THE LANGUAGE OF GOD
Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
As I was in the process of preparing for ordination, now about 20 years ago, part of that process was the requirement to take a barrage of psychological tests. You go to one of the psychological testing centers near your seminary, and you have to sit down and take tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which perhaps many of you have heard of. One of the tests that we had to take was called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--the MMPI.
Now the MMPI is kind of a controversial test, even today, because the purpose of it is to, kind of, smoke out psychological pathology. You know, to see if you had any psychological issues that would be unhelpful in the practice of ministry. So you have this in mind as you're answering the questions. And some of them, as I recall, were questions like:
"I hate my mother. Yes or No."
"I communicate with aliens. Yes or No."
"I hear voices. Yes or No."
And so on. Pretty straightforward as to what the right answer is--I guess for most people. I'm happy to report I passed, or at least they didn't tell me that I failed. They also ask you the same question multiple times. So we would joke among ourselves that if it doesn't test whether you have psychological issues, the MMPI might cause them.But one of the questions that tripped me up was this one: "God speaks to me. Yes or No." I really scratched my head about that one…because I wanted to be ordained. And I didn't know what the psychologically healthy answer was, as opposed to the answer that has theological integrity. And it strikes me that such a question does blur the line between psychology and theology. We might consider the fact that what's considered today to be psychological pathology, in ancient times was considered holiness, or closeness to God. But that's another sermon, I think.
The question I'd like to focus on is a tough question, today. Does God speak to me? Or to you? Or to us? I'd like to reflect with you about that today. And we're going to be a little discursive. We're going to meander and meditate around those questions a little bit. It's the first Sunday of the year, so we have to blow the cobwebs off, and so stay with me, if you would.
And I think those are appropriate questions--does God speak to me, to you, to us?--for this particular Sunday, which is the actual feast day of Epiphany. January 6th this year falls on a Sunday, the first day of the season of Epiphany. You can read more about Christmastide and Epiphany in the worship notes in your bulletin. But this season is a season to reflect on how God has been revealed through the Christ event--a child born in a manger in Bethlehem. And specifically we reflect on the story of the Magi--the wise men traveling from the East who saw the language of the Star; God's communication to humankind through that sign--and were the first people to bow down and worship Christ, born in a manger in Bethlehem. And so, appropriate enough for us to ask the question: If God revealed that through the language of a star long ago, does God communicate with us? With you? And if so, by what language does God speak?
And so, as we get at that question, let's begin here, and in this way: If God does speak--and of course, the obvious answer is yes, God does…maybe the question for us is how? And if we say yes, God speaks to us, how do we test the validity of such speech? I think it's important to begin that way, because if I got up here and said, "I'm closest to God here, of course" (which is, of course, not true) but if I said, "God spoke to me this morning at breakfast. And so hear the Word of the Lord. God said that we should all eat buckwheat pancakes for breakfast every morning." And that's kind of a silly example, but I'm using it just to illustrate my point--how do we test the validity of that statement, that that is, in some way, divine communication?
There is a test for us, as Christians, and especially as people in the Reformed tradition. We can say that the test is, of course, this book, right in front of me. The way that we test communication that we might say is from God is by means of this book--the primary mode by which God communicates to us. And notice I use the present tense, and not the past. It's not that God communicated at one time through these words on a page. This is a living document, not just dead words on a page. This communication is alive. John Calvin taught us that the only way we can understand the Scriptures is through the help of the Holy Spirit, and it's important that we understand God speaking through them to us today, in our real life situations. That's how it works.
Taking, my example of the buckwheat pancakes--we have a pattern of communication in this book by which we can test divine communication. And so, we might ask, then, what does eating buckwheat pancakes have to do with the pattern of communication we find in this book? We'd probably say that we'd be hard-pressed to find any connection there. The most basic test of which is the Hermeneutic of Love, or the principle of love which really is the central Biblical principal. What does that have to do with the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ that we know through this book? So that's a basic test.
But we could also say that if God communicates through this book, God communicates both to us, and to me. It is the case that divine communication came through individuals, prophets, who said, "Hear the word of the Lord." Hear the Word that I heard. But that word was validated and affirmed by a community, that's why it's here in this book. Because the community understood--this is the Word of God. From you, but for us. So it's not the tyranny of one individual's words.
Also, we can say, that this book speaks not just in a communal way, but in a personal way. If we can affirm that God's eye is on the sparrow, I know that God is watching me…we also must affirm that God speaks to me, and to you, personally--to the very real situations and problems of your life.
And so if you're engaged with a struggle right now, or if you simply want to know what God might be saying to you as you live your life, my suggestion is to pick up and read this book. It truly can be very helpful to us in finding answers about living our everyday lives--to try to understand God's very personal message to us through these words on these pages. Here's a plug for the lectionary Bible study that we do every Sunday, over yonder--it's a way of reading the Scriptures and asking the question, What does this have to do with my life? What is God saying to me, to my own, very personal life, through these words?
So, check it out. Take up and read. God speaks to us through this book. That's the primary mode of communication of God that we, as Reformed people, have affirmed.
So that's the conventional answer, and I did a whole sermon series on that several months ago, a series on the Bible--maybe that is a brief review of some of that. But for the rest of the time that I have this morning, and I don't have that much more time, I want to talk about this story, the scripture lesson about the three Wise Men. And how I think that this story is really about how God uses other means to communicate with humankind. The Bible is, again, the test for all divine communication, but not the sole mode and means God uses to communicate with us. So what might this story say to us in that regard?
First of all, what's most surprising in the story about the three Magi, or Wise Men from the East, is that Matthew uses in at all his narrative--this story about…pagans. They are the first ones who understand the language of God. It's most surprising because Matthew is the most Jewish among the four gospel writers. Matthew is the one who seems to show clearly that Jesus is the one to fulfill the prophecy of the Old Testament. So it's surprising that he uses these people as characters in the divine drama. Magi. Magicians.
Let's look at who these people really are. We would understand them, and the Jewish people of that time would understand them, as kind of New Age astrologists. They would have come from an area around Persia, and they might have looked into crystals, horoscopes, and that kind of thing. They would have been looking up at the heavens, and they would have been good at studying the pattern of the stars. They would have been experts in dream interpretation. They would have been doing all those things that Jewish tradition would have forbade. They would have been seen as idolaters. And yet these are the very people, in Matthew's narrative of the story, through whom the revelation of God is made known.
If we consider the question, "Is God speaking to us? Does God speak to us?" this story might lead us to the humble notion that such speech might come to us from surprising sources that we might never expect. It might make us open to the idea and notion that God may indeed not speak exclusively through Christian people. Consider that!
The Protestant theologian Paul Tillich speaks about the idea that just because the church is the body in the world seeking to bear witness to the unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ--and I believe it is a unique revelation--it doesn't mean that God works exclusively through the church. God is more creative than that, according to Paul Tillich. And so we might consider whether God might be creative and crafty enough to communicate through other traditions, maybe, like even Islam, and Buddhism. The logos of Christ, the spirit of Christ, might just be present there, as well.
Another way we might think of it on an individual level, if we affirm that God speaks both to us and to me, is to think about this: whether God might speak to me in ways that are unexpected and surprising. I think I might have mentioned in a sermon earlier that I went on a retreat at a Buddhist monastery for a week. It was a wonderful experience, almost all of which took place in silence. And at various times the teacher of that retreat met individually with the participants in the retreat. And during his talk--he would do a talk once a day--he mentioned that some people kind of pushed his buttons. You know? Some people kind of irritated him. But he said that he needed to treat people as if they might be a Bodhisattva, a divine being, who had been sent to him in order to communicate something important. So…that person who pushes my buttons might be the person who has a message for me I need to hear. Isn't that an interesting way to think? That instead of this person being cast off, useless, blocking my way--what if we believed this person might have something important for me to hear.
How does God communicate with us, and by what language? I have one more idea about that, that comes from this story, before I conclude this morning. And it may seem a little far out, but it's a very biblical idea. If we take the activity of looking at the stars--which would have been a most commonplace thing to do if you were living in the ancient world, and still today--if we consider that that is the way, through the language of ordinary everyday events, by which God communicates to us. We might consider that there's a very specific, everyday occurrence by which God communicates, which we often see in the Scriptures; namely, dreams.
It's interesting that dreams are mentioned rather frequently in the Scriptures as the chosen means by which God communicates to people. Did you notice that at the end of this story, the Magi were warned in a dream not to return to Herod? No less than three times in this narrative about Christ's birth has Matthew used dreams as the way God is revealing Godself to individual human beings. Dreams are also part of the language of God.
In his book Dreams: God's Forgotten Language John A. Sanford, who is an Episcopal priest, asks the question, "Why are people so deaf to the voice that comes to them in their sleep? In the case of the church, there is scarcely a thought given to the significance of the dream to the religious experience. And this in spite of the great number of dreams in the Bible, and the high regard in which they were held by the early church." Sanford suggests that dreams can be the means by which we heal our soul; transform our life; and become intimate with God. Through this very concrete means, and mode of communication: a dream. C.G. Jung, who believed in dreams of the unconscious as a means of communicating with what we might call "a divine realm," in a now famous interview with a BBC reporter toward the end of his life, was asked the question, "Do you believe in God?" And C.G. Jung replied, "No, I don't believe. I know." His experience with the unconscious led him to an intimate sense of the presence of the divine dimension in human life.
I know that paying attention to my dreams has been transformative, and made a huge difference in the course of my life. And so you might consider not just paying attention to this book (The Bible), but your dreams as well. Buy a book about interpreting dreams. Sit down with a spouse, or a friend, and talk about them. They may be the language by which God is speaking to you.
So in conclusion might we consider this: whether the same God who communicated to three Wise Men by means of a star, is trying to speak to me, and to you, and to us, if we simply care to pay attention.
Amen.
January 6, 2008
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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