Inheritance: What Religion Were You Born With,
and What Are You Now?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

October 4, 1998

II Timothy 1:1-14

 What religion were you born with, and what are you now?  What part does inheritance play in your faith today? Did your parents, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends -- did they play a role in forming and fashioning  your faith?  I ask the question this morning because Paul's letter to Timothy, which we read just a moment ago, refers to Timothy's grandmother, Lois, and to his mother, Eunice, and to the legacy of faith Timothy inherits from them.

Paul suggests faith can be passed from generation to generation.  In Timothy's case I suspect his articulation of the faith, the emphases he appropriates, even the words he uses might not be the same as his grandmother's, but her faith and her hope, the way she talks about and  lives them, surely makes an impact on her grandson.

"What religion were you born with an what are you now?"   I stole this title from that elegant new compendium of religious reflection by Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace.  She subtitles it, "A Vocabulary of Faith."  Kathleen Norris's  essay on inheritance, what her grandmother believed, the frequency of conversions in her family, Ms. Norris's own  upbringing in Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational and Churches of the Disciples of Christ; then her distancing herself from the faith, her impatience with churches in her college years, her inner debates, and cocktail party repartee, her encounters with Benedictine monks and her efforts to interpret the faith to a skeptical husband all lead her to reflect on where, religiously speaking, she began and where she finds herself now.

And Kathleen Norris's  great rhetorical question, "what religion did you begin with and what are you now?" with its tip of her hat to inheritance, and our lesson this morning referring to Timothy's mom and his grandmother -- this made me think about my own inheritance, as well. Just certain facts, for instance: my father's parents, hard line, stringent, fundamentalist Methodists, sabbatarian to the core, my grandfather James Coalter Crawford, early in this century running  for Secretary of State in New York and for Mayor of New York on the Prohibition ticket. My father, as he put it, unlearning in college and medical school, much of what his family exposed him to as he grew up, trying to avoid throwing out the baby with the bath water, ending up as a dedicated, deeply committed person, convinced the church was the last best hope of humankind, stepping smartly to our pew each Sunday morning after rounds in the orthopedic wards, heedless of what he considered the liturgical preliminaries, in time to catch the sermon, unable himself, as we have said on other occasions, to recite the creed, but eager to stand next to somebody who could.

And my mother? Playing the piano as a teen-ager in a little Dutch Reformed Church near the foothills of the Catskills, her father dying while teaching  Sunday School when she was seven years old, her tearing up even as she passes her 88^th birthday when she remembers this occasion. She superintended the Church School through three children, served as a trustee and elder of our Presbyterian Church, provided  a magisterial and inspiring presence to everyone through the deaths of her husband with esophageal cancer and her two daughters with ovarian cancer; you will find her this very afternoon playing the preludes and hymns for vespers services in the residence for Seniors where she now lives. I could tell you a lot more about these parents of mine, but my point is that like Timothy and Kathleen Norris, I am one of those in whose life and vocation the inheritance of faith plays a primary role.

In some ways as we recite these facts about those who might be instrumental in providing the ambiance for the seeds of faith to take root and grow, we know as well that for some of us the quality of life, the radiant presence, the depth of character, the beauty of a person grounds our faith as much as formal reflection or instruction. We discover a person, all of a piece, whose integrity captures our curiosity and admiration, and we make them models of principle and behavior.

Indeed, I wonder, as I think of Timothy's grandmother, Lois, if her character had something to do with the shape of his faith. I suspect she provided him with more than just a catechism and a creed, some dogma and doctrine. Maybe Lois  was something like the grandmother Erma Bombeck describes in one of her inimitable columns.  Remember Erma? She was one of the wise women of our generation.  In 1974 she wrote "Love is a grandparent."   It goes like this:

"A preschooler who lives down the street was curious about grandparents. It occurred to me," writes Erma Bombeck - "it occurred to me that, to a child, grandparents appear like an apparition with no explanation, no job description and few credentials. They just seem to go with the territory. This column, then, is for the little folks who wonder what a grandparent is.:"

A grandparent can always be counted on to buy your cookies, flower seeds, all purpose greeting-cards, transparent tape, paring knives, peanut brittle and ten chances on a pony. (Also a box of taffy when they have dentures.)

A grandparent helps you with the dishes when it is your night.

A grand parent will sit through a Greek comedy for three hours to watch her grandson and wonder how Aristophenes has time to write plays when he's married to Jackie Onassis.

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn't chargemore after mid-night -- or anything before midnight.

A grandparent buys you gifts your mother says you don't need.

A grandparent arrives three hours early for your baptism, your graduation and your wedding because he or she wants a seat where he or she can see everything.

A grandparent pretends he doesn't know who you are on Halloween.

A grandparent loves you from when you're a bald baby to a bald father and all the hair in between.

A grandparent will put a sweater on you when she is cold, feed you when she is hungry, and put you to bed when she is tired.

A grandparent will brag on you when you get a typing pin that 80 other girls got.

    A grandparent will frame a picture of your hand that you traced and  put it into her Mediterranean living room.

A grandparent will slip you money just before mother's day.

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in a hurry for you to grow up.

When you're a baby, a grandparent will check to see if you're crying when you are sound asleep.

When a grandchild says, "Grandma, how come you didn't have any children?" a grandparent holds back the tears.

That's it:  Grandmothers like Lois, through radiant character, providing for her grandson the inheritance of religion he was born with.

So we ask again: What religion were you raised in, and what are you now?  I'll bet there are any number here this morning who can attest to no family faith connection like Lois or Eunice in their lives, some here who may have been born into no religion, but somehow discovered themselves touched by another person, inheriting, if not by blood, then by friendship, by solidarity, by an act of grace or through the inspiration of another,  the capacity to take a risks and to step out on a journey toward the One promising to hold us and feed us through every threatening and devastating circumstance. 

What religion were you born with and what are you now?  What a mix here this morning! Presbyterians now skeptics; Catholics now agnostics; Wesley Methodists, of course,  still Wesley Methodists;  some recovering  Episcopalians,  others lapsed Lutherans. Some of you this morning grew up hard-shell  Baptists and now are now a little more soft-shell; others in Jewish homes, recognizing how the way of the Jew, Jesus, could really change our world;  still others, Eastern Orthodox, come to terms with Western culture. Some of you were Christmas and Easter Christians, others the children of spirit-filled holiness homes; still others recovering from a home or religious experience that can be designated only as cruel or abusive, and who seek someplace, somewhere a place of safety,  a community ready to stand with you as you get your life sorted out, your soul healed,  your heart mended.

Whatever your circumstance; from whatever inheritance you come, indeed,  if you come from no inheritance you can name, if you just walked in off the street this morning, up to here with what is going on out there, pleading, "There has to be more than this,"  let me affirm that what you are now, regardless of what you were then -- what you are now is a person, man or woman -- regardless of whether you were then a Unitarian, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist, Buddhist, Jew, nothing -- you are a man or woman in this gathering affirmed by One who never lets you go, who embraces you through thick and thin and who invites you to a meal under a cross where we see and share living testimony to faith that risks everything and to hope that passes through the worst.  The religion we were -- or were not -- born with, as beautiful and as edifying as some of them may have been -- we gently transcend for a few moments, for today we are a new people bound together by the grace of Jesus Christ, united not by denomination, race, gender, sexual orientation, nation, tribe or religion, but by loyalty to One who declares an abiding love for us and sends us out into the world claimed and assured that because of His risks in our behalf we dare risk a creative, compassionate, costly mission bringing justice, healing and reconciliation to a city and world desperately in need.

And so I ask again, what religion were you born with, and what are you now?  Whatever it was, wherever you are, for these next few moments  let it go, and come, join the exultation around this table as brothers, as sisters, we assemble as the joyful and grateful family gathered by our expectant  friend and brother, our gracious and welcoming host, Jesus Christ.