Belonging
“Belonging”
Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year B May 13, 2018
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 John 17:6-19
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Have you seen the rainbows we’ve had last week? Have you felt any? I have. Both the storms and the sunshine. It’s one thing to see something like a rainbow. It’s even more intense to experience them in life. Seeing a rainbow, we can talk about water droplets, visible light, refraction, angles, arcs, and other weather aspects or scientific data related to how rainbows form, why they have different colors, that sort of thing. All these would be interesting facts. We could either believe them or not, accept them or reject them, and if we like them, we could even share these facts with others so they might hear and understand what rainbows involve. But would they get the whole picture?
Much of life can only be discovered by living it, rather than told about it. Explaining a rainbow is no substitute for seeing a rainbow in person. Especially if it’s a double rainbow, or if you were in the storm that created the moisture in the air, or if you saw how dark it got as those clouds gathered before unleashing their downpour. Then when the sun comes out, you experience glory. You participate in praise. You are one with the storm, one with the rainbow, one with all there is. In living experience, a rainbow is entirely different than someone sharing ideas and asking, Do you believe in rainbows?
The same is true for faith. As we follow Jesus, learning from the Spirit as we travel on the Way of Christ, as we trust God with our whole being, even as we get tripped up by unseen hazards along the way; it’s one thing to hear about God, and another thing to be in living relationship with God, and still more to realize experientially that God lives inside of us, and even more to make the connection that we are divine beings at our core, and there is no separation, only unity. This Good News is kind of like a beautiful rainbow. It’s one thing to hear about it, maybe you believe it or reject it. It’s another thing if you live through it, learning from the very subtle ways God reveals in mystery, even through the most difficult times. As the life of wisdom reveals, sometimes you can’t breathe deep enough to soak in the awe and wonder; other times it’s all you can do to take the next breath. Life is hard, but God is good.
This morning we hear Jesus talking about being in the world, not of the world, no longer in the world, but followers in the world, but they are not of the world: rather surreal language filled with image and symbol while it’s supported by a foundation of relationship, intimacy, care and devotion, but most of all love. Love is what gives faith it’s strength and power. Love is what changes a weather phenomenon like a rainbow into a promise from a Presence that can be trusted. Love is something that is lived in all it’s complexities and gifts.
Diana Butler Bass wrote a book called Christianity After Religion, the End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. We studied this book in our adult class on Sunday mornings a couple years ago and these text this morning got me thinking about it again as Jesus prays for those God has given him, which could mean the church. Bass talks about the church that we’ve mostly known undergoing a tremendous change, and in this process of Spiritual Awakening, God is at the heart of this transformative work. It is tough, because one thing comes to an end for a new thing to come into being. Even though this is the pattern of all life, it’s still hard.
Bass talks about the church typically being based on these three things, in this order: Belief, Behave, Belong. Christian faith is largely based on doctrines, orthodoxy, which means having the right ideas about God, and coming to an agreement with this in the form of belief. This is largely an idea thing, agreeing with certain concepts or assumptions about who God is, who we are, and how that relationship plays out. Throw into that mix the Soteriology of the Western Church of the Greco-Roman world, and you get Jesus as the Savior because God is wrathful, and we are original sinners who are condemned, other than being saved by Jesus who becomes a divine mediator. Anyway, rather than get caught up on specific doctrines like that, for now let’s just use belief as the catch-all term Diana Butler Bass says is the first aspect of the contemporary Church in most of our experiences of church.
The second thing she lists, after belief, is behaving. If you believe, if you pray the right prayer and have the correct thoughts, you better behave a certain way, which makes Christianity a moral contest, a rules game, a purity code and a witch hunt. Behaving a certain way, living a Christian life is so critical that if you don’t behave properly, you risk the third aspect, belonging. Only those you believe correctly, behave properly, are allowed to belong. If you mess up either of the first two, the third does not work and you are shunned, excluded, killed, demonized, written off as unsaved or other.
Thankfully Bass recognizes that we are in the midst of a movement of God that is unraveling this prevalent form of Church. What is emerging is based on the same things, but as this Spiritual Awakening takes place, the order of these three is changed. Instead of Believe, Behave, Belong that religion tries to promote and institutionalize as church, God is bringing about a faith community that lives out love through Belonging, Behaving, and Believing, in that order.
Belonging is first, because love is unconditional and relationship is primary. Indeed, if we experience faith, which is what mysticism is, experiential faith, then we perceive through our hearts that we are united with all things, and God is in all things, and all things are in God. If God is in all things, then how can something not belong? Everything belongs.
Next is behaving, because once you experience acceptance and love from God and a community showing genuine concern and care as best as they know how to express it, then why would you behave in ways that tarnish this gift? The Ten Commandments, for example, stop being an external list of law and become instead an internalized outcome of a lived faith. They are results of loving and belonging.
Finally there is believing. After the community is formed, as the church lives in love, then we share our experience and through story and partnerships come ways to express what is taking place. These are not ideas about God, but limited metaphors pointing to the mystery of God at work in the midst of the community. In this process we express a wholeness that we would not find individually. In discovering together and sharing what believing involves, it’s as a community that we can confront and overcome that in our world that seeks to challenge God’s authority and divine purpose.
This is why, for example, a letter from a church regarding protecting wilderness carries more weight than a letter from an individual, even if that lone person is sincere and committed. A collective voice is a larger witness. It’s as a group that resources can combine to find strength to do that which an individual just couldn’t afford or be able to carry out. Belief takes shape uniquely in a community’s context, and the larger, overlapping themes of wisdom, grace, and love equip the larger Church in God’s mission in the world. This is also why, for example, that peacemaking becomes a focus. War and violence, intolerance and killing are violations of the image of God present in all things, including our enemies. We love others as ourselves because in God, we are one with the other.
To close, I’d like to read something we have already read, because it helps capture belonging, behaving, belief, and God’s Spirit at work in our lives both individually and as part of the larger cosmic and universal church. It is in the bulletin, the Prayer of Confession, and I’ll restate the words of assurance as well.
O God of all there is, as we come into your Presence, we know more fully who we are. We are those who can never comprehend the whole truth, but sometimes believe that we do- deceiving ourselves in our certainty. We fail to see that we have become captive to our own egos and seduced by false rewards. We claim to be your servants, but narrow your tasks into the dimensions of our own desires. Stay with us in grace, Jesus Christ, and break open the truth before us. Forgive us, and help us be your true servants.
And then I said,
Jesus Christ will never be captured by the forces of judgment and vengeance. God is love and love is of God. The grace of Christ gathers us in, enfolding us into God's wide embrace. We are forgiven! Thanks be to God!
And so as this sermon concludes, we go out to experience the cloudy storms and shining rays, praising God through rainbows and every breath. And I invite us to share this gift as far more than mere words, but a deep, abiding, lived reality: The Peace of Christ be with you. And also with you.
May God be glorified now, even as forever. Amen.