as an intellectual. The dialogues he wrote in the
early years of his conversion trace his development as
almost entirely intellectual - a journey from one school
of thought to another, using his mind to purify his life
by a progressively higher consideration of the divine.
And why would God not give us the exquisite creation of
the mind if we were not to use it to pursue His truth as
best we can.
But in his middle years when Augustine came to write
his CONFESSIONS OR TESTIMONY OF HIS FAITH Augustine moves
beyond his beautiful rationalistic understanding of the
truth of Christianity into accepting the scriptural and
Pauline understand of the grace of God pushing against
his strong will to overcome him with love.
In his CONFESSIONS, Augustine, while not abandoning
his brilliantly intellectual defense of the Christian
faith, references more personal events which promoted his
conversion. Some of these are "feet first" supports to
faith like his beloved mother's prayers for her son's
conversion during his wanton years; and the loving
friendship of a mentor bishop.
My experience is the response to God's grace needs to
be the whole person - intellect, will and emotions moving
feet first in response to God's call.
********
From Genesis we heard the Lord promising Abraham that
he would make a great nation of his offspring, that he
would bless Abraham, and Abraham would forever be a
blessing to other peoples. And then the text states: SO
ABRAM WENT.
SO ABRAM WENT! The story wastes no words: God calls
Abram, God makes promises, and Abram responds. ABRAM WENT
FEET FIRST! The simplicity and directness of this
encounter and of Abram's response is in stark contrast to
our self absorption about faith. Why do we make faith in
God so complex? Our many credentials and degrees do make
us more sophisticated in our approach to God than our
spiritual ancestors, but they also create a smokescreen
of intellectual pretense.
In Father Abraham, Judaism, Christianity and Islam
all have their father figure. It is the stepping out of
Abram which sets the course for those faiths as
contrasted with the cosmic religions of Asia.
When Abraham acted with his feet first he altered
forever human understanding of time and of our spiritual
destiny.
With Abraham's feet first response to the divine call,
the world ceases to be held in the great equilibrium of
the cosmos and its harmony, first propounded in Egyptian
and Indian religions, and brought to its final expression
in Buddha's focus on the blissful now achieved by
removal from time and destiny.
In Abrahamic religions the future is something new; it
is not the return of the past. Time is not circular; time
is linear. As God's creation, the world is aligned
towards the future where the Kingdom and the fulfilment
of creation beckon. The past is the reality which can
never be brought back; the future is the potentiality
which can never be caught up with; and the present is the
interface at which the possibilities of the future are
realized or neglected.
SO ABRAM WENT. There is no suggestion that he sat
under his tent's flap to consider for a long while the
promises of God, impossible though they were, and thus to
be tempted to slide into eternal meditation, thinking it
over. He simply got up and went. His faith led with his
feet…his mind and feelings would follow where his
feet took him in his journey of faith.
Way, way upriver, Abraham is the model for our
spirituality and he is the forerunner of the Christ. In
our exposition from Romans, the apostle Paul states that
Abram's faith in God accounted him righteous and this,
says Paul, is the example for Christians. Why? Because
faith is the basis for inheritance. Despite his infirmity
and the incredible demands placed upon him by God, Abram,
HOPING AGAINST HOPE, GOT UP AND WENT. He trusted in the
promise of a divine inheritance.
Paul goes on to remind us that the inheritance, which
initially was of land and racially defined for the Jews,
was expanded and universalized through Jesus to be the
spiritual inheritance available to everyone: through
Abram's faithful response to God, divine grace passes to
Jews and gentiles alike.
Jesus showed a similarly uncomplicated and complete
trust in God, even to the cross, and his approach to
others was a "feet first" urging. When he met Matthew
and so many others, he simply said: "Follow me." And they
did. Feet first!
SO ABRAM WENT. He simply went and the more he stepped
out the surer became his step and his way. Is God
inviting you to go feet first toward Him?
Why do we make it so hard? Why do we hold back from
the love of God. For is not our choice in life this:
Either God is for us or we are alone. Either Love is at
the center of human truth or we are abandoned. Faith can
be helped by intellectual considerations - that's why we
study the Word and sit through so many sermons. But faith
can't be calculated or carefully weighed for it is a
response to a God who is beyond our calculation and whose
love is without limits.
So many wonderful faith stories like those of Abraham
and Paul and Augustine and, towering above them all, the
story of Jesus whose faith was perfect. They all put
before us God's actions for us: God sees us, calls us,
heals us, and saves us. God draws near; it is God who
waits to have a meal for us. It is God who offers this
symbolic meal of his love represented through the Christ
and the bread and juice symbolic of his life given for
us.
When we go back and back to the sources of our faith,
way way up river where the waters first flow and life
begins and the springs of faith bubble forth, we do not
find disease and death and disillusion. We find a
gracious God who longs to feed us and who is with us.
Last summer in London Nancy and I enjoyed the newest
nt Lloyd Webber Rice musical "Whistle Down the Wind." It
is a retelling of the Christ story set in Louisiana in
the l920s. A group of children indoctrinated in the
fundamentalism rampant at that time in the rural south
discover a charismatic stranger hiding in their barn.
They have been brainwashed to expect the Second Coming of
Jesus anytime in their lives and so they conclude this
stranger is Jesus come to help and lead them. They give
him food, companionship and security for he is an escaped
convict.
But the stranger knows his capture is imminent and
that the children will be taken from him by their
parents. In the song we shall now here, "No Matter What"
the children pledge their faith to the stranger. Let us
hear this song of a simple faith in the Boyzone version
as we prepare to receive God's bread and wine for us.
Pastor Gene Preston
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