It often happens in life, that appearances are deceptive, and first impressions are mistaken. This may well be the case for a first-time visitor to the Episcopal Church. It appears that we are a very traditional church, with highly structured worship, an emphasis on right belief, and on being saved from sin. That appearance is partly true and partly misleading. The order of our worship is certainly traditional: it goes all the way back to the 4th century, and every Sunday we stand up to affirm one of the historic creeds. But the single characteristic of the Episcopal Church most valued by its members, is the fact that we don't check our minds at the door. We are thinking Christians, who expect to use reason, experience, history, science and even imagination in our church, whether we are interpreting Scripture or discussing moral values. We are thinking Christians, participating in a church which does not believe it has all the right answers, nor that it is the only true church.

The reason we are thinking Christians goes back to our beginnings in the 16th century Reformation. As the church in England severed ties with the Roman Catholic Church, there was a great debate about whether the new Church of England should be thoroughly reformed, like the Lutheran and Calvinist churches, OR should retain many of the practices of the catholic, which means universal church. At the end of the debate, after major upheavals and reversals, the answer was, YES, we want to be both reformed and catholic; we want to find the middle way. More importantly, we are willing to have a big spectrum of belief and practice in the Church of England, and in her American daughter the Episcopal Church--from parishes which emphasize the reformed way to parishes which emphasize the catholic way, and from parishes which are more traditional to parishes which are more progressive. And all of that diversity holds true within parishes as well. What holds us together, then, is commitment to Anglican worship, AND commitment to this peculiar community of armchair theologians who disagree with each other!

Let me illustrate these remarks by means of each of our Scripture readings. In the reading from Exodus, we have the 4th miracle that the Israelites experienced on their way out of Egypt. The story is presented as another example of how unwilling the Israelites were to trust God: after they had escaped from slavery, been rescued from the Egyptian army, and given bread from heaven to eat, they still complained that God had not provided water to drink. In the Episcopal church, you will meet a variety of interpretations over what happened next: God guided Moses to a particular rock, told Moses to strike the rock with his staff, and water came out. Some members of this parish, and some preachers in other Episcopal Churches, believe this was a miracle. I think this was an instance of an event well-known in the Sinai Peninsula: porous limestone rock accumulate rainwater, and after some of it has drained out, particles build up at the runoff points, and hold the rest of the water in the rock. Even today, if you know which rock is porous limestone, and where to strike it, water will come out of a rock.

Although I don't believe it was a miracle, I do believe that Moses would never have struck the rock without God's guidance. After all, if you are leading a group of people on a trek through the desert, and you are all thirsty, you will be poking your staff in the ground to find hidden streams and springs, not hitting rocks with it. So when Moses appealed to the Lord, asking "What am I to do with this people; they are about to stone me!" God answered that prayer immediately and specifically. God directed Moses to a particular rock, and showed Moses where to strike it, apparently by standing on the rock and pointing. As we have heard, enough water came out of the rock to allay the thirst of all the people. Later on, a similar story is told in the Books of Numbers, chapter 20. Because of that second story, later rabbis believed that the original rock Moses struck in Exodus 17, actually followed the Israelites during the rest of their years in the wilderness, giving them a reliable water supply. Although the image of a rock with legs, or alternatively a rock that glides along like a spaceship, is amusing to us, it made sense to St. Paul, who claims in his first letter to the Corinthians (10:) that the rock which followed the Israelites, was Christ, who provided a spiritual drink. This would be an example of why we should not read every statement in the Bible literally. Truth is often not literal; for example, it is true that human beings have a spiritual thirst, which can only be satisfied by God.

Having a spiritual thirst is usually a blessing, because it motivates us to seek out a community where we can converse with others and learn more about matters of the spirit. But sometimes people get carried away with their spiritual thirst, and it turns into spiritual certainty. When that happens, people stop learning and asking questions; instead claiming that their thirst has been satisfied with a particular set of doctrines. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus is talking with just such a group of people. The Pharisees were so eager to be right with God, that they believed they had found all the answers. This meant that they could not hear the message of repentance proclaimed by John the Baptist, and they could not tolerate the actions or the teachings of Jesus. The way they chose to challenge Jesus was to ask what authority he had. Even if he had told them, which he seems to have done at other times, they wouldn't, they couldn't accept his answer, because their minds and hearts were closed.

The parable of the two sons describes an experience many parents have had. One son agrees readily to do what his father asks, but doesn't do it. The other sons refuses to do what is asked, but later decides to do it. This is actually the first of 4 parables, which we will hear in coming Sundays, on the theme of self-righteous arrogance. Jesus makes it clear in each of the parables, that God rejects the arrogance of people who say they will follow God's way, but fail to do it. In particular, he points out that once the tax collectors and prostitutes repented, the Pharisees should have changed their minds, and repented as John

Both because of these parables, and because of Christian history, Episcopalians tend to be wary of absolutes. Most of us believe that the Holy Spirit continues to lead the church into truth, and we also believe that we are influenced by the cultural attitudes of our day and place. So most of us hold our beliefs with the awareness that we don't understand Christianity completely, and may even be mistaken about some things. In this, we follow the disciples of Jesus, who worshipped and doubted Jesus on two important occasions: when he stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and at the end, when Jesus commissioned them to make disciples of all nations.

Those extraordinary verses in the Gospel of Matthew, which say that the disciples worshipped and doubted at the same time, bring me to the final point I want to make. There is much that is paradoxical in our religion, and Episcopalians are willing to hold onto both poles of those paradoxes, tolerating an amount of ambiguity that is not always comfortable. Our religion begins with the paradoxical claim that God chose to become human, and chose to be born, not to royalty, but to a young woman betrothed to a carpenter. The paradox continues with the ministry Jesus chose with the outcasts of his day, healing the sick and forgiving sinners. Most paradoxical of all, He who created all that lives, accepted death on a cross. It is all the opposite of what we would have expected, and it is never possible to collapse the paradox into a single picture: the Crucified One never looks like God Almighty, nor can the greatness, the power and the glory of the Creator, really be folded into the baby in the manger.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul adds two further paradoxes to the set we already have. First, he asks us, limited as we are, to have the same mind--that is, to think in the same way--as Christ thought when he emptied himself of his divinity. St. Paul expects that we are able, in some way, to imitate the descent from holiness to humanity, by our own small acts of letting-go. And then in the second place, St. Paul asked us to "work out our own salvation in fear and trembling" as if we knew how to do that. But, he says cheerfully, you're not doing this alone, because "God is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure". This is one of my favorite paradoxes, because it means that the path I take to salvation will not be exactly like anyone else's. Each of us has to work it out, with the Spirit's guidance, because our personalities are so different, and our life circumstances place different demands on us. For example, part of my path is contemplative prayer, and I have learned much from others in the church about this kind of prayer, but many people do not find it helpful. Another part of my path is theological discussion, and again, some share that with me and others don't. I wish singing were part of my path, but it isn't. So each of us, as we "work out our salvation" will find others to share with, and yet each of us has a unique journey to the kingdom of heaven.

If that is true, then it makes an odd kind of sense to be part of a church with such a broad spectrum of theology and practice; a church which has room for faith and doubt, for tradition and reason, for the reformed and the universal. The Episcopal Church welcomes you just as you are, and we invite you to make the spiritual journey on the king's highway, with us.   Amen.