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Sermon - It Does Matter What You Believe - 29th July 2007
St Aidan’s 8.30 am
Readings: Hosea 1:2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13
Last Saturday I was planning to meet Sarah at a dinner in Parramatta. To avoid taking two cars, we decided that I would travel by bus. I checked the timetable on the web, planning to catch a bus just after 5pm. Just as I was about to leave, I heard a screech of brakes and a bang. Someone had hit the back of a car entering a driveway just down from us. I went out to see whether I could be of any help. Many other neighbours did the same thing, the police and ambulance were called, no one seemed to be hurt, and help was being offered. There was no point in hanging around.
It had taken long enough to make me definitely late for the bus, so I went in to check the timetable. I couldn’t find the bus I had been aiming for, and suddenly realize that I had chosen a bus from the weekday timetable. If I had gone down when I planned, I would have been waiting nearly half an hour for the next bus in the Saturday timetable. That, of course, was the bus I ended up catching anyway!
That incident reminded me that it really does matter what you believe. If you believe that a bus is coming at a particular time and you’re wrong, it can cause great inconvenience, if not more than that! If you are driving behind a car and believe that it is going to maintain its speed when it is about to turn into a driveway, you could find yourself causing an accident. Much of what we believe is not a matter of theory: it affects our actions and their consequences.
That is true in the area of spiritual belief, as well. Our belief or our unbelief in God will have an impact on our outlook on life, the way we live, the priorities we have, the decisions we make. If you believe that those who do not share your particular religious understanding are God’s enemies, who ought to be destroyed, you might well become a suicide bomber, or what I call a suicide murderer. People can use their own spiritual experience as the basis on which they judge others: a person whose experience is different from theirs is condemned by them - but is the person condemned by God?
And what about our readings today? In the days of Hosea, the people of Israel believed that they were safe: they were God’s people. God would always look after them, even if they turned away from him and abandoned his laws. They were wrong. Hosea made clear that judgement was a reality, even for them - as it turned out not many years later. But to those who thought that God would abandon his people for ever, Hosea also made clear that there was still hope of restoration.
And so the Psalmist could use his belief, his knowledge of what God is like, of what God has done in the past, and of what God requires, to pray and expect that God’s blessing would again come to his people: that mercy, truth, righteousness and peace shall flourish, and the Lord shall give his people all that is good.
And in the Gospel today, we hear Jesus speaking about prayer. If we believe what Jesus says, we shall be people who pray, pray with meaning and confidence and persistence. If we believe that these words are not true, then our prayers will be perfunctory or non-existent.
Yes, it does matter what we believe.
This is a vital truth underlying Paul’s Letter to the Colossians. The letter was written to a community where a huge variety of religious ideas were around. Some of these ideas were clearly making inroads into the church, and Paul’s letter seeks to deal with the problem.
It seems that one idea was that God was so unapproachable that you had to get past a whole series of spiritual guardians, as it were, to get closer to him. Jesus was amongst these great ones, but there were many others more important than him. These great ones must also be worshipped: to have any chance of getting closer to God, you must abase yourself before these spiritual or angelic figures.
Another idea was that the Old Testament laws must still be followed: circumcision, restrictions on food, certain ceremonies were all vital for anyone who wishes to draw near to God. A legalistic outlook was a significant side of this teaching.
But Paul is absolutely clear that these ideas are false ideas: they are disastrous for anyone who seeks to know God. To add these to the Christian gospel is in fact to throw away the Gospel. To replace the Gospel with these ideas is to throw away our relationship with God: it is a disastrous mistake! Paul is very clear that it does matter what we believe.
He tells his readers: don’t be taken captive by any of these false teachings or their advocates. Hold on to him. “Continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in the faith, just as you were taught.” Paul wants the Christians of Colossae to make sure that they don’t replace the message they heard, the Gospel of Jesus, with a different message, a false message, a message which will lead them in the wrong direction.
Why does it matter so much? Why are these ideas so harmful?
Because “in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells bodily”. If we want to see God, look at Christ. If we want to know God, we must know Christ. Christ is the one who reveals God to us. Christ is God: God sharing our human life and existence. There is no one, no angelic being, no spiritual power, who can reveal God to us as Jesus does. Through Christ we meet God: we need no one else. These angelic figures, inasmuch as they exist at all, only get in the way. Let go of them, and hold fast to Christ, who is the way to God. It really does matter, says Paul.
And you don’t need special ceremonies - circumcision and other rituals - to get you closer to God. We don’t need to seek special spiritual experiences as necessary steps to God. Of course we have baptism and the Eucharist as important parts of our spiritual walk, but what do they do? They express the faith of which Paul is speaking. They speak of the forgiveness and new life which we have in Christ, and strengthen us in our faith. They are not ends in themselves, but ways by which God helps us along the path of Christian life.
It is Christ who brings us salvation, not the sacraments that speak of Christ, important though they are.
Almost all the ideas which were being raised in Colossae seem to have been attempts to improve the Gospel. Yes Jesus is great, but there are others who are just as important. Yes, faith in Christ is important, but you need to be circumcised or go through these rituals or keep these rules.
But as Paul insists, these are not mere additions or clarifications of the Gospel: they are distortions or denials of the Gospel. To take these things on board is to in fact throw away the Gospel. It really does matter what you believe.
And so the message that comes to us is this. We need to hold onto the truth, and beware of ideas that will turn us away from Christ. We need to beware of adding to the Gospel, for what may seem add small addition or modification or clarification, may well be a distortion. In Christ we have been given the fullness of truth.
Of course I am not saying that we know everything there is to be known. There is always more to be learnt from the scriptures, and there are times when the church will have to re-examine its understanding of those scriptures. We can fail to take account of important things they contain. We can become so taken up with one aspect of their teaching that we ignore another part. And we need to keep working out how their teachings apply to us 2000 years after Christ. We have what we need in the scriptures, but we read them and think about them, we compare them with each other, and we keep learning from them. As a hymn puts it, “the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his word”. So when we hear new ideas about our faith, let us think about them rather than automatically accepting or dismissing them, but let us consider them in the light of scripture, and consider them in the light of the Gospel.
In Jesus we have be given the way to God. In the Gospel of Christ we have been given the way to live and the way to live.
Yes, it does matter what we believe. In the mercy of God, we have not just been put on to a good thing: we have been put onto the one who is God, who is truth itself. Let’s stick to the Gospel. Let’s hold on to Christ. Let’s hold on to the Gospel of Life. Amen.