this past sunday, the sermon scripture at church was from the sixth chapter of john's gospel, in which jesus turns "five small barley loaves and two small fish" that a boy had brought with him into enough to feed a huge crowd gathered around jesus. (the gospel says the crowd numbered "about five thousand men.") these folk were attracted to jesus because of his healing miracles. the passage implies that jesus wanted to further demonstrate his power over the physical world by feeding such a gathering with meager resources. so much food was produced from the boy's offering that there were twelve baskets of bread and fish left over after all had eaten.
as i read through the scripture, several thoughts came to mind. the first thing that struck me was that the crowd was numbered according to the men who had come. apparently, the women and children who were there were not important enough to be counted. i wondered how many in the congregation believed that this story was true. many christians have no problem accepting that stories in the old testament are not literally true. the universe couldn't have been created in six days, noah didn't build an ark to save himself, his family, and thousands of pairs of animals from a flood that covered the entire earth, there was no ruth or esther, and david was a mythic king about whom many tales were told much like king arthur. we learn from these folk tales but they are not factual. why is it, then, that many christians accept the miracles of jesus as being actual events?
we know that none of the authors of the gospels witnessed jesus' life personally and that all of the gospels were written decades after jesus' death. surely, exaggerated stories about his life had developed in the retelling of his life in the oral tradition. there were other gospels purporting to be accounts of jesus' life that were rejected because the church fathers doubted their accuracy but the four that have come down to us as part of canon scripture are accepted as the most truthful. this faith in unreasonable events in the life of jesus do great harm. it is this sort of denial of science that has led to the situation in which we now find ourselves, when thousands of people refuse to take a life-saving vaccine despite all the evidence of its benefits. it is no coincidence that the largest number of unvaccinated people and increasing infections are found in the most "christian" states in the country. we watch as people are needlessly infected and die because they believe those who repeat lies for political gain rather than heeding the testimonies of medical experts.
belief in the impossible does great damage to the real meaning of jesus' life. God is a god of love, not a god of vengeance and pettiness. we are to love and care for one another. the perversion of religion for one's own advantage is evil. we are to be quick to forgive one another's wrongs. all of us are connected beyond ties of blood and race. we can learn from the stories of jesus' miracles, and in that deepest sense they are true, but we must not take them as evidence that supernatural intervention in our lives will protect us from calamity and disease. when we ignore science and adopt the stance that God will protect us from a deadly virus even when we refuse to do our part to escape it and that when we catch the virus it must be because God wills it, it is not God in whom we believe, rather we have faith in our own foolishness.
may we read the gospels with a critical eye, learning their deepest truths without rejecting the operations of the natural order. may we keep learning throughout our lives. may we do our part to keep ourselves and those we love safe. may we not allow politics to blind us to the truth. may we accept that we have been given the gift of reason for a purpose. shalom.
No comments:
Post a Comment