Breakdowns And Breakthroughs
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
There are some recent studies on racism that offer important information about our thinking processes for all of us no matter to what race we belong. These studies challenge the older idea that racial prejudice is something we are born with -- something inherent in our makeup. They show that even when we have a negative gut reaction to someone based on race, we can override that reaction with our rational thought processes.1
Racism is not my subject this morning, but I mention these studies about racism to highlight its important conclusion about our ability to modify our emotional responses by how we think. That also means that in other areas of life, our minds can take us beyond gut reactions and beyond passionately held conclusions.
Chances are I am not telling you anything you don't already believe. But here's where we may be breaking some fresh ground: This same principle of our thought processes carrying us forward in terms of how we live together as a society needs to apply in our understandings of religious faith as well. I say that because when it comes to Christianity, some people view the Bible, which was completed about 1,900 years ago, as God's final word on all subjects. As though it timelessly answers all questions of concern to us mortals without the need for any further input from God -- and that no matter what new information or experiences we encounter as a human community, it is already addressed in some way in the scriptures.
That is simply not the case. The Bible is invaluable and our best resource for learning about God. To us who seek to follow Jesus, the Bible is irreplaceable and even precious. It is God's word -- but not God's final word.
It is important to acknowledge that because as we go through life we encounter new situations and gain new information. Thus it is important that we process these things in ways that are faithful to our Christian commitments without acting as though God has nothing further to say to us.
The ability of the rational part of our minds to move us along, then, becomes a tool of our religious and spiritual growth.
In that regard, the scriptures themselves give us two excellent examples.
The first is this strange story from Genesis about God telling Abraham to slay his son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice, a story in which there are, admittedly, several things that are difficult for modern people.
For one thing, the story tells of the voice of God and later the voice of an angel coming to Abraham from outside himself. Actually, the idea to offer his son could be from Abraham's own imagination. Today the same events might be told in terms of inner conflicts, convictions, and insights, for this is a way God communicates with us today. Still, we get the point that Abraham believed that God wanted him to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice.
For another thing, the whole idea of God requiring a human sacrifice is totally foreign to our understanding of God. But we must remember that Abraham lived in Canaan about 4,000 years ago, in a time and place where the sacrifice of children was practiced by many of the other peoples around him. They did so in hopes of appeasing gods they thought of as angry or unpredictable. Also, Abraham did not have benefit of much previous knowledge of God. He did not have the Old Testament. He did not have the Mosaic laws, including the Ten Commandments, which weren't given until some 650 year later. He lived in a culture that believed in many gods, and so he was just learning what the Lord God, whom the Bible calls Yahweh (among other names), was like. Therefore, this idea to offer his son did not astonish Abraham. He probably believed that God had as much right to ask for Abraham's son as his neighbors' gods did of theirs.
So Abraham prepared to obey, but then, at the last minute, God stopped him from killing his son and directed him to instead sacrifice a ram caught in a thicket nearby.
What is of interest for us this morning is what happened to Abraham's understanding of God. When the angel stopped him from slaying his son, the angel said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
At that moment, Abraham understood that the whole incident was a test of faith, and he realized that it was not God's will that he should offer his child as a sacrifice. He learned that what God wanted instead was trust and obedience. This new awareness was an important point in not only Abraham's personal development but also in the entire Judeo-Christian history ever thereafter. The Old Testament Israelites repudiated the whole practice of human sacrifice, and Christians today believe that every human being is valuable in God's sight.
But to return to Abraham: What happened to him in that incident was breakdown of an old idea about God -- that he was as bloodthirsty as the gods of Abraham's neighbors -- and the breakthrough of a new understanding of God that placed Yahweh above other gods.
Abraham was presented with new information. To deal with it, he had to let his thinking processes override his old ideas and perceptions. The old ideas broke down because they were found to be inconsistent with new information. That was a spiritual giant step forward for Abraham.
The other example is from Acts 15, but to get the point, we need a bit of background first: Jesus was Jewish and almost his entire ministry was among Jewish people. Thus, after the resurrection, when Christianity started to spread, it was among Jewish people. The 3,000 converts on the Day of Pentecost were virtually all Jewish. In essence, the earliest Christians saw their faith as a further development of Judaism. And later, when Paul and Barnabas went on the road as Christian missionaries, they started their ministry in each town by preaching in the synagogues, the Jewish houses of worship. They soon discovered that a lot of non-Jews -- Gentiles -- were listening to the Christian message, too, and many were responding in faith and becoming followers of Jesus.
This was a new development and created a situation in the church. Nobody wanted to prevent the Gentiles from following Jesus, but since the first Christians' own experience of Christ was in the context of Judaism, some of them believed that Christianity could not exist outside of Judaism. So what these Christians said was that yes, the Gentiles were welcome but they first had to convert to Judaism.
But people like Paul and Barnabas, who had witnessed the sincere conversions to Christ of many Gentiles, had come to the conclusion that requiring a move into Judaism as well was an unnecessary obstacle on the road to Christ.
What we read in Acts 15 is part of the debate over this matter that took place in the mother church in Jerusalem, where not only Paul and Barnabas, but also the apostle Peter, all spoke in favor of welcoming Gentiles into Christianity without requiring conversion to Judaism. Acts 15 also includes the ruling of this church council, issued by the church elder, James, who decided the question in favor of freely welcoming the Gentiles.
This is another example of an established idea breaking down because of new experience and of a new understanding breaking through. Now that Gentiles were clamoring to join the church, Christians had to consider what was happening. They concluded that God was in this situation and some new direction was essential.
That same principle of old ideas breaking down and new ones breaking through is still a major way in which we grow spiritually as individuals and in which the church grows in its understanding of what it means to be the body of Christ in the world.
It is not that we usually go looking for some new concept. Instead, we actually hold tightly onto the ones we are already comfortable with until we reach some point where they become untenable, inconsistent, or unworkable -- or until some new light is shed on the subject.
For example, in our individual lives, God as we envision him now, should be different from how we envisioned God when we were children. We adults cannot easily worship the concept of God that exists in the mind of a child unless we are prepared to deny our own experience of life.
Think of the image of an insect in the larva stage. It has a shell, but as it grows, the shell becomes too tight. Eventually the shell cracks and the insect sheds it and grows a larger shell. Many of our ideas of God and our understandings of what it means to live a Christian life are like that shell. They suit us for a while, but eventually, if we are to mature, our ideas must allow for some expansion.
The church's experience in the last couple of centuries is instructive. There was a time when many in the church thought that races could not worship together. We have, thankfully, rethought that idea.
There was a time when a majority of people honestly believed that women were unfit for many jobs traditionally held by men, including church leadership positions, until some women came along and did those jobs well. Then the old concept did not fit the new information. So the old concept broke down and the new concept broke through.
In both of those cases, it was not simply a matter of saying the church needed to be more inclusive. It took new information, arguments from experience, and some brave persons pioneering a new way that helped us as a church to see that certain old ideas were no longer helpful. Eventually, former understandings broke down and new ones broke through.
The church is going through a similar experience today as homosexual people are asking to be fully integrated into the life of the church, and the church is struggling with that issue. While we cannot predict where it will all come out, we can recognize that we have a lot of new information that we need to process while we listen for God's word today.
It's not a matter that at one point we are not Christians and after rethinking a position we suddenly are. Rather it is that a growth process is taking place. Abraham was being faithful to God both before and after he realized that God did not want human sacrifices. The Jewish Christians in the first-century Jerusalem church were being faithful to God both before and after their decision to open the church to Gentiles. Most of the people in earlier generations who denied women leadership roles in the church did so from quite sincerely held commitments to Christ. They were attempting to be faithful to the light as they saw it at that point. When they finally dealt with new information, some were able to revise their position.
It is of interest to me that Methodism's founder, John Wesley, had changing views about his own Christianity. His journals have been preserved, and in them he occasionally expresses a view of his own growth and development that he himself later challenges. One of Wesley's biographers, Richard Heitzenrater, writes:
We must assume that what [Wesley] believed about himself at any given time is true for him at that time. Later reflections upon his earlier conditions must be accepted for what they are, an indication of his self awareness at that later time ... Thus in 1725, he thought he was a Christian, for a while after 1738, he thought he had not truly been a Christian in 1725; by the 1770s, he was willing to admit that perhaps his middle views were wrong, and that he could understand himself as having been in some real sense a Christian in 1725.2
In truth, most of the growing in life, spiritual and otherwise, takes place by this process of old concepts breaking down and new ones breaking through. It is important therefore that we not be afraid of this process, but that we recognize it as natural, helpful, and necessary.
Of course, not all new ideas are better than old ones, and not every change should be made. Both of these incidents from the Bible suggest that the breakdown-breakthrough process is one way in which God speaks.
So both Genesis and Acts ask us to consider these questions: What strongly held convictions that arise from our faith are becoming too tight and beginning to break down? What gut reactions need to be overridden by our rational thought processes? Could any of that be God calling us to grow? What new understandings are trying to break through?
The answers to those things are found in prayer, in study, in experience, and in thought -- all of which are tools God has given us to help us grow in faith and walk loyally in the way of Jesus. Amen.
____________
1. See Sharon Begley, "Racism Studies Find Rational Part of Brain Can Override Prejudice," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2004, B1.
2. Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 32.
Racism is not my subject this morning, but I mention these studies about racism to highlight its important conclusion about our ability to modify our emotional responses by how we think. That also means that in other areas of life, our minds can take us beyond gut reactions and beyond passionately held conclusions.
Chances are I am not telling you anything you don't already believe. But here's where we may be breaking some fresh ground: This same principle of our thought processes carrying us forward in terms of how we live together as a society needs to apply in our understandings of religious faith as well. I say that because when it comes to Christianity, some people view the Bible, which was completed about 1,900 years ago, as God's final word on all subjects. As though it timelessly answers all questions of concern to us mortals without the need for any further input from God -- and that no matter what new information or experiences we encounter as a human community, it is already addressed in some way in the scriptures.
That is simply not the case. The Bible is invaluable and our best resource for learning about God. To us who seek to follow Jesus, the Bible is irreplaceable and even precious. It is God's word -- but not God's final word.
It is important to acknowledge that because as we go through life we encounter new situations and gain new information. Thus it is important that we process these things in ways that are faithful to our Christian commitments without acting as though God has nothing further to say to us.
The ability of the rational part of our minds to move us along, then, becomes a tool of our religious and spiritual growth.
In that regard, the scriptures themselves give us two excellent examples.
The first is this strange story from Genesis about God telling Abraham to slay his son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice, a story in which there are, admittedly, several things that are difficult for modern people.
For one thing, the story tells of the voice of God and later the voice of an angel coming to Abraham from outside himself. Actually, the idea to offer his son could be from Abraham's own imagination. Today the same events might be told in terms of inner conflicts, convictions, and insights, for this is a way God communicates with us today. Still, we get the point that Abraham believed that God wanted him to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice.
For another thing, the whole idea of God requiring a human sacrifice is totally foreign to our understanding of God. But we must remember that Abraham lived in Canaan about 4,000 years ago, in a time and place where the sacrifice of children was practiced by many of the other peoples around him. They did so in hopes of appeasing gods they thought of as angry or unpredictable. Also, Abraham did not have benefit of much previous knowledge of God. He did not have the Old Testament. He did not have the Mosaic laws, including the Ten Commandments, which weren't given until some 650 year later. He lived in a culture that believed in many gods, and so he was just learning what the Lord God, whom the Bible calls Yahweh (among other names), was like. Therefore, this idea to offer his son did not astonish Abraham. He probably believed that God had as much right to ask for Abraham's son as his neighbors' gods did of theirs.
So Abraham prepared to obey, but then, at the last minute, God stopped him from killing his son and directed him to instead sacrifice a ram caught in a thicket nearby.
What is of interest for us this morning is what happened to Abraham's understanding of God. When the angel stopped him from slaying his son, the angel said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
At that moment, Abraham understood that the whole incident was a test of faith, and he realized that it was not God's will that he should offer his child as a sacrifice. He learned that what God wanted instead was trust and obedience. This new awareness was an important point in not only Abraham's personal development but also in the entire Judeo-Christian history ever thereafter. The Old Testament Israelites repudiated the whole practice of human sacrifice, and Christians today believe that every human being is valuable in God's sight.
But to return to Abraham: What happened to him in that incident was breakdown of an old idea about God -- that he was as bloodthirsty as the gods of Abraham's neighbors -- and the breakthrough of a new understanding of God that placed Yahweh above other gods.
Abraham was presented with new information. To deal with it, he had to let his thinking processes override his old ideas and perceptions. The old ideas broke down because they were found to be inconsistent with new information. That was a spiritual giant step forward for Abraham.
The other example is from Acts 15, but to get the point, we need a bit of background first: Jesus was Jewish and almost his entire ministry was among Jewish people. Thus, after the resurrection, when Christianity started to spread, it was among Jewish people. The 3,000 converts on the Day of Pentecost were virtually all Jewish. In essence, the earliest Christians saw their faith as a further development of Judaism. And later, when Paul and Barnabas went on the road as Christian missionaries, they started their ministry in each town by preaching in the synagogues, the Jewish houses of worship. They soon discovered that a lot of non-Jews -- Gentiles -- were listening to the Christian message, too, and many were responding in faith and becoming followers of Jesus.
This was a new development and created a situation in the church. Nobody wanted to prevent the Gentiles from following Jesus, but since the first Christians' own experience of Christ was in the context of Judaism, some of them believed that Christianity could not exist outside of Judaism. So what these Christians said was that yes, the Gentiles were welcome but they first had to convert to Judaism.
But people like Paul and Barnabas, who had witnessed the sincere conversions to Christ of many Gentiles, had come to the conclusion that requiring a move into Judaism as well was an unnecessary obstacle on the road to Christ.
What we read in Acts 15 is part of the debate over this matter that took place in the mother church in Jerusalem, where not only Paul and Barnabas, but also the apostle Peter, all spoke in favor of welcoming Gentiles into Christianity without requiring conversion to Judaism. Acts 15 also includes the ruling of this church council, issued by the church elder, James, who decided the question in favor of freely welcoming the Gentiles.
This is another example of an established idea breaking down because of new experience and of a new understanding breaking through. Now that Gentiles were clamoring to join the church, Christians had to consider what was happening. They concluded that God was in this situation and some new direction was essential.
That same principle of old ideas breaking down and new ones breaking through is still a major way in which we grow spiritually as individuals and in which the church grows in its understanding of what it means to be the body of Christ in the world.
It is not that we usually go looking for some new concept. Instead, we actually hold tightly onto the ones we are already comfortable with until we reach some point where they become untenable, inconsistent, or unworkable -- or until some new light is shed on the subject.
For example, in our individual lives, God as we envision him now, should be different from how we envisioned God when we were children. We adults cannot easily worship the concept of God that exists in the mind of a child unless we are prepared to deny our own experience of life.
Think of the image of an insect in the larva stage. It has a shell, but as it grows, the shell becomes too tight. Eventually the shell cracks and the insect sheds it and grows a larger shell. Many of our ideas of God and our understandings of what it means to live a Christian life are like that shell. They suit us for a while, but eventually, if we are to mature, our ideas must allow for some expansion.
The church's experience in the last couple of centuries is instructive. There was a time when many in the church thought that races could not worship together. We have, thankfully, rethought that idea.
There was a time when a majority of people honestly believed that women were unfit for many jobs traditionally held by men, including church leadership positions, until some women came along and did those jobs well. Then the old concept did not fit the new information. So the old concept broke down and the new concept broke through.
In both of those cases, it was not simply a matter of saying the church needed to be more inclusive. It took new information, arguments from experience, and some brave persons pioneering a new way that helped us as a church to see that certain old ideas were no longer helpful. Eventually, former understandings broke down and new ones broke through.
The church is going through a similar experience today as homosexual people are asking to be fully integrated into the life of the church, and the church is struggling with that issue. While we cannot predict where it will all come out, we can recognize that we have a lot of new information that we need to process while we listen for God's word today.
It's not a matter that at one point we are not Christians and after rethinking a position we suddenly are. Rather it is that a growth process is taking place. Abraham was being faithful to God both before and after he realized that God did not want human sacrifices. The Jewish Christians in the first-century Jerusalem church were being faithful to God both before and after their decision to open the church to Gentiles. Most of the people in earlier generations who denied women leadership roles in the church did so from quite sincerely held commitments to Christ. They were attempting to be faithful to the light as they saw it at that point. When they finally dealt with new information, some were able to revise their position.
It is of interest to me that Methodism's founder, John Wesley, had changing views about his own Christianity. His journals have been preserved, and in them he occasionally expresses a view of his own growth and development that he himself later challenges. One of Wesley's biographers, Richard Heitzenrater, writes:
We must assume that what [Wesley] believed about himself at any given time is true for him at that time. Later reflections upon his earlier conditions must be accepted for what they are, an indication of his self awareness at that later time ... Thus in 1725, he thought he was a Christian, for a while after 1738, he thought he had not truly been a Christian in 1725; by the 1770s, he was willing to admit that perhaps his middle views were wrong, and that he could understand himself as having been in some real sense a Christian in 1725.2
In truth, most of the growing in life, spiritual and otherwise, takes place by this process of old concepts breaking down and new ones breaking through. It is important therefore that we not be afraid of this process, but that we recognize it as natural, helpful, and necessary.
Of course, not all new ideas are better than old ones, and not every change should be made. Both of these incidents from the Bible suggest that the breakdown-breakthrough process is one way in which God speaks.
So both Genesis and Acts ask us to consider these questions: What strongly held convictions that arise from our faith are becoming too tight and beginning to break down? What gut reactions need to be overridden by our rational thought processes? Could any of that be God calling us to grow? What new understandings are trying to break through?
The answers to those things are found in prayer, in study, in experience, and in thought -- all of which are tools God has given us to help us grow in faith and walk loyally in the way of Jesus. Amen.
____________
1. See Sharon Begley, "Racism Studies Find Rational Part of Brain Can Override Prejudice," The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2004, B1.
2. Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley, vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), p. 32.
