From Rev. Rachel
I recently picked up a book that has been recommended to me a hundred times but that I never managed to read. It’s Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, and I’ve found myself hollering “Eureka!” more than once already, and I’m only on Chapter 2!
What strikes me in this post-Easter season, when the sugar highs have worn off and Easter eggs, if they are still left in the store, are 70% off, and people have returned to life as usual, is that it becomes a lot harder to remember the resurrection. The world’s drumbeat of war and wealth continue on, and life is back to its normal stream of difficulties.
This is where I think the practice of faith comes in. It’s easy to be joyful when you’re on a sugar high. But Jesus’ resurrection calls us to a faith of joy, a faith in God’s ability to overcome evil, even when it looks like evil is back on top. As Easter people, our central command is to have “faith” in God at all times.
Borg takes on the idea of faith in Chapter 2. Most of us grew up in denominations that taught faith as belief, a “right” way of thinking that often meant believing in things that were counter to science and reason. As the Enlightenment began to challenge our old notions of the way the world works, to have faith meant to be willing to cut off the part of your brain dedicated to thought in order to submit to the Bible’s version of history and science. Such was the only way to salvation.
Borg challenges this notion with a different understanding of faith. The “belief” understanding is only one of four ways that the word “faith” was used in the Bible. Other meanings for it were much less heady, and much more heart- and soul-based. They include:
- Faith as trust: using a metaphor from Søren Kierkegaard, faith is like floating in a very deep ocean. The more you struggle, the more likely you are to sink; if you relax and trust and let go of the anxiety that it all depends on YOU, you will float. When we let go of anxiety, we are freed to love more fully and deeply.
- Faith as fidelity: as spouses do in a marriage, in baptism we commit ourselves to God with loyalty and allegiance, even when the going seems tough or impossible. The opposite of this kind of faith is adultery – not necessarily sexual adultery, but going elsewhere for the fulfilling of the relationship when bringing the conflict in the relationship to the forefront would have been more helpful. God would prefer our arguing with God than our leaving the relationship. To put our fidelity elsewhere is idolatry, likely to get us caught up in the pursuit of wealth, achievement, or desire. Instead, God seeks our devotion to God’s self, to our neighbors, and to creation – even when it’s hard.
- Faith as vision: we orient ourselves to a new way of seeing, a vision that Jesus cast for us. Borg claims that we have several general options of how we see reality. We can see reality as threatening and hostile, which would lead us to being overly protective of self and family. We can see reality as indifferent, and therefore see no use in reaching out help anyone. Or, we can see reality as life-giving and nourishing, as what has given us life and sustains us, like the ways the flowers are clothed by God in beauty. This last way of seeing, while possibly overly optimistic, tends to free us from anxiety and self-preoccupation, and opens us up to giving and receiving generously. It is an Easter kind of vision.
As you settle into a post-Easter life, I invite you to consider one of these ways of living in faith. Is there something here that could help you when the going gets rough? Could it lead you to a Eureka moment?
Happy Easter, friends.
Rev. Rachel
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