What is of God and What is Not?

 Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

May 29, 2016

4 Proper C

          When I was in college, I spent three summers serving as a camp counselor at Camp Mitchell, the Episcopal Church camp in the diocese of Arkansas.  Those summers were challenging as we worked with the children in the heat of an Arkansas summer, provided activities for them that would help their faith grow, and in general provided them with a memorable week on Petit Jean Mountain where the camp was located.  Those summers were also challenging for us as a staff as we were pushed beyond what we thought of as our limits, practiced patience when we really wanted to scream, leaned on each other and our faith in new ways, and had opportunities to explore what we believe and how we live our lives as people of faith as we helped the children do the same.  How do we learn, as children or as adults, to make good, faithful decisions in our everyday lives?  In my experience, one of the ways we do that is to practice over and over again in the context of Christian community, where ever that community might be.  Once I was ordained, I began to serve as a chaplain at the Episcopal camp in Southern Ohio.  For one week each summer for 16 years, I got to watch campers and counselors alike learn to live together in Christian community and practice making faithful decisions so that when they were confronted with situations in school or at home, they could respond with the tools of faith. 

          At the heart of all three of our readings this morning is the questions “How do we know what is of God?”  This is a similar question to “What would God have me do?”  or “How would God have me act?”  In the reading from 1 Kings, Elijah asks the people “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?  If the Lord is God, then follow him.  If Baal is god, then follow him.”  What is of God and what is not?  The people in 1 Kings figure this out by preparing two bulls.  The people of Baal call upon their God, and the Israelites call upon the God of their ancestors.  Whichever God answers with fire is, indeed, God.   While we might wish for a way to decide what is of God and what is not that is this straight forward, animal sacrifice is not part of our decision making process.  But what is part of our decision process, like the Israelites, is being part of a community of faith, confidence that God will guide us, and connecting with God in acts of worship, which is what animal sacrifice was.  Living in community, confidence that God will act, and connecting with God through worship are tools that we have to make faithful decisions about how we live our lives.

          In the reading from the letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul is livid.  Paul founded the church in Galatia and converted the gentiles directly to faith in Jesus without first converting them to Judaism.  The gentiles are a new creation in Christ and do not need to follow the laws of Judaism in order to be believers.  But after Paul left, some other Christians arrived.  They were called Judaizers because they believed that the only path to Jesus was through the faith of the people of Israel.  The Judaizers believed that converts to the faith must obey all the laws of the Torah, including the dietary regulations in order to follow the Jewish messiah.  Paul is furious with both the Judaizers and the Galatians, and I imagine the Galatians are a bit confused. How are they to know what is of God and what is not?  The story of the Galatians is that sometimes we come up short when we try to answer the question “What is of God and what is not?”

          In the gospel reading, we see faith in an unlikely place. The centurion, a Roman soldier, seeks healing from Jesus for his slave who was close to death.  The centurion’s faith is so deep and so bold that he sends his friends to Jesus so that Jesus needs only to speak the word and the centurion’s slave will be healed.  How does the centurion know that?  How does he know to send word to Jesus in the first place?  How does he know that Jesus is not just another false prophet?  How does he know what is of God and what is not?  My guess is that he has heard the stories people have told about their encounters with Jesus.  Perhaps he has read the Hebrew scriptures.  The centurion was open to those stories and the power they hold, so he reached out in faith to Jesus.

          How do we know what is of God and what is not?  The reality is that we have a lifetime to work on figuring this out, and a lifetime is required.  Sometimes, like the centurion, we are successful and sometimes, like the Galatians, we are not.  But while we do not have a ritual like the one the people in I Kings had, we do have tools.  We have our community of faith with which to pray, to worship, to practice, to study the ancient stories, to hear about other’s experiences, and to practice living as faithful people.  This morning, we will baptize Vera Perini into the body of Christ, into the community of faith, where she will be able to bring her own questions when she is older and wrestle with what is of God and what is not.  Even as a baby, she has some understanding that being held and fed and loved is of God and being hungry or cold or lonely is not.  But as we all know, life will quickly get more complicated.  This morning, Vera’s parents and godparents promise to raise Vera in the Christian life and faith and to help her grow into the full stature of Christ. They cannot do this alone.  And so we will promise, as the body of Christ, to do all in our power to support Vera in her life in Christ.  These are not just empty words.  These are words that demand action on our part as we bring Vera into this community of the body of Christ that practices discerning what is of God and what is not using all the tools we have been given. 

          What is of God and what is not?  The people in the Bible teach us that answering this question is not always easy, and we will make mistakes along the way.  We need experienced teachers to guide us and communities of faith in which to practice.  And over and over again, Scripture reminds us that God loves us simply because we are God’s children, not because we always get things right.  What God asks, and what we promise in baptism, is that we practice living as God’s children, simply because we are. 

                                                                             Amen.