Sermon: Listen to Him

Texts: 2 Corinthians 4:1-6; Mark 9:2-9

Date: February 26, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

Did some of you see the movie “Napoleon Dynamite”? The hero, Napoleon, is a teenaged boy, a kind of uber-geek. He likes to draw pictures, especially of fantasy creatures like his specialty, the “liger,” which is a cross between a lion and a tiger. We see a few of his drawings through the camera’s eye—they are simple and cartoon-y, nothing to write home about. But he sees artwork as one of his skills, and with the encouragement of a friend, he decides to use his art skills to help him get a date for the school dance.

He spends many hours working on a pencil portrait of the girl he hopes will go with him to the dance. He’s proud of it, judging it to be one of the best pictures he’s ever drawn. The camera sees it as the young lady who is the subject does. It is simply awful. Napoleon has obviously labored over shading her face to make it look realistic, and the result is a dark grey, twisted, distorted face that is barely recognizable as the girl in question. There’s a note attached—“There’s plenty more where this came from if you will go to the dance with me.” The girl is justifiably horrified; you can see in her expression both a rejection of Napoleon’s skill as an artist and her desperate hope that she doesn’t really look like that.

It’s a funny and poignant moment in the story. The girl’s mother also sees the portrait. But what Mother sees is not the distorted image so much as the genuine effort and the affection that went into the making of the portrait. She presses her daughter to go with Napoleon to the dance.

One of the week’s headlines, “Christians defend attacks on Muslims in Nigeria,” got me thinking again about the extreme challenge of practicing Christianity in our mixed-up world. If we think of our practice of discipleship as the portrait we draw of Christ in the world with our life, it seems to me we Christians are too often handing Christ a portrait that must be horrifying in its distortion. Take the story whose headline I just read. Some of the Christians in Nigeria are killing any Muslims they can find in order to get even with Muslims who had attacked churches out of anger over the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed that have been on the media’s front burner for weeks now. The central mosque in Onitsha, Nigeria was gutted by fire, and someone had written on the wall with a piece of charred wood: “No Muhammad, Jesus Christ is Lord.” Muslim refugees who fled into police stations or across the border described mobs of Christian men wielding guns and machetes bursting into Muslim-owned businesses to loot and kill. One of the local Christians is quoted as saying, “We have to retaliate. It is a shame to us if we don’t kill them.”[1] This is like handing a twisted portrait to Jesus with a note, “There is plenty more where this came from if you will be my Savior.”

I cannot fathom a Christian feeling not only justified but compelled to carry out revenge killings in the name of Jesus. I suppose if I had grown up in that region, where ethnic and religious tensions are centuries old, it would make more sense. It seems like a horrible distortion of Christianity to me. Yet I think we are called upon to do more than condemn when we read such a story of either Muslims or Christians killing in the name of faith. We will be healthier if we let such a distorted portrait of Christian discipleship inspire us to search out our own version of bad portraiture.

In the reading from 2 Corinthians Paul uses the image of the veil. Apparently he has been accused of not making the gospel clear. He defends himself by saying that if “our gospel” is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. He says that the “god of this world”—that’s a small “g” god—has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. The god of this world would probably be named as Satan by Paul. Since the name Satan calls up such a complex set of images and ideas, maybe it’s best to do what Paul did as we reflect on his words, and stick with the god of this world, with the emphasis on the world. I think the metaphor of the god of this world veiling the minds of the unbelievers is provocative. I would expand it, though, to include the believers as among those who may also be blinded by a veil woven by the god of this world.

George MacDonald, a Scottish mystic who wrote a devotional sonnet for every day of the year in his classic Diary of an Old Soul, wrote these verses addressed to God for a couple of days in October:

From sleep I wake, and wake to think of thee.

But wherefore not with sudden glorious glee?

Why burst not gracious on me heaven and earth

In all the splendor of a new-day-birth?

Why hangs a cloud betwixt my Lord and me?

The moment that my eyes the morning greet,

My soul should panting rush to clasp thy father-feet.

Is it because it is not thou I see,

But only my poor, blotted fancy of thee?

Oh, never till thyself reveal thy face,

Shall I be flooded with life’s vital grace.

Oh, make my mirror-heart thy shining-place,

And then my soul, awaking with the morn,

Shall be a waking joy, eternally new-born.[2]

Why, the poet asks himself, isn’t he overwhelmed with joy and grace at the crack of each new dawn? Why is there a cloud hanging between his soul and God? Is it, he asks himself, because it is not God he sees but only his poor, blotted fancy of God? This poet seems to understand himself as one whose understanding is veiled, and he longs for the day when Christ will be truly mirrored in his soul. The next few verses employ the image of refining silver, as he speaks of God gradually removing the impurities from his soul so that he might truly reflect the image of Christ in his own soul.

Another of MacDonald’s verses captivated me:

With every morn my life afresh must break

The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;

That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake

The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh

The spider-devils spin out of the flesh—

Eager to net the soul before it wake,

That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.[3]

Such evocative poetry, spider-devils spinning a net to catch the soul while one is unguarded in sleep. Every morning one must break the crust of self, inviting the wind-spirit in to rend the mesh the soul is caught in. Jumping off from MacDonald’s imagery, imagine waking, suddenly aware that a spider-web sticky veil has enmeshed the eyes and ears of the soul. This veil must be broken anew each day to allow the fresh winds of the spirit into the veiled darkness.

Awareness that there may indeed be a veil distorting our communion with God and our vision of Christ is a step toward wholeness. It is devilishly hard to see one’s own veil, though. It’s easy for me to peer across the world to Nigerian Christians killing Nigerian Muslims with machetes and see that their understanding of Christ is veiled. Not so effortless for me to lift my own veil off my spiritual understanding and examine it.

What sorts of veils do you think are being woven by the god of this world that keep us from seeing and following Christ? How is the crust of self forming to come between us and full communion with God? Imagine a Christian in some far-away place peering across the world to evaluate our practice of discipleship—how would the veils blinding our hearts and minds be described by one who can see them more clearly than we can? How is what we teach as gospel veiled by worldly interests and priorities?

These are not particularly pleasant questions to ponder and certainly not easy questions to answer. I got a view of what I think qualifies as one veil that distorts the practice of many faiths when I went to hear George Regas preach at St. Mark’s Cathedral in January. I went to listen to Regas, a retired priest from All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, because I knew he was in trouble with the IRS for speaking out from the pulpit against the Iraq war. He talked about the core sin of every war: the persistent failure of humanity to recognize that everyone is sacred and every life is precious. Everyone shares a common humanity, and all are equally loved by God. When we enter into war, a veil is drawn over our eyes that makes us believe somehow that the soul of the enemy is not as precious as the soul of one’s fellow citizen. This is not a veil that we Americans own exclusively; but it is a powerful dark force in our collective psyche that lets us stand by while our countrymen carry out violence on our behalf so that we will feel safer. In Paul’s imagery, the god of this world has woven a veil that blinds our minds to the sacredness of every life, to keep us from seeing the light of the gospel.

I am fully aware that there are many in the Christian community who would argue that saying such a thing is evidence of a veil that liberal politics has cast over my heart and soul. That may be so. It is devilishly hard to see one’s own distortions of Christian faith and discipleship. That’s one reason why we need a community of Christians around us to both encourage and correct us.

Returning to George MacDonald’s poetry, I share his longing that this cloud that hangs between me and the Lord would disappear, that my poor, blotted picture of God would be corrected by a full revelation of God’s face. There is a tantalizing hint of full revelation in the gospel story of the transfiguration, when the disciples are suddenly confronted with the sight of Jesus shining with pure light, flanked by the figures representing the law and the prophets. I wish that kind of revelation could happen to me. But even the disciples privileged to be present didn’t know what to do with the vision. It may well have encouraged them during hard times to come, but at the moment it just dazzled and even frightened them.

God gave those disciples a gift, though, that pointed the way to unveiling Christ over the long haul, beyond the flash of bright vision. Do you recall what the voice of God said? “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Listen to him.

How fortunate we are that Jesus was, among other things, a teacher. How fortunate we are that at least some of what he said was captured in the portraits of Jesus we know as the gospels. Listening to what he said gives us a glimpse into God’s character and some hints about true discipleship.

It is, of course, possible to call oneself Christian and neglect the teachings of Jesus. If you read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed you might recall her account of attending a revival meeting:

The preaching goes on, interrupted with dutiful "amens." It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage.

But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so he can never get a word out of his mouth.

Ouch. She says as she leaves the tent that she half expects to see Jesus tethered to a tent pole, bound and gagged.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can let Jesus live through his words, let him continue to speak to us through the gospel record. We’ll have to concentrate on unveiling our ears, because some of what he has to say is so challenging. The words themselves can tear open the veils and make way for the fresh winds of the spirit to blow the cobwebs out of our souls, if we are attentive.

When Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Give to everyone who begs from you,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and wealth,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Pay the emperor what belongs to the emperor, and God what belongs to God,” listen to him.

When Jesus says, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it,” listen to him.
When Jesus says, “There is nothing veiled that won’t be unveiled, or hidden that won’t be made known,” listen to him.

We may never become the perfect reflection of Christ’s light in this lifetime. The portrait of Christian discipleship we paint with our lives may never be a thing of great beauty, undistorted by our sin and our lack of discipleship skills. But if we listen to Jesus and try to live by his teaching, giving it our best, I believe God will receive us like that mother in “Napoleon Dynamite” who looked at what Napoleon, in his passion, had produced, and saw the effort and desire for beauty behind his smudged and twisted portrait.

Jesus said, “Seek, and you will find.” Listen to him.

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[1] Timberg, Craig “Christians defend attacks on Muslims in Nigeria” The Seattle Times Friday, February 24, 2006, p. A7

[2] Mac Donald, George Diary of an Old Soul Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsberg, 1975, p. 102-03

[3] Ibid, p. 104