September 3, 2006
Today we get a picture of the faith we hold as a work in progress.....something that is still being understood....still unfolding.
Two voices speak to us today about the observance of laws.
In Deuteronomy, Moses says keep all these rules...keep them in front of you....observe them diligently.
Just a few minutes later we hear Jesus saying, “You folks are really too hung up on statutes. You know all about rules, but you haven’t taken them to heart.”
Whatever we might think about the keeping of laws and statutes, it seems clear that some things we cannot do well until we quit thinking about how to do them. At some point we must stop focusing on the rules and get busy.
I am thinking now of riding a bicycle. I remember learning to ride when I was five years old. I remember partly because I was taught by my favorite baby sitter, an older girl in the neighborhood with whom I was rather smitten. Some lessons you don’t forget.
Riding a bike is really pretty complicated if you think about it. Put your leg over, bring up one of the pedals so it is in a good starting place, pointing forward and up a little. Stand up on that higher pedal and balance for a second as it goes down and you start to lurch forward while at the same time making sure you get your other foot on the other pedal which will soon need to go back down, which you accomplish by shifting your weight to that side a little and stepping on that pedal just after--and not before--it has reached the top of its circuit. Then all you do is keep doing that over and over...one pedal then the other..until it’s time to turn or stop, both of which will need a bit of explaining also. Then as you wobble off down the road, you might hear someone calling out the last and most important rule of bicycle riding. Don’t look at your feet! Watch where you’re going!
Those instructions have everything and nothing to do with riding a bicycle. Some explanation of how everything works and what you need to do is required in order to get you going. But you will never be riding a bicycle until you forget the rules and just do it. No one, after learning how to ride, takes out their bicycle and says, “I think I’ll head up the bike path and see if I can keep the pedals going around, and stay upright and not hit anything.” Something else brings the bicycle out of the garage. You ride a bike because the exercise feels good, or because it takes you where you want to go, or because you like the sensation of flying down the next hill with the wind in your face.
I hear Jesus saying today as he so often does, “you people are never going to get anywhere 'til you quit worrying about the pedals and about where your feet are”. In the letter of James today we hear the same thing. “These laws you’re so concerned about weren’t invented to test your balance, they are meant to set you free....to take you places...places you couldn’t go on your own.” This message--that the rules we live by serve a higher goal-- is one one we people of faith need to hear over and over again. It is so easy to be distracted by the rules, and too often, religion seems to be about rules and working the pedals correctly and not much more.
As children in the Church, many of us got the message that religion is mainly about following a lot of God-given commandments. There were at least ten of them, though preachers and parents could always come up with new ones, and at some point in our upbringing, if you grew up in this church situation, it became all to clear that actually keeping all those rules was darn near impossible. I say almost impossible, because many of us were left with the idea that if we just worked a little harder we might get it some day. Even if we eventually heard the message that there was more to the faith than getting all the details right, that kind of early learning is hard to erase.
I think I was in seminary before I realized the extent to which I had cast God as the rule-enforcer in my conception of the cosmos. That idea--God all concerned about how often we screwed up, keeping track of whether we believed the right things and did the right things--was challenged by the writings of a great, insightful theologian who lived in our community and who died this week. She was a gentle and persuasive woman who spoke of something she called the Dream of God. When I read Verna Dozier’s book by that name, and heard her speak of God’s dream for all humanity--a dream of a good and full life, of community and mutual care and compassion--my concept of God began to shift. Her idea of God as one who dreamed us into being and who nurtures that dream in us and for us opened for me a whole new understanding of what it means to be one of God’s children. You will hear me use her term, “the dream of God” in place of the more traditional “kingdom of God” sometimes in sermons. The dream of God speaks to me of a work in progress, a work that will be completed one day. As a human type person whose feet sometimes slip off the pedals, the idea of being a part of a cosmic work still in progress is very comforting.
Verna saw a big difference between attending to the details of religion and following Jesus. She called into question the early Church’s interest in doctrine, which she says took precedence over the work of becoming God’s agents of healing in the world.
Again and again in the gospels, Jesus says gently, and sometimes, not so gently, ‘think about why you were given these rules’. Think of the purpose they serve and focus your attention there. Everything will fall into place if you set your mind on loving God and your neighbor. If you set out to do mercy, practice compassion and justice, all those laws about how to treat people will be at work in you....will come naturally. And, if you set out to love others, you will find yourself working alongside Jesus and loving God in the process.
I once left a worship committee meeting in which several people had different ideas about the meaning of the readings for the coming Sunday. Verna was there, and after the meeting I confessed that I didn’t have a clue about what I should say, since I would be the preacher that week. She looked me in the eye and said, “you know what you have to say”. Well, the truth is I didn’t, but I didn’t want to tell her that, so I went on my way, and by Sunday I knew what I needed to say and I said it.
Don’t worry about your feet and the pedals.
Watch where you’re going.
Trust what you’ve learned.
I’ll need to keep hearing that for the rest of my life.
I’m not saying, of course, that the rules don’t matter--that we don’t have to think about them from time to time. When you’re sitting at the side of the road looking at a bent wheel, that might be a good time to go over some of the basics in your mind. Or if you’re riding the bike path and it starts raining. When things get slippery you might want to think about the physics of balance and pay attention to keeping you feet on slippery pedals. I promise, though, that if the rain keeps up you won’t want to keep riding in that pay-attention-to-the-rules mode for very long. We weren’t created for that kind of riding. We were created to look down the road and dream with God about where that road might take us.
Amen. JMB