Sunday, June 16, 2019 | 4:00 p.m.

**What Does a Christian Have to Believe?**

Joseph L. Morrow
Minister for Evangelism, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 22:22–31
Romans 12:1–2; 9–21

Almost every day, many of us make use of the Global Positioning System, otherwise known as GPS, to help navigate our way through life. We yell out a name or type out an address to find a friend’s home, a new restaurant, plan a long road trip, jump in a cab or rideshare service, or avoid time-wasting traffic. But as some of you have likely discovered, sometimes the digital map gets it wrong. In fact, the failures of GPS-led devices, such as phones or cars, have been widely reported over the last decade.

Here’s an example I heard on NPR. A newcomer to San Francisco was on the lookout for a grocery store in their neighborhood. So they typed the name of a well-known grocery store chain into their phone to find directions to it. Listening to the directions as they set out in the car, the newcomer found themselves making a series of unexpected turns. Perplexingly, they noticed the road was now taking them clear out of the neighborhood. Soon enough they arrived not at the grocery store, but at a giant office building, the store’s corporate headquarters. GPS wasn’t completely wrong. But it just wasn’t right either.

That experience is a reminder that the great challenge in defining Christian belief, the subject of today’s sermon question, is that our theories of faith do not always line up neatly with reality. Thinking thoughts about the faith is easy. Living it can prove difficult. In the Church, belief is often about using our intellect to understand God, creation, and ourselves as human beings. We read Scripture. We interpret it. We come up with theories about atonement for sin, the Holy Spirit, when to wage war and how to make peace. Like GPS, we enter the coordinates of salvation, hit the road of life, and expect to arrive at a soul-satisfying destination. Of course, like the errant directions given on a smart phone, we get on the ground and discover that Christian belief requires more of us. Thoughts and theology are not enough to carry us successfully to journey’s end.

When I was in college, first dipping my toes into Christian faith, I spent a lot of time scanning the websites of congregations and denominations looking up statements of faith. Perhaps you’ve done this. I was in search of an ideal set of beliefs about Jesus and wanted to join the community that affirmed it. I searched those statements for answers to perennial questions of faith: was Jesus human or divine? (A fine question for Trinity Sunday.) Was the Bible to be taken literally or symbolically? Did heaven and hell physically exist or was there another destiny for human bodies and souls? I found myself stirred by some answers and being underwhelmed by others. But after visiting congregations, I soon discovered that even the most eloquently written statements of belief filled with wisdom could tell me precious little about what people truly believed, practice, and lived in the pews.

Belief isn’t simply found in what Christians advertise. Belief is embedded in what Christians do. And the troubling thing is, some Christians do significant wrong. Like many of you, one aspect of this sermon question that I wrestled with mightily is what to do about Christians who verbally call Jesus their Lord and Savior, but act in ways that oppose or undercut those beliefs?

Consider this: Henry Gerecke, a Lutheran Missouri Synod pastor in the 1940s, enlisted as a chaplain in the army during World War II. After hostilities had ended he was given an unusually difficult assignment: he was to provide pastoral care to Nazi German war criminals on trial at Nuremberg. As Gerecke got to know the prisoners he was struck by the religious dimension of their lives. While their crimes were well known, the apparent faith of the senior Nazi commanders surprised him. Gerecke observed how well they understood at an intellectual level church doctrine, could recite the creeds, and thoughtfully engaged Martin Luther’s catechism. He reported that Goebbels, who approved the death of many in the concentration camps, sang hymns movingly with passion.

If belief is to be measured by the standard of theology, then these war criminals expressed a commendable faith. But what if we measure it by standards that Paul gives us in this passage from his letter to the Romans? What if belief in Jesus is measured by a life of sacrifice, of extending hospitality to strangers, of returning evil with good? If so, then the belief of those who would call themselves Christians and willingly send millions to a cruel death in concentration camps is inadequate. We might say the same for Christians who affirmed the trinity, but denied the full humanity of enslaved Africans or of those who affirm justification by faith, but abuse the vulnerable. Those who affirm the bodily resurrection, but have no care for the bodies of the poor. After all, as the author of 1 John reminds us, “Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him,’ but does not obey his commandments, is a liar.” A faith focused on thought but not action, on intention but forgets impact is perhaps no faith at all.

But maybe it’s not so simple. In a West Texas prison, Christian author and psychologist Richard Beck sits with a group of inmates for a Bible study. Several years into this ministry, he noticed that the prisoners were quite open about their faults, shortcomings, and the pressures to do evil that surrounded them. One day, while conducting a Bible study on the gospels, his group came across the words, "if you can’t be faithful in the little things, how can you be trusted with the big things?"

Willy, one of the participants became sullen and unnerved. You see he received a fan as a gift. Now, in a prison without air conditioning during a hot Texas summer, a fan is a sought after commodity. However, gifts are against house rules and none of his fellow prisoners had access to one. Willy became convicted. “It was a little thing, to be sure,” said Beck, “But Willy wanted to be faithful, even in the little things. Especially in the little things.” And in an act that stunned everyone, Willy decided to throw away his fan. In reflecting on it, Richard Beck said “it was barely conceivable, beyond our moral horizons, that someone would be that obedient in the face of the resultant suffering he would have to endure.” But Willy considered himself “free inside” with this act of solidarity with his fellow inmates. While this wasn’t the only faithful way for Willy to respond, the fact that he was willing to engage in deep moral self-examination, to admit he could be wrong, even if it led to personal cost was morally transparent. Persons like Willy are perhaps more transparent than many of us about their shortcomings and their desire to make amends, even in small ways. In fact, their trust in Jesus, their willingness to come to Jesus in their frailty is much greater than those outside prison walls. In keeping with the Romans image, they are ready to sacrifice their pride, their assurance, and their comfort to live in faithful ways. (Richard Beck, “Faithful in Little Things: A Prison Story,” experimentaltheology.blogspot.com).

We shouldn’t be surprised to see such persons, despite crimes they may have committed, as somehow close to Jesus. If we know anything about Jesus, we know that he keeps company with people of questionable belief and attitudes—at least by the measure of their society. Jesus is crucified beside two thieves and absolves them of their crimes with the words, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.” He disarms the wickedness of his accusers with, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Jesus seems to have an uncanny compassion for those constrained morally and ethically by their society or circumstance. It’s part of his charm that Christ is often known as a “friend of sinners.” The people who seem furthest away from purity of Christian practice are still never far from God’s redemption.

Karl Barth was a great Christian thinker of the twentieth century. An academic theologian, he wrote twelve volumes—filling up 10,000 pages—on what Christians believe about God. One day at an academic lecture, Barth was taking questions. Someone in the audience, unsure of whether there was sincere belief behind all his theological sophistication, asked him point blank, “Do you believe in the devil?” The professor replied emphatically, “No, I believe in Jesus Christ.”

Barth was hinting at a deeper definition of belief than his accuser; belief as an affirmation of a relationship of trust—not in a devil, but in Jesus Christ as the beloved of God. This is trust in God who loved humanity to the utmost—even when declared an enemy, outcast, or rebel by the religious and political powers of our world. To view belief as trust gets to the heart of the word faith. In Scripture it is often rendered as faithfulness: a commitment of self-giving love and honor. The prisoners in West Texas embody the kind of belief Barth suggests. Jesus is the one in whom they have trust. And that trust has opened up a new way of living, one that our passage in Romans passionately describes and that Jesus embodies in the gospels. That way of living isn’t closed in on itself, bounded by prejudice, but extends love past its furthermost boundaries, propelling our body and life to do that which our mind is reluctant to do.

A living sacrifice, as Romans articulates it, asks us to sacrifice a sense of perfectionism, whether in doctrines or rituals, through which we hide from God’s caring judgment. A living sacrifice asks us to question and doubt, and to confess and repent. And if we fall or fail, we do so toward justice, love, and inclusion. Because we trust, Jesus—desiring our best—will catch us if we fail and pick us back up.

“What does a Christian need to believe?” is more a question of how a Christian believes. We believe that Jesus is Lord and savior beyond thoughts and words uttered. Like our baptism, we believe by leaning into this holy mystery. We believe through acts of self-giving love and repentance based on a trustful relationship with Jesus, in whom love is personified and made real. And that love is worth not only believing with our minds but, as the old hymn puts it, “demands our soul, our life, our all.” Amen.