Sermon
I was listening to part of a podcast last night called “Come Through” with Rebecca Carroll from NYC Studios1. It is a podcast that is 15 conversations about race in a pivotal year for America. In the portion I heard last night Rebecca Carroll spoke with Bishop T.D. Jakes, who is a bishop, author and filmmaker. While I don't espouse all of his theology, or agree with him on all of his statements, I did appreciate the complexity of the conversation he and Rebecca Carroll were having.
Rather than go over their entire conversation from last night, I will only highlight one portion of their conversation because I think it directly speaks to the conflict between Paul and the Corinthians, as well as to conflicts in our own lives.
In part of her conversation Carroll asks him how his description of overcoming suffering through his faith is different from “regular resilience.” He calls some of them a series of born again moments. Ms. Carroll too feels as though she has had to renew and grow again and again, but she has come through things because of her own tenacity, and her own will to be the best possible person. She feels she has done it on her own – with supportive people around her, but not God pulling something out of her-self. She is really asking what the difference is between will power and providential power, and how do you know which is which. She also asks him “What role does God play in our choices and our choices we make as human beings?” She is basically asking “Why God?”
While there would never be enough time for the full answer to a question like that on a 30 minute podcast, I took away two things that reminded me of the eternal mystery we all share when it comes to faith. He said, “For the rational, reasonable person, who seeks to know, and to know for sure, faith does not make sense because faith does not ask you to know, faith asks you to believe.” He expressed the difficulty inherent in trying to answer sociological questions through a theological lens.
This is Paul's dilemma.
Paul is an apostle of Jesus. He was not a disciple. He did not know Jesus the human, but he had a life changing wrestling match on the road one day that changed him from Saul the persecutor of followers of Jesus into Paul the apostle of Jesus. He had a born again moment, long before there was a born again movement.
Paul, forever trying to explain to societies he runs into, how to understand this new relationship to God is just like Bishop T.D. Jakes trying to explain theology to Rebecca Carroll. When you and I try to convince someone of something, we try to use stories from their experience to help them identify with us. When you haven't had an experience of God, without a story from experience, how do you know how to relate to someone talking about God? Proof of the existence of God will always be unsatisfying to those looking for something that makes sense.
When we talk about God we often have to use language in new ways. When Paul talks about God a tent isn't just a tent. Clothing isn't just clothing. Being at home or being away doesn't have anything to do with where we live. Being beside ourselves doesn't have anything to do with our mindset. Death doesn't mean death.
One of the themes of so much of Paul's writing has to do with the inner world and the outer world. He speaks of his body and its scars and his suffering and compares it to what is in his heart and the love of Jesus and the joy that brings him. He wants his followers to be sure to think of things in a new way. Don't just look at what is on the outside, look at the love I have for you, the love I have for Jesus, the love God in Christ is for us.
T.D. Jakes who I mentioned earlier, says that one of the strongest things about Christianity to him, is that the entire brand is built around a cross. Right away, suffering and struggle are acknowledged and not pushed aside. That's the same language as Paul uses. Look, the very heart of love of God in Christ does not overlook the suffering and torture and humiliation Jesus experienced, as a matter of fact love of God in Christ starts there. It's not very good branding if you want lots of self-interested customers. The very brand of Christ, the mark of Christ, starts with everything being upside down and inside out. What is unclothed is not naked. What is dead is now new. What is gone has come again. What you see isn't what is true. It's only partly true. I think that when Paul says that we walk by faith, not by sight, he means that what we see is only part of the story. We don't regard anyone from a human point of view anymore, we view them from a suffering Christ point of view. God reconciled us to him through the cross. God turned everything upside down. If we believe this, if we have faith in this, we are participating in that same reconciliation. God reconciled the world to himself, through us if we let it happen.
If we start with an assumption of faith, then what we see becomes something else. What is we look at everything through the lens of the cross? What if we see Christ is every situation? What if we consider someone's suffering before we act? If we take our faith and what our faith leads us to believe and start there when making a decision we will move forward in faith.
What does God have to do with how we behave and the choices we make, asked Rebecca Carroll? That's asking a sociological question of a theological situation. It will always be an unsatisfying answer.
The only way to explain God's presence, the only way to explain our faith is through experience. We have to have an experience and then pass it on. We have to find a way to be that experience in someone else's life.
How will living through the lens of our faith change us? What will we do different today because we shift how we see, not what we see?
Right now, our only hope of moving forward as the church, in our families, in our social groups, in our work lives, is to start thinking of our lives in new ways. Our lives of faith cannot wait for the next thing to just happen. We are the next thing. Just like the Corinthians, just like people new to the story of Jesus and the love of God in their lives. We can't stay in a holding pattern waiting for what we want to happen. We can't be the church online only, and neglect any of our mission work, our justice work, our giving. A life of faith is a life of generosity, a life of risks, and a life of movement. We have a faith that begins with the cross and so is no stranger to suffering and struggle. We have a faith that juxtaposes the suffering of the cross with the unimaginable, unstoppable love of God.
Maybe we'll find ourselves meeting a 21-day challenge to learn how to begin to become anti-racist. Maybe we'll find ourselves running into podcasts by chance, that speak to the subject of racism right when we need to. Maybe we'll pay attention differently.
If we have a Christ-like heart when we see something troubling, we might ask what's needed instead of what does that have to do with me? T.D. Jakes says he “want(s) to work on the front end of destiny not the back end of history.” He is just one voice of many saying if the past can't be changed then let's do what we can for the future.
If we walk by faith, we might even find a way to get in the way. We might find a way to get in good trouble.