Too Bad about All Those Other Folks - May 16 sermon.mp3
John 17:20-26
Too Bad about All Those Other Folks
When I was in seminary, I loved studying theology and always thought it odd that some of my classmates disliked it. One of the favorite images I picked up in seminary is that of theology or church tradition as spectacles, lenses through which we read and understand God’s revelation to us in Jesus and in Scripture. We never hear Jesus speak or read a passage of Scripture without some sort of interpretive lenses, without some sort of glasses on.
However, when we get accustomed to glasses or contacts, we can forget we have them on. We don’t think of what we see as being changed or corrected before we see it. We simply see what we see. A similar sort of thing happens with the lenses of theology and tradition. We don’t realize that we see what we see filtered and refracted by our lenses.
I saw this some years ago during an officer training class that I was leading. People elected as elders or deacons are required to receive training in our Reformed theology because as part of their ordination, they promise to be guided by that theology, to use those lenses, to help them understand what it means to be a faithful church. And as the class was discussing our theology, one of those officers-to-be said, “Why can’t we just be Christians? Why can’t we just all read our Bible and do what we find there?”
That’s legitimate and important question. And I suspect that similar questions lay behind the distaste some of my seminary classmates had for theology. Trouble is, the question itself is wearing glasses. The notion that individual Christians should read the Bible for themselves and act on what they find there is in fact a theological position, a set of lenses that some Christians, but not all, wear as they seek to follow Jesus.
As laudable as it is to desire some pristine Christianity not complicated by layers of theology, that’s pretty much impossible. We all carry around with us lenses that have been shaped by our culture, by our experiences in the church, by our place in history, and so on. But these lenses are so much a part of us, they are often more like lens implants than glasses. They are always there, we can’t take them out, and they have simply become a part of us. But what if they are distorting rather than focusing our vision? What if what we think we see is not what is really there at all?
I recently been reading a wonderful new book by Brian McLaren entitled A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that Are Transforming the Faith. The first of those questions is, “What is the overarching story line of the Bible?” And McLaren’s answer suggests that we have seen this story through bad lenses. We not only look back at Jesus, and the Old Testament story from which he emerges, through the accumulated theologies of our church, Calvin, Luther, Aquinus, Augustine, and even the Apostle Paul, but, as part of Western culture, we also see Jesus and his Jewish story through the lens of Greek philosophy, most of us without ever realizing it.
Now I have a feeling very few of you are interested in hearing about Neo-Platonism or its tension with Aristotle, so I won’t go into that. (I’ll be happy to discuss it with you later if you’re one of the few who are interested.) Suffice to say that this Greco-Roman notion of perfection as static, disembodied and spiritual, compared to the messy, decaying, infinitely inferior physical experience of bodies, trees and, such, has profoundly impacted how we see and understand Jesus, humanity, and the kingdom Jesus says he is bringing.
In the worst distortions, our Greek, philosophical lenses produce a Christianity with little use for bodies, for creation, for procreation, or any of the messiness of life. Such Christians are stuck here on earth until they are freed by death for that more genuine, better life that is not physical. And even in its more nuanced forms, this distortion often perceives a God who can scarcely put up with the world and its human inhabitants. God simply can’t abide how bad things are down here, and sooner or later cannot avoid wiping the whole mess out. But if you play your cards right and believe the right things, God will rescue you from this sordid existence into something better. Too bad about all those other folks.
McLaren argues that such pictures of Christianity and God can be found in the Bible only if you view it through bad lenses, and I’m inclined to agree with him. And these bad lenses are often used to view the Jesus found our gospel for today. There is Jesus, praying for his followers, and also for all who will believe through them. There is Jesus praying for the Church, for us, asking that we may all be one, that he may be in us and us in God, a mystical community bound together by God’s love. But then there’s that bad old world that doesn’t know God, doesn’t recognize Jesus. Too bad about all those folks.
In John, “the world” isn’t really a place. It’s a term he uses to speak of all that stands in opposition to God’s work in Jesus. It’s a slippery term with no simple, one-to-one correspondence. It’s not the culture, or the government, or the pagans, or the Jews. But the oppressive forces of the
Those who are part of this world don’t “know” Jesus; that is they don’t recognize God present in him and so they don’t know God. But Jesus says those who have heard his voice, have recognized it and followed him, do know. And Jesus prays for those folks, which presumably includes us. Jesus prays that we will be part of that mystical communion he enjoys with the Father. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… I in them and you in me…”
How wonderful that Jesus wants to dwell in us, to give us the sort of intimacy with the Father that he enjoys. How comforting to know that this is the very last thing he does prior to his arrest and the cross. He holds us in the embrace of his prayer, of his longing for us. Too bad about all those other folks.
Except that Jesus comes precisely because God loves all those other folks. For God so loved the world… In other words, God so loved all those folks who don’t recognize Jesus, whether the oppressive forces of empire or the well intended but misguided, self serving operators of religious institutions. Those other folks are the very reason for Jesus.
So why does Jesus cradle us in his heartfelt prayer? To strengthen and encourage us so that we might show the world, might show those folks, how much God loves them.
We live in a time in which the church many of us grew up with is passing away. No matter how much we may long for it, no matter how meaningful it was for us, it is slipping into the mists of the past. That’s actually nothing unusual, and not all that troubling. Various forms of church have appeared and disappeared since the faith was born. Even in our own little denomination, the church of my youth bore little resemblance to the Presbyterian Church of a hundred years previous.
But for some reason, maybe because of today’s rapid pace of change or an increasingly secular culture, or maybe because of the move from a modern to a post modern world, many church people seem to be looking backward more than forward. We huddle in our little enclaves, wondering where all the people went. In a lot of congregations there is a terrible fear of decline, and even of death. And even in congregations like this one, many long for the old days of overflow crowds and monster confirmation classes. And when I talk to them, some seem sure that the best days are back there. But we’ll hang on. We’ll keep doing what we do. Too bad about all those other folks.
Except those are the ones God loves. And Jesus holds us in his prayers; Jesus promises to dwell in us so that those other folks will see God at work in us, so that they will see God’s love take on flesh. Jesus says that he will be in us so that our love and unity will show God in Christ to all those other folks. And if Jesus is truly in us, is there any doubt that we can do whatever Jesus calls us to do?
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