Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas by Lindon Eaves, January 3rd 2010

             "And now for something completely different"

This morning's sermon is dedicated to all those who dragged themselves to Church on the Second Sunday after Christmas  but have a hard time saying the Nicene Creed.  "Hang in there, baby.  God feels your pain."     The sermon today is sponsored by Ed and Amanda Riley who bought the right to name the topic at the St. Thomas' Auction last Valentine's day.  They asked me to preach on "Monty Python".

For those who haven't a clue who Monty Python is, just type "Monty Python" into your web-browser and you can read the whole thing for yourselves in Wikipedia.  

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python's_Flying_Circus ]

Many of you have probably seen movies that were produced by the Monty Python team. Perhaps "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" and "The Life of Brian" are the two that push most of my buttons.   They are both R-rated (adult situations, nudity, strong language).  They are blisteringly irreverent, some might say even "blasphemous" so it's up to you if you want to watch it.

Coincidentally, the CNN website yesterday morning, noted that Ireland passed a new "blasphemy" law in July that came into force January 1.    A person breaks the law by saying or publishing anything "grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion."  Anyone found guilty would be liable to a $35,000 fine.   A group called "Atheist Ireland" has challenged the new Law by publishing 25 quotations from the words of Jesus, Mohammed, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie and others. They affirm: "Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them."  

Also coincidentally, I was browsing the latest news on  the English edition of Al Jazeera's web-page and found the following item yesterday:  "Danish police have shot and wounded an axe-wielding Somali man who tried to break into the home of a cartoonist whose 2005 drawings of Prophet Muhammad outraged Muslims around the world... Intelligence authorities said the 28-year-old suspect... has close links with the Somali terrorist organisation al-Shabab as well as with the heads of al-Qaeda in east Africa."

These two news items highlight the fact that religion is a deep source of conflict and division in our world. On the one hand, the new Irish blasphemy laws acknowledge that it is very hurtful when someone trashes what, to you at least, are very deep, personal, and precious convictions.    On the other hand, freedom to write, freedom to speak,  freedom to think the unthinkable, and freedom to own any religion or none is perhaps the most precious and awe-inspiring  product of  human evolution. The greatest gift of nature and nature's God is the will to follow truth wherever it may lead.  It is a principle that goes back to Socrates' own defense of philosophy at his trial in 399 B.C.  Socrates chose to drink hemlock rather than compromise his conviction that an inconvenient truth is, in the long run, safer for the future of human race than a comforting lie.   Many people, including me and many of you, are repelled by the idea that there is anything so sacred as to be beyond question.   That includes all those ideas we lump together under the labels of "religion" and "God".  Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris get in my face.   I don't like it and I don't like the way they go about it.   But not liking it is not the same as having a good argument.   Not liking it is not a reason for passing laws against it.  Not liking it is no justification for killing or harming people in the name of God: whether his prophet be Moses, Mohammed or Jesus Christ.  It must be almost a hundred years since Bertrand Russell reminded his readers that depth of feeling does not necessarily correlate closely with truth.  More recently, theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg reminded Christian scholars that the truth of any religious claims had to be judged in the marketplace of ideas and history and not in the comparative safety of the church and seminary.

"Monty Python" is up there as a prime target for the new blasphemy law, along with Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins and all the rest of the pack.  But that doesn't make the law right and them wrong.

 The "Meaning of Life" takes a withering look at the values associated with birth, educations, life, reproduction, and death.    Some of it is really "in your face".  Perhaps my biggest ouch comes in the scene where a line-up of cardinals and nuns are dancing in an overcrowded slum to the song "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great..."  I think my mother was in the room the first time I saw it  -  though she got her thrills from reading John Updike so she may actually have been a secret admirer of Monty Python.    

The "Life of Brian" began when "Brian" was born in a stable in Bethlehem of Judea at about the same time that Jesus the real Messiah was born only a few stables down the alley.  The story really starts in Jerusalem AD 33 when Brian joins a small group of Jewish revolutionaries dedicated to the overthrow of the Roman oppressors.  He falls in love with the beautiful Judith, who is probably a proxy for Mary Magdalen.   On the way, he is pursued by a band of mindless fanatics who decide he is the Messiah and convert every trivial thing he says into a chanted slogan that drives the modest and humble Brian crazy.  

At one point, Brian escapes the crowd to spend the night with Judith.   Next morning, as the sun comes up, he goes stark naked to the window, throws open the shutters and, to his horror, finds the crowd waiting for him to appear.  Again they begin to repeat their slogans "We worship you, O Brian", "Hail Messiah" and so on.   Finally, his mother makes him go and speak to them.    "I'm not here to tell you what to do" he says, " You are all different".   "Yes"  they chant in perfect unison "We are all different".  "You must make up your own mind" says Brian.  "Yes", they all shout "We must make up our own mind." The story ends with Brian hung on a cross with 139 other miscreants while they sing the final chorus:  "Al-ways look on the bright sy-ide of life..."

Why would Ed and Amanda want me to preach on "Monty Python"?  You should probably ask them.    But I can tell you why I was happy to try.  The first reason is that I just enjoy Monty Python.  The second is that it gives me a chance to talk about some issues I really care about: "God", "Jesus" and "The Meaning of Life".

The reason I like Monty Python so much is that it throws down the gauntlet to all those miserable people who want to legislate for my life on the basis of their answers  to questions that I believe cannot be answered for sure.  More importantly, it forces me to question my own values and beliefs.  Why am I here in Church?  What do I really believe?  What can I believe?  How much of what I say and preach is useless garbage?  How can I be so sure?

The truth is that I don't know and I can't be sure.   Many of the things said and done in the name of God are just not honest, even plain silly. They sometimes seem to have very little to do with God or Jesus.  Whether it be snotty upper-class English elocuted voices enunciating perfectly the nine Christmas lessons at Kings College Cambridge - "in the sickthuh monthuh...",  bishops Anglican and Roman with two-foot high jeweled hats on their heads or the Archbishop of Canterbury winging about the election of a lesbian bishop in California, it all seems to have very little to do with Jesus.  In this world of religious certainty and silliness,  Monty Python provides us a way of seeing how silly we all look and sound.  And paradoxically, by showing us what is silly about religion, it points us towards what is really sacred. There is a long tradition in Christian theology and religious thought as a whole that tries to describe God by enumerating all the things that God is not.   The minute you say "God is this or that" you have at once to add "but not really this or that".

Most religion, and Christianity in all its forms is no exception, almost always confuses its current picture of God with the final absolute truth.   That is the essence of what the Hebrew bible calls "idolatry".  Idolatry is simply the human condition of creating ultimate truth out of our fumbling ideas about life and God.

Perhaps the most important line in scripture is what God says when he addresses the people he has just led out of slavery:  "I am the LORD your God who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt:  You shall have no other God's before me."     It is not just directed against the pagan idols of silver and gold, but against every human tendency to claim knowledge of what is absolutely and finally true.   The Hebrews learned that their God is elusive and mysterious. 

God reminds us that every picture we paint, every religious or political creed we write, every organization we belong to, every social structure we create, every theory we propound is, at best, a best guess for the moment.  It may not be the final word.   If we lose sight of that principle then we are guilty of idolatry. 

Remember what God called himself when he spoke to Moses from the burning bush.  "Who are you?" asks Moses.  ‘What shall I tell people?".   And truth answered Moses from the bush: "I am what I am.  I will be where I will be.  When you think you have me taped, you probably haven't."    God cannot be confined by any human images.  No religious creed or scientific theory, can hope to embrace the final truth. 

The truth is that I don't know and I can't be sure.   "Faith" is not a way of "knowing".  Faith is a way of behaving when you have to admit you don't know and can't know.   Faith is not an escape from honesty.  Faith is a journey towards complete honesty.

The toolkit for the journey to truth is very easy to remember. Paul sums it up in Chapter 13 of his first letter to the Corinthians.  "What really lasts?", he asks.  Where do I go when creeds fail me?   To what can I cling that will keep me afloat.  Strangely, paradoxically, tantalizingly, his answer makes no explicit mention of Jesus and has only one passing mention of "God".  

"These three things really last for ever" says Paul "Faith, hope, love.  And the greatest is love."

"Faith, hope and love": These three gifts judge every creed, every philosophy, every human institution and every value. They challenge every system we create in our heads or in our world.  They judge you, me, the bishop, the pope, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, every church, every nation and yes, even Monty Python.

Amen.