First Presbyterian Church
Mythtakes
Sermon for February 6, 2005
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Listen for the word of God as it is found in Matthew 17:1-9.

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved ; with him I am well pleased ; listen to him!"

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.

7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."

8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."

This ends our gospel reading. Light is a biblical symbol for God. To have Jesus be dazzling white indicates his divinity. The cloud overshadowing them was bright, indicating it too was divine. The song from Proverbs tells us ‘thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light unto my path.' Jesus is known as the morning star. Our epistle reading uses this same imagery of light and star.

The author writes in Peter's name, probably around 80-90 c.e. to the churches in Asia. The letter defends Peter's instruction against false teachers.

Biblical interpreters speculate that there were some teachers who wanted the Christian faith to be more accommodating of Roman culture. Businesses and social clubs held meetings in pagan temples. Pagan worship included idolatry and sexual immorality. Christians missed out on these social events. That may have been hard on the new converts. So the teaching went: If Christ did not return in the first fifty years, he wasn't coming at all. There would be no judgment, no return, no parousia, and so there's no reason why these Christians couldn't go to the pagan temples after all.

It is this argument the letter is trying to refute. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 2 Peter 1:16-21.

16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.

17 For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, my Beloved , with whom I am well pleased."

18 We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

This ends our reading of God's word.

What jumped out at me from this text was the phrase “cleverly devised myths.” Probably because our family enjoys watching the television show “Mythbusters.”

On the show, a group of people test urban legends to find out if they are possible or not. Is it true tomato juice is the best way to get rid of a skunk smell? Does putting sugar in the gas tank really wreck an engine? Does having a tongue piercing increase your chance of getting struck by lightening? How many party balloons does it take to float a child away? The answers are no, no, no and about 1,800. Your tongue ring would have to be the size of a doorknob to increase your risk. A little bit of sugar alone does not make the engine grind to an immediate halt. Vinegar works better than tomato juice. If you are going to inflate 1,800 balloons, you need a lot of time and know-how to tie them together in long columns. You don't want to spend a day tying 1,800 strings to 1,800 balloons. There's lots of good reasons not to get your tongue pierced, but injury from lightning isn't one of them.

The mythbusters gleefully stamp a myth busted once their experiment offers definitive proof. They are less gleeful when they discover the myth is possible, but not probable. They use a crash test dummy, (named of course, Buster), ballistics gel, a lot of bullet resistant plastic, explosives, a variety of dangerous chemicals, pumps, forklifts, and generators in places like condemned buildings, airplane hangars, swimming pools, and deserts.

I find their busting much more entertaining than the myths themselves.

When we pass on information that isn't true it affects our integrity. Our integrity is worth more than entertainment.

Just last week I learned about the Sports Illustrated jinx. Apparently, once a team is pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated , along with a glowing headline, the team starts to lose. Some of you have probably read about this before, but it was news to me.

I found a three-year-old Sports Illustrated article that busts the myth of the SI jinx. In the 80's, two college guys did their thesis on the jinx. They chose 271 random covers and found that the subjects maintained or improved 58% of the time.

The SI writer talks about a new study. He wrote “In investigating virtually all of SI's 2,456 covers, we found 913 ‘jinxes' -- a demonstrable misfortune or decline in performance following a cover appearance roughly 37.2 percent of the time. One of the most fascinating things we discovered …[is] that the Jinx is more likely to strike athletes in fine-motor-skill sports like golf and tennis than smashmouth sports like boxing. Golfers were "jinxed " almost 70 percent of the time and tennis players after more than 50 percent of their appearances, while boxers suffered barely 16 percent of the time.” (1) Not a very consistent jinx.

For theired ition about the jinx, Sports Illustrated asked Kurt Warner, then with the St. Louis Rams, to pose for the cover with a black cat. They figured “Warner is as confirmed a Christian as there is in sports, and if you believe that your life is subject to a superior power, some dubious magazine hoodoo shouldn't give you a second thought.” He still refused to pose for the picture, and so they titled the issue “The cover that no one would pose for.”

Two years ago, the Chunky Soup jinx appeared on the scene. Supposed ly, once a player appears in a Campbell 's Chunky Soup commercial he doesn't make it to the Super Bowl, or if he does, his team loses. Some sportswriter came up with that one, although he hasn't written anything about it recently. The Campbell 's soup people aren't unhappy with the curse rumor-- I think they're glad it makes people pay attention to the commercials.

The Chunky soup curse is whispered to have kept Warner from making the Super Bowl in 2001 … and could explain Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis' numerous injuries throughout the 2001 and 2002 seasons. (2)

So how come people still talk about the sports curse? It's a lot more fun than trying to analyze probability. It's hard to accept that success isn't the norm, it's the exception. For athletes, it's a lot easier to control posing on a magazine cover or appearing in a commercial than to control the outcome of a game or to prevent an injury while playing a contact sport.

The sports curse is a myth in every sense of the word.

We generally think of a myth as something untrue that has been made up to serve someone's agenda. But there is another definition, used in literary criticism. Mythos is the narrative of a work of literature; it can be literal, descriptive, formal, archetypal, or anagogic narrative. I condensed the definition; it went on for paragraphs. A simpler definition is that myth is a system of beliefs. That system is not necessarily untrue.

So when you hear someone talk about Christian myths, they may not be casting aspersions on faith. Instead, they are looking at how a system of Christian beliefs shapes a person's life.

It was in that sense that a pastor friend of mine preached that “Jesus Christ is nothing less than a myth.” He was trying to say that belief in Jesus shapes us, our world, and colors how we look at things. He meant it in the most positive sense: Christ influences every aspect of our lives and we experience life through the eyes of faith. People who don't follow Christ cannot see the world the way we do. My friend served a small church in a small town, and apparently a few people in his congregation woke up during his sermon for just that one sentence, “Jesus Christ is nothing less than a myth.” They weren't very happy with him.

A seminary professor of mine said “myth builds world.”

What world did Jesus build? He reiterated the old testament prophets' emphasis on caring for the poor and needy. Jesus busted the myth that the empire is in charge, that political and military might matter most. I think Jesus busts today's myth that success equals blessing, that God blesses America more than any other country. I think Jesus busts the myth that behavior doesn't matter, because after all, God loves everybody. Jesus busts the myth that people in trouble have been cursed by God.

I can't imagine why the false teachers in Peter's time would even bother speaking of Jesus if they promoted routine promiscuity and worshiping idols at pagan temples. Denying Jesus' return was part of denying his divinity.

2 Peter refutes that by recounting the transfiguration, and the heavenly words “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

If Jesus is the son of God, and he calls us brothers and sisters, that makes us children of God also. We belong in God's family. We are created in the image of God. Therefore, we have to treat ourselves and others with care, devotion, and love.

2 Peter also says “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

And so the definition of prophecy is that it comes from the holy spirit, not one's own interpretation. That one was a little problematic for me, because I do believe we interpret scripture based on our experience and our education. It seems like circular reasoning. You know it's from the spirit if it's good; if it's good it's from the spirit. Most preachers pray that the holy spirit will work through them. I pray that prayer, before I write each sermon, and sometimes while I'm writing it.

People persist in thinking that pastors are extraordinary, that we are somehow above sin. Let me assure you that is not the case with me. Gluttony, laziness, avarice, selfishness, I could write several sermons on my sins. But I don't think that would speak God's word to you, so I don't. I do read the prayer of confession with the congregation. I am just as glad as you are to hear the words of the assurance of pardon.

When I visit people who are sick, I see them relax when I pray with them. Sometimes they get tears in their eyes. One skeptic I read spoke of prayers as nothing more than incantations. For me, prayer isn't magic that transforms events. Instead, the act of praying and being prayed for helps attune us to God's priorities, reminds us of God's care, and helps us watch for evidence of the holy spirit in our lives. I don't feel it is my job to convince skeptics that God is real, or to make atheists believe Christ offers salvation. I see my job as letting people know what God's care looks like, and what Christ's salvation means where we are.

I know my experiences shape my interpretation of the scripture and the way I tell stories. I expect many of you were surprised when I mentioned sports today; I guess it was good you are all sitting down.

But how do we know if someone speaks the truth about the gospel? Compare the truth with the person. If she says believing in God will keep you safe and prevent you from having trouble, and you know her life is filled with trouble, you don't believe her. If he says God will keep you from sinning, and you learn he's having an affair, you don't believe.

Does that mean that only those of us who don't sin can preach the gospel? That would mean that no human being could ever preach. It does mean that we who call ourselves Christians have to take our heartbreaks and our troubles to God and to the gospel. We have to figure out our faith given the experiences we've had.

We don't have to hold on to the myths that we are afraid aren't true, to the myths that don't serve us well, to the myths that build us a scary world of a few powerful conquerors, relentless loss and doom. We can instead recognize these myths, examine them, and bust them. We can embrace God's mythos of love, justice, peace and hope for God's coming realm, the kingdom of heaven. Those can't be busted.

Amen.

(1) Wolff, Alexander, “The Cover that No One Would Pose for,” Jan 15, 2002.

(2) Madden, Mekeisha. “Soup Curse is Hot Fable for Some Football Fans.” The [ Tacoma ] News Tribune. Jan 26, 2003.