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Jan 4, 2009
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Return to Sermons
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Last week we heard a little from J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, The Return of the King. We spoke of epic language and what may or may not be evoked through such grandeur…and whether or not the Gospels provide such an epic scope. “Yes and no” appears to be the answer; the great “both/and!” Fantasy fiction leads us from reality to entertainment. The epic of the Gospels leads us to places of vulnerability...away from fantasy and securely into life. They lead us into the world and not away from it. This is the nature of the Gospel Story.
This week I want offer you some of Tolkien’s own theological thinking. It seems that he never abandons the melodrama of the epic even in the daily life of his faith. Here is his musing on Communion. He calls it “the Blessed Sacrament.”…there you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that [everyone's] heart desires. Just hear these words: romance, glory, honor, fidelity, love, death, surrender, taste, foretaste, faithfulness, joy, reality and desire. All of this is contained in the simple ritual of communion, the rite that Tolkein called “the Blessed Sacrament.” His theological writing was as wide sweeping as his fiction.
There’s another way of understanding this same idea. It’s in somewhat simpler language. Listen to the words of Alton Brown, celebrity chef and host of “Iron Chef America.”Remember this: It’s not food until somebody eats it. Cook all you want. Be as inventive as you want. Be as creative as you want. But until someone comes along and takes it in somehow, what you have made has no meaning.
I love Alton Brown’s directness as much as I love Tolkien’s grandeur. And in a sense, they are both trying to get us to understand something essential about life…and faithful religion. One must choose to participate in it. Life is not a spectator sport. Food and faith have this thing in common. One must participate in it; take it into oneself before it can be truly real to us…before it can be complete or useful. It cannot exist in any true sense when it is simply laid upon some shelf, or stuck in some museum, television studio, or upon a sanctuary dais.
Jesus talks about this problem in terms of lights and bushels and flavorless salt. Faith needs to be ingested. And it needs to be proclaimed.
We must consume it. We must take it into ourselves. Jesus knew this. We must somehow enflesh it, and to allow it to shape us more and more deeply every day. It demands passion and action.
This is the power of story. We have come to the end of the Christmas story and I want us to think once again about the nature of story and why we tell the ones we tell.
On Christmas Eve we cradled Christ in our arms…as the child Jesus who was The Story of God born into the world.
Last Sunday we allowed the Christmas Story to make us vulnerable by entering into it’s epic frame.
This morning we take the same Story into ourselves through Communion; we ingest it to make it real. “My flesh is food indeed. My blood is drink indeed,” says the Lord. Today we are the Story through Communion.
Religion is a thing. That is all. It is no more intrinsically valuable than anything else…though it can be. Religion, though as corruptible as anything else humanity participates in, can be a positive and beautiful thing. It can provide a loving nurturing community and avenues through which we encounter God who is, was, and will be in the center of all things that bring life. The story can be a good one if we let it…a story of divine Revolution…of a God, a Word, a Story made flesh.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese activist and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, says: The quintessential Revolution is that of the spirit…A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Can we look at the various world conflicts, our struggles to overcome poverty and disease through the lens of her idea? She continues…Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative…It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influence of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear. This is the Word, the Story, made flesh. This is the core of the story we tell…The Christian Story. This is the central truth of our Religion…and the reason for our many traditions…our liturgies, our charity. This can be one of the roles of Religion in our world. We can be the vehicle for a revolution of the spirit.
Do we as a congregation have the strength to participate in our own tradition fully and thus proclaim its goodness to the hills? Can we engage our faith as passionately as Tolkien does his? Or are we hiding our light under a bushel? What Alton Brown says, though certainly incomplete, has the grain of truth in it. Religion, if it is spiritual food, is useless unless we participate in it...with passion and joy. Dare we enter the Revolution that Kyi proclaims?
Today we celebrate the rite of Communion. Today we physically take in our faith through symbols of bread and juice. In the beginning was the Word. Through that Word all things were created. The people of the Word, you and me, need not hide their faith or be ashamed of their religion. We certainly may have to apologize and seek the forgiveness of others. That is part of our Story, but we need not be ashamed.
We live in a world in need of hopeful and nurturing faith. We live in a world that needs
alternative communities that proclaim life, that deny violence of all kinds. We need Religious voices that speak words of love.
We need people who will be the Word made Flesh, who will tell the Story.
Thanks be to God. |
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