THE &TMNPLEIFTICATION OF GOD John H, Buchanan
~ Corinthians 1:20-25 Rroad Street Presbyterian Church
Novemher 28, 1982 Columbus, Ohio

Tt takes awhile for something as incredible as the birth of Jesus to
sink in. One day won't da it. In fact, the theclogical claim the church
makes on December 25 is so incredible, it is nearly unapproachable. And so
we are inclined to reduce its magnitude, to fasten on to one or another aspect
of the celebration, making an idol of a portion of the truth, which is how
all idolatries begin. Thus, people who have not given one solitary adult
thought to the idea of following Jesus, will, once again, fawn all over the
baby of Bethlehem. The season of Advent is, in my mind, one of the early
church's better ideas. It is an opportunity to think intentionally ahout
both the enormity and the simplicity of the claim we make. For thoughtful
people there is, at the heart of the matter, a major theological problem.

We are about to make a claim which, quite simply, staggers both the intellect
and the imagination. We are about to say that Ged - the Holy - the Divine

- the Mysterium Tremendum - pursue? by philosophers, artists, and mystics
since time began, was intimately involved in the labor and delivery of an
unmarried Jewish girl 2,000 years ago.

There are some problems of historical documentation, to say “he least.
The birth is recorded no where. Wo one noticed particularly, but several
scruffy shepherds and a curious trio of astrologers from Babylon.

Historical decumentation is the least of our problems, however. ‘The
major concern is theological . or philosophical. It is what we might call,
basic. All the best thinkers have understood that human thought about God
is ultimately a contradiction in terms. The object of the inquiry is the
Infinite, and the only tool we have with which to do our inquiring is an all
too finite mind. The object of the search is also the subject: that is,
the one we seek, created the ones doing the seeking.

Karl Barth, perhaps the most important Christian thinker of the century
understood exactly the dilemma we are considering. Barth was a very prolific
scholar. His 12 volume theology, Church Dogmatics, is one of the high achieve~
ments of Christian scholarship. It is also a lot of books. In an interview
shortly before he died, Barth was asked about his prodigious output. He said,
"The angels laugh at Old Karl. ‘They see him huffing and puffing, pushing
his cart loaded with all his books, and they laugh."

How do you know who the baby was? How do you know any of it is true?
As a matter of fact, how do you know anything is rea? Oh, you can know that
you have hands and feet: and you can know for sure that the toast and coffee
on the breakfast table is real, and there is no question about the existence
of the chair on which you sit, You can rely on your senses to establish what
is real and what is unreal. Some reality may be touched, or pushed, or caressen:
a table, a hand of a beloved. Some may be heard ~ the "Hallelujah Chorus",
a baby's cry. Some may be felt - a brisk ocean breeze. You and I know what
we gense but is that all? DBoes reality stop with the nerve endings in our
finger tips, our ears and eyes? The people who live by the ‘scientific method
tell us that it is not intended to be exclusive. Most contemporary scientists
are saying that there is reality outside the scientific ability to weigh,
measure, and analyze. It's the lay perple, those of us who know a little
bit about science, who conclude that if it isn't measurable, it isn't real.

A major portion of life; in fact a very human portion, simply will not be
analyzed by the rules of science. A slide projected on a screen has reality
until someone turns the lights on to see it better, and then it disappears.

I was at Port Columbus one evening this week and joined thousands of other
people who were meeting loved ones visiting or coming home for Thanksgiving.
The airport was literally full of happy people. There were babies and grannies
and students and lovers. One earnest young man was there with roses for a
special returning passenger. All ages, all shapes, all stations were hugging
and greeting. It was heart-warming - but it won't last for long under the
bright light of reason. The young man with flowers was, of course, simply
answering his hormones. The young couple meeting parents were expressing

their continuing need for parental validation: the older couple welcoming

the business woman daughter were expressing their longing for immortality.

The reason they were all there - affection - love ~ doesn't have much documentable
reality. You can't know it - as you might know the existence of the plastic
seats at the airport,

Unless there is a category of reality which doesn't fit sour rules; or,
put ancther way, unless cur rules are so hopelessly limited by our own finiteness
our humanity, that they exclude a lot of reality.

Again, the best of us have always understood that: the artists, the
poets, the philosophers, the believers, In fact, the best and brightest of
us are the first to understand our limitations as we approach that which is
without Limitation.

In a regent Christian Century editorial, Ronald Goetz pointed out that
Socrates insisted that his only claim to being the wisest man in Greece lay
in the fact that he knew nothing, while everyone else was in the same boat,
but claimed to have the truth. (C.c., 11/24/82) Goetz suggests that thoughtful
Christians will, on occasion, find themselves dumbfounded by their own affirmations.
He calls that familiar state a "higher ignorance". He writes: "This higher ignor-
ance born of intellectual daring, the daring to insist that the unseen things
that give meaning and significance te life are real," (ibid.)

St. Paul spoke to the issue memorably in the preface to his first letter
to the early church in Corinth. The people of Corinth enjoyed the culture of
Greece. They were reasonable people. Paul was a scholarly doctor of the law.
He understood his religion: he was good at thinking academically about it.
Paul knew and wrote to the Corinthian Christians, however, that there was more
to the Gospel than ideas. In point of fact, the claim that Jesus, who was crucified,
was the Messiah, was not being received very well by the people who expected
the annointed one to look a little more regal, say like King David or better
yet, Solomon. And to those accustomed to being reasonable above all else, the
whole thing seemed foolish. The Greek thinkers were far more comfortable with
God as a proposition, a metaphor for the oneness of the supreme good. But a
erucified Tewish carpenter - a baby in a crib? Foolishness!

So we balk at the simplicity of it sometimes. Like the Corinthian intellec-
tuals, we are more comfoortable with God as an academic proposition, a philosophic
hypotheses. We are at home thinking about God in terms of “the Good, the Beautiful,
the Moral Imperative, the First Cause, or even the Ground of all Being."

Ana Advent says to us: stop, put the text books Gown and see the simplifica-
tion of God for a moment.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote about the birth of Jesus: “It is sublimely simple,
‘a transcendental soap-opera going on century after century and touching enumerable
hearts: from some bleak, lonely soul seeking a hand to hold when all else have
been withdrawn, to vast choruses of joyful believers singing their glories.
(Jesus, p. 17)

The next four weeks, weeks which will be happy, hectic, full of unusual
activity and unusual complexity, are for the purpose of preparing us for the
simplification of God. God has called us to be his people ina time an’ place
which make it neither easy, nor simple. ‘There are difficult problems: complex
issues: there are strategies to be devised, plans to be made, programs to be
launched, For each of us, there are people to be loved, difficult and hard
choices to be made, causes to he advonated.

But here, as we move through days of Advent, it will be sublimely simple.
A new-born child, a birth, a mother and father - a God who loves and who wants
that love known and experienced an@ celebrated enough to express it in its magni-
ficant simplicity.

Come, thou long expected Jesus
Born a child and yet a King
Born to reign in us forever
Now thy gracious kingdem living. Amen.