Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

  C Christmas 2 Pilg 2021

                                               John 1:10-18

                                               January 2, 2022 

           In this socially distanced time, maybe your Christmas, like mine, was a procession of videos or Facetime calls from young relatives.  With all the glee of a prison inmate, these forced confessions, or, I mean, expressions of gratitude, come to us with the gift prominently on display presumably so that “A” we know the gift did truly arrive and “B” the young person remembers what they are thanking us for.  I imagine that when the communication to us is over, Aunt Beth’s gift is moved in front of the youngster and the process is repeated. 

           We may not get to see the joy of Kian or Eli opening their gifts, but I do appreciate my sisters and brother pushing their kids to do one of the not so glamorous but necessary rituals of Christmas.  Our children should learn and practice gratitude—even when it feels like they are being tied to a chair to do so. 

           Unfortunately, our family also experienced some of the hard lessons of pandemic.  A number of our family members made the trip to Florida, even went to Disney World, and somehow, in the mix, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece all tested positive for Co-Vid.  My mom actually ended up in the emergency room but probably due to her vaccination status was fortunate to only end up with a deep cough and fatigue.  The Omicron variant is humbling even the fully vaccinated and boosted. 

           As we walk into another surge in this pandemic, I was reminded this week of the article written by the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, who observed in April 2020 that the pandemic was hitting some of the richest nations in the world the hardest, namely the United States.  The language we were using to offset the pandemic, the language of war, was not working out for us.  We would be prepared if our frontline workers had needed stockpiles of guns and bombs, fighter jets and submarines.  We did not have the language nor the resources ready for care and healing.  We did not have the resources or the language in place for care and healing.  We didn’t seem to know how to requisition that. 

Roy went on to write,

 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.^[1]

 

The pandemic is a portal—a choice between two worlds.  The pandemic required and requires that we see all of us in this together.  The old way pretended that we could build a wall, circle the wagons, or a gated community around ourselves and escape the horrors of the world.  A new world needs to be imagined.

           Our Scripture verse today is a foreshadowing of Holy Week when Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate, interrogated by Pilate, the local representative of the Roman Empire.  Jesus responds to Pilate by saying, “My empire is not of this world. If my empire were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Judeans; but as it is, my kingdom or empire is not of this world.”^[2]  The Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos and it is used in the first chapter of John when the writer seeks to define Jesus by saying, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him.”

           That word, kosmos, is used over and over again in Biblical books influenced by what is called “Johannine theology.”  Johannine theology is found as today, in the gospel of John, but also in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.   Most classic translations interpret the word kosmos as “world” which has led to some unhealthy theology throughout the ages. Christian tradition has sometimes used that classic translation to bend away from embodiment and bend toward denial of the body, away from the physical world toward more of a concern for heaven and the afterlife.  

But the late, great Biblical scholar, Walter Wink transformed the meaning of Johannine theology by recognizing that the more apt translation for the word kosmos was "Domination System."  In Jesus's context, Wink might even agree with me that "Roman Empire" could be another good translation.  Jesus tells us not to be of the Domination System or the Empire.  Do not practice its ways or be like it.  

           Jesus always tells his disciples to not be of the Domination System or Roman Empire.  Jesus is always telling the disciples within Johannine theology that we are born into the kosmos but we are not to participate in the ways or trade of the kosmos.

Jesus, before Pilate, in that Holy Week Scripture, is not saying, my kingdom or Empire is not of this earthly world, or is in heaven.  Jesus is saying that his kingdom or Empire is not the violence and death, oppression and slavery of the Roman Empire.  Jesus is not being otherworldly.  He is being anti-establishment.  The same is true in the passage before us today.  Jesus was in the Domination System, born into it, yet the Domination System did not know him. 

           We remain in the season of Christmas—a time when the entrance of Christ into the world highlights how God’s order and way of doing things engages, confronts, and collides with Rome’s order and way of doing things.  Too often, what I feel in the pull of a cultural Christmas, is to be more like the materialism and violence of Rome than the countercultural values of God born in Christ.   That cultural narrative is so strong, so powerful.  So strong and and so powerful that often I hear the Christian church touting the way Rome did things based on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism.   The Christian church then, without reference to who Jesus said he was or what he did, names those things Jesus and Christ and God to ordain a focus on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism. 

And I’m drawn to that cultural Christmas—the flash and buzz of it as I scurried around trying to make sure I had an expensive enough present for nieces, nephews, daughter, sons, and spouse. 

           Sometimes, even outside Christianity, there are echoes of doing things a different way.  Maybe you’ve heard of one of those echoes.

 

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?^[3]

 

Did it?  Does it?  Do the boring and mundane values of gratitude, mutual healing, care, the sharing of bread, love for God’s good earth, kindness, hospitality, and non-violence mean a little bit more –even when we might have to push our kids to make the video just to say another boring thank you?

           The pandemic is a portal.  It not only has told us who we are but given us permission to imagine a different way of doing things, another world.  I was reminded this past week how different that world might be when I read this short and simple message from faith leader, Carlos A. Rodriguez, that reminded me of values that were about my family, my wider community, and who we are to be in this moment in time, praying for a new kosmos.  Rodriguez wrote: 

 

Someone is alive this week because you wore a mask last month.

Someone is healthy today because you followed the guidelines and kept your distance.

Someone is not hospitalized right now because you got boosted already.

Thank you for your kindness!

Keep loving.

 

            I pray, dear friends, that your Christmas is one filled with the values of a kosmos that means a little bit more.  We were born into a Domination System as Christ was.  God, in Christ, especially during this season, calls us to imagine a whole new way of doing things.  May we all have the courage to fight for it.  Amen. 

---

^[1] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca. 

^[2] John 18:36

^[3] Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  (New York:  Random House, 1957). 

Sermon for Year B, Reign of Christ Sunday, November 22, 2015

B Reign of Christ BFC 2015

November 22, 2015

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; John 18:33-37

            As those of you who raise children know, once a child likes a book, a recording, or a movie, the whole family gets to hear it and see it not only once but several times over.  So Tracy reminded our family on Facebook this past week of all the long trips in the car when Sophia would request Neil Gaiman’s “Coraline.”  As the first CD was inserted, the rest of us would pull our coats up over our ears as Neil Gaiman quoted that wonderful line from G.K. Chesterton which applies to fairy tale and Bible alike, “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”  At least, it was a wonderful line until I heard it on, I kid you not, twenty straight car trips. 

At every sitting you, as a parent, hear, “Want to listen to that again, Dad?  Want to watch that movie again, Dad?”  Of course, sweetie.  So what our daughter has seen or heard over and over again, the whole family has seen and heard over and over again. 

          As I have related in a previous sermon, one of the movies I still find enjoyable to watch is Toy Story.  For those of you who have never seen Toy Story, the movie is about a community of toys owned by a little boy named Andy.  Whenever humans are absent, much as we might suspect, the toys come to life and fulfill specific functions within their toy “world.”  And again, some of my favorite lines in the movie are delivered by the big, green, plastic dinosaur named “Rex,” short for Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Representing the most fearsome of all dinosaurs, this toy Rex is a rather neurotic fellow who can’t seem to find a bark or bite to go along with his T-Rex reputation.

          I think Rex’s two best lines in Toy Story are:  “I don’t like confrontations!” and “Great!  Now I have guilt!”

          These lines sound very reminiscent of my life lived as the oldest of four children, feeling like I had failed my parents whenever I was not the perfect child—which happened every day.  Maybe that is why I like Rex so much.  At one time in my life, I identified strongly with trying to please people so much that I avoided all conflict.  I also grew up with tremendous guilt if I believed I was responsible for anyone feeling bad.  If not within ourselves or within our history, we probably all know someone like Rex.

          Tracy suggested that is why the writers of Toy Story made the neurotic Rex a dinosaur.  Those creatures and communities which spend their time trying to avoid conflict, confrontation, and guilt, well, they end up extinct. 

          In serving local churches for close to twenty-five years now, these lines also sound like life lived in many churches.  We think we are doing well and healthy if there is no conflict, confrontation, or guilt.  We absolutely hate to make a decision that would make someone feel bad.  In fact, many of the local churches I have served have gone out of their way to be unhealthy so that they could avoid that conflict, confrontation, or guilt.  We allow good, solid, and healthy ideas and programs to be hijacked so that one person or a small group of people will not feel bad.

          In contrast, good fairy tales have necessary conflict to reveal goodness and strength of character.  The story does not start out with “And they lived happily ever after” because then we would not be entreated to read the story over and over and over again. 

So too the whole of each gospel seems to be about conflict.  The central conflict in the book of Daniel and the gospel of John is set before us in the Scripture lessons for today.  Each Scripture lesson represents the clash of two worlds.  In Daniel, it is the clash between empires and their sovereigns over and against the Ancient of Days and the Human One. 

In the gospel of John, in first century Rome, Pontius Pilate, a sub-governor of Judea was constantly in conflict with the Jewish people.  Pilate survived as long as he did because he took care of those conflicts as quickly as possible.  He ruled with an iron fist—crushing rebellions without mercy, executing anyone or any movement that exhibited the least bit of resistance to Roman rule.  In contrast to how the gospels portray Pilate, the historians Philo and Josephus wrote of Pilate’s gratuitous cruelty and brutal way of handling even unarmed crowds.[1]

          The author of John’s gospel has the conversation between Jesus and Pilate go the way of all conversations found within its pages.  Nicodemus, the woman at the well, and now Pilate engage Jesus with an assumption that the world is as it is because God has ordained it to be so.  Jesus has a different assumption.  Jesus engages their world, puts his world in direct conflict with theirs, and seeks transformation of their world.

          “My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus is often translated as saying in this Scripture from John today.  Traditionally, we have read such Scripture passages as Jesus speaking about some otherworldly, spiritual plane.  “My kingdom is not from this earthly world,” is how we often hear this Scripture interpreted.

          Throughout the gospel of John, the Greek word kosmos has been often translated as “world.”  Within its context, however, the Greek word kosmos is probably better translated as “system,” or “order,” or “a way we do things around here.”[2]

          Using this definition, Jesus is saying, “My kingdom is distinct from this system, from this order, from this way of doing things.”  Pilate participated in, was beholden to, and commanded a world or system of domination.  Who knows whether Pilate even recognized any other ways of doing things besides his own?  Maybe he thought that was the way the world turned.  Brute and raw force against brute and raw force; Pilate, as the ambassador of the State, keeping peace against the insurgents by quashing rebellion; Rome, establishing law and order, over and against the terrorists, the barbarians, and the heathens.  Would Pilate even understand Jesus’s world or way of doing things, rooted in mutuality and healing, compassion and mercy?

          “My world is not your world, Pilate.  My system is not your system.”  This Scripture is not Jesus being anti- or other-worldly.  Rather, Jesus is being anti-establishment.[3]

          It is those historical people within the United Church of Christ, those Congregationalists during the 19^th Century who would not allow one to be a part of their communion if that person owned slaves.  The Fugitive Slave Law declared that anyone who aided or abetted runaway slaves would be breaking federal law and fined and/or imprisoned.  Congregationalists built “Safe Houses” to hide runaway slaves, believing the gospel called them to do things in a different way.    Their system, their way of doing things was not the way of the domination system which surrounded them.  It is those Evangelical Germans who recognized that German immigrants and refugees did not have health care when they came to this “new world” and formed a Deaconess movement to provide health care and healing for those without resource.  Their system, their way of doing things, did not correspond with a too often brutal existence.  It is those Confessing Church Christians in Germany who would hide and not surrender their Jewish neighbors seeking refuge and safe haven.  Their system, their way of doing things, did not correspond with the ethnocentrism, violence, and death of Nazi Germany.  It is churches like this one who found a way to surround and support refugees from Hungary like Vilma Reich who now speaks with delight about what great neighbors she has in the gay couple just across the street.  Their system, their way of doing things was not the way of the domination system which surrounded them.  By their very lives, our faith ancestors proclaimed a different world. 

          In the same manner, Daniel does not believe what it means to be “human” corresponds with the unbridled power, arrogance, and violence of empire.  He does small, everyday practices that show he does not participate in that world.  His everyday kosher practice, as a vegetarian, defines him as different as empire.  And every day, three times a day, Daniel turns his face toward Jerusalem and prays.  That is why Daniel is thrown in the lion’s den, because Daniel’s prayers represent a loyalty and source of power not found in the Babylonian Empire and its king

Jesus does not recognize Pilate’s way of doing things as authoritative for his life.  Jesus comes from a different world . . . a different system.  Every day he does small practices of building community by sharing bread, tending to the ill and infirm, and enjoining others to see “their neighbor” as bigger and broader than many of his listeners could imagine.  Every day the early church practiced a radical hospitality and community practice to welcome the stranger, share what they had in common, and blur lines of ethnicity to say that they were not one and the same as the domination system surrounding them.

          The good news of this passage is that the domination system which surrounds us is not the way of doing things in God’s kingdom.  So if there are ways the system, as it runs presently, runs and grinds against us, then maybe we need a new system.  If there are ways the system devalues life, fails to include us into community, and does not allow rest for us, maybe we need a new system.  If there are ways the system tells us we will never measure up, we are good for nothing, or we really don’t matter, maybe we need a new system.   If there are ways the system tells us that we should be afraid of people who are not like us, then we need a new system.

          The call of this Scripture passage is for us to engage the world, or the system as it is, with the love and compassion of God, to transform systems and structures so that they may be life-giving, community building, and Sabbath taking.  The call of this Scripture passage is for us to engage the world, or the system as it is, so that we will know there is enough grace to hold us, that we are precious and cherished by God, and that all of us hold some gift that makes us the Body of Christ entire.

          Now I need to be honest in sharing . . .  that if we don’t like confrontations, or seek to avoid conflict, or are preoccupied with our own guilt, this transformation will not take place.  Too often we have been taught or find ourselves teaching that everybody is supposed to be “nice.”  Conflict and confrontation have historically been understood as a manifestation of original sin.[4]  So we will not only have to come into conflict with the powers and principalities of our day (the Pilates of our time), but we will also have to begin seeing conflict as a healthy part of our life lived together as a community of faith.  As the conflict of worlds and systems did in Jesus’s conversations with Nicodemus and the woman at the well in John’s gospel, so we embrace conflict and confrontation as healthy, we then hold out the possibility for transformation.  Nicodemus and the woman at the well begin with  a conflict of worlds and transform to become part of Jesus’ movement.

          In Walter Wink’s book, Engaging the Powers, he writes, “I consider conflict to be an inevitable consequence of human freedom, and thus would expect it even in the reign of God.  Conflict is thus not an expression of human sin, but of the inevitable rub between a variety of interpretations of good.”[5]  And I believe that variety of interpretations holds out the possibility we all might be transformed by one another.

          The only way, however, we will be able to engage the world, the systems and the structures as they are, and continue in that struggle, is if we have at least one foot in that different world or system.  We must, as Ghandi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world.  For if we are that change, if we live in that alternative system, we have the opportunity to receive the goodness and the life that way of being offers.  We will need that goodness, that bread from heaven, to walk in the wilderness of the way the world is.  We will need everyday practices, however small they are, that remind us we are not part of a domination system.

          I also believe very strongly that the strength we need to be in conflict, to confront the world as it is, to challenge the system and rage against the machine, requires others to walk with us.  That is why we are all here.  Church is the radical notion that we can transform the world because others accompany us in mutual love and support.

          So I exhort you, dear sisters and brothers, to not just become another cog in the machine, a part of the system.  The call is before us to engage the world as it is, to confront the evil which lashes out seeking domination, and, as we do so, to begin walking in another world.  The Bible is often true not because it tells us that evil systems and structures exist in the world.  The Bible is true because it tells us that evil systems and structures can be overcome—by a community of people who are not afraid of engaging the ensuing conflict, have values in another way of being, practice daily stepping outside the domination system, and partner with God to transform the world. 

Evil systems, like dragons, can be beaten.  Let us begin.

People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast
Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There's room for all
among the loved the most     

Amen. 

---

[1]http://www.opendoormcc.org/community/study_groups_files/this_is_fresh_air_john_dominic_crossan.pdf.

[2] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers:  Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 51-59.

[3] John H. Elliott, 1 Peter:  Estrangement and Community (Chicago:  Franciscan Herald Press, 1979), p. 52, as quoted in Wink, Engaging, p. 52.

[4] George Weigel, Tranquillitas Ordinis (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 329, as referenced in Wink, Engaging, p. 385, n. 25.

[5] Wink, Engaging, p. 385, n. 25.

Part 2, A Conversation: The Difference Between Being Prophetic and an Ass

Ok, so I want to make sure I encourage prophets as well as differentiate between what it means to be a prophet and an ass.  I want to reiterate.  Prophets are regularly accused of being asses.  They push on what we might call "civilized" recognizing that what some people call "civilization" is actually violence institutionalized.   So they end up being the "troublers of Israel", the makers of necessary conflict, and the disrupters of normalized injustice.  

I also experience prophets as people who have a little twinkle in their eye about trouble-making.  It's not that they necessarily enjoy the discomfort or disruption they cause; it is more that they are once again amused that the principalities and powers react so predictably.  Prophets know that the weird and broad expanse love of God is often befuddling to the Domination System.  

Sometimes, however, it is not about the love and justice of God.  It's about winning and leaving "your opponent" licking their wounds in the dust.  Intentional shaming is done for one reason and one reason alone:  to show a certain superiority.  Prophets know it is important to win, but victories where the poor are not protected, the vulnerable are not saved, and justice and peace are not established are hollow.  

That is why "wins" can leave the ass jubilant and the prophet depressed.  For the ass is not necessarily in it for the long haul, and the prophet knows that a momentary victory that does not bring about transformation can lead to incredible suffering and death.  The Domination System is snubbed or shamed by some person or movement that revels in a temporary win.  The Domination System shows up with greater numbers, with greater force, and with greater violence to make it clear who is in charge.  The prophet takes evil very seriously.

Based on conjecture by some Jesus scholars, I think that may be the very reason for Jesus turning to non-violence.   Time after time, Jewish people rebelled or thumbed their nose at Rome.  Time after time, Rome showed up with greater numbers, greater force, and employed greater violence.  Just before Jesus' birth, Herod the

Great died and in the power vacuum created, Jewish rebellion broke out in Galilee.  Coming from the north, the Roman general Quinctilius Varus moved in with three Roman legions to squash Jewish resistance.  Roman legions raped and pillaged, pillaged and raped.  Roman legions obliterated two Jewish resistance cities, Emmaus and Sepphoris.  Sepphoris was within eyesight of a small, rural village that was certainly raped and pillaged as well--Nazareth.  

Non-violent movements and resistance pre-dating Jesus actually gained traction without such bloodletting.  Certainly being told what happened to Sepphoris and Emmaus and also being witness to the results of Jewish non-violent actions, Jesus had to know that temporary military victories accomplished far less than non-violent actions.  Or, at least, he may have hoped that non-violent confrontation held open the possibility for transformation.

I do not want you to think I am naive.  Certainly, the Civil Rights Struggle was and is filled with moments when non-violent actions led to the same response from the Domination System.  Non-violent confrontation holds open the possibility for transformation in a way that violence, particularly violent victories, do not.  Non-violent confrontation is the ultimate prophetic action done to hold open the possibility for transformation.  

I am going to brag a bit.  My youngest son often talks about how impractical it is to win an argument if it does not result in transformation.  "What purpose does it serve?" he will ask.  This comes from a young man who gloated quite a bit in high school about the verbal sparring he would do with his classmates.  He would come home and gloat quite a bit about having left someone in the dust with his verbal skill (He was very accomplished in the Extemporaneous Speaker category on Speech Team.).  

There was one day, however, when he recognized that he would be sacrificing a friendship and perhaps a friend if he simply "won" an argument.  He was strongly debating with a Catholic female friend on the abortion issue.  His friend is strongly pro-life.  He is strongly pro-choice.  For some reason, he became aware that his friend might need grace and love if she were ever in the predicament of deciding for an abortion in the near future.  It is not that it changed his view.  It changed how he expressed his view to his friend.  In that moment, I think my youngest son began developing his skills as a prophet and leaving behind his gloating behavior as an "ass." 

Ok, so I'm a proud dad, but will fully admit that he and I both have those "ass" skills flowing within us.  Some of it is that I think prophets have a default "snark" mode within them.  It goes with that twinkle in the eye.  Snark and twinkle are often a part of non-violent confrontation against the Domination System.  They unseat the Domination System with satire.  And the "ass"/satire line is one that is permeable, one of those Celtic thin places.

That is the second difference between what it means to be a prophet and an ass.  2.  The ass is in it to win it.  The prophet is in it for transformation.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Easter, April 12, 2015

B Easter 2 BFC 2015

John 20:19-31

April 12, 2015

American novelist and writer, Anne Lamott, is a prolific Facebook poster who turned 61 years old this past week.  In reflecting back on how she got from 47 to 61, she wrote down every single things she knows as of today.  In keeping with Lamott’s style, much of her wisdom seems hard won, spoken with a sense of humor, and laced with the language of faith.  Here are some of the things Anne Lamott knows of today: 

o   Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

o   There is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you are waiting for an organ.  You can’t buy, achieve, or date it.  This is the most horrible truth.

o   Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together.  They are much more like you than you would believe.  So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.  Also, you can’t save, fix, or rescue any of them, or get any of them sober.  But radical self-care is quantum, and radiates out into the atmosphere, like a little fresh air.  It is a huge gift to the world.  When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” smile obliquely, like Mona Lisa, and make each of you a nice cup of tea.

o   Faith: Paul Tillich said the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. If I could say one thing to our little Tea Party friends, it would be this. Fundamentalism, in all its forms, is 90% of the reason the world is so terrifying. 3% is the existence of snakes.

o   Jesus; Jesus would have even loved horrible, mealy-mouth self-obsessed you, as if you were the only person on earth. But He would hope that you would perhaps pull yourself together just the tiniest, tiniest bit--maybe have a little something to eat, and a nap.

In these words of Anne Lamott, we hear beautifully poetic ways of knowing that are not about certainties and moralisms but a quality of life that is rich and full and grace-filled.  The character and content of Jesus is non-judgmental and an offer for Sabbath rest in the midst of a world that would have us working 24/7.   

o   Have a little something to eat, and a nap. 

o   We all find ourselves able to work again after we have been unplugged for a few minutes. 

          In the same way, the resurrection appearance we have from the Gospel of John this morning is more about affirming a way of life than it is about asserting God’s power of life over death or Christ’s authority over the grave.  In verses 30 and 31, there is a direct address to you, the reader, “But these things (“these things” referencing the resurrection appearances of Jesus in the Gospel of John) are written so that you may believe . . . .  Now translating this as “believe” is what we have heard forever and a day as the most important thing with Jesus.   For too long we have translated the Greek into the word “believe” as a way of saying that what is important is our opinion about Jesus. 

          But two things.  First, the Greek word for “believe” is better translated as “to be loyal to.”  In a world where John’s community, in the second and third century, is being heavily persecuted by the Roman Emperor, this is not some otherworldly, ethereal ask for intellectual belief.  This is the author of John relating resurrection appearances so that his community might have loyalty to a way of life demonstrated by Jesus over and against loyalty to a way of life sanctioned by Caesar.[1]  The stakes are high.  In the midst of tremendous persecution, the author of the Gospel of John is trying to communicate courage to communities so that they might keep on, keeping on with an alternative lifestyle that runs counter to the principalities and powers.  The reader is being asked to make their everyday, ordinary life mean something. 

          Secondly, in this context, the resurrection appearance is being given to you, the reader, so that we might continue to have loyalty to, might continue to have life.  Using the traditional translation as “belief”, the passage before us says, “through believing, you might have life in his name.”  Whatever the translation, it is important that we know “belief” as not the be all, end all of the passage.  Even if we would translate loyalty as belief, the author tells us that we are to know that through believing we might have life in Christ’s name.[2]  Life in Christ’s name is what matters.

          Such stories pointedly ask then what is the content and character of life as defined by Jesus.  Within these stories is a certain statement that life in Jesus’ name is something different, set apart from the wider cultural narrative about life.  As Christians, I think that is the 64 million dollar question we have to ask ourselves about our everyday, ordinary lives.  How is a life lived under the aegis of Jesus’ name all that different from a life sponsored by Caesar? 

          The Gospel of John offers an interesting paradox as to how we are to know Jesus.  One writer in the Gospel of John, in keeping with the Jewish story of the Exodus, says that we know, believe, have faith in, have reason to give loyalty to Jesus through the signs and wonders he does.   Just as Jews were to know, believe, have faith in, have reason to give loyalty to God in the many signs and wonders did in liberating them from Egypt, so Jesus, as the God-revealer, merited the same devotion for his many signs and wonders.  At the same time, there is another writer in the Gospel of John who basically says, “Do you really need all the signs and wonders to know, believe, have faith in, give your loyalty to life in the name of Jesus?  That is what we see in the story of doubting Thomas.  The disciples, with Thomas away, have an experience of the Resurrected Christ.  Thomas seems to need the signs and wonders.

          As I shared in last week’s Easter Sunday sermon, resurrection was a common occurrence in 1^st Century Rome.  Particularly for the Jewish people, proclaiming that someone was resurrected was a way of saying that a just and righteous Jew had suffered and died in an unjust world.  So proclaiming resurrection was a way of proclaiming that a person’s life, teaching, and ministry were just and righteous in the ordinary, everyday world. 

          Hear in the story of “doubting Thomas” the paradox of two traditions, three ways of knowing, all included in Scripture to suggest that there is more than one way to know Jesus.  Some of us need the signs and wonders.  Others, like Thomas, need the empirical evidence for the signs and wonders.  But there are still others who, for whatever reason the Scripture suggests, are blessed to know Jesus without the signs and wonders or the empirical evidence.  “Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Do you have loyalty to me because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to have loyalty to me.’”

          Now in the Gospel of John, the program and message of Jesus is known by how he confronts the Domination System, reveals the saving power of God through signs and wonders, and, in the end, how he is culturally different from the Domination System by being on his knees washing the disciples’ feet.  But the Scripture passage before us today makes it clear that there is more than one way to know the content and character of Jesus. 

That seems to fly in the face of how Christianity is presented today.  Today it would seem that the only way you can know Jesus and honor his name is by believing in him and his signs and wonders.  Showing loyalty to the program and practice of Jesus in an everyday, ordinary way seems to run counter to the Christianity that demands we believe in the signs and wonders.  And I don’t want to totally dismiss the signs and wonders.  New Testament scholars, Richard Rohrbaugh and Bruce Malina make it clear that ecstatic experiences or alternate states of consciousness, like ones experienced by the disciples in Jesus’ resurrection appearances are commonly accepted in 90% of the world.  Rohrbaugh and Malina point out that people in the U.S. who reference these experiences as irrational are in a very small minority.  And as long as I have been a local church pastor, though I have not personally had such an experience, some of the most lucid, healthy parishioners have related an experience they have had with the presence of a deceased relative.

All of this is to say that Scripture acknowledges multiple ways of knowing, the paradox of knowing through signs and wonders, but also through empirical evidence or sensory experience, as Thomas does, or through just knowing, intuiting.  Faith knowing allows for all of these ways and probably several more.  Sometimes, we, as Christians, do not show ourselves to be all that faithful when we insist that others come to know as we have known. 

I began this message with talking about the things that novelist and prolific Facebook writer, Anne Lamott absolutely knew as she turned 61 this week.  I end with another one of those things she absolutely knows. 

o   All truth is a paradox. Life is a precious unfathomably beautiful gift; and it is impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It has been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It is so hard and weird that we wonder if we are being punked. And it filled with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.

o   All truth is a paradox. Grief, friends, time and tears will heal you. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate you and the ground on which you walk. The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know.

I agree with Lamott in the sense that for people of faith the project with Jesus is often not

knowing with absolute certainty, but with a sense of wonder, taking off our shoes to gaze at the world and know that we are standing on holy ground.  Whether we gaze at the night sky and see the signs and wonders of the Northern Lights, with our hands touch the deep pain and grief of another, do the hard work of curiosity and intellectual investigation through our brains, or simply intuiting or know down deep in our bones, they are all legitimate ways to give our loyalty to a life lived in the risen Christ. 

          It may be a paradox to know there are so many different paths.  But as Anne Lamott reminds us, truth is often found in the paradox.  In the end, it is about having the courage to give your heart to life in Christ.  Amen.

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[1] Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 279-286.

[2] Ibid.