Sermon On The Mount 1: A Mariner

"1Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2and he began to teach them saying:"
-Matthew 5:1-2

A "Mariner" is one who makes his way by use of a compass. We all have a compass. We all have something which has the final authority on which way is north in our lives. John Wesley identified what he saw to be the 4 compasses used in Western Civilization-- tradition, experience, reason, and scripture. There is an unhealthy tendency to separate them and see them as incompatible and competing compasses. I would rather look at them more like one sees multiple navigation systems within the cockpit of a plane which work together to give direction. However, this picture isn't quite right. For if my understanding of navigation systems within planes is correct (I probably have no idea what I'm talking about) the different systems all function to communicate different types of information (speed, altitude, radar, etc.). While to a certain degree this is true of the 4 components of the Wesleyan quadrilateral there are unquestionably times when one or more of them appear to be communicating conflicting information. It is at those times when the components function more like members of a committee--and every committee needs a chairman. Wesley's vote was for Scripture, and while many have concluded that the 250 years since Wesley cast his vote has proven his candidate to be ill-equipped, I would argue that recent trends have only proven Wesley correct. Tradition is vital. It connects us with the past and helps prevent us from reinventing the wheel (which, by the way, is something that we non-denominationalists find ourselves doing time and time again). But tradition often, by its very nature, lacks the flexibility necessary for changing times. Experience is also a vital instrument of direction and is one that cannot be turned off. But it has the pesky problem of being inconsistent--one day saying that north is out your front window and the next day pointing toward your backyard. Reason has been the compass of choice since the enlightenment. And for the most part it has proven to be exceptionally reliable. But in recent times it has become increasingly apparent that what we call "reason" is not the fixed point we once thought it was. Rather it, like the other members of the committee, has proven to be just another opinion, biased by its own cultural agendas. So, left to fly through life with these three instruments of direction, we find ourselves in the Bermuda triangle of the postmodern era where up is down and north is south. It is in this context that we can begin to understand the necessity of re-electing Wesley's candidate chairman. If there is a God, and if he is to guide us, what the postmodern era is teaching us is that the only way we could ever possibly know about Him is if he came down and told us. When the phones aren't working, the internet is down, and the postal service has gone on strike, you have to walk over to your neighbors house to say hello. This is of course exactly what Christianity says God has done. Scripture is our authority because it is the camera (actually multiple cameras) that recorded God's unique visit. The higher criticism of the late 19th and 20th centuries has attempted to discredit the report. But once again the postmodern era is showing us that higher criticism reveals as much, if not more, about the cultural biases and presuppositions of modern reason than about the "historical Jesus."

This may seem like a rather odd introduction to a blog about the Sermon on the Mount. But nowhere in Scripture do we find a more succinct account of what Jesus came here to tell us. So turn off your phone (the reception is bad anyway), wait for the cable company to fix the internet, let the mailman go on strike, and by faith join the disciples on a Galilean mountainside to hear what God has to say.