Father Goodrich Sermons
Father Goodrich Sermons
Spiritual Oxygen and Christian Faith
What's faith about? Is it static or dynamic, a complement or an opposite to reason?
Father Goodrich preached this sermon, based on Genesis 12:1-9, Romans 4:13-25, Matthew 9:9-12, 18-26 to a live congregation of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dubuque, Iowa.
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When people learn that you are a person of faith, when they learn that you are a Christian, when they discover that you go to church and they happen not to be a person of faith themselves, these are some of the thoughts that might be going through their mind. Faith, a belief in something that can't be proven. Faith, wishful thinking. Faith, a static belief system to be held unchanged at all costs, against all comers. Faith, an outdated form of human thinking and direct opposition to scientific thinking. Now, most people are too polite to actually say that to your face, but that's what some people are thinking. When they discover that you are a person of faith. And today's lesson from Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, the camera lens focuses in on just one man or perhaps a couple, we might say, and it sets the stage for everything else that will happen in the whole rest of the Scriptures. In Genesis 12, we discover a man named Abram, a wealthy Middle Easterner, not a believer in the one God at this point, a pagan, so to speak, and he is advanced in age, or, as someone in this congregation sometimes says, a person of significant years, and he is very well established in his life. And this is what God tells Abram in Genesis 12. Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you do a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. So, in this sense, faith could be thought of as a journey of leaving home in order to seek a country of blessings and to be a blessing. Now, sometimes this analogy the life of faith, the journey of faith sometimes applies literally, like you got to grow up and you got to leave your parents' house, but more often it applies metaphorically leaving the home of your comfort zone, leaving the home of the ways of thinking that are very familiar to you, that perhaps have not been serving you so well, maybe they've never been serving you so well. To seek out that unknown country, to seek that land of blessings, to live a life seeking blessings and to be a blessing, a life that has certainties and a life that has uncertainties. In other words, to live a life of faith, a life of faith that is supported and made possible and sustained by God's grace. Let's say those two words together God's grace. And that's what St Paul is reminding us in Romans, chapter 4, today, a very important reminder. We're not going to say a lot about it, but he emphasizes the whole life of faith is made possible by God's gracious favor towards us, toward you, toward me, even if I mess up, even if you mess up, even if I'm doing the right thing or if I'm not doing the right thing. Important reminder from Paul, romans 4. Okay, so let's get back to Genesis.
Speaker 1:Have any of you read the saga of Abram and Sarah, later known as Abraham and Sarah? I see a couple of hands, a couple of hands going up there. They were the model couple. Right, they were the model couple Perfect teeth, perfect kids, perfect living room. Well, how shall I say? Not so much, they had issues, to say the least. And yet that is God's peculiar pattern. A hundred times over throughout the pages of Scripture, you find that God chooses messed up imperfect people And God blesses them, and God chooses to work through them to bless others messed up in perfect people. People like me, people like you Turn to somebody and say it. Like you, like you, people like Abraham and Sarah.
Speaker 1:Now, interestingly, throughout the pages of the Bible, holier than thou individuals. raise your hand if you've ever met a holier than thou individual. Hey, those kind of individuals in the Bible do not fare well. They flunk the test of faith in the Bible. So faith, using this analogy of the journey, faith is seeking this unexpected in this unknown country. Now, check this out. Check this out. Faith is not a journey into ever increasing levels of airtight certainty that can never be questioned, changed or challenged. I'm going to rewind that one Booo. Faith is not a journey into ever increasing levels of airtight certainty that can never be questioned, changed or challenged. Got some rewinders here. If I were to take a glass container and put it over a candle, oh, look, there we are, there's a glass container. So if I take this glass container and I put it over this candle, what is going to happen to this flame? Eventually it will die out. It will die out for a lack of oxygen. Biblical faith, christian faith, has to remain open to God, to other people and to the world in order to receive the sustaining spiritual oxygen of the Holy Spirit. And a faith that is open to the world and to other people and open to God will burn more brightly than a faith that is closed off from all criticisms, questions and doubts. And this flame has gone out under the glass container.
Speaker 1:In college, my major was philosophy. Any other philosophy majors here? Okay, we've got maybe one, as usually how. It was like two people, the whole school And I would semi-radically read and really get ridiculed by other people's parents not my parents, not other students and other college kids but I would be ridiculed by other people's parents. They would say something like a philosophy degree. What are you going to do with that? You're going to have a more sophisticated conversation with people at the unemployment office, you know. Or they say something like philosophy. What do you do? Have a clever chat with the people whose table you're waiting on at the restaurant, and that's usually how it went. But actually philosophy is a very useful subject to study. Philosophy is the study of truth and logic and reason. Philosophy is the rational expiration of very simple and very complicated topics like ethics and God and politics and locusts Okay, not so much locusts, But all sorts of things. Philosophy studies Anyone here ever taken a philosophy class in college? Okay, you survived. Good, good, good.
Speaker 1:One day when I was in college I was in the student center. I was just kind of hanging out And when I ran into someone that I was in several philosophy classes with a fellow student, extremely bright, extremely sharp guy. We were just chatting, shooting the breeze, and I just happened. I wasn't thinking about it, i just happened to mention that I was going to church later that day. His jaw dropped, he had a shocked expression on his face and he just blurred it out without thinking. But you're too smart to be a Christian. So, unlike most people that you and I meet, or at least a good deal of them, he didn't hesitate to share with me, probably out of shock, what he thought about the fact that I was a person of faith.
Speaker 1:Truffle's statement you tell me there is an intellectual component to Christian faith. True, now, it's more important for some people than others, absolutely, but every Christian should both feel their faith and think their faith. Now, depending who you are, you might struggle one way or the other on that side of the equation, whether it's the feeling or the thinking side. Some of the world's smartest people over the centuries, including to this present moment, are people of Christian faith. Now, i'm certainly not one of them. I wouldn't put myself in that category. But what I can tell you is that, yes, philosophy, reason, science are wonderful compliments, not obstacles to faith. Wonderful compliments, not obstacles to faith. They are gifts given to us by God and we should use them. Are you using them? We should use those and we should make use of those in our faith life.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing After all the thinking, after you've done all the thinking, after you've done all the deducing, after you've made sense of all the complicated things as best you can, you still have to leave your metaphorical home and go into the unknown country. Now, hopefully, you do that with God, but we all have to do it, regardless of what we believe. The unknown country of raising your kids. The unknown country of your relationship, your marriage. The unknown country of your diagnosis. The unknown country of tomorrow. The unknown country of what's around the corner. Bishop Rowan Williams anyone heard of him? Former Archbishop of Canterbury, probably the smartest, wisest people on planet Earth. He has been for a while. Here's what the bishop says about this topic.
Speaker 1:Quote knowing God. Call it love, yes, only that can sound too emotional. Or call it faith, and that can sound too cerebral. And what is it? Both and neither. It's the decision to be faithful. The patient's refusal of easy gratification is how you learn of a God who will not be fitted into my categories and expectations. The living truth is too great for me to see, trusting that he will see and judge, and you're not turned me away. End of quote.
Speaker 1:Beth Moore, the great Bible teacher and author, puts it more simply and provocatively I don't know how, but I know who. I don't know how, but I know who. So the good news of the Christian faith is triumph faith, this faith in a God of love, is that in Jesus, god has been revealed to us, and so, by accepting Christ and walking with Christ, we can have confidence that we are heading toward that country of unknown blessings. And the blessings aren't just at the end. No, there's blessings all along the way. But it is an unknown and unexpected country, and we all go through the ups and downs of that faith journey each and every day of our lives.
Speaker 1:But we don't walk by it ourselves alone. No, we walk this journey with all those messed up and imperfect people just look left and right, especially look straight ahead who, all the way back to Abraham and Sarah, have responded to God, people who were willing to leave by what was familiar to them, what was known to them, to walk the sometimes very steep and muddy footpaths of faith. This is the kind of faith that we are to pass on to our children and to others, a faith that's a journey, a faith that grows, a faith that encompasses the head, the heart and the hands and the feet. You know, with the Christian faith there's always more, whether you're nine years old or ninety years old, there's always more to know, there's always more to experience.
Speaker 1:And this Christian faith may sometimes require you to leave behind persons, places and perspectives that were very dear to you. You even thought of them as home, but you leave that behind to seek a better country. That's faith in life, faith every day, faith through the heart, faith in the joy. In today's Gospel from Matthew, jesus invites this tax collector named Matthew to enter into a whole new way of life, yet to leave behind so many things that were familiar to him, to take this journey of faith to seek out this unexpected country. And, by the power of the Spirit, jesus is inviting you to take that next step in your journey of faith. What is that next step for you? Hear afresh these words spoken by the Spirit now to you Follow me, amen.