Text — Ephesians 1:3-14

 This is the weekend of the General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC) which is meeting in Minneapolis.  There is a joke in our denomination that the letters U.C.C. really stand for “utterly confused Christians” or as a variation, Unitarians considering Christ.  As with most humor, there’s a germ of truth, or more than a germ of truth, in these jokes. 

 I don’t know if you members of South Church feel this way, but over at 190 Court Street we sometimes feel like religious misfits, or cast-offs from other denominations  — ones that have more religious certainty than we do.   

In the UCC we do have our eminent theologians in our past.  John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards come to mind.  But when it comes right down to the people in the pews today, and in our pulpits today, it’s safe to say that “religious certainty” isn’t our denomination’s trademark. 

 Have you ever been in a conversation and gotten the feeling that the other person didn’t consider the UCC to be quite the “real” thing?  We get this from both ends of the theological spectrum. 

 Those from the more fundamentalist side would argue that we don’t really believe the Bible.  We don’t read it literally.  Of course, no really reads it literally.  But we’re seen as taking the Bible too figuratively, or metaphorically, or symbolically. 

This makes us seem wishy washy.  We don’t believe enough, or we’re too caution, or lukewarm, in our belief.  So that’s one perspective

 Another perspective comes from what is called the “magisterial” side of the Church — those a more highly developed authority structure.  These are the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches.  To them, we’re sort of like juvenile delinquents.  We rejected the “episcopacy” — the oversight structure provided by bishops and apostolic succession.  After all, Jesus set up one church, with a head bishop.  Jesus wanted bishops, to keep the rest of the clergy on track.  The idea of bishops keeping the clergy on track has taken a beating lately, but the idea is there: Clergy, on their own, can’t be trusted.

 Now, in the UCC, our way of dealing with that is that you, the members, can always fire your minister if she or he goes off track.  The trouble with this, according to the magisterial denominations, is that you can’t be trusted either.

 So from their perspective, we have too much democracy in the church.  And because of this lack of magisterial guidance, our sacramental life, our practices regarding baptism and the eucharist are irregular.  We’re sacramentally promiscuous.  We’re not careful enough about whom we baptize, and whom we invite to the Lord’s table — so the sacraments get watered down in meaning, and sloppy in terms of how we administer them. 

 So we get a lot of disdain from both sides.  We’re middle-of-the road.  We don’t know what we believe.  We’ve got a lot of fence sitters, doubters, and skeptics in our ranks.  There is some truth in these charges.

 As I was thinking about the variety of churches, the “dog-breeding” metaphor came to mind.  The Presbyterians are the Scottish terriers; the Episcopalians are the Corgies because that’s the kind of dog the Queen has; the Lutherans are the German Shepherds’ the evangelical free churches are the pit bulls; the Catholics are the St. Bernards (They’re big.  They can save the whole word.

 What are we?  A dog-loving friend of mine said we’re the Golden Retreivers.  That seems apt.  It’s a mild-mannered dog that wants to please everyone.  But I think we’re more like the mutts.  We come from all different places, background-wise and belief-wise.

 So the phrase “confused Christians” is apt in a certain way — not that we’re utterly confused, but I suspect we’d be spiritually richer if we worked harder at being less confused about how we read the Bible and our sacramental life.

 But now I want to offer a completely opposite take on confusion.  There’s a positive side to being confused.  Our religious situation is, after all, pretty confusing.  Confusion is warranted.  Those who feel confused may be in touch with something that the less confused need to pay attention to.

 Those who claim not to be confused can even be dangerous.  Today there are many people, including some Christians, who firmly believe that they have the Truth, straight from God, and everyone who doesn’t have it is going straight to hell.  There are some passages in the New Testament that can be read and taken to mean that.  Horrible crimes have been committed in the name of Christian conviction.  Four hundred years ago Protestants and Catholics were burning each other at the stake.

 There are some Muslims — a small but infamous minority — who firmly really believe they have the whole, unconfusing truth, straight from Allah, and the enemies of Islam — which means just about everyone else, especially the Jews — deserve to die.  There are passages in the Koran that can be read and taken to mean that. 

There are Jews who believe that any agreement to share Jerusalem with Muslims would be a betrayal of God’s promise to Abraham and David.  There are passages in the Hebrew Bible that can be read and taken to mean that.

 So if we’re confused, it may be, in part, because we haven’t worked very hard on clearing up our confusion.  It may also be because this world is a confusing place, and because religious ideas raise a lot of questions and problems.

 If there is One God, who loves all people, why are there so many competing religions?  There are many things to be confused about.   

We read in our passage about “being blessed in the heavenly places.”  What are “heavenly places?”  Is heaven a place, a location in the physical universe?  When Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you” should we hear that as literal language or figurative language? 

We read in our lesson today that God “has made known to us the mystery of his will.”  Does anyone really know in any detail what God’s will is?  Or it is still, for the most part, a “mystery”?

 If Jesus is the Savior of the world, then why doesn’t the world look more “saved”?  Why doesn’t the church look more saved?  Why are we so disagreeable?  We can’t even come to the Lord’s table together.

 These are questions worthy of confusion.  We should be proud of our confusion, in a certain sense.  But I don’t want to end this by celebrating confusion.

 There is something we can believe wholeheartedly, without reservation.  Christianity, at its core, is a way to experience God.  This experience is somewhat elusive.  It’s not as if we plug in a formula and out pops a predictable religious experience.

 Still, there is something we call “the experience God’s presence.”  It’s a kind of experience most of us, or all of us, would like to have, or like to have more of.  Without it, life can feel empty and meaningless.  With it, life feels charged with meaning.  Even the memory of such an experience can keep us going for a long time. 

Feeling God’s presence isn’t an experience we achieve.  We don’t find it by ambition.  It does take some aspiration, and some discipline helps.  We don’t find it by trying to make ourselves important, but it does involve taking our lives seriously.

 We find it by following Jesus Christ — by learning to look at the world the way Jesus taught us to look at it, and going to the people he went to.

 Where did Jesus tell us to look?  At the lilies.  At the birds.  Where did he tell us to go?  To be with sinners and outcasts, because that’s a category where we all fit in one way or another. 

 We experience God by learning to be open, being willing to be enchanted, touched, and sometimes even hurt by life around us.  About this path, at least in it’s general outline and it’s destination, there is no reason to be confused.