“Finding meaning in our own lives”1st Sunday After Chritmas, December 28, 2008
“Progressive Christianity, in a world hungry for change, is not about a new set of beliefs to either accept or reject. Progressive Christianity is about providing a framework around which spiritual people can find meaning in their own lives, in their own adventures, in their own dreams.”
“The conversation is no longer about whether Jesus was the son of God, or not, or the Christ, or the Word of God. That’s an old conversation. Now the conversation is about whether you live with the same courage, the same passion for justice that Jesus lived with.”
“The conversation is no longer about whether Jesus was the son of God, or not, or the Christ, or the Word of God. That’s an old conversation. Now the conversation is about whether you live with the same courage, the same passion for justice that Jesus lived with.”
Audio version of the sermon is available.
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you, in the name of God our Creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier.
Amen.
The older I get…the more I worry about it.
The older I get, the more often I find myself not being able to remember people’s names, or titles of movies, or dates.
Recently, I spent one whole day trying to remember Oprah Winfrey’s name.
I could describe her in great detail.
I could have asked anyone for her name and gotten it right away.
But I stuck with it, determined to remember on my own.
I think of my brain as a computer’s internal hard drive, filled with all kinds of information, but with one corrupted track.
Oprah’s name is there, but not readily accessible.
I want you to know that I I finally did remember, on my own, without asking for help.
It’s always been this way.
This experience is not particularly new to me.
You see, I’ve never been able to remember names and dates.
And I definitely do not have an affinity for numbers.
History?
All those names and dates?
Forget it.
Economics?
Got my only college “D” in economics.
In seminary, in order to graduate, you had to pass the Bible content examination.
I took it at the end of the first year.
Flunked.
I took it at the end of the second year.
Flunked.
I took it at the end of the third year, my last chance.
I swear I didn’t do any better the third year than I had the first year.
But somehow they passed me.
Wanted to get me out of there, I guess.
I’m good with the big picture, but I’m not good at the details, the numbers, the names, any word that begins with a capital letter, actually.
Never have been.
What I did do well at
What I did do well at in college was creative writing, and literature, and philosophy.
In seminary, my best work was in apologetics, theorizing about God, putting forth ideas, and then offering reasoned arguments justifying my ideas.
Got “A’s” in those classes.
John’s gospel: theology, not history
This morning, Deacon Tony is out of town, which means that I got to read the gospel.
In my mind, this morning’s passage, the beginning of John’s gospel, is probably the most beautiful piece of writing in the Bible.
Plus, it’s not history, no names or dates or places.
It’s not a story, easily mistaken for history.
It’s theology.
Ideas, theory, conjecture.
And it’s stunningly beautiful.
In the beginning, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
It’s a “big bang theory” from the first century!
The evolving idea of who Jesus might be
This idea about who Jesus was, that Jesus was the Christ, and that the Christ was the Word, and that the Word had actually been present at the beginnings of the universe, this idea came at the conclusion of the church’s first-century thinking about who Jesus had been.
It’s the conclusion to theology that evolved over a period of 60 to 70 years following Jesus’ death.
Paul (20 years later)
Paul, who wrote only 20 years after Jesus’ death, explained Jesus this way:
He said that God simply declared Jesus to be the “son of God” at the time of the resurrection.
For Paul, resurrection had nothing to do with a physical resuscitation of a deceased body.
It had to do with raising Jesus, a spirit, into the eternal life of God.
It happened all at once.
There was no split between resurrection and ascension.
That idea came later.
Mark (20 years later)
Mark, writing 20 years after Paul, that would be 40 years after Jesus’ death, Mark explained the way God “got into Jesus” by telling a baptism story.
God declared Jesus to be the Son of God by the actions of the spirit when Jesus was baptized.
Mark agreed with Paul, except for the timing.
For Mark, it did not happen at the resurrection.
Instead, the heavens opened, and the Spirit descended.
Matthew (50+ years later)
Matthew, writing at least 10 years after Mark, that would be 50 years after Jesus death, Matthew claimed that it was an unnamed angel who explained Jesus to Joseph in a dream, that God “got into Jesus” at the moment of conception, conception by the Spirit.
Luke (60 years later)
Another 10 years pass, and we’re up to about 60 years after Jesus’ death, when Luke repeated the birth story, but this time gave the angel a name, Gabriel, and the message was to Mary, not Joseph.
Luke is the one who introduced the need for an ascension because he transformed the story of Easter into a physical emergence from a tomb.
Once you had a resurrected Jesus walking around, there had to be a way to remove that physical body from this world into the realm of God.
Hence an ascension.
John (65 years later)
Finally, five years after Luke, more than 65 years after Jesus death, John declared that there had never been a time when God had not been in Christ.
John in this morning’s gospel reading explained Jesus as the “enfleshment” of the Word of God, the Word that had spoken at the dawn of creation.
That’s the evolution of first-century theology, from Paul, to Mark, to Matthew, to Luke, and finally to John.
In that order.
The bottom line, though, for each of these writers, the thing they had in common, was that they knew they had met God in the life of Jesus.
They disagreed about the details.
But that was the bottom line.
It was bishops, in the early part of the fourth century, they’re the ones who cast these ideas in concrete, to be passed on to subsequent generations in the form of the Nicene Creed.
We live in a world ripe for change
The world we live in is ripe for change.
Things are bad, and seem to be getting worse.
I know I don’t have to provide any details.
Everyone knows it.
Democrats, Republicans, Europeans and Asians and Africans, it seems that everyone is ripe for change.
On November 3d, Barach Obama said, “it’s no longer about whether we have big government or small government.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation now is about having good government.”
The situation in our churches is comparable.
Mainstream church membership and attendance are declining.
One in five Americans define themselves as “spiritual,” but not religious.
That’s more than 45 million Americans, spiritual but unchurched.
The church lacks relevance.
The churches carry on with the old conversations.
But it’s not about whether God exists or not.
That’s an old conversation.
Now it should be about our experience of the sacredness of the moment, and about grasping for the most poetic, extraordinary language that will describe our experience.
The conversation is no longer about whether Jesus was the son of God, or not, or the Christ, or the Word of God.
That’s an old conversation.
Now the conversation is about whether you live with the same courage, the same passion for justice that Jesus lived with.
The conversation is no longer about whether the Bible is the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God, or not.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation is no longer about history, names and dates and places, chapters and verses.
No Bible content exams any more.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation now is about ideas, theory, conjecture.
It’s about whether you are moved by the experience of our religious ancestors striving to do the best they could in horrific circumstances.
Progressive Christianity, in a world hungry for change, is not about a new set of beliefs to either accept or reject.
Progressive Christianity is about providing a framework around which spiritual people can find meaning find meaning in their own lives, find meaning in their own adventures, in their own dreams.
The Word: Let it be ours
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
May that Word, in these days, come from our hearts, and be our words, in new conversations.
This is my prayer.
Amen.
Amen.
The older I get…the more I worry about it.
The older I get, the more often I find myself not being able to remember people’s names, or titles of movies, or dates.
Recently, I spent one whole day trying to remember Oprah Winfrey’s name.
I could describe her in great detail.
I could have asked anyone for her name and gotten it right away.
But I stuck with it, determined to remember on my own.
I think of my brain as a computer’s internal hard drive, filled with all kinds of information, but with one corrupted track.
Oprah’s name is there, but not readily accessible.
I want you to know that I I finally did remember, on my own, without asking for help.
It’s always been this way.
This experience is not particularly new to me.
You see, I’ve never been able to remember names and dates.
And I definitely do not have an affinity for numbers.
History?
All those names and dates?
Forget it.
Economics?
Got my only college “D” in economics.
In seminary, in order to graduate, you had to pass the Bible content examination.
I took it at the end of the first year.
Flunked.
I took it at the end of the second year.
Flunked.
I took it at the end of the third year, my last chance.
I swear I didn’t do any better the third year than I had the first year.
But somehow they passed me.
Wanted to get me out of there, I guess.
I’m good with the big picture, but I’m not good at the details, the numbers, the names, any word that begins with a capital letter, actually.
Never have been.
What I did do well at
What I did do well at in college was creative writing, and literature, and philosophy.
In seminary, my best work was in apologetics, theorizing about God, putting forth ideas, and then offering reasoned arguments justifying my ideas.
Got “A’s” in those classes.
John’s gospel: theology, not history
This morning, Deacon Tony is out of town, which means that I got to read the gospel.
In my mind, this morning’s passage, the beginning of John’s gospel, is probably the most beautiful piece of writing in the Bible.
Plus, it’s not history, no names or dates or places.
It’s not a story, easily mistaken for history.
It’s theology.
Ideas, theory, conjecture.
And it’s stunningly beautiful.
In the beginning, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
It’s a “big bang theory” from the first century!
The evolving idea of who Jesus might be
This idea about who Jesus was, that Jesus was the Christ, and that the Christ was the Word, and that the Word had actually been present at the beginnings of the universe, this idea came at the conclusion of the church’s first-century thinking about who Jesus had been.
It’s the conclusion to theology that evolved over a period of 60 to 70 years following Jesus’ death.
Paul (20 years later)
Paul, who wrote only 20 years after Jesus’ death, explained Jesus this way:
He said that God simply declared Jesus to be the “son of God” at the time of the resurrection.
For Paul, resurrection had nothing to do with a physical resuscitation of a deceased body.
It had to do with raising Jesus, a spirit, into the eternal life of God.
It happened all at once.
There was no split between resurrection and ascension.
That idea came later.
Mark (20 years later)
Mark, writing 20 years after Paul, that would be 40 years after Jesus’ death, Mark explained the way God “got into Jesus” by telling a baptism story.
God declared Jesus to be the Son of God by the actions of the spirit when Jesus was baptized.
Mark agreed with Paul, except for the timing.
For Mark, it did not happen at the resurrection.
Instead, the heavens opened, and the Spirit descended.
Matthew (50+ years later)
Matthew, writing at least 10 years after Mark, that would be 50 years after Jesus death, Matthew claimed that it was an unnamed angel who explained Jesus to Joseph in a dream, that God “got into Jesus” at the moment of conception, conception by the Spirit.
Luke (60 years later)
Another 10 years pass, and we’re up to about 60 years after Jesus’ death, when Luke repeated the birth story, but this time gave the angel a name, Gabriel, and the message was to Mary, not Joseph.
Luke is the one who introduced the need for an ascension because he transformed the story of Easter into a physical emergence from a tomb.
Once you had a resurrected Jesus walking around, there had to be a way to remove that physical body from this world into the realm of God.
Hence an ascension.
John (65 years later)
Finally, five years after Luke, more than 65 years after Jesus death, John declared that there had never been a time when God had not been in Christ.
John in this morning’s gospel reading explained Jesus as the “enfleshment” of the Word of God, the Word that had spoken at the dawn of creation.
That’s the evolution of first-century theology, from Paul, to Mark, to Matthew, to Luke, and finally to John.
In that order.
The bottom line, though, for each of these writers, the thing they had in common, was that they knew they had met God in the life of Jesus.
They disagreed about the details.
But that was the bottom line.
It was bishops, in the early part of the fourth century, they’re the ones who cast these ideas in concrete, to be passed on to subsequent generations in the form of the Nicene Creed.
We live in a world ripe for change
The world we live in is ripe for change.
Things are bad, and seem to be getting worse.
I know I don’t have to provide any details.
Everyone knows it.
Democrats, Republicans, Europeans and Asians and Africans, it seems that everyone is ripe for change.
On November 3d, Barach Obama said, “it’s no longer about whether we have big government or small government.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation now is about having good government.”
The situation in our churches is comparable.
Mainstream church membership and attendance are declining.
One in five Americans define themselves as “spiritual,” but not religious.
That’s more than 45 million Americans, spiritual but unchurched.
The church lacks relevance.
The churches carry on with the old conversations.
But it’s not about whether God exists or not.
That’s an old conversation.
Now it should be about our experience of the sacredness of the moment, and about grasping for the most poetic, extraordinary language that will describe our experience.
The conversation is no longer about whether Jesus was the son of God, or not, or the Christ, or the Word of God.
That’s an old conversation.
Now the conversation is about whether you live with the same courage, the same passion for justice that Jesus lived with.
The conversation is no longer about whether the Bible is the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God, or not.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation is no longer about history, names and dates and places, chapters and verses.
No Bible content exams any more.
That’s an old conversation.
The conversation now is about ideas, theory, conjecture.
It’s about whether you are moved by the experience of our religious ancestors striving to do the best they could in horrific circumstances.
Progressive Christianity, in a world hungry for change, is not about a new set of beliefs to either accept or reject.
Progressive Christianity is about providing a framework around which spiritual people can find meaning find meaning in their own lives, find meaning in their own adventures, in their own dreams.
The Word: Let it be ours
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
May that Word, in these days, come from our hearts, and be our words, in new conversations.
This is my prayer.
Amen.
