Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's June 6, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.  If you would like to read sermons from previous services, please click HERE.

The latest sermon will be posted here as soon as it is received – usually by Tuesday or Wednesday following the Sunday that it was presented.

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I am happy to report to you that since my May 9^th sermon on the controversy about the censorship of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation in the high school baccalaureate service, that I have received nothing but kind and appreciative comments from many people whom I know. And if one defines fan mail as notes of appreciation sent from people whom one has never personally met, then I am even happier to report that I now have a fan club – well, maybe not a “club,” but the airwaves and cyberspace have produced two people who seem to like me, sight unseen! It is always nice to know that somebody cares beyond those who you can always count on caring. As they say in Hollywood, keep those cards and letters coming!

If you have been following the editorials and letters in our local newspaper, you have a sense of the various opinions swirling around this controversy. For some, it seems to boil down to a matter of free religious speech and the importance of adults honoring the permission they had previously given for some high school seniors to put together their own program for this worship service, including the freedom to include what I and others would regard as a hallmark card kind of quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

For others, however, it is a matter of defending the right of clergy to guard the truth, prevent error, and ensure that the sacred space of the church sanctuary is not polluted by something or someone which might be considered – or have even the implication of being considered -- either unchristian or even heretical.

This whole controversy is really, fundamentally, even more a matter about the separation of church and state and the illegal activity of adults demanding that a school activity conform to certain religious standards, but I am not sure that discussion has even yet begun. This remains one of those issues that polarizes churches and communities, because the emotions can run so deep on both sides. I am sure that Lindsey Hicks, the senior who had innocently turned to this quote as a source of inspiration and selected it for the baccalaureate service, had no idea the impassioned feelings it would generate.

I have thought, myself, about entering the editorial page fray; the problem is that the academic in me always likes to take a wide angle view of things – you know, the “but what if,” the “yes, but . . . “ sort of questions or the “on the one hand . . . but on the other hand” kind of discussions. If you are a Presbyterian, you’ve probably gotten used to that approach! Ours, as St. Anselm once said famously, is a “faith seeking understanding.” And as is so often the case, understanding has many layers, many sides, many perspectives.

Small town newspapers aren’t prone to print dissertations. Succinct and even mud-slinging controversy sells more papers. So I am reduced to trying to reduce my wide-ranging thoughts for presentation to the best captive audience I know, actually the only captive audience I have on a regular occasion, which would be you, today! In the absence of the choir, I suspect I am preaching to the choir, but maybe we all will be able to hear a word from the Lord in the process!

In the spirit of the academic – and setting aside for today what is really the fundamental issue at play in this controversy, namely the separation of church and state -- I would want, first, to give my colleague in ministry, Roy Graves, minister at First Baptist, here in Kingston, his due.

His position, as I would interpret it, represents a very powerful, pervasive, and persuasive impulse in Church history and in the American religious experience. It is the impulse to purity – that is to purify the faith, protect the truth, even if it means taking an unpopular stance like censoring words some might think are rather harmless, e.g. Emerson’s quote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us, is nothing compared to what lies inside of us.” (By the way, I am an eyewitness to the fact that some of Bethel’s own high school students have capitalized on the market possibilities of the occasion by producing, for only $12, belief T-shirts, each complete with the hand-painted, individually lettered Emerson quote on the front. I can now testify, first hand, that the American penchant for selling God is alive and well! And now that I have done an important piece of PR, perhaps I will get a cut of the action!)

Seriously, I am sure that Roy would say that it is less the spirit of the quote than the spirit of the person who spoke it that is the problem. Because Emerson was not a Trinitarian in terms of classic Trinitarian theology, his incredibly influential religious and literary shadow cast across the 19^th and into the 21^st century poses a scary problem for those who see Christianity as a closed system, who depend on a literal reading of scripture, or whose beliefs can’t abide ideas or thoughts alien to the tenets of evangelical or conservative versions of Protestant Christianity.

The faithful, you see, must be kept pure and clean and unspotted from the world’s pollution, protected from any hint of error in dogma. It is true that from the Puritans in New England to the Mennonites and the Mormons, to modern day Christian fundamentalists, there have always been groups guided by this religious impulse to purity. Scriptures like John 3:16, Romans 12:2 “do not be conformed to this world,” or references to the blood of atonement guide the believer as he or she stands in a kind of oppositional relationship over against the world and against virtually anyone whose fundamental beliefs don’t match the particular subscribed orthodox version of the faith..

In this position, there are strong elements of an Old Testament chosen people ideology, a people separated from others and for God’s own purposes; in this position, the plain and common sense reading of scripture is the only way of reading the Bible that really counts; in this position, there is no new revelation since God’s commandments ans truth have been already dictated once and for all. The community that heeds those commandments will be the one that is pure and holy and set apart by God; those who don’t are the lost.

And so, when I read the newspaper, I realize that one of the most significant impulses in church history – the impulse to purity – is alive and well.

But, as Presbyterians are wont to do, I would hasten to add my own, “but on the other hand. . . .”

On the other hand, there is a very strong counter impulse in scripture and in the tradition of the Church, one defined by inclusion instead of exclusion, one that prefers an expansive, more open view of what God is all about, one that looks to integrate instead of separate, and looks, therefore, for evidence of truth in a variety of people, places, and even denominational and religious traditions. Important scriptures are Isaiah’s vision of the gathering of all the nations, Paul’s injunction that we are to be “stewards of the mysteries of God,” his sermon on Mars Hill recorded in Acts, the gospel teachings about the ethic of Jesus, and many others.

This position realizes that to read the Bible is, for each reader, an act of interpretation; the Bible is not only filled with a variety of literary forms, but things like parables and prophecies are notoriously difficult to understand. This position allows for a Christocentric piety without disregarding truth evident in a transcendentalist like Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Deist like Thomas Jefferson, a non-Protestant like Mother Theresa, or even a non-Christian like Mohatmas Ghandi or the Dahli Lama. This position says that the Spirit of truth reveals truth to us in ever new ways, that scriptural admonitions that slaves obey their masters or that women must keep silence in the church are words that can no longer be used to justify patriarchical forms of power and oppression.

I said that the current controversy is fundamentally a matter about the separation of church and state. I might also say, that to peel the layers of the onion back to the very core, it is also a matter of scripture and its interpretation.

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I will be at Harvard’s Divinity Hall, the very building where in 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his famous Divinity School Address, challenging the “corpse-cold” religion of his day. I will also be at Memorial Church, at the center of Harvard’s campus, built as a memorial to veterans of World War I, where a man by the name of Peter Gomes currently serves as the minister to the university community. He is an orthodox Trinitarian if there ever was one.

One of his recent books discusses the role of the Bible in contemporary life. He outlines three temptations, three forms of idolatry, that face us when we read the Bible.

One temptation to idolatry is to worship the Bible, making of it an object of veneration and ascribing to it the glory due [alone] to God.

A second temptation is to worship the text itself, in which the letter is given an inappropriate superiority over the spirit.

A third temptation is the worship of culture, in which the Bible is forced to conform to the norms of the prevailing culture (The Good Book, 36).

These are truths about the interpretation of scripture that I would think we all could agree are important, that we should avoid any idolatry of the Bible. And from my perspective, the fact that Peter Gomes has acknowledged publicly that he is a homosexual person in no way affects the importance of what he has written about the way we are to interpret and read the Good Book.

I don’t believe that God needs us to pass judgment on others in order to know the truth that can set us free.

And now, finally, after that long prolegomena, I arrive at the texts of the day. More than ever, we need the kind of wisdom that the book of Proverbs describes. We need wisdom as we read the Bible and practice the faith and struggle to understand so many complex moral and spiritual matters of our day.

And we need the kind of teaching Jesus offers in the 16^th chapter of John’s Gospel. So often John’s Gospel is a portion of scripture to which those who want to see Christianity in terms of exclusion or purity turn. But I see something else when I turn to these several verses I read from the 16^th chapter.

For many long passages here in John, Jesus has been explaining his mission to his followers. He has used a rich array of images, delved into a number if heavy ideas. He is leaving them, he tells them, and before he goes, he passes along to his disciples some of the most impressive teachings recorded in the Gospel of John.

Then, in the middle of this long dissertation that comprises chapters 14-17, he says in verse 12 of chapter 16 that he has lots he could tell them, but he won’t. There are aspects of who he is and what he is about that they cannot yet bear to hear, so he is saving that for later. Later, the Spirit will share that with them.

It is an odd comment for Jesus to make considering all those places in John’s gospel where Jesus tells his disciples that “he has made known everything” that is to be known from the Father (15:15). John has depicted Jesus as the full, complete revelation of God. We look at Jesus and see as much of God as there is to see.

Or do we? Have we got, in the New Testament, in all those words about Jesus, all there is to know about Jesus or are we supposed to expect further revelation? Jesus says, in verse 12, that there are things about him that the disciples “cannot bear” at the moment. What could he mean by that?

Some say that what he meant was that they could not bear to know what he must go through with the suffering of the cross. Yet others say that Jesus must be saying something about revelation as a continuous process, an ongoing process that will continue even after the canon of the New Testament is closed. That “spirit of truth,” the Holy Spirit that Jesus promises them, will be their guide into all truth. This “spirit of truth” will continue to unfold the significance of Jesus and the significance of their faith.

William Willimon notes that the great theologian, Karl Barth, once wrote that all of us Christians must continually cultivate among ourselves the “spirit of the amateur.” There can be no “professional Christian,” said Barth. He may have been speaking particularly to clergy, but all of us need to hear this warning. We must guard against thinking that we have arrive in our faith, as if there were no more growing and converting for us to do, as if the work of the Spirit of truth in us has been accomplished. None of us can get a Master’s degree in discipleship, implying we have mastered the art of following Jesus. We’re all just beginners. (Pulpit Resource, 46)

The oldest name for Christians, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, is “The Way.” To be a Christian means to be on the way. Thank God, then, that we don’t have to figure out everything about Christianity from the very first. Thank God that we have been given resources in our faith that challenge our intellects, that nurture the spirit of truth in us. Thank God that the Spirit of truth is always working in us, and in others, in more ways than we could possibly ever number.

And thank God, that we have an open and inclusive table where we know that God loves us for who we are and for who we can become.

Thanks be to God, that the Spirit of truth will guide us into all truth. Amen!