Holy Habits (Part 3): Study

Let us pray. God, as your word is opened to us,

we seek truth, the truth about you, the truth

about your world, the truth about ourselves.

Speak your truth to us, we pray. Amen. Our second

reading is from Colossians chapter 3, starting

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

at the first verse. Let us listen together for

God's word to us. So if you have been raised

with Christ, seek the things that are above,

where Christ is. seated at the right hand of

God. Set your minds on the things that are above,

not on the things that are on earth. For you

have died, and your life is hidden with Christ

in God. When Christ, who is your life, is revealed,

then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly,

sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,

and greed, which is idolatry. On account of these,

the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.

These are the ways you also once followed when

you were living that life. But now you must get

rid of all such things, anger, wrath, malice,

slander, and abusive language from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have

stripped off the old self with its practices

and have clothed yourselves with the new self.

which is being renewed in knowledge according

to the image of its creator. In that renewal,

there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised

and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved

and free, but Christ is all and in all. The word

of the Lord. Thanks be to God. In middle school

and high school, I loved math. I enjoyed it.

There was a thrill to it for me, the thrill of...

of discovering the solution to a difficult problem,

of unlocking what felt like a secret mystery

hidden by the numbers and discovering the patterns

and the properties. So throughout middle school

and high school, whenever I could, I took advanced

classes. And by the time I was in 12th grade,

I had already taken all the math that my school

could offer. In 11th grade, I was even in the

math club. Don't tell anyone. That was how much

I loved it. But by 12th grade, there was no more

math for me to take. I didn't want to do dual

enrollment at a local community college, and

so I just didn't take any math in 12th grade.

Instead, I took AP English Lit. And I approached

the challenge of reading great literature with

the same attitude that I had approached math

with. Namely, there's a right answer in there.

And I am going to find it. And I tried and I

tried and I could never get that right answer.

Of course, because it wasn't there. We read great

novels. We read short stories. We read poems.

And every time I felt like that right answer

was just out of my reach. Eventually, I concluded

that I'm just not very good at this. But of course,

what I couldn't see then. What I can see now

is that I was approaching it all wrong. You've

heard the old saying, if all you have is a hammer,

then everything looks like a nail. And that was

my attitude. I was trying to find the answer

because I was sure there had to be an answer.

And the harder I tried, the more energy and time

I wasted, the more I turned to these great works

of literature. into something other than what

they were supposed to be just so I could try

to squeeze an answer out of them for a paper.

And the further I moved away from real insight

and real discovery, we have a long history in

the Christian tradition of doing something similar

with our faith. Christians have often been tempted

to intellectualize the faith, to make it into

a system. A clear, concise, and coherent, well,

never concise, but at least coherent system to

dogmatize the faith. You've heard the question

probably, how many angels can dance on the head

of a pin? This is often the go -to example of

how ridiculous things can get when we spend too

much time in speculation. Chances are that question

was never seriously asked by medieval theologians,

but they did, Thomas Aquinas in particular. did

speculate about whether two angels can occupy

the same space, which is pretty close, I think.

The point is that our theoretical speculation

can very easily go off the rails. Now it grows

out of a good impulse. The 12th century church

father Anselm said that theology is faith -seeking

understanding. We should want to understand.

We should try to understand God, but we also

have a tendency to take it too far. And there's

an opposite mistake, opposite of over -intellectualizing

the faith, and that opposite mistake believes

that the quest for knowledge, the quest for understanding,

too easily leads us astray, so we shouldn't even

bother. Faith is a matter of the heart, not the

head. Emotion, passion. A relationship with God

should be our highest and only goal, and everything

else is just a distraction. If an overly scientific

approach builds the house of faith so confining

that there's no room for the living God to dwell

there, then the opposite mistake builds the house

of faith so haphazardly that there's no telling

who or what might take up residence there. Brian

McLaren once said, why are we being asked to

choose between intelligence on ice and ignorance

on fire? We want to avoid the lifelessness on

the one hand and the danger of carelessness on

the other, a faith that can too easily fall for

false gods. that can too easily follow after

the latest trends or even make a God of the self

and its own desires and ideologies. And this

is what makes study an important spiritual discipline.

Paul writes in Colossians, seek the things that

are above. Seek the things that are above, where

Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set

your minds on things that are above, not on the

things. Now Paul is not saying keep your head

in the clouds. He is not saying be so heavenly

minded that you're no earthly good. His point

is that we very naturally set our minds on things

that are on earth. Because as it happens, we

also are on earth. All other things being equal,

our mind dwells on what is in front of us. Our

attention these days is directed by media. by

marketers, by merchants of endless distraction.

Our imaginations are calibrated to the values

of this age. Our vision is limited to the things

of this world because this is where our minds

dwell. To engage in study as a spiritual discipline

is to regularly elevate the mind. to lift our

gaze above the fog of this moment so that we

might get a glimpse of the eternal. And in this

day and age when our focus and our attention

are being so ruthlessly monetized and every day

feels like walking through a digital bazaar full

of products and lifestyles and the newest trends

and the latest outrage, study becomes a radical

act. of reclaiming our attention that so many

people are trying to take from us. It is intentionally

choosing how we will direct our focus and what

will shape our imagination. So what is study?

What are we talking about? I fall back on the

words of Anselm, that it is faith -seeking understanding.

Seeking it first and foremost in Scripture, but

seeking it in all kinds of places. There are

too many to count. What it really amounts to

is taking control of the inputs. We can't control

everything that comes in, but we do have some

say. We do have some say in what is going to

structure our thoughts and our ideas and what

is going to nurture our convictions to study

as a discipline. is to engage our minds in the

pursuit of God. It is to engage our minds in

the life of faith. As Paul says, to clothe ourselves

with the new self, which is being renewed in

knowledge according to the image of its creator.

We don't check our minds at the door. We use

our minds and we let them be transformed so that

we can be made new. But as with any discipline,

it requires something of us. Effort, of course,

every discipline requires effort, but this discipline

in particular requires discernment. It requires

our ability to tell the difference between the

things that are above and the things that are

on earth. A while ago, probably in the 1940s,

C .S. Lewis wrote the introduction to a new translation

of On the Incarnation by Athanasius, a third

century saint of the church. And this introduction

has later been published as part of collections

of Lewis's essays, often under the title On the

Reading of Old Books. And in this essay, he advocates

for reading much more widely. than just from

thinkers of the current moment. Now this may

sound like academic snobbery, like the great

old thinkers are all better than anyone out there

today, but that's not what it is. As you'll see,

what it really gets at is the kind of discernment

that we're talking about. If we only give our

attention to what is current, to what is of the

moment, then we lose all context. We lose the

ability to see the errors of our age, the errors

that we ourselves are making. We are unaware

of our blind spots, and we can't tell the difference

between the things that are above and the things

that are on earth. Lewis writes this, where modern

books are true, they will give us truths which

we half knew already. Where they are false, they

will aggravate the error with which we are already

dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep

the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing

through our minds. But then he quickly adds this,

not of course that there is any magic about the

past. People were no cleverer then than they

are now. They made as many mistakes as we, but

not the same. mistakes. They will not flatter

us with the errors we are already committing,

and their own errors, being now open and palpable,

will not endanger us. This is what study as a

discipline looks like, not sitting at a desk

for hours on end with stacks upon stacks of books.

But it's also not being swept away by the currents

of the moment and not letting our mind grow stagnant.

It is opening the window so that that sea breeze

of the centuries can blow through. But to what

end? What is our goal in studying? How far can

our understanding go, especially if we're concerned?

about that danger that we started with, the danger

of overthinking, of overanalyzing, of studying

too much, of putting God under the microscope

and then into a little container that fits just

right with our beliefs and our ideas. For a period

of a few weeks, six weeks maybe tops during the

pandemic, we in our house spent a lot of time

doing puzzles, jigsaw puzzles. We were never

a puzzle family. We still are not a puzzle family.

But for some reason, being stuck at home with

nothing to do made puzzles seem like a great

idea. And so from that time, we have a few family

pictures, usually selfies, of us huddled around

a completed puzzle. joy on all of our faces,

because there is great satisfaction when you

complete a puzzle. I suspect many of you love

to do puzzles. We don't really, but we sure did,

and we felt that great satisfaction at completing

a puzzle. Now, we often approach God the way

we approach a puzzle. If we work hard enough,

a puzzle can be solved. and we can see the whole

picture come together in perfect clarity. And

we might imagine that we can solve, if we work

hard enough, we can solve the puzzle of God,

and God will make perfect sense to us. If we

work hard enough, we can find firm answers to

the thorniest questions. We can give ironclad

explanations for why God does the things that

God does. We can dispel all uncertainty or ambiguity

or doubt. But God is not a puzzle. God is a mystery.

And a puzzle and a mystery are not the same thing.

The prophet says, as high as the heavens are

above the earth, so are my ways higher than your

ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. A puzzle

can be solved. It has an end. But a mystery is

inexhaustible. There is no end. We can solve

a puzzle and possess the knowledge that we gain

from that puzzle. But there is no possessing

a mystery. A mystery possesses us. It fills us.

It surrounds us. It shapes us. To seek God, to

seek to understand God, is to knowingly confront

and enter into a mystery. And it is to choose

to seek discovery instead of solutions. Insight

instead of certainty. Wisdom instead of knowledge.

Sometimes when we say that God is a mystery,

what we mean is that God is a puzzle. But don't

worry, we have the puzzle solved and we will

give you all of the answers you want. Sometimes

when we say that God is a mystery, we mean that

God is a secret, that God is completely out of

our reach. There's nothing we can know, nothing

we can say. When I say that God is a mystery,

what I mean is that God is an invitation, a worthy

subject of the attention of our hearts and our

minds, a source, the source of what is good and

true and right, not a puzzle to be put together

or a problem to solve, but a mystery to embrace,

a place to dwell, to learn. to grow, and to be

made new. Let us pray. God, you are a mystery.

Help us to come to terms with that when we want

answers and certainty. Help us instead to enter

in to the mystery that is you, seeking insight,

seeking wisdom, seeking discovery, so that we

might be shaped, transformed, and made new. We

pray in Jesus' name. Amen.