“The Colors Through Which we Look at Life”

Second in a Series on the Sanctuary Stained Glass Windows

February 28, 2010 Des Moines

Hebrews 4:12-13

“The Bible”

What impression do you draw of someone described as “seeing through rose-colored glasses”? My guess is that no one hears that as a compliment; it’s always brandished as a means of summarily dismissing someone as a PollyAnna-ish light-weight who is deluded or intoxicated by naiveté.

And in any given individual, that might be true. But let’s not allow that fragment of truth to seduce us into the delusion that any of us is capable of absolute objectivity. The fact is that all of us see life through some kind of lens – none of us is ever free from one kind or another of interpretive filters through which we process and make some kind of sense out of what we see. And since we are not finally prisoners of those lenses – since we can, in fact, choose to take certain ones off and replace them with others – it is critical that we look ourselves in the mirror every now and then and “see”, so to speak, what we are wearing.

If not “rose-colored” ones, then, how about “faith-colored,” or – and how is this for a segue? – “stained-glass lenses” instead? Last week we began a series that will sustain us throughout this season of Lent focusing on these stained glass windows that surround us every time we gather in this room. Such windows, we recalled, have been used in places of worship for something like 1000 years to infuse, at times, and architecturally remember the sense of mystery and wonder and awe that is at the heart of our worship; used at other times to teach, through their glassy designs, the stories of scripture and the lives of the saints both local and ancient.

On a historical note, we recalled that while stained glass is no stranger to this sanctuary – colored windows originally filling skylights throughout the ceiling -- all of these particular windows came to this room from Central Christian Church after the congregation which had worshiped in that building located at 9^th and Pleasant and affectionately dubbed “a poem in stone”, reunited with the people of University Christian Church around 1970, making this facility their shared home.

Indeed, the Central Christian Church building was ablaze in stained glass – only a fraction of which made its way into this building. Bob Oberbillig, who chaired the renovation project in the mid-seventies, tells me that more glass from Central was sold than was ultimately installed. What was retained were the windows we now see surrounding us, and the 10 additional windows gracing the second floor chapel. Bob recalls that, at the time, all the windows were stood on easels around the fellowship hall and backlit, and over a period of weeks the congregation voted on their preferences for which ones to use.

All that may sound like so much congregational trivia, but it underscores the valuable point that whatever the lenses we ultimately select for our living, those choices are made in the midst of other and competing options. Consider, just as an example, that we don’t have to be a Christian. There is no law – of nature or nation – that requires us to stand up in front of an assembly of people and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is not a given that we do so. There are plenty of other options, and plenty of people choose them.

The fact that at some critical point in our lives – amidst all the alternatives – we professed this particular faith means that we have chosen to be defined – and to define all else – according to this faith’s particular tint on things. So what does it mean for our living that we have chosen to look at all of reality and eternity through this particular window?

Last week we began by focusing on the largest of these panes – the one that confronts us most dramatically and commandingly every time we enter this room: the center window above the baptistery. We saw represented in its colors and swirls the very act of Creation – dry land separated from the waters of chaos; light wrought from the very void of darkness – and heard its stirring and insistent affirmation that life was no accident of molecules or quirk of quarks quixotically charged, but rather was God’s imaginative intent. Moreover, we heard afresh that, once it was all accomplished – earth and sky and flora and fauna and male and female -- God looked around and pronounced it good. No, not simply “good,” but “very good, indeed.” It changes how we relate to things, when we start out seeing through that lens.

Today we push our attention away from the front of the room to the center of the north side – to the window recalling to us the Scriptures; an open Bible with a sword laid along its spine. Now, in a sense that sounds like a big “ho-hum.” Who around here doesn't know that the Bible is a big thing for Christians? Denominationally speaking, our movement has always emphasized the importance of Scripture. “No book but the Bible; no creed but Christ,” our founders use to shout. “Bible names for Bible things,” they added. From our earliest beginnings we have thought of ourselves as “People of the Book.” Thomas Campbell, speaking in 1809 at a meeting to form the Christian Association of Washington, Pennsylvania asserted a principle that was to become one of our favorite slogans: “Where the Bible speaks we speak, and where the Bible is silent, we are silent.” Nobody is going to be surprised to see a window with a Bible on it.

But look again at the window, and the image more precisely rendered. As I mentioned before, the window doesn't simply depict an open Bible. Laying across the open book is double-edged sword – looking something like a lethal bookmark with a hostile message for anyone thinking of turning the page. What's that all about?

We can trace the image to both the letter to the Ephesians and the book of Hebrews. In the former, amidst counseling the faithful to “take up the whole armor of God,” the writer includes as a part of that spiritual equipment “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:13-17)

In the latter – the passage read earlier as a guide for our reflection – the writer describes the “word of God” as “Living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword...” Now if you are like me, right about now you are nervously wondering exactly what that might mean. Unfortunately, the writer proceeds to tell us: “...piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.”

Really? A book can do all that? Well, actually, no; a book can't do any of that. That isn't the claim. What Hebrews asserts is that the Word of God can do all those terrible sounding things. The distinction, I think, is important. The book, after all, is paper – paper and glue and ink. As a book, the Bible may connect us to the Word of God; may communicate the Word of God; may even be the voice through which we hear and understand the Word of God, but it should not finally be equated with the Word of God – as if the Spirit and creative breath of God could ever be held still long enough to be gold-leafed and shrink-wrapped.

If the book were the Word, what sense could we make of the biblical claim that Jesus is the Word of God? No, however valuable and even precious this printed and bound volume may be to us, the Word of God is something much larger -- something deeper, more mysterious, and according to the description, potentially dismembering. Can that possibly be a good thing?

Well, in a word: “yes.” At the very least it calls attention to the truth that God is not withdrawn and distant, but thrust into the very center of life, itself. But more importantly, it recognizes that the action of God is less about hammering us into some particular obedient shape and more about opening and creating new spaces within us.

Quite beyond the common view of it as an encyclopedic compendium of right and wrong that we consult whenever we have a moral question, the Word of God is concerned about our very construction – how we are put together in body, mind and soul – concerned with creating fresh spaces where divinity can seep in. As you might have heard actress Jane Seymour explaining in the jewelry store ads promoting her “Open Hearts” designs, “If your heart is open, love will always find its way in.” Our heart and, according to this writer, our soul and spirit and joint and marrow.

And according to this passage, the Word of God is actively, powerfully intent on creating precisely such openings in parts of our lives we didn’t even know existed.

This, then, is the Word of God as sharpened blade: not a weapon with which to attack those different from ourselves, but a scalpel with which God accomplishes spiritual surgery.

Which is finally to claim the lens behind the window: the view – the conviction – that the Word of God knows us better than we know ourselves, and that true living is found, not in chaining ourselves to ink on a page, but in offering ourselves – submitting ourselves – to the sometimes painful, oftentimes dismembering, routinely enlarging, and always recreating Word of the living and active and loving God.