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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Sermon
from February 19, 2006 I
want to talk about blasphemy today and about the authority that has such
prominence in the Gospel of Mark. We
are only in the second chapter of the Gospel, and already this is the second
time that we read about Jesus’ authority.
He had been teaching in the synagogue as one with authority and not as
the scribes do, whatever that means.
The scribes are catching on; they are not oblivious to the man in their
midst who, by his teaching and acts of healing, is drawing great crowds wherever
he appears. Jesus
is back home where he started his ministry, and the people, who have been
waiting for him to return, all come to hear him teach.
When he begins to speak, there is no room to spare; so many people have
come to hear the man who somehow sounds so different from the scribes and whose
words are often followed by acts of healing.
Among the eager listeners are the scribes themselves who have come to
size up the man and his claim to fame. The
quest for healing comes as an interruption to Jesus’ sermon—a man who is
paralyzed is brought to him by four of his friends.
The interruption is significant. Just
imagine, in the middle of the sermon someone starts dismantling the roof.
Jesus is moved by the faith of the four friends who will not be deterred,
and so he says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.” This
is just what the scribes have been waiting for.
Obviously, what makes this man so popular is that he speaks and acts
without any legitimacy. He just
goes around and forgives sins as if there never was a temple where priests are
doing the work of God. This man
Jesus just absolves sins as if there never had been the laws of scripture that
specify what needs to be done to atone for ones sins; as if there weren’t the
sacrificial animals to be purchased and offered up in a sacred ritual for the
forgiveness of sins. The scribes
are still pondering in their hearts what is worse—Jesus’ presumption to know
a man’s sins before they even have been acknowledged, or his ready willingness
to speak of forgiveness as if he were speaking for God (and without any regard
to the laws, mind you), when Jesus reads their minds, too, and rebukes them:
“What is easier, to say to a man ‘Your sins are forgiven’ or to say
‘Stand up, take your mat, and walk.’” “Blasphemy”
is the thought that the scribes have pondered, the worst of all offenses,
punishable by death. It is the
presumption that one speaks for God or that one speaks as God or that one takes
God right out of the temple and out of the priesthood and out of the scriptures
and sets God free, as if God could be known outside the rituals and regulations
of religion. They are guarded and
executed by an exclusive cast of holy men and that are overseen by a cast of
scribes that rule all of society, the supreme court of their day. The
scribes have a point. Jesus does
set God free. The scribes remind me
a bit of the parents of teenagers, and I have sympathy with them.
They point to the rules and the principles and say that sometimes you
have to do something just because it is the rule, regardless of whether you like
it or whether it makes sense, but because it is the rule, and the rules are what
hold it all together. They point to
the principle and ask, “What would happen if everybody just showed up and
forgave sins as if there was no tomorrow? We
could all just pack our bags. If it
wasn’t for the sins, why would we have the temple and the church?” Think
about it: There are churches for
which sin is the very reason for
being. If it wasn’t for the sins
of the world, there would be no point in their existence.
When they encounter yet another example of moral failure, they feel good
about themselves just as they point the finger. This is what we are here for,
they say I think of them as the
ecclesial equivalent of Ghostbusters. Sinbusters.
They walk around with their little vacuums and suck up sin. Then
there are churches for which grace is
the very reason for being. If it
wasn’t for God’s grace and God’s presence, there would be no point in
their existence. When they
encounter yet another example of God’s grace, they feel affirmed in their
beliefs and they spread the word. Which
kind of church do you want to be? The
Gospel of Mark obviously believes that Jesus does not commit blasphemy. Is what
Jesus says not blasphemy because he is the son of God?
No, I don’t think so. Blasphemy
is to make one equal with God. What
Jesus does is invoking God’s forgiveness.
Where he says, “Your sins are forgiven” he might as well have said,
“Your sins are forgiven by God.”
His authority is such that he knows about God’s grace.
Such is our authority if we
only own up to it. The
church has, unfortunately, beginning with the disciples, tried to somehow
contain and domesticate God’s grace, as if it was a wild animal. When later in the Gospel the disciples see others heal people
in Jesus’ name, they get all upset but Jesus doesn’t quite see their
problem. People are healed in
Jesus’ name. What is wrong with
that? Jesus gives Peter the
authority to forgive; in other words to invoke God’s forgiveness.
You remember the words: “Whatever
you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will
be loosed in heaven.” We
are here and we have the authority to invoke God’s reign and presence, to
speak of God’s grace, to care for God’s children and God’s creation.
We can have faith on behalf of one another. We can say to each other, “Your sins are forgiven.”
How powerful is that! Our
lectionary this week makes us think about blasphemy as if by some divine
providence somebody knew that the question what is blasphemy and what, in turn,
is freedom of speech would be on our minds these days.
I want to comment on the cartoons in the Danish paper and the reactions
we have witnessed, not because I have some unique insight into what is going on,
but because I think we would be failing our responsibility to the world, near
and far, if we didn’t talk about it. I
heard a segment of the news hour with Jim Lehrer on the radio this past
Wednesday where they interviewed a Catholic priest and a professor of Islamic
studies from Hartford Seminary, the same seminary where I plan on taking classes
again. In spite of my delight of
hearing one of my seminary professors on the news, I was quite frustrated with
the conversation. The interview, by virtue of the interviewer’s questions, was
about images of the divine, and how the various religions have historically
handled depictions of their deity. For
my taste, it was far too academic a conversation. These
protests that we are witnessing are, obviously, not about someone trying to
depict the prophet of Islam. They
are about someone drawing the prophet Mohammed with bombs in his turban in a
caricature, thereby equating the core of the Muslim faith and the whole of the
Muslim community with the acts of terrorism that Islamic extremists have
committed. The message of the cartoon is, in my view, anyway:
“If you believe in the prophet Mohammed, you believe in terrorism.” This does nothing but feed the cheap appetites of bigotry. Let
me make three comments. First of
all, even the discussion whether this cartoon exemplifies freedom of speech is a
bit academic. My question is not
whether this person had the right to publish his cartoon. My question is, “What was he thinking? What exactly is the point of offending millions and millions
of moderate Muslims who reject terrorism in particular and violence in general?
Aren’t they our most likely allies in bringing about a future
understanding between cultures, countries and religions that will prevent the
kinds of conflicts we are experiencing right now? Second:
We are all shaking our heads at the intensity of the response to the
cartoons. It is terrible that
people are being killed in the protests against the cartoons.
But now let me ask you this: Are
we going to go the naïve and easy road and say, “This is the extreme response
of extremism. See, I told you so. No
sense of humor …” I have
actually heard these words said in the past weeks and days.
Or are we going to think about this twice, and find that this outrage is
about more than the cartoon? Something
is very volatile here, and I tend to think it is more than just the temperament
of a group of extremists. I think what is volatile here is the moment itself,
where prejudices and fears run rampant and find ready justification, whether it
is the prejudice against Islam as a cradle of extremism or the prejudice against
the United States as the leader of the western world, as an imperialist
superpower—both of them ultimately wrong, which is they are prejudices.
Shall we lend further fuel to those prejudices?
A picture, they say, is worth more than a thousand words. These twelve
cartoons were, that’s for sure. Finally,
the operational question here is not who is right, whose religion is right,
whose culture is superior, whose system of governance is superior, who has more
sources of energy and who has more clout in the international community.
The question is: what are we going to do to make this work in the future?
How are we going to coexist, not just as various countries on this
planet, but as neighbors in this very diverse country?
This is a question of cultural attitude.
For starters I think we might be well advised to learn about and learn
from the organizations that represent our Muslim American neighbors.
I urge you to look up the website of the Islamic Society of North America
at www.isna.net. We
should all read their denunciation of terrorism in the name of Islam, as well as
their commentary on the cartoons and the response they caused.
I will put a couple articles from their website on the bulletin board
outside my office for all of you to read. Incidentally,
on that same website, I saw a picture of a church group visiting.
Maybe the next picture they post should show a group from our
church—Christian Americans who are concerned about relations between religions
and cultures within this country and beyond. In
Jesus’ name. Amen.
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