That Old Time Religion

PROPERS:         PROPER 11, YEAR B   

TEXT:                 EPHESIANS 2:11-22

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY, ON SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2018.

ONE SENTENCE:        We inherit a faith perspective; we determine whether it matures in light of experience and learning.         

                                    

            Years ago – and by that, I mean decades – my family would gather around my great-grandfather’s piano in his living room. We would form a semi-circle around the dark-wood upright piano.

            My aunt would play the piano as we all joined in singing one of my great-grandfather’s favorite hymns: Gimme that Old Time Religion.

            It was not even the version that is in some traditional hymnals today.  The version was from 1907, and it included some verses that are not used today.  It included verses such as, “It was good for the Hebrew children,” AND,“It was good for the prophet Daniel,” AND,“It was tried in the fiery furnace.”

            Those lyrics assume that the faith of the Judeo-Christian tradition did not change in more than 3,000 years – from the time of the prophets until today. 

            But it had.  And one of the most remarkable changes was being highlighted by the Apostle Paul in the second lesson today.

            Paul is addressing the young church in Ephesus in the letter today.  He reminds them that they were once outside the covenant community.  They were not Jews.  They were known as “the uncircumcision” – Gentiles, part of the great unwashed pagan masses that populated the known world outside of the tiny land known as Israel.

            As Gentiles, they did not follow the Law – which was assumed to be the pathway to righteousness.  It was the central tenet of the Hebrew faith, and had been for many centuries. Righteousness was understood by adherence to the Law.

            That was the old-time religionat that point. Then the theological foundations were shaken.

            From Paul’s perspective, that old-timereligion was transformed in the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Becoming a new creationin Christ was all that mattered – for all people.  In Paul’s words from the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!”

            That was the central tenet in Paul’s theology – relationship to God through Jesus. Righteousness not by the Law, but by faith in the Risen Lord. And that understanding for Paul was enormously costly.

            Paul was born and Jew and reared a Jew.  He had loved and embraced the Law.  He was a Pharisee – a devout student of the Law and of Jewish traditions. He spent great energy and efforts in persecuting the young church – a group which represented apostasy to him. We are told in Acts that Paul held the coats of those who stoned Stephen, the first deacon.

            But Paul’s world changed.  A blinding light knocked him from his horse as he traveled to Damascus to persecute the church there.  That moment was captured by the 17^thcentury Italian master Caravaggio in his depiction of that scene.

            Paul was struck blind, of course, and he experienced the voice and presence of Jesus.  And his old-time religionstarted to give way.  He spent several years in study, prayer, and conversation as he became aware of the transformative nature of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection.

            This one-time Pharisee and advocate of the old-time religionbecame the greatest of all Christian missionaries.  

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            Paul’s spiritual journey has something to say to us – each of whom would be considered, in first-century terms, as Gentiles, “the uncircumcision.”

            The journey – the spiritual pilgrimage – can be captured in two words: embeddedand deliberative.  Embeddedand Deliberative.

            Paul was born into a certain tradition.  He was educated in those ways.  His upbringing reinforced that understanding of faith.  The culture and people around him upheld that belief system. 

All those elements combined to give him an embeddedtheology.  A rock that he could hold onto.  Solid ground.  An old-time religionhanded down to him by culture, family and religious institutions.  And it served him well.

Until… until… that trip to Damascus.

In that brilliantly lit moment, Paul’s theological foundations were shaken.  His life-long grounding trembled.  Things could never be the same.  Old assumptions were cast aside. He could not ignore what he had seen and heard.

He began to build a deliberative theology.

Because of his faith, he saw things differently. Over the course of years after being knocked off his horse, a time replete with study, prayer, worship, and conversation, Paul claimed as his owna new way of seeing the world, and a new way of seeing God’s work in the world.

Paul moved from an embedded theology, one he had been given, to a deliberative theology, one which was given to him, too, but by revelation, study, and prayer.  Even to the point of death in Rome, he never flinched from his new religion.

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            There is no simple or easy way to move toward a deeper faith.  It must come from the grace of God.

            I saw that movement in my father, as his life unfolded. His faith was different as an 80-year-old than it was in his younger years. 

I have seen it in my own life.  While I have not been knocked off a horse by a blinding light, I can name instances in which I have been pushed in a specific direction by encounters with the Holy One.

            We all hold tightly to elements of our embedded theology– it is part of who we are. But Paul gives us an example of how our understanding of God, the world, and our relationship to our fellow hu