Hilton Head Island, SC – December 30, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Genesis 28:10-22; Mark 1:35-45
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people.” Mark 1:44 (RSV)
Many words have more than one definition. However, in my dictionary, there is only one definition for the verb “ascribe.” It means “to refer to a supposed cause, source, or author” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary).
If a quarterback is flattened by a 285 pound defensive tackle and his leg is broken, one can legitimately ascribe the broken leg to the onrushing lineman. If the wrinkled manuscript of a play with the title The Inevitable Tragedy of King Edward I were to be found in a long-deserted attic of an old house in an old section of the city of London, and it was written in exactly the same handwriting as that of William Shakespeare, and the plot was remarkably Shakespearian, experts might reliably ascribe this previously undiscovered play to Shakespeare. If spectators at a golf tournament were running toward shelter under a tree when a sudden thunderstorm enveloped them, and a lightning bolt apparently struck one of them dead, the death would, in all probability, be ascribed to the bolt of lightning, and not to overexertion, trampling, or a heart attack.
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In the Genesis account of creation, it is God who is ascribed to be the Creator. When Abraham left the city of Ur in the land of Mesopotamia and ultimately went to the land of Canaan, God is the one the Hebrews ascribed to inspire Abraham to make that courageous journey. When the very elderly Abraham and his wife Sarah became parents of a son, the Bible gives the ascription for that birth to God. When baby Moses was rescued from the Nile River by the Pharaoh’s daughter, that highly unlikely occurrence was ascribed to the intervention of God. When the Red Sea parted, when Joshua and the Israelites conquered Canaan, when Gideon led the Israelites to defeat the Midianites, these occurrences were ascribed to God. The Israelites had no doubt God was the cause of all these things, and therefore they ascribed them to God.
But did God do all of those things, and all the other things we read about in the Bible? And does he do similar things today? The answers to those questions depend on how we choose to perceive the nature of divine activity. Is it all as clear as the Bible tells us, or, because of the nature of contemporary education, is it less obvious to us than it was to people who lived two or three or four thousand years ago? Did it seem more natural or obvious for people then to ascribe events to divine action than it is for us now?
It is not immediately evident to everyone that God created the universe. Many physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists think the Big Bang happened because the Big Bang happened - - -all by itself. Creation was sui generis; it did it itself. There need be no ascription to God, according to that belief. Be assured of this: that also is a belief. It is surely as much a leap of faith to say that creation just happened as it is to ascribe it to God.
I have been reading a long biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson. As one who happily withdrew from the study of mathematics in the tenth grade, and never took physics or anything remotely resembling physics, I can assure you that if your background in theoretical or pure science is as woefully limited as mine, much of Isaacson’s book would likely be as much an obtuse oblong blur to you as it is to me. Nevertheless the story of the man’s life is thoroughly engrossing.
One of Einstein’s most famous statements was this: “God does not play dice with the universe.” From Isaacson I gather that means Einstein believed there is an order to nature and the universe, and that very order is what keeps all matter from disintegrating into oblivion. It has nothing to do with God as you and I understand God. Einstein ascribed principles of physics, not God, to the relative orderliness of the universe.
In any event, the author tells how, in the middle of his life, Einstein became captivated by Zionism and his growing connection to the Jewish people and the state of Israel. He always saw himself as a cultural Jew, not as a religious one. The great theoretical physicist said, “My relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human tie.” Therefore, like many other Jews after World War I, he committed to the movement to establish a new state of Israel. Isaacson describes this transformation in this way: “Thus in 1921 he made a leap not of faith but of commitment” (p. 291).
Is there a difference between “faith” and “commitment”? Does faith in God equal commitment to God, or are the two different? Does faith in science equal commitment to science? Is E=MC2 a statement of fact or faith, of certainty or commitment? What things can we know for certain, and what things are true in theory, but may never be proven in fact?
I learned that Einstein proved many things about which many other physicists had conflicting views, even though scientifically I could not fully understand what the disputes were about. Ultimately we all have to make ascriptions about certain fundamentals. Was it God who created the world, or was it a collision of stray atoms or molecules or chemical constructs which randomly met somewhere in space (whatever that is), and something extremely powerful and magnificent happened? But where did the neurons and protons and electrons in those atoms come from, or what was the origin of the atoms themselves? To what, or to Whom, do we ascribe it?
If “to ascribe” means “to refer to a supposed cause, source, or author,” biblical faith is the ascription to God of numerous events that happened in myth, mystery, and history. What or Who was the source of creation? Who caused the waters of the Red Sea to part, if indeed they did divide into two great liquid walls as the fugitive slaves fled between them? The Gospel of John declared that the Word become flesh, and dwelt among us, but did it --- or HE? Is the life of Jesus of Nazareth the ascription of God among us?
Everything about God in the Bible is a purported action ascribed to God. Nothing of substance that is read there is valid beyond intellectual dispute. Hebrews or Israelites or Jews existed. Historical records from sources other than the Bible verify that historical fact. It is what the Jews believed that is of paramount importance, the One to whom they ascribed their existence that is the primary issue, the One in whom they placed their trust and faith and commitment that counts the most in the end. Whether anybody is technically a Jew or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or whatever is not of ultimate importance. What IS of ultimate importance is that to whom --- or to which --- we ascribe ultimate importance. It may be nature and the natural order, or mathematics and principles of physics, or the pursuit of justice and equity, OR it may be God. These are the kinds of choices we all make.
When your child was gravely ill, and you thought you might lose her, and she recovered, to whom did you ascribe her recovery? When you were driving your car through a green light, and a car on your left sped through a red light and almost hit you broadside, and in the last possible millisecond you swerved out of the way as he recklessly raced on, to whom, or what, did you ascribe yourself not being badly injured or killed? When Grant and Sherman finally emerged as the two most successful Union generals, to whom or what did you scribe that (depending on your point of view): 1) God, 2) the devil, or 3), implacable, dispassionate fate?
According to II Kings 2, two she-bears came out of the woods and attacked some children who were making fun of the prophet Elisha because he was bald. Elisha (or the biblical writer writing about it) ascribed that horrible attack to God. Was it really God who caused those bears to kill those cheeky children? Jesus enabled the blind to see and the lame to walk and the mentally ill to regain their sanity. He and his followers ascribed those events to God. Are all ascriptions to God equally valid?
Should we ascribe anything to God? Should we ascribe everything to God? A young burglar who has been committing crimes for fifteen or twenty years is never apprehended. One day he sees the error of his ways, reforms, gets as degree in criminology, and becomes a worker in a home for released convicts. He helps scores of people over many years to reform themselves as he himself was miraculously reformed. Did God cause that young man to become a thief in order to become a transformer of thieves? To whom should we ascribe such a story, for such stories occasionally do happen? Was the devil or evil or pure cussedness there in beginning, and God was there in the end? How does all that work? What shall be our ascriptions regarding God?
The episode of Jacob’s ladder is one of the most memorable in the Bible. It isn’t really an episode, though; it’s a dream. Jacob was fleeing from his twin brother Esau, whom he had heartlessly cheated. After running so fast and for so long, he fell exhausted on the open ground to sleep, using a rock for his pillow. In his sleep he had a vivid dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven. Angels were going up and down the ladder. In Jacob’s dream, God spoke to him, and told him that the place where he was lying would become his land and that of his descendants.
Jacob was so moved by his dream that he ascribed it as a direct message from God. And Jacob being Jacob, and not yet fully on board with God, he made a tepid promise. “If God will be with me, and keep me on the straight and narrow path, and I am led back to this place without Esau ever catching up to me, then God will be my God” (Gen. 28:20-21, paraphrased).
Jacob hedged his bets. He didn’t fully commit. We’re also like that sometimes. We give a half-hearted ascription to God, a conditional commitment. In the words of Sheryl Sandberg, God wants us fully “to lean in” rather than to make a slight movement in His direction. But if He can eventually transform a rascally reprobate like Jacob into one of the three great patriarchs, he can also do something significant with us, if we give Him the ascription He deserves.
In the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, the first thing that happens after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist is that the devil tempted him in the Judean wilderness. His temptation essentially was to imagine that whatever he was going to do in his public ministry would be because he did it, rather than allowing God to do these things through Jesus, by means of Jesus. In other words, Jesus was tempted to ascribe his divinely-anointed abilities to himself, rather than to God. After forty days of wrestling with this temptation, which all of us also face, Jesus overcame the siren song of the self.
Later in the first chapter of Mark, the first public declaration of Jesus was this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (1:15). Then he began preaching, teaching, and healing. From the outset, Jesus did not want to be recognized primarily as a healer, but rather as a preacher and teacher. Nevertheless, he continued to perform miracles, even if he did so somewhat reluctantly.
One of his first miracles was to heal a leper. He instructed the man to tell no one who had healed him, but to go to a priest, and to offer the sacrifice which was commanded in the Torah, the laws of Moses. The cured leper was not to suppose that his cleansing should be ascribed to Jesus, but rather to God. But the man told everybody it was Jesus who had healed him, and thus Jesus was all the more hounded into become a mere miracle worker, of whom there were many in Judea, instead of being a messianic Gospel proclaimer.
In every life things happen. For most of us, most of what happens is basically good, but some events are bad. Accidents, illness, important relationships broken, injustices inflicted, opportunities snatched away, whatever: they all happen to all of us.
One of the most influential thinkers in the long history of the Church was St. AU-gustine, or Au-Gus-tin, if you prefer. He got a city in Florida named after him. When he was teenager and young man, Augustine was someone with whom you wouldn’t want your own teenage or young adult offspring to hang around. He was a brilliant but sex-crazed libertine, and he nearly drove his mother Monica, who was a pious and devout Christian lady, wild. But Monica continued to pray for Augustine every day, and one day he had a profound conversion experience, which I shall not take time to explain. She, by the way, also got a city, but in California, named after her.
Augustine thought long and hard about how thoroughly he had been transformed, and the only way he could explain it was to ascribe it to God. Later he made one of the most important theological statements in the history of Christian theology. It is very short, but also very huge. “All good comes from God,” he said.
Things happen. Most things are good, but some are bad. I can’t explain why bad things happen, but along with Augustine, I also choose to ascribe all good to God.
However, it is important to note that that conclusion is not an objective one; it is subjective, and can only be subjective. Some very important things can be affirmed only subjectively, such as the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics - - - or God. When we choose to ascribe events or occurrences or life-altering situations to any reality outside or much larger than ourselves, it is a choice; it is not a fact. Nor can it ever be established as a fact. As Christians, one of the most crucial questions to confront us is this: What things in the Bible, in history, and in our own lives do we ascribe to God, and what things do we ascribe to chance or happenstance or “fate,” whatever in the world that might be?
Christmas has come and gone once again. Was a baby born, and that’s that, or do we ascribe much more to the story than just that? The ascription is ours to make, because the choice is ours - - - and only ours.