One of the things that I love about our chapel is that we don't have any required creeds. There are no belief statements that you have to agree to in order to be a member of this community. This has been important to me for some time. Adherence to believe statements about God, Jesus, or whatever have always seemed to me to be a rather superficial way to define one's faith. And over the centuries an awful lot of violence and oppression has been perpetrated on people whose belief statements differ from ours. Even today, amongst people who think that believing the correct creed is the definition of faith, an awful lot of energy and rhetoric is devoted to being right, and a lot of hatred and condemnation gets heaped on those they think are wrong.

As a society and as a spiritual community, we need to ask ourselves what this has cost us in terms of our relationships with ourselves, with others and with God. What has been the cost of our need to control and conform? What has been the cost of our fear of getting it wrong? How has this shut us off from one another and from life itself? How has this shut us down instead of getting us going?

In Psalm 27 the Psalmist is clearly going through a rough spot. Besieged by "adversaries and foes" s/he seeks Divine protection. I find it interesting that the worst that the Psalmist wants for them is that they "stumble and fall" in their attempts to do violence. That seems rather understandable to me. I think I can practice compassion and loving-kindness toward my enemies and still hope that they stumble when they come to do me harm. What the Psalmist really seems to be after is not retribution or revenge but rather God's presence, God's sanctuary and God's wisdom.

There is a beautiful and inspiring sense of confidence and trust that permeates this psalm. The Psalmist knows that it is fear, and not doubt, that is the opposite of trust. This is because the life of faith is about who we are and how we act in the world, and not primarily focused on what we think. It is our practice that makes us Christians, Jews, Buddhists, etc., not our adherence to faith statements. And practice is a lot harder than simply agreeing to an intellectual proposition. Believing something about Jesus is much easier than believing in Jesus when he says, "Love your enemies," or "Lose your life in order to find it."

I thank God that throughout human history there have been teachers and sages, prophets, mystics and healers who have reminded us that the life of faith, the life of the Spirit, is best expressed in a trust that transcends fear. This is certainly a hallmark of the historical Jesus' life and teaching. As an itinerant sage and faith healer Jesus depended upon the hospitality of others for his daily bread, for his food and lodging. He believed that whatever the community shared with each other was God's way of providing for all.

Many of his earliest followers also became itinerants and had to rely on the hospitality of others to survive. They undoubtedly found strength and inspiration in remembering Jesus' teaching, "Ask - it'll be given to you; seek - you'll find; knock - it'll be opened for you. Rest assured: everyone who asks receives; everyone who seeks finds; and for the one who knocks it will be opened." (Q 11:9-10) This saying probably took on a more practical and concrete meaning for them than it does for us today. They lived on the edge, without a safety net, and felt called to live a life of trust they had to put into practice every day.

The trust, the faith, that Jesus and his followers discovered within themselves was a radical affirmation of life. Life as unpredictable, unrehearsed, gloriously beautiful and painfully unfair, but always greeted with an open heart, a hopeful spirit, and an attitude of trust.

In the Tao te Ching there is a beautiful song of trust that calls us to pay attention to life, to remember the bigger picture and to realize our place within it:

What a marvelous invitation to recognize our common source and to live in trust and serenity! There is a beautiful sense of confidence in and connection to the way of life that is our source and our home.

It seems to me that there is something in the nature of life itself that continually heals, renews and rebuilds, no matter how much it seems that life has fallen apart. Some call it the Tao, others the Spirit of God, and others may refer to it as our Buddha nature. Whatever its name, it empowers us to live with confidence and trust.

There is another Psalm of trust that illuminates our living and walking on this path; it is the familiar Psalm 23. In it the Psalmist sings, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." The Psalmist doesn't say that nothing bad is going to happen, only that they're not going to fear it, and they're certainly not going to let it stop them from walking the path.

It is completely understandable when, at times of great difficulty, sadness or despair, we wish to stay up in the mountaintops. Perhaps we sometimes find ourselves wanting to fly from mountaintop to mountaintop and avoid the frightening depths below. But the soul knows it must go through the valleys as well as the mountaintops if it is to embrace the path and take the journey. Not to do so would be not to live. Something within us knows that fear must not stop us from living the only life we have to live.

I think that our greatest fear is not about dying, but about dying without having ever really lived. This is why fear-based religious systems don't work, they seem to offer a respite from something scary only to enslave us to something that is even more terrifying. But the good news is: life happens, it is no farther away than here and now, and we have the gifts and graces, the courage and the wisdom we need to risk this adventure. And, to paraphrase the Psalmist, "there is a Sacred Presence, Goodness, and Light that is here with us in the land of the living. Be strong, and let your heart take courage!"

Psalm 27