Don Friesen
Last Sunday I began a series of sermons using the alphabet as a device to frame twenty-six important biblical themes. It's a rather arbitrary device, and my choice of the English alphabet is also an arbitrary choice. The English alphabet is essentially the Roman alphabet, derived from the Greek alphabet, and as Khaled pointed out to me last Sunday, the Greeks imitated the Phoenician alphabet, the alphabet developed by Khaled's Phoenician forebears.
The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, so perhaps I should have chosen the Greek alphabet, and then I could talk about the Alpha-Beta-Gamma's of Christian faith. Or, since the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, perhaps I should have chosen the Hebrew alphabet -- or alefbet, in Hebrew -- and then I could talk about the Alef-Bet-Gimel's of Christian faith -- or the Gimel-Bet-Alef's, because Hebrew is written from right to left!
Whatever you call the alphabet and in whatever language you recite it, I am simply using it as a device to choose a limited number of important biblical themes -- a challenging exercise! And one I challenge you to attempt; why don't you submit your twenty-six choices to the next edition of the OMC Forum, our congregational newsletter? Which of the biblical themes do you consider primary? Which do you consider secondary or derivative? What are the important building blocks of our faith? What are the ABCs of our faith?
The Bible's B-List; B Is not for Blasphemy or Baalzebub
As I mentioned last week, I have chosen positive words and ideas, though the Bible's B-list includes some interesting negative words, like backsliding, blasphemy, bondage and busy-bodies. One could sure have fun with a sermon on busy-bodies, though, to be fair, it only appears twice in the Bible. It seems busy-bodies weren't quite as busy in New Testament times as they are today!
There's no shortage of B-characters in the Bible, like Balaam, Barabbas, Bathsheba, Belshazzar, Boaz, and Beelzebul, the Prince of Evil Spirits, and Baalzebub, the Lord of the Flies! Of the positive words we can choose from among the beloved Beatitudes, or the words, "beauty," "bread," "blessing," and "baptism". We can't choose the word, "Bible," since the word itself is not found in the Bible.
Dazed and Confused, Baffled and Distressed
The word that I have chosen for the letter B is the word, "believe" -- a word to ground us in baffling times. We can be baffled by various things. Some people are baffled and confused by the Hebrew alphabet because it consists only of consonants. Most things written in Hebrew are written without vowels, but people who are fluent in Hebrew don't need vowels to read it. Unless you know the language, however, it's confusing. To ease the confusion of those who read the Hebrew Bible, the rabbis developed a system of dots and dashes (n'kudot; "points") written above or below the letters to reduce the level of bafflement of pronunciation and provide a pronunciation guide.
Bafflement is not unique to our times; in the passage read from 2 Timothy the Apostle Paul prepares his young colleague, Timothy, and Timothy's community of faith, for "distressing times" (2 Timothy 3:1), or as other translations render the phrase, "difficult times" (JER), "terrible times" (NIV), "grievous times". (ASV) Paul writes, "For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, (and) holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power." (2 Timothy 3:2-5) Wow! That's quite a collection of distressing attributes! There's enough there to be dazed and confused, baffled and distressed!
What are Christians to do in the midst of these brutish, self-loving, arrogant, abusive, ungrateful, inhuman, implacable, slandering, treacherous profligates? How do we reduce our level of bafflement? "Avoid them, says the Apostle Paul. Avoid them! It would be difficult to continue in their midst without their spiritual toxicity rubbing off on you. Paul, however, also has positive counsel, adding something that can help guide us -- orient us -- in the midst of this distressing confusion; he tells Timothy and the Christian community, "Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed...." (2 Timothy 3:14)
Baffled by Belief Itself!
Many moderns, however, find belief -- the word itself and in any of its forms -- baffling and scary! A contemporary poet, reflecting on the tsunami of last December, writes:
we are better off without belief
("The Clergy Pronounce on God's Purpose for the Tsunami,"
The Poetic Journal of Elizabeth Cunningham)
There are Christian churches, of every variety, who insist on the virtue of correct belief, driving all honest doubt underground. Such coerced belief caused one sardonic believer to say, upon his deathbed, "I believe it all, true or false."
On the other hand, several centuries of secular attack on the existence of God and upon the beliefs of the faithful have established a cultural and intellectual climate not conducive to holding religious beliefs, particularly Christian ones. Pluralism is valued in our society, and so if Hindus have one belief system, Muslims another, and other groups yet other beliefs, "Well, that's great," we say, and if we ourselves can help diminish Christian beliefs in the name of pluralism, well, so much the better! A curious approach to belief!
We are better off without enforced beliefs. We are probably better off without self-diminished beliefs. We may also be better off without belief if belief is a noun. David Schroeder, professor emeritus at Canadian Mennonite University, says that we have a tendency to turn acts and events into doctrinal statements. And so Schroeder made a point, when writing a study guide on faith, of stating God's great acts of creating, judging, saving, covenanting, and ruling as verbs! (Invited to Faith) To hail God as Creator, Judge, Saviour and Ruler looks good on a list of doctrines -- and they look good as titles -- but it does not serve us well to entomb God's dynamic presence in nouns. It also damages the notion that God continues to create. God continues to judge, to save, to covenant with us, and to rule. God's actions are ongoing. Interestingly, though our English translations of the Bible often use the word, "believers," as a noun, the Apostle Paul uses the word for belief as a present participle, meaning, more literally, "the believing ones". Even those who believe are verbs!
Kathleen Norris, in a chapter with the wonderful title, "Belief, Doubt, and Sacred Ambiguity," concurs. She says, "the word ‘belief' has been impoverished; it has come to mean a head-over-heart intellectual assent. When people ask, ‘What do you believe?' they are usually asking, ‘What do you think?'" (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, page 62) Norris herself came to think of religion as a primitive relic that could not stand up to the advances made in our understanding of human psychology or the inquiry of higher mathematics and the modern sciences -- and yet -- yet -- she knew religious people who were psychologists, mathematicians, and scientists! And so began her journey to reclaim traditional Christian language and beliefs. She recalls a moment of insight when, struggling with a creed that she could not with integrity affirm, the priest said, "It's not your creed, it's our creed," meaning the creed of the entire Christian Church! (Amazing Grace, page 65) That may grate on our modern sensibilities, but it does give one pause to assess the super-sized presumption of the modern mind that would make one mind the arbiter of a time-worn truth.
Help us, Lord, to Lose the Hell-Fire of our Disbelief!
It may be in the spirit of this age to trivialize Christian beliefs, but the spirit of dis-belief is also subject to erosion. Canadian poet Anne Wilkinson (1910-1961) wrote:
(Anne Wilkinson, "Swimming lesson," 1955, Dictionary of Canadian Quotations and Phrases)
There may be legitimate barriers to belief in God, but the impulse to look for God never leaves us. American novelist Christopher Morley wrote, "We have amputated God out of our hearts, but we still have twinges of pain in the spot where we sewed up the arteries."
God's presence may not be readily apparent, but Frederich Buechner invites us to be alert to "the muffled presence of the Holy" in everyday life and he himself has a wonderful eye for looking at the commonplace and finding great wonders there.
Some say the world is thick with the presence of God, that evidence of God's power and loving care are everywhere. Canadian poet Bliss Carman, for example, wrote:
(Bliss Carman, Vestigia)
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
(Francis Thompson, 1859-1907, "Hound of Heaven")
The Scriptures Acknowledge the Busy Bees of Doubt
The Scriptures acknowledge the place of doubt alongside faith. At the pinnacle of the gospel story, when the story of Jesus climaxes with his resurrection, a doubting disciples steps on the scene. Is this really a good time to introduce Thomas? Thomas insisted on some evidence of the resurrection, saying, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." (John 20:25) Jesus acknowledged Thomas' disbelief, but invited him to examine the evidence and then said, in a tender challenge, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." (John 20:29)
And then, in a summary to all of his readers, John writes, "Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31)
Madeleine L'Engle speaks of meeting Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama and who asked Madeleine one day, out of the blue, "Do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?" To which Madeleine replied, "Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts," to which she adds, "But I base my life on this belief." ("Belief and Doubt," Glimpses of Grace, page 121)
I Know Whom I Have Believed
Our reading from 2 Timothy has an interesting choice of words, saying, "Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it...." (2 Timothy 3:14) Paul is referring to the heritage of faith that Timothy's mother and grandmother (1:5) passed on to him, but the word, "whom" also brings out the relational aspect of believing.
The Hebrew language of the Old Testament has six terms that develop the fundamental ideas of belief. The root word has to do with feeling secure as a result of a trusting relationship with God. (Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology) To believe someone is to deem that person trustworthy, and to relate to him or her in that manner.
In Greek, the word, "to believe," at its root simply means "to give one's heart to". That to which you give your heart gives you an idea of what you believe. Norris says, of her journey through doubt and belief, "I began to appreciate religious belief as a relationship, like a deep friendship, or a marriage, something that I could plunge into, not knowing exactly what I was doing or what would be demanded of me in the long run." (Amazing Grace, page 66)
The Gospel of John, which uses various forms of the word, "believe," more than any other biblical book, talks about "believing into" Jesus. That doesn't make for smooth English, but it gives the sense of the New Testament Greek, which conveys more than an intellectual assertion. Believing in God is one thing; believing "into" God -- or simply believing God -- is quite another thing. "It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. ... It affects who you are and what you do with your life -- like believing your house is on fire or (believing) somebody loves you." (Frederich Buechner, "Believing," Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith, page 38)
Our Christian beliefs may have less to do with what we believe than they do with whom we believe. We know Whom we have believed. There is a story that may illustrate this well. A Master quoted Aristotle to his disciples, saying, "In the quest of truth, it would seem better and indeed necessary to give up what is dearest to us." And then he repeated the quote, but substituted the word "God" for "truth," saying, In the quest (for) God, it would seem better and indeed necessary to give up what is dearest to us.
One of the Master's disciples approached him later and said, "I am ready, in the quest for God, to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?"
The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God."
The disciple went away sad, for he clung to his convictions. He feared "ignorance" more than death. (Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom, page 119)
We know Whom we have believed. May we be persuaded to give our whole heart to Him.
"If the purpose of the world's religions
We are better off without belief? We may be better off without belief if it has no redemptive value or if it has a negative spin. Some find belief scary because belief is often associated with coercion. An ancient creed (Athanasian) states that "whosoever will be saved" must hold certain stated beliefs, and adds that anyone who does not keep this creed "...entire and unviolated, without doubt...shall perish everlastingly."
or their clergy
is to explain that we are
bad
and all our suffering
punishment then
better to stand stark and staring
in the wake of the terrible wave
better to let disaster knock us
senseless...."
"And though she did not holy believe
That could be a modest prayer for moderns: "Help us, Lord, to lose the hellfire of our disbelief."
She'd lost the hellfire of her disbelief."
"I took a day to search for God and found him not.
For still others, it must be said, it's impossible to escape from the Divine. One of the characters (Kirillov) in a Dostoevsky novel confesses, "All my life I have been haunted by God." (The Possessed, cited in Robert Coles, The New Republic, June 6, 1981) Another man had the same experience. His father wanted him to become a priest, but he flunked out of seminary. He studied medicine, but after six years failed again. He sold newspapers for a while before becoming a drug addict. It was at this point of utter turmoil and with every reason to despair, when any judge would have dismissed his case as unworthy of a hearing, that the man penned some unforgettable lines. In the midst of a horrid addiction and dying of tuberculosis, the young man wrote about God:
But as I trod by rocky ledge, thru woods untamed,
Just where one scarlet lily flamed,
I saw his footprint in the sod.
Then suddenly, all unaware,
Far off in the deep shadows,
Where a solitary thrush sang thru the holy twilight hush —
I heard his voice upon the air.
And even as I marvelled how God gives us heaven here, and now,
In stir of wind that hardly shook the poplar leaves beside the brook —
His hand was light upon my brow.
At last with evening as I turned homeward, and
That what I had learned and all that there was still to probe —
I caught the glory of his robe, where the last fires of sunset burned."
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
A wonderful image, the relentless "hound of heaven" challenging our complacency and eroding the hellfire of our dis-belief.
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him...
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat --
‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'"
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.