Psalm 14:1-7
John 1:1-18
Luke 15:1-10
"I
say there is no darkness but ignorance."
William Shakespeare
"Two-thirds
of Americans cannot name a single Supreme Court justice. Only about one-third can name the three
branches of government. Less than one-fifth of high school seniors can explain
how citizen participation benefits democracy.
Less than one-third of eighth-graders can identify the historical
purpose of the Declaration of Independence, and it's right there in the name."
"The more I read and the more I listen, the more apparent it is that our
society suffers from an alarming degree of public ignorance. That ignorance starts in the earliest years
of a child's schooling, but often continues all the way through college and
graduate school." Former US
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, miamiherald.com, 9/6/13
Though often misunderstood, "ignorance" is not strictly an insult to one's intelligence. Rather the term speaks to what is undeniably true: knowledge is lacking. One can be completely ignorant of certain information without being "stupid". I am ignorant about just about all things mechanical, but I am relatively well-versed in how our government works.
Yet at the time of this writing, I could
tick off only four of the nine Supreme Court justices right off the top of my
head (five if you count the one I tried to name who died several years ago!). Who they are, however, is not as great a
concern to me as the decisions they hand down; so I don't make it my business
to memorize each individual member of the Court. Yet some decisions which have come from that
Court are my business, especially those rulings having to do with religion in society.
The knowledge we pursue speaks directly
to what we consider to be important to know.
The knowledge we expose our children to speaks directly to what we
believe to be important to their well-being and their education. Yet when it comes to religious studies, there
is a huge gap we seem largely unconcerned about. I suppose there can be many reasons for this
deficit and why we don't seem so concerned about being or becoming more
biblically literate, but the compelling factor cannot be denied that ultimately
the Bible is just not that important to us - and if it is not important to us,
it will likely never be important to our children.
This is not a condemnation; it is an
observation with merit that our children pay attention to what we pay attention
to. Oh, we complain that prayer is not
allowed in public schools and we decry the absence of the Ten Commandments in
the hallways of those same schools, but we fail to take full advantage of the
religious opportunities there are outside of the public school systems. It seems much easier to blame others for
failing to do what WE should already be doing, what we've had opportunity to do
since the advent of the printing press.
What is especially appalling about this
reality is expressed in Jeremiah, in the
Psalms, and in John. In Jeremiah
it is written about the impending judgment against Judah: "My people are foolish; they
do not know Me." In Psalm
14 it is written, "Have they no knowledge [who] do not call upon the Lord" (vs 4).
In John's gospel it
appears things had not gotten much better between the advent of the Exile and
the advent of Messiah: "He came to His own, and His own did
not receive Him."
Jesus was born, was brought into the
Covenant community, and was raised pretty much like all other children. Of course the Bible gives us only a glimpse
of Jesus' childhood, but we can see even by that short piece of chapter two in Luke's gospel that Jesus was "known".
So when John proclaims that "world did not know Him"
and that "His own did not receive Him", we are compelled to
ask ourselves how this could be since Luke's
gospel seems to go in another direction in terms of familiarity and
acceptance. It has been suggested by
some that portions of the first chapter of John
can be more accurately described as "post script"; that is, speaking
of Jesus' crucifixion as the ultimate rejection. Perhaps.
I think, however, there is much more we need to know especially in light
of the often-quoted but rarely understood passage, "No one comes to the Father
but by Me".
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks well of the priesthood of Messiah as
"mediator", as a "priest in the order of
Melchizedek" (Hebrews 5:6),
and indeed He is. No one would deny this
component of Messiah as the "anointed one", yet this component of
Messiah is relatively small in comparison to what we need to know about
"logos", the Greek term in John's
first chapter translated to our English "word". The "logos" is the "Word of
God - and more than this, the "Word made flesh".
So we can pretty easily say we know Jesus
as priest and Jesus as Savior (that's the easy one!), but what can we say we
know about Jesus as "The Word" which is necessarily the primary
configuration as His place in the Holy Trinity?
Some may suggest it means different things to different people and to a
degree this is a reasonable supposition, but it can only be a supposition. It says nothing of what we know about "The Word",
the "logos" because there is only ONE "Word", and it is the
"Word of the Lord" - that which comes from the blessed Mouth of the
Most High and Eternal God; the
God who "does not change"; reasonably, "The Word"
which does not change.
What we conceive of and understand, however, can change everything
according to our opinions - what we think
rather than what we know.
Consider a book by James Michener called The Source. It is a fictional story of archeologists on a
dig in Israel. Cities in the ancient
world were built on top of one another rather than moving down the road after
destruction, so archeologists dig "layers"; and each
"layer" tells a different story from a completely different
time. In the story, one layer which
revealed a culture before the rise of the Hebrew faith revealed the story of a
woman standing in her doorway with tears streaming down her face as her husband
took their first-born son to the temple to be sacrificed as an act of worship
to an ancient "god". Though
this is a fictional book, that practice actually happened. Our Scriptures attest to this reality. In fact it still happens today.
Later there is this same woman revealed in
yet another "layer" this time watching as her husband goes off to the
temple to "worship" with temple prostitutes, an accepted act of
worship of this ancient religion (also revealed in our Scriptures, practices which
our Holy Father firmly HATES!), a mode of worship believed to ensure fertility
in the family and on the farm. As the
woman stands in the doorway with tears streaming down her face she says,
"If my husband had a different god, he would be a different man" (Faith Sharing, Fox/Morris, pg 18).
For those families then and for our
families now, the theological issue is not whether or not the family is engaged
in faith formation. The question is: what kind of formation is taking
place ("Faith Sharing Congregation", Swanson/Clement, pg 68)
especially in light of a colossal failure to give religious education its due? That we call Jesus our "Savior" is
central to our understanding of the Christian faith, but can we honestly say we
know Jesus if we are ignorant of
"The Word"? Because it cannot be denied that what we think
we know about Jesus has everything to do with what we think we know about the
Holy Father. Our behavior is conditioned
by our understanding of the very nature of the Holy God revealed in
Messiah.
To believe Jesus of Nazareth existed does
not require a lot of faith. He was,
after all, as much a rabbi and a prophet of the Most High God as He was fully
Man. To believe He was executed because
He went against the religious establishment is also not much of a stretch of
faith because we can easily see in our own culture, indeed in our own towns,
that people (clergy and laity alike) who do not "go along" with pop
culture are subject to social crucifixion - often by very cruel, unfeeling, and
uncaring Christians who think they "know" Jesus. It all has everything to do with what we know about our Holy Father because, you
see, we "see" the Father when we "see" Jesus; and we
"hear" the Father when we "hear" Jesus. When we are in "darkness", however
- that is, in ignorance of "The Word", "the Word which was in
the beginning" - we "see" nothing and we "hear" little
beyond our own thoughts and opinions.
The primary nature of our Holy Father,
that divine nature revealed in Messiah, is one of Shepherd who leads the willing
flock. And when even one of the flock
goes missing, the Shepherd drops everything to find that missing lamb and
return that lamb to the fold, worrying more about the one who "needs
repentance" than those who do not.
And we might think one dollar missing out of ten is not so bad, yet our
Lord states very clearly that it is a very big deal to Him and He will stop at
nothing until that "missing" one is found! All for that one tiny, socially insignificant
coin which is finally found, there is "joy in the presence of the angels of
God over one sinner who repents."
This is a God worth knowing. It is not enough to "suspect" there
may be a higher power. It is not enough
to believe a Man named Jesus existed. It
is not enough to form opinions in "darkness" (that is, in ignorance
of what is actually written in the Scriptures), opinions borne in darkness and which
remain in darkness that do not shed Light; for "the Light shines in
darkness, and the darkness [still] did not comprehend it" because
He came - but we could not "see".
It is not enough to know He came; it is a
matter of Life and Death to know what He says as "The Eternal
Word". What He said in the
beginning, what He says to the Church today, and what He will say when He returns. "The Word" is that which speaks to
us even in our moments of doubt, and it is "The Word" which speaks to
us in our moments of glory. It is
"The Word" which not only seeks us out when we have gone astray; it
is "The Word" which restores and transforms the Willing Soul. There is no "magic trick" - there
is only Love; the Love of the Holy Father in His Word made flesh.
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