What Does it Take?
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
March 15, 2015
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
John 4: 46-54
1 Kings 19: 11-15
Let us pray,
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
46 Then he
came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now
there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47 When
he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to
come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 Then
Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49
The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” 50
Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word
that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51 As he was going
down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52 So
he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him,
“Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 The
father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son
will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Now
this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee. [1]
So it seems like at this point the Gospel of John has now gotten going
after the prologue, and a slow start, without much action. Now it seems that
Jesus is going from place to place and having encounter after encounter with
person after person. It seems that some of them believe and some of them don't,
and each story is unique. Person after person comes to Jesus, says something to
him, some insight that they think they have about who Jesus is and what he is
doing. Jesus then sets the record straight, either pushing them further in what
and who they think Jesus is, or completely and directly challenging the notion,
condemning the shortsightedness and the confidence of the person coming to him.
First you have John the Baptist, not the light, but he who came before the
light, calling Jesus the lamb of God, then Nicodemus, saying, hey Jesus we can
tell you are one of us, a teacher sent from God, to the Samaritan woman we
talked about last week, who comes to believe in Jesus eventually. She was
unnamed, and the encounter we study this morning is also with an unnamed person,
this time a man. We got information about her, the Samaritan woman from last week,
she was Samaritan, hated race, 5 husbands, living with a 6th man who isn't her
husband, if Nicodemus should have seen it but didn't, we said last week, that
she should have missed it, but she doesn't, she comes to believe, and through
her so does many in her village. Now Jesus returns to Cana, where it all began
with the turning of water into wine, (I think it tells us that so we know that
Jesus has a reputation there, they are in the know, they know that this man
does magical things), and so now we get another nameless person, but he is far
from a Samaritan Woman, it says that he is a Royal Official.
How do you read that? What comes to your mind
when you think Royal Official? Especially since he is unnamed. . . Royal how? Roman, Jew? Is he royal himself,
or someone who works in an official position inside the government, which at
the time was royal? It makes a difference because the royalty at the time in
Judea is puppet government stuff, person put on the throne by the Roman
Authorities. . . another sellout? So soon after the Samaritan, just a different
empire to sell out to? Are we to be distrustful of him, are we supposed to see
him as "privileged," a privileged class person in a society of very,
very poor? You would think he would be the kind of guy who can get things done,
a person of means, a person of power, a person who can just say the word and
people act, but here he is desperate, because this passage introduces a real
world truth. Money doesn't solve all your problems, neither does power. There
are some things in this world that our systems of esteem and status just have
no effect on. . . and death is one of them. The passage does not say why the
boy is at "the point of death" just that he is there. He may be
diseased, he may have cancer, he may have been this way for awhile, he might
have just had an accident where he fell out of the royal litter and was
trampled by a crowd, he could have been harmed by someone, a burglar, a kind of
ancient mugging by a highway man, he may have fallen out of a window, my
favorite english word: defenestration, we just do not know. And it doesn't
matter. Jesus doesn't need the back story he just heals him, and not by laying
hands on, or rubbing mud on him, nothing of the sort, he just says "Go,
your son will live." Period. . . and it was so. . . If it had said,
"and we saw that it was good" it would have been just as if Jesus had
said "Let there be light." Important, of course. . . Jesus is not
hiding who he is, neither is John the Evangelist, remember we started with
"In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word
was with God." Some times
we like a moment, an action, a ritual to let us know it is working. We like our
medicine to taste bad, our gain to have some pain, otherwise we may doubt its
effectiveness, does Selson Blue really work better on dandruff than Head and
Shoulders, the ad says it does, because "the tingle means it's
working" but the tingle really has nothing to do with it the medicine, the
tingle just comes from the menthol and the tea tree oil they put in it, but we
buy it because it fits into our natural inclination. If we can't suffer a
little bit, or earn it, or make it happen, often we miss it. . . did this Royal
Official miss it? It says no, he believed enough to go home at first, just to
see, and then when he gets there and realizes that all the stars align and the times
were the same and he could not explain away it all as some kind of glorious
coincidence, he just couldn't talk himself out of it, so he believed. . . but
it seems to me like he was doubting all along. . . why? just because Jesus
seems to see his doubt. Jesus says to him, "unless you see signs and
wonders you will not believe." Jesus knows that this man is coming to him
in desperation, like he is just doing everything he can do to try to save his
kid. Remember he's a government official, a man of power, a man of action, a
man who gets things done, a man focused on the ends, and so whatever means are
necessary just to get the job done. And now he is in a situation where all his
power has been stripped away because money can't save his kid, neither can him having
the ear of the king, nothing in his arsenal will work, nothing in his bag of
tricks has been effective, nothing within his plans have done anything, and so
in desperation he comes to the man who turned the water into wine saying,
please save my son, and then in such a sweet moment, changes the term of
endearment, not my son, but my little boy. . . "Sir, come down before my
little boy dies." I've seen this desperation first hand, a couple weeks
ago when I was called to go "pray over my niece." My sister in law
was looking for anything she could do, any piece of control she could grasp,
she was going to walk down every avenue, just in case something might work, she
was going to do whatever it takes. There is something so human in that, so very
touching because it is us, and this nameless royal official, becomes for us
every one who has ever loved someone enough to do anything to save them,
especially a parent and a child. (God and Jesus seem to know that, too, they get
that, understand that, but still, the cross, and still, for God so loved the
world. . . knowing human love, knowing the deepness of connection, having that
in perfect example, puts it aside, not to save his own son, but to save this
man's and yours and mine, our children and us, not because of anything we have
done, but because of love).
What does it take for us to believe that in
all of its power, potential, realness and world changing actuality? What does
it take for us to believe that and have
it completely shift our world into a new one, shift isn't strong enough, it's
more of a realigning, like a shift, but one that includes an explosion, and
violence, and world destroying change, but we don't have a word for it. . . .
so instead we use Salvation and Grace. . . but often even those words fall short.
The theology word for it is conversion, full and total conversion, that born
again, born from above stuff, that is so fresh in our minds from a few weeks ago.
. . no we don't go back into the womb, that's too literal, but we wake up in
another world, one where the fears, doubts, insecurities, worries, and clueless
lost misdirection of the old world is gone and
replaced by our will being aligned with God's. . . grafted to the vine,
near the cross, harmony and love. This is the shift, the violent, world
destroying, explosive, realigning, born from above, stuff that is conversion. What
does this conversion take?
Some of the great writers and thinkers from
Christian History, Experience, and Literature have tried to tackle this very
topic, trying to capture their own experience, their own version. In the
bulletin I put a brief passage from St. Augustine's "Confessions" at
the moment of his change. His confessions are his spiritual biography depicting
all the twists and turns, that led him towards Christ, and they included all
sorts of missteps, including other religious beliefs, being lost in sin, until this
moment, and he puts the impetus for the conversion within the work and will of
God. . . listen to his words:
Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the
innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I
able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it
was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending
my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of
the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more
powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The
light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly
different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense
that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because
this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone
who knows truth knows this light.
Most people do not know this because usually
the only part that gets any press is the first part the Inferno, but Dante's Divine Comedy is his epic poem that
depicts his personal conversion. He like Augustine arises one morning and is
drawn to the light, but the light makes him realize that he is very much lost
in a wood of error, and he is unable to conquer sin on his own enough to just
go climb the hill to the light. So Love and Reason work together and he comes
to recognize sin and its rewards in Hell, he learns of the rewards of sacrifice
enough to renounce those sins in Purgatory, and then finally is his will
cleansed enough for him to accept and experience actual divine Love in Heaven,
perfecting his conversion.
Just
so was I on seeing this new vision
I wanted to see how our image fuses
Into the circle and finds its place in it,
Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —
140 Except that
then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.
Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,
145 By the Love
that moves the sun and the other stars.
Another is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, where his character, Christian, finds a book that
tells him he is living in a city of destruction, a man named evangelist comes
to him, shows him the gate by which he can begin his journey to the city of
salvation, but Christian fears he cannot make it on account of the heavy burden
he is bearing on his back. He goes through the gate, where Christ removes the
burden, and then travails through the world symbolically facing all the
challenges of the Christian life.
Yes conversion is a major aspect of the
Christian life. What does it take for us? What did it take for you? When did it
happened? Or has it yet? It seems that all of our answers are different, and
rightly so. . . though uniformity would make things easier, Christ is not
relegated to one thing, though many have tried to sell it that way. . . but
like Selson Blue, it doesn't have to tingle to be working, and in this case
belief is a response to grace not the cause of it. Jesus heals the boy, and
then the family comes to believe. . . even our desperation, even our trying to
cover all our bases, though they do not control God, they don't get in the way
either, unless we let them. Just like this father, the nameless royal official
does not start talking away the miracle, explaining it away into the rationalizations
of this world, instead he lets it despite himself bring him to faith, bring him
to conversion. Ours may not happen like his, or Augustine's, or Dante's or Bunyan's,
there may be no burning bush, or blinding light on the road if we happen to be travelling
towards Demascus. . . God instead works in many ways to call you to conversion,
call you to Christ. Be open, be aware, look for Christ, but don't be afraid
when Christ sneaks up on you in a place you didn't expect to find him, in a way
you never thought, in the opposite place from where you were looking. . . for
the answer to the question, what does it take. . . is simply this. . . it takes
Christ, and Christ alone.
[1]The
Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Jn 4:46-54). Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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