Exodus 17:1-7 Excerpts from With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live
is More Important Than What We Believe by Gretta Vosper**
Sunday October 1st, 2023
By Rev. Nicole M. Lamarche
Good morning again on this beautiful morning! I can’t believe it’s October!
I invite you now to take some deeper breaths as you are moved, letting
ourselves arrive, allowing each of us to tune into whatever word God has for
us today. As you are moved I invite you to join me now in a spirit of prayer
from Psalm 19. God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen.
In the last 25 years more Americans have left the Church than all of the
new people who became Christians from the time of the First Great
Awakening to the Second Great Awakening and the Billy Graham crusades
combined.(1) I had to read that a few times to really process it. That is a lot of
people! The number one reason people give is this… Do you want to
guess? It’s that church members, Christians themselves are experienced
and seen as hypocritical and judgmental. Isn’t that fascinating? It made me
think of that quote from Mahatma Gandhi “I like your Christ, I
do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
I am truly grateful that I have had the privilege of spending my life investing
in and being a part of faith communities that are at least trying for a Christ-
like character, where love and inclusion and justice are at the center and
where questions are welcome and what matters more to many of us are the
relationships, the community and the connections with others who share
our values, more than the idea of being bound by the same beliefs.
We are spiritual seekers of all kinds and here’s the wild thing, not all of us
identify as Christians, we are agnostics, probably some atheists, we are
independents spiritually and otherwise and there are many of us who still
want to be rooted in the ancient faith, and need a modifier so we call
ourselves progressive Christians.
The point is that in this time and at this church and not just here, but
definitely here, we have given ourselves permission to ask the questions
that weren’t allowed to be asked within Christianity before.
We are freeing ourselves to wonder out loud do we need this? Do we need
church? Do we even need a god?
Because in our context we understand that much has been added by
history and patriarchy and the agendas of nation states that became
empires that colonized in the name of Jesus.
And as I was pondering, for many of us, we are doing something like
spiritual decluttering- decluttering our lives from the lies of the past, and I
notice that people are decluttering in general, so maybe it’s decluttering all
over the place?
But in our case, decluttering from some of the dogma created not by or
from the life of Jesus, but by those who used his name for power and
privilege.
For a while in the United Church of Christ we have decluttered from the
manufactured theological stance that only men can be spiritual leaders and
we have decluttered from the notion that each of us is born a sinner and
that the point of our life is to avoid a fiery pit, but it is clear to me that there
is still lots of decluttering to do.
This book that both Andy and Kamilla recommended, as you heard, it’s
called With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important Than
What We Believe by Gretta Vosper, and in that she writes, “There’s stuff
left hanging about-bits and pieces of detritus that don’t get properly cleared
away- things we no longer actually believe but have not officially so
declared.” She says, “Unlike scientific paradigms, social, religious and
cultural paradigms seem to hang around forever. Though they may have
only a shadowy existence, they never really die, are never really
abandoned when a new paradigm appears. Rather, they get stacked up
like cafeteria trays in a self-service cafeteria.”
And you won’t be surprised to hear that I think one of the questions sitting
on that cafeteria tray is whether we even need God at all?
In this beautiful old story from the book of Exodus, the people are
wandering in the wilderness, thirsty and frustrated and they complain to
Moses- why would you lead us here, free us from slavery and bring us to a
place where we are going to die of thirst and starvation? And they ask, “Is
the Lord even among us or not?”
And clearly we humans are still asking this same question even in different
ways. And it is often under the other questions people ask. What I mean is
that if we now have science to explain weather- we know that a thunder
strike isn’t God mad at us well maybe it is, and we know that light isn’t just
some miracle but it is really just electromagnetic radiation that we can see
with our eyes and we know that some theology was made up to control us
humans into doing what governments wanted, do we need God? Do we
need church?
Gretta Vosper refers to the work of other historians and scholars and she
points to the work of Jack Good in particular who argued that we should no
longer perpetuate the idea of a world that is “safely secure within the arms
of a personal chaplain to the earth.” And further she says that letting go of
the need for some of that allows the space for us to get better about looking
to each other about caring for ourselves and one another.
I guess that is where I find myself. And I look forward to hearing where you
are too.
For a while I have been done with that God who is a personal chaplain, the
Santa that keeps track of missteps, the One who is distant, that is the god
that I long ago washed from my spiritual cafeteria plate. And maybe you
have too?
And there are many more- I have washed off the theology that says that it
is even possible to take the Bible literally. I washed off the idea that there is
only one kind of relationship construct and washed off the idea that even
though God is love, this God killed his son in some exchange to save us.
What a gift to be alive now and among this community to be able to
declutter, to be being open and honest about what is true, about what we
know and don’t, we are free to in the words of the poet Rilke, “live our
questions…”
I realize that especially in Colorado saying all of this could annoy and even
offend those who accept so much of what human beings have added onto
Christ, what has become Christianity, but I decided I am tired of letting
others be loud or mean or cause harm simply because they say they are
right. I am tired of people ruining things because they force the rest of us to
be made to feel inferior or have fewer rights because of their beliefs. Just
because you believe it, doesn’t make it so.
Last week, I was here for another event, and I encountered a couple who
shared that they are a part of a non-denominational church not far from
here and they started to ask some questions, and once we got a little
engaged, I could just feel their judgement. It was radiating toward me them
like heat. Another person I was with was trying to explain that we take the
Bible seriously, but not literally. And they couldn’t handle that. And I said,
well part of we do and I referred to Isaiah and how we take weapons and
turn them into garden tools. And her eyes got bigger. And then as kindly
and as quickly as I could muster I said, “the Bible says women shouldn’t
speak in church and that they should be silent,” and I bet you spoke in your
church? She didn’t say much after that. But I bet she is still pondering?
I didn’t have time to go into the fact that every reading of the Bible was a
selective reading, girlfriend don’t you know?
But it made me think of all of the people who have left the Church… And
this woman went at me and she said, “Well you believe in the resurrection
don’t you?” And I said, “we don’t exclude people who don’t.”
What a gift that we have a place like this where we can ask, “Is the Lord
among us?” Well maybe, but I believe yes, but also I believe no, we don’t
need to know. . In this decluttering, what if we can explore the idea that
maybe God is an experience? Maybe the gift of this time is knowing it’s not
out there, but an invitation to dive deeper in here and between each other?
Maybe we have evolved enough to see that now?
COMMUNAL REFLECTION: What do you think?
Beloved of God, is the Lord among us, maybe not like we thought? But look
around. The answer is still yes. May it be so. Amen.
Comments