“What’s it all about?”

Rev Neville Watson

Introduction:

Many years ago, I promised an “Ultimate Sermon” and it has become a standing joke in the congregation on how many “Penultimate” sermons there have been. Today I seek to remedy the situation. I have, however, changed the title. The word “ultimate” has two meanings. The first is ultimate in point of time. The second is ultimate in point of significance. I make no claim that this is the ultimate sermon in terms of significance and to make this quite clear I have changed the title to “What’s it all about?”

I recognise, of course, that this is the philosopher’s ultimate question and that libraries are full of attempts to answer the question. I am not a philosopher and nor do I pretend to be one. There is for me more to life than sitting in a box at the theatre watching life being enacted on the stage. I see our place as being on the stage living out the drama of life. Where you stand (or sit!) really does determine what you see. For many the “shock and awe” bombing of the Iraq war was like a fireworks display on telly. To those of us who were there watching the bodies of children being loaded on to the back of a ute, it literally was shocking and awful, and raised the question “What’s it all about?”  I raise the question, not as a philosopher, but as one who has been on the stage for over ninety years, and who is convinced that the Christian faith is not primarily about the salvation of individuals like you and me. It is about the future of  humanity. It is an alternate vision to what it means to be human.

Let me begin by saying three things about the Christian faith.

(1) It is about the future of the quality of life of the Human Species:

 The Book of Proverbs in the Bible raises questions of value, moral behavior and the meaning of life, with my favourite proverb being “Without a vision, the people perish.” I believe that to be fundamentally true, and that we are perishing. And I am not the only one to see it this way.

Thomas Berry is one who maintains that a person’s story of the universe and the human race within it, is what really counts and that “the deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the current story becomes inadequate”. I believe he is right. A person’s “story line” is crucial. We desperately need alternate stories to replace the story of the sacred place of free enterprise in our society. Far from being free it is at great cost. A few months ago it was officially announced that one per cent of the world’s population now owns more than the other ninety nine percent put together.

David Korten also maintains that what is needed is a “reframing of the cultural stories by which we define our human nature, purpose and possibilities”. He is disillusioned with traditional religion (the cosmos being ruled by a distant patriarch) and science (the cosmos as a grand machine).   He speaks of an “Integral Spirit” which is very close to what I mean when I speak of God as “The Spirit/Energy” of life” – with life consisting of both being and becoming.

So let’s be very clear that the Christian faith is not about a guy in the sky who pulls the levers of life on request and who rewards the faithful with everlasting life in some kind of heaven where God is believed to live. The Christian faith is about a concept of life, a way of life, an understanding of life  as expressed and lived by Jesus of Nazareth. It is not about life after death in some kind of heaven. It is about life in all its fullness. This was how Jesus of Nazareth described his mission. “I am about life in all its fullness”.

The Christian faith is about life in all its fullness – not the superficial understanding of life we see in our contemporary world where pleasure seems to be the dominant motive. As Thackeray put it “We live in a world where everyone is striving for what is not worth having”.

(2) It is about quality of life rather than quantity of life.

Mention “quality of life“ today and you may well end up discussing euthanasia, the terminating of life when there is no quality of life. This is a pity because the phrase quality of life is what the Christian faith is all about. My sister Moya had excess curvature of the spine and died in her thirtieth year. The quantity of her life was short. The quality of her life was enormous. In her thirty years she lived more than most people do in their seventy five. Quality, not quantity, is the name of the game.

It is worth noting that Jesus of Nazareth lived only until he was thirty years of age. In that short period of time, however, he lived a life of great significance with one of his crucial comments being  “I am about life in all its fullness”. The early Christians were known as “people of the way”, the way of Jesus.

(3) Past, present and future are part of the one reality.

 This is the conclusion of an over endowed Albert Einstein. A few months before his death, he wrote to the widow of his friend Besso:  “The distinction between past present and future is only a stubborn persistent illusion”. Past, present and future are part of the one reality.  Paul Tilich put it neatly “It is impossible to speak of  being without also speaking of becoming”.  

With these things in mind, that the Christian faith is about the future of the humanity, that it is about quality rather than quantity of life and this necessarily involves consideration of the past, present and future, we come to the question of “What’s it all about?”  What is life all about?

The answer of Jesus to that question is “It is about living life to the full”, the life that stirs within each and every one of us. “To be, or not to be”, really is the question!” In the words of the philosopher Feuerbach “every organism, including homo sapiens, is animated by an overwhelming drive for fulfillment” and this in essence is what the Christian faith is all about. It is about fullness of life, with Jesus of Nazareth showing us the way. There is no question about it!  “I have come “ said Jesus “that you might have life in all its fullness”. The Christian faith is about maturity measured by nothing less than the stature of Jesus of Nazareth.

There is a piece of scripture that puts it well. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, but now that I have matured, I have put away childish things.” When I was a teenager one of the ways of abusing another was to say “Why don’t you grow up?”  The problem of course was “Grow up into what?”  The Christian answer to this question is “Into maturity measured by nothing less than the stature of Jesus of Nazareth.” The Christian faith has nothing to do with pie in the sky when we die. It is about maturity measured by nothing less than Jesus of Nazareth. It is about the future of the humanity. It is about quality rather than quantity of life. It is about life in all its fullness!

I recently went to a funeral which concluded with a recording of the deceased singing Monty Python’s “Always look on the bright side of life”. You may remember some of the lines “You come from nothing you go back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing! Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it”. 

 I beg to differ!

 In the first century a guy named Paul wrote a circular letter to all his friends. The so called “Letter to the Ephesians” has a simple structure: Three chapters about the Christian faith, the word “therefore” and then three chapters about the Christian life

 Chapter 1 “God, the Spirit of Life, has allowed us to know the secret plan. It is this. He purposes that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists shall find its perfection and fulfillment in him. And here is the staggering thing, that we who are the first to put our trust in him, we have a part to play in the working out of his purpose.”

Chapter 2. “The plan is to create a single new humanity thereby making peace.”

Chapter 3. “ This is to be made known through the Church.”

Then comes the word “therefore”. “Therefore, live up to your high calling and spare no effort to make fast with the bonds of peace the unity that the Spirit gives”

 And then there follow three chapters of what this meant in the first century, with our task, of course, being to express it in terms of the twenty first century. It’s all very simple when you come to think of it: growing to maturity measured by nothing less than the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Meditative and Contemplative Praye

 When people learn that I rise at about 4 am they invariably ask  “What do you do at that unearthly hour?”  I no longer say  “I pray” because praying today is all too often associated with Petition and Intercession. Not for me!  God, as I have said, is not a guy in the sky manipulating the levers of life on request.  God is the Spirit/Energy of life in which we live and move and have our being. Prayer isn’t about God hearing that for which we pray. It is about us praying until we become aware of what God wants of us.

 Prayer is about the experiencing and deepening of our awareness of what we call “ultimate reality” – that which really counts. Prayer isn’t about motivating God. It is about motivating us! What we aim to do in prayer is to break free from our cultural conditioning and become aware of a greater reality. Prayer isn’t about God changing things! It is about God changing us and we changing the life we know and experience today. There is an ”Inward Journey” and an “Outward Journey” and the two depend on each other.

Simone Weil defines prayer as “Attention taken to its highest degree”.

Conclusion

 The Christian faith is about fullness of life.  Jesus made this quite clear. “I am about life in all its fullness”. To be or not to be really is the question!  Creation is in the future and we are called to bring it into being. Past, present and future are parts of the one reality. Value lies in our response to this reality.

 The problem is that we have dropped the ball! Much of the Church continues to speak in terms of a flat earth with God as a heavenly father, individuals worship pleasure, and politicians are a joke that isn’t funny. And in all of this there stands tall one who sees life as a value creating activity.

 My favourite piece of scripture? It is when Pilate asks Jesus “Are you a King?” and Jesus replies. “King is your word. If I was a King my followers would be fighting”. Pilate got the point of non-violence and unsuccessfully tried to wash his hands of the matter. He couldn’t. And neither can we!  Pilate’s unconscious comment goes to the heart of the matter.  “Behold, the man”

Ian Harris, recently summed it up nicely. He referred to the Christian faith as “an open ended process of becoming". True faith is a quality of human living. It draws on past traditions but is free to re-think them as knowledge expands and world views evolve. It sits along with hope and love at the pinnacle of human values.

 There is another way to live! “Faith enables us to see it, love puts us on the road and hope keeps us there.”

 God is the Spirit/Energy of life inviting us to fullness of life with Jesus of Nazareth being the catalyst of human transformation.

And that, my friends, is what I think it is all about!