I learned this week that Anne Rice, the famous author of the vampire series Interview with a Vampire and other gothic horror novels, renounced Christianity. Rice was raised Catholic and at age 18 rejected the church and became an atheist for many years. Then in her fifties she rejoined the Catholic Church. Now she has left again.

Bloggers and media outlets are having a field day, with some conservatives predicting her descent into hell, and others deliciously pointing out how hypocritical and untenable Christianity is.  It all would seem like a media stunt—Rice is an author, after all, and has to sell books—until one reads what she actually said about her departure.

She announced her rejection of Christianity on her Facebook site saying, “Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.

“In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.”

She later commented, “My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God, is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.”

Rice has said she’s been troubled by the Catholic church’s stance on gay marriage, the continued unfolding of the sex abuse scandals and the and the ex-communication of Sister Margaret McBride, the hospital administrator of a Catholic hospital who approved the abortion that saved the life of a 27-year-old pregnant woman among other things. And so she is through.

A casual glimpse at the headlines and one would assume, “oh she has lost her faith and left the church.”  But looking in depth one sees a very different picture, a much more complex picture. It is a question that looks at the very nature of faith, and whether one considers faith to be a noun or a verb.

The first scripture we read this morning is from Isaiah. Isaiah is repeating to the people what God has said, and truthfully God sounds a bit fed up. It is the mid 700’s BCE. Previously the kingdom that King David united split into two pieces, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. At this point in time, Israel has fallen to the Assyrian empire and been subsumed, lost, destroyed. Judah is hanging on, but trouble looms on the horizon. Isaiah is pleading, shouting at the religious and kingly leadership to clean up their act, to return to the ways of God, or else disaster will come--as it eventually does.

We heard from the very first chapter of Isaiah, the first verses. God isn’t pulling any punches:

“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt-offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

God is angry at their faith, meaning God is sick and tired of bloody sacrifices, incense, and burnt offerings piling up at the Temple while injustice is rampant. Faith is not something you show up at the Temple and receive in exchange for your stuff, but rather faith is to be acted out, lived in the day to day interactions with strangers and neighbors and enemies alike. Faith is how we treat the vulnerable. Faith is a verb, not a noun.

John Sherman, pastor and scholar writes, “It is obvious that Isaiah was speaking to the upper classes of Judah in particular. The common people could not have afforded the exorbitantly costly offerings at the frequent festivals cited in vss.11-14. It was the wealthy too who oppressed the defenseless orphans and widows of vs. 17…. To say that God is more concerned with human relationships expressed through just economic practices than with formal acts of worship in a stately temple would have been as anathema among the religious establishment then as it is now… Human conduct must be a reflection and imitation of God's justice, goodness, truth, kindness and mercy. In this Isaiah was not alone, but one with all the great prophetic voices of Israel - Amos, Hosea, Micah and Jeremiah.” (seemslikegod.org)

We, too, can become wearied and angry by what passes for faith, what some proponents of Christianity claim is right and holy and of God.

Writer and pastor Brian McLaren, writing in response to Rice’s departure from the church, reflected, “I haven’t taken that step myself, though I think about it quite often. (As recently as last week when I heard about the pastor planning to burn Qurans on September 11. Sheesh.)

“I hang in there for several reasons. First, if I want to be affiliated with any group of human beings, sooner or later I will be associated with bigotry, intolerance, violence, stupidity, and pride. In fact, even if I stand alone, distancing myself from every other group, I know that within me there are the seeds of all these things. So there’s no escaping the human condition.

“Second, if I were to leave to join some new religion that claims to have – at last! – perfected the way of being pristine and genuine through and through, we all know where that’s going to lead. There’s one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naïve and arrogant new one. In that light, maybe only religions that have acknowledged and learned from their failures have much to offer.” (Faithblog, cnn.com)

Faith is the returning again and again and again to the promises of God, to the demands of God to live with justice and grace, forgiveness and love, and to try again in our flawed way to live those out in community. Church is certainly an act of faith. And I mean an act of faith.

I think it is difficult to be a Christian, to live a Christian life by oneself (in fact I would actually say it is impossible but am willing to listen to the argument otherwise). For the central theme of Christianity, Christ’s life itself, is living in community, serving in community, sharing with community, and abiding in community even when, especially when, it is difficult. A faith life is not about individual sacrifice to God, or private personal acts, but about real life lived in messy community with other people. A much harder sacrifice than any number of sacrifical lambs or bulls or whatever.

Faith is not what you have—a membership, ascribing to a creed—but what you do. And in particular what you do for those hurting—the poor, the difficult to understand, the oppressed, the people who alienate other people.

Faith is how we live. And it is not easy. And it is not something we ever truly achieve. You don’t ever arrive, really. You can never “have” a faith life in the sense that you can at some magical point in your life place it on a shelf and stop striving. No, faith is fluid, it is uncomfortable, it is always pushing us, nudging us, dropping us down from the top of the ferris wheel into new places and challenges. Faith asks us, “what have you done for me lately?”

The writer of Hebrews says, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The writer then lays out the lives of many faithful people in the Hebrew Bible, particularly the life of Abraham who followed God even when it meant moving, leaving his family and heritage, journeying across the desert, and finding a new place to live, a new way to be, and new promises to keep. God promises Abraham three things: land, numerous descendents, and that he will be a blessing to all the nations.

What did Abraham’s faith life, actions in accordance to what God asked, get him? Abraham dies with one son. One. And the one son who was sent away into the desert never to be seen again. Abraham never reaches a promised land. Is he a blessing to other nations? Not when you look at his interactions with his Egyptian neighbors—another long story for another sermon.

The rest is dependent on faith. Faith never sees the end of the story, never sees the generations upon generations, three robust religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) that trace their heritage to Abraham. Faith never saw innumerable descendents, and the blessing they are, sometimes, to other nations. Abraham only saw the beginning of the story. Just as we only see the middle. God continues to work in us and through us and will continue with those after us.

Faith is what we do, standing in this tradition, acting on the promises of God, even though we never see the end of the story. Faith is how we act, how we persevere,

We never get it all, get it all set.

During one vespers service at camp this year we were talking about love, the love of God, and the love we have for one another. Then the leader asked us to turn to the people sitting next to us and share with them one person who loved us and how we knew they loved us. How do we know we are loved? There is no way to prove it. There is no way to scientifically nail it down, isolate some love gene or molecule or enzyme. Yet, we have faith in love while understanding that love is a malleable, changeable thing. It matures, grows, and overcomes barriers and hard times. We believe in love.

Our discussion revolved mostly around ways in which we are shown we are loved. That those who love us care for us, cook for us, call us, send us silly emails, sit with us in deep grief, and talk turkey to us when we need to get going.

We know love as love is acted out. It is a verb, not a noun.

Faith is much the same. We live in faith, with faith, out of faith. We choose to live believing in God, believing in the inherent goodness of people, believing in the path of Jesus and our community, the church. We cannot prove God exists. We cannot prove that our actions will result in what we plan or whether they will do any good at all. We just have faith and keep on keeping on. Faith is not something we can plot out.

Douglas Hall writes "Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly, intermittent, and full of surprises..Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting" (Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons).

Sometimes we do it badly. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes it seems we are no closer to love and service. And yet, in faith we continue and know that we shall not see the end of the story, just as we did not see the beginning. We are called to work for the promises of God to all people right here, right now, in faith that they will eventually come true.

We may not get there ourselves. Moses didn’t get to the promised land. Gandhi did not live in a free India. Paul died in prison and did not live out his days to see the churches emerge as a body of love. Martin Luther King Jr. did not get to see the advancement of his Civil Rights work.

We will not get there either. It will be more like the slow truing toward the good, the slow turning of people and families and communities and nations and religious institutions. The slow turning and working toward the vision of peace and justice for all. Just faithful people walking forward doing the work of God, proclaiming that God is still speaking, even in the face of doubt, disaster, or those preaching the very opposite of what we believe. 

It will be people, like you and me, sitting in churches or ashrams or synagogues, pushing over years and generations and centuries for change and hope and justice and love in the name of the divine we serve. Faith in action.

One night a woman had a dream. In the dream she walked into a store, a huge store, and behind the counter stood Jesus. He told her that the store stocked everything in the world and that she could find what she desired most.

“What would you like?” he asked.

The woman paused and then said, “I want world peace. I want peace of mind for myself and my family. I want an end to hunger. I want to forgive my brother. I want--”

Jesus gently interrupted her and said, “I’m sorry. I think you have misunderstood me. We only sell seeds here. Just the seeds.”

We live in faith. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Amen.