The Council of Nicaea, 325 C.E.
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Here’s something fun we could do. Let’s list the things we don’t like about Christianity.
I’ll go first.
I don’t like how elusive and indirect and mystifying Christianity is, right at the very center. Our savior dies and rises again: Yes. I believe this and I proclaim “alleluia” year by year when we preach this Good News to one another. But I have so many questions. He could eat in their presence, but also move through walls. He invited Thomas to touch him, but told Mary Magdalene not to touch him. And Thomas ended up not touching him. Or did he touch him after all? The text doesn’t say. Come on now.
Then there’s the Nicene Creed: it is splendid, replete with the discerned wisdom of early-fourth-century spiritual teachers, a masterpiece of systematic theology, a crash course in Christology, a true and effective song of praise to the Holy Trinity. And: it is as elusive as the risen Christ himself. What does it mean? How does everything really … work? And when we say it, are we saying we believe in God the way we believe in, say, gravity? As in, “this we believe, this right here, because we think it’s true”? Or are we saying we believe the words of the Nicene Creed as in, we trust them, we live into them, or we sing or dance with them? Which is it? And what does it really mean to “sing or dance” with a text?
Then there are the ever more serious problems with Christianity: the way it can so easily be used and abused, the way a Gospel about self-giving love can so easily become a tool of oppression, and even genocide. Generations after something is written down, like John’s Gospel for instance, Christians foolishly and wickedly twist the text to rationalize dreadful things, like anti-Jewish violence and murder.
We can all too easily misunderstand Paul’s letters and not see his proto-feminism, but rather see its opposite, and justify the oppression of women, creating Christian communities that put women down. Paul would be mortified by this! He praised women by name as equal leaders and church founders, something that was scarcely ever done in his place and time.
It’s just so easy to misinterpret Christianity, and Christ himself. I suppose that’s true for any religious tradition that endures long enough on the face of this old, tired earth.
And speaking of the earth, there’s the maddening way some Christians can bizarrely see our faith as gnostic escapism, a world-denying promise about the afterlife. These Christians sing old hymns with terrible verses like “Earth is a desert drear, heaven is my home.” Come on now! That’s not what Jesus taught! That’s not what God has ever taught, God who lovingly made the heavens and the earth and called everything good. Yes, Christ goes before us and prepares a place for us. But Christ is also here. Christ is now.
And so today we may have a sharp answer to Jesus when he turns to us and asks us, “Does this offend you?” Yes! Yes it does!
Jesus had been talking about something specific when a large number of his followers decided they had heard enough, and walked away. He wasn’t presenting dense Trinitarian theology, or commenting on the equality of women. But he was saying things that might be on my list, or your list, or many other people’s list of the Ten Things We Hate about Christianity.
Jesus was talking about how, if we eat his flesh and blood, the bread that came down from heaven, we will live forever. Now, maybe some people walked away simply because they were mystified: they just had no idea what Jesus meant, and it all seemed like a hopeless and deeply weird puzzle. And maybe others walked away because they understood clearly what he was saying, and they found it mortifying, or disgusting, or simply wrong.
For us, this is a good moment to stop and wonder, to pause and ask ourselves, what exactly we find most troubling about our faith, and really consider whether we want to keep at it, to keep following Jesus, to keep gathering here week by week to be formed into disciples, and sent forth from here as apostles, as those who proclaim this faith, in our words and in our actions. That’s the moment Peter and the others are having here: Jesus is turning to them and being direct: Do you want this, or not?
Peter’s answer is intriguing: it’s not a simple, “Yes, Lord,” the way so many prophets before him would respond to God with the simple yet fierce phrase, “Here I am.” Peter says, in his own way, that sure, he’s in, but it’s mostly because there is nowhere else to go. Peter says, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
But maybe we are different. Maybe we have plenty of other places to go. We could choose from any number of religions, or step away from religion entirely and seek ultimate meaning in our other pursuits, like nature hikes or yoga. We could simply be good agnostics who seek the truth in our relationships, or in our careers, or in our identities as parents or neighbors or friends.
Why Christianity? Why Jesus? Why this complicated, sometimes exasperating life of faith?
I’ll give you my answer, and let you reflect on what yours might be.
Christianity goes the distance. That’s my answer.
Jesus of Nazareth leads us into the very worst problems of life. We are called to reconcile with one another, with those we call our enemies, and (this may be the hardest kind of reconciliation) with those we ourselves have harmed. We are called to give of ourselves, to give painfully, in loving service to others. We are called to take seriously the most excruciating human problems: injustice, cruelty, systems of oppression, economies that help us while hurting and killing other people, deadly pathogens, ecocide, addiction, racism, sexism, transphobia… and that’s not even the whole list.
Jesus of Nazareth went the distance, and as the Body of Christ, we participate in his work. Jesus “ate with sinners,” which sounds gentle and lightly provocative, but in his day it was the kind of thing Sister Helen Prejean does in our time: she goes to death row and finds the humanity in people who have committed atrocious crimes. Jesus cleansed the temple, which sounds quaint and lightly theatrical, but in his day it was the kind of thing St. Francis did in the Middle Ages when he stripped naked in the town square and told his wealthy textile-merchant father that his father wasn’t his father anymore, and Francis wanted nothing to do with the trappings of money and power. Jesus stretched out his hands to touch sick people and outcasts, which sounds loving and lightly pastoral, but in his day it was the kind of thing a Seattleite of our time, a gruff old man named Dutch, spent his whole sober life doing, for decades, when he walked along the gutters of Pioneer Square and pulled alcoholics up on their feet, put them in his truck, and took them to AA meetings.
Christianity goes the distance.
Now, I readily confess that I often fail to go the distance. I am often slow to reconcile, even though reconciliation is my life’s work. I am often resistant to let go of my valuables and creature comforts, even though I truly want to learn the hard lessons of St. Francis. (Or at least I think I do.) I imagine Sister Helen and Dutch will always shine more brightly than me in the Communion of Saints, arrayed gloriously around God’s throne.
But that just brings me to my second-favorite thing about Christianity, the thing that keeps me coming back, even when it is odd, and offensive: Christianity goes the distance, yes, but it also offers forgiveness, and authentically welcomes everyone, even and especially those of us who keep falling short. There is nothing I can do that will separate me from God’s love, and Christ’s invitation. God will never, ever, give up on me. Or you.
So maybe that’s what Peter meant, when he said that Jesus offered the only Way for Peter to follow. The Way of Christ demands everything of us, but it also never gives up on us.
What could be better than that? On the other side of all that, with all of its messy conflict and human absurdity and searing heartbreak — on the other side of all that is the weight of glory, all that is good, a feast of unending life for all.
Does this offend you?
Yeah, it offends me too.
But what could possibly be better than this?
***
Preached on the 13th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16B), August 22, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69