turn, turn, turn

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth OAMARU

and St Alban’s, Kurow

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT (February 26^th) 2023

Take a u-turn, bro

 

 READINGS:

 

Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7

Psalm 32

Romans 5: 12-19

Matthew 4: 1-11

 

Firstly, let’s get over talking reptiles and tall mountains from which human beings can see the entire face of a globe. That's got to be a pretty tall mountain, and it never has, never will, never could exist. I failed physics at school, but even I can get that.

One of the greatest tragedies to befall Christianity, in some ways more devastating than the great waves of persecution that Christianity has experienced ever since the first Easter, has been the invention of fundamentalism. Literalist, or fundamentalist reading of the scriptures of Christianity was a late 19th century invention that was set in concrete in the first two decades of the 20th century. It has done irreparable damage.

If I had a job as the devil for a day, I would invent fundamentalism. It strips our texts of meaning, pushes Christian faith beyond the boundaries of intelligence in a bad way, and hamstrings the gospel.

I add the rider “in a bad way” because we must also admit that there are aspects of our faith that are beyond human intelligence. That in fact is not saying an awful lot. There are aspects of science that are beyond human intelligence even today. I suspect there always will be, I suspect there always must be, otherwise human beings will have committed the final unforgivable sin of turning themselves into gods.

I am no scientist. I not only failed physics, but I only scraped through general science at school certificate level. But when I hear on the news that scientists have discovered that the sources of energy expanding the universe since The Big Bang are moving more rapidly than scientists think they should, then I respond with a resounding “meh.” There is so much we do not, cannot know or understand. I can live with that.

The founders of fundamentalism were terrified that scientific exploration and, alongside it, intelligent interpretation of texts would destroy belief in such fundamental doctrines as the resurrection. I have news for them. Resurrection, and most especially the unique moment of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from a tomb in the Roman province of Palestine, is a bit like the speed of the universe, or for that matter the intricacy of the human brain or a single cell: it is a matter beyond our human limitation.

I can live with that, too.

So, terrified as they were by intelligent critical reading, a small group of American Protestants invented fundamentalism and in doing so did immeasurable damage to the credibility of Jewish and Christian and perhaps other faiths.

So instead of talking snakes, let’s think about wet paint. Am I the only human being who has touched the paint to see whether the sign is telling the truth? Or the infamous “keep off the grass” signs that are so much a part of British city life. Am I the only person who has resented, if not rebelled against a sign that may in fact be there for good reason?

Forget the snake, but recall what the story tells us. Most of us have a sneaking capacity to do the wrong thing, if only occasionally.

Forget the pinnacle of the temple, or the Very High Mountain, too. As we read through the holy texts we can learn what to read as symbolic, what to read as history – though with the proviso that history was very different in the ancient world to what history is today. Geography, genealogy … we need to learn to dialogue with one another and with the great and credible scholars, too. We need to interact with the pages of those who interpret ancient texts, with a lifetime of their scholarly effort.

We might for example notice that the Satan who interacts with Jesus in our quite surreal scene today is constantly telling him to play act, to turn the relationship with the author of creation into a self-serving gimmick. We don't need to look far to find distorters of Christianity who do just that today, filling the airwaves and the plush auditoriums of so-called churches with entertainment and false hope.

What then is our task? Few of us will spend a lifetime studying 1000, 2000, 3000 year old texts in ancient languages. As we journey through the texts we will find that they challenge us to check the authenticity of our own lives. We will, surprise, surprise, fall short of perfection, but are we striving to put and keep our lives in order? What in my life is a sham? What in my life is shameful? What in my life is opulence or greed, what in my life damages or destroys the lives of others?

And slowly with the help of the God who comes to us in the humble Carpenter of Nazareth, the one we call Lord in our prayers and hymns, slowly with his help we are called, stumblingly, imperfectly, to, as the Ash Wednesday service puts it, “turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.”

 

Amen.