Christianity: The Scandal of Spirit
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
May 26, 1996
Memory Verse: "If this counsel or work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overcome it." (Acts 5:38f)
Today's Texts: Numbers 11:24-30 and Acts 2:1-21
Opening Prayer: Come, Holy Spirit, Come. Fall upon us and make us see the wisdom of Jesus inherent in Thee. Amen.
This morning I begin a new sermon series entitled Putting Christianity to the Test. It was inspired last summer by my nostalgic return to the house in which I spent my earliest years, from 1954 to 1963. The house is located in Parma, Ohio -- a fact which many people would be wont to admit due to its reputation for white socks, pink flamingos, and an ethnic population of Poles and other eastern Europeans. Parma was the frequent brunt of ethnic-slur jokes on local late-night television shows, making it something of an embarrassment to admit that one was actually from Parma.
I don't think it actually hurt me, however, although on occasion -- as Megan can testify -- I do have an almost uncontrollable urge to wear white socks with a dark suit. My memories of Parma are fond ones. Small starter houses, built in the years following World War II, with an abundance of playmates, neighborhood schools, and churches on most every corner.
It was classic Americana, with plenty of mothers, apple pies, and American flags. Memorial Day was a time for parades, in which the members of the VFW would march down Ridge Road in their World War II uniforms. Kids would wander around the neighborhood, without much supervision and without much concern for their safety. Parents took responsibility for whoever and whatever they found in their yard. The village was raising its children. I can remember the man next door roughly breaking up a fight between me and my best friend -- and we never even thought to file a law suit. This was a different era.
When I knocked on the door of my old house last summer, I was greeted by a Filipino woman who lived there with her Anglo husband and her mestizo children. They welcomed me and showed me all around the house. I saw the room in which I had my earliest, traumatic memory as well as the kitchen in which two of us ate an entire can of Charles Chips at one sitting. In the basement, the family showed me their sword and knife collection with blades from southeast Asia. The young boy was quite proud of a large knife made by his dad. He brandished the knife in my direction, just close enough to make me back up a few steps and suggest that the time had come for us to move along.
On the way out of the neighborhood, back on Ridge Road, we passed a sign for the Shiva-Vishnu Temple. We didn't drive in and look around, but I thought to myself: "What a different age in which we live. Filipinos are living in my old house, and there's a Hindu temple just down the street. Christianity really does have much more to contend with than it did 40 years ago."
My objective in this sermon series is to clarify some of the differences and some of the similarities between Christianity and the religions of the world. This is no longer an abstract or theoretical conversation in comparative religion. This is a struggle for your loyalty and your love that has reached intense proportions in every major city of North America. Confirmation, as we saw this morning, can no longer be taken for granted. It is not something that you do just because everyone else is doing it. The fact is, most people aren't doing it and the Christian church has to be very persuasive if it wants people to come on board with the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.
Howard Snyder talks about this in terms of worldviews. "A worldview is the grid we use to make sense of the cosmos," writes Snyder. "It is our set of silent assumptions as we navigate life's currents. It is our sense of the world, the framework that tells us what is true and important and what isn't. Worldviews answer the questions of right and wrong and serve as the basis for countless daily decisions." (EarthCurrents: The Struggle for the World's Soul, Abingdon • Nashville, 1995)
Many people never make a conscious decision about their worldview. They live and die within the context of a worldview that is taken for granted by their culture at-large. That's just "the way things are." Increasingly, however, worldviews are coming under fire. People are being exposed to competing worldviews as never before, and it's taking place all around the globe. As a result people are thinking things never thought before, and they are forming new hybrid views of the universe. We live in revolutionary times, described by Alvin Toffler and other futurists as "the hinge of history." (Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century, Bantam Books • New York, 1990)
This shifting and synthesis is taking place in every area of human endeavor, and religion is certainly no exception. A country which started out with grand visions of being a Christian nation, set upon a hill for everyone to see, is becoming the cultural crossroads of the world. Islam is now the fastest growing religion in America, with more adherents than the Presbyterian church. By 1993 some 1,500 new mosques had been built in the United States. Muslims may soon surpass the number of Jews. Hinduism and Buddhism are also on the rise, not only in Parma but all around the nation. And I can't begin to count the number of times I've been contacted by the Mormons or the Jehovah Witnesses.
All this is just the tip of the iceberg. Spirituality has taken hold of our entire society. You can find signs of it in the shopping malls and on the street corners. Television commercials show Buddhist monks in Tibet distracted by the hum of the Budweiser blimp while tabloids flash headlines of the coming apocalypse.
Even modern science has gotten into the act with its revolutionary discoveries in genetics and physics. Body, mind, and spirit are not as clearly divided as science once thought. The material world is being reconceptualized in spiritual, and even animistic, terms. The Gaia Hypothesis, named after the Greek goddess who personified Earth, is moving beyond the point of analogy to the fundamental question of identity. Mother Earth is becoming an object of worship.
With the advent of New Age religion and neopaganism we find ourselves coming full circle to the birthday of the church. The cultural and religious diversity of our day has made our world very much like the world of 2,000 years ago, moving our mission field from the lands across the sea to the neighbor next door. Suddenly Christians have new reason to tell the old story all over again.
"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." They spoke about Jesus of Nazareth, who was put to death by the powers of this world but was freed from death by the power of God. Now everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Acts 2:1-4, 23-24, 21)
"And the gathered crowd was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in their native language. All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, 'What does this mean?' But others sneered and said, 'They are filled with new wine.'" (Acts 2:6, 12f)
All were amazed and perplexed. Scandalized might be a better word. We have a strange worldview, indeed.
Suggesting that someone, or something, exists independent of and apart from the dimensions of time and space. Seeing that One interact with our world in strange and marvelous ways. Choosing uneducated Galilean peasants to communicate the mysteries of the universe. Giving them the ability to reach the peoples of the world with the message of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. It's an experience the Christian church has often found as confusing and as threatening as everyone else.
The Spirit of this One, this God, poured out on all flesh? Without any of the usual discriminations? Without regard to male or female, slave or free, age or ability, language or ethnicity, orientation or occupation?
No wonder people keep trying to put the Spirit back in the box! It disrupts our assumptions about the way things work. It lifts up the poor and brings down the rich. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It fills the hungry with good things and empties those who are full. It brings laughter to those who weep and sorrow to those who laugh. (Luke 6:20f, 24f) It turns the tables on the world as we know it, putting in its place the eternal reign of God.
When the Spirit fell on Eldad and Medad, the problem was one and the same. They had not joined the elders to be installed by Moses in the desert. They had skipped the consecration service, and had failed to register as Moses' assistants. But when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied along with all the rest. Joshua, son of Nun, tried to stop to such an unauthorized display of power. He found it insulting and dangerous. But Moses rebuked him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!"
It happened all over again with the disciples of Jesus. Immediately after arguing over who was the greatest among them, John came up to say, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us." But Jesus said, "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us." (Mark 9:38-41) The disciples still didn't get it.
So when it came time for him to return to God, Jesus told his disciples to wait. Wait in Jerusalem until you understand the scandal of the Spirit. Wait until you understand that the Holy One of Israel is no respecter of persons. Wait until you prophesy in my name, to all the peoples of world, with the language of the Spirit.
That, in the end, is the real genius of Christianity. The recognition of God as the One who always takes the initiative -- moving, stirring, speaking, brooding, listening, healing, teaching, troubling, and filling. The recognition of God's people as the Spirit-filled followers of Jesus. The world does not understand this way, but to those who are being saved it is the wisdom and the power of God.
Today is not only the birthday of the church; it is our birthday in the Spirit. Even as Lindsey was led to the waters of baptism, and even as the confirmands were led to the promises of faith, so are we led to a new vitality in Christian discipleship which this world needs now, as much as ever. Amen.
Judaism: The Scandal of Jesus
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
June 9, 1996
Memory Verse: "If this counsel or work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overcome it." (Acts 5:38f)
Today's Texts: Genesis 14:17-24 and Acts 9:1-9
Opening Prayer: Gracious God, help us to see our face in the face of Jesus and to hear our voice in the word of Jesus. Transform us in this hour with the power of grace. Amen.
In the 144-year history of this church, there have been 14 Senior Ministers. Each of them has left their mark and in some sense has transformed this community of faith.
The transitions between one Senior Minister and the next have not always been easy, gradual, and progressive. Sometimes the changes have been abrupt and dramatic. For all his love of Gothic architecture, with its thousand-year history of strength and beauty, Dr. Lichliter was not very enamored with the theology which prompted Christians to build such grand, cross-shaped houses of worship. He was a unitarian, a rationalist, and a mason with extraordinary oratorical skills. If Dr. Lichliter hadn't been able to pack the house, we might never have gotten this place built nor paid for it through the Depression.
Dr. Lichliter's successor, Boynton Merrill, came out of a different mold altogether. For Dr. Merrill, Jesus wasn't just the greatest teacher who ever lived, he was the Son of God -- worthy of praise and adoration. One of the first things he did was to persuade our church to put a cross up in the chancel, as well as a communion table, in order to symbolize the new theological wind which was blowing at First Church.
As you can imagine, Dr. Merrill's changes took some getting used to after almost two-decades with Dr. Lichliter. Things looked different, sounded different, and felt different than they had in quite some time. Things were changing at the church, right before their very eyes.
Word has it that two women were going out the Ninth Street doors, following a Sunday morning worship service, in the early years of Dr. Merrill's tenure. They didn't know that he was trailing behind them nor that he was within earshot of their conversation. One of them reportedly exclaimed to the other, "'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!' If I hear that name one more time, I think I'm going to scream!" At which point Dr. Merrill made his presence known.
The theological claims of the Christian church about Jesus are, in the end, the hardest claims to swallow. It's not his teachings nor his deeds. It's not his birth nor his death nor even his resurrection. It's the notion that in Jesus of Nazareth, a first-century Jew from the region of Galilee, God was finally and fully manifested in human flesh. Those women who went out the Ninth Street doors are to be commended for both their passion and their perception -- they at least grasped the outrageous claims being made for Jesus.
It's really no wonder the Jews have found these claims to be so scandalous for the past two thousand years. "Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58). Who can say what Jesus meant by that? No past, present, or future. No chronology which makes any sense at all. Just a mysterious statement of presence since the beginning of time. John put it this way, at the start of his gospel:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us -- like the glory of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1, 14) In the person of Jesus Christ, God's Spirit was pleased to dwell.
Many Jews had hoped for more than they got out of someone with such an impressive pedigree. After all, they could still remember the golden years of Saul, David, and Solomon -- a century of national sovereignty which confirmed their tale of manifest destiny. God had chosen them from among all the peoples of the world and had made certain promises to them which would not be forgotten.
"I will bless you and keep you. I will make my face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. I will lift up my countenance upon you and give you peace." (Numbers 6:24-26).
Those words, given to Moses from the very mouth of God, led to the understandable expectation that there would come a day of vindication and fulfillment. Their interminable exile would come to an end and the Holy Land would once again be a happy home for Jews and, indeed, for all humanity. The God who acted in history to deliver them from slavery in Egypt and to establish the kingdom of David would act again to inaugurate a new age of righteousness and peace.
Less than 40 years after Jesus had come and gone, the Zealots organized a revolt against the Romans on the grounds that God was soon to bring about the end of the age. As it turned out, the Romans were soon to bring about the end of Jewish messianism. In 70 A.D., the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. Within a few years, all active resistance was eliminated. The final stand, taken by the most zealous of Jews on Mount Masada, was crushed in 73 A.D., after a long and arduous siege.
All this was a far cry from the promises of God. Any hope of persuading the Jews that Jesus was the long-hoped for Messiah of Israel pretty well died with the last soul on Mount Masada. Instead of righteousness and peace, there was wickedness and war. Instead of blessing and honor, there was cursing and humiliation. The right-handed power of God had abandoned Israel, thereby producing yet another wave of bitterness and resentment. It wasn't a pretty picture.
"Some despaired of any restoration as long as Rome was in power. That was the realistic answer. Some projected a time when Rome would reap its just deserts. That was the apocalyptic answer. ... Some gave up on history as the arena of salvation and projected a destiny for the righteous in heaven. That was the gnostic answer. Some mustered the strength for one last, belated attempt to regain Jewish control of Jerusalem and went down to humiliating defeat." That was the messianic answer. (Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth, Harper San Francisco, 1995).
But others took comfort and found meaning in the notion that Jesus, who suffered no less bitterly than the Jews, had somehow become the epitome of God. The stone which the builders rejected became the cornerstone of faith. It was easy enough to draw a connection between the Jewish rejection of Jesus and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The more simple-minded did just that, leaving a tragic legacy of Christian anti-Semitism which survives to this very day. The more sacred-minded did something different, leaving a tremendous legacy of Christian compassion and divine grace which confounds people yet today.
Have you ever wondered why we have no physical description of Jesus? With all the words written about him, not even a single brush stroke let along a full-blown portrait? The followers of Jesus weren't interested in him as a media event; they were interested in him as a Christ event in which God became flesh for the salvation of the world. Not with lightning bolts and the armies of heaven, but with nail holes and the indignities of life. What moved the writers of the New Testament was not the color of his eyes or the curl of his hair, but the life which came alive inside them as they heard the good news of the gospel.
Behold, I am making all things new. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the fountain of life. (Revelation 21:5f).
Perhaps that is the best way to answer the question which came up over an over again in this year's confirmation class: what's the big deal about Jesus? The big deal is not what happened to Jesus but what happens to you when you hear about Jesus -- the mortal one who is at once fully God and fully human. Do you see a new possibility for yourself in the Spirit-person of Nazareth? Do you take in the pain and sadness of the world with new faith, hope, and love? Do you see the light of your follies and the error of your ways?
Paul saw the light on the road to Damascus. He had been part of the temple police, violently persecuting the church of Jesus Christ, when the light shown so brightly as to knock him to the ground. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Why do you ridicule me? Why do you reject my offer of salvation, which has been present since the beginning of time, and which has been perfected in the person of Jesus Christ? For three days Paul was left without sight, and he neither ate nor drank. But then the scales fell from his eyes, his sight was restored, he got up, and was baptized.
Paul had died and risen with Christ. He experienced a transformation that has been repeated so many times, in so many ways, over so many centuries that one begins to see how God has used Jesus to accomplish the very purpose of creation: namely, to make Christs of us all.
This could never happen by the right-handed exercise of power, as though God was some ancient version of a cartoon super hero. This could only happen by the left-handed expression of pain, as though God was groaning until the whole creation capitulates to love. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say to his tormentors that "our capacity to endure suffering will outlast your capacity to inflict it." And so it is with God. God endures the sin of this world until every last one of us succumbs to the mystery of grace.
In 1967 Paul Newman portrayed this mystery in the award-winning movie, Cool Hand Luke. Luke is a curious character who manages to confound the world with his resolute willingness to suffer rather than to compromise. After going to prison, Luke gets into trouble with the prison bully for not playing by the rules of the game. Luke ends up having to fight the obviously bigger and stronger man.
Although Luke hardly throws a punch, he ends up winning the fight. Time after time, the bully pummels Luke and knocks him to the ground. Time after time, Luke struggles back to his feet. Eventually, the bully can no longer bring himself to strike a man who offers no resistance other than his blood, his determination, and his pain. The bully is literally shamed into submission, and the entire prison is transformed in the process.
That is the big deal about Jesus. In the beginning was the Word -- for there never has been and there never will be a world without salvation.
That is the significance which the New Testament finds in this morning's lesson from the book of Genesis. Before Abraham was even Abraham, before Jerusalem had ever heard the songs of Zion, there was a certain king named Melchizedek who was known as a priest of the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth. Abram bowed down before Melchizedek, offering him a tenth of everything, in return for his blessing of peace.
The author of Hebrews saw Melchizedek as a foreshadowing of Jesus -- his story neither begins nor ends in scripture. It simply has been from the beginning, and will be forevermore. "Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." (Hebrews 7:3).
Such is the timeless value of the one we call Jesus. He reveals the way things are about the universe. It's not that in Jesus God decided to change the rules of the game and to act in a new way. It's that in Jesus God decided to reveal the mystery of Christ, present in creation from beginning to end. The mystery of Christ is the mystery of grace, anointing all things with the lavish balm of forgiveness. We have no claim to the blessing of God, no reason to be accepted or redeemed, and yet God calls to see our face in the face of Jesus. It is an outrageous claim. It is scandalous word. And yet for those who are called, it is the power and wisdom of God. Amen.
Islam: The Scandal of Grace
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
June 16, 1996
Memory Verse: "If this counsel or work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overcome it." (Acts 5:38f)
Today's Texts: Genesis 12:1-9 and Acts 10:9-16, 34-43
Opening Prayer: Holy God, you have given us standards to live by and yet you love us regardless of our performance. Teach us now how to live into the fullness of your grace. Amen.
It's not hard to understand how someone might have come up with the idea of God. Three nights ago I was sitting on top of a mountain, in southwestern Virginia, laughing with our Appalachian work campers and looking at the stars as they poked their way through the smoke from our campfire. It was as at once an intimate and awesome moment, worthy of the one we call God.
For untold millennia, human beings have taken experiences just like that one to form ideas about the nature of the universe. Archaeological evidence -- from cave paintings to burial mounds -- suggests that our earliest object of worship was the earth itself, with its constant and rhythmic change between creation and destruction, birth and death. There is no evidence of weapons from this period, although tools and pots are not lacking. Mother Earth became a feminine goddess which nurtured and protected her inhabitants. The primary petition focused upon the physical survival of life itself.
About 10,000 years ago all this began to change. With the domestication of plants and animals, Mother Earth became something to dominate and subdue rather than to worship and fear. Father God became something separate and distinct from the natural world, empowering humans to transcend the confines of their own environment. This was the era of the first legal codes, the first cities, and the first military operations. It was also the era of the first Israelites, our ancestors in the faith.
The primary petition was no longer focused on physical survival but on political success. The vision of God's kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, began to look very much like the establishment of a Jewish state headquartered in Jerusalem. If only people would do everything God commanded in the first five books of the bible, all would be well and life would be good. A causal link was established between human obedience and divine blessing. Obey God and live. Disobey God and die. The rhythms of nature could be overcome as long as we submit ourselves to the High One of heaven.
This spiritual movement accounts for the origin of three major religions which are still very much a part of the modern world. Judaism is the oldest of the three, beginning more than three thousand years ago. Christianity arose as something of a protest movement, about two thousand years ago. Islam is the youngest of the three, beginning in the early decades of the seventh century with yet another revelation of the Most High God.
All three religions broke with the contemporary patterns of deities in the ancient Near East. The Earth Mother is replaced with a Transcendent Other who shares his power with no one. He is the Creator of the universe, and is typically characterized by such masculine epithets as King, Lord, Master, Judge, and Father.
Judaism and Islam both revolve around the transcendent power of a masculine God. God is the one who lays down the laws which we must follow. God is not only the Creator of the universe but the Giver of the rules. It's a dictatorial formula, which all parents can understand. "Why do I have to do this?" "Because I said so."
Islam goes even further than Judaism in this regard. It may well be the quintessential expression of a submissive spirituality. Islam literally means "submission to the will of God." That was the experience of its founder, Muhammed, in receiving his revelation from God and that is the legacy of this religion in our world today. It took Muhammed 23 years to complete the recital of God's will in the Qur'an, covering such wide-ranging subjects as how to organize a government, what foods to eat and how to eat them, how women should handle menstruation, and how to treat homosexuals.
The list could go on and on, because the Qur'an is cut from the same cloth as the Old Testament law. It tries to consider the situations of its day and to tell people how to handle them. There's been a lot of talk about Islamic Fundamentalism. Given the nature of their holy book, one might argue that it's all fundamentalism. The Qur'an is viewed as the infallible and incarnate Word of God. The Transcendent One didn't come into the world as flesh but as a book. The Qur'an is to Islam what Jesus is to Christianity.
Reading the Qur'an makes me glad that there were some subjects Jesus decided not to touch. Jesus was much more of a storyteller and a healer than a lawgiver and a leader. That's why Christianity is so frustrating for Islam. There's too much diversity and too little conformity. From one church to the next, you can find as many differences as similarities. And there's no way to say, based upon our holy book, that one way is right and the other way is wrong. Our founder permits such diverse readings and inspirations.
Just before I left town for Appalachia, I got a call from the editor of The Christian Chronicle -- a conservative, evangelical newspaper -- telling me that they were going to stop carrying reprints of my sermons and newsletter articles because I had become too controversial. Since I wasn't aware of having done anything lately, I inquired as to what had prompted this phone call. Apparently they had received some complaints about this church's willingness to be open and affirming of homosexual persons.
I ended up in a one hour conversation with the editor and had a very good conversation. Although the editor had a lot of misconceptions about my position, and although we saw to eye to eye on many things, it became clear, in the end, that we would have to agree to disagree on the question of homosexuals and their place in the church of Jesus Christ. We both loved Jesus. We both read the same bible. But we took away some very different learnings about this particular subject.
Discussion like that don't happen within Islam. They have a book with a definitive word to which they must submit. There's nothing left to the imagination. There's nothing to argue about. Christians, on the other hand, have a book with a provocative word which often raises more questions than it answers.
I has a similar experience recently with the Let Justice Roll organizing project. Some of you know that Jim Wallis and Ken Medema will be coming to town this December for an evening of inspiration and encouragement in the struggle of social justice. Jim is the founder and editor of the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. He is known around the world for his courageous actions. Ken is a blind musician who has tremendous gifts, including the gift of spontaneous composition. He has brought tears to my eyes more than once.
At our last organizational meeting, we got a taste for how diverse the understandings of social justice can be within the Christian community. There were representatives present from the more conservative, evangelical mega-churches in town. When they saw our list of sponsors they became concerned that it would cause people to stay away since there were so many groups on the opposite sides of so many fences. "If you want this to be a success," they suggested, "don't publish your list of sponsors. Let people come to hear Jim and Ken; but don't let people know about underpinnings of this organization. You risk losing more than you gain."
Such diversity is not possible within Islam. You don't have such widely disparate opinions, on all sides of every issue, from one Mosque to the next. That's because the word didn't become flesh in Islam. The word became a book rules. Our job is to submit to those rules if we want to belong to the community, not to argue with them.
Jesus himself produces the mess that we call the Christian church. We have chaplains in the army and pacifists in the army resistance -- all claiming to follow the same Lord. How can that happen? It can happen because we're dealing with grace. And it's no surprise that many people would scratch their head and wonder.
Islam is a rapidly growing religion in the world today. It has about 1 billion adherents. 56 nations have Muslim majorities; four others are close to 50%. It's one of the fastest growing religions in North America, where it should become the second largest religion (moving ahead of Judaism) within the next decade. It has the same appeal as the Christian Coalition: namely, simple answers to complicated questions with a relatively small range of dissenting opinions. The Qur'an is not as cryptic and homiletical as the bible; it's more didactic and propositional. It tells people the will of God in areas Jesus never even talked about.
This can be very attractive in an age of anxiety. It certainly has the power to turn people around and to put them on a better track. People are looking for answers and Islam has answers to give. It's a religion that has more to do with answers than with questions. The Qur'an is more akin to the U.S. Constitution than to the Christian bible. It has fewer stories and more discourses.
The formula is simple: God's will is revealed in the Qur'an. Our job is to submit to God's will if we want to be acceptable to him. God has sent other prophets. Moses and Jesus are counted in that number. But Muhammed is final messenger. This is a religious system which can easily lead to extremism. The more committed we are to the cause, the more zealous we are for God's program, the more God will love us. Our job is to submit to the teachings of God as revealed in the Qur'an through the prophet Muhammed.
Islam means submission. The deeds of a lifetime will be weighed in the balance, the preponderance of good or evil determining an eternity of bliss or tribulation. The Qur'an graphically portrays the delights of heaven and the torments of hell. It reminds its readers about the failure to submit.
If Muhammed thought that Jesus was an antecedent prophet in the spirit of the Qur'an, then he missed the point and he really didn't know Jesus. Jesus was against making the kinds of distinctions between people which the Qur'an is want to make. Identifying the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad, the deserving and the undeserving.
Take this morning's New Testament lesson. It really doesn't fit in the Qur'an. Peter goes up on the roof to pray. While waiting for his lunch, he falls into a trance and has a vision. A sheet comes down from heaven filled with all kinds of unclean foods. Judaism, like Islam, had clean and unclean foods. Certain foods are off limits; they're forbidden. If you submit your will to God then you refuse to eat foods which others may enjoy. You are different. Set apart. Better than everyone else.
But Peter heard a voice saying, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." But Peter said, "No way, Lord! I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean. You are not better than everyone else because you refuse eat certain foods. That's not what I am looking for at all. I am looking for people who find their salvation in Jesus." So much for submission and obedience as the way to heaven. So much for killing and dying as the way to God.
Abraham himself became a model for such grace-filled righteousness. Before there any law to obey. Before there was any circumcision to perform. Before there was any burden to bear. God called Abraham with the universal promise of peace. "I will bless you so that you will be a blessing."
The notion of grace really is scandalous to religions such as Islam and Judaism. The notion that we don't have to perform in order to receive God's blessing. But that's exactly the notion we see find incorporated in the person of Jesus. Jesus saw the problems with religions of submission and he led a protest at the expense of his very life. Amen.
Hinduism: The Scandal of History
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
June 23, 1996
Memory Verse: "If this counsel or work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overcome it." (Acts 5:38f)
Today's Texts: Genesis 45:1-15 and Acts 13:16-33
Opening Prayer: God of heaven and earth, bring your reign among us. Teach us your will and give us your Spirit. This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
The story of Joseph is one of the classic stories in our tradition. He was the great-grandson of Abraham, the patriarch of the Hebrew people. His father, Jacob, the Son of Laughter, was the progenitor of the twelve tribes of Israel through his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and his two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah (Genesis 35:23-26).
Rachel was the only woman Jacob really loved (Genesis 29:16-18). Thanks to the deceit and trickery of Rachel's father, Jacob had to work for fourteen years in order to win her hand in marriage. Yet those years seemed to him but a few days, because of the love he had for her.
After such an long and arduous wait, it's only natural that Rachel's first-born child would be Jacob's favorite. He already had ten other sons by three other women, but this one was his love child. This one was born to him in his old age. The one was the fulfillment of a dream and the gift of God. So Rachel named the child Joseph, saying, "May the Lord add to me another son!" (Genesis 30:23f).
Over time Joseph's status as the favorite son became the source of great irritation and jealousy. He was the baby of the family, and he was spoiled accordingly. While the others had to work in the fields, Joseph was given a coat with long sleeves and a life of luxury. When Joseph started to have illusions of grandeur, his brothers hated him all the more. They conceived a plot to sell him into Egyptian slavery.
This morning's Old Testament lesson takes place many years later, after Joseph had risen to a position of power within the Egyptian government. His ability to interpret dreams and to avert disaster enabled him to escape from slavery and to become part of the royal family. He was second in command to the king himself; it was a classic tale of the pauper made prince.
Finally, his brothers came to Egypt in order to buy food during a time of famine. Little could they have known the surprise that was lying in wait. Joseph was the one with whom they had to negotiate, but they didn't recognize him. They never expected to see their brother again -- let alone as the viceroy of Egypt. After a game of cat and mouse, Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers with a loud, emotional outpouring that rocked even the household of Pharaoh. His brothers could not respond, so dismayed were they at his presence.
Surely Joseph would now take vengeance upon his evil brothers. They had every reason to fear for their lives. And yet nothing could be further from Joseph's mind. "What you meant for evil, God meant for good," Joseph told his brothers. "This was God's way of stepping into history in order to honor his promise to our family. God sent me before you to preserve life. God made me the lord of Pharaoh's house and ruler over all Egypt in order to salvage our family from the famine which is upon the land and which will last for five more years. If you had not sold me into slavery, God's promise might have died with us in the land of Canaan."
This story, as with many stories in the Old Testament, evidences a certain finality about history which few religions have been willing to grant. If God had not chosen to intervene, the course of salvation history might well have come to an end after little more than four generations. There is no other plan. There is only this life, in which God creates and covenants with the people of his choosing. Identity does not lodge in the soul, as something separable from the body. Rather it emerges from the unique combination of body, mind, and soul which is fashioned at birth and is at times transformed by life itself.
This point of view, represented by the Sadducees in Jesus' day, did not believe in life after death as you and I might conceptualize it. There was no resurrection of the soul, apart from the body and the mind. It was a package deal. Body, mind, and soul either came together or they didn't come at all. They had a "this-worldly" rather than an "other-worldly" understanding of God, leading to a very historical understanding of their ultimate hope. There would come a day and time when the promises of God would be fulfilled on this earth. Even those who had died would be restored to life in order to participate in the goodness and the victory of God.
This rather linear and chronological vision of the afterlife is best represented by Ezekiel's prophecy concerning the valley of dry bones. Those who had died were dead and gone. They lived on only in the memory of the community and in the mind of God. But that was enough. For on that great day, God would open their graves, put their bones together, and recreate their lives. Body, mind, and soul would be knit back together and given yet another chance to live, on their own soil, in perpetual communion with God.
"Then the Lord said to me, 'Prophesy, mortal one, prophesy and say to the Spirit: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.' So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and they stood on their feet -- a vast multitude." (Ezekiel 37:9f).
In the early decades of the Christian movement, as evidence by this morning's New Testament, the same view was being taken about the agency and activities of God. The story of Jesus was attached to the stories of Abraham and Moses, of Saul and David. Now even the Gentiles had reason to hope that God would intervene in history on their behalf. They were grafted into the tree of life, not in some transcendental sense, but in the material sense that Jesus would come again soon to set things right.
Although it differed in its positing of God as a player on the stage of history, this understanding of immortality and of hope was not radically different from the understanding of Karl Marx and the devotees of communism. Fulfillment would come at the end of history, not in some ethereal world which Marx labeled as "pie in the sky, bye and bye." We see this hope playing itself out anew in the creation of the modern state of Israel and the significance given to that state by the more fanatic branches of Judaism and Christianity.
As we move from the ancient Near East, the cradle of the three great monotheistic faiths, to the subcontinent of India we encounter a very different world view and understanding of history.
Hinduism is the name given by Westerners to the religion of Santana Dharma, or Eternal Truth, which is practiced by about 80% of the people of India and is having an influence in new religions around the world. Hinduism is the third-largest religion in the world, with three-quarters of a billion adherents. Most of those adherents live in India itself. They accept the authority of the sacred scriptures known as the Vedas and they belong to one of the castes of India.
In some sense, Hinduism is more a way of life than a religion. Anyone who seeks the Eternal Truth is considered Hindu, regardless of his or her religious or national affiliation. Hinduism has no historic founder and has flourished in India for thousands of years. Its sacred texts developed during the same period of time as the Old Testament, from 1400 to 400 B.C. Hinduism has no central church, authority, or creed. Instead, it represents a melange of movements with a family resemblance which can be exemplified but not defined.
One such resemblance has to do with its understanding of the material world. There is nothing linear and nothing unified about it. The world has no definite beginning and no definite end. Instead, it is caught in a constant cycle of creation and destruction which is overseen but not exactly manipulated by the gods. The material world becomes something of a drag on the higher reaches of the spirit; it is never ultimately redeemed and incorporated into the Ultimate Reality of life.
This cycle of creation and destruction takes place on an individual level as well. You are not the unique combination of body, mind, and soul -- created at birth and transformed over the course of a lifetime. You are the soul which occupies your body and animates your mind. This soul is reborn over and over again in the material world through a process known as the transmigration of souls. One's present state reflects the choices made in past lives even as one's future state is determined by the choices made in this life. Being in one caste or another is therefore not unjust; it is rather a reflection of one's karma -- the unique combination of choices and actions which have led up to your present go round in the wheel of life.
Rather than the culmination of history, which becomes little more than a staging ground for the soul, salvation has to do with the soul's escape from the wheel of life itself. One is set free from the cycle of reincarnation through pure, unselfish choices. Emotional choices cause the soul to be returned to life in human form. Impure and selfish choices cause the soul to be reborn as an animal, plant, or even mineral.
Hinduism acknowledges three ways to improve your karma in order to eventually break free from the cycle of reincarnation: the way of activity, the way of knowledge, and the way of devotion. The way of activity centers on offering gifts and sacrifices to the gods in the temple or at home shrines. The way of knowledge is more difficult than the way of activity since it requires a single-minded attention to the spiritual realm and a renunciation of the material realm. The guru is the epitome of the way of knowledge. The way of devotion is the most common way, as individuals practice spiritual disciplines in the midst of their daily lives.
This thumb-nail sketch of Hinduism may help you to see its influence in our popular culture today. Although the bible says nothing about reincarnation or the transmigration of souls, many North American Christians have picked this up as a fundamental tenet of belief. Although the bible says much about the kingdom or the reign of God, coming on earth as it is in heaven, many North American Christians have given up on this as an historical possibility that we or our descendants will ever see.
My concern is not to try and persuade you one way or the other with regard to things which can never be more than a matter of opinion. Whatever can be explained in Hindu terms can be explained in other terms as well. My concern is to help you see the mystery of Christ as something which cuts through all attempts to put our destiny into our own hands. The Hindu system of karma is just one more variation on the theme. Now instead of one life we have countless lives in which to figure out the Ultimate Reality and to win our release from the world. Even though we all manage to get home eventually, this system doesn't exactly sound like good news to me. The notion of our unmerited and unbounded forgiveness, based upon God's act in Jesus Christ, is the really the only way to go.
There are, of course, those who have turned that forgiveness into another way of activity, knowledge, or devotion. They make God's forgiveness contingent upon whether or we acknowledge Jesus Christ, worship him, and follow him to the best of our ability. While this may be the stuff of institutional religion, it is not the mystery which has kept our faith going for almost 2,000 years.
In the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is a different kind of release from the wheel of life. It is a release from the bookkeeping and score keeping of who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down, who's right and who's wrong, who pure and who's impure. All these systems are finally trashed in favor of the free acceptance of everybody and everything by grace. Nobody has to pass a single test in order to move on to the next stage. God is not the infinite Watchbird, like some holy Santa Claus who knows whether you've been naughty or nice.
Instead, God becomes incarnate in the whole, slimy, messed-up history of the world. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God offers his last and final word on the mess. The old order has passed away and the new order has come. In the New Creation there aren't any tests to pass. Everybody's home free. Reincarnation gets everybody there in the end; resurrection gets everybody there now, since in the person of Jesus Christ we have been redeemed.
The hard part is getting people to trust the good news. We have a natural affinity for self-improvement schemes, and karma works as well as any other. But the gospel of Jesus Christ makes the bizarre promise that God works in history to produce a new creation by water and the Spirit. God bestows healing in spite of who we are in order to make us more than we can ever imagine being. It's really not up to us at all, and for that I can heartily say, "Amen!"
Buddhism: The Scandal of God
The First Congregational Church
United Church of Christ
Columbus, Ohio
June 30, 1996
Memory Verse: "If this counsel or work is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overcome it." (Acts 5:38f)
Today's Texts: Genesis 7:1-7, 17-24 and Acts 17:16-34
Opening Prayer: Transcendent God, come down from on high and speak to us in the quietness of this moment. Make the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
This morning I bring to a close a sermon series which has considered the five major religions of the world. Three of them -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- emerged out of the ancient Near East. The other two -- Hinduism and Buddhism -- emerged during the same period of time out of India. Between the five of them, they account for almost 4 billion people in the world today, or more than 70% of the world's total population.
Three of these religions have a missionary agenda to convert the rest of the world to their way of thinking: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Since its founding in a region of northern India that is now southern Nepal, in approximately 500 B.C., Buddhism has been steadily moving east while Christianity has been steadily moving west and Islam has been spreading out in both directions at once. It should come as no surprise, then, that some of the worst wars in history have resulted from the collision of these three religions. Tolerance is not a universal virtue; the proponents of these religions have often been intent upon destroying each other.
Buddhism grew out of Hinduism with the noble birth of Siddartha Gautama in 566 B.C., just twenty years after the Jewish temple was destroyed in Jerusalem by the Babylonians. It was a poignant time in the history of the world as two otherwise unrelated events, separated by a distance of some 4,000 miles, went on to form the basis for most of the religions in the modern world.
Unlike Judaism, with its obsessive attention to the working out of God's purposes in history, Buddhism shares the perspective of Hinduism in which history is but a distraction from the real stage of life which is ethereal, spiritual, and incorporeal. The goal of life is not to create heaven on earth, but to escape from the earth altogether as a bundle of pure energy. Until you understand and accept this reality, your energy is destined to continue going around and around the wheel of life. Your choices in this life determine your station in the next. Nothing is permanent, however, until you reach nirvana: the extinguishing of ignorance and desire which drive a person again and again into the realms of rebirth.
Siddartha Gautama was a person who reached nirvana. He awakened to the true nature of life and his energy never again returned to the world of physics and history; instead it entered the rarefied dimension of eternal rest which is reserved for the awakened souls of every space and time. He escaped from the sufferings of this world in order to become the Buddha, which literally means the Awakened One. Before lying down between two trees in order to die, the Buddha promulgated an extensive set of teachings to help others attain the same awakening and release. These teachings led to the formation of a canon of Buddhist scripture and a variety of Buddhist movements around the world.
There are many similarities to the history of Buddhism and the history of Christianity. In the case of both religions, scholars agree that little can be independently confirmed about the life of their founders. But they also agree that Buddha and Jesus were historical figures about which there is little doubt regarding the basic elements of their legends. Jesus was born to a poor family in Galilee and he died a martyr's death in Jerusalem. Buddha was born to a rich family in India which he left behind in order to practice spiritual discipline.
After a privileged life of self-indulgence he pursued an ascetic life of self-denial. His awakening began when he realized that self-denial was no more effective than self-indulgence in avoiding the sufferings of this world. As a result he took up a balanced form of spiritual discipline, called the Middle Path, which can awaken people from the sleep of ignorance that binds living beings to the sufferings of this world. Once awakened, we are set free to escape from this world altogether.
If these teachings sound familiar, that's perhaps because of their gradual assimilation into North American culture. Buddhism has gone so far east as to end up in the west, just as Christianity has gone so far west as to end up in the east. Buddhist ideas form the spiritual underpinnings for today's most popular New Age religions, and they are presented to us through the media in both subtle and dramatic ways. The Buddhist world view is so prevalent that many Christians have incorporated it into their own structures of belief and practice without even noticing the difference.
Perhaps the most explicit portrayal of Buddhist philosophy and religion appears in the Star Wars trilogy, which first appeared almost twenty years ago out of the studios of Twentieth Century Fox. As some indication of the popularity and influence of this cinematic triumph, I'd like you to raise your hand if you've seen at least one of these movies in the past twenty years. As I suspected, we're talking far more than just a majority of people in the room. It is, in fact, one of the most popular series of all time -- with the next installment due out in 1998.
You will remember that the movie works with a two-tiered universe: there is, on the one hand, the material world in which the evil and oppressive empire, a phrase once used by Ronald Reagan to describe the Soviet Union, is battling the good freedom-fighters. For all its high-tech drama and explosive special effects, this material world is not where the real action happens. The real action happens on a different stage, in the spiritual world, where the dark side of The Force engages the bright side in a battle of cosmic proportions. As go the fortunes of the spiritual battle, so go the fortunes of the material one as well.
Luke Skywalker is the Buddhist monk in training, otherwise known as a Jedi apprentice. His first master, O.B.1 Kenobi, begins his training by explaining to him that a Jedi knight gets his power from The Force. "It's an energy field," O.B.1 asserts, "created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together." When O.B.1 explains that The Force can give a person miraculous powers, Luke wonders whether that means The Force controls the actions of a Jedi knight. "Partially," is the response he's given, "but it also obeys your commands."
Luke's second master is an old troll who lives in a distant star system. Yoda puts Luke through a spiritual bootcamp, with rigorous exercises for the body, mind, and soul. As Luke advances in his training, he becomes increasingly endowed with these miraculous powers. He lifts rocks by focusing his attention on them, and he begins to see the future. Yoda's constant encouragement is that Luke should "feel The Force flowing through him" and that he should "use The Force" for knowledge and power.
When Luke beholds a painful vision of the future, in which his friends are being tortured by Darth Vader, Luke decides to cut short his training in order to rescue them. Yoda deems this a terrible mistake. The dark side of The Force is making his friends suffer in order get to Luke, not because his friends are important. This is a test to see whether or not Luke has detached himself from the sufferings of this world. Sufferings are, after all, never as final nor as hopeless as they may appear. There's always the next go-round in the wheel of life, where things can work out better. But Luke cannot ignore his compassion for his friends, and, much to the dismay of Yoda, he takes off to meet his destiny.
The Star Wars trilogy has done as much as any other single event to promote Buddhist philosophies in the Western world. Unfortunately, we seem hardly to have noticed.
Let's begin with the question of God. In the vicious conundrum of which came first, the chicken or the egg, Buddhism and Star Wars come down clearly on the side of the egg. God is created by life, not the other way around. The Force does not have an existence apart from life; instead, it is a reflection and a byproduct of life. If God hadn't managed to get some living things on that ark, not only would all of life have been destroyed but God would have disappeared in the process. There is no transcendent God in Buddhism; life itself is the author and perfecter of our faith.
This origin of The Force accounts for its rather suspect moral character. The Force is both good and bad, making it quite malleable in the hands of its human devotees. It can serve the forces of right and wrong, without much difference. The dark side is more aggressive and hateful than the bright side, but they both get pretty violent in the end. The myth of redemptive violence is built into the structure of life itself.
Given that The Force is created by life, we should hardly be surprised that The Force reflects the problems of life and can even be manipulated by life. The Force does not stand apart from life on a higher plane; on the contrary, it is so invested in life that it has picked up the best and the worst life has to offer. Evil is given the same palpable reality as good, making the struggle for the world's soul a primordial and perpetual reality. Even as the Buddha had to struggle in order to find a solution to the problems of suffering and death, so must The Force struggle in order to resolve its own bifurcated nature. And those who tap in to one side or the other can channel and use The Force for their own purposes -- whether to build up or to tear down.
Apart from the revelation of a different way, Buddhism makes about as much sense out of the world as any other system of belief. If all you have to work with is your own experience and your own mind, you're going to be left to come up with one proposal after another.
This was the situation in which Paul found himself when he entered the Greek city of Athens. We all know how cultured and cosmopolitan the Greeks were, with Athens being the pinnacle of their affluent society. They were the crossroads of the world, with ideas infiltrating from both east and west. They had so much leisure time on their hands that some people had nothing better to do than to experiment with the latest and greatest idea to come through town. So Paul found himself debating not only with Jews and Gentiles but with Epicureans and Stoics. It was a multicultural situation to be sure, not unlike the situation in which we find ourselves today.
"People of Athens," Paul began his speech, "I can see how extremely religious you are in every way. You have been working really hard to try and figure this thing out. I've been wandering around your city, and I've seen temples and idols to just about every imaginable god. It seems as though you people will worship just about anything. The Earth--The Sky--The Sea. Sex--Money--Health. Rhetoric--Politics--Business. You name it, and you've found a way to play this out on a spiritual level."
"In fact you are so religious," Paul continues, "that you even have an altar to the unknown god -- just in case you may have missed one along he way. Just in case someone shows up with another god you can add to your collection. Well I have news for you. The god you worship as unknown I worship as known. This god is not created by human hands. This god is not a byproduct of the pathetic excuse we have for a life. On the contrary, this God creates us and loves us and seeks to bring us home. God may have put up with your speculations in the past, but now you have no excuse. Now you've heard the good news that in the person of Jesus Christ, God can be known as never before. So bow down and worship the God of heaven and earth, who holds the key to life itself."
And when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed, some were intrigued, while still others began to follow Paul in the way. When you get right down to it, the notion of God is a scandalous idea. The notion that life is created by someone who exists apart from space and time, who cannot be manipulated by our idols and our practices, but who loves us nonetheless and has prepared for us a feast in the presence of our enemies. It's a hard notion to wrap our brain around, but it's the only notion worth believing.
The religions of the world do not all say the same thing, even if they are all trying to cope with the same reality. In different times and places, different people have come up with different answers. We do not show disrespect to recognize those differences and to proclaim our faith in Jesus Christ. This morning seventeen people have joined our church in order to share and deepen that faith. My prayer is that they will be neither distracted nor disappointed in their quest for God. We have a story and it will bear inspection as the best news this world has ever known. We are made in the image of God that we might live as the family of God for all the world to see. Amen.