Beyond belief

 

1 Corinthians 1: 1-9

verses from The Thunder: Perfect Mind
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
January 15, 2023

Photo of two stained glass windows depicting the Nativity of Jesus and the Adoration of the Shepherds

Since we began livestreaming our worship service from the church building and reopened our doors to in-person worship, people have been saying, “When will people come back to church?” The truth is, most of us never left. Most of us are keeping up our usual habits of church, but now we’re worshiping online, either on Zoom or on Facebook Live, depending on our needs and availability that week. Some of us are attending more often now that we can worship online.



“But it doesn’t feel the same”, we say. The church experience doesn't feel the way it used to. We miss the cohesion that comes from being together in the same physical or online space. For some of us, this uncomfortable feeling of loss has brought us to revisit seminal questions like “Why Church?” “How does Church add value to my life and the life of our community?” “What does it mean to be a Christian?” “What do I actually believe vs. what I have inherited?” “Can I have doubts and questions and still belong?”



It's important to ask these questions because it’s all part of how we grow spiritually, which is one of the main reasons why we have Church in the first place. We won’t arrive at the same answers nor should we. The United Church of Christ is a non-credal church, that is, there is no one set of beliefs that we must adhere to in order to belong or call ourselves Christian, regardless of what anyone else might say. This has led to some humorous interpretations of what the abbreviation UCC stands for: Unitarians Considering Christ, Utterly Confused Christians, or my favorite, Unlimited Coffee and Cookies, but even that last one stings a bit since we haven’t had coffee hour in three years.



What makes a faith community cohesive, feel connected? Is it what we believe or is it how we want to live? Is it possible to believe what our heart tells us is true but live together in such a way that is life-giving to everyone, especially the most vulnerable and oppressed among us and around us? Is it possible for us to be Church in ways that straight White Jesus is not?



Early communities of people who followed the Way of Jesus, like the one in Corinth in Greece, were asking and struggling with their own questions. Even though Paul referred to them as ekklesia, the Greek word that has come to refer to church, meaning ‘called out’, these early gatherings did not resemble what we are familiar with. The community in Corinth consisted mostly of Gentile Christians, Greeks who were already familiar with ekklesia, with assemblies of people who came together to discuss philosophy, offer libations to their gods, and eat a meal together with meat that had been sacrificed at the local temple of their deity. The smaller group of Jewish Christians in the Corinthian church considered such activities to be idolatrous, as did Paul, and later in the letter he names idolatry as their most pressing problem.



Imagine being an early follower of Jesus in the Roman Empire. You never met Jesus. He’s been gone about 20-25 years; you’ve only heard stories, maybe from Peter if you’re lucky but mostly second and third hand. Maybe your community has a few scrolls of the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek. The only newest piece of instruction or witness you have is a few letters from Paul that get passed around and read aloud from time to time. No gospels have yet to be written—maybe just a few sayings or some parables.



You’ve got some idea about who or what God is, you know some teachings and stories about Jesus, but what on earth is the Holy Spirit? You’ve heard Paul talk about the Spirit but it still isn’t clear to you who or what it is. Even about 250 years later in a place called Nicea and 125 years after that in Chalcedon and then ever after, people will argue about who or what the trinity is and the nature of Jesus’ divinity and humanity, and how the Spirit is the means by which all life comes into being.



But there are also all these other writings and stories and ideas about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, to be a human being in community with other human beings, to have some notion of what it means to be created in the divine image. Maybe you’ve heard pieces of this long poem or song entitled The Thunder: Perfect Mind, written in Egypt and found centuries later in 1945 with other early Christian writings as part of the Nag Hammadi library. It’s a confusing piece of work, but it liberates you out of what you think you know.



“I am the first and the last.
…I am the bride and the bridegroom
And it is my husband who gave birth to me
I am my father’s mother,
My husband’s sister, and he is my child
I am the slave woman of him who served me
I am she, the lord
Of my child
I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name”



It’s not so strange to hear the divine referred to as both ‘she’ and ‘he’ because you know of the pantheon of gods that point to a deeper unknown reality. You’ve heard Paul talk about Jesus as Wisdom—Sophia in Greek—and so have no difficulty thinking of Jesus as both feminine and masculine and perhaps beyond the limitations of gender.



This Thunder commands your attention: “Don’t ignore me any place, any time/Be careful. Do not ignore me”. Don’t think you can pin me down, she says. She is honored and mocked, celebrated and humiliated. She is all these contradictions and yet is she is one. If we have a particular idea of who God is, how will we know God is still speaking if we are only listening for what we know, what we recognize?



After centuries of trying to define the Christian faith, declaring what is heresy and what is orthodox, what is choice and what is correct opinion, after joining hands with empire and trying to unify belief under one banner, sometimes violently, we are just as disparate and free-thinking as ever. Just as the Corinthians in their time, there are also times we have made our own thoughts about faith and its practice into an idol.



In his book A New Christianity for a New World, John Shelby Spong wrote, “In the Christian West today, we are far too sophisticated to erect idols of wood or stone and call them our gods. We know that such an activity no longer has credibility. In our intellectual arrogance, however, we Westerners — especially the Christian theologians among us – have time after time erected idols out of our words and then claimed for those words the ability to define the holy God. We have also burned at the stake people who refused to acknowledge the claim that God and our definitions of God were one and the same. Truth now demands that we surrender these distorting identifications forever.”



Questions are not only welcome here, they are also encouraged. As for answers, they are many and varied, and “I don’t know” is as valid as any of them. So where does faith come in? In the uncertainty, the unknown, that which is beyond belief, beyond words that is also made known through us and through our life together. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of that which is unseen.” Who or what is the authority in our lives and in our life together? That is what is currently being pondered and discussed and argued as well as resisted and controlled and reduced in every aspect of human life.



So, I will leave you with a question, a thought to consider: What would it mean for you, for me, for our life together for freedom to be an image of God?

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Stars, moons, mystics,
ocean tides, squawking birds,
earthworms turning over soil.

Go forth blessed in your Holy Interdependence.
For, even amidst sorrow, Love unfolds within and without.

Let us Become with God 

Who Becomes with us.