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Building on the Foundation
Sermon by Catherine W. FitzGerald May 28, 2006, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 Mark 12: 28-34 1 Corinthians 3: 10-17 “Imagine that we could revive a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century,” writes author Sam Harris. “The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God. Though he would be considered a fool to think that the earth is the center of the cosmos, or the trepanning [the practice of boring holes in the human skull] constitutes a wise medical intervention, his religious ideas would still be beyond reproach. There are two explanations for this,” he writes, “either we perfected our religious understanding of the world a millennium ago—while our knowledge on all other fronts was still hopelessly inchoate—or religion, being the mere maintenance of dogma, is one area of discourse that does not admit of progress.” Harris’ book, entitled, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, concludes that the latter is true—that religion is the “mere maintenance of dogma” and admits of no progress. “The point is,” he later writes, “that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.” This is a troubling view for those of us who have spent our lives professing belief in the triune God, remembering and holding dear the faith of our ancestors, and adhering to the very dogma Harris has declared ultimately antiquated. Harris admits that most of us have tried to progress in the faith—adapting our traditional understandings so that they may be relative to the present. However, he argues that our attempts at modernization and moderation are in the end futile. There is no good reason to maintain these obsolete conceptions of God and the world. It is truly a dismal evaluation of our Christian worldview. Harris gives a thoughtful but ultimately limited criticism of our practice and tradition. He sounds a wake-up call to those of us who would declare ourselves progressive Christians—but it should not lead us to resign our beliefs. Sam Harris is wrong when it comes to the matters of faith and tradition. He does not understand the foundations of the church, the communion of saints, and the living Word. Faith cannot be measured in the same way as the sciences. The Bible is a living document in many respects—it is a text through which we are called into relationship with God and by which we live lives of faith and even struggle in our lives with doubt. As William Sloane Coffin so insightfully wrote, “When people stop believing in God, the trouble is not that they thereafter believe in nothing, but that they believe in everything.” Coffin is right—there are so many places in the world in which we can find “meaning.” Every day we are barraged with temptations of this sort. We are taught that we are our own gods—that our needs can be met through success—that all we need is to believe in ourselves and we will find happiness. It seems as though Sam Harris subscribes to this course of thought. But such self-reliance cannot be the only way—it is shallow and does not consider our communal nature—our need for the other, and most of all, our need for God. The Christian Corinthians did have belief, but they struggled similarly in creating boundaries for their faith. Paul had established the church in Corinth, laid its foundation, and then moved on to continue his ministry elsewhere. He writes to them from Ephesus, having been informed of dissension within the community—they faced quite a bit of confusion over certain beliefs and practices. They had apparently been misguided in numerous matters. Paul writes to set the record straight. He proclaims, “…like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it.” He pleads with them to construct a church with integrity. As Biblical scholar Richard B. Hays puts it, “Shoddy workmanship on top of the sound apostolic foundation is not to be tolerated.” The Corinthians needed guidance—a way to sift through the teachings so that they would be a functional Christian community. The letters of Paul were one way in which the Corinthians were guided. But even before the epistles of Paul were written, before the Gospels were written, before they both were canonized—brief creeds were being formed—creeds that provided the groundwork for the very creeds we use today. If Jesus Christ is the foundation, the original creeds are the first blocks built up on that foundation. Perhaps this is the most important reason we affirm our faith each week through the Apostles’ Creed—why each week we are asked, “What do you believe?” Now, Sam Harris would here accuse us of participating in this tradition for no other reason than that our ancestors created and recited the creed. And for many of us, the recitation of the Apostles Creed during worship may feel like a moment of stagnation. It is hard to maintain focus on and to continually be inspired by the repetition of the same words week after week. What does the creed do for us? Biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson explains that we modern-minded folks may be acutely aware that, “For Modernity, belief in a creed is a sign of intellectual failure. Creeds involve faith, and faith makes statements about reality that can’t be tested. Everyone knows that statements can be true only when they don’t really say anything about the world or when they have been empirically tested. Creeds are therefore structures of fantasy. One cannot be both a believer and a critical thinker.” Johnson’s sarcasm echoes the not-so-sarcastic tone of Sam Harris. With all of these thoughts and comparisons making a strong case for the irrelevance of the creeds, why is it that we feel the need for this form of proclamation? The late Christian scholar Jaroslav Pelikan understood our need for creeds. “My faith life, like that of everyone else, fluctuates,” he explained in an interview. “There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots, and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morning, ‘As of 9:20, what do you believe?’ And then you sit down with a three-by-five index card saying, ‘Now let’s see. What do I believe today?’ No, that’s not what they’re asking me. They’re asking me, “Are you a member of a community which now, for a millennium and a half, has said, ‘We believe in one God’?” When we say what we believe in unison, we join the throngs of Christians past and present in professing faith in the Triune God. We not only say what we are called to believe as Christians, we acknowledge our place among all those who’ve come before us, and all those across the world who are daily reaffirming their beliefs with these same words. Creeds are necessary parts of our existence, as Luke Timothy Johnson explains, “…life in the world is not possible without some form of creed, and that even the hardest of physical sciences now admit that they cannot demonstrate their basic premises but must accept them on faith.” The acceptance of a creed indicates both what we believe and with whom we stand in belief—in it, we identify our loyalty. The Israelites also experienced the need for a creed, though perhaps more informally, which is identified as the Shema and found in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” As Johnson points out, the Shema has three interesting marks: “first it is a call for communal, and not simply individual commitment. Second, in the context of surrounding polytheistic cultures, it is exclusive….Finally, it is a personal commitment: Israelites are to ‘love’ the Lord God with their whole heart and soul and whole might. In other words, the Shema both defines the one to whom loyalty is given and defines Israel among all the nations by its unique loyalty to its deity.” This is the beginning creed for our context; it is the creed for our Jewish brothers and sisters. It was the beginning of Jesus’ creed as well. Professor and author Scot McKnight argues that in the New Testament we find the “Jesus Creed,” as found in our text from Mark. After he ends the Shema, Jesus adds to it by quoting text from Leviticus, requiring that we love our neighbors as ourselves. By adding the text from Leviticus to the already well-known Shema, Jesus creates his own creed—forever linking the love of God with the love of others. McKnight writes, “This creed is what gives discipleship a foundation and the disciplines a future. If our foundation of radical commitment is love for God and others, we live as God would have us live. And if we practice the disciplines in order to deepen our love for God and others, we live as God would have us live. Discipleship is not so much about radical commitment as it is about radical love, and the disciplines are not so much about spiritual formation as about love formation.” Likewise, when we profess our beliefs through the Apostles’ Creed each week, we acknowledge these bonds of love and community which stretch across space and time. Our call is communal, and we acknowledge this by reciting it together. Also like the Shema and “Jesus Creed,” the call is exclusive—there is only one God to whom we owe our allegiance—it is the God we know in Jesus Christ, the God revealed through Scripture. And it is, finally, a personal commitment to love God and one another with all our might. Indeed, we do, in part, honor the creed because it was the creed of our Christian ancestors. We value their faith and work—we attach importance to their struggle to create these faith statements in the first place. But our foundation is in Jesus Christ. Our ancestors built upon that foundation, helping us to understand the basic tenets of the faith—helping us to proclaim each week what it is that we believe. As Jaroslav Pelikan explained, “…in the darkest hours of life, you’ve got to believe something specific, and that specification is the task of the creed, because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another.” When we speak the creed we proclaim and remember all that God has done for his creation and all that she has promised. It is this faith that strengthens us through the most difficult times in life—it is this faith that reminds us we are not alone. As we stand together, reciting this creed along with millions across the world, let us remember the foundation that has been set before us. Our faithfulness is not a futile endeavor—it does not lack progress, for as we each open our hearts and minds to God we are simultaneously charged with opening our hearts and minds to one another. This kind of progress is unsurpassable. May we, as a faithful community, build upon the foundation of love that Jesus Christ has set before us, always progressing in his name. Amen. |