Sermon for Lent 5: "Questioning Belief: The Church?"

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-26

In memory of Rev. David Clark

Friend, Companion and Guide

When I announced to the discussion group last Monday night that we would observe Anniversary Day holiday tomorrow – and so not meet - one response was “oh - so we can’t have a go at the Church then?”  Isn’t that what many of us would like to do? I imagine most of us, one time or another would like to sail in with our many criticisms and challenges about this, institution, which seems to fail us so often and, which Benedictine nun Joan Chichester eloquently describes as a ‘dysfunctional family’ of which she is ‘a loyal member’.[1]  For some of us, our criticism is directed at the church universal – for others, it’s more finely tuned towards our own particular denomination or parish.  I remember having to deal once with a student for ministry, who had had one of those bruising encounters with her local parish.  She was devastated.  “But, I expected better of the church”, she cried.  A cry echoed by so many.

One of our conversation partners from recent weeks, Bill Loader suggests that “The Church - any congregation - and the Church as a whole is an odd mixture, a strange assortment of people. Some of us are in the Church out of habit and tradition, without much commitment to what it is all about - in fact, often blocking any initiatives to be relevant to the world around us. Others of us are there by habit and tradition because we have always tried to walk the way of Jesus in [our]lives. We were there when it was what everyone used to do; we are there when it’s out of fashion.”[2]

Dan Clendenin, who hosts the Journey with Jesus web site, considers some of the very good reasons why so many people don’t stay the distance – and choose to leave the church:  “Tops on most people's list are gross hypocrisy, violence, and intolerance” he writes. “In the name of God's love Christians have slaughtered Muslims, Jews and Native Americans [and, we could add, Aboriginal Australians].  We have humiliated and exploited slaves, women and gays. Clerical pedophilia has devastated thousands of families. And whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, fellow Christians have persecuted each other with similar sadistic cruelty.”

“Christians have burned books, defended the dubious, supported pseudo-science, and avoided hard questions. In movies like Babette's Feast (1987) and Chocolat (2000) church is portrayed as a place of moralistic, hair-splitting, repressed people who never have any fun and who don't really believe what they say they do. In his book What's So Amazing About Grace?, Phil Yancey tells the story of a prostitute who, when she was encouraged to go to church for help, responded, “Church! Why would I ever go there? I already feel terrible about myself. They would just make me feel worse.”

“Other people leave [the] church because our pious platitudes contrast so sharply with unanswered prayers, bitter disappointments, intellectual doubts, nagging questions, or life traumas”...[sometimes, people even leave to save their faith].

“Still others leave [the] church because they find it irrelevant, mediocre, boring or perfunctory. In her essay "An Expedition to the Pole," Annie Dillard describes her church experience: "Week after week I was moved by the pitiableness of the bare linoleum-floored sacristy which no flowers could cheer or soften, by the terrible singing I so loved, by the fatigued Bible readings, the lagging emptiness and dilution of the liturgy, the horrifying vacuity of the sermon, and by the fog of dreary senselessness pervading the whole, which existed alongside, and probably caused, the wonder of the fact that we came; we returned; we showed up; week after week, we went through it."[3] 

Bill Loader invites us into a consideration of a wider vision of the church than some of us might usually hold. 

“The Church is the local congregation; but it is also bigger than that. It is worldwide and it reaches back across nearly 2000 years.” Loader suggests “We can think of the Church lying across the landscape of history in the shape of a cross: it reaches out across the world and it reaches back across history and also forward into the future. The vertical aspect is the one which makes me feel [at] one with Christians down through the ages, right back to the first disciples and Jesus himself. ...The horizontal aspect is the Church across all the peoples and cultures of today’s world. We sense this when we pray..talk about [or participate in actions with] people outside our own local congregation and don’t just focus always on ourselves.”[4]

One of the major theological metaphors for the church is that of the Body of Christ.   I invite you to think about that metaphor for a moment.  As I get older, I find I become more aware of my body – its limitations, its vulnerability, its inability always to heal – but I also become aware of the way in which life continues to emerge and evolve from out of such fragility and mortality (one of the many delights of being a grandparent).  When we look at the life, death and transformed possibilities in Jesus, we see this same broken vulnerability and re-creative power.   The church – the Body of Christ – never perfect, but offering hope that in spite of all its failings, might actually point us to the possibilities of a new relationship in God to which Jeremiah pointed all those years ago; hope that even in the brokenness – or perhaps even because of it – transformation emerges.

This last week, the church farewelled one of our truly inspiring ministers: Rev. David Clark of St Luke’s Remuera, who died at the age of 64.  Speaking at David’s funeral Rev. Dr. Allan Davidson[5], spoke of how David had, with great integrity, maintained his ordination and membership of the church in spite of the incredible odds and personal hatred, which he faced. 

“Coming out as a gay man at the Invercargill Presbyterian General Assembly in 1991 was an act of great courage. David was unwilling to back down and to compromise. He stood at that Assembly before the Moderator confronting the Assembly with the reality they were debating. David was deeply wounded by the church. He felt acutely the rejection that not only he but other Gay and Lesbian Christians experienced. Hurtful things were said about him and sent to him. Yet David by his courage helped give Gay Christians a place to stand in the church.”

“For a time David withdrew from the courts of the church – hurt, angry, sad at the way in which he and others were being treated. [His parish] community however loved and embraced him and became even more his family. He sometimes wondered what it was that he had done to deserve this without realising that he was the reason for this. What he gave so selflessly to others – his love and friendship – was returned to him in abundance. He also taught [others] a lesson in forgiveness as he came to a position where he let go of any bitterness and recrimination he felt towards those who had hurt him. He realised that to be truly inclusive he had to accept and work with those who were hostile to what he stood for.”

“David eventually became the Convenor of the Auckland Presbytery Executive. His superb management skills came to the fore. Although some people he now worked with disagreed with David theologically on attitudes of inclusiveness and the recognition of gay people in ordained leadership they recognised David’s integrity, his considerable gifts and his love, albeit a critical love, for the church.... If the Presbyterian Church wants to honour David, then it will revisit its attitude towards Gay Christians in ordained leadership and promote the inclusive church which David himself embodied.”

There’s an absolutely mythic story about Jesus’ arrival in heaven where a vast host of angels greeted him. After the formalities, they asked him whom he had left behind on earth to finish the work he had begun. Jesus replied, ‘Just a small group of men and women who love me.’ ‘That’s all?’ asked the angels, astonished. ‘What if this tiny group should fail?’ Jesus replied: ‘I have no other plans.’[6]

The task of the church is to be the tiny group of people who pick up on that plan and go on the journey Jesus sketched out for us.  We look to others to help us on the way.  David Clark was one such person.   The Jesus David knew comes to all loyal members of this rather dysfunctional family, as David put it ‘in identification with our common life, with our service to others, our struggles for justice and peace in this tortured world, to give us more passion to transform that world and overcome darkness, desolation and defeat however people experience them”. [7] This is the Jesus who calls us to be the church and the one with whom we journey – even, and especially, all the way to Jerusalem.

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[1] Quoted in "A Loyal Member of a Dysfunctional Family" Why I Go to Church  - Daniel B. Clendenin, For Sunday January 16, 2011 http://www.journeywithjesus.net/

[2] William Loader, Dear Kim: This is what I believe http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKChurch.htm

[3] "A Loyal Member of a Dysfunctional Family" Why I Go to Church  - Daniel B. Clendenin.

[4] William Loader, Dear Kim: This is what I believe http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKChurch.htm

[5] Allan Davidson “Remembering The Revd David Clark” The Community of St Luke 21 March 2012

[6] W. J. Bausch, A world of stories for preachers and teachers. 1998.p.336-337

[7] David Clark, “Easter this year finds David Clark believing less, and knowing more...”, 12 April 2009,

http://www.stlukes.org.nz/?sid=42238 (quoted by Allan Davidson)

Questioning Belief: Ethics? A sermon for Lent 4

Readings:  Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

“Those who do what is true come to the light so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” (John 3:21)

You may have seen the articles in the paper last Saturday.  They were in quite different sections; but on the same topic.  In the court news, there was an article about a woman, appearing in the Christchurch District Court on a charge of infanticide.  The woman, who had already been convicted of disposing of the body of another newborn baby, admitted to this second incident of killing her full-term healthy baby girl, almost immediately after giving birth.[1]   Further on in the same paper, in the World News section[2] a more extensive article explains how two medical ethicists have argued in the British Medical Journal that killing newborn babies should be allowed if the mother wishes.  The report’s authors (from the Universities of Melbourne and Milan) say “after-birth abortion should be considered late-term abortion because there is not much of a difference between them biologically.”  They go on to argue that “foetuses and babies that are hours old do not have the same ‘moral status as actual persons.’ For these two academics, their ethical decisions are based on the ‘the ability to attribute a certain value to your own life, the ability to make plans for the future, the ability to appreciate and value that you are actually alive’.  While these capabilities occur very early in life, they argue, new born babies in their first few days don’t have that moral status – and so, are not actual persons. Therefore, killing a new-born is not infanticide but ‘after-birth abortion’ and should be allowed wherever abortion is legal. 

This is stirring stuff.  I imagine both stories will have set you thinking – and possibly judging the thoughts and actions of the mother and academics.  I’m not planning to speak this morning about what are the right or wrong outcomes in this very difficult and complicated issue.  What I want to do instead is to ask you to consider, how you, as a Christian, approach such difficult issues in this increasingly complex world, and; what does the exploration we have been on over these last weeks, as we have explored an expanding emerging view of God, Jesus and the Bible for the 21^st century – what does that have to say to the challenging ethical context in which we find ourselves on a daily basis?  Of course this is not just about abortion, but genetic, embryonic and stem-cell research, crime and punishment, ecological responsibility, euthanasia, arms manufacture, nuclear energy – to name but a few.  How do we as Christians, in this 21^st century, engage with all this complexity and determine a way of action that is, as the writer of the Gospel of John describes, ‘done in God’? 

For the young Christchurch mother, we don’t know what shaped her decisions – but we can guess they may have been driven by her own very personal and immediate responses – perhaps out of fear, despair, or illness.  For the medical ethicists, their decisions were also individually based – this time, first from the new born baby’s situation, who according to them, had not yet reached the moral position of valuing their own life – and, so could be disposed of at the will of another. 

One Christian alternative to deal with all this, is to trot out the rules:  the Ten Commandments say “You shall not kill”; both the Christchurch mother and the Australian ethicists are wrong;  the church has spoken; end of story.   Another alternative is to say nothing – to consider it all too difficult – washing our hands of liability and betraying all responsibility of care with our ‘safe silence’ ... a path humanity so often takes, becoming colluders by default in crimes of crucifixion, holocaust and genocide.  In my opinion, neither of these alternatives is persuasive; one too simplistic, the other too horrific.

Professor Bill Loader from Australia, who has been one of our conversation partners these last weeks, reminds us that “The Church has often been a place where people have expected answers. And often, especially in the past, some in the Church have given answers even when people weren’t asking questions. Worse still, they have been often quick to condemn people. Nobody appreciates ‘holier than thou’ people or those who seem to have to have all the answers... for [Jesus] people mattered most and rules or guidelines were there to help people; people were not made to be fitted into someone else’s rules and regulations - not even God’s. God is much more generous than that!”[3]

Bill Loader suggests at least three interweaving points for 21^st century people of faith, as we approach the complexities of ethical decisions.

1.      “Church carries with it nearly 3000 years of wisdom on a wide range of issues. It’s worth listening to what people found to be right in the past.” – but not to be bound by that.

2.      “Ultimately, it is respect for people, caring about others and oneself, in short, love, which lies at the heart of Jesus’ picture of God. Everything, even creation itself, stems from God’s goodness.”

3.      Making decisions in community is likely to be more effective.  “as soon as I start looking at specific situations, I grasp for every bit of assistance I can get. Not that I don’t trust my own ability to make a decision. But I know myself well enough to know that I can usually only see things in a limited way. I’m not God. Others will see things I don’t see. This is one of the reasons why the more we can make decisions about right and wrong in discussion with others, the better. Also, if I am deciding on something where I am emotionally involved, there’s an even greater chance that I may skew my own reasoning and neglect important things. This is also where the wisdom and the rules of previous generations become very helpful. But they need to be weighed up carefully.” [4]

Drawing on the wisdom of our heritage, respecting and loving the whole creation, and working in community:  three helpful pointers.

Today’s New Testament reading does that.  The Gospel of John, the last of the biblical ones to be written, emerged out of a community which had already undertaken significant theological and metaphorical reflection on the life of Jesus – and the way in which Jesus impacted on the lives of his followers. Today’s very familiar reading – which includes probably the most well-known, best-loved and most-misunderstood verse in the whole Bible (John 3:16) – is within the context of an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus.  Nicodemus – a man of faith, a leader, a teacher of the law, is starting to question his life direction – perhaps seeing things in a more complex light, as he ages.  The old answers – the old rules – the old laws don’t seem to be enough to make sense of the life he is leading.  Nicodemus seeks to expand his understanding and so he comes to Jesus (seeking light at night – one of John’s many plays with language.)  Nicodemus doesn’t appear in any other gospel – perhaps he is an historic figure – maybe not – but that doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that in this story told by our spiritual ancestors, we meet someone who, like us, seeks meaning in the midst of his journey of faith.  And in response to Nicodemus’ questioning, Jesus suggests that new ways of looking at things are necessary:  we need to start again – to see other-wise – to open our eyes as newborn babies – to look around, lifting our eyes to a new ‘horizon [for] our becoming’[5] – one that John calls ‘eternal life’. For God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus so that we could have eternal life.  And let’s digress, to be clear here.  This ‘eternal life’ is not about some future life in heaven – or immortality – living forever (those are more recent interpretive readings and aberrations of what the gospel is suggesting here.)  John’s use of the language of eternal life is clearly pointing to the new life Jesus has promised Nicodemus for here and now – new life like that which a baby experiences moving from the protectiveness of the womb, out into the vast possibilities of what we call life.  Eternal life is a metaphor for living life to the full - flourishing now and into the future within the unending presence of God, who is Light and Love.

It’s within this new, opening and constantly emerging horizon that we might be invited to place our ethical questions.  “In approaching them our guidelines are few. They all flow from [a deep] concern [and love] for people and include ... questions [like]: Are the solutions in the long term interest of the world and its people? Is an adequate data base being considered? Have the possible effects on people and their environment been considered? Are the voices of those directly affected being heard clearly? Are the questions being asked in a way which ignores or excludes other relevant issues?”[6] Who benefits from any decision? 

It’s from within the context of such questions we might ponder our stance on the infanticide and after-birth abortion stories, with which I began this sermon.  As the Church enters these essential conversations, which are going on around us all the time, we need to remember that we join, not as people who have the answers – but as those who have a deep love and concern for all people, all animals, all plants and for the very Earth itself.. We bring into these conversations, a particular and significant perspective, as we seek to be a community cooperating with God in bringing about eternal life – or, put in different language – seeking to act as creative partners in cosmic flourishing within the Eternal Presence of Life-giving Creativity.

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[1] “Mother admits killing newborn” Otago Daily Times, Saturday March 3, 2012 COURT, p.28

[2] “Paper argues for killing newborns” Otago Daily Times, Saturday March 3, 2012, WORLD, p.13

[3] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKRightWrong.htm

[4] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKRightWrong.htm

[5] Jantzen Grace M., Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Manchester University Press, 1998)

[6] http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKRightWrong.htm

Questioning Belief: The Bible? A sermon for Lent 3

Readings: Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

While talking this week with a friend about this morning’s sermon, I was asked why we at Knox continue to carry the Bible into the church at the beginning of services – and carry it out at the end of worship.  “Isn’t this a form of idol worshipping?  Does the congregation really know what is happening here”, I was asked.  Do we?  Is it only to do with the fact that we are part of the Reformed Church, which places high value on all people having access to the Bible … or is there more to it than that?

Marcus Borg suggests that in the last half century “probably more Christians have left the church because of the Bible than for any other single reason”.  They left, he proposes because “contemporary biblical literalism – with its emphasis on biblical infallibility, historical factuality, and moral and doctrinal absolutes” no longer made sense.[1]

American Bishop John Shelby Spong would agree. When he was asked why he thought people insisted on reading the bible literally – i.e. taking every word as a directive from God – Spong replied “We put an aura around the Bible that makes it very difficult to look at it any other way than as some mystical book that dropped from the sky. In some church processions, they walk in and somebody is holding the book on high as if it’s to be worshipped. We read from it and say “This is the word of the Lord” no matter what the [readings are]. You do that often enough and people don’t think that’s a book to be read. It’s an untouchable.

Also, [he went on] we publish the Bible in columns. No other book is published that way except encyclopedias, dictionaries, and telephone books. You don’t want to read those books, you go to them for authoritative answers and you don’t argue with the dictionary. If you’re playing Scrabble you go to the dictionary to settle the argument. We’ve encouraged people to think about the Bible as this kind of book, a source of authority, the final word, not to be debated. I think that helps people to think that it’s inappropriate to ask questions….I think the Bible is a great book and I think if we can get people to look at it properly and not use it as a weapon to enforce their prejudices we’d be making a major step forward.” [2]

So, let’s ask some questions; let’s break through the aura; let’s see if there are some ways to ‘look at it properly’. (and we’ll do more of that tomorrow night in the discussion group – to which you are all invited, even if you haven’t come to any of the others in the series)

I find Marcus Borg’s approach to the bible very helpful.  He suggests a three-fold consideration: historical, metaphorical and sacramental.

First, historically:  we do well to remember the bible is not just one book; it’s a collection of very different writings that have been produced by individuals from particular historical communities.  It’s not written by God – but by people, like you and me.  It tells how people and communities saw things – “above all it tells us how they saw their life with [and in] God.  It contains their stories about God’s involvement in their lives, their laws and ethical teachings, their prayers and praises, their wisdom about how to live, and their hopes and dreams.  It is not God’s witness to God…but their witness to God…

As a human product, the Bible is not ‘absolute truth’ or ‘God’s revealed truth’” but is related to particular situations and cultures – using the language and concepts of the culture.  It “tells us how our spiritual ancestors saw things – not how God sees things.”

This is very evident in today’s first reading: a letter written by Paul to the church in Corinth: an actual letter, written in the first century by a real person to a community that lived and breathed – and argued (the kind of letter Dr Stuart might have written to our Knox ancestors, if he had taken a long trip away and while back in Scotland, discovered some others were undermining his authority here in Dunedin.)  Paul writes, as Dr Stuart might, forcefully, defending his position as founding leader - and his teaching.  And so, this letter opens with a strong argument against those who claim status because of their ‘wise teachings’.  God, Paul argues, “has reversed the world’s polarities.  Folly is wisdom and wisdom is folly; and the crucified messiah (1.23), the trembling apostle (2.3) and the socially misfit Corinthians (1.26-29) [are the ones who reflect] … and embody God’s true and saving wisdom.” [3]

In an historical approach, “the emphasis is not upon words inspired by God, but on people moved by their experience of the Spirit”.  Rather than picking out a verse (as a word from God that we must obey) we take this experience of Paul and the Corinthian church and reflect on it: noting how - in all their humanness - they grappled with how to be the Body of Christ - in the midst of their squabbling and elitism. And as we consider this text, we seek understanding of how we might centre our lives on Christ in this historical moment and place; listening for what the Spirit is saying to the Church today.

Borg’s second approach to the Bible is metaphorical.  “Metaphorical language”, he writes, “is a way of seeing. …The Bible can be thought of as a giant metaphor; a way of seeing the whole; a way of seeing God, ourselves, the divine-human relationship and the divine-world relationship.  And the point is not to ‘believe’ in a metaphor – but to ‘see’ with it.”  Some of us are uneasy with such an approach. “We ... tend to identify truth with factuality and [therefore] devalue metaphorical language.  To a large extent, we have become tone-deaf to metaphor, often viewing it as ‘pretty’ language for something that could be said more directly.”  But, not to see the Bible as metaphor, prevents us from getting anywhere near the profound truths there to be discovered. In today’s Gospel reading, we have a story of Jesus driving out the money changers in the temple – and it’s already metaphorical. There may well have been some such event in Jesus’ life – but, in the writing down decades after the event, the Johannine community is already demonstrating it has been reflecting on it through the light of what happened at Easter.  They have seen the market-driven temple as a metaphor for the way Jesus was treated by his religious and political contemporaries.  The community has been doing its theological work – which we need to continue.  This is not about an event to be ‘believed in’ but rather the community is reminding itself of the indestructibility of the Body of Christ:  in spite of abusive economics, in spite of church institutional corruption, in spite of even the crucifixion, the Body of Christ flourishes, because Godness is stronger than evil and corruption. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of the bible that is intent on proving historical facts, we are unlikely to be taken into the deep truths and insights which are there waiting to be discovered as we consider our own saturated-in-God lives today.  As Borg puts it: “even when a text contains historical memory, its more-than-literal meaning matters most….”  Even when there is no history involved (e.g. the stories of Adam and Eve, or  Noah and the flood), as metaphorical narratives, they can be profoundly true, even though not literally factual.”

Borg’s final approach to the Bible is as sacrament. Today, with the symbols of bread and wine before us, that word sacrament is very much in our awareness.  Bread and wine – the means whereby Christ becomes present to us.  As we take the bread and the wine, these outward and visible signs open a door for us into the sacred, the holy, the mystery - what we call God.  In the same way, Borg suggests the Bible - like the bread and wine, all very human products, mediate God’s Presence –  which is always here – and there – and there.  If we should take the time to listen, to study in community, to let this amazing treasure be broken open for us, we will hear the Spirit speaking to us through these ancient words – not telling us what to do, but inviting us to be transformed within the wisdom of God.

As the Bible is carried into this Church each Sunday, may we never lose sight of its human origin and its sacred function – offering us a way of seeing God and our life in God.  And, as it is carried from the Church, luring and leading us into risky, transformed and flourishing life, may we follow with confidence that in engaging with its many texts, we are living faithfully as the Body of Christ here in 21^st century Dunedin.

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[1] Marcus Borg The Heart of Christianity 2003, p.43.  This sermon depends heavily on and quotes extensively from Chapter 3 The Bible: the Heart of the Tradition”, pp 43-60.

[2] “The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It”

http://www.progressivechristianity.org/library/article.cfm?library_id=1150

Originally published at ReligionDispatches.org

[3] Jouette M Bassler “Corinthians”  in The women’s bible commentary  Carol Newsom and Sharon Ringe eds.1992 p.321.

Questioning Belief: Jesus? A Sermon for Lent 2

Readings:  Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38

Who is this man, whom Christians follow; this man Jesus, whom we have just sung about as “a shadow presence asking us to be companions of the way through this life’s journey”[1]?   ‘Shadow presence’ gets to the nub of the question: there’s so much more we can say about what we don’t know about Jesus – than about what we do.  But let’s start with what we know: “Jesus was a Jewish man who lived at a particular time of human history, which we know something about. It was the time of the Roman Empire and the place where he lived was Palestine.  In other words, whatever else I or any other person may say, Jesus was a figure in human history, not a god nor a legendary or mythical figure.  Nor is he someone made up by religious people...non-Christian sources of the first two centuries (for example, Pliny, Tacitus, Josephus) treat him like any other historical figure.”

Having said that, we need to realise how difficult it is to “get a picture of what he was really like.  There is [so] much legend and symbol that has grown up around him.” [2]

If twenty-first century Christianity is to be authentic to the good news of Jesus, it might be important to at least consider whether some of the legendary layers and mythic rituals that have developed over the centuries might need to be let go.  This morning’s gospel reading provides an intriguing perspective on that possibility: if you want to become Jesus’ followers, the gospel[3] says, you have to give up your own self – that self which has been constructed within the culture and expectations of our day – give up living by your own self-interests – and “walk beside that man who comes from Galilee.”[4]

Last year, I came upon a “Letter to Jesus”, written more than a decade ago, by Lloyd Geering[5].  I found it at a time when I was considering how to present a reflection at the midnight Christmas Eve service.  I was very aware that many people who come to Knox on Christmas Eve are not regular church-goers; their expectations are not necessarily about living as Jesus-followers. Many come to the midnight service seeking the magic and mystery and the so-called traditional music of well-known Christmas carols. Geering’s letter offered a different focus and challenged some of the assumptions of the tradition.  Without naming its source, knowing some people would be turned off by the writer, I offered an abbreviated and slightly adapted version to our Christmas Eve congregation. Today, as a congregation of those who choose to follow Jesus, I invite you to listen to the letter in its entirety.

“Dear Jesus,

You could have heard those two words millions of times in the last two thousand years – that is, if you had been within hearing distance, as those who addressed you certainly believed you were.

But it’s my belief you didn’t hear them. You died on a cross and never learned anything of what happened after you breathed your last. So I write to tell you, but where to begin? Seventy years after you died one writer said, “The world could not contain all the books that could be written about you.” And if that was true after seventy years, what about two millennia later!

You have become the most widely known person in the world. And this in spite of the fact that, as my six-year old granddaughter said a few years ago, ‘You don’t hear much about Jesus these days!’

You may well be shocked to learn that within thirty years of your death you were being worshipped as divine. They began to speak of you as the Christ – the only Son of God – and refused to believe any more that you were wholly human like ourselves.

Well, some in the ancient world tried not to forget you were a human being, but they got themselves into awful verbal tangles. Finally they said you had two natures – human and divine – and these were to be “acknowledged inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” In view of the way you criticised the Pharisees and lawyers of your own day for their hair-splitting arguments, I suspect you would have been cuttingly derisive if you had witnessed that debate. And after philosophically analyzing your nature, they excommunicated any who disagreed with them!

After that, your humanity got lost sight of altogether. You were pictured as a stern judge on a heavenly throne, ready to pounce on all who stepped out of line. And the line was determined by the prejudices of those in power rather than in accordance with your teaching. That was largely forgotten and replaced by doctrines they created.

Actually it’s your sheer humanity that many have been rediscovering – and we find it very encouraging. Of course the way we see the world today is drastically different from what was the common view in your time. It now seems that we live in a universe almost infinite in both in space and time.

In this sort of world we haven’t much use for gods or supernatural forces. We are more interested in learning what it means to be human. That’s where you come in. Our biblical scholars have been discovering what sort of person you really were – that is, before the ancients hid you from sight behind the divine being they created to take your place.

It’s a pity there was no Boswell among your disciples. That would have helped us no end. We would very much like to know in more detail just what you actually said and did. And it seems a terrible shame that you never wrote anything yourself – except, as one report has it, in the sand.

We have to rely on what people wrote many years later, when both you and all your close friends were dead. However, we think we’ve recovered some of your genuine voiceprints – especially in your witty one-liners. I suspect that our former Prime Minister David Lange learned something from you.

Then there are those stories you told. They must have shaken your hearers out of their complacency – not only because they often had an unexpected twist at the end, but because they challenged people’s way of seeing the world. And that is why people remembered them.

The trouble is that people began to put their own thoughts into your mouth. Then, after you were turned into a god, people took everything you said, or were supposed to have said, with such deadly seriousness that they often missed the point you were originally making.

We’ve discovered you were quite a humorist, just like some of your fellow-Jews today. I think you would get on well with Woody Allen. He has a serious side to his humor, just as you did.

You will be sorry to hear that some very cruel things have been done in your name – and by the very people who were most keen to honour you. They tortured those they deemed heretics, burned the so-called witches, and even today they reject homosexuals. That is what comes of having lost sight of your humanity. They forget how you hob-nobbed with outcasts, prostitutes, and those reviled tax-collectors.

We are still a bit puzzled as to how you got on the wrong side of the Romans. Did you ever really understand that yourself? Of course, those were pretty rough times you lived in, and thousands of people met the same fate as yours.

But what a remarkable impression you left on those around you. You had only a few short years to do it, and yet you continue to inspire millions.

We still celebrate your birthday, in spite of not knowing when it was. Christmas is the most popular season of the year. It’s become quite a family occasion. I think you would like that. You taught us a great deal about personal relationships. Nonetheless, we still have trouble learning how to be neighborly, to say nothing of trying to love our enemies.

But you deserve the credit for all the peace and good will that prevails at Christmas. It’s really true, as many say, that your spirit keeps on coming alive in us.

Actually you are the one who, though indirectly, brought the modern world into being. It isn’t perfect by a long chalk.  But it’s the nearest we have yet gotten to the kind of Kingdom you talked about. We care for the sick. We have freed the slaves. We draw attention to human rights. And we have finally come to do lots more.

So I write this on behalf of your innumerable fans around the world. We thank you for what you achieved in those few short years. May your influence live forever!”

Even for those who would call themselves atheist, the influence of Jesus is often acknowledged.  For those of us who place ourselves on the agnostic-believer-spectrum, Bill Loader asks the question “What do [we] see in Jesus? ... what [are we] looking for? [We’re] looking for what God is like, what life is all about. [We are] wanting to get in touch with what lies behind the universe, what makes sense of it, what ultimately matters.”  

Tomorrow night’s discussion will pick up on these “God-type questions” asking what we see when we “look at the data we have on Jesus”. As with last week, there is reading material available – again from Bill Loaders’ booklet “Dear Kim, This is what I believe...”  Together, we will explore the question:

“Who is this man, who calls us now to follow –

a shadow presence asking us to be

companions of the way through this life’s journey

to live in truth to set our tired world free?”[6]

---

[1] Mary Pearson “Who is this man” 1994.

[2] William Loader, “What about Jesus?” Chapter 2 of  Dear Kim: This is what I believe “

[3] Mark 8:34

[4] Mary Pearson

[5] Lloyd Geering, “A Letter to Jesus” prepared for National Radio of New Zealand, 24^th December 2000.  http://www.tcpc.org/library/article.cfm?library_id=1022

[6] Mary Pearson