PB & J — PeaceBang and Jesus. One of my all-time favorites.
My pal Vickie Weinstein (who once made me famous for 15 seconds by giving me a fashion makeover on ABC's "Nightline"), has written a thoughtful reflection on "the way we treat the J-Man in the UU Church", which she's titled "The Meaning of the Cruxificion." I commented over on her blog, and now here's a slightly expanded version of that comment here on my own.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve taken a very simple and pragmatic view of anastasis — the Teacher is Dead, but the Teaching Lives On, and that everything that Jesus ever said or did or stood for still "stands up," and is just as True Now as it was then (or ever more shall be). And back when I was young and fiesty and preaching in West Texas, I often liked to blow away my more evangelical friends by suggesting that I was seeking a Christian Faith which I could still trust and live by not only if Jesus DIDN’T rise from the dead, but even if it could be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had never lived at all.
We live in a culture which, for better or worse, has been profoundly shaped by Christianity as both it and us have evolved together symbiotically over the past two millenia. It's true that nowadays we tend to see ourselves as a pluralistic society (and this "liberal/secular humanism" is itself very much a product of the Christian experience -- or perhaps I should say "the Judeo-Christian heritage"), in which values of dialogue, toleration, and respect for diversity are essential components to our self-understanding (even if they do sometimes bring us into conflict with less "enlightened" faith traditions for whom Zeal still trumps both Reason and Understanding). But unless we are also capable of understanding ourselves and how we came to BE this way, we still run the risk of falling back into the slimey swamp of sectarian self-righteousness out of which our forebearers so boldly crawled.
Our post-modern, post-Christian liberal Protestant "living tradition," which so enthusiastically embraces the Wisdom of ALL the World's "authentic" Faiths, also has a specific history and cultural context. We may like to THINK of ourselves as the most pure and perfect expression of 19th century Transcententalist minister Theodore Parker's "Absolute Religion." But we are really just a blister on the butt of the Body of Christ, where the Armour of God rubbed a little too uncomfortably around Christendom's expanding girth.
I won’t preach the whole sermon here, but if anyone wants to read more about my views (and assuming my html tags are OK), here’s a link to what a retired Methodist minister once told me was the best Easter Sermon he'd ever heard, “Easter, Again?” And a SPOILER ALERT!!! to the good people of First Parish: you're likely to this same message next Spring, when I deliver my first Easter Sermon for you.
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3 comments:
"But we are really just a blister on the butt of the Body of Christ"
Well that imagery goes quite nicely with CUC Executive Director Mary Bennett's hilariously ill-advised reworking of the U*U "corporate identity" acronym. ;-)
It's important to know that there have been societies that have cherished dialog, tolerance and even respect for diversity long before Christianity (or Islam or Judaism). It is good to understand where we came from, but we should be carefully to assume that the path we all walk now could have only come from Judeo-Christian values.
That's one of the things I like about Riane Eisler's book, The Chalice and the Blade. She talks about alternative models to violence and domination as aims of the society. We have the capacity within us as human beings to live a more peaceable existence, so let's give ourselves some credit as we struggle, in these frightening times, to reclaim those abilities.
I posted an entry in my blog a couple of weeks ago in which I quoted from Thomas Sheehan. One of the things he said was, For all the natural gifts and talents he once displayed, and regardless of whether one chooses to take him as a model for enacting the kingdom, Jesus is ultimately dispensable." What matters to me is the religion of Jesus, not the religion about him.
I'm not sure how modern UUism can really claim to be the descendent of the Christianity-based unitarians and universalists who preceded them, since the vast majority of UUs are neither unitarians nor universalists in the lower case sense those words. Whenever I see various nineteenth or eighteenth century unitarians "claimed" by modern UUs as one of their own, I have to marvel at the hubris of incorporating into your faith history people who represent viewpoints that most modern UUs would reject. It is kind of like Mormons baptizing dead people in absentia.
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