A sermon exploring a way to read the Bible, not as history (as we know it) or science, but as art, and how to profit spiritually from its truth. Based on John 10.1-11 and a poem by scientist/astronomer, Rebecca Elson, and her poem, “Antidotes to Fear of Death.”
1.
In the Bible, there are four Gospels. The word, Gospel, comes from the ancient Greek word, euangelion, from which we get our words, “evangelism,” and “evangelist.” The word, euangelion, means “good news,” and the four Gospels—supposedly written by the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are four different ways the early Christian communities told the story of the good news about Jesus. These four Gospels are not the only Gospels; there are others: the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth—these are a few of them. But only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were, after several hundred years of debate in the early church, accepted as the more commonly authorized versions of the Jesus story.
I could spend a lot of time talking about how and why these four Gospels rose to the top of the heap, identified as worthy by the orthodox tradition while the others were dismissed as inferior or unworthy or even dangerous theologically and spiritually. Dr. Jim Goss, our resident theologian, teaches classes here at DCC that explore all this—the politics and agendas and power struggles behind the early church’s wrestling over these various stories. Jim has helped us listen to these alternative Gospels that were, unfortunately, largely lost over the course of history, but have important things to say about Jesus, religion, and the spiritual life.
This is all quite interesting, but the point I want to make today is about the striking differences between these four Gospels. If you read these four Gospels you’ll immediately notice strong similarities among the first three—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—while the fourth, John, stands alone as a very different way of telling the story of Jesus.
A lot of the material in John doesn’t show up in the other three. And a lot of what’s in the other three doesn’t show up in John. Some people like Mark, for example, because it seems so straight forward, like it’s a simple history without much diversion. Others like John because in John we get long meandering talks, deep symbolism, and a sense of spirituality that doesn’t come through in the way Mark, Matthew or Luke tell their story.
I’ll say more about John in a few moments. But first a comment on the so-called historical reporting of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These Gospels are not history in the way we think of history. They are religious histories. But they have very little to do with the way historians work today. They are, in the language of the ancient world, mythos. Mythos is the word from which we get our word, myth.
Myth is the way the ancients conveyed a sacred story which is not scientifically or historically factual, but which is religiously, philosophically, and spiritually true. Myth in our popular language today is something that is false, a lie, an illusion. But a religious myth is a window into what’s Real, capital R, a doorway or gateway into eternity. It’s a story that opens us to God in a way that a mere statement of historical or scientific fact cannot. J.R.R. Tolkien once said that fiction can be more true that fact.*
The Bible is aware of history, it’s connected to history, but there’s an important difference between being aware of history, maybe being based on historical events, and being historical as we understand “historical” today. Northrop Frye says that the story of the Bible is not really a history but a mythic form that’s much closer to poetry than it is to actual history in the modern sense; and we must read it that way or miss the truth it seeks to convey. (Tacey, Religion as Metaphor, p. 3)
If the Bible’s not read poetically and artistically as mythos—that is, as a doorway to experience Truth—then we’ll make terrible mistakes with the Bible. Looking at the Bible, as history as we understand history, leads Fundamentalism to adhere to the Bible literally, while some expressions of Liberalism dismiss the Bible as nonsense. Fundamentalism can focus too much on the purity of the Bible; Liberalism can focus too much on the scandal of the Bible. Both can end up missing what stands on the other side of the door.
Jesus even says something like this in the Gospel of John: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5.39-40).
2.
This is one of the reasons we often read poetry in worship alongside the Bible. It’s why art is important to us in the worship space, as well as music, emotion, silence, and the Sacraments as embodied rituals. All these things help tease us loose from a way of reading the Bible that reduces it or flattens it into what it’s not. History and science, as important as they are, can’t get at what is Ultimate, the Ineffable is beyond their reach. That’s why scientists like Rebecca Elson write poetry.
Elson was an astronomer, and as far as I can tell was not religious. She was twenty-nine when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma but continued to work and peer into the universe as a scientist; yet she wrote poetry as someone who knew that she needed other ways of opening to what is so much Bigger than we are. Only the poetic could help her face one of life’s great mysteries, death itself.
When she died at age thirty-nine, she left behind fifty-six scientific papers and a slender, stunning book of poetry entitled A Responsibility to Awe. Our second reading, Antidotes to Fear of Death, is the crowing achievement in that collection of words she conjured up to help her open up to what a telescope can never see.
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death, [she wrote]
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
That’s not scientific language; it’s poetry, mythos. It’s language that’s a gateway into what can be found, experienced, in no other way but through metaphor.
Sometimes, […] I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
Then speaking of death she says:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
That’s mythos, that’s metaphor, that’s truth but it’s certainly not fact. The words are designed to be a gateway to what can never fully be described even in the best scientific or historical language.
Ornithologist and wildlife ecologist J. Drew Lanham is another scientist with a poet’s sensitivity to mythos. In his recent book, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, Lanham testifies that there’s truth scientific ways can’t grasp; there’s mystery we can only describe poetically.
Lanham writes: “For all those years of running from anything resembling religion and all the scientific training that tells me to doubt anything outside of the prescribed confidence limits, I find myself defined these days more by what I cannot see than by what I can. As I wander into the predawn dark of an autumn wood, I feel the presence of things beyond flesh, bone, and blood. My being expands to fit the limitlessness of the wild world. My senses flush to full and my heartbeat quickens with the knowledge that I am not alone.”
Lanham has crossed a threshold, stepped through a doorway, passed through a gate into an experience the religious call God. That’s what the Bible aims to do and what, especially, the writer of John’s Gospel aims to do. And this is the function of the poetic, metaphorical, mythic language the biblical writers use.
3.
Among all the words and images unique to the Gospel of John, there are seven statements which the evangelist says Jesus said. No other Gospel writer puts these words in the mouth of Jesus, so it’s unlikely Jesus ever said them. But, remembering what I’ve just said about the difference between historical/scientific and poetic/metaphorical language, you know that when words aren’t factual, they can be most true.
Seven metaphors; seven, four- to ten-word poems; seven ways to open us to what is most deeply true; seven ways to guide us into Wonder, capital W.
Jesus says:
1. I am the Bread of Life
2. I am the light of the world
3. I am the gate
4. I am the good shepherd
5. I am the resurrection and the life
6. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and
7. I am the true vine
There is no way you can take these words literally, historically, or scientifically. Jesus is not actually sourdough bread or ultraviolet light; he’s not a wrought iron gate or a grapevine. For the writer of John’s Gospel, the Jesus he’s passionate to tell us about isn’t interested in building an institution or advancing the dull dogma of cranky priests. No, Jesus reveals God; Jesus is God; Jesus is the human experience of the Divine, what it means to be in God, conscious of God, alive to God, and therefore to be all a human being can be.
“I am the gate,” says Jesus in the Gospel of John.
The evangelist and his community experienced Jesus as a gateway into the ultimate Mystery of life, a reality that can’t be described or domesticated—only entered and enjoyed. They’d been hurt by religious traditions that hadn’t opened them up to God, but had, instead, closed them down, manipulated them, misled them, frightened them. They’d been robbed by much that had called itself “religion”—forms and doctrines and priests and prophets which were actually “thieves and bandits,” stealing and troubling and controlling bodies, minds, and souls, rather than liberating them, rather than guiding them into the abundant life God desires for everyone and everything.
“I am the gate,” says Jesus, which is an invitation to anyone, even the most sheepish among us, to experience the pleasure of the pasture of God.
“I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus in the Gospel of John.
The evangelist and his community experienced Jesus not only a gateway into the ultimate Mystery, but a guide into it as well. Trust Jesus, follow Jesus, do what Jesus did, pray as Jesus prayed, listen to what Jesus said and you will find meaning and purpose and wholeness—you’ll experience the “abundant life”—you “will come in and go out and find [the nourishment your soul wants and needs].”
“I am the good shepherd,” says Jesus, and I’ll help anyone, no matter who they are, find a way to experience the fullness of life, to taste the bliss that’s the birthright and destiny of every human being, every precious lamb of God.
I invite you now into a few minutes of personal meditation. As you close your eyes and grow still, prayerful, ponder these things:
Before you stands a doorway. God is opening it before you.
What is the doorway in your life?
The doorway may be a crisis you’re facing or just a subtle nudge that’s been pestering you for awhile. Maybe you’re resisting it. Part of you doesn’t want the change even though you’re not truly happy where you are.
What will it take for you to step toward the threshold?
What do you need to walk through that door?
“I am the Gate,” says Jesus.
“I am the Good Shepherd.”
“I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”
“Here, take my hand.”
* “After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien