Jesus was very definitely dualistic in his worldview. Fundamental to his entire religious understanding were the two opposing pairs of soul and body, and God and the Devil. The Gospel of Mark stands as a key to his basic viewpoint: "What will it profit one to gain the whole world and lose one's soul?" (Mk. 8:36).
The "world" to which "soul" is opposed consists of two separate entities: the "world" of the body and the "world" of the Devil. Both worlds are intended in the passage from Mark just quoted, for Jesus had just said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" (Mk. 8:33). Both views of the world appear in Jesus' most famous parable as well, the Parable of the Sower. The Parable of the Sower sows seed on four types of ground. Three types fail to bear crops: the first because the Devil takes away the seed; the second because of persecution; the third because of the worries of the world and the lure of riches (Mk. 4:14-20). The types of ground - that is, the hearers of Jesus' teaching - are faced with two major obstacles, one internal and one external. The internal is the natural desire to have a good life in this world, a desire that often draws one away from following the gospel. The external is "the world" as a spiritual system run by the Devil, opposing anyone wishing to follow Jesus.
Faced with these obstacles, human beings needed help from outside. It was no longer a case of being obedient to the law while living in a good "place," the world created by the God of Genesis. The world was, in reality, not such a good place anyway: life was short and difficult, full of diseases and hardships. But now people had souls that they could lose and did not know their danger; in addition, they were living in the enemy's camp. They were trapped.
That is the point of the scriptural story about tying up the strong man cited in Chapter 4: "No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered" (Mk. 3:27). the "strong man" is the Devil; his "house" is the world system he rules. Jesus came as the Savior, as the Devil's opponent from outside his "world," to plunder his house; he came to rescue his people. Those who came to have eyes to see, as in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, could say, "This is truly the Savior of the world." (John 4:42).
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*Excerpt taken from The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins, by Gregory J. Riley, pp.217-218.
Monday, February 18, 2013
Preachers Misusing Funeral Sermons
Howard Thurman tells of being seven years old when his father died, and he has never forgotten the trauma he experienced when the guest preacher delivered a funeral sermon that did violence to his father's memory. That guest preacher handling the funeral had not known Saul Thurman. Yet that preacher dared to assess Saul Thurman's nonmembership in the local church the family attended as evidence that he was a nonbeliever, and he forthrighly declared him lost and in hell. That preacher wanted to make the occasion an object lesson for all who were "outside the church."
As young Howard sat on the mourner's seat, he kept saying to his mother beside him, "He didn't know Pappa? Did he? Did he, Momma?" Alice Thurman, Howard's mother, held her calm through the service and gently patted her son's knees to comfort him as the verbal violence ate away at his young mind and spirit. It was the handling of that sermon by that preacher, Thurman tells us, that turned him against the church for awhile during his youth. Lacking intimacy with the family, that preacher would have been wiser and more helpful if he had chosen to comfort the family rather than interpret the life of the deceased. That preacher used the occasion as an evangelistic opportunity. This type of sermon is common among fundamentalist Christian preachers.
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(Source: Excerpt taken from Designing the Sermon: Order and Movement in Preaching, by James Earl Massey. William D. Thompson, editor, pp.78-79)
As young Howard sat on the mourner's seat, he kept saying to his mother beside him, "He didn't know Pappa? Did he? Did he, Momma?" Alice Thurman, Howard's mother, held her calm through the service and gently patted her son's knees to comfort him as the verbal violence ate away at his young mind and spirit. It was the handling of that sermon by that preacher, Thurman tells us, that turned him against the church for awhile during his youth. Lacking intimacy with the family, that preacher would have been wiser and more helpful if he had chosen to comfort the family rather than interpret the life of the deceased. That preacher used the occasion as an evangelistic opportunity. This type of sermon is common among fundamentalist Christian preachers.
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(Source: Excerpt taken from Designing the Sermon: Order and Movement in Preaching, by James Earl Massey. William D. Thompson, editor, pp.78-79)
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