I'm In the Milk and the Milk's In Me--A Sermon

I’m In the Milk and the Milk’s In Me

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

March 18, 2012

John 17: 1-26 (Scholars’ Version)

The scene is that Jesus is just about to be arrested and he is offering his last words. It is a prayer. After he says this prayer, he marches his disciples across the Kidron valley to a garden where he knows all what will happen. As John writes the story, Jesus is in control even of his own arrest. There is no agony in this prayer.

In the synoptic gospels, Jesus pleads that God take away the cup. Some manuscripts in Luke read that Jesus’ agony was so intense that he sweated blood. This is from Mark:

They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, ‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.’

This is the anguish of the poem, Hamlet, by Boris Paternak that I included in the liturgy:

But the order of acts has been arranged
And the end cannot be forestalled.
I’m alone. All else, sunk to the Pharisee.
To live one’s life is no stroll in the park.

Certainly not.

The rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, does a great job with this scene. Jesus fights with God and finally gives in to God’s overwhelming will.

Not my will, but thine be done.

How do you say those words on stage? With casual indifference? C’est la vie? No. With resignation? Maybe. Defeat? Now you are getting closer. Defiance? “Fine then, kill me, see what I care!” 

Whatever nuance you bring to it, it is agony and doubt. It is a clash of wills, “not mine but thine”. It makes for great drama.

But none of that with John’s Jesus. John’s Jesus is cool, confident, and in control. "I and the Father are one."  The tone of his speech is not the tone of a person who knows he is likely to be tortured and executed. It is the tone of someone going to receive a Nobel Prize.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son my glorify you…”

When he is on trial he has philosophical debates with Pilate over truth and power. On the cross, while dying he arranges his familial affairs. "Take care of my mother", he says to the beloved disciple. He says he is thirsty, not because he is really thirsty, but because he fulfills scripture, then after he has finished his script, he says, “It is finished.” He bows his head politely, and gives up his spirit.

None of the torment of Mark’s Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” 

That would be heresy for John’s Jesus. John’s Jesus is a complete opposite of Mark’s Jesus.

Historical Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan, in his latest book, The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus, Crossan writes:

“The Jesus of Mark dies in human agony. The Jesus of John dies in divine radiance.” P. 233

What does all this mean?

A couple of things.

First, that when we read the gospels, the parables about Jesus, to use Crossan’s designation, we are reading conflicting and divergent views of Jesus. The gospel writers are not of one mind.

Second, these gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are creative fictions or parables in which Jesus is a character in the story and he functions in different ways in each gospel. There are a small minority of scholars who think that the gospels are total fictions and that Jesus is a complete fiction. Most scholars would say there is an historical person in Jesus and we can know some things about him and speculate about other things. Even then, as a whole, the documents we have about him, namely the gospels, are creative parables that serve the interests of the writers.

Third, the gospels have both continuity and discontinuity with the historical person of Jesus. I personally find Dominic Crossan’s Jesus most compelling. This Jesus by telling parables challenged people to participate in God’s advent of distributive justice.

This is the kingdom of God that comes as a mustard seed becomes a weed. As leaven contaminates bread, so does peace through justice contaminate and thwart the dehumanizing violence of empire. Empire hates disorder. Therefore, be disorderly.

Be a weed. Be leaven.

Empire wants a place for everyone and everyone in her place.

Get out of place.

That is the message of Jesus.

By the time we get to the fourth century and the Nicene Creed, we have nearly total discontinuity between the historical Jesus and the Jesus as icon of empire. In the Nicene Creed, Jesus blesses the very system that oppresses. He becomes an otherworldly fantasy. The focus is not on what Jesus did or said, and certainly not about distributive justice, but about him as a gear in the church’s salvation machine. Worship Jesus. Recite the creed. Obey the emperor. You’ll escape hell and get to heaven.

The gospels have begun that journey toward the fourth century, but they have a long way to go and they still retain that message of Jesus, even as it begins to shift and take a different shape. Even in the earliest gospel, Mark, Jesus becomes the good news rather than someone who tells the good news.

However, there is still continuity between the gospels and the historical Jesus, even in John’s gospel. This continuity comes across in John’s use of the word cosmos, which is translated world. A better English rendering might be system as in domination system.

The domination system is that network of dehumanizing forces that include economic exploitation, racism, sexism, heterosexism, militarism, all enforced by legalized violence and legitimated by religious institutions.

“It is the way the world works,” we say.

John’s Jesus says of his disciples:

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” 17:16

The “world” does not mean physical reality, Earth, life, the world we know, as opposed to some spiritual or supernatural existence. That understanding comes later as Jesus becomes co-opted by empire and the institutional church. In the first century, including John’s gospel, the universe is of one piece and what happens here is what is real.

The “world” as John uses the term is the way of domination and injustice. It is an ideology en-fleshed in the various empires and their institutions. Its values include but are not limited to:

Peace by force. Peace by force is reinforced by the myth of redemptive violence. That is the lie that violence saves. If Jesus were told that he needs to thank a soldier for his freedom, Jesus would say, “No thanks. That is the freedom of this world or system. That is not true freedom.” Who should he thank by the way, the soldier who crucified him?

Another value of this world is that the order of the system is more important than those who suffer from the system. We are told that we must do everything to uphold Wall Street because the banks are too big to fail. We must keep our economic system growing even if it means destroying our home and causing suffering to the most in need. Making a primary commitment to housing, food, and healthcare for everyone would hurt the system. The system is more important than people.

You hear this kind of argument in the church. Well, if we allow those people in the church, what will people think? They might not give money to the church. Really? If the survival of your institution depends on pandering to discrimination, then your institution is probably not worth saving. Your church has become “the world.”

When Jesus says in John:

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world…” 17:16

…that isn’t religious talk. That isn’t spiritual talk in the sense that we normally think of religion and spirituality. It is real stuff. He is saying in effect in modern idiom,

“I do not share the values of this system of violence, exclusion, and inequality. The values I share are non-violence, inclusion, and distributive justice.”

That is the continuity between the historical Jesus and John. John’s conflict with his sibling Judaism that he puts on the lips of Jesus is not continuous with the historical Jesus. Obviously, Jesus was a Jew. Listen to this, when Jesus says to Pilate:

“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

Certainly the reference to “the Jews” is discontinuous with the historical Jesus. But what does Jesus mean when he says my kingdom is not from this world? He doesn’t mean that his kingdom is in heaven above or in heaven after or as an internal spiritual escape. His kingdom is right here and now. And it is seen in the way we treat one another.

That way is not returning violence with violence.

That way is valuing people over the system.

That way is hospitality and welcome to everyone.

This is what I think is being said to Pilate:

“If my values and the values of my followers were the same as yours, Pilate, they would be fighting for me with the weapons of violence. But their values and mine are not those values. Let it be clear. That is why you are executing me. The world (your system) cannot handle my values.”

Before Jesus is arrested, John has Jesus offer this prayer.   It isn’t really a prayer, though.   It certainly is not a prayer born of anguish as is the prayer in Mark’s gospel.  

In John it is more of a sermon, a statement.

In this sermon he says something that I take home:

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me….”

It is that verse that got me thinking of the children’s book by Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen. A little boy, Mickey, has a fantastic night journey, kind of surreal, like the Gospel of John, really. Under Mickey’s house is a bakery. The bakers are making breakfast cakes. Mickey almost gets baked in the oven.   He gets out.   The book is scary and funny at the same time. There is a playfulness about it as it addresses real things that children experience. As the bakers in Mickey’s dream are baking the cakes, Mickey falls into the milk and realizes,

“I am in the milk and the milk’s in me! God bless milk and God bless me!”

There is a playfulness and a confidence in the Gospel of John as well. Amidst all of this stuff that I just said about the world, the violence and the injustice that was true in the time of Jesus as it is now, it is also overcome as one participates in life in a different way. Jesus in John is confident as the day is long. He is arrested by 600 troops and they bow down before him. He carries his own cross. He decides when to breathe his last. He announces,

“I and the Father are one. I am in you and I am in them.”
“I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me.”

What I take from this, is that this way of being, this way of following a vision in opposition to the powers of violence and injustice in favor of non-violence and justice is agonizing and frustrating. And it appears that the good loses more than it wins. Says Jesus in Mark:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

But the sheer, brazen, fantastic confidence of John needs to be heard, too. This is the message that the victory has been won. The way of justice, joy, love, and peace has already defeated the world. The world doesn’t know it, yet. But it will. In the meantime, we live those values, confident that we are not alone. Confident also that these values were established before creation itself when the Word was with God and the Word was God.

And that Word is in you.

Amen.

Better Off Without Me--A Sermon

Better Off Without Me

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

March 11th, 2012

Third Sunday in Lent

John 16:1-33 (Scholars' Version)

This section in John’s gospel is called The Farewell Discourse. In John, Jesus takes a long time to say goodbye. Over the course of the Winter we have been working our way through John. John was written about 60-70 years after the death of Jesus, sometime in the 90s. That is a best guess. John appears to be not an historical account of the life of Jesus, but a theological proclamation about Jesus. 

Jesus in John is more of a literary character than an historical person. Jesus is used by John to deal with problems in John’s time.

Jesus begins chapter 16 by saying,

“They are going to throw you out of their congregations. But the time is coming when those who kill you will think they are offering devotion to God. They are going to do these things because they never knew the Father or me. Yet I have told you all this so, when the time comes, you’ll recall that I told you about them.”

This is happening in John’s time. John writes his gospel by having Jesus predict the future which is John’s present. This is not uncommon. The book of Daniel is presented as a prophecy of the future. Yet scholars now realize that it was written in the time of the events it “predicts”.

Who is throwing them out of the congregations and according to John even killing them? It appears to be a sibling community. The Gospel of John is one side of a sibling rivalry between the community that eventually became the church and the community that eventually became modern Judaism. This is the most difficult aspect to read because we know of the legacy of antisemitism that has resulted. We have no idea how much to trust John. We are reading one side of the story.

John’s gospel is addressed to a community that sees itself under siege. Under siege from its sibling and under siege from what it calls the “world”. The gospel is written to comfort and encourage this community to hang in there and to discover peace in Jesus. Jesus is presented in John as the incarnation of the Word, the divine dabar that was with God from the beginning. Jesus knows everything. Nothing happens to him that he is not aware of happening. He knows where he is going. He knows where he is been. He knows what people are thinking. He and the Father are one. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is I Am. He is IT. He is the Man.

He has conquered the “world”. Hang with him and with the community that follows him and you will conquer the world too. One way to encourage a community is to remind the community of its founding story and to tell the community that the troubles it is experiencing have been anticipated by the founders themselves and will be overcome.

The challenge for the community is that there is no more Jesus. He isn’t around. They are alone. They are scattered. They are grieving. The way John handles this is that he has Jesus tell them that they are not alone, but they have the advocate. After Jesus is resurrected and he is alone with the disciples he breathes on them and they receive the spirit, the advocate.

From John’s perspective, they are not alone. They have Spirit with them. While the community might think it would have been easier or better to be with Jesus, Jesus tells them,

“…you’ll be better off if I leave. You see, if I don’t leave, the advocate can’t come to you. But if I go, I’ll send the advocate to you.”

When read in community, the Gospel of John is a constant reminder that the advocate is with them, teaches them truth, gives them encouragement, and will enable them to conquer the world as Jesus conquered the world. It is not really a surprise that John ends up becoming the centerpiece in many respects of the Christian faith.

When you go through a struggle, it is comforting and encouraging to speak to someone who has been there and who was able to make it through and who can offer authentic and honest encouragement and hope from the inside.

The story is that the founder, Jesus, even though executed by the powers, by the world, from John’s perspective conquered the world. Even though the world persecutes and kills you, you still conquer. That is martyrdom talk. That is the gospel from a siege mentality. The New Testament as a whole comes from various communities that see themselves under siege.

When we see today contemporary American Christians who by the standards of the world are at the top pinnacle of wealth and power, yet see themselves as under attack or under siege, you can see from whence that attitude comes. It comes from the Bible. John’s gospel is about how to survive being a victim.

One of the challenges for contemporary people and for contemporary faith is to figure out how to read ourselves into these stories. When we listen to sermons or read the scriptures we read ourselves into the stories. We look for a place to hang our experience. When the literature is primarily victim literature, we can read our own present experience that way, even when we are not victims. That is not a healthy thing to do. It is not healthy for us or for others.

I could preach a sermon on this text that paints greedy coal companies as the “world”. The “world” is intent on destroying our mountains for its own profit. Jesus, the Victim Divine, is on our side and conquers the “world”. That would be true. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth. It is more complex and much more messy than that.

Truth be told, we are the “world” as much as victims of the “world”. I drive cars and I turn on the lights and I eat from the top of the food chain. I am one of the average North Americans who if the world consumed like me, we would need four planets of resources. I had my coffee this morning from McDonald’s and I don’t think it was fair trade. Somebody and probably a lot of somebodies is not getting theirs as I get mine.

That doesn’t mean I am going to stop talking about saving our mountains. By no means. But there is no way I can ever think of myself as righteous about this. I am not only a victim of the world. I am not merely hated by the world. I am also the world.

John has Jesus say to the disciples:

 “In the world you are going to face persecution.”

That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. As the history of the church has shown, and certainly in our own time, the disciples and followers of Jesus have persecuted others at least as much as they have been persecuted. We need to take care as we read and appropriate these texts that we are honest about them and ourselves.

In fact, I am wondering if we ought to use this victim literature sparingly. It appears that everyone claims to be a victim. Christians are victims. Muslims are victims. Jews are victims. Republicans are victims. Democrats are victims. We all claim persecution. Rarely do we see ourselves as persecutors.

Victim language tends to divide as it hides our own dark side. We are a mixed bunch with mixed motives. Much of the time what others experience as persecution was not intended as such by those accused of persecution. I am not saying that there is no such thing as persecution and that there are not victims of persecution. I am suggesting that this language be used sparingly, accurately, appropriately, and with the recognition that few of us have clean hands.

The Gospel of John was written to and for a community that saw itself as under siege. It is apocalyptic literature. That means there are two kinds of people in this world, light and dark, above and below, us and them, good and evil. You are good. You will conquer the evil. That is dangerous language. It is great for rousing up a crowd and for starting a holy war but it is not so good for the messy, complicated, humbling, and carefully engaging, long-term work of peacemaking and justice-making.

That is the kind of work we need on Earth today.

There are many problems and many conflicting ideas and agendas for solving them. These ideas and agendas are motivated often by fear and self-interest to be sure. But there is wisdom and love out there and within us as well.

Even as John’s gospel is written to a community under siege, it yet has wisdom and truth. I turn to John’s understanding of the advocate. This is the spirit who is with the community in the place of Jesus. The advocate is the spirit of truth. Jesus tells them that it is better for them if he goes so that the spirit of truth can come.

Why would that be better? Why is the spirit better than the real guy?

I think it is the difference between having an external authority who gives you all the answers and having an internal moral compass. It is the difference between relying on your parents for deciding where to go and what to do and growing up and making your own decisions. It is the difference between relying on an authority figure such as a teacher or preacher for the answers and for seeking answers yourself.

The famous Zen koan says, 

“If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

The point is that if you see the Buddha you have externalized enlightenment whereas true enlightenment is within. Killing the Buddha is a metaphorical way of realizing that you are the Buddha.

In a similar but not exact way, the spirit or the advocate is the Christ within. Not just within in a personal sense, but among in an interpersonal sense. The wisdom, the spirit of truth, is among and within all of us. This spirit of truth is within all of humanity, in fact, within all of Earth’s life. That is the recognition that we are moving toward.

My critique, if I can be so bold as to critique holy scripture, is that the spirit, the advocate, is within those we regard as persecutors as well, or the “world”.

We are not simply good or evil, light or dark, above or below. We are a massive mess of mixed motives.

Our salvation is in recognizing that truth and bringing everyone, including those who have been without voice to the table. This spirit of truth is at work all over in many places. As Buddhist Joanna Macy assures us, the truth is in all beings.

Joanna Macy speaks of the work of the spirit as “The Great Turning”:

“A revolution is underway because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. We have the technical knowledge, the communication tools, and material resources to grow enough food, ensure clean air and water, and meet rational energy needs. Future generations, if there is a livable world for them, will look back at the epochal transition we are making to a life-sustaining society. And they may well call this the time of the Great Turning. It is happening now.”

We are part of an exciting time.

As tempting as it might be to see ourselves as under siege, or see ourselves as being persecuted by the forces of darkness, it is likely more wise, to recognize that the spirit of truth is larger than us and is found in unexpected places and is at work in our enemies as much as in our friends.

Amen.

Let the Mystery Be: A Sermon

Let the Mystery Be

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

March 4, 2012

Second Sunday of Lent

John 11:1-57 (Scholars' Version)

The story of Lazarus is a curious one.

I have been fascinated by this story since I was a little kid.

There is all this business of Jesus delaying so he can make a big show. Of course, there are Martha’s famous words when Jesus commands that the stone be rolled away after Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days.

The King James puts its best.  

“Lord! By this time, he stinketh.”

Jesus shouting at the top of his lungs:  

“Lazarus, come out!” 

The corpse of Lazarus rumbles and bumbles, and out he staggers, wrapped like a mummy.

Jesus says: “Unbind him and let him go!”

John’s gospel tells the stories in a big way. Jesus just doesn’t cure a person from blindness, but a person born blind. He doesn’t just raise a child from death who has recently died, but he raises a guy who has been entombed for four days. He doesn’t just make a little bit of wine from water, but enough for several parties and better wine than the host served first. When Jesus goes to his execution, unlike the synoptic gospels, who have someone carry the cross for him, in John, Jesus carries his own cross. Jesus isn’t the adopted son of God at his baptism, or even his birth as in the other gospels. In John, Jesus is the pre-existent Word in the beginning with God. No one messes with John’s Jesus unless he allows them to do so. He is kind of like Chuck Norris. Jesus doesn’t even need to pray. He just prays for the benefit of others who hear. Abraham? Ha! Before Abraham, I AM. That is John’s Jesus.

John’s story leaves many unanswered questions. Such as, what happened to Lazarus? I thought it might have been interesting to ask Lazarus what it was like to be dead. Did his soul go somewhere then come back? Did he see the light? Did he have a spirit guide? Did he go to Hades or to Heaven? Did he hover over his body? Or was he simply without consciousness then have it back again? Was he the same guy when he came back? Were his memories intact? Was he happy coming back? Did he stinketh?

None of that is interesting to John. We never hear of or from stinky Lazarus again.

Those kinds of questions always get you in trouble in Sunday School. Just stick to the script. I used to ask a lot of troubling questions. I learned fairly early that my preachers and teachers were pretty grave about the Bible. It wasn’t a book to enjoy, really, it was a book to believe.

I preach on the Bible about as much as any other preacher. I don’t preach on it as if it were a book to believe. I don’t find most of it particularly believable, at least in the way that we were supposed to believe it. For instance, that this story is about something that happened. I look at it and I see some kind of literary imagination at work, or perhaps on oral story put in writing. The author may be having fun with us.

I don’t find this story credible, but I do find it enjoyable. I don’t think that is a bad way to read the gospels or the Bible for that matter. I think we should at least have as much fun as the authors had. I think we tend to regard these stories far too gravely and more gravely than the authors intended us to regard them.

To put it bluntly, our serious, belief-oriented readings stinketh. We need to hear the command to come out and to be unbound. My irreverence is not intended to be a dismissal of these stories. It is intended to prod (myself mostly) out of a too serious, belief-oriented, reading. If this story seems funny and weird, then go with it. There may be something to that.

When I suggest that Jesus in the Gospel of John is a more of a fictional character than an historical figure, and that John is using his creative imagination in creating this story, it isn’t that I am saying throw out the gospel.

When I learn that these Appalachian mountains are 500 million years old and formed by natural processes such as continental crashes as opposed to being created 6,000 years ago by God, that doesn’t make them less sacred. I find that natural explanation far more interesting, actually.

When I admire a painting or hear a beautiful song, it doesn’t make either less admirable or less beautiful because human beings were the painters and the singers as opposed to angels.

I can be inspired and intrigued by Hamlet’s soliloquy even though I know that Hamlet was a creation of Shakespeare. It is easier of course with Hamlet as opposed to Jesus because there was no church that claimed Hamlet was the second person of the Trinity. Hamlet is thus unbound from the strictures of church dogma.

This is one of the changes that has been underway for some time. The Bible is beginning to be seen as a human product and as a classic of Western literature. It no longer belongs to the church. It can be read, interpreted, enjoyed, and criticized as a literary product. When it is unbound from church restrictions, it can be an inspiration to our creativity.

This is true for other so-called holy books, such as the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita. Those who want to have control of those books and their interpretation may not like this freedom, but it doesn’t matter. Those books do not belong to them. They belong to all of us. The field is wide open. The stone to the tomb has been rolled away.

“Come out!”

This freedom allows us to read again these texts with a new perspective.

That freedom has to do with reading, enjoying, and savoring these stories and the life questions they raise with curiosity, unbounded curiosity, as opposed to indoctrination. We can have a conversation with the author. We can resist the author. We can embrace the author.

In this story, Jesus says to Martha,

“Your brother will be raised.”

Martha responds, 

“I know he’ll be raised—in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, 

“I am the resurrection and the life; those who believe in me, even if they die, will live, but everyone who is alive and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Throughout the Gospel of John, the reader is often at a loss of how literal to take the character of Jesus when he makes these pronouncements. This story is odd in the fact that Martha seems to have the doctrine correct. That is even traditional Christian doctrine, resurrection on the last day. Yet apparently, that isn’t right.

For John has Jesus say that anyone “who is alive and believes will never die.” That is odd. He can’t literally mean that. Or does he? Is “die” a metaphor for something? Does he just mean those who believe will go to heaven when they die? What would the difference between that and what she originally said? Does “believe” and thus “never die” mean quality of life?

What does that have to do with Lazarus? The zombie thing? The corpse that stinketh coming back to life is just kind of creepy. Are we still to assume that Lazarus is still alive somewhere? Or did he die again or just go to heaven?

I am sure there are preachers who will give you the answers.

I think answers are boring. They turn us into believers (or non-believers) rather than curious seekers.

What happens after death?

I don’t know. Do you know?

I personally have not met anyone or read anyone ever who has convinced me that they actually know anything about life after death. I have met people who believe and who seem certain and are concerned that I believe correctly (or at least that I lead the sheep correctly). I simply don’t find them convincing.

I especially don’t find people convincing who claim (and all religions and spiritualties seem to do this) that there are certain practices or beliefs you have to do in this life to get the best action on the other side. I am not convinced. I am not convinced they know what is on the other side and I am skeptical that I have to jump through beliefs or practices to get there.

Someone posted on Facebook a phrase that made me snicker. It said,

“I am going to hell in every religion.”

That is probably true for me.

In the worry over life after death, I will let that mystery be.

However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t fun to think or talk about.

I am having fun now with the idea of the multi-verse, the possibility of an infinite number of universes.  That sounds fun.  Maybe I will experience consciousness in one of them.  Who knows?

Mostly I am just amazed when I allow myself to be aware that I am actually here.

I think when Jesus has that conversation with Martha that Martha is anxious. She has her beliefs "right", but they aren’t that comforting. Jesus says,

“…everyone who is alive and believes (or trusts which is a better word) in me will never die…”

He is saying in effect, 

“Don’t worry about it so much.”

John’s Jesus is the authoritative Word from the beginning. He knows everything. He can do anything. He is the Chuck Norris Jesus. You know those Chuck Norris jokes. Like this one:

“The universe isn’t expanding. It is just running away from Chuck Norris.”

That Jesus, is telling Martha, I am the guy with the answers. Trust me. Don’t trust your religious doctrine. Trust that whatever happens, alive or dead, it is OK.

This is what I take away.

There is a great deal of anxiety about our lives. Certainly. The contingencies of life are challenging and there is suffering to be sure. One of the goals of religious institutions ought to be to help people negotiate and come to terms with the contingencies of life. They do that.

Sometimes, however, they can add needless suffering. I see people

 anxious that they are good enough,

worried that they will believe the wrong things,

or convinced that they believe the right things,

concerned that God will reject them or has rejected them.

Much of that comes because they have been brow-beaten by some form of religion. The answer from these spiritual abusers has been,

“No you are not good enough and you are going to hell unless you believe X, Y, and Z and do A, B, and C.”

I keep thinking to myself that that cannot be the main narrative out there. I keep naively optimistic that people are not that religiously abusive. But, then I run into reality. That spiritual abuse and its effects are rampant.

The abuse is based on something that no one can possibly know.

How can anyone know anything about God or about what happens (if anything) when we die? The most anyone can do is make guesses. Your guess is as good as any preacher’s.

Let the mystery be.

I think that the author of John’s gospel was in his own quirky way trying to get that message across. He creates this character, Jesus, as the Word with God from the beginning of time to come down to Earth and to give the answers.

The first miracle that the Creator the Universe performs when he comes down to Earth in human form is turn water into wine. He is the life of the wedding party. That should say something about how John wants us to approach the mystery of life.

He has Jesus say, in effect:

“I have been there. I have been everywhere. I and the Father are One. Chuck Norris runs away from me.”

The answer to life’s perplexing questions is,

“Trust.”

Trust.

If John’s Jesus is the personification of Reality, I hear Reality say:

"Chill out. 

Come out! 

Be unbound! 

I am life. 

Enjoy it. 

Whatever happens after you are dead, it is OK too. 

How can it not be OK? 

In the meantime, 

I am the party and I am in charge."

Amen.

Be Your Own Shepherd--A Sermon

Be Your Own Shepherd

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

February 26, 2012

First Sunday in Lent

John 10:1-42 (Scholars' Version)

We are making our way through John’s gospel.   John’s gospel is about Jesus.  But the Jesus depicted here is not the historical person.  John’s Jesus is an imaginative construction.    The events and the dialogue we just read from chapter ten are probably not events and dialogue that took place, that someone (ie. the author we call John) wrote down, but rather, a scene created by some author we call John.   

Now that makes a big difference.    For those who believe that the Bible is inerrant, to say what I just said would be blasphemy.   To say that there is a difference between the historical person of Jesus and theological and literary construction of Jesus really messes with people’s heads.   Some people get angry about such a suggestion.

That was the reaction to the work of the Jesus Seminar in the 80s and 90s when they meticulously went through every saying and deed attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels and in other gospels to see what could be historically plausible and what was literary or theological creation.    Folks were mad as heck.  

Not only were the folks who didn’t want scholars messing with their Jesus upset, other scholars were upset as well.  It appears that they didn’t like that the Jesus Seminar did this all in public and offered their methods and conclusions in language that non-specialists could actually read.   The Jesus Seminar let the cat out of the bag. 

This type of historical-literary criticism has been used in academic circles for decades, centuries even.    But it was so shrouded in academic language that it seldom left the academy.   We preachers got the message both from seminary and from our congregations that sharing this type of stuff with church folks was unhealthy to one’s career.   Furthermore, we were instructed that offering critical assessments of scripture or theology was damaging to the faith of the sheep. 

The sheep are simple.  The sheep need to be fed.  The sheep need to be led.  The sheep need to be protected against wolves like the Jesus Seminar and against hired hands who don’t care about the sheep, like ministers who share blasphemous ideas like ‘Jesus probably didn’t say most of the stuff the Gospel of John said he said.’   

Won’t somebody think of the sheep?

Baaaa.

One of my favorite criticisms over the years has been by other ministers that I am leading my sheep astray.    That would be you.  In this schematic you are the sheep and I am the shepherd.   How is it that ministers made that assumption about themselves?   Who dreamed up this plan?  Even the word “pastor” comes from the pastoral metaphor of a shepherd as pastor of the flock. 

Now granted some ministers are quick to say, “Jesus is the shepherd.  But we are the under-shepherds.”  Yeah, whatever.   There is a reason why those in authority like to think of themselves as shepherds or under-shepherds.  That is to have control over the sheep.   It is loving control of course.  Because the sheep need to be fed.  The sheep need to be led.  The sheep simply cannot handle life at all except that a loving shepherd tells them what to eat, where to sleep, and what to think.   If you are a sheep you don’t need to do a lot of thinking.  Mostly just obeying.  Listen to the voice of the shepherd and follow.

In the Five Gospels, the Jesus Seminar wrote this about the tenth chapter of John:

“…there is no echo here of the authentic voice of Jesus; the Johannine community is attempting to work out its self-definition in terms delivered from the scriptures.”  P. 436.

In other words, John made it up.   

John borrowed images of shepherding from the Hebrew Scriptures in places like Ezekiel and the Psalms and of the story of David as a shepherd boy and applied them to Jesus.     I doubt that the historical Jesus ever thought of himself as a shepherd.    To me Jesus was more like a guy who would say,

“Don’t wait for a shepherd.  Be your own shepherd.”  

His parables and aphorisms were about inspiring people to find their own voice and to use it.  

“The kingdom of God is within you!” 

“You are the light of the world.” 

“You are the salt of the Earth.”

Why then does John turn Jesus into a shepherd?

This is not about Jesus.  It is about John.   He wants sheep.   The theme throughout John is to believe what "we" told you.  “We” being the ones who control and own the story.     Some scholars suggest that the original ending for The Gospel of John was the end of chapter 20.   It is the scene in which Thomas the doubter is scolded by Jesus for not believing the others. 

“’Do you believe because you have seen me?’ asks Jesus.  ‘Those  who can believe without having to see are the ones to be congratulated.’”

 Then the book seems to end with the narrator saying:

“Although Jesus performed many more miracles for his disciples to see than could be written down in this book, these are written down so you will come to believe that Jesus is the Anointed, God’s son—and by believing this have life in his name.”    

Don’t doubt.  Believe.  Be a good sheep.

Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief suggests that the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas (that did not make it into the Bible) represent competing communities.   Whereas John saw Jesus as an object of belief, Thomas saw Jesus as inspiration to discover oneself.    This section in which Jesus addresses the character Thomas, Pagels sees as a dig at the community that centered itself around the Gospel of Thomas.   Don’t be like Thomas.  Don’t be like that group.   They will lead you astray.

Interesting stuff.  Thomas’ Jesus is made up too, although the Jesus Seminar discovered that more of the sayings of the historical Jesus have been preserved in Thomas than in John.  However, Thomas’s Jesus is also a creative theological fiction as is John’s Jesus.  These early communities were competing over not only who Jesus was but who Jesus is.     

Those competing visions of Jesus were competing ways of living.   That competition had to do with authority.    It had to do with boundaries of who is in and out of the community and what was the hierarchy of authority.    One can imagine that it might be easier to build a church around the Gospel of John than around the Gospel of Thomas. 

I offer this critical assessment for a number of reasons.  The Bible is not always what it seems.  It was created by numerous human authors.  Every one of them had an agenda.   They created these stories and these images for a variety of reasons.  Reasons that we may never know.

Still today these stories in the Bible are used for certain agendas.    People will quote from the Bible and from Jesus as if it or he were the final authority and then claim authority as under-shepherds to interpret it and him for you.  

Now you may say, "John Shuck, why should we believe you?"   My answer is you shouldn’t.  If you disagree with my interpretation of the Bible, good for you.  Be your own shepherd.   I can’t lead you astray if you are not sheep. 

If I succeeded at least in part by encouraging you to look at John’s gospel, and actually the whole Bible, critically, good.  That was my devious plan.   I also want to offer another spin on the shepherd story.  

There is something that is endearing and comforting about the shepherd.   In our busy industrial society, the notion of leaving it all and moving to Kansas to wander around with sheep all day sounds like a pleasant idea.  

There is a reason why the most beloved psalm, the psalm that is most likely to be known by heart is the 23^rd Psalm. 

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,

He makes me like down in green pastures,

He leads me beside still waters,

He restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil.

For thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff

They comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,

Thou annointest my head with oil.

My cup overflows

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I remember it in the King James version.

The image of Jesus as The Good Shepherd is a comforting image.   As comforting images go, it is one of the best, at least one of the most popular.    In those times in our lives in which the valley is dark and life is anything but peaceful and pastoral and we are surrounded by enemies and dangers, when we do fear evil, to know that the Lord is my shepherd and that the Lord has a face, perhaps the face of Jesus as we have imagined him or have seen images of him in artwork, is comforting.   We can reach this Jesus through meditation, prayer, scripture, and song.  It restores the soul.  

Even as I advocate critical study of images, I find that image and others to be powerful and comforting.   In part because I grew up with it and it is embedded in my psyche.  But also because there is a longing we humans have for a comfort and an anchor, for a shepherd.  That is why our hymns are filled with that kind of imagery.      

But the image of Jesus or of God as the shepherd or the gate or the anointed one or God’s Son and so forth is an image.  They are all images.   They are the way our brains work to get in touch with the ineffable.   

We can make an idol of any these images.  We can make an idol of our religion as a whole.  We can make an idol of the Bible, our images of God, Jesus even.  Idol-making usually leads to violence.  Think of the craziness in Afghanistan over the Qur'an burning.    Christians can be equally crazy when criticism of creed or the Bible is equated with blasphemy.    The critical study of these images is important because it keeps them from becoming idols.   

Yet we wouldn’t want our critical study of images to keep us from using them.    That is where I part ways with those who want to do away with religion.   I think these symbols and images can help us live meaningful and joyful lives.   

In traditions that use icons for prayer, the instruction is not to pray to the icon, but through the icon.   The icon or image is a vehicle.   The image of Jesus as Good Shepherd is, for me, a vehicle, not an end.  As I have come to see it now, the feelings of comfort, of belonging, of care, of peacefulness of purposefulness, are the real thing.    Jesus is the vehicle, but at the end of the day, you are your own shepherd. 

You are your own shepherd. 

Those feelings of love, comfort, belonging, care, and purposefulness are not dependent on something or someone outside giving them to you.  They are yours.   You can activate them within by many means, including by the use of these beautiful images.   

So go ahead, sing the songs, pray the prayers alone or with others, and embrace the tradition with awareness.  Yes you walk the lonesome valley.  But you do so with the awareness that the kingdom of God, the lamp of truth, and the love that holds the universe is within you.  

Amen.

From Blindness to Sight--A Sermon

From Blindness to Sight

John Shuck

First Presbyterian Church

Elizabethton, Tennessee

February 19, 2012

John 9:1-41 (Scholars' Version)

This is my favorite story from the Gospel of John. It is filled with irony and snark. There may have been an event in the life of the historical Jesus that is the basis for this story. The Jesus Seminar concluded by a narrow majority that the historical Jesus might have cured one blind person by the use of spittle. Not that the spittle was medicinal but that Jesus fit the profile of a charismatic healer and the healing was of blindness due to psychosomatic therapy.

The story became part of the lore about Jesus. In Mark 8:22 ff., Jesus cures a blind man with spittle. In Mark 10:46 ff., he cures Bartimaeus of his blindness.   Both may be narrative elaborations of one common event. Thus this story in John chapter 9 may be a further elaboration in which the author of John’s gospel places the healing in the context of another struggle altogether.

That is the struggle in John’s time between these two infant sibling religions that arose after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. These two siblings became Judaism and Christianity. The common parent for these two religions was Biblical Israel. The Gospel of John is one side of the squabble between these siblings. Jesus never had a conflict with “the Jews”. He was a Jew. That is John’s conflict. He creates these stories to present Jesus on his side.

Ancient religion was about the sacrifice of animals. You go to the Temple or to a holy shrine whether it is the Temple of Zeus or the Temple of YHWH and you sacrifice animals. That is worship. It appears that a couple of things are happening. The Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. That makes animal sacrifice a logistical problem. Also a consciousness has been arising of thinking of worship without animal sacrifice. This sacrificial practice is slowly becoming symbolic or commemorative.

At least two paths develop, one centering on Jesus as sacrifice represented by the Lord’s supper and another on Torah, circumcision, and Sabbath. Neither requires animal sacrifice. One path becomes centered in the church and the other in the synagogue. John’s gospel reflects this early division from the perspective of what would become church. When characters in John’s gospel are kicked out the synagogue that reflects the situation in the author of John’s time, not in the time of the historical Jesus.

So John takes this story in the lore of Jesus of healing a blind person probably psychosomatically and elaborates making it a teaching moment. There is nothing psychosomatic in John’s telling of it. Jesus has been exaggerated to become God incarnate. He barely touches the ground. He speaks in exalted terms about himself. “I am the Light of the World!” Just to show that this healing was no parlor trick, John has the blind person be born blind.

This gives the disciples an opportunity to ask a theological question. Whose sin caused him to be born blind? If you have a just God who runs the place, you can’t have people suffer for no reason. You have to blame someone, either the man who sinned (either in the womb or in a previous life) or his parents. John sets up a classic question of theodicy. 

By the way, a side note. Since I mentioned theodicy, it might be fun to go there for a minute. Theodicy is the attempt to explain the injustice of God. If you have an all-powerful and all-good God, why is there suffering and evil? Much thought, energy, and time have been spent on that question. You can tie yourself in knots over this. We ask this question in many different ways, whenever there is suffering in our own lives or in the lives of others, we ask what is God doing?

If you have found an answer that works for you of why an all-good and all-powerful God can allow for suffering and evil, then I say go with it. If you have an answer that works I don’t want to take it away from you.

Personally, I take the easy road. I think an all-good and all-powerful God on one hand co-existing with suffering and evil on the other is a logical impossibility. I find that any explanation for someone’s suffering by implying that God could fix it if God wanted to is cold and cruel.

I let go of the idea of an all-powerful God. The answer then is easy. God is not all-powerful. There is no magic fix out there. Life is a mix of good, evil, suffering, and joy, and we make the best of it. But I do believe God is all-good. Not all-powerful but all-good. That to me means Life is worth giving it a go and hanging on for the ride. It also means that part of Life’s purpose is to look for and to find decency, compassion and joy and to make life more decent, compassionate, and joyful for ourselves and others. If you would like to read someone who agrees with me, I recommend Rabbi Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Here is how the Gospel of John handles the question of theodicy.

As Jesus was leaving he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, was it this man’s sin or his parents’ that caused him to be born blind?”

Jesus responded, “This man did not sin and neither did his parents. [He was born blind] so God could display his work through him. We must carry out the work of the one who sent me while the light lasts. Nighttime is coming and then no one will be able to do any work. So long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.”

This is an interesting answer. What John’s Jesus is saying is that you can spend a lot of time worrying over who to blame for misfortune and suffering. You can blame the victim. You can blame the parents. You can even blame God. Or you can carry out the work of healing while you have the light to do it.

John’s gospel is a symbolic gospel. Nothing is to be taken literally. Jesus is not just about Jesus. The figure Jesus is not a one of a kind supernatural God-Man. I see him as representing the Authentic Human. He is a symbol, an archetype perhaps, of what it means to be an integrated, authentic, and aware human being. When Jesus speaks so exaltedly about himself, we can read it that he is speaking exaltedly about human beings.

Jesus is you when you see yourself as you truly are.

So the answer to the question of why do bad things happen to good people is this: 

So you can do good today. 

So pick up some spit and let’s go heal this guy. Here is the text:

With that he spat on the ground, made mud with his saliva, and smeared the mud on the man’s eyes. Then Jesus said to him, “Go, rinse off in the pool of Siloam” (the name means “Emissary”). So he went over, rinsed off [his eyes], and came back with his sight restored.

That is all done in the first three small paragraphs, the first seven verses. The rest of the narrative, the next couple of pages, the next 34 verses are about the responses to this healing. This is all John’s creation. Remember this is all fiction. John made this whole thing up. Part of this narrative is John’s sniping at his sibling, the synagogue. John writes later in the narrative:

“…the Judeans had already agreed that anyone who acknowledged [Jesus as] the Anointed One would be banned from their congregation.”

That is the historical issue behind John’s gospel. Those are John’s fighting words. His crowd in his time as he sees it has been thrown out of the synagogue. This is reminiscent of church splits.

You know there are dozen (give or take a couple) Presbyterian denominations in the United States. Last month, another one started. It is another splinter off the PC(USA). Apparently, the PC(USA) does not believe in the authority of Scripture. Because if we did we wouldn’t allow gays to be ministers. If we really loved Jesus we wouldn’t allow gays to be elders or deacons either. From our end we say the issue might not be scripture but perhaps a wee bit of prejudice on your side? 

Now imagine either side writing a gospel and putting Jesus in the script. Imagine the snark and sarcasm that would be embedded in the text. I know I could write a doozy. That is John’s gospel. The hurt and the anger jump off the page.

But it isn’t all snark and sarcasm. It does rise above that on occasion. Jesus certainly is a figure used to bolster one side in a sibling squabble. But he also represents the authentic human. In order to read it the second way, we have to allow ourselves to be the opponent of Jesus in the text as well as his ally.

The Pharisees or the Judeans or the leaders of the synagogue represent the folks who cannot see beyond their own traditions. These are those who believe that unless something receives their stamp of approval it cannot be legitimate. Anyone who does work outside the bounds of the authoritative structures is to be mocked and not acknowledged.

They are blind for doing that.

But…is there a sense in which we do the same on occasion? If honest I have to admit my blindness too.

There are forms of religious expression that I find particularly blind, silly, and superstitious even. I am suspicious of faith healers. I don’t like the way some people read the Bible as if it is a supernatural revelation from heaven. I don’t like certain views of Jesus dying for sins and whatever.

I think everyone would benefit from a dose of religious and scientific literacy. But if I cannot open my eyes enough to see that not everyone experiences life, our religious tradition, spirituality, and healing in the same way I do, then I am like the Pharisees who ask smugly,

“We’re not blind are we?”

Well, yeah, kind of, you are.

There are many different ways to live in this world. We all have our blind spots. We have blind spots about ourselves and we have blind spots about others. Sometimes others can point out our blind spots. That can be painful or embarrassing. That should be done sparingly and with love, not fake love, real love. Before we point out the speck in the other’s eye, we could remove the plank in our own as Jesus is reported to have said.

It seems that the gift of insight, the ability to see with the heart, is the gift that recognizes ironically, that we see very dimly. The greater the insight, the less omniscient we become. The greater our horizon of knowledge and wisdom, the larger is the abyss of the unknown. Insight then becomes humility.

That is the insight of John’s story. The blind beggar, the most humble of all has the gift of sight, whereas the scholar, the leader, the person with authority, is blind. The blindness on the part of the leaders in the text is not due to their lack of knowledge or wisdom. The blindness is the unwillingness to see that others can see where they cannot. It is the lack of humility.

Humility as insight is not hiding your truth. It is telling your truth but recognizing that your truth is provisional, meaning it can change. Humility also recognizes that your truth is one truth among many. None of us has a corner on truth.

One of the more rewarding aspects of ministry is being able to be present when people have their eyes opened in such a way to see things about themselves, or others or the significance of their lives. This is different than trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. This is different than the blind leading the blind. The posture of seeing is one of permission-giving and of humility. It is a posture of invitation. It is not forcing one’s truth on another but allowing through the telling of your truth for others to discover theirs. It is the gift of listening so that others may find the space to become whole.

Our story began with the disciples asking Jesus whose sin caused this man to be born blind. Jesus turns the question. He says it is nobody’s sin. It is life. In fact, it is an opportunity.

To the suffering and blindness in the world, you have the opportunity, with your life, with your truth, with your limited sight, to respond with compassion and healing.

Work while you have the light.

Amen.