April 2004 Sermons

• 4/4 Sermon -- What To Do About the Difficult Ones
• 4/11 Sermon -- Jesus Christ Superstar
• 4/18 Sermon -- 
• 4/25 Sermon -- 

Rev. Nancy D. Dean

April 11, 2004

Jesus Christ Superstar

Unitarian ministers often find Easter a difficult holiday to talk about. After all, we do not believe that Jesus was the only son of God, God in human form, who died to save the sins of the world. Though we believe he was one of many holy men who have lived in human history, but man still.

As the Rev. Kathleen Korb wrote:

[In] the late nineteenth century when everybody believed in progress. A saying blossomed on the walls of Unitarian churches from Maine to California: “We affirm our belief in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Jesus and the progress of mankind, onward and upward forever.” Everybody, in those days, could accept some of that at least, and whether they were theists or nontheists, they were all humanists with their abiding belief in human possibility and human freedom.

We UUs believe all people are born with the same spark of divinity, but only some rise to the spiritual levels of Jesus, Buddha, Ramakrishnan, or Mohammed.

Yet, for the vast majority of us, whether we grew up Unitarian, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or in no religion, we have felt the overwhelming impact of the fact that the western world has long had a Christian majority which means Christian holidays get more attention in all the media, so we know something about the Easter holiday however ambivalent we may be about it.

Most people I hear talking about Easter, especially on TV or the radio, are usually referring to the long weekend, the food of Easter (and sometimes Passover which is tied to it), the Easter egg roll at the White House, and the masses of candy that go into the Easter baskets that kids get with little understanding of what it all relates to.

UUs generally like to make mention of the fact that the name Easter, comes from the pagan Roman holiday Oestre, meaning egg, and eggs were given as gifts during the feast of the Goddess Ishtar (also called Astarte or Esther) because eggs represent fertility and the birth of the Goddess and all nature. Easter eggs and bunnies that bring the eggs come from the thousands-year-old pagan traditions that existed prior to Christianity. Ishtar was a superstar goddess in her day, but alas she has long since been superseded by another superstar, Jesus.

As a little child I didn’t question the associations of these pagan symbols with my religion and my school activities, and it remains surprising in many ways that they were allowed to thrive as they have. However, the Puritans and many other Protestant sects had no use for them and did not allow any such celebrating around Easter or Christmas as we see these days. Most of what we see today comes via the 19-20^th Century immigration of Eastern Europeans and Catholics who always have had a greater tolerance for local superstitions being incorporated into Christianity. So nowadays we might say the reason Easter, like Christmas, gets so much attention, especially the traditional pagan parts, is because it sells. We like the tradition, and most of us do not care that much about what it meant originally, or whether it means much in relation to our faith now. It’s fun, so it sells.

If that sounds cynical, then keep in mind that no one or no thing gets much attention unless it has the power to be “sold”, be that acceptance or real dollars, and it usually means both. Ergo, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion,” and the already-in-the-works movies of other religion stories that the big studios are now rushing to get into the theaters. It came as a surprise to the big studio executives that religion sells, the ones who had no interest in producing Gibson’s film, which he then financed himself.

Frankly, I find that incredibly ignorant of them, for religion has always sold, since the so-called pagan times of ancient religion, plays about the religion, gods and goddess, and icons, and admission to local holy sites have been big sellers. In fact, during the period termed the Dark Ages that was just about the only entertainment on offer. You would think the execs would have remembered “The Ten Commandments” movie back in the 1956, with Charlton Heston playing Moses, with his white hair flowing back, coming down from the mountain with the stone tablets. It, too, was a big best seller! Moses was also a superstar.

In Asia, they also have had superstar religious heroes, and India’s famous Bollywood film studios makes dozens of such films based on the superstar gods and goddesses of Hinduism. Western filmmakers have even made movies (and cartoons) about the pagan religion’s superstars, like Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts, among others-Greek religion produced some really wonderful superstars.

When Andrew Lloyd Weber’s rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar” came out, it was roundly denounced as poor writing both of script and music, pandering to the easy sell, and of course various religious leaders denounced it for the Jesus-as-Man theme, that is clearly the theme which only made it more popular. It was a big hit, and the album/CD still sells even thirty years later.

To call Jesus a superstar is not disrespectful, but simply stating a fact. If he did not have those qualities, he would not still be worshipped some two thousand years after his death. Of course the faithful Christians believe this is because he was the only son of God, and that he will always be the greatest of all religious superstars, but history does not necessarily bode well for that position.

Still, how does a Jewish man, who is primarily a rebel against his own faith, come to be worshipped by millions of people for all these years? For those of us who do not believe he was or is God, what accounts for the success and on going popularity of Jesus Christ and Christianity?

Over the years of my life, growing up in a Christian fundamentalist home, and especially my years at divinity school, I have read and re-read the four gospel accounts of Jesus in the New Testament. Four somewhat different stories, written roughly seventy to a hundred years after Jesus’ death, which progressively get more determined to show the Jews in a bad light, which probably relates to the fact that by the time of John’s gospel, the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed and this was seen by the Christian community as either proof or opportunity to restate the story to show Jesus as rejected by God’s chosen people. Simultaneously we see the Roman occupiers as less and less culpable since the Romans are the real power to be courted and avoided.

Now just for the sake of understanding what this all means, do you think that the stories about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, which we have written much more immediately, have come to us free of error or subjectivity? Certainly not. You can read ten to twenty good biographies of any of these great superstars of American independence, and you will not get one unified story.

Or to bring this closer to home, do you think that those of you who know me, have known me for nine years, could independently write one cohesive story about me and my ministry of this congregation? Even with me right here available for consultation? I doubt it. In fact, I don’t believe my two children or husband could write such a story regarding me as wife and mother. Now since I am quite obviously no one’s idea of a superstar, and no one would profit by the stories other than to record a life, we could assume the best motives on everyone’s part. Even so, it would be a pretty likely scenario that the versions would vary widely, for experience varies widely. I have heard my children relate events from their childhood that I know absolutely did not happen in the way they now believe they did. My daughter will tell you I made tuna casserole with crushed potato chips on top, but I have never, nor never would, ever make tuna casserole with crushed potato chips on top. Mine always had cheese on top, but no doubt she ate that dish somewhere, or recalls it was popularly made that way, but I’m here to tell you it was not in my kitchen.

Keeping in mind that besides the differences in recall, what could we expect to happen if the stories people might write about their ministers, leaders, heroes would have everything to do with keeping a group strong, holding it together, keeping the faithful people connected in a unified whole? Then we move into the arena of control or power, even over the destiny of the group.

The long held aphorism says that history is written by the winners, but history is also written by the sustainers, those who have something to gain by maintaining the status quo. People also have both good and bad motives for the stories they tell or write, sometimes they are even unconscious motives. That is how lying, cheating Uncle Bingo becomes dear, sweet Uncle Bingo in his waning years, especially if Uncle Bingo has a small fortune to leave to some deserving relative. Or if cranky old Cousin Gertrude that we could never stand, dies and we find we find we inherit her hundred acres of valuable property, we will most likely begin to recall her more fondly and remember she did have her good side, despite the fact we never could see it earlier. This is human nature to some degree, though some people are more or less subject to this sort of ethical swing-factor than others.

Jesus of superstardom is very unlikely to be much like the Jesus of reality. Logic tells us that the famous names of this age, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Hilary Clinton, Julia Roberts, Barbara Streisand are not likely to be the people in reality that they are in their fame. People rarely are nearly so much like the legends that grow up around them. So too Jesus.

The difference between your regular run-of-the-mill superstar (I know that’s an oxymoron!) and a religious superstar, has to do with the realm of the supernatural. While near supernatural legends do grow up around some mortal legends, for the most part they remain human, vulnerable in various ways, and die like the rest of us.

Religious superstars, on the other hand, become over time-and it is always a progressive process-more and more imbued with special characteristics that set them apart. Now many Christians, perhaps most, these days, believe the story of Jesus is unique. That he alone was born of a virgin birth, was made to suffer ridicule, died and was resurrected, but in fact the Jesus story was quite a well-known story in his day. Other holy men, like Gilgamesh of Sumerian religion, of an earlier times were also given these attributes or had these things said and written about them. We might call them stars of their day and place. What differs in Jesus’ story relates to something Jesus, the Jewish rabbi (meaning religious teacher), certainly could have never imagined, which is that his name became attached to the religion of the most powerful empire on the earth at that time.

Most scholars agree that Jesus primarily was determined to lift his opposition to the Temple leadership of the Jewish community, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the two most powerful Jewish sects in Jesus’ time, and the Sanhedrin court. Jesus believed, as we read (in the words scholars believe he is mostly likely to have said in the New Testament), that the religious leaders were so caught up in the rules and regulations, the power they had in the Temple, that they had effectively divorced the people from the love of God, even from God altogether. He was seeking support for his ideas, and began to teach and soon had a following.

Others were doing the similarly. There were many sects in opposition to the Temple power. As we can see today, not everyone follows the doctrine or party line in modern religion and politics. So it was then, too. Jesus never indicates by word or deed that he is beginning a new religion, or founding Christianity. Like Martin Luther, 1500 years later, had no intention of founding a new church, but was seeking to reform what he believed was a corrupt church. Luther never planned on the full blown Protestant Reformation that led to the hundreds of Protestant churches we have today.

The disciples who kept the community of his followers together after Jesus’ death believed he would soon come back to establish God’s kingdom on earth, so the writings closest to his death, those of the Gospels, are very much focused on that event, and on keeping the community ready for that event. Yet, as time went by and Jesus did not return, the focus was forced to shift, and that is noted in the later writings, especially those of Paul, and those of the Apocrypha and Gnostic gospels. As time went by, stories of his miracle birth, were expanded to include his mother Mary’s miracle conception and her miracle birth. And further expansion of Christianity added still more stories of a miracle nature.

The more important event, though, was not Jesus’ birth, death, or resurrection stories; rather, the signal event that led Jesus from minor stardom to superstar comes by virtue of a pagan Roman Emperor named Constantine, who adopted (more than converted) to Christianity around 312 C.E.

Constantine was a great general, and as Emperor had taken his part in persecuting Christians who were personae non grata in Rome as upstarts who were corrupting the morals of the religious Romans. As Shaye Cohen, professor of Judaic and Religious Studies at Brown University explains, one day when he was out at one of his battles, Constantine is reported to have vision, and a bishop (or local leader) of one of the Christian sects (for by this time there were several) that focused both on Hebrew scriptures and Christian gospels, and . . . the model of the kings of Israel. And it's with this governmental model that the bishop explains the vision to Constantine.

Constantine liked the way this bishop interpreted his vision and began to see himself in a religious light. As Shaye Cohen writes:

In a sense Constantine becomes the embodiment of the righteous King. And once he consolidates his power by conquering, eventually, not only the west, but also the Greek east where there are many more Christians and concentrated in the cities, which are the social power packets of this culture, [he] is in this amazing position of having a theology of government that he can use to consolidate his own secular power. And it works both ways. The bishops now have basically federal funding to have sponsored committee meetings so they can try to iron out creeds and get everybody to sign up.

Suddenly, this one sect of Christianity becomes the sect of Christianity, and the next thing that happens is that Constantine quits persecuting all the Christians, but begins persecuting the other Christians who do not follow his preferred group.

Keep in mind that Rome had been having its own problems, the empire was not what it used to be, so Constantine was looking for something that would improve these problems. Or, as Cohen states: There's a kind of internal purge of the church as one Emperor ruling one Empire tries to have this single church as part of the religious musculature of his vision of a renewed Rome.

From that point until the Reformation that Martin Luther unintentionally set off, first the Holy Roman Empire then later governments in league with the Church exerted absolute power over the western and parts of the eastern world. There was one church, one religion, governmental leaders were approved by the Church and the mutual power of church and state held sway over the people. During that time, first consolidated in the 4th Century Council of Nicea it was decided which of the religious texts would be kept and which would be thrown out, then later the stories expanded, as the saints of the church added further to the story of the Christian church. Jesus’ appearances, Mary’s appearances, and so forth.

As mentioned earlier, stories have a way of growing and changing. It’s like the trio of old timers at the Veteran’s Home who ran out of tales of their own heroic exploits and started bragging about their ancestors. One declared proudly: "My great grandfather, at age thirteen, was a drummer boy at Shiloh."

Another one boasted: "Mine, went down with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn."

"I'm the only soldier in my family," confessed veteran number three, "but if my great grandfather was living today he'd be the most famous man in the world.”

"Why? What'd he do?” the others asked.

"Nothing much. But now he'd be 165 years old."

A superstar gets to be one because of the backing of powerful people. I have no doubt there are better actors than Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts, but these two have the backing of people who give them good roles in good films and pay them huge salaries which make them the superstars of the film world.

Jesus is a superstar in death, though he was not in life. By all accounts he was a man of great loving compassion who was trying to make people see that life could be lived in a better way, that God was not the God of the rules and regulations of the human religious leaders, but a God of love, and for preaching that he died a miserable death in the way the Romans liked to kill troublemakers of that time, by public crucifixion.

Jesus left a group of followers so committed to his message that they could not believe that he had died, or if he had died he would certainly come back. Many Christians, as those later followers became known, believed the stories of his miraculous resurrection. Today, around the globe, millions are celebrating this miracle of Jesus rising from the dead.

Of course, there are millions of people do not believe this story, but its long and powerful history has kept it real for people, despite the attaching of the pagan elements that Roman rulers always found convenient as they conquered the peoples that became part of the Empire.

I doubt this story could happen today, for we do not have any one such powerful empire who can make everyone accept one story at threat of death, though there is no doubt that a certain segment of the religious right would love to see an Army of God, with a warrior Jesus at the head, descending like the Mongol hoards across the world to convert every man, woman, and child to Christianity. It is a big part of the Last Days stories, and oddly many of these Christian fundamentalists who are flocking to see the gory Gibson movie don’t know that Gibson’s brand of anti-Semitic Catholicism has them all going to hell as non-believers, and even the current Pope is considered a sham Pope by Gibson’s Catholicism.

The realm of religion remains a realm of power and striving for control of the minds of present and potential believers.

The big difference today is the wonderful world of communication, which means that people are not so afraid to think for themselves and can question power--who would have it and why--and find other free thinkers to join them. That means those of us independent free-thinkers who make up the UU community, and many other Christians and religious people of many other faiths around the world, will not be silenced or made afraid to ask questions. So while it sometimes seems that we smaller groups do not have the power or the voice of those large groups, remember, neither did Jesus.

Jesus did what you and I must do. He thought for himself; he taught what he believed was true; he was willing to be ridiculed and threatened, and ultimately die for what he believed. In that way, Unitarians follow very much in the path of Jesus’ teachings.

Perhaps the time-frame is not what we would have wished, but you and I are here as a testament to the on-going struggle for free faith that he set in motion. Which is not to say that Jesus had Unitarians in mind, but he certainly had an understanding of standing up for and proclaiming what you believe.

Jesus is a superstar as an effect of powerful forces he could not have anticipated, and most likely would not have approved.

One thing I believe is that history has given us a good many superstars, but none last forever; so it remains to be seen what religious superstar will emerge in the future.

But, I am convinced one will emerge, and for all we know she may be a Unitarian Universalist.

So be it.

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