Rollins Chapel, 5.6.12
Romans 14: 1-8
Courage is something of a second-rate virtue,
if you think about it.
It’s not like love.
Not like beauty.
Or wisdom.
Which are all rooted entirely in
the good.
But there’s no courage without
fear.
No courage without the
possibility of failure.
No courage without the
possibility of
bad things being true,
or real.
Courage necessitates a shadow
side.
It is, as I said,
second rate. And ambiguous
as virtues go.
And there are, of course,
many ways around it.
Three in particular come to mind:
We can simply deny the good,
and succumb to the idea of
nothing,
or of nothing mattering.
We can go the way of Nietzsche,
or nihilism,
and simply try to get what we
can,
while we can,
for little else matters.
And thus make courage
unnecessary.
On the other end of the spectrum,
we can, and do, try to deny the
negative.
We can pursue adamantly,
ideas like security,
and comfort.
And we can distract ourselves to
the extreme.
If you’ve not read,
or haven’t read recently,
Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopia,
Brave New World
I would certainly commend it to
you.
(Or, if you can’t quite stomach
that one,
perhaps Lois Lowry’s The Giver.)
Both weave incredibly poignant
tales,
of societies so bent on security,
pleasure, comfort,
stability and safety,
that they give up entirely on
things like
love, passion, freedom and
memory.
They are compelling tales,
because they speak to our impulse
toward,
a kind of hollow happiness.
And I’ll admit,
they hit a little close to home,
sometimes.
Given our persistent illusions of
security,
and stability,
and our willingness to sacrifice
much for them.
Not to mention our appetite for
comfort at great cost.
And the increasingly efficient
science we’ve made,
of distracting ourselves.
Thus, making courage largely
superfluous.
Finally,
and more common in my experience,
at least in the Christian world,
we can seek to deny ambiguity,
particularly through the lens of
faith.
Significant amounts of ink
(and whatever the web-based
version of ink is)
have been spilt trying to
convince us,
that the church,
or the bible,
offer us an easy, achievable,
unambiguous connection to the
good.
A connection which justifies all
pain,
all suffering as connected,
to the ultimate source.
We need only open our eyes,
read with the right spirit,
and surely all will be made
clear,
and all ambiguity wiped away.
One pastor writes (K. McDanell,
blogozomai.com):
One’s view of Scripture is a gospel
issue. So though there is great reason to be concerned regarding the rejection
of Scripture’s perspicuity [note:
perspicuity means clarity, ironically enough], it is imperative that the reader be reminded that this is not a mere
debate about semantics and dogma, but about the gospel itself. If Scripture
is unclear then the gospel itself remains a mystery. And if the gospel is a mystery, then God help
us all!
Now, I recognize
that there are many kinds of
people in the world.
And in those many kinds,
there are people who love
certainty.
Who long for a kind of
solid-ground,
especially in faith.
And then there are people like
me.
Who can’t help but live in
ambiguity.
Who yearn for questions.
And, dare I say,
learn to love them from time to
time.
If you are the kind of person who
loves the certainty of faith,
I hope you’ll listen and come
converse later.
But you may also want to just
spend some time with the hymntext
today.
Or zone out.
Or pray for my mortal soul.
Because I think neither life nor
faith,
nor indeed our scriptures,
are a matter of certainty.
But rather call us to live with
the courage
of ambiguity.
And I think courage,
second rate as it may be,
is all too important
and indeed necessary to the life
of faith.
And will say, honestly,
that while I can understand the
appeal,
I find that sort of Christian
security
neither true, nor desirable.
It after all,
an odd collection of texts,
we call scripture.
And they form not an easy, single
story,
but a rich,
and if we’re being honest,
sometimes confusing tapestry of
narratives.
The scene opens, you’ll recall,
on a formless void.
And a separation of waters,
and creation of all that is,
light and earth and all creatures.
And all of a sudden,
in the middle of a verse,
we have a dry and barren earth,
and Man created out of the dust.
This seems to me a signal and
sign,
that this is not a simple kind of
story.
Following that,
we have hundreds of pages,
of honestly pretty mediocre
people.
Abraham,
the grandfather of us all,
was ready to sacrifice his son.
Moses was a stutterer with a
temper,
and a penchant for making
excuses.
David was lustful, violent, and
overly passionate.
These seeming “heroes”
and many more,
weave a tale of deceit and
violence,
all while representing the one
true God.
The stories span millennia,
and multiple literary genres.
Meanwhile the upstanding ones,
like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos and
the like,
spend much of their time
critiquing the religious leaders of the day.
And all of that is somehow
brought into clarity,
in the grand vision of Word made
flesh.
The divine living among us.
Told not once,
but four different times.
With subtly difference tropes and
nuances,
emphases and details.
And the living embodiment of the
divine,
speaks most often in parables,
which place the emphasis of
interpretation
far more on the hearer,
than on the speaker.
Add to that a grand finale collection
of letters and writings,
from all over the early Christian
map.
Many of them with varied stories
and visions to tell.
And I find myself wondering,
from whence is our certainty
supposed to come?
Or perhaps more often,
wondering how we’ve convinced
ourselves,
even a little,
that this is a tale meant to be
about certainty.
But indeed, it seems to me,
nothing less would be adequate,
to tell the story even of
creation,
or of humanity,
let alone God’s work with and for
humankind.
Because life is uncertain and
insecure,
much as we might like to convince
ourselves otherwise.
John Polkinghorne,
Theologian and physicist writes
(in Testing Scripture):
The tapestry of life is not coloured in
simple black and white, representing an unambiguous choice between the
unequivocally bad and the unequivocally good. The ambiguity of human deeds and
desires means that life includes many shades of grey. What is true of life in
general is true also of the Bible in particular. An honest reading of Scripture
will acknowledge the presence in its pages of various kinds of ambiguity.
Nothing less would do.
A scripture that mirrors the
tapestry of our lives,
is ultimately far more timeless,
far more beautiful,
far more significant.
I would suggest,
that a monolithic witness to all
that is.
And scripture thus meets us where
we are,
with all its clues,
and all our questions.
And we can, I hope,
love it for that.
And though we may not have
certainty,
we have a number of important things,
pointing us to a robust,
if complicated vision of God:
We have the text.
And make no mistake,
it’s a good one.
We have our experience, and
faith, and reason.
We have our living tradition.
And we have community.
We have tools to make and
discover meaning.
And we know that this is work not
meant to be done alone.
Courage is much easier to build,
and insecurity much easier to
bear,
when surrounded by friends.
And thus we come at last to our
friend Paul.
Romans is, as we’ve discussed
before,
Paul’s magnum opus.
Written not to hypothetical early
Christian communities,
but to real ones.
The evangelism has been done.
The uncircumcised are welcomed
in.
The community built.
But still questions arise,
about the intersection of
gentiles and Jews,
trying to follow Jesus.
Questions about when to worship.
Questions about what to eat.
And his advice is
Not to go unquestioning back into
the text.
Not to quote laws or rules.
But to set forth an ethic of
welcome.
An ethic of hospitality,
grounded on love.
Paul’s last word is not
inerrancy or legalism.
But thoughtful, lived community.
faith and hope.
“Welcome one another,” he writes
a few verses later,
“just as Christ has welcomed you,
for the glory of God.”
Weak in faith, or strong?
You are welcomed here.
Vegetarian or meat-eater
(and note that I am one of the
weak non-meat eaters)?
Questioners or certainty-seekers?
We can find space for you.
Scientists, artists, activists -
even economists,
you are welcome into this place
for hope.
And I think those of us here have
a special call.
To remind the world
that we can hold all these things
ambiguous things together.
Faith and uncertainty.
Hope and the possibility of
death, darkness and failure.
Love of neighbors and enemies,
and the burning call toward
justice.
We stand in the midst of this,
saying not that we are certain,
but that we believe.
Saying that we hope,
even amidst the messiness of real
life.
This is, I think, courage.
And the world needs it,
and I think our faith,
our scriptures and our lives demand
it.
It may be hard news, for some,
that our faith is not about
certainty or security.
But the good news is that our
faith is about so much more.
About joy and hope
and about courage to live in that
ambiguity.
And about God among us,
encouraging us to love and hope.
And as we ponder the courageous
road ahead,
I leave you with these words from
the 15th Chapter of Romans:
“May the God of hop fill you with
all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of
the Holy Spirit.”
Amen. Amen.
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