A few years ago, Richard Dawkins, prominent zoologist and atheist, wrote a letter to his ten-year-old daughter, Juliet.  In the letter, Dawkins uses age-appropriate language and illustrations to steer his daughter toward the truth as he sees it.

It probably comes as no surprise to you that this famous biologist advocates for the sort of truth that can be proven through scientific investigation.  I’d like to read an excerpt of his letter.  The entire letter is worth contemplation and discussion.  This morning, however, I would like to focus our attention on the contrast that Dawkins draws between science and tradition.[1]

To my dearest daughter,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the Sun and very far away? And how do we know that the Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the Sun?
The answer to these questions is ‘evidence’.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something, and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called ‘tradition’, ‘authority’, and ‘revelation’. 

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about 50 children. These children were invited because they’d been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by ‘tradition’. Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents, which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either….

They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over centuries. That’s tradition.

I have been thinking about Dawkins’ depiction and criticism of tradition.  Is he right?  Do we pass tradition along to our children without thinking about it?  Is tradition a bad reason for believing something?  What exactly is tradition?  These questions remind me of another letter, one written 2000 years ago by the Apostle Paul that was addressed (once again) to a young person—Timothy.

I think this ancient letter is a fascinating one to put in conversation with Mr. Dawkins.

Second Timothy 1


1 [From] Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, for the sake of the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, 

2 To Timothy, my beloved child:

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

3 I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4 Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. 5 I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. 6 For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; 7 for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline. 

That’s two excerpts from two different letters to two different young people: Juliet and Timothy.  In keeping with the letter theme, this Mother’s Day, here is one to my eight year old son, Oliver.

Dear Oliver,

I want to write to you about something that is important to me and to your mother.  We love you very much.  Among other things, our love leads us to think about, and talk about your future.  Don’t worry.  We have tried to keep our hopes for you wide and not narrow—broad and not constricting.  We haven’t picked out a college or a job or anything like that.  You will figure all this stuff out in due time.

Still, as your parents, we can’t help having a more general set of hopes for you.  We hope that you will always think with rigor and act with integrity.  We hope that you will have good friends, enjoy the beauty of the world, and have plenty of opportunities to laugh.  We want you to feel safe, and hope that a community of trusted companions will always surround you—especially when times are hard.  We hope that you will remain courageous, compassionate and creative throughout your life.

We also hope—as you get older and eventually become an adult—that you will have faith.  This is why I am writing to you today.  When you were baptized, your mother and I promised to raise you in the Christian faith.  We promised to teach you the Christian tradition.

Now, the Christian tradition is a pretty big thing.  Yes, it includes the Bible stories that you enjoy.  It is also our prayers before eating and at bedtime.  It is singing the hymns in church.  It is eating the bread and sipping from those tiny glasses of juice that you find so funny.  It is lighting the Advent candles in December, and it is listening to the list of names of all those people who have died in our church as they are read out loud on All Saints Day.

Tradition is practices and rituals and stories and songs that tell us who we are.

For this very reason, some people say that tradition is a dangerous thing.  They warn us to think twice before we let some funny, old stories tell us who we are.  They point out that our tradition includes odd and even upsetting stories and downright unsavory people.  They also remind us that our tradition has been used to support some pretty bad stuff.

I know that you have heard about slavery in school.  Slavery was a terrible thing.  It allowed people to buy and sell other people, and to force people to work.  Did you know that in this country, in the 1800’s, there were Christian people who used our tradition, our Bible, to claim that God was in favor of slavery?  It’s true.  It’s also true that there were people who used the same tradition—the same Bible—to argue that God wanted the slaves to be set free.

Our tradition has things in it that are shameful, and it has been used in ways that should make us feel sad and sorry.  Yet, our tradition has also inspired countless men and woman, and it has empowered people to work on behalf of the poor and the outcast in ways that make me very proud.  In the end, we Christians will always need to be careful about how we use our tradition.  Tradition, like science, like any sort of knowledge really, can be used for purposes that are good and purposes that are evil.

Now, since I have brought up science, I want to talk about it for a bit.  Ollie, some people want to put faith and science at odds with each other.  The other night you asked your mother, “Can a person be a scientist and still believe in God?”  The answer to that is definitely, “Yes.”  There are many scientists who are also people of faith.  However, some scientists and some religious people want to divide the world into an either/or discussion: either you believe God created people, or you believe we evolved from apes; either you have faith in God, or you trust in science.

I think you know, son that I don’t like the either/or way of looking at things.  So, you probably have guessed that I think that it is silly to make science and faith into enemies.

I am a big fan of science.  I find scientific inquiry in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology to be fascinating.  No one can dispute that human beings engaged in scientific work have brought about great advances for the people of this world.  Science has given us amazing medicine, more productive crops, and accessible energy.  Science has given us a remarkable insight into how the world, and even the universe, works.

To be sure, science and scientists are not perfect.  They have made some big mistakes too.  There are things that have been done in the name of science that have hurt people.  Still, I am a fan of science, and I am thankful for what most scientific advances mean for the world.

So, why do science and faith sometimes get put at odds?  I think it has to do with how they look at the world.  Many of the discoveries brought about by scientists have come about through something called scientific method.  You already know about this.  A person following the scientific method first asks a question, next she makes a guess (a hypothesis) about the answer, then she experiments to see if the guess is correct, and eventually she decides if her hypothesis is true or false.

This method works great if you are trying to figure out whether the earth goes around the sun or whether the sun goes around the earth.  It works great if you are trying to figure out if a statement about the natural world is true or false.  It doesn’t work so great if you are trying to answer a more open-ended question like: Was “The Avengers” a good movie?  Or… What is the purpose of my life?

This is where religion and philosophy and the arts: poetry and painting, drama and music come into play.  These activities concern themselves with meaning and purpose, with the shape of human life, with tragedy and comedy, with heroism and cowardice, brokenness and triumph, and yes, with good and evil.

This is the point where religion and science can get crosswise with each other.  If you believe that the only good, real and true explanations of the world and the people who live on this planet result from scientific method, then you probably think that religion is silly, unverifiable stuff.  Religion is a distraction at best or, more likely, a mistake that needs to be weeded out like a dandelion in grandpa’s lawn.

As you know, I think this is wrongheaded.  As I said earlier, I don’t think that scientific method, while a remarkably helpful thing, is a tool that can accurately measure the truth or falsehood of everything it encounters.  How can you test to see if a painting by Picasso is true?  How can you measure whether a sonnet by Shakespeare accurately depicts the real world?  And what about religious tradition?  How do you know if it is true?

Let’s take, for example, the baptism of the five babies that just happened here in the sanctuary.  Can you measure the truth or the meaning of that moment using scientific method?  I guess you could try.  Before the baptism, you could weigh each baby.  You could take their temperature and x-ray their bone structure?  After they are doused at the font, you could repeat the measurements and look for differences.  Has baptism physically changed the tykes?  You could enter the names of all baptized children into a database and compare that database over time to those children who have not been baptized.  Do baptized babies live longer?  Are they less likely to get sick, to get in trouble, to do bad things, to go to jail?

We could study a baptism scientifically, and conclude that nothing measureable or meaningful was happening in this ritual, but that would, of course, be missing the point.  We would be missing the joy of grandparents and friends.  We would be missing the hopes and fears etched on the faces of parents who are shouldering a huge responsibility for raising these babes, and who want a community’s help in this undertaking.

We would also be missing the deep truths embedded in our tradition—truths that cannot be measured by microscopes or oscilloscopes or any other kind of scope for that matter, and yet this makes them no less profound or life changing.

When babies are baptized here, we say that they belong to God, they are beloved by God, and they are meant to serve God’s purposes in the world.  When babies are baptized here, their parents (and the whole congregation) make promises to care for them, and to bring them up in our praying, story-telling, hymn-singing, Jesus-following tradition.  When babies are baptized here I scoop water on their heads and say, as Christians have said for 2000 years, “Child of the covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

This is our tradition.

We do not engage this tradition (or allow it to engage us) because we are pathetic robots whose programming prevents us from doing anything else on a Sunday morning.  We do not participate in this tradition (tell these stories, sing these songs, light these candles) because we are foolishly enslaved to something that we have not thought about in critical ways.  We do this week after week, Ollie, because the tradition that surrounds us in story and song and ritual—the tradition that we act out here—makes deep sense of the world in a way that nothing else does for us.

To sum up, science helps us in wonderful ways to understand and navigate the world.  Curiously, this is the much same reason that I am still trying to follow Jesus.  I believe (and I think) that Christianity makes sense of the world: of who people are; the mistakes that we make, and make again; the brokenness that we embody; and then, it offers the most hopeful picture of what we might become that I have ever encountered.  I continue to wrestle with and be blessed by this tradition.  I have never encountered anything so terrible and so beautiful and so true as the story of Jesus of Nazareth.  I believe that if any story is worth telling, it is that one, and if any One is worth praising, it is the God proclaimed to us by him.

Ollie, I trust, as you and your sister continue to grow up, that this faith, which lived first in your grandmother Nell, and then in your mother Amy, will live on in you, and will kindle the gift of God that is within you.

With love,

Daddy

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Paul writes:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.  

I love this passage. It reminds me of the black, leather-bound King James Bible that sits on my desk, and the way it would look resting in my grandmother’s lap as she told stories of the faith. David and Goliath. Sampson and his long tresses. Mary and the baby Jesus fleeing for Egypt.

I know exactly what Paul is talking about. I remember. 

What I find especially fascinating, as I prepare for this Mother’s Day, is how controversial this passage has become. Or more accurately, how much high-octane debate now surrounds the notion that faith gets passed down from one generation to the next.

Richard Dawkins — a biologist who’s actually better known as an evangelist for atheism — argues that human beings have evolved so that, as children, we will accept what our parents have to say. We are hard-wired, he claims, to believe our mothers and our fathers will tell us the truth.

This inclination to trust our parents (and other elders), Dawkins surmises, helped us survive. It is important that a child trust his mother when she says, “Don’t go by that cave. A tiger lives there, and he will eat you!”

The problem, as Dawkins sees it, is that so much of what we pass along is not factually true. It is “tradition,” which (in Dawkins’ view) adds up to drivel, myth and outright lies. In fact, Dawkins famously wrote a letter to his 10-year-old daughter, “Dear Juliet,” warning her about the dangers of believing in tradition.

I have been thinking about Dawkins’ arguments. They are interesting, provocative and important for Christians to consider. What do we think of tradition? Can we trust it? Did grandma Lois and mother Eunice pull the wool over little Timothy’s eyes?

Or is something else going on here?

My guess is that “tradition” is a bit more complex than Dawkins lets on. In other words, don’t give up on Lois, Eunice or Timothy just yet!

My sermon for Mother’s Day comes in the form of a letter to my almost nine-year-old son, “Dear Oliver.”

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Take, for example, the American flag.  What does it mean?  Ask that question, and you will get a whole wheelbarrow full of legitimate answers in response.

I might speak of the thrill that went with raising the flag one dawn at Boy Scout camp.  Someone else might wax historical, citing the Flag Act of 1777.   Someone would, no doubt, talk about the meaning of the fifty stars and the thirteen stripes.  Someone would note that there are people in the world who despise the American flag.  Someone would talk about freedom and democracy and principles worth protecting.  Someone would speak with pride and sadness about the flag that sits in a polished, triangular case in their living room.  Someone would tell the story of Francis Scott Key asking, “Oh, say can you see?”

The best symbols evoke strong and thoughtful responses in us.  They pull at history and memory.  They tug at the difference between hope and reality.  Symbols can be the subject of fierce debate, but they can also unite us.  They can unite us precisely because they allow us to approach—to gather around them—in so many different ways.

This coming Sunday, we will be talking about and participating in the sacrament of communion—the Lord’s Supper—in worship.  Now, to be clear, I believe that the breaking of bread and sharing of the cup is more than a symbol, but like a good symbol, the table we set in God’s house has a delicious surplus of meaning.

This morning I am eager to hear:  “What does taking communion mean to you?”  If you have second to jot down a few thoughts, just a sentence or two, and would be willing to post them to my blog, I would really appreciate it.

Other than that, I encourage you to come hungry for the bread of life this Sunday!

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Fergus is teaching me about grace — about receiving unmerited favor again and again and again.

He is teaching me something else, too. Almost every day, I walk around the reservoir in Central Park. Most of the time I walk with my wife Amy, sometimes our two kids come along, other times I walk alone. Whether I am with a family member or alone on these walks, I almost never get into a conversation with other people. Sure, I’ve given directions to lost tourists, but that’s about it.

That’s all changed now.

Once Fergus began accompanying us on our walks, we have been tugged (quite literally) into conversations with all sorts of other park wanderers. Some are brief exchanges of pleasantries with other dog owners as our respective pets give each other a sniff. Yet the bulk of these conversations happen when Fergus gives some passing stranger his full-body wag. This gift of uninhibited friendliness cuts through every kind of barrier and carefully cultivated New York reticence.

It is really quite remarkable.

I was reflecting on the different perspective that I get journeying through this city with and without Fergus the other day when I saw a slogan (a proverb?) that captured the life lesson for me.

On the back of a beat-up Volvo going down Lexington Avenue was a bumper sticker that said simply:  “Wag More, Woof Less.”

Amen.

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That is, I believe, the Easter question.  What does it all mean?  How will we live… How will we go about life in the light of the resurrection?

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My favorite hymn writer is Isaac Watts.  Watts, a teacher, poet and pastor of meager estate, wrote over 750 hymns while serving a small London parish in the early 1700’s.  His hymnody is historically significant because rather than writing musical tunes for the psalms—which he also did, and which was primary function of church music at that time—Watts frequently set his own religious poetry to music.

The man’s poetry was (and is) sparking brilliant!

Almost everyone knows at least one of Watts’ compositions.  The most published hymn in the history of the world is “Joy to World.”  It is hard for me to imagine Christmas without trilling Watts’ concluding verse:

I also have an Isaac Watts hymn that I need to sing when Holy Week rolls around.  The hymn I have in mind has lyrics that are sorrowful and strong, confessional and yet surprisingly noble.  The great preacher and hymn writer Charles Wesley once said that he would give up all of the hymns he had ever written, if he could have penned this particular one.  I am speaking of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.”

Watts begins by placing all who are singing at the foot of the cross:

We conclude by confessing the absolute claim that the cross of Jesus makes on us:

At first glance, this hymn, written in 1707, seems to stand in stark contrast to the upbeat Joy to the World.  Yet, over time I have come to realize that Watts’ theology is consistent.  In both cases, he focuses our attention on God’s love.

I hope you will join us this week as we travel a difficult road, surveying the wondrous cross, stooping to peer in the empty tomb, always surrounded by love, so amazing, so divine.

P.S.  Here’s a link to our Holy Week Services.  Don’t forget to bring a few blooms from your garden or the local market for the flowering of the cross on Easter morning.

P.P.S.  The American hymn writer who set Watts’ poetry in “When I Survey…” to its most familiar tune was Lowell Mason, Director of Music at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church from 1853-1860.  Mason is responsible for over 1600 hymn tunes!

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We are ready to accompany you on the spiritual path that begins with Jesus riding into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), that continues with a simple meal shared amongst friends (Maundy Thursday), that reaches its darkest point in a three hour service (Good Friday), and that finally stands in joyful anticipation of God’s triumph (Easter morning).

We invite you to spread the word—to give “witness” to these events—by inviting a friend or coworker to travel on this sacred journey with you and with us.  We promise to make it an accessible, honest, and beautiful pilgrimage.

All are welcome.

If you are into alliteration, here are three P’s—three aspects of our celebration this coming Sunday—that you can use to describe our time together.

P is for Pancakes.  On Palm Sunday morning, our kitchen staff will cook up a stomp-your-foot good Pancake Breakfast that runs from 8:30 – 10:15 am.  Tickets are $12 for adults; children 12 and under eat free.  You can pay at the door, but we would love reservations!  RSPV to David Liu (212.247.0490,dliu@fapc.org).  Get your carb-loading done before belting out “All Glory Laud and Honor.”

P is for Piano.  This past winter we discovered that the estate of William S. Perper, a long time member of this congregation and lover of church music, had gifted FAPC with a brand-new, matte-black Steinway “B.”  The piano, carefully chosen by our own Mitchell Crawford and Mary Rose Main, has arrived.  It will be used in the sanctuary and the Kirkland Chapel for many years to come.  At 11:00 AM this Sunday, our beautiful new instrument will accompany both the Adult and Children’s choirs.  Later in the Spring, FAPC will host a special concert to dedicate the piano.

P is for Praise.  My friend Jon Walton says that one of the most basic human responses is praise.  Inside us, from infancy on, there is a gurgling, pre-verbal desire, to whoop and warble and coo—a longing to celebrate the goodness of life and the wonders of God’s creation.  Palm Sunday is about praise.  We will wave palms, sing psalms, and play our part in an ancient parade.  This is how we begin our holy journey—with hearts full of praise.

Join us, and bring a friend.

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The father so badly wants to reconcile with his beloved boy that he places an advertisement in the local newspaper, El Liberal.  The advertisement reads, “Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana at noon on Tuesday.  All is forgiven!  Love, Papa.”

The next day at noon, arriving at the Hotel Montana, the father is astonished to discover 800 young men named Paco waiting for the embrace of forgiveness.

This story makes a profound assessment of the human condition.

We all have a deep hunger for forgiveness.  We carry the weight of guilt around.  When we inventory our lives; bad decisions, selfish acts, and stupid moves stand out in our mind’s eye.  We know that we have spoken angry words, behaved in cloddish ways, and even done violence toward other children of God.

Sure it’s true; there are those out there who claim to have no guilt, no misgivings as to how they have conducted their lives.  I have heard people say, with a beer in hand and a belly full of bluster, “I have no regrets.  There is nothing in life that I would have done differently.”

In Clint Eastwood’s mold-breaking Western movie, Unforgiven, there is a moment when a young outlaw, the Schofield Kid, is overcome by the fact that he has just shot a man.  Even though the dead man was a nasty character, the young fighter struggles with what he has done.

Finally, through his tears, the Kid appeals to his older, jaded partner, William Munny (played by Eastwood): “I guess he had it coming to him.  He sure had it coming to him, didn’t he, Will?”

Silently, Munny thinks over the weeping man’s question; and then, spitting in the dust, the craggy-faced gunslinger growls, “We’ve all got it coming, Kid.”

We’ve all got it coming.  “There is no distinction between us humans,” writes the apostle Paul, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3: 22-23)

This is why we all hunger for pardon.  We are all “Pacos” yearning to run and find a father who will declare, “All is forgiven.”

This Sunday we will be talking about the power of God’s mercy and the witness of a forgiven heart.  Don’t forget to set your clocks forward an hour before you go to sleep on Saturday night.

I wouldn’t want you to be late for your rendezvous at the Hotel Montana!

As I fiddle with my clocks, I am wondering, would you be willing to share the story of a time when somebody forgave you?

Dare to post, good readers!

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Recently, I used this quotation in a sermon.  After the service a young man came up to me and said, “Sir, that wasn’t Jesus.  That was my Momma!”  I laughed, and suggested that maybe Jesus and his Momma were in cahoots.

I was only half-kidding.

Over the past two months, I have been collecting stories of why people call a particular church home.  Why do you go to this church?  Most of those stories begin with a friend or family member who joyfully and enthusiastically recommends the church—a person who says; “I would love to introduce you to a community where my soul gets fed.”

The #1 reason that an adult begins to attend a church is a strong recommendation—a positive invitation from a friend.

Youth are a different story.  Youth sometimes feel a bit of coercion has been applied to get them out the door on Sunday morning.  “You will go to church young lady!”  That sort of thing.

In a radio interview, Anne Lamott was once asked why she drags her 12 year-old son to church every week.  She responded, “For the same reason that I make him eat his vegetables.  To give him strength.  To give him what I found in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see by.”

This Sunday is Confirmation Sunday.  We will be welcoming twelve teenagers (one of the largest confirmation classes in FAPC’s history) into full membership in the church.  I know that the parents of these bright and beautiful kids have had plenty of Sunday morning battles along the way, but I also am willing to wager that somewhere down the line these children will thank their parents for it.  They will thank them for showing them the path and for gifting them with the Light.

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-Mark 1:9-13

Have you seen the commercial where four guys in a truck keep driving until they get no bars for their cell phones (a reverse of the old Verizon “Can you hear me now?” ads)?

As Christians who swim in this culture, we all need this experience. We all need time in the desert-time in a place where our Blackberries and iPhones will not get a signal, and we can listen for the voice of God.

The Christian version of “driving until you get no signal” has been around for almost 2000 years. We call it Lent. It is modeled after Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. It is still a difficult journey (especially for those of us who are addicted to a steady, intravenous stream of information). Those brave enough to take a 40-day spiritual hike into the wilderness (tuning out, paring back and refocusing) will be lashed by winds, baked by the sun and tempted by the devil to give it all up for comfort.

You can lose part of yourself in the desert. Of course, that is exactly what we need: a few key losses-letting go of ceaseless information gobbling, longstanding resentments and destructive dreams; refusing to care about the wrong things, the stupid things, the things that really don’t matter. Then, when the desert is done with us, we just might find ourselves with more capacity to care about the things that do matter-that matter more than anything else!

A Prayer for the Beginning of Lent

Holy God, whose Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, drive me there, too! Take me on a sacred journey this Lent, that I might find those things that truly nourish and will sustain me forever. This I pray, in the name of my baptized Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen.

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