(Traducción Francisco Javier Lagunes Gaitán)

RELATO: El milagro

Era un tiempo de terrible lucha. Por todas partes la gente estaba dividida en grupos separados, como pequeños clubes. Y en todas partes peleaban contra toda la gente que no estaba en su pequeño club.

Todos decían que odiaban el enfrentamiento, desde luego. Pero todos sabían que solamente la gente en su pequeño club tenía realmente la razón. Y dado que tantos otros estaban equivocados ?bueno, todos ellos rezaban para que Dios les diera la victoria sobre los demás, y así terminara la lucha. Pero mientras tanto, era una época de terrible enfrentamiento.

Un día un joven mago vino a esta región. Él no parecía pertenecer a ninguno de sus clubes, pero era un maravilloso mago y realizó algunos trucos sorprendentes. Tenía esa clase de “cualidad estelar” en él que atraía a la gente. Mucha gente amaba mirarlo, aunque no les interesaba gran cosa escucharlo, debido a las cosas que les decía.

Lo que les dijo fue que si no estuvieran divididos en tantos clubes, no habría tanto enfrentamiento. Sus clubes, les dijo, eran la causa de sus guerras.

Para la gente, esta era la cosa más tonta que nunca habían oído. Sus pequeños clubes les daban una pequeña área de paz y amistad entre gente como ellos mismos, en un mundo de otra manera hostil. A ellos les gustaban sus clubes. Así que casi nunca escucharon cuando el mago trató de enseñarles. Pero amaban su magia, así que siguieron viniendo a verlo, y comenzaron a contarse historias sobre lo grandioso que como mago era

Años después, luego de la muerte del joven mago, una cosa chistosa sucedió, aunque no le hubiera parecido graciosa al mago. La gente formó un nuevo club. Y para estar en este nuevo club, tenías que creer todos los relatos que ellos contaban sobre el joven mago. Incluso hicieron imágenes y esculturas de él, y las exhibían en sus lugares de reunión, para que la gente pudiera recordar todo lo grande que había sido.

El club llegó a ser popular, y pronto tuvo miles de miembros. Antes de que pasara mucho tiempo, se hicieron incluso de un ejército.

Fue entonces cuando finalmente decidieron que podrían usar su ejército para terminar la lucha de una vez por todas. Sus sacerdotes y generales acudieron a sus lugares de reunión ?que se habían convertido en iglesias? e hicieron como que hablaron a las imágenes y estatuas del mago muerto, como para pedir su bendición. Después de todo, ¿no había hablado siempre el joven mago de traer la paz?

Fueron a la guerra. Fue una guerra larga, y mucha gente murió o resultó herida. Pero su ejército era mayor y ganaron. Y obligaron a mucha, mucha gente a entrar en su club.

Luego de las batallas, sus sacerdotes y generales iban a la iglesia a dar las gracias. Se paraban frente a las imágenes y esculturas del mago muerto, y le contaban su orgullosa historia de la batalla victoriosa.

Entonces sucedió el milagro. Justo cuando todos los sacerdotes y generales miraban las estatuas y les hablaban de sus guerras victoriosas, todas las imágenes y estatuas empezaron a llorar?

LECTURA: “El aro sagrado” por Alce Negro, hombre de medicina Lakota Siux

Entonces yo estaba parado en la más alta montaña de todas y a mi alrededor, hacia abajo, estaba todo el aro del mundo. Y mientras estuve ahí vi más de lo que puedo decir. Y comprendí más de lo que vi. Porque veía de la manera sagrada la forma de todas las cosas del espíritu. Y a las formas como deben vivir juntas cual un solo ser. Y vi que ese aro sagrado de mi pueblo era uno de muchos aros que formaban un círculo, amplio como la luz del día y la luz de las estrellas. Y en el centro creció un poderoso árbol floreciente para resguardar a todos los hijos de una madre y un padre. Y vi que era bendito.

SERMÓN: “Las cuatro caras de Jesús”

Tiene riesgos despojar a un hombre como Jesús de su halo y preguntarse qué clase de hombre fue, y qué tan sabias fueron realmente sus enseñanzas. Ofende a la imagen popular de Jesús, sentimental y soñadora, como el Hijo de Dios y salvador sobrenatural de la raza humana. Desde hace ya más de dos siglos, los estudiosos han sabido que aquellos fueron atributos míticos inventados por sus seguidores mucho después de su muerte, y que el Jesús real fue 100% humano ?dado que esta es la única categoría que existe para nosotros. En un mundo construido de esta manera, no nos gusta que la gente pueda recibir la mitad de sus cromosomas de un humano y la otra mitad de un dios celeste, y esta idea tampoco agradaría a sus contemporáneos.

Quiero respetar la verdad sin venerar el mito esta mañana, por medio de la sugerencia de que este hombre, Jesús, tenía por lo menos cuatro diferentes aspectos, o “caras”. Un aspecto era inútil, un segundo era erróneo. Un tercero ?el más “mágico”? fue real, pero no sobrenatural. Y entonces ahí está la cuarta cara de Jesús, que aún hoy parece mirar dentro de nuestras almas con incómoda exactitud.

1. Jesús como pensador cínico itinerante

La primera cara de Jesús se refiere a su estilo de vida, a sus valores personales, la clase de modelo a imitar que él habría sido. Esta es la dimensión de Jesús que apenas ha sido discutida, debido a que es tan estrafalaria. Por ejemplo, trata de recordar cuántos sermones has escuchado sobre estas citas atribuidas a Jesús:

  • “Quien no odia a su padre y a su madre, no podrá hacerse mi discípulo. Y quien no odia a sus hermanos y a sus hermanas? no se hará digno de mí” (Evangelio de Tomás 55) ?¡No es precisamente un texto para un sermón de “valores familiares”!
  • En otra ocasión, una mujer de la multitud, en voz alta, dijo a Jesús, “Dichoso el seno que te llevó y los pechos que te amamantaron”. Era esta una manera convencional de hacer un cumplido a la madre a través del hijo, algo así como decir “Tu madre debe estar muy orgullosa de ti”. Pero Jesús replicó así: “Más bien, dichosos los que escuchan la enseñanza de Dios y la ponen en práctica” (Evangelio Q, en Lucas 11:27-28 ?¡Otro mal texto para el día de las madres!
  • Y la última cita que es la más extrema y la más famosa. Viene del Evangelio de Lucas. En el que Jesús dice “¿Creéis que estoy aquí para poner paz en la tierra? No, os lo aseguro, sino división. Porque desde ahora habrá cinco en una casa y estarán divididos tres contra dos, y dos contra tres; estarán divididos el padre contra el hijo y el hijo contra el padre; la madre contra la hija y la hija contra la madre; la suegra contra la nuera y la nuera contra la suegra” (Evangelio Q y Lucas 12: 51-53) ?¡Nunca se escucha a la derecha cristiana predicar este fragmento tampoco!

Estos dichos no corresponden a la imagen tradicional del Jesús dulce que predicó valores familiares, así que casi nunca son mencionados. Ellos nos muestran algunos de los valores personales de Jesús y de su estilo de vida, y lo hacen parecer muy peculiar y extraño, por no decir fastidioso. La mayoría de los estilos de vida que Jesús ejemplificó nunca han tenido muchos seguidores.

Este es el perfil de alguien en el margen de cualquier cultura, en cualquier época. Los estudiosos reconocen este perfil, no obstante. Era un estilo marginal pero bien conocido de vivir en el mundo antiguo. Desde cerca del cuarto siglo AEC (antes de la era común), hasta aproximadamente el siglo sexto EC (de la era común), había un nombre para este estilo de vida ejemplificado por Jesús. Estos personajes fueron llamados los cínicos.

Algunos estudiosos consideran a Jesús un “pensador cínico itinerante”. El nombre en sí mismo es desdeñoso, fue dado a los “cínicos” por sus detractores (de esa forma se originaron muchos nombres). Viene de la palabra griega para “perro”, y quería decir que los cínicos vivían como perros. No tenían casa, ni propiedad, ni consortes, ni un círculo fijo de amigos, ni trabajo, ni amor por la sociedad en la que vivieron. Los cínicos no ofrecieron una corrección de la sociedad, tanto como ofrecieron una alternativa a la sociedad.

Los mejores de entre los cínicos fueron críticos sociales astutos: fueron una especie de versiones seculares de los profetas del Viejo Testamento, manteniéndose por fuera del orden de las cosas aceptado, mientras trataban de subvertirlo.

Alguien que pudiera vivir una vida de esta manera tenía que estar, entre otras cosas, extremadamente enfocado y dedicado a su visión particular. Para el cínico más famoso de la historia, Diógenes de Sinope, la visión fue una de autonomía personal, de libertad de las exigencias innecesarias de la sociedad. Un viejo relato lo ilustra:

“El mensajero del rey llegó a ver a Diógenes, quien estaba sentado en cuclillas en la calle para comer un simple plato de lentejas. “El rey lo invita a vivir en su castillo”, dijo el mensajero, “y a ser uno de sus asesores en la corte”

“¿Y por qué debería hacerlo?”, preguntó Diógenes.

“Bueno, por una cosa”, dijo el mensajero, “si aprendiera a ganarse el favor del rey, no tendría que comer lentejas”.

“Y qué si uno aprende a disfrutar las lentejas”, replicó Diógenes, “no tendría que aprender a ganarse el favor del rey”.

El mensaje de los cínicos siempre fue extremo, y ellos estuvieron dispuestos a sacrificar todo por él. Además, ellos generalmente pensaron que todos los demás también estarían mejor si abandonaran la visión de la vida de la sociedad y adoptaran su visión cínica.

Jesús queda muy bien dentro de esta concepción del pensador cínico. No tenía hogar, propiedad o trabajo. No daba por buenas las imágenes aceptadas de “la buena vida” o las expectativas normales que sobre la gente se tenían en una sociedad civilizada ?las reglas culturales y religiosas que daban a la gente sus identidades sociales, por ejemplo. Su visión del “Reino de Dios” era, para Jesús, la única cosa digna de vivir por ella. Sus parábolas presentaron al “Reino” de esta forma extrema una y otra vez. Era una “perla de gran valor”, un “tesoro enterrado en el campo” por el que el afortunado descubridor lo venderá todo.

Lo que debe notarse sobre los cínicos, incluso Jesús, es que su mensaje nunca es fácilmente escuchado, o seguido, excepto por personas extremadamente marginales ?otros cínicos. Los esposos, viudas, niños, el gozo del trabajo, hacer una contribución a la sociedad, el nacionalismo, el orgullo de identidad étnica o religiosa, ?todo esto no era nada para los cínicos en comparación con su singular visión. En el caso de Jesús, su familia entera fue tratada como si no contara nada en comparación del “Reino de Dios”. Esto no convirtió a Jesús en excepcionalmente frío, o insolidario, simplemente lo identifica como uno de los grandes cínicos de la historia ?y un pensador cuya visión era, a veces, demasiado extrema para resultar útil, o sabia, para la abrumadora mayoría de la gente que ha vivido jamás, entonces o ahora.

Así que la primera cara de Jesús fue la de un estilo de vida cínico. Constituyó una gran parte de quién fue él y de lo que valoró. Para casi todos en la historia, excepto para los cínicos, sin embargo, este no fue un camino sabio a seguir, sino una inútil aberración.

2. La “Regla de Oro”

La segunda cara de Jesús es su más famosa enseñanza. Si hay un punto en el que todos estén de acuerdo este es la afirmación de la “Regla de Oro” de Jesús crearía la mejor clase de mundo humano posible.

Aunque la amplitud de las enseñanzas de Jesús no puede satisfactoriamente ser reducida a una sola línea, hay una regla bastante simple que la mayoría acepta como el núcleo verdadero de su mensaje. Esto es que Jesús enseño que deberíamos siempre retribuir la ofensa con amabilidad, y el odio con el amor. En la imaginación popular, la mayoría de la gente vería esto como lo que constituiría la esencia de la Regla de Oro. “Haz a otros lo que quieres que te hagan”, significa “sé compasivo y perdona a los otros, no importa cómo te traten”.

La pureza de este ideal ha inspirado a cristianos y no cristianos por igual. Las enseñanzas de Jesús sirvieron como una de las grandes inspiraciones del dirigente hindú Gandhi hace medio siglo, quien adoptó su enfoque no violento de retribuir la crueldad con amabilidad en su esfuerzo fallido por revolucionar su sociedad hindú.

Hoy en nuestra época computarizada, podemos de hecho someter a prueba diferentes teorías éticas, sin arriesgarnos a una guerra. Robert Axelrod, un profesor de ciencia política en la Universidad de Michigan, estuvo entre los primeros en realizar un estudio sobre el “Dilema del Prisionero” [de la teoría de juegos] que puede examinar los resultados de largo plazo de diferentes reglas éticas, con la ayuda de simulaciones computarizadas de los dilemas éticos de la vida real. A través de algunas series de experimentos interactivos en computadora, él ha probado una amplia variedad de reglas éticas. Sin entrar demasiado en detalles, los resultados de miles de interacciones parecen confirmar el sentido común. La Regla de Oro siempre pierde, por la sencilla razón de que premia el comportamiento abusivo. Si podemos tomar ventaja de alguien sin que haya ninguna penalización o represalia, tendemos a aprovecharnos ventajosamente de esa persona.

El otro extremo tampoco funciona ?la idea de que la fuerza dicta la ley, y que puedes hacer lo que sea, siempre y cuando no tenga consecuencias negativas para ti. Esto crea ciclos sin fin de violencia y venganza.

La regla ética que parece ganar siempre es simple. Los experimentadores la llaman la regla de “sólo coopero si el otro coopera” [‘Tit-for-Tat’, en inglés]. Tu primer movimiento es siempre cooperativo. Pero luego de eso, tratas a los otros como ellos te trataron. Una vez que los otros jugadores cooperan, te muestras dispuesto a olvidar las amarguras del pasado. En el largo plazo, otras estrategias se derrotan a sí mismas, mientras que esta vía intermedia toma la delantera.

En otras palabras: si de verdad deseas hacer del mundo un lugar más justo y compasivo, por lo que más quieras, no sigas la Regla de Oro. Que tu primer acto hacia los otros sea amable, pero de ahí en adelante sigue la regla de establecer límites saludables al hacer a otros exactamente lo mismo que ellos te hayan hecho ?es importante dejarles claro siempre que pueden esperar que los trates exactamente de la misma manera en que te han tratado. En el largo plazo, este enfoque de sentido común ?que Confucio enseñó hace 2500 años? creará un mundo más justo y previsiblemente más razonable de lo que sería con la idea extrema de Jesús sobre recompensar la maldad con amabilidad. En el largo plazo, como lo muestra la teoría de juegos, las enseñanzas de Jesús pueden convertirte en un “siervo sufrido”, pero alentarán los peores comportamientos en los otros, al recompensarlos. Irónicamente, esto te dará más oportunidades de perdonarlos, con lo que se creará un círculo vicioso ?uno que ha sido evidente a lo largo de la historia de Occidente y de la civilización cristiana.

Al combinar solo las dos primeras facetas de Jesús, obtienes lo que ha sido llamado el “siervo sufrido”: aquel que recibe siempre abusos y eternamente los perdona. Esto podrá hacer a los cristianos buenos, obedientes y seguidores sufridos, pero no buenos líderes. Maquiavelo vio esto hace siglos, cuando observó que el cristianismo daba a la gente, “fortaleza para sufrir, más que fortaleza apara hacer cosas audaces”. Es significativo que la preocupación central de Maquiavelo fuera de qué manera los dirigentes de los estados podrían mantener bajo su dominio a las masas. Y cuando Rousseau dijo que “Los verdaderos cristianos están hechos para ser esclavos”, esto también vino de un hombre cuya primordial preocupación fue, como lo señala el título de su libro, “El contrato social”. Desde por lo menos los tiempos de Constantino, aquellos cuyas simpatías están con los dominadores, más que con los dominados, han agradecido las enseñanzas que pueden extraerse del cristianismo ?principalmente de Pablo? para conseguir que la autoridad de Dios complemente a la suya propia, con el objeto de mantener obedientes a las masas.

3. Jesús el sanador por la fe

Prácticamente todos los estudiosos bíblicos están de acuerdo en que Jesús fue un hombre con un gran carisma, y una señalada habilidad para lo que hoy llamaríamos “sanación ritual”. Aunque casi todos los estudiosos aceptan que los relatos fueron grandemente exagerados, y que las escenas como “caminar sobre el agua”, levantar a Lázaro de entre los muertos, o alimentar a 5,000 personas con unos pocos pescados, son todos mitologización cristiana, el hecho duro sigue siendo que Jesús fue fundamentalmente conocido, en su tiempo y en las décadas que siguieron inmediatamente a su muerte, como un curandero de gran talento. Era este poder casi mágico lo que realmente atrajo gente hacia él, aun cuando no entendían o no querían escuchar las cosas que él quería enseñar. Sus seguidores también compartieron este poder curativo, aunque no en la misma medida en que lo tenía Jesús.

Sin intención de desacreditar, hay que hacer notar que esta clase de poder carismático no implica necesariamente que el curandero sea bueno o sabio. Todavía hay muchos curanderos hoy en día, desde Oral Roberts, hasta Bennie Han. Además, el principio de la curación por la fe está detrás de los placebos ?esas píldoras de azúcar que muchas veces pueden hacer desaparecer tus síntomas, si crees que lo pueden hacer. Es fácil pensar en algunas otras figuras históricas que también tuvieron un carisma inmenso y un gran poder personal sobre la gente, pero que no fueron sabios, o que incluso fueron malvados. Rasputin, Hitler, Jim Jones, Matthew Applewhite, y David Koresh son ejemplos que me vienen rápidamente a la mente. No todos los sabios son magos, ni los magos sabios. Aún así, Jesús fue uno de los curanderos más brillantes de la historia.

4. Subversor de las identidades artificiales

Es difícil saber cómo llamar a esta cuarta cara de Jesús. Como los estudiosos bíblicos saben, la principal preocupación de Jesús era lo que él llamó el Reino de Dios. Lo que Jesús entendió por Reino de Dios fue fundamentalmente diferente de lo que la mayoría de los cristianos han entendido por esta frase. Entendido propiamente, fue la enseñanza más radical de Jesús. Fue también la más profunda y perdurable, y es su cuarta “cara”.

La frase “el reino de Dios” no fue exclusiva de Jesús. Era una frase popular en los primeros dos siglos, usada por mucha gente. Significaba el mundo ideal, la clase de mundo que podría tener la mayor compasión y justicia. Juan el Bautista, quien fue maestro de Jesús, dijo que el mundo había ido demasiado lejos para ser salvado, que deberíamos esperar a que Dios lo destruyera todo y volver a empezar con la clase apropiada de personas ?aquellos que creyeran lo que Juan el Bautista creía.

Luego que Juan el Bautista fue asesinado y que no llegó el fin del mundo, Jesús emergió como líder carismático, y muchos de los seguidores de Juan empezaron a seguirlo. Pero el mensaje de Jesús era muy diferente. El “reino” de Juan sería sobrenatural; para Jesús, el reino de Dios era existencial, aquí y ahora, no en un mundo por venir.

Para Jesús, el Reino de Dios no vendría. Ya estaba aquí, al menos potencialmente, dentro y entre nosotros. O como lo dijo él en otro lugar, el reino está extendido sobre la tierra, y la gente no lo ve.

¿Cómo renovar un mundo hostil? Esta ha sido casi siempre la pregunta que enfrentamos. Para Juan el Bautista, así como para muchos predicadores apocalípticos de hoy, debemos esperar a Dios para actuar. Para Jesús, Dios esperaba que actuáramos. Y actuamos, creamos el reino de Dios, o el mejor mundo posible, simplemente al tratar a otros como nuestros hermanos y hermanas, como hijos de Dios.

Esto suena agradable y dulce, sin embargo, es una cosa peligrosa de enseñar. Por ejemplo, las leyes de alimentación de los judíos los separan de sus vecinos. Así que las instrucciones de Jesús a sus seguidores fueron que comieran lo que les sirvieran: puerco, mariscos, cabras, cualquier cosa que sirviera el anfitrión. Los judíos odiaban a los samaritanos, con cuyo reino limitaban al norte, más de lo que odiaban a casi cualquiera. Así que Jesús contó una historia sobre un judío golpeado que yacía a un lado de la carretera, cuando pasaron unos sacerdotes a su lado y la única persona que lo socorrió fue un samaritano. Durante sus principales días santos, los judíos solo comían pan ácimo (sin levadura). Así que Jesús dijo que el reino de Dios es como la levadura que pones en la masa para expandirla. Una y otra vez, él desdeñó las identidades artificiales que nos separan de los demás. Sólo había una identidad posible para nosotros en el Reino de Dios: tratarnos mutuamente como hermanas y hermanos.

¿Ves todo lo subversivo que resulta esto? Este es un mensaje que podría amenazar cualquier forma de gobierno, todas las ideologías, y todas las identidades religiosas y raciales. El mundo está en un caos, hemos perdido un centro compartido, así que creamos cientos de centros artificiales, o “clubes”, de los que obtenemos nuestras identidades. El problema es que son demasiado pequeñas, todas excluyen a quienes creen o viven de manera diferente a nosotros, y por ello son precisamente las estructuras que mantienen al mundo como un lugar hostil.

Hoy en día, su mensaje podría ser ¡Detengan los clubes! Dejen de identificarse con su nación, su raza, su religión, o su sexo. Todas estas identidades son finalmente divisivas y hacen así imposible un mundo pacífico. ¿Quieres un reino de Dios? ¿Quieres un mundo de paz y justicia? Está en tus manos y sólo en tus manos. Te ha sido dado todo lo que necesitas, ahora es tiempo de actuar.

Este es un mensaje que todavía haría que mataran al mensajero que lo porte, casi en cualquier parte del mundo. Imagina ir a Irlanda del Norte a decirles a los combatientes que ninguno de sus bandos es cristiano, que ambos son agentes del mal, y que deben dejar de pensarse a sí mismos como protestantes y católicos, porque tales identidades son ellas mismas el problema. La única cosa en la que ambos bandos estarían de acuerdo sería en lincharte colgándote del árbol más cercano.

Imagina intentar vender el mensaje a los judíos y palestinos, y decirles que la única forma de parar la lucha asesina es dejar de pensarse a sí mismos meramente como judíos y palestinos, y comenzar a verse mutuamente como hermanos y hermanas, como hijos de dios. ¡Te dispararían!

No quiero sugerir que Jesús fuera la única persona en la historia en contemplar esta visión de un mundo que sigue mezquino y hostil debido a nuestras identidades artificiales y nuestros impulsos territoriales. Puedes encontrar esta idea de que todos somos hermanos y hermanas en muchas religiones y culturas. También la encuentras en culturas que nunca tuvieron contacto directo con la civilización occidental. Recuerda estas líneas del hombre de medicina Lakota Siux, Alce Negro:

“Y vi que ese aro sagrado de mi pueblo era uno de muchos aros que formaban un círculo, amplio como la luz del día y la luz de las estrellas. Y en el centro creció un poderoso árbol floreciente para resguardar a todos los hijos de una madre y un padre. Y vi que era bendito”.

Estas cosas no son verdad porque las hayan dicho Jesús, Alce Negro u otros. Son verdaderas porque ellos han visto hacia la esencia de lo que significa ser humano, con una claridad que poca gente en la historia había logrado jamás. No sé de ninguna forma de alegar contra esta noción precisa. Parece honda, profunda y eternamente correcta. Nuestras tendencias humanas o animales a crear identidades artificiales para nosotros mismos son el pecado original de nuestra especie. Nos sentimos mayores y más merecedores de consideración como parte de una familia, una nación, una raza, una cultura. Así que naturalmente nos unimos a pequeños clubes y ondeamos nuestras banderas, y esperamos la segunda venida de Jesús para que pueda haber paz en el mundo.

La tragedia real de un hombre como Jesús no es que hayan arrumbado tanta fantasía tonta sobre él a través de las épocas pasadas ?aunque Dios sabe que así ha sido. La tragedia es que lo ascendimos a hombre-Dios, luego lo añadimos a la religión de Juan el Bautista que esperaba que ese hombre-Dios viniera para salvar el mundo para nosotros, mientras nos sentábamos en silencio a recitar cualesquier credos que nuestros pequeños cultos religiosos, políticos o sociales hayan declarado como la ortodoxia vigente. Tomamos al hombre que vivió y murió predicando contra las identidades divisivas y creamos un club alrededor de su nombre. Es un cruel e irónico destino para el simple judío de Galilea.

La tragedia es que este hombre extraño, este judío marginal sin familia, amigos, propiedad o trabajo realmente tenía algo que ofrecernos, y nadie lo quiere. Es demasiado duro. Pide demasiado de nosotros. Así que encontramos una ruta más simple. Hicimos miles de estatuas de este hombre, Jesús, a quien convertimos en un Hijo de Dios. Y rezamos para que, a través de su infinito poder, traiga la paz a este mundo en el que hacemos la guerra al identificarnos con nuestra irrelevante religión, nación, raza o territorio. Entonces decimos amén, salimos, y nos preparamos para los días de batalla contra los infieles de la iglesia de junto, del pueblo de junto, de la nación de junto.

Y entonces imagino el resto de la historia. Imagino que por todo el mundo, conforme la gente sale de sus iglesias, dan la espalda a las imágenes y estatuas de Jesús que han hecho. Y luego de que todos se han ido, por todo el mundo, en la fría obscuridad de las iglesias vacías, todas las imágenes y estatuas empiezan a llorar?

The Four Faces of Jesus

© Davidson Loehr

April 29, 2001

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Prayer

We pray not to something, but from something, to which we must give voice;

not to escape from our life, but to focus it;

not to relinquish our mind, but to replenish our soul.

We pray that we may live with honesty:

that we can accept who we are,

and admit who we are not;

that we don’t become so deafened by pride and fear

that we ignore the still small voices within us,

that could lead us out of darkness.

We pray that we can live with trust and openness:

to those people, those experiences, and those transformations

that can save us from narrowness and despair.

And we pray on behalf of these hopes

with an open heart, an honest soul,

and a grateful reverence for the life which has been given to us.

AMEN.

SERMON: “The Four Faces of Jesus”

It was a time of terrible fighting. Everywhere people were divided into separate groups, like little clubs. And everywhere they fought against all the people who weren’t in their little club.

They all said they hated the fighting, of course. But they all knew that only the people in their little club were really right – and it is so important, being right. And as long as so many others were wrong – well, they all prayed that God would give them victory so the fighting could stop. But in the meantime, it was a time of terrible fighting.

One day a young magician came to the area. He didn’t belong to any of their clubs, but he was a wonderful magician who did some amazing tricks. And he had that kind of “star quality” about him that drew people to him. Many people loved watching him, though they didn’t much care for listening to him, because of the things he said to them.

What he said to them was that if they weren’t divided into so many little clubs, there wouldn’t be so much fighting. Their clubs, he told them, were the cause of their wars.

To the people, this was about the dumbest thing they had ever heard. Their little clubs gave them a tiny area of peace and friendship among people like themselves, in an otherwise hostile world. They liked their clubs. So they almost never listened when the magician tried to teach them. But they loved his magic, and so kept coming to watch him, and they started telling stories about what a great magician he was.

Years later, after the young magician died, a funny thing happened, though it wouldn’t have seemed funny to the magician. People formed a new club. And to be in this new club, you had to believe all the stories they told about the young magician. They even made pictures and statues of him, and put them up in their meeting-places, so people could remember how great he had been.

The club became very popular, and soon had thousands of members. Before long, they even had an army.

That’s when they finally decided that they could use their army to end the fighting once and for all. Their priests and generals went to their meeting-places – which had become churches – and sort of talked to the pictures and statues of the dead magician, as if to ask his blessing. After all, hadn’t the young magician always talked about bringing peace?

Then they went to war. It was a long war, and many people were killed or wounded. But their army was bigger, so they won. And they forced many, many people to come into their club, because they wanted them to be right – it is just so important to be right.

After the battles, their priests and generals went to church to give thanks. They stood before the pictures and statues of the dead magician, and told him their proud story of the victorious battle.

That’s when the miracle happened. Just as all the priests and all the generals were looking up at the statues telling them about their successful wars, it happened: all the pictures and all the statues began to cry.

The young magician, of course, was Jesus.

There are risks in stripping a man like Jesus of his halo and asking what kind of man he was, and how wise his teachings really were. It offends the popular romantic picture of Jesus as the Son of God and supernatural savior of humankind. Yet for over two centuries, scholars have known that those were mythic attributes invented by his followers long after he died, and that the real Jesus was 100% human – since that’s the only category there is for us. Calling him a “son of God” was poetry, not biology or genetics. We don’t like in a world constructed in such a way that people can receive half their chromosomes from a human and the other half from a sky-god – and neither did they.

I want to respect the truth without worshiping the myth this morning, by suggesting that this man Jesus had at least four different aspects, or “faces.” One aspect was useless, a second – the most “magical” – was real, but not supernatural. A third was just wrong. Then there is that fourth face of Jesus, which still seems to look into our souls with uncomfortable accuracy.

1. Jesus as an Itinerant Cynic Sage

The first face of Jesus concerns his life style, his personal values, the kind of role model he would have been. This is the dimension of Jesus that has hardly even been discussed, because it is so bizarre. For instance, see how many sermons you’ve ever heard preached on these quotations attributed to Jesus:

“Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be a follower of me, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters – will not be worthy of me.” (Gospel of Thomas 55) – Not the text for a “family values” sermon!

On another occasion, a woman from the crowd spoke up and said to Jesus, “How fortunate is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” It was a conventional way of handing a compliment to the mother through the son, like saying “your mother must be very proud of you.” But Jesus replied, “How fortunate, rather, are those who listen to God’s teaching and observe it!” (the Q Gospel, in Luke 11:27-28). – This one would be a bad Mother’s Day text!

And the last quotation is the most extreme and the most famous. It comes from the gospel of Luke, where Jesus says “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Q Gospel in Luke 12: 51-53) – You seldom hear the Christian Right preaching on this one, either!

These sayings don’t fit the traditional picture of a sweet Jesus who preached family values. They show us some of Jesus’ personal values and lifestyle, and make him seem very strange and foreign, not to mention unappealing. For most of the styles of living that Jesus exemplified have never had many takers.

This is the profile of someone on the fringe of any culture at any time. Scholars recognize this profile, however. It was a marginal but well-known style of living in the ancient world. From about the fourth century BCE until the sixth century CE, there was a name for this style of living exemplified by Jesus. These were the people called cynics.

Some scholars describe Jesus as an “itinerant cynic sage.” The name itself is derogatory, given to the “cynics” by their detractors (the way most such names originate). It came from the Greek word for “dog,” and was meant to imply that cynics lived like dogs. They had no home, no property, no spouses, no fixed circle of friends, no jobs, and no love for the society in which they lived. Cynics didn’t offer a correction of society so much as they offered an alternative to society.

The best of the cynics were astute social critics: they were like secular versions of the Old Testament prophets, standing outside the accepted order of things, trying to subvert it.

Someone who could live a life in this manner had to be, among other things, extremely focused and dedicated to his particular vision. For history’s most famous cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, the vision was one of personal autonomy, freedom from the unnecessary demands of society. An old story makes the point:

The king’s messenger came to find Diogenes, who was squatting in the street, eating his simple meal of lentils. “The king invites you to come live in his castle,” said the messenger, “and be one of his court advisors.”

“Why should I?” asked Diogenes.

“Well for one thing,” said the messenger, “if you’d learn to curry favor with the king you wouldn’t have to eat lentils.”

“And if you would learn to like lentils,” replied Diogenes, “you wouldn’t have to curry favor with the king.”

The message of cynics was always extreme, and they were willing to sacrifice everything for it. Furthermore, they generally thought that everyone else would also be better off abandoning the society’s vision of life and adopting their cynic vision. Their message was to individuals. They didn’t belong to or care about a real community. They weren’t social reformers. They thought society was fundamentally wrong, and people should “tune in, turn on and drop out,” to recapture that slogan from the Hippie years.

Jesus fits very neatly into this conception of a cynic sage. He had no home, property or job. He didn’t respect the accepted images of “the good life” or the normal expectations made upon people in a civilized society – the religious and cultural rules that gave people their social identities, for example. His vision of the “Kingdom of God” was, for Jesus, the only thing worth living for. His parables presented the “Kingdom” in this extreme way over and over again: it was a “pearl of great price,” a “treasure buried in a field” for which the lucky finder would sell everything.

What must be noted about cynics, including Jesus, is that their message is never likely to be heard or followed except for the extremely marginal person – another cynic. Husbands, wives, children, the joy of working at a job, making a contribution to society, nationalism, ethnic or religious pride of identity – all these counted as nothing for cynics compared with their singular vision. In Jesus’ case, his entire family was treated as though they counted for nothing compared with his vision of the “Kingdom of God.” This doesn’t make Jesus exceptionally cold or uncaring, it just identifies him as one of history’s great cynics – and a sage whose vision was sometimes too extreme to be either useful or wise to the overwhelming majority of people who have ever lived, then or now.

And so the first face of Jesus was his cynic lifestyle. It was a huge part of who he was and what he valued. For nearly everyone in history except other cynics, however, it was not a wise road to follow, but a useless aberration.

2. Jesus the Faith-Healer

Virtually all biblical scholars agree that Jesus was a man with great charisma, and a remarkable ability for what we today call “faith healing.” While almost all scholars agree that the stories have been greatly exaggerated, and that scenes like”walking on water,” raising Lazarus from the dead or feeding 5,000 people from a few fish are all Christian mythmaking, the core fact remains that Jesus was primarily known in his time and in the early centuries as a gifted healer. It was this almost magical power that really attracted people to him, even if they didn’t understand, or didn’t want to hear, the things he wanted to teach. His followers also shared this healing power, though not to quite the same extent as did Jesus.

There is nothing here to debunk, except to note that this kind of charismatic power doesn’t necessarily imply that the healer is wise or good. There are still lots of faith healers today, from Oral Roberts to Bennie Han. Furthermore, the principle of faith healing is behind placebos — those sugar pills that can often make your symptoms disappear if you think they can. It is easy to think of other historical figures who also had immense charisma and personal power over other people, who were unwise or evil: Rasputin, Hitler, Jim Jones, Matthew Applewhite, and David Koresh come quickly to mind. Not all wise people are magicians, and not all magicians are wise. Still, Jesus was one of history’s gifted faith healers.

3. Young Idealist Without a Concept of the “Sangha”

The third face of Jesus shows a severe limit to his vision, one that would have almost undoubtedly relegated him to the dustbin of history without the contributions of St. Paul. That statement alone is enough to upset or enrage many who love Jesus and can’t stand Paul.

The ethical teaching most associated with Jesus is the Golden Rule. While he is reported to have said it means to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” it has also been equated for twenty centuries with another of Jesus’ sayings: “turn the other cheek.” Some radical Christian sects, like the 14th Century Cathari group in France or the 16th century Mennonites in Germany, took this literally and refused to resist the violence of others altogether. This led to the slaughter of thousands or tens of thousands of Cathari, and the slaughter of most of the first generation of Mennonites.

It wasn’t a new teaching. It had been around at least five hundred years before Jesus came along. We know this because we have the story of one of Confucius’ followers asking him five centuries earlier what he thought of the idea of repaying evil with forgiveness. Confucius thought it was a dumb idea. “With what, then,” he asked, “will you repay goodness?” Instead, Confucius taught that we should repay evil with justice and repay good with good. Confucius lived to be much older than Jesus did; perhaps this just shows the greater wisdom of a much older man.

Others have said that if you want to see a place where people have lived by the rule of turning the other cheek, go to a battered women’s shelter. It was a very idealistic teaching, but not a wise one, unless you are in a community where all are treated with respect.

And that’s the second and more important limitation on the teachings of Jesus. All of his teachings were directed to individuals. He did not come to reform Judaism; he didn’t come to start a new religion or found a new church. He had no home, no job, no community, and he never addressed the necessity for a healthy community in his teachings.

A quick look at Buddhism can help understand what Jesus omitted. Buddhists say you must have three things to become awake, enlightened. You must have Buddha, dharma, and sangha. Buddha means a center, a source of authority and inspiration. Dharma means the personal work that you must do. Jesus, you could say, taught that you must have God and dharma: you must live as God wants you to live. But he had nothing at all to say about the sangha. The sangha is the supportive community devoted to serving these high ideals, like a good church. And the Buddhists are right: we’re not likely to do the growth and awakening we need alone. We need a supportive community, a faith community, a church. Jesus never mentioned this.

It’s ironic Ð especially for people who like Jesus but dislike Paul Ð but the concern for community was what Paul contributed, making it possible to create a religion out of the memories, myths and teachings of Jesus. Without Paul, Jesus was just another teacher who stressed individual duties but neglected to address the necessity of being part of a community of faith.

4. Subverter of Artificial Identities

It’s hard to know what to call the fourth face of Jesus. As all biblical scholars know, Jesus’ primary concern was for what he called the Kingdom of God. What Jesus meant by this Kingdom of God was fundamentally different from what most Christians have meant by the phrase. Properly understood, it was Jesus’ most radical teaching. It was also his most profound and timeless, and his fourth “face.”

The phrase “the kingdom of God” wasn’t unique to Jesus. It was a popular phrase in the first two centuries, used by many people. It meant the ideal world, the kind of world that could have the most compassion and justice. John the Baptist, who had been Jesus’ teacher, said the world was too far gone to save, that we should wait for God to destroy it all and start over with the right kind of people — those who believed as John the Baptist did.

After John the Baptist was killed and the end of the world didn’t come, Jesus emerged as a charismatic leader, and many of John’s followers began following him. But Jesus’ message was very different. John’s “kingdom” was to be supernatural; for Jesus, the kingdom of God was existential, here and now, not in a world to come.

For Jesus, the Kingdom of God wasn’t coming. It was already here, at least potentially, within and among us. Or as he said in another place, the kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don’t see it.

How do you rejuvenate a hostile world? That has almost always been the question to which our greatest sages have offered their different prescriptions. For John the Baptist, as for many apocalyptic preachers today, we have to wait for God to act. For Jesus, God was waiting for us to act. And we act, we create the kingdom of God, or the best possible world, simply by treating all others as our brothers and sisters, as children of God. What Jesus was doing was attacking and subverting exclusive identities, identities that make us feel special or “chosen” at the price of casting others into a second-class status.

This sounds sweet and nice, but it’s a dangerous thing to teach. For instance, the food laws of the Jews set them apart from their neighbors. So Jesus’ instructions to his followers were to eat whatever was set before them: pork, shellfish, goat, whatever the host was serving. The Jews hated the Samaritans, who bordered them to the north, more than they hated almost anyone. So Jesus told a story about a beaten Jew lying by the side of the road, when priests passed him by and the only person who helped him was a Samaritan. During their high holy days, the Jews ate only unleavened bread. So Jesus said the kingdom of God is like leaven that you put in dough to make it rise. Over and over, he spurned the artificial identities that set us apart from others. There was only one identity possible for us in the Kingdom of God: to treat one another as brothers and sisters.

Do you see how subversive this is? This is a message that could threaten any form of government, all ideologies, and all religious or racial identities. The world is in chaos, we’ve lost a shared center, so we create a hundred little artificial centers, or “clubs,” from which we get our identities. The problem is, they’re all too small, all exclude those who believe or live differently than we do, and so they’re precisely the structures that keep the world hostile.

Today, his message might be Stop joining clubs! Stop identifying yourselves with your nation, your race, your religion, your political party or your sex. All of these are ultimately divisive identities that make a peaceful world impossible. You want the Kingdom of God? You want a world of peace and justice? It’s in your hands, and only in your hands. You’ve been given everything you need, now it’s time to act.

This is a message that would still get the messenger killed almost anywhere in the world. Imagine going into Northern Ireland a few years back, telling the fighters that neither side is Christian, both are agents of evil, and they need to stop thinking of themselves as Protestants and Catholics, because those identities are themselves the problem. The only thing the two sides would agree on would be lynching you from the nearest tree.

Imagine trying to sell that message to the Jews and Palestinians, telling them the only way to stop the murderous fighting is to grow beyond thinking of themselves as merely Jews or Palestinians, and begin seeing each other as brothers and sisters, the children of God. You’d be shot!

I don’t want to imply that Jesus was the only person in history to see this vision of a world kept small and hostile by our artificial identities and our territorial impulses. You can find this idea that we are all brothers and sisters in many religions, many cultures. You also find it in cultures that never had contact with any Western civilization. Remember these lines from this morning’s responsive reading by the Lakota Sioux Medicine Man Black Elk:

And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight. And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

These things aren’t true just because Jesus or Black Elk or the others said them. They are true because they have seen to the essence of what it means to be human, with a clarity few people in history have ever had. I don’t know of any way to argue against that insight. It seems deeply, profoundly, eternally correct. Our human or animal tendencies to create artificial identities for ourselves are the original sin of our species. We feel bigger and more worthwhile as parts of a family, a nation, a race, a culture. So naturally we join the little clubs and wave their flags, and we wait for Jesus’ second coming so there might be peace in the world.

The real tragedy of a man like Jesus isn’t that he has had so much silly hokum dumped on him through the ages – though God knows he has. The tragedy is that we elevated him into a man-God, then joined the religion of John the Baptist who expected this man-God to come save the world for us, as we sat silently by reciting whatever creeds our little religious or political or social cult has declared to be the current orthodoxy. We took the man who lived and died preaching against divisive identities, and created a club around his name. It is a cruel and ironic fate for the simple Jew from Galilee.

The tragedy is that this strange man, this marginal Jew without family, friends, property or job, really did have something to offer us, and nobody wants it. It’s too hard. It asks too much of us. So we found a simpler route. We made thousands of mental and physical pictures and statues of this man Jesus, whom we turned into a Son of God. And we pray that he, through his infinite power, will bring peace to this world in which we’re making war by identifying with our tiny religion, nation, party, race or territory. Then we say Amen, go outside, and prepare for the day’s battle against the infidels in the next church, next town, next nation.

And then I imagine the rest of the story. I imagine that all over the world, as people leave their churches, they turn their backs on the pictures and statues of Jesus they’ve made. And after they’ve gone, all over the world, in the cold darkness of the empty churches, all of the pictures and all of the statues begin to cry.

Forgiveness is Possible

© Barbara Coeyman

22 April 2001

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

The Sunflower: A Story of Forgiveness

I want to tell you a story this morning about a man named Simon. Well, it’s actually a story about forgiveness. So before I tell you about Simon, I want to ask you:

Who could explain to me what forgiveness is?…

Could one person tell me someone you’d like to forgive, or maybe did forgive?

Could one person tell me about how you’ve been forgiven by someone else?

Well let me tell you about Simon. This story is true, and it happened about 60 years ago, during a very bad time in the world, during the Holocaust. In the Holocaust millions of Jewish people were put in Nazi prisons-what they called concentration camps-and many were killed.

Simon was a young Jewish man from Poland. Simon was confined to a concentration camp. One day he was called from his work detail at a hospital to the bedside of Karl, who was an SS officer from Stuttgart. That is, Karl was part of the people who persecuted the Jews. Karl was 21 and he was dying after being wounded in fighting.

When Simon walked into Karl’s room, Karl was clutching a letter from his mother and he was crying. He knew he was dying. He also knew that he had done many horrible things to many Jewish people, including setting a house on fire and shooting some of the people who tried to run out of the burning house. Karl felt very guilty. He wanted to talk to a Jew like Simon because he said he wanted to die in peace. So he asked Simon if Simon, on behalf of all the millions of Jews in Europe, would forgive him for all these Horrible things he had done. He thought that if Simon would forgive he, he could die in peace.

Simon was so startled by this story, that he didn’t know what to say to Karl. So he said nothing. He walked away and said he’d come back tomorrow to talk about Karl’s Request some more.

That night, when Simon got back to the concentration camp, he couldn’t stop – Talking about this scene with Karl to his friends, and he couldn’t sleep that night. He was so torn about whether he should tell Karl he forgave him.

Before I finish the story of Simon, I was just wondering: what would any of you have done if you had been Simon? Would you have forgiven this man who did many horrible things to you or your family or your people?

Well, let me tell you how the story ended. When Simon went back to Karl’s bed the next day, he found it empty. Karl had died during the night. Simon never gave Karl the chance to be forgiven before Karl died.

Simon was one of the lucky Jews. He survived the Holocaust. And he lost a lot more than one night’s sleep over Karl’s request. This incident with Karl haunted him for years afterwards, so much that he wrote a book about this. He called this book The Sunflower, because the story reminded him of fields of sunflowers that were near the hospital and the concentration camp. The sun- flowers reminded him of life and hope and beauty which can survive, even through horrible events like the Holocaust.

So I want you to take Simon’s story away with you, and think about someone you’d like to forgive, or maybe someone who you’d like to be forgiven by. And how hard forgiveness can sometimes be.

Forgiveness is Possible

Dr. Loehr is at the southwest district meeting this weekend. This is the first time I’ve been in this pulpit since I received the invitation to Portland next year. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a little over two years since I preached my first sermon from this pulpit. I am thankful for the many opportunities this and other UU churches here in central Texas have provided me to hone my ministerial skills. I’m also looking forward to challenges awaiting me in Portland.

Recently one of my seminary profs gave a pep talk to us seniors about to enter ministry. He reminded us that worship services and sermons can vary a great deal, from individual to individual and from Sunday to Sunday. Some services, he said, seem like the finest four-star meal at Fonda San Miguel. Other services are more like take-out from MacDonalds…… I’ll leave it to each of you to decide how you are nourished this morning.

I want to frame my sermon on forgiveness with two readings. The first, by Raymond Baughan, is short, but may pull us into a framework for thinking about forgiveness.

When my anger’s over

may the world be young again

as after the rain –

the cool clean promise

and the dance of branches glistening green

 – Raymond John Baughan: The Sound of Silence, 1965

  I want to tell you about an experience I had about six years ago with some church friends back in Pittsburgh which could have used some forgiveness. An ad-hoc committee planned to re-organize our church’s music program. Things were going along really well, when suddenly our planning fell apart, I think largely because of a few avoidable mis-communications. Ill feelings over music carried into other parts of church life. The music program was never reorganized and several of us lost valued friendships, I suspect for good.

All five of us on the committee probably messed up. Thinking back, there were Things each of us could have done to help the mix-up. For myself, I probably took the incident more seriously than some others. I felt lots of emotion because I really liked the people on this committee and was sad to loose their friendship. I wanted to make amends, but for whatever reasons, we didn’t. I hoped for wholeness, but relationships were broken. I wanted to forgive and be forgiven, but it was not to be. But I didn’t push toward forgiveness because some others on the committee did not feel the same need I did. We had really different understandings of forgiveness. Given that we were in a church context, like Simon in our ‘Sunflower’ story, I started to feel confused about forgiveness. If you don’t find forgiveness at church, where can you find it?

This music incident certainly was not as serious as the harm of Jews Simon was asked to forgive. In our musical problems, no one was physically hurt, even though there was emotional distress. But the incident started me thinking about forgiveness. Why did forgiveness seem so remote, so ungraspable? What is the role of forgiveness in the personal, social, religious, and political communities we live in?

As part of a course on liberal ethics at the UU seminary Meadville/Lombard in Chicago this past January, I returned to the topic forgiveness. I was quite surprised when my research yielded little about forgiveness in the context of liberal religion and ethics. I looked in various Unitarian Universalist materials. For example, forgiveness is not mentioned in our seven principles: like the word ‘love,’ which is also not in the principles, ‘forgiveness’ seems like an allusive quality. There are several hymns and readings on forgiveness in the UU hymnal, but there’s also not much about forgiveness on the UU web- site. Even that liberal ethics course included very little on forgiveness.

What was this all about? Was this situation in Pittsburgh purely personal and isolated: that is, was that break-down just something about us? Or was there something about that particular church context? Or, is there something more pervasive in liberal ethics and religion which skirts the topic of forgiveness?

CHARACTERISTICS OF FORGIVENESS

I thought I might find better answers to my search if I understood better what forgiveness looks like. Forgiveness can be situated in so many different contexts-in spirituality, in ethics, in religion, in psychology. Forgiveness is explained by a variety of criteria. Let’s review some of these.

For one, the theologian Paul Tillich explains forgiveness as continuing to accept one who has hurt us. Forgiveness is a process involving two individuals or groups between whom there has been an injury, trespass, other offense significant enough to require resolution (Kushner). Forgiveness can occur between individuals, or in a community such as a church, or among larger units such as nations. One-sided forgiveness is possible, but not as effective as mutual forgiveness. Forgiveness can also be of the self, as if the self is divided into two parties. Sometimes self-forgiveness is the most difficult: we tend to be hard on ourselves, we often have trouble lightening up. Tillich also keeps forgiveness in check. Some harms are not severe enough for forgiveness: it’s important to know which harms should be forgotten, not forgiven. Clearly, Karl’s offenses against Jews were not forgetable.

Second, Forgiveness involves both admitting wrongdoing and accepting admission of wrongdoing from the other: forgiving and being forgived. Harold Kushner hopes that admission of wrongdoing takes the form of guilt-that is, judgment of self about the act precipitating forgiveness-and not shame-judgment from others that the core nature of other people is rotten.

Circumstances calling for forgiveness are often located in parts of ourselves involving intense creativity or emotion: like work, parenting, sex, and mortality. These areas are all very much a part of the human condition. Nevertheless, we often tend to apologize for wanting forgiveness in these core parts of life.

Also, Forgiveness is intentional. We CAN choose not to forgive. Mutual intentionality is best-both parties want forgiveness-but sometimes forgiveness is for one side only, as already mentioned. For example, incest is often described in terms of one-sided forgiveness, important for the victims but not the perpetrators. Sometimes forgiveness is not appropriate at all- there may be serious injury we choose not to forgive (Rodney Jones poem). But it is also important to remember that forgiving is NOT forgetting. If we forget, we risk repeating past wrongs. If we forget, we miss the process of transformation which forgiveness makes possible.

Finally, thus we see that forgiveness is practical, or I like to describe it as performative. We can’t just think forgiveness, we need to do it. Doing for- giveness brings about changes to relationships. Forgiveness can re-stabilize a temporarily broken relationship. Forgiveness leads to RECONCILIATION. Forgiveness makes a future possible. Forgiveness helps us get rid of grudges and find peace.

FORGIVENESS IN LIBERAL THOUGHT

Even after considering all these dimensions of forgiveness, I still wonder about the absence of forgiveness in liberal religious and ethical thought. I admit that as I read Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower I sensed that forgiveness was a much more common part of both Jewish and Christian cultures in the 1940s than I know today in our postmodern culture. In fact, maybe forgiveness is not so much a religious or ethical issue today, but instead a culture one. Maybe we postmodern humans just don’t do forgiveness these days?

At the risk of over-generalizing, could we critique a collective liberal position regarding forgiveness for a few minutes. Is there something about a liberal mindset which is less than compatible with forgiveness? Can you see your- self in any of these possibilities?

Historically, liberal faith has represented self-reliance and independence of the human spirit. Might these qualities work against admitting culpability and wrongdoing in situations which require forgiveness?

Also, if we misunderstand forgiveness to mean forgetting, we might thus equate forgiveness with giving up control. My Pittsburgh friends could not accept MY forgiving them because to do so would have meant admitting that THEY were also affected by our broken relationship: they would have had to admit that they too were vulnerable, to being hurt and also to hurting others.

Also, while the principles of Unitarian Universalism theoretically promote respect for the inherent worth and dignity of all persons, is there ever any time when we exercise our respect categorically? Do we decide that some per- sons may be more worthy of respect and thus forgiveness than others? Sometimes I wonder if we confuse inherent worth with tangible worth.

Perhaps most persuasively, for seekers in liberal religion, forgiveness may be associated with other religious experiences based on admission of original sin, confession, and general human inadequacy. Usually in religions which advance such theologies, forgiveness is generated only by God rather than humans. In contrast, the liberal view grants humans much more agency and control in forgiveness, but we may shy away from talking about forgiveness at all because of past experiences with this more incriminating approach.

FINDING VIABLE SOURCES

While any of my proposals about forgiveness and liberal views might be theoretically true to some extent, I also know that there are many forgiving persons in our community, indeed, in this sanctuary this very Sunday morning. So rather than categorize or rationalize too much, I’m willing to chalk up that Pittsburgh incident to individual circumstances. However, I also don’t want to back down on my observation that forgiveness could be much more in evidence in our written materials and our worship practices. I’m beginning to find many resources which I think could be applied to and adopted by Unitarian Universalism.

I’ve had some moving forgiveness experiences recently in both Yom Kippur and Christian worship services, and read about forgiveness in bestsellers such as Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul. But the most stimulating ideas about forgiveness I’ve found recently appear in two books. The first is a rather scholarly work by Donald Shriver, former president of Union Seminary in New York City. In a book called An Ethic for Enemies, Shriver discusses forgiveness in Politics-and he doesn’t mean just in Florida. Shriver envisions forgiveness between nations and other large groups of people. Forgiveness and justice are closely related. His thesis is that ‘the leftover debris’ which ‘clogs the relationship of diverse groups of humans around the world’ will never clear up until forgiveness enters these relationships. – Shriver refers frequently to Rodney King’s plea after the Los Angeles race riots that we all get along. Without forgiveness, Shrivers reminds us, we will repeat the crimes of our ancestors.

Shriver’s theory is already being implement in South Africa, where forgiveness is the core of Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu derived forgiveness from his Ubuntu (U-BUN-tu) theology. Ubuntu theology might be a worthy inspiration for liberal western forgiveness. Meaning ‘humanity,’ ‘Ubuntu’ theology believes that religion and politics cannot be separated. Ubuntu promotes community, interdependence, and mutual support, unlike the typical western ideology of independence, self-sufficiency, and hierarchy. Ubuntu’s central tenet sounds a lot like UU’s 7th principle: that we promote respect for the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part.

Wrote Desmond Tutu: –

… I have gifts that you do not have, so, consequently, I am unique. You have gifts that I have, so you are unique. God has made us so that we will need each other. We are made for a delicate network of interdependence. (Tutu 35). 

However, Community cannot be sustained without forgiveness, even forgiveness toward perpetrators of apartheid. Desmond Tutu’s recent book title tells it all: No Future without Forgiveness. There is no future if we don’t confront past hurt and injury. Unresolved conflict will destroy God’s community. The humans in God’s community must take responsibility for forgiveness. –

*******

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

How can we become even more forgiving? Since love and forgiveness are integrally related, a proactive mentality toward forgiveness can help us live more lovingly with everyone, even if we do not have specific wrongdoing to work through. Sherrill’s song?

If I had known Desmond Tutu’s vision of forgivenness a few years ago, how might I have dealt differenlty with my friends in Pittsburgh?

-Tutu’s political base might have reminded me not to shy away from issues which require forgiveness, even if we suspect that the other party could hold power over us. In not confronting these issues, we actually reinforce the power and never find forgiveness. – –

– Tutu would have reminded me not to forget about the incident. Forgetting risks repeating past wrongs. – –

– Tutu may have reminded me that if one person hurts, all persons of a community hurt. Ubuntu might have inspired me to re-write our seventh principles, to read something like this: we promote ‘respect for the interdependent web of existence which is sustained by hope for the future through forgiveness and reconciliation.’

So as we asked the children earlier, let us ask ourselves again, who would you like to forgive? Is there anyone you would like forgiveness from? Forgiveness IS possible, and thus a future of reconciliation, hope, and love. For our closing frame, listen to these words of Sara Moores Campbell: – –

… when we invite the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from some of the destructive hold the past has on us. Our hatred, our anger, our need to feel wronged – those will destroy us, whether a relationship is reconciled or not.

But we cannot just will ourselves to enter into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it, and still not be able to.

However, We can be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn’t of our own making. Its power is rooted in love.a transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invited the power of love to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival. (Montgomery 43).

***********

CONCLUSION

Archbishop Tutu believes we have no future without forgiveness. What lies in your future, in your personal relationships, in your community and church life, in your hope for our state and our nation and the world.

Under the cover of war

Davidson Loehr

April 21, 2001 

OPENING

Under the cover of war, stories circulate that all is not well with our nation, that serious things are amiss:

  • hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned from our economy and given to selected corporations
  • civil liberties being curtailed and threatened – some say dangerously
  • growing evidence that our government knew of the September 11th attacks in advance, and may even have known specific details, including the targets.

As people of faith who are also proud Americans, these things must both concern and disturb us. If true, they have profound implications for our lives and for the soul of America. This morning and next Sunday, we gather to ask some hard and necessary questions. Our gathering is sanctified by the high and serious purposes that collect us.

And so once more, it is a sacred time, this and a sacred place, this:

a place for questions more profound than answers,

vulnerability more powerful than strength,

and a peace that can pass all understanding.

It is a sacred time, this:

Let us begin it together in song.

PUPPET SHOW:

CHARACTERS:

Two raccoons

Dragon

Baby Dragon (same voice as the 2nd raccoon)

– So only three voices for this one, though four characters.

All three characters appear at the beginning. The dragon is in the middle, with one raccoon on each side of him/her. The sex of the dragon doesn’t matter, whoever you have who’d like to be a good dragon here.

RACOON 1: (Doing a double-take at the dragon, looking around it to the 2nd raccoon, who’s also doing a double-take at the dragon and looking around it to the 1st raccoon). Hey! Like, uh, like you look a lot like a dragon!

DRAGON: (Dragon is always very cool, very in control.) Like, uh, that’s because I am a dragon – dude.

RACCOON 2: Wow! A dragon! I’ve never seen a real dragon before!

DRAGON: Most raccoons haven’t. Say, you’re a really good-looking raccoon!

(RAC2 kind of sashays, blushes, is really flattered.)

RAC1: Hey! Like what about me over here?

DRAGON: You wouldn’t think a dragon would be able to tell the difference between raccoons, would you? You’d think that to a dragon, you’d all look alike. But dragons can see some things very clearly, even though we don’t have good eyesight for big pictures.

RAC1: Well (grumbling) you sure are different from us, that’s for sure!

RAC2: Yes, you’re so very different from raccoons!

DRAGON: (To RAC2) Very different, very different. Tell me, what do raccoons do all day?

RAC1: Well, we work mostly at night.

(Dragon can upstage, turning his head when RAC1 answered his question to RAC2 with kind of condescending body language, then turning avidly, almost warmly, back to pay attention to RAC2 when RAC2 speaks.)

RAC2: Yes. We hunt for food.

DRAGON: Food? You mean like a nice medium-rare steak dinner with asparagus?

RAC1: Hah! No man, more like canned food. You know, like garbage canned food.

(Dragon can again turn his head toward RAC1 to kind of put him down or dismiss him through body language, before turning back to RAC2.)

DRAGON: (To RAC2) Oh, that’s not right, you should be eating steaks.

RAC2: (The flattery is working). Hey, you’re really nice, for a dragon. But what do you do all day?

DRAGON: Well, we guard the gold, mostly.

RAC1: The gold? Hey, gold’s so cool, ya know? Like what gold?

DRAGON: Oh, a whole mountain full of gold. Tons and tons of it. And diamonds and rubies and other jewels, too. (Looking at RAC2) Tons of the stuff. Here, like this. (Hands RAC2 either some gold, or a necklace, or jewels – whatever is easiest to handle that comes under the heading of “loot”).

RAC2: Oh, wow! Is this stuff real?

DRAGON: Is it real? Why, it’s as real as you are, you gorgeous little raccoon.

RAC2: Ooooooh! (Putting it on or looking at it, adoring the loot, whatever works.)

RAC1: (caustically mocking) “Your gorgeous little raccoon.” Argh! Like man, make me barf, why don’t you? Like whose gold is this you’re guarding?

RAC2: Oh, it’s probably the people’s gold, right? And you’re keeping it safe for them, huh?

DRAGON: (The dragon is much too powerful ever to need to lie). The gold belongs to the rich masters who own the people. They own the mountain, too. We work for them. And we get special things for doing it. (Dragon looks over to RAC2 with this last remark, as it’s intended to make RAC2 ask what special things.)

RAC1: What, you guard gold some rich finks have stolen from the workers? Karl Marx wouldn’t like that.

DRAGON: No, neither would Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson. But Milton Friedman does.

RAC2: What special things do you get for guarding all that gold? (RAC2 is getting interested, and starting to take the dragon’s side).

DRAGON: (Dragon turns full toward RAC2, ignoring RAC1) Well, we get to fly, and we can breathe fire whenever we feel like it, and everybody is afraid of us. Here, would you like some more gold/jewels? (Gives more to RAC2).

RAC1: Fly? Hey, I wish I could fly! Can you teach me to fly?

DRAGON: (Slowly, and barely, turning to acknowledge RAC1) Sorry, fuzzbutt. That’s for dragons. (To RAC2) But you might be able to fly!

RAC2: Me? Really? Me fly? Oh like wow, that’s so cool!

RAC1: Hey, how come he might fly but not me? Like, that’s not right, man!

DRAGON: (Ignoring RAC1, talking to RAC2). Here, you need some more gold/jewels. Aren’t they nice?

RAC2: (Loaded down with jewels/gold). Oh, these are just beautiful. And they must be worth a fortune!

DRAGON: They are. Several fortunes. And there’s a lot more where they came from, believe me.

RAC2: Oh, I’d love to see it!

DRAGON: Would you? Then here, have some more (gives a big pile of loot to RAC2. RAC2 starts SINKING under the weight, and as he sinks below the stage, the dragon speaks down to him.) – There you go, there you go! See how easy this was? And look at you! You look marvelous!

RAC1: (Feeling – and being – very ignored and left out). Hey, like I don’t know why we’re bothering with you at all, you scaley old lizard. Come on, you gorgeous little raccoon, let’s go. (Looking over around the dragon, sees that the other raccoon is gone.) Hey! Hey, lizard-face! Where’s my friend? Bring back my friend right now!

DRAGON: (Looks down below stage level.) Ah. Yes. Wonderful. (Turning to RAC1) OK, fuzzbutt. See how beautiful your old friend looks now!

BABY DRAGON: (But with the same voice that RAC2 had – the voice needs to be characteristic enough to be easily identifiable.) Oh my gosh! Look what’s happened to me! Why, I’m not a raccoon at all any more! I’m a ? a?

DRAGON: You’re a baby dragon! Congratulations! Now you really are gorgeous!

RAC1: Hey, hey! This isn’t right! This is all wrong!

BABY DRAGON: Watch your lip, fuzzbutt.

RAC1: Hey, he called me Fuzzbutt! What is this?

DRAGON: This, my dull-witted friend, is what this story was about.

RAC1: What? What? I thought this was a story about how different raccoons are from dragons! DRAGON: Nope. This was a story about how to turn a raccoon into a dragon. (Turning to baby dragon) Let’s fly away, baby, we’ve got a date with a big mountain of gold and jewels! (They start flying away, out of sight.)

RAC1: Hey, that’s not right! That’s not right! The story can’t end this way! I don’t like this! This isn’t the end!

BABY DRAGON: (Either just the voice, or the baby dragon comes back up) Sure it is, Duuude. It’s all over. We win and you lose. (Beats raccoon on the head with the THE END sign, though nobody can read the sign because it’s horizontal while he’s beating raccoon with it. Raccoon disappears from sight, saying “I don’t like this, I don’t like this!”)

After RAC1 disappears, Baby Dragon holds the sign up for the audience to see:

THE END

CENTERING:

500 years ago, Martin Luther said “War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families.

35 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. said “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

I want to talk with you about our nation’s body and soul this morning. Yet I know there are some here who have come with other needs, needs unrelated to this war.

Some come bearing the pain of private, personal wars: hurts and fears that are much with you this morning. Some come needing comfort, or quiet moments, or the hope of finding someone, somehow, with whom you can share your story. Some come for the first time, wondering what kind of church this is, hoping the service will be typical, and an informative introduction to this style of liberal religion, of being human religiously.

Whoever you are, however you have come to us this morning, I welcome you, and am glad you are with us today. If you have a personal matter or would just like someone to listen, please phone the church office and leave a confidential message in the appropriate mail box. We have a listening ministry of trained church members who can meet with you. And I am available to talk or meet with you. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock, and the doors shall be opened.

For now, let us take some quiet moments to center ourselves. If you like, you can light a candle of memory or hope during the quiet music.

SERMON

How do you turn a raccoon into a dragon? According to the puppet show, you do it by giving them wealth and privilege until they get used to it. In real life, the question and answers are more complex.

The real question is more like “How do you command and control others, to get them to serve your agenda rather than their own? How do you colonize people?”

This sounds like a political coup, so we think of things like armies, guns, loud noises and the smell of gunpowder. But these loud and rude acts only give you the opportunity to win the people’s mind and heart. Really to win them, or to colonize them, takes more subtle means. Still, it can be put simply: To control people, you need to write their story. You need to write the rules of the game that assign them supporting roles in a story that benefits you – and get them to want to do this.

Most religious teaching teaches us that we live in stories. We don’t live in “facts,” but within the stories that assign those “facts” their meanings. These are our life stories, our myths, our necessary fictions. On a personal level, there are many such stories: be pure, be reliable, be hard-working, witty, popular, prove that daddy was right about us, or prove that daddy wasn’t right about us. We have, between us, hundreds of such personal life scripts that assign us some of our life roles.

But I want to talk about larger stories today. I want to back off and look at the stories we live out, and live out of, as a society. This too could get complex, but I want to keep it simple, by looking at our “official” story – that we are a democracy – and the “real” story that has usually controlled our society – that we are some kind of an aristocracy. Democracy, while a high and noble-sounding ideal, is such an unlikely form of government! Even back when our colonies still belonged to England, there were skeptics. Here are some lines from an 18th century English historian that sound very modern. I haven’t been able to shake them, maybe they’ll stick with you too:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always voters for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. (Alexander Tyler)

Let’s not pretend that this is easy, or that all good people are naturally and solely on the side of democracy here. If you could get the government to give you money that came from other people’s taxes, wouldn’t you take it? If it were legal, if you could actually get other people to pay your way, how long would it take you to rationalize it? I could do it in ten seconds. The problem is how to do it. How can you get other people to support you?

You do it, again, by getting others to play roles in your preferred story. So let’s go back to America’s stories. Since the 17th century, there have been two primary stories that have vied with each other for control of our society. Their descendents still do.

In the language of those writers, it was the choice between rule by the “masters of mankind” and “the majority of mankind.” It is the rule of the many by the few, or of all by the many. Or, in just single words, it is the choice between an aristocracy and a democracy.

Which is better? We have all been trained to answer “democracy, of course!” But opinions have always been divided on this, as they are today, and even in this room. John Locke, the English philosopher who influenced many of our own Founding Fathers, thought it must be an aristocracy because he didn’t trust the masses. He said that “day-laborers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairymaids” must be told what to believe: “The greatest part cannot know and therefore they must believe,” he said. Many still agree with him.

Thomas Jefferson took the other side. He said aristocrats are “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.” Jefferson’s “democrats,” on the other hand, “identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as honest and safe?.”

Those who excel, after all, want excellence to rule. The vast majority want the needs of the vast majority to write the laws, so that all citizens can live rich, empowered lives that allow them to become the most that they can become, whatever that is.

The one story seeks government through command and control; the other, through empowerment and trust. You can already hear which one is more vulnerable and less likely to win, can’t you?

Still, there’s a tactical problem. How will the more powerful and wealthy (for example) pull this off, when they are the distinct minority? For all of our history, this battle between aristocrats and democrats has continued. For the first 150 years of our history, it sometimes seemed like a battle between those who had money and power, and everybody else. The courts (sometimes) kept regulating them through laws and statutes that limited their ability to earn profits at the expense of turning the rest of the country into subsistence-level workers or beggars.

The country, when it had a choice, wasn’t buying the story the aristocrats were trying to sell, and people weren’t willing to spend their lives as servants of the few. Here is the long story of labor disputes, monopoly and anti-trust laws, and other rulings designed to protect the rights of the majority from the extra power and skill of those who would be their rulers. If you know much American history, you already know all of this. There’s nothing new here.

But in the 20th century, something new did come along. It was a new invention that could become a tool powerful enough to let a smart few rule an unaware many. It came with mass communication, and was first noticed over 80 years ago, in WWI. It was the invention of propaganda. “Propaganda has only one object,” wrote one of its early masters: “to conquer the masses.” Propaganda is the tool used by a small minority to sell their story to a large majority. With enough slick spin, emotional power, and appeal to elemental yearnings and powerful symbols (as in “God bless America”), a few brilliant visionaries can convert and control an entire nation.

After WWI, people on both sides of the Atlantic wrote about this new invention. Adolph Hitler praised the British, and said the main reason that Germany lost the war was because its propaganda was so inferior to the British. He vowed to learn from the British.

And in this country too, President Woodrow Wilson formed a new group to adapt techniques of using propaganda to influence the American people in desired directions. This was in the 1920s. Let me read you a few quotes from that decade:

The great American journalist Walter Lippman was in President Wilson’s propaganda organization, along with Edward Bernays, who could be called the father of American propaganda. Bernays led the transfer of wartime propaganda skills to business’s peacetime problems of coping with democracy. When the war ended, he wrote, business “realized that the great public could now be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed during the war to the national cause, and the same methods could do the job.”

And the payoff? In the words of one of these early propagandists: “If the others let a minority conquer the state, then they must also accept the fact that we will establish a dictatorship.” There is the end of democracy that the 18th century English historian warned about. Once a group learns how to manipulate the masses to its own ends, democracy ends, replaced by a dictatorship, a rule of the few, an aristocracy. This last quote came from Joseph Goebbles, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. It was also Goebbles who said that propaganda’s one object was to conquer the masses, just as he described the masses as “the weak, cowardly, lazy majority of people.”

But the masses – and you realize, I hope, that this means us. We are the masses over whom sly leaders vie for control – the masses weren’t thought of any more highly on this side of the Atlantic. Walter Lippman wrote of the “ignorance and stupidity of the masses.” The general public, he said, were mere “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who must not intrude in the management of public affairs, though they may be permitted to select periodically among the “responsible men” whose task it is to rule them.

Do you see that this is the tool the aristocracy had needed since our country began, a tool to let them write the story for the masses, to put a command and control government in place of a government of empowerment and trust. The invention of propaganda and its immediate use after WWI is one of the most important stories of the 20th century.

Propaganda was talked about pretty openly during its early years, before people realized that wasn’t a very smart thing to do. In 1934, the new president of the American Political Science Association said in his presidential address that government should be in the hands of “an aristocracy of intellect and power,” not directed by “the ignorant, the uninformed.” “The public must be put in its place,” added Walter Lippman, so that the “responsible men” may “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd” as they rule them.

That “bewildered herd” – that’s us too, you know.

This is a chapter of American history we must know if we are to understand who is running our country and how they run it. But we don’t know it, do we? Why do you suppose that is?

This is a lot of new and probably strange information. Let me try to sum it up in a clear and simple way, borrowing from the writings of Alex Carey (Taking the Risk Out of Democracy):

There were three key developments in the 20th century which have shaped the world we’re living in today: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Corporate propaganda directed outwards toward the public has two main goals: to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions – the only forces capable of checking the complete domination of society by corporations – with tyranny, oppression and subversion. The techniques used to do this are variously called “public relations,” “corporate communications” and “economic education.”

Corporate propaganda directed inwards to employees has the purpose of weakening the links between union members and their unions. From about 1920 through the present, US business made great progress towards the ideal of a democracy managed through corporate propaganda.

Those who run the best corporations didn’t get where they are by being stupid. They are among the most savvy and quick people in our society; few Ph.D.s would stand a chance against them in their court. Those who were entrusted with corporate power realized that one of the best investments they can make with their money is to invest in buying the politicians who make the laws.

Current struggles to pass meaningful campaign finance reform are attempts to undo this powerful structure of command and control by corporations. But for the past couple decades, many or most of our major political candidates are, like used BMWs, “pre-owned vehicles.” In order to get the money they need to compete in American elections, they must get large investments from large business interests. And for those investments, they owe something once they’re in office. They owe their investors the effort to slant the laws of the land in ways that let their investors “vote themselves money from the public treasure,” as that 18th century historian put it.

What does this mean? It means weakening or eliminating controls on environmental pollution or toxic emissions or burial of radioactive waste, letting chemical companies like Monsanto infect the entire continent’s wheat and corn crops with genetically modified organisms that have not, and can not be, tested.

It means reducing the taxes corporations pay, and shifting that tax burden to the citizens those of us in the bewildered herd, so that they can vote themselves money out of our personal treasuries. It means breaking unions, and redefining the economy as one that revolves around the price of stocks rather than the ability of regular citizens to earn good livings through an honest day’s work.

You can see how corporate investments in political candidates work by looking at NAFTA. NAFTA was carefully crafted as an investor rights agreement. It can’t be considered a worker’s rights agreement. Opening the borders means that America’s higher-paid workers must now compete with the far cheaper labor in Mexico. This threat has been used routinely to break American union demands for decent wages and benefits. If they refuse, the manufacturing is simply moved to northern Mexico, to workers who have low pay and few benefits, but see it as an improvement over abject poverty. NAFTA is an investor rights agreement. It is paying dividends on the financial investment that corporations and wealthy individuals made in our elections. They helped elect their candidate, and they want payback. It is only fair.

Or you can see how the paybacks from investing in elections work by looking at Texas’ own, Enron’s former CEO Kenneth Lay. Lay was the biggest single investor in George W. Bush’s campaign for president. In return for this investment, Lay was able to appoint White House regulators, shape energy policies and block the regulation of offshore tax havens, Enron had “intimate contact with Taliban officials” and the energy giant’s much-reviled Dabhol project in India was set to benefit from a hook-up with the oil pipeline we planned to run through Afghanistan.

These negotiations collapsed in August 2001 – a date that should begin making our ears stick up – when the Taliban asked the US to help reconstruct Afghanistan’s infrastructure and provide a portion of the oil supply for local needs. The US response was reportedly succinct: “We will either carpet you in gold or carpet you in bombs.” The notes of this meeting, which took place only weeks before September 11th, are now the subject of a lawsuit between Congress and the White House. Was the Taliban really destroyed for harboring terrorists? Or was it destroyed for failing to further the ambitions of Texas millionaires?

The London paper The Guardian also reports that US State Department officials in early July of 2001 informed their Russian and Pakistani counterparts of possible plans to invade Afghanistan in the fall.

To put this in the form of a question made famous during the Watergate investigation 30 years ago, we now need to ask “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

Once we began our new war, it provided a cover for other agendas that the administration had been trying to do since the election, to fulfill their promises to their corporate investors.

I read in early March that over $212 billion was transferred from our economy to our larger corporations in the form of retroactive tax refunds sometimes going back fifteen years. Democracy can only exist “until [some] voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.”

Huge tax refunds were voted in, from which well over 90% went to the richest 1% of Americans. These are some of the returns on their investments in the president’s campaign.

And do you recall Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s recent statement? While requesting an additional $48 billion for defense, much of which will go to corporations closely related to this administration, he casually mentioned that the Pentagon had somehow misplaced $2.3 trillion. This makes me want Lewis Black to do an angry rant! It’s the wrong verb! Nobody “misplaces” $2.3 trillion. Someone took it, moved it to somewhere else, and others else got it. Who? Was it done without the President’s knowledge? If not, again, what did the President know, and when did he know it?

News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration before the 9-11 attacks. It has even been reported that the US government broke bin Laden’s secure communications before September 11. The US government is being sued today by survivors of the Embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the US had received prior warnings then too, but did nothing to protect the staffs at our embassies. Did the same thing happen again?

And does it get even worse? Could there be an even darker side to the events of 9-11? Maybe. I read an article in the March/April issue of The Humanist magazine that’s worth sharing. (I’ve since been told by several people at the three services on Sunday 21 April that these things were widely known and discussed back in September. But I don’t have independent verification.)

In the days leading up to 9-11, thousands of “put” options were purchased on companies whose stocks tanked after September 11. “Put” options are bought by investors when they are willing to gamble that a company’s stock prices will go down in the near future. Most prominent among these companies are American and United Airlines, whose planes hit the twin towers, and the investment firms of Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch, whose offices were destroyed in the towers.

Between September 6 and 7, investors purchased 4,744 “put” options in United Airlines at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. At the same time, only 396 “call” options – where an investor bets on a stock price increasing – were purchased.On September 10, investors bought 4,516 “put” options in American Airlines versus 748 call options. In the three days prior to September 11, investors bought 2,157 “put” options in Morgan Stanley, a company which occupied fifty floors of office at the WTC. Volume during the previous week was a mere 27 “put” options per day. Likewise, investors bought another 12,215 “put” options for WTC tenant Merril Lynch.

 

Most embarrassing to the government, however, is the fact that many of the mysterious “put” options were purchased through an investment firm that was formally headed by Buzzy Krongard, the current executive director of the CIA.

Next week I want to keep exploring some of these issues. I want to look into propaganda more deeply, and to look at some disturbing developments indicating a new political ideology beginning to take over the religious right in this country – much to the dismay of some of their own Christian ministers. I’ll also want to look at much that is right and promising, and suggest some actions we might take.

But I have asked a lot of you today. I have tried to put some clear patterns to a tremendous amount of what will be new information for most of you. I may be wrong. My patterns and understanding may be wrong. The patterns I see suggest that the aristocracy controlling our election processes and much of our government is not serving, and can not serve, the interests or needs of the vast majority of the American people.

Under the cover of war, I believe there is a good chance that we are losing our American way of life, our civil freedoms, our economy, and the remaining vestiges of our democracy, just as that cynical historian predicted 250 years ago.

Where does this leave us? It reconnects me with some of my strongest and most basic convictions:

  • We cannot lose faith. We must continue to appeal to the better angels of our nature, and the better angels of our leaders.
  • We cannot lose hope. The future is not yet written, its options are still open.
  • And we must try not to become self-righteous or mean-spirited, or attempt to harm our nation. We may and must criticize and chastise its errant ways. But we must struggle to do it in a spirit of love. I struggle mightily with this one, and often lose here.

I hope and I pray that we may indeed add our critical and caring voices to the dialogue. And even though we are few and our efforts may seem meager, they are essential – for us, for our nation, and for the world.

Let us go forth in faith, in hope, and in love.

Amen.

New Life for Old

© Davidson Loehr

15 April 2001

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

(This was the Easter service, which is also this church’s annual celebration of the Flower Communion created by Dr. Norbert Capek in 1923. While it doesn’t read like a straight sermon, all the words are reproduced here for those who would like to know more about this unique “communion” and how this particular church celebrates it.)

FLOWER PROCESSIONAL AND STORY OF THE FLOWERS

As the flowers are brought forward, I want to tell you a little about the story of the flowers. This ceremony was created by a Czechoslovakian Unitarian minister named Dr. Norbert Capek in 1923. His church in Prague had 3200 members, and was the largest Unitarian church there has ever been. Today, Unitarians hardly even know how to dream of such numbers and such influence.

Capek had felt the need for some symbolic ritual that could recognize people’s unique gifts, but also bind them more closely together – the idea of diversity within unity with which we still struggle today. The traditional Christian communion service with bread and wine was unacceptable to the members of his congregation, so he turned to the native beauty of the Czech countryside for the elements of a new kind of communion that might speak to them. The Flower Communion we will celebrate today was the result. It was an immediate success, and was held annually. His wife brought it to this country in 1940, and it is now celebrated annually in most Unitarian or Unitarian Universalist churches here.

Dr. Capek was arrested by the Nazis in 1941 because of his liberal religious beliefs, and taken to Dachau. He died in a concentration camp in 1942, so he is also seen as a martyr for the cause of more honest and open religion.

In his service, as in this one, he asked each member to bring a flower to church. This signified that it was by their own free will they joined with the others. And, as we also do here, his church provided a lot of extra flowers, to make sure that everybody would get one. The flowers were arranged in a vase, as we have arranged them in baskets. The baskets represent the united fellowship of the whole church. After the service, as people left the church, they each took a flower other than the one they had brought. The significance of the flower communion is that as no two flowers are alike, so no two people are alike, yet each has a contribution to make. Together the flowers form a beautiful bouquet. Our common bouquet would not be the same without the unique addition of each individual flower, just as our growing church community would not be the same without each of us.

By exchanging flowers, we show our willingness to walk together in our search for truth, rising above all that might divide us. Each person takes home a flower brought by someone else – thus symbolizing our shared celebration in community. This communion of voluntary sharing is essential to a free people in a free religion.

CENTERING: (Adapted from “Prayer Before Birth” by Louis MacNeice)

I am not yet born; O hear me. I am your tomorrows, but I am not yet born.

I am not yet born, console me. Protect me from the doubts that strangle, the fears that stifle, the friends who drain and demean.

I am not yet born; give me dreams of what we may yet become, and nourish me, that I do not starve before I gain the strength to walk, and to fly, and perhaps even to soar with the eagles.

I am not yet born; O hear me, Let not the woman who is a beast or the man who thinks he is God come near me. And those who can remain big only by keeping those around them small – guard me from them, for I am yet a fragile thing.

I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity, who would make me into a thing, a mere thing, who would dissuade and dissipate me until I lose my spirit, and then my soul, and then my hope, and your hope as well.

For I am the greater you who is not yet born, And together we must strive, must strive with the gods if necessary, for so much is at stake, there is so much to be gained. I am the you who is yet to become, and I am not yet born. Help me.

SERMON: New Life for Old

This morning I want to take this sermon title in two directions. The first is to talk a little about the very ancient Easter tradition. It’s message, both in pre-Christian and in Christian cultures, was the message of “new life for old.” Literal religions took it literally, liberal religions took it symbolically, and it always takes some work to relate the old Easter stories to the world as we know it today, and to life as we are living it today.

I have a confession to make that will sound very un-Unitarian to nearly everybody who has been here for a few years or more: this is the first time I have ever been involved in a Flower Communion. I didn’t even know the story, except in the barest outline. It is almost always celebrated in Unitarian churches on the second Sunday in June, which is when Dr. Capek celebrated it, as the last regular church service until fall. We are a full-service church that meets every Sunday of the year, so we don’t have a “last regular church service until fall,” and in this church, the Flower Communion has been celebrated on Easter Sunday.

So the second thing we’ll be doing this morning is becoming acquainted with Dr. Norbert Capek’s invention of the Flower Communion as another kind of “new life for old” – inventing new stories and rituals that may communicate a little more easily with us today, while still connecting us with what Dr. Capek called the “Infinite Spirit of Life.”

But first, let’s begin with Easter. There are several things about our culture’s two favorite holidays – Christmas and Easter – that are very ironic.

One is that both of them are ancient pagan celebrations, with no necessary connection to Christianity or any other modern religion whatever. The symbols for the winter solstice festival, which most of us have learned to call Christmas, are all from the ancient days of nature religions: evergreens, the holly and ivy, mistletoe, and of course light. Whether a Yule log is burned, or Christmas bonfires are lit, or just candles, there is always light. This is also clear in the festival the Jews created for the same time, Chanuka, which is also called the festival of lights.

And the symbols for the vernal equinox, or Easter, are also completely pagan, from nature religions and ancient agricultural societies. Easter is about new life. The two prime symbols of Easter are that timeless symbol of fecundity, the rabbit, and those numberless symbols of fertility, eggs – this isn’t subtle. The other symbols of Easter are signs of spring: bright colors and Easter bonnets.

The name “Easter” probably came from an ancient goddess of spring named Eostre, who also had a special rabbit [hare] who laid eggs for good children to eat. And “Easter lilies” probably began as Eostre’s flower. It was said they were “lily white” because they grew from Eostre’s milk. Later, the Romans said the lilies were Juno’s and were white because they grew from her milk. And still later, the Christians identified “Easter lilies” with the Virgin Mary, and said they were white because they grew from her milk. It’s a story people liked, and told in many cultures.

Another ironic thing about these two holidays is that they are really celebrating the same thing, the power of life over death, or of new life for old. They are our two most optimistic holidays. Many thousands of years ago, people noticed several examples of this. They used the cycles of the moon as a symbol of death and rebirth. Each month there is about a three-day period between the shrinking moon and the expanding moon when it is almost gone. They saw this as a three-day period of death followed by the rebirth of the new moon. Then the moon grows larger into a full moon, then grows smaller again, “dies” again, and is reborn again. This plot of dying for three days then returning to life was woven into many religious stories, including the Christian Easter story, where the man Jesus is said to have died, then three days later risen as God. There is a similar cycle in plants. Seeds look dead, we bury them in the ground, and then new life springs forth through the ground – like all these flowers. So when people were buried in the ground, many hoped they too would rise again into a new kind of life. These are ancient hopes, myths arising from deep in our souls and our past.

I like these stories, but they are so fantastic that it’s hard for us to know just what to do with them. We live in an age of science, but these ancient stories aren’t written in the language of science. They are written in the language of hope, the language of faith.

A friend of mine, a colleague from the Jesus Seminar, retired about six years ago after a forty-year career as a minister in the United Church of Christ. He founded the Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix, Arizona in 1955 with about fifty people, and when he retired in 1995, it had 2500 members. He made a point of telling people who attended the Jesus Seminar — and wondered how you could ever preach the truth from a pulpit — that he had never lied from his pulpit. He began every Easter sermon, he said, by saying that Easter isn’t about corpses walking, it’s about the chance for our lives to be reborn, rejuvenated, here and now, in ways that might seem magical, but were not supernatural. This man, Culver Nelson, had a lot of charisma, and I think he could get away with saying that where thousands of other Christian ministers could not get away with it. Usually, it’s hard work to relate these old stories of death and resurrection to the world as we know it and life as we actually live it. I’ve done an Easter sermon every year of my career, and a lot of times I’ve wished we could just use different stories, stories and symbols that communicated more directly.

Now I want to make a transition to the second part of this short sermon. I couldn’t find a smooth and classy way to do it, because the two halves aren’t very closely related. So I decided to do it in a light-hearted way, maybe even a silly way. This week an e-mail made the rounds of some ministers’ groups where we exchange some ideas and materials. It was a list called “All I need to know about life I learned from the Easter Bunny.” It’s a play on the book title All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Unitarian Minister Robert Fulghum. It’s kind of like some Easter sermons you may have heard, taking an old story and loading it with some funny modern messages. I don’t know who wrote it, but here are some of the life lessons you can learn from the Easter Bunny:

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

Walk softly and carry a big carrot

Everyone needs a friend who is all ears

There’s no such thing as too much candy

All work and no play can make you a basket case

Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day

Let happy thoughts multiply like rabbits

Keep your paws off other people’s jellybeans

Good things sometimes come in small sugarcoated packages

The grass is always greener in someone else’s basket

An Easter bonnet can tame even the wildest hare

To show your true colors you have to come out of your shell

And – The best things in life are still sweet and gooey

The Flower Communion

That’s one way to give new life to old symbols. But there is another way that is distinctly liberal. And that is to introduce new stories that open us up to some of life’s gifts in more direct ways, so we don’t have to keep working so hard to translate ancient symbols like the symbols of rabbits, eggs, death and resurrection so they don’t mislead people into confusing religion with superstition.

It’s a pretty bold move, inventing a new ritual. Most of the time it will probably bomb, because it’s hard to find new rituals that speak to people easily. But that’s what Dr. Capek (Chah-Peck) did with his Flower Communion when he invented it in 1923. I already told you the story earlier, but it’s worth going into a little more detail about some of Capek’s religious beliefs, which were inspiring both then and now.

He thought that all people were inherently religious, and inherently good, and he taught that religion should, above all, provide that “inner harmony which is the precondition of strong character, good health, joyful moods and victorious creative life. It is my ideal,” he wrote, “that unitarian religion in our country should mean a higher culture – new attitudes toward life. In short, unitarian religion should mean the next advanced cultural level of our people.” The church’s task “must be to place truth above any tradition, spirit above any scripture, freedom above authority, and progress above all reaction.”

He defined religious education as “an endeavor to awaken the inner forces of children and teach them how to organize, harmonize and adapt them to the ever-changing influences which come to them from outside.” He identified a list of feelings and abilities which a modern religious education should elicit from a child. They included, in his terms, the ability to have faith and confidence, the ability to hope, the feeling of worship (like Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life), charity or selfless love, and conscientiousness. In the 1920s and 1930s, he thought that a person with these qualities was a truly religious person. In 2001, I think so too. You could say it was a very optimistic faith that Capek had, just before the dark days of the Nazi occupation of Czeckoslovakia from 1939 – 1945.

When the Nazis took control of Prague in 1940, they found Dr. Capek’s gospel of the inherent worth and beauty of every human being to be – in the words of the Nazi court records – “too dangerous to the Reich [for him] to be allowed to live.” Think about that: believing that people were good made him too dangerous to be allowed to live; what a complete failure of the human spirit that was! Dr. Capek was arrested in 1941 and sent to Dachau. He died in a concentration camp the next year. This gentle man suffered a cruel death, but his message of human hope and decency lives on through his Flower Communion, which is celebrated in many of our churches today.

Before his life was taken from him, he gave new life for old by creating this beautiful ritual celebrating the interweaving of diversity and community. You will each judge for yourselves this morning where you found more new life for old – in revisiting the Easter stories, or in visiting the Unitarian Flower Communion. But as we prepare for our celebration of Dr. Capek’s Flower Communion, I want to suggest that the Nazi court records, as they often did, had it completely backwards. Because people who believe in, and who teach, the inherent worth and beauty of all people are the only ones whose beliefs equip them to live, and to share in the gifts of life that others bring.

BENEDICTION:

For our benediction this morning, I have adapted some words which Dr. Capek used in his Flower Communions:

Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask thy blessing on these fragile flowers, which are thy messengers of fellowship and love. May they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and devotion to our most sacred callings. May they also remind us of the value of comradeship, of doing and sharing with each other. May we cherish friendship as one of the most sacred and precious manifestations of the Infinite Spirit of Life. May we realize that, [as these flowers each contribute their different styles of beauty, every one of us is an embodiment of the gods, and in every one of us the gods struggle for higher expression.

FLOWER COMMUNION:

It is time now for us to share in the Flower Communion. I ask that as you each in turn approach the communion baskets you do so quietly – reverently – with a sense of how important it is for each of us to address our world and one another with gentleness, justice, and love. I ask that you select a flower – different from the one you brought – that particularly appeals to you. If you didn’t bring a flower, don’t worry about it, we have provided plenty of extras for you so that everybody can have one. As you take your chosen flower – noting its particular shape and beauty – please remember to handle it carefully. It is a gift that someone else has brought to you. It represents that person’s unique humanity, and therefore deserves your kindest touch. Let us share quietly in this beautiful ritual of unity, diversity, and love.

As you come up to get your flower, please start with the back row and move row by row from the side aisles to the front. After taking a flower, please exit by the center aisles. We will then leave to recreate this bouquet of harmonized gifts in the world outside these walls, where our diverse gifts are as desperately needed as our ability to blend them into a bouquet. Accompanied by our flowers, let us leave this place of worship with peace, with hope, and with beauty.

An Easter Story

Martin Bryant

April 8, 2001

First UU Church of Austin, Texas

On Palm Sunday, First UU member Martin Bryant will review the powerful story of Jesus of Nazareth. Martin’s spiritual path led him to reconciliation with its message. He will discuss the value of this reconciliation for other humanist/universalists, for his church, and his denomination.

A handful of years ago, I became dissatisfied with my rationalist lack-of faith, and I undertook to try and discover what spirituality was and how I could introduce more of it into my life.

Among the first conscious steps was to talk to a friend of mine for whom spirituality seemed to be a major component of his life. He followed the Indian and Buddhist religious traditions and spent at least a week each year at meditation retreats and had traveled to India in search of inspiration. His answer to me was surprising. He said I’ve been told by many of my teachers that Jesus is a path to enlightenment and an appropriate one for many Americans.

Now I was raised, and confirmed as a Methodist, but it never took, and after I had been in college most of a year, my born-again Baptist high school sweetheart sent me a Dear John letter that called me a heathen. So in spite of my initial reaction to this suggestion that I had already rejected this and the suggestion seemed a little condescending, I accepted this as a challenge and thus began a year or so of sojourning into these things and so I turned to C.S. Lewis. I read not only his wonderful Narnia Chronicles to my children, but I read his other works, including Mere Christianity. Mere Christianity can serve as a sort of rosetta stone for the Christian jargon. From Mr. Lewis, finally I had a working definition of what the “holy ghost” was, but I still didn’t get possessed.

Over the course of that year I also taught the Jesus curriculum to the Jr. High R.E. Class here at First UU. I was determined that it would be respectful and as accurate as I could make it. However, accuracy is a difficult concept in these matters. Though I could talk respectfully about Jesus, to convey understanding about Christianity required a Christian, something I simply was not.

On Easter weekend, Mary K., the then three kids and I went on a camping trip near Kerrville. Driving back in the rain on Easter Sunday, my daughter Kathleen asked about Easter “what did it mean? Why did Christians celebrate it?” I was silent for a while and then told the story of Jesus, not too differently from how I am about to tell it here.

Years passed and in the spring one year a professional colleague of mine who I admire, really my mentor, a devout Christian, sent me a simple e-mail. I had discussed this place with him and he was somewhat confused by it. Right before Easter he sent me this message asking “What about Easter? What do you and your church do on Easter?”.

By this time, I was beginning to find access into myself. My initial guide was the Tao-te-Ching. I am still fascinated by the most ancient texts. I had discovered what many here know, that my sojourn was and would be one of self-discovery. But Don’s question asked me to look back at Christianity. I did and I thought about the story I told my daughter, driving in the rain. I reflected that it gathered much of what I knew about Jesus and I wrote it down for Don and her and I guess for you..

The story begins many thousands of years ago. And those that know it, know that things were not going too well between the one, Yahweh, and his people. Things had started out pretty rocky with the apple from the tree of knowledge. Then there was the time the big guy got so mad he flooded the earth, drowning everyone except Noah, his family, and two of each of the animal species. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Even after saving the people from famine in Egypt and then delivering them from servitude, with dramatic plagues and locust swarms no less, there was that Golden Calf incident. The commandments didn’t really help too much. Frankly they reinforced the opinion folks had of the one – prescriptive and vindictive.

Well, Yahweh felt misunderstood. And so, he sent a messenger to better explain his position. A prophet, an angel, a treasured one, more a part of himself than any other.

And people were very surprised. Jesus of Nazareth shattered the “prescriptive and vindictive” image. He taught compassion and tended to the sick, including the lepers. He taught mercy and protected the sinner. He taught justice and brought his message to foreigners, women, and children. He eschewed religious law to assist people on the Sabbath. He taught that man could best show his love for Yahweh by loving his fellow man. And he lived his teachings.

A message this radical was hard to take. Jesus’ earthly mentor had been arrested and beheaded. And Jesus was even more popular and dangerous, both to the established church and the complicated government of his occupied homeland. And so Jesus of Nazareth, too was arrested. According to the story, he reacted to this with a discipline of nonviolence that was consistent with his teachings. But as we all who know the story know, Jesus’ fate, as was John’s before him, was to die.

Now whether by divine hand, or well crafted lore, this part of the story seems to be designed to make clear that the blame for Jesus’ execution should not be assigned to any one party. The Roman governor had him whipped, but limited punishment to that. The Jewish puppet monarch also refused to declare a punishment, giving the crowd the right to determine Jesus’ fate. Jesus’ own friends denied or otherwise betrayed him. Yes, Jesus would die, and it would be everyone’s fault, including, to the extent we could see our failings (of lost faith, embarrassment, and negligence) in those who killed him, our own.

But there was Jesus, beaten, bleeding, in enormous pain, humiliated, and a few breaths from death by horrible execution. And hanging from the cross, Jesus uttered among the most famous words of our lore “Forgive them, father, they know not what they do”

Now imagine you were among those early Christians. Believing that Jesus was the unique “son of God” and knowing the history of Yahweh, the powerful one who had proven to have such a nasty temper in the days of Noah and Moses. Those simple words “forgive them, father”, might offer little hope of protection from that awful wrath.

How long would we wait for the vengeance? Hours? Days? Months? Years? Centuries? What is this time to an omnipotent one?

And yet each day, the sun rose. The seas did not boil with blood, the skies did not fill with death. Those few words, requesting forgiveness began to seem like a shield, protecting the people. Protecting them from a terrible vengeance they completely deserved. There was no other explanation.

Well, two thousand years have passed and here we are now, recognizing the power of that forgiveness. Two thousand years. Forgive them Father.

Now, I’m not one of those people that believes that this story is either historically or metaphysically accurate. In the Gospel according to Mark…….Twain, he said “There’s nothing to change the truth like a good story”. And like many great stories, this one does “ring” true.

If I can learn from this story, if I can learn to be compassionate to the sick, even those that frighten me. If I can be merciful, even to those who threaten me. If I can exercise justice and see all of my sisters and brothers as equals. If I can see beyond dogma and religious law to a religion of kindness and understanding. If I can l be truly nonviolent and turn the other cheek. If I can make my life a mission of reconciliation and tender instruction. If I can forgive, when forgiveness seems impossible.

If I can learn to love.

Then maybe, I can be a Christian, in the same sense as my Unitarian predecessor Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: “I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.”

Many Unitarian Universalist churches, including this one, seem to have an invisible picture of Jesus over the front doors. Unlike other churches, however, ours has a red circle and a bar across his face. I remember one meeting I attended here where we were discussing not having too much Christian music in the service and someone stated “We never have Jesus or Christ in the music in our church” followed by “…..well never in English in anyway.”

Not unlike my namesake of a few hundred years ago, I’d like to take hammer in hand and climb the church steps — not to nail something on the doors, but to tear down that invisible sign. It does us many disservices.

Firstly, it denies us the proven spiritual power of this story and this message. A message that is in great part responsible for the best parts of our culture. A message that is at the heart of both our Unitarian and Universalist traditions.

Secondly, it alienates those do not need or want the unnecessary and convoluted theology that others package with them, but find cultural reassurance in Jesus’ message and great comfort in the symbol of the kind and wise shepherd. They feel if he is not welcome here, they must not be either.

Thirdly, our rejection of this story is a barrier between between us and liberal Christians. A barrier which prevents us from cooperating with these fine people in ways that could be powerful and meaningful for us and our communities. A barrier which prevents us from building partnerships that could be transforming for ourselves and our communities.

Finally, that sign abandons this story to be the exclusive license of those whose unnecessary and convoluted theology separates this story from the Universal faith where it belongs. If we cannot preach this story here, then it cannot be taught without those things that some cannot accept.

Did Jesus rise? I don’t know. Jesus taught compassion, and justice, and forgiveness.

Can you roll back the great stone of guilt and fear and let those things rise in you?

It Ain't Necessarily So

Davidson Loehr

April 1, 2001 

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PUPPET SHOW

Written by Davidson Loehr and the No Strings Attached Puppet Players

This Performance : Ryan Hill, Julie Irwin, David Smith, and Eric Kay

Parrot, two raccoons and Mother Parrot.

Parrot and raccoons appear, raccoons on one side, parrot on the other.

Parrot

Hey, see my new hat?

Beavis Raccoon

Hey, where’d you get that hat, bird?

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah. That’s a cool hat. How’d a goofy-looking bird get such a cool hat, huh?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh, heh, how’d that happen?

Parrot

Well, I got it volunteering for “Wings on Housing”, that’s how.

Butthead Raccoon

Uh….don’t you mean “Paws on Housing”?

Parrot

No, Wings on Housing. That’s where we rebuild the nests for birds in the forest who need help.

Butthead Raccoon

(To Beavis Raccoon)

Hey, I like, want that hat!

Beavis Raccoon

Hey, yeah, I want it too, heh heh.

Parrot

Well you can get one if you volunteer, too. The next one is on April 28th and 29th.

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, right. Well, how about we just take it!

Beavis Raccoon

Take it! Yeh, that’s good, let’s just take it! Heh heh.

(The raccoons go over and take the parrot’s hat.)

Parrot

Say, what are you doing? You took my hat!

Butthead Raccoon

Took your hat?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, took your hat?

Butthead Raccoon

Why are you saying we took your hat?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, why?

Parrot

YOU TOOK MY HAT! YOU TOOK IT RIGHT OFF MY HEAD, AND NOW YOU HAVE IT ON YOUR HEAD! THAT’S WHY!! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!!

Beavis Raccoon

Heh, can’t do it?

Butthead Raccoon

Can’t do it? You mean you haven’t heard about the law?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, I’ll bet the dumb bird has never heard the law!

Parrot

Law? What law? You stole my hat!

Butthead Raccoon

The law – well, it’s the law that says raccoons have the right to take the hats off of parrots, that’s what!

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh, heh, because we’re bigger-

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, and there are two of us.

Beavis Raccoon

It’s the law, heh heh.

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, it’s the law, you dumb parrot.

Parrot

I don’t believe you! What a dumb law!

Parrot Exits Below

Beavis Raccoon

Well, um, it’s the law.

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, bird, it’s the law.

Beavis Raccoon

Um- like, where’d the bird go?

Parrot enters with a scarf on.

Parrot

All right, keep my hat you dumb raccoons!

Beavis Raccoon

Hey, cool scarf!

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, cool scarf, bird!

(The raccoons mutter between themselves, agree, laugh, then one goes over and takes the scarf away from the parrot.)

Parrot

Now stop that! You stole my hat! You can’t steal my scarf too!

Beavis Raccoon

Boy, you really don’t know the law!

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, what a dumb bird.

Parrot

Now what law is this?

Butthead Raccoon

Um- it’s like, the law that says- .uh-

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, the law, the law that says that-

Butthead Raccoon

Heh- It says that once we have your hat, we can have your scarf too!

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, because like the hat and scarf like go together, and if we have one then we need the other.

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh. Dumb bird.

Parrot

(Pulls out a candy bar or some sweet treat.)

Oh, I’m so unhappy, this just isn’t fair!

Beavis Raccoon

Hey, hey, uh, what’s that?

Parrot

When I feel sad, I have a candy bar. It makes me feel better.

The raccoons mutter quickly to each other, then one takes the candy bar.

Parrot

Hey!

Butthead Raccoon

Sorry, bird, but it’s the law.

Parrot

What law? You’re making these laws up!

Butthead Raccoon

Well bird, that’s the law.

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, it’s the law.

Parrot

What law?

Butthead Raccoon

Well, um- the law that says when we have more stuff than you do-

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, like hats, scarves, things like that-

Butthead Raccoon

That we can take anything else we want from you too!

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, like you know if you don’t have any stuff, then you don’t have any rights to have other stuff!

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah right, we have your stuff, so we get the rest of your stuff.

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, yeah, it’s like in the bible, or something-

Parrot

The Bible?

Butthead Raccoon

Yeah, it’s like religious and everything. It says “To them who have, even more shall be given”

Beavis Racoon

“and to them that don’t have, even what they have will be taken away.”

Butthead Raccoon

So like it’s the law, and it’s religious.

(The raccoons start laughing, mocking the parrot, making fun, waving the hat, scarf, candy bar, etc.)

(Mother Parrot enters and quickly takes the hat, scarf and candy bar away from the raccoons.)

Butthead Raccoon

Hey, like, what are you doing?

Mother Parrot

April Fool! April Fool! (Laughs.)

Beavis Raccoon

April Fool? What’s April Fool?

Mother Parrot

It’s April Fool’s Day! You didn’t really think I’d like you steal everything from the parrot, did you?

(Gives everything back to the parrot.)

After all, that wouldn’t be fair. And the real rules are fair, not set up so you can just steal from each other!

Beavis Raccoon

Aw man “that”

Butthead Raccoon

Aww, come on, you’re spoiling our game.

Parrot

It was just awful! I thought they were going to take everything I had! I was so scared!

Mother Parrot

No, nobody can do that. Only on April Fools’ Day would they think they could do that! Here, have another candy bar, it’ll make you feel better

(Gives another candy bar to the parrot).

Parrot

Oh, thank you,

(Parrot exits)

(Raccoons look at each other.)

Butthead Raccoon

Candy bar? You have more candy bars?

Mother Parrot

Oh yes, I have lots of candy bars.

Butthead Raccoon

So, like, can we have some more?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, heh heh, like you know we would like a whole bunch of candy!

Mother Parrot

(Laughs and laughs and laughs)

No!

Butthead Raccoon

No? This is like another April Fool thing, isn’t it?

Beavis Raccoon

Yeah, we really get a bunch of candy bars, don’t we?

Mother Parrot

(Laughing)

Nope. April Fools is all over now. Say goodbye!

Raccoons mutter grip and yell as they all disappear.

(Somebody holds up a “THE END” sign)

CENTERING:

From Healing and the Mind by Bill Moyers:

A Story by Rachel Naomi Remen

I bought a little, falling-down cabin on the top of a mountain. It was so bad that when a friend came to see it, he said, ‘Oh, Rachel, you bought this?’ But with two carpenters, an electrician, and a plumber, in three years we have remodeled the whole thing. We started by just throwing things away–bathtubs, light fixtures, windows. I kept hearing my father’s voice saying, ‘That’s a perfectly good light fixture, why are you throwing it away?’ We kept throwing away more and more things, and with everything we threw away, the building became more whole. It had more integrity. Finally, we had thrown away everything that didn’t belong. You know, we may think we need to be more in order to be whole. But in some ways, we need to be less. We need to let go, to throw away everything that isn’t us in order to be more whole.

Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you–all the expectations, all of the beliefs–and becoming who you are. Not a better you, but a more real you.

SERMON: “It Ain’t Necessarily So”

(It ain’t necessarily so, it ain’t necessarily so; the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so, etc.)

April Fools’ Day demands some foolishness and some seriousness, and I think they should be mixed in unpredictable ways.

As a student of religion, I agree with almost every word in that Gershwin song from 1935. But the orthodoxy I want to challenge today isn’t from the Bible.

Most of the time, people expect their religions to keep them content and happy rather than awake and concerned. Nobody comes to church hoping they will feel worse for the trip. But like the little poem on the cover of your order of service by Danish poet Piet Hein, I want to mix fun and earnestness today. (“The Eternal Twins”: “Taking fun as simply fun/ and earnestness in earnest; shows how thoroughly thou/ none of the two discernest.”)

I want to think about one of the oldest pronouncements of religion, which is that the love of money is the root of all evil. I think that’s far too simple: evil has a whole lot of roots, though the love of money is certainly one of them. This isn’t saying that money is bad, or that it isn’t good to have it. It just says that it’s seductive, that we’re easily seduced, and that if we make the mistake of falling in love with money rather than people, the effect on us and on our world may be deadly.

Take the trillion-dollar drug business. Whether you are in favor of legalizing all drugs or not, it is clear that the business wouldn’t be so big if it weren’t so profitable.

Or take pornography, which is now a $10 billion-a-year business in this country. It’s routinely attacked by conservatives as though it were a liberal demon. But when there’s that much money to be made, you should expect big businesses to be getting in on it, and they are. The New York Times recently revealed that General Motors now makes $200 million a year from pay-per-view sex films aired through its DirectTV subsidiary. That’s more money than Hustler magazine’s Larry Flynt makes on graphic sex movies. (Hightower Lowdown, 2-2-2001)

Another big profitable company, AT&T, outsells Playboy in the sex business, offering a hardcore sex channel called Hot Network that reaches 16 million homes on cable TV, plus selling pay-per-view sex in a million hotel rooms. “Revenue-wise,” says an official with AT&T’s cable channel, “it’s one of our biggest moneymakers.”

That’s an astonishing statement: “Revenue-wise, it’s one of our biggest moneymakers.” And the unspoken ending to the sentence is “Therefore, it’s a defensible activity for a reputable business.”

Please understand that I’m not bashing the rich. I don’t think poor people are any more or less moral than rich people. Given the same temptations the majority of us would act the same.

But if the love of money really is one of the roots of evil, then nobody who falls in love with it is likely to be immune.

Those stories of General Motors and AT&T embracing pornography as good business raises the question of just how far we will go. How many people are we willing to sacrifice, given the temptation of enough power, profit and privilege? It’s a sobering question. And it is a huge area. Originally, I had intended just to talk about economics, in a kind of sequel to the sermon I gave here last fall on “The Dark God of Capitalism.”

But I got sidetracked by Bill Moyers’ two-hour PBS television program this past Monday (March 26, 2001). It was called “Trade Secrets,” and was about the rules that have governed some significant areas of the chemical industries for a long time. I want to use some of that material to sketch a broad picture. Then I’ll go into much more detail on just one story that he didn’t mention, one tragic story that has been unfolding for decades, and which has probably touched almost everyone in this room. And then, as in any good sermon, I’ll relate everything back to this morning’s puppet show.

The documentation for Moyers’ program was several million pages of private letters and inter-company memos obtained from the major chemical manufacturing corporations. Some documents go back over forty years. While there is room for differences of opinion on some parts, other parts seem unambiguous.

I hope many of you saw the program. While I took a lot of notes, it was much too detailed to repeat here, and would take too long. It was a story, documented by the actual confidential memos of some giant chemical corporations like B.F. Goodrich, Dow Chemical, Union Carbide and Esso, of the wholesale betrayal of both employees and citizens. It showed that the companies have known, as far back as the 1950s, that some of their most profitable chemicals were toxic, caused cancer, dissolved bones, sterilized and killed people. They acknowledged this in private letters to each other, as they also insisted that they must all agree to keep this secret from their employees, the government and the general public. 1

One of the chemicals was vinyl chloride, the key ingredient in PVCs, which you may remember from the news stories about them not too many years ago. B.F. Goodrich knew as far back as 1959 that they were toxic and posed serious health risks to their employees, which they did. In 1966, they wrote to Monsanto, Union Carbide and others that exposure to vinyl chlorides could cause bones to dissolve. Their advisors suggested reducing it to less than 50 parts per million – though concentrations in their factories were five to ten times that high. But they never published the warnings, and continued to tell their own employees that vinyl chloride was harmless.

In 1973 Union Carbide acknowledged in private memos to the others that the companies’ secret actions in these areas could be seen as criminal conspiracy. Nevertheless, they continued to cover up and lie to employees about the deadly concentrations of vinyl chlorides in which their employees were working.

Another infamous chemical was benzene. As early as 1958, it was identified as toxic by Esso and other companies. It was linked to leukemia, and they wrote that it was so toxic that only a level of zero was safe. Also in 1958, Dow Chemical knew that Benzene’s active ingredient could cause sterility in men, and concealed this from their workers, who experienced exceptionally high rates of sterility – and which the company insisted were not work-related.

As the threat of government regulation gained force in the 1970s, the chemical companies wrote more secret memos to each other trying to find or invent a way to get more money, so they could have more political influence – or, to put it less romantically, so they could buy more politicians. Finally, before the 1980 election PACs were created as a way of pooling money to buy greater access and influence in politics. They have been spectacularly successful. In his first month in office, Ronald Reagan delayed all EPA regulations of the chemical industry until the EPA could prove their claims conclusively. The rest, you could say, is history. Many of the toxic chemicals are still unregulated.

As part of the program, Bill Moyers had samples of his own blood taken and tested. The tests showed that he had 84 foreign chemicals in his blood, including more than 15 in the dioxin family, and more than thirty in the vinyl chloride group. It’s a good bet that we do too.

These chemicals have been known to be toxic for decades, during which time the company memos show they have conspired to keep this secret from their own workers and the country as a whole. For the record, these are also the companies who own the patents and are doing the work on genetically engineered foods, introducing mutant genes and invented chemical combinations into us at every meal. These artificial products haven’t been well tested because they can’t be well tested. The slow processes of evolution have not prepared any life form on earth to deal with these new chemical inventions. So there is no way – and probably can be no way — to predict what their medium or long-term effects will be. They are, however, profitable.

What will the costs be? We don’t know. But already, brain cancer in children is up by 26%, and there is over a 60% increase in testicular cancer in young men from the profitable chemicals that are already in us.

At the end of Bill Moyers’ program, an executive representing the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association, while evading almost all questions, kept saying, “We’re a science-based industry.” No, that’s not right. Chemical companies use science as an essential part of their business. But science doesn’t drive the business or tell them to mislead their employees and the general public. They’re a profit-based industry. It’s not clear that they could survive if they weren’t. Their history shows that it is profits, not science, that steer their decisions.

I have a personal story about this difference and the difference it can make. Sixteen years ago, while I was writing my dissertation, I was offered a job as a staff chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a huge hospital in downtown Chicago. The hospital had just been restructured to respond to what the insurance industry called DRGs, or Diagnostically-Related Groupings. The length of time the insurance companies would now reimburse the hospital for any patient’s stay was now determined not by the attending physician, but by a chart allocating a certain number of days for almost every imaginable sickness or surgery. Coincidentally, very few patients stayed longer than their insurance would cover. (To add some balance, the DRG system was the idea of Medicaid, an effort to curb excessive spending by hospitals, and patient stays that were longer than proper medical care warranted.)

My boss, who had been the head of the chaplaincy program there for about fifteen years, was struggling to understand what this change meant. The hospital’s board had been changed from doctors to MBAs and accountants, and each time he returned from a board meeting he seemed more confused. “Something fundamental has changed here,” he would say, “and I can’t see what it is.” After two or three months, he did see it, and he taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

Both the quality and the cost of patient care had always been central concerns of the hospital, and the same language was still being used, about quality and cost of care. But formerly, they used to say “We try to make medical care as cheap as possible, considering our primary commitment to the quality of patient care.” Now, while using the same words, the formula had been reversed. Now they were trying to provide the best medical care they could, considering their primary commitment to profitability.

That’s what the chemical companies were saying in the memos exposed in Bill Moyers’ television program. They cared about public safety, and about profits. But they cared more about profits than about public safety, and quietly sanctioned the disease and death of tens or hundreds of thousands of their employees and their fellow citizens over several decades because, revenue-wise, it was a big money-maker.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

This may be hard to believe. It is certainly disheartening to believe. But to see both the horror and the cynicism that are represented by letting concerns for profits rather than people govern a country, as I think they are in fact governing our country now, I want to tell you in some detail about something that has become an annual national tradition. You’ve all heard of it, it is called Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Last October was the fifteenth, the sixteenth annual BCAM is coming up in six more months.

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month’s core message is the importance of early detection, with a special emphasis on regular mammography exams. It also carries the subtle implication that breast cancer is just something that’s somehow just “out there,” without any specific cause, and that if women get it, it’s partly because they didn’t take adequate care of themselves. How on earth can we go through sixteen years of concern about a killer like breast cancer without ever once raising the question of its possible or likely causes?

Imagine how different this story would sound if we learned, instead, that breast cancer had been linked to some chemicals commonly found in pesticides and other chemicals produced and marketed by a giant international chemical conglomerate by the name of Imperial Chemical Industries. It’s true, and Breast Cancer Awareness Month was invented by AstraZeneka, one of the subsidiary companies in the conglomerate that produced the cancer-causing chemical.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month was not devised as a public service but as the kind of “misdirection” that magicians do to distract you from the real trickery. AstraZeneka has always been the primary sponsor of this program, and has final control over all promotional and informational copy published in connection with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As a result, no mention has ever been made of some of the known causes of this murderous disease. AstraZeneka is no longer under the giant ICI firm. But it now produces and distributes another controversial chemical called tamofixin, which has been approved to reduce the risk of contracting cancer in women with a high risk of breast cancer. So it still wants to be associated in the public eye with efforts to address breast cancer, though not with discussing the causes of the cancer.

The official story, celebrated every October, is that we are all blessed by better living through chemistry, and the chemical companies are our life-saving friends in a naturally hostile world.

But there is another way of seeing it. That is that the world is not naturally hostile. It was made hostile and deadly by the very chemicals that this and other companies are polluting us with, knowing full well their murderous effects, knowing they also make a good profit. And, as General Motors and AT&T have done with pornography, when these companies come to a fork in the road where profits go one way and concern for people go the other way, they seem to follow the profits, and create a cynical and intentionally misleading Breast Cancer Awareness Month to hide the evidence that all these women are being killed not by nature, but – at least in part — by them.

In this country, about 40,000 women will die of breast cancer this year. The disease has skyrocketed over the past 40 years. In that time, more American women have died of breast cancer than the total of all American soldiers killed in all the wars of the 20th century combined. If there is a more cynical story around, a story continually showing brutally how greed kills when profits are elevated over people, I don’t know what it is.

Now we have a new president in our country, and every member of his cabinet comes with longstanding and powerful ties to the biggest and most powerful corporations in America. I won’t read you the whole list here, though I’ll put it in the version of this sermon that is posted on the church website and printed in hard copies. But twelve of President Bush’s cabinet members came from, have strong ties to, or will return to, virtually every major corporation in the country. And both the President and Vice President come from and represent the oil industry.

Some people who claim to be knowledgeable claim that the corporate control of our national government has never been this complete. I don’t know. But if programs like Bill Moyers’ expose of the chemical industry and the sad, cynical story of the real origin and purpose of Breast Cancer Awareness Month are fair indications of what lies ahead, we may be entering a chapter in this country’s history that we will look back on in shame. Many European countries already see it that way.

The most fundamental power that rulers can have is the power to write the story within which we agree to live. Those who control a society’s story are its invisible puppeteers.

The mother in this morning’s puppet show was an April Fools’ joke. There is no mother to keep the rules fair. There’s just us. I think that enough rules are out of control that we are on the verge of losing our health, our safety, perhaps our country.

I think that at least some of what I’ve said here has been persuasive for some of you. You are the brightest and most creative group of people with whom I’ve ever had the privilege of working. I wonder if there isn’t something that we can do in this area to make a positive difference in the lives of ourselves, our children and the larger community? I can’t organize anything, but if there are those here who feel drawn to these issues and have some organizational skills, I will do what I can to help you. There must be many ways in which we can begin to make a positive difference. I don’t know what they are. But I keep thinking of that puppet show. Those raccoons and the parrot – they were just puppets. We’re not.

—————

Addenda:

Here is a partial list of President Bush’s Cabinet members and their corporate connections, taken from Jim Hightower’s newsletter The Hightower Lowdown. I’m repeating most of this from a column by Molly Ivins where she quoted Hightower:

Elaine Chao – Bank of America, Dole Foods, Northwest Airlines, Columbia/HCA Health Care

Norman Mineta – was a top Washington lobbyist for Lockheed Martin before joining the corporate cabinet as Transportation secretary.

Gale Norton – Amoco, Chevron, Exxon, Ford, and Phillips 66, all funders of the Mountain States Legal Foundation from whence she came. She also chaired the Republican Environmental Advocates, funded by American Forest & Paper Association, Amoco, ARCO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and Ford.

Paul O’Neill – Alcoa, International Paper Company, Eastman Kodak, and Lucent Technologies.

Anthony Principi – QTC Medical Services, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, and Federal Network.

Donald Rumsfeld – General Instrument Corporation, G.D. Searle & Co., Asea Brown Bavari, the Tribune Company, Gilead Sciences, Ind., RAND Corporation, Salomon Smith Barney.

Colin Powell – America Online and General Dynamics, plus a very long list of corporations that paid $100,000 per speech.

G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, & Commerce Secretary Donald Evans – all Texas oilmen representing the oil industry.

John Ashcroft – Particularly close to the Schering-Plough pharmaceutical company and was heavily funded by BP Amoco, Exxon, Monsanto, Occidental Petroleum, Union Carbide, and Weyerhauser.

Spencer Abraham – Energy Secretary, sponsored a bill to abolish the Energy Department and led the fight in the Senate to defeat greater fuel efficiency for SUVs, a cause dear to both auto and energy industries.

Ron Paige – Education Secretary, is an enthusiastic corporatizer of the public schools. While he was superintendent in Houston, he privatized food services, payrool, and accounting, signed a contract with Coca-Cola to put Coke bottles in the halls, and with Primedia Corporation to broadcast Channel One in the public schools.

Ann Veneman – Agriculture Secretary, was on the board of Calgene, Inc., which produces genetically altered food, and was connected with an agribusiness front group funded by Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Kraft, and Nestle.