We went to the home show yesterday, and I still am amazed that we would pay seven bucks to see people try to sell us their products. Next year I am simply going to spend the day at Lowes and Home Depot (on free hot dog day) and save money and get a free lunch to boot. But the Home show was good; it was crazy full of people, a lot of whom are do-it-yourselfers like me. There is no project that I am not willing to tackle, even though my skill set might be running on fumes. Flooring? No problem, except that crawling around on your knees is tough. Plumbing? Again, it is simple, it is not rocket science, just have to able to contort your body to fit under the sink. Electrical? OK, that one scares me a bit; something about the house burning down while we sleep is a bit of a deterrent.
Now Dianna is cringing, because she thinks that I am not as capable as I obviously am. In fact, she likens me to Tim “the toolman” Allen from the Home Improvement TV show. I am nothing like that guy. Just because some of my projects don’t work out doesn’t mean they all don’t. I put in our Pergo flooring in the kitchen by myself, and it was the old fashion glue together kind, not that wimpy snap together stuff they sell yuppies today. It is not entirely my fault that it took a year to get some of the baseboards back in place, because I really thought that I wanted to change them out, and I was just trying to be a good steward of my time. I mean how smart would it have been to put those down and just ripped them up again. And anyone could have flooded the bathroom changing out a faucet, it goes with the territory.
It is true that people are into do-it-yourself stuff, because you can take the satisfaction that you saved a lot of money and that you did it yourself. This mentality has made Home Depot a retail giant, second only to Wal-Mart in annual sales. There are shows on TV, in fact a whole channels such as HGTV and the DIY network that encourage and guide us to tackle our own projects.
But Home Improvement is not the only place where do-it-yourselfism is popular. I keep seeing a web-site pop up when I am googling all kinds of other stuff, and it is called ehow.com: How to do just about everything. And on ehow.com, there are tips on all kinds of things, in more than 20 broad categories, including culture, fashion, business, Arts, cars, computers, Pets, relationships and the like. Clicking on fashion then reveals 10 more subcategories. I chose men’s fashion, and there were 14 more categories with 2089 articles. And since my uniform at work consists of a suit and tie, I clicked on men’s suits and found 61 “how to” articles. What kind of articles you say? Well, important things such as how to dress down a suit (that is good to know so you don’t look geeky); how to fit a man’s suit (that is easy, just buy one BIG ENOUGH GUYS); how to flute a handkerchief (I keep tromboning mine for some reason); how to match socks(wow, some stupid man really needs help- listen guys, if you don’t k now how to match your socks, quit reading this stuff now and get some help); how to be stylish after 40 (come on now, ehow, how about how to be stylish before 40 for heaven’s sake—we old guys got the suit thing down); How to paint your own t-shirt (so you can say, “honey, where did I put the tie die that matches my Georgio Armani suit?”); how to remember not to wear that next week (a trick since most men have less than two week’s worth of suits); How to look like David Beckham (how about a face transplant, hitting the gym, buy a toupee, and forget the suit); and a whole bunch on how to tie a tie (useful for the aforementioned stylish under 40 crowd who purchase clip-ons!).
Ehow.com has an article for everything you need to know how to do. Today’s feature is how to fix dry skin, and I am going to read that one posthaste. But I also ran across a group of articles about fixing mistakes. One such as “How to Fix a Big Mistake at Work.” I try like heck to avoid big screw-ups at work, but this article looked interesting so I read it. It had four steps to fixing a big mistake at work, and they were: 1) admit your mistake immediately before the boss finds it; 2) Do whatever it takes to fix the problem immediately; 3) Ask to meet with the boss to explain the mistake and your steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again before you get called into the office; and 4) never bring it up again, and if it comes up in your performance review, simply remind the boss of the steps you took to fix the problem.
It seems to me that we would all be better off in life if we knew how to rectify mistakes in all of our relationship. Now it might not fully remove the consequences of our actions, but we would be better off. I certainly think in the majority of times that it would mitigate the effects of our mistakes if we could swiftly deal with them, correct them, and learn from them and be stronger because of them. That would be far better than the stick our heads in the sand approach and hope no one is looking.
In our lectionary text today, we have Mark’s account of the baptism of Jesus and the temptation in the wilderness in about five short verses in typical Markan, quick moving, cut-to- the-chase style. I mean mark is quick and to the point. Just look sometime and see how many times Mark uses the word “immediately.” Marks’ Jesus must have been an American, because he is definitely a “type A” personality. In our text today on this first Sunday in Lent, Jesus is Baptized, and then he is tempted, and then he preaches, and Mark must be saying forget the details, they just slow things down. So on this first Sunday in Lent, when all Christendom is talking about temptation and sin, I instead am going to talk about heresy, and thus the tie-in with all that talk about making mistakes. How do I get a sermon on heresy out of these verses? It is easy, as I can find something heretical in most every sermon I preach, but most weeks I understand that discretion is the better part of valor and I refrain. Besides, I am allergic to stonings.
So we have the Baptism of Jesus in Mark’s account and we have no fanfare with it, just a statement of fact, but we do have something significant with it: one of only two or three proof texts for the doctrine of the Trinity in scripture is in these few verses. When one thinks of the cardinal doctrines of the faith, you have to list the deity of Christ, for many the Virgin Birth and of course the Trinity. What you may not know is that our doctrine of the Trinity is based on just a couple of explicit references in scripture, namely the formula we see uttered here at Jesus’ baptism, where we see Jesus being dunked in the Jordan (the son) the heavens being opened and a Dove descending (the Holy Spirit) and the voice who says, That a boy, good job my son, you do me proud (God the parent—and no, my neutral reference to God’s gender is not the heresy I am talking about). So this is one of only three occasions where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned in the same verse. The other explicit one is in Matthew 28 and the Great Commission, where Jesus says to go and baptize in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. And after these two events, there are really only two more obscure references to the three persons of God in the same verse, and they are “[T]here are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” (1 John 5:7) and “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” (Galatians 13:14). That is it–period. The term “Trinity” is of course nowhere in scripture, and these verses offer no insight into the complex theology that has developed this cardinal doctrine. If you research the Trinity, you will find many highly theologized attempts from other verses to prove it, but only these places do we see all three members of the Godhead mentioned together, and there is nothing how these three are related and one. So today’s text is significant in that regard.
Now, I understand that the Bible doesn’t have to say something a million times for it to have credence. I will go a step further and say that the Bible doesn’t have to say something at all to have credence; there is something to taking the whole body of teaching in consideration of developing our theologies. But what I am saying is that of all the big heretical no-no’s, not believing the doctrine of the Trinity is tops on the lists. Not believing in the Trinity will get you burned at the stake faster than shouting “Texans are sissies and your football sucks” in downtown Lufkin.
The truth is, there are many verses that seem to support some view of God other than our Trinitarian one. The adoption of the doctrine of the trinity is rooted deeply in church history and it has a bloody past:
Theological differences regarding Jesus Christ began to manifest in Constantine’s empire when two major opponents surfaced and debated whether Christ was a created being (Arius doctrine) or not created but rather coequal and coeternal to God his father (Athanasius doctrine). The theological warfare between the Arius and Athanasius doctrinal camps became intense. Constantine realized that the his empire was being threatened by the doctrinal rift. Constantine began to pressure the church to come to terms with its differences before the results became disastrous to his empire. Finally the emperor called a council at Nicea in 325 AD to resolve the dispute. Only a fraction of existing bishops, 318, attended. This equated to about 18% of all the bishops in the empire. Of the 318, approximately 10 were from the Western part of Constantine’s empire, making the voting lopsided at best. The emperor manipulated, coerced and threatened the council to be sure it voted for what he believed rather than an actual consensus of the bishops. The present day Christian church touts Constantine as the first Christian emperor, however, his ‘Christianity’ was politically motivated. Whether he personally accepted Christian doctrine is highly doubtful. He had one of his sons murdered in addition to a nephew, his brother in law and possibly one of his wives. He continued to retain his title of high priest in a pagan religion until his death. He was not baptized until he was on his deathbed. Even with the adoption of the Nicaean Creed, problems continued and in a few years, the Arian faction began to regain control. They became so powerful that Constantine restored them and denounced the Athanasius group. Arius’s exile was ended along with the bishops who sided with him. It was now Athanasius who would be banished. When Constantine died (after being baptized by an Arian Bishop), his son reinstated the Arian philosophy and bishops and condemned the Athanasius group. In the following years the political foes continue to struggle and finally the Arians misused their power and were overthrown. The religious/political controversy caused widespread bloodshed and killing. In 381 AD, Emperor Theodosius (a Trinitarian) convened a council in Constantinople. Only Trinitarian bishops were invited to attend. 150 bishops attended and voted to alter the Nicene creed to include the Holy Spirit as a part of the Godhead. The Trinity doctrine was now official for both the church and the state. Dissident bishops were expelled from the church, and excommunicated. (http://www.angelfire.com/pa/greywlf/trinity.html)
When Athanasius won, Constantine declared that anyone caught believing the Arian heresy would be killed. That is motivation for getting one the same page, and that would sure stop church splits. The whole debate seems to have been as much political as theological. Hard to imagine, huh? Politics, not theology. Trinitarians use a whole host of Old Testament scriptures to advocate for their doctrine, and I can tell you that no Jewish scholars sees any of that there. I am sure that not believing in the Trinity gets you a “cult” label, and all of a sudden you are bedfellows with the Tony Alamos of the world.
Now, am I advocating throwing out the doctrine of the Trinity? No, of course not, I believe it even though no one can really explain it or make sense out of it. But I don’t have to understand something to believe it, that is where faith comes in for me. Because without a framework of faith, there are always going to be more questions than answers. Ask any three Christians you know to explain the Trinity and you will get three different answers.
What I am concerned about this morning is how easy it is to become a heretic, and along with it, how so many are afraid to question tradition and dogma, just because. While the doctrine of the Trinity makes theological sense to me, it is on precarious scriptural grounds, and maybe we should cut people a little slack if they don’t understand it or believe it. We have a mindset that some things are just givens and we are not sure from whence they come, but it doesn’t matter. Futhermore, if you don’t believe them, then you ain’t right and we want nothing to do with you. This is what makes Christianity the most polarizing force on the planet, when I think it should be just the opposite, one of the most uniting. Sure, I know, Jesus preached a divisive gospel for sure, but I don’t think Jesus intended for us to kill our own soldiers. I think he meant that there would be a high cost for siding with him, and in our country at least, there is a high cost of not siding with him.
When you think about the 100’s of different kinds of churches just in our city alone, you have to think that one of the main things that separate us is belief. And I don’t mean major beliefs of cardinal doctrines. What separates us from other Baptist Churches and what separates us from other Christian churches is small beliefs. Growing up in Searcy, I can remember a friend’s father who was a Church of Christ preacher say to me that we were so close on almost every single doctrine (we were not) but where we differed on Baptism was enough to send me to hell. I told him not to worry about it, because if heaven were full of the likes of him I would be better off in hell anyway.
So for us, virtually all of us, right belief is what our faith is all about. It is really what you believe that makes up who you are. Belief more than anything else determines where we go to church. A common belief set creates understanding and community. The problem is that belief doesn’t sell anymore, especially those that can send you to hell even if you cannot understand what they are all about in the first place. The newer generations don’t buy the company line unchallenged. They see through the hypocrisy of practice that undermines our staunch theologies of belief. Or they see through the shallowness and superficiality of belief only. They believe that belief is overrated, especially if it doesn’t make a difference in their busy lives where so many things demand their attention. And I can tell you, that I am on the same page as well. I am uninterested in your beliefs, but I am very interested in what works in your life.
After all, what good is belief, if it doesn’t change us and transform our world? It is a good question. There are some of us that believe that dialogue about belief is as important as belief itself, and that approach leaves little room for “burn you at the stake” heresy motifs. Because the truth is we all get some things right and we all get some things wrong. Most would say that getting doctrine right is more important than living right, but the truth is there is no heresy of belief that holds a candle to the heresy of practice.
What if there were a community of faith that were united by their service culture, their doing and acting, their projects and missions, regardless of their beliefs? Well, that will likely never happen, it is belief that unites us, not service nor mission. And I say why not? It seems that as long as we can agree we can worship together, and then and only then are we free to disagree on how to spend the churches money and what to get involved or not get involved in.
So what happens when you have a good non-Trinitarian Mormon, who serves others, who helps both the poor and disposed in third world countries and down the street, who dedicates two years of her life to full-time missionary service who feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, who is kind to strangers and practices the law of love, who is motivated to make the world a better place, who loves God as she understands him on one hand, and on the other hand you have a self-righteous southern Christian who is prejudiced, arrogant, divisive and always right who only does church on Sunday. So who is the heretic? The one who believes wrongly? That is how we always define a heretic, by what they think. Period. So our faith is cognitive, and believing right makes you right. And as shallow as that sounds, that is the way things are in 21st century Christendom. We only ask what you believe to join our church, to be ordained as clergy, to serve as missionaries or to teach our children. Or at the very least, that is what we are primarily concerned about.
My problem is this on this first Sunday of Lent when we reverently focus on what Jesus’ sacrifice was all about: The Jesus Christ of the gospels was not concerned about belief nearly as much as he was concerned with how we live and how we love others. Read the book of Mark. Even in heavy teaching passages such as the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, the didactics are more about Kingdom living and ethics than belief. They will know we are Christians by our thinking? Never. It’s not in there, anywhere – look for yourself. Where does it say that you have to believe certain doctrines to be his disciple? They will know we are his disciples if we what? Love one another. That is it friends. Sorry, Jesus said it, not me. His message of the Kingdom of Heaven is near was one of how to live and get along in the Kingdom of God. It was about how we relate to others and how we are related to God. It was about our ethic for living, about getting our lives right and about dealing with our sins. It was about real forgiveness and reconciliation. It was about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, it was about walking the second mile. It was anti-establishment, it was revolutionary, and it was radical. Jesus came in a world of belief, where every “T” was crossed and every “I” dotted. The theological ducks lined up in a row for the Pharisees and Sadducees, and Jesus constantly pointed out that there heresy of practice led to hypocrisy, the king of sins. That feeding the hungry on the Sabbath was more important than their belief about not picking grain on the Sabbath.
I received an email this past week from friend who has been an International Mission Board Missionary in Kenya the last 18 years working with the Maasai in Kenya. The email was a plea for prayer as there is great famine in the Kenya, and the Maasai who are semi-nomadic have been left out of the government’s relief efforts, and as many as 180,000 Maasai are starving. My friend, Bob Calvert doesn’t know how to feed 180,000 people, but he is trying to get it done. What I noticed about his plea was that he was breaking with tradition and feeding the Maasai whether or not they were believers or whether or not they were even friendly toward Christians. Shoot didn’t matter if they were pagan or Muslim, he was feeding them all the same. There would be no strings attached to the food, it was merely his job to feed the hungry, so the point was don’t be asking him about the number of converts he was getting from feeding the poor. And it also seemed that he was asking that we pray that the IMB would support his decision. Who knows if they will? Bob Calvert realizes that in a very real way, what we do trumps what we believe. It is what Jesus’ message of Kingdom living was all about.
It seems to me that if we are to rock this world for God, then we must get past what divides us, what trivializes us, what makes our message foolish and look for what gives us credence and unites us as his children. Because we too must feed others, feed the souls of the spiritually starving who are hungry for relevance. And I can tell you this, we will never be united by our set of beliefs as children of God, in fact there are some that will be divided over what I have had to say this morning. But I can tell you this, that the hungry, the hurting, the broken of our world could care less about our doctrines. Is belief important? Of course it is– beginning with the one about what we do being more important that what we think. Thanks be to God, in the name of the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.