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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| An Inconvenient Truth Luke 24: 1-18 April 8: 2007 Easter A guy was coming home late one night from the pub and decided to take a short cut through the cemetery. It was dark and he had had a couple of pints so he didn’t notice the open grave and fell in. He jumped and clawed and struggled to get out but it was to no avail so he just hunkered down in the corner waiting till the next morning for someone to come by and help him out. An hour or so later another man comes on the same short cut and falls into the same grave. He repeats the struggling and clawing of the first man with the same results. All the while the first man is watching from the corner where he is crouched unnoticed by the second man. Finally when the second man has finished his futile attempts at escape, the first man comes up behind him, lays his hand on the man’s shoulder and says in a soft voice, “You can’t get out of here.” But he did! It’s an old story but I couldn’t pass it up, because it illustrates perfectly one of the principle paradigms of the world in which we live; “Once you are in the grave, you can’t get out.” Everybody knows that. But if one guy did, even if it was only one out of the billions who have lived and died on this earth, then it calls into question the whole paradigm. As Peter O’Toole once said in a movie, “In a world where a carpenter can be raised from the dead, anything can happen.” That’s a paradigm shift. It means that the colloquialism about the two certainties being death and taxes has to be rethought – maybe it’s just taxes. I’ve used that word, “paradigm” several times so perhaps I should clarify its meaning. A paradigm is the lens through which one views the world. In the bulletin there is a little brain teaser. If you had trouble answering it, it’s because of your paradigm. If you assume that by, “one line,” I meant a straight line, you’ll have a problem: or if you assume that the two figures there are Roman numerals. If you had the right paradigm the solution is simple. But, people don’t like their paradigms messed with. In Al Gore’s movie, from which I borrowed the title, the reason the truth is inconvenient is because it requires a new way of looking at the world, and a new way of behaving in it. That’s threatening to people and they always use the same arguments. In the movie, “Amazing Grace,” Wilberforce is trying to convince the British government to do away with slavery. But, they insist, our economy would be ruined; and besides, if we don’t do it the French will. The issues change, the arguments don’t. People naturally resist having their precious paradigms fiddled with even if it is for their own good. Same with the resurrection - even church people. Most churches have taken the amazing truth of the resurrection and relegated its meaning to apply to the after life; when we die we will be resurrected in heaven. But the glory of Easter isn’t just about eternal life; it is about abundant life – in this life. If anyone is in Christ, the scriptures declare, there is a new creation, new birth. Along side the physical miracle of Easter runs a spiritual truth; we can be reborn to new life, in this life. Someone said that a grave is a rut with both ends plugged up. Easter means that you can get out of the rut (or the grave) and go on to new life with new paradigms – Kingdom paradigms. “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” is an affirmation for this life, if you can handle the shock of the paradigm shift. Here’s one that the church hasn’t gotten comfortable with yet, that religion and morality aren’t the same thing. Centuries after Deism fell out of favor as a theological paradigm, we are still a nation of Deists. Many if not most of the founders of our country were Deists. They were people who acknowledged the existence of God but saw him rather like a clock maker. He designed and built the mechanism then wound the spring and sat back to watch it work. The Deists saw no purpose in prayer or church attendance because God did not intervene in worldly affairs after he set them in motion. Most of our politicians are Deists; they believe in God but think it is their responsibility to keep the mechanism running. John Paine, one of the most eloquent of the Deists of the eighteenth century said this, “My religion is to do good.” And two and a half centuries later that is still what religion is about for most people, morality, doing good. The problem is, of course, that we all know people who are good and moral and generous and even self-sacrificing, who aren’t religious. They might believe in God but see no point in worship or prayer; their religion is to do good. And we don’t make much effort at sharing the good news because we agree with the paradigm – religion is primarily about living a good life, doing good to others and making the world a better place, while God is off doing his omnipotent thing. That is another of the paradigms that gets exploded by the Easter miracle. God isn’t disengaged, God is personal – willing to take on human form, suffer and die (that’s pretty personal) then Christ is resurrected as a promise to the ones who will claim the miracle by faith, that the intimacy with God is there to define and direct life, this life. Religion isn’t about morality; it’s about relationship – life altering relationship. Two men were walking on the road when a third one joined them. It couldn’t be any more personal. And in that encounter on the road their journeys were turned around literally and figuratively. They had a major paradigm shift. In a world where a carpenter could be raised from the dead, anything could happen. Those who claim and internalize that great truth will find that they are a new creation born out of intimate relationship with the God who brought again Jesus Christ from the dead. Later on in this story, Thomas will make a declaration based on an old paradigm, “seeing is believing.” He said, “I won’t believe until I see the nail prints in his hands.” But Jesus had already rendered that paradigm obsolete and replaced it with this one, “Believing is seeing.” The only ones who experienced the resurrection and saw the resurrected Christ were the believers. Last week the daughter of one of our members was involved in an accident on the freeway. Her two children were in the car with her. Nobody was injured but it was pretty scary. When the car finally came to stop, the eldest of the children was surprisingly calm. She explained that while the car was spinning out of control she had seen an angel. She described what it looked like. Probably all of us have been saved by guardian angels but only the pure believers can actually see them: especially children – that’s before we train that childlike faith out of them and convince them that what we call reality is the only reality. There is another paradigm exploded by the resurrection of Christ. The more you believe the more you will be able to see. Easter is for believers: that’s why it’s okay that some people treat Easter as a simple celebration of spring: eggs, bunnies and new clothes. Actually the name, “Easter” is borrowed from a pagan rite of spring and fertility. Eastre was the goddess of spring worshiped by pagan Anglo-Saxons through her earthly representative, the rabbit – thus we get the Easter bunny. So, for the world outside the community of faith, that’s okay; they won’t be able to see it anyhow. They will look at the resurrection through their old paradigm and smile at its ridiculousness. But when the resurrection becomes the new paradigm through which we view the world – eyes are opened. At the end of the movie John Newton is blind and says to his friend, Wilberforce, “I’m blind but now I see.” For us who believe, today isn’t a festival of spring, it’s resurrection Sunday, and our commission is to do as the men on the Emmaus road; turn around, embrace the paradigm shift, go into the city and tell anyone who will listen what we have seen with our newly opened eyes. It’s an inconvenient truth we share because it calls everything else into question. In a world where a carpenter can be raised from the dead, anything can happen – anything – even intimate relationship with the God of the universe, the God of love, the God of life, the God for whom all things are possible. As always you can get a DVD of this sermon. Contact the church office.
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