January 13, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
We think of science and religion as oil and water but in fact, science has made great contributions to Christianity; and, if the Secularized culture would allow it, Christian ethics and moral theology could make a huge contribution to setting appropriate boundaries on science.
Download
Full Text
Preached@Trinity Buffalo
1 Epiphany A, 2012
Text: Mark 1:4-11 & the 20th Century
Good morning.
Here is a little secret.
When I start on a sermon,
I start.
I do not know where it is going to go,
I just start with a thread from the readings,
and I pull.
The hardest sermons to write
are the ones that end up going somewhere
I simply do not want to go.
Those sermons take more out of me
than you can possibly imagine.
(And I know they are not easy on you either).
I am telling you this
because for today
I walked blindly into the sermon.
Just like you,
sitting there right now
with no idea where this is going to go;
that’s what I did.
Frederick Buechner did it –
opened the garden gate
and suddenly
there we were
or here we are.
He led me to want to talk about
the two most important contributions
that the 20th century offered Christianity.
Now…no one I know
can say for sure what those would be,
and no one I know
has actually said this,
so I am going out on a limb here.
But what’s the worst that could happen?
I could be wrong.
Anyway,
Christianity is obviously a fairly old religion –
not as old
as Judaism, Buddhism or Hinduism
but older than Islam, Shinto or Falun gong.
Each century,
and indeed, each culture
makes numerous contributions to a religion,
so that Christianity
is like a mountain sculpted by time and events
that changes its shape
and texture
and size.
We imagine,
standing as we do
at a fixed moment in time,
that Christianity
has always been like it is today,
but that is as impossible
as Christianity 100 years from now
looking like it does today.
I mean, just think about how much Christianity
changed from what it was
when Constantine made it the religion
of the Roman empire?
It went from being a decentralized,
competitive
and subversive movement,
that was a loosely associated
string of tribes and regional centers,
to becoming
an institution
with a bureaucracy
and an emperor who had the power
to enforce conformity.
The 4th century was big
in the evolution of Christianity
and so was the 20th century.
For one thing,
the 20th century began to apply
historical analysis and interpretation
to the Bible.
Think about this.
Prior to the 20th century
the Bible was read through the filter of doctrine.
All the things that the Church
already believed about Jesus
were assumed
before
reading Scripture.
So, for example,
never mind that the Gospels are quite clear
that Jesus had brothers
and sisters,
and that Mark even names some of them,
the doctrine that said
his mother, Mary
was a perpetual virgin,
took precedence
over what the text actually said.
But in the 20th century
archeology
and anthropology
and history
suddenly blossomed as sciences,
and it was inevitable
that the Bible came to be read through their filters
as well as,
and sometimes instead of,
Doctrine.
To its credit,
Protestant theology often led the way:
great 20th century
Christian scholars and theologians
began to ask the Bible
historical and archeological questions
instead of isolating
single passages
that helped prove a point of Doctrine,
while ignoring
or rationalizing the rest.
So in the fist half of the 20th century
Christianity began to open its doors
and hear brand new things
from the very old Bible.
And they did not always
match up with Doctrine.
For example,
it soon became clear
that John the Baptism and Baptism
were treated with a radical difference
in the earliest Gospel, Mark,
from the last Gospel, John.
With forty or fifty years between them,
and with totally different audiences,
it began to be noticed
that Mark treated John the Baptist and Baptism
much differently
than the Gospel of John did --
and that Luke and Matthew
were kind of a mid-way evolution between them.
Here is what I mean.
In Mark, as we heard today,
it clearly states that people
came to John the Baptist confessing their sins
and being baptized
as some kind of ritual cleansing
in the Jordan River.
Mark does not make clear
that John the Baptist recognized Jesus,
nor does Mark make a clear connection
between “the one”
John the Baptist predicts
and Jesus as “the one”.
Mark describes a private religious experience.
Jesus comes up out of the water,
and he sees the heavens torn apart
and he sees a dove descending
and he hears the voice of confirmation,
“You are my beloved.”
In Matthew and Luke,
this story evolves
and the experience becomes public:
John the Baptist declares Jesus as “the one”
and the crowd sees the dove
and the crowd hears the voice.
There is no room left for doubt
that this was a miraculous event
that was to prove
Jesus was “the one.”
But, as the historians discovered,
the followers of John the Baptist
had their own religious movement
and it was focused on John
not Jesus.
In fact, they still exist.
Mandaeans they are called,
and they lived mostly in Iraq
until we invaded it.
The John the Baptist movement
was probably bigger and stronger
than Jesus’ movement
when they both existed
side-by-side.
Biblical historians began to recognize
that this whole idea that John the Baptist
foresaw and proclaimed to the world
that Jesus was the Messiah,
was a bit of early Christian propaganda
used to counteract
the preserved fact
that Jesus was baptized by John.
Surely John’s followers
used that inconvenient point
to say that John was superior to Jesus.
Then another problem arose
like a dead arm rising up out of a grave.
As time went by
those that followed the Jesus movement
began to claim that Jesus was perfect –
that he was not human-only
and that in fact, he was without sin.
That is a big claim
and it contradicts the very human Jesus
that appears in Mark –
the one that goes to the Jordan River
confessing his sins.
In fact,
the idea that Jesus submitted himself
to a baptism for the forgiveness of sins
became such a scandal
in early Christianity,
that the last Gospel written
does not even record that Jesus was baptized.
In the last Gospel, the Gospel of John –
not to be confused with John the Baptist –
it does not actually say
that Jesus was baptized,
and it quotes John the Baptist
declaring that Jesus is superior to him;
and declaring Jesus to be the Messiah.
So the Gospel of John
makes clear
that Jesus was not baptized
for the forgiveness of sins or anything else,
and that John the Baptist
was merely an opening act
for the main superstar, Jesus.
To summarize then,
historical, literary and archeological analysis
of the Bible
led us to realize
that Mark is not the same story
as Matthew, Luke or John –
and that it is not just a matter
of a few stray details;
but in fact,
these are four different manifestos
with four different views of Jesus
ranging from a grown man
who has a religious experience
at his baptism,
to an eternal God
begotten not made.
So why do we care?
Because whether we choose to believe
all the doctrines about Jesus or not,
the 20th century
opened the Gospels
and let the cat out of the bag.
Conservative Christianity
simply refused to accept the analysis --
putting hands over ears and eyes
and very loudly shouting down
anything that did not agree its doctrine.
It is no coincidence
that Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism
are products of the 20th century,
because they are a reaction to
and against
historical
archeological
and anthropological
analysis of the Bible.
So much of what we see and hear today
in terms of the conflicts within Christianity
are as a result
of the 20th century’s
theological contributions to
Biblical scholarship.
We think of science and religion
as oil and water
but in fact,
science has made great contributions
to Christianity;
and,
if the Secularized culture would allow it,
Christian ethics and moral theology
could make a huge contribution
to setting appropriate boundaries
on science.
So that is the first big gift
of the 20th century:
Biblical scholarship.
The second contribution of the 20th century
is rooted in horrific violence
and suffering.
The Holocaust
forever changed Christianity.
Christians were forced to begin
asking themselves
if there was something inherent
in Christian theology
that led to
and created
and allowed
the extermination of six million Jews;
and six millions others,
including the other primary targets of Nazi slaughter:
Gays and Lesbians,
Gypsies,
Communists,
and the Disabled.
What was it about Christian theology
that allowed baptized Church-goers
to participate in boxing up their neighbors
for extermination?
What was it about Christian doctrine
that made possible
the rationalization of genocide
and a willingness
to choose the survival of the church
in favor of speaking out against
12 million murders?
As Christian theologians
began asking themselves this question,
even before WWII was over,
but all the way through the post-war prosperity,
it sewed the seeds of Christian participation
in the Civil Rights and Anti-war Movements
of the 1950’s and 60’s.
The roots of these questions grew deeper
and sparked the Libation Theology movements
in South America and Africa.
And it has led,
all the way to our current moment,
to the deconstruction of the Church
as it has been known.
Until Christian Churches and leadership
can coherently answer the questions
posed by the Holocaust,
our credibility will drain away.
Until Christian Churches
deal head-on with exclusivist claims
about Jesus,
that were not present
in the earliest Jesus movement,
we will expose ourselves
to the sharper, clearer analysis
of the 21st century
and be found wanting.
It need not be that way.
Baptism still matters.
Christianity is as embedded with wisdom and truth
today as ever,
and it is needed today
more than ever.
The teachings
we have attributed to Jesus
have never been more timely or powerful,
and the dawning limits of science
and rationality
as ways of knowing,
is spreading across the generation.
The deconstruction of the church
as the sole expression of Christianity
is a good thing.
We can give less time to institutional maintenance
and bureaucratic squabbles
and more time to spiritual practice –
to figuring out how to live out
what we value,
and embody the wisdom of Jesus
instead of obsessing
on how to pray and worship
or counting how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin.
This deconstruction of the institutions
is a good thing
because it focuses our attention
on the authority of the teachings
rather than on collars and miters and crosiers;
and we can be more concerned
with nurturing community
than with making Episcopalians or Christians.
You know, one of my sisters,
after reading my book,
wrote me a note and wondered if my bishop
ever gets nervous about me.
I confessed, I didn’t send him the book.
Anyway,
it is the season of Epiphany –
one of the cool things the Church does,
which is to create moments in time
in which to pause and reflect.
This one
is a time to pause
and reflect on baptism –
not the ritual
but the Christian spiritual practice
of narrowing the distance between
what we say we value
and how we actually live our lives.
That’s pretty doggone bold
and brave,
if you ask me.
I’d like to see banks and credit card companies,
or legislators and physicians
create a time and a space
to reflect on
and narrow the distance
between rhetoric and action.
So the Church
still has lots to commend it,
in spite of everything.
So welcome to the season of Epiphany.
I invite you to take your word home*
and stutter over it.
Let that word be a whisper in your ear
or a stone in your shoe.
That is your word for the week
and it is asking you,
in one way or another,
how you can narrow the distance
between what you cherish and how you live.
Good luck.
*As part of the worship at Trinity Buffalo, people are asked to come forward and pick a word at random from out of the baptismal font.
