I have a painful revelation to admit to you here today: sometimes, I envy people who aren’t Lutherans. I was raised, Baptized, and practically born Lutheran, and have, for the most part, taken this way of life for granted. This isn’t to say that I haven’t examined it critically or confirmed it as the path I everyday choose to walk, but it has become so engrained after 27 years that I’m hard-pressed to do anything the easy way.

Would that we could do things the easier way. Lots of other religions, even other Christian denominations, have it figured out. The first and foremost thing is that no inward change is required… Your worldview, your attitudes, your prejudices, your lifestyle is just fine. Secondly, they offer a way to appear holy by following all sorts of neat rules and rituals that don’t really have anything to do with anything important.

Going out and making the world a better place by feeding hungry people, or clothing naked people, or protesting war, or heck, even not shopping at discount, sweatshop-driven department stores is kinda’ hard, and might even seem like you’re taking a genuine interest in the welfare of others. Instead, let’s go to church or temple on a different day than everybody else, or pray in a certain direction using a certain mantra, or something like that.

Better than that is to make-up a path of righteousness based in negations… That is, to appear holy by what you don’t do rather than what you do do. For example, since there are no passages in the New Testament saying that the early Christians used musical instruments when they worshipped, we won’t use them either, and that will prove how much more Christian we are than those fake Christians who do use instruments. No, for real, there are denominations that believe that.

Best of all is if you can consider yourself holy for simply what you are rather than what you do or don’t do. The easiest religion of all is one that says you’re better than everyone else because of your gender or skin color or marital arrangements or the accident of where you were born. In short, I have a little bit of envy for those religions that base their idea of holiness on what makes a person distinct rather than what makes them good, since it is easier to be different than it is to be decent.

That envy doesn’t last long, though. Sure that may be easier, but it’s also a lot shallower. In today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, he tells the fledgling congregation that a righteousness based on the law will get by fine… They’ll lead perfectly happy lives in obedience to this set of rules and that set of dogmas, finding some rewarding satisfaction in leading this ultimately shallow way of life without having to worry all that much about God or goodness or grace or faith, thankyouverymuch.

But there is something beyond that, something deeper, more meaningful. We might be happy getting by just following a set of rules and waiting for God to give us our eternal rewards in Heaven as we reap our rewards of a good reputation here on earth. It merely proves the adage that “ignorance is bliss”. God would have more for us than that, because God is Love, and Love abides in relationships, not in sets of rules.

Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century American philosopher, once said that “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law so much as for the right.” Reuben found that out the hard way in our reading from Genesis. There was no law per se to tell Reuben that what he and his brothers were doing to Joseph was wrong. Moses wouldn’t be born for another couple hundred years, and God only gave the patriarchs a few vague sort of notions. And not only was there no law to say that killing your brother or selling him into slavery was wrong, but Reuben had peer pressure to contend with.

The sons of Jacob were unified in their plot, and it would actually have been harder for Reuben to go against them and do what was right than to go with them and do this wrong. There are times when just being an ordinary, normal person going with the flow, who has cultivated a respect for the law, results in horrible evils. When Hannah Arendt wrote her report on Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann, she noted that "that an average, 'normal' person, neither feeble-minded nor indoctrinated nor cynical, could be perfectly incapable of telling right from wrong… The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal… this normality was much more terrifying than all the attrocities put together, for it implied... that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani [an enemy of the human race], commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong..." Being normal and law-abiding when normalcy and the law means putting people in gas chambers or throwing your brother down a well is a form of evil.

Instead, Reuben was stung by his conscience… He recognized how morally wrong they were, and he did so not because they were any rules telling him it was wrong, but because he recognized his relationship with Joseph and their father’s love for him. It was the strength of these relationships that worked on Reuben to deepen his sense of right and wrong, which deepened his religious life, and which in turn saved the life of Joseph. He didn’t need to be told what was wrong; he knew it.

The life of faith is not about following a set of rules and laws and right dogmas. It is about living in deep and abiding trust in God Himself. When we live by this faith, this trust, the Lord ceases to be some alien entity out there who we must appease; the Lord is with us, in our hearts and on our tongues. He lives inside us, drawing us into Himself, engaging us in a genuine relationship.

A lack of this trust is what caused Peter to sink into the storm-tossed seas. He didn’t sink because he wasn’t obedient to Christ: he asked Jesus to command him to walk out, and he did for a little while. Peter was perfectly good at following the command.

The problem was that following the command wasn’t good enough. The only way he was going to do the impossible is if he surrendered himself and kept his eyes on Jesus, Who would make it possible. All of the power, all of this miracle, rested in Jesus’ power. Peter only had to open himself to it and trust in Jesus. But instead, Peter worried about how he was going to walk out to Jesus, keeping his eyes on sea rather than on the Lord. Peter asked for a command, when he really needed to ask for a change of heart.

Paul tells us that when we believe with our heart we will be made righteous, and when we confess with our mouths we will be saved. Neither this belief nor this confession is about making ourselves adhere to one or another dogmas about Jesus. True faith is not, as Mark Twain suggests, “believing in what you know ain’t so.”

Our belief is our trust in God and in Christ, and when we are opened up to this trust, then our heart changes. This change of heart is righteousness because it changes our attitude and outlook on life and towards others. It crafts us into more open, more generous, more vulnerable, more kind, more humble, more genuinely loving people. It prepares us to live for others, and to find our satisfaction and reward not in a law successfully followed, but in relationships richly and justly shared.

How we share these relationships is our confession. And through our confession we shall be saved. Salvation, after all, isn’t a reward for adherence to correct dogmas, nor for the belligerent proclamation of The Truth[tm] regardless of the reality of our neighbours’ lives. Salvation is a whole way of life lived in reconciled relationships with God, each other, and Creation. We are saved by kind and healing words, by sharing the peace amongst us, by living simply so that others may live at all, and above all we are saved by our relationship with Christ. None of these are a checklist of deeds we have to accomplish to earn salvation: they are the natural consequences of a changed heart. Our confession is how we live intimately with God and others, working and helping to make the world a better place through the Love of the Divine. In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi: “Witness at all times and in all places, and if necessary, use words.”

According to Dictionary.com, belief is “Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.” That definition works fine for a form of righteousness based in laws. But for our faith, one that is a whole way of life, another definition is needed. Jellaludin Rumi, a Mediaveal Sufi mystic, I think said it best: "Any movement or sound is a profession of faith, as the millstone grinding is explaining how it believes in the river!"

Were are millstones, God is the river. She is our source and our fulfillment, from Whom everything flows. By deepening our relationship with God and going beyond following rules and dogmas, we enter in a new way of life… A deeper, more meaningful, and more beautiful way of life. With our trust placed in Christ rather than doctrines about Christ, God can accomplish much through us. We will be able to walk on the waters of unrest amidst the storms of this world, God embracing us in His Love rather than sinking into distress.

Amen.