Aug 11 | “Myth-makers,” (Sermon, August 11th, 2019)

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ²Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. ³By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

Hebrews 11:1-3

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

A friend introduced me to the music of Jay Brannan several months ago. Brannan is a singer-songwriter from Texas. He was raised in a conservative Baptist home and ended up leaving for California to become an actor, more than likely after discovering that he was gay. Over time he built up a music career through sharing his songs on Youtube.

Brannan has a sweet, almost plaintive voice, and his first album is low-fi, mostly just him and his guitar.

The first song my friend played for me was called “Goddamned.” In it, Brannan details his thoughts traveling through the Holy Land. He is clearly working through a lot of the theology he was force-fed as a child, and I could understand why my friend, who went through a similar struggle, shared it with me. It didn’t speak to me in the same way, but for those who have to break through the chains of spiritual abuse, naming such things is an act of bold resistance.

The chorus goes:

“‘Cause virgins don’t have babies / and water, it isn’t wine

And there’s a Holy Spirit, maybe / but she would never rent a room with walls built by mankind

Mary and Mohammed are screaming through the clouds / For you to lay your goddamned arms down

Rip your bigot roots up from the earth and salt the goddamned ground.”

In the interests of honesty let me add that while I have trouble singing the first few lines, I always join in on the last three.

Later, in the second verse, Jay sings, “Am I crazy? Maybe it’s me / But this all sounds like mythology.”

An admission which, for Jay, perhaps remembering thundering hellfire sermons from his childhood, was probably a moment of prophetic bravery.

For me, though, when I heard that line, I thought, “Well…yeah!”

See “myth” has become this dirty word in reference to religion, and it shouldn’t be. Myth was never meant to merely indicate something that wasn’t true. A myth is able to convey a depth of truth that ordinary facts cannot. Our ancestors have always known that, which is why they tell stories. We actually remember stories far better than facts. That’s probably why Jesus, like many other spiritual teachers, taught through story.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

The problem with the more standard definition of “myth” is that it consigns myth to the exclusive realm of spiritual, religious, or metaphysical thought. It insinuates that everyday life and the secular world have no place for such things. But our everyday lives do have myths. Devaluing the idea of myth, or pushing it into the realm of the “merely” spiritual, fools us into thinking we as a species have grown out of them. And we so haven’t!

Richard Topping, the principal of Vancouver School of Theology, used to say, “Today’s myth is that a Lexus will make us happy.” We laugh, but we know it’s true. Commercials are probably the most recognizable Western cultural myths. But there are more in the zeitgeist, floating around, spun by today’s storytellers. One of them is that guns will protect people. One is that the poor deserve their lot in life because they just haven’t worked hard enough. Another is that ignoring hateful people and their rhetoric will make them go away.

Most of us know that none of those things are true, or at the very least, they are simplistic. They have never been factually true, but they continue to influence cultural movements and human souls the way older myths used to. We tell these stories in the campfire shadows of our uncertainty because it makes us feel safe, makes the world seem more understandable.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

If we are not post-mythic, the point is not to try to grow past them, because we can’t. If we start from this assumption, that myths area by-product of human presence, we can move on to deciding which ones are allowed into our palace of meaning-making, here, today.

The point of a myth is to guide us through a loud and confusing world where there are many stories, many routes to take. So let’s think of myths like a map. Which ones give us a true and simple path? Which ones should we discard as out-of-date? Are some parts of them now under construction, or have they surrendered to erosion or natural disaster that changed the topography? Do some warn, “Here there be dragons”? Remember, myths are truer than true. There didn’t need to be literal grasshoppers and ants or tortoises and hares for us see truth and worth in those stories. They are illustrations of things we know to be real.

Now we will not know if our myth maps were the right route to follow until we come to the end of our lives. That’s what the faith, the conviction of things unseen, is for.

As Christians, we are called to use the Jesus map. And choosing it is so much more complicated and beautiful than “What would Jesus do?” although that is a big part of it. It is also so much more complicated than just uttering a magic prayer to be “saved,” as though that were ever done in Jesus’s time.

It’s about holding fast to the faith that Jesus gave us; not The Faith in a capital F exclusive Christians-only sense, but the faith as in the peace, the conviction, the heart of Jesus. It’s about accepting a posture of watchfulness for the one who will come to us unexpectedly – and remember Jesus begins this instruction with “Don’t be afraid.” It doesn’t have to be a frightened, paranoid watchfulness. Think of it more like the watchfulness you might have had waiting for an exciting event – a child watching for snow to show her Christmas is near – or watching at your window for an expected and much beloved guest.

So what is our Jesus myth? What’s the topography? What’s the landscape? It’s anything but easy. There are thick woods and barren wastelands. There are long stretches of unfathomed ocean. There are sticky humid swamps and mossy tundra. But there are also plains of soft sweetgrass and cathedral groves where sunlight paints everything in shades of gold. There are starfields above our heads which represent untold generations of faithful that came before and will come after us. And through it all a voice that proclaims an unbroken hymn: We are not alone. We have been fully known by the one who made us, and that one came to be with us to show us that we are never alone and that violence, ignominious death, and sin cannot change that. The very act of death indeed made it possible for all things to enter into a dance of resurrection and abiding presence.

Once you’ve accepted a myth as binding, you’ve got to dig in. Let it get into every nook and cranny, like beach sand or water. Let it bewitch you. Let it be childlike in its enthusiasm and adolescent in its intensity. Sometimes, it won’t be either of those things. When it isn’t, settle in for a stretch of contentment, or let it push you to reclaim what was lost. Your body and your heart will tell you what you need. Ask yourself questions. Ask God questions. Trust. Again, this will not always come easy or naturally. That’s okay. And if you find yourself trusting despite logic, despite patience, despite terror or pain or grief, let yourself laugh. It was the same for the psalmists, the same for the faithful among the Israelites in the desert.

Remember, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And we don’t need to be afraid.

Let faith frustrate you. Let it claim you. Let yourself be open to shouting at it, laughing at it, accepting it, pushing it away, doing everything we do with the ones we care for most deeply.

Let faith be your landscape.