Are You Sure?

It was called the "errand in the wilderness." For a bit more than a decade, thousands of Puritans sailed from England to New England to perform an errand, do a job. Puritans in 1641 who stepped aboard a leaky ship and crossed the Atlantic to the wiles of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, these Puritans were called to make a demonstration, create a new form of government where the laws of God and the Bible were harmonized with the laws of government. The errand in the wilderness was an experiment to prove such harmony was possible. With such proof, England would see the light, be restored, saved from imminent destruction.

This was the understanding of Puritans who sailed to the colonies. Build a city set high on a hill, show how the kingdom of God could be done on earth as it is heaven, and then, go back. With success in hand, they could radically transform the Church of England from a crypto-catholic-superstition-infested abomination to a truly biblical state, a house of God led by Elders, the Presbyterian form of church government. 

When I tell people the Presbyterians ruled England for a brief time, from the 1640s-1662, there is disbelief. But they did, we did.  And then we didn’t. In 1662 Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity and approved a new book of common prayer for the Church England.  Each of these, effectively, kicked the Puritans and their Presbyterian sensibilities out of power. 

For the Puritans in the colonies these changes were seen as a setback.  The winds blow in both directions.  But then, four years later, a great calamity struck, and this calamity was seen as a call to return. The city of London burned in 1666.  For Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the fire was a sign, a call: now is the time to return.  The generation of Puritans who heard the call to leave England for the colonies now understood they were being called home.  They would bring with them the great insights gained from their “errand in the wilderness.”  A new age would dawn.  But then the unthinkable happened.  The Puritans back home said, no one is expecting you, nothing will come of your return.  We are not calling you home.

For the early Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony this rebuff was devastating and confusing.  They had come to perform a service, to prove a new way of government, where the church and state lived in harmony.  In their minds, the new form was obvious, ready for transplant.  To be told you are no longer needed, no longer the hope of a new nation was terribly disappointing.  It would be disillusioning for anyone.  Yet, for the Puritans, the disappointment was more than a failed expectation, this was also a crisis of faith.

Puritans believed in destiny, predestination.  God eternally chose them, called them, and their errand was guiding them unto salvation.  They could not change or direct this redeeming grace as it was the pure election of God, but they could read the signs, see markers of God’s favor.  They thought they were following the will of God.  All signs were positive and then not.

For thirty, and for some forty, years they examined all signs, all events, even the most obscure occurrence as a way of confirming their work was real, purposeful.  By signs of assurance they knew they were doing what God asked of them.  We all do this to some degree.  Look for clues, markers we are on the right path, living the right way, doing what is good, God's will be done.  God is smiling on us.  For the Puritans, though, the signs were more than life was good.  They looked for signs of destiny. A good sign told them God had indeed elected them.

 For their brothers and sisters back in England to dismiss them, saying, no one really remembers you left, to be so rejected called into question whether they were indeed the predestined.  Everything they looked to affirm was no longer valid.  If their errand was of no consequence what of the faith giving rise to it?

It may be difficult in our day to fully appreciate the crisis the Puritans felt.  In our depth of cynicism and firm conviction that God’s love is everywhere and for everyone, it may be hard to see the need to be a true one, a select few who were chosen, predestined to live in a particular way with a particular God, it may be hard to see how this was the deepest sense of assurance.  We may not see life this way.  Yet, for them, to be the elect, was how life was good: God was in charge; time had meaning.  The irony of the Puritan faith is this: such a belief made you completely confident but also made you completely vulnerable. The belief making you sure also begs the question, are you sure?

Just as it may be hard for us to imagine the crisis of faith the Puritans experienced in 1666, it may be just as hard for us to imagine the crisis felt by John the Baptist.  Jesus was the one he called the "lamb of God."  He was unworthy to untie his sandal let alone baptize him.  He said, he must increase, and I must decrease.  John told his disciples Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.  But then he lost faith. He took offence with how Jesus lived and lost faith in him.

We can infer the offence from what Jesus says, what he heard about himself as criticism.  He was a drunkard.  He was a glutton.  We know he was kind to prostitutes.  He was accused by the Pharisees of not enforcing the sabbath. He didn’t conform to what people thought the messiah would be.  Jesus conveys this disappointment when he says, “we played for you, but you didn’t dance.”

John was offended by how Jesus lived, the loose way of living.  John the Baptist was ascetic, someone who refrained from all comfort and pleasure.  He followed an extremely strict moral code.  Jesus seemed to live the opposite if he was accused of being drunkard and glutton.  It’s sad to think that he would be so offended as to lose faith, but that is what expectations do.  When people don’t meet our expectations, especially if we hold them in high regard or esteem them, we lose faith in them; we get offended.

In a strange way, I encountered the opposite of this.  When we arrived in our first church, on the first day, a member of the nominating committee came to the manse with a six pack of beer.  Glenn was a truck driver and was the wildcard on the search committee.  He was bombastic and funny, and he only had one question for me in the interview process, “Would I drink a beer with him?”  This was Glenn's way of saying, I want a pastor who is down to earth, someone with whom a trucker could sit on a front porch and shoot the breeze.

I promised Glenn I would welcome such an opportunity and he took my word and showed up just as the boxes where unpacked on our move-in day.  We were sitting on the front porch talking and laughing when suddenly a big black Cadillac came toward the house, parked on the grass in the front yard.  I remember how the driver seemed to just put the car in park before it stopped so it rocked back and forth.  Out stepped an older gentleman in Bermuda shorts and black socks to match his black dress shoes. 

He walked up to Glenn and I and when I asked his name, apologizing for not remembering if I had met him, he said, “I ain’t gonna tell you.”  And then he gave me a long look up and down.  Both Glenn and I felt like kids being caught; we were busted.  Finally, he said, “I was just talking to Old John about the new pastor showing up.  We were discussing whether he was a teetotaler or a beer drinker.  He was hoping for the later.  I will tell him his hopes proved true."  And with that he turned around and drove off. 

Through the years I have encountered different types of expectations of what a pastor is or is not.  Yet none of the expectations of what a pastor is or does or doesn’t do have come anywhere close to the expectations I saw and heard as a boy and then teenager growing up in evangelicalism.  Here it was not just about what to expect of clergy or pastors, it was what it meant to be a real Christian.

I say real because I grew up in a church where the distinction between real and phony or “in name only” were a deep part of the culture.  A real Christian not only didn’t drink or smoke or dance or listen to secular music, a real Christian was also on fire for the Lord, gave witness to their faith, and was willing to stand up for what they believed. 

For the most part this second set of expectations, being on fire, took the form of judgment, a lot of judgement. And if someone who was not living up to this enthusiasm, this level of zeal, they were known as backsliders, people who had lost their faith.  I remember my mother being told that my faith would be ruined if I attended Princeton Seminary. The teachings of such a place would promote heresy and ungodliness.  I would no longer be a real Christian.

Our reading today conjures many memories for me.  The need to expose the backslider, to shame the one who wonders, and what is worse is the "hate the sin but love the sinner." Hypocrisy.  The longer I have lived in the gospels the more I am convinced grace is the courage not to hate at all.  The response of Jesus embodies this grace.  Tell John what you see; tell him not to be offended. And then, he praises John, calls him a prophet. 

This is one of the few times Jesus speaks about himself.  His gospel, his good news, is not about him, nor is it about what his life and death will do.  The Apostle Paul talks a lot about Jesus, what it means to believe in Jesus, the right way to speak of Jesus.  In the gospels Jesus seems to ever deflect attention away from himself.  His teachings, his miracles, his proclamations come down to two: you can trust humility to find freedom; and you will find the kingdom of God if you have the courage to give your life away.  If you want to be more, become less.

It would be easy in our culture today to show the power of shame and ridicule, the way we seek to purify each other, to include everyone who believes what we believe and to shun all those who do not.  There is great zealotry today for people to be real believers or real Americans or real progressives or real conservatives. In this zeal we are awash in offence, taking offence, being offended.  As this conjures so many memories in me, I am led to believe such is the challenge of faith in all times, in all places.  Life is ever prone to the tyranny of expectations.

Jesus didn't tell John to believe in him; he only promised a blessing if he was not offended.  Blessed is the one who is not offended in me.  Such a blessing can be ours today if we resist the temptation to shame, to hate, to ridicule, to take offence.  We can live in faith and courage as Jesus lived. Freedom in humility; courage to give our life away.  We can resist the temptation of offence, and thus, keep our faith.  Amen.