A Sermon by Fr. Davenport, May 10, 2009
Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A staunch left-winger, a Marxist academic, Terry Eagleton is among the most influential literary and cultural critics in Britain today. He has just published a new book, half of which responds to the anti-God crowd, in particular the best-selling, celebrity authors Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Eagleton writes, “Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology.”1 But Eagleton is not signing up with Dawkins and Hitchens. Hardly.
He asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer is that all of the alternatives to God – be it science, capitalism, humanism, liberalism, whatever – don’t deliver. They may provide some comforts and pleasures, but ultimately they are superficial and prop up the status quo, rather than offering meaningful transformation.2 Eagleton points out, “A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.”
For all of its faults, religion attempts to deal with the biggest, most elemental questions. “Why is there anything in the first place?” What is the nature and destiny of humanity? What are the first principles of a good life? Only by asking and reflecting on these questions can there be “a radical transformation of what we say and do.”
Dawkins and Hitchens and their fellow travelers have greatly benefitted Christianity by denouncing it. They have inspired a lot more people to reflect on what really matters. The disappointing part is the shallowness of their argument and their ignorance of the subject. Eagleton likens their position to “saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.” Dawkins and Hitchens attack Christianity with the seriousness of someone who would prepare to write a book on Nazism only by watching episodes of “Hogan’s Heroes.”3
Despite their lack of depth, these paper tigers attract attention to the issues that matter most to Christians, but I’m not sure we’ve capitalized on the opportunity. Instead, we seem more absorbed by internal squabbles, sometimes about difficult issues like gender and sexuality, but also often about more petty things. The Church has to balance its internal needs and questions with its response to the needs and questions of its culture.
The threat of becoming self-absorbed is nothing new. In our epistle this morning, John is addressing his community’s bickering, which was debilitating Christ’s mission and ministry. John pleads for his community to love one another, but instead they are becoming polarized and hostile to one another, failing to handle doctrinal differences charitably.
John’s community is struggling with gnosticism, the tendency to elevate the value of knowledge to the same level of importance as grace and love, that knowing the right thing is what matters most. Gnosticism is a universal danger for Christian communities. It takes all kinds of forms. A gnostic danger for this parish, for example, might be our attitude and views about our elaborate worship. Do we get worked up about the details? Is the way we worship more important to us than our relationships or than sharing Jesus and the gospel?
In today’s epistle, John encourages his community to adjust its values and to love one another. As God is the source of love and the essence of love, the only way for us to have true, deep, sustained union with God is loving one another. John makes this point to focus attention on what matters most, on the first principles of Christianity. Our love of one another, our love of those outside the church, our love of the stranger – this is evidence of God, and a powerful witness of God, and what he most desires for us.
When the Corinthians were having a hard time loving one another, Paul wrote that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Cor 8:1-3) The good life comes not from knowledge, not from feelings of superiority that knowledge gives us, but rather from love. The message of John and Paul to us is: put your energy in loving one another and don’t sweat the details because if you don’t love, you don’t know God, you’re cutting yourself off from God. This presents a challenge to every Christian and every Christian community.
Today’s gospel shows us that the purpose of our relationship with Jesus is to produce fruit. Every gardener knows that producing more fruit often requires pruning, that is severing ourselves from meaningless distractions and from fretting about little things so that we can focus on first principles. Pruning involves loss and pain, but it yields more fruit. John implies that churches growing in their relationship with Christ endure the hardship, the stress, the shock of pruning to become more fruitful, more responsible, more focused on first principles.
The story of Philip from Acts shows us love in action; it provides a model for what we might become. Sent by the Holy Spirit, Philip goes into the wilderness where he meets the Ethiopian eunuch, an exotic black man and a sexual deviant. Philip was a faithful Jew. He would have known that Deuteronomy explicitly prohibits eunuchs from worshiping God. They were cut off, beyond the pale, too weird to endure. The Ethiopian eunuch would not have been at Philip’s table at coffee hour. He would not have even been allowed in the room. The Holy Spirit, however, impels Philip to cross the barrier, to break with custom and religion, to be humane, to share good news.
We may have preconceived ideas about who we ought to reach out and welcome. We all feel much more at ease with people like us, but the Holy Spirit wants to mix things up and encourages us to take some risks. The Holy Spirit stretches us and challenges our values, habits, attitudes, behaviors. The Holy Spirit, the great Archbishop Michael Ramsey said, is not like a hot-water bottle. The Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is bracing.
The Bayeux Tapestry, a medieval masterwork, depicts Bishop Odo, the half brother of William the Conqueror, holding a spear, which he is poking the backside of a soldier. The Bishop is compelling the reluctant soldier to move forward, to fight, to engage. Woven into the tapestry is a Latin inscription saying, “Odo comforts his men.”4
Following the Spirit is frightening. Philip overcame his fear and reached across boundaries to embrace the ‘other.’ He responded to the need and questions of the eunuch and welcomed him. The inclusion of the eunuch changed the eunuch’s life, but it also changed Philip and the fledgling church, just as every time we welcome new people here we’re opening ourselves to them, and the Spirit would have us be changed by them. It’s a challenge for us. Timothy Radcliffe asks us, “Do we fear to offer Christ’s attentive, compassionate look, because those whom we see may change us? We shall discover anew who we are with them.”5
The fear that we will no longer have a place, that we’ll be left behind, forgotten, changed beyond what we think we want to be, is real, but following that voice is like following the Devil, succumbing to our worst instincts, the opposite of love. John says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” Love is open, vulnerable, and not afraid.
That’s why, especially in the last century, the Holy Spirit has led Christianity to reach out and welcomed the people of Africa and Asia. As millions have converted, Christianity has become something new. The old Euro-centric Christianity is, if not quite dead, near death. In crossing boundaries to embrace new peoples, Christianity is changing radically to the delight of God and millions of people, who are discovering new life. By honoring the Great Commandment, Jesus’ direction to go and baptize all nations, the Church is renewing itself.
In Christ’s mission, our role is not to tell people what they should do and should want or to get hung up on the fine points of faith and practice, the details of belief and worship, but to emphasize God’s love for each person, his delight in each person. Our work is to acknowledge and help to identify the deep longing that every person has for God and to witness by how we live that God is the most attractive alternative. Most of us here this morning aren’t going to do this in Africa or Asia, but we can do it right here. People in our culture cry out for connection with God. People seek answers to the big questions. We have far more reasonable and attractive answers than Dawkins and Hitchens.
That doesn’t mean that being a Christian is always a party. It isn’t. That doesn’t mean that being a Christian is about warm feelings for one another. It isn’t. Timothy Radcliffe asks, “[Why do any of us] get out of bed and go to church? Often enough the church will be cold, the sermon irritating, the music trite, and the pews hard. Nothing exciting may appear to happen.”6 Indeed, we come to church week by week not to be edified, not to have our agenda followed, not to be coddled, not to escape. We come to receive God and to let him change us. We come to be strengthened and encouraged and prodded to love one another.
Usually when our faith is most engaged, most alive, most growing, we are being challenged and stretched, living with anxiety, doubt, annoyance, uncertainty. The comfort of the Holy Spirit is not a down pillow, but often a kick or spear in the backside. Yet we will find, not immediately, but gradually, over the years, if we are patient, that God is transforming us. We will become more aware of the presence of God in us and in others and more aware of his pleasure in us.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev. Lane Davenport
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1 Quoted by Andrew O'Hehir, ‘Those Ignorant Atheists,’ Slate, April 28, 2009.
2 Stanley Fish, ‘God Talk,’ ‘Think Again’ blog of The New York Times, May 3, 2009.
3 O’Hehir.
4 Ramsey and Odo references from Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church?, Continuum (2008), p. 198.
5 Radcliffe, p. 203.
6 Radcliffe, p. 207.