on wasps of faith

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT

17^th February 2008

Readings:      

Gen. 12.1-4a

Ps. 121

Rom. 4.1-5, 13-17

John 3.1-17

If we compare John with the synoptics Matthew, Mark and Luke we find a different method of story telling. Here we find a developed interior monologue that takes us into the heart and inner mind of Jesus but dumbs down the other characters: outworking of he must increase I must decrease of John the Baptist (Jn. 3.30).

Nicodemus enters into a long protracted discourse with Jesus – and like most of his interlocutors does not come out of it appearing to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the passage is not about Nicodemus – except in so far as Nicodemus will exemplify the story, himself entering into a journey of ego-decrease and pneuma-rebirth. Paul is adamant that this is precisely the journey of faith: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. The image may seem macabre, but the invitation is in a sense to become like one of the unfortunate caterpillars that are eaten from the inside out by parasitic wasps, their body taken over by the wasp larvae. So too must we allow ourselves to be taken over by Christ.

By the end of our story Nicodemus inhabits a grey area. He doesn’t altogether get it, but he is on the way. I remember some conspicuous moments in my own journey into faith – the journey from atheist to agnostic, from agnostic to theist, and from theist to Christian believer. For me they were distinct and identifiable moments, but this will not always be the case – and in any case my journey, like that of Nicodemus, has been a slow and not always right-directioned stumble into faith.

Nicodemus stumbles over the whole question of rebirth – doing so in the story so we can get a better understanding of Jesus’ terminology. This is a complex point. The Greek words gennhqh~| a)/nwqen (born again / from above): they have become a hallmark of certain wings of Christianity, and have been badly abused by those wings. Yes they refer to a new start – and to new start after new start. They refer to an event and to a process. This is a conversation between minds fixed on God – the minds of the theologians Jesus and Nicodemus – and we belittle the potential of these profound words if we turn them into no more than a revivalist slogan. Yes: the wasps of faith must infiltrate your body more and more and more until it is not you, but Christ, who is the totality of your existence, says Jesus.

In the end Nicodemus is allowed to become proof of the Jesus pudding. He who comes fearfully at night becomes he who stands up for Jesus – as the old hymn used to invite us to do – in the Temple, reminding the antagonistic community that its own standards of decency demand that Jesus be treated fairly. Nicodemus is mocked by his audience (Jn. 7.50), but the wasps of faith are slowly but surely taking him over, and he is as it were being born again, being born from above. The last time we see him the process is complete: he gets it, over-killing in the anointing of the body of Jesus, pouring his resources out in love and adoration. The wasps of faith have him, and he is as we are called to be: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

The clumsy start has led to adoration, and there the journey begins and ends and begins and ends again and again and again.

TLBWY

on backing into power poles

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, WHANGAREI

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

10^th February 2008

Readings:    

Gen. 2.15-17, 3.1-7

Ps. 32 
Rom. 5.12-19

Mt. 4.1-11

We do violence to Matthew’s intentions if we dwell too much on the actualities of this poetic tale. We need only ask where the Satan of the tale would find a high enough mountain to see ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour’ to know that we are being invited here to a poetic rendition of the temptations faced by Jesus, and, to a lesser degree, by every human being. All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, said Lord Acton, a little over a century ago. The New Testament writers knew that too: so they tell us a story of the one who remained and remains uncorrupted. Few of us will ever know much power in our lives, but tragic stories of abuse within the church and other communities remind us that Lord Acton’s and Paul’s and Matthew’s and the author of Genesis’ insights into human corruptibility are timeless. Given the chance, we just might do the wrong thing, exploit others, advance our own ends at the cost of the needs of those around us.

In fact we probably need to pause for a moment on the whole question of Satan. The Hebrew scriptures mention Satan, at least by that name in only fourteen times, spread across three books, 1 Chronicles, Job, and Zechariah, but mainly in Job. In each case he does not resemble the underworld figure who becomes known to us in the Christian scriptures and subsequent writings, the opponent of God, seeking to capture the unsuspecting and unprepared, to lure them from salvation to the depths of Hell. We need to be careful in Christian preaching: so much of what is said in churches seems to suggest that God is trapped in an even struggle with an equal being, a struggle we hope God will win, but still …

The temptation story, whether it be of the supremest being, or of you or me, is a story of proportions. I am unlikely to take seriously a temptation to possess the nations of the world, but I could presumably be tempted to turn faith into entertainment, to cheat on Anne and on my family by betraying my marriage vows, to slip out of a shop without paying: these are the temptations of the smaller players. Should I tell the tax man everything? Should I hand that purse into the police station? Should I run the gauntlet of breathalyzers after one drink too many? These are the smaller temptations experienced in my smaller life, yet I no more nor less than the president of the USA, need the help of God to stay on the right side of the equation. We remember also the temptations of scientists to, for example, play God: it is heartening to know that those scientists who have been championing the creation of embryos in the name of medical research and especially cell regeneration are finding that their method is being squeezed out of the medical equation by rising costs and by the better medical performance of less morally tenuous options.

I normally keep whanau out of the tellings of my faith, but perhaps I can tell one story? I was fifteen at the time, and my mother and I were staying in a motor camp in Aramoho, on the Whanganui river banks. One night, in her hurry to get me back to boarding school, she backed into the electric power supply pole for the caravan parks, knocking it out of the ground. For a moment or two she wrestled with her conscience. No one had seen her, after all. But conscience, that delicate flower within us that we can all too easily extinguish, won the day. She fronted up to the manager and told him her sorry tale. ‘Good God!’ he said. He repaired posts knocked over by campers on a weekly basis, but not once in his career had someone bothered to come and tell him they had knocked one down. I was very proud of her that day – even if I didn’t at that stage believe in the peculiar God she believed in!

For most of us the temptations of Jesus are not about empires, but about power supply poles in caravan parks. Nevertheless, it is only by the stirrings of God that we are able to whisper ‘get thee behind me Satan’, and so live lives of which we can be proud all the time.

TLBWY