The New Church and the
Nicodemus Tension
The Rev. Christopher A. Barber
(This was an address at the New Church Day Banquet of the Washington New Church,
June 30, 2015)
L
et’s start with a stupid example. Imagine that you are an executive working
for PepsiCo, the soft drink company. You’ve been there for a decade-anda-half in an executive position. One day you are grocery shopping and at the
end of an aisle you spot a table with free samples. On end of the table is a bottle
of your sweet beloved Pepsi; on the other is a bottle of Coke. Right away you
know what this setup is: it’s the Pepsi Challenge.
Without hesitation you take the blindfold and begin the challenge. You are
handed a cup. You take a whiff and drink it. You are handed the other cup. This
one is the winner! You remove your blindfold and you see that your preferred
cup is labeled “Coke.”
“How can this be?” you ask yourself. You’ve stood for Pepsi since the ‘90s!
You know where your loyalties lie. You know who pays your salary. But this –
this Coca-Cola, it lacks the tart taste of Pepsi. It has a kind of savor you’d never
detected before. It’s good. You like it. You might even . . . prefer it.
To add insult to injury, the attendant hands you a red pin: “I picked Coke
in the Pepsi Challenge.”
You feel conflicted, confused, tense. This is a crisis of faith.
My Background
As a teacher of religion to young minds, many of whom are steeped in popular
culture and secular ideas and ideals, I create space for inner conflict and
tension, and deal at a professional level in crises of faith. It is my job to help
wake students up to an awareness of a Divine. This happens gradually, and
for most I’m not the first to try, but I am the most recent in a line of teachers,
parents, family and ministers.
The greatest joy of my job is getting a front-row seat to epiphanies, having
the opportunity of seeing a teaching of the church really hit home. The most
powerful of these generally relate to the afterlife – the belief in a spiritual
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