This sermon was delivered with the online worship service for Innisfail and Springbank United Church. The relevant scripture is 1 John 5:1-6. The sermon references Children’s Time. I asked the kids to do a blindfolded taste test with pink and yellow lemonade to see which one tastes better.
Have you ever read something, or watched something on TV, or maybe see a fashion trend on YouTube, and thought “I think I’ve seen this before.” Perhaps a song that young kids believe to be trendy with their friends, such as one made popular on the TV show Glee, Don’t Stop Believing. And then they learn that their parents or grandparents listened to it 40 years earlier. Ideas in philosophy or theology enjoy the same fate and are periodically recycled.
I had that odd feeling when I first reviewed the Lectionary and saw todays scripture. It isn’t the poetic, image filled verses in the Old Testament. It isn’t the cryptic parables told by Jesus as teaching tools for his followers and adversaries. This piece of scripture reads like clumsy example of logic in a philosophy class. Or maybe some convoluted example in an archaic computer programming language like FORTRAN. Arguments based on logic are common today (or at least they should be common), but were fairly new 2000 years ago.
Placing ourselves in the scene of the scripture 2000 years ago, we have a new way of making persuasive arguments, and we have something new to argue about. Our new arguments are that ‘Whatever is born of God conquers all’, and ‘the Holy Spirit provides testimony.’
I would have like to have been part of the crowd where this was proclaimed. An excellent set of tools for the downtrodden to fight for social justice. To have God provide testimony for ones plight, and put this up against the testimony of people serving injustice. We can’t lose with this new power tool. A brand new idea. An idea that is just as new as my kids singing:
Just a small town girl, Living in a lonely world.
Journey, 1981.
We have seen this before.
Way back in Exodus, Moses prescribed how his people should deal with disputes. If there was a dispute between two people, then each side would provide testimony, and the judge would pass judgement based on the testimony. These rules were fine for the people with good status in the community. Land owners, shop keepers, people with money. People that were seen as upstanding members of society, and deemed to be righteous. Their word was accepted at face value. And if you were a little lower down the ladder of acceptability then you would need a few more people to provide testimony to make an argument before the judge.
What about the people who do not have status to provide testimony, and there are no witnesses to help? Such as a shepherd looking after animals for his master, and a wolf takes a sheep. The personal testimony “I did not bonk Lambchop on the head and make tasty dinner” was not accepted. But the shepherd could bring the carcass back to the landowner, show her the bite marks and proclaim God is my witness. This is how God provides testimony. Forensic evidence from God trumps the testimony of all people. Or deciding if yellow lemonade tastes better than pink lemonade. We make a decision based on factual evidence straight from God.
Our little taste test now seems quite profound. We can extend our taste test to something more complex, such as a double blind trial for the effectiveness of a pharmaceutical. It begins with accepting that one person’s testimony may not be relevant and should not be trusted, and we need to have a quiet, honest discussion with God to be blessed with the Spirit of Truth.
This honest discussion happened back in the mid 1700’s. A Scotsman by the name of James Lind was the doctor aboard a Navy vessel when scurvy was wearing down the crew. As tempting as it was to simply proclaim a particular cause of the disease and prescribe a treatment, Lind did the unthinkable. He gave different sailors different food items, and he wanted to see if a change in diet had an effect on their health. One group got lemons. And one week later, God tapped Mr Lind on the shoulder and said Congratulations, you are blessed with the Spirit of Truth. Lemons are born of God.
And whatever is born of God conquers all. Or, so it is written. It didn’t go that way for Lind. The Navy did not accept the proposal that lemons be part of the diet for another 50 years. This was partly due to Navy bureaucracy preventing a change. It was also partly due to Lind himself being sceptical of the value of God’s testimony. Lind was leaning more towards his own proclamations about what caused scurvy, and this slowed down adoption of God’s Truth.
And Lind’s discovery was not unique. Portuguese sailors knew all about lemons in the late 1400’s. The British Navy even had medical texts on this topic in the early 1600’s. Or the experience of the North American Indigenous peoples who have dealt with scurvy for countless thousands of years.
Not only does God’s Truth seem to have trouble conquering, it needs to be uncovered on a periodic basis.
In the past few months, God’s truth seems to be slipping from our grasp.
We have flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and people that refuse to make concessions on public gatherings for the overall safety of the population. We have religious leaders abuse their position of leadership and become tyrannical rulers that place their own self-serving testimony before the testimony of God. God’s testimony that says “COVID is bad.” This testimony comes to us through the experience of medical staff, trying to keep people alive in Intensive Care. This testimony comes to us through the researchers who look at how and how quickly the disease spreads. The vast amount of God’s testimony is over-run by the infinite amount of testimony from people that just want to make a name for themselves. And we all suffer as a result.
Does the Holy Spirit really provide testimony? Does everything born of God really conquer all? Or are the self-serving testimonies from people winning out? Were these words of scripture just a pep-talk for cannon fodder? No, I don’t think they were.
On that grim Friday when Jesus was placed on trial, the Holy Spirit’s testimony was not listened to. Our human judge required a personal testimony from Jesus, and Jesus saw the failings in this. But this was not a failure.
The testimony of the Holy Spirit was embraced by others, people that Jesus met, and complete strangers that knew nothing about Jesus. The fact that the scripture passage exists is evidence that the Spirit of Truth was spreading. The people in our scripture knew this, and the words were a spark to continue the work that Jesus started.
It is just a matter of numbers, and a matter of “we have seen this before.”
Everything born of God really does conquer all, it just needs to be conquered again and again. This message is just as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago.
We need to continue holding up the light that is the Spirit of Truth.
Because we are Apostles of Christ.
Thanks be to God
Amen.
