Sermon: The Difficult Concepts

            Is there such a thing as objective beauty?  You know me and my fascination with comparative religion, so let's look at what the Tao te Ching says about beauty:  "Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.  All can know good as good only because there is evil."  The Tao looks at comparative opposites as being necessary for either to exist.  It teaches a balance of things.

            Now, at the same time, St. Augustine teaches that God created all things good – just look at the first chapter of Genesis.  Therefore, as with darkness only being able to exist where there is light, evil does not exist by itself, but is an absence of good. 

            So to extrapolate from the first question – is there such a thing as objective beauty?  Can beauty exist without a comparison? 

            So let's tackle a question that is easier for us to answer, but still doesn't have an easier explanation:  can good exist without a comparison?  As Christians, we go back to the source – God pronounced His creation good, from the Earth to the Heavens to the animals to humans.  So of course good can exist without evil.  But why do we believe that?  More than that, why do we believe that, and others – like the Taoists – don't?

            The simple and complex answer, of course, is faith.  We have faith that the Bible is the Word of God, and that through the action of the Word, we meet Jesus Christ.  Our Gospel readings these last several weeks have had some pretty tough concepts to understand, and today, it culminates in many of Christ's disciples throwing up their hands, and saying, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" 

            People like things to be clear and understandable.  It makes them clear-cut and able to be categorized.  Unfortunately, knowledge is rarely clear-cut and organized. 

            Did you know that there have been over 8.7 million species of creatures categorized by our scientists?  And that they categorize approximately 15,000 more every year?  Given what they know about our land masses, couldn't they extrapolate an approximate number of species in existence?  And yet, none of them are willing to do so.  Why?  Well, approximately 99% of all living space on Earth is under the ocean, but we've only explored about 10% of that.  Those statistics tell us that there's a lot more that we don't know than there is of what we do know.  And sometimes knowing how much we don't know causes us to have that much more faith that what we do know is accurate and true.

            But how many things do we truly not understand, and still accept it enough on faith that we move forward, just as the twelve disciples did in John's Gospel?

            Let's take for example, Paul's letter to the Ephesians.  Last week, the portion of the letter we read gave us specific examples of how to live:  to choose things wisely, and avoid drunkenness and debauchery; to be filled with the Spirit and exemplifying that through song.  This week, Paul refers to putting on the whole armor of God, using the metaphors of the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of Faith, helmet of Salvation, the sword of the Spirit which is also the Word.  And ensuring that you're dressed head to toe, he advises that you wear whatever shoes will help you be ready to proclaim the Gospel of Peace. 

            There's plenty in that one passage to dig into and discuss, working to understand the complexities of each metaphor.  But right now, we're looking at things that are difficult to understand, and yet we accept that we do not understand them at present.  To do that, we're going to look just a few verses earlier in this letter, to a section that is tough for our modern-day minds to understand:  Paul addresses slaves and masters, exhorting slaves to obey their masters as they would obey Christ, and urging masters to treat their slaves well, as we all have the same Master in Heaven and He shows no partiality.  If God shows no partiality, why is slavery even an issue within Christian society?  And yet, Paul does not tell masters to free their slaves.  He doesn't rail against a social norm of the time.  How do we justify our belief and understanding in the protection of the Armor of God, without addressing the spectre of slavery just 5 verses before?  If you're interested, I just listened to a podcast this week that had an interview with Scot McKnight, who wrote a commentary about Paul's Letter to Philemon, which deals almost entirely about the subject of slavery. 

            The disciples this week don't actually understand the concepts of Christ being the bread of life, of eating his flesh and drinking his blood.  Christians had a reputation for being cannibals in the early formation of the Church for a reason.  They repeated the words of Christ, sharing the bread and wine of the last supper, but not truly understanding them.  Simon Peter's response to Christ's question of whether they would be leaving Him as well is pretty straightforward:  “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” 

            Religious scholars are numerous as they work through the meanings of words, the context in which they're set, the genre of passages, etc.  Some scholars spend their entire lives trying to figure out one concept, writing article after book after commentary, and finding that truly, it comes down to faith.  The unknown is answered by our faith in God.

            We, like the twelve disciples in today's Gospel, are willing to stay and struggle with the difficult concepts.  Through our baptism, our confirmation, and both our request for our daily bread in the Lord's Prayer and our participation in the Eucharist, we choose to act on what we know and believe, and trust that understanding of the rest will come in time.  We reiterate Joshua's statement, "as for our house, we will serve the Lord."  May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.