Note: Reading attached, which you might like to read first. 

April 9, 2006

          There are times in everyone’s life when it can feel that we are in the wilderness, lost, bereft, afraid, searching for something or someone to bring comfort and hope. I call this “wilderness time.” Through the ages, religious faith has been a salve for wilderness times. And many of these beliefs have grown out of major myths or stories that offer certainty and hope. What religious teaching has been a help for you when you have felt “lost.” For many Christians, the story of Jesus has been salve for the times they have found themselves lost in the wilderness, particularly the story of the end of his life and the resurrection.

For many if not most Unitarian Universalists, the story of the risen Christ is a bit of a stretch to be believable. But even without the resurrection story, there is still something compelling about Jesus of Nazareth. How can we put him in a context that makes “sense” to us? I believe that liberal biblical scholar, Marcus Borg, has offered some ideas that could make at least Jesus’ life and character an inspiration for wilderness times.

            We heard in the reading that the major myth of the Jews is the story of Exodus. The Bible tells us that thousands of Hebrew slaves left Egypt. However, the records of Egypt say that only a small band of Hebrews left. There is no archeological trace at all of thousands of Hebrews in the desert for 40 years and no other historical record. And yet the Hebrews gathered together the laws of the Ten Commandments, dietary, personal purity behavior, judgment, and atonement by which they were to live and which formed their identity as a people. If the people followed these laws, they could feel they were indeed Yahweh’s people; they belonged together and to Yahweh. The Hebrews had a priestly caste that kept the temple and performed sacrifices to honor their God and also for people who had broken the laws and wanted to be forgiven or to atone. Perhaps you’ve heard this story [Dear Reader, a congregation member with a deep, loud voice played the voice of God.]:

Ann: Moses was sitting in the Egyptian ghetto. Things were terrible. Pharaoh wouldn’t even speak to him. The rest of the Israelites were mad at him and making the overseers even more irritable than usual. He was about ready to give up. Suddenly a booming, sonorous voice spoke from above:

God: “You, Moses, heed me! I have good news and bad news. You, Moses will lead the People of Israel from bondage. If Pharaoh refuses to release your bonds, I will smite Egypt with a rain of frogs. You Moses will lead the People of Israel to the Promised Land. If Pharaoh blocks your way, I will smite Egypt with a plague of locust. If Pharaoh’s army pursues you, I will part the waters of the Red Sea to open your path to the Promised Land.

            Ann: Moses was stunned. He stammered, “That’s…that’s fantastic. I can’t believe it!---But what’s the bad news?”

            God: “You, Moses, must write the Environmental Impact Statement!”

 

            About 800 years after the Exodus, the most skilled workers and artisans of the Jews and their families were captured by the Assyrians in 587 BC and taken to Babylon (in present day Iraq). This is the second great myth of the Jews although there is some historical evidence for this “myth.” You heard the song that the choir sang this morning, “By the Waters of Babylon,” where the Jews wept about the bitterness of their life in exile. When the Persians conquered the Assyrians, the Jews were allowed to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem. They were sure that Yahweh had allowed the captivity in Babylon as a punishment to them because they had not kept the laws appropriately; they had not been “good” enough. They were equally sure that God had forgiven them when they were allowed to return to Jerusalem in 539 BC. This period heralded a conservative era where the Hebrew priests and governors were determined that the people would lead a more devout and pure life even to the point of banishing their Babylonian wives and children who were not Jewish born! A few centuries later, the Jews would be sorely tested again under the occupation of first the Greeks and then the Romans who tried to foist upon them their pagan beliefs and practices.

            Jesus of Nazareth would have grown up under the domination of the Romans and with the major myths of the Jews. And he would have studied and known Hebrew scripture in depth for that was what was commanded of the Jews—that they should teach their children. His life would have been shaped by making an annual pilgrimage at the time of Passover from Nazareth in the far north of Israel to Jerusalem in the south. The gospels show Jesus to be well educated, at least in the Jewish scriptures and way of life.

Jesus was thoroughly and deeply Jewish. This fact has historically been lost on the Christian community. One woman reported that in a religious education class she had a hard time convincing the class members that Jesus was Jewish. Someone in the class responded exasperatingly, “Okay! But the Blessed Mother for sure is not!” (Borg, p. 39) This is a true story!

A group of liberal religious scholars first gathered in 1985 to study in depth the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in search of the historical Jesus—the man Jesus, the pre-Easter Jesus. They are called the Jesus Seminar. One scholar, Marcus Borg, sees in these three gospels Jesus as a Spirit Person, a teacher of wisdom, and a subversive social prophet. I believe that Unitarian Universalists have always seen Jesus in this way. Marcus Borg articulates these characteristics well. Let us take them in reverse.

Jesus as a subversive prophet for social justice: We admire Jesus’ social justice activity on behalf of the poor and the disenfranchised. The portrait that emerges from the gospels is that of Jesus eating and drinking with such people as tax collectors and women, even low class women and he spoke to them in public. He embodied compassion for the poor, the ill, and the outcast. He said things like, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate” and he acted upon it. The temple authorities had become so rigid in their observance of the purity laws that they were no longer just. Jesus’ attitude was, ‘what is the sense in being clean and pure when the heart is hard and unjust?’

His Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrated this point. When a man lay bleeding on the side of the road, a priest and a temple official passed him by because they would not want to touch someone whose body was impure with open wounds. The Samaritan was a despised outsider and yet he stopped to help the man (which some say was Jesus himself but others take the view that all wounded and needy are God itself). Who was the most pure if the measurement is compassion? The Samaritan, the outsider, is the most pure in heart, of course. We call Jesus “subversive” because not person of his day would associate with outcastes for fear that they would be seen as outcasts and unclean.

Jesus as teacher of alternative wisdom: Jesus was a teacher of wisdom, but not conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom carries the cultural myths and beliefs. In fact, Jesus’ teachings caution us to challenge the conventional wisdom of our day for it may be unjust. (Witness the history of racism in our country and the myth that black people are inferior!) He was exceptionally skilled with words in his telling of parables.

The parable of the Prodigal Son is especially good and also quite opposite to the teaching of the day. A man’s son wants his inheritance that he may go and experience the world. The son squanders his entire fortune and, ragged, starving and smelling of the pigs he has taken care of, he goes back home. The father welcomes him with complete acceptance in spite of his being so-called “unclean.” Conventional wisdom would have counseled the father to disown his son, but in radical alternative wisdom the father’s compassion knows no bounds. Jesus’ short sayings are also arresting. He said, “It was said to you of old, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you: turn the other cheek.” While trying to get across a teaching about non-judgment, he counseled, “Before you point to the speck in your neighbor’s eye, first look to the log in your own.”

Jesus as Spirit Person: Marcus Borg calls Jesus a Spirit Person because his teachings and actions mediate the sacred for us. Borg said, “Jesus used spiritual practices, including both fasting and prayer. We are told that he prayed for hours at a time, sometimes all night long….it seems…that he practiced a form of contemplation or meditation [like other itinerant Jewish preachers of his day].” (p.35, Borg) Also, there was the intimate way in which he addressed God as “Abba,” which means “Daddy” or “Papa.” This was a most unusual address and indicates his closeness and intimacy with God. He was rather like a Jewish mystic of his day. In the Gospel of Luke, he says, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” reminiscent of the report of Moses after he descended from Zion with the Ten Commandments. Jesus, the Spirit Person, models for us the way for a spiritual life, or a relationship to God. So this pre-Easter Jesus is clearly an exemplar, and one whose teachings are worth following.

How do we account for the fantastic story of the death and resurrection, or the post-Easter Jesus? We know the gospels of Luke and Matthew were written 30 to 60 years after Jesus’ death. Marcus Borg is convinced that these stories were added on as a result of what Jesus’ life and works came to mean to the early Christians. Their experience of the passed-on teachings and stories were proof to them that Jesus was no ordinary man. The dramatic death and resurrection gave them the epic story they needed for them to form their identity as a people—the body of Christ, just as the Jews had formed themselves as Yahweh’s people with their epic story being The Exodus. These Gospels were written 60 to 90 years after Jesus’ death and the Gospel of John was written even later. The earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark has no miracle birth and it ends with the discovery that Jesus’ body had disappeared. Scholars are agreed that the rest of the story was very clearly added on.

The fact that imaginative writers added on the miracle birth and the resurrection stories was likely done to give their hero a noble birth and magical post-death experience in a world that valued nobility. The Gospel of John is the one from which the Trinity was extracted and where Jesus talks constantly of his identity. Nowhere else did Jesus indicate that he was God.

Again, what do we make of this claim that Jesus was God? Marcus Borg says that the very early Christians valued the teachings of Jesus himself and tried to follow his example. Their beliefs and practices were free flowing and creative. A few hundred years later, however, some people were beginning to claim that Jesus was God. Scholarly Bishops began to comb the many scriptures for evidence of these claims. And, as you know, the Emperor Constantine forced a decision about Jesus’ identity. The Bishop Arius claimed that although Jesus was a “special” person, he was not God.  The Bishop Athanasius claimed that Jesus was God and this was the claim that won the day. Over the next one hundred years, many scriptures (and people) were declared heretical if they did not comply with the official story that was being adopted and so many of the banned scriptures were hidden. One was the Gospel of Thomas and you have heard this week that the Gospel of Judas has been translated and is on the market.

Not only was Jesus declared to be God but he became the only true way and thus great horrors have been committed in making others believe that Christianity is the only true religion. Marcus Borg says, “What are the chances that God would speak only to and through this particular group of people (who just happened to be our group of people)?” He goes on, “There really are [spirit people in all traditions] and Jesus was one of them.” (p. 37, Borg) The early Christians began to experience the teachings of Jesus as an experience of God.

Can one be a Christian and not believe in a resurrection and all the rest of the added on story? I believe that it is up to you to define this for yourself. You should feel free to say, “I can accept that to be true but I cannot accept this—it’s just too far out!” Orthodox Christianity would require that we believe all the created stories, especially the resurrection, which to many people is the most unbelievable. Marcus Borg considers himself a Christian and he does not believe in the resurrection and he is married to an Episcopal priest!

What about us? We are free to believe what is true for us. We may each have a different take on who Jesus was. If we wish, we can enter into the experience of those who believed that Jesus was God. Or, we can appreciate Jesus for his alternative wisdom, his courage to be a subversive prophet who helped others, regardless of who they were; and we can appreciate his spiritual example of one who has a relationship or closeness with God which can help us on the journey of life, especially in “wilderness times.” And if you decide that you are a Christian who doesn’t believe in the miracle birth and the resurrection, I encourage you to take your stand!

Being free to decide for ourselves, however, requires a lot of inquiry and work on our part that will at least keep us out of the wilderness and may even lead us to a rich and rewarding spiritual life, if not a life as a fearless prophet. May we all be fearless prophets and tread in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth!

 

 Reading from Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg

San Francisco: HarperCollins Publisher, 1994

 

The Exodus Story

            For the people of ancient Israel, the story of the exodus from Egypt was their “primal narrative.” It was the most important story they knew. It was the primary story shaping their identity, their sense of who they were, and their sense of God. Around it Israel’s foundation document, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Torah or Law), came into existence.

            As the story that stood at the center of Israel’s most ancient recital of her origins, it was to be told by parents to their children:

You shall say to your children, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Yahweh displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. Yahweh brought us out from their in order to bring us in, to give us the land that Yahweh promised on oath to our ancestors.

          The story was remembered and celebrated liturgically again and again, preeminently in the annual festival of Passover. Importantly, it was seen not simply as a story about the past, but as a story about the present. It was not just the ancestors living in the exodus generation who were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt and who were led out of Egypt by God. Rather, as the Passover liturgy states:

Forever after, in every generation, all of us must think of ourselves as having gone forth from Egypt. For we read in the Torah: “In that day thou shalt teach thy child, saying: All this is because of what God did for me when I went forth from Egypt.” It was not only our ancestors that the Holy One, blessed be God, redeemed; us, too, the living, God redeemed together with them, as we learn from the verse in the Torah: “And God brought us out from thence, so that God might bring us home, and give us the land which God pledged to our ancestors.”

 

          Comment by Rev. Ann Fox: Thus it is a story not only about ancient Israel, but also about “us, too, the living.” As a story about both the past and the present, it images the human condition and God’s relationship to us in all times.