As our Gospel story
begins,
the disciples are confused and frozen
in fear.
They are not
rejoicing at the rumors that Jesus is alive.
They are just mixed
up, helpless, and hiding.
Then, Luke says,
“Jesus himself stood among them.”
Their response? Luke
tells us their feelings.
They are started and
terrified.
He tells us their
thoughts – confused and superstitious.
They think he is a ghost.
As for their action,
they stand stock still, as if paralyzed.
Jesus rolls up his
sleeves and goes to work
on their spirituality from three
angles,
feeling, thought, and action.
He calms their fears.
He opens their minds
to understand the Scriptures.
Then he moves them to
act by asking for food.
Luke gives us a
picture of holistic Christianity,
a faith that balances feeling, thought,
and action.
My own faith falls
out of balance all the time.
I suspect many of us
need to consider
the balanced, holistic faith we see in
Luke.
Two writers have
described holistic faith especially well:
John Henry Newman in the 19th
Century,
and Baron Freiderich von Hugel in the
20th.
In his book, The Via Media in the Anglican Church,
Newman described “the three
offices of Christ,”
as priest, prophet, and king
corresponding to feeling,
thought, and action.
Feeling means piety
and devotion.
Thought is study and
theological reflection.
Action is service and
generosity.
Newman insisted that
these three parts of faith
must be balanced and integrated
because any one of them alone goes
wrong.
Feeling alone leads
to superstition and fanaticism.
Thinking alone leads
to cold rationalism.
Action alone leads to
tyranny and legalism.
Most people today
think religion is just personal feelings.
A psychologist,
William James, said that real religion
is what each of us feels about God when
we are alone.
Creeds and
institutions, he said, were just second-hand conformism.
But was James right?
Baron von Hugel
agreed with Newman.
He said that James’
private feeling religion is
“fraught with every kind of danger.”
Von Hugel noted that
20th Century religion was all subjective emotions
and passed this judgment on it. He
said:
“Nothing
. . . .can equal the power of strong feelings
or heated imagination to give a hiding
place to superstition,
sensuality, . . . . self-complacent
indolence, arrogant revolt
and fanaticism.”
Piety and devotion
are the heart of our faith.
And faith must have a
heart.
But faith also needs
a head.
The head asks hard
questions, reads books,
studies
Scripture and Tradition, and stacks what we learn
up
against science and philosophy.
But that isn’t all it
takes.
Faith needs hands and
feet.
Giving money and
serving others in the name of Jesus
are the hands and feet of our faith.
These three practices
– feeling, thought, and action – inform each other,
temper each other, and support each
other.
Many have observed
the remarkable capacity of religion
to turn evil and do great harm.
One reason that is
apt to happen is that we skip
one of the three key ingredients of
authentic faith.
I am sometimes amazed
when people
who are quite intelligent in their work
lives
subscribe to naïve, simplistic
religions.
They have checked
their minds at the church door.
It’s as if the Church
had been posted a no-thinking zone.
That kind of religion
goes wrong.
Faith is a
three-cylinder engine
and we need all thee cylinders firing.
But we also have to
recognize that some people
are just better with their hearts than
their heads.
St. Francis was like
that.
Others are better
thinkers – like St. Thomas Aquinas.
Others are best in
action – like Mother Theresa.
So, what do we do
with that difference in our gifts?
Two things:
If we have an A+ head
and a C- heart,
we should use our heads to teach
others,
but we still need to
use our hearts
to
worship and pray as best we can.
We don’t drop the
course just because we can’t ace it.
Second, we remember
Paul’s point about diversity
and community.
We need each other.
Individually, we can
only be so balanced.
But together we can
hit on all three cylinders.
We can do that only
if we actually honor and encourage
each other’s different approaches to
faith.
We actually need each
other to be different.
Baron von Hugel,
criticizing what often passes for religion today,
said, “The verdict of history is fatal
to . . . religion . . . in which . . .
individual experience and emotion would
form
religion’s
core and center.”
That brand of
religion balks at the hard questions.
Worse, it balks when
we are asked to give money, time, or effort
for the good of others.
But when we practice
all three aspects of faith,
Baron von Hugel says, Christianity
becomes
a school for the production of persons.
He means we learn to
become whole human beings.
We practice a faith
that doesn’t escape reality
but engages us up to our necks in
reality
and makes us fully human.
