Meta-narratives.

Revelation 5:1-5

March 24, 2019

I.

Every Empire, every human culture, has what philosophers call a meta-narrative.  A meta-narrative is a Big Story by which a society justifies and describes itself.  It is a comprehensive account which explains everything and keeps people together on the same page.  A meta-narrative is what almost everyone in a culture accepts, assumes, and believes to be true.  It is what we are all taught very early in our lives, and it is what we learned in school, and it covers everything.  Anything it doesn’t cover is dismissed as a figment of our imagination, or we just don’t see it at all, or if we do we immediately forget it.

The meta-narrative guiding our culture congealed about 500 years ago, and it included things like our belief in science, rationalism, individualism, democracy, and a market economy, as well as colonialism, white supremacy, and nationalism.  The main thing about our meta-narrative was that humans, appropriately usually referred to as “man,” were at the center as the measure and decider of all things, and everything else was an object to be disposed of as we pleased for our sole benefit.  And our meta-narrative was aggressively secular, even though it kept a domesticated, subservient, neutered version of Christianity as a sidekick and cheerleader.

Many of us can remember when our culture’s meta-narrative really was a consensus and everyone believed in it.  When I was in about the first grade we all had to go to a gym at a local school to get vaccinated.  No one questioned this.  No one declined to participate.  No one thought it was going to give us autism, which no one had heard of in those days anyway.  The government and scientists and doctors all said we should do this, and we did.  Because doing so perfectly fit the meta-narrative we lived by.

And that’s just one example.  When we all share the same meta-narrative, everyone gets the same news, everyone follows the same fashion trends, everyone likes the same music, and everyone has political opinions within the same range.  Those of you who can remember what life was like in 1960 or so, know what I mean.  In some ways that was the peak of the consensus about our meta-narrative.

But the thing about meta-narratives is that they are always mostly lies.  They are not true.  Oh, sometimes there are some basic truths deep inside them, and often meta-narratives produce some good things.  But at their heart meta-narratives are false.  They are self-serving ideological constructs designed to say why our society is better than others, and why the people running our society should keep running it.

And because meta-narratives are untrue, they eventually and inevitably collapse.  They collide with reality and people stop trusting them.  People discover over time that many of the things that we thought were tried and true, really aren’t.  I remember when Columbus was a hero.  Now we know he was a mercenary, genocidal, liar. 

And when trust in the authorities who maintain the meta-narrative starts to waver, then people stop believing even the accurate things they are saying.  Thus today some people are afraid to vaccinate their children, and the number of people convinced that the earth is flat is growing.  And the thing that really kills our meta-narrative is global warming, which is why some people just deny it.  It contradicts the meta-narrative to believe that our supposedly great civilization is really crippling the planet.

II.  

The early church lives in a time when the meta-narrative of the Roman Empire was also shaky.  It had some benefits.  But the pantheon of gods was being revealed as ridiculous and ineffective.  People were working long and hard and not making much headway, while watching other people get wildly wealthy.  Social order was enforced by a grotesque level of military and police brutality.  The government was a parade of pompous ego-maniacs with large armies, pummeling each other, at great cost.  And there was this continual drive to conquer more territory, and a perpetual fear of both the Persians in the east and the Germanic barbarian tribes to the north.  The Roman meta-narrative was not working anymore.  The stories and rituals that were supposed to give life meaning and bring everyone together, weren’t.

A new meta-narrative was needed.

Into this turbulence, come these Jewish missionaries with a bizarre story about a man, who claims to be the long-awaited Messiah, who because of that was crucified by Rome… but then who nevertheless still lives in and with those who trust in him and follow his teachings.  Those missionaries are saying that he, this Jesus fellow, is really the Lord God, and that following him gives people a new reason to live.  And they demonstrate this by actually gathering communities who live according to his good news, and find unity, meaning, hope, and joy together.  Their meta-narrative is based on the Jewish Bible, which is the story of a bunch of slaves who escape from Egypt and live a new kind of life according to the Laws of the One Creator God, which Jesus fulfills and interprets.

This meta-narrative is true and irrevocable because it is the Word of the One who creates, redeems, and sustains all things.  It is not the product of a bunch of writers hired by kings and generals to sing their praises.  It is not held together by brute force and terror.  And it is not designed to placate or distract workers while they make rich people richer.

This meta-narrative is true because it works.  It makes people better.  It makes them forgiving, humble, generous, kind, thankful, gentle, steadfast, and joyful.  In tune with this meta-narrative, you are transformed into your best self in God.

 

III.

I suggest that this meta-narrative is what is written on the scroll with the seven seals which John in his vision sees in the right hand of the One seated on the throne in heaven.  That scroll is what got me thinking about meta-narratives in the first place.  The scroll is the book of all that is true and good and beautiful.  It is like the source code of the universe, the way things are supposed to be, the basic blue-print or schematic of the origin, nature, and destiny of all creation including humanity.  It is the One True Story that gives meaning, purpose, and direction to everything and everyone.

In John’s vision, the scroll is sealed with seven seals.  Such seals were dabs of molten wax which, when solidified, would to keep scrolls from unraveling.  They also might be stamped with an imprint of the owner or author for authentication purposes.  This scroll has seven seals, and they are apparently unbreakable except by One who is declared worthy to do so.

The closed nature of the scroll indicates that what is in it is not readily accessible.  God’s ultimate plan, and even God’s very existence, is not obvious to everyone.  It is hidden from us in our normal, egocentric condition.  If we try to approach these questions like we approach everything else, as an object, a thing to be examined, taken apart, analyzed, dissected, tested, and grasped… we will fail.  That method does not open the scroll.  Which is why many people conclude that there really is no divine plan, and probably no God either.  We don’t see or know about it, and we can’t understand it, by ourselves.  This makes it unintelligible to anyone whose perception is hampered by our meta-narrative, which says that if we can’t figure it out, it doesn’t exist.

John breaks down in bitter and anguished tears because the scroll appears to be unopenable.  If the scroll can’t be opened, it means that no one will ever know God’s will to save, redeem, bless, and love the creation.  If the truth is hidden from us forever, we will continue to live in self-serving lies that lead to violence and death.  If we can never know the truth then all we have are the false meta-narratives imposed by whoever happens to be strongest.  If the scroll cannot be opened, then there is no hope for the world.  If we can’t know the meaning of life there might as well be no meaning at all.

John’s tears are the tears of everyone who knows in their heart that it doesn’t have to be this way and that there is a better world out there according to God’s good will… but who see that it is not happening.  Indeed, things just keep getting worse.  Isn’t it better just to give up and join the cynical rat-race and get what you can or die trying?  Since life is apparently meaningless anyway?

In the vision, one of the 24 elders comes up to John and says, “Do not weep.  See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”  There is One who can open the scroll and communicate God’s will and plan, and he is that Jewish Messiah we talked about earlier.  And the reason he is able and worthy to open the scroll is that he is the ultimate witness to the truth which is God’s love, and he, by taking on and transforming the worst violence the world could throw at him, has conquered and overcome the power of evil.

IV.

Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, opens the scroll, which is to say that he is himself the ultimate self-revelation of God because he empties himself in transcendent love for others.  We only know what is written in that scroll, we only know the origin, nature, and destiny of the universe and everyone in it, in and through him, the One who embodies in himself what is true and real.  Because of the love to which he witnesses, we know that what everything is really about is love.  

Now that the scroll is open in him, we realize the choice we have.  We may now choose which meta-narrative to follow and live by.  We may continue to adhere to the one generated by our egos and imposed by the strong.  Or we may turn and follow the truth as revealed in Jesus.  We may love one another as he loves us, and spread that love across the world in lives of humility and gratitude, blessing and peace, healing and hope, forgiveness and joy.

The old one is going down.  That’s not going to be pretty, but don’t let it depress you.  Because the true story, the story of God’s love in Jesus, is always rising up, within us and among us, bringing new and eternal life to everyone who follows.

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