Baucis and Philemon were just your run of the mill down to
earth people who lived in Tyana, a small village in the province of Phrygia
(central Turkey). Their home was a
small, rustic cottage with a modest little yard and an old grey goose for a
guard dog. They were a bit out of place
in their corner of the world. All their
neighbours were quite well off and lived in lavish estate houses with enclosed
yards and locked gates. One day two
ordinary peasants came and asked for a meal.
Baucis and Philemon, having little, were glad to share and so they
showed the strangers great hospitality.
They fed them well and as Baucis kept filling their wine glasses she
realized that her pitcher of wine was not going empty. She then surmised that these two men were not
ordinary peasants but the very gods Zeus and Hermes in disguise. So, she figured she'd better feed them the
best she could and went out to get the old grey goose. Well, the old grey goose realizing she was
about to be cooked fled into the very lap of Zeus himself who said Baucis need
not cook the goose. Rather, Zeus told
Baucis and Philemon they should follow him and Hermes up the hill just out of
town because he was going to destroy the town for he and Hermes had been to
many houses that day only to be locked out and treated rudely. When they got to the top of the hill and
looked back they saw a flood had destroyed the village and a beautiful temple
to Zeus was standing where their house once stood. As Zeus and Hermes were leaving Baucis and
Philemon made two requests: that they be the guardians of the temple and that
when it came time for one of them to die they both would die together. Zeus granted their request and in the bog
where they were buried two intertwining trees grew, one an oak and the other a
linden.
Well, that's a rough cut of a fable by the ancient Greek
poet Ovid found in his work Metamorphoses VIII. It is a fable which demonstrates the virtuous
practise of theoxenia, or showing hospitality to the gods. This story greatly informs our passage from
Acts in which Paul and Barnabas find themselves also mistaken for the gods Zeus
and Hermes. They visit the town of
Lystra in the province of Lycaonia which is adjacent to Phrygia where Baucis
and Philemon were supposed to have lived.
Paul proclaims the Gospel and there's a man there crippled from birth
who believes Paul's message of the Lordship of Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son
of God crucified and raised, ascended and returning. Paul perceives that the man has faith to be
saved and tells him to stand up and walk that his salvation may be
enacted. The man does and the crowds go
wild lifting up their voices proclaiming that the gods Zeus and Hermes had come
down to them. Knowing their Ovid, which
was truth as far as they were concerned, they were not going to let happen to
Lystra what happened to Thyana, the town of Baucis and Philemon. So, they pour on the theoxenia and try
to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas thinking they were Hermes and
Zeus. Paul just does get them to refrain
from doing that by pointing them to the one true living God who was their
Creator.
Interesting to note here is how Paul unknowingly taps into
the endemic beliefs about gods the people of Lystra had and when that happens a
mass religious movement arises. Also,
interesting to note is how in that mass religious movement people want to
idolize or worship the messenger. Now I
would like for you to consider that this is quite possibly what has happened
with North American Christianity since it has become media driven. We should be asking what endemic beliefs
about god and the gods has, let's say, Joel Osteen tied into to have such a
mass religious movement surrounding him?
What endemic beliefs did Rick Warren at Saddleback Church tie into in
Orange County, CA for such a purpose driven way of doing church erupt that
really hasn't proven all that successful anywhere else? The same can be asked of Bill Hybels and the
Willow Creek Church seeker-sensitive movement which has proven largely
unsuccessful or rather unrepeatable outside of that Chicago suburb.
To look more broadly at North America as a whole and our
endemic beliefs about god and the gods, I contend that Zeus still lingers
around the tall steeples of Christendom.
You've come across him I'm sure.
He's the almighty, all-knowing, bearded old man enthroned above the
clouds. He makes it rain or not. He's the supreme head of the state and of the
financial institutions. He's the great
Watchmaker who set the universe in motion and stepped back only to interfere on
the side of the Americans and Brits when evil erupts. He is the ultimate judge of people with
respect to the afterlife which is the only thing that really matters anyway for
us or should be. Therefore, if we want
things to go well for us, we have to figure out a way to keep the old man
upstairs happy with us. So, we go to our
temples to get our moral compasses reset and our egotistical psyches refreshed
and maybe give a thought to becoming more altruistic. We do this because there is a lingering
suspicion that the lingering Zeus will get us in the end if we are not good
people and upstanding citizens. Some
good modern day crusaders named Bill Bright and Billy Graham developed a
message that tied Jesus into our game.
They said this God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives. But because of sin we can't know God, his
love, or his plan. Jesus is the only
solution to our dilemma. So, if we want
it to know all this we have to invite Jesus into our hearts. Yet, something
happened in the '60's to our lingering Zeus.
He was dealt a mortal blow and he and his temples are slowly and
steadily disappearing. I think maybe
Narcissus, Aphrodite, Bacchus, Athena, and the Fates formed a coalition
opposition government and are slowly poisoning him and his son Apollos to
death. And Hermes, well, he tries to
keep this lingering Zeus in power by masquerading as an agent of change which
only gets him whipped or he's the institutions biggest Don Quixote or he's just
playing it safe because the institution is paying his salary. And, I'd better stop before my sarcasm proves
to be nothing more than the last defence of a weak mind.
Friends, we truly need to take a fresh look at our doctrine
of God. I think there is a huge failure on our, the Church's part, that is
affecting our congregational life as Presbyterians. It is that though we confess that God is
Trinity, functionally were are unitarian.
We have bowed at the altar of Christendom's lingering Zeus. I prayerfully believe that our neglect in
"getting God right" - if I may put it as politically incorrect as
that - is what is at the heart of our problem with what NCD calls passionate
spirituality. So, in an effort to put us
back in the right direction please tolerate me talking about the Trinity with,
of course, three points.
Firstly, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the theologians
behind the Nicene Creed said, "When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit." He realized that
people differ in what they mean when they say the word God. Just ask any American who or what they are
referring to as the god mentioned on their currency. In the Christian faith, God is Trinity - the
loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of late we have grown accustomed to
confessing that God is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. I appreciate the move there to inclusive
language, but that move only reduces the Trinity from being a communion of
persons to just being actions. Moreover,
God is the loving communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before creation
ever existed and therefore before the actions of creating, redeeming and
sustaining ever came onto the picture.
Though it is common in our culture particularly among men to reduce
people to being simply what they do, we cannot do that with God.
Secondly, the Trinity is a loving communion of
persons. By person we do not mean what
is typically thought of in individualized Western culture. A person is not an autonomous, rational,
decision making animal capable of shaping its own destiny. A person is rather a relational being. Yes, there is something uniquely me about me
but my me is profoundly shaped by all the relationships that I have been in and
continue in. I am so profoundly shaped
by them that I might as well just say that I am the sum-total of all my
relationships though to do so would drive us to being reductionist in the
opposite extreme. The Trinity is the
loving communion of persons - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - whose
personhood is the relational way of being that forms their identity. God the
Father is not Father without the Son and the Holy Spirit. God the Son is not Son with out the Father
and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is
not Holy Spirit without the Father and Son.
Thus, we cannot be who we are without God and one another. We are who we are by our relationships with
God and one another.
Thirdly, the Trinity is a loving communion of persons
formed in the relational and dynamic being of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
through their giving themselves so completely to one another that they are
one. The Greek word for that is homoousion. They are the same stuff. They are all the sum-total of the
relationship that they share in one another that is distinguished as steadfast
love and faithfulness. Another word the
post-Nicene church used to describe their dynamic communion of love is perichoresis. Peri means around or through. The chor- part means to contain or indwell or
inhere. So originally the term meant
that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually indwell one another or indwell
through and around one another. A word
the derives from the chor- part is chorea which means dance. So, later in the life of the Church perichoresis
came to mean the divine dance. The
Trinity is in himself the dancing in, around, and through one another of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in self-giving steadfast love and faithfulness, a
dancing that reaches out to us to include us in themself.
So, there you have it God is Trinity - the loving communion
of relational persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who give themselves so
utterly and completely in self-giving, indeed self-sacrificing love that they
are One. I will now say briefly why this
matters and to do this we must ask what has the Trinity done for us and not
only for each of us but for his whole creation in, through, and as Jesus of
Nazareth the Christ the incarnate Son.
Well, let's keep ourselves to simply saying he has done nothing short of
restoring his image, thi divine dance of love, in humanity and in so doing has
saved, is saving, and will save his whole creation. Like the man crippled from birth whom Paul
commanded to walk and he did, the Triune God of grace makes this salvation,
this including us in the dance effectually real in humanity through the
powerful working of the Holy Spirit to build community. The Holy Spirit has been, is, and will
continue to bring into existence all over the place small fellowships of people
who give themselves to one another in self-giving indeed sacrificial steadfast
love and faithfulness. The creation of
these small communities of the body of Christ all over the world is like the
sprinkling of the blood of atonement all over the temple on the Day of
Atonement in ancient Israel.
The loving
communion that arises among us by the work of the Holy Spirit reflects the true image of the Trinity within the creation. This is
only possible because each of these people, each of us are organically,
dynamically, and essentially united, glued, bonded to the Son by the relational
working of the Holy Spirit so that we know deeply and personally the steadfast
love and faithfulness of the Father for us just as Jesus the incarnate Son
knows it for himself. So, in turn, we
want to thank and praise and serve the Father as faithfully as Jesus himself
does because it is Jesus, the Son's, own faithfulness that abides in us as our
own. In these fellowships things like
forgiveness, reconciliation, mutual affection, graciousness, kindness,
peacefulness, self-control, gentleness, and loving one another as Jesus has
loved us each by giving himself for us - these relational things are what
really matters. Therefore, a major
component of passionate spirituality for us is to work at being the community of people
who in their relating together reflect the image of the Triune God of grace
because he has adopted us into the dance of his very self. The people in these fellowships, us, were
once crippled from birth by sin and death, but now we live and dance in the
life and dance of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because of what the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit have done, continue to do, and always will do in, through
and as Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son in the power of the Holy Spirit to the
glory of the Father.
Finally, St. Athanasius who was the primary theologian
behind the Nicene Creed wrote in his classic The Incarnation that the
reason he knew Jesus has been raised from the dead and lives is that all over
the world idolatry was ceasing to exist.
So it is today in the church as I see it. In the church here in in North America the hidden
lingering Zeus of Christendom and Christendom itself is dying because Jesus
lives and he will no longer tolerate the presence of this false god among his
people. The question that comes to us
now is are we going to die with Zeus or are we going to dance? Are we going to get serious about loving the
Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbours as
ourselves? Are we going to get
passionate about loving one another as Jesus has loved us each? Are we going to dance? Amen.
