Christopher L. Webber

A sermon preached at`St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on  January 29, 2012, by Christopher L. Webber.

Marcus Borg is a well-known scholar with a doctorate from Oxford who has written a lot of books  about Jesus.  I heard him speak a few years ago at the Cathedral in Hartford  and he spoke about his upbringing in  a Lutheran Church in the upper mid-west and how he had rebelled against  the very narrow and judgmental expression  of Christian faith he found there.  Later in life he became an Episcopalian, and if he found mid-western Lutheranism too confining  he has apparently found the Episcopal Church not confining enough.

Borg is a member of the so-called “Jesus Seminar,”  a group of scholars who meet everyyear to exchange views and get publicity for themselves.  They vote, for example, as to whether or not Jesus really said what the Bible says he said or did what the Bible says he did.  Which is all very interesting as an academic exercise  but kind of misses the point.

Borg is a Canon Theologian at the Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle but when someone asked him once to differentiate  his views from those of the Unitarian Church (which denies the divinity of Christ) he said there really wasn’t very much difference.  But there is all the difference in the world  between studying an historical record  and understanding its meaning for human life. Here is this widely read and highly educated man who knows so much about Jesus – but doesn’t know Jesus.  And that’s sad;  and it really misses the point.

The Epistle this morning makes a critically important point in its opening words when it says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”  St. Paul is writing to new Christians  who are trying to live out the gospel as they are beginning to understand it.  “You are free from the law,” said St. Paul.  So some of them had set out to break the law  to demonstrate their freedom.  “We don’t have to keep kosher any more,” they said,  and they invited their friends in for dinner and served up a roast that had been offered previously at a pagan shrine.  And their guests said, “Wait a minute! How can you eat food offered to idols.” “No problem,” said the hosts, “we know idols are foolish.” “That’s true,” said the guests, “but once food has been offered to idols, true or false, we don’t want to eat it. It offends us to be associated with idols in any way.” So they wrote to St. Paul and asked, “Who’s right?” And St. Paul said, “You’re both right.”  (Paul was probably an Episcopalian.) “We know that idols are nothing,” he wrote, “but if my knowledge offends my fellow Christian, I won’t take advantage of it. Love is more important than knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

Well, OK, but then why do we send our kids to school? Why do we read the papers? For that matter, why do we study the Bible?  Just to get puffed up? I think we need to make some distinctions between different kinds of knowledge. I think, for starters, there’s a difference between knowledge and wisdom.   There are “wisdom” books in the Bible  but they aren’t chock-a-block with facts.  What they offer is something far more important:  the knowledge gained not of facts but of life.  They tell you how to live.

This is wisdom:

“Let another praise you,  and not your own mouth.”  (Wisdom 27:2)

“Better is a neighbor who is nearby than a friend who is far away” (27:10)

“Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so are the lazy to their employers.” (10:26)

“To guarantee loans for a stranger brings trouble (11:15)

Now is it better to know that kind of thing, or the square of the hypotenuse and the President of Croatia?  Can you get wisdom from a microscope  or a test tube or a CAT scan?  No way!  So there’s knowledge and there’s wisdom;  knowledge is good, but wisdom is better.  Wisdom is a deeper kind of knowing, isn’t it?  A knowledge not acquired by reading books  or going to school  or working in a research center.  It can’t be measured, or analyzed, or demonstrated by scientific experiment, but what a difference it makes to have that kind of knowledge!

You may remember that the word “sophomore” means “a wise fool” – someone who knows a little  but not enough.  I don’t know why we use that for people in their second year of high school or college when it might fit better on recent graduates: people who know some facts but still have to leam about life.

Here’s another way to look at it:  I’m sure you’ve heard of “carnal knowledge.”  The Bible also talks about that kind of knowledge.  God says to the chosen people,  “You only have I known of all the people of the earth”  and the word used is the word used for a sexual  relationship.  God knows us that intimately -  unfortunately – because the Bible then goes on to say, “Therefore I will punish you.”  But isn’t that the way we behave too?  Punishment is for our children not the neighbors children;  they are the ones we know and therefore they are the ones we discipline.

I was watching the morning news one day and they brought on a child development expert and I’m always interested to see  whether they have some wisdom to pass on -  wisdom, not information. And this one said you should talk to your child everyday. Not that’s pretty basic; you would hope we lived in a society where you didn’t need to be told that –  but we don’t.  There are parents who think that buying toys for their children and  putting them on the school bus will do it.  It won’t. That’s not enough.  So to say, “talk to your children,”  is some wisdom that needs to be passed on -  wisdom, not information.  But if you don’t talk to your children,  how can you know them,  really know them or know anyone, for that matter?  And how can your children – or anyone else -  know you – if you don’t talk to them?  And what kind of community would we have if we didn’t know each other?  That’s a real question today.

They talk about computer systems that will bring you movies and groceries and  everything you could possibly want and you’ll never have to leave your  easy chair –  and we will truly become vegetables, no longer human beings at all, knowing no one and nothing, all the information in the universe and no wisdom.  Small children and rocket scientists  can cope with computers  and even set the VCR, but we don’t put them in charge of foreign affairs; that takes wisdom, it takes a knowledge of human life  and, ideally, of moral principles.

Now, I’ve been talking about the opening words of the epistle, but I think we ought to put that together now with the gospel readings of the last few weeks.  We’ve had two stories about Jesus calling disciples, and today a story about the formal beginning  of his ministry.  He goes into the synagogue to teach and a man possessed cries out  “I know who you are: the holy one of God.”  And Jesus rebukes him and silences him.  The man had knowledge of a sort, but not wisdom.

Jesus called – well, we say he called “disciples”  but that’s our word not his.  I think it’s too narrow a word; it means someone being taught.  But Jesus called people to follow him;  not just to listen to him, but to be with him, to know him. And it wasn’t a matter of sitting down for advanced instruction in religious principles; it was, literally, following -  going from village to village,  climbing an occasional mountain,  taking a boat from one side of the lake to  the other,  being with him in a storm,  being with him at a banquet,  being with him when he healed the sick,  being with him when he reached out to the lepers, and being with him when he sat down with the tax collectors.  Every now and again he gave them a little test: when I fed the 5000 how many loaves did we have?  Who will love more,  the one forgiven a few sins or the one forgiven many?  Who do people say I am?  Who do you say I am?  

The disciples did fairly well on those tests, but then there was another test; “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  Actually, that was a make-up exam because Peter had failed the first test.  And eventually Peter passed it,  when he was crucified himself.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.  In one version of the epistle, they put the word “knowledge”  in quotation marks  and I think they’re trying to indicate  that there’s a knowledge-so-called  and there’s a knowledge-that-matters.  Maybe you could also call it wisdom; why not?  But also you might call it love, perhaps,  call it an experience of the love of God -    the kind the disciples gained by watching Jesus respond to the sick and  hungry and needy – and by watching him die -  the kind we ourselves can gain  by faithfulness in prayer and  Bible study, and by gathering around an altar  to share the bread of life  and by working with other Christians  to create a community in which God’s love can  be experienced right here, right now.  That builds up.  It builds us up into something more like the potential implanted in us.    It’s also the kind of wisdom the disciples gained by watching Jesus respond to the sick and  hungry and needy – and by watching him die.  It’s the kind of wisdom  we ourselves can gain  by faithfulness in prayer and  Bible study, and by gathering around an altar  to share the bread of life  and by working with other Christians to create a community in which God’s love can be experienced right here, right now.  That builds up.  It builds us up into something more like the potential implanted in us.  It’s the kind of wisdom that unites us in love with God.

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on the Epiphany, celebrated as a “Festival of Light,” on January 8, 2012

The first thing God ever said,  according to the Bible, was “Let there be light.” The God we worship  gives us light. 

But do you know that for centuries  and still today there have been Christian churches  that have tried to block the light, even to keep Christians from reading the Bible?  There are churches today that try to prevent scientists from doing research and to control what children are taught. And that’s not surprising  because truth can be dangerous and if you are insecure,  you don’t want new ideas and possibly different ideas filtering in and raising questions.  North Korea is the ultimate example today of a government afraid of light, afraid of knowledge,  afraid of information.  Russia used to be that way.

It’s understandable that people in power  would try to control what people know, to limit information,  to prevent asking questions and to inundate people with their own point of view so they will agree with them and support them. Well, you know, it’s annoying to have people disagree with you. It would be so much simpler  if they would just ask your opinion and go with it. You are ready to give them the light  and they seem to prefer the dark. You have to wonder why.

We celebrate tonight a Festival of Light because we are celebrating the Epiphany, and the very word means “showing forth,”  “enlightening,” specifically “enlightening the Gentiles,”  showing forth God’s light to the rest of the world, even to us. And however much light may threaten some of us,  our God is a God of light, relentlessly shining into the dark places,  relentlessly challenging us to look and to see and to understand.

God is not threatened by the light.  God made the light. God the all-powerful is not threatened  by those of us who have doubts  and questions to ask.  God wants us to see.  But look at what God shows us about God. First at Christmas:  a child is born, God comes into this world as a helpless child. That’s a lot of light right there, an enormous revolution in our knowledge of God.  The Bible speaks of God as “dwelling in light inaccessible”  and a modern French spiritual writer,  Simone Weil, once said, “God out of love withdraws from us because If we were exposed to the full radiance of his glory without the protection of space, of time, and of matter, we would be evaporated like water in the sun.”  But it is that unknowable, inaccessible God  who created a billion suns who nevertheless comes in the simplicity and helplessness of a newborn baby and comes, not to compel us but to draw us and love us, not to overwhelm us  but to speak to us at our level, in our life, where we can see without being blinded and come without being overwhelmed. God wants us to see,  God wants us to know.  And so we have Christmas and we learn something more of what God is like.

And then we have the Epiphany, the manifestation to the Gentiles, the shining out to the rest of the world, the breaking down of barriers between nations and races and religions.  We don’t know who these magi were, these wise men from the East who are often shown as kings, but east of Bethlehem is Jordan and beyond that is Iraq and beyond that is Iran and it’s perfectly legitimate to see a message here about the overcoming of divisions: God throwing some light on the darkness of our divisions, our lack of understanding of all our human differences  God shows us, enlightens us, on the insignificance of our differences  in the light of the glory of God.  God is not afraid -  it seems strange even to have to say that -  God is not afraid of knowledge,  of otherness, of differences,  of questions.  God created us in all our wonderful diversity and we do God no honor  by trying to close minds or close books or build barriers.  There’s no reason to fear questions, no reason to tell scientists they’re wrong  about evolution or climate change. If they are, they’ll find that out themselves but it’s likelier that what they find out is something more about the glory of God.

There was a time when human beings imagined a universe no bigger than the solar system and now we know that we would have to travel for years at the speed of light even to get to the nearest star and no one knows or can know  how far the universe stretches beyond that and that enlightens us, that tells us something about the glory of God.  Who would ever want to go back to the tiny, narrow  universe Christians once imagined? Yet there was a day when Christians tried  to block that knowledge as if somehow a smaller less glorious God  were preferred.  Whatever we learn, whatever we know, is knowledge of God, is the light of God’s glory.

We are fortunate, you know, to come from a tradition that has tried to be open and inclusive and respect the opening of the mind and the expansion of knowledge.  Lots of Christians came to this country to limit knowledge and escape the clash of ideas. The Puritans and Pilgrims were brave and principled people but they wanted to live in a state where everyone agreed and that remains a very strong strain  in American Christianity. It’s unfortunate that some of the loudest voices  in American religion still take that perspective and give non-Christians the idea that that’s what Christianity is about,  that we are afraid of knowledge, afraid of new ideas, afraid of change.  We need to do everything we can to let people know there’s a difference, that Christianity at its best  Is not afraid to ask, not afraid of freedom.

We’re just at the beginning  here at this festival of light but we’re setting the tone for the rest of the year. Week by week we follow the story and we see Jesus teaching and healing and reaching out never controlling, never fearing the questions,  always open and ready to come where we are and give us the light we need: the knowledge of a God  who is light, who wants us to know and to ask  and to understand.  And the climax, of course, is that great burst of light that we call the Resurrection  when we see that death is not the end, that God’s will for us is life  and that life is stronger than death and light is stronger than the darkness.

When we understand that, we need to do everything we can to shed light ourselves, to make known in our lives the kind of God revealed to us in Jesus,  a God of light, of life, of love,  of openness and compassion, who seeks those farthest away, those most in need, those least likely to be here on Sunday but not beyond the reach of God, not beyond the light.

It’s appropriate that it’s dark outside and that the light from these windows penetrates that darkness. But it doesn’t go far enough, not nearly far enough.  So we go out from here like rays of light to penetrate that darkness, to show others something of the light we have seen  and absorbed and carry with us.

St.  Paul our patron saint once wrote  “Walk as children of light.” That’s our task this year  and every day and every year: to walk as children of light. Take the light with you  and let others see something of what we have seen  and what guides us and transforms us.  You can’t shine the light into a box and close the box and keep the light inside but you can carry it with you  and light up your home and your neighborhood  and the place where you work.  So let the light of God shine through you  into God’s world and among God’s people.  Let that light shine in you  because we are called to be children of God, children of light.