Before being at Christ Church, I was the assistant rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church located in downtown Richmond. Among other responsibilities, I was the minister to the youth at St. Paul’s, and that meant that I led the youth confirmation process. Now confirmation, by definition, is the mature and public affirmation of the vows made on one’s behalf at one’s baptism. And my understanding of "mature" includes the element of choice. Confirmation is not intended to be something you do because your parents make you do it. It’s intended to be something one chooses to do. And in my first year at St. Paul’s, after taking the kids through the process, about two weeks before the confirmation service, after one of the gatherings, one of the kids came up to me and informed me that she had decided against being confirmed. Now, that didn’t make me particularly happy, but I had done all that talking about choice, so I had no choice but to honor her decision. So we sat down and started chatting. Now I don’t know if in that conversation we had we ever really got to the root of the issue, whether there was something more going on. But the essence of what she said to me was that there was just too much about the Christian faith she didn’t believe, or didn’t know whether she believed, for her to be confirmed. I praised her for her honesty and integrity, and then asked her to get specific in her questions. And what it came down to was this: She believed in evolution, that the earth is billions of years old, that there were dinosaurs, that humanity has evolved from some kind of hominoid. And she also knew that the Bible said that God made the world, made the universe, in seven days. And she was saying, basically, that "if science say this and we know it’s true, but the Bible says something different, I don’t know whether I can believe the Bible. And if I don’t believe the Bible, then how can I be a Christian?" The entire possibility of her believing the gospel, and being a Christian - in her mind - hinged upon this single question, and she couldn’t resolve it in favor of scripture and Christianity. For her, it was as if this issue was the fulcrum upon which all Christian truth rested, so that if she couldn’t believe this, how could she believe all the rest? "The Bible is wrong here," she was saying, "I can’t believe it, therefore it is impossible for me to be a Christian."

It was the questions of a fourteen year-old, but she isn’t the only, and she wasn’t the youngest, person I have heard ask the questions, been unable to come to a workable answer, and therefore have their entire faith be thrown into disarray.

Every summer at Christ Church, while the kids are involved in their Sunday Summer Vacation Bible School, we offer a special teaching for the adults during the message time in the worship service. Three years ago we did a teaching series on the New Testament, a Sunday each on Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. Two years ago we did a series on the Old Testament, talking about the law, the prophets and the writings. Last year, if you remember, the series centered on images of Jesus, and we viewed clips from various film and video renderings of the life of Jesus.

This year, this five week series is entitled "Five Questions People Ask." Each Sunday, I’m going to address some significant questions about the Christian faith and life that people have asked me from time to time. Now, I’m not talking about questions like "what’s that thing called that you wear around your neck every Sunday?", though I get asked that question a lot. Or, "What does the word ‘Episcopal’ mean?", which I get asked from time to time. Incidentally, this is called a stole, and the word Episcopal means "bishop." The Episcopal Church is a church with bishops.

Instead, I’m taking about some broader questions that people wonder about, and that intersect strongly with where our lives are. Some of the questions will have to do with what we believe, some of the questions have to do with how we live the Christian life. Some are head questions, other are more heart questions. But they are all big questions that different people have asked me from time to time, so we’re going to take some time this summer to consider them at a leisurely pace, and then also discuss them as people choose. So that if you have questions about the questions and my response to the questions, after greeting people after worship I hope you will feel free to talk with me during refreshment time if you want to probe a bit more deeply.

The question I want to consider today comes from that conversation with that young person several years ago, but also from other conversations I have had with several other people over the years. And it isn’t the question of evolution versus creationism. It’s a larger question. It’s the question of "What is the essential belief of the Christian faith?" To put it another way, what are, what is, the essential propositions of the Christian faith that one must believe if one is to be Christian? In other words, beliefs which, were we to deny them, we could not justly say that we are Christians. Because, you see, I believe, for example, that one can deny the literal seven day creation as told in scripture, and still be a Christian. Now I’m not sure one can deny what that story means and still be a Christian, but I haven’t been convinced that one must believe it on the literal level to be a Christian. That is not the essential belief. What is?

Now granted, this question today is going to appeal to some people more than others. There are some of us who never ask this questions at all, but there are also lots of people who have been unable to jump into the Christian life and faith with both feet because they have real and sincere intellectual questions about the Christian faith. A lot of these people never darken the door of a church at all, while some of them might. Many of these people are afraid of expressing questions or doubts because they wonder what the "believers" will think of them. Sometimes they feel guilty... "I’m supposed to believe this, but I can’t." If you are one of these people, I hope you feel at home here. God’s eyebrows aren’t raised at sincere questions and wondering, and ours aren’t either.

So let’s talk about this today, and maybe in only a few minutes boil the Christian faith, the Christian belief about God, down to it’s bare essentials.

Lastly, I want to issue a warning before we begin. This teaching I’m going to offer is essentially heretical. In reality, every sermon is heretical because no sermon can touch on all the truth all the time. If it took the Bible 1200 pages to tell the truth about God, it’s impossible for a preacher to tell the whole truth in only a few minutes. And some of us may have already decided what is most essential about the Christian faith and belief, and are right about it, and I’m not going to say the same thing you would say. And I’m not going to mention every important Christian proposition. Just because I don’t mention it, doesn’t mean it’s not important, maybe even essential. What I have sought to do, and it’s been a fun exercise for me, is to get this down to its basic core, and speak to the fundamental belief about God that make us Christian, and upon which every essential doctrine of the Christian belief rests.

Now to get at this questions, what are the basic beliefs that make a Christian a Christian, I want to tell you the story of a heretic. His name is probably unfamiliar to most of us here - doesn’t pop up very often during poolside conversations - and if I told you the name of his heresy you may never have heard of it. But it is the most common of heresies, prevalent in our world and in the Christian church today. It is taught by hundreds of well-intentioned preachers every Sunday, and it grossly misrepresents the essential nature of our God.

The heretic’s name was Pelagius, and he is a mysterious figure. We don’t know a whole lot about him. He was born sometime during the middle of the fourth century in what is now Great Britain, which at that time was still influenced by the Roman Empire, though I’m not sure it was still part of the Roman Empire. He was a monk during a time when Christian belief was still in formation, and was a relatively charismatic teacher, as most heretics are. He wasn’t a bad person, a horrible sinner. His intentions were mostly good, again as the intentions of most heretics are. He was just wrong about something really important.

He traveled to Rome, which was still the big city in the world at that time, around the year 410. But this was not the great Rome that we see in all those movies about the ancient world.

Now let me explain a little bit about what’s going on in the world at that time. The city of Rome was a mess, and the Roman world was a mess. The empire had been split into two parts several years earlier. The stronger Roman empire was in the east based in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, and the weaker Roman empire was the western one based in Rome. Rome was well past the height of its power, and was in obvious decline. The barbarian hordes were threatening the west from every direction, and there was this palpable feeling of despair among the people. In only a few years, the barbarian tribes would sack Rome for the first time in centuries, a devastating occurrence. People knew the stories of Rome’s greatness, a few of the oldest still remembered stories from their grandparents of how things used to be. But they weren’t that way anymore. Things were looking hopeless. They were suffering a spiritual malaise, even though, by this time, anybody who is anybody in Rome is a Christian.

Pelagius, though, was essentially irretrievably optimistic about human nature and abilities. He was kind of like a Noman Vincent Peale of the ancient world. "You can do it," he told the people who gathered around him in Rome and the other places he visited. And most of the people who gathered around him were the middle and upper classes, the "tut-tuts" of Roman society. The people who had influence. They were despairing, and Pelagius said "You can do it!"

"What can we do?" they’d say.

"Well, you have the power inside you to choose for good rather than evil, you can make a change for the better. You have the freedom, the free will, to make the world a better place and yourself a better person. Every day, and in every way, you can be better. It’s all in your power. After all, didn’t Jesus say "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect?" Of course he did! So that means you can do it. You can be perfect, and by being perfect, or at least good, you can be saved. You can have the Kingdom of God if you just work for it."

"Oh?! You mean that if I’m good enough, God will save me? I’ll get into heaven?"

"Yes!" said Pelagius and those who taught what he taught.

Now I’m making this pretty simple, and there are things that make it more complicated, but you get the picture. "It’s in your hands," the Pelagians said. "Goodness and salvation are in your control. Just be good."

At the same time Pelagius was alive, the great theologian St. Augustine of Hippo was alive and working. Of course there is Jesus, but after Paul, Augustine is probably the most influential thinker in the history of the Christian Church. He had a passion for truth, and in those days when people actually died over variations in Christian belief, Augustine was the great warrior against false belief and teachings. He was regularly knee-deep in the conflicts that tore at the Church, and as Pelagius’ ideas began to gain popularity he picked up his stylus and went on the attack.

He saw something incredibly dangerous in Pelagius’ thought. He believed that what Pelagius was teaching was a gross misunderstanding of human beings, and a gross misunderstanding of God. A gross misunderstanding of human beings because even the best persons make mistakes, Augustine knew. Even the best persons do wrong things, do things that harm themselves or God. Nobody’s perfect, Augustine knew. And essentially - and this is Augustine’s relatively unknown pastoral side coming through - human beings can’t stand the pressure of having their salvation depend on themselves alone because if it depends on my perfection, it is an unwinnable battle.

And a gross misunderstanding of God because if God is God, God can not be in debt to another being. That sound complicated, but let me put it this way. You see if being saved means me doing a certain amount of good thins, if it means me being good enough, then if I succeed at that then I can pretty much stand before God, stamp my foot, and say "You owe me heaven!" And what Augustine said is that God is never in that situation. The created being cannot make that claim against its Creator. God is not a lackey, who takes orders from human beings. That’s not much of a God... not a God worth believing in... and that is not God’s nature. The nature of salvation is not that of us doing enough good things to put God in our debt and earn our way in. Instead, the nature of salvation is that it is God’s pure gift. Pelagius said, "Just try hard enough, just do enough good, and God will give you the Kingdom of heaven." Augustine said, "No matter how hard we try, we aren’t good enough. But that doesn’t matter to God. God will give us salvation - even though we don’t deserve it - anyway because more than anything else, God is giving and gracious."

Now Augustine went on and said a bunch of other things, some of which aren’t as pleasant to the ear. But at the basis of it all is Augustine’s belief, based on what he read in the gospels and the letters of Paul, that God is gracious and is a great giver. Pelagius said that God is this being we work toward through our good works. God is up there, and we’re climbing up. Augustine said that God is one who gives over to us. Pelagius said that God is sort of standing there tapping his feet with arms folded, Augustine said that God is standing there with arms outstretched, beckoning us.

And it may not sound like much. If you were sitting there waiting for me to say that the essential belief of the Christian faith is the Trinity, or the resurrection, or the incarnation, or the atonement, or some other doctrine, you may be disappointed. But I would argue that the basic, essential belief of the Christian faith, without which I’m not sure one can be a Christian... maybe still a good person, but not a Christian... one must believe that God is a giver, and that God is gracious. One must believe that it is not us who love God first, but that it is God who loves us first. That it is not us who reaches out first to God, but that it is God's unchangeable nature that God reaches out to us first. And I would argue that it is this fundamental understanding of the nature of God, this fundamental truth, that is the cornerstone for everything else we believe about our God... things like the Trinity, or the incarnation, or the resurrection. Without it, I’m not sure there is the Christian faith.

Now if you don’t believe me on this, let me just flesh it out for you a little bit. Some times people say "The Old Testament God is a God of vengeance, while the New Testament God is a God of grace." That’s hogwash. The Old Testament is filled with stories of God’s givingness and generosity and grace and forgiveness, and what is forgiveness but a gift. God creates everything not because God is lonely, as the folk tales have said, but because God’s nature is to give. God calls Abraham not because Abraham is worthy - scripture tells us nothing about Abraham’s character before God calls him - but because God is gracious. "You will have descendants a numerous as the stars" God says to Abraham. And it doesn’t happen because Abe is a good man or Sarah is a good woman, it happens because God is a generous God. God rescues Israel from Egypt not because they’ve been faithful. The Bible says they’d actually forgotten about their God. God rescues Israel because God just keeps on giving. Read through the Old Testament, and every single person God calls, except, maybe Daniel, has faults. Their being called does not depend on their goodness, is not something they’ve earned. Their call is a gift. God chooses Israel not because they are good or faithful. Often they are neither. God chooses Israel, rescues Israel at least twice, just because God is generous.

God just keeps on giving and giving and giving until finally God makes the greatest gift, who is Jesus. You ever see those signs at the football games that say "John 3:16?" John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life." God gave his Son, the Word became flesh, God’s presence to humanity, God’s becoming human, was not something we deserved or earned, but was something given to us.

Let me give you a little more Bible here. Read the story of John the Baptist in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and what John say is "Repent. For the Kingdom of God is at hand." That’s his big line. Then read Matthew, Mark and Luke to see what Jesus says first. You know what he says? He says "Repent. For the kingdom of God is at hand." He says the same thing John the Baptist says: But there’s a difference in the way they say it. John points a finger and with a snarl says "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s coming, and if you want part of it, you better get yourself straight." Jesus opens his arms and with a smile says "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. The Kingdom of God is here, it has come already, whether you are "ready" or not."

Look at the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What is it? Some people have said it’s like an egg - shell, white, and yolk. Others have said it’s like water - ice, liquid, and steam, though they are all still H20. Neither of those analogies work very well, which is why we say it’s a mystery. But what we have always known about it, what the Church has maintained as true about it, is that in the Trinity the Father gives glory to the Son. The Son gives glory to the Father. And look at what we’ll say in the creed in a few minutes. The holy Spirit proceeds from, is given by, the Father and the Son. How has God chosen to exist in God’s self? In an eternal relationship of giving.

Giving, giving, giving. It is all over the place. That is the essential characteristic of our God which if we deny, I’m not sure we can say we are Christians. If we walk out of here and say "No, our God is not a giving God," then we’re missing the boat.

I’ve said this before, but it’s so good I will say it again today, and probably lots more. The difference between religion and our God is the difference between DO and DONE. Religion says do this, do that, and you’ll make it. Obey these laws, follow these practices and you’ll get there. Jesus says, "It’s already been done for you. Here. Take it. It’s a gift."

If this sounds weird, I’m not surprised. Many preachers, including myself sometimes, I am sure, don’t talk this way. A lot of preaching most of the time, often not intending to, still talks as if it all depends on us. "Be good, and get heaven. Do good things, and you’ll get salvation." But it doesn’t work that way. We don’t do good works so that we can earn our way into the Kingdom of God. Instead, because we are given the Kingdom of God, we do good works.

Sometimes people have a hard time with this truth about God. Maybe we have a hard time with it for the same reason that when someone invites us over for dinner just because they like us, we feel as if we need to invite them to our house. Paybacks, you know. We would much rather pay back than be in debt, and it is sometimes so hard to receive a gift that comes for no reason other than someone loves us. Gifts are easy to receive at Christmas or birthdays or anniversaries, aren’t they. They are harder to receive when they come for no reason except the giver’s affection for us.

Maybe we have a hard time with it because well, maybe we’d rather have to earn it. The attractive thing in earning this relationship with God is that we have some control over it. There’s not control of gift, though. It’s just there. The only thing we are responsible for is saying yes to it.

And maybe we have a hard time with it because we think it should be more complex. "Wait a second Paul? The most important thing to believe is merely that God is a giver? That’s it? But what about all those things we say in the Creed? What about those 1200 pages of scripture? What about the millions of books that have been written about Jesus and the Christian faith?" Well, all that we say in the Creed comes from the truth that God loves to give. And scripture tells the story of God’s ever expanding grace, starting with Abraham, one person, in Genesis and ending with the universe in Revelation. And all those books? Let just remember that most of the faithful throughout most of history haven’t been about to read. They’ve only known that God is gracious and good and giving. And that has been enough.

God is pure gift. Another way we say it is that God is Love. That is God’s essential nature. The Kingdom of God is not ours because of our goodness or our effort, it is ours because God loves to give.