Nature Coast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship February 16, 2003
Lecanto, Florida
Freeing Jesus From The Creeds
A sermon by the Rev. Lloyd H. Dunham
Paul and Maxine met in the church youth group of a mainline church.
They enjoyed being with the others in the group
But didn’t attend church much
until after they attended summer church camp.
Friends had urged them to go.
It was a great week –
and they even liked the classes.
They went together to a class on the teachings of Jesus.
Even though they had been to Sunday school in their Methodist Church
since childhood,
it was like they were discovering something brand new.
What Jesus stood for,
what he taught,
commanded their attention like never before.
. If only everyone would follow his teaching,
it would be a better world!
Paul and Maxine came
home from camp flying high.
Some
years later,
after
college and their wedding,
they settled into a new home in a
community that was new to them.
They
hadn’t forgotten the high ideals
they had learned at that summer youth fellowship camp.
They
were eager to get to work
in their new church home.
During their very first Sunday there
the whole congregation joined in reciting
the Apostles’ Creed.
This was new to them.
It happened the next Sunday
and every Sunday.
Paul and Maxine were
troubled.
The
creed seem to be totally different
from
what they learned at camp.
They
asked their pastor about it.
He
told them that all Christians believed in the Apostles’ Creed.
Oh, some interpret it differently.
Nonetheless,
it is basic.
This creed with its
strong “I” statements,
“I
believe in this” and
“I
believe in that”,
just didn’t fit with the Jesus they were
trying hard to follow.
Finally
they came to the hard choice
that they had to find another church,
one that was more compatible with their experience.
. Paul
and Maxine visited many other churches –
and found similar situations.
They all claimed to follow Jesus
but
the doctrines and creeds were too much.
They
wondered –
“How could teachings so simple and so powerful
be smothered by such heavy doctrine?”
They
felt shut out of the very churches
that
claimed to follow the man of Nazareth!
I don’t need to tell
you
that Paul and Maxine are not alone.
Our
UU congregations have an abundance of people
who have come out of Christian churches
as a result of their struggles
with the creeds
and other doctrinal requirements.
<<>>
Thankfully our
Unitarian and Universalist pioneers on this continent
have worked to set Jesus free from the
creeds
that
have obscured him.
And
now a new generation of scholars
are
breathing fresh meaning into the man
and his message.
Marcus Borg,
speaking out of his role as a Jesus
scholar
with the respected
and often maligned
Jesus
Seminar,
brings
refreshing new insights
to those of us who have become increasingly uncomfortable
with orthodox Christian theology and doctrine,
yet retain
a profound loyalty and love
for the
man of Nazareth.
In league with a
large and respected group of other Biblical scholars
and
theologians
Borg strips away the interpretive
materials
in both traditional Christian teaching
and in the Gospels.
He
uncovers significant “historical remembering”
that can easily speak a powerful spiritual and social justice
message
alongside
the wisdom of other revered spiritual leaders
like
Guatama Buddha,
Moses,
Mohammed,
and
others.
To put it more simply.
Jim Burklo says:
“More and more people are learning to
love God
through the story of Jesus,
while leaving unhelpful baggage from
historic Christianity
by the
side of the road.”[1]
The Jesus Seminar
scholars are a tremendous help
in
sorting out historical data
from the embellishments of later
generations
imposed
on an ever-changing oral tradition.
The
appearance of the creeds hardened those embellishments.
The creeds came about under very peculiar
circumstances
when the emperor Constantine
became weary of the religious bickering within the empire
and
called together the Christian bishops.
Surrounded by royal troops and bodyguards
and under orders of the secular ruler
they shaped the Nicene Creed.
That creed and its successors have done
much
to hide
the real person they were trying to honor![2]
often
feel that the real Jesus has been stolen
and
hidden away
behind layers of doctrinal
pronouncements.
One
recent author has dared lay it all out
in a book called Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity.[3]
While this author points the finger at fundamentalists,
my experience is that there is a lot of theological hairsplitting
in mainline Christian groups,
an insistence upon a doctrinal standard based in the creeds.
This is where I believe the real Jesus gets lost.
It is refreshing to learn
how our Unitarian and Universalist predecessors
declared their freedom from the Calvinist orthodoxy.
We can be proud that
historically
Unitarians and Universalists
moved
away from orthodox Christianity.
Within
our contemporary Unitarian Universalist movement
many people wonder
who UU Christians really are!
It
is understandable
when former Christians assume
that we are all like the community of
faith from which they came
and
from which they may well feel alienated.
Actually
we are not all alike,
though we hold
some things in common.
While I use the pronoun “we”,
please
understand that I speak for myself.
While experience tells me that many
others stand with me,
I
make no claim to speak for all UU Christians.
We
are too much UU’s
to walk in lock step with each other!
>><<
UU followers of Jesus
are Unitarians!
That
means that with Michael Servetus,
Susan B. Anthony,
William Ellery
Channing,
Elizabeth Katie
Stanton
and others,
we believe in the oneness of God
(as compared to the more orthodox belief
in the Trinity,
taught
by most mainline Protestant,
Orthodox,
and
Roman Catholic churches).
It
means we do not equate Jesus with God.
It
means that we,
like our Unitarian forebears,
claim the freedom to fully use our minds
to discover and shape our own understanding of God,
of
Creation
and of reality.
We refuse to check our minds at the door
when we come to worship.
UU followers of Jesus
are Universalists!
That
means that with James Relly,
John Murray,
Olympia Brown
and
others
we believe that God cares for and accepts
all.
No one stands permanently condemned
before the Creator!
It
means that,
like our Universalist forebears,
we find our faith to be a religion of heart,
responding
to the infinite love of God.
With John Morgan,
we seek “personal transformation”
and “the social application of the faith in everyday life.”[4]
<<<>>>
Ours is a liberal
Christianity!
Unlike
much you hear and see in the media
and
unlike the church that many of us came from
and unlike many churches in central Florida,
we believe that to be truly faithful in
our search for Truth
we must bring all our best skills of
understanding with us
Into the religious and spiritual arena.
We
use these gifts to better understand what is being said
in scripture
and in contemporary theology.
We
have no creed.
We
believe in the God to whom Jesus pointed
by his words and deeds.
Marcus
Borg describes a Christian,
not as one who holds certain beliefs,
but as one “taking seriously what Jesus took seriously.”[5]
Most major religions and spiritual paths
have wide
variations within them.
Jews have their Reform,
Conservative,
Orthodox
and other groups.
Buddhist have their Mahayana,
Hinayana,
Zen
and
others.
Islam offers Shiite,
Fundamentalist
and Mainline.
In most religious expressions
there are mainliners
and there are fundamentalists.
So it is in Christianity,
with its
Roman Catholic,
Eastern
Orthodox
and
Protestant.
Within
each of these
you will find a variation
including a narrow fundamentalist group.
In all of these groups
there
are those who will plead,
“Don’t judge us by the extremists!”
Please
do not judge liberal-minded Unitarian Universalist Christians
by the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robinsons,
the Pentecostals or the Southern Baptists
or even more
moderate traditional denominations.
In marked contrast to these types of Christians
there is Bishop Spong who speaks with
compassion
when he talks about
the “great host of ‘believers in exile’,
those who
feel that they had to give up their faith
because
their church’s teachings
required
them to give up their reason.”[6]
They have been hurt by doctrines that violated their
inner spirit.
Our
UU view of Christianity
and
the story of Jesus
is not exclusive
and offers
meaning and insights
without
negating the spirituality of others.
We do not find God with our heads so much
as in our hearts.
We do not take the
Bible literally
but
as an expression of ancient people’s experience of the Divine.
We
also believe that God has many more ways of speaking to us
than just
the Bible with its isolated time and place,
or just in the person of Jesus..
Thus
we look for inspiration and Truth
in all the wisdom of the ages,
in the events of everyday life,
and in the lives of those
with whom
we are privileged to encounter
along life’s way,
many
of whom have chosen other spiritual paths.
When we turn to the Bible
we become recipients of the spiritual
insights
of our Jewish
and our Christian predecessors.
However,
we understand that neither the Hebrew Bible
nor the Christian New Testament
are books of history or science.
As
biased witnesses to their particular spiritual journey
they cannot be expected to be the total repository of
spiritual truth
or of Divine revelation.
In fact to
make them such
is to severely limit and confine
the Creator.
Marcus Borg uses a helpful distinction in
Biblical studies
when he speaks of history
remembered
and history
metaphorized and theologized.
Harry Emerson Fosdick preferred to
speak of the “abiding experiences”
that
often become trapped in the mental “categories’ of a previous era.
Fosdick says:
“What
is permanent in Christianity is not mental frameworks
but
abiding experiences
that phrase and rephrase themselves
in successive generations’ ways of
thinking…..”[7]
There are those who love to point out the failings
of traditional Biblical teachings
while failing themselves to pay respect to these
and other great bodies of
spiritual treasure.
One can recognize the issues raised by
scholarly study of the Bible
without
losing touch with the tremendous positive impact of religious writings
on
our society and many individuals.
Yes, both Jewish and Christian
mythology and theology
stand
in many ways on the shoulders of Zoroastrianism,
Paganism,
the mystery religions
and others.
This
does not negate their value
but rather
gives powerful evidence
of
the interconnectedness of our various spiritual paths.
Turning now to Jesus, the central figure for Christians:
Many
of us are uncomfortable using the word “Christ”
to refer exclusively to Jesus.
His
real name was Jesus bar (son of) Joseph.
He
was called “Christ”
by
those who regarded him as the Messiah.
Jesus is very special to us:
one who lived faithfully
what he believed God desires from us all.
Jesus points us toward God.
Indeed, because our faith seeks to be the
religion of Jesus
rather than a religion about
Jesus,
we feel called to live by his example of
forgiving love
and caring for others
and
for the earth
with which we have been entrusted.
Some
of us would prefer to be called
“Followers
of Jesus”
rather
than “Christians”.
Jesus of Nazareth has been called the “lens”
through
which Christians see God.
This is quite different than the
traditional Christian doctrine
that makes Jesus an object of worship,
a part of the Divine being.
becomes
the source of the power of his life
for
most UU Christians.
His
teachings and the life he lived
inspires
us to be his followers.
One person asked
us, “Do you believe that Jesus died for our sins?”
Our
response would be
that
the execution of the young Jesus came,
not to satisfy the demand of a vengeful God
who was seeking a blood sacrifice for the sins of the
world,
but as a result of political forces at work in ancient Israel.
Yet
his brief life left an indelible mark on history
that is quite separate from all the mythology
and doctrine
later constructed out of the oral tradition about him.