Hope in a Post Modern World [1]-Neil Ryan
Date: April 5, 2009
Passage: John 18:28-40
Message: Hope in a Postmodern World
Series: Easter 2009
When kids are little they sometimes have trouble pronouncing some letters. Whenever a word starts with ‘S’ Lochie puts an ‘H’. So, instead of barracking for the Saints he barracks for the ‘Haints’. It’s not the Sun it’s the ‘Hun’.
The other day I went to wash his hands and as I picked up the soap, he looked at me and said,
I don’t need any ‘hope’ Pa.
I picked him up and said,
My little man, we all need hope! And you still need some soap!
But it raises a question….
Where do you find hope in our postmodern world?
Where does Easter fit in a postmodern world?
Now don’t dose off on me here because we are heading into serious territory!
Let me carve up history into 3 sections.
1. Pre-modern world: 500-1500
• Religion was the source of truth and authority.
• The common person did not have access to the divine except through the intermediaries, who often held positions of power.
• Tradition was seen as unshakable and sacred.
• The state of things was generally seen as unchanging, and social order was strictly enforced.
2. Modern world: 1500-2000
• Knowledge and science become the source of truth and reality.
• God recedes into background as more distant, subjective realm of the immutable and unreachable. Search begins for objective truth. Opens way for the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, Scientific discovery. Darwinian Evolutionary theory.
• It’s the birth of a world where man believes he can be the Master of this Universe. Man reveled in reason, hope of a new world, the confident belief that utopia was humanly achievable.
• Lead to Colonialism, Great Explorers – Christopher Columbus, James Cook, Douglas Mawson etc, Scientific Discovery, Education revolution and in Christian context …..Modern Mission on global scale.
• Modern world was abuzz with hope and expectation!
But somehow the 20th Century made a mess of all that!
With the atrocities of WW1 in Somme, the Great Depression, Auschwitz, the Gulag [Russia], Hiroshima, Vietnam, Rwanda and 9/11
It became clear that modernism had officially failed!
Modernism with all its optimism was ruined by the age old problem of evil!
There was a problem with the human race that could not be educated out of existence!
It’s was a modern Tower of Babel experience.
All our attempts to play God crashed and we are left with this massive confusion of hopes and dreams and confusion of language to go with it!
That’s what gave birth to…
3. Post-modern world: 2000 –
• No single defining source for truth or reality beyond the individual. The optimism of modern world was replaced by skepticism, relativism and mysticism – an incapacity to know anything with certainty!
• In a postmodern world traditional views of God are said to be like a silly old dream. But because religion abhors a vacuum, we have had the rise of spirituality in the forms of neo-pantheism and neo-Gnosticism.
• Everyone wants spirituality but we don’t want God. We even talk of Chris Judd being the spiritual; leader of Carlton Footy Club!
• View we have of the world as Postmoderns is much more mysterious and chaotic. The great ‘master of our own destiny’ doesn’t know where to find himself or where we are going.
• Charlie Mingus, the jazz muscician says, “When I’m trying to play my music, I’m trying to play the truth of who I really am. The problem is that I’m changing all the time.”
• Kevin Vanhoozer [The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology] believes that most people we are trying to reach with the gospel today…reject unifying, totalizing, and universal schemes in favour of a new emphasis on difference, plurality, fragmentation and complexity. Postmoderns are suspicious of truth claims, of ‘getting it right’.
That’s why people today resent the Church’s arrogant claim that “Jesus is the answer to our every need”.
That’s why they can’t get enough of David Attenborough or Philip Adams or Richard Dawkins because they take what seems a more humble, more diverse approach that leaves room for the unknown, the uncertain and the mystical.
So where does that leave us in our search for hope?
Where does Easter fit in a postmodern world?
That’s why this passage in John 18 is so critical.
It is the ultimate showdown.
This is where two worlds intersect.
Don’t miss this!
We have Pilate – seat power. Kingdom Rome
We have Jews – God’s people appealing to that power.
In middle is Jesus!
Pilate has no idea what is happening – but he asks two telling questions.
v33….. are you the King of the Jews
What a question?
Is he King?
I’m just going to let that question hang.
It’s haunted humanity for 2000 years.
It begs to be answered by every generation.
It needs to be answered this morning!
It’s the one question that stands in the way of our postmodern push for secularization.
Is he King?
….are you the King
Pilate says, I don’t understand. It was YOUR people who handed me over to you. What have you done?
Jesus doesn’t get into that question.
Read v36
Pilate says, You are a King then?
Read v37
The comes Pilate’s second great question -
v38 ….What is truth?
I had a very postmodern conversation with Madi about truth this week!
We were playing handball and a couple of her shots went out but I didn’t call them. Both times she said,
“They were out Pa.”
Then it happened again. She confessed again!
Then she said,
“I can’t believe I’m being so honest. Can you give me a couple of points for that!!”
……what is truth
Pilate’s parameters are too small.
The only truth he knows is Caesar’s truth!
The only truth he knows is the truth of scourging and nails and crosses.
The only truth he knows is that to oppose the Kingdom of Rome is to perish!
So Pilate goes back to Jews and threatens to let Jesus go and the Jews shout back
….. if you let this man go you are not Caesar’s friend… we have no other King but Caesar.
In that one statement they wiped out their sacred history of a God who had created them, liberated them, guided them, disciplined them and loved them for 2000 years!
Folks the search for hope in a postmodern world is a search for a King!!!
But there is a twist – the King has come to reveal TRUTH!
That’s the great sticking point for a postmodern culture!
Practically speaking the only truth in our culture is that there is no truth. We are all confined to our own ideas and perceptions of what is right and wrong, true or false.
We are all imprisoned behind these unbreakable walls of subjective reality.
Great commandment is – TOLERANCE!
I have no problem with tolerance but in true postmodern fashion we need to understand what is meant by that word in todays context.
If it means living together without killing each other.
If it means accepting that my neighbor has a belief system different to mine and I should live peacefully with him.
Then I agree with tolerance.
I do not have the power or authority to prohibit someone from believing what they choose.
But I suspect that is not what is meant by tolerance in a postmodern culture.
Our culture is not asking me to TOLERATE other beliefs but to COMPROMISE my beliefs.
They want me to say that my beliefs have no more merit than anyone else’ beliefs.
That I should give up this notion that what I believe is TRUTH.
That for the sake of spiritual harmony I should cease to hold convictions that offend modern diplomacy.
That we should stop declaring the Bible has some ultimate authority!
I have no problem with tolerance when it means accepting people’s right to their beliefs.
That is part of a free and democratic society.
But postmodern tolerance that says I need to keep quiet about the gospel because it offends modern spirituality, and that we silently approve what contradicts truth of God’s Word is not tolerance at all, it is compromise.
It is equivalent to abandoning of our faith!
It is in effect dethroning the King!
….what is truth
Here is the truth in these chapters.
The only power that Pilate knew was Rome and even God’s people have succumbed to it.
That power says,
We have the power of life and death.
The cross in Roman Empire stood as the ultimate reminder of ultimate power.
Can you see the genius of God, that He took that same symbol and literally turned it upside down and made it an everlasting symbol of his unwavering and unconditional love!
….God forbid that I should glory in anything else except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
This was God re-defining power!
This was God saying – let the world exhibit its greatest power and authority and then let me show you another way!
As might of Rome fades into history the cross is still the power of God that saves us.
The cross is still the place where we find the truth about God, about our sin, about salvation, about life and death and hope!!
Let me bring this to a finish by saying this is much more than just a truth to make us feel warm inside!
That’s part of the rejection of faith in a postmodern world.
It seemed too detached from the world, from reality!
That’s why the world loves John Lennon anthem.
Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
I want to suggest we need the opposite.
We need to imagine there IS a heaven but that it is not just some obscure place out there somewhere, but God is the God of heaven and earth.
That’s the message of the cross.
This is where heaven and earth meet.
This is where heaven and earth come together.
The Christian message is not just we are going to heaven some day, but God is engaged with THIS world!
We are accountable to God in every area of life.
Modernism thought it could fix it but couldn’t Postmoderism can be summed up by Blaise Pascal
“Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.”
That’s why the message of the cross is critical in a postmodern world.
It confronts the problem of evil and has the power to judge it and then offer new life and new hope in and through the resurrection of Jesus.
This is a call for Christians to re-enter the race, not just look forward to heaven!
Imagine someone comes to me and says,
“I’m having real problem with sin. Again and again, beats me and its making a mess of my life. But it won’t be long, I’ll be in heaven, everything will be right…so I won’t worry about this problem right now!”
You would expect me to say something like,
“It’s precisely because of what God is GOING to do that you NEED to do something about problem NOW….in the light of the Cross and the power of Holy Spirit!
What about our world?
It’s not enough to say,
“Well, I’m on my way to heaven – doesn’t really matter about the mess here! I’ll just keep polluting the planet and exploiting it and treating it like it’s something between a gold mine and an ash tray!”
The Kingdom of God doesn’t know a dichotomy between heaven and earth.
The gospel is not just a ticket to heaven but the truth that allows us to show something of the love, justice, compassion and grace of God!
So the Cross inevitably embraces issues of sin and salvation just as easily as it embraces issues of politics and social justice and poverty and economics.
Why? Because the whole earth stands accountable to the King!
That’s truth.
That’s also our hope!