"Dreamcatchers: A New History of Christmas"

15 December 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Prayer

Let our prayers be like Christmas stockings this month, hung by the chimney with care. Let them be simple, even childlike, sewn together out of hope and anticipation.

Let us dare to ask for what we really need, and believe that if our prayers are heartfelt and honest, there is always a chance our stockings will be filled.

And even if our wishes aren’t granted, our honesty will gain the respect from those who matter most, including ourselves.

Let us sing the song of our heart’s true desires like a Christmas carol: dashing through the days, laughing all the way.

Because we’ve remembered what it felt like to be a child for whom dreams really might come true if only we could be open to them and prepare a manger within ourselves where they might be born.

‘Tis the season of good dreams. Let us welcome them, as we prepare for the holidays in the hope that they may also be holy days.

Let our prayers be like Christmas stockings this year, hung by the chimney with care, and with faith, hope and love. And let us allow, even dream, that like our Christmas stockings, we might be filled to overflowing.

Amen.

SERMON: Dreamcatchers

I think Christmas is a tough time of year for an honest preacher. We say this church offers a religion for both head and heart. We say you don’t have to check your brains at the door, but you don’t have to leave your heart outside either.

It’s a bold boast, and the Christmas season always threatens to make a mockery of it.

Who would dare to tell the truth about Christmas during the Christmas season? We know all the supernatural stuff never happened. The world isn’t built that way. Not now, and not two thousand years ago. We know it, but how could you say it? Especially now?

Some few people do say it, of course. Nine years ago at this time of year, the Jesus Seminar published their book The Five Gospels: the Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. In it, they said that an eight-year study of every saying attributed to Jesus had convinced a large international group of scholars that fewer than 20% of the sayings should be considered authentic, the rest written by the people who wrote the gospels, or taken from other sayings and sources at the time.

The choice of timing – bringing the book out just before Christmas – was the publisher’s decision, not the Jesus Seminar’s. But as the publisher explained, Christmas and Easter are about the only times of the year that people much care for the subject of Jesus. Still, telling the truth can change the world, even when it’s unpopular.

If you think the book didn’t make a difference, consider that every magazine cover or network television program on Jesus since then has come either from this work of the Jesus Seminar, or in angry opposition to it. The last I heard, it had sold over 300,000 copies: an amazing number for a book only a tiny fraction of the public would even be interested in.

Still, everybody already knew a lot of what it said. The miracles didn’t happen, just as the miracles in other mythologies didn’t happen. Neither Jesus nor anybody else walked on water or was raised from the dead because the world isn’t built that way, not now or then.

Sure, we knew that. But how could you say it out loud, especially at Christmas?

And they said more. The stories about Jesus were written about him long after he died by people who hadn’t known him. The gospels were not written by his disciples. They were written anonymously. They weren’t assigned their present names until the second century, when a rich layperson named Papias thought it would look better if the gospels were given the names of some disciples, and donated enough money to make it happen.

This probably isn’t surprising. All history looks a lot less dramatic when you strip away the veneer. But how could you say this, especially around Christmas?

And of course there’s a lot more that scholars have said. The baby in the manger, the star, the wise men, the gifts, the colorful trip with the donkey, none of it is historical. We know absolutely nothing about just when the man Jesus was born. In the early centuries, his birth was said to have come in May, in March, in August, probably in a few more months.

December 25th was the date of the winter solstice in the ancient calendar, and wasn’t adopted by the Christian church as the official date of Jesus’ birthday until the year 336, the same time that Sunday was adopted as the religion’s holy day. Both December 25th and Sunday were taken from the religion of Mithraism, where they were the birth day and holy day of the god Mithras.

Still, how could you say this around Christmastime?

One answer – you’ve probably noticed since you’re such a quick group – is that I just did say all this. And if you look in that 1993 book by the Jesus Seminar, you’ll find that my name is listed in the back among the Fellows of the Seminar.

So one answer to the question of how you can keep religion honest by speaking the truth at Christmas time is that you do it in sneaky ways, by saying it while pretending to wonder how on earth anyone could say it.

So far, you didn’t have to check your brains at the door today, and being honest was pretty painless. In truth, liberal religion has always been good at honoring your mind. Even in the first century, religious writers were saying that no literal reading of scriptures is ever religious, and no religious reading is ever literal. St. Paul said that the letter kills and the spirit gives life. Everyone who has ever read any religious writing symbolically and metaphorically knows it’s true.

A lot of times, though, honest religion is also sterile religion that may let you feel smug, but can’t nourish your spirit. So we can’t stop here or you wasted time by bringing your heart to church this morning.

If we did stop here, with these academic critiques of Jesus, Christianity, and Christmas, we would be stopping too soon. So far, we have treated it as though stories like this were meant to be no more than empirical science or dry history. And of course they are not. The hardest part of this is still remaining, for the Jesus story, like similar stories found in most of the mythologies of the world, are not primarily history-catchers or fact-catchers. Like all religious stories, they are primarily dream-catchers.

I think the native American dreamcatchers are doing what honest religion tries to do. The web is like the honest part, keeping bad stories out. And the little hole in the middle is like the religious part, letting the good stories through.

In that story of a baby both human and divine, a baby born to the poorest of parents, in whom the whole hope of the world resides – in that simple and timeless story, a lot of dreams have been caught. For if the birth of the sacred can come even to poor parents at a manger in a stable, surely it can find us too.

No, of course the story isn’t true. So what? The story doesn’t have to be true to be magical, any more than the story of Santa Claus has to be true to work its magic. We have to help. When we are children, our naivet” lets us into the stories. As adults, we have to work harder to regain our suspension of disbelief.

The native Americans who make dream-catchers know perfectly well how they work. They require faith. If we can believe that sticks and string can keep back our fears and bad dreams, then they may indeed keep back our fears and bad dreams. That is the miracle of both myths and dream-catchers.

You know the same is true in the story of Santa Claus. If we can enter into the really odd story of a fat man in white fur who slides down chimneys without getting smudged, then Santa Claus may also become a dream-catcher, and bring us a miracle or two.

Let me ask a question of both your mind and your heart: Does knowing that the story of baby Jesus born in a manger wasn’t true ruin it? Even during the Christmas season? It’s a trick question, be careful how you answer. For if it does, then all the scholars and preachers who ever lied or sugarcoated the truth were justified in their low opinion of the human spirit. Because if hope and confidence can not find a comfortable home within the world as it really is, then there is no hope at all for us. And then the best teachers and preachers would have no choice except the choice of misleading or lying to their people.

But no, there is far more to us than that. Let’s give ourselves some credit here. We are not that destitute of imagination, especially during the Christmas season. Good lord, this is the season of imagination! As incredible as it sounds, this is the season when millions of people – probably including some of you – line up and pay good money to see the story of a Nutcracker that comes to life! And large mice, that dance! Full-grown people have been known to cry during the Nutcracker. I’ve been one of them.

This is the season when we again watch the story of Scrooge visited by ghosts from Christmas past, present and future. It didn’t happen, you know, it’s just a story. They’re actors. But everyone who has ever been moved by that story knows there is a deep and important kind of truth to it. This is also the season when Jews light their Menorah to symbolize a light kept burning by faith through eight long dark nights, even though that never really happened either. And the Grinch: we don’t actually need to be told that the Grinch never really lived, do we?

A good myth is true, but it isn’t scientific. A good myth is something that never happened but always is. It’s that kind of true: way more true than mere facts.

Must a story be true to transport and transform the human spirit? If that were so, no one would ever buy a novel, watch a soap opera, cry at a movie, or cherish a song that brings back to life a memory and a hope so long gone you thought you”d never find them again. With good stories, whether they are true or not is the least important thing you can know about them. It is far more important to know whether, with our help, they can be transformative. Good dream-catchers are hardly ever made out of straightforward truth.

I wish for us this Christmas season the innocence and trust of our most childlike parts, so that we can enter once more into stories of unlikely veracity, because those stories offer us much more than mere facts. They offer us new life for old, joy in place of tiredness, a free ticket to some unearned merriment, and another visit to a place where all things are again possible, even if they seem as unlikely as a visit from the angels. And oh yes – there are indeed angels. They are messengers from the place where dreams live. And they always visit during this season to bring, to anyone who wants them, a few good dreams. All you need is something to catch them in.

Merry Christmas – and sweet dreams!