August 30, 2009

Moving Together in the SPIRIT

"A Quaker Church"

Sermon - August 30, 2009

First Friends Meeting
Hebrews 12:1-3
‘Precipitating Faith’
Doug Gwyn

Emile Durkheim was an early pioneer in the field of the sociology – in particular the sociology of religion. Durkheim suggested that all religion is basically ancestor worship. So-called ‘primitive’ religions are often focused on ancestors. For example, the ancient Celts, like my ancestors in Wales, celebrated a fall festival. It underlies our modern-day Halloween. Bonfires were lit, feasts were eaten, and sacrifices were made to the ancestors. You made peace with your ancestors to get their help in surviving the long, dark winter ahead. In other words, you treated them so they didn’t trick you later on.

Well, Durkheim argued that if you scratch the surface a bit, you can find ancestor worship in religions down to this day. It’s not the only thing going on in modern-day religion. But it’s there. We Quakers would have a hard time denying Durkheim’s claim. Some Friends speak with pride of being so-called ‘birthright’ Friends. Some like to recite their long Quaker ancestry. Even those of us who became Friends more recently look to our spiritual ancestors in Quaker history. I, for example, have devoted many years of study and writing to understanding the first Quakers, back in England of the 1600s. We Quakers are fascinated, even devoted, to our spiritual ancestors.

So here we are at First Friends, about to celebrate the Bicentennial of our Meeting. Two hundred years of faithful life and witness here in Richmond, Indiana. That’s something like ten generations. It’s something to celebrate. It’s not two hundred years of perfection. I’m sure there have been confusions, failures of nerve, and wrong turns along the way. But we must have done something right. I’ve been fascinated reading the draft chapters of Lincoln Blake’s history of our Meeting, from 1942 to the present. It’s the story of a congregation continually seeking to rediscover and reclaim its ‘sacred center’ even as the world around us has changed at a mind-bending rate of speed.

And part of savoring and celebrating the past is savoring and celebrating Friends in this Meeting who have been our mentors, friends and collaborators in faith. Barbara Blake’s forthcoming book of personal stories, titled Our Stories, will preserve some of those personal perspectives we cherish so much. Of course, we’ve lost a number of our long-time stalwarts over these past few years. Friends who mentored and modeled and inspired us to go deeper and stretch further in faith. So part of celebrating our 200 years is celebrating the Friends, past and present, who have enriched our lives and deepened our faith over the years.

We might want to put a few hotdogs out on the deck railing on Saturday, the 12th, as a treat for our spiritual ancestors! Maybe they’ll help us through the next one hundred years. I’m only kidding, of course. But perhaps there is some truth to their abiding presence with us. The passage Arlo just read for us is a favorite for many of us. The Letter to the Hebrews celebrates the many centuries of Hebrew-Jewish faith that preceded Jesus. The heroes and heroines whose lives and words defined Israel’s faith in the Lord. The whole of Chapter 11 is devoted to mentioning some of these greats. And so, in Chapter 12, the writer summarizes, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses….” These heroes and heroines of faith, extending back more than a millennium, are some kind of presence around the early Christians – and around us too. A cloud, a nebula, an aura – not easy to point to or define, but something we sense from time to time..

Chapter 11 starts out with that great definition of faith – “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That’s the King James translation of the verse. More recent translations read something like “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” That interpretation began with Luther. Luther emphasized the subjective aspect of faith, what faith feels like in our heart, how it shapes our minds. And that’s important. But that’s not what the Greek really says here. I don’t think it’s what the writer is really getting at. Faith is substance, evidence. Even more than how you feel or what you think, it’s what you do, it’s how you live.

Substance – the Greek word here is hypostasis. The earliest Greek use of that word was scientific and medical. A hypostasis was something solid that precipitates out of a liquid solution. Our feelings and our thoughts swirl around like liquid. But faith is the real substance that precipitates out of that swirl. It’s what we make real with our words and actions.

In the middle of Chapter 11, the writer of Hebrews pauses and reflects on its long list of heroes and heroines of faith. Many of these women and men died without seeing God’s promises fulfilled. Abraham and Sarah didn’t see the Promised Land become theirs, or a great nation rise from their son Isaac. They died long before those things were fulfilled. As Hebrews testifies, such men and women know that they’re strangers and foreigners on the earth. They seek a homeland. Not the one they left behind – they could return there. They desire a better country. This world of injustice, pettiness, violence, prejudice and hatred, war and oppression – this is not home to us when we take the promises of God seriously. We’re strangers and foreigners in this world. This week, as the nation looked back on the life of Ted Kennedy, I heard reporter relate a conversation he had with him. He asked Kennedy why he worked so long and tirelessly in the Senate to help America’s poor. Kennedy replied simply, “Have you never read the New Testament?”

When we take seriously the promises of God, there’s a fire in our hearts that won’t go away. When we realize how faithful God has been to us, we want be faithful to God. When we realize how generous God has been with us, we want to be generous with others. We want to be God’s evidence, God’s substance on earth. Of course, it plays out differently in different people’s lives. Some excel at work for the poor, others in peacemaking. Some in family and community life, others in teaching and other vocations. We have some of that variety just here in our own congregation. “Therefore,” Hebrews concludes, “God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them.”

So there seems to be some kind of residue of faith – some kind of precipitate, some kind of accretion, build-up. Particularly when a community honors its history. When we are mindful and grateful for those who came before, who passed on the torch of faith, to a new generation. You can almost feel that residue, substance of faith in a congregation. Maybe even a building. That’s something Quakers don’t find it easy to think about. We resist the notion of sacred places, and rightly so. But it seems like we can feel something extra in a room where people have worshiped for many years. So of course it was wrenching for this Meeting to let go of the beautiful building that was its home for more than a century. But already within a decade of worship and ministry, I think I sense some build-up in this room. I think the great cloud of witnesses has followed us here.

But the purpose of looking back is that we can look forward again with greater clarity. Hebrews looks back over the great examples of faith for a present and future purpose. The passage this morning proclaims, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Whatever spirits of old Friends and mentors may be with us in this room right now, it’s the Spirit of Jesus that guided them and must continue to guide us today, and into tomorrow. Jesus is the point of all this. Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He’s way back at the beginning of all this, and he’s way ahead at the end of it too. And here in the murky middle, the swirling solution of it all, every step we make in faith presents visible substance to the world of who Christ is in our lives. Every faithful word and act in our lives is evidence. May we continue to add evidence that God is good, that Christ is our hope, and that we are Friends in Truth.

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