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Spiritual Beliefs
Next I have to say to you "fare thee well". This is the last article that I will be writing as I have taken a posting in Texas and will be leaving after this Sunday. For three years I have served the people at St. Peter's Episcopal Church and had the opportunity to enjoy their fellowship and the hospitality of Jackson, Alabama. A part of that hospitality is attached to the story of the fainting goat. Yup...no kidding...a fainting goat. When he gets scared, he falls over. In a minute or so he will come to, raise up and continue on as if nothing had happened...at least, until he faints again. There doesn't seem to be any sense of preparation for whatever it is that scares him, he just faints. My pal in Jackson, who claims this beast, has named him "Uncle Pittypat", remembering Scarlett's aunt from "Gone With The Wind" who was constantly on the verge of fainting and kept asking for her smelling salts. Last Sunday the folks of St. Peter's had a picnic to begin the process of bidding me farewell. It was a great gathering of fun and fellowship, with good food, swimming, fishing and a chance to see Uncle Pittypat. He wouldn't faint. Can you believe that fact? After all the hoopla about a fainting goat he would not perform for us. We were left wondering if it was really true. The faith of the church of Christ is similar: We expect it to perform for us and when it doesn't do it we wonder if it is really true. "Faith", said one of my seminary professors,"is believing in that which is unbelievable". I remember that statement hitting me especially hard back in school. I remember it being something that I pondered for a longtime. I remember it being tested through some of the trials and tribulations that have been almost 20 years of ordained life. "Faith" calls upon me to wonder, test and finally make a decision. Do you know that outside of the biblical witness, we have no proof that Jesus of Nazareth even existed except for two very suspect references made by a pagan Roman historian and a Jewish collaborator historian, both of whom were writing way after the resurrection event? I will include in this statement the writings of the church fathers in the centuries after the resurrection, because they were not eye-witnesses, but were those who continued to hand down the tradition. Outside of the biblical witness we have absolutely no proof of Jesus at all--not His birth, His family, His growing up, His work, His death and certainly not His resurrection. We are then relying on the faith of those who have handed things down to us for years. John Dominic Crossan, in his new book "The Birth of Christianity", makes a good argument for how little we actually know about the first 20 to 30 years after the passion, death and resurrection of the Jesus. It is a fascinating book, a bit technical and hard on the head at times, because he makes you think and think hard. I haven't finished it yet, but I don't think it will make me into a fainting goat. It may challenge my faith, but that is more a positive than a negative. A faith that is challenged is brushed off and made to shine for all the world to see. A faith that is never challenged gets rusty, narrow-minded and dull. "Choose you this day whom you shall serve" can be applied to this sense of faith. I serve a Living, Loving Holy Mystery whose name is unknown to me, but whose personality "is" known to me. He is the one. He was before there ever was time. He is time and the void of time. Creating, redeeming, sustaining, His is the way of truth, justice and steadfastness. He is love unbounded. It is that love that conquers everything that has tried to thwart that love. I may question the validity of Uncle Pittypat's ability to faint on command, but that is not faith. Sooner or later we can prove whether this goat faints or not. I believe that the Holy One calls me out to question the faith that has been handed to me so that I may choose to either accept it or to reject it. I have known people who have done both and I choose to be one who continues to believe that Jesus died to take away the sin of the world; that the power of ultimate love has raised Him to show me the power of that love; and that He lives and reigns, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Fare thee well friends. As my Welsh relatives once said, "...and may the Lord be kind to ye". | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
