So, last weekend I had a day off. I read the book, "Voyage to Venus" (
Perelandra). I really got into it this time. I think I read it once over 10 years ago. I've heard that it has similar ideas in it to Lewis' commentary on Milton's
Paradise Lost. Pathetically, I have not yet read
Paradise Lost but it is these themes that got me really thinking this week. It got me thinking so much that I have now changed my passage and sermon topic for this
Sunday. (Ted is gone this week for his ordination interview and I am left to do church this week). Anyways, is it wrong to change my sermon for this reason? I wasn't so excited about what I was going to preach on, but I had hardly started the work for before. It was going to be on the faith
of the Centurion in Matthew 8. I had shortly discussed that one with Ted a couple weeks ago and he seemed happy with it. Anyways, I don't think he'll care much that I changed it, but what is a good reason for changing topics? I wanted to study what I am presently interested in. Perhaps that is wrong. I was interested in the other passage a couple weeks ago, but not as much as I now am in this one. Oh, by the way, this one I am preaching out of Romans 5:18-21. This talks about how everything got mucked up starting with the disobedience of one man, Adam, and then how the the obedience of another man, Jesus, gets us out of it. We can be under the one or the other. What draws me to this passage this time is a few things I think. 1)I get to preach about the gospel specifically 2)It deals with issues that stretch from the beginning of creation, through now, and into the future/return 3) I get to dwell in this story that I have gotten into lately about how the world was made so good at first but we somehow defiled it.
Perelandra helped me understand just how tragic that first mucking up was and made me get into a part of the story of our world that I had not really cared too much about before. I mean, I always
already knew whenever I read about the Garden of Eden that it doesn't last and it is ruined and it is all lost. Ya, I deal with it before I even get to that part. I'm not horrified with that part of the story because that is the only reality that me and everyone else I know has known for the last thousands and thousands of years. We've gotten pretty used to it by now. I can't read that without seeing it in the context that it's gonna all be solved by Christ anyways. So, what I am saying about
Perelandra is that it helped me get into the tragedy of that part of our story. It made me long for what could have been. It made me imagine a perfect world without sin, and no separation from God. All of nature and humanity living in harmony. (Really, for once, I can imagine that in a way where it seems cool and exciting and not boring) People are real and they don't rebel against God and they live in a unique position of looking after the world under their care that is also not spoiled by any act of rebellion. I can't know exactly what that would have looked like... no killing by anyone or anything, no death etc. Anyways, that was all lost. It was spoiled, ruined, defiled. We thought there was something better than trusting God and now we have learned from experience that there isn't. Sometimes experience is not the best source of knowledge. In the case of sin, experience ruins knowledge and confuses almost beyond repair. In
Perelandra, the character, Dr Ransom uses the analogy that sinning to learn about evil is like trying to study sleeping
patterns by going to sleep. (Something like that, I'll have to search for that part.)
Well, once I could appreciate what was actually lost (to some small imaginitive degree), I think it helps to see more fully what God has done to fix the problem. It was no half-conceived experiment to save us through incarnation. Here is the turning point for all of humanity. Christ's obedience replaces Adam's disobediance, and guess what? It can be applied to us in the same way. The actions for one man can be applied to us. This gift works for all of humanity. We have all already chosen to align ourselves with Adam's sin. When Adam sinned, so did we. And, we have continued to sin. Our world is so muddled, messed up, confused, cut-off, lost by this sin, we can barely even figure out which way is up and what the difference is between straight and bent. I think we can alot of times admit that things have been lost and we got it wrong, if we are really honest with ourselves. I'll admit that sin and its effects of messed me up and confused me so much that I don't even know what the right, the good, the pure even look like. I'm trying to learn, through the renewing of my mind, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but there is alot that has been messed with since this whole sin thing started thousands and thousands of years ago.
So, where are we now? Things have been fixed, through the biggest scandal in the history of the universe. God takes on full humanity in the very stinking, messed up, rotten middle of it and says that He made it good. He talks about the Kingdom of Heaven and what it is like. He points out what it is like and what that things are near to it. Jesus shows us how to live like we are apart of that kingdom even though we look around us and see that we are still in the middle of this world we already destroyed. But, what? It still works? We can live for God's kingdom before Christ returns and fully sets everything fully right again. He has started with those of us who are willing to have His obedience apply for us in a way that says we never sinned in the first place? We walk around as The Undefiled in the middle of this world that we ourselves remember defiling? So now we go about reconciling this world that God, through Jesus, decided to reconcile back to himself. We get to work that out. We are reconciled to God by the work of Christ on the cross; now we get to be there and involved as we see Him continue to reconcile others and our world back to him. He's doing it, and he will finish it. Soon, EVERYTHING that was lost, will be regained. I'm not smart enough to deal with the "what ifs". Only God really knows. Would we have still gotten the human visit from God if we hadn't blown it all and needed him to fix it for us? Who knows? Maybe I should write a Sci-Fi novel about how God became incarnate in a world that never rebelled against Him, and how much better and cooler that whole thing went. It worked out pretty well for us though, in the real world, despite how shameful our actions have been toward him in our defiled world, and he visited us anyways. What a brick that guy is. (I hope that was proper usage of that early 1900s british slang) I think it means "a great chap".
hmmm, sorry, I think I ruined my train of thought with my "brick" usage. that's ok. I was too scared to talk about what the future holds anyways. I'm not studied enough to talk much about it.
Well, writing a blog about this stuff was fun enough. The problem is, how do I write a sermon about this...before sunday?
