The Old South Church in Boston
There's a Lie in Belief Sermon by Jennifer Mills-Knutsen
August 8, 2004
Hebrews 10:35-11:3
“My faith, it is an oaken staff, a traveler’s well-loved aid. My faith, it is a song of trust, sustains me undismayed.” Those words sum up the kind of faith I would like to have, the kind of faith I imagine we all would like to have—a well-worn, much-traveled, trustworthy and beloved walking stick, upon which we can place the weight of our many cares. “My faith it is an oaken staff, O let me on it lean. My faith provides the ground of hope, supports a purpose keen.” This describes a faith that grounds our hope, even in the worst of times and the most difficult of circumstances. It is a faith like that in today’s scripture: faith that is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
We shared as our call to worship today another testimony of faith, the 121st Psalm. A voice cries out in fear and frustration: “I lift my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come?” Then, with a strength that comes from somewhere deep within, that same voice answers its own plea: “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” The voice goes on to state with great confidence that God will preserve and protect, that God’s watchful care never sleeps. Where does the voice get that conviction? What happens between the shaky cry for help and the strength and certainty in reliance on God? Where does that kind of faith come from, and how do I get some?
In the course of our lives, all of us will at some time or another face those moments that make us cry out in anguish, “from where will my help come?” So today I’d like to think together about the faith that might allow us to answer, with the confidence of the Psalmist, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Where does that kind of faith come from and how do we get some?
The problem is, whenever I begin to think about the mystery of faith, I get haunted by the phrase that is the title of today’s sermon: “There’s a lie in belief.” It comes from my 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Herbert Bailey. He hailed from the small town of Topsail, North Carolina, and spoke with a Carolina accent thicker than John Edwards. He was a great instructor, and his lectures kept us mesmerized as he interwove folksy stories of his southern youth with lessons on great American literature, and taught us grammar by way of peculiar idioms and folk expressions. This particular phrase, however, always bothered me. He was fond of saying, “There’s always a lie in belief, and there’s always an end to a friend.” “There’s always a lie in belief, and there’s always an end to a friend.” While this phrase taught me well how to arrange “I’s” and “E’s” in the proper order, it also unsettled me. Did the expression only relate to spelling, or was it trying to convey some deeper adult-level wisdom? Mr. Bailey, a devout Southern Baptist, reassured us that it was only a spelling device, but I was not convinced. My best friend and I puzzled over the conflict between the second part, “there’s always an end to a friend,” and our promise to one another to be “friends forever.” We resolved this problem fairly easily, however, by incorporating a mature understanding of life’s finitude—working out the logic that unless we died at exactly the same moment in time, one of us would outlive the other, thus ending the friendship, at least in this life. But the first part continued to trouble me. I remained convinced that, beyond grammar, this phrase contained some bit of meaning I was missing. I had discovered the end to the friend—what was the lie in belief?
Today, thinking about the kind of faith that can turn a cry of anguish into a profession of faith, I think I might finally propose an answer to that question. No, don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you it’s all a sham, that all belief is a lie—but I have been thinking that there are indeed lies we tell ourselves about belief, little fictions we cling to that prevent us from a deeper faith. Theologian Douglas John Hall has named three common misperceptions about faith, and I am greatly indebted to him for this construction. These misperceptions, or, to put it more strongly, lies we cling to about belief, these ideas masquerade as faith, but are incapable of becoming an oaken staff or a sustaining hope. These lies in belief will cause faith to crumble under the weight of difficulty.
The first lie in belief is the misperception that faith is about convincing yourself of the tenets of doctrine. As Douglas John Hall says, “faith is not the assent to doctrines about God, creation, Jesus Christ, etc.” Faith is not the ability to check the “yes” box next to a long line of creedal statements about the virgin birth, the Trinity, atonement or resurrection. I know many of us in this congregation struggle to make sense of various points of Christian teaching—and that is a necessary and worthwhile endeavor. We who call ourselves Christians must negotiate ways to understand the meaning of the great Christian symbols and stories. But the danger, the lie in belief, is mistaking a well-thought out theology for faith. You could harbor doubts about every last Christian doctrines and still have great faith. Or, you could accept the Christian creed without hesitation, yet have no faith at all. Because to believe, from its Greek root, means “to give one’s heart to.” Not “to think something is true,” but “to give one’s heart to.” Kathleen Norris writes that, “The word ‘belief’ has been impoverished; it has come to mean a head-over-heart intellectual assent. When people ask, ‘What do you believe?’ they are usually asking, ‘What do you think?’”
But there is a lie in belief, if belief is only about how we think, how we rationalize or make sense of the world around us. Because in such belief there is no oaken staff upon which we can lean. In times of trial, a great theological system might help you make sense of the problem you are facing, but it is not likely to give you the courage to go on. Right thinking won’t soothe a broken heart or calm a fearful soul. When seeking a sustaining faith for times of trouble, we must rephrase the question—not do you think, but do you give your heart over to God? In that question, not the theological one, we find the beginnings of faith.
The second misconception, the second lie in belief, is vulnerable to the same kind of crumbling under pressure. Hall describes it like this: “faith is not accepting ‘on authority’ what one cannot personally experience or feel to be true.” In other words, if you believe because someone or something tells you to—be it the Bible, the church, the tradition, your parents or grandparents or spouse or partner, even the preacher—be prepared to confront a crisis when times get rough. Because you can’t have a sustaining faith that belongs to someone else. There is necessarily a “do-it-yourself” aspect to faith. Each of us must confront our own doubts, wrestle with our own experiences, and form our own relationship with the Holy One—no one can do it for us. As the apostle Paul writes, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12)
What’s more, you cannot even rely on your own authority, if that authority is 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years old. You cannot trust a faith that was worked out by a younger you. Your faith and its authority must be grounded in your contemporary self. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, preaching a sermon to his confirmation class in Germany in 1938, spoke with passion about the impermanence of faith’s authority. He told these youth, “You do not have your belief once and for all. Your belief, which you profess today with all your hearts, demands to be won anew with every new day. God gives us always just precisely so much faith as we need for the present day. Faith is the daily bread which God gives us. … Either we receive it anew everyday, or it decays. One day is long enough to keep faith.” (Bonhoeffer, 295) The authority of faith has an expiration date.
Why does faith require such constant attention to avoid becoming a lie? Because faith is not a thing, it is a relationship—a relationship between you and God. Like any relationship, it dies when left unattended. To have a relationship, you can’t just rely on mediators—there’s a big difference between knowing a friend, and knowing a friend of a friend, right? To say I am friends with Al Gore means something different than saying that my college roommate went to kindergarten with his oldest daughter, Karinna Scott Gore, and they’re still friends. The same thing is true with God. If we want to have a faith that is an oaken staff, we have to nurture a friendship with God on our own.
Finally, Hall names a third misperception: “faith is not a vague spirituality, a belief-ful attitude toward life…an emotion, a positive outlook, [or] a readiness to believe.” In other words, faith is not the same thing as optimism. The lie in this belief gets exposed when confronted with great horror. In the wake of Auschwitz or Ground Zero, in the midst of mounting civilian casualties in Iraq and genocide in the Sudan, when confronted with the death of a loved one, the betrayal of a relationship, a debilitating illness, or the brutal violence in the streets of Boston this week, a simple positive attitude toward life is grossly inadequate to the task. When the cry erupts, “from where will my help come?”, such vague spirituality most likely answers, “I don’t know, but look on the bright side. Don’t worry, it’ll all work out fine.” In many ways, this positive attitude is summed up in the common expression, “have faith!”—but such faith in positive outcomes can only ever be skin deep.
Contrast that with the Psalmist, whose cry of anguish is answered from somewhere deep within, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Contrast that with a faith grounded in the reality of the cross. On the cross, all naïve optimism is lost, yet somehow faith remains—as Jesus offers forgiveness to the crowd, as he promises a criminal they both will be in paradise, as he commends his spirit into God’s hands. This is a faith that from the depths of despair musters a strong and vibrant hope. This hope is not a vague vision of a sunny future, but it is faith, the true assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen—conviction that God’s strength and goodness can reach even into the darkest moment, conviction that God will never abandon us, conviction that death and persecution is never the end of our being. In the face of a thousand resounding, “no’s”, faith says with defiance, “yes.” In moments of despair, when all optimism fails, faith is what wells up inside and refuses to give up. That kind of faith is a mystery, a gift from God to us. In the end, that kind of faith comes simultaneously from deep within us and from some place of transcendence out in the universe.
Where do we get that kind of faith? In the end, the answer is simple: it comes from God. There are ways we must be open, there are ways we must enter into relationship with God, there are ways we must give our hearts to the Holy One. But the faith that is an oaken staff, the faith of the Psalmist, the faith of Christ on the cross—that does not depend on our getting it all right. That is a gift from God, that will sustain us today, tomorrow, and every day to come. There is no lie in that belief. Amen.
The Old South Church in Boston
645 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 536-1970