January 27, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Third After Epiphany
Isaiah 9:1-4
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Matthew 4:12-23
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
[Read 1 Corinthians 1:10-18]
We have all heard that our age is defined as one of pluralism. It is the idea that there are many different paths to truth. It relativizes truth; thus an individual’s religious or political allegiance becomes a matter of personal truth.
We are not happy in such an atmosphere. Yet this is our reality and we seek to find words, images and ideas that will ground our activity in helping humanity to flourish. The question becomes who has the correct way to make this flourishing happen?
Fundamentalism is a contemporary response to the crisis of faith brought about by pluralism. Such views get reinforced by literalistic interpretations of sacred texts. This is when one group claims that their particular reading is the only reading. They forget that all viewpoints arise in specific contexts and are addressed to special needs. Important insights about what is true and how to flourish are always grounded in particular experiences.
Our world makes it hard to have respectful conversations with those different from us. To be a believer requires a paradigm shift in our understanding of evangelism and witnessing our faith.
Paul is dealing with an issue of truth and the claims that some baptisms are better than others. Matthew is dealing with the result of Jesus’ baptism and the call of the disciples to go out and baptize the world. Both suggest what Isaiah is suggesting, flourishing has to do with a wholeness of experience What cannot be imagined will not come to pass, so Isaiah says imagine a world where the light is not divided and it reclaims and restores the world. Not only is the light not divided, it is found in many unexpected places, not just in the comfort zone of present reality.
Yet we see around us a noisy history of divisions, not unlike Paul’s situation. The light is divided and used to beat up on those who are different. It seems we find clever ways of extinguishing the light. We can have fights over the meaning of communion and how it is to be done rather than seeing it as a meal which binds us together and is a witness to the excessive love of God, and table of inclusion.
Matthew and Paul provide an insight to how the light is not divided. It is in Matthew’s creative use of Isaiah. Jesus spends his ministry in Galilee which is a metaphor of beyond proper reality. Isaiah has the lost in Galilee drawn back across the Jordan, as the light bringing healing to those lost. In Matthew Jesus is in this metaphorical foreign territory, suggesting sacred space is everywhere. Then he calls the fishermen. Again paradigm shift - the unclean, for fishermen by vocation were unclean, are now the witnesses to the light undivided. That which was excluded in now included in one small act of call. Safe boundaries are transcended, the world is larger than they had thought, God found in territories where conventional wisdom said it would be impossible.
I read this, and Paul, as an affirmation of pluralism. The premise is that God is a God of a thousand names, and the aim of God for flourishing is found in many voices. Think of it as a choir - if we all sang alike how boring it would be. There is color and excitement in many voices, intensity even when there is disharmony, and even more intensity when the many voices sing in some form of harmony, differences yet together, the many increase the strength of one.
Paul is asking us to learn and unlearn what baptism means to us as agents of God’s mission in the world. The attitude moves from saving the world to the fact that God has done all the redeeming work that needs to be done. We are not asked to show that our theology is better than others. It means that we take seriously where and who we are and live that faith, not to impose it but to show it by our love. While its not correct belief that is needed, neither is correct action. For if beliefs don’t save us neither does action. God has.
This does not mean action is not important to flourishing, because it is. It means asking what flourishing is needed, and how are those who are left out included, and finding ways to imagine a society which reflects an undivided light. It means there will be many voices, many directions and the efficaciousness of each vision is judged in how it helps the healing of our world. We respond not for justification but because that is our character.
Our passages reflect on the character needed in a pluralistic world. Not only are we divided societally we are often divided internally - divided against ourselves. In an age of fear and terror we don't dwell on the worst that can happen but we remember our calling, which is we are witnesses to the aim of God seeking the flourishing of our world. As the Psalm suggests whatever happens, whatever the reality is, we are those who seek to build our character on God. It is to live in the inexhaustible love of God.
When we speak out of a humble faith we can see the aim in God in places unexpected. We can tap into other religious views, and secular views and see an affirmation of God seeking flourishing. It is when we see the light as undivided we can joining with others to offer our part to this project.
Paul says it is the wisdom of worldly power that is to be resisted. This is through the wisdom of the cross which is a rejection of human desires to demand vengeance and scapegoating. We misread the cross when we think it is to appease God. No, it is human beings who are angry and demand appeasement. The cross is God declaring that scapegoating, the whole system of worldly wisdom of vengeance never made sense. It is not how flourishing happens. What God offers is forgiveness, a new relationship. In this we get a new character.
Our character is formed in baptism where God has called us to join the undivided light in our time and space. It is a song of Joy where we imagine peace, where we will love one another. When we baptized Craig there was the song we use which was:
Come on you people now, smile on your brother.
Everybody get together try to love one another right now.
Love is but a song to sing
Fear’s the way we'll die
you can make the mountains ring
or make the angels cry
through the bird is on the wing
and you may know not why.Come on you people now, smile on your brother
Everybody get together, try to love one another, right now.[Note: If you have QuickTime installed as a plugin with your browser, you will see a control and be able to play this song:
Dave Clark Five - "Everybody Get Together"
Or you can download the MP3 file here:
Dave Clark Five - MP3 - Download Everybody Get Together]
It is an affirmation that our hearts have been set free, there is a light that comes with the dawn that lights up the hearts of all. We come to the table with outstretched hands, reaching out and taking others in ours with love. We come to be fed, singing songs of joy for love and understanding. With many voices we sing to the heavens that joy has come, we can move into new and strange territories. Even if we don't know what lies beyond the Jordan we know that the aim of God is there. There are no godforsaken places.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson.com
