Tuesday 19 May 2015

“People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening”: a sermon for Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21)

“People talking without speaking,
people hearing without listening”.
 
Sometimes language has its limitations. In fact, sometimes language is downright confusing.
 
Words frequently change their meanings.
  • In recent decades, the word “wicked” was high praise indeed in youth culture.
  • There are some people in politics and the media who oddly use the phrase “do-gooder” as an insult (as if, strangely, it is somehow a bad thing to do good things).
  • The word “gay” changed its meaning twice in most of our lifetimes. “Gay” once meant “jolly”. For many decades, it has meant “homosexual”.  Now, in some sections of youth culture, “gay” means “boringly pretentious”. In a sense, “gay” now – for some people - means the direct opposite of its earlier meaning of “jolly”.
Sometimes language has its limitations. In fact, sometimes language is downright confusing.
 
Sometimes, words can be used to conceal reality.
  • If a politician, a religious leader, or a media figure says that he (or she) is “pro-life”, it may not say much about their attitudes to war, to famine, to highway safety, or to anything else except for the fact that he (or she) is against abortion.
  • If some politicians, religious leaders, or media figures speak about “family values”, it may not mean that they want to make life better for families. It just means that they disapprove strongly of single parents, working mothers, unmarried couples, same-gender couples, and a few other people as well.
  • If a comedian describes her (or his) comedy as being “edgy”, it may just mean that she (or he) often deals in cruel comedy, adolescent comedy, comedy that makes fun of people’s suffering.
  • Many euphemisms have been coined to make it seem acceptable that some people lose their jobs as a result of boardroom shenanigans: “downsizing”, “restructuring”, and so on.
  • Other euphemisms were coined to make civilian deaths and injuries during war seem somehow acceptable: “collateral damage” and so on.
  • Then there’s the phrase “political correctness” (coined by some cynical smart-aleck in the 1990s) to lampoon the idea that people of all races, all religions, and both genders deserve to be treated with equal respect, courtesy, and dignity. 
Sometimes language has its limitations. In fact, sometimes language is downright confusing. 
 
In the area of people’s beliefs, there is further confusion. 
  • The word “evangelical” was once a lovely word, and a word belonging to all Christians. It came from the Greek word for “good news”. “Evangelical” once referred to the Christian church’s belief that Christ transforms human life for the better – both for individuals and for communities. But, in recent decades, the more rigidly narrow sort of Christians have tried to take over the word “evangelical” as if it applies to them alone. 
  • And then, there’s the word “humanist”. For centuries, “humanist” meant a well-read person of broad cultural sympathies, and a person who rejected racial and religious bigotry of any sort. But, in recent decades, the word “humanist” has become an “upmarket” term for an atheist or agnostic.
  • In the popular corruptions of these words, “evangelical” and “humanist” have become mutually exclusive words. Using the real meanings of these words, it is very possible for a person to be an “evangelical humanist”. (And, in fact, I personally believe that the community, the nation, and the world in general would be a far better place if there were far more “evangelical humanists”.)
Sometimes language has its limitations. In fact, sometimes language is downright confusing.
 
It’s like the statement made in the comedy series “Yes, Minister”, by the bureaucrat’s bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by the late Sir Nigel Hawthorne. Sir Humphrey once described a bureaucrat as a person “who calls a spade a personal, hand-held domestic garden digging implement”. 
 
The experience of our culture:
  • our culture which speaks with acceptance of “downsizing” and “collateral damage”; 
  • our culture which lampoons normal human respect and decency as “political correctness”;
  • our culture which regards a “do-gooder” as a bad person; 
the experience of our culture is one in which a spade is frequently called “a personal, hand-held domestic garden digging implement”.
 
This experience of our culture was once described in the song The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle as:
 
  People talking without speaking, 
people hearing without listening …
 
This experience was once told in an old story from the Hebrew Dreaming, a story about a time when the world was young, when people all spoke the same language, and when people in their hubris wanted to usurp God’s godhood. They built a tower at a place called Babel where they could reach up to the skies and become godlike. According to this old story, God’s response to human hubris was to confuse the languages of the people, so that people could not “play God”. 
 
In today’s reading from the Book of Acts, one of the gifts of the risen Christ was to reverse the experience of Babel. A big crowd was in Jerusalem for a major Jewish festival: Shavuoth in Hebrew, Pentecost in Greek. The festival celebrated God giving the Law to Moses. It was an important festival. Jews still celebrate Shavouth now. The festival today includes the eating of cheesecake, so you know it’s got to be good.
 
While the festival was in progress, something happened to the disciples. God’s spirit gave them the courage and the strength to talk about what had been happening during the past few weeks, months, and years; about what had happened in the life of Jesus, how he had conquered death, and how his conquest of death was significant for us all. Not only did God’s spirit give the disciples the gift of courage to speak. God’s spirit also gave the crowds the gifts of sensitivity and openness to listen.
 
Think about these two stories.
 
The important thing to remember about the old Babel story from deep in the Hebrew Dreaming is that this division into racial, national and language groups was because people were getting a bit full of themselves. 
 
It was never part of God’s original intention: 
  • for races and nations to be divided from one another;
  • for people to speak with acceptance of “downsizing” or “collateral damage”;
  • for people to lampoon normal human respect and decency as “political correctness”;
  • for people to regard a “do-gooder” as a bad person;
  • People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening....
The experience of Babel was the experience of a broken world, a world that did not fulfill God’s intentions.
 
When the story of Pentecost was first told by the early Christians, it was told by – and it was told to – people who knew the story of the Tower of Babel very well. The presence of God’s Spirit that the first group of Christians experienced soon after the first Easter was explained in terms of a reversal of that old story from the Hebrew Dreaming, the one about the big tower.
  • In the Babel story, God confused people’s speech so that people who could once understand each other could no longer do so.
  • In the Pentecost story, God “un-confused” people’s speech so that people who once could not understand each other could now do so. 
If the Babel story tells us how racial and national divisions among people are a result of people being far too full of themselves, the Pentecost story tells us that being full of God’s Spirit, being God-intoxicated, can lead us to know that, from God’s perspective, all humanity is a single family.
 
And so may it be for us all. 

Tuesday 5 May 2015

"What part of 'God is love' don't you understand?": a sermon (1st John 4:7 through 5:6)

It was Abraham Lincoln who once said, as a piece of advice to his political colleagues:  

“You can fool all of the people some of the time.
 You can fool some of the people all of the time.
 But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

I’d like to paraphrase that saying for use within the context of the Christian church:

"Some people believe God loves all of the people some of the time;
other people believe God loves some of the people all of the time;
but, the truth is, God loves all of the people all of the time.”

We hear this in our lesson from the First Letter of John, and I’ve deliberately combined last week’s lesson from First John with this week’s lesson, which follows on immediately, as it continues the same train of thought.

This passage is a celebration of God’s love. In fact, the lesson goes so far as to say that “God is love” ... and it makes that statement twice: “God is love”.  

Sometimes, however, when I speak to some religious people, I frequently have the urge to ask, “What part of ‘God is love’ don’t you understand?”

But still we hear the statement: “God is love.”
Now there is an ethical edge to this lesson. We cannot say we love God without an active love for the people around us, and for all humanity. There’s always an ethical edge to our faith. 

But this love of God is not captive to our human ethics. Our love for God is preceded by God’s love for us.: 

“In this is love, not that we loved God but that ... [God] … loved us….”

Our love for God is always preceded by God’s love for us. Thus we can say:


“Some people believe God loves all of the people some of the time;
other people believe God loves some of the people all of the time;
but, the truth is, God loves all of the people all of the time.”
 
“Some people believe God loves all of the people some of the time ...;”

There are some people who believe that all people need to earn God’s love continually. According to their view of God, God only loves those whose good deeds outweigh their bad deeds. And as for the others, well ... that’s their problem.

People with this sort of belief imagine that God is sitting up there in the clouds with a big book, listing our deeds and weighing them against each other. As we sing about someone else at another time of the year:
 
“He’s making a list, and checking it twice,
Going to find out who’s naughty or nice….”
 
People with this kind of God can be very, very nervous people. They’re worrying how they’re balancing out in terms of good deeds versus bad deeds. They worry, for example, if that last dirty thought they’ve had was bad enough to outweigh the few dollars they gave the Salvation Army the other day. 

I once encountered this view of God very vividly. I had only been ordained for a few years. I must have been wearing my clerical collar that day because, after I had crossed a city street - against a red light, a drunk staggered up to me and said, “Hang on, mate. I thought your job was to tell the rest of us to obey the rules.”

This man had somehow developed a view of the Christian church that saw the church as made up of very negative, condemning, and uninviting people - particularly its ministers. 

Perhaps this was because somewhere, back in that man’s past, he experienced a negative, condemning, and uninviting church of some sort. They are out there, you know.

Perhaps in this church, he was taught a view of a very negative, condemning, and uninviting god. 

If so, it was a very destructive view of God that he learned, but it’s also a view that’s all-too-common in our culture. 

“Some people believe God loves all of the people some of the time ...;”
And some of us ask, “What part of ‘God is love’ don’t you undertand?”
 
“... other people believe God loves some of the people all of the time ...;”
 
There are some people who believe that, to earn God’s love, you just need to believe all the right things. And, preferably:
  • you need to use the right religious jargon to talk about all the right things you believe;
  • you need to have made a public affirmation of these beliefs at some occasion;
  • you probably need to go to a church where everyone else believes all the right things; and
  • you definitely need to persuade other people to believe the same things as you.
People with this kind of God can also be very, very nervous people. They’re not worried about themselves usually. They know they’re “right with God”. But they may be worried about all their family members, relatives, friends, neighbours, and co-workers who they suspect don’t believe all the right things. Will they become fuel for an eternal barbecue if they don’t “see the light”?
 
I’ve encountered this view of God very vividly, a number of times. Once, a woman once told me that, when her husband (who was Catholic) was dying, he gave his rosary - a precious possession - to his daughter. The daughter later joined a very strict, aggressive, and bigoted church. The daughter’s pastor persuaded her that the rosary was “a pagan idol” and “possibly even demonic”, so it should be burned. The daughter burned the rosary.  
 
When she told her mother what she had done, the mother was heartbroken that her daughter had burned her father’s rosary. She was shocked that a church - any church - would tell the daughter to desecrate a sacred thing like that. The daughter callously replied, “Oh come on, Mum. You know Dad wasn’t a real Christian. ” 
 
“... other people believe God loves some of the people all of the time ...;”
 
And some of us still ask, “What part of ‘God is love’ don’t you understand?”
 
“... but, the truth is, God loves all of the people all of the time.”
 
I’ll let you all in on what has somehow become a big secret in many parts of the Christian church over the centuries: “God loves all of the people all of the time.”  
 
We don’t have to make nervous wrecks of ourselves making sure that our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds any particular week. God loves you anyway. “God loves all of the people all of the time.”  
 
We don’t have to make nervous wrecks of ourselves making sure that our beliefs are 100% correct according to whoever’s doctrinal scorecard is the flavour of the month. God loves you anyway. “God loves all of the people all of the time.”  
 
There’s one really good side effect. People who are aware that “God loves all of the people all of the time” do just as many good deeds as people who merely believe that “God loves all of the people some of the time” - usually more – usually a lot more. The difference is that people who know that “God loves all of the people all of the time” do their good deeds for the right reason. It’s not a matter of squaring the balance sheet. It’s a matter of thankfulness.
  • They are thankful for God’s kindness, and so they are kind.
  • They are thankful for God’s generosity, and so they are generous.
  • They are thankful for God’s forgiveness, and so they are forgiving.  
However, we can wish that people who believe that “God loves all of the people all of the time” were as conscientious in commending their faith as those who merely believe that “God loves some of the people some of the time”. I suppose the threat of fire and brimstone can be a powerful motivating force for some people to share their faith. I believe that those of us with a more optimistic view of the extent of God’s generosity need to be more up-front about sharing our faith. For we have a faith to share, a real faith, an authentic faith.
 
“... [for], the truth is, God loves all of the people all of the time.”
 
 “In this is love, not that we loved God but that ... [God] ... loved us....”
 
Our love for God is always preceded by God’s love for us:  
 
"Some people believe God loves all of the people some of the time;
other people believe God loves some of the people all of the time;
but, the truth is, God loves all of the people all of the time.”