Two Paths to ... Jesus?

December 17, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

It is almost Christmas, the season that can remind us of gifts and wrapping paper. We think about gifts we want to give, gifts we want to receive. And the wrapping paper, to make them look really appealing. Sometimes, we know the wrapping paper is really better than the gift, so we hope we don’t give or receive too many like that.

And sometimes we get gifts from a child or a friend or relative who is dramatically gift-wrap-challenged, and it almost looks like the present kind of rolled down a hill of wrapping paper, collecting some as it went, then winding up under the tree, looking kind of like a sparkly tumbleweed among the really well-wrapped gifts.

Sometimes, our very favorite presents were also the best-wrapped. That’s rare but memorable. Sometimes the very best gifts come in the sloppiest wrapping paper. You just never know until you unwrap them. Then you discover what your real gifts are.

That’s what life is like too, we know. Most of the great gifts come in the plain wrapping paper of our regular old lives. Most of the great gifts don’t have to be bought. They’re free. It’s hard to believe we might really have something to give just from inside us, without spending much money or struggling with the wrapping paper. For this is the season when we, friends, family and merchants often seem like co-conspirators saying, “No, there really isn’t something just in you, just free, that’s worth giving. You need to go buy it.”

But really, we know better.

It is the gift-giving season, when we pretend and sometimes act like only money can buy the real gifts we long for from one another, and so we’ll spend our money again because it feels like there must be at least some truth to that.

And it is the season when the real longings of our hearts are for simple and quiet things K-Mart doesn’t have – love, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, peace, a reassuring touch, feeling like we’re really home.

How much are those presents worth? And how much more often should we give them? It is the gift-giving season: time again to open ourselves to these questions, and to welcome their answers as gifts of the season, from the very heart of us. Let us prepare ourselves to give and receive real gifts – even if they have to cost money.

Amen.

SERMON

For this Christmas season, today and next Sunday, I want to talk about three very different approaches to the figure of Jesus. There are good scholars who don’t think there ever was a historical Jesus, and perhaps they’re right. But if this Jewish man we call Jesus did live, I believe he was one of that handful of truly gifted prophets and sages of history.

We’re in what is called “the Christmas Season.” You could also call it “the merchants’ season,” since major chain stores make a third to half of their annual profits in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s why almost every Christmas decoration you see was paid for by merchants, whether they have a religion or not.

And it’s fair to remind ourselves that Christianity only began identifying the date we call December 25th as Jesus’ birthday in the middle of the fourth century – we have no idea when he was born, though some scholars believe it was in about 6 BC. Only Jesus could do that. But for many centuries before that, the date had been celebrated as winter solstice, the birthday of all solar deities.

I’ve never been a Christian, so in some ways it’s easier for me to see this as the season of shopping and solstice. But no matter what our personal religion is, the fact is that Christianity is the dominant religion in our society, many Christians see the season as having everything to do with Jesus, and whether you’re a Christian or not, it is one of the rich, deep and profound religions in the world, and understanding it better has something to offer everyone. In fact, as one of the minorities in a nominally Christian nation, we need to understand the religion better than most Christians.

So today, I want to look at two of these paths within Christianity. The first is the path of Christianity: the religion about Jesus. This is the belief that Christ was the savior of all who accept the story taught about him by the various churches. The second is the very different kind of path opened most recently by the scholars of the Jesus Seminar, which is concerned not with the religion about Jesus, but with the religion of Jesus. I’ve been a Fellow in the Jesus Seminar for fifteen years, and think they have indeed shown a profound way of understanding Jesus that can offer challenge and wisdom to everyone, regardless of their religion. That’s the Christmas present I want to unwrap today.

Next Sunday, the day before Christmas, we’ll warm it up more, by looking at some of the powerful mythic and psychological dimensions of the story of Jesus, looking at them as timeless myths rather than one-time history.

All three of these paths deal in one way or another with some aspect of Jesus. They don’t agree. They each have different pictures of who we are and how we should live. The first path can be good, though throughout history it has also often been downright evil: the cause of bigotry, hatred, persecution and war. The second path, if it’s done well, will almost always be good. The third path, which we’ll visit next week, is a very different way of understanding what it means to be human: who we most deeply are and how precious and holy that is.

And yet I think you’ll find that not one of these paths that talk about Jesus is really about Jesus, but that each lead to a different place.

The First Path: the Religion about Jesus

The first path, the one that has always attracted and led the majority of those who consider themselves Christians, is the religion about Jesus, the religion of Christianity.

You all know this story. Jesus was the son of God. In orthodoxy, this is meant pretty literally, though nobody wants to go into a lot of detail about the genetics involved. Jesus was, for orthodox Christians, the only son of God. The next part of the story is that he gave up his life, was killed, to save us. Somehow, God was pleased when his son was killed – there are several parts of this story that don’t hold up well under much scrutiny. He is our savior, the only real savior we can have. This salvation isn’t open to everyone, only those who say they believe this story. Those who don’t buy the story may be called heretics, heathen, pagans, or just by the more inclusive and poetic phrase, “The Damned.”

This is the story of Christ as a sacrifice made to god – the highest sort of sacrifice there could be, the sacrifice of a god-man, a son of God, in return for which God gives us something we want. Put more crudely but accurately, this is the very ancient practice of bribing God, and its roots go back into prehistory.

Mary Renault wrote a wonderful historical novel about this back in 1958, still in print, called The King Must Die. The king must die as a sacrifice to the gods because as king, he’s the highest sacrifice the tribe can think to offer. The practice of sacrificing kings continued in some societies well into the 19 th century, but its roots are in pre-history.

The reason you sacrifice someone so important is because you want to ask a lot from the gods, and think you need to trade something of apparent high value. At some time in our pre-history, some kings got smart and decided they could sacrifice their son instead, and it could still be considered a sacrifice from the “A” list.

This practice went on in the ancient Hebrew tribes from which Judaism evolved, and it is reflected in the story of Abraham and his son Isaac. You may remember that in this story, God told Abraham to take his son up to the mountain, put him on the sacrificial altar, and kill him, and Abraham was willing to do it. (Never mind what deep psychological problems Isaac may have had for the rest of his life.) Once he was ready to sacrifice his son, this God told him that no, he would now accept the sacrifice of a ram rather than his son. This story marks the transition in ancient Hebrew history from human sacrifices to animal sacrifices. This must have made kings, queens and their sons a lot happier, though not the animals.

But the purpose of the sacrifice was still the same: to curry favor with Yahweh, to bribe God. And in return, this God was expected to grant some of our wishes – food, victory, mates, the usual list.

I can understand the logic behind this, but it is a Wizard-of-Oz kind of religion. It is saying that whatever it is that we really need, isn’t within our power to get. It’s outside of us, along a path defined by priests, and we must do as they say because we, after all, aren’t really holy, aren’t really sacred. We were made from dirt, after all. And dirt isn’t holy. It needs the help of gods, who wouldn’t care to help us out without a bribe. It sounds like primitive thought, and it very primitive psychology: also very powerful.

I have never liked Wizard of Oz religions, because I don’t buy their premise. They empower priests and rulers, and define believers as obedient, through a supernatural religion promising to save us through a human or animal sacrifice. I think it’s a bad concept of humans, and a worse concept of God.

And in Christianity, the person who would have hated this religion most was the man Jesus. Because if all religions of sacrifice and priest craft are playing the role of the Wizard of Oz, all great religious prophets and sages are Toto, pulling back the curtain to reveal the illusion, and to tell us that we don’t need the illusion, because we already have what we need, if only we will have the courage to claim it.

The Second Path: the Religion of Jesus

So let’s talk about Jesus, and the path of the religion of Jesus. This is the second path, the one that is not concerned with making Jesus a human sacrifice, or claiming that his death was good news for us. It is the path concerned with trying to know what that great teacher actually taught , the path that believes it was not his death, but his life that that was the gift to us.

Those who have been here for a few years know that in the past, I’ve invited several very good liberal Christian ministers to preach here. Every one of them is far more interested in the religion of Jesus than they are in the religion about Jesus. And there have always been Christian ministers like them, thank goodness.

While such voices have come up throughout history, in the last twenty-two years I think the best single guide to what Jesus thought and taught has been the Jesus Seminar. It has come as a breath of fresh air to millions of Christians and non-Christians alike, because it resurrects not Christ, but the man Jesus.

The Jesus Seminar switched the focus from understanding Christ as a human sacrifice, to understanding Jesus as a man, through his teachings. This makes his teachings available and challenging to everyone, and makes him easier to take as a sage, and teacher, rather than some kind of a supernatural character.

During Jesus’ life, the Wizard of Oz religion of sacrifice had become big business, with the huge Temple in Jerusalem selling all sorts of animals to be used in the animal sacrifices conducted by the priests. That’s how you got God to listen to you, how you bought a ticket in the lottery, hoping that God might grant your wishes.

But all great religious teachers are like that little dog Toto, who pulled back the curtain showing the Wizard’s illusions to be illusions made to empower the Wizard, not the people. Jesus, like all the Hebrew prophets, said God doesn’t care about sacrifices, but about how we’re treating one another. And there’s no short cut there, no way to duck that.

You can see this just by looking at the most mistranslated line in the whole set of Christian scriptures. It is the line from the Lord’s Prayer, which you have probably heard translated as, “and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” In that form, you wouldn’t have to think much about it. It sounds like it could say “Forgive our sins, and we may forgive the sins of others if we get around to it.” But that’s a horrible translation of the key word in the whole sentence.

Translated more accurately, it should say, “and forgive us our sins, to the extent that we forgive those who have sinned against us.” Unless we forgive the sins of others, in other words, we have absolutely no hope of having our own sins forgiven. That’s the religion of Jesus.

The kingdom of God is the state of affairs that exists when we treat all others like brothers, sisters and children of God. We have everything we need, and God is waiting for us to act, to bring it about, for the kingdom of God is not within the useless killing of people or animals; it is within and among us. Either we act in ways that honor high ideals or we have no claim to be following God.

Jesus attacked the Wizard-of-Oz religion of his time like an angry young man. He didn’t come like the Sweet Jesus of bad Hallmark cards, but like an ethical and moral explosion. He said those who mislead children would be better off thrown in the lake with a rock around their neck. He said he didn’t come to bring peace, but came to bring a sword, to divide members of families from each other.

A lawyer came to tell him he had kept the commandments, and asked if there was anything else he should do. You can feel that he expected to be told No, no of course not: just follow the commandments, buy your chickens and lambs for the temple sacrifices, and everything is just dandy.

Instead Jesus said he should sell all he had and give the money to the poor. A young man was drawn in by Jesus’ charisma and Jesus asked the young man to come follow him. The man said yes, but my father just died, so I need to bury him first. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead!” This is not Sweet Jesus! You wouldn’t want to be sending a whole lot of Christmas cards with some of his most famous sayings on them.

He wasn’t a saint, and didn’t try to be one. The first miracle the gospels record automatically disqualified him from ever being a Baptist, when he turned water into wine! And he didn’t just do tricks with wine. He drank it. In fact, in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is described as a glutton and a drunkard!

Jesus would usually have been a bad role model, not one parents would want their children to emulate. He ran around with prostitutes. He had no job, no home, no mate, no family, and could always be counted on to insult the high priests. He was surrounded by people who didn’t understand him, and described himself merely as homeless. How many parents really hope their kids turn out like that?

But this Jesus, the man who lived, isn’t a role model or a savior or any sort of a supernatural figure at all. Forty to eighty years after he died, when the gospels were written, he was turned into a magical figure, a supernatural figure, a savior, and he would have hated it. He came to put the ball back in our court, to say that we have what we need, and God is waiting for us to act. And the priests, as they almost always do, turned it back into a magical Wizard-of-Oz religion that empowered them, and once more assigned their people the simple roles of believing and obeying – not Jesus, but them. Not much has changed, has it?

What I’ve enjoyed about my years as a Fellow in the Jesus Seminar was the exposure to this greater Jesus, this idealistic young Jew with such bold, disturbing and life-giving things to say. But while this is much better than the first path, the religion about Jesus, this one doesn’t really lead to Jesus either; it leads past him.

One of the Jesus Seminar’s most popular authors, Marcus Borg, even wrote a book called Jesus and Buddha: the Parallel Sayings , showing some of their sayings on facing pages, arguing that many of their teachings could be made to sound very similar – though of course the Buddha didn’t care about gods at all. And I have heard Marcus say that if he had been born into a Buddhist culture, he could have been perfectly content with Buddhism, and saw Jesus and Buddha as being on the same level, neither being higher than the other.

This is really where the Jesus Seminar leads, I think – not to Jesus, but to the desire for healthy and wise insights into the human condition and how we should treat ourselves and others – insights from any source.

There is a wonderful passage in the Gospel of Thomas that may not sound like orthodox Christianity, but Elaine Pagels described it as her favorite passage in that gospel. I think it is one of the most profound psychological insights in the history of religion:

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

(Another translation of this same passage, much harsher, puts it this way:

Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.” [Jesus Seminar translation])

Understanding the teachings of the first-century Jewish sage may lead through Jesus, but it is not about leading us to Jesus. It is about leading us to ourselves: to our own best selves. It is about pulling back the curtain hiding all the wizard wanna-be’s who would keep us tied to bad creeds anchored to horrible notions of God. Bypassing the religions about Jesus to listen to some of the teachings of this great spiritual visionary can lead anyone – Christian or non-Christian – to life more abundant, love more generous, and an appreciation of ourselves as being, like the man Jesus, the sons and daughters of God, precious beyond measure, and the hope of the world.

And it’s free. It isn’t cheap, for it can cost us our comfortable smallnesses. But it’s a free gift, once you remove the bad wrapping paper.

Merry Christmas, all you daughters and sons of God. Merry Christmas.