WEBVTT
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A reading from the Gospel according to St. John.
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And when the counselor comes,
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that one will convince the world concerning sin
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and righteousness and judgment.
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Concerning sin because they do not believe in me.
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Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father,
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and you will see me no more.
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Concerning judgment
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because the ruler of this world is judged.
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I have yet many things to say to you,
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but you cannot bear them now.
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When the spirit of truth comes,
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that spirit will guide you into all the truth,
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for the spirit will not speak independently
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but will speak only what the spirit hears
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and will declare to you the things that are to come.
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The spirit will glorify me by making what is mine
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and declaring it to you.
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All that God has is mine.
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Therefore I said that the spirit will take what is mine
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and declare it to you.
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This ends the reading of the Gospel.
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Good morning.
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It is very good to be back at Duke.
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Feels quite natural.
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Do you believe the right things about God?
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If you belong to the Christian group,
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does your understanding of how God is three-in-one
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and one-in-three qualify
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as orthodox?
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That last word means right opinion
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or straight as opposed to crooked thought.
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Do you believe the correct things in the correct way?
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This may strike you as a fairly abrasive set of questions
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for a guest, however familiar with the place,
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to bring before a gathering of people
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who not only got themselves up and out on Sunday morning
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but probably are not even planning deeply serious evil
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and destruction for the afternoon.
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But there are these Biblical texts,
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and I am accountable to them.
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They are the Biblical texts appointed for Trinity Sunday.
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In that passage from the Gospel of John that you just heard,
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Jesus tells his disciples that the coming of the Paraclete
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will be a visitation by the spirit of truth
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and a judgment.
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Those who think and believe the truth
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are choosing to live in light,
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those who do not, the darkness,
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the place or the condition in which life
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or at least abundant life is not found.
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And from that passage, from Paul's letter to the Romans,
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there is this assertion about what happened to us
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whether we were ready or not.
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And it begins with a phrase,
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a phrase easily bent, often bent,
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to suggest that we had better be straight
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about what counts as religious truth.
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The claim that you and I are justified by faith
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has sometimes been turned into a test
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of whether the faith we hold is a set of beliefs consistent
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and correct enough to get us justified.
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Or more crudely,
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do you believe in the way you need to believe in order,
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as the roadside signs in this part
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of the country used to say,
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get right with the One we call God?
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One reason I was invited to be here today,
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it's certainly not because this is a celebrity weekend.
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One reason I was invited to be here today is that I know,
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I know something about the warfare
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that stands in history behind Trinity Sunday
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and even behind the prospect of singing Holy, Holy, Holy.
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I even wrote a book
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about the villain whose beliefs were censored
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at a council of Nicaea in the fourth century.
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And Will Willimon and some others
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at Duke even recognized that my fascination with Arius,
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the fourth-century arch-heretic was not advocacy,
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and I do appreciate that when I meet it.
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I owe it to them and to you not to delve
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into doctrinal disputes in the early church.
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Why should Sunday worshipers entitled to good luncheon plans
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be subjected to a verbal lobotomy by a historian?
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Yet I will, I will mention
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that several centuries passed after the death
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and resurrection of Jesus
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before a majority of the faithful concluded
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that they had hit on the right formulas
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for describing the God of Christian experience,
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a sovereign divine life manifest
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in the Father, Son, and Spirit,
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one in essence, three persons.
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Though I should say that early Christian thinkers,
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better than some moderns,
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knew that ascribing gender to deity
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was strange and figurative.
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One God in Trinity,
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there you have a description of the God, it is agreed,
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we cannot finally capture in our language or our thought,
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God, the Holy One.
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But, of course,
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agreement among religious people is hard to gain.
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Battles continued after the fourth
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and fifth century councils,
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which we, by hindsight, consider conclusive.
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Think about it.
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If some have the doctrine right,
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some others must not.
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If someone grasps or claims to grasp
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the Christian doctrine of God fully,
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others will be accused of having only partial understanding.
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Question,
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how crucial,
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how crucial is doctrinal correctness?
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Is it a matter of life or death?
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Is it a matter of salvation or damnation?
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Does God withhold what God gives
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from those who do not think and believe correctly?
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Whether we speak directly
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or by our body language,
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our different religious groups,
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Christian groups decidedly among these,
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our different religious groups convey
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that those who do not see things in ways closely like ours
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are at least deprived
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or less than saved.
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But we mean to say more.
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By our very existence as distinct groups,
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we mean to say more,
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for in standing apart and in being indifferent to learning
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or crediting the faith of others, we give the judgment,
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we give the judgment that those who do not believe
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as we believe are in serious serious jeopardy.
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They are in endangered.
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They are lost.
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They are damned.
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A convocation of over 1,000 Native Americans
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took place on the campus of Stanford University last week.
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And I was asked to join in blessing the grounds
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on which this annual powwow was to be held.
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A fellow holy person
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was the primary bringer of blessing.
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And while this man, Arvol Looking Horse,
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chanted and said his prayers prior
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to lighting the sacred pipe
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of which he is the Sioux Nation guardian,
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I remembered an earlier event
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in which this same man sat
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on a panel with representatives from other religions,
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answering student questions.
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Students have a refreshing way
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of forcing smooth talkers to fess up,
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to declare themselves.
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And on this night, each panelist was asked to respond
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at whatever length, but finally with a clear yea or nay,
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asked to respond to this question.
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Is your religion a way to truth,
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or is your religion the only path to salvation,
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the one true way?
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Arvol Looking Horse,
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when the question came to him,
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closed his eyes and fell silent for quite a while.
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And the moderator, anxious, restated the question,
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and that did not stir Arvol immediately to speak.
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But when he finally did open his mouth, he said,
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"The Sioux way is the only way I know."
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His answer had the ring of truth
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and a kind of modesty
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other panelists might have tried on for size.
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The one true way?
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The only way I know.
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Is God a doctrine checker?
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Are we to imagine a date in which God will assume the manner
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and the method of a not very imaginative doctoral examiner?
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Please tell me, Mr. or Ms. Believer,
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precisely how you conceive of me
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under the following six headings.
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Is a test in the cards for each of us,
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and might it be a test in which the questions anticipate,
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presume, and will accommodate a single series
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of answers fixed, invariable,
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and purely true?
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Wouldn't you find,
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wouldn't you find a matching quiz
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or a fill-in-the-blanks exercise
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on your God concept a weak climax,
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in fact, a disappointing anticlimax to the riddles
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and wonders which have filled your life?
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A God who measured life and its meanings on these grounds
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and took the results seriously would seem to us too shallow
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or too clueless to have been the source
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of the life we have in fact enjoyed.
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Four out of six young couples
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with whom I was discussing the baptism of their new babies
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surprised me two weeks ago
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by expressing their pain at having been estranged
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and separated from church community for years.
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Common to their stories was a sharp sense
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of being disapproved
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or in their youth being made to feel
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that they could not be accepted in church as they were
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with the active curiosities
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and in the awakening bodies they possessed.
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And so they were among the millions distanced
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from religious life
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and yet nagged with a form of longterm homesickness.
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And yet they were also resentful
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of having been stiff-armed
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in the name of a God they now wanted to believe
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cares about their children.
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What turned them away?
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It seems that what turned them away was their churches,
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their various churches' claims about what was required
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in order for one to be a member
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in a community of truth.
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Imagine, for example, believing or being led to believe
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that the desire to marry someone of another group,
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even another Christian group,
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disqualifies you from receiving what God gives.
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Were these young parents doctrinally sharp?
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Were they sharp enough
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to be worthy to make vows for their babies?
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I don't have the faintest idea.
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Did they trust or were they trying to trust
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that a love exists to enfold their children
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and to be with those children as they grow into their lives?
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Yes.
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A few years ago,
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35 or 40 yards from here,
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in the Divinity School in a classroom,
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there was a discussion about evidences for the existence
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and the activities of God.
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And this discussion grew intense
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and for some people in the room, difficult, even agonizing.
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In the middle of this discussion,
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which really had become a debate,
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one person captured everyone else's attention
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by making a very direct point in very direct language.
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The point was about a certain kind of activity
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that is found among some religious people,
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particularly the seriously religious.
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Some theological statements
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and broodings, this woman remarked,
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begin to take on an idolatrous feel,
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as if God's existence and effect
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hinged upon our abilities to think God right.
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She said she found it helpful to recall that if God is,
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and if God lives up to billing, that will be that,
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with God's reality not dependent upon our willingness
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or our ability to keep the idea and the dream alive.
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Give God a break I think she meant to say
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and do yourself a favor as well.
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Hard and careful thinking
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as a good and salutary,
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as a good and salutary human activity?
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No doubt a good thing.
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Correct thought as the reason for being cared about by God,
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and orthodox belief as the source
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of our own justification and salvation?
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Easy to doubt.
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Easy to doubt given the range and mystery of our experiences
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and the range of our thoughts and words for making sense
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and perhaps giving thanks for our experiences.
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All of this brings me back
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to the first passage we heard today, Proverbs 8,
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and a few words in that passage concerned with God's wisdom,
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what it does,
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for how long it has been being and doing God's wisdom,
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how wisdom spends divine time.
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This particular text from Proverbs 8 was disputed
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and contested in those fourth century days
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when Christians debated whether the Son of God was eternal,
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divine in nature, or a creature.
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Wisdom says the Lord created me
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at the beginning of God's way, the first of the acts of old.
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Ages ago, I was set up at the first,
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before the beginning of the earth.
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In the early church days
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in which people thought about the difference between God
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and humans in categories of essences
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or natures, divine nature as distinct from human nature,
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one way of imagining God's transaction
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with us through Christ was expressed in this way.
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God's wisdom who is God's eternal Son
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who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth
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is divine in nature,
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is in possession of divine holiness and power,
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and in that capacity as God,
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God's wisdom brought help from above
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and in becoming human, infused our humanity
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with saving divinity.
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It is a wonderful way of picturing what God does in love,
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in a reach of compassion toward human beings
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in every conceivable kind of need and trouble.
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If you wished to believe correctly,
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at least in one set of fourth-century categories,
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that would not be a bad starting point.
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But I have been, I have been hinting steadily
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that the preoccupation with getting beliefs exactly right
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smacks more of the human desire for control
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than with definitive divine activity.
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Yes, it is important to know who is God
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and who and what do not qualify as God,
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that is, are not worthy of your trust.
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Idolatry is dangerous because it seeks life support
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from what cannot support life.
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Yes, it is important to respond
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to a call urgently put in the first century and urgent today
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to know who God is
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and among what groups of beleaguered people
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God is most likely to be most directly involved
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in Passover, in deliverance from captivity.
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Is it likely, though,
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that God is most concerned
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with moving people to right opinions about God-ness?
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It is fashionable
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in establishment political
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and religious circles these days
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to single out for attack single-issue
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and special-interest individuals and groups.
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Has it occurred to the newer champions
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of religious orthodoxy and right practice
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to question whether they may not be dancing
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dangerously close to fashioning God
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into a single-issue personage, a doctrine checker?
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It seems strange to me at least
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to have rambled around with reverence in scripture
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and in tradition and to have come up with the notion
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that God cares most of all
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about the correctness of our belief,
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that orthodoxy is decisive,
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that is, decisive for the way in which God regards
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and treats that part of the created order
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that is capable of judging and giving assent to ideas.
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Consider just for a moment this picture
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from Proverbs 8.
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It is a picture of how a holy God
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in wisdom spends time.
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From the beginning of creation,
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the wisdom of God is about the daily business,
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and here is what the text says,
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is about the daily business of rejoicing
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in God's inhabited world and delighting in humankind.
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Rejoicing in God's inhabited world
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and rejoicing in humankind.
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However we imagine God or God active
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or God with a plan,
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this little phrase from Proverbs 8 points to something basic
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in the One we count as our life-giver and life-definer,
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rejoicing and delighting,
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taking pleasure in the world inhabited by living things
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and enjoying the likes of you and me.
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If we were to take seriously the idea
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that salvation means having the image of God
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in ourselves recovered and restored,
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it would mean that you and I could imitate
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that activity of God's wisdom,
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that you and I could ourselves
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daily be about rejoicing
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in the inhabited world and delighting in humankind.
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And how would the great commandment sound to us?
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It might be the mandate to love the God
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who in wise love rejoices in the world
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and delights in the likes of us
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and secondly to take pleasure in each other as in ourselves.
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If our reflex
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is to resist rejoicing and delighting
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as activities not serious enough to be religious
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or perhaps a bit self-indulgent,
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okay for God, perhaps on God's Sunday but not right for me,
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not in keeping with the way I was taught religion,
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perhaps the only remedy is to hear the challenge
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repent and believe the Gospel.
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Repent and believe the Gospel
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about a life-giver who rejoices
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and delights in all that is
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and all who exist even in the broken, incomplete,
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unfinished, and sometimes tragic conditions
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you and I know clearly to be our conditions.
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It is the same wisdom of God
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who not only urged us to rejoice with those who rejoice
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but to weep also with those who weep
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and also the same wisdom, who in the flesh,
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embraced life, containing all there is
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in the way of sorrow and joy.
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It is that same wisdom,
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who from the first before the beginning of the earth,
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has taken pleasure in who we are
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and takes pleasure in who,
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by the love which will not be frustrated,
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we finally will be.
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Whatever other interests can be detected
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in the wisdom sung about as God's wisdom,
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this one is fairly unmistakable and clear.
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If you and I believe ourselves to have been redeemed
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or believe ourselves at the point of being claimed
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by a presence and power you might call God,
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we should be able to find in ourselves something
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of what has been at work in God's wisdom from the beginning,
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rejoicing in our lives in the inhabited world
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and delighting in humankind.
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Delighting in humankind, all of humanity,
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all of our lives, all of it,
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all that was made, all that has fallen apart,
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all that is under repair, all that will be raised up.
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God is good and faithful.
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And God is the One, who out of love more than out of logic,
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makes our life together a cause for rejoicing and delight.
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Amen.