William H. Willimon - "Keep Asking Why" (April 2, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | I don't know why the lectionary divides our gospel | 0:09 |
as it does today. | 0:13 | |
The lectionary has us reading an answer. | 0:15 | |
The answer, | 0:19 | |
God so loved the world | 0:21 | |
that God gave his only son. | 0:24 | |
It's an answer to a question | 0:29 | |
that is raised a few verses earlier. | 0:32 | |
So what we've got is an answer | 0:37 | |
without including the question. | 0:39 | |
First, therefore, here's the question, | 0:41 | |
for which John 3:14-17 is an answer. | 0:44 | |
A smart man named Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night | 0:50 | |
and he has a question. | 0:57 | |
How can anyone be born | 0:59 | |
after having grown old? | 1:03 | |
How is it is possible? | 1:06 | |
Can you enter a second time into your mother's womb | 1:08 | |
and be born again? | 1:13 | |
It's an interesting question, | 1:15 | |
Nicodemus' question. | 1:20 | |
It is an inquiry into the possibility of starting over, | 1:22 | |
becoming fresh, new, | 1:27 | |
changed, reborn. | 1:30 | |
It's a curious question for an old man to ask. | 1:33 | |
Or maybe it's the only question old men ought ever to ask. | 1:38 | |
How is it possible to start over? | 1:42 | |
How is it possible to be youthful again, | 1:46 | |
to lay aside all of the bad, old things I've done | 1:49 | |
and all of the bad old things that have been done unto me? | 1:53 | |
How is it possible to begin again fresh, to be recreated? | 1:57 | |
I think one ought to cultivate such questions. | 2:05 | |
Here is the answer. | 2:10 | |
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, | 2:13 | |
so must the son of man be lifted up. | 2:19 | |
That whoever believes in him may have eternal life. | 2:23 | |
For God so loved the world | 2:28 | |
that God gave his only son | 2:31 | |
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish | 2:34 | |
but may have eternal life. | 2:38 | |
Indeed, God did not send his son | 2:41 | |
into the world to condemn the world. | 2:44 | |
But that in that the world might be saved through him. | 2:47 | |
This is the Word of the Lord. | 2:54 | |
Thanks be to God. | 2:57 | |
Something happens to the eyes of a child. | 3:02 | |
Sometime between, I'd say five and 10 years of age, | 3:07 | |
I blame it on the brutality of the school, | 3:13 | |
but I could be wrong. | 3:16 | |
Who dulls those bright five-year-old eyes? | 3:19 | |
Who stifled the questions, | 3:25 | |
the incessant questions of a four-year old. | 3:27 | |
Now, I think those of you who are young | 3:32 | |
will agree with me when I say | 3:37 | |
that you are better off than I. | 3:38 | |
You're young, you're beginning. | 3:42 | |
I am old, I am ending. | 3:45 | |
You are summer, I am fall. | 3:48 | |
Everything about you still works. | 3:52 | |
(audience laughs) | 3:55 | |
You are yet green. | 3:56 | |
Of me and my tribe, | 3:59 | |
the poet, Yeats, said in his poem, The Scholars, | 4:02 | |
"Bald heads forgetful of their sins, | 4:08 | |
"old, learned, respectable bald heads | 4:12 | |
"edit and annotate the lines | 4:17 | |
"that young men, tossing on their beds, | 4:19 | |
"rhymed out in love's despair | 4:23 | |
"to flatter beauty's ignorant ear. | 4:27 | |
"All shuffle there, all cough in ink. | 4:31 | |
"All wear the carpet with their shoes. | 4:36 | |
"All think | 4:39 | |
"what other people think." | 4:42 | |
I have shuffled there. | 4:47 | |
When I write these days, I live off | 4:50 | |
of yesterday's love's despair | 4:52 | |
that once was typical sophomoric speech. | 4:55 | |
I sleep soundly. | 5:00 | |
Unlike the youth tossing on their beds, | 5:03 | |
I cough up a great deal of ink | 5:07 | |
and mostly think as others think. | 5:09 | |
And that is the real curse of old age | 5:13 | |
and I don't care what Bob Dole says in the commercial. | 5:16 | |
(audience laughing) | 5:20 | |
Thus the poet, John Crowe Ransom, | 5:21 | |
advises young girls in school, | 5:24 | |
"Go listen to your teachers, old and contrary. | 5:28 | |
"Please, do not believe a word." | 5:31 | |
And that's not bad advice for the young. | 5:36 | |
I thus urge you who are still young to cultivate skepticism. | 5:40 | |
Pay not too close attention to old words of old people, | 5:46 | |
maybe even mine. | 5:50 | |
I can tell just by looking at some of you, | 5:53 | |
into your eyes, | 5:58 | |
that some of you are quite good | 6:01 | |
at not being too respectful of old people. | 6:02 | |
And that's good, not only because | 6:06 | |
we're sucking away your social security, | 6:07 | |
but also because old, learned, respectable bald heads, | 6:09 | |
suffering as we do from short-term memory loss | 6:15 | |
of our youthful sin, | 6:19 | |
tend to be less knowledgeable of the world than we claim, | 6:22 | |
and you are smarter in your youthful ignorance | 6:28 | |
than you lead on. | 6:33 | |
The truth of things is so thick, so not easily stated. | 6:36 | |
Elusive of our desire to understand. | 6:43 | |
I think you've got to keep cultivating | 6:48 | |
an unconvinced deportment. | 6:51 | |
Not cynicism, which seems to be | 6:55 | |
your generation's particular fault, | 6:57 | |
that Beavis and Butthead MTV smartassness, | 7:00 | |
cynicism is just a mask for a failure to think deeply. | 7:04 | |
Cynicism is being smart enough to know | 7:11 | |
that something is not right | 7:14 | |
but knows not how nor cares not enough to think it through. | 7:15 | |
No, make skepticism your goal. | 7:21 | |
Fortunately, the truth of things, | 7:26 | |
all the way down deep is so elusive, mysterious, thick. | 7:29 | |
It has a way of, it keeps beckoning us. | 7:36 | |
Alluring us, seducing us to think. | 7:39 | |
Despite that cultivated kind of cynicism | 7:43 | |
that says there's no use for the bear to go up the mountain | 7:47 | |
to look over on the other side because when he does, | 7:51 | |
there's really nothing on the other side. | 7:54 | |
No, the great thing is that the sheer weirdness of the world | 7:57 | |
makes us drop cynical defenses and makes us, | 8:01 | |
keeps making us go take a look for ourselves. | 8:06 | |
And I want you to keep cultivating that. | 8:10 | |
I want you to keep doing the Nicodemus thing of, | 8:14 | |
well, how can this be, Jesus, how? | 8:20 | |
Alas, too much of a liberal arts education is anything | 8:26 | |
but liberal, or even art. | 8:29 | |
We teachers present ourselves | 8:31 | |
as if we know something for sure. | 8:34 | |
And we'll tell you what we know, | 8:39 | |
and you'll write it down, | 8:41 | |
and then you spit it back on the midterm. | 8:42 | |
No, absolute certitude about anything ought to be rare. | 8:45 | |
We tend to bed down with facts, | 8:52 | |
what we know for sure, far too soon in the journey. | 8:55 | |
Maybe it's because I'm paid to think about God | 9:01 | |
who is so much more interesting, say, | 9:04 | |
than psychology or French History. | 9:06 | |
But I fear that what we call higher education | 9:09 | |
is just encouragement to give up the fight way too soon. | 9:13 | |
To cut our intellectual losses. | 9:18 | |
To grab a few facts that we've assembled | 9:21 | |
and then leave the table long before the game gets good. | 9:24 | |
We become far too easily pleased with what we know. | 9:30 | |
And apathetic over what we don't know | 9:36 | |
and this is our great defeat. | 9:39 | |
When Augustine was checking out the Christian faith, | 9:46 | |
he tried reading the Bible. | 9:49 | |
And frankly, Augustine was unimpressed. | 9:52 | |
Augustine had been the beneficiary of the very best | 9:55 | |
of a classical liberal arts education. | 9:59 | |
He had read great literature like Virgil, | 10:01 | |
and Cicero, and Levi. | 10:05 | |
And Augustine knew instantly | 10:08 | |
that the Bible is not great literature. | 10:10 | |
He complained to Ambrose of Milan | 10:14 | |
about the inferiority of the Bible's way of doing things. | 10:18 | |
Ambrose told him, you silly little peasant. | 10:24 | |
You have not the skills for reading the Bible. | 10:29 | |
When you read the Bible, | 10:33 | |
you read something like fish | 10:35 | |
and you erroneously think, fish. | 10:37 | |
Or you read about bread and you start thinking | 10:40 | |
about bread and nothing else! | 10:43 | |
No, no, no, no, in the Bible, | 10:45 | |
everyday things keep being transformed. | 10:47 | |
They become signs of sacraments | 10:51 | |
of deeper, thicker, richer truth. | 10:54 | |
And Augustine said when he heard that, | 11:00 | |
it was as if his ears got unstopped. | 11:03 | |
A new world opened. | 11:07 | |
Not long after that lounging one afternoon in the garden, | 11:11 | |
Augustine heard a child singing a little rhyme. | 11:16 | |
Take up and read, take up and read! | 11:19 | |
Augustine wasn't sure, was it a child or an angel? | 11:21 | |
By this point, under the tutelage of Ambrose, | 11:26 | |
he was highly suggestive. | 11:29 | |
He picked up the closest thing at hand, it was a codex | 11:30 | |
of Paul's letter to the Romans. | 11:35 | |
He flopped it open and he read | 11:37 | |
and he said his whole life was reconstituted. | 11:42 | |
His eyes and ears were opened | 11:49 | |
and he knew. | 11:52 | |
Oh, I wish I could get you | 11:55 | |
to develop that kind of deportment. | 11:57 | |
That willingness, that Augustinian expectation. | 12:00 | |
That bible-engendered intellectual eagerness | 12:05 | |
to be surprised by words. | 12:08 | |
People often say Christianity is a revealed religion. | 12:15 | |
A revealed religion, what we mean by that is | 12:19 | |
that it's not self evident. | 12:22 | |
You're not born with it. | 12:25 | |
It's got to be revealed to you. | 12:28 | |
It's got to come as a gift, | 12:31 | |
it's got to come as some kind of word from the outside. | 12:33 | |
During a discussion last year on ethics, | 12:40 | |
a graduate student lectured us. | 12:43 | |
Well, we were learning that there is | 12:46 | |
a certain genetic disposition to certain kinds | 12:48 | |
of adaptively beneficial behavior, | 12:50 | |
and you see, what you call ethics is only | 12:52 | |
that sum of behavior, | 12:56 | |
which has been genetically programmed into the human race. | 12:57 | |
I thought it sad that on some April evening, | 13:02 | |
in the Duke Gardens, | 13:06 | |
a young man might look into the eyes of a young woman | 13:08 | |
and say sweetly, | 13:12 | |
I have a genetic propensity for you. | 13:15 | |
(audience laughing) | 13:18 | |
And I feel that together, | 13:20 | |
we could strengthen the gene pool of the race. | 13:22 | |
(audience laughing) | 13:25 | |
Oh, modernity, | 13:28 | |
modernity, that narrow point of view engendered | 13:31 | |
into us by the enlightenment. | 13:34 | |
Modernity is always saying, | 13:38 | |
well, things are only this or they're just that. | 13:40 | |
I want you to take that word, only, | 13:46 | |
as a tip off. | 13:49 | |
That whenever you hear it, | 13:51 | |
you're going to hear some reductionistic account of reality | 13:52 | |
that falsifies the very stuff | 13:57 | |
it's supposed to be describing. | 14:00 | |
Alright, sometimes I confess I teach | 14:03 | |
as if I'm preparing students to be contestants on Jeopardy. | 14:07 | |
Or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. | 14:11 | |
Here's the answer, now memorize it and repeat it. | 14:14 | |
Protagoras, that fifth century Sophist declared, | 14:21 | |
"Man is the measure of everything." | 14:26 | |
No, 'cause that confuses the measure with the measurer. | 14:31 | |
Truth, truth always precedes our knowing truth. | 14:39 | |
Life has got more meaning | 14:46 | |
than I would ever be able to tell. | 14:48 | |
You are not, for all of your intellectual achievements, God. | 14:51 | |
And I think to keep appreciating the limits of our knowing, | 14:57 | |
to keep working that distance | 15:01 | |
between the knower and the known, | 15:03 | |
that is wisdom. | 15:07 | |
Curiosity is close cousin of humility | 15:11 | |
and that, I think, explains why fresh persons can be | 15:16 | |
embarrassingly more interesting than seniors. | 15:20 | |
I had a class once read Scott Peck's, | 15:25 | |
The Road Less Traveled. | 15:28 | |
There, the psychotherapist, Peck, | 15:30 | |
implies that some people in this society are sick. | 15:33 | |
They're sick not because of something, | 15:39 | |
some childhood trauma, not because | 15:41 | |
of some inner psychic distress. | 15:44 | |
They're just sick because they're intellectually lazy. | 15:47 | |
When confronted by life's very predictable crises, | 15:53 | |
they dig in, they stick with the accustom routine. | 15:56 | |
They keep working what once worked. | 16:03 | |
They don't take the trouble, the effort, | 16:07 | |
the risk, to investigate, to rethink. | 16:10 | |
Peck says reality takes a constant dedication. | 16:14 | |
Work. | 16:21 | |
That's one reason we make you read like poems of Yeats | 16:24 | |
or we make you do Shakespeare. | 16:28 | |
Because, well frankly, nobody needs this stuff at 20. | 16:30 | |
But the trouble is, there's hardly anybody | 16:35 | |
who can live after 50 without it. | 16:38 | |
'Cause one day, you're gonna need to have a reason to go on. | 16:43 | |
And you'll know where to go when you need a reason | 16:48 | |
just to make it through the night. | 16:51 | |
I know you've been told that curiosity killed the cat. | 16:55 | |
But here at midlife, I can count lots of dead cats | 17:00 | |
who died for lack of curiosity, not because of it. | 17:05 | |
Old Nicodemus came to Jesus in the dark. | 17:11 | |
He comes in the dark to Mr. Light | 17:15 | |
and he asked, how can this be? | 17:19 | |
How is it possible to be reborn? | 17:23 | |
You climb into your mother's wound, | 17:25 | |
you start all over like an infant, | 17:26 | |
how can you begin again, how? | 17:29 | |
Jesus, as is typical of Jesus in the Gospel of John, | 17:34 | |
responds with an enigmatic talk | 17:39 | |
about wind, and spirit, and light, and truth. | 17:42 | |
How? | 17:49 | |
Says Nicodemus. | 17:51 | |
I don't get it. | 17:54 | |
Jesus says, you're beginning to get it. | 17:56 | |
Rebirth, new life, light, is possible in our darkness. | 17:59 | |
Not because of our earnest scholarly investigation | 18:05 | |
but because of the incursions | 18:10 | |
of a God who loves. | 18:14 | |
We got a God, says the rest of John's Gospel, | 18:18 | |
who loves you and the world enough to reveal, | 18:23 | |
to be lifted up, so you can see him. | 18:29 | |
The answer to our questions is before us as light. | 18:34 | |
We shall know. | 18:41 | |
Now we see through a glass darkly | 18:44 | |
but one day will be like being face to face, | 18:46 | |
not as the result of our earnest intellectual inquiry, | 18:51 | |
but rather as a gift, a gift | 18:55 | |
of a God who refuses to leave you in the dark. | 18:59 | |
The answer to our best questions has got a name, | 19:04 | |
has got a face, | 19:07 | |
Jesus. | 19:11 | |
To know him is to be known and to know. | 19:14 | |
Proust writes that | 19:21 | |
much of life is | 19:25 | |
like walking down a dark deserted night time street | 19:26 | |
and you're all alone and you try this door, | 19:31 | |
and then you try that door. | 19:33 | |
But all of them are locked, | 19:36 | |
all secured against entry. | 19:39 | |
But you keep trying, you keep walking. | 19:43 | |
You keep trying each doorknob. | 19:46 | |
Until you come before a door | 19:52 | |
that opens to you of its own accord. | 19:55 | |
And you go in | 19:59 | |
and you know. | 20:02 | |
Keep knocking on the doors | 20:06 | |
and I promise, it shall be opened unto you. | 20:09 | |
How? | 20:14 | |
How can this be? | 20:17 | |
I'll tell you. | 20:20 | |
God so loved the world | 20:24 | |
that he gave his only son | 20:27 | |
so that we might have life. | 20:31 |