Hear the words of the Collect for the Third Sunday in Advent:

O Lord Jesus Christ, who at Thy first coming didst send Thy messenger to prepare Thy way before Thee; grant that the ministers and stewards of Thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready Thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at Thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in Thy sight.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be alway acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. We pray in the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Ghost. Amen.

Last week we learned about the importance of the Bible to Christianity, catholicism, and Anglicanism. We are, after all, Christians first, catholics second (small ‘c’ and not big ‘c’) in that we believe what has always been believed in matters of faith, and third that we are Anglican in the expression of the proceeding two groups.

Once we realize the importance of the Bible we can begin to use it as a guide in our walk with God. We see the Old Testament as we see the season of Advent, a time of preparation for the coming of the Messiah. We hear throughout the O. T. of the expected one, the redeemer, the ‘Emmanuel’, or ‘of God with us’ as Matthew 1:23 tells us. This means exactly what it says, God is come to earth to be with us in all that happens in our human lives, even unto death itself. This is a very important point, and it is on this that I would like to focus today. It is this point that in so many ways separates truth from heresy.

In much of what passes for theological debates today there is a basic misunderstanding of just who God is.

In these discussions both sides seem to be ‘out claiming’ the other in their support of, and embracing of, the Bible, the Creeds, and the Prayer Book but coming to two diametrically opposed conclusions. Many of the people in the pews just sit there and are confused at the two opposing sides claiming the same basis for their arguments and saying opposite things. The reason that this is possible is because of that basic misunderstanding I mentioned before.

The first time we hear this misunderstanding written of is in the late 18^th century by Freidrich Scheiermacher. He is the father of modern theological liberalism and his method of interpreting the Bible came to be called ‘the historical critical method.’ His basic premise was that God was not an object, therefore not a person, and therefore unknowable. This lead him to the conclusion that, since only objects can influence other objects by the idea of cause and effect, then God could not interact with the world on any physical level. It was he who first denied that God performs miracles or talks to mankind directly. In other words, God is spirit, and that man can never know Him through direct experience.

His idea was that man would listen to God and then interpret those words within the culture and time that he was in, or in other words, that as society evolved, man’s understanding of what God said would evolve too. He did not believe in any eternal truths, only current ones. We see this battle of ‘opposing truths’ playing out across the world and even in Church today.

Once this idea of ‘current truth’ became entrenched within the Church’s teaching, it was easier to deny the physicality of the virgin birth, the Crucifixion, the empty tomb, and the Ascension. They were all viewed in this light of spiritual, rather than physical reality. They could be re-interpreted in ways that their physical sense, which was denied, would not allow. They could all now be interpreted in a spiritual sense of love, in an ever-changing definition of what that meant, and not from an eternal perspective.

We could now see all religion, all of mankind’s experiences with God, as an expression of the culture and time that that people lived in. Hence, all religions were equally correct in what they were saying about their experience with God. In other words, all religions led to the same place.

This is not something that orthodox Christianity believes, or that orthodox Christians can accept. We believe that God did intervene in history and spoke words to men that were true in all historical and cultural circumstances, throughout time and space. It is in this context that we hear John 1:14:

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

When we therefore look at this verse and interpret it representationally, we see God as present with us. However, since God cannot be a person, He is only some kind of mental symbol. Hence, we can decide what that ‘symbol’ means to us based on our culture, or any other criteria we can think of.

In this manner of interpretation, there is no physical reality to fall over. There is nothing that will cause us to actually adhere to the physical reality of His words and all the ramifications that they have for our lives, because we could not really hear them in the first place. This is the crux of modern biblical criticism and the root of ‘truth’, with a small ‘t.’

Yet, when we read the words, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” we cannot help but stumble over the innate physicality that they invoke. We see ‘Truth’ with a capital “T”, and this makes all the difference in the word to us and to our interpretation of Scripture. We must follow His words, because we follow in His footsteps.

With this very long prologue I can finally come to the question which I want to ask each one of us today. Since we say we believe in the Bible and that we are followers of Jesus Christ, I will ask us all the question which the Gospel lesson for today said that the followers of John the Baptist asked Jesus in Matthew 11:2-3:

Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, “Are you he that should come, or do we look for another?”

And considering the focus of the Propers for today on the ministers of God, when we preach and teach the hard sayings of Jesus which cut us to the quick, are we offended as those that followed Jesus were and their reaction in John 6:66-67:

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.Then said Jesus unto the twelve, “Will ye also go away?”

It is not the words of our mouths which will provide the answer to these questions. I ask us to consider what our lives say our answer to these questions give to a world that is utterly confused as to who Jesus Christ is and hence, God is and how we can know Him in spirit and in Truth with a capital “T” and that He is as real as any of us are.

Amen,

The Very Rev. Canon Rev. John Jacobs