Roger Ray, pastor
Jan. 2, 2011 Epiphany 1
John 1:1-13
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
Charles Elliot was the president of Harvard at the turn of the twentieth century. A hundred years ago he made the claim that a liberal arts education was available to anyone who was willing to read a set of classical literature which could be contained on a five foot shelf.
It wasn't a novel idea to him. Throughout the modern era, as universities were evolving, a certain set of classical books were considered to be the core of what it meant to receive an education. Elliot was challenged to compile a list which constituted the state of that five foot shelf in the beginning of the modern era.
He did compile that list and you can still buy the books of the five foot shelf as the very expensive set of Harvard Classics, which, even still, would be a collection of considerable importance including works from great philosophy, literature, religion and science.
You could argue that liberal arts education really ought to return to some kind of core collection of general knowledge because that shared awareness helped to form the basis of communication among educated people, all of whom you could safely assume to have a basic awareness of the content of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Aquinas, Machiavelli, and, the guy I'm interested in today: Plato.
Long after liberal arts colleges began to abandon the five foot shelf of classics, law schools retained a commitment to reading Plato's Republic which is a philosophical dialogue which seeks to define the concept of Justice.....a concept which seems not to be rapidly becoming extinct in what we euphemistically still call the American Justice System.
It is my personal opinion that law schools have abandoned the ideal of educating lawyers in the art of the pursuit of justice in favor of simply learning the techniques of the practice of law. Similarly, I'm afraid, that divinity schools have ceased to emphasize training ministers to pursue the truth in favor of simply being able to recite traditions.
The word, "philosophy," is a combination of two Greek words: philos and Sophia, meaning, "lover of wisdom." The word, "theology," is from the Greek words: theos and logia, meaning "words or wisdom of God."
When we read John's prologue to the gospel we see that he is using some of these very heavily weighted words which we really should not read over too quickly. We translate the Greek of John to say, "In the beginning was the Word." Literally, it says, "in the beginning was the logia" or "logos" which does not mean simply "word."
It does not mean, "the Bible" or simply "the word of God" as we tend to use it in modern religious circles. The logos is wisdom, truth, the knowledge of God.
In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, wisdom, "Sophia," is portrayed as a divine woman who was with God in the creation. John ignores the gender of wisdom in Proverbs and is saying that Jesus is the embodiment of the wisdom, the truth, the light which was co-creator with God from the beginning of time.
Clearly..... I hope it is clear anyway..... John is also mimicking the book of Genesis which starts by saying: In the beginning God..... John, though he predates most of the works on Elliot's five foot shelf, was writing three hundred years after Plato's works had become foundational to all educated persons. John would be familiar with Plato. Paul would certainly have read Plato and it would not surprise me if even Jesus had heard something about Plato. Jesus grew up in a little Jewish town, Nazareth, which was within sight of the Roman university city of Sepphoris.
It is reasonable to assume that if the family of Joseph were carpenters then it is likely that they worked for Roman families in Sepphoris and Jesus would have been able to listen to some of the open air discussions of the works of Plato and Aristotle.
John uses the word, "logos" and interplays the words "light" and "darkness" into this poetic introduction to the gospel to give it the weight of all of that theological and philosophical tradition. Some scholars think that he took the poetry of a hymn to the logos and adapted it to his purposes here, weaving in the names of Jesus and John.
What John wants us to know about Jesus, before he tells us anything about what he did or how he died, is that what he represents is a commitment to knowing the absolute truth. Jesus, for John, and I pray with all of my heart that it is true of us as well, is that what is unique, powerful, and vital to understanding Jesus is that his message was to bring the light of truth to a world which is often captured in the darkness of ignorance.
And, quite conveniently, no one explains this idea better than Plato. Plato's longest and most complete work of philosophy is The Republic, his treatise on justice. Within that work Plato articulates the most famous allegory in all of philosophy, the allegory of the cave. And that, is what I would like for us to spend a little time with this morning.
Plato sets it up this way: There are a group of men chained into a cave in such a way that they can only see in one direction. Behind the men there is a large fire which is the primary source of light and the only light they have ever seen.
Between the men and the fire there is a pathway across which other men carry large puppets so that the shadows of the puppets are cast on the wall in front of the imprisoned men. Now, you just have to play along here.... In this entirely improbable situation, these men have spent their entire lives looking only at a wall where all they could see were shadows.... But not even shadows of real objects.... They only saw shadows of puppets which are, as you know, simply imitations of real things. And the shadow was not cast by the bright light of the sun, but only a more dim and inferior light from a fire.
Of course, since these shadows of puppets cast by the light of a fire is all they have ever known and so, they assume that they are very well informed people who assume that they know everything that there is to know about the real world.
Any similarity you see here to people who sit and watch Fox News all day is purely coincidental...., as the proverb says, if the shoe fits.....
Now, as Plato continues, one of the men eventually breaks free.....it was, after all, bound to happen. He turns around and sees the fire, the puppets and the other men chained looking at the shadows. He has the dawning awareness that the world is a great deal more than he had ever imagined. He is aware, that he has been tricked. That everything he has ever believed about the world was based on myths, deception, lies and partial truths.
Plato tells us that he then finds his way out of the cave, and after a lifetime of imprisonment in near darkness, he is initially blinded by the light of the sun. Slowly, gradually, his eyes adjust and he sees the things which he had once only known of as the shadows of puppets. He sees trees, animals, hills, buildings, people...... excited by his discovery of the truth, he returns to the cave to tell the men chained there the truth about the world.
Of course, upon returning to the darkness, he initially stumbles, falls and in his excitement and apparent blindness, the men in the cave assume that he has gone mad and that everything he is saying is utter foolishness, the insane ramblings of a blind and crazy man. Plato brings it home saying, and I quote:
And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice?
It is not very hard to see how John is using these images to describe a world in which it seems that most people are chained to a wall and that all they know about the world are shadows of false images cast on the wall by the light of an artificial light. They are chained in the darkness of ignorance but they get very angry when they are confronted with truths which are inconvenient or challenging to their comfortable mythology and prejudice.
I don't want to be and I don't want our faith community to be in any way condescending towards other churches or individuals. Still, we know that by opening our minds to leave the cave, to question traditional faith, to search for truths which are beyond the superstitions of primitive ages, and beyond the assumed prejudices of our own time, that we are alienating ourselves from the people who really like to watch the shadows of puppets on the wall of a cave.
We've spent a lot of time chained down in the darkness ourselves. We understand the temptation to just be like everyone else.... To fit in.... to keep quiet about our questions, our doubts and sometimes our certainties. But I don't think that we'll be forever alone.
A hundred years ago, when Elliot first came up with his list of books for the five foot shelf, the Wright brothers had just proven to the world that men and women could fly. A decade later a 14 year old boy in Utah invented the television.
A few years later refrigerators became available, then cars. People began to realize that for most of the history of the world, we had discriminated against women for no good reason and laws began to change which allowed women to go to college, own property, vote and eventually tell men what they had been thinking about them for more than ten thousand years.
Two generations ago we began to disassemble the racial apartheid which had divided the world for centuries. In the past generation, we've finally begun to awaken to the fact that being gay is nothing we straight people need to either fear or envy..... twenty years ago we began to openly accept gay artists, musicians and hair dressers..... finally, it seems, we are willing to accept that we have always had gay pilots in the air force, admirals in our navy, and soldiers on the battlefield.
The darkness of prejudice and superstition.... The fear which keeps us entrenched in an economic system which creates poverty, a health care system which supports illness more than health, and a religious system which perpetuates ignorance rather than the truth can be dispelled if only we have the courage to ask the questions and claw our way into the light.
As John said, "5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
This is our year to stop being afraid of the dark and to learn to live in the light.
