The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
- Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

The following is my transcription of N. T. Wright’s retelling of the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, taken from his talk entitled “So What?” given at Yale University in 1995.

Two serious minded unbelievers are walking home together, trying to make sense of their world. The dream of progress and enlightenment has run out of steam; critical postmodernity has blown the whistle on the world as we knew it. Our two unbelievers walk along the road to Dover Beach. They are discussing animatedly how these things can be, how can the stories by which so many have lived have let us down? How shall we replace our now deeply ambiguous cultural symbols? What should we be doing in our world, now that every dream of progress is stamped with the word ‘Babel’?

Into this conversation comes Jesus, incognito. It’s a good job they don’t recognize him because Modernism taught them to disbelieve in all religions, and postmodernism rehabilitated so many that Jesus is just one guru among many.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

They stand there looking sad. Then one of them–we’d best call him Jack–says, “You must be the only one in town who doesn’t know what a traumatic time the Twentieth Century has been! We had a war to end wars, and we’ve had nothing but more wars ever since. We had a sexual revolution, and now we have AIDS and more family-less people than ever before. We pursued wealth, but we had inexplicable recessions and ended up with half the world in crippling debt. We can do what we like, but we’ve all forgotten why we liked it. Our dreams have gone sour, and we don’t even know who we are anymore. And now even the Church has let us down, corrupting its spiritual message with talk of cosmic and political liberation.”

“Foolish ones,” replies Jesus. “How slow of heart you are to believe all that the Creator God has said. Did you never hear that he created his world wisely, and that he has now acted within his world to create a truly human people, and that from within this people he came to live as a truly human person, and that in his own death he dealt with evil once and for all, and that he is even now at work by his own Spirit to create a new human family in which repentance and forgiveness of sins are the order of the day, and so to overturn the rule of war and sex and money and power?”

And beginning with Moses, and all the Prophets, and now also the Apostles and Prophets of the New Testament, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

They arrived at Dover Beach. The Sea of Faith, having retreated with the outgoing tide of Modernism, was full again, as the incoming tide of Postmodernism proved the truth of Chesterton’s dictum: “When people stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” On the shore there stood a great, hungry crowd, who had cast their bread on the retreating waters of Modernism, only to discover that the incoming tide had brought them bricks and centipedes instead. The two travelers wearily began to get out a small picnic basket, totally inadequate for the task. Jesus gently took it from them, and within what seemed like moments, he had gone to and fro on the beach until everyone was fed. Then the eyes of them all were opened, and they realized who he was, and he vanished from their sight.

And the two said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us on the road as he told us the story of the Creator and his world and of his victory over evil?” And they rushed back to tell their friends what had happened on the road and how he had been made known in the breaking of the bread.

The part of Jesus in that story is to be played by you. That is the “so what” of the Gospel. That is why we have been given the Spirit. That is why we have been given the Scriptures. That is where they find there truest authority. We are so to tell the true story of the world that God’s puzzled children find their hearts burning within them. We are so to act symbolically, from breaking bread to healing the sick, that we will be recognized as Jesus’ people. This is the “so what” that results from our being found by the light and truth of God.

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.
“Speak tenderly to Jerusalem
and cry to her that her
that her warfare is accomplished
and her iniquity pardoned.
Lift up your voice with strength;
Lift it up, be not afraid.
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Behold your God!”

~ Isaiah 40:1-2a, 9b

(Listen to the complete lecture.)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2005 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Christian Community, Tell Me a Story, Worldview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.