Don Friesen
We live in baffling times. Comedian Chris Rock says that you know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy; the best golfer is a black guy; the tallest guy in the National Basketball Association is Chinese; the Swiss hold the America's Cup; France is accusing the United States of arrogance; and Germany doesn't want to go to war! Chris Rock's observations prompted someone to add, "And we've reached a new level on the surprise scale when 500 food experts declare that the best restaurant in the world is British." (Secular Blasphemy blog)
Comedians have a finely-tuned bafflement detector, often expressing sentiments that have been in the back of our own half-baffled minds. Granted, too, that some of us are more easily baffled than others. For example, I read that these are baffling times for health-conscious people, what with all those contradictory studies, one telling you that eggs are bad, another that eggs are okay! One says that fibre is good, another that fibre doesn't matter! One study says that margarine is the better spread; another says that margarine is as bad as butter. (Adrienne Forman, "Why Nutrition Advice Flip-Flops All The Time — Or Does It?) Life is hard for some of us.
Perhaps the word, baffling, should be reserved for truly troubling issues, as used by Winston Churchill in 1946 (March 5) in a speech he called, "The Sinews of Peace," a speech that changed the way the West viewed the Communist East and which became known as the "Iron Curtain Speech". Introduced by the American President to a crowd of more than 40,000 people in Missouri shortly after the war, Churchill said, "The president has told you that it is his wish ...that I should have full liberty to give my true and faithful counsel in these anxious and baffling times."
The Need for a Vocabulary of Faith
Some people are so baffled by things that they reach for explanations wherever they can find them. For some, the fact that the planet Mars is closer to Earth than it has been for the last 73,000 years helps to explain away much of the world's baffling mayhem.
One thing that baffles me is that as the bafflement of the world seems to increase we are losing language that could prove an anchor in baffling times. The rise of biblical il-literacy has been a concern for a few generations. Erwin Wiens told me of a student who asked him, "Who's this Satin character that keeps popping up in literature?" An almost satanic lapse in our education system! As biblical literacy vanishes, so does our ability to understand much of Western literature! While some would blithely dismiss this loss of biblical language as a refreshing break from an archaic thought-world, our ability to speak meaningfully of the human experience is much diminished thereby.
We've forgotten how to speak the Christian language. It's like me trying to speak Low German, one of the languages of my childhood; my stumbling attempts to utter a coherent thought makes my brother roll on the floor with laughter. Similarly, the diminishment of the language of faith is in danger of turning our professions of faith into incoherent mumbling.
Recovery of the Christian vocabulary may be what prompted Kathleen Norris to write her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith and that also prompted many to read it. Her respect for the poetic language of Scripture — its symbols, myths, allegories and metaphors — has rescued many important biblical ideas from oblivion and breathed new life into what the New Testament refers to as inspired language (2 Timothy 3:16) — God-breathed language.
An Alphabetic Device
I apologize for this rather lengthy introduction to a rather lengthy series of sermons I plan to do on the language of faith. I plan to use the alphabet as a device for the series, and I trust that you will tell me if either the sermons or the series get too lengthy. And even though I now have tenure, I'm quite certain that the Worship Committee will let me know when the idea starts to wear a little thin.
A 26-sermon series using an alphabetic gimmick may be a sign that a minister has been at a church too long, but be assured that my track record with series of sermons is an uneven one. I managed to finish a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, and another on the Fruit of the Spirit, but I only got through five or six of the Ten Commandments! I lost my nerve when I got to the commandment concerning adultery, though in retrospect I should have done at least one more.
I find some consolation in the fact that Lister Sinclair only got to the letter, M, in his celebrated and original CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) series, "A is for Aardvark". I am also encouraged by other authors, such as Frederick Buechner, who has written three alphabet books on the language of faith. Like Kathleen Norris, he lifts up words — often the words of Scripture — that point to the mystery and depth of human experience. "A word a day to keep the demons at bay" is how he describes his book, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith. (2004)
Once I starting looking for ABCs, I found them everywhere! This week's issue of the ChristianWeek paper leads with "The ABCs of Adult Sunday School" (September 2, 2005). I've also read about:
This array of discoveries almost made me abandon my alphabetic project, but I found it an interesting and challenging exercise to choose twenty-six important biblical themes. Some letters of the alphabet provide a cornucopia of choices while others offer much less, and no doubt some of you are curious about what I will do with the letter, X. Wait for it!
It's a challenging exercise to separate primary material from what is secondary or derivative material. It's an exercise I also faced this summer when I re-wrote our baptism instruction class material. What are the important building blocks of our faith? What are the ABCs of our faith — the central tenets of our spiritual heritage? What ideas provide us with a solid foundation? — such that when the rains fall and the floods come, and the winds blow and beat upon our spiritual construction, it will not fall — it will not resemble New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina — for it was built, not by a fool, but by one wise in the ways of God. (Matthew 7:24-28)
The New Testament speaks of the "elemental spirits" of this world. (Galatians 4:3, 9; Colossians 2:8, 20) The Greek word for elemental is "stoicheia" (stoiceion; Does the GREEK FONT come through ?? stoicheion), a word that also refers to the alphabet, the ABCs. It's a word that refers to the most basic aspects of something — the first principles, the rudiments, the fundamental principles of any art, science, or discipline. In Scripture it refers to a basic understanding of how the universe operates. The same word can also refer to those forces that shape us, including our language.
The Bible's A-list; A is not for Aardvaark or Antichrist
All of which brings me, finally, to the letter A — and the Bible's A-list. In choosing twenty-six themes, I decided on two things: firstly, that the words chosen should be biblical words — so A is not for Aardvaark; and secondly, that the words should be positive — so A is also not for antichrist. This takes some fun out of the exercise, for the Bible has a lot of juicy negative words. A, for example, could also represent anger, or apostasy, or ambition or affliction, or avarice, or apocalypse!
Positive words beginning with A include words like atonement, apostle and ambassador, but I have chosen the word, awe — A-W-E. A short word, and one that actually appears only 54 times in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, but its meaning is fundamental to the main story of the Scriptures — the story of our relationship to God.
The Creator's Relationship to those He Created
The tone of our relationship to God is set at the beginning of the biblical story. God is the Creator; we are God's creation. A tree was placed in the biblical garden to define the limits of creatureliness; it marked the line between Creator and those who were His creation. The story of the Garden of Eden is a story of Paradise, where all things were as they needed to be. The ground produced its fruit; the animals knew their place; the people had knowledge enough and skill enough and grace enough to enjoy themselves; and God walked in that garden daily, in gracious communion with His creation ... until that diabolical snake came slithering in.
I don't find the notion of human creatureliness a diminishing term. To be convinced of our creatureliness is no cause for self-flagellation or grovelling or any other form of self-abasement. The biblical idea of creatureliness is not a cowering creatureliness. When three characters step onto the stage in the opening acts of the Genesis story, there is no doubt as to which one of them is the Creator, but the Scriptures also assure us that God made human beings but "a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour." (Psalm 8:5) In fact, the Creator gave us dominion over the works of (the Creator's) hands! (8:6)
God's relationship to us is somewhat comparable to an artist's relationship to his or her artistic creation — a relationship in which it is clear which one is the creat-OR and which one is the creat-ED, but it is also an incredibly intimate relationship — a work of sweat and tears and love!
I introduce students in my baptism instruction class to the ideas of the transcendence of God as well as the immanence of God. God is both near us, and beyond us. A God who is only transcendent tends to be remote from us, dis-interested in our puny affairs. A God who is only immanent may lead us to deify things not worthy of deification. The Judeo-Christian conception of God holds these two ideas together. It testifies to both the hiddenness, the beyond-ness of God, as well as to God's desire to continue a close relationship with His creation.
Some would argue, however, that the pendulum has swung to an emphasis upon God's immanence, and that our present Western culture is devoid of transcendence. We live in a world pre-occupied with the observable. Our consciousness is cluttered with canned theories and miles of data and the conviction that we ourselves are the only source of meaning. God becomes, at best, an errand-boy, and our faith is robbed of all depth and power.
On our way back from the church conference in North Carolina Dorothy and I stopped at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to look at things commemorating the decisive battle of the Civil War. It's the place where Abraham Lincoln gave his famous "Gettysburg Address" (November 19, 1863) — "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation...." — an address that I had to memorize in my youth for some inexplicable reason. It was nice to visit the site of this famous speech, but it's interesting that at the time Lincoln gave his address a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania newspaper dismissed it, reporting, "We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion...be dropped over them and that they shall no more be repeated...." The Harrisburg paper could not fathom the depth of meaning Lincoln's speech would have for generations of Americans — no idea that these ten simple sentences would capture the imagination of the American people for some time to come.
In Awe of God's Inscrutable Ways!
The awe-inspired tone set at the beginning of the biblical story is dismissed by some as the baffling vocabulary of an ancient and primitive people, but there is a depth and resonance to these words that haunt us when we are prone to focus on ourselves. Job, who endured incredible suffering and had every reason not to lift his eyes upward, said, "(God) does great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number." (Job 5:9) The psalmist declares, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable." (Psalms 145:3) The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah declares that the "...Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth... His understanding is unsearchable." (Isaiah 40:28)
Paul writes, in Romans, "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33) Inscrutable! Incomprehensible! Unfathomable! Paul writes, to the Ephesians, "I pray that you may have the power to comprehend...what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge...." (Ephesians 3:18-19)
One of the intertestamental writers challenges us: "You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out His mind or comprehend His thought?" (Judith 8:14)
There is a deep sense of awe and wonder in the Scriptures regarding God. Exodus asks us, "Who is like you, O Lord, (even) among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour...?" (Exodus 15:11; compare Psalm 106:22) Deuteronomy describes God's deliverance from Egypt as "great and awesome" (Deuteronomy 6:22) and God as an "awesome God". (Deuteronomy 7:21; 10:17) who does "awesome things". (Deuteronomy 10:21) Similar sentiments are scattered throughout Scripture. The psalmist says, "I will bow down toward your holy temple in awe of you." (Psalm 5:7) He encourages "all the inhabitants of the world (to) stand in awe of (God)" (Psalm 33:8), even "those who live at earth's farthest bounds...." (Psalm 65:8) Psalm 66: "God ...is awesome in his deeds among mortals." (Psalm 66:5) "...my heart stands in awe of your words," says the psalmist. (Psalms 119:161) "I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work," says the prophet Habakkuk. (Habakkuk 3:2)
The New Testament sustains this awed tone (Matthew 9:8; Mark 4:41; Mark 9:15; Luke 5:26), even when the work of Jesus is left to the apostles. (Acts 2:43; 19:17) The New Testament encourages us to worship God "with reverence and awe" (Hebrews 12:28) and includes a warning — in Romans — saying, "do not become proud, but stand in awe." (Romans 11:20) It calls to mind an Old Testament observation that King Uzziah, that "when he had become strong ...grew proud, to his destruction." (2 Chronicles 26: 16) In colloquial language, the king got too big for his britches! Our democratic pretenses keep us from saying that he "acted or reached above his station," but you get the idea. It takes no little measure of presumption to be un-awed in the presence of God.
An Experience of Dumbfounded Awe
One of the classic biblical descriptions of awe is the one recorded in Isaiah, chapter 6. Recounts Isaiah, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.' The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke." (Isaiah 6:1-4)
This is an encounter with the Almighty God — a "high and lofty" God, a God surrounded by the regal trappings of power, by strange flying creatures, shaking pivots, and tendrils of smoke. In biblical parlance, a holy God! Isaiah encountered a stunning God, a stirring God, a God beyond our reach, yet One, unbelievably, who reaches out to us. There was great uncertainty about the future in the time of Isaiah; Israel was baffled and fearful of threats of war, but a powerful and holy God gave them comfort and hope.
Isaiah's description of being awestruck is amazing enough in itself, but it's also interesting to see his reaction. He was dumbfounded! He said, "Woe is me! I am lost, ...I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; ...my eyes have seen ...the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5) There's an interesting emphasis here upon lips, no doubt seen as an instrument of speech. And then one of the winged creatures flew to Isaiah and held a live coal to his "mouth". (6:6-7) This was no time for words that had not be fired in the crucible holiness.
Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
There was an interesting story in the Citizen this week about a local columnist's search for a recording of a baseball game that took place in 1965. His story of discovering the rare recording is a great story in itself, but the baseball game in question took place at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, with Vin Scully providing the play-by-play commentary. Scully is considered the gold standard for baseball announcers, and on September 9, 1965, he had a great game upon which to comment. It was a one-to-nothing victory for the Dodgers, pitched by Sandy Koufax, who retired all twenty-seven of his batters. A perfect game! Only five pitchers had done it before him and only nine have done it since. ("Mark Sutcliffe, "A baseball moment so sublime, only silence could do it justice," The Ottawa Citizen, September 9, 2005)
A wonderful game to comment upon at the moment the last batter leaves the plate. And Scully is renowned for his carefully chosen and eloquent turns of phrase and thoughtful descriptions. The recording of this game, however, reveals that the achievement of the perfect game was followed by thirty-eight seconds of silence! That's a lot of broadcasting silence. Not a peep is heard from Scully, a man who is paid to talk! The columnist describes it as "a baseball moment so sublime, only silence could do it justice."
There is a time to talk and there is a time to refrain from talking. The psychologist and philosopher, William James (1842-1910), mused over the prospect of immortality but finally laid his rationality aside and confessed that the notion of immortality is beyond our powers to comprehend. He suggested that, like Job, we put our hand over our mouth and be thankful that in our personal littleness we ourselves are here at all!
Frederich Buechner tells of seeing a forest of giant redwoods for the first time. There were some children nearby, giggling and chattering and pushing each other around, as children are wont to do. As they entered the forest, however, no one had to tell the children to quiet down. They quieted down all by themselves. Everyone did. You couldn't hear a sound of any kind, writes Buechner, for these trees, two thousand years old and two to three hundred feet high, had a "stillness and stateliness about them that seemed to become part of you as you stood there stunned by the sight of them." ("Awe," Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith, page 31)
"Let all mortal flesh keep silence," says a fifth-century hymn:
(Hymnal: A Worship Book, #463)
What Is Fundamental?
"Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
The language of faith, paradoxically, may require silence. It certainly is anchored in an attitude of awe, often expressed, if not in silence, then musically. In the Bible itself God's assembled creatures sing without ceasing, "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come." (Revelation 4:8) A song of awe in honour of God because the Scriptures — and we — consider God "worthy ...to receive glory and honour and power...." (11:4) AMEN
and with fear and trembling stand.
... Christ our God to Earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand."
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.