April 15, 2001 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

April 15, 2001

Jesus and Resurrection: The Connection

This is the first pointedly Easter sermon I have given in several years. Easter is not a major event for Unitarians, though it is for some Universalists, but since the Unitarians among our numbers tend to be far greater, and I am a Unitarian first and foremost, Easter does not tend to capture my imagination to the same degree as some of the other Christian holy days. For most of us Unitarian Universalists, the literal understanding of the Bible story about Jesus’ resurrection is metaphorical at best, and not to be taken "literally." Further, the majority of Bible scholars at the most respected schools of theology tend toward the metaphorical interpretation as the one originally intended. Nevertheless, I find for me, personally, that the Easter message of Jesus’ death on the cross as God’s human sacrifice of himself for the sins of all humanity, is one that is so incomplete that I have generally ignored it. I recall mostly from my childhood growing up in an evangelical Christian home, that this was considered the "greatest story ever told," that God came to earth as a man in order to die for all our sins. But the questions that the story left with me were more profound to the course of my life, than the story. Why would a loving God create a world with so much sin and suffering in the first place? What is the good of dying on a cross for all humanity’s sin if they are going to go right on sinning; why not take sin from humanity altogether? And so on. My deeply religious family was upset by such questions. The standard answer to all of my questions about the nature of God, especially as stated in the Bible, was that we could not know the ways of God. Or, that it is was a great mystery. I heartily agreed with the later. It all seemed an entirely, and unnecessarily, mysterious.

As a loving father, would you make life so hard that your children would fail constantly, and often through no fault of their own? Would you, as a loving creator, destroy your creation by sending human beings, who did not get a choice in whether to participate in the grand scheme in the first place, to hell for all eternity? The answer for Universalists was a resounding, No! Further, it just seemed such a sloppy and unreliable approach to doing a thing so profound as saving all humanity. Even after 2000 years, many people on this planet have never heard of Jesus as the son of God, or God himself, who died on the cross for their sins. Couldn’t God have made everyone everywhere aware of this at one time? Why wouldn’t salvation be like breathing, something we all want to do, need to do, and get to do? Yes, I say to my Christian heritage, I know, it is not for us to know the ways of God. Then, I must ask of God: Why did you give us the power of reason and questioning? How is it that we are taught by our elders and betters to question virtually everything, but what we are taught of God? See what I mean, things about this mystery just do not add up for me. However, I can only believe that if there is an all powerful, all knowing God, then It expects me to live in the questioning power It/God gave me, and will fill me in on the details at some point.

We should never, never be afraid to question. Fear of questioning what we are taught and told has led to some of the worst of the world’s sin and ugliness. I believe as passionately as one can believe anything, that the only way we can grow spiritually or know the truth of God is through the reasoning, questioning minds we have been given.

One night during an episode of insomnia I was watching a television preacher telling me that I was condemned to burn for all eternity if I did not accept Jesus as my redeemer. Having listened to him all I could, I switched to the only sound place for spiritual truth in the middle of the night, the Comedy Channel, where I heard—in what I like to think was a hint from beyond—the comic Margot Black say: "Every time I see a TV evangelist I can’t help but think that if God wanted to talk to me through the TV, I think he could get a spot on a major network."

Yet, as with all things given enough time, I found in my reading, especially of the past year, some new insights into this metaphor of the resurrection story that have helped me have a greater appreciation for this particular Christian New Testament myth. Speaking of both comedy and the New Testament, I am reminded that George Carlin once said: "The New Testament is not new anymore; it’s thousands of years old. It’s time to start calling it the less old Testament."

Scholars from all the great schools of religion, theology, and philosophy such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton offer us some insight into this myth, which as they use the term means "story," for all religions are imbued with a rich mythology. They tell us that the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection is a story that is interesting from both Biblical and historical perspectives. Further, it also relates to the way we in the western world function in the present age.

Looking at the story without the bias of our person religious upbringing is helpful, for if you were taught as I was that the Bible is the literal word of God, you will get confused in a hurry, for there is much that can only confound and confuse. This passage in the book of Mark, for example, has two endings. And I will pause here to give you the briefest of Bible history lessons.

Most of what is in what Christians call the Old Testament or scholars call the Hebrew scriptures, was originally an oral history of the people of Israel. Later, some 2000-3000 years, it was written down on parchment, which is sheep’s skin, or papyrus, and rolled up into scrolls. These scrolls or books were collected and over a period of many hundreds of years were edited, added to, changed, etc. One of the greatest events of modern Biblical scholarship came in the early and mid-Twentieth Century with the discovery of both the Dead Sea Scrolls and later with the Nag Hammadi scrolls of the Gnostic Gospels. In the arid desert caves of the Dead Sea and Egypt, were found large pottery urns in which ancient scrolls had been placed at some distant time in the past by the teachers of the faith of Israel, with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and later the teachings of Jesus were written down and preserved by a group of his followers with those scrolls of the Nag Hammadi find. Both these events profoundly affected our understanding of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

From the Christian standpoint, the various books of the Bible, as we know it, were collected together at the Council of Nicea, in the 4^th Century, CE, when the texts, forms and practices of Christianity were codified. Up to that time, there were various books/scrolls all over the place, and the teachings were various as well. Just as today when we try to standardize what is taught in the schools, the Emperor Constantine, frustrated by the bickering and fighting amongst the various Christian sects, commanded that the groups come together in Nicea and decide once and for all what would be the "authorized" texts to be taught, and they were put together in what we call the Bible. Bible, means books. So many things were left out, and we call that collection that we knew of before the Nag Hammadi find, the Apocrypha--the questionable or left-out books. The find at Nag Hammadi told us, as scholars had always suspected, that were other books that had been lost and/or destroyed over time.

Those scrolls/books were then translated into Latin from the original Hebrew and Greek (all of the New Testament was written in Greek, though Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic, a Hebrew dialect). Later, following the15th Century Protestant Reformation, German and English translations were made, with even further changes and emendations. Which is why we have now such translations as the Oxford Annotated Bible, and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), in which the oldest of the New Testament books, which is Mark, contains a story of the resurrection of Jesus that has two endings.

There is nothing simple about the Bible—Hebrew or Christian. (I will tell you more about the history of the Hebrew Bible at another time.)

Jesus was a Jewish young man, who became frustrated by the institution, the rules and regulations, of his Jewish faith. Jesus was not outside his faith, or indeed intent on setting up any new faith. At least that is what the New Testament tells us. The oldest parts that can be discerned by Biblical scholars, particularly those who focus on the historical Jesus, find little reference to Jesus that indicates that he believed he was the son of God, or God. There is more of the radical conscientious objector in his words and deeds. Yet, after his death, some seventy years at the earliest after his death, when the story of his death is written, there are various different interpretations given by the followers of what had happened. The Nag Hammadi texts, which are the very oldest Christian texts known, have no such resurrection story at all. So for many scholars, the later versions of Jesus’ death and resurrection are about how the followers dealt with his death and how they decided to carry on the work he had started. There are parallels down through history of the legendary quality that early biographers had towards their subjects. The same is true for the stories about Jesus.

One of the highlights of my Harvard Divinity School education was being taken to the most secure library in the world, where we had to be cleared by a complex security to attend with our teacher a viewing of a surviving piece of one of these ancient scrolls from which the Bible was translated. I shall never forget the powerful affect of looking down through the glass at the piece of parchment of a section from the book of Timothy, to see lines of writing now almost 2000 years old, to what looked like one of my own school papers (before computers), with lines drawn through a word or words here and there and the changes inserted in the space above or in the margins. If the Bible is meant to be read literally, then you must know that the writers were sometimes unsure as they wrote down the words we now see in our Bibles. How much more real the Bible now seems to me for having seen that ancient script. These writers were real people, writing down, after the fact, the stories of Jesus’ life, and what happened to the followers of Jesus after his death, which was, even as the NRSV demonstrates, not one consistent story. Can you imagine trying to accurately write down the details of your own life, much less someone else’s?

One of our great Unitarian ministers of the 19^th Century, the scholarly Rev. James Freeman Clarke, who helped our Unitarian understanding of this story of salvation by teaching that our real salvation is that which is seen not in just our words, but in our actions, or as he termed it we have "salvation by character"; Clarke looked upon the resurrection as teaching that is not intended to be about the physical coming back to life later Christians believed in, but the metaphorical resurrection that scholars have found was the common mode of teaching at the time when these scrolls were first written. Clarke taught us to see the resurrection in the light it was most likely seen in originally; that is, as he wrote:

This is the over-arching message of the resurrection that has become meaningful for thousands of Unitarians; that we need not be afraid of death, nor afraid of being forgotten in death, which is what the Humanists among us believe compelled later writers to focus on the resurrection of a physical body. It is the truth of Jesus’ message that how we live our lives for others, as well as ourselves, or as he said was the second greatest commandment, to love your neighbor/others as yourself, it is this that allows us to live in God. To live in the love that is God.

Clarke further explained that those who focus the resurrection on the future, a thing yet to happen for humanity, miss Jesus’ teaching that in looking at his life you see God. That resurrection happens all the time, now, as people turn from purely self-centered living to living for others as well; in that new way of life we are resurrected.

Clarke also points to this powerful understanding when he says: "One power of Christ’s resurrection was to abolish the fear of death. It brought life and immortality to light. It showed [people] their immortality."

Back in October of 1982, following a traumatic illness, I looked Death square in the face, and since that day I have had no fear of dying. It is impossible for you to know how very powerful this experience was for me unless you understand how I grew up so very afraid of dying, of going to Hell, of burning for all eternity because I was not good enough for God. In my own personal near-death experience, and the hundreds of similar experiences I delved into over the next few years, combined with my ministry experiences at the deathbeds of many people, I know that there is no need to fear death. We may fear pain prior to death, yes, that remains, but not death itself. I see far more clearly than most, something for which I feel a great sense of privilege and humility, that to move beyond that fear of death is to truly experience resurrection.

Clarke again: "Christ teaches that at death all rise to a higher state—of life and love to the loving, or judgment by the sight of truth to the selfish; but higher to all."

Jesus wanted people to live; to love life; to love those with whom we share this life. To share his belief that God did not/does not live in the rules and creeds and dogmas of human religion, or outside us, but within us, in the higher truth that we each can know if we are not afraid to know it.

While I no longer call myself a Christian, I am most certainly a follower of Jesus, as I am also a follower of Buddha, of Lao Tsu, of Gandhi, and of many of the world’s truly holy people; holy, because they live outwardly focused lives, rather than ego-centered, selfish and self-righteous lives.

I am saddened by what I can only see as a mis-understanding, mis-interpretation, and even a mis-use of the life and teachings of this holy man Jesus. I can only believe that Jesus, were he to come to the world today, would be astonished and sickened by what has been said, done, and perpetrated in his name.

Humanity has been constantly challenged to grow beyond our basic survival instincts, to evolve—and we continue to evolve even now and will continue to—to evolve past those basic drives to the higher selves we have learned we can become. That is the whole point of civilization. Death, war and destruction have plagued humanity for eons, and I expect we will not see the end for eons to come, if ever. The motivations have always been and remain just as basic: greed and power. We see all around the world, wars for nationalist reasons, and even for religious reasons—the most inane of all. We see God and faith used to get land and wealth, power and control--little has changed. I am reminded of how religion has been used in these battles by the Rev. Desmond Tutu the now retired Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, South Africa, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize once said in a speech to a group in New York City: "When the missionaries first came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, the tables had been turned: We had the Bible and they had the land."

There is nothing sacred about Bible! There is nothing sacred about religion! There is nothing sacred about a piece of land. There is nothing sacred about any book, or chalice, or any thing, except as we use any of those for the betterment of all humanity, for the love of all humanity.

Jesus was a man of his time, but an unusual man in that he was not afraid to challenge the religious status quo; was not afraid to say what he believed, was not afraid to do what he understood must be what a loving creator would want. And, he died because he was not afraid. There have been few like him. Still, I challenge you, all of us, today to be more like Jesus. To question what you are told, to challenge living by laws, rules and regulations that do not show concern for all the people. To live and give your life for others: your family, friends, community and beyond. To believe that love is the greatest force in the world, and that only through love can you know the best of what it is to be alive, and to know God.

That is what we as Unitarian Universalists must do if we are to live the truth that history has placed before us time and time again. We must love ourselves, and we must love our neighbor—stranger or friend—as ourselves. Because the truth is, we are all going to die. And all that will live on of us is the truth we were not afraid to speak, and the love we gave. That is what lives on of the real man Jesus. May it be what lives on of all us gathered here this morning.

Wintersteen, Pescott B. Christology in American Unitarianism, The Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, 1977.

April 29, 2001 Sermon

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

April 29, 2001

Grist for the Mill: Why Membership Matters

Did you ever wonder why we are called the Unitarian Universalist Society of Mill Creek? Probably many of you, like me, just did not give it too much thought initially. We tend to make some assumptions; but, usually, sometime during the year, I find myself explaining something about either the "society" part of our name, or the "Mill Creek" bit. Yet, there is a story in the whole name that is part history and part membership.

For instance, we are first Unitarian Universalist; Unitarians and Universalists were two separate denominations prior to 196,1 when we merged. Unitarians, as the more intellectual, were the group affiliated with five presidents, Harvard, the Enlightenment, especially as it developed in Boston, known in the past as the "Athens of the West." The Universalists, were the more rural, the perhaps gentler, religion that refused to believe in a wrathful God of hate and eternal damnation. The saying that has developed in the last forty years is that the Unitarians are the Head and the Universalists are the Heart of this body of faith we now call Unitarian Universalism.

Next, we are a "society," rather than a church, temple, synagogue, tabernacle, fellowship, or meeting. Each of these terms has a specific meaning that tells the community something about the gathering of people who belong. While many of us with a Christian background, such as myself, find ourselves frequently falling back on the term "church" as an easily understood, or at least less confusing term, many of those among our membership who have Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and other religious backgrounds are often not comfortable with that term. We are a "society," a term also used by the Quakers, or Society of Friends, to indicate that our gathering is not to be identified with any sort of exclusion. Webster’s primary definition of society is: "A group of persons forming a single community." Simple, neat. So the initial group of fifty members who founded this congregation decided that "society" was the term that they would prefer.

I say "they decided" because each UU congregation is an independent entity, self-governing, self-determining, that decides what the by-laws will be, and how the group will work together. This is called "congregational polity." There are other religious groups who operate under this same system. Rather than having a hierarchy of authority that operates from the top down and tells the congregation what the rules are, appoints the clergy, and mediates any disagreements. Our many UU congregations chose to affiliate for reasons of convenience as the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. We all contribute a sum of money per member so that we can receive services such as the UU World magazine, help with ministry settlement, the developing of Religious Education materials/curricula, and so forth.

Across our association/denomination are many different congregations who continue to use the names of their pre-1961 founding, and so we have Unitarian and Universalist churches, some UU churches, many fellowships (these were formerly those congregations that decided to form and not have ministers), many societies, and some that use "congregation" as their designation.

The "Mill Creek" part is what most people wonder about, but as Frank MacArtor who was the principle organizer to get this congregation started told me when I wondered about it (remember I was new to Delaware), this area of New Castle County is called the Mill Creek Hundred. There is the Brandywine Hundred, the Christiana Hundred, meaning that during the Revolutionary War period, the "hundred" represented an area where one hundred militiamen could be called up to fight. So you see that we have a lot of history tied up in this rather long name of ours (always a challenge to fill in blanks provided for our name on forms and such, when our six words have to go in the a space for two words).

Now what the UU Society of Mill Creek means to you and to those in northern Delaware and southern Pennsylvania where most of our membership comes from is less tied up in all that history and more involved with who you-we all are. That is you, all of us who are members, we are the mind and body, the heart and voice of our congregation. Each of us is an advertising agency, as it were, for this congregation, and in the totality of our continually-growing membership, we speak in a common voice that upholds the principles and purposes which we as members of the UU Association have agreed guide our ethical and moral living.

That is not to say we are all alike, for we are not, nor do we all share a common experience of spiritual growth and expression. What most binds us is the recognition of the need we all have, that every human being has, to be a good and moral person. It is always a mistake to assume that any congregation, of any denomination, is filled with people who have all the answers and are all virtuous.

I like the story about an angry man who stood at the door of a church and shouted down the aisle to the congregation, "You are all just a bunch of sinners and hypocrites." An old lady seated near the back stood up and beckoned the fellow to come in, "How right you are, young man! Come on in and join us--there’s always room for one more."

Our congregation, like all UU congregations, is concerned with how we go about the business of living; how we grow in mind and spirit; how we learn to live fuller, richer lives. We claim no truth of spiritual expression that we would have all accept, no dogma, no doctrine, save that which is the truth of your own heart and that follows our First Principle. We are all people of error. No one among us is perfect. Winston Churchill once said, " [People] occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off, as if nothing had happened." The difference with those who chose to become members of our UU congregations is that we hope to become people who err less and care more in our search for the truth, and do not hurry away from the possibility of learning.

We do have people who will visit for a long time before they decide to join. That is usually a sign that they either are new to our faith and they need time to figure out what we are all about, or they have private issues about joining outside the family of origin’s faith, or they just have commitment issues that are known only to them. I respect their need to be with us, but not of us. I try to explain that the main reason I am concerned for their joining (the main of three principle reasons one should join), is that only members in good standing are permitted to vote in the annual meeting when all the decisions about budget, and changes, etc., or as in this year, a major, pivotal decision to either go ahead and build our building, or continue on here as we are (which I consider a positively dreadful idea!). Membership in good standing means that you have joined at least thirty-five (35) days prior to the annual meeting, and have made some contribution of record. Remember I said that the saying is that the Unitarians are the head, and the Universalists the heart? This is the head part of our Unitarian rational side. The practical, how-you-get-the-congregation-to-run, part.

I always tease, but it is absolutely the truth, that if you are around here regularly, everything, including asking you for money, will be the same for you. We are an equal opportunity congregation, even when it comes to fundraising! Your response to our requests for funds is also an equal opportunity. "Opportunity" is the keyword, here.

The other two principle reasons for becoming a member are more about the heart of the matter. When we decide to join this or any congregation, we are making a statement for ourselves, our families, our friends; in other words, we are making what Christians call as "public profession of faith" by our actions. That we believe in honoring and promoting " the worth and dignity of every person," and the other principles that are what identify us as an ethics-based tradition. This is a singularly important thing to do. To say unequivocally what it is that we stand for, and what we reject that is exploitive, denigrating, prejudiced, or hateful.

Also, we are telling each other here that, "I want to be part of this group. I want to join you in the sharing and caring, and in the struggle to know what is important and worthwhile in life. I want to be part of this UU Society of Mill Creek of people that work for each other, and in the wider community." Membership is the signal to the rest of us that you want to be involved with us. And it then become "yours" and "ours," not "theirs." The sense of belonging is powerful; so, when we make a profession or statement of belonging by becoming members, we truly feel a sense of ownership, that this is "My Congregation." We lay claim to our own sense of values and ethics this way. The benefit of seeing oneself as an important part of something greater than oneself is defining. And your membership makes a difference as to what this congregation will be like, feel like, look like. I want you to really know that, to really feel that.

The benefits of membership can be sometimes as surprising to the old-timers as the newcomer. There’s a story about a housekeeper who applied to a church’s board of deacons for membership. They told her that she needed to give them some indication that she had truly gotten religion. After a bit of cogitation, she told them she had had a ‘visitation.’ But, the deacons pressed her for something more specific. Frustrated by their persistence, she thought some more, then countered by saying, "I can’t talk theology to you, and I don’t know much about the Bible, but I can tell that ever since I got religion, I don’t sweep the dirt under the rug anymore."

"Grist" is the term for the grain that millers put on the stone mill wheels to grind into meal or flour. The Mill Creek part of our name encouraged the use of the Grist for our monthly newsletter. The material we use toward our spiritual development, all that which is business, social, ritual, memorial becomes the grist for our Mill Creek congregation. The image is powerful for me. I will soon have completed six years with this UU Society of Mill Creek. I have seen the joy and sorrow you all experience a thousand times over, and the product of all that which you bring to this sanctuary, this sacred space, we create here, the opinions, thoughts, and especially the joys and sorrows, all of it becomes a fine product that is mostly love and determination to build-make-create something out of the grist of our lives that is better that what we began with.