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Speaking of Faith
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle May 2, 2004, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Exodus 3:1-14, 4:10-17 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
Speaking of faith, of our own faith, makes many of us uneasy. Ask us about our church and the kinds of things we do in the church, and it’s no problem to respond. (We do Habitat, we have these great classes and an excellent Church School, the ministers throw great parties.) Ask us about our favorite hymns or church music, and we will start humming the tunes. Even ask us about Bible stories and we will gladly list our favorites- the feeding of the five thousand, the woman at the well, the Good Samaritan. But ask us about our relationship with God, about what we believe in deep in our hearts about God, about how we experience the reality of God, and suddenly, for most, our eyes turn to the floor, our voices fall silent and the uneasiness is palpable. At the least, that is true at the beginning of the year for every Confirmation class I have ever taught. At the most, it is true for the majority of people in these pews. The reasons for our apprehension when it comes to speaking of faith are varied. Some worry they might be seen like the evangelist on the street corner who says just a little too much about Jesus. Some worry that they might be seen like the college kid in Philosophy 101 who “gets deep” at the end of the night, rambling on asking “What if there really is a hell? Aren't you guys scared?" Some worry that giving words to the most personal of belief might lessen the power they have to grant hope and help. Some worry that their beliefs are not right, or not orthodox, or that the doubt existing alongside is too close and too mighty, that the questions will outnumber the affirmations. But more and for all, speaking of faith makes us terribly vulnerable, because it puts our hearts right there on the table for everyone to see, and for anyone to hurt. So it is that many of us, most of us, even those who seem otherwise to speak the most, are strangely silent when asked to speak of our faith. Depending on the situation and what shape my worries take, I am no different. I have confessed to this congregation before how my insides recoil when I recall the testimonies that were delivered by my seminary classmates having to do with their personal experiences of the Almighty. Their “witnessing,” you see, all seemed to underline the superiority of their own experiences and their faith, and the inferiority of mine, which were not nearly as exciting. For that reason, for most of my first year, I dreaded talking about my faith because I was terrified to be included among their number. (I also knew that my doubts would overtake their prayer lives and there were probably people who needed prayers more than me.) Nevertheless, I have obviously, overcome my dread of speaking of faith and have also come to believe that there is something very beautiful about people talking openly of their faith or their lack of it. I don’t mean speaking of faith as recruitment, or as fear, or as evidence of a tidy little package of belief, but I mean speaking of faith with honesty and openness, sometimes with tenderness and sometimes with anger, sometimes with hope and sometimes with despair, sometimes with eloquent and poetic words and sometimes with choppy sentence fragments and simple metaphors, sometimes with conviction and sometimes with great trembling. It is the kind of speaking of faith that the nine young people in this year’s Confirmation Class did week after week after week. Sometimes they spoke because the volunteered, other times because I made them, but, in any case, their speaking of faith was and is beautiful. Historically, Confirmation did not exist as a separate sacrament in the early church. Adults joined by a single liturgical event, which combined baptism and anointing or laying on of hands, and it culminated in partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Well, as the early church grew geographically and expanded numerically with the practice of infant baptism instituted under Emperor Constantine, Bishops, to whom alone the right to anoint was reserved, were few and far between. It became impossible for them to be present at every baptism. So infants would be baptized and then, by the Middle Ages, would wait sometimes up to seven years until a bishop came around and they were “sealed” or confirmed. Later, the Reformers threw out the sacramental quality of confirmation, but still saw the need for an opportunity for children baptized in infancy to make their own response to the Christian faith and become identified with the life and mission of the church. For Presbyterians, Confirmation was not about sealing or finishing what was started at baptism, but about teaching young people about the beliefs of the church, helping them examine their own, and then identifying them, by public rite, with the mission of the church. And while communion used to be reserved only for those who had been confirmed, that no longer is so, according to our constitution, and children, once they each the “age of reason and understanding” are admitted to the table. Confirmation, then, is not so much about the session confirming that these young people “have it right” and then letting them sit at the adult table, as it is about these young people confirming the promises their parents made on their behalf as tiny babes, or, for two of them, the promises they made last week. But for all of that, I do not think that the only important part or even the most important part of this pastoral and educational ministry of the church will happen this morning. Rather, it was and is about conversing over the stories of Testaments Old and New that together we might discern meaning for today. It was and is talking about the faith of the church and what the cloud of witnesses who went before us had to say. It was and is about asking questions and giving word to doubt. It was and it about confirming which beliefs, from choices wider than ever, you hold as your own. It is, then, about speaking of faith, in particular the Christian faith, that you might, we might, by grace continue to grow in faith and conviction. On this Confirmation Sunday, though, there is more to say to a congregation that has, at least for the last five years, witnessed this ritual year after year. For when it comes to equipping our children to speak of faith, a calling not just to ministers trained in the seminaries, or to church school teachers who read the stories, or to parents who stand at the font with their little ones to be baptized. When it comes to equipping our children to speak of faith, the calling is to each and every one of us who dares to stand and make the promise to each and every baby sprinkled with water in this sanctuary. Like Moses, anyone who has tried to recruit church school teachers will tell you, most will say “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue,” which translates to, “Can’t you ask someone else?” But let me tell you, Church School is not the only place children learn how to speak of faith. God help us if we think that it is. So how then, do we speak of faith, in all that we do, so that our children will be able to do the same, with intelligence, integrity, conviction and beauty? To sharpen the question, how do we, as a congregation, put meat of the bones of the promises we make each time a baby is baptized? In the first place, we teach our children, all of our children, about the unconditional love of God by showing them and telling them what it means. To be sure, that means reaching out to all of God’s children and explaining to our children that we collect toiletries for victims of domestic violence or make Sloppy Joes for a homeless men’s shelter, or bundle up school supplies for children in Haiti, but also explaining why we do those things. It means standing up for the underprivileged and the under paid and the under educated and the under nourished, and telling our children why we do that. It means using the name of Jesus as more than an expletive and it means telling our children day by day that no matter how much or how little they excel in the world, they are loved by a good and gracious God. It means teaching our children that they all matter, because they do. And so it means, my friends, bending down to talk to them in coffee hour rather than just scoffing as they do laps in Widener Hall during coffee hour and it means celebrating that they are capable and talented rather than picking out the flaws either in front of them or behind their backs. It means cherishing them as individual miracles God been gracious enough to give us. In the second place, speaking of faith so that our children will one day do the same has to do with how it is that we keep our own faith alive and active, always seeking understanding. You see, children who see adults thinking about belief week after week, thinking critically and intelligently about what they believe and what that means for their lives, not just adults who come to worship week after week to help pithy sayings and helpful hints to take with us for the week ahead, are children much more likely to want to know about this faith. Children who hear adults, parents and others alike, be honest about their doubts and fears, about what they surely believe and what they believe only with their fingers crossed, are children much more likely consider this faith openly and seriously. Children who see adults in worship, substantive worship that feeds the sheep rather than simply entertaining the goats, are much more likely to end up with a substantive faith. Seeing adults committed to the discipline of worship and education, who, in this self centered world of ours, can take the focus off themselves for even an hour on Sunday morning, who pray together, who collect a hunger offering each month, is more valuable over a lifetime, I do believe, than any soccer game or hockey practice or lazy Sunday morning at home. Even if, in the early years, those children don’t understand all the words and lose track of the sermon within the first sentences, I tell you, they are learning and absorbing and witnessing faith and that has the power to change their lives. They might wiggle in their seats and doodle all over their bulletin, they might tell us they are bored, and it might be a chore to get them here on a Sunday morning, but, with last week’s young people in the pulpit as evidence, it pays off. But more and finally, putting meat on the bones of our baptismal promises is deeply connected to how we live and act in and among this body of believers called the church. By grace, our children have been welcomed into the household of God, and by all means, if we are to teach our children what that means, we would do well to be mindful of how we behave in this household. For if our children are to catch a clue at all about what it means to be the church and are to catch an interest in her at all, let alone a belief in her goodness or a commitment to her mission, you and I need to think long and hard about what we are doing here. Last fall, I went to a memorial service at a Mennonite church in Harleysville. Now I know that Mennonites do things differently than Presbyterians and, particularly in South Eastern Pennsylvania, where Mennonites historically clung to each other and defined themselves over and against culture in so many ways, still my heart learned something there. It wasn’t just in the beauty of congregational singing in a church where all the people in the pews can sing in four parts. It wasn’t just in the thoughtful and intelligent words of a minister who was obviously and powerfully connected with her congregation. It wasn’t just in a service of witness to the resurrection that was carried out with beauty and integrity. It was in the reception that followed that I learned something, that I saw something. These people loved to be the church. They cared deeply for each other and understood even the simplest of duties, cookies and coffee, to be a great service and a great privilege. As I talked to congregation members, I understood more. In their worship and their work, in their Sunday lives together and in their daily lives apart, these people were honored to be in service to each other and to their God. They loved to be the church. I am not naïve enough to suggest that they got along all the time, God knows Mennonites have had just about as many splits along the way as any other denomination, and God knows that every church has its share of personalities that are peculiar, but I will suggest that these people revealed something very important; there is a difference, a very real difference, between doing the things of the church, sometimes happily and sometimes not, sometimes without question and sometimes picking out the little things that are wrong the whole way along, and loving to be the church. Children who see people who love to be the church, who know the great privilege of caring for one another in great joy and in great despair, who understand that the church is and should be full of people of all kinds, even the people who annoy us and who disagree with us and who are different than we, are children who themselves will love to be the church and, I promise you, that is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children. On this Confirmation Sunday, there are at least nine young people who have learned something about speaking the faith and now confess their faith in Jesus Christ. If they are any indicator of the kind of thing that happens in this place, not just in a year of discussions as they squished onto my family room couch, but in all the things that happened from the moment their heads were wet with baptismal water until this very moment, something very right has gone on in this place. But, there is still much to do. By God’s grace, then, may we keep speaking the faith, may we teach our children more and more about this word of love that will not let them go, may we learn more and more about that word ourselves, and may we love to be the bearers of such a word to the world, that one day little Galen and all the others like her may stand on these chancel steps one day and speak the faith. Thanks be to God. Amen. |