Problems of believing the impossible

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, May 04, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson

Problems of believing the impossible Easter 3, May 4, 2003 sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas

You can be sure of one thing and that is disbelief at what is unusual. In fact it is what is unusual and unexpected that makes us laugh. Comedians rely on finding a story to which the end must have an unexpected turn at it is this that makes us laugh. For example a mother told her son off for pulling the cat's tail. "But I'm not," he protested, "I'm only holding the cat's tail it is the cat who's pulling."

Laughter has also greeted the idea that someone could rise from the dead. When we die we are expected to stay dead and not reappear. The apostles, apparently, did not treat this as a laughing matter, they were somewhat scared but later generations when they were presented with the story of the resurrection were skeptical that Jesus had risen and the gospels were amended and altered and added to in order to convince the skeptics. I was going to say, "convince the skeptics of the truth" but we first have to ask, "what is the truth?"

Unfortunately, none of the gospel writers are eyewitnesses and what they have given us is confusing to say the least. One minute we have Jesus walking through walls and the next minute we are being told that he eats broiled fish and, according to Luke in today's Gospel reading Jesus is given to say that "ghosts do not have flesh and blood."

If anything we are even more skeptical than the people of the second century. We want proofs and signs in ways that other generations have not ... and why ... because we have discovered that the world is full of unscrupulous people who are prepared to tell us anything in order to separate us from our money.

Just go to the grocery store and see the claims on the tins and packets. Only one calorie it says, but you find out that it is one calorie per 50 centiliters and there are 600 in the tin which means that the tin contains 12 calories not one as might have been supposed. New larger size declares the packet, but the contents are actually the same as before. More for your money proclaims a bottle, but the contents have been diluted so what you buy is more water. Restaurants fill your glass with ice before putting in the juice so what you buy is mostly frozen water.

Can you be surprised therefore that there are people who want to read the small print to discover what is really going on?

I urge you to take nothing on face value, not even the bible whose writers and editors were as human as you and I, and who had axes to grind and their own failings to cover up, and their own agenda to put forward under the guise of something else. All our scriptures have been edited and re-edited and rewritten, and then changed altered as circumstances in the world and in the church altered and demanded different answers. It wasn't that they were trying to deceive us in a nasty way, or that they had seriously ulterior motives to misinform us, but that is sometimes the result, and we need to be aware of it, if we are to discover the truth for ourselves.

There is a part of the church that wishes to believe that there is nothing to question at all. That the truth has been preserved for all time, and for every generation, and that we can rely on the face value transcripts that the bible offers us. I have great sympathy for such a view because it makes life so much simpler ... but it isn't true if you read the bible with any kind of discrimination.

What version are we to rely on, and what, of the hundreds of options available, did the translators choose and why?

There are judges and juries in courts that want to take the state's prosecution evidence as always being truthful, dependable and trustworthy. Perhaps it should be like this, but history shows us, time and again, that reality is not so pure. If you were writing an account of the life of Jesus a hundred years after the event, with not much in the way of written evidence, you might be excused if you got some things wrong.

So should we look again at John's gospel in a different way, a more critical way, before taking all that it says so literally?

Can we rely on Matthew and Luke who are writing fifty years at least after the events?

What we need to aware of is that there may be a discrepancy between what actually happened, and what is theologically true. It may not matter if what the writers tell us did not happen, or that it happened in a different way, as long as what they say gives us an accurate theological truth.

If the truth, that the evangelists want to impart, is that God gave Jesus a new life after the crucifixion so that the force and power of his person lives on and that we, his followers and admirers can in some way, tap into that resource and so gain the same new life, then I believe that the details of exactly how it was done are of less significance.

However, if the evangelists are more interested in maintaining the structure of the church, and have created stories to enable it to maintain a coherent organization, then we might have some significant reservations about its truthfulness, and wonder if it is worth preserving, because now the theological truths are also being called into question.

If we take Luke at chapter 36 verse 39 it has Jesus say, "Look at my hands and feet, see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."

This raises all kinds of problems, not least that a bodily resurrection is presumably the body he had before, if it has the marks of the crucifixion still on it. The death process either was not completed and he didn't die, or that it was reversed, which goes against God's own rules and procedures. It also means that this body also has, at some point, to die and yet we have no account of an alleged second dying of Jesus. The ascension with bodies floating up into the sky is not a reasonable alternative.

It looks to me as though Luke was trying to answer problems of his day but did, in fact, only compound the problem for later generations. What the resurrection appearances do tell us, even though in these appearances some are in a body and others appear to have no body, or Jesus is in the bodies of other people, is that there were a number of people who were totally convinced that Jesus was and is alive. This group of people moved to Jerusalem and waited for Jesus to arrive in the Temple to lead a new kingdom in which God was the only ruler.

This is, for me, a much more convincing proof than stories of eating fish and walking through walls.

In the world of faith, what we may have to rely on are theological truths, but first make sure that the stories of physical events are not setting us up to believe for reasons that are not of the highest ideals and truthfulness.