Sin Is Not About Sex or Dessert

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 
Romans 5:1

In Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome, he argues that God’s grace is always greater than our sin.

Sin and grace are ancient words of the faith.  But they sound oddly out of place in modern life. “Amazing Grace” is not only the most popular hymn for Christians, it is probably the most popular song on the planet.  But that does not mean we are comfortable with grace.  And before we can really understand grace, we need to understand sin.

Contrary to what we see in the popular culture, sin is not about dessert and it is not about sex.

Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth (or any other) century, argues that another word for sin is separation.  In his famous sermon, “You Are Accepted,” he contends that to be in a state of sin is to be in a state of separation: separation from God, from others, and from ourselves.

Just as we cannot be born without separating from our mothers, so we cannot exist without separation from our essence, which is with God.  Existence necessarily means separation and estrangement.  We are not only separated from God’s being, we are also separated from God’s will.  And we know that.  If we were not separated from God’s will, then we would never do things to hurt others and ourselves.

We know that we are also separated from others.  That is obvious physically.  But it is more than that.  

Immanuel Kant once said with courageous honesty, that there is something in the misfortune of our closest friends that does not displease us.  When something bad happens to someone else, we are sad, but we are also relieved.  Somewhere deep inside a voice echoes: “Thank goodness it wasn’t me.”  “. . . it’s not my child.”

But our situation is deeper than that.  Our separation is greater.  

One of the hardest things for those who have lost a loved one is that life goes on all around as if nothing had happened.  Even close friends soon go back to their own business.  

Those who have lost a parent, or a child, or a spouse, or a close friend are left alone.  Sometimes people ask why he or she doesn’t “get over it.”  When we are grieving, we feel as if the world should stop, at least for an instant.  But it goes on, as if nothing had happened.  We are separated from one another.  We are estranged.

We are also separated from ourselves, from our best selves.  Sometimes we experience this acutely and we say that we don’t know who we are.  Or when we do something which we know is wrong, we say, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”  In the story of the Prodigal Son, Jesus tells us that “when he came to himself” the son decided to return home.

Grace is the opposite of sin.  If sin is separation, then grace is union, or more accurately, reunion.  By God’s grace we are reunited with God, with others, and with our selves.

The word which Paul Tillich uses to help us understand the working of grace, is acceptance.  To experience God’s grace, is to be accepted by God.  God’s acceptance of us enables us to accept others, and even to accept ourselves.

For many years I have used this concept of acceptance as the basis of a benediction.  The general idea came from my late friend and mentor, Bill Ziegler.  To be honest, I cannot say precisely how what I say differs from what he said, and I don’t think that the differences are terribly important.

It begins with the proclamation of God’s grace:

I send you forth with Good News.

That God loves you.

And accepts you just the way you are.

This acceptance is not something we have earned.  It is not something which God will give us after we fulfill certain requirements, after we have been to counseling, or lost weight, or conquered our bad habits.  It is a gift.  And real gifts have no conditions.  God takes us as we are.

This does not mean that we should not change and grow.  I have a long list of things I want to change or improve about myself.  And my family could probably give me an even longer list.  There are plenty of things in our lives that we ought to change in order to become what God calls us to be, but that change and growth is not a condition of God’s acceptance.

The same thing is true in our personal relationships, with children and parents, with spouses and friends.  It is hard for people to change unless they are accepted as they are.  It is that unconditional acceptance, that gift, which gives us the freedom to change and grow.  The gift of acceptance makes me want to change and grow, and that gift also makes it possible.

God’s acceptance is personal.  God loves you and accepts you.  This is not just a general statement.  It is specific and personal.  It is addressed to individuals.

And by that love and acceptance,

calls to you and to me

to accept this day

and this life

as God’s gift.

This is the challenge.  God’s gift calls for a response.  As God accepts us, so we are called to accept, and affirm, and claim, the life that God has given us.

That is not easy.  Unless we are remarkably comfortable, it is not always easy to affirm life as a gift.  When I look out on Sunday morning and see the hurt and grief that people bring to church with them, and realize that there are other hurts that I don’t know about, it would not surprise me at all, if, from time to time, people looked up and thought to themselves, “easy for you to say!”

There are many times when life does not feel like a gift.  And at certain points in my life as a pastor, I have thought that perhaps I should send folks out with some other word.  When people are hurting, what right do I have to tell them that life is a gift?

I felt that concern acutely during the many months that a young friend was struggling with cancer.  But when we were planning his memorial service, he told me specifically that he wanted me to use that benediction.  “I love that,” he said.  “I want you to remind people that God loves them.  And life is a gift.”

We are often more comfortable with yesterday, and we may be more hopeful about tomorrow.  But today is what God has given us, and today is what we are called to live.

To live it to the full.

And we are called to “live it to the full.”  Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.  The apostle Paul said that we are more than survivors.  Our challenge is not simply to endure.  He insisted that we are “more than conquerors” through God’s love.  The great Methodist evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, said that Christians are called to “victorious living.”

Several years ago Bishop Dale White gave a wonderful sermon at the Memorial Service at Annual Conference.  He used Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and his text was “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!”  

He recalled hearing Dr. Christian Barnard, the pioneering heart surgeon talk about joy and suffering.  Dr. Barnard spoke of visiting two children in South Africa.  One little boy had lost his eyesight when his father, in a drunken rage, threw a kerosene lamp at him.  Now the plastic surgeons were rebuilding his face.  The other little boy could not walk and had both legs in a cast after several operations.  

When he opened the door to the children’s ward, the nurses were out of the room and these two boys had commandeered a food cart.  One could not see and the other could not walk, but together they careened around the ward at high speed, to the squealing delight of the other children.  

Before Dr. Barnard could think of how to restore order, they crashed into the brick wall at the far end of the ward.  The dishes clattered to the floor and it was a mess.  But the boys were thrilled.  

As he pulled them up, they were laughing and smiling, and one of them proclaimed, “Did you see that?  We won!”

They were winning the race of life.  They were living victoriously, in spite of the odds.

To share God’s love and hope and joy 

with one another.

Finally, we are called “to share God’s love and hope and joy with one another.”  We do this poorly, even on our best days.  But it is still what we are called to do.  And we know that there are times, when we look at one another, when we listen to one another, that God’s grace comes alive for us. What more important work could we have than that?  What greater witness could we give to the Gospel?

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Doctrine Is Not Our Saving Grace

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

William Willimon, the most widely published United Methodist Bishop, retired from his episcopal responsibilities and returned to teaching at Duke Divinity School in 2012. The Christian Century marked his retirement with a wide ranging interview covering a wide spectrum of topics relating to the work of a bishop and the ministry of the United Methodist Church.

He was asked whether in his role as Bishop he would have removed a pastor who had “recanted doctrinal vows he or she had solemnly pledged to honor.” “Absolutely,” said Willimon, “tell me you have misgivings about the Trinity or trouble believing in the bodily resurrection and I’ll help you find less intellectually challenging work—like being a Republican candidate for president.”

Throughout his career, Willimon has been known more for his wit than his wisdom, and if one assumes that he was trying to be funny about the Republican candidates, then maybe he was just kidding in his doctrinal illustration.

If he wasn’t kidding, then it’s troubling to think that having “misgivings about the Trinity or trouble believing in the bodily resurrection” would be grounds for dismissing a pastor. (Didn’t he read Paul Tillich’s “Dynamics of Faith,” or does he think the greatest theologian of the twentieth century was wrong about doubt being a necessary part of faith?)

But setting Tillich aside, Methodists have never been greatly concerned about doctrine. We are united in a general affirmation that Jesus is the Christ, but widely divided about precisely what that means.

And more seriously, if “misgivings” can be grounds for dismissal, then it will be difficult to have really honest conversation with one’s bishop, who is supposed to be a “pastor to the pastors.”

But there’s more.

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday. I’m guessing that the average United Methodist lay person doesn’t know that and doesn’t care. The Trinity has a strong tradition as church doctrine, but it is connected to the biblical witness of the early church by the thinnest threads of biblical evidence.

The Trinity does represent an important truth: we experience God in different ways. The traditional formulation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reminds us that we experience God as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

And if we don’t understand the Trinity, how will we ever make sense of Don McLean’s “American Pie” reference to “the three men I admire most”?

But to the average person, the doctrine of the Trinity often sounds like a belief in three gods, rather than three experiences of the One.

Willimon’s second example of denying a doctrine is described as “having trouble believing in the bodily resurrection.” Nothing is more central to Christian faith than the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels are written by people who are convinced that they have met the risen Christ. That encounter vindicates everything that Jesus taught. They are clear that they are not just talking about a memory, and they have not encountered a ghost. His presence is real.

Expressing that reality in a way that it can be understood is not easy.

Clearly, we are not talking about a resuscitated corpse, but the Gospel descriptions never confront the issue head on. We see an empty tomb and we hear a voice. He approaches two of them on the road to Emmaus, and they talk for hours before they recognize him in the breaking of bread. When Paul describes his encounter on the road to Damascus, he claims that the appearance to him is just the same as previous appearances to other disciples. There are no words to describe the experience which has turned their world upside down.

More than half a century ago, Paul Tillich published a sermon called, “The Yoke of Religion,” using the text from Matthew cited above. He argued that Jesus had come to free us from that “yoke.” And he described the predicament of modern “man” this way:

“The religious law demands that he accept ideas and dogmas, that he believe in doctrines and traditions, the acceptance of which is the condition of his salvation from anxiety, despair and death. So he tries to accept them, although they may have become strange or doubtful to him. He labors and toils under the religious demand to believe things he cannot believe.”

In Tillich’s time, there were many church goers who labored and toiled under the religious demand to believe things they could not believe. In our time some of those people are searching desperately for a way to reconcile their faith with ancient doctrines, while many others simply leave the church. For such people, a pastor with “misgivings” about those doctrines may be exactly what they need.

When Jesus called his disciples, he did not demand that they believe something, only that they follow him. That is still our invitation.

*This is revised from a post first published on June 1, 2012.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

John Silber and Bad Theology

Marsh Chapel with Memorial to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the foreground.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD your God is One. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9

On a beautiful day in early September in 1971 I sat in Marsh Chapel for the first time. Dean Walter Muelder smiled warmly as he welcomed the new class of students to Boston University School of Theology and introduced us to the incoming University President, John Silber. He spoke of Dr. Silber’s study of Kant’s philosophy, of the great leadership he had shown in his previous position at the University of Texas, of his intellect and his commitment to learning.

We gave him a standing ovation. 

And while we were still standing, Dr. Silber began to speak.

There were many, he said, who questioned whether the study of theology should even be part of a university or whether it might more appropriately be left  to what he called “the backwaters of civilization.”

I did not have a warm feeling.

We stood, awkwardly, waiting politely for him to indicate that we could be seated. He just kept talking. A few people sat down, but that seemed impolite. 

President Silber posed a question and asked for a show of hands. “How many of you believe that God exists?”

I was new to the study of theology, but I had read enough of Paul Tillich to know that the question was very poorly phrased. Existence is a limited and contingent category. God cannot “exist” in the way that other people and animals and things exist.

Reluctantly, I raised my hand. 

“I see,” said President Silber, “Now, how many of you believe that you can answer that question through rational inquiry?”

I lowered my hand. 

“Theoretically,” he said, we should see at least as many hands as before, plus a few who do not presently believe in the existence of God but are willing to submit that belief to rational inquiry and academic study.”

No, I thought. Wrong again. This is not a question that can be answered through academic research or analysis. It’s an existential question. What we can do intellectually is to frame the question, and put ourselves in a position to answer it in our lives.

Then Dr. Muelder interrupted and invited us to be seated. The Dean was no longer smiling.

And all at once, that was my introduction to Boston University School of Theology, John Silber, and bad theology.

My first impression of President Silber was confirmed by his relentless antipathy toward the School of Theology. My impression of Dean Muelder as an academic functionary was completely wrong. It did not take long for me to realize that he had an incredible grasp of philosophy and theology and could bring that to bear on any discussion or inquiry. 

But I totally missed the significance of John Silber’s question.

I had been exposed to bad theology before. I probably heard some of it from well-meaning adults. I certainly heard it from other children in elementary school, and I’m sure I offered my own versions back to them. 

But this was the first time I heard bad theology from a well-educated adult, and I did not recognize how much of a problem that would become. 

To be fair, it could have been a lot worse. Silber did not ask, “How many of you believe in a god?” 

I’m not sure how we got there, but that’s where we are. The truth is that even within the church, we do not do theology very well anymore.

Paul Tillich pointed out that when we speak of “God,” we are always speaking symbolically. We do not really have a word for that reality. And so he spoke of God as the Ground of Being, Being Itself, and Ultimate Reality. 

Tillich liked to speak of faith rather than belief, because believing is generally associated with a conviction or certainty that something is true although it cannot be proven. Faith, for Tillich, is ultimate concern; it is being grasped by ultimate questions.

But setting aside Tillich’s aversion to the word “belief.”

We do not believe in “a god.” 

We do not even believe in “a God.” 

We believe in God.

Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment here or on Facebook. Please feel free to share on social media.

The Eternal Now: Science and Theology

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. 
I Corinthians 15:51

Science and theology are not natural enemies.

They work with the same subject matter. Both begin with the observation of the world around us. 

And each is focused on big ideas.

One focuses on how the world works and the other focuses on what it means. But those distinctions are not as clearly delineated as one might suppose. There is natural overlap and there is also intentional overlap. And some conflict is probably inevitable.

But lately the conflict has been fairly acrimonious. We tend to forget that although there have been many famous conflicts across the centuries, science and theology have also been understood at many points as complementary disciplines. And they ought to be complementary disciplines.

The blame for our current state is broadly shared. The present conflict began a little over a century ago when the Fundamentalists began to push back against the theory of evolution and assert that the creation story in Genesis was a scientific document. It was both bad science and bad theology, but it provided the foundation for biblical literalism and a simplistic view of the world which has been surprisingly popular. It is so popular that more people believe in creationism today than fifty years ago.

The pushback against Fundamentalism and biblical literalism has found its voice in what we call the “New Atheism” of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and others. It is hard to blame anyone for pushing back against the anti-scientific (and anti-intellectual) views of the biblical literalists, but the New Atheists have been as ignorant about theology as the biblical literalists have been about science.

Given this background, I was pleased to receive an article from one of my atheist friends, written by physicists Bob Berman and Robert Lanza and titled, “There Is No Death, Only a Series of Eternal ‘Nows’.”

Berman and Lanza want to tell us what will happen when we die. 

And the good news is that we don’t. We don’t really die. 

They begin with what they call the “scientific view of death,” which they summarize as “essentially, you drop dead and that’s the end of everything. This is the view favored by intellectuals who pride themselves on being stoic and realistic enough to avoid cowardly refuge in Karl Marx’s spiritual ‘opium’ – the belief in an afterlife.”

“This modern view,” they observe dryly, “is not a cheerful one.”

But they have an alternative: “our theory of the universe, called biocentrism, in which life and consciousness create the reality around them, has no space for death at all.”

Death has no reality because time is an illusion. What is real is now. And, as the title of the article suggests, we live in a series of eternal nows.

Their argument goes deep into the realm of theoretical physics, but is written in a style that is accessible to the non-scientist.

I was fascinated first by the title. Paul Tillich wrote a famous sermon called, “The Eternal Now,” which is included in a book by the same title. And the idea is central to Tillich’s theology.

As I read the article, I was reminded of the Process Theology of Charles Hartshorne and John Cobb. 

In Hartshorne’s book, “The Logic of Perfection,” he wrote about his understanding of death in a way that complements the view of Berman and Lanza. “It is a truism,” writes Hartshone, “though one often forgotten, that whatever death may mean it cannot mean that a person is first something real and then something unreal.”

Berman and Lanza conclude by recounting what Albert Einstein wrote when his lifelong friend Michele Besso died in 1955: “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

It is unlikely that the conflict between science and theology will be resolved any time soon (although I could argue that for me it is already resolved in this eternal now). But I cannot help hoping. 

And I have this image, always a favorite, from that iconic scene at the end “Casablanca.” The cynical American, Rick Blaine, links arms with the corrupt French police sergeant Renault. And as they walk off into the fog to begin their unlikely partnership fighting against the Nazis, Rick says,  "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."   

What Does It Mean to Say We Believe in God?

Paul Tillich

Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:13-14

It happens more often than you might think. I am at a party or some casual event, and someone finds out that I am a pastor. After a short explanation of what it is about churches which keeps this person away, he (most of the time it is a guy) says awkwardly, “Well, anyway, could you put in a good word for me with ‘The Man Upstairs’?” At which point I am tempted to say, “As a pastor, I think it is my duty to tell you that ‘The Man Upstairs’ is a figment of your imagination.”

To get a sense of what an absurd image of God that is, picture Moses at the burning bush. And remember, this story dates back more than three thousand years. This is a primitive story told by primitive people. Here is Moses, tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, in Midian. He sees a burning bush. At this point, we modern people want to interrupt and point out that bushes don’t burn like that, but let the story go. [If you are fixed on the question of how the bush could burn like that, I will refer you to my wife, the geologist. Elaine says that there are natural gas vents in that area which could have produced approximately the phenomena recorded in the story.]

Moses stops to look at the bush and hears the voice of God, calling him to go back to Egypt and lead his people to freedom. Moses says no. He can’t do it. It is impossible. “Who am I,” he asks, “that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” They argue. God persists and finally Moses agrees. But he wants a name for this presence which has confronted him. God has already declared, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebecca, of Jacob and Rachel.” Moses wants more than that. “What shall I say,” he demands, “when they ask who sent me?” And God says, “I AM WHO I AM.” And finally, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

It is a magnificent scene, and it reveals in this primitive people, a depth of theological understanding which we moderns are hard pressed to match. Could you possibly imagine that story ending with God declaring to Moses, “Tell them ‘The Man Upstairs’ has sent me to you”?

The cosmic “I AM,” the Creator of heaven and earth, is not to be confused with something as small as “The Man Upstairs.”

The great theologian, Paul Tillich, speaks of God as “the Ground of Being” or “Being itself.” “The Man Upstairs” is too small, too tame, too limited to be anything more than a figment of our imaginations.

Where does that leave us? As thoughtful Christians, what do we mean when we speak of God?

1. We begin with experience. The Bible was not written to convince us that God is real, nor was it written as an affirmation of faith. It is the story of the people of God, a record of their (our) experiences. In the Bible, faithful men and women are telling us how they have experienced God. The writers don’t start with their beliefs, they start with their experiences.

What fundamentally differentiates Christians and Jews (and Muslims, in many respects) from other members of our culture, is not in the first instance our belief. What makes us different is our experience.

On January 1, 2000, Elaine and Carolyn and I spent the first day of the New Millennium in Georgetown, Maine. We got up before sunrise and drove to Five Islands, and went down on the dock, and watched the sun come up out of the water where the Sheepscott River runs into the Atlantic Ocean. Then we drove to Reid State Park and walked out on Griffith’s Head. It was spectacular. It was almost perfect. The water was beautiful. The sky was clear blue. The sun, coming up out of the ocean, was so dramatic. There were perhaps a dozen people walking on the beach or sitting on the rocks. There was a family cooking breakfast on a camp stove. Even the little dog with the red bow was magnificent. If the family with the little dog, cooking breakfast on the top of Griffith’s Head had invited us to join them, it would have been absolutely perfect. It was so close.

As I stood there, taking in the incredible beauty and majesty of that scene, I was overwhelmed. And I thought, if I could just take everybody there; if you could see it as I saw it, I wouldn’t need to preach a sermon. Ever again.

One of the best known verses from both Psalms and Proverbs is usually translated as, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” But a better understanding of that verse is not “fear,” but “awe.” Awe of the Lord, wonder, amazement, this is the beginning of wisdom.

We begin with wonder and amazement, at sunrise and sunset, at the change of the seasons, at birth and death. The starry night and the bright sunlight both speak to us of wonder.

2. The order of the universe is amazing. There are some who say, “I would believe in God if there were some sign, some miracle, some supernatural occurrence.” They are looking for something which contradicts the natural order. I have to confess, I am just the opposite. For me, the ordinary is extraordinary. The order of the universe is a miracle of cosmic proportions.

I had a high school physics teacher by the name of Harry Drew. Mr. Drew was a wonderful teacher. On a fairly regular basis, he would ask us, “Did you ever think what would happen if ice were heavier than water? If ice formed at the bottom of the pond, do you know what would happen?” My classmates and I were not nearly as amazed by this as he thought we should be. He would glare at us, clearly appalled at our adolescent indifference, but with a twinkle in his eye as if he were enjoying some intergalactic joke which we didn’t get. Then he would lean forward and say softly, “Everything in the pond would die.”

The order of the universe is amazing. We often think of miracles as events which contradict the natural order. But the greatest miracle is the order itself. And miracles may best be understood as ordinary events through which we see the eternal presence of God. A miracle is an ordinary event which is transparent to the eternal.

3. Life has meaning. When we say that we believe in God, we are saying that we believe life has meaning. There is depth. It isn’t all shallow.

Elaine used to say of my Grandfather Gibbs, that it was wonderful to tell him stories because when you told him a story it seemed to take on greater importance. In the telling, it became more than it otherwise would have been. Events had meaning because we could tell him about them. He enjoyed the stories. He cared about us. It mattered to him, and because it mattered to him, it became more important to us. I suspect that you may have people in your own life who are like that for you.

Ultimately, God is the one to whom we tell our stories. God is the one before whom our lives are acted out. Our lives have deeper meaning because they matter to God, just as my stories took on a deeper meaning because they mattered to my grandfather. When we say we believe in God, we are affirming that life matters, ultimately and eternally. Our living makes a difference.

4. We are finite. I will not say this well, but I will try. For me, the greatest significance of living my life before God is that I believe it gives me a real perspective on who I am.

To believe in God is to live with a sense of finitude, a sense of limits. One of our junior high teachers liked to tell her kids in Sunday School, “It’s not always about you.” Believing in God is reminding myself, it’s not always about me. There is more in life than us. We are limited and God is unlimited. We are finite and God is infinite.

Paul Tillich asserts that to comprehend this, to stand before the universe and recognize one’s finitude, is an act of courage. It takes courage to claim one’s place before God.

We can make believe that we are the center of the universe, but believing will not make it so. It is comforting to think that the world revolves around us, but it doesn’t.

To take upon one’s self the limited nature of human life in this vast and uncertain universe, is an act of existential courage. Tillich calls it, the courage to be.” It is facing life honestly, as it really is.

What does it mean for thoughtful Christians to speak of belief in God in the twenty-first century? To me, means awe, and order, and meaning, and the courage to face life as it really is.

The Problem with Prayer

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Romans 8:26-27

A few weeks ago a friend posted a link to an article titled “Why I Hate Prayer,” by Jim Mulholland, a former pastor who now maintains a web site called “Leaving Your Religion,” which offers “guidance for becoming non-religious.”

I was not surprised that someone hated prayer. The idea is common in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. The prophet Amos proclaimed God’s hatred of prayer and worship without justice. And Jesus had harsh words for those who made a show of their prayers.

But I was surprised by the idea that anyone needed help in “leaving your religion.” In my experience, folks seem to make that transition without any help at all. As witness the joke told in one variation or another in every denomination. It begins with the question of how to rid the church of mice and ends with the punchline: “We just confirm (or baptize) them and they never come back again.”

Mulholland hates prayer first because he grieves for those who pray desperately in horrific circumstances and face the pain of unanswered prayers. But his second reason is that the celebration of “answered” prayers can inflict even more pain on those whose prayers have not been answered.

He writes, “Perhaps the more graphic examples of this cruelty happened in one of my last years of ministry. One Sunday, a woman stood to announce that – after several months – her prayers had been answered and she was pregnant. Everyone was excited and happy for her, except for me and one other. As I looked out on the congregation I saw the crestfallen face of a woman who had recently shared with me her long depression over her infertility. It wasn’t enough that she would never have children. Now she had to struggle with why her prayers went unanswered.”

When Christians celebrate “answered prayers” as a sign of faithfulness, they imply that the reason why the prayers of their sisters and brothers have not yielded similar results is because they lacked faith. If we add in the folks who, often innocently, celebrate answers to trivial prayers, for a parking space, or a trip without traffic, or sunshine on a picnic, or the victory of their favorite sports team, it becomes even worse.

So Mulholland declares emphatically, “If there is a god who answers the prayers of some men, women and children, but ignores the prayers of others, I have no interest in such a god. That god would be source of inequity and not a god of justice. I would hate a god who answered trivial requests while ignoring the pleas of the parents of starving children.”

In a radio sermon preached in 1952, Reinhold Niebuhr said that for many people, believing in God means “that that we have found a way to the ultimate source and end of life that gives us, against all the chances and changes of life, some special security and some special favor.” As an example, he speaks of the prayers “that many a mother with a boy in Korea must pray, ‘A thousand at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, let no evil come to my boy.’”

For the mother or father with a child in danger, that is the most natural prayer in the world and it is the deepest desire of our hearts. Yet in the end it is impossible. As Niebuhr explains, “The Christian faith believes that beyond, within and beyond, the tragedies and the contradictions of history we have laid hold upon a loving heart, and the proof of whose love, on the one hand, is the impartiality toward all of his children and, secondly, a mercy which transcends good and evil.”

In a FaithLink article called “Prayer in a Postmodern World,” Alex Joyner begins with a reference to the movie “Gravity.” He describes poignant scenes of the astronauts “floating in space talking into the void in the hope that they will be heard.” The lead characters, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, are set adrift when flying debris strikes the space shuttle on which they are working. They do not know whether or not anyone can hear them, but hoping that ground control might somehow pick up their transmissions, they tell their story in great detail.

“Later,” writes Joyner, “Bullock’s character intercepts a radio signal from Earth, and though she can’t understand all that is being said, she pleads with the staticky voice to pray for her.” She feels compelled to explain, “I’d pray for myself, but I’ve never prayed. Nobody ever taught me how.”

In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he tells us that the astronaut is not alone. No one knows how to pray. We don’t know what to say and we don’t know how to say it. Prayer would be impossible if it were not for the intervention of the Spirit of God within us, which prays through us.

In a sermon on this passage, Paul Tillich writes, “This may help us also to understand the most mysterious part of Paul’s description of prayer, namely, that the Spirit "intercedes with sighs too deep for words." Just because every prayer is humanly impossible, just because it brings deeper levels of our being before God than the level of consciousness, something happens in it that cannot be expressed in words. Words, created by and used in our conscious life, are not the essence of prayer. The essence of prayer is the act of God who is working in us and raises our whole being to Himself. The way in which this happens is called by Paul "sighing." Sighing is an expression of the weakness of our creaturely existence. Only in terms of wordless sighs can we approach God, and even these sighs are His work in us.”

Karl Barth said that “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the the disorder of the world.” It is a rebellion against the chaos and an affirmation of the Spirit. The promise of Christian faith is not that God will grant us a special exemption from life’s hardships, or give us a special reward for our virtue, but that at the center of life there is a loving heart, which will be with us now and forever. The gift of prayer is that we open ourselves to that loving heart.

The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.
Matthew 23:1-4

There is no moral dilemma which makes me more uncomfortable than the question of abortion. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a close second, but abortion is number one. And it has been number one for a long time.

I have supported a woman’s right to choose since before Roe v. Wade. I don’t believe that abortion is ever a “good” choice. It is always tragic. We need better sex education and we need free access to contraception as part of universal health care, but when that fails, then I believe the decision should belong to the woman involved. I hope she consults with her partner and with a trusted counselor, but in the end it is her body and it should be up to her.

I believe that abortion should be safe and legal and rare. That last part has to be clarified. I believe that we should provide contraception and sex education so that women rarely face the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy. There are plenty of people trying to make abortion rare by making it unavailable. By instituting burdensome (and medically unnecessary) regulations at the state level, anti-abortion advocates have shut down clinics so that abortion is already virtually illegal in ten states.

One of those states is Mississippi. And if the anti-abortion advocates are successful, they will soon shut down the last remaining clinic in the state. An article in esquire.com by John H. Richardson profiles one of two physicians who continue to provide abortion services in Mississippi. What caught my attention was the title, THE ABORTION MINISTRY OF DR. WILLIE PARKER. For Dr. Parker, this is not a job, it is a Christian ministry.

Richardson describes a varied and divrse small group of women who are listening to Dr. Parker as he goes over the procedure and answers their questions. Most of them only know that he is willing to help them in a time of desperate need. He writes:

They don't know that he grew up a few hours away in Birmingham, the second youngest son of a single mother who raised six children on food stamps and welfare, so poor that he taught himself to read by a kerosene lamp and went to the bathroom in an outhouse; that he was born again in his teenage years and did a stint as a boy preacher in Baptist churches; that he became the first black student-body president of a mostly white high school, went on to Harvard and a distinguished career as a college professor and obstetrician who delivered thousands of babies and refused to do abortions. They certainly don't know about the "come to Jesus" moment, as he pointedly describes it, when he decided to give up his fancy career to become an abortion provider.

Parker spends a lot of time talking to them. He knows that many of them feel shamed and condemned by those who can only see black and white, and cannot see the gray area where they find themselves. “There's more than one way to understand religion and spirituality and God,” he tells them. “I do have belief in God. That's why I do this work. My belief in God tells me that the most important thing you can do for another human being is help them in their time of need."

Richardson describes the process that led Parker to become an abortion provider:

. . . gradually, the steady stream of women with reproductive issues in his practice focused his mind. He thought about his mother and sisters and the grandmother who died in childbirth and began to read widely in the literature of civil rights and feminism. Eventually he came across the concept of "reproductive justice," developed by black feminists who argued that the best way to raise women out of poverty is to give them control of their reproductive decisions. Finally, he had his "come to Jesus" moment and the bell rang. This would be his civil-rights struggle. He would serve women in their darkest moment of need. "The protesters say they're opposed to abortion because they're Christian," Parker says. "It's hard for them to accept that I do abortions because I'm a Christian." He gave up obstetrics to become a full-time abortionist on the day, five years ago, that George Tiller was murdered in church.

Richardson describes how, after meeting with the women in a group, Parker consults with each one separately. One patient is still in High School. Her mother is with her. He asks the mom to leave for a moment so that he can speak with the young woman privately. He wants to make sure that her mother is not the one pushing her to have an abortion. “Is this your idea to have an abortion?” he asks her. “Do you feel comfortable with your decision?”

Parker believes that the birth rate among teenage girls could be dramatically reduced by making contraception more easily available “without shame.” It’s not just the young women who have abortions who are shamed by the people Parker calls “the Antis,” the shaming is also directed at those who use contraception. "So it seems like if they want to reduce abortion,” says Parker, “the best thing to do would be to support contraception—but they're against contraception, too, because contraception and abortion decouple sexuality from procreation. That's why I think religious preoccupation with abortion is largely about controlling the sexuality of women."

Parker’s faith quest led him to study the work of Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as Martin Luther King. He was particularly moved by Bonhoeffer’s insights with regard to how the Gospel calls us to confront evil and injustice. He summarized Bonhoeffer as insisting that “the kind of Christianity that does not radicalize you with regard to human suffering is inauthentic—cheap and easy grace."

Parker’s reflection and study led to what he called his “come to Jesus” moment when he was teaching in Hawaii. Richardson writes:

He was teaching at the university when a fundamentalist administrator began trying to ban abortions in the school clinic, throwing students with an unwanted pregnancy into a panic. One day, he was listening to a sermon by Dr. King on the theme of what made the Good Samaritan good. A member of his own community passed the injured traveler by, King said, because they asked, "What would happen to me if I stopped to help this guy?" The Good Samaritan was good because he reversed the question: "What would happen to this guy if I don't stop to help him?" So Parker looked in his soul and asked himself, "What happens to these women when abortion is not available?"

He knew the answer.

We Don't Know How to Pray

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.Romans 8:26-27
Yesterday in worship, as we were sharing our celebrations in preparation for our prayer time, one of our folks gave thanks that he was leading in a family football pool organized by another member of the church. This led me to share my dismay that it appeared that the Steelers would be playing our Patriots next week. “I’ll be praying for Tim Tebow,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Obviously, our worship service is fairly casual.

It was all in good fun. Though I did worry a little that someone might think I actually prayed about football games. And I worried a little more after Denver pulled off what seemed a miraculous win.

But in a larger sense, it got me thinking about prayer. It is the most common and probably also the most misunderstood of Christian practices.

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul makes an amazing confession. He says that we do not know how to pray.

Although the Gospels had not been written when Paul wrote his letters, it is almost certain that he would have known the story of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. And he would have known the prayer that Jesus taught them, which we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” And he would have known all of the Jewish prayers by heart and used them daily.

But Paul is talking about something that is much deeper than the words we use. He is talking about the nature of prayer itself.

In his wonderful sermon on this text, Paul Tillich explains that, “According to Paul, it is humanly impossible. This we should never forget when we pray: We do something humanly impossible. We talk to somebody who is not somebody else, but who is nearer to us than we ourselves are. We address somebody who can never become an object of our address because he is always subject, always acting, always creating. We tell something to Him who knows not only what we tell Him but also all the unconscious tendencies out of which our conscious words grow. This is the reason why prayer is humanly impossible.”
From this insight into the impossibility of prayer, Paul gives us a mysterious answer. God intercedes for us. It is God to whom we pray, and it is God who prays through us. Paul gives us a picture, which is absurd if we take it literally, but profoundly true if we understand the symbolism. God intercedes for us before God. Through us, God speaks to Godself.

Like most pastors, I work hard to craft a pastoral prayer for Sunday worship. I want it to be profound and poetic and moving. Parts of the prayer are intercessory, meaning that in a formal sense we “intercede” for one another before God.

But in a deeper sense, the language of public prayer is for the congregation rather than for God. What we hope is that the words we use will help individuals open themselves to God in prayer. The words themselves are not the prayer; they are the invitation to prayer. The real prayer is what happens “when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”