22 November 2009

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 93 (2)
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

Some of you doubtless have heard of something called, “The Jesus Project.” “The Jesus Project” is a group of scholars who strive to determine which of the many sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels are, in fact, what Jesus really said. While I’m certainly glad that this Jesus Project has helped draw some people back to reading Scriptures with brain fully engaged, I have to tell you, I find the whole enterprise completely irrelevant, if not downright ridiculous. We’ve just heard from St. John’s Gospel Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” That is exactly what one might ask of The Jesus Project along with those who try to reconstruct the real life of the so-called historical Jesus, as well as those who propose everything in Scripture really happened.

“What is real?” Are “facts” real? Or is the “real” something else? Something heard in the night? An idle tale told by the women who said the tomb was empty? What is real? A rumor? Is it all Gossip – a word from Old English meaning God’s sibling. God’s kinfolk spreading the rumor, the tale told round the hearth that God is fully present in the Human One, the God become human, the God humane. Gossip has it that this  Humane God refuses to dwell upon Mount Olympus, or Hollywood, or Rome, or Wall Street, or some other temple as the other gods, much more appropriately do. Rather, so goes the story, the monarch-not-from-here is really and always present in all the last places a world of fact would expect an almighty one to be. The Gossips have whispered that the One whose dominion is everlasting and shall not pass away not only had no palace, but had no home, preferring to sleep in a stables and caves with the outcasts, the diseased, and the homeless and forever hallowed the smells of the stable and the tomb – how inappropriate of divinity . . . . The rumor-mongers even have it that the Humane One – to whom they say belongs the only dominion and glory and kingship – the Humane One, they say, has even taken on the role of a female slave, washing the feet of those who forsake him and who forget they ever knew him.

And rumor has it – that the Humane One promises always to be found atop a garbage heap outside the city, there lifted high upon the throne. But the throne of the Humane One is not made of gold nor any other shiny metal; the Humane One’s throne, say the gossips, remains to the end of earthly time a wooden cross – the cross – it is said – the forever refusal of the Humane God to hurl down bolts of lightening upon a fractured world. The rumor mongers have it, rather, that the Humane One instead hurls down from the throne of the cross love and mercy and even upon those who nailed the Humane One’s body to the tree. What’s more, say the gossips, the Human One’s courtiers, the nobles of the Humane One’s court – are thieves and murderers and the very last ones a “real” King would choose.

And there is another rumor still being spread. God’s siblings, the companionable women, the sisters of God, are doing what God’s siblings, our God parents do: they are gossiping, spreading the rumor that there’s life to be had on the other side of death. But of course, there’s no proof. Fact is, a camera placed in the Garden would likely not have been able to see a thing. And un-photo-shopped pictures, they don’t lie, they only show the facts, ma’am, just the facts – and I once knew someone who said her wedding was ruined because the pictures didn’t turn out. So, was there a wedding or not?

And there’s more mere rumor too, that the Humane One has truly threatened us – all of us, not just some of us – threatened us with resurrection. Gossip has it that all that was meant for evil shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of eye; gossip has it that we will not be allowed to stay in our tombs, not be allowed to wallow in our past, and not be allowed either to lock our neighbors in their tombs, chained to the their deeds done or left undone.

All this talk is, of course, the scourge of every serious researcher. All of it what is disparagingly referred to as mere anecdote, Stories passed round and round. And try as we might or might wish, there is next to nothing in the Story that is verifiable as fact. But still we come here, time and again. The rumors, the gossip, and the idle tales – they have found us and they have formed us and we have come to know one with another that the rumor, the gossip, and the idle chatter of the women at the tomb – all that is what’s really real. We are here because what counts for our truth is not fact but the story of the Humane One, a tale that has changed our life and our death for ever. It is our faith, the hope of things un-factual, the hope of things rumored, that the Humane One shall reign for ever and ever, the only true Almighty. We have heard some gossip, heard a rumor, an oft’-told-tale that the Humane One is the one and only one who shall have the last word. And the last word will be good, very, very good indeed.

So come to the table with empty hands and receive what is rumored to be the True Body and Blood of the Human One, the One who shall reign for ever and ever. Amen.