Sunday,
March 29, 1998
Jim Todhunter
"The Apathetic, the Passionate and the Hard-Hearted"
Micah 6:6-8 I Corinthians 13:1-13 Matthew 7:1-5.
The Lenten study theme for this morning is "Faithfulness or Extremism?" This is, of course, a very complicated subject. In reflecting on how to deal with this in the religious sense, it is tempting to visualize a spectrum with fundamentalists on the far right, then maybe evangelical Christians, then conservatives, then moderates, etc. moving left until you get to ultra radicals. At the two far ends are the extremists of the left and of the right, each sharing traits like intolerance and exclusivity and perhaps a tendency to condone violence. Then the effort is to locate oneself or one's church somewhere on that scale. I am not going to proceed that way because I don't think it's especially helpful. There is too much of a tendency to classify, pigeon- hole, and stereotype.
I want to take a different approach. To do this I would like to suggest that within each of us, there are three kinds of Christians, three kinds of faith we experience. The apathetic, the passionate, and the hard-hearted. I suppose that is a continuum of sorts. But I know that in me, all three are struggling with one another for control. To begin with, the apathetic faith is, in the words of the author of the Book of Revelation, "neither hot, nor cold, but lukewarm." The apathetic believer is not an atheist, but rather someone who seeks the comforts and rewards of religion at minimal cost. Such faith avoids risk, is reluctant to take stands, and believes the purpose of religion is to facilitate security and happiness. This faith has been characterized as resting on "cheap grace." It is a faith of low expectations. When the apathetic believer is on the ascendant in me, I am tempted to say religion is good up to a point, but let's not get carried away. I don't want to be a so- called 'true believer' as Erich Hoffer once called zealots. But the author of Revelation is very clear about the fate of the apathetic Christian. God says "Since you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. H Reinhold Niebohr says that Christ came to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about the "cost of discipleship," and Jesus spoke of picking up the cross and carrying it. So much for the apathetic believer in me.
That leaves the passionate and the hard-hearted. I use the term hard-hearted because the Bible doesn't really talk about extremism. Certainly many people today would, I suppose, regard such biblical figures as the Prophet Amos and John the Baptist as extremists. Perhaps even Jesus. Certainly Martin Luther. But while lukewarm believers are rebuked, those who are singled out for special condemnation are those whom Jesus called the hard- hearted. For him it was the Pharisees of the religious establishment, who followed the letter of the law in observance, but could engage in acts of great self-righteousness and cruelty in the name of God. For the prophets it was the official religious orthodoxy and the political establishment, in league to oppress the poor and use religion to justify what they were doing.
I know that in me there lurks a hard-hearted, impatient, self-righteous Christian, ready to pass Judgment on any and all in the name of God, ready to flash forth in anger and impatience. And yet, at the same time, I would like to believe that there is another kind of Christian, one whose faith is characterized by a love of God, a yearning to do what is right, and a striving to be kindly and loving, even if I may not always know how to do that; a person of passionate faith. But I am afraid that all three of these Christians inhabit the landscape of my particular soul.
Having already said a little about the lukewarm Christian faith, I would like to focus now on comparing the hard-hearted Christian and the passionate Christian.
First, the hard-hearted Christian proudly declares, "I am Christian." The person of passionate faith declares, "I am trying my best to be Christian." For the hard-hearted, the word Christian is used as a noun. For the person of passionate faith, the word Christian is used as an adjective - that is a modifier, not a definer. The word modifies my intentions, efforts and actions, not my essence, not as a label. If I am living as a person of passionate faith, I am all too aware of how far I fall short, aware of all the things I do that are not Christian at all. Some moments I may truly be Christian, but at other times, I am acutely aware of how un-Christian I am. Kierkegaard said that we are never Christian once and for all; we are Christian minute by minute. This passionate faith doesn't have much to do with what I believe. It has everything to do with the quality of my love. St. Paul says that without love, whatever wonderful things I do or believe account for nothing. The hard-hearted Christian in me wants to define myself as better than others, higher than others, closer to God than others. The red flags for me in this are feelings of certainty, smugness, righteousness, and the desire for others to shape up. And there is always a whiff of resentment present. But the person of genuine passionate faith in me uses Christian as an adjective. I haven't arrived, I am becoming. Lord, I want to be a Christian, in my heart. I know I have not reached some final state of wonderful perfection that enables me to use the noun, Christian.
Second, hard-hearted Christianity is characterized by the attitude that says "I have the Truth (with a capital "T"), and you need to hear it for your own good." "We, my group, my church, have the Truth (with a capital "T") and you need to hear it, for your own good." What do I mean by the word Truth used this way? Here Truth means a package of answers. It can include dogma and doctrine, prescribed patterns of behavior, codes of conduct, even life-style. Truth may also include a few of my own cherished notions of what is most important, thrown in for good measure. Interactions are characterized by "I've got it. You need it." That is our relationship. Our relationship is defined by this package called Truth, this third thing. It either brings us together, or stands between us forever. Whenever I start feeling like I've got the answers and someone else doesn't, I know I am in my hard-hearted mode.
Standing in contrast to this is the attitude of passionate Christianity. My passionate faith leads me to say "I am so excited by what God has done in my life that I have to somehow express it." Time was when Protestant Christians were expected to share their "testimonies." This practice has fallen into disuse with mainline Christians, and for a number of good reasons. Many testimonies became rote, insincere, and rang phony. But that is too bad because there is nothing more interesting nor more powerful than the sharing of a story of one's faith Journey, particularly a moment when God has become a reality. The trap too many preachers fall into is one of telling people what to believe, from an attitude of "I have something that needs to be conveyed to you --the package." How different that is from "This is what happened to me." For me a wonderful illustration of this was in Joey's sermon last Sunday in which she described playing the piano and singing the spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I seen. Glory, Halleluia!" It was the experience of joy in the midst of sorrow. What she shared, it seems to me, was not something that she was teaching us about God, so much as sharing a moment of personal spiritual insight, a moment in which God broke through to her in a fresh way. That needed to be shared. I experience that every time Wilma Woodard tells me how wonderful it is to be alive and what a gift from God the decade of her eighties has been. I experience it when Steve Gilbert describes the moment, sitting alone on the floor of his living room, in the midst of pain and illness and the unspeakable loneliness that comes with it, sitting there alone, yet knowing without doubt that God was there with him. For myself, when I discover something about God and me, even if it is some insight everybody else learned for themselves years ago, still I just want to share it, because it's part of my story. I can't help it. Like the Prophet Jeremiah says, it is like fire inside my bones that cannot be contained.
This, to me, is very different from "Here's the Truth (with a capital "T"). Instead, this is "Here am I. This is me at a moment of transformation." This is me "becoming." How we share those stories with each other is what it means to be a community. How we share those stories with the world is what it means to be an evangelical community.
So: Christian as an adjective, not a noun. Second, telling the story of God in my life, versus unloading on others the package labeled Truth.
Third, how do we do the Christian life? How do we define the Christian community? How do we live the life of faith? For the hard-hearted Christian, one's beliefs are all-important. My beliefs define whether I am in or out. There is a line. If you believe like me, step over. If not, stay out. This attitude is characterized by suspicion, caution, analysis, exclusion as the basis of inclusion. It is using doctrine and dogma as a club or a barrier. It is to say that those on the inside have a special relationship with one another and with God. God and I, God and us are on the same side, literally. Everyone else is on the other side, therefore different, probably enemies.
But when I am living the style of passionate faith, it is quite different. Using Christian as an adjective instead of a noun, focusing on the experience of how God is breaking into my life and my community, I see our lives together as a journey - a Journey of discovery. What is the only requirement for this journey? It really isn't what I believe or how I define myself. The Prophet Micah puts it simply and eloquently. What is required is "...to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." Join God and one another on your journey, and all you need for the road are justice, love and humility. In my church in Vermont, I remember a stained-glass window behind the pulpit with those words from Micah 6 in it. The window had been donated by a totally deaf parishioner. Since he couldn't understand a word of what was said in worship, he came every Sunday nevertheless, knowing that a visual reminder of all that "the Lord required of him" was waiting there.
As a person of the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, I can only add that, for me, Jesus Christ, his life and teaching, his birth, death, and resurrection, somehow provide me with the way. Not the way to do anything. Not the answer. But the way of the Journey, the path. Not a package of Truth (labeled Christian dogma), but literally the Way, the Truth, and the Life. AMEN.
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