Most of us know the anxiety of not knowing for sure what's real, or what's really true! When we look at faith filled people from our past we assume that they had no doubts and that there is something wrong with us when we do.
As I talk about Paul's letter to the Philippians, I remember a young woman who felt her faith was second rate, and that she was a huge disappointment to her parents. You see, her parents seemed to be on first-name basis with Jesus. They had little doubt about themselves, and no doubt about Jesus. Jesus was always placing things on their hearts; but never on hers. When she sits in church she feels like God is talking to others and not to her. It's either unreal or it's unfair. So she's starting to stay away.
I also remember a man a few years older. Faith used to fill his soul like blood fills the heart. It all made sense to him and shaped his existence. But just recently it's as if his heart has been ripped out and he's struggling to get his blood round his body some other way.
He doesn't want a psychological explanation, because he's already lost his present faith and some kind of psychological explanation makes him terrified he'll come to think his past was just a coping mechanism. And he will not discount his past. What he had was as real as anything he'd known. It's just not there right now.
Is there some word here in chapter 3 of Philippians that can give them hope? Paul says "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead."
These words amaze me. This is Paul, remember, the guy that wrote part of the Bible. And Paul is saying "I want to know Christ." Paul's doesn't say "I know all about Jesus and all about God and take it from me, you accept this stuff or you're eternal toast," no.
Instead, we hear "I want to know Christ." Feel the tentativeness of it. "I want to know Christ." In other words, I don't yet quite know for sure.
Now maybe for some of us that tentativeness instills a level of panic. Surely, we feel the Bible is supposed to present to us rock-solid unshakeable words. Yet here's Paul, arguably ranked #1 disciple on the USA Today's Hall of Fame list saying that even he, right now, doesn't know it all.
Is that terrifying? Or is it incredibly liberating? Maybe faith's not a certainty but more a trust. If you feel you've lost the faith you had, maybe this is the moment faith really begins. "I want to know Christ." Feel the tentativeness of it. Paul was a passionate man, and he seldom exaggerates his faith.
And listen to that last line " - by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." There it is again! Did you hear it? Did you hear that word "somehow" - "if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead"? He's not 100% sure of his knowledge of Christ and he's not 100% sure of what Christ has in store for him when he dies.
For a lot of Christian history this part of Paul's testimony and this dimension of Christian faith have been airbrushed out. The great revivals that shaped the church in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America were largely founded on Jesus being a guaranteed instrument to help you bypass hell and enter eternal life. Today often the most successful brands of Christianity are those that make Jesus a handy device for material prosperity or inner peace or spiritual adventure or cultural dominance.
But Paul is talking about something different. He mentions three things.
First he says "I want to know the power of Christ's resurrection." If Christ wasn't raised from the dead then it's a story that ends in failure on the cross. But if Christ is raised from the dead, if Christ is raised, then God's love is not finally in vain, our love is not finally in vain, hard as it often feels, all that is done for love will finally become fruitful.
If Christ is raised then death does not have the final word. If Christ is raised then hope really is the shape of tomorrow. If Christ is raised then all our pain and shame and regret will finally be redeemed, nothing is finally wasted, fear will finally pass away and joy will prevail, all will finally become beauty.
The power of resurrection is the power that dismantles every other power. When Paul says "I want to know Christ," he says he wants to know this power, the power of resurrection.
Then second Paul says "I want to share in Christ's sufferings by becoming like him in his death." You wonder whether Paul had ever heard the phrase "Be careful what you hope for." If Jesus is a device for getting us to earthly comfort or eternal blessing, then Paul's desire to suffer is meaningless.
But Paul is talking about love. Paul is saying "I don't just want to be the beneficiary or Jesus' resurrection. I want to enter into the very process by which the resurrection came about. And in a way I think we all enter into moments where the light goes out, where we no longer have control. These are moments where we experience a kind of death, with a small d. I want to go into the heart of darkness with Jesus that I may come to discover more wonderfully the splendor of light."
This stepping into the darkness or those moments where the rug is pulled out from underneath your feet are moments of crucifixion, where you, on a more limited basis, step into the death of Jesus. Where we lose control and find ourselves upheld by other hands than your own, where we discover an unconditional love that sustains, when all other ground is sinking sand.
Think again for a moment of the guy whose previously profound faith had disintegrated. He knows what Paul's talking about. He would rather walk through intense darkness, provided he knew he was close to the heart of God, than face the daily superficialities of life alone.
And then third this tentative possibility, Paul says "if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." There's that "somehow" again. It's almost an afterthought. Maybe an afterthought but maybe this is exactly the point.
Yes, we hope to be given everlasting life, the fruit of Christ's resurrection.
But faith begins, indeed eternal life begins, the moment we let go of our own destiny and certainty and say I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection whatever. Jesus isn't a device to get you to something more important. Jesus is God saying to each one of us, "Your faith in me can be as tentative and fragile as, - may be, - but my faith in you will never waver."
But what we can learn from Paul and others in the Faith is that they didn't let that tentativeness about certainty paralyze them. Look what they did, they shared it, and their lives inspire us today.
The question is, do I want to know it? Do I want to know that love more than anything else in the world? If the answer is yes, all then we walk toward promise. If the answer is no, you may be facing a loneliness and a numbness that just keeps ticking.
To those who feel they are longing for a lost faith, I want to say, wanting to believe, is believing. Yearning, longing, aching to believe is entering into the passion and pathos of God's love for the world- feeling for a moment what it feels like to be God.
Faith begins in trust where certainty gets cranky. Paul said "I want to know Christ" - not "I know Christ."
A life of Prayer opens up this faith. Prayer is the decision before the decision. I think everyone prays. Just before every decision there is a pre-decision where you say, yes or no.
Greta referred me to an article from the Christian century on Prayer. In it Rowan Williams says that "God has decided to work out his purposes through what we decide to say and do." So if God's will is to bring some act of reconciliation, some act of healing, some change for the better in the world, God chooses that your prayer is going to be a part of the set of causes that makes it happen. Because our prayers release to God situations and person through whom God can move.
Just as Jesus empties himself out of love for us, we in return empty ourselves. We push away the selfish desires and the limiting images that subtract from our being human, and leave us instead numb toward the goodness and wonder of life.
We make room inside, that's what faith does, that what prayer does it makes room, we empty our minds and hearts so that there is room for God's love.
It begins by being quiet not on the outside but more on the inside. This can be a long journey this getting quiet. Because quiet needs to happen at a deeper level of our soul and occasion a peace with others, and yourself and God. It's the beginning posture for payer and it does take time. This is not an app that you download.
Origen says we have to step back from a reactive life that just reacts to images and sounds from the TV, or the noise from notifications, that causes emotions and reactions to flow out in all directions. And instead attach your inner you, to Christ to love itself. Listen for that in the peace of your soul.
In the early church there emerged a pattern of starting prayer by learning self awareness. To begin prayer recognizing when you're wrong and selfish and begin to turn to act with more generosity. From there you move to see God active in the world.
When you have got your ego and all its fussiness a little more in its place, then you begin to see more. The world around you becomes more real and more beautiful. The intensity and clarity with which you see in the world around you triggers a leap in the dark. "I want to know stepping into a death like his, and from there into the light of God. Your eye sight gets clarified by your actions; as the divine life slowly transforms you. Rising into a resurrection like his."
Rowan then quotes Origen with this beautiful phrase- "then we move into a condition where the whole of our life says, God."