Seeing and Notseeing Is Believing, October 19, 2008

Exodus 33
Matthew 22:15-24
Yesterday, I was at our sons' Parents weekend, where we heard the former Majority leader of the US Senate Dr. Bill Frist speaking about economic development in Underdeveloped countries. After the lecture I introduced myself and described we had created a Clinic in South Sudan and provided for it for two years. He responded dismissively “O yes, religious groups have done a number of wonderful things.”

I was speaking with someone on the Nominating Committee the other day about the church, who described “We've created a very fragile, dangerous consortium. All these separate cliques, side by side. We know that in other times the church has been divided against itself. The world has so many different people's of differing cultures, differing nationalities, ages, orientations, all of which seem to be in competition. It's going to take a firm and authoritative hand to keep all these divergent groups working together!” And we are diverse , we claim that diversity as a value, trying to be as diverse and mutli-talented as possible, but, it doesn't take a heavy hand. What is required is an ABIDING PRESENCE, a covenant that we will trust one another and trust God; the presence of the holy and the presence of one another, that we can be the body of Christ in this place and time, together.

There are those among us who are rationalists, who know that SEEING is BELIEVING, we want to build success upon success, accomplishment upon accomplishment, to invest only in that which can guarantee a sound future.
There are also those among us, who theorize that for BELIEF to be Belief, our BELIEF must be in WHAT IS NOT SEEN. Science, Law and Physics can determine the mathematic probability of every contingency, but there are limits to our knowledge, limits to what we can prove, there are also times when rationalism and pragmatism and technology are simply too stiff, too cold and practical when we need human touch and re-assurance, support and prayer, at which point we BELIEVE because the alternative is hopelessness or a reliance on fate.
There are also those Second Grade Grammar teachers among us, who will insist that we need to use the plural adjective, that rather than SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING, What is proper is that SEEING and NOT SEEING ARE BELIEVING, but it is precisely the interplay and juxtaposition of these TWO as ONE where faith is alive and real. SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING.

If the Bell Choir were each to play all their notes all at the same time, or even as ever each chose to do, there would be sound, there might even on occasion be chords, but we would not call this music. ONLY when every one of the choir have rehearsed together and built trust in one another, being there when needed and having made mistakes, as well as the power and presence of silence, does music resonate.

Last week we read together that the people became anxious because of the delay of Moses on the mountain. The people wanted predictability, wanted a guarantee that WHEN I pray, my wishes will be answered. When I make an offering, I will get what I desire. SO they made an Idol, the GOLDEN CALF. Moses came down the mountain and broke the calf, naming that what they had done was to repeat the Sin of Adam and Eve in Genesis, because they chose to do for themselves as if God did not exist. Moses then went back up the Mountain at Horeb and God says “GO on Your Way, take the people” Go to the Promised Land and get it over with. To which Moses says NO LORD, Not without you. There can be CHEAP GRACE, where we rush to get to the end, where we accept without understanding or forgiveness, without claiming and accepting all that has gone along, but the point is not to GET LIFE OVER WITH.

In the late 1980s, George Steiner, Cultural Critic and Philosopher of Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia, went so far as to describe that every great work of ART, all great LITERATURE deals with the SEARCH for “LIFE, DEATH and GOD”, everything of worth in culture is a transcendent journey that without God is humanly impossible. We could send rockets to the moon, but there would be no questioning of WHY, no search for anything beyond ourselves, without God being part of our lives. An artist can follow all the rules to technically paint or sculpt like one of the Masters, but without faith, without conviction and calling, life would lack passion, life would lack meaning. We can marry and have children, but how different the experience when we come together with shared hopes and dreams and belief in the impossible. We pace the floor at night with our children wishing we could take away the ear ache, make the cancer vanish, allow them to succeed, and where life fails to struggle and wonder, WHY GOD?

Moses does what neither Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac or Jacob had done before him. All the Patriarchs had encountered God, responded to God's call, walked with God, and struggled with faith when circumstances did not fall their way; but most were like Jonah wishing they could get away from God, only to discover that they could not, so they would do as God commands. Moses demands that God be in his life. Moses demands that life, that marriage and the community, and the raising of children, the daily and lifelong struggles, all of it, all of life, WHAT IS SEEN & UNSEEN, be HOLY.

I am convinced that there are painful times in life, which God uses. I would not go so far as to blame God for causing suffering in the world; but that there are times when our lives, our understanding and knowledge and schedules are SO FULL, we have left no time or space for what is holy, that we are humbled. And in those struggles, the car accident that almost killed us... the economic collapse that means we cannot retire to do as we wanted to do, but instead must continue to be of service... the doubts of fidelity that we realize there is GOD in our lives. In the silence and in the struggle, and the juxtaposition of the two, there is FAITH.

The Ancient Empire of Rome was in many ways the cultural opposite of our own time, not that one is good and the other bad, both have their limitations. But in our time and culture, it would be rare and odd for a person to stop in the midst of their work to pray. Often when greeting folk on Sunday morning, they will comment on the weather, and I will respond “GOD DOES GOOD WORK” and they will look at me as if humorous. It is as if, Faith in God is safe so long as it is kept within this house of worship, within Sunday morning. In the Ancient Roman World, they would be equally PROFANED if you brought something worldly into Religion. Religion was a place for faith in the UNSEEN, the MYTHIC and MYSTIC and SPIRITUAL, and to bring logic, or reason, or world events, into a house of worship was seen as evil. In the Ancient Roman Empire, the culture had so legislated the difference between what is SEEN what is REAL IN THE WORLD and WHAT is UNSEEN/ what is of God, that you were required to use different money in worship than in the culture. As a Roman Society, you paid taxes, you bought and sold and traded in ROMAN Currency. But within a Temple, you made an offering with a living thing, if you had come a great distance and could not or had not brought a heifer or a goat, you could buy them, BUT you had to use TEMPLE CURRENCY not Roman Coinage. Like going through International Customs you traded all the Roman currency you had on you so as to bring nothing worldly into this place, and when you left you sold or gave away everything of the Temple so as to take nothing out into the real world. The Pharisees ask a POINTLESS Question, IS IT LEGAL TO PAY TAXES? Not is it Righteous, is it faithful, is it moral or ethical, or As a man of faith is it WRONG to support the Government...but is it LEGAL. And Jesus replies, by saying I do not have a Coin of the Empire, do any of you? When they produce one, they have already “Profaned Themselves” by having brought that thing into this place.

But he goes further, to question the inscription and picture on it. At which point, he is naming this challenge as a Question of AUTHORITY. The question is not whether it is legal or right to have to pay taxes, but if you have to give to both, which is more important, what is the greatest authority in our lives? And they describe that the image of Caesar is on the coin, to which Jesus claims and you are created in the image of God, so render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God.

The issue of our times is not Should we go into despair over the Market, nor Can we continue living Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow we may die, WE DO NEED to change our priorities and question what is of greatest value, but in that profess we are created in the image of God.