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Abraham’s Caravan: Finding Faith by Leaving Home
The Unitarian Church of Evanston Evanston, Illinois Michael Anderson February 4, 2007
I’m so grateful to be here this morning. Barbara, thank you for the invitation to speak, to tell my story. It’s the story of how I left my career in Christian ministry and then left the Christian church and how I’m finding my way now along a more natural spiritual path.
I grew up in Yankton, South Dakota, the second of seven children. We were members of Calvary Baptist Church in Yankton, and every summer the church put on a week-long event called DVBS, a Daily Vacation Bible School.
In 1956, when I was eight years old, the theme of DVBS that summer was Abraham’s Caravan. I remember this verse: “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a land that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.” (Hebrews 11:8) “He set out, not knowing where he was going.” What an image of faith that is! God said to Abraham, I want you to travel to a certain land but I’m not going to tell you anything about it. I want you to get your family, your people and all your possessions and form a caravan and start moving to this land. And it says he started going, not knowing where he was going. Abraham’s decision to leave home and head out into the unknown—that decision made him the father of faith.
That’s the lesson I learned that week and before the week was out, I had accepted Jesus as my savior. Now you might wonder why, at the end of a week studying Abraham, I ended up following Jesus. But this was a Christian church, and for many Christians, all the stories in the Hebrew scriptures point to Jesus and find their fulfillment in him.
I don’t recall much about that day. All I remember is that after the session when the other children had gone out to play in the church yard, I went with Mrs. Stewart, the church organist, and sat down with her in a side room. I don’t recall all we talked about but I do recall with great vividness what happened next. I left the dark sanctuary, opened the big church doors and walked outside into a brilliant sunlight. I stood on the concrete stoop. It was probably 15 steps above ground level but it felt like 15 miles! I just stood there in the sun.
The next thing I remember—there were children playing in the church yard and people walking along on the sidewalk and cars going by on the street. And I thought, why, in view of the tremendous thing that had just happened to me, why didn’t the world—the world of children and people and cars—stop for just a moment?
That was June 22, 1956, my spiritual birthday. Every year I celebrate the event. Last year, 2006, was the 50th anniversary of the day I first made a decision to follow the call of God.
I want to fast-forward through the next several years. Calvary Baptist was a moderate church as Baptist churches go, but for reasons I don’t have time to detail this morning, my parents took a turn in their religious life. It was a right turn, a hard right. As a result, three of us older children were encouraged to go to Canada to study at a very strict, fundamentalist Bible institute near Calgary. Which is where I met Kay. And I just want to pause and say how good it has been to travel this journey together with my wife. Obviously we’ve traveled a long road since those days, but we have traveled it together. Not all couples do that, but we did and I’m so grateful for it.
From Canada we came to Illinois to study at Wheaton College. My ultimate goal was to be a Baptist pastor, but things changed dramatically for us at Wheaton. We found the Episcopal church. And after a few years of worshipping as Episcopalians, I felt again the call to ministry, enrolled in seminary and was ordained.
In the course of the next 15 years I served two Episcopal parishes in Illinois: St. Gregory’s, Deerfield and Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills. Then, in 1998, I left the ministry and Kay and I moved here to Evanston where we eventually set up our little business. For about three years we didn’t go to church anywhere. Then we found UCE and eventually joined. Gradually we’ve become more and more involved. And that brings us up to the present moment.
But I want to go back now and focus on my decision to leave the ministry and to leave the Christian church. It had to do with many things of course, but primarily with the Creed.
The Nicene Creed is a three-part statement of faith, its three parts corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity. The first part is about God the Father, the third part is about God the Holy Spirit (these two sections are quite short) and the long, middle section is about God the Son.
Now, the interesting thing about this middle section: it mentions nothing of the teachings of Jesus. It does not cite any of the famous sayings like, “Love your enemies” or “Turn the other cheek” from the Sermon on the Mount. There is not one word from this or any of the sermons or discourses for which he is remembered and revered. The focus of the creed is not on the words of Jesus but entirely on his life and furthermore, on the six supernatural claims regarding that life. Here they are: 1) that he existed before all time, co-equal with God the Father; 2) that he entered human history, being born of a young girl who was a virgin; 3) that he was executed by Roman authorities and three days later rose from the dead; 4) that he then ascended into heaven; 5) that at some time in the future, he will return to the earth and judge every person who has ever lived on the earth, all Jews, all Hindus, all Buddhists, Muslims, pagans, people of faith and no faith, everyone. And then, the final claim, 6) that after this judgment, this same Jesus will set up a global kingdom where he will reign as sovereign over all the faithful.
These are remarkable statements, focusing as they do on the super-human nature of Jesus, on his dominance, supremacy and sovereignty. And I thought, too, this week: if there is a correlation between what we believe and how we behave, think of the implications of these statements!
And remember, regarding these claims the Church permits no modulated affirmation. The creed begins: We believe… It doesn’t say, We think, or We hope, or We would like to believe, or We have reason to believe… It says: We believe.
And remember too, these are the core doctrines of the Christian faith—as defined by the Church. Of all the things the Church could have chosen to assert about Jesus, they chose these. But then they went one step further: the Creed is to be said in the context of baptism (both an entrance requirement and a communal definition) but also every time the community gathers to make Eucharist. In other words, the doctrinal mandate is reinforced with a corresponding liturgical mandate.
For a long time—I know now, looking back—my mind and these mandates were on a collision course. You see, it’s one thing to have occasional misgivings about the core doctrines. That’s called doubt. And the Church tolerates, even affirms doubters in its midst. For a while, that’s what I was, a doubter. But then one day it came to me: the group that stands and says, We believe—I can’t honestly call myself a member of that group. In other words: if you were to ask me, personally, directly: Was Jesus born of a virgin? Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is Jesus coming back to judge humanity and rule the earth? –my answer to those questions would not be, I doubt it or I’m not sure. My answer to all three questions would be No, a simple, secure No. That’s what I honestly believe. And that’s not doubt. The church used to call this apostasy. The terms isn’t used much any more. But if you look it up—apostasy is “the renunciation of a religious or political belief…”
Once I was forced to admit my true position and, this is critical, to name it, to call it what it was, the consequences seemed clear: if I really denied the Creed, I had to stop saying the Creed; and if I stopped saying the Creed, I had to stop being an Episcopal priest.
Now, some of you may be asking, How come it took you so long? That’s a good question. Someone once said of great psychological and emotional displacements: until we believe there is a solution, we can’t allow ourselves to admit there is a problem. In my mind I had moved beyond the bounds of Christian faith, but in my heart—I literally could not imagine living there. So instead of facing the issues head-on, I made adjustments. In the early years, I moved from more conservative to more liberal denominations. In the final years, I rationalized, spiritualized and psychologized the Creed, anything to maintain my integrity and at the same time stay in the Christian fold. Finally, there came a breaking point; I could not sustain the tension any longer.
So, it did take me a long time. Even so, the final break was not easy. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’m glad I made it, glad that Kay and I made it together, but it hasn’t been easy.
You know, the temptation as you’re preparing a talk like this, telling your spiritual story—the temptation is to leave out the sad part, the dark part, to make it a kind of easy, breezy tale of triumph, the triumph of bright reason over blind faith. Or worse yet, to make it a kind of self-congratulatory epic journey: I have scaled the summit of intellectual honesty!
The truth is not quite so simple. The truth is sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I have a hard time getting back to sleep. When I wake— it’s often around 2:00 AM—sometimes I’m just worrying about work or worrying about the children, that sort of thing. But at other times there’s an emptiness, a sadness, and then, as I lie there in the dark, waves of doubt wash over me and voices of doubt. Then I, the doubter, doubt my doubts. I wonder if you’ve had a similar experience? I suspect you have and that makes me feel less alone.
I don’t know about you, but at 2:00 in the morning I’m not in my best form. My rational mind is half-asleep, but down there deep where fears and feelings live, down where dreams are made—that part of me is wide awake and there’s a longing in that hour to have something to hold on to: the hope I used to have, the Savior I used to have, the hymns I used to sing.
But you know what I’m learning? I’m learning to listen to those voices and let them speak. I’m learning to interview my moods. I just stay right there in bed. I don’t get up. I don’t read a book or go down and watch TV or take some other form of distraction, or a sedative or sleeping pill. I have the ability now to lie there in the dark and listen.
And then when all the voices have spoken, I am able to speak. And I remind myself of the decision I made 50 years ago, on June 22, 1956, how on that day I heard the call of truth and set out on a quest to find the truth and follow the truth wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences.
Also—and this has been in just the past year or so—I’ve come to realize that I’ve been grieving. I have been grieving the loss of my faith. And I’m learning that as I do this work, I’m able to see what is opening up for me; that along with the angst and the uncertainty there is also a new calm. I am finding what so many have found: that the foundation of my life is not some supernatural externality, certainly not some creed. It is, rather, in relationships, honest, just and loving relationships with others, with myself and with the world around me. This is now my foundation and my hope. Is there more than this? There may be. I do not know and I find do not need to know.
In the great legend of Abraham’s Caravan, God spoke to him and said to him, I want you to follow me to a land that I will show you. The amazing thing is that Abraham didn’t ask questions. He didn’t say, What does it look like in that land? Or, What will happen to me in that land? Or, Will I be happy in that land? He didn’t ask, Will my friends be there? Will all my family be there? And, in that land, will I always sleep peacefully through the night? He didn’t ask these things. He didn’t ask anything at all. When God said Go! Abraham started going, “not knowing where he was going.” Blessed Abraham!
That’s what I say to myself in the middle of the night. And this morning, that’s what I wanted to say to you. Which is why I find this such a satisfying place to be right now. I have a place where I can speak these things out loud, in public, in a community of friends.
Last week the young adults had the service and this young man, Mike Lewis, told us about his spiritual journey. He, too, talked about his doubts. It was powerful stuff. I can’t quote him exactly but at one point he used the words doubt and proud in the same sentence. That was a first for me!
There’s so much to love about this church. I love the music. I love Barbara’s consistently thoughtful sermons. I love the fact that this morning we heard June’s dispatch from the DC peace march. I’m grateful for these things but this morning I’m especially grateful that this is a place where we can be completely, publicly honest about what we believe or don’t believe. We don’t have to hide our doubts and slink off with them somewhere in the dark. On the contrary, we have a place here where both believers and doubters can be proud, where Unitarian Christians and Unitarian atheists, and agnostics and everyone in between, can come together in common devotion and then get to work for the common good.
I want to close with some words from the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi. When you hear these words you’ll recognize them right away; and, having heard my story, you’ll know why I was so moved when I first sang them here with you:
Come, come, whoever you are, Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come.
Amen. Blessed be. Unitarian Church of Evanston
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