Losing the Path (Week 2)

Exodus 32:7-14 

Luke 15:1-10

On the first pages of John Updike’s novel, In the Beauty of the Lillies, a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Clarence Wilmot, is standing in his book-lined study, in the church manse in Paterson, NJ – and right there and then, he loses his faith.  His wife is fixing dinner in the kitchen for the Building Committee who will be coming over later that evening.  And right there in his study, poof, the faith just leaves him.

After Princeton Seminary, Rev. Wilmot pastored several congregations across twenty some years of service.  But lately he had been reading the work of an atheist named Robert Ingersoll.  Some of his parishioners had read it and were confused and troubled by the book.  Ingersoll argued that once you come to grips with Freud’s discoveries about the unconscious; with Darwin’s new findings on the origin of species; and with the latest biblical scholarship about how the Bible was stitched together, God no longer makes sense.  Armed with this new learning, the sophisticated, thoughtful person no longer needs faith or the church.

Here is Updike’s description of the experience: “At that moment the Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot, down in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church at the corner of Straight Street and Broadway, felt the last particles of his faith leave him.  The sensation was distinct – a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward. . . . “.

I give Updike credit for picturing the loss of faith in a pointed and interesting way.  The person who loses his way is a clergy person with much invested and lots to lose.  So it’s a story about what can happen to religious insiders.  And it acknowledges that faithful people sometimes lose the path.

From another angle, this scene - of the minister, standing in his study, thinking about books, losing his faith – is not how it usually happens.  An intellectual crisis is only one of many forms that losing the path can take.  There are many other ways that we lose the path . . . sometimes we wander away because we’re ashamed of some failing; or we’ve compromised ourselves morally and don’t want to face that; or we’ve dealt with tragedy and loss and our hope flags; or we struggle with mental illness and depression and can’t see any light; or we lose confidence in God’s goodness in the face of ongoing injustice; or we get out of the habit of regular worship and the vision of the risen Christ loses its grip on our hearts and fades slowly away; or we allow our lives to be conformed to values that aren’t the values of God’s kingdom – racism, nationalism, greed, individualism, comfort.  There are a thousand ways to lose the path.

But there is one other serious problem with Updike’s scene of the reverend losing his faith:  Updike imagines this loss as devastatingly final.  The Reverend never comes back from it.  It is an abrupt ending from which there’s no hope of return.  Updike imagines the loss of faith as an irretrievable loss, a fall from which one can’t recover.  While losing the path is a real threat for all of us, it is rarely final.  And that’s a point I want to come back to in a few minutes.

Now let’s turn to our Exodus reading.  Three months after their dramatic escape from slavery in Egypt, Israel comes through the desert to Mt. Sinai.  Here God will meet them and give them the law, which amounts to a new way of life.

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us a god who will go before us.  As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him’ ” (32:1). 

Their leader Aaron grants their wishes.  He asks them for their gold earrings and melted them and formed them into a golden calf.  “These are your gods,” Aaron said, “who brought you up out of Egypt” (32:4).  He built an altar before the calf, and called for a religious festival the following day. 

Meanwhile, cut to God and Moses still up on the mountain.  Deeply angry over this scene, God tells Moses of plans to destroy all the Israelites and to make Moses into a great nation without them.  Moses begs God to relent from God’s anger and to spare the people from destruction.  And God relents.

Here is a picture of God’s beloved people losing their way.  They are already on pilgrimage, out of slavery into a life of freedom.  But they lose touch with the God who rescued them and promised them a future.  What happened?  What was their sin?  Was it impatience?  Restlessness?  Fickleness?  Dullness?  Forgetfulness?  A need for physical symbols of theh divine?  A need for certainty?  God charges them with “idolatry” (32:8) and refers to them as a “stiff-necked” people (32:9). 

The truth is that Israel frequently gets lost.  They lose the path over and over.  And so it’s not surprising that Jesus the Jewish rabbi tells stories about getting lost and getting found.  The big questions for Jesus’ listeners are questions for us too: “Who is lost and who is found?” and “What does it mean to be found or saved or welcomed home?”  And “What does it mean to be a community of God’s hospitality and grace?”

On one level, these parables of lost sheep and coins are about the “lost” people, the sinners whom Jesus welcomes and with whom he gladly (and scandalously) eats.  One commentator refers to him as a “promiscuous” meal sharer.  But on another level these stories challenge those who see themselves as safe and sound.  And Jesus tells these stories to unsettle those of us who are comfortable; to help even religious folks discover that we are just as “lost” as those we label as “sinners.” 

Once we begin to see ourselves as the lost, as those who have lost the way, and as those who regularly keep losing it, we have broken through to a new view of ourselves.  We can finally see ourselves as people deeply in need of God’s kindness, mercy, and forgiveness.  But then something else immediately happens.  When we see ourselves as radically dependent on God’s grace, our view of others is also transformed.  They are no longer strangers, but friends suffering from the same temptations and distortions as are we.  They are not some categorically different kind of people who need to be “saved” by those of us who are “found.”  They become those fellow-sufferers who can be gladly welcomed into our hearts, our lives, and our congregations. 

Now let me return to why Updike’s scene of the reverend losing his faith may not be that helpful for us.  In actual fact, people lose their way all the time.  Sometimes losing your way looks like losing your faith, but not always. 

Losing the path isn’t a rare and occasional event, happening only in extreme circumstances to a few people.  It is the background rhythm to our lives, both personally and as a congregation.  Getting off track, losing the way, bending into unhealthy habits, sliding quietly into unbelief, letting go of life-shaping trust in the good news – these are normal, even daily challenges to the life of faith.  Being honest and upfront with ourselves about how prone we are to lose the path is the vigilant first step towards an openness to change and renewal.

More often than not, losing the path is not a final, life-defining loss.  Often it’s a clearing of debris; a letting go of something shallow and non-essential; a leaving behind of forms of religious habit and spirituality that served one earlier in life but do so no longer.  When these kinds of losses happen, there is something fresh and new that grows in their wake; something more honest and more real.

Some of us have been through periods of life when it felt like we lost our faith.  Some of us may feel like that right now.  We might look back wistfully to times in our lives when things felt easier, when we could believe and trust and pray quite naturally.  But now all that has slipped away.  We keep hanging on, but with the nagging sense that something has been lost, or has become broken in us. 

I hear these stories all the time.  People confide in me that they think they’ve lost their faith.  They’re not sure if they believe anymore.  They can’t commit themselves to the things that used to make sense.  These are common testimonies.  Many of us have been through these periods.  And these “periods” may even constitute the majority of our lives. 

But here’s what I’d like you to consider.  The feeling that you’ve lost some connection to past forms of faith may actually be a wonderful sign that your life is unfolding towards newness.  It might mean that on some deep level, you’re recognizing that what you used to believe, and how you used to believe it, won’t work anymore.  It means that you’re tired of twisting your life and heart, pretending to believe religious teachings and supposed truths that have lost their grip for you.  And releasing these things, letting go of them, often feels like losing your faith.  But it’s not the same thing at all.  It’s actually a process of growth and discovery.  The unnecessary features of your faith and spirituality are being burned away, or chiseled off, or taken from you.  And that process can be scary.  Because often you don’t know what’s coming next.  Or if anything is coming next.

The point of reflecting together on how often we lose our way is simply to remember once again that God is with us in our failings and distortions; to remember that God is patient and merciful in repeatedly calling us back to lives of faith, hope, and love.  It’s never “over.”  The clock never runs out.  We get far more than three strikes.  It’s not over for us; and it’s not over for those we consider “big sinners”; and it’s not over for those we think of as our enemies.  There is hope no matter how dark the situation.

The changes we’re experiencing as a congregation are challenging, but they’re also interesting and exciting.  We’re becoming a community for people who don’t want the standard religious answers that used to make sense.  We’re becoming a welcoming family for people who’ve tried obeying the rules and conforming to the expectations of their religious upbringing.  And it didn’t work.  And they need something different.  We’re becoming a place where it’s ok to be lost; to be unsure; to be confused; where it’s ok to take your time; to ask questions; to sift through a variety of possible lives; to experiment and try out new forms of spirituality and discipleship.

Our readings call us to be a joyful community.  We are to party together, to rejoice together, to have fun together, to share meals together.  We’re to be a place with wide open doors and an air of festivity.  Those who find us find a place of glad hospitality and of joyful welcome.  Those who find us find a place where all the different parts of their lives are welcomed.  Those who find us feel like they’ve made their way back home.  What’s lost is found, and we all cheer for one another as we find the path, again and again.