The Secret Decoder Ring and the RCA-Victor Dog

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

John 10:1--10 (NRSV)
¹“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ²The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

⁷So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Sermon:

          I recently went into Borders in Santa Fe, and I was very surprised to see the number of books on religious and spiritual topics so prominently displayed.  Gnostics from two-thousand years ago could have easily written some of these books.  I looked at the various books on display and asked myself, “What is going on with this latest spiritual fad?”

          The answer was so obvious as to be silly.  All of these books in some way or other purported to impart special or even secret knowledge about how to have a better or deeper spiritual life or to get a peak at the future.  I must admit, I laughed aloud, shook my head, and went over to the outdoor section to look at fly-fishing books.  I mused, same old, same old.  Human beings trying to deal with our dependency on forces we can’t control and the eventuality of death, by taking matters into our own finite, mortal minds, and coming up with mystic answers of our own design and calling them true.

          This situation is reminiscent of the old adage about a doctor who treats himself—he has either a fool for a patient or a fool for a doctor.  The point is, here we are finite, contingent creatures trying to give ourselves ultimate answers from within our finite minds and resources.  Dumb!

          As I stood there looking at several books on fly patterns, a memory ran across my mind.  I guess it had been prompted by my insights to the religious book displays.

          Back in the mid-to-late 1930s various companies that marketed products to kids started offering toy encoding and decoding devices or rings as a premium for buying their products or as an additional product.  This business of offering an encoding and decoding device for kids continued up to the year 2000 that I know of when Ovaltine offered a secret decoder ring.

          When I was about 9 or 10, I pestered my mom into buying enough cereal of one brand to let me send off for a secret decoder ring that would decode these special messages on the backs of the cereal boxes.  Only people who had the decoder rings could read the messages and be in the cereal company’s special kids’ club.  I had to send three box tops and a dollar into the cereal company to get my ring.  It was a dollar of my hard-earned money.

          This decoder ring was not like the cool crypto-logical rings offered by Ovaltine.  I don’t remember the cereal’s name; it was some off brand cereal.

          In a couple of weeks, my ring arrived.  I tore open the package and immediately became disappointed.  It was a cheap plastic ring with a red, see-through plastic center.  You placed the red plastic center down on the secret message section of the cereal box, and then you could read the message embedded in a multi-colored panel. 

The messages were dumb also.  The messages sounded like a Chinese fortune cookie.  I expected some special knowledge that would give me power over something—my parents, my teachers, or other kids.  Instead, I got messages like, “study hard, pay attention to your parents and teachers and you will be a success.”  That was some real secret message.  Any and Every kid heard this stuff from some adult at least twice a day.  Big deal, secret club, secret ring, secret knowledge only for a select bunch of kids.  I was apart of an elite group of kids, however.  I belonged to a select group of dummies who believed the sales hype, ate a lot of awful cereal, and paid a dollar for the stupid ring.

          I am still amazed at the number of people in America that fall for this kind of thing, even as adults.  This book or that book promises health and spiritual insights from some ancient, secret sect of Tibetan monks, who each lived to be over a hundred and forty-something.  Other books promise secret insights and a road map to the future through newly discovered manuscripts or new insights to old manuscripts.  Some expert or scholar found a secret-decoder-whatever and now these manuscripts reveal their here-to-fore hidden secrets.  Another book promises to awaken the spiritual person within you through ancient words and formulas.  One TV Info-mercial, tries to sell an audio and video tape series on how to unleash your spiritual energy and cosmic consciousness.  This cosmic consciousness will put you in touch with the great energy, the ground of all being that will release your essential and true spiritual self.  And, you; yes, little old you, can be in touch with this cosmic consciousness by sending $99.99 to P.O. Box 123, Never Heard of It, Minnesota.

          What all this tells me is that there are many people today, as well as through out history, who need and long for a spiritual depth and a sense of belonging to something bigger than their own lives for external validation and affirmation.  I think people are being pulled away from a very simple, powerful, practical, and realistic spiritual life by a lot of complicated and convoluted mumbo jumbo reminiscent of the ancient Gnostics that plagued early Christianity. 

It seems to me that the more complicated and convoluted things are the more people want to embrace them.  I guess people like the status and illusion of power that comes from the doing things their way in opposition to time honored, tried, and proven ways.  This reminds me of the whole Adam and Eve fiasco—self-determination contrary to the best holy information available.

          Let me give you an example of the dynamics of the Adam and Eve story. 

Some fly fisherperson fishes for years, they study various insects at each stage of their life cycle, and he or she creates a fly pattern to match an insect stage of development that the fish will key on and bite.  The angler tests the insect pattern, proves it, and then shares it with others in books, magazine articles, etc.  Then other fly tiers start tying the pattern, but soon they begin to put their own tweaking on the pattern.  A little, sparkle here, a little more fuzziness here, a darker color here, so on, and so forth.  The original pattern caught fish, it was an excellent pattern, why change it or mess with it? 

The answer may go something like this: I want to put something of myself in to the pattern.  I want to be a fly-fishing end unto myself.  The creator of the pattern was on the right track but he didn’t quite have it right, but I do.  I want to add that little bit of my creativity that will make the fly better, so I think, and I can catch more fish.  I am better than the original; I am more clever that the experts.  You get the idea.

          It is this kind of Gnostic thinking that John addresses in his Gospel.  In today’s scriptures, John uses the analogy of the shepherd and sheep to make his point about the right ways and means of a true spiritual relationship. 

Let us listen to some of these passages again:

¹“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.

          John says that those people who try to enter into the company of Jesus with its eternal blessings by any other means than a belief in Jesus’ as the unique, only begotten son of God, who in his love of God and love of humanity, sacrificed himself so that all who believed in him might be saved are like a thief trying to climb through a window at night to steal God’s blessings and everlasting life.

²The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.  ³The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.

          The shepherd leads his sheep into the common sheepfold at night for protection.  The rightful shepherd is recognized by the night-watchman shepherd (analogous to God) as the legitimate shepherd of the flock and his flock follows him in to the common fold for nighttime safety.  Jesus leads his followers to God for God’s eternal care and keep.

Come morning:

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

          When morning comes and its is time to head out to pasture the sheep recognize the unique whistle of their shepherd and they come out from among the common flock and follow him as he goes ahead of them

⁵They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

          Jesus’ followers will not answer to the whistle of another shepherd but will instead run from that stranger.

Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

⁷So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.  ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.

John hears Jesus saying, that the way of the Christ is the only way to a joyous everlasting life.  Though many other claimants have said or will say that they hold the Truth and the Way of the Christ, they are in fact frauds.  They seek to steal away followers of Jesus for their own ends.  There are many who purport to speak for the Christ but do so out of their so-called special revelations, which are contrary to scripture.  These people are also frauds, thieves.

Jesus says:

⁹I am the gate.  Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.  ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

          In short, in hearing the teachings of Jesus in the presence of the Holy Spirit, we humans come to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  We know that the only true way to be in this world is to be like Jesus—trusting the goodness and the ways of God as revealed in scriptures under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.  We know that God’s way is Jesus’ way and his way is the way of love.  Anyway, that does not hold up God’s sacrificial love as the way to be truly human in this world should be avoided like the plague.

          There are many different groups in this country and in the world trying to promote a particular brand of spirituality as the absolute and final answer.  They offer complicated charts, formulas, rites, rituals, observances, and newly uncovered secrets in the Bible or someone else’s scripture as a way of hooking the unsuspecting and the unsophisticated.  They play to our human need to belong to something bigger than ourselves, to our fear of death, and our fear of the unknown future.  They present well-reasoned schemes and how-to-plans, but they neglect the obvious and most Christian of all Christian knowledge—our relationship to God is based upon God’s love for us and our love for God as witnessed in our love for our selves and others, not on secret or complicated schemes of knowledge.

The true Christian will listen to scripture and its historical witness and remember Jesus words in John 3:16:

¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

The true person of Christ understands the truth of John’s reason for writing his Gospel

…that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.  (John 20:31). 

This love of God and its purpose in Jesus the Christ is not to be kept a secret; it is not the property of a few; it belongs to all.

          God’s Love does not hide itself in secret rites, formulas, or in ancient encryptions.  God’s love encourages self-expenditure for the beloved and will self-sacrifice for the beloved if the situation demands it.  God’s love does not hide in the shadows of secrecy but rather seeks to give the best of life to all it encounters.

          Jesus says that those who are called by God’s spirit and are true followers of his will know this.  They respond only to him and his words of truth in their relationship to God and to others in love.  All of those who claim to be of his fold who seek relationship to God in any other way than love are wearing stolen clothes.  Anyone who teaches secret knowledge, formulas, and doctrines as the way of the Christ is a thief and a pretender.  They are people out to steal unwary sheep to improve their power base or reinforce their delusions of power over life and death.

          Do you remember the advertisement for RCA-Victor Records and products that used the famous painting by Francis Barraud of Nipper, the fox terrier dog, looking into the horn of an old gramophone?  Do you remember the slogan about the dog knowing his master’s voice?  Victor records used this painting before it merged with RCA in 1929 to imply that their records were of such quality that a dog with its sensitive ears recognized his master’s voice on their records.  Well, like Nipper the Victor Dog, a Christian knows his master’s voice because it is clearly replicated by the Holy Spirit within each of us. 

The truth of Christ is not a secret that needs a special decoder ring or secret groups to interpret or to make God’s love clear.  It is a self-evident truth for those who possess the Holy Spirit and are truly of the Christ.

            Across the annuals of Christianity, it has been very difficult for people to trust the simple and beautiful truth that God loves creation, creature, and us.  From God’s love comes God’s grace.  Those who live in love receive God’s grace, unmerited by any religious actions on their part.  The truth of our acceptance before God in love is brought home to our hearts and minds by the work of the Holy Spirit.  Trust it, live it, don’t try to design your own scheme of salvation when a perfect one has been provided.