Zeph 3:14-20
Ph 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

The Desire Beyond Desire

John said to the crowds …. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ….. One is coming who is more powerful than I … His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear the threshing floor And to gather the wheat into his granary; But the chaff (!) he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So John proclaimed the good news to the people.

So this is John’s version of the good news. Some good news! Some glad tidings! In fairness, it would be more accurate to say that this is the gospel writer labeling John’s words as good news. John himself seems to be thinking that he is bringing not glad tidings but tidings of doom. “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come.” So how are we to think of the coming kingdom: as good news or as the wrath to come? Of course we can have it both ways. Good news for the good people, for the believers, for the repentant: they will be like the wheat safely stored in the granary; bad news for the others, they are the enemy, the evil doers, they do not believe the truth as we believe the truth, and are unrepentant about it: they will be like the chaff burning with unquenchable fire. This good news/bad news message is found, sporadically, here and there in the gospels: in the parable of the maidens whose lamps run out of oil and who find the doors shut to them, in the wedding guest with the wrong garments who is thrown into outer darkness, in the saying that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard,” in Mark’s image of the last days as one of great “suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation,” and of course in the Book of Revelation which pictures the kingdom coming with a battle of horrific destruction where the forces of darkness are utterly annihilated. But there is another voice that we hear in the gospel, a considerably more gentle and generous voice, the voice of Jesus saying, come unto me all you who are heavy laden, a voice that tells the story of a Samaritan who provides aid to a severely beaten stranger, without asking any questions or demanding any conditions; or the story of a wastrel son who had abandoned family and home, splurged his inheritance, and yet is welcomed back unconditionally by his father; or Jesus telling us to forgive not seven times but seventy times seven and to not only love our neighbor but to love our enemy.

So, how are we to sort thru these alternative voices, these conflicting views of the good news, these contrary visions of the kingdom of God, these incongruities in the words of scripture?

The philosopher Nietzsche is famous, or perhaps I should say infamous, for interpreting Christianity as a vengeful religion of the poor and the subjugated against the rich and the powerful who are cast into utter darkness in the world to come. Nietzsche sees resentment as the basis of Christian morality, which he labels a slave morality, for it is like the resentment of the slave, whose life is narrow and meager, towards the master whose life is wide and brimming with vitality. And finally N sees all that religious talk about the enemy as the evil one to be punished and destroyed as nothing more than a pathetic attempt to view oneself as the good one destined for salvation and eternal bliss.

Well, N may have a point but it’s a very overdone point. There are, indeed, biblical texts and events in the life of the church that have too easily declared the believers’ historical adversaries to be, also, God’s enemies. And it may well be that when those adversaries are rich or powerful or highly educated an element of resentment feeds that negative religious judgment. But there are an overwhelming number of other biblical passages and events in the life of the church and of believers which witness to God’s mercy, compassion, love, forgiveness, justice, reconciliation, peace, concern for the other in need no matter who that other is. Still, we need not simply ignore N’s argument as useless to our understanding of faith. For his criticisms point to the dark side of religion: a temptation amongst believers to brand those who are other, whether in beliefs or values or race or group or even sexual preference, (to brand those who are Other) as enemies of God destined to damnation —- and therefore justifiably discriminated against, ghettoized or even killed. This dark side of religion can be found in the Bible, for the Bible tells it as it is, and in the history of the church —- need I provide examples: the long history of anti-semitism, the inquisition, the crusades, the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the subordination of women, the criminalizing of gay sex —- and of course this dark side of religion is only too visible today … in all the religions.

What shall we call this dark side of religion? Nietzsche would call this darkness the very heart of religion, that religion is rooted in the darkness of resentment and revenge, and that it leads inevitably to the desire to destroy the Other. The modern atheistic critics of religion, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, agree with him. They see religion as primarily a force for destruction, doing more evil than good. On the other hand, Obama, in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, calls this dark side of religious faith “warped religion.” Shall I mention its old name: sin, sin taking the form of spiritual pride: (meaning) my faith gives me certain knowledge of God’s will, I know what God wants; my faith means that I am amongst the good ones, the chosen ones of God; my faith calls me to act in God’s name, justifying the subjugation and even killing of unbelievers. Whatever happened to humility? John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer, who in the popular mind is imaged as the embodiment of predestinarian pride, wrongly imaged I need to add, (Calvin) used to say that the three precepts of religious faith are these: first humility; second, humility; third, humility. Those who have been caught up in the dark side of religion, in warped religion, seem to have forgotten that faith calls us to humility.
It’s time to return to John the Baptist and his “unquenchable fire.”

What lies behind this vision of chaff burning in unquenchable fire. Is it Nietzsche’s darkness of resentment and revenge burning in John? Perhaps. Perhaps not. How can we ever know what lies in the depths of another’s consciousness. All we have are interpretations from the outside. Let me suggest a less dark interpretation.
John has inherited from the thousand-year history of ancient Israel, especially from the prophetic tradition, the belief that God is the God of justice, demanding as high or even higher standards of justice from the community of believers than from those outside that community. John also inherits from the very same tradition the belief that the almighty God can do whatever the almighty God pleases to do. These two notions lying together in the believer’s head produce first puzzlement and then mental havoc. The great prophet Isaiah, as long ago as seven hundred years before John, cried out to God, “How long O Lord, how long,” meaning, how long O Lord are you going to tolerate these rampant injustices in the world, these cruelties, horrors, exploitations, killings. Why are you, a God demanding justice, not acting to stop these evils? One of the psalmists shouts out to God, “Wake up, wake up!” assuming that the only way to account for the flourishing of evil in the world is that God must be asleep. By the time of John, the notion that a just God is also an almighty God is playing havoc with the religious imagination, creating, amongst some, apocalyptic visions of Armageddon, a final, cosmic battle where the army of God and the angels defeats the army of Satan and all the forces of darkness sending all evil-doers into eternal hell-fire. Simultaneously the kingdom of God is ushered in, a kingdom of peace and justice for those who have been saved from destruction, and where God’s will is writ on every heart and where love prevails eternally.

There is no evidence that John believed in Armageddon, and there is certainly no evidence that John believed that believers should take up the sword in God’s name —- which is of course one of the characteristics of warped religion. Still, it is clear enough that John believed in a final day of judgment, coming soon, when God will burst into our lives armed with destructive power, wrathful against those who violated the norms of justice. So we need not think of John as burning with resentment and revenge, but as burning with a sense of God’s justice, of God’s moral indignation. John desired justice. He burned for it. Surely we have all known people like that. Perhaps in John’s case the burning went too far, so that he got burnt by it, and saw only divine wrath, only divine retribution, thereby missing the real meaning of the good news, the gospel. There are, after all, very good reasons why John was never declared the messiah. That was left for another, whose coming we celebrate in this season of advent.

So what is the real meaning of the gospel that John misses? What is the good news that the gospels witness to? You’d think by now that I’d grown old enough to know better than to ask such a mouth-filling question as what is the real meaning of the gospel. Actually I do know better. Let me rephrase the question. What is it that we find in the voice of Jesus, the one who has been declared the messiah, that we do not find in the voice of John? I ask the question this way to remind us of what I spoke about earlier as conflicting voices in the gospels, the voice that says the way is narrow, that shuts the door in the face of the foolish maidens, that sends into eternal torment the rich man who ignored the beggar Lazarus that sat every day by his door, and, on the other hand, the voice that forgives seventy times seven, the voice that forgives the woman caught in adultery, the voice that says love your enemies. The first voice is the voice of justice, the voice that insists that everyone be given their due, that everyone be treated fairly, and that those who violate, abuse or exploit others must also receive their due, which is condemnation and punishment. The second voice is the voice that forgives the violator, showing mercy to those who do not deserve mercy; it is the voice of compassion and love.

We tend to think of these conflicting voices, which we all hear inside ourselves, as voices belonging to the ethical dimension of our lives. When is it appropriate to show justice to another, when compassion? These are not academic questions as was made all too tragically evident in last week’s killing of four police officers by an ex-convict with a murderous record who had been paroled from prison, that is, shown compassion, by Governor Huckabee. But these two voices do not simply point to conflicts and dilemmas in our ethical lives, they point to conflicts in our theological understanding, in our understanding of who God is. These conflicts, both ethical and theological have bedeviled ethicists and theologians for two thousand years, so please do not think that I am going to resolve them in the five minutes remaining to me. Still I have something to say that perhaps will be helpful. I am going to talk about the notion that creates both dilemmas and havoc in the religious imagination, the notion that God can do whatever it pleases God to do —- a notion which generates endless discussions of why there is so much evil in the world and fuels the religious imagination with fantastic images of an end time when God will appear as the savior of the good and the destroyer of the evil. Behind this notion of God lies the assumption that the very godness of God lies in having absolute power, the power to cause things to happen. If you and I can cut down a tree or blow up a train, surely God cannot have less power than we have. Quite the opposite we say. Our powers are limited, God’s power is unlimited. If God chose to blow up a train, or blow up anything else, including the universe, God has the power to do so. The fact that God does not blow up trains or the universe is because God is not simply power, God is also love and justice. Therefore God will use power only for good, constructive purposes, never for evil, destructive purposes. When we think this way, we are thinking of God’s power as the causal engine of God, and of love and justice as the moral dimension of God qualifying God’s use of power. It is as if we are thinking of God after the image of a king with absolute power who is also good, just and loving. It is not accidental that the image of God as king, even Christ as king, is found not only in scripture but in the theological and liturgical traditions of the church. This is a hoary image and a hoary notion, it lies deep in the consciousness of all of us, but hoary as this notion of God’s power is, I would like to suggest an alternative to it. The alternative is this: to think of love and justice not so much as the moral qualifier of God’s power but to think of love and justice as God’s power. God’s power is the power of love and justice. It is not by might but by love and justice that God rules the world. Love and justice rule by drawing us towards them. We do not create ourselves as beings who desire love and justice, we find ourselves desiring love and justice. We hardly know how to define those terms, and we cettainly don’t know how to achieve a society of perfect love and justice. But we do know what it is like to be unloved and we do know when we experience an injustice —- and if only we are able, we run from both. And what are we running towards. We are running towards what doesn’t have material existence, and yet it is real. We know it is real because it has drawing power. It lures us forward. It is the lure of possibility. It lures us towards new possibilities, towards greater love and greater justice. What shall we call this lure towards ever greater possibilities of love and justice. We shall call it God.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, in this advent season when we look towards the coming of Christ, we are looking towards the one who embodies the spirit of love and justice. When we say that God is incarnate in Jesus Christ or that God’s Word is here made flesh, we are saying that God binds “himself” to us, that God’s power of love and justice, a power which gives us purpose and meaning and dynamism, nevertheless that power of God, to be fully exercised, has need of our decisions, our active response. Christ is the incarnation of God’s lure towards us, a lure which can never be finally achieved and yet everlastingly draws us forward. For Christ is the desire beyond all our desires. I hardly know what I am saying anymore. I had best stop.

Praise Christ.
Praise God.
Amen.

Sermon preached by Burton Cooper
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich, Vt.