October 20, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

Equipped by Truth

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 119:97–104
Jeremiah 31:31–34
2 Timothy 3:10–4:5

Picture an intersection where people keep getting run over. A church will nurse their wounds, will even build a hospital right on the corner. . . . What they would not do—if theirs is a God of the status quo—would be to go to the federal government to demand that a stop light be placed in the path of an economic “progress” that leaves behind so many victims.

William Sloane Coffin
“The Saints”
The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume 2

What we believe affects how we behave. Not just what we believe about God, but how we view the world. An example of this came home to me recently when I was in training to be a facilitator of what is called SoulCollage®. In SoulCollage®, persons are encouraged to create collages using images found in magazines, calendars, or photo albums as a means to discover insights into themselves and for direction in their lives. What struck me in my training was the palpable culture of abundance. When we went to create our own collages in the training event, hundreds of magazine images were provided for our use; we were even encouraged to take images home. We let each other know if we were looking for a particular image, and if any of us found such we gave it to one another. If we wanted to make several collages rather than just one, materials were ours for the taking. Someone had designed a good format for doing an introductory workshop on SoulCollage,® and her design was made readily available for free online. When we got in small groups, we helped each other interpret meaning in the collages we made. Though many of us lived in the same geographic area, rather than seeing each other as competing facilitators scrambling to recruit participants for future workshops, we were encouraged to support and network with one another to share the wonderful creative process of SoulCollage®. We experienced an abundance of images, resources, ideas, relationships, and a creative process we can freely share.

It would have been quite a different experience if that training had been done with a mindset of scarcity. If we believed that we didn’t have enough—enough images, enough time, enough credibility, enough trust, enough future “clients”—we would have created a culture of limits and competition. We may have each been required to bring our own magazine images and not share them and been limited to make only one collage. We would not have built on each other’s insight, experience, or talent but had to figure things out on our own. We may have only shared our contact information to see that no one else in our zip code area was being trained as a facilitator. One’s beliefs make a big difference—whether we claim truth to be one of abundance or of scarcity.

In fact, whatever we claim to be true shapes what we do and how we live.

If we view the universe as essentially hostile to human interests, we will treat life as fundamentally a battleground. We will put on the armor of distrust and only look out for ourselves as number one. There are a lot of battleground images in the way we speak. We talk about tactics and strategy, about using our “big guns,” about “do or die,” about wins and losses. Parker Palmer wrote,

The imagery here suggests that if we fail to be fiercely competitive, we’re going to lose, because the basic structure of the universe is a vast combat. The tragedy of that . . . unexamined inner fear is that it helps create situations where people actually have to live that way. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. . . . A quick example: A bank in this town may be a perfectly sound bank. But if enough people start a false rumor that it’s an insolvent bank, everybody will line up to withdraw their money and the bank will be insolvent because the prophecy has fulfilled itself. (Palmer, Parker, Leading from Within: Reflections on Spirituality and Leadership, p. 12)

The scriptures attest to the truth, against which we need to examine our own beliefs and worldview. In today’s scripture lesson, the Apostle Paul urges believers to hold on to the teachings of the sacred writings. Paul had experienced persecution and suffering because of his faith, yet God rescued him from all of that. Paul believed that “all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Thus, he urged his fellow believer, Timothy, to carry on steadfastly, whatever happens. He saw the day coming when many people would adopt as truth whatever suited their own desires. In such a context—familiar to us now, too—the way believers remain faithful and persistent in good works is by claiming the truth of the scriptures.

To claim the truth of the scriptures, we must know what they say and return again and again to the full story of God interacting with God’s people. We need to understand the claims of the prophets and apostles. It is essential for us to know and apply the teachings of Jesus. It is crucial that we understand the biblical story of how God has shaped and intervened in the history of the people of faith. We need to examine what we believe about God, because the images of God that we fashion and worship will determine our self-image and our worldview.

Whenever I hear someone who claims to be an atheist describe the God they have rejected, they invariably describe a God I wouldn’t believe in either. Always it’s a God who represents something less than human love at its best. Ironically, what atheists believe generally meshes with, rather than contradicts, the message of Jesus. But instead of embracing the God “who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosever should believe in him should not perish but have eternal life,” such agnostics or atheists are content to repudiate the God of some fundamentalist preacher they may have heard on television or in their youth.

In our church, in the Reformed Christian tradition, we reject an image of God as a God of fear and instead worship a God whose love is even more than the highest expressions of human love.

We also reject a God who is a God just for some—a tribalistic, nationalist God. Instead we favor a God for all, whose love is inclusive beyond our imaginations.

We are also called to believe in a God, not of things as they are, but a God of things as they could be if we cared more. William Sloane Coffin wrote that “it is virtually impossible for Christians who profit by the status quo to believe that God is really against it. We comfort ourselves with the thought that because our intentions are good (and who gets up in the morning saying, ‘Whom can I oppress today?’) we do not have to examine the consequences of our actions.” We may acknowledge injustices and even be willing to address them, just as long as we don’t have to confront their causes and our own complicity with them.

Coffin goes on:

When the God we worship is a God of the status quo, then the church serves as a kind of ambulance service. Picture . . . an intersection where people keep getting run over. The church will nurse their wounds, will even build a hospital right on the corner. But most churches are reluctant to go down to City Hall and demand a change, a stop light, for that would be politics, and religion and politics don’t mix. Actually . . . church members would go to City Hall to demand a stop light. What they would not do—if theirs is a God of the status quo—would be to go to the federal government to demand that a stop light be placed in the path of an economic “progress” that leaves behind so many victims. (William Sloane Coffin, “The Saints,” The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume 2)

If we understand the scriptures to call us as a church to embody God’s love and work for justice, we won’t argue that religion and politics don’t mix. God calls us to be instruments of social change on behalf of the poor, especially.

Fourth Church has a strong legacy of reaching out to our brothers and sisters through acts of mercy, charity, and service. We have not been as strong in acting as a body to change public practices and policies for social justice. The truth of the scriptures calls us to challenge the status quo so that no one goes hungry and all live in safe neighborhoods, a world without famine and without borders.

Our Lord Jesus said, “The one who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” We need to challenge the lie that too many people believe—that the way to protect ourselves from increasing gun violence is by more residents owning and carrying their own guns.

The Apostle Paul said, “God delights in a cheerful giver.” We need to challenge any claims that our congregation is already giving as much as we can and instead support one another in discovering the joy of generosity, of giving at least a tithe or 10 percent of our resources for others.

The prophets addressed whole nations and peoples of faith to seek justice for all people. We need to let go of thinking the journey of faith is only about our personal lives and instead claim the truth that the church as a whole is called to work for economic justice and systemic change.

The Bible continually portrays God as the God of the downtrodden and poor. We need to debunk the myth that people are poor because it’s their own fault and instead challenge economic practices that allow the ones on the top to profit even more while those on the lower rungs are worse off than before.

We need to examine how we live our lives. Would others know what the scriptures teach by the way we act? Central to our being able to hold fast to our faith, in good times and hard times, is our claiming the truth of the scriptures. Paul holds up scripture as being inspired by God and “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Let us proclaim God’s Word through the way we live our lives.