Everything is Different Now

John 17

 

Don Henley is perhaps one of the most important figures in rock music, as a member of the Eagles, in the last 30 years. He was a notorious rocker in his early years: his unholy trinity was "sex, drugs and rock and roll." He sustained a conviction for soliciting an underage prostitute. He's now nearly 53 and a changed man. Several years ago he married and how has 3 children.

The set for "inside job" is laced with church imagery. He wears a priest's outfit on stage. Don Henley's song "Everything is different now", gives us insightful words:

 

I hate to tell you this, but I'm very, very happy

And I know that's not what you'd expect from me at all

I'm not the kind to smile and bow out gracefully

I always wanted to take it to the wall

 

But I found somebody with a heart as big as Texas

I found an angel with the golden wings

She saw me down here in the dark somehow

And everything is different now

 

A black, Baptist-like choir sings the refrain with him in the background and his face radiates joy. One like to think that his conversion is real and that the grace of God is operating in his life.

But the real test lies just ahead; his wife, a former model, has been diagnosed with multiple scleroris. There may be an allusion to this in the song when he puts these words in her mouth: "Will you stand here in this fire with me?"

Lewis and Transposition

But the refrain "Everything is different now" could characterize lots of conversions. C.S. Lewis, as a converted atheist, who once wrote, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." And perhaps more than any other writer in the 20th century, Lewis brought us back from that arid deserts that come to dominate much of Christian thinking.

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For the child at heart he created the land of Narnia and the untamed lion/savior, Aslan. For science fiction readers he traveled to Perelandra with Ransom. For the philosopher and theologian he reasoned about pain and miracles, as well as debating doctrines of Christianity and the philosophy of men. For the lover of myth, he wrote an adaptation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. For the pain stricken he observed grief and spoke of prayer. For those enchanted with rhythm and rhyme he wrote poetry. For those concerned with the afterlife he wrote about Heaven and Hell and exposed the mind of Satan. For the weak and questioning he wrote letters of personal encouragement and advice.

As I mentioned last week, his sermon "Transposition," delivered on Pentecost Sunday, 1944, when it wasn't at all clear who would win the war, was one of the great sermons in Christian history.

What is transposition? It is when the higher reproduces itself in the lower by using the stuff of the lower. For example, suppose a child paints a picture of a sunrise, using reds and oranges, and then takes it outside in the bright sunlight. The sunlight radiates down on the red and orange hues, turning them into an image so bright we can hardly look at it. The painting doesn't just symbolize the sun, the sun itself brings the painting to life by participating in the symbol. We might speak of the "real presence" of the sun in the painting just as we speak of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar.

The one who is skeptical about the reality of the upper level will say only that love is but lust, thought is but firings of neurons, and we are but protoplasm taking ourselves much too seriously. It will be difficult to convince a person who is skeptical that there are other minds they are but figments to his only lonely mind. Lewis writes,

But who dares to be a spiritual person? ... yet we are somehow aware that we approach from above, or from inside, some of these Transpositions which embody the Christian life in this world. ... We are only claiming to know that our apparent devotion, whatever else it may have been, was not simply erotic, or that our apparent desire for Heaven was not simply a desire for longevity ... Perhaps we have never attained at all what St. Paul would call the spiritual life. But at the very least we know, in some dim and confused way, that we were trying to use natural acts and images and language with a new value ...

The Old Testament will not let us dismiss the lower level as unreal; the New Testament, by contrast, will not let us dismiss the upper level as real. The spiritual level is transposed in the physical level and both are fully real though this age is much more impressed by the reality of the lower. That explains our discomfort with glossolalia.

John 17

Our gospel lesson for this day is taken from John 17. Whenever we confront a lesson from John, we are immediately in another world entirely. It is too strong to say this--but not by much--that Mathew, Mark and Luke are Jesus from below, and John Christ from above. John's Christ is the transposed Jesus of Nazareth.

I have relayed to you before the astonishing claim that John may have been written by the resurrected Lazarus. I doubt it, but it would explain much. The Jesus in John is given to theological discourses and long monologues.

And as I have also said to you, I doubt Jesus said much of this at all. Is this therefore the invention of the early church in tense dialogue with orthodox Jews in the syngogue? It is this but more since this is to approach this gospel from below. I believe the sense of the resurrected Christ was so powerful in the early Christian community that they heard him saying these words.

If this prayer has a vague feel to it is really a kind of eucharistic prayer. Let's call it eucharistic prayer E.

You might say, "well right there, at the beginning of the chapter, it says, 'When Jesus had spoken these words.'" Indeed it does. But verser 11 hints that we are operating from above, in transposition: "And now I am no more in this world." This is the resurrected Christ presiding at the early Christian altars and to this day we speak of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament.

Look at your cover. The wisdom of the church is that in the sacrifice of the altar Christ is present just as surely as you are present in your body. So when I say, on your behalf, in a few minutes, "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us," you ought, by the wisdom of this culture, start laughing, grab your belly to keep it from shaking, and roll in the isle, consumed with laughter, a skeptical, modern-day holy roller. With no sense of transposition, this is utter nonsense and idolatry.

Our gospel lesson for this day is the transposition consummation of the High Priestly prayer. We won't won't make "heads or tails" of all this high flying language without a sense that the spiritual can participate in the very material things that symbolize the spiritual so that the material things become the spiritual. And this flies in the face of everything our culture is disposed to believe.

"The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me." This is transposition, the higher participating in the lower and transposing the lower so that it becomes the higher. Strange, surprising, astonishing talk. That's the astonishing claim. And if we are not breathless, we have not been paying attention.

But as Don Henley has put it so well, everything is different now. Amen.