Rogue Reverend

Preach Christ, a sermon

A couple of weeks ago, I was stressing about this sermon, wondering what to preach on next, and walking around the track. I heard a word. Don’t think I’m crazy, but it just came to me, in the voice of my preaching professor, Robert L. Smith. “Preach Christ.”

Preach Christ? What does that mean?

I have to tell you a little about Dr. Smith. He’s a large black man, a preacher who hoops (which means that he gets a certain cadence to his voice, a sing-song-like rhythm), who sings amazing songs at the end of sermons. His voice is deep, like James Earl Jones.

And he said, “Preach Christ.”

Preach Christ? What does that mean?

I heard his voice. “It means Christ crucified.” Christ crucified? What is that? Why does that matter? “Because it’s Christ resurrected.” Ah, the resurrection. Now what difference does that make? And then I hear Dr. Smith. “It means Christ is alive.”

So, today, I’m going to preach Christ.

I have a new podcast series I’m listening to, put on by the Long Now Foundation, which
was established in *01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. I listened to a talk by Daniel Everett, who is a former Christian missionary turned anthropologist. He has studied a language group of people called  the Piraha

Daniel says:

The Piraha have a very interesting concept, among all Amazonian tribes as far as I can tell, one important value that is shared, is called immediacy of experience, Amazonian tribes are very interested on what is going on now.  And they tend not to value so much, the deep past or the distant future, but to focus on now, and many anthropologist have commented on that, but I do not know of any other group that has a concept, which the Piraha called “xibipiio” and xibipiio is a fascinating concept, when you are out there, they do not speak Portuguese by the way, so when I first went there in December of 1977 and got off the plane airsick and looking for the first place to throw up… they started talking to me, and I didn’t understand anything they said.  So, I remember once a fellow walked in to the jungle, and they said, he xibipiio left, and then somebody else came out of the jungle and they said he xibipiio arrived.  Well maybe it means he just left, he just arrived, and then I saw someone go around the bend in a canoe, and they said he xibipiio left they came back, he xibipiio left, planes, they would say xibipiio.

And then one night, I could not find my candles and I just had a match and my flashlight batteries were dead and I have this match lit and it was flickering, and they said the match is xibipiioing they used it as a verb, and I could not figure out, what on earth would this mean.  Well it means to go in and out of the boundaries of experience.  If you want to use a technical terms, you can say, that refers to experiential liminality, but it simply means to go in and out of experience. This is so important to them, not… we do this when we are children, peek-a-boo that sort of the equivalent to xibipiio in our vocabulary.  It is the excitement of seeing something go in and out of experience, the Piraha have codified it and made it a very important part of their language and an important part of their culture.  And one thing I noticed was that, their verb structure… so English has how many verb forms, well it has about 5, sing, sang, sung, singing, sings… Spanish or Portuguese might have 40 different verb forms, well Piraha like many American Indian languages has a very complex verbal system.  So Piraha has 16 different suffix that can go with the end of a verb, that gives 2 to the 16th power possible verb forms and that is a lot. That is more than 40. And of those things, 3 suffixes are very important and those tell you how you got your evidence.  So every verb has to have on it the source of the evidence, did you hear about it, did you see it with your own eyes, or did you deduce it from the local evidence.  So if I say did John go fishing? They can say John went fishing “heai” which means I heard that he did, or they can say John went fishing “sibiga” and that means I deduced that he did, or they can say John went fishing “ha” and that means I saw he went.

As I mentioned, Daniel Everett was a Christian missionary when he got to central Brazil to learn this language. He continues:

In some respects the Piraha are the ultimate empiricist, or like people from Missouri, the “show me state”.  Part of this cultural value of the Piraha, the immediacy of experience reflected in this word xibipiio produces a value to keep information slow and to keep it verifiable, and it must be witnessed, so a Christian missionary, which I no longer am, if you read the book, you will find out what they did to me.  They actually demanded evidence for what I believe and I realized, I could not give it as well as they wanted me to give it.  So, this changed my profoundly, but I remember telling them about Jesus one time and they said “So Dan, is Jesus is he brown like us or is he white like you?  “I do not know I haven’t seen him.”  “What did your dad say?  Because your dad must have seen him.”  “No, he never saw him.”  “Oh what did your friends say who saw him?”  “No I do not know anybody who saw him.”  “Why are you telling us about him then?  Why would you talk about something you do not have evidence for?”

Hmmm. And you want me to preach Christ?

There have been two Scripture texts rolling around in my head all week, the first of which has mostly been used as a weapon against me or as an argument as to why I’m wrong:

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

And here’s the thought that keeps coming to me. What if we listen to this verse a little differently? What if it says, which some scholars say,“I am the way, which is to say, the truth and the life. No one ever comes to the Father but through me.” We’ve looked at Jesus saying that he is the Way, AND the Truth, AND the Life. As if they are three things concurrently, But what if Jesus is saying, I am the Way, that is to say, the truth and the life. You get it? And really, what if Jesus is talking about his WAY being the way? And his way is that of truth and life. And that our way gets so deep inside of us that it becomes who we are?

The second passage that keeps coming to me is this:

John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

You know, that verse has been taken over and over again to prove that God wants us to be rich, but what exactly is abundance? It’s not wealth, says the man who had no pillow for his head. It’s not food, says the child with the distended stomach. It’s not a new car, says the woman on the public bus.

Christ came to give us life more abundant, but really. Abundant what? Abundance is what Anthony De Mello calls waking up. It’s awareness. Presence. Being in the moment. That’s the abundance Jesus is calling us to. And it’s abundance in compassion. Feeling. Understanding. Ourselves and others better.

Are you getting it? The church’s job, our way, Jesus way: Noticing, and Passion with compassion.

Preach Christ, huh?

Mother Teresa said, “Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.”

When I was in seminary, I went to see my preaching professor, Dr. Robert L. Smith one day, and he wasn’t in his office. He wasn’t in the classroom next to his office. I found him, instead, in the preaching lab, where we gave our sermons. He was pacing the room, praying over every chair in the lab, praying for his students. And every day when I left his presence, he would say, “I love you, Lia.” Never sure what to say, I would turn away and say, “Thank you.” One day, he stopped me and said, “Lia, why do you look away when I say I love you?” I couldn’t answer, but I know now that I couldn’t look upon that much love right then. I couldn’t face down my own demons to be loved like that.

He preached Christ. Through his preaching and his words. He preached Christ crucified through his life that he poured into the lives of his students. He preached Christ resurrected when he noticed me and loved abundantly.

I know Christ. You know Christ. You have seen him, if only in the lives of those around you. Christ is crucified in your life every time you face down the demons that persecute those around us. When you follow your passion, you are Christ crucified. When you paint a painting. Love a child. Hug your spouse. Whenever you give love, ou are preaching Christ crucified. And you know Christ resurrected. You may not be able to prove it, you can’t say, “I heard it. I saw it.” But you can infer it in the lives around you, in the love around  you.

Preach Christ? What does it mean?

It means Christ crucified. It means Christ resurrected. It means Christ is alive today.

May it ever be.