Memorial United Methodist Church

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This morning I want to think with you about one of the most pressing issues of our time – the relationship of faith and reason, and how we can have a deep and satisfying faith in this modern scientific age.
I.My father grew up in Methodist parsonages in North Dakota in the beginning of the last century. In those rural communities, faith came easily to a child and Dad grew up with his childhood faith – until college. One day in science class, a professor said that a human being is nothing but an elongated donut, with food going in one end of the donut and waste coming out the other. Dad was devastated. Man, the supreme act of God’s creation, only a big tube with no deeper meaning? Dad remained a churchgoer but he often talked of the way that professor, perhaps unknowingly, shattered his childhood  faith.

A hundred years later, we live in a different world. Belief in God has to contend with science, with evolution, with tragedies like the Holocaust and HIV/AIDS, and with the materialism of modern society. If God is there. Why doesn’t He do something about all those problems? Are we descended from Adam and Eve, two people who lived 6000 years ago, or from a common ancestor of humans and apes? The universe is billions of light years wide, so where is Heaven? For that matter, where in all that space, is God?

We can’t turn back the clock, but some folks still retain the faith of their childhood. When I was a young minister In my first church, one evening in bible study I was explaining, with the newfound knowledge I had learned in Seminary that the world wasn’t created in 7 days, but that those stories conveyed a deeper truth even if they were not literally true. When I finished, Janey Smith, who had never gone beyond the sixth grade, but went on to raise six children, most of whom went on to college, said sweetly, “Well Rev. Collins, if it helps you to believe it that way, I think you should. But I think I’ll believe it the way I always have.”

That was a good lesson in humility for me, but that kind of simple faith is increasingly hard to hold onto in today’s world. For some, it leads to the kind of fundamentalism that denies the advances of science brought about in the last hundred years and opposes the teaching of evolution in the schools. For some it can lead to a loss of faith altogether. It is often a struggle to reconcile our faith in God with the advances of modern science and the complexities of modern life. Let me be clear: I am convinced not only that they can be reconciled but that it is a matter of survival for humanity to do so.

II. The other day I visited Janet in the hospital. I prayed, and when I recited the 23d psalm, tears came to my eyes. Not tears of grief but tears of a strange joy because for that moment we were in the presence of something greater than ourselves. As I reflected on that while preparing this sermon, I remembered the words of the seminary professor who taught us about the myths of the Bible 50 years ago. “Are they true?” he thundered. “Of course they’re true!” I came to see that they carry within them a truth greater than the historical accuracy of the stories.
We need myths to live by. Because a myth is important for the truth it embodies, not for its literal truth or untruth. It is important because of its power to inspire and to motivate and to sustain us in difficult times. My granddaughter loves to have me read Longfellow’s  poem, ” Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…” It’s a myth based on a shred of historical fact, but it thrills her because of its beauty and heroism. I know that some of the gospel hymns of my childhood are not strictly true in every respect, but I still love to sing them. They tap into something very deep in my subconscious. Leaning on the Everlasting Arms. Abraham Lincoln was a historical figure, but much of what we know has evolved into myth, but Lincoln stories still more me to tears because they embody the deeper truths of his greatness. And I love the stories of Jesus and his life. “Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear…”

But myths can also be dangerous. Hitler used myth to stir up anti-Semitism. Racists used the myth of racial inferiority to support segregation and injustice. I read yesterday that some parents in Texas, and yes – Peekskill – are opposed to President Obama speaking to schoolchildren on the ground that he is teaching socialism. That is another myth.

III. So how do we decide what myths shall influence our lives and beliefs?  I believe that the ligaments holding together faith and myth, faith and science, are ethics. What do I mean? I mean that the important thing is not what we “believe” but what we do. If we believe that love is the guiding principle of the universe, and I do, then we can sing the gospel hymns about Jesus Loves Me because we believe in love. That’s what the civil rights movement did with the spirituals – adapted them to the present situation but kept their power to inspire. Martin Luther King, confronted with so much evil, still was able to say “I believe the universe bends toward justice.” Now I may not ever see God, but I know what hate looks like and I know what love looks like. Is it too much of a strain to say that when we see an act of love we are seeing God?

And ethics is love lived out – love made concrete. I heard a friend of Senator Kennedy on the radio the other day. He said that Kennedy’s religious faith had influenced his position on many issues. He used the story (really a myth) of the Good Samaritan as an example. You know – where the Samaritan stops to help the victim of a mugging and pays for his care. Sen. Kennedy inferred from that story that we have a duty to care for our neighbor in trouble. For him it was a short step to say that our society has a duty to provide health care for all our citizens. You see, myths at their best are ethical stories, and the parables of Jesus are among the best.

My sense of right and wrong comes from my childhood, from Sunday School and from home. When my father and our relatives would argue politics. Some of my relatives in the ‘30’s thought Hitler was pretty good. I still remember how angry my father would get – “I don’t care what he’s done about putting people to work or creating law and order! Everything he stands for is wrong.” That feel for right and wrong – for justice and injustice, has always stayed with me. That doesn’t mean that I’m always right – far from it. But I have found that in the complexities of modern life, the surest guide to ethical behavior is in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. For me they are the North Star of my life – always a good way to orient myself in troubling situations.
That’s why I like the letter of James that ____read for us earlier. James, who tradition says was the brother of Jesus, believed that faith without works is dead. When challenged, he said  “Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.”  Incidentally, James was my father’s favorite book of the bible.

Faith faces many challenges that the faith of our grandparents did not face. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot have faith; just that we need a faith that is not in conflict with science and modern life, and the way to such a faith is through reappropriating and reinterpreting the myths of the bible, just like we explain to our kids that Santa Claus is not a real person, but that he embodies the spirit of generosity and giving. And God can be real for us if we understand that God is love. And we need the life and teachings of Jesus to know God in a new way and to walk and talk with a God who is neither male nor female, but greater than anything we can imagine.