PRAYER

Let us prepare a manger in our hearts, where we can welcome the birth of the sacred this Christmas.

Let us not worry about building a place to hold all the presents we anticipate tomorrow. Holidays become holy days when we become aware of the gifts we already have; we’re not always sure how that’s supposed to happen. So let us make a space where we are open to life’s miracles, the ones happening within and among us.

They’re free, the best gifts: like the ability to accept ourselves as a cherished part of our world, or the fact that just being loved by people whose love we didn’t earn is a gift beyond measure. And the gift of life itself, the fact that we so often complain about not having enough and so seldom give thanks for the fact that we are here at all . These are the gifts that transform holidays into holy days. There is no room for them at the Inn. They can only be born in simple and honest places that make room for them. These gifts need a manger.

And so let us prepare a manger in our hearts. For something sacred wants to be born, and it needs our help. Let us prepare a manger in our hearts.

Amen.

SERMON

This is the morning of the Night Before Christmas. Tonight, at our two Christmas Eve services, we will tell the traditional Christmas story, with some comments to relate it to our lives here and now, and lots of singing of traditional Christmas songs.

This morning, I want to put that old story in historical and human context by showing it as a variation on a much older story, one probably going back into our pre-history. For the story we tell about Jesus is a variation on a theme we have told countless times, in almost every human society in all times and places.

Some of these stories had been told for thousands of years before Jesus even came along. They were famous stories, and a lot of them were stories about special babies born on December 25 ^th , because in the ancient calendar, the day we call December 25 ^th was four days earlier, the date of the winter solstice, when the sun is “reborn,” days start getting longer, and the light in the sky starts coming back.

But we need to learn how to read religious stories, because they’re not meant to be read in a straightforward way. So I want to borrow an insight from a very odd place. Over twenty years ago, I read a what I thought was a profound essay in Esquire magazine by William Broyles called “Why Men Love War” (Esquire, November 1984) Broyles had been a soldier in Vietnam as I also had been, and in this essay he made the astonishing statement that no true war stories had ever been written. It wasn’t, he said, that those who write about war mean to lie. It’s that they are trying to write something that is true not to the mere facts of their war, but to the deep and powerful associations it generated within them. And mere words, mere facts, can’t do this without being shaped into an almost mythic story. That’s still one of the most important and enlightening things I’ve ever read about either war or religion.

All of our most important stories, our favorite stories, are in some sense not true, are in some sense mythic. This includes all of our favorite novels, popular television shows, movies, video games or fairy tales. They’re all imaginative stories made up to express and evoke some very deep needs and hopes within us. That’s what gives them their power. In this sense, the animated television show “South Park” is no more unreal than “All in the Family,” “Rambo,” “The Matrix,” “Star Wars,” or all the world’s most fantastic-sounding religious stories.

They’re trying to serve something more important than mere facts; they’re myths. What’s a myth? It’s a story in whose images and terms we want to live for a while — sometimes minutes, sometimes years. It’s why action movies, love stories or fantasies like “Lord of the Rings” and the Harry Potter stories attract a million times more people to them than documentaries and The History Channel do. We live in stories. Without a good story to live in, we hardly know who we are.

We live in stories a lot like hermit crabs live in their borrowed homes. These are animals without their own protective covering, who will find abandoned shells of other animals, or even tin cans on the floor of the sea, and live in them for protection. The little animals are really quite vulnerable, no matter how secure they may look in someone else’s shell or soup can.

And without a good myth to live in, we feel vulnerable, too. The stories we choose are almost always on themes that have been with us for as long as we’ve been humans. They give us a role, a picture of the world, always at least partly imaginative, and we need that. That’s what a myth is: a story that never happened but always feels true to some parts of our human condition. So it’s almost impossible to create a brand-new story that isn’t just a variation on some much, much older story.

Prometheus was the story of someone who gave “fire” – often interpreted metaphorically as creativity, an imagination letting us transcend mechanical fate. How many variations on this story can you think of? Atlas was the god with the life-consuming, boring job of holding up the sky for others. How many people still spend their lives doing this?

And to take just two more, Artemis and Demeter remind me of a book by Arianna Huffington on The Gods of Greece . She was raised in France, but her culture was Greek, and she learned the ancient Olympic gods as symbols and projections of dynamics and allegiances that are, as the Greeks recognized, timeless parts of the human condition. As a brilliant and ambitious woman with two daughters, she wrote that her adult life has often seemed like her balancing act between the conflicting demands of Demeter – the archetypal Mother – and Artemis, that defiant, bold spirit of an assertive woman. (Artemis was the patron goddess of the “Women’s Movement” of the 1970s, embodied by, among others, Gloria Steinem.)

Those who have read much by Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Thomas Moore, James Hillman or a host of other mythologists and depth psychologists will recognize this sort of thinking. It is saying that all the great religious myths, including all the myths about Jesus, are absolutely ancient, far older than Jesus, Christianity or Judaism, and that if we understand them well, they are actually stories about the human condition, about us, about our anxieties and yearnings.

We don’t have to put this in stories; we just like stories. But some of this can be put into pretty straightforward philosophical language for those who aren’t as fond of stories. Listen to these words the philosopher Aristotle wrote about us, more than 2300 years ago:

“There is a life which is higher than the measure of humanity; [we] will live it not by virtue of [our] humanity, but by virtue of something in [us] that is divine, … [will] live according to the highest thing that is in [us], for small though it be, in power and worth it is above [all] the rest.” (Ethics, X, 7, 7)

We want to believe this, but questions arise: like, how did this divine thing get inside us? Where did it come from? Most of our poets and mythmakers have said these things must come from gods. We don’t see gods in the world we live in, but sometimes, those rare people who we see as heroes or saviors – so many ancient writers described them as somehow coming from that place where gods come from. In ancient Greece, this is what a hero was: someone with a human as one parent and a god for the other. Human, but also a child of God. That’s how storytellers say what Aristotle said about that something in us that is divine.

And there are thousands of these stories about the birth of someone sacred, about heroes or saviors with one parent from earth, the other from above the sky in the heavens. Stories of “sons of God” are in almost every culture. You can find them in Native American stories from long before they had any contact with Europeans. They are in all cultures, people living within very similar stories, like hermit crabs that look for similar shells or tin cans.

So in ancient Greece, Zeus, Father of the gods, visited the young woman Semele in the form of a thunderstorm; and she gave birth to the great savior Dionysus.

Zeus, again, visited the young woman Danae in a shower of gold; and the child was Perseus, one of Greece’s greatest mythic heroes.

In Hinduism, the god Krishna, the favorite god of most Hindus, was born of Devaki, the human woman, and the great god Vishnu.

The Egyptians had their stories of Isis and Osiris, and the miraculous conception of their son Horus, and the many drawings and statues of Isis holding baby Horus on her lap were the models for the later drawings and statues of Mary holding the baby Jesus. Most people knew these stories weren’t true in a historical or factual sense, but were meant in that deeper sense that is so hard to put into words.

So when ancient people from all over the world tell stories about their favorite heroes and saviors, something deep inside of them seems to want to tell the story as the birth of a special human whose father was a god. They’re not lying, any more than those who write moving stories about the experience of war are lying. They’re trying to tell a truth that seems beyond the reach of mere facts, that seems to live only in that place within our imaginations where miracles can still happen.

Many of you have seen “The Nutcracker,” and you know it was written in the same way. People who see it know it isn’t really about dancing mice in the middle of the night. It’s about dancing spirits in the middle of the winter. When we read some of the world’s great myths, we could wonder whether there really were all these special births all over the world. Were they reported in the media of the day? Did historians mention them? Did anybody interview them? Did they leave writings, maybe memoirs? But we know better. These things never happened in historical time, public time. Instead, we wonder why it seems so natural to tell stories like this, and why they seem to make such comforting homes, such welcoming myths, for us to live in.

Dionysus, Krishna, Horus, Hercules and most others were mythic inventions, not real people. But we can even find stories of historical people who were said to be born in this miraculous way with God as their father, and there are a lot of those stories, not just the one about the man Jesus. The most interesting thing about these stories is that the special births weren’t awarded to these people until after they had died! It was a kind of posthumous recognition that here, something spectacular had dwelled in the heart of a person.

There was even a famous example of this that happened during Jesus’ life. In August of the year 14, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus died – considered by many to have been the greatest of the Caesars — the month of August was named for him. And one month later, in September, the Roman Senate conferred on Caesar Augustus a virgin birth. This may give geneticists trouble, but not mythologists. For how can you tell whether this really was one of those people who lived by something in them that was divine, until you’ve seen how they lived?

The best pagan writers during the early centuries of Christianity were not at all surprised or upset by the Christian myth of Jesus’ “virgin birth” – they had lots of those, and understand the imaginative, literary genre. What they objected to was that Jesus was awarded a virgin birth. He didn’t achieve anything notable in history – certainly compared with rulers like Caesar Augustus; he didn’t deserve to be awarded a virgin birth! And of course during his life (if he lived), nobody said things like, “Well, there’s that Jesus. You know his mother was a virgin and his father was old Yahweh from up above the sky?” Virgin births, like resurrections, aren’t historical events. They’re imaginative, mythological events, trying to make a qualitative comment on the style of living and being we think this person exhibited – the degree to which that “highest thing in us,” that “divine thing” shaped and defined their behaviors.

Almost every other part of the story of Jesus was also used hundreds of years earlier in the stories of other heroes, saviors and gods. Three wise men are said to have visited the births of these miraculous babies hundreds of years earlier. There are hieroglyphs depicting the birth of a son of God with three wise men bringing gifts from ancient Egypt, over 1600 years before the Jesus stories were written.

Some scholars have said all this is from astronomy and astrology, and the three wise men or three kings represent the three stars in the belt of the constellation Orion in the sky, just as Jesus’ twelve disciples or Mithras’s twelve companions or the twelve labors of Hercules or the twelve tribes of Israel represent the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Twelve was a symbolic and mythic number in the ancient world; a way of saying this story isn’t just a local thing, that it refers to the whole universe.

Also in the Jesus story is the awful story about how Herod had hundreds or thousands of innocent babies slaughtered when he heard that Jesus would be born. No historians from the time record this, because it didn’t happen in real time. It happened in mythic time, and had happened many times before. It was in the myths of Sargon, Nimrod, Moses, Jason, and Krishna as well as Jesus. Innocents are also slain in the stories of Oedipus, Perseus, Romulus and Remus, and Zeus.

What this seems to be about is that someone has predicted that the birth of a certain child or mythic character will be destructive of the current corrupt regime, so all possible contenders are slaughtered. It’s another way of saying that the presence of that divine thing Aristotle talked about is a threat to everything on earth that is brutal or dishonest.

These are very old stories, and they don’t come from history, but from some of own deepest anxieties, fears, and hopes.

We are a funny species. We are these strange animals who know we’re here and know we’ll die and feel that somehow it matters who we are and how we should live. We don’t worry much about this with dogs, squirrels, whales or even with chimpanzees, with whom we share almost 99% of our DNA. We think it’s just about us. A good religion scholar (Peter Berger) once defined religion as the effort to conceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant. That’s an incredible statement, but it seems to be true.

The stories we write show our anxieties and yearnings. It’s as if we are saying, “Please God, don’t let us be like everything else on earth. Our life must have meaning, even cosmic meaning. The universe must somehow be humanly significant. Can’t we have a special star, a special god who cares most of all for us, and a special savior who lets us feel chosen? Can’t we?”

And these dreams seem to surface at this time of year more than at any other time. We have woven stories around the winter solstice for perhaps ten thousand years, have woven our webs of hope, wanting to make the return of the light into a metaphor for our the return of light in own lives. We must have hope return; we will have hope return, and some of our best-loved stories are on this theme. It is the great human yearning of the last 10,000 years or more, wearing a thousand faces.

There have been well over a hundred deities born on the day we call December 25 ^th , probably over a thousand. It is, by definition, the “birthday” of all solar deities. It’s the time the sun returns, the light returns, days start getting longer, and something deep within us hopes and believes that somehow it might be “on earth as it is in the heavens,” that that light, that divine spark, might be born again in us, as well.

Jesus didn’t start out as a solar deity. In the first three centuries, he had no recognized birthday, and early Church Fathers used to write with pride about having no “holy day” in their religion, like those pagans who named days after their gods. But in the fourth century, as part of the accommodation to Constantine – who seems to have been a Mithraist rather than a Christian, all the way up to his deathbed – Christianity, while gaining the protection of the state, adopted Mithras’ birthday (December 25 ^th ) and the holy day of Mithraism – the same holy day any solar cult would have: Sunday. The halos drawn around Jesus’ head by later painters preserve this ancient symbol of solar deities.

The purpose of writing so many stories about the winter solstice, the rebirth of the “sun of God” or “son of God,” isn’t to tell the astronomical truth about the sun and the earth. It’s about trying to tell stories that feel true at that deeper level where we yearn for more light, both in our world and in ourselves. And at this level, the literalism of Christianity — that unfortunate notion that all these mythic stories were only about a historical person, one man, rather than archetypal stories about the possibilities inherent in all of us — has been a profound enemy of honest or useful religion for two thousand years.

Stories about “virgin births,” birth of the sun/son of God, rising above lower temptations, and being “resurrected” in the sense of being “reborn” into a life serving that divine thing Aristotle noted, are all and always symbolic and mythic, not historical. They are about that divine spark, the power of that kind of light. We can see this is the Jewish story of Hanukah, too. A flame burns eight nights without fuel: impossible! Can that spark of the divine be kept alive in our world, in us, even when the nights are longest and darkest? Can our faith keep it alive?

It’s funny, and telling, that in all these stories we seem to keep a distance from them, as though we were handling fragile, sacred things and didn’t want to get too close. So we don’t tell it as though it were something in us being reborn, as though it were us in whom this divine presence entered the world. No, we say “I have this friend, this savior, in whom something truly divine lives, in whom lives a light that could bring a little light into the whole world. It’s a miraculous story, a birth of the sacred right in the middle of ordinary old life. I’m sure it’s not about me. I’m not that special. Still, I have this friend, this savior: Dionysus, Apollo, Mithras, Jesus, or a hundred others. And this friend of mine, this savior of mine, is a son of God, and just telling the stories about him makes me feel more special, more safe, even more sacred. It’s how I find that divine light that’s supposed to be in me.”

There was a wonderful op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday (12-23-06), written by a woman here in Austin named Jacqueline Woolley, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. She talked about how both children and adults decide what to believe, in large part by how seriously it is presented to us.

So she and her group invented imaginary things they called “surnits,” and presented them to children as parts of different kinds of stories:

To some of the children, we put surnits in a fantastical context: “Ghosts try to catch surnits when they fly around at night.” To others, we characterized them in scientific terms: “Doctors use surnits to help them in the hospital.”

The 4- to 6-year-olds who heard the medical description were much more likely to think surnits were real than children who were told they had something to do with ghosts. The children demonstrated that they do not indiscriminately believe everything they’re told, but use some pretty high-level tools to distinguish between fantasy and reality. (Jacqueline Woolley, “So you believe in Surnits?” in NY Times 23 December 2006 op-ed page.)

So why do children believe in Santa Claus? She suggests it’s because “The adults they count on to provide reliable information about the world introduce them to Santa. Then his existence is affirmed by friends, books, TV and movies.” And of course you can see him in every shopping mall.

And this is why we believe in religious myths and stories: they are presented in a serious attitude; people we trust take them seriously, and ministers are hired to treat them as sober facts. So they feel like safe stories to take seriously, to move into, in our hermit-crab mode.

But also like hermit crabs, as we grow bigger intellectually and spiritually, we need bigger stories in which to live, in which to let our imaginations soar and our souls grow. Many of you find yourselves in this church precisely because you need more room to grow, need fewer constraints on your mind and your spirit. So you come, often, to ask and to hear pesky questions, and you’ve heard a few pesky things this morning.

But we also need some answers. We’re also looking for new stories to live in, or new ways to live in old stories. And among those old stories, the ones associated with Christmas, our winter solstice stories, are still good stories if we can find our way into them, even if for just a few hours or weeks.

Because good Christmas stories are more than a hermit crab’s seashells or tin cans. They are like mangers , in which the tenderest of dreams and yearnings can be born. Let us prepare a manger in our hearts. For something sacred wants to be born. It is the rebirth of hope, light, love, and the reminder that all the sacred stories we hear are trying to remind us that:

“There is a life which is higher than the measure of humanity; [we] will live it not by virtue of our humanity, but by virtue of something in us that is divine, … [will] live according to the highest thing that is in [us], for small though it be, in power and worth it is above [all] the rest.”

It is the time of winter solstice, the return of the light in the heavens and the light — we pray — in our hearts and lives as well. And so let us prepare a manger in our hearts. For something sacred wants to be born, and it needs our help. Merry Christmas, good people.

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 25 ^th 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 but 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:

70 — 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.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, this morning we wish to talk about the elephant in the church. The elephant’s been here for some time, and behind closed doors it’s being talked about. Some say the elephant is the senior minister’s fault. He brought the elephant into the church. It’s remembered by others that he did, as a child, bring a horse into his mother’s house, so it seems likely he would bring an elephant into the church. Others think the elephant is the figment of a collective imagination, and if they ignore it long enough, the imagined elephant will go away. Elephants traditionally work for peanuts, so it’s easy for them to stick around, they don’t leave on their own, they have to be invited to leave. But before they can be invited to leave, all those involved must note their existence. Today the elephant will be paraded, it will stand on its hind legs and curl its truck, it will balance itself on a large rubber ball. Today, the elephant will do all its tricks. It will be hard to ignore the elephant after this. Those who see it, and those who wish they didn’t see it, will have to talk about the fact that its presence has been noted among us.

Elephants aside, we do come here to worship, to find a peaceful haven from the weariness of life’s treadmill. In this hour of contemplation and celebration, help us to band together as brothers and sisters in search of consolation, and comfort. The world is a hard place, and sometimes when the world is brought into the sanctuary, we feel the sanctuary becomes a hard place. Help us to remember that we bring the world into this sacred space so that we might judge it against eternity, so that we might hold up the transient, the ephemeral, the fleeting images that we are assailed with everyday of our lives, so that we might give up on these images as producing anything in us but fear and trembling. The world is a scary place; do we really need to know all the bleeding wounds from all over the world, wrapped up into one half hour newscast?

Help us to learn to protect ourselves – to turn off that newscast, to set aside that news magazine, to be less frequent surfers on the Internet. Much of what we are exposed to we can, in no way, do anything about. If this were simply a lesson in powerlessness, that would be one thing, but as presented by the actors and actresses of news, there’s an implied responsibility in reporting these bleeding wounds, and an inferred transference of responsibility from the teller to those told. Help us remember that prayer first penned by Reinhold Neibuhr, God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Psalm 126 (Stephen Mitchell’s Adaptation)
Luke 3: 3-7 (NIV)

Introduction: The Lord of this Unitarian Universalist Church is about to return. As a matter of fact the Reverend Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr will be filling this very pulpit one week from today. When I call Davidson Lord I am relying on the archaic definition of the word as in the head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

The passage in Luke read this morning is actually from the 40 ^th Chapter of Isaiah. In that part of Isaiah the prophet foretold the day when everything that was within the land of Judah would be carried off to Babylon – nothing shall be left, said the prophet Isaiah.

We have our own prophet here at First Church Austin. He was voted the Best Minister/Spiritual Leader in Austin for 2005 – just last year. His sermon “Living Under Fascism,” delivered on the 7 ^th of November 2004, woke up a whole lot of people in this church, and within two weeks of its appearance on our Internet site it was reproduced on the Website for al jazeera in the Arabic world. It was a prophetic shot that was heard around the world. Within a year Dr. Loehr was offered a book contract. The book, America, Fascism + God – sermons from a heretical Preacher – got Dr. Loehr interviews on radio, guest speaking engagements and eventually ended up landing him a friendship with, the television producer, Norman Lear.

I’m not sure that Dr. Loehr knew that his voice and his message would reach as far as it has, as far as it continues to reach. You were, rightfully so, a proud congregation as the message of warning that Dr. Loehr was delivering to this congregation actually reached a worldwide audience. After all, you were privy to this warning – this information – long before the rest of the world and there’s something wonderful about being in with the in crowd . First UU Austin was holding its head high – damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

But prophetic preachers, like our beloved Dr. Loehr, do not rest well on their laurels. For to rest on one’s laurels means that one is content with past achievements and ceases new efforts. Nor is Dr. Loehr one to look to one’s laurels that is he is not interested in protecting his position of eminence against rivals. Why is that? Fundamentally it is because the Rev. Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr did not even wish to reap laurels . He did not write his sermon, which was soon to become the world’s sermon, Living Under Fascism , in order to receive honors and acquire glory.

He wrote it because he is an extremely religious man, in the sense that he believes in paideia, the Greek word that means honor, the word that means that you do what you must do with the idea that all those who have come before you, all those who have chosen the path of honor and truth, are watching you, seeing if, in fact, you will fold under the pressure of the dominant society, or whether you will stand up and act, speak and live in the best interests of all those living and dead who cherished the higher, holier, more noble values.

The first time I visited this church I sat out there on the bench across from the office and Paula Wiesner, from the Internship Search Committee joined me with her writing tablet and pen. When the first service was over I wandered with Paula into the foyer and Dr. Loehr was busy shaking hands, and these are the first words I heard from Dr. Loehr at this church. He was talking to a parishioner and something that parishioner had said invoked this response from Dr. Loehr. “That’s a load of crap!” or words to that effect! Dr. Loehr said those words loud. I heard them on the other side of the foyer. Dr. Loehr agrees with another noble one who said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

When I call Davidson Lord, perhaps you know that I am relying on the archaic definition of the word as in the head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

I think it’s obvious, that since Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr has been the senior and only preacher here at First Church Austin for the past six years that he is the head of this household, if you can take the leap to consider this church a household of faith. As the motto of this church says, One Church – Many beliefs. Is there any doubt that Dr. Loehr is the head of this church where there are many beliefs? I think not.

But what of his being a husband? The archaic definition of husband is to be a manager or steward. I like the word, Steward. After all we here at First Church Austin have a stewardship campaign. A steward is one who is in charge of the household affairs. This house of faith, or if you chose, this house of reason, must have someone who can articulate for this house what it means to be a part of a religious tradition – as in the Unitarian Universalist tradition – which as Dr. Loehr is apt to proclaim in his prophetic way about the UUA – “There is no there, there.” And what does Dr. Loehr mean by that? “There is no there, there.” He’s not being snide, or uppity, well, maybe he’s being a little uppity, but what he’s getting at is, if a household of faith built around this tradition is to survive there must be offered a religious center around which it can revolve, a center that is solid and firm, a conviction that the search for truth, however horrible, however upsetting, however controversial, the search for truth is, in and of itself, a noble and holy undertaking. As it says in the words for the lighting of the chalice, “To seek, to find and to share.” In this sense, then Dr. Loehr is the husband of this household who seeks, finds and, then shares.

The head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

Dr. Loehr is the head of this household of faith/reason, he is the husband in the sense of being the steward who is in charge of the household affairs. These affairs right now center around the transition this church is undergoing from the smallish family style church that it once was and is fondly remembered by the older members and the newer, bigger, more outward reaching larger church that finds its concerns turned from internal maintenance to true, active involvement in the outside world with all its political and corporate messes.

But is he a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity?

You who have witnessed his preaching know, don’t you? And yet, some of you have lost faith because his prophetic vision, his ability to be one who speaks beforehand, his mental acumen that allows him to ingest and digest enormous amounts of materials and to see within those materials patterns that give him advanced warnings, or the anticipatory grace to see what is about to happen, or what is happening behind the smokescreens of commerce and the military/industrial complex, these prophetic powers have, to some of your thinking, put you, him and this church in the embarrassing position of being considered conspiracy nuts . “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t!”

Perhaps we really don’t know what prophets do, and how they are received in their own homeland?

Prophecy may be in words, signs, actions, ways of life, or sacrifices of life. Prophesy may be delivered by men, women, children, groups, or individuals, and in the case of Balaam’s ass by a jackass. Prophecy cannot however be delivered ex officio or in layman’s terms, prophecies cannot be authenticated in advance, since if they were they wouldn’t be prophesies, would they? All prophesies require investigation and evaluation, and if they are to be accepted, recognition by the community to which they are addressed.

The Biblical tradition represents God as commanding people to form religious institutions, and as calling individuals to criticize and challenge these religious institutions. Why are those who considered themselves Unitarian Universalists upset by Dr. Loehr’s criticism of the UUA? Prophets offer challenges so that institutions – religious or otherwise – might learn and grow in positive directions. Those who fear criticism may, in fact, be in lock step with those that both the Unitarians and the Universalists fought against as they were branded heretics, non-believers and unorthodox. You can’t be a member of a rebellious religious institution and decry rebellion in the ranks. It simply doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work.

It is true that the religious institution may try to silence the prophet – why is it, you suppose that the UUA magazine refuses to publish Dr. Loehr’s articles? Can you say “gag order?”

However, if the prophet wins, then the religious institution will incorporate the prophet’s message within its system and, more importantly, come to represent the prophetic tradition within its functioning. Who are the prophets within the UUA? Has the UUA come to represent the prophetic tradition within its functioning? Or has the UUA simply unearthed the mess of two thousand years of heresy and sat back to admire an edifice it did not erect, but only uncovered, forgetting in the process that the job of internal criticism continues, especially once a denomination has become established?

In a sermon by another prophetic preacher here in Austin, Rev. Tom VandeStadt, of the Congregational Church of Austin, he explores the book of Revelation and says, “In the Book of Revelation, a man named John, has a series of visions … In his climatic vision, he witnesses the fall of Babylon and the heavenly city of Jerusalem descending from heaven.

“In Revelation Babylon refers specifically to Rome. John envisions the fall of Rome and the manifestation of God’s heavenly realm on earth. But Babylon refers to more than Rome. After the Jewish exile, Babylon came to symbolize all empires. Babylon symbolizes all concentrations of political, economic, and military power organized for the express purpose of making one group of people dominant over (another). Babylon(s have always) existed for the express purpose of maintaining the ascendancy of some people over other people.

“In the Book of Revelation, the counterpoint to Babylon is Jerusalem. These two realities – Babylon and Jerusalem – are opposing realities. They are realities that contradict one another. They are realities that, to use apocalyptic imagery, are engaged in a spiritual battle with one another for the hearts, and souls, and very lives of human beings … they are realities that existed simultaneously when Revelation was written and they are realities that exist simultaneously today … in this reading (of Revelation) we don’t simply wait for Jerusalem to arrive from some heavenly, otherworldly realm in the future, (no), we undergo a transformation of mind, heart and lifestyle and enter into and begin to manifest the Jerusalem reality in our own lives.”

Rev. Tom VandeStadt is a prophetic preacher of the Christian tradition. Does his congregation agree with him totally? No. Yet, they have chosen to remember that what counts is not the opposition within their religious community, but the greater opposition that they pose as they face the empires of Babylon. They have chosen to remember that they are in covenant with Rev. Tom VandeStadt and that covenant allows each to both err and be corrected through love. Their adherence to what Rev. Tom has to say, may vacillate between complete agreement to utter disbelief, but they honor his noble position as prophet. They cherish his occupation as one who is the head of a household of faith, a husband or steward who is in charge of the affairs of that household of faith, and as a man of renowned power, and a man who has mastery in his field. They give Rev. Tom the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of his long vision, the benefit of, if nothing else, being simply an interesting point of departure in a discussion centering on covenant.

Conclusion: I want to read something that Carl Jung wrote in 1954.

The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing … He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths … There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the choice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. “You are no different from anybody else,” they will chorus, or, “there’s no such thing,” and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as “morbid.” … He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. “His own law!” everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law … the only meaningful life that strives for the individual Realization – absolute and unconditional – of its own particular law … To the extent that man is untrue to the law of his being … he has failed to realize his life’s meaning.”

So … this morning I am that voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way for Lord Davidson, make straight paths for him, every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low, The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.

And you, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the coming wrath? I think you know who warned you. Now, it is up to you to set yourselves free. When you are free then your mouths will be filled of laughter and your tongues with singing. And even though you may have sowed in tears you shall reap in joy. For those who go forth weeping with precious seeds shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing with them the sheaves of harvest.

The weather report on television isn’t always right, but it doesn’t hurt to have that umbrella with you, does it? Do you stop watching the weather report when the sun shines all day long and you’ve had to tote around that old umbrella, or do you simply put the umbrella back in the closet and tune in to see what the predicted weather will be tomorrow?

Is there a prophet in the house?

You purport to be Unitarian Universalists. You think for yourselves. Well, guess what? Even if the good Reverend Doctor is prophetically wrong half of the time, he’s still batting 500. That puts Dr. Loehr at least 134 points ahead of the lifetime batting averages of Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. Hey, either give the man a break or step up to the plate.

Perhaps someday many years from now you will be sitting around with friends after dinner and you will remember the famous … the infamous … Dr. Loehr. And faces will light up and stories will be told and finally someone beaming a big smile will tell how one day after church Dr. Loehr told them personally, right to their face, that what they had just said was “a load of crap!”

Amen.

© Bren Dubay 2006, December 03, 2006

PRAYER, Jack R. Harris-Bonham

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we joyfully gather here this morning in the presence of new friends and old acquaintances. We’re thankful for the many and varied blessings that have been bestowed upon us. We hope that in the coming weeks we can be reminded of those who have less, who are impoverished both physically and spiritually. May our thoughts turn into actions as the season of giving rapidly approaches. This morning we also hope and pray that the war, which rages in Iraq, will come to a peaceful and equitable end. So many have suffered and some many more will suffer until this war is over. We pray for that end. Help us to listen carefully to the message of community that is being offered to us this morning. Remind all of us that community starts with risk and continues through risk and, if it is to be successful, the risking simply never ends. If we can’t risk, then we can’t have community. Also engender in us today the feeling of tolerance for those who do not hold the same opinions. Let us make room in our hearts for everyone – especially those with whom we have had problems.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Thank you for your warm welcome. It helps these trembling hands and shaky knees. Every time I approach a podium I think of an exchange with our daughter, Jillian. I’d been invited to deliver a commencement address and she had recently graduated from St. Edward’s here in Austin. So I thought, with her graduation fresh in her mind, I’d ask her for advice about speech making. What she told me was “Be funny, be clever, be brief.” Then she looked at me as only a twenty-two year old can look at her mother and said, “You don’t stand a chance.” It’s fear and trembling all the way to every podium now.

But you’ve made feel welcome and the hands and knees are a little more calm. Thank you. I especially want to thank Jack Harris-Bonham. Jack, it’s been a pleasure exchanging phone calls and e-mails with you. And I, of course, want to thank you, Mary. Because of you and people like you, Koinonia was able to survive some dangerous times. We’re grateful for your support over all these years.

I hope all of you will return this evening to see the documentary about Koinonia, Briars In the Cotton Patch . You’ll see what I mean about dangerous times — about those times when Koinonia was being shot at, dynamited. About the boycott when no one in the county would sell anything to or buy anything from this small group of people living together on a farm in southwest Georgia. You’ll learn of how Koinonia started a mail order business to survive. That same mail order business continues today and remains our main source of income. Among other things, we grow pecans — when that mail order business began in the 1950s, co-founder Clarence Jordan came up with the slogan: “Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia.” And we’re still shipping the nuts out of Georgia today. I’ve brought catalogues.

When you see the film, you’ll get a glimpse of how some impressive organizations were born at Koinonia— the most famous being Habitat for Humanity. And of how we continue today to serve others, of how we welcome visitors from all over the world. I hope you will want to come visit.

But this morning rather than focus on the story you will see in the film this evening, I wanted to share with you three stories, some thoughts about language, about labels, titles, what’s in a name.

Koinonia — it’s a Greek word found in the Christian Scriptures. It means “community,” “fellowship.” Truth is I had never heard the word and certainly had never heard of the place before visiting Americus, Georgia in May, 2003. Koinonia. I had never heard of it. Couldn’t spell it. Wouldn’t even attempt to pronounce it for months after I first saw the name. It was a chance visit. I was in a hurry to get back to Texas. I only stopped by Koinonia because I was being polite — at least outwardly. Someone had asked me to stop. Inwardly, “I don’t have time to stop at some farm. I’ve got to get back to Houston.” Eight months after that first brief visit, I was asked to be the director, twelve months after that first visit, I moved to Georgia. I wasn’t looking to leave Houston, to leave my home, my life, my work in Texas. But I did. And I had to face some things. One of the people that helped me to do that the most was my Unitarian friend, Carla.

Koinonia is an intentional Christian community. It started in 1942; about 25 of us live there now. We’ve pooled our talents and resources, we live simply, each according to need and together we take care of the farm and do whatever we can to help our neighbors and each other; we work for causes of social justice. Everybody is welcome at the farm — Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Christian of any stripe though our fundamentalist friends seldom have much patience with us, seekers, non-seekers, Unitarians — all our welcome. I was and am comfortable with all that. But what I had to face when moving to Georgia was this word “Christian.” I never used it. Never called myself by that name. It would stick in my throat. I didn’t have that same problem with the label “Catholic.” I am a Catholic. I cut my teeth on the likes of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, co-founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, on the likes of the Jesuit social justice activists Dan and Phil Berrigan, of Mother Teresa, Saint Frances of Assisi, St. Theresa of Avila, Hildegarde of Bingen. I attended a university where serving the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the orphan, the widow, praying, meditating, learning to think, appreciating other traditions and attending Mass were all on equal footing. I saw priests, nuns, brothers, lay people whose names will never be known give of themselves unselfishly, untiringly to others. When I said the word “Catholic,” these are the people that came to mind not the crazies who also bear that name. But “Christian” —crazies, definitely the crazies. All that was lousy, awful, disgusting about them and that history — that was the image that made the word stick in my throat.

Then I moved to Koinonia. Founder Clarence Jordan, who died in 1969, was a New Testament Greek Scholar and a Baptist minister. A Baptist? Now that name conjured up some images for me. But from the beginning, the people at Koinonia have been a diverse group of people. That’s what I saw when I got there. What I also saw was a reluctance to use the word “Christian.” This intentional Christian community choking on its own name? Why? When did this happen? What made it so? And here I was coming to join Koinonia and I had the same problem. Then that Unitarian friend I mentioned helped us. I read from an e-mail she sent.

[Bren,] you said something at Mama’s [Café] over breakfast that caught my attention, I didn’t want to let it go, or forget. And it seems more important now. Something about not letting people forget, or blow off, Koinonia’s Christian underpinnings, its foundation in the Gospel. And I wanna say, as a second generation Unitarian with a deep suspicion of anything that comes with a cross on it, YOU GO, GIRL!

It matters. Language matters, and calling yourself Christian, if you are, matters. Language — names, labels, they carry identity, and we’ve seen a genuinely creepy, sad and dangerous thing happen over the last 50 years or so — our names get stolen and corrupted, and we’re left without our identities, confused and robbed of the power our names held.

Remember “feminist?” It used to be a very simple word that meant a person who believes that the world should be run as if women matter. Then the Opposition stole it and twisted it. They took women’s anger with domestic violence, and called them “man haters.” They took women’s efforts to be heard and called it “strident.” It went on and on, even as essential feminist ideas became the law of the land. And the Opposition was really, really effective. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a woman say, “I’m not a feminist, but…” then proceed to proclaim a perfectly ordinary feminist philosophy. But the Name, the Word, “feminist” is ickyickyicky and they won’t claim it. If you can’t describe yourself, can’t identify yourself — well — people like that have no power. Notice any feminist movers and shakers, and politicians or writers in the last ten years?

And “liberal.” Every great political effort that moved us a little closer to the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” had liberals behind it. But the Opposition got their teeth into the word. Have you heard it said without a derisive sneer any time since, oh, — 1975? And by the sheer force of repetition it worked. Now even the most dyed in the wool liberals struggle with words like “leftist” or “moderate” or “progressive” or any number of things that don’t quite fit. Because “liberal” sounds ickyickyicky, weak, wishy washy. But there were no liberals [that fit that description] marching in Selma, going to jail during Viet Nam, getting women the vote, or running the Underground Railroad. Not only do liberals lose the power and cohesion that comes from a name, they lose the great history that goes with it.

The same thing is happening with “Christian.” With the rise of the Radical Right, a small vocal camera-hungry group of extremists took over the label “Christian.” They identified their narrow, angry views as Christian views, claimed to be the voice of Christian America, and dagnab it if a lot of people didn’t believe them. Even my most ditzy apolitical friends associate “Christian” with hostile, ignorant, hateful people. Just like the women who mumble “I’m not a feminist, but…” liberal Christians have a fumbling discomfort with the word. And why wouldn’t they? The Christians of Leviticus are in charge of the name, and the Christians of the Beatitudes are homeless.

So, yeah, the Koinonia folks need to reclaim the name from the Nasties who grabbed it, and clean it up a bit, and wear it proudly on their sleeves. Otherwise the Nasties get to define you for the world, and you lose the great power, and the great history of the name.

Carla wrote this first part prior to the presidential election of 2004. She continued on after the election — I’ll have to wade a bit into her politics here — but you’ll see the point she wants to make. She finished the e-mail with this:

Now it’s after the election. I don’t know where my brain has been, or why I’m feeling so blind sided by it. This sudden revelation that many ordinary people voted for Bush because he seems better fit to be a “moral leader?” A moral leader? Since when is our national CEO supposed to be our moral leader? There are countries where they do that, but they’re not democracies, and the CEO isn’t called a president. So what inspired this vision of George Bush as Desmond Tutu — what has he identified as a key moral issue? Not poverty. Not hunger. Not illiteracy, social alienation, despair, addiction, violence. No, the great moral issue that he used to bring his voters to the polls — gay marriage. That is his idea of a great moral problem. And what’s scarier is that so many people agree with him. We desperately need to start a loud conversation in this country about what’s really important, and why. And we really need progressive Christians to reclaim their name and their history, and take the lead. They have history, they have credibility, they have the language, they can be heard by people on both sides of the Divide. And they can recognize a moral issue when they see one. Tell your hesitant Christians at Koinonia that we need them to save the country, and be snappy about it … Onward through the fog. [Your Unitarian Friend,] Carla.

Thank you, Jesus, for Unitarians. That’s what I really wanted to title this talk today, but I was afraid none of you would come.

What Koinonia went through in the 90s was perhaps more frightening, and certainly more insidious, than the bombs, bullets and boycott of the 50s. We grew “embarrassed?” about our name and slowly, over time, not at an instant death, but a slow eating away of our soul? Some of us forgot who we were. But not anymore.

Claim your name, live your name, embrace other names.

Claiming the name may be the easy part, but it is living it … By living it you become secure in it and if you truly are, you reach out to all other names, embrace them, learn from them. You don’t fear them. If you don’t fear them, you don’t harm them. I don’t have to tell you that Christians continually get into trouble because their actions don’t match their name. What happens though when they do? Remember recently, the attack on ten little Amish girls? Remember the response of the Amish? They went to the family of the killer and said, “Stay in your home here. Please don’t leave. We forgive this man.” That more than the senseless killing shocked us. It was the Christianity so many profess but which the Amish practiced that left us stunned.

Part of what you’ll see in the film tonight is the story of three Koinonia children. To our knowledge, they are the only white children in our nation’s history who had to go to court to win the right to be allowed to attend a public school. And, oh, my goodness, what they suffered at the hands of their classmates … but what may shock you more is their response to it. Greg Wittkamper was one of those children. He graduated from Americus High School in 1965. Forty-one years after his graduation, he was invited, for the first time, to his class reunion. Living your name matters. Finally, a group of Greg’s classmates reached out to him, apologized for what they had done to him. Greg sent us copies of the letters he received. Perhaps if there is time this evening, we can take a look at them, but for now I want to read you a story written by one of Greg’s classmates. It was sent to him along with a letter of apology asking him to come to the reunion. [ Greg & TJ ]

“What’s going on over there?”

“TJ’s fixing to whip Greg!”

“Naw!”

“Yea! He claims Greg called him a bad name in Mrs. Bailey’s government class, and he’s gonna beat his butt!”

TJ and the crowd caught up with Greg just as he reached [the baseball stadium parking lot] … Since we all knew he parked his car beneath a colored friend’s house a block beyond the park, it was not difficult to determine direction he would take after the dismissal bell rang. He was not dim-witted as to leave his vehicle on campus in the morning and expect to be able to drive it home.

Our class of 1965 was not the only class to study with “white sympathizers,” but we were the first to have colored students pictured in our annual. LBJ had just said they could go to school with us. We cussed them. We sneezed on them. We wanted to hurt them …

[As teenagers in Georgia in 1965], we knew what was expected of us. We were to be seen in church regularly, we were to be at the football games in the fall—whether on the field or in the stands, we were to look forward to voting for Democrats when we reached eighteen, and we were to have no use for people different from us.

Greg looked like us, yet he was drastically different from us. His family had taught him from the same Scriptures where we memorized verses, yet…but…well…

Well, Greg lived toward Dawson on a farm where Negroes and white folks lived and worked together. Back then the notion of whites and blacks living together was wrong! Caucasian teenagers approaching voting age in Sumter County in the middle of the 1960s were reared to believe nothing else. Some say this communal living is still wrong.

There must have been fifty of us standing four deep around a ten foot circle on this particular day. TJ challenged Greg to hit him first.

“Thomas, you know I did not call you a name, and you know I do not want to fight you,” Greg calmly replied.

“Knock hell out of him, TJ,” someone sneered.

Each witness knew Greg did not talk ugly, nor was he belligerent, but we wanted to see a fight. We wanted a victory.

History books will say Selma was worse, but there were not many newsman with cameras in Sumter County like there were near the Edmond Pettis Bridge during the Freedom March. Americus had beatings, shootings, and killings …

“Kick the crap out of him!” came another taunt.

TJ eventually threw the first punch—the only punch—landing it high on Greg’s face.

Greg winced and staggered backwards, maybe five steps. His knees buckled. He reached back with his left hand to cushion his fall. Greg did not fall. Nothing ever touched the ground other than his two feet.

Over the past forty years I have often recalled Greg’s inconceivable counter.

He hastily recovered and repositioned his full stature within arm’s length of the seasoned football player. Without one word, Greg clasped both his hands in the small of his back, jutted his chin forward toward his opponent and waited for the inevitable.

The inevitable did not happen. A coach came and the crowd dispersed. Greg whipped all fifty of us that afternoon without throwing a punch! I did not realize it until years later though.

I saw a sermon that afternoon. Because I did, I understand the Scriptures better today—one verse in particular.

As a boy, I, that day, went home feeling embittered about life and a miss opportunity to get even with someone I violently disagreed with. As a man, I admire a young man whose actions matched his words. I want to thank him for what he taught me.

Claim your name, live your name and if you do, you will embrace other names.

Over the past two years, several of us from Koinonia have traveled with an interfaith delegation to meet with Palestinians and Israelis who are working together for peace in that troubled part of the world. There are peacemakers there though it’s not their stories that are often told by the media or by the politicians.

I share, in closing, a story from my recent trip as an example of embracing other names.

“I am Palestinian,” he said. “I will tell you about four of my friends. When they were young boys, just children, the Israeli Army came into their home and killed an uncle right in front of them. They tried to move his body, but before they could, the bulldozers came and knocked down their house. They grew up with hearts set on revenge. One of them often brags to me why he’s here, in prison. But today I heard him and all his brothers. They were weeping. There was no bragging today. It was a letter that made them weep. They showed it to me. It was a letter someone had sent to their mother. I will read it to you.”

‘My name is Sarah Holland. I am the mother of Micah who was killed by your son. I know he did not kill Micah because he was Micah. If he had known him, he would never have done such a thing. Micah was 28 years old. He was a student at Tel Aviv University working on his Masters in the Philosophy of Education. Micah was part of the Peace Movement. He had compassion for all people and he understood the suffering of the Palestinians. He treated all around him with dignity. Micah was part of the movement of the officers who didn’t want to serve in the Occupied Territories. But nevertheless, for many reasons, he went to serve when he was called up from the reserves.

What makes our children do what they do? Do they not understand the pain that they are causing — your son for having to be in jail for many years, and mine whom I will never be able to hold and see again, or see married, have a grandchild from him. I cannot describe to you the pain I feel since his death, nor the pain of his brother or his girlfriend or all who knew and loved him. All my life I have spent working for the causes of coexistence, both in South Africa and here. After Micah was killed, I started to look for a way to prevent other families, both Israeli and Palestinian, from suffering this terrible loss. I was looking for a way to stop the cycle of violence. Nothing for me is more sacred than human life. No revenge or hatred can ever bring my child back. After a year, I closed my office and joined the Parents’ Circle, Families’ Forum. We are a group of Israeli and Palestinian families who have all lost immediate family members in the conflict. We are looking for ways to create a dialogue with the long-term vision of reconciliation.

Then your son was captured. Afterwards, I spent many a sleepless night thinking about what to do. Could I be true to my integrity and the work that I am doing? This is not easy for anyone. I am just an ordinary person, not a saint. But I have come to the conclusion that I would like to find a way to reconcile. Maybe this is difficult for you to understand or believe. Yet, I know in my heart that this is the only path that I can choose, for if what I say is what I mean, it is the only way. I understand that your son is considered a hero by some. He is considered to be a freedom fighter fighting for justice and a viable Palestinian State. But I also feel that if he understood that taking the life of another may not be the way, if he understood the consequences of his act, then he could see that a non-violent solution is the only way for both nations to live together in peace. Our lives as two nations are so intertwined.

I give this letter to Nadwa, a Christian, and Ali, a Muslim, both members of Parents’ Circle, two people I love and whom I trust to deliver it. They will tell you about the work that we are doing and perhaps it will create in you some hope for the future. I do not know what your reaction will be. It is a risk for me. However, I believe you will understand as it comes from the most honest part of me. I hope that you will show the letter to your son and that maybe in the future we can meet. Perhaps you will want to join the Parents’ Circle. Let us put an end to the killing and look for a way through mutual understanding and empathy to live a normal life free of violence.

With respect and hope, Sarah Holland’

When he had finished, the Palestinian prisoner neatly folded the letter then stared out the window as he spoke.

“This was the letter that my friends gave me to read. If everybody signed this letter, perhaps there would be peace. If governments would read… To me this Sarah Holland is wise. What she writes — this is the essence of what we must do, this process of reconciliation and dialogue, this sense of forgiving. Without them, I don’t care how many peace agreements you sign, without dialogue and reconciliation, without forgiving, without serving one another there will not be any quiet in this country for any of us.”

Thank you, Jesus, for Muslims and Jews … and Christians. And thank you for allowing this Christian to speak to you this morning. Thank you.