celebration, with football

As Cheri would say, Billy hit one out of the park!

That's a joke, y'all, as she really doesn't follow sports.

Still, I agree with the sentiment: the sermon today was the best one ever.

What was it all about?

God being at Billy's house for the Super Bowl game last year.

Seriously, that was the premise.

The sermon was all about people taking verses in the Bible out of context, losing their original meaning, then twisting the verses for their own purposes.

Wow.

He presented the sermon in the form of a comedy routine, primarily as a conversation he had with God while trying to be a good host to the party.

That would be the Southern way to do things, you know.

Keep it all genteel, with a soothing dose of self-humor to smooth any ruffled feathers.

So... Billy arrives at his cousin's house and there's Yahweh - Jehovah, The Creator, The One And Only Everlasting God - sitting in the chair Billy likes to sit in.

(Shades of Sheldon Cooper! LOL! An inside joke for those who watch "TBBT"!)

Not surprisingly, God is a vegetarian, as Billy found when he offered him chicken wings.

He did like the chips and guacamole, though.

(smile!)

All goes well until 7 minutes left in the first half.

 

That's when God says, "I can't believe it. That disgusts me!"

 

There followed a discourse between God and the preacher that went a lot like this, though I may have left out some of the jokes sprinkled in like confetti.

(That's an inside joke for my first niece.)

[For those who view the sermon, this is between time stamps 42:40 and 1:01:22.]

preacher: I didn't see it. What happened? Was it a late hit?

God: No, not that. Look at that. (Pointing to the screen) Look at that!

preacher: I don't see anything. What's happening?

God: The sign. Look up in the stands! Do you see what that guy is holding?

preacher: (Sees the man holding a sign that reads "John 3:16") Oh, yeah, that happens all the time. People do that all the time at these big games.

God: I know, and it disgusts me.

preacher: It disgusts you? I thought it'd make you happy. It's not my style of doing things but I didn't think it would bother you.

God: I can't stand it. When people take a verse out of context from the Bible, it gets people in all kinds of trouble. Especially that particular verse. The Bible is hard enough for people to understand as it is. It was written thousands of years ago, in a different culture, in a different land, in different languages, and if you take a passage out of context people don't stand a chance at understanding what it's trying to say.

preacher: Well, I've never tried seeing it that way before.

God: You ought to preach about it sometime.

preacher: Lord, what specifically is your problem with John 3:16? it's a beautiful text, a wonderful verse. 'For You so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in Him will not perish but have eternal life.' What's wrong with that?

God: Taken out of context it can seem to say that those who do not believe in Jesus will not have life after death, that they will perish. It's difficult to overestimate the horror this kind of thinking has caused. The Crusades against the Muslims were based on that belief. The Holocaust was based on that kind of thinking. They obscenely thought that if you do believe in Jesus, you will perish, therefore we are free to use any tool at our disposal to stamp out anyone who does not believe. You all have especially struggled with this in south Georgia. Christians damning jews, Protestants damning Catholics, Baptists damning Methodists, Pentecostals damning Baptists. If it wasn't so sad and destructive, it'd be comical. Nonchristians look and you and think those people are just crazy. Who'd want to be part of that.

preacher: But, Lord, the text does say that...

God: I know what it says, and I know what you think it says. Even the most trained Biblical scholars should approach the Bible with great, great, great humility, and not with arrogance, thinking they know exactly what something says and means. Take what you call the New Testament. You are reading translations from the Greek and there easily can be something lost in the translation. Not only that, my son, you're not actually reading translations of the original manuscripts because you don't have any of the original manuscripts of any of the books. What you have are copies of the manuscripts which were made centuries later, sometimes many centuries later. And these thousands of copies you have are all different from one another, different in lots of little ways and sometimes in big ways. Did you know that?

preacher: I think someone just scored a touchdown...

God: Did you know there are about 800 copies of Paul's letters, 800 copies, and you don't have any of the originals? You have 800 copies, and no two copies of the copies are completely alike. So you have to be very careful when you're reading and studying the Bible. You need to approach the scripture with great humility. No one should every say that they know for sure exactly what it means. I've been trying to tell that to a guy named Billy Graham for years, but he doesn't get it. What is it with you guys named Billy? Why do you feel like you have to know it all and know that you are right?

preacher: I think there was a fumble...

God: Do you remember the context of John 3:16? Do you remember the story?

preacher: Yes, everybody knows that. It's when Nicodemus, the great Jewish religious leader, came to Jesus and had lots of questions for him.

God: Well, if you'll read that story you'll discover that their conversation had nothing to do, nothing to do, with life after death. It was about how to experience life now, about how to have a second birth now, so that life now has new meaning and purpose for you now. It's about experiencing transformation and living a certain kind of way, and it's for everyone. Jew, Gentile, male, female. It says "For God so loved the world", not I so loved the Christians or I so loved the church. It says I so loved the world. I love everyone and I love every living thing. 

preacher: It's half-time now. How about more guacamole?

God: And when it says I gave my only begotten son, you people think that's talking about the cross, Jesus dying on the cross. That [verse] has nothing to do with the cross. Jesus was talking with Nicodemus, Jesus hadn't even died yet. What the gospel writer is referring to is the incarnation. It's about me loving the world so much that I gave Jesus to the world to tell people how much I love them and to show people how to love others, so the world can change.

preacher: Yeah, I like that. I like that, but when it says "so whosoever believes in him", it sure sounds like there are some who are 'in' and some who are 'out'. That you have to choose a team. Do you believe him or not. Right?

God: The meaning of the word 'believe' in this context does not mean believing a set of statements like you think today. The pre-modern meaning of the the word "believe" is to "give your heart to, to commit yourself to, to follow, to live like, to be like, to trust". It's about living a certain way kind of way. That's why those first Christians were called "followers of the way".

preacher: But, Lord, it says "if you believe in Jesus", which you are saying means following the teachings of Jesus and following that way, "you will have eternal life". "Eternal" seems to suggest forever, like life after death. Right? 

God: So, have you been listening to a word I've said? Language is tricky. You have gay folks in your congregation, but 70 years ago the word meant "happy, cheery". The word "bad" used to mean "wrong" or "evil", not it means "good" or "great". The word "sick" meant "being ill", but now your young people say it means "amazing". The word "cell" used to mean a jail, but now it's something you hold up to your ear  every day. You get the point, you get the point. All of those changes with words in your country happened in the last seventy years or so. Son, you expect words put into the Bible thousands of years ago in a different language, in a different culture, to mean exactly what you think they mean today? Are you teasing me? It's not that easy. You have to do a little work. And even after you draw some conclusions, you have to be humble about it because this is bigger than you are. But if you put in some work, you might discover what the writer of John's gospel meant when he refers to "eternal life", for he says it very clearly a little later in his manuscript. It's in the 17th chapter, the third verse, John 17:3. "For this is eternal life" - and notice the present tense and not the future tense, it's about now - "For this is eternal life, to know God." To know God! Not life after death. To know God! It means being in a relationship with me, spending time with me, trusting me. It's the only way to experience life in its fullness now. That's what John means by "eternal life".  It's the only way to experience true joy and peace and contentment. And it's the only way to transform this world into the world I created it to be. Because instead of you Christians putting all of this time and energy and effort into wondering who is going to have 'life after death" with me, you'll be able to spend more time doing what I created you to do, to love one another so you can create a better world now. That's what being born again is all about. So instead of seeing signs at the Super Bowl that have John 3:16 on them, I would rather see a sign with Matthew 5:9 on it - "Blessed are the peacemakers". Or Luke 6:27 - "Love your enemies. Do good to those that hate you." Or Luke 6:37 - "Judge not and you will not be judged." If they put up signs like that, let it be ones about loving one another, trusting one another with compassion and respect.

 

Then God took his leave, not staying for the second half.

As I told Billy afterward, that was the best sermon ever. Like, ever.

Another thing I really liked were the three Spanish-language songs we sang.

One of those, "Lord, You Have Come To The Lakeshore", was in the hymnal and we've sung it a few times before.

Its refrain has some of my favorite lines ever.

Translated, those words are:

"Lord, with your eyes you have searched me

And while smiling, have spoken my name..."

Such a beautiful expression of love and friendship and trust, isn't it?

[I even sang that refrain at Greenwich when I visited Mama just now.]

The other two songs were new to us, included in our program in both English and Spanish.

And here's something I noticed: the translation is fairly loose and inexact.

I'm sure that was done to maintain a rhyming scheme, as song lyrics typically have... however, the end result seemed to emphasize the message of the sermon...

whether intentionally or not.

Coincidence?

Ah, Master Oogway would say "there are no accidents".

Amen to that.

Right place, right time.

And to think, I very nearly didn't go to Asbury Memorial today...

i thank You, God, that i was there.