Epiphany 4 2005
Are we all lunatics? Are we all mad?
I mean, we just don’t make sense.
We gather here on Sunday mornings, early, like some of us at 8am even, and sing songs, ring bells, read the Bible, do some praying. I mean, its all quite weird really. It’s not what normal people do these days. It’s very counter-cultural.
So why do we do it? We do have a reason, don’t we? We come to church and we sing songs and ring bells and pray and partake of the sacrament from the Lords table because we believe in God, we believe in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and we believe in the Holy Spirit. We affirm that every time we say the Nicene creed. We have faith in our Trinitarian God.
Faith? Belief? Where do these concepts fit into a world of provable facts, of empirical research methods and viable outcomes? The only faith we hear about in the outside world usually is faith in ones self, or in one’s team mates. Maybe faith in humanity is acceptable. But faith in God? Well, really it doesn’t fit. And that’s where we look to many people in the outside world like lunatics.
Look at UFO cults. There would not be many of us who would hesitate to label them lunatics, whackos. These people believe that beings from other worlds, other galaxies, even other universes, are in contact with them and offer them salvation. They believe that they will one day ascend in spaceships to a higher level of existence. Some believe these UFO beings are actually angels. Now this is all a bit bizarre. I mean, I’ve mentioned before the Heavens Gate mob who committed mass suicide wearing matching Nike tracksuits and runners, so that they would ascend to a UFO that was hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet. It was only after death, apparently, that they could go to the higher level of existence, you see. Lunatics. Absolute lunatics, weren’t they?
But then what about us. We have a saviour who is God incarnate, yet at the same time, God’s son. He lives outside of this universe, yet is also present within it. He promises us salvation. He promises us that even though we die, yet will we live. He promises us a continued life on a higher plane of existence, in the heavenly kingdom. Now try to look at this from the point of view of a sceptical outsider, a person who is used to thinking in a world of proven facts. Do we look sane to that person? As I said earlier, we can appear mad to such a person. I mean, what we say we believe can’t actually be proven, can it?
Well, no, it can’t. If we could prove that God exists through scientific methods, we wouldn’t look silly. If we could invent a time machine that could take a documentary film crew and cameras back to Jesus time, then we could prove it all absolutely. We could present to the world evidence that would convert the world. It would be so easy. But we can’t get that proof. We have to rely on something else to tell us God is real. Something that is outside of the bounds of logical and scientific wisdom. We have to rely on Faith.
Now I don’t want to get into a long dissertation on the nature of faith and where to get it, except to say that it is not logical, and that it usually, for me at least, comes from a feeling rather than an intellectual process. Theology is an attempt to explain feelings in intellectual language, which at times fails the subject, because faith is often indescribable. Faith just is. Mere language cannot explain faith. It grows and changes. A living faith is organic and changeable, unable to be put in a category. Certainly unable to be measured and proved.
We feel our faith. And we feel things that help our faith grow, through experience on all levels. Things that happen to us, good or bad, and our reactions to them, and the reactions of others to these events inform and develop our faith. The response of Christians to disasters will help those who are coming to faith to be strengthened in their faith, or to lose it, depending on the reaction. A judgemental, fundamentalist response will bring condemnation from the general population. A compassionate response will help others to know the love that is inspired by faith in Jesus Christ our Lord.
I guess where I’m going with all this is to say that we can’t prove, with the wisdom of this world, that God exists. We can’t prove absolutely through empirical scientific research that Jesus existed and that he died on a cross and rose again and ascended to heaven. I mean, the whole cross thing doesn’t make sense to this world, as Paul rightly points out. We can’t take pictures of the Holy Spirit. But gee, we can show the world by the way we live that we are different and loving and that God inspires our faith, and that our faith is what inspires us.
That’s the way we prove, or at least demonstrate, that God is real. The very fact that for 2000 years, even when Christianity has been the state religion, even when horrible things have been done in the name of the church, people have been moved by their faith in God to be counter cultural, to be compassionate and caring, to be prayerful and peaceful, is the greatest proof there ever can be. The fact that people are still inspired to stand up for others. The fact that the beatitudes still ring true after all this time, that they still represent the greatest message that has ever been given to humanity, a message that takes us out of our own mortal existence and gives us hope in something better. Just the fact that after 2000 years, so many people continue to believe, and help others to believe. I mean, in some parts of the world Christianity is actually growing at a phenomenal rate. That is the undeniable legacy of Jesus, and proof of His continuing interaction and involvement with us and with this world.
I’ll leave the goodbye speech for the celebration later. All I want to say now is thank you welcoming me into your worshipping community, and helping my faith and my vocation to grow, and for giving me the space to be a lunatic for Jesus, wallowing in the foolish wisdom of the Cross. I encourage you all to do the same. Because there’s always room for more crazies for Christ.
