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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
October 26, 2003"Training in Christianity"
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
A Christian friend of mine who travels in largely secular circles recently expressed to me his exasperation with the media. He felt that journalists, when they want news about Christianity always seem to cite the most extreme sources!
Some wild-eyed fundamentalist is quoted first; then, a maverick skeptical bishop is interviewed to provide "balance." No position in between is ever cited.
Such selective quotation implies that our religion itself is extreme -- meant for people who are slightly crazy! Careful, nuanced interpretations of faith never seem to make headlines.
So while commentators in the media may talk about "Christians" believing one thing or another, those of us who are practicing Christians find that we don't ourselves hold views remotely similar to those mentioned in the media.
Take the Bible. Most Christians believe that the Bible has been inspired by God and contains necessary truth for human happiness. At the same time, most of us don't believe every word in the Bible to be literally true.
In fact, I would guess that educated Christians in every phase of the Church's history have been well aware of the Bible's limitations. They knew that the 66 books of the Bible were written by human beings; they knew that many passages in Scripture were influenced and distorted by the time and place they were written.
Thus the Bible's occasionally speaks of stars and planets but it doesn't mention galaxies and black holes!
I admit that talk about educated people seems to imply there are two versions of Christianity: a simple version, and a sophisticated one.
In fact, today's First Lesson, appears to make just such a distinction. The Letter to the Hebrews distinguishes between "milk" and "solid food."
According to the author of the text, "Milk" represents "the basic elements of the oracles of God" -- the simplest parts of faith. Solid food, on the other hand, "is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil."
Now, of course, in one sense this distinction is dubious. All Christians are equal in the sight of God. And if most of us Christians would like to consider ourselves "mature," we still are capable of behaving in childish ways!
Yet the real point of the text is that faith asks us to move forward. For all Christians, new and old, simple and sophisticated, Christianity is ever-changing -- a complex, difficult and varied combination of beliefs and practices.
Maturing in the faith doesn't mean you move "higher" than someone who is "simple." But it does mean that you grow in your experience of the deepest mysteries of faith.
We all begin with the milk of simple ideas and religious rules; but while we never can never forget these rules, we also need to learn to deal with life's hard cases -- cases that don't fit these rules. These problems require the "solid food" of spiritual instinct. They require what the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called, "training in Christianity."
Now the idea that we need training is quite obvious in other areas of human life. A person who has just purchased his first computer recognizes quite soon that he needs a basic knowledge of how to operate the machine.
So he may call in a more experienced computer user to teach him the fundamentals, the "milk" of basic computer science. Only when those fundamentals are learned will the beginner be ready to advance to the "solid food" of more advanced computer skills.
It is just such complexities of training in Christianity that we need in approaching the demanding texts in the Bible. We can't appreciate the spiritual wisdom found in Scripture if all we do is simply leaf through it once in a while.
We need to study the Scripture first hand for it to change our souls. As the Prayer Book says, Bible texts are to be "read," they are to be "learned," they are to be "marked" and they are to be "inwardly digested."
Even experienced preachers spend a great deal of time pondering a text. Many read scholarly commentaries before trying to speak about a lesson, because language, archaeology and history are all needed if we are to glimpse the meaning of the ancient Book.
In fact, lack of such intellectual work can keep people from appreciating even the simple truths of Christianity. It's particularly sad that many people reject Christianity without having really understood it-they have never tried to interpret its more challenging ideas-like its ideas about God, or its vision of human community, or its promise of new life.
Nor have they appreciated that interpretation requires, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, "faith and patience."
Training in Christianity takes faith and patience. The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams is a fine example of a church leader who refuses to speak in simplistic sound bites!
He knows that the advance from milk to solid food is a difficult one. His particular awareness of the need for spiritual growth may have come from his deep study of Spanish mystics such as St. John of the Cross.
These mystics spoke of the "dark night of the soul." And Archbishop Williams stresses that such experiences of dryness, of depression, even of doubt are almost predictable. They happen to everyone as they advance in the spiritual life. They're an essential part of "training in Christianity."
As St. John of the Cross says in his book on the dark night of the soul: "It is well for those who find themselves in this condition to take comfort and to persevere in patience. Let them trust in God, Who abandons not those that seek Him with a simple and right heart, and who will not fail to give them what is needful for the road, until He brings them into the clear and pure light of love."
St. John's of the Cross's advice is to "persevere in patience" through the dark night. One hopes Archbishop Williams, too, takes this lesson to heart as people from all over the world give him their ideas of what constitutes the "solid food" of Christianity!
Yet, how much we all need to learn about our faith: about our fellow Christians throughout the world; about prayer, about dark nights of the soul.
This solid food we get from spiritual work gives us training for the perplexities of life. And, as St. John noted, once in a while, spiritual growth may even leads us to the "clear and pure light of love."
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.