Embracing Progressive Christianity - Intro

Sermon given by Rev. Shawn Coons on January 15, 2023

We are beginning a new sermon and worship series this week called Embracing Progressive Christianity. Immediately with the title there are a couple questions that are fair to ask. First, what is progressive Christianity? Second, why embrace it? We're going to cover both of those this morning in this intro. Then for the following several weeks we'll dive into specific areas of what different parts of faith, different parts of our Christian walk look like with progressive Christianity.

But the first question I want to tackle is actually the second question I just asked. Why do we embrace progressive Christianity, or why do we have to label our Christianity at all? We live in a time, many will say, of increasing dividedness, of increasing polarization. There are many ways that we divide ourselves and there are many camps that we put ourselves in, whether that's political, values, religion, even sports.

There are just so many ways we divide ourselves these days. It's a fair question to say, why can't we just be Christian? Why do we have to say I'm this kind of Christian, or I am that kind of Christian? Well, we’ve always done that. In the history of Christianity, when Jesus first started teaching and he had just a couple disciples, maybe there was a unity among them, but I'm willing to bet even then maybe Peter said, "Well, I kind of see what Jesus is saying this way." One of the other disciples, "Well, I kind of think about it this way." Certainly if we go to Paul's letters, and Paul's letters in the New Testament are the earliest New Testament writings we have, we see that Christians had already started to divide themselves.

Paul writes, "I have heard that some of you follow this teaching. I have heard that there's a group of you who understand the Lord's supper to be this way." We see early on in Christian tradition and Christian history, there are different ways of understanding the teachings of Jesus. There are different denominations, there are different traditions. There are all sorts of different churches these days.

When we say we're going to articulate what it means to be a progressive Christian, we are not creating a division, we are not creating something that didn't exist before. We are articulating what this particular group of Christians may believe. Even within progressive Christianity, there will be different opinions.

I'll go one step further and I will say that this is helpful and not divisive. It is helpful when we can respectfully articulate who we are and what we believe.  Whether you're a progressive Christian, whether you're evangelical Christian, whether you're an evangelical progressive Christians (they exist). Whether you're Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, for us to have a respectful dialogue,
“I believe this and I understand spirituality this way.”

“Well, I understand it this way.”

Even if we disagree, if I learn about you and you learn about me, we're not dividing ourselves. We're coming to understand one another. I think about this in this way. Our family recently took a trip to Ethiopia just a couple weeks ago. It's a different country and they do a lot of things differently than we do. We could have pretended those differences didn't exist. But we didn’t.

We would say to our guide, "Solomon, I'm noticing this and this is the way you do it here in Ethiopia. Well we do it this way in America." He's like, "Oh, that's interesting." We talk about those differences and he would learn about America and we would learn about Ethiopia. So articulating the differences didn't create them, instead it brought us closer together.

I hope maybe I've given you at least some leaning into why it's good to talk about what we believe and sometimes even to label what we believe. So now let's jump to what is progressive Christianity? First and foremost, we want to emphasize the Christianity piece. Progressive Christianity is Christian. At its center is Jesus Christ. At its center is Jesus Christ the Son of God. We follow his example, we follow his teachings and we see those most clearly in scripture in the Bible, the Bible for progressive Christians - for most Christians, I hope all Christians is central. It is authoritative, but progressive Christianity will also say God continues to reveal to us.

God didn't stop when the Bible stopped. God continues to work through the Spirit. God continues to work in many ways, speaking to us, speaking to others, speaking through the church. I want to show an example of this, of how God goes beyond scripture using today's scripture passage. We're going to read from Matthew 5:17-20, 38:44

As you listen to the scripture today, listen for Jesus going beyond scripture. For him, relying on scripture, using that as a base, as a foundation, but then adding a new revelation to it.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

You have heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evil doer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

“You have heard it said, but I tell you,” Jesus begins this passage by saying, "I'm not here to get rid of the laws. Get rid of the scripture that we as Jewish people find holy. Not here to give or to get rid of what God has given us. I'm here to fulfill it.” But then Jesus goes on. "You have heard it said, but I tell you."

In essence, Jesus is saying, “You've heard it said. This is what God gave us back in Israel, back a number of centuries ago when we were wandering the desert. This is the law that we get us when we were first settling in this land and getting started. This is what God told us in this time and place, and it was a gift from God and it worked. It did what it was supposed to in that time and place, but now it's different. We're moving forward, so we hold that scripture and we add to it and we sometimes even go beyond it.”

Jesus acknowledged the value. Jesus acknowledged the truth of what had been given by God before. But in the same breath, Jesus says, "We're also ready for an additional truth, for a new truth." You have heard it was said, "An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth." That's in scripture, that's in our Old Testament. “But I say to you, do not resist an evil doer. Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile.” Progressive Christianity takes this approach that Jesus takes here with biblical accounts, with biblical passages.

It doesn't pit them against each other. It doesn't say, "Okay, here's one thing in scripture. Here's another thing in scripture. Which one is right? Which one is better? Let's listen only to that one and let's get rid of the other one. Forget it ever existed.” It honors the truth of God's word given to God's people for the time and place it was given. It honors why did God give this to God’s people? Why did God say this? What purpose did it honor?

But it also asks the question does it serve the same purpose today? Sometimes the answer is yes, it does. Sometimes the answer is, well, it functions a little bit differently today and we need to honor that. It takes each of these moments in scripture, each of the passages of scripture and uses them as a window onto God, as a window onto God's purposes. Progressive Christianity understands biblical accounts and passages, church tradition, the world, our own experiences, all as windows upon God and God’s world.

Different windows are going to provide different views. Let's think about literal windows right now. You can have a really big window and you can see a lot out of it. You can have a really small window and not see as much. I'm looking in our sanctuary right now. I can see here in the back and I can see out across the street through the windows on the door. I can't see through that opaque window right there to the street there. Those windows provide different views. Some windows are big, some are small. That is how we view different passages of scripture. That is how we view different teachings of church tradition.

They all provide us a window on God. They all help us see God a little more clearly, but some more clearly than others and some might even be a little distorted or colored. The Bible is a collection of windows, and it's not that one is not a window, and the other is. It's that they show different views and together taking them both into account, we can see God more clearly. For some people though, for some Christians, the Bible isn't so much windows on God, as a glass box that we peer into. Everything that we need to know about God and everything we need to know about humanity is in this glass box of the Bible. If we just look enough, if we just can see enough, then it's there and it's all clear-cut. It's all black and white. It's all the answers we ever are going to need can be found in scripture. It all makes sense together. It's not different windows, it's one clear picture.

For example, some Christians will look at Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two, the creation story or some would say the creation stories. In Genesis chapter one that's in the beginning. God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. That was the first day. On the second day, God says, "Oh, separate the water from the land." Now we have land and it goes through six days of creation. Eventually there's animals and birds and things that swim. On the sixth day, God makes humans, male and female. No mention of Adam and Eve by name at this point.

Then we get to Genesis chapter two, and it's a different order to creation. The very first thing that is made is Adam. Then all sorts of animals and creatures to find a companion for Adam. Finally, Eve is made at the end of this story. It's a different order of creation. Some Christians will say, actually, it's not a different order. They'll, in my opinion, perform some mental gymnastics to reconcile the two stories. Say it's just two accounts of the exact same story.  They’ll say it happened literally like that in six 24-hour days about 6000 years ago.

For progressive Christians, many Christians will look at these stories and say they're poetry, they're fables. Not in the sense that they're untrue, but they're not meant to teach us like a textbook how the world is created. They're meant to show us truth about God and humanity. They're both windows and they show different views of God and God's world. We can't necessarily reconcile them and we can't make them into one consistent story, but that's okay.

Progressive Christianity is comfortable with multiple images, multiple understandings of God, including ones that cannot be easily reconciled. Sometimes the easiest example is this division we make, it's not quite a fair division, but I'm going to use it. We say there's God in the Old Testament, and God in the Old Testament is angry. God in the Old Testament wants Israel to wipe out all their enemies. God fights on behalf of Israel. God kills people and armies in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, God is loving. We hear, turn the other cheek, love your enemies, forgive. We don't see the angry God in the New Testament. We don't see the loving God in the Old Testament. That's not true. I can show you examples the other way, but let's stick with that for the moment. Even if that were true, progressive Christianity says, okay, let's use each on a window and go about God and not try and put one against the other. Is God either an angry God or a loving God? Let's see what each one tells us about God and the time that God revealed these stories and accounts for us. Let's hold them up together. Seeing what each window tells us, even if it brings up more questions, even if we can't answer those questions.

There's a story told by Jaroslav Pelikan of a rabbi who's challenged by one of his students. His student says, "Why is it rabbi that you Rabbis so often put your teachings in the form of a question?" To which the Rabbi replies, "So what's wrong with the question?"

Frustrating, but that's where we are as Christians sometimes. It's not that we don't want the answers to questions. It's not that progressive Christians don't want all our questions answered. Often we do, of course we do. But we realize that may not come and we realize that's okay. We realize it's still okay to ask and name the questions.

As we go forward in this series, that's the one most important thing I want you to hold in your mind about progressive Christianity is these windows into God. We don't think that if we just look through the right window, we will see and know everything there is about God. We keep looking through different windows and keep describing and naming the view we see through each window, even if they look different to us. Even if we can't reconcile two different views, we don't throw one out versus the other.

Progressive Christianity does this with other windows on the world. The easiest example is science. Progressive Christianity says that science can teach us things about the world and how the world works, that our faith may not be able to.  We will honor science and what it can teach and what it can provide. It's another window on the world. Other areas of expertise, mental health, for example. We'll honor mental health professionals, physical health professionals.

We take this concept of windows, especially windows on the divine, into our understanding of other faiths. Progressive Christianity honors other faiths. We have limited views of windows on the divine, and it's possible that other faiths have their windows on the divine too. Maybe looking through their windows, we can learn some things about our Christian faith. This is not the same as saying all religions are the same. This is not the same as saying, we all have our own paths to God and they're all equally valid and they're the same.

As a Christian, I find that offensive. If I was here talking with a Muslim or a Buddhist, I would guess many of them would find that offensive too. Each of our faiths, each of our religions has distinct values and aspects of it that make it beautiful and unique. To say and equate that all religions are just the same, dishonors all religions.

Two final points, and we're going to build on these in Sundays to come. Progressive Christianity lifts up biblical values of peace and justice, care for the environment and inclusion. These are the themes that are going to be stressed heavily by progressive Christians. Along with those values of peace and care for the environment and inclusion, a lot of those are based in action, as much as they are in belief.

Progressive Christianity definitely is a lived faith. It's not just about what we intellectually ascent to. It's not just about a correct set of doctrines and beliefs. Progressive Christianity is heavily invested in what does your faith lead you to do? How does your faith lead you to show God's love in the world? How does your faith lead you to care for the world God has provided? How does your faith lead you to include all of God's children?

I hope you will join us on the next four Sundays as we continue to explore these topics. Specifically, we'll talk about progressive Christianity, salvation and other faiths. We'll talk about the environment, we'll talk about inclusion, we'll talk about progressive Christianity and politics, and we'll talk about progressive Christianity and the Bible. I look forward to learning more alongside you.