2nd Sunday of Advent December 6, 2009 “Series C”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Come, Lord Jesus, come. Come, O living Word from heaven, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, lead us into a living relationship with you and with our Creator. Come and inspire our imagination, that we might see ourselves as people who are a part of your kingdom, embraced by your redeeming grace, heirs of eternal life, and participants in your ongoing work of salvation. This we ask in your holy name. Amen.
As I was preparing for my sermon this morning, as I often do, I revisited some of the sermons that I had written in years past. One sermon that I had written six years ago, caught my attention, and I have rewritten it for this morning. Thus, I would invite you to journey with me through some of the concepts that I learned in my first class in systematic theology.
According to my professor, the late Dr. Aarne Siirala, just as there are only three ways of answering a question – “Yes,” “No,” and “Both yes and no,” – there are basically only three ways of understanding reality, and our relationship with God. The first method he referred to as “The Mythical approach.” In this approach, the reality and truth of God are believed to be buried and implanted deep with each person. It is the theological approach of Zen Buddhism, and a lot of the so-called “New Age” philosophy that is so prevalent in religious bookstores these days.
According to this approach, if we want to really know and understand God, we need to look deep within ourselves. After all, we were created in God’s image. Thus, if we want to know God, we should learn and practice the techniques of transcendental meditation, and allow God’s Spirit that is within us to speak his reality to us.
The problem is, however, that this approach to theology can become self-centered. There is no objectivity. A person who believes that the reality of God is revealed to them from within their own being, would then view the world around them, and study the Scriptures in relationship to what they already know about the reality of God. This is quite different from approaching the Scriptures objectively, believing that through these sacred texts, we can learn of the reality of God.
Dr. Siirala referred to the second approach to the study of theology as the “Ontological approach.” In this approach, reality and the truth of God lie somewhere outside of ourselves, and if we really want to know God, we need to look at and study the world around us. After all, God is the Creator of the universe, and through a study of what is objectively before our eyes, we should be able to discern God’s identity from his handiwork.
Persons who seek to know God from this approach pour through and study the Scriptures with a fine toothed comb. Like the Pharisees and Scribes, they want to get at the heart of God by dissecting the various stories of the Bible with questions such as “Which is the greatest of all of the commandments?” In recent years, this approach to theology was exhibited by many Biblical scholars in the movement that became know as “the search for the historical Jesus.” Like members of a Crime Scene Investigative team, using techniques of modern literary criticism, they sought to demythologize Scripture, to separate fact from fiction, and then they would know the truth and reality of God.
The problem with this approach to the study of Scripture, is that our search for God is limited by our human reason, which convinces us that unless something can be proven to be logical, it must be false. For example, an expectant virgin has got to be a myth, because that is beyond the scope of human logic.
That may be true. We encourage our children to remain chaste, because that is the best birth control method available. However, simply because something is illogical doesn’t mean that it does not convey truth. How does one convey the truth, that in Jesus, we behold the very incarnation of the Son of God? The truth is, some facts about the reality of God and his intervention into our world to redeem us from sin and death remain beyond our comprehension.
It is my belief that if the authors of the Scriptures were limited to the use of logic, we would know much less about the reality of God and the nature of his redeeming grace in Jesus the Christ. Without denying the Spirit of God’s role in the birth our Lord, this is a not a logical concept to express. And in various ways, with the exception of Mark, who chose to ignore the birth of Christ altogether, the other Gospels utilized their own creative means to express the reality of Jesus’ incarnation.
This brings me to point out that an objective, ontological study of God’s creation and Scripture, does not always result in finding the reality and truth about God. Haven’t we all read or heard a story that was not based on scientific reality, yet which conveyed a truth to us that touched our hearts? We cannot devoid the Scriptures of the stories that the authors’ utilized to convey to us their experience of God’s grace in Jesus the Christ. God cannot be contained within the bounds of human logic.
The third method of theology Dr. Siirala defined as “The Functional approach.” In this approach, the reality of the world around us and the truth of God is experienced in the relationship between the person and what they encounter in life. What is important is not the subjective ideas of the person about the world and God, gained through inner searching. Nor is the data obtained from an objective logical study of the world around us the determining factor in the knowledge of God. Rather, it is the relationship between the subject and the object – it is the relationship between the person seeking to understand life, and the God who gave life to us.
In this functional approach to theology, a person studying Scripture is not so concerned about distinguishing fact from story, because they realize that story can also convey the reality of their life experience, and their experience of God. Nor is this person reading the Scriptures in order to bolster what they believe to be true, as a result of their inner searching and belief. Rather, it is an affirmation that God speaks to us through both our objective study of Scripture, and the Spirit of God working within us – both seeking for us to come to trust that God truly loves us.
Now, I realize that this has been a very brief summation of Dr. Siirala’s understanding of theology. I have respected this theologian, who was a member of the world think tank, invited to Auschwitz following the holocaust to seek to make sense of the situation. He was the most brilliant person that I have ever met, and was pleased to have him chose to be my mentor.
So I ask you to think about our Gospel lesson from Luke, from the perspective of these three models of theology. Here, we are told that John the Baptist went about the Jordan River proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And according to Luke, the Baptist proclaimed, using the words of Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight…’”
A person encountering this text from the Mythical perspective might interpret these words of the Baptist to mean that they need to work harder to bring their daily life more in tune with their inner convictions of being created in the image of God. After all, they need to reflect the Spirit of God that is within them.
A person encountering this text from the ontological perspective might interpret this text as Dr. William Barclay did in his commentary, in which he compares the Baptist’s role to that of a courier for a king. “In the East,” he says, “when a king decided to tour a part of his dominions, he sent a courier before him to tell the people to prepare the roads – to fill in the potholes to make his journey smooth.”
Of course, as Barclay himself points out, John wasn’t asking people to fill in the potholes in the roads. But from his analogy to this ancient custom, he concludes that John used this ancient story to give us some indication that we should mend our lives, patch up our behavior, put on our best front.
But from the Functional perspective, we might interpret John’s message to prepare for the coming of our Lord by focusing on our relationship with God – to open our hearts to embrace Jesus as the incarnate Word of God, and through our relationship with him, allow him to shape and mold us as his disciple.
John’s call to repentance, is a call to stop seeking to find God through a search of our own conscience, as if we are somehow equal to God, or that we possess him. It is a call to stop seeking to know the creative and redeeming grace of God, through our human logic, as if we are somehow equal to God in our ability of reason.
Rather, as I read this text, I interpret the Baptist’s call to prepare, as a call to open my heart, through his external admonition, to welcome into my internal being, the incarnate Word of God, that in relationship with him, I might know and trust in the grace of God. What John the Baptist is crying for us to do, is to open our hearts to be in relationship with the incarnate Word of God, who offers us life in the kingdom of God.
Amen.
