Sermon:  Phoenix Affirmation 1

Texts: Wisdom of Solomon 7:21-8:1; John 8:12; John 10:14-16

Date: January 7, 2007

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            Dr. Eric Elnes, UCC minister and one of the authors of the Phoenix Affirmations, likes to introduce the force behind the affirmations and Cross Walk America with this story.  He was chatting with one of his parishioners, a woman named Linda who was a high school choir director who had joined Eric’s church several years before.  She said to him, “You know, I’m just sick and tired of being a Christian butt.”

Eric says he found this rather shocking, quite frankly.  Not her use of course language so much as Linda’s apparent displeasure over being a Christian.  Linda was confirmed in a church over thirty years ago and had been a regular attender of one church or another ever since.  The Christian faith has always made sense to her, at least it as made as much sense as much as it makes to any of us.  She’s one of those people who draw plenty of awe, wonder, and joy from their faith.  And she’s not shy about talking openly about her faith.

So when Linda said she was tired of being a “Christian butt,” Eric couldn’t figure out where she was coming from.  He asked her, “Whadaya mean, Christian butt?”

She replied without hesitation: “I mean I’m tired of having always to qualify the word Christian when I tell people I go to church.  I may as well say I’m radioactive.  They get a surprised expression on their face and start looking for an escape route.  So I find myself throwing in more and more “buts” all the time: ‘I’m a Christian, but … but … but …’” 

“Oh, I get it,” Eric responded.  “I thought you meant ‘Christian butt’ – b-u-t-t.” 

“Once I use the C-word, they’re going to think I’m a b-u-t-t, unless I throw in a few b-u-t-s,” Linda replied.  Like this: “I’m a Christian, but I don’t hate homosexuals …”; “I’m a Christian, but I believe in equal rights for women …”; “… but I care about the poor …”; “… but I’m an environmentalist …”; “I’m a Christian but I don’t think people who believe differently from me will fry in hell for eternity …”?

“What has happened to Christianity?” Eric Elnes and his colleagues have been asking.  “The label “Christian” should stand for people of extravagant grace and generosity; people of unusual courage and compassion, who stand for justice and are known for being far more loving than the norm; far more forgiving.  Instead, being a Christian seems to have become synonymous with being a butthead.”[1]  What Elnes points to with this colorful language is that the Christians who generally wind up on TV or in the newspapers tend to be the ones who are meanly and gleefully pronouncing (God’s) judgment on everyone they find distasteful.  Sadly, many people outside the Christian community think that the Falwell-and-Robertson-esque expressions of an angry, narrow and fearful faith are the whole picture. 

Rather than letting Christianity get high jacked, several ministers in Phoenix started working together on a more inclusive articulation of Christian faith, which we are exploring in worship and discussion the next 12 weeks.  It’s not enough to say what you are not, when you’re talking about the theology that guides your life.  Theology needs a positive expression of what we are for, not just what we are against.  The Phoenix Affirmations spell out a way of talking about Christianity organized around the three great loves of which Jesus spoke: Love of God, neighbor, and self.  If you happen to be someone who feels like Linda – like a “Christian, but..,” I hope this exploration of one expression of progressive Christianity will help you understand and articulate your Christian faith more fully.  The authors of the affirmations, some of whom took them on the road on a hike from Phoenix to Washington D.C. last summer in order to meet people and talk theology, hope that a new expression of faith will sweep the nation in such a way that it will do away with the need to say “I’m a Christian, but…”

We read the first affirmation together already: “Loving God includes walking fully in the path of Jesus, without denying the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity.”  I want to read to you the explanation sentences that unfold this affirmation on the full version (3.7): “As Christians, we find spiritual awakening, challenge, growth, and fulfillment in Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection.  While we have accepted the Path of Jesus as our Path, we do not deny the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity.  Where possible, we seek lively dialogue with those of other faiths for mutual benefit and fellowship.  We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found wherever love of God, neighbor, and self are practiced together.  Whether or not the path bears the name of Jesus, such paths bear the identity of Christ.  We confess that we have stepped away from Christ’s Path whenever we have failed to practice love of God, neighbor, and self, or have claimed Christianity is the only way, even as we claim it to be our way.”

I appreciate the way the affirmations, in the full version, all include an element of confession.  As far as Christianity having an enormous superiority complex over the years, there is a great deal of confession and humility called for.  As a group, we’ve had trouble not only recognizing the legitimacy of other non-Christian faiths but have had a hard time affirming even other expressions of Christianity.  Here’s a joke that won a contest for being the funniest in a survey in a major newspaper, probably because of the grain of truth at its heart:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, "Baptist!" I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your BaptistChurch of God or BaptistChurch of the Lord? He said, Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!" I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.

One of our flaws as humans, it seems, is that it’s so difficult to affirm that a path to truth is our path without going the next step to saying it’s the only path. 

            That’s partly because of the way we have been taught to think about truth.   Paul Knitter, in his excellent book No Other Name? points out that the biblical writers were themselves influenced by what is called “classicist culture” that had a very particular understanding of truth, taking for granted that truth was one, certain, unchanging, and normative.  For anything to be true, to be reliable, it had to bear these qualities.  Early Christians were aware, as we are, that there are many truth claims in the world.  But they also felt that if any one of these claims to truth really were true, it had to either conquer or absorb the others.  That was what truth did, in their understanding.  So when they wrote about the truth they encountered in Jesus, they had to describe it as the only or final truth.[2]

            We live in a different era now.  As Knitter says, “it seems possible for Christians to feel and announce the saving truth about Jesus and his message without…having to insist that Jesus’ truth is either exclusive or inclusive of all other truth.”[3]  That’s one of the central features of what thinkers now call the Post-Modern Era.  It’s clearer to us than some previous generations that God has sheep that are not in the Christian sheepfold.  We’re more apt than our forbears to recognize that there is more than one legitimate path to God, just as there is more than one legitimate road going north to south on Bainbridge Island: 305, Sunset, Fletcher Bay Road, Madison, Manzanita.  Our culture not only supports us but actually forces us to ask, “For truth to be truth, for truth to call forth total commitment, must it be the only truth?”

            Post-modernism is a gift insofar as it helps us to recognize the legitimacy of other paths to God.  It’s a curse, in a way, too; it becomes increasingly difficult to make a total commitment to the truth of Jesus in the cacophony of so many other claims to truth.  I don’t sense that avoiding denying other faiths is too much of a stretch for most members of our church.  We do, after all, have as part of our mission statement the phrase “Joining with other faith communities in our quest for harmony.”  It may well be more of a stretch for us spiritually to commit to walking fully in the path of Jesus, claiming the Jesus way as our way without dinking around with other religions along the trail or making a half-hearted commitment to Christ that leaves plenty of room for an essentially secular life. 

            When I say “dinking around” with other religions I don’t mean to imply that we have the real thing and other living faiths are just playthings.  I mean that existentially speaking, we don’t have time to sample every religious truth, to try a little taste of this and a little taste of that.  We only have this one lifetime to commit fully to the path of Jesus and hope that the time we have—60-90 years, if we’re lucky—is long enough for Christ to transform us, long enough for Christ to “cast out our sin and enter in” to our innermost hearts and change the way we carry on with our daily lives.  I was reading William Sloane Coffin’s Credo the other day and one phrase he used jumped out as he talked about Jesus.  He said “eventually Jesus became for me my Lord and Savior.”  I don’t know if for him that meant years of consideration and then one day, a commitment.  The way it spoke to me was through the lens of my own spiritual journey.  I have made a commitment to walk in the path of Jesus; but as far as my practice goes, it seems to me that Jesus actually becoming Lord and Savior of every aspect of my life is a slow process.  Not because of what God is able to do; more because of what I will allow in the speed of my conversion.  My sin keeps applying the brakes.   Do you know what I mean?  That word “eventually,” paradoxically, is a statement of somewhat discouraging fact and a shining word of hope—eventually it will happen.  I will walk fully in the path of Jesus and on this path eventually I will become a Christian.  I look forward to the day when anyone can look at my life and see nothing but love.

            In the introductory paragraphs of the Phoenix Affirmations, there is this statement: “As people who are joyfully and unapologetically Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of Love.”  That is the fullest expression of the path of Jesus.  William Sloane Coffin wrote, “Too many religious people make faith their aim.  They think ‘the greatest of these’ is faith, and faith defined as all but infallible doctrine.  These are the dogmatic, divisive Christians, more concerned with freezing the doctrine than warming the heart.  If faith can be exclusive, love can only be inclusive.”[4]

“Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”  It is in trying to live love fully that we will most fully know Jesus and we can also respectfully meet and work alongside people of other faiths.  Loving action doesn’t need labels; you don’t have to explain what or who motivated you to act in order to engage in loving action together.  People of many faiths can find their common ground feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, working to preserve the environment, and so forth.  Love will draw us together with people of many paths to God more effectively than centuries of dialogue and debate.  A line of Sufi mystic poet Rumi’s poetry is apropos: “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing is a field; I’ll meet you there.”  That field is the common ground of love for God and God’s creation. 

Love is like what the Wisdom of Solomon described as Wisdom: subtle, irresistible, pure, steadfast; more mobile than any motion, a breath of the power of God, renewing all things, reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things well, passing into holy souls in every generation, making them friends of God.  Let us pledge ourselves fully to the path of Jesus, the Way of Love.  As we fully and joyfully walk this path, we will meet and learn to love others who walk on parallel paths of faith and compassion. 

[1] http://www.crosswalkamerica.org/files/BeatitudesProgressiveChristianity.doc

[2] Knitter, Paul F.  No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985, p. 183

[3] Ibid.

[4] Coffin, William Sloane Credo  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, p.25