I’m sure many of you will have seen the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you have then you’ve seen a film that’s regarded as one of the greatest science-fiction films, and indeed one of the greatest films of any genre, ever made. If you’ve seen it you may, like me, have agreed with that assessment, but there’s an equal chance that you may, like a lot of other people, have wondered what all the fuss is about and perhaps, again like so many others, have wondered what the film is actually about. But if you’re one of those people, I can help you out with that last problem. As strange as it may seem, the film is actually about God, or at least about the idea of God, the ‘God concept’ as the film’s director Stanley Kubrick put it, and it’s about humanity’s relationship with their God; their creation by God, their search for God and their ultimate destiny with and in God.
It’s a film that begins with the creation of human beings, or at least their primitive ancestors, through the dawning of knowledge, and that’s very quickly followed by the first murder as two rival groups fight over access to a water hole. The film then moves on to modern human beings with all their technical ingenuity and their faults. And the film ends with the human race being saved from nuclear annihilation by one of their own, a man who has become one with God. To put those things in Christian terms, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film about creation, fall and salvation. But I think the most interesting character in the film isn’t the creator of human beings, nor any of the human beings in the film. To me the most interesting character in the film is the computer that runs the spaceship during the space odyssey, HAL.
HAL controls every aspect of life aboard the ship, he knows everything that’s happening on the ship and through his cameras he sees everything that’s going on aboard the ship. He’s omniscient, he knows all, he’s omnipresent, he’s in all places at all times, and he’s omnipotent, he has power over everything on the ship, even life and death. For those on board the ship, HAL is, to all intents and purposes, god. But Hal is a very deeply flawed god because he’s a god made in the image of human beings and so, as it turns out, he has all their faults and failings. Actually, HAL isn’t God at all, he’s a human creation but because he’s been given so much power, he thinks he knows better than his creator and turns on them, with murderous results. The reality is that HAL is a god made in the image of man and because modern humans are really no better than their primitive ancestors who killed each other for a waterhole, neither is the god they made in their own image.
I mention this because I think that, today, we’re in danger of creating another HAL. Not a computer, although we might not be too far away from that in terms of technology, what I mean is that in the Church we’re in danger of creating another HAL because I think we’re in danger of turning God into HAL, by turning God, and Jesus, into a God of our own making. We’re in danger of turning God and Jesus into HAL by making God and Jesus over in our own image. Because that is what we’re in danger of doing when we start to change the words of Scripture and the teachings of Jesus to make them say what we want them to say rather than changing ourselves to comply with what those things do say.
This isn’t a new problem for the Church, people who claim to be Christians have always done this kind of thing. People have interpreted Scripture in ways that allow, or at least excuse, their own un-Christian behaviour. People have re-written Scripture to suit their own ideas about what it means to be a Christian. People have distorted Scripture or put words in Jesus’ mouth so that they can preach their own beliefs as Christianity. How many people have we met, for example, people in the Church, who’ve said that it’s a sin to drink alcohol? What Scripture actually says is that it’s a sin to get drunk, not to drink alcohol. If that was a sin, Jesus was a sinner because he drank alcohol. He said so himself;
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’”
And how many people in the Church look down on others and won’t associate with them, never mind befriend them because of their job or the way they live? How many people don’t want ‘that sort’ in Church? And what is that but turning those most in need of the Gospel away from Jesus? Did Jesus tell us to do that? No, but this is what some people in the Church do, and think well of themselves for doing it too very often!
So this is not a new problem for the Church, but it is something new, I think, for our own Church, as a Church, as a body rather than just individuals within it, to be contemplating a move away from Scriptural teaching and to be contemplating rewording Scripture to suit the beliefs and opinions of some people in the Church and in the society we live in.
As Christians, we’re called to conform our lives to Christ and his teaching and example. As a Church we’re commissioned by Christ himself to call society to his teaching and example. And if we, either as individuals, and especially as a Church, change Christ’s teaching and example to suit the teaching and example of others, are we not then remaking God in our own image, turning God into HAL? And that is a very dangerous thing to do because if we make God and Jesus fit our own beliefs and opinions and standards, we impose all our own faults and failings on God and Jesus. We make our prejudices and bigotry their prejudices and bigotry. We make our truth, their truth. We make our sins acceptable to them and anything we find unacceptable in others unacceptable to God and Jesus. If we recreate God and Jesus in our own image, we make God and Jesus the enemy of anyone who doesn’t fit our image of the way human beings should be, the enemy of anyone who doesn’t share our beliefs and opinions and standards.
Today, is another of those Sundays when the readings we have are different in both churches in the benefice, but even so, all our readings today tell us just how wrong it is to try and make God and Jesus over in our own image.
In our Old Testament readings, God calls us to be holy, to be dedicated to him, because he is holy. They don’t say God should be holy and dedicated to us because we’re holy. They tell us that God gave the law to Moses. They don’t say Moses gave the law to God. They tell us that the law is God’s instruction to us. They don’t say that the law is our instruction to God.
The Psalms we read today speak to us of God’s love and compassion towards us and yet speak of nations, rulers and people turning against God and plotting against him and Christ, his anointed. And isn’t this just what people are doing, in effect, when they turn away from God and Christ and live according to their own rules, their own law, their own truth? Isn’t this what the Church is doing when it contemplates moving away from Scriptural teaching and rewriting Scripture to suit the views of society and of some people? Psalm 103, which we read at St Mark’s this morning reminds us that it’s neither society nor ourselves who redeems us from the grave, but God, and that’s something anyone who would make God and Jesus over in their own image would do well to remember.
Our Epistles this morning remind us that Scripture is not a matter of personal interpretation because the words of Scripture are of the Holy Spirit; they are God’s words, not the words of men and women. We affirm our belief in that every time we read in church because don’t we end the reading by saying that what we’ve just read and heard is the word of the Lord? So how can we change those words without making God’s word the word of human beings? One consequence of decisions made at the General Synod of the C of E, is that the Anglican Communion has been put in jeopardy. Some parts of the Communion are considering breaking away from the Church of England and from communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and what is this other than the kind of destruction of God’s temple that St Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians? Christ called the Church to be one and yet people within the Church are doing things which cause division in the Church, simply because they want to have their own way, even if they have to ignore or even rewrite Scripture, to have it.
In our Gospel readings Jesus tells us to be perfect, as God our heavenly Father is perfect. Through his teaching and by his example, Jesus showed us what it means to be perfect. At his Transfiguration, God our Father, told us to listen to Jesus. So how can the Church consider reworking Jesus’ teaching and example to suit the views of some individuals in the Church because their views are more in keeping with the views of the society we live in? As Christians, are we called to be like Christ and to urge others to do the same, or to make Christ like everyone else?
If we go down this road of remaking God and Jesus in our own image, we’ll be embarking on a very dangerous journey because we’ll make all our own faults and failings, our prejudices and bigotry, our lack of forgiveness and appetite for revenge, our lack of love and our hatred, part of God’s word and Jesus’ teaching and example. We’ll make God and Jesus our creation, and we’ll turn them into the kind of flawed god that we see in HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. We might want that kind of god because that kind of god will let us do whatever we want to do, but in the end, that kind of god will kill us just as surely as HAL killed most of the crew of the spaceship he ruled over in the film. That kind of god will kill us because that kind of god is nothing but our own selves writ large and so when our lives end, that god will die with us and how can that god, a dead god, redeem us from the grave? There’s only one God who can do that, and that’s the God who speaks to us through the words of scripture and the rough the Holy Spirit. So let’s listen to him and to Jesus, his anointed and beloved Son.
Amen.
Propers for the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Next before Lent)
Entrance Antiphon
Lord, your mercy is my hope, my heart rejoices in your saving power.
I will sing to the Lord, for his goodness to me.
The Collect
Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him,
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18
Psalm 103:1-4, 8, 10, 12-13
1 Corinthians 3:16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 