Scripture: Ephesians 2:11-22
There is no particular reason for this sermon…except for the fact that something inside me said that maybe it’s about time for me to say something along the lines of what I am about to say.
Over the years that I’ve been at Sojourners more than a few people have commented that my sermons contain more questions than answers. People say this to me in various ways. Sometimes they say it in just that way. Someone will say to me after a sermon, “Thank you for your sermon. I think you left me with more questions than answers, but thank you.” Or more sweepingly someone will say something to the effect of, “You don’t give too many answers in your sermons, lots of good questions but not too many answers.” Or even more sweepingly people will sometimes extend the comment to the whole church: “We at Sojourners have a lot more questions than answers.”
Or, some of you have said to me that you think some of my favorite phrases are “on the one hand” and “on the other hand”. Some of you think that is as predictable a part of my preaching as the traditional three points is part of some other people’s preaching. Some of you have noticed that the word “nevertheless” appears quite often in my sermons, or some equivalent of it, and that I will go off in one direction or another, acknowledging this problem or that, pointing out that danger or this, but that I will eventually get around to saying “Nevertheless…”
I’m pretty sure that these kinds of remarks are meant, almost always, in an appreciative sort of way, or at least in a good humored sort of way. I choose to think that I’m being either complimented or teased when remarks like these are made. I’ll take either one. I prefer not to think that people are saying I’m wishy washy. I prefer to think that it’s more a matter of appreciating ambiguity and paradox. I have found people at Sojourners in general to be more comfortable than most with ambiguity and paradox, and I think in general people at Sojourners think that questions are good things, so when people say that I seem to have more questions than answers, I tend to think that they are expressing their appreciation of ambiguity and paradox, or that at least they are saying that they appreciate that I appreciate it, or at least are willing to tolerate it, though I understand that quite often there may be a significant amount of frustration mixed in here too. In any case, I mostly do not apologize for avoiding quick, easy, straightforward, unambiguous, unqualified answers to the kinds of questions we are involved with as a community of faith, nor do I feel I am being asked to apologize. Nevertheless…
There is a part of me that is uncomfortable with the idea of having more questions than answers. There is a part of me that wants to say, “Wait a minute. Let’s not leave it at that. It’s all well and good to say that we have more questions than answers, but let’s not say that as though it’s sort of the goal of the Christian life to have more questions than answers, as though we don’t care about answers, or as though we don’t have any answers. We do.”
I hope I’m not sounding defensive here. I don’t mean to speak in that spirit, and hope you will not hear me in that spirit. I don’t feel under attack, and as I say I don’t feel I’m being asked to apologize or that I need to defend myself in any way. This has more to do in my mind with how we present ourselves and how we see ourselves as a progressive community of faith. Because although we may be accepting of spiritual questions and value such questions, as we should, and although we may be hesitant to claim that any truth anyone speaks here is Truth with a capital T, and although we are reluctant to lay out some set of beliefs that anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian must subscribe to, although we don’t claim to have all those kinds of answers, it is also not true, it cannot be true that we are a community just of questions. We are a community of faith and faith includes questions to be sure but also has answers or affirmations, and we should not shy away from that just because the church has too often presented its answers in rigid or authoritarian ways.
One thing I am not going to do today is lay out for you a list of answers that I think are ours as Sojourners or UCC people or as progressive Christians or whatever. That is precisely not the approach to having answers I want to have. It is precisely the approach that I think we are justified in rejecting. Let me try to explain more what I mean by answers though by saying some things I actually meant to say last week but chose not to get into at the end of a sermon that was already long enough.
I was talking about the UCC slogan “God is still speaking” and how “on the one hand” it is very much in keeping with what the United Church of Christ is all about but “on the other hand” can tend to imply a certain confidence not only that God is still speaking but that we know what God is saying and that that kind of self assurance that we are in possession of what God is saying is something that religion needs to be on guard against these days, religion in all its forms, and that we would do well to take very seriously the question of whether we are listening, not in the sense of whether we are willing to do what God says but in the sense of having a mind and heart and spirit that is open to God and that continues to be open to God so that we do not ever settle in or hold on too firmly to what we think God is still saying. I suppose I was, in a way, encouraging us to continue to be comfortable with a type of faith that does not present itself as having answers, certainly firm and final answers.
What I didn’t get to last week was the thought that the phrase “God is still speaking” also does not speak to the fact that for a great many people, for a great many genuinely religious people, God may not be still speaking. For a great many people God may not be speaking at all. For a great many people God may be silent.
And these are not faithless people. Faithless people are people for whom God is just not very important. Faithless people are people for whom God just doesn’t have much of a place in their lives. Faithless people don’t think of God as being silent because they don’t expect God to speak in the first place, and don’t much care. For people who are not people of faith, God is not so much silent as irrelevant, just not part of the picture.
God is silent on the other hand when we are listening with all our heart, waiting for God to speak in some way, any way, to us, and God does not speak. God is silent when we are in want or in need of some word from beyond, need some help finding some new direction or dealing with some problem, but that word of guidance is not given. God is silent when we find ourselves overwhelmed by some deep grief or sorrow or swimming in a sea of depression, and we look for a gift from God that will bring joy back into our lives again, but it does not come. God is silent when fear is standing in the way of something we know we need to do, or that is the right thing to do, or when anxiety is limiting our lives in some way and we know we need some extra bit of strength or courage and that word of en-courage-ment is just not there.
I am thinking that there are very few people of faith anywhere who have not known the silence of God. There are some people of faith who seem reluctant to admit that God is ever silent for them or anyone else, but they should not be, because the silence of God is very much a part of the life of faith. It is profoundly part of the life of faith. Faith is not just the promise that God is a sure presence along the way, or that if we open our hearts, God will speak, or that if we open our spirits God will be there, or that if we come to God in prayer God will answer. There are people for whom such things are true. There are people who hear God speak every day, who can hear God’s voice alive in the world around us, in its beauty and in its need, who know God as a constant presence, who can pray to God as though they are speaking to a best friend. And blessed are those who have such a sure sense of God’s presence and who know God to be speaking to them in countless ways.
But blessed also are those who know the silence of God. They too, we too, are among the faithful. We too are among the blessed. We too are among God’s beloved. And I say all this today, in connection with a sermon on answers, because the kinds of answers I believe in, the kinds of answers we may have to offer one another and others through this progressive community of faith may not be exactly what some people think are the answers the Christian community is supposed to offer. Is God a sure presence in the believer’s life? Yes. Does God answer prayer? Yes. Is God still speaking? Yes. Those kinds of things are, I suppose, what we usually think of as answers. And it’s not that I have any interest in denying those answers, or even questioning them, in some theoretical sense. It’s that I want to allow room in the life of faith and in the community of faith for other realities. So that the answer that is most true for me is of a different sort. Does God speak in a clear way to people of faith? The answer to that question is not “yes”. It is not “no” It is not “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know” or “that’s questionable”. The answer, at least as I would phrase it this morning, the answer is more of this nature: God has a place in his heart, God holds in her embrace both those who hear clearly the voice of God in their lives and those who do not, both those who are certain of God’s presence and those who are not, both those who know the touch of God in their lives and those who are well acquainted with the silence of God.
It is not just that we all have different ideas about such things. It is not just that there is a diversity of ideas about God at a place like Sojourners. It is not just that there are some who have a firm commitment to understanding God’s word and some who have a better understanding of God’s silences. It is not just that we are tolerant types who can put up with the differences among us. It is definitely not that there are some who are people of greater faith and some among us who are people of lesser faith because of being more familiar with God’s silences. It is that God holds us all together in her embrace. All of us. Hearers and doers of God’s word and dwellers in God’s silence. All of the faithful ones. And the faithless too, who I referred to before, not meaning to be unkind or negative in calling them faithless, just descriptive. They of course would not be likely to say that they have a place in the heart of God, but as a person of faith I will say it. It is included in one of the answers I hold as part of my faith, that those people who are not people of faith are among God’s beloved. This is an answer that leaves room for lots of ambiguity and allows for lots of questions. But it is not the same thing as saying that questions are all there are.
I have not made explicit reference to the scripture from Ephesians as I have been talking today. Paul’s words are very different from the way I talk, and the specific issues he was dealing with are very different from what I have been focusing on, but what I hear him saying to me is very much in keeping with the spirit of what I have been trying to say. “He is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility…” In his case the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, in my case this morning the dividing wall between questioners and answerers—between those different qualities that may be found in the community of faith or that may be found as different aspects of faith within ourselves. We do not need them to be in hostility to each other. We need them not to be in hostility to each other. To affirm the legitimacy of questions and to recognize the need sometimes just to live with our questions does not deny the importance of answers. The soul does not live on questions alone. But the answers we offer as people of faith also should not be in hostility to the ambiguities and uncertainties and silences that are also part of faith. Our answers need to leave room for all of that too. In that spirit may we continue together to seek the kinds of answers that will allow a place for all people in the community of faith and in the heart of God and most of all answers that will turn out to be more loving than right. Amen.
Jim Bundy
August 26, 2007