8 March 2009

Lent II RCL

The Rev'd Lloyd Prator

New York City

Years ago, I used to listen to Garrison Keillor, the American humorist and social commentator who used to appear on Public Radio. One of his most popular sketches was the weekly update on life in a town called Lake Wobegone that town where all the women were strong; the men were good looking and all the children were above average. He usually had something to say about the passing religious scene, which was composed of a local Roman Catholic parish and a whole string of protestant churches, mostly variations on a Lutheran theme, as one might expect for a town located in a state like Wisconsin or Minnesota.

These folks were the heirs to the traditions of Protestantism. American Protestantism at its best. Pure Biblical faith, unadorned, unaccompanied by ritual or ceremony, sacrament or priesthood, this was the faith that these residents of Lake Wobegone embraced with all their heart.

One story he told happens to illustrate the little town fairly well and also offers an insight into some of the dynamics, which have shaped American religious thought for centuries now. There was a renegade parishioner from some church like the Reformed Evangelical Brethren. And, he was unhappy with his church, it was not preaching the simple, Biblical faith as clearly as he liked, so he began to look around for another church. And there were plenty. One Sunday, hoping to sample a local Lutheran Church, he arrived for the 11:00 service, only to find that it had started at 10:30, and the church door was closed. But, by sitting on the side steps near an open window, he could hear the goings on in side, and by this time they had got to the sermon.

He was pleased with what he heard, although he could see nothing. The preacher talked about Jesus who was God and man, the perfect new Adam. He talked about the singular value of faith, unadorned simple faith in an inerrant Bible, a God who was full of grace and love, and a humanity degraded and spoiled. Only faith could save such a man, and he even quoted our visitor's favorite line about salvation coming not from works, but from faith alone.

The sermon came to an end, and the visitor stood up, thinking that before he decided on this as his new church, he would like to see what the place looked like. So, he waited until the ushers had gone away to get the alms basins, and he slipped in at the back.

A good thing, too, because when he saw what was going on inside, he nearly had a heart attack. As he would later tell his friends, “They may have talked about faith alone, but that place looked like the pope was about ready to come in the front door. Lace sewn to everything! Colored silk hangings and stoles on the clergy. Candles! Aflame on the altar and decorating the cross behind the altar. The choir bellowing them Gregorian chants like they were at the middle of the Vatican. As he would later explain, “I almost fainted.”

And as my friend Steve Wolf once put it that was not the end of his search for a friendly church.

What he had discovered was Lutheranism, which has a strong, evangelical protestant preaching tradition, but set, strangely enough, in the midst of a liturgical style that in many places is almost Catholic.

What the story illustrates is the back and forth play of two ideas about what is essential about Christianity—faith and grace on one hand, and law and works on the other hand. This dichotomy, which is often set up as a battle between two straw men, is something you should know a little about.

The Biblical book in which this is all worked out is the Letter to the Romans. In fact, historians tell us that Martin Luther started the continental reformation after intense study of Romans. Paul the Apostle, who wrote Romans, had been a pious and scholarly Jew. As such he was a devotee of the Jewish law, what they and we still call the Torah. In it the law was laid down, in some 600 precepts, the rules of the religion. Piety lay in keeping the rules. Like Martin Luther, some 1500 years after Paul, Paul had a major epiphany about God and what God required. The problem with having a religion based upon law was twofold. First, you had to have a lot of laws, because, life, even then, was complex. And, if your religion revolves around law, you are going to have a perpetually sour taste about religion, because inevitably the law will remind you how much you break it.

Great, so what you have is a religion with a lot of laws that you feel bad about whenever you stop to think about it. Not what one would want in a religion.

So, Paul began to think about religious law. And he ended up writing what became our second reading today. His way of thinking went something like this: “Let's see, we have got our bible here and, well, here is the law, tucked right here in Exodus , in chapter 20, great stuff, doesn't get better than this….and, let's see, what else do we have here.” And he kept leafing backward in the book to the very beginning. “And, here is Genesis, that's another great book, and here's the story of Abraham and Sarah—actually Abram and Sarai, they were always changing their names back then, maybe I should try that…now, let's see what Abraham has to say about the law. Hmm…. that's funny. Nothing. Of course, nothing—because the law wasn't invented until generations after Abraham

At that moment it dawned on Paul that Abraham, the founder of the Jewish faith, had got along perfectly well, thank you, without the law. The Jewish law was great stuff, but it did not go back to the very beginning. What existed in the most primitive stratum of Jewish religion was an attitude of trust about God, a sense of the worthiness of God, the trustworthiness of God. And that primitive attitude was faith.

The way that the pendulum has swung back and forth on this issue throughout human history has a lot to do with the reformation in the16th century. By the time of the high Middle Ages, religion had become a complicated welter of devotions, rituals and ceremonies, all in response to some sense that this was what God wanted. By the time of the reformation, catholic religion began to look more and more like a religion of law, the same thing Paul had reacted against. There they were, living under a system of rules and laws, procedures and rituals, which obscured the fundamental relationship, the reformers believed, between men and women and their God.

So, when the reformation swept away all the accretions of Catholicism, they thought they were following right in the footsteps of Paul the first reformer. And they gave birth to traditions like the Reformed Evangelical Brethren that our friend in Lake Wobegone supported until the day he discovered the shocking excesses of Lutheranism.

In our own Anglican tradition, the reformation and the Catholic heritage have been two polarities around which our religious life has revolved through the centuries. We have churches like ours, which is ripe with catholic practice, and we have churches like our friends over on Broadway at Grace Church where the reformation reigns supreme.

Why has the idea of faith been so important to Christians over the centuries. It has been important because it most accurately describes the God we need and the god we have in Jesus Christ.

In our faith, God is love. Like most things having to do with love, our relationship with God is a gift. The thing about love, whether it is earthly love or heavenly love, we never deserve it. Think of someone you have loved. Didn't work your way into it, did you? Didn't earn it by your terrific behavior, did you? It came as a gift. Similarly with religious faith. You don't earn the love of God by coming to church, or saying prayers, or making a pledge. You are in relationship with God because God sought you out the way he did Abraham and decided to love you. It was a gift, it was free, and it was grace.

Basing religion on faith is more embracive than the law; it includes more folks. The law is confined to Judaism or to certain western philosophies loosely based on Christianity. Not everyone has that kind of religious experience. But faith is a primitive thing, as primitive as was Abram himself. It is an idea which can touch the experience and history of anyone.

Basing religion on faith is a reminder that faith is something that does not depend upon human achievement. You do not have to be one of life's winners to hit it big in the realm of God. Abraham and Sarah were examples of the way in which it all depends upon God not upon human beings. They were old, well beyond childbearing years, and, according to one scholar, even Sarah's original name Sarai is derived from a word that meant striving. Striving for her did nothing. Accepting a gift from God, in this case, the birth of a son, made her into Sarah, the little princess and the mother of the great nation.

Today, in this reading from genesis, the power of God starts to unfold. People are changed. What has been barren becomes fertile, the offered gift of a land and a people—that profound gift is offered and accepted. And the first step of faith was taken. It has such power that it changed people, it so transformed them that it changed their identities. May God grant that faith has such power with you.