5-year-old Johnny had a sore throat on Palm Sunday, and so stayed home from church with a sitter. When the family returned home, they were carrying palm fronds. Johnny asked them what they were for.
“People held them over Jesus’ head as he walked by,” his father told him.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” Johnny fumed, “the one Sunday I don’t go and he shows up.”
Writing this sermon I wasn’t feeling confident that you would want to hear about Palm Sunday. I imagined you saying “the fact that churches around the world are talking about Jesus today, doesn’t mean that we should!” I imagined that somebody might argue there right as a UU to ditch Jesus.
Christian churches in many countries have been siding reactionary forces, anti-gay and anti-choice. Too often they have aligned with autocratic rather than democratic choices. The most recent example I’ve
read is the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church.
Conservative Christian influence on politics makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that most US Christians are pro choice, and most have come a long way to abandon historic anti-gay attitudes. I’ve heard UUs repeatedly claim that you can be Christian, Jewish, Buddhist etc and be UU. If we are going to claim this we have to make perpetual efforts to avoid the polarization. To keep liberal religion alive we must avoid all or nothing thinking.
Instead of leaving Christianity in our rear view mirror, what if we were to use reason and scholarship, studying scripture with literary criticism, historical context and with attention to political agendas past and present?
This Easter story has had and continues to have great influence on society. Ignoring it diminishes our influence. Given that our UU tradition grows from Christianity, education assists us to continue our faith tradition. Unitarians and Universalists were Christians who read the bible and found no basis for the trinity or eternal damnation. They sought to follow Jesus by peeling away distortions of hir message added by those who came after him. In the first explicitly American Unitarian sermon, William Ellery Channing said “we follow not the religion about Jesus, but rather the religion of Jesus.” I don’t know generations how Protestant Unitarians heard that message. It sounds pretty Jewish to me! The idea that Jesus or any human could be said to be G*d, was certainly a break from Judaism, that likely arose gradually some years after he was executed by the Roman Empire. The watchword of Judaism goes “Shma Israel Adonai Elohenu. Adonai Ehad. Translation: “Listen Israel, Adonai is G*d, G*d is One. The core belief of the first Unitarian churches which were established in what is now Romania held this same pronouncement “God is One.”
What if you identify as UU and atheist, why does any of this matter to you? I would say that to be UU, atheists, and all of us have to be willing to translate and accept that different people use different words to express what is most sacred and what it is that unifies all of existence. Traditional theists posit a deity that is separate and outside of nature. Atheists are not the only people to reject this idea. Many of us affirm a sense of supreme worth and or unity that is part of nature, a system with infinite order.
In the three patriarchal religious traditions, G*d is conceived and spoken of as the Father or alternatively the king of the Universe. Religious liberals see these as cultural expression, poetry, metaphor rather than literal historical fact or falsehood.
We know for example that the world was not created in six days as in written in Genesis. That is one of many creation stories written in antiquity. Today we have more accurate and sophisticated understanding of the origins of life. This doesn’t prevent us from appreciating truth and values expressed in the Genesis story. Being a religious liberal means going beyond a literal understanding. It means encountering religious words, concepts or text with humility, openness and willingness to learn. It might be tempting to abandon the word “god.” I believe that being liberally religious means interpreting generously, respecting and honoring the diversity of ways different cultures have understood and expressed what unites us and enables us to exist.
Being religiously liberal means understanding that words are symbols that we use to try to share our experience or understanding. In a multicultural world, people use different words, have different attitudes and understandings. When we assume that our perspective is correct, and theirs is wrong, we create a block that keeps us from beginning to be able to understand and appreciate their experience of sacred.
When I use the word God, I am generally referring to “ALL that is.” I’m referring to the infinite universe, to the web of existence of which we are a part. I believe this is what Buddhists find in meditation. It’s what one of our hymns calls “source of all.” I am not demanding that you use the same words that I do. I am certainly not demanding that you adopt the same beliefs as mine. Beliefs are dead. Life is bigger than any of our beliefs about it. That perspective is central to our UU faith.
Does that make sense? (They nod or say yes). Phew! (laughter) …. This notion that truth is greater than any of us can speak or even grasp is not exclusive UU property. There have been great religious thinkers from every culture who have said the same. Judaism teaches that God is ineffable.
When the sun sets on Friday, the festival of Passover begins, and Jews will retell the story of G*d sending Moses to tell Pharoah “let my people go!” When this message comes to Moses is having a paranormal experience. He sees a bush on fire and yet the fire doesn’t consume the bush. Moses asks “which god shall I say gave me these instructions?” G*d answers “I am that I am.” I was taught that the original Hebrew was in future perfect tense, that a more accurate translation might be “I am that I am and I am what I am becoming”. Christians took “YHVH” (“I AM”) translated it is JHVH which became “Jehovah,” which was incorrectly said the name of the Jewish god. Although Moses might have expected or wanted to know God’s name, Jews don’t take G*d’s answer as his name. In Jewish tradition naming implies dominion. Jews therefore use titles like Lord reflecting that we don’t have the ability to fully grasp or understand the source of all that is. Jesus was a rav, a Jewish teacher. Everything he said was an interpretation of Jewish law, aka the commandments. BTW who can tell me the number of commandments listed in Hebrew scripture? There are 613. What people speak of the 10 commandments, this refers to the laws or instructions given by God to Moses at Mt Sinai.
The first commandment is “I am the Lord your god, and you shall place no other gods before me. In Christian scriptures Jesus is asked for the sum of the commandments. His reply “Love God with all your heart mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” sends love out into two or three dimensions.
Traditionally this instruction is seen as having two parts. The first to love God, the Ruler of the Universe. The second is to care as much for our neighbors as we do for ourselves. I take it to mean that if instead of worrying about ourselves, we are to treat people as precious and trust G*d to care for us.
I see three dimensions in Jesus answer. (Demonstrate w gestures). 1 self (right here) 2 neighbors, lateral (arms swing wide) 3 G*d (arms up and out). If we don’t accept who we are, it will interfere with our
ability to know and love others. BTW self love is not the same as self worship or self absorption. All major religious traditions warn against selfishness, being divorced from concern for the tribe or for humanity.
Society today often promotes this kind of spiritually deprived greed and self absorption. Capitalism is built upon the false notion that self interest and the profit motive will best serve the greatest good.
The market culture is driven by profit motive. It promotes a sense of disconnection, scarcity, fear and insecurity. For example, Putin has accumulated a level of wealth unprecedented in history and yet he
believes he seems compelled to restore the domination of the former USSR. Affluent Americans also often live fearful, stressed, depressed lives driven by a sense of scarcity and a perception that acquiring more will provide security.
Our core problem is a disconnection distrust and disrespect for life.
Our society makes it possible for an individual or a corporation to profit by causing harm to the common wealth. Individuals and corporations profit by polluting our air, water or otherwise harming the ecosystems that support life on Earth!
I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant by love. He showed us what he meant by love. He denounced the worship of power. He turned his attention and effort to help the poor, society’s outcasts, and those in need.
Jesus talked about love by and of G*d, the “source of all.” Jesus referred to God as Abba. While translated as father but is in an informal form, ie Daddy. Jesus’s stories and parables express a sense of
divine love and care for all of creation. Jesus’s stories teach faith. They suggest the way to experience G*d’s love is to live righteously and leave the outcome to God.
The book of Luke reports Jesus saying “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asks will receive; and he that seeks will find; which of you that is a father shall his son ask for a loaf, and you give him a stone? or if he asks for a fish, you give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you then, in the fearful illusion of your separateness (that’s a creative interpretation), ..if you in the fearful illusion of separateness will good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
Perhaps Jesus wasn’t saying that everything will go our way. Maybe he meant that righteous action brings a consciousness of heaven. He didn’t say God will make you powerful. He said God will give hir children the “Holy Spirit.”
The gospels repeatedly show Jesus favoring compassion over a strict adherence to law. For example, Jesus heals on the sabbath. He instructed people to look deeper, to connect with the care that abide beneath the law. Care or love is supreme. Jesus was a religious liberal. It is said that Jesus intervened the death sentence execution of an adulterer saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” The life example, teaching and spirit of Jesus seems to me to have been lost by Conservative Christian forces that have infiltrated our political system riding on a fervor of hatred toward liberal valuing of women’s rights, LGBTQUI rights, the rights of people of color, rights of disenfranchised, marginalized and poor.
Jesus’ call for love, nonviolence and justice was powerful! And although he came to Jerusalem on a wave of follower adoration, Pilate saw him as a threat to Roman order, and in less than a week, Jesus was made an example to any who would consider rebellion of the Roman occupation of Israel.
Jesus is quoted as having said: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
I read this as Jesus warning of the folly of attachment to anything impermanent. Doing righteousness for its own sake, developing consciousness as a result. However, in the religion that came after him, reward was shifted to an afterlife. In this formula those who believe Jesus to be the messiah and son of God get eternal reward and everyone else gets eternal suffering in Hell. It seems to be 180 degrees from Jesus’s attitude as described in the synoptic gospels. He criticized the worship of power, the clinging to Law as a means to grab a better position.
Was this Jesus, Christ? Christos is Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashiach, messiah or “God’s anointed” in English. Hebrew scriptures speak not of one, but many who were anointed by G*d. Christians claimed that the books of the Prophets foretold Jesus. From a Jewish perspective, it’s a great misrepresentation of scripture. The arrival of G*d’s anointed would be a new order where there would be an end to suffering, injustice and human cruelty. The illusions that keep us fearful and greedy would be gone. There would be no affliction, no more stealing, killing …. war.
Jews believe that G*d delivered us from slavery and asked us to help establish divine order on Earth. The books of the Prophets spoke of a time when an anointed leader would usher in greater liberation, justice and peace in this world. A new religion formed based on the belief that Jesus was the Son of God was crucified to pay the price for the sins of humanity. Jesus death became a sacrifice whereby those with the right formula were “passed over” for the sentence of damnation and eternal suffering.
This atonement doctrine shifted Christians toward obedience and enforcement of the church and its new laws. Unitarians and Universalists saw this formula as an aberration of the teachings of Jesus.
Regardless of our beliefs about God or Jesus, we are following in the religion of Jesus when we care for the last and the least, when we refrain from the worship of power, and give our life energy to causes of liberation, justice and peace. We UUs following in the tradition of Jesus when we choose faith in life, something mightier than death, faith in something that transcends our days and will not die when we do. Blessed is the faith or the consciousness that enables us to keep love alive with a vision of heaven for every soul.
So may it be.
Recent Comments