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“The Preservation of the Truth”
March 22, '09
John 1:1-5
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The opening words of the Gospel of John are word pictures of wonder and faith and particularly of hope: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5) It is the predominant image greeting us as we reflect on this stained glass window – it is the image of light shining in the darkness – light shining out of the darkness – light shining in spite of the darkness which is all around it. As with all of our stained glass windows, a central image is the dove, and in this case, a dove with light shining around it. This is the Spirit of God – this is the Presence of God. In the image on the stained glass window, it is not just a flame like a flame of a candle – it is light which penetrates the darkness – it is light which divides the darkness – it is light which winds its way through the darkness. In a world filled with much darkness, the Presence of God is present – the Presence of God is with us.
Some time ago, six banners were created to depict the Great Ends of the Church. The banners were long and narrow – proportionately similar to the long and narrow windows in our sanctuary. Bob Drake took the banner designs and adapted them for stained glass, which worked well for our sanctuary.
One can wonder what kind of pondering the artist who created the original designs had to do to transform a denominational mission statement into a picture with hopes of representing the statement’s core meaning. Seems to me that the artist first had to come to an understanding of the truth at the heart of this statement.
A temptation would be to associate “truth” with “right thinking.” Truth as “correctness” has become an obsession. Specific meanings and interpretations of laws and documents; with courts of the land analyzing every word in documents to define the deepest intent of the document and how those documents might relate to the world of today. The same in our denomination – a steady flow of overtures presented to our denomination's General Assembly for consideration of who we are as a denomination within the context of the world. As in the world around us, within our denomination there are those who deliberately break rules so that their issues will be brought before the church courts in order to determine interpretations of wordings of specific documents perhaps even written generations ago. It is a process of searching for the truth. It is a manner of preserving the truth which could be what the writers of the Six Great Ends of the Church intended when they penned those words a century ago. But the artist’s interpretation of this Great End in our stained glass may not have had exactly that in mind.
The image in our glass is the light shining in the darkness and the darkness not overcoming it. The image shining in our window is one of the Presence of God in the midst of that light with a glow of light shining all around that presence. The truth is the Presence of God. Like the flame in and amongst the bush Moses encountered on a desert mountain many many centuries ago – the presence of God was with Moses in the burning bush. Moses was changed. His life took a new direction. It was no more to be about Moses. It was to be about God. The “tongues as of fire” which descended upon the disciples gathered in the Upper Room, the Presence of God became known to them – their lives changed – a new direction. It was no more to be about them and their fears and their search for meaning. It was to be about Jesus. The faith exploded from that room and took over the Roman Empire. Even beyond the Roman Empire. Even to the ends of the earth.
This is the meaning of “truth” which the artist portrays in our window. Something which cannot be captured and placed into documents – the nature of God cannot be captured and placed into a collection like a butterfly captured and pinned within a collectors box. There is a wildness in the nature of God refusing to be tamed. Regardless how hard we may try to capture the essence of God to encapsulate and enshrine in the little boxes of our world experience, we will find that God is not there after all, eluding us yet again. The light flowing from the bottom to the top of the window – dividing the window in half. Splitting the darkness. It goes where it wills. There is nothing the darkness can do about it.
Documents and dogmas of our denomination cannot even begin to contain the Truth which is the Presence of Almighty God. The great learned thinkers and theologians of the world may write their volumes of pages intent on helping us in our understanding of God, but even with many lifetimes of study and seeking, the best hope anyone could ever have of capturing the essence of God into a document would be as empty as capturing a shadow.
In this phrase of the Great Ends of the Church, two words were put together. An uneasy marriage: “preservation” and “truth.” Pondering the word preservation, our minds may wander to the word preserves. It is what many people do with summer fruits. One of my favorite websites is epicurious.com with its thousands of recipes in their data base. I look up a recipe for sour cherry preserves and find that with four pounds of sour cherries, after I have pitted the sour cherries and have thrown most of the pits away, I am to add five cups of sugar and a third cup of fresh lemon juice. I am also to take three tablespoons of the pits, crack them, extract the white inner kernels (which I am to wrap in some cheesecloth) to stir into the cherry mixture and chill for a day. Then I am to put the whole mixture into a pot and boil for five minutes. Next, I am to remove the cherries and divide the cherries among my jars. Following that, I am to bring the juice to a rolling boil for about ten minutes, then throw away the cheesecloth bag. Gradually I am to add one box plus three tablespoons of lower sugar powdered pectin, boil a bit more, skim the foam off, then pour the juice into the jars. Sealing the jars, I'm done. Imagining that I have just made eight jars of sour cherry preserves, I would have captured, in a fashion, some of the essence of the sour cherries I started with. At the beginning of the process I would have certainly enjoyed sampling some of the fresh cherries I started with the day before as I began the recipe. My guess is that there would have been quite a difference between the fresh sour cherry upon my palate, puckering with its tart sourness, and the preserve I boiled and put into the jars together with the sugar, lemon juice, and pectin. But in November when fresh sour cherries are scarce, the preserves would be a delight on my bread with some butter. With preserves, we seek to capture the essence of the fresh fruit, hanging onto it long after nature would have snatched the fresh fruit away from us. We add stuff to it. We take other things away from it. We cook it. We sterilize it, which, in a way, is to sanitize it. We put it on the shelves of the pantry, available to pull out when wanted, when convenient. Or, the sour cherry preserves can sit on those same shelves, forgotten for years, perhaps even to be thrown out when we choose to give the pantry a cleaning.
This is why those two words living together in this phrase of the Great Ends of the Church can seem to make for an uneasy marriage. Preservation and truth. To preserve the truth. If we are not careful, the words can play into humanity's persistent desire to tame God, to make God into a dogma useful for dividing even the most faithful followers of Christ. As much as we in the Church may try to reduce God into little jelly jars to be stacked neatly upon the shelves of our pantries, we will only find to our dim amazement that God is not preserved nicely in our little jelly jars. God is still out there on a wild cherry tree, beckoning us to come over and taste what a real cherry is supposed to taste like. We climb the tree and find that God is there – wild and unwilling to be tamed – unable to be tamed. From the tree we see, on the edge of the garden, a bright red strawberry peeking out from behind leaves. We are enticed over to find, again, that God is even there – delighting in opening our senses to another of God's delights. And then along the fence we see a plant with a fully ripe raspberry beckoning us over. Again, a kiss from God. It is because God is alive and is everywhere and is delighting in waking us up to the incredibleness of the fabulous creation all around us – a masterpiece, which God is still creating. And like the stream of light flowing through the darkness in our stained glass, God has been flowing through history, and is flowing into the future, bringing light into a world living with its eyes closed, a world not wanting to see the phenomenon of the Spirit of God.
To preserve the truth is not to control a dogma. To preserve the truth is to allow the truth to be free of our futile attempts at the control of God. To preserve the truth is precisely to keep the truth out of the bondage of our little jelly jars, allowing the truth to live as wildly and as freely as it always has and as it always will.
In this dark world, traveling down the road of life with eyes affixed on the documents and belief systems we are easily tempted to worship as gods, or even traveling with eyes closed because we think that we have found all the truth there is to find (no need to even look anymore) – with some courage and with some curiosity, we see a glint of light dancing alongside us on the pathways of life. We wonder about it. It is over there. We are over here. Our group is traveling nicely together over here. We are familiar with the path we are on because we are on it and it is secure. But then there is that glint of light again. But it is coming from the wrong place. It is not coming from the little jelly jar we have labeled as truth preserves, which, by the way, is still sitting nicely next to the other jars in the little pantries of our souls. Then there is that glint of light again. Not just any light. It is a light which seems to have life and understanding and wisdom and playfulness. It is trying to get our attention. What are we going to do?
God is the Mysterious One. Difficult to see for those whose eyes are only trained for the truths of the world. But knowing God is ever-present, we look and look, not knowing exactly what to look for. Then, out of the periphery of our eyes, we see the movement of a shadow. We know, somehow, we have been in the presence of God. But since it was only a shadow, all we know is that the presence of God was there. God is the Delightful One who teases us like a lover – who wants to make our eyes twinkle – who wants to woo us to fall in love with God. God is the Compassionate One whose heart breaks with our sorrows and who walks with us in our pain. God is the Whispering One who whispers our names out of the silence, and nudges us, and calls to us to step out of the prisons we lock ourselves into and step into the freedom of knowing that we are dancing with God after all. God is the Free One. Unable to be caught. Unable to be caged by those of us who desire to put God on display so that we can say we are the ones who own God. While we think that we have God captured and preserved in the little jelly jars of our souls; while we think that we have God captured in the butterfly collections of our theologies; out of the corners of our eyes something can move. A flicker of light dancing over there. A little tease. “I'm not in your jelly jar. I'm not in your collection. I'm not dead. I'm over here… And, I'm over here as well… And even over here as well. Follow me! Chase me! Try to catch me! Watch out! I'll bet I can catch you.” The delightful game begins. Your soul begins to grow again. My soul begins to grow again. Our souls grow again. And we are flabbergasted that God could really loves us – even us. Flabbergasted that God could love us enough to pull us out of our souls and into the amazing tender embrace of the Love of the Universe – into God's tender hands.
Ponder the words from the Song of Solomon:
2As a lily among brambles, so is my love among maidens.
3As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. 4He brought me to the banqueting house, and his intention toward me was love. 5Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples; for I am faint with love. 6O that his left hand were under my head, and that his right hand embraced me! 7I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready! (Song of Solomon 2:2-7)
Oh, you could chase that flicker of faith and the glimmer of God until you find that God has caught you. Or, you could put sunglasses onto your soul, and pretend that that flicker of light out there in the darkness was just your imagination playing tricks on you.
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