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Peter JB Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
Offered Sunday May 27, 2018
Readings:
Isaiah 6:1-8
John 3:1-17
We have dramatically different ways of experiencing, or even relating to, what is holy. One of us may relate most fully to God our creator and parent. A second relates to Jesus, a personal guide and savior, the embodiment of God. A third senses an immediate Presence, one who is here, a breath, an energy, a gathering Holy Spirit. Each of these experiences or approaches is most real for somebody. And yet when it comes down to real experiences of the sacred One we call God, when we hear the story through, it may not fit neatly in any single category of theology or doctrine or even experience.
Our reading from Isaiah offers an extraordinary example of one human being’s encounter with the Holy. It has a dream-like quality— as the prophet Isaiah recalls the day he experienced a Call too big for anyone fully to grasp. He recalls being in the presence of a power so huge that the mere hem of the garment—the fringe of the fringe, filled the temple. It was a Presence, a Power, bigger than one person’s self-doubts. The young Isaiah had a searing transformation. He felt God touching his lips—and soul-- with living fire. Don’t get too caught up in the six-winged angels, the trumpet call, or the smoke rising. One burning coal of cleansing truth, one clear summons to call a nation to repentance and justice was what was needed. That one coal, that was a door to the divine.
Our senior minister at First Baptist Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts was Dale Lock, an unpretentious pastor who always walked fast, talked with a slight drawl, came from Bastrop Texas, and was NOT prone to long theological conversations. A man with an elfish smile, he was wise. One day walking (briskly) back to church from a lunch together he said, “Peter, it seems to me there are three kinds of churches. Over the years I have worshiped in God churches. I have worshiped in Jesus churches. And I have worshiped in Holy Spirit churches. Seems to me that the church you and I work in is not a Holy Spirit church. And much as I want to believe otherwise, let’s face it, it isn’t really much of a Jesus church. This is a God church. That’s how people think. That’s the language they use. That is what the majority of people experience and understand.”
Dale Lock had a way of getting you thinking. A few years later, far too early, Dale died and was taken home to be buried in Bastrop, Texas. For me it was a death that was hard to bear, for I had grown to love him. But that brief remark about kinds of churches has stuck with me since he made it. Although I still disagree, just a little.
When I am struggling with Christians, and our competing beliefs, I remember that remark. And I am grateful to Dale especially when I am tied in knots by the doctrine of the trinity, a belief codified long after the last book of the bible was written and enforced over the centuries by the hand of emperors and inquisitors. When I read about the Emperor Constantine and his role in getting the bishops together to decide what Christians should believe, back in 325, Dale Lock’s remark still helps me to be charitable, and take this trinity thing as a means of inclusion rather than expulsion.
Despite the horse the emperor rode into the church that day, and despite all the emperor’s men, the doctrine the bishops cooked up, the doctrine of the trinity, helps me include the God people, the Jesus people and the Spirit people. For then as now, there were the God churches, the Jesus churches and the Holy Spirit churches. And they needed to figure out that they were all on the same path. We need a wide view of God, at least as wide as the horizon at the Bastrop cemetery. Today as then we need an openness to each others’ surprising experience. For our maker, our savior, the spirit that compels us is the One too big to be contained in our sacred spaces, the One whose fringe of a fringe of a fringe fills the sanctuary with smoke and fire: One who can still touch our lips and our lives with burning searing healing truth.
Here at Emmanuel Friedens, you can try to figure out which kind of a church we are: but I maintain we have several kinds of religion floating about this room. For many of us, the most vital door to the divine is awe in the face of our maker, a being who was and is and always shall be, and yet who is ultimately beyond any human image: a force, a power, Being before and beyond our comprehension. Call us the “God Christians”.
But wait a minute, we don’t all take the same approach even within this wide family of “God” Christians. For some, the Creator is first and foremost a powerful monarch, for others, an intimate parental presence. For some this is the God who both creates and destroys in an instant. For others it is the vast source, the Ground of Being, the Light from which we come. All of these are takes on who God is that have been part of Christianity since its earliest days.
We need to acknowledge many of us genuinely are “Jesus Christians.” Our UCC members may have figured out this is an approach that Baptists have been especially prone to! Indeed Baptists traditionally have but one question we ask at the baptism of a new believer. We don’t ask one to affirm the Nicene creed, and the doctrine of the trinity, nor the virgin birth. We don’t give a litmus test on your beliefs about social justice or evangelical commitment. We don’t ask anything but one question, always about Jesus. However we word the question, before we go to dunk, excuse me, immerse, we will ask if you are ready to follow Jesus, and stake everything on that decision.
To meet the Jesus of the gospels is the heart of our encounter with the holy, for us Jesus people. The person Jesus provides the most accessible information about God’s love, and perhaps the most comfort, and surely the most dangerous door to the divine—as the cross reminds us. Open this door and, as many a martyr will tell you, there is likely to be a lion on the other side. Of course, there is a lot of variety among us Jesus enthusiasts—those who emphasize Christ’s divinity and power, versus those of us who sing “What a friend we have in Jesus.” But many of us will share some personal experience of Christ’s presence in our lives, or in our hearts. Many others stress the importance of the radical teachings of Jesus. And while no two stories sound quite the same we somehow know it is the same Jesus.
And then there are us Holy Spirit Christians—talk about a wide door, this is a huge gateway to the Godhead! For some it comes up from within the soul, for others it is sensed in the room in the heart of a community.
This experiential approach to faith has lots of room. It’s got room for the lonely Charismatic worshiping in a traditional church who feels compelled to curb the urge to speak in tongues—or dance spontaneously. If you are one of those people, let me let you know, there is room in this church for you!! Go ahead and dance. There is also room for the person who describes herself as “more spiritual than religious”. There is room for the individual who wants to reclaim the wisdom tradition of Judaism and Christianity and experiences the Spirit as a deeply feminine door to the divine. There is room for the self-described mystic. There is room for the Pentecostal Christian, and room for the seeker, longing for a nudge from the Spirit.
For centuries, we people of faith have had trouble with how different our experiences of God are—because we are VERY human. We have mistrusted others whose spirituality is not like ours. It is natural to be fearful! But all along faith has had these drastically different kinds of doors through which to enter the holy of holies, and none of us has had more than a glimpse of a part of the hem of garment the One who is beyond all names. We don’t do God any favors by trying to close the many doors that God has made open. If these be heresy, then some time or another each one has been a holy heresy. And we all start somewhere. God finds us each, each on our own ground.
Are you a God person, a Spirit person or a Jesus person? The person next to you may or may not be arranged the same way spiritually, or in personality type! And, oh yes, there are the ones of us who will check “other” or “unsure”. For some of us simply aren’t sure—because we have yet to see the door open fully, yet to step through. Or maybe, just maybe, we have had some earthshaking moment, and like Isaiah we have met a being too huge, too wondrous, too life-changing, to summarize in one word or another.
For those of us who have yet to make a first step of faith, that is good news. And it is equally so for those of us who took some step long ago and need to rework, or re-enter or re-conceive the journey of faith. The multiple doors are doors are there, wide open! The stories of Jesus still have the power to convict. The presence of the Spirit is yet as real as it was on the day of Pentecost. The One who made us continues to make and remake us, melt and molding, shaping, lighting our way, nurturing our souls, confronting our conscience receiving us at the last. God is real, real as a mother’s love, alive as the sharp intake of a baby’s first breath.
Many doors stand open. Start to walk toward one and you may find yourself on the other side—and on a whole new adventure. Rest assured someone someplace once called your path heresy. Rest assured—God is bigger than that.
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
Offered Sunday May 27, 2018
Readings:
Isaiah 6:1-8
John 3:1-17
We have dramatically different ways of experiencing, or even relating to, what is holy. One of us may relate most fully to God our creator and parent. A second relates to Jesus, a personal guide and savior, the embodiment of God. A third senses an immediate Presence, one who is here, a breath, an energy, a gathering Holy Spirit. Each of these experiences or approaches is most real for somebody. And yet when it comes down to real experiences of the sacred One we call God, when we hear the story through, it may not fit neatly in any single category of theology or doctrine or even experience.
Our reading from Isaiah offers an extraordinary example of one human being’s encounter with the Holy. It has a dream-like quality— as the prophet Isaiah recalls the day he experienced a Call too big for anyone fully to grasp. He recalls being in the presence of a power so huge that the mere hem of the garment—the fringe of the fringe, filled the temple. It was a Presence, a Power, bigger than one person’s self-doubts. The young Isaiah had a searing transformation. He felt God touching his lips—and soul-- with living fire. Don’t get too caught up in the six-winged angels, the trumpet call, or the smoke rising. One burning coal of cleansing truth, one clear summons to call a nation to repentance and justice was what was needed. That one coal, that was a door to the divine.
Our senior minister at First Baptist Church in Pittsfield, Massachusetts was Dale Lock, an unpretentious pastor who always walked fast, talked with a slight drawl, came from Bastrop Texas, and was NOT prone to long theological conversations. A man with an elfish smile, he was wise. One day walking (briskly) back to church from a lunch together he said, “Peter, it seems to me there are three kinds of churches. Over the years I have worshiped in God churches. I have worshiped in Jesus churches. And I have worshiped in Holy Spirit churches. Seems to me that the church you and I work in is not a Holy Spirit church. And much as I want to believe otherwise, let’s face it, it isn’t really much of a Jesus church. This is a God church. That’s how people think. That’s the language they use. That is what the majority of people experience and understand.”
Dale Lock had a way of getting you thinking. A few years later, far too early, Dale died and was taken home to be buried in Bastrop, Texas. For me it was a death that was hard to bear, for I had grown to love him. But that brief remark about kinds of churches has stuck with me since he made it. Although I still disagree, just a little.
When I am struggling with Christians, and our competing beliefs, I remember that remark. And I am grateful to Dale especially when I am tied in knots by the doctrine of the trinity, a belief codified long after the last book of the bible was written and enforced over the centuries by the hand of emperors and inquisitors. When I read about the Emperor Constantine and his role in getting the bishops together to decide what Christians should believe, back in 325, Dale Lock’s remark still helps me to be charitable, and take this trinity thing as a means of inclusion rather than expulsion.
Despite the horse the emperor rode into the church that day, and despite all the emperor’s men, the doctrine the bishops cooked up, the doctrine of the trinity, helps me include the God people, the Jesus people and the Spirit people. For then as now, there were the God churches, the Jesus churches and the Holy Spirit churches. And they needed to figure out that they were all on the same path. We need a wide view of God, at least as wide as the horizon at the Bastrop cemetery. Today as then we need an openness to each others’ surprising experience. For our maker, our savior, the spirit that compels us is the One too big to be contained in our sacred spaces, the One whose fringe of a fringe of a fringe fills the sanctuary with smoke and fire: One who can still touch our lips and our lives with burning searing healing truth.
Here at Emmanuel Friedens, you can try to figure out which kind of a church we are: but I maintain we have several kinds of religion floating about this room. For many of us, the most vital door to the divine is awe in the face of our maker, a being who was and is and always shall be, and yet who is ultimately beyond any human image: a force, a power, Being before and beyond our comprehension. Call us the “God Christians”.
But wait a minute, we don’t all take the same approach even within this wide family of “God” Christians. For some, the Creator is first and foremost a powerful monarch, for others, an intimate parental presence. For some this is the God who both creates and destroys in an instant. For others it is the vast source, the Ground of Being, the Light from which we come. All of these are takes on who God is that have been part of Christianity since its earliest days.
We need to acknowledge many of us genuinely are “Jesus Christians.” Our UCC members may have figured out this is an approach that Baptists have been especially prone to! Indeed Baptists traditionally have but one question we ask at the baptism of a new believer. We don’t ask one to affirm the Nicene creed, and the doctrine of the trinity, nor the virgin birth. We don’t give a litmus test on your beliefs about social justice or evangelical commitment. We don’t ask anything but one question, always about Jesus. However we word the question, before we go to dunk, excuse me, immerse, we will ask if you are ready to follow Jesus, and stake everything on that decision.
To meet the Jesus of the gospels is the heart of our encounter with the holy, for us Jesus people. The person Jesus provides the most accessible information about God’s love, and perhaps the most comfort, and surely the most dangerous door to the divine—as the cross reminds us. Open this door and, as many a martyr will tell you, there is likely to be a lion on the other side. Of course, there is a lot of variety among us Jesus enthusiasts—those who emphasize Christ’s divinity and power, versus those of us who sing “What a friend we have in Jesus.” But many of us will share some personal experience of Christ’s presence in our lives, or in our hearts. Many others stress the importance of the radical teachings of Jesus. And while no two stories sound quite the same we somehow know it is the same Jesus.
And then there are us Holy Spirit Christians—talk about a wide door, this is a huge gateway to the Godhead! For some it comes up from within the soul, for others it is sensed in the room in the heart of a community.
This experiential approach to faith has lots of room. It’s got room for the lonely Charismatic worshiping in a traditional church who feels compelled to curb the urge to speak in tongues—or dance spontaneously. If you are one of those people, let me let you know, there is room in this church for you!! Go ahead and dance. There is also room for the person who describes herself as “more spiritual than religious”. There is room for the individual who wants to reclaim the wisdom tradition of Judaism and Christianity and experiences the Spirit as a deeply feminine door to the divine. There is room for the self-described mystic. There is room for the Pentecostal Christian, and room for the seeker, longing for a nudge from the Spirit.
For centuries, we people of faith have had trouble with how different our experiences of God are—because we are VERY human. We have mistrusted others whose spirituality is not like ours. It is natural to be fearful! But all along faith has had these drastically different kinds of doors through which to enter the holy of holies, and none of us has had more than a glimpse of a part of the hem of garment the One who is beyond all names. We don’t do God any favors by trying to close the many doors that God has made open. If these be heresy, then some time or another each one has been a holy heresy. And we all start somewhere. God finds us each, each on our own ground.
Are you a God person, a Spirit person or a Jesus person? The person next to you may or may not be arranged the same way spiritually, or in personality type! And, oh yes, there are the ones of us who will check “other” or “unsure”. For some of us simply aren’t sure—because we have yet to see the door open fully, yet to step through. Or maybe, just maybe, we have had some earthshaking moment, and like Isaiah we have met a being too huge, too wondrous, too life-changing, to summarize in one word or another.
For those of us who have yet to make a first step of faith, that is good news. And it is equally so for those of us who took some step long ago and need to rework, or re-enter or re-conceive the journey of faith. The multiple doors are doors are there, wide open! The stories of Jesus still have the power to convict. The presence of the Spirit is yet as real as it was on the day of Pentecost. The One who made us continues to make and remake us, melt and molding, shaping, lighting our way, nurturing our souls, confronting our conscience receiving us at the last. God is real, real as a mother’s love, alive as the sharp intake of a baby’s first breath.
Many doors stand open. Start to walk toward one and you may find yourself on the other side—and on a whole new adventure. Rest assured someone someplace once called your path heresy. Rest assured—God is bigger than that.