“It Isn’t Necessarily So”
March 2, 1997
This is the third week of receiving a peculiar invitation. Year after year, we go through these 40 days of Lent and are given an invitation to question our long-cherished images and ideas. We are invited into the desert to reflect upon our meanings and our beliefs. The theme for Lent is: it isn’t necessarily so. What we have heard and learned about God isn’t necessarily so.
Perhaps you have heard the story about a husband who took his wife to a doctor, not because she was gravely ill, but simply because she seemed listless and chronically fatigued. The doctor examined her, even put her in a hospital for a series of tests. No matter what he did, he couldn’t locate any illness. In the final consultation, the doctor admitted he couldn’t diagnose the sickness. As the couple stood up to leave, the doctor impulsively and quite inappropriately rose from his chair, crossed the room, took the woman in his arms, and planted a kiss on her cheek. Immediately, the old brightness returned to her eyes, she beamed, and her skin displayed the former radiance. Seeing all this, the doctor turned to her husband. Look,” he said, I want you to see that your wife gets a kiss like this every single day.”
“Well, uh, OK, Doc,” the husband said, “if you say so. At what time every day do you want me to bring her in here?”
Sometimes, we just don’t get it, do we? What we’ve learned about God. What we’ve been taught about Jesus isn’t necessarily so. We think we have met Jesus. We examine the Gospel record, and we often find we are following an incomplete picture. Sometimes when we hear Jesus speak in the Bible, we just don’t get it
Last year, a parishioner gave me a fascinating book. I’ve kept it by my bedside and pick it up from time to time – to remind me to rethink my image of Jesus. Jaroslav Pelikan, the author, called his book Jesus Through the Centuries. In it, Pelikan describes different ways that Christians have focused on Jesus. He uses such terms as: the cosmic Christ, the teacher of common sense, and the mirror of the eternal. And he shows how each of these images affects our belief systems as well as our understanding of life.
Reading the book provoked me into thinking about the dominant characterizations in our day. Jesus, the embodiment of political liberation; Jesus, the psychological guru of wholeness and successful living; Jesus, the exemplar of right-wing orthodoxy. Or Jesus, the harbinger of feminist theology. There are certainly many ways this mysterious figure has been seen and interpreted.
But what about yourselves? How do you see Jesus? The other day, someone told me that she had been taught to see Jesus as a gentle, meek, and mild helper of people in trouble. Someone else said he was a kindly teacher of enigmatic ethical stories. And from our Gospel lesson, we might view Jesus as an angry young man who delivers God’s rebuke upon temple practices.
Many people leave the church because they can’t identify with the versions of Jesus presented on a Sunday morning. Many people leave the church, not because we are hypocritical or incompetent (we certainly are all of the above and more), but because the Jesus they are presented with is incomprehensible. He just doesn’t make contact with their lives. And when preachers talk about Jesus, they don’t get it.
This is why Lent is important. It’s a time to reassess our picture of Jesus. It’s a time (if I might borrow a title) to “Meet Jesus Again for the First Time.” Today I would invite you to do it, not through the spoken word, but instead, through music. Let Bach’s incomparable “Passion” introduce you to a different Jesus
Let me warn you. Bach’s Jesus will make you uncomfortable. He’s not the kind of God figure who is the great doctor that will prescribe and advise you on life’s problems. Instead, we are shown a picture of a wounded Savior, one who suffers and identifies with our pain. He is the one who weeps when we weep, who hurts when we hurt, and who knows firsthand what it feels like to be abandoned, exhausted, and despairing.
The other morning, I was sitting in my study at home and meditating on the words of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. It struck me that what I was being shown was a Jesus who was basically a loser by our culture’s standards. We might weep for him. It’s hard to identify with him, for he would never make it into any hall of fame. This Jesus would never receive an Oscar nomination for the best portrayal of God. Bach’s picture isn’t pretty. It doesn’t fit with the American way of religion. And to tell you the truth, I said to myself, “It is a good thing that we sing it in German. At least we don’t have to be confronted with the words.”
I spoke with a young man several years ago. He came to my office and said he wanted to become an Episcopalian. I casually asked why. He was young and naive, and therefore honest. And he looked at me, at my clothes and surroundings, and said, “Because you all look so successful, so content with your lives.” And I wondered to myself, what kind of Jesus were we showing him? What kind of Jesus were we following? The great problem for most of us is that we want a God to comfort us, and yet we still continue to address Him as “the crucified one.”
One of Johnny Carson’s favorite jokes comes to mind. A man walks into a pet shop and asked for the best singing canary in the store. The proprietor gladly sells it to him. The next day, the man returns the canary, demanding a refund. “What’s wrong?” said the owner. The man answers, “This bird stands all day on just one leg.” The owner exclaims, “You said you wanted a singer, not a dancer.”
What we really want is a God who will come down and take us in his arms and kiss all our hurts away. What we get is a God who suffers and bears our wounds. He’s a singer, but his song is about suffering love. And that’s not much of a tune by which to dance.
I bid you this morning to empty yourselves of old images, to sit back and listen to Bach’s music. And to allow other voices from other centuries to speak to you about Jesus, “the crucified one.” Amen.