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ah \ \ @TEACHER, SHOW US A SIGN
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I think it rather amazing that after 2,000 years of history

we can pick up the BIble and find words that speak directly to the

modern situation. [seross the centuries, from one culture, totally

different from our own, come words and ideas that_hit us whegre we

live, /Written by peasant fisherman, in@xe uneducatdd tax gatherers

their message could very well have come from contemporary cultural

analysts. I find this especially true in our scripture lesson this
morning. [ x it are raised two problems that are a definite part
of our way of life. The first is the traditional human need of

proof. (Sasa is weliexine®) se one of the by+words of our civilization;

we simply don't like any thing that cannot be proven. /Underlying this

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of course is the gx larger question what is truth?--How do we really

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know what is true?--We will come Back to this one later./ The gecond
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major problem, directly related to the first is the inevitable tendency

of man to substitute inferior but proveable beliefs for truth that is

above proving This is the story of man's religious self expression
over the past 100 aa We don't like anything that cannot be proven;
and when religion falls in that category we discard ity eonelously or

we unconciously substituting something more material and tangible,
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something we can see and feel, something like our children's blaniets

which will give us real secubity and comfort when all else fails.

In the tweihth chapter of Matthew, Jesus is being interrogated,
taunted and questioned by a group of Pharisees. They have asked him
on what ground does he break the sabbath by healing; and further by

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whose power and on whose authority does he perform these acts of
healing. Bdfore the questions have even left their lips, some of
their number have given answer to them saying that his power and
authority are of Beelzebub, the prince of the ceviis.| These were

those who piously prayed for the Messiah, but who were repelled by

the humble man who claimed the tatie.| But there must have been
others in that group who wanted to believe Jesus, who found themselves

attracted by his blunt_truth and tender mercies. And it would have

been this faction that asked Jesus for a sign./ It was a rabbinical

custom that a student in question had the right of asking for a sign;
some concrete proof that the teaching was legitimate and taue / And
so it was perfectly normal that they should say (Teacher, show us

a sign. ") ane desire here expressed is not unlike that which we all

harbor in our hearts. We want to believe in God; we truly want
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to be thoroughly Christian; but it would be a lot easier if we had

some proof,

Jesus' reply to their request is a flat denial. His response to

them is one of the few occasions where Jesus delivers a scathing verbal

attack on his opponents / He called them a brood of vipers; an evil

and aldulterous generation; a generation so bent _on piety and keeping

the law that they were blinded to the truth in their midst | tne

word aldulterous is significant; it could only mean that in thier works

of righteousness the Pharisees had been unfaithful to the Lord who

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is righteousness; and that by even 3 asking for a sign they have committed

a grave offense. /te had healed a man out of pity and compassion}

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now they wantdd him to repeat the miracle to prove himself. These
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—__—

were the same men who would have been first to acclaim our Lord had

he jumped from the pinnacle of the temple | But this he did not and

could not co. | He would not use his God given power to prove himself; he

knew that if he did the skeptics would still be suspicious and endlessly

—-

repeat their trite request.

In his harsh response Jesus ruled out forever, the poxsibility

that he might perform mighty acts that men might be impressed and

believe in nim, [i pointed to two historical incidents where truth was

accepted at face value. [sonan went to Ninevah preaching repentence;

he had no credentials, as far as we know he performed no signs, nor

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miracles; but the people of Ninevah repented | tne Queen of Speba had

heard of King Solomon's great widdom; and instead of asking for pret

or a display of power she was satisfied just to be with the great man.

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These wre people of the past who had ears to hear and yees to see;

they were people who recognized and accepted the turth without having it

deonstrated to them. / Jesus lamented that his generation was not so

wide-eyed and open hearted. If only they would accdpt the truth at

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face value. Jesus concluded both illustrations by noting that something

greater than either Jonah or Solomon was here,

The question and problem we are left with having contemplated
the pasaage is this (via is truth? How can it be proven?" ) This is
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the question that is every bit as relevant today as it was twenty

centuries ago, fotvizizaton has advanced 100 fold; but within man there

is still the beloved idiom (‘seeing is rersevine.) | put can truth ever

be provent/ can w ever submit the Vatimate to categories of measurerment

we have concoctea There is the little stork of a college freshmen who

had jut returned for his first weekend home. His school was famous for

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its atmosphere of intellectual superiority. /His mother, on seeing her

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son asked bien are you eonitghst) The astute reply wesel “heave to -weirt 7"

The point of the story is that ultimately we can/t say how_we are; we

are See, healthy, comfortable, only in relation to a_standard of

health and comfort we, ourselves have established. / Now this is truly

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a pure academic problem, and it can be left to the classroom. But

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as we live out our lives professing beliefs in God, the ultimate, we
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must sooner or later come to grips wien se f Temporally we can define

truth, and prove it by means of formulas and equation / tax Ultimately

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it eannot be aone./ Thés was the amazing discovery of Albert Einstein

in the field of physics and mathematics, a discovery that has been

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known to men of God throughout history,

We live, however, in a cultural environment, that denies this philo
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phical and theological maxim; for we are the heirs of the age of

science. / Every aspect of life as been reduced to equation; no area

of existence is immune to the vulgarity of the polltakers' statistics.
We like life to be clear and well defined, we want answers to all our
avestions of me principle that is the guiding light of the advertising

industry is that the American consumer will buy anything that bears the

approval of laboratory setence./ 1 think we are all a little weary of

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t.vPever abundeace of white coated salesmen, beakergf and test tubeg

in hand. / Nathan Scott, Prof. of Rel, and_Lit. at U of C. brilliantly

summarized this modern dilemmna, (" peek at a young married couple

today reveals the extent to which we have gone in depending on science

for our values; both material and mora. [an thier driveway sits an

—— — —

ugly foriegn car; road tests have proven it to be more economical,

Their gleaming house is filled with scientific gadgetry guaranteed

healthier and safer. / On thier hearth gleams the senile pink light of

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artificial fire; burning wood is too arty. In the bedroom their new

baby nurses from a bottle filled with a liguid vastly superior to that

which nature has supplied. / Smoking filter cigarettes, because science

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has assured them they will live five years longer that way, they are
religiously studying and discussing their favorite Literature/-tantet?

Paradise Lost? A modern novel? No indeed, Lo and behold it is @Consumers

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Report .? In this house science retens;/ synthetic, proven, laboratory

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Seated ‘These are the gods. Of humanity there is none. —

In this atmosphere we profess belief in a God who is undefinable;

and call Jesus Christ our Lord who bluntly and harshly refused to be

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proven o course the inevitable has paposneat Religion has fallen

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prey to the scientific netnoa./ Modern America wants a religion that

has results. Modern Christians want their faith to lavish them with

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security, inspiration,and clean living, Our culture has given rise

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to Norman Vincent Peale's positioa thinking substitute for faith.

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At any book store you can find countless testimonies of how Christianity

is good business. / the Golden Rule has become thé standard for fair labor.

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practices and an automatic assurance of business saccess / We have

successfully made Christianity into another equation in our sclenfific
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way of life. / Do the prescribed acts, motthh the prescribed creeds, go

the right places, md like a celestial computor religion will spew forthl

the answers to every problem,

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The point of Jesus _ harangue agains the Par isees was that God

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cannot be proven. / that even if one were so inclined to try, the existence

of God cannot be determined by any amount of proot / tikewiss Christianity

cannot be submitted to a scientific test. We simply have no right, as

the Pharisees did not, to ask our Lord for a sign / To ask for proof

is to blaspheme against the God who is the ultimate, the first cause.

the God who is his own proof,

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How realyy is truth proven? It can't be proven. How do you
prove light. Certainly not by equations or physical principals. The

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impact of light is its own proof, no amount of scientific jargon can

explain it away when it is present; nor can science prove the exis-

tence of light to one who cannot see it.

So it 25 WibA christianity. / Jesus Christ cannot be proven to

a person who wills not to believe. His power and presence are real,

—

and meaningful to us, not when we involve ourselvesin the intellectual

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gymnastics of tryin go establish that presence and power. / Jesus Christ

is his own proof, his own evidence. Our response must be not in_terms of

idle questions but in terms of commitment and faith.

A few years ago, it was fashionable in the academic world, to

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be a hard-headed critic of anything that fell outside the bounds of

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material things, rational equations and 1ogie / Natareits imaginative
literature and poetry suffered very badly at the hands of these

cirtics, {/ If a writer described the heights of ecstacy of a man in

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leve; or the depths of grief of a man who has lost a loved one, his

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writing regardless of its beauty, was called nonsense. /Against this T.8.
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Eliot, a poet and eriteque in his own right spoke, / t one memorable

sentence he summarized the defense of unrpovable truth by saying

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'a_poem is a poem and not another thing." A poem can't be fzzmuned

by a mathematical formula. A poem that touches on human emotion, that

describes an aspect of life that can/t be boiled down into an equation

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is simply not up for srave./ Time magazine in an attempt to givd_words

of description to a recent performance of Rosalind Russe}; finally

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gave up with the statement, "Roz is a Roz is a foz is a Roz." If you

——

will excuse the irreverent analogy this is precisely the Christian

approach to Jesus cnnist./ We come to himk not with equafiong and formula,

not with demands for proof--but in faith,

Although this sermon has two points; the te§ are so closely

related that I cannot say this is where the second one ee React]
—— —*

that after Jesus refused the Pharisees he told a very strange parable.

It is a parable that describes the ppritiual state of a man who

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demands proof; and who therefore substitutes that which can be

proven for that which is anove proot / A man had rid himself of an evil

—— at as

spkrit. [re house, or h&s body, was clean and swept and empty. The

vanguished spirit roams for a while and then returns to find his old

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place of residence still unoccupied. tn his glee he gathers seven other

evil spirits and they quickly invade the house causing it to be much

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worse than it was originally.

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Once again in the context of lst century mythology we hear words

that apply directly to our situation./ How many times have we witnessed

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this very thing happen in the world of pofitical power struggles?

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At the end of W.W.I Germany was rid of Kaiserism, the myth of Aryad#)

culture dominating the globe was erushed;, Prussioan Militarism had

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been soundly defeated; indeed it was @ clean house; Germany was rid of

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its evil sstest./| nat the house was not empty long; into the gap rushed

Hitler with the seven devils of anti-semitism, Arryan superiority, scienti-

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fie contempt for life and so on. | one would disagree that Germany

was seven times worse than perore / Without too much trouble the

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What is true politically, in this case, is true spirttaariy. /2

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is gamma a fact that under normal conditions a vacuum cannot exist; air
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Will rush in to fill the pmptied space. We have cleansed our lives

of all superstition, of all false_science. We have replaced them with

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technical proveability and scientific amuweer And in so doing

we have put all our eggs in one basket--the basket of proven data, facts

and ragures./ doing this we haw#e all but eliminated the possibility

that our lives will be touched by the God who is Sprit and whose

existence will not be fitted into our categories of truth.

One of the most belowed pieces of prose in the English language

is Joyce Kilmer's "A tree.” /sosentificalty his description of a tree

—

doesn't hold much water and yet would anyone with eyes deny its truth?

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He is not denying the truth of the bilogical description of a tree--

but he is affirming that biology is limited that there is something

greater here.

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The irony underlying the problem I have been addressing this

morning is tnis. | Most men_of science don't think the way I have been

séseribing. | very fem sclentifstsclaim undarskandingx that their discipline

hold the keys to all truth and understanding. / on the contrary science

————

has led most of its servants to an awareness that there is something
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greater here; that every scientific advance is only more evidence to
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the God who is above even science, sain

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When Moses encountered God in the burning bush, he asked God

who he should say had sent nin / And then_we hear a strange anser,.

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(sex them I_am Who I am sent you.') God cannot be explained; he is

because he tf This must be our_approach to him through Jesus Christ;

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it must be an approach in faith./ Faith is not_unreasonable it is

above reason. | Jeuss Christ cannot be measured and described

sclentiftcally and logically--for he is the Lord science and Logic.
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Let us heed the lesson of the Pharisees, Let us not spend our time asking

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for a sign; let us not be blinded to the truth which is among us.

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