EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 HYMNS

 Still thinking about the little white church as I remember as child. Actually I don’t remember much about it. When I was just getting old enough to remember things, all the young adults who had grown up with the church, and moved to the city, started their own church. It will warrant its own time later.

What I do remember, and treasure to this day, is the music.

There is something unexplainable about those songs that leapt from the pages of the Baptist Hymnal.

Something so primal and emotional they seem to me more spiritual that many of the passages in the Bible.

There was so much joy unbridled in the likes of I’ll Fly Away that it makes a mockery of the hateful, venom-spewing tirades of modern TV evangelists. No matter if one has suffered greatly in life, or has enjoyed its many blessings, “Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I’ll fly away” can, depending upon the singer, voice freedom from an unkind world or the promise of continued happiness in another.

Among the hymns was one written by an African American after he learned that he just lost his wife and unborn child, who met the tragedy with Precious Lord take my hand.

They don’t write them like that anymore. As a speaker whose name I can’t remember once said, the likes of “Just as I am without one plea” type offerings has given way to “Jesus is my boyfriend” babblings. Another said that “Comparing the old hymns to the modern ‘praise music’ is like comparing a Shakespearean sonnet to a Halmark greeting card.”

I’ve made a long journey intellectually from that little white church to a life of secular humanism. I deplore the hatred and divisiveness that erupt from so many modern evangelical meetings. I can’t reconcile the screeching of a Kenneth Copeland with the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve lost friends over the misanthropic shrieks of so-called Christian Nationalism.

I still like those old hymns, though.

Opposites

 Who was this man on the Judean hill, and who opposes him? Perhaps he could be described in one manner by examining some reactions to what he was teaching.

One doesn’t venture far into a study of the Sermon on the Mount without encountering the word Christology. Simply stated, it means the branch of Christian theology relating to the person, nature, and role of Christ, the Galilean.

With many writers it isn’t simple a study of the man’s life as presented by the writers of the gospels. It descends further, involving the dialectic between the lessons of the Galilean and the stance of those who reacted those lessons. Those reactions vary.

Author Leo Tolstoy, trapped in an unhappy marriage, found solace in the Sermon. In the words of Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Greek author, lecturer, and Christian pacifist, Tolstoy, at one point in his life, became horrified at the thought that “that life seemed to have no meaning if death was guaranteed to follow.” He even contemplated suicide before turning to a study of religion. As Christoyannopoulos describes the experience of Tolstoy’s seeking of a meaning to life:

“Then came the breakthrough. He observed that the peasants around him—which as a proud aristocrat he had hitherto overlooked—seemed to approach death with calm and serenity. But why? What was it that helped them remain so serene in the face of the apparent futility of life? Tolstoy realised that what they had was ‘faith’. This intrigued Tolstoy, yet it also gave him hope. So he plunged into the Bible with renewed enthusiasm, in the hope that the meaning of life would finally be disclosed to him – and this time, it was.”

Tolstoy evidently found that the teachings in the Sermon, seemingly so antithetical to harmony and success in life, could lead to a perfect state if followed.

Friedrich Naumann, a German liberal politician and Protestant parish pastor is reported to have said that the teachings of the Sermon were incompatible with capitalism. It’s hard to argue with that.

Consider as well the messages polluting our senses from the current mob of “pray for pay” theologians. If one can call their spewing a philosophy, it is one that cannot be more in contrast and opposition to that of the Galilean.

What government today would last upon a policy of not resisting evil, but forgiving it? Indeed, one might eventually come to regard the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as a body of righteous teachings employed in a cosmic struggle with the forces of everyday life. Perhaps that is why hear so little of them voiced from either the pulpits or the halls of government.

It has taken a crisis of enormous proportions for us to see, as Tolstoy saw, where power derived from principles such as the Galilean espouse may be found. It is being manifested by those whom the inhabitants of Manhattan skyscrapers would call “America’s peasants.” They are finding peace and meaning to life by tending those whom the Galilean would later call, “The least of those among us.” Their lights are shining so brightly that they drown the howling of the hyenas.

Greed

Sometimes the Sermon On The Mount becomes quite timely. Like today. Our country, and the world, is experiencing the worst pandemic crisis we’ve known in our lifetimes. Predictably, the experience is bringing out the best and the worst in us.

The best is displayed be the scientists, medical personnel, a public safety officials who are risking their lives be exposing themselves to the deadly virus that sweeps our planet. People are dying. Businesses are closed. Jobs are lost. Families face bankruptcies. The crisis is testing our faith in the systems on which we depend. Some families face not being able to buy food.

People turn to their religious leaders. What do they hear? Perhaps they hear the voice of the Galilean from that Judean hill:

“For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:7 NIV)

Perhaps they also hear the voices of TV evangelists who tell them they must keep sending money, even in the face of this unimaginable crisis, money to sustain the evangelists’ mansions and private jets.

Perhaps they see crowds, defying the exhortations of medical experts to remain at home during the crisis, gathering at mega-churches whose leaders defy logic, safety, and righteousness in equal measures.

Times like these make it easier to surpass the righteousness of some pharisees.