Oxymoron?  Seemingly.

That’s what I find so fascinating.  All sorts of people, wherever I go, seem to hold fast to the idea that whatever the way things are (or should be) is because it’s always been that way.  Churches have always been in buildings with steeples and pews.  We’ve always sung from a hymn book.  The King James Version of the Bible is the most “correct” and earliest version of the bible…and these are just the churchy examples!

The sun goes around the earth.

The world is flat.

Men are the epitome of the human form and women are just underdeveloped vessels for future men.

The atom is the smallest particulate form of matter.

Fat is good for you.

Fat is bad for you.

Certain fats are good for you.

We could go on like this all day.

I was a youngest child until I met my younger sister and became and oldest child…until I met my younger brother and I became a middle child and an older child again.

Didn’t I tell you that shifting fundamentals would be fascinating?  You can puzzle that one out or ask me about it later.  For now, I can tell you that I grew up as the youngest of 3 children and as a youngest I had a propensity for being the “watching” child.

Watching and noticing, I often found myself the holder of truths (many times unwanted truths)

I noticed that adults would often behave as if something was true even when all evidence was to the contrary.

Sometimes it was just the little white lies (nobody looked that good in the 70s), some were much bigger elephants to ignore.

A person they clearly struggled with and didn’t like…but said they did.

A marriage in ruins masquerading as a happy couple.

“You can be anything you want to be.”

Really?  Really?

This may seem like a sad childhood realization but ironically it gave me a great freedom.  Freedom from holding on to truths as if they were fixed and static points.

Truths about myself!  I was a very shy and introverted child until the day I realized that being shy and scared of people was just not working for me…what if I wasn’t anymore? 

My sister always told me that I was a clutz with no rhythm who couldn’t dance and I accepted this as truth until I realized that if I ever wanted to enjoy dancing I was going to have to let go of the “truth” I had accepted.

Recognizing that the world around me seemed to have only the flimsiest grasp on “reality” gave me a fluidity to my faith formation that has held me in good stead in a post-modern world.

Yes, I was first introduced to God as a benevolent person-like being in the sky looking over all we humans do…but what if that wasn’t the whole truth?  What if God was also an idea?  A solution?  A relationship?  A friend?  A world?

Freedom from the idea that adults or authority figures had some sort of monopoly on the truth and I was just there to receive it gave me the confidence and agility necessary for reading the Bible without having a crisis of faith…because there are a *lot* of contradictions in there.

Throughout history varying cultures and peoples read the Bible with sometimes dizzying contradictions in translations and understandings of what it all meant, often with little awareness of how their worldview was informing and influencing their understanding.

Somehow these stories get transmitted from generation to generation, translation to translation and whole generations find themselves waking up to an ancient text for the first time.

Let’s take a quick walk through Genesis, for example:

First we have Creation…how many days was that again?  Who was created first?  Where? 

Actually there are multiple accounts and rarely can we tell the story from memory without mixing a couple of these accounts together…but let’s go on…

Cain & Abel have their saga, Noah has his, then Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph and his brothers.

Here’s a basic breakdown:

The creation myths are told and the story of God and humankind begins.  It is a global and cosmic story, inclusive of all humankind.  Cain and Abel are not Jews…they’re just two brothers.  And faith and understanding take a revolution.

The destruction and restoration of the world in a flood is also a cosmic and global story, even if it centers with one particular human character.  And faith and understanding take a revolution.

The story of Abraham gets more specific.  A promise of re-creation and restoration of a particular man to bring for a particular people.  This promise throws us into the Israelite cycle of covenant and infidelity, blessing and exile that is tied to the land and its people (even if still a nomadic and Diaspora rich culture)…until Hellenism and faith and understanding take a revolution.

Around the time of Jesus and Paul the Israelites find themselves prisoners in their *own* land.  It is a time when Jesus turns the laws of purity, of the covenant on their head and declares God’s blessing upon clean and unclean alike.  And faith and understanding take a revolution.

Christianity begins as a Jewish reformation, with strong cultural ties to North & East Africa and the Middle East.  But as the Roman Empire falls, the Muslim faith moves across North Africa, and the Catholic church splits into Eastern and Western Orthodoxies…as the Barbarians to the north are converted and suddenly Christianity is decidedly European…faith and understanding take a revolution.

As the Renaissance and the rise of Humanism sparks a theologian, protected by a prince to challenge an Empire, faith and understanding take a revolution.

In a new world, a new peoples, a new Manifest destiny…faith and understanding take a revolution.

As slavery rises and falls…faith and understanding take a revolution.

As a world of industry reaches new heights, as a war rages across the world in ways previously unimaginable…and then finds the strength and energy to wage another…faith and understanding take a revolution.

Sisters and brothers, we are living in remarkable and dizzying times.  Much of what we have understood about our patterns of life, the church, even our faith are taking a daily tumble.  The temptation is to hold on and try to put things back the way they were.  But perhaps this is just the way of things in this particular time.  Perhaps this is God’s way of helping us with a re-ordering of our lives.  Perhaps some of the things we have decided to hold constant are leaving others out in the cold.

I have a feeling that God doesn’t just stay in one place, be it in the sky or in the sanctuary.  So will we have the courage, in this time, in this place, for our faith and understanding to take a revolution?