What Do I Know?
Deuteronomy 6:20-24; Job 38:1-7
A Sermon by the Reverend Ron Parker

Epworth United Methodist Church, Berkeley

I see from the brochure in the bulletin that during Lent this year we are exploring what we can learn from representatives and practices of other religions.  That leads me to wonder about how I am perceived. Was I invited to preach today as a representative of some unfamiliar faith?  Probably.
 
In that spirit, I would point out that the title of this sermon can be pronounced two ways:
 
“What do I know?”  and “What do I know?”
 
I’ll have to leave it to you to decide which is the most appropriate.
 
Of course, if you listen to NPR on Saturdays, you know that this also implies, “What do you know.”  Unlike those on “What do you know?” this morning we ultimately have to answer our own questions without any celebrity contestants playing for us.
 
You know some things that I don’t know and I know some things that you don’t know … first of all, because you are standing over there and I am standing over here. But even more, we know and see differently because we have different histories and different life stories.
 
Here’s an image that may help us:
 
Scholar of religion, Diana Eck writes: “…our religious traditions are more like rivers than monuments.  They are not static and they are not over.  They are still rolling – with forks and confluences, rapids and waterfalls.  Where those rivers of faith flow depends upon who we are and who we become.”[1]
 
So, if religious traditions are like rivers and I find myself born along by this stream of tradition:  what do I know?

*
Well, first of all, I know that I have come down a particular river that has been the context of the experiences that have shaped me.  I have hints of the headwaters of the traditions I have adopted, the history of faith that I have lived into.
 
Earlier, we read from Deuteronomy 6.  It is one of the oldest pieces of text in the Old Testament.
 
We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.  …. The Lord brought us out from there in order to bring us into this land promised to our ancestors.  Then the Lord commanded us to observe all thee statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive as is now the case….
 
When you asked the ancient Israelites what they knew, they answered with where they came from.  By being part of that tradition, I came from there, too.
 
Of course I am not there anymore.  I have come a long ways since then.  The river and the story of it are long and winding.  But when we read this text, we remember that it is one of the headwaters of the stream in which we find ourselves.
 
My particular tributary of this stream starts back in a little rural church in southern Michigan, probably with something like, (singing) “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”   The business about being Pharaoh’s slaves probably flowed into my stream much later.
 
I believe that the fundamental currents of every person’s faith are laid down very early in life and are never completely forgotten, no matter how hard we try.
 
Most of us will live our lives profoundly influenced by the faith that we held when we were seven years old.   (Makes Sunday School pretty important, huh?)  I don’t know how many times someone joining the church said to me, “I grew up Catholic, but I left that behind. Now I am a Methodist.”  I wanted to say, but didn’t always, “Sorry, you’ll always be a Catholic, but that’s ok; you’re welcome in the Methodist Church.  You’ll just be a Catholic who is more comfortable in the Methodist Church at this point in your live.”
 
The enduring currents of our faith have their sources deep in the mountains.
 

**

What else do I know?
 
I  know that, like rivers, our faith histories and traditions tend to keep moving and changing course.  We may try to make them static, but their forward movement is a powerful force.  
 
A number of years ago, Ruth and I took a raft trip down the Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon.  One thing I remember is that going forward was easier than stopping.   If you wanted to stop, you had to find an eddy.  An eddy was a place where the topography of the shore and river bottom caused some the water to temporarily move in a circle.  If you paddled hard, you could get out of the main current and rest in an eddy for a while.
 
We can do that in our faith journey.  Sometimes things just move too fast and we want to stop for a rest.  In the eddy, we go in circles for a while.  In fact, some of us manage to go in circles for a long time while the stream of history passes us, but most of us must eventually move on.
 
Of course the other way to control this forward flow is to build a dam.  Building dams is a power trip in more ways than one.   Fundamentalism in any faith tradition is a dam-building operation.  It’s an attempt to hold back an unstoppable stream.  Any fundamentalism eventually develops leaks and cracks and overflows.
 
Or, as Mark Twain said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble.  It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
 
Perhaps this is what Job was doing.  He was gathering up all of his righteousness in a pool of his own making.  When things didn’t go right, he blamed God, but he couldn’t stop the river.  In that passage we read, God essentially says, “You are the dam, but I am the river.”
 
So - so far, what I know is  that, first, I have come down a particular stream and second, my spirituality tends to keep moving and changing, even in the face of extreme efforts to make it stay the same.
 

***

A third thing I know is that the stream of faith and practice that I started out with keeps merging with other tributaries to form larger and more diverse rivers of religion.  In the world we live in, we unavoidably come into contact with spiritual traditions that are different from our own.
 
Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way.  He said, “ The religions of the world are no more self-sufficient, no more independent, no more isolated than individuals or nations. Energies, experiences and ideas that come to life outside the boundaries of a particular religion or all religions continue to challenge and to affect every religion.  Horizons are wider, dangers are greater. … No religion is an island.  We are all involved with one another.  Spiritual betrayal on the part of one of us affects the faith of all of us.”[2]
 
I encounter others who have come down other rivers, who have been shaped by other experiences.  They have adopted histories and traditions that are different from mine.  But now in this intermixing stream, contact with them is unavoidable.
 
Here’s where the river imagery begins to break down a bit.  Unlike the waters that flow together from different tributaries, our faith traditions often maintain a degree of separateness as they come in contact with each other.  There is some mixing, but some uniqueness is retained. I think this is actually a good thing.  
 
It is a good thing because the uniqueness of our histories and perspectives is not lost.  We have our own particular depth to share with the whole of the human river.
 
Sometime around 1969 or 70, when I was teaching philosophy of religion at Cal State at Hayward, I decided that being a Methodist was kind of boring and that maybe being a Sufi or a Buddhist would be more interesting.  I had been a Methodist as long as I could remember, but recently had spent far more time studying the texts of other faiths than I had reading the Bible.
 
But as I was considering these possibilities I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation on the function of ritual and other religious practices and arguing that these practices were like skills that were learned by embodying them rather than facts to be memorized or interpretations to be believe in.  If this were true, I realized, I already had thirty years of practice being a Methodist and I would have to start over as a beginner if I wanted to be a Sufi.
 
So with this firm knowledge, I asked the Bishop to appoint me to a Methodist Church.
 
Now did that mean that I had decided that the Methodists were right and the Buddhists and the Muslims and Jews were wrong?  Not at all.  It meant that I thought I was best equipped to enter into the mysteries of the universe through the Methodist path rather than any of the others.
 
This method has served me well over the years, as I have practiced my Methodism and delved into the texts and practices of other faiths.
 
Now I want to distinguish the path I have taken from those who say, “I just pick and choose from the best in all religions.”   That is the method I chose when it came to learning to play a musical instrument.    I can play a few notes and even pick out a tune or two n most any instrument there is – in fact, I actually own more than a dozen kinds of musical instruments, not counting a big suitcase full of all kinds of percussion.  Do I play any of them well? Of course not.  I’ve spent my life dabbling a little in each one.  Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy dabbling; but sometimes I wish that I’d actually gotten good enough on one of those instruments to get in a band or play a difficult piece.
 
I think it is something like that with religious practice.  Having depth and skill in one tradition gives us something to offer to the conversation.   It means that our own faith is the deep foundation on which we stand when we are learning from the insights of others.
 
Caroline plays the viola in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.  She has spent her life learning the depths of the viola.  My guess is that not only would that depth help her if she tried out an other instrument (we’ve all heard her sing), but that exploring the strengths and limitations of another instrument would help her viola playing.
 
I know that I can never completely embody the experience of another, return to the headwaters of the river he or she has come down; but I know that I can listen to stories and share in practices and be enriched by that perspective.
 

****

So what do I know?
 
I know that this sharing of stories and experience is more authentic than learning the doctrines of another and interpreting them in terms of my own experience.
 
I know that most every religious faith or practice is an attempt to be firmly rooted while being carried beyond ourselves.
 
I know that no faith, including my own, is free from distortions and prejudices and small-mindedness.
 
I know that standing here and listening to you over there is profoundly rewarding.
 
Hindu philosopher, Krishnamurti said, “Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we really are.”


[1] Diana L. Eck, Encountering God:  A spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras (New York: Penguin Books 1993), p. ix.
[2] “No Religion is an Island,” p. 6, quoted in Eck, op. cit., p. 219.