Sermon for Sunday, March 1, 2009

I Peter 3: 18-22

"Fact, Fiction, Truth"

Rev. Christopher Fazel

A couple of weeks ago, Dale Beals and I took four of our Youth to the February UCC Minnesota Conference Youth Event.  It was held at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton.   And everybody had a great time.  Now, like at all Youth events, we ate together, sang together, and played together.  But, we also studied together.  That’s what we call around here the “curricular piece.”   The title of this conference, and its curricular focus was “Myth Busters.”  The title, of course, was taken from the popular television series where a couple of guys test the veracity of various urban legends.  For example, there are on the internet plans for making gadgets that are supposed to increase your gas mileage like ten-fold.  So, Adam and Jamie actually try to build these things and test them.  In this case, these gadgets totally failed, and so as they say on the television show, “The myth is busted.” 

            Now, that’s a good show, but the title is misleading for this conference, because it’s using the word myth to describe something that isn’t true.  However, the curriculum of the conference used the word myth in an entirely different way.  The curriculum used the word myth as did Dr. Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell and other 20th century pioneers of in-depth psychology.  They applied the word myth to mean stories and symbols that reveal the landscape of the deeper levels of the human soul, much like sonar has mapped the landscape of the ocean floor.  This interpretation of myth would say that all sacred stories including those in our Bible are meaningful and enlightening if we learn how to read them. 

            As one of my contributions to the weekend, I read from Black Elk Speaks – a book that records the actions, thoughts and visions of a shaman from the Lakota Indian Tribe of the late 1800’s.   In it, Black Elk tells the story – myth, if you will – of the coming of the sacred pipe to bless their nation.  And it’s a fantastic story with a beautiful spirit entity  named White Buffalo Woman, wise and foolish Indian scouts, a mysterious cloud of destiny, and ultimately the transformation of the spirit into the white buffalo.  And after he tells the story, Black Elk says, “Whether these things happened so or not, I do not know, but if you think about it, you can see that it is t rue.”  An uneducated, 19th century Indian, who never learned English, understood the nature of myth.  May we cultivate such an understanding in our day.  It was the intention of this Conference Youth Event to begin that education – learning how to read sacred story in a way that enlightens  us as to who we are, where we come from, why we’re here, and where we’re going. 

            One of the exercises we did at the conference was to break into small groups,  each group getting a Bible passage.  The assignment was to read the passage and then discuss it.  Then, on a large piece of poster paper, we drew three columns.  We named the columns “Fact, Fiction and Truth.”  Then we were to list in the columns which parts of the story – in our opinion – were fact, and which parts fiction.  Then, in the third column, we were to write what “truths” we found in the story.  For example, our group got a Jesus healing story to work with.  The group easily identified some parts that they could readily accept as fact – the fact that Jesus was at Peter’s house, the fact that he was teaching there, the fact that a paralytic was brought to him for healing.  On the other hand, the group struggled with whether they could accept as fact that Jesus could perform healing miracles.  We admitted that there was no way to know for sure.  But then, we looked for the “truths” that we found in the story.  Here are some of our truths:  1) A life lived in love and compassion is healing to self and to others.  2) Jesus cares about other people’s health and well-being, and we should too.  3) As the story indicates, healing is available to us all as from “On High.”  

            Now, don’t you think that’s a good exercise?  I think we could spend a lot of time doing that.  As a matter of fact, I recognized the Apostle Peter doing the same thing in our passage from his letter that we read today.  I was astonished to see it so clearly.  First, he affirms that the death and resurrection of Jesus saves us, but then, he proceeds to shed light on how that saves us.  And he goes to the story of Noah, the ark, and the flood.   And he points out that the eight people in the ark were saved by water.  Now, you could argue that they were saved by the boat, not by the water, but that’s not Peter’s point.  Peter’s point is that the flood story is a story of cleansing.  That’s the truth of the story.   And such also is the true meaning of the new Christian ritual – baptism.  Baptism is about cleansing just as the flood story is about cleansing.  But then, Peter goes further and clarifies what he means by cleansing – not dirt from the body, but a cleansed conscience. 

            You see, Peter took us to a classic Bible story and interpreted it mythologically.  Although he didn’t discuss the modern debate about fact or fiction, he used the story to bring us to an essential truth – that through the love of God, as manifested in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, we all may be cleansed of a soiled conscience.  The love of God is more powerful than our guilt.  Now, whoever we are, and wherever we are on life’s journey that is very good news.  Thank you to Peter, thank you to Jesus, and thanks be to God.  Amen.  Let us pray. 

Church Office is open to
receive telephone calls:
763-421-3375
Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

The office is closed Fridays and national holidays.

E-mail:1stcongo@pro-ns.net

Fax: 763-421-3093