Late Saturday revisions...

... so a couple of dear friends - who have read my on-line worship notes - have said:  you need to say more about what you mean by orthodoxy.  Ok... but it has to be in the context of a generous orthodoxy or else it doesn't work.  So, I revised Sunday's message to include this change and amplification.

There is an old American colloquial expression – “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble – it’s what you DO know that ain’t simply so!” Are you at all familiar with the writing of NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof? Last year at this time, when we were all up in arms because some media savvy religious fanatic in Florida was threatening to burn the Koran during worship, Kristof ran a column called, “Test Your Savvy on Religion.” It began: “… most religious people in America turn out to be remarkably uninformed about religion. Almost half of Catholics don’t understand Communion. Most Protestants don’t know that Martin Luther started the Reformation. And almost half of the Jews in America don’t realize that Maimonides was Jewish. Interestingly, atheists were among the best informed about religion.”

Now, there is something fundamentally wrong with all of this – something the generous orthodoxy of St. Paul could correct – so let me share a quick survey of some of Paul’s best spiritual insights:

• When it comes to social relationships, Paul was light years ahead of his time when he proclaimed in Galatians that:

In Christ's family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ's family, then you are Abraham's famous "descendant," heirs according to the covenant promises.

• Do you know what he said about living into the challenges of a multi-cultural world in Romans?

Forget about deciding what's right for each other. Here's what you need to be concerned about: that you don't get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is. I'm convinced—Jesus convinced me!—that everything as it is in itself is holy. We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it, can contaminate it… So cultivate your own relationship with God, but don't impose it on others.

• Or how about the essence of authentic Christian living by love in I Corinthians?

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn’t always "me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back but keeps going to the end.

And last, but hardly least, the Apostle’s sacred insight into humility that has application on so many levels: When I was a child, I thought and acted and spoke as a child; but now that I have grown-up, I have put childish things away… because now we see as through a glass darkly – only later shall we see face to face.

I am convinced that in the 21st century, more often than not it ain’t what we know that gets us into trouble, it’s what we do know that ain’t simply so! And exploring the wisdom of St. Paul’s generous orthodoxy strikes me as one corrective to the religious intolerance and bigotry of our era. 

Paul offers us passion and patience, light as well as darkness, tremendous spiritual wisdom along with some exasperating theological blind spots all of which are saturated in God’s grace. So before I apply Paul’s perspective to the readings for today, let me clearly articulate what I think the phrase – generous orthodoxy – means for the 21st century.

Brian McLaren defines generous orthodoxy like this: To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. It is rather to be in a loving (ethical) community of people who are seeking the truth (doctrine) on the road of mission..." (293).

But let’s go deeper – and I’ve found the words of Fleming Rutledge insightful. Not only does she have one of the coolest names of any preacher working in North American, but she is a brilliant and clarifying Christian theologian. And when it comes to shaping the meaning of a generous orthodoxy, she writes:

The word ortho-doxy (Greek for "right doctrine") has both positive and negative connotations. In a culture that prizes what is iconoclastic and transgressive, orthodoxy has come to sound constricted and unimaginative at best, oppressive and tyrannical at worst. But… we cannot do without orthodoxy, for everything else must be tested against it… (and that means that the) orthodox (traditional, classical) Christian faith should by definition always be generous as our God is generous; lavish in God's creation, binding (her) self in an unconditional covenant, revealing himself in the calling of a people, self-sacrificing in the death of his Son, prodigal in the gifts of the Spirit, justifying the ungodly and indeed, offending the "righteous" by the indiscriminate nature of (her) favor. True Christian orthodoxy therefore cannot be narrow, pinched, or defensive but always spacious, adventurous and unafraid.

Did you get that? A generous orthodoxy… affirms that there is still more light to be discovered in God’s word in Scripture, embraces the ethics of Jesus as practiced in community; and seeks to share this way of living through mission and ministry – that is, through acts of compassion to individuals, service to the world and social justice.

Another way of saying this comes from our old German Reformed tradition: Unity in essentials, diversity in non-essentials and charity in all things. 

That is what I added to tomorrow's message: I hope that helps... because I am grateful for the critique of my friends.