I am sure you have had the occasion when you know something, but then when you encounter a certain situation you realize you had forgotten it, or else you had not forgotten it, but you did not realize the extent of it. Something like that happened to me this week. In fact, it was at a funeral on Friday, a funeral that I conducted for an African gentleman who used to sing in our choir. It was an amazing moment really, because I realized just how diverse African culture can be, and how the traditions from one country to another differ considerably, although others were the same: cultural traditions dealing with death and dying, cultural traditions dealing with joy and remembrance, and cultural traditions around worship and praise.
It was a wonderful experience to be able to see what I had already realized and known before: that Africa is a diverse continent. And, while most of us tend to think about Africa as a continent as a whole; it is one of the most, if not the most diverse of all the continents on earth. From that which is north of the Sahara to that which is in the Sub Sahara to the Southern Hemisphere, to the Northern Hemisphere, from the east to the west, it is an incredibly, culturally diverse continent.
What made it stand out even more was something that I remembered years ago when I was travelling in Africa and I was given a traveller’s warning or a travellers note. The warning and the note that we received was to remember that if we travelled in other countries outside our own, mine being South Africa, you had to respect and obey the laws of the land that you were travelling in; ignorance of those laws was not a defence. You needed to be respectful and law abiding and appreciative of the laws and the traditions of the nations that you were visiting.
It was also a rather daunting thing, because sometimes what you thought was rather benign in fact could get you into terrible trouble. What you thought was innocent behaviour could be deemed to be sedition or illegality. For example, and we are talking over thirty years ago, if you were to have dinner with an Anglican Bishop in the City of Kampala in Uganda, just by being in the very presence of that Bishop could have you arrested or forced to leave the country.
Simply sitting down with a clergyman could actually cause you legal troubles. Or, for example, if you were to buy something from a street vendor in Lusaka, maybe a nice woollen mitt or scarf, you could in fact be arrested, because many of the scarves that were sold on the sides of the road were contraband, and you would be in the presence and possession of something that had been stolen unbeknownst to you.
The one that really caught me off guard was something that happened to a friend in Kinshasa in what was then known as Zaire, the Congo. It was one day when he decided he was going to buy a cap. The cap had a certain logo on it, and this was sort of before logos became “cool” and part of our every day culture. I sometimes laugh and think that humanity has gone through many different periods from Neanderthal man to Cro-Magnon man to Homo sapiens man, and I think we are now in the “Logo Man” era of humanity, where the logo often determines who you are or what you stand for, and defines you by what you wear.
This was even before our current Logo Man and Logo Woman culture. This was years ago! But, my friend wore a cap with a logo on it only to realize that one of the great street gangs in Kinshasa wore those caps exclusively. And boy, did he find himself in trouble in a hurry! See what I mean? You have to obey the laws of the land, but you are not always quite aware of them. There is a line in jurisprudence that says, Lex of rus ruris, which means you basically abide by the law of the land or the nation that you are in.
It is not always easy, because sometimes the laws are unjust. Look what I was struggling with, apartheid: unjust laws, yet laws that you had to live under. Not always are laws administered with the same degree of evenness or truth or sincerity or proper procedures. On the other hand, the absence of law leads to chaos, and without the presence of laws humanity and society falls into chaos and disrepair and anarchy, and we see the effects of that when it happens.
In other words, we humans live under the laws of the land that we are in. And, if we move even from culture to culture those laws change. The Apostle Paul, in today’s passage, says exactly the same thing. Colossians is in fact a statement by a lawyer, by a Pharisee, by someone who is schooled in the law. He makes a very profound case. He doesn’t talk about the laws per se; he talks about the status of humanity as a whole. He implies and states quite clearly elsewhere that as human beings we live under what he calls in Romans 8:2 “the law of sin and death.”
You see, when we think of sin, most of us, and certainly people with no knowledge of the Christian faith, tend to think of sin as a series of moral imperfections, or doing something wrong and something you have been told not to do. A sin is something that is in the back of our minds, and has often come from the example of our parents. Even to this day, when I see a chocolate bowl and I see the raw ingredients and everything that has been put in the pan, I still want to take my finger and go around the outside of the bowl and eat the little remainders that are there. You do that – come on! You just want to take it!
Well, my mother prohibited that. My mother said, “You are not to do that!” as if it was a sin. I only now realize of course, as Dr. Hunnisett pointed out to me in defence of my mother today, that often there is raw egg beaten in, and in raw egg lies salmonella, and with salmonella I could die! So, thanks go to my mother for preventing me from sinning and dying! That’s the message. So, mother knows best. That is a good philosophy.
We think of sin as moral imperfection, doing something that we are told not to do, or we think of morals and sin as a sort of breaking God’s law, that God has a law and when we break that law we sin. But, whenever we do that we look at the result of our sinfulness, not at our sinfulness per se. The Apostle Paul says, “No. You live under the power of sin. This is our human nature. This is what we live with.” He uses a metaphor to describe living in that sin. He says, “When you live in that sin, it is like living in the Kingdom of Darkness or the Dominion of Darkness.” The Dominion of Darkness is where we are at odds and are directed by the elemental things of this world, and are at odds with the things of God.
This is the power that is over us, but Paul is really clear to point out that this defines and applies universally. All humanity lives under the power of sin and death. But, what we have a tendency to do and what religion in particular has a tendency to do is that within the law of sin and death is to set a series of boundaries: that some sins therefore are worse than other sins. And, have you noticed when we talk like that, usually the boundary of what is acceptable is just within the limits of our own behaviour, and what is unacceptable is just beyond the bounds of our own behaviour. So, it is in fact not us, but it is somebody else who sins. The boundaries are arbitrarily drawn. We draw them all the time.
Very often religious traditions are built around drawing those lines. This is what infuriated Jesus. Jesus saw that people who were living like everybody else under the power of sin and under the power of death were arbitrarily being punished for things that were in fact quite innocent just because somebody else had drawn the lines. This applied to the poor, and this applied to widows, and this applied to those who were ritually unclean, and this applied to the tax gatherers, and this applied to the Romans, and on and on the list went to where the boundaries had been set by somebody else.
Jesus understood and he articulated what Paul articulated: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All have done that! It is a universal thing: we live under the power of sin and we live under the power of death. If we are really honest with ourselves, if we don’t put any pretense on or play any games, we all know that to be true. If there is anybody who can persuade us that we are not perfect, it is ourselves. Paul is only speaking what is real. What is real is that in our mortality we are under the power of sin. He doesn’t stop there.
Paul suggests very boldly in Colossians that now we have been rescued: we have been set free from the power of this Dominion of Darkness into the light of his Son, whom God loves. We have a rescuer. We have someone who has come our way and has decided by virtue of his own sacrifice, as God’s only son, to put right this sinfulness and this brokenness and this power that is over us.
That is why The New Testament is full of language describing Jesus are the Redeemer, or describing Jesus as the Saviour, or Jesus are the rescuer. If it is not from something, then what is it for? And, if it is not for something, why does it happen at all? Here we are rescued from the hold of the power of sin and death and we are liberated for God. Paul uses high language to those who describe the Jesus who does this. This isn’t just a moral teacher or a good guy who has some nice ideas; this isn’t someone who just observes the hypocrisy of the religious and points a finger at them. No! This is somebody who is much greater than that.
This is the one that Paul describes existed before time – with God. This is the one who is above all dominions and all powers and all tyrannies and all nations. This is the universal power of God in his Son dealing with the universal problem of human sin and its power over us. This is the one who can reconcile and bring together that which is broken. This is the one who has dominion over all the other governments and dominions and powers of this world and all their laws. This is the one who is greater than even those who make the best boundaries in which sinful humanity can live.
For Paul, Jesus then is the one who has come to rescue us. Oftentimes, it is only when we look at him, and only when we see him that we realize just how powerful the power of sin and death can be. My heart, like many of yours, goes out on a regular basis to the people of the Philippines. It seems disproportionately they have more crises and natural disasters than most. Some years ago, something quite traumatic struck the Philippines: it was when the volcano Pinatubo erupted.
Pinatube had in fact lain dormant for a staggering six hundred years. In fact, it was considered a hill, really. Nothing had happened to it. People had built around it and near it and farmed by it and had never given it any thought. It was like a dormant hill for everyone to enjoy until one day it just erupts! And when it erupted, its devastation was everywhere: billions of dollars of damage, people killed, an American base removed. It was an absolute disaster and the people did not see it coming: for six hundred years it had been quiet!
Is that not in a sense what sin is like? Does it not at time erupt in our own lives, and we are shocked by it? Does it not erupt in societies, and we are staggered by it? Are we not overwhelmed when see the inhumanity that is often the result of it, and are we not just staggered that something such as the Holocaust could happen? Are we not astounded at the murder of children? Are we not struck by the fact as we found in England this week that women had lived in a house for thirty years in submission and tyranny!
When you see the effects of the power of sin, we are shocked by it, and yet it is like a subterranean volcano ready at any time to explode. But, when we see Christ, we understand that even when it is dormant it is he who takes it away and restores and heals us and gives us life.
This last week, I am sure everyone has been thinking about what happened fifty years ago on November 22, 1963. So much of our attention has been drawn to the death of John F. Kennedy, and I think my mind has certainly turned to that event as well. But my mind was also turned to another event on the very same day, not in fact the death of John F. Kennedy, but the death of C. S. Lewis. Fifty years ago! The same day. What a tragic day that was! Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy – all on the same day!
Well, this past Friday, at Westminster Abbey, C. S. Lewis, that great Christian writer was recognized with a memorial stone in Poets’ Corner, alongside the Brontes, alongside Chaucer, Dickens, Keats, Samuel Johnson, Alfred Lord Tennyson. C. S. Lewis, known to his friends as Jack. C. S. Lewis was there because of his great writings, but he was also there because of his great faith. Who has not heard of Narnia? Who has not heard of The Screwtape Letters? Who has not heard of Surprised by Joy? Who has not read The Four Loves? Who has not encountered his most incredible book, Mere Christianity? Who has not seen his story in the movie Shadowlands?
C. S. Lewis towers over the twentieth century as one of the greatest Christian witnesses. He, probably as much if not more than any other writer in the last century, was someone who understood thoroughly and clearly what Paul was talking about in the power of sin and death, and the rescuing mission of Christ. In fact, C. S. Lewis realized that of all the things, this was the most important in his life. He went on the BBC and week in and week out gave a commentary in defense and in expression of the Christian faith.
Many people came to appreciate and understand the depth of his faith, and it resonated with them. He understood exactly what human beings go through. He could identify with us. His writings were so brilliant not only because they were divinely and philosophically inspired, but because they were real. He knew, for example, the struggle that we have and the power of sin and its challenges. He wrote this in Mere Christianity, and can’t we all identify with him:
Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest and then failing. Unless we really try, whatever we say, there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder, next time we will succeed and be completely good. That is in one sense the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder, but in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home: all this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to Christ and say, ‘You must do this; I can’t.’
The Apostle Paul is saying exactly that in Colossians: that he rescued us from the power of darkness into the Son whom he loves. Have we not seen the example, even in the last few weeks in the city, of desperately trying to be better, of someone trying to come to terms with their weaknesses and their problems, and striving and struggling and apologizing and trying to put it right and not putting it right, and in the end, is not the answer the answer that actually is for everyone: you must do this; I can’t!
C. S Lewis also understood the power of doubt. He understood people who struggled with their faith and could not comprehend it or make sense of it. They wrestled with it and struggled and could not find a good enough reason to believe. He understood that. He had gone through it himself. He wrote these immortal words, and these are the words on his memorial stone in Poets’ Corner. We should all go and see it someday. He wrote: “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else.”
C. S. Lewis got faith. It is in fact seeing the life of sin and death and darkness and understanding it in the light of Christ: Christ becomes the way in which we see through it and interpret it and understand it even though we do not see it ourselves. I repeat: “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else.”
One last thing he understood – and God bless C. S. Lewis and his great Belfast-Irish mind! He also had a deep soul and a great love. He understood the hold and the power of God. He did so because he lived his life as a bachelor until the age of fifty-eight when he ran into a woman called Joy Davidman. Joy was a Jewish woman from the United States who also was a Marxist, and eventually became a Christian. Joy needed to move back to the United Kingdom, and so C. S. Lewis had an “arranged marriage” for her. All very convenient.
What he didn’t expect and what she didn’t expect was that they would fall in love. And what a love story it was! But it was all the more poignant because when he married her he realized she was terminally ill. For the next three years, they had a passionate love affair that C. S. Lewis writes about in the most glowing way in his book about grief. His observations about that grief made him realize just how incredible the power of love is. She changed him, but in changing him, he had to leave her and lose her – after just three years she died!
C. S. Lewis was grief stricken. All these years alone and finally the love of his life appears – and then she is gone! How sad! Did he let that sadness rule him? No! He wrote about his grief for everybody else, because he knew that at the end the law of sin and death might have a hold over us, and we might live within it and under its law, but there is one that is greater than that, and the one who is greater than that is Christ the Lord. It was that belief that took him to his grave, his death fifty years ago this Friday. It seems to me that the power of the rescue mission of Christ is a rescue mission for all time and for everyone who believes. Believe me. Amen.