| December 23, 2007 | The Reason for the Season? Rev J. McRee (Mac) Elrod |
OPENING WORDS
We gather this morning in bleak midwinter, and the day after winter
solstice, in celebration of light. During this time many religions have
chosen to rejoice in light. Earlier this month our Jewish friends lit
Hanakuh candles; our Muslim friends earlier celebrated the festival
of lights. On the 15th our Hindu neighbours observed the birth of
Ganesh. North American Blacks will light candles for Kwanza December
26th, which is also the anniversary of Zarathustra, founder of
Zoriatorism, for whom light is the central symbol. For Wiccans,
yesterday was Yule. Baha'i will celebrate two feasts this month.
Norma lights this candle as a symbol of warmth and joy we all seek in
our lives, and in recognition of you kinship with all who observe this
season in anticipation of the return of the sun.
SERMON
Many conservative Christian are fond of telling us that Christ is the
reason for the season, as the Christmas season approaches. This is
not entirely accurate. The winter solstice had been the largest pagan
festival for a very long time before it was "baptized" as Jesus'
birthday. We know from the Gospel accounts that Jesus was probably
born in the spring, when shepherds were in the fields with their
flocks. But it suited the purposes of early Christian church liturgical
year better to celebrate his birth in midwinter, and his resurrection in
spring.
It's interesting that the discovery of Jesus' tomb, making the
ressurection celebrated in spring even less likely than we Unitarians
have assumed for some time, received less media attention than the
fictional "Da Vinci Code", or the earlier display of Joseph's ossuary
stolen from that tomb.
The fitting of these celebrations to season works very well in the
northern hemisphere, but pity the poor Unitarian minister in Australia
or New Zealand who can't talk of the hoped for return of the sun at
Christmas, or the burgeoning spring at Easter.
Personally I'm quite comfortable with the Christian adoption of the
winter solstice celebration for Christmas. Christianity has a long
history of adopting features it finds useful. It was Martin Luther
who asked why should the Devil have all the good tunes, as he adopted
popular tunes for use with hymns.
Mistress Ford's in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", warns
that Falstaff's apparently modest words don't go with his actual
disposition, "they do no more adhere and keep place together than the
Hundredth Psalm to the tune of 'Green Sleeves.'" (Act 2, Scene 1).
But we found the tune of Greensleeves to adhere quite well to the
carol "What Child is This" we just sang.
So let us not quibble about this not really being Jesus' birthday the
day after tomorrow, but instead consider how this man's life and
teachings relate to us as Unitarians, most of us considering ourselves
post Christian, and a few of us identifying with other traditions
ranging from Pagan to Buddhist.
Many of you in my generation are humanists, and some of you perhaps
became Unitarian in flight from more conservative denominations. Some
of us have tended to throw the baby out with the bath water, in terms
of Jesus and his message. Many of you who are younger, entered
Unitarianism from a secular background, and are more open to our
Jewish and Christian heritages.
Let us consider the concept of the religion *of* Jesus vs. the
religion *about* Jesus.
Adolf non Harnack (1851-1930) gave a series of lectures in Berlin in
1890 in which he made this distinction, between that which Jesus
himself believed, taught, and lived on the one hand; and the religion
*about* Jesus, that which has been believed and taught about him after
his death.
The religion about Jesus, beginning with the Gospel of John and
letters of Paul, but taking full form with the writings of early
theologians such as Aquinas, concerns a divine being, part of the
Trinity, sacrificed for our sins, and risen from the dead. The word
"Church" in our name keeps some, whose values are in accord with our
own, from being among us, since they assume mistakenly that a "Church"
of necessity must have some allegiance to these christian doctrines. We have
gradually departed from this view of Jesus, from 325 AD Arius,
through Reformation Socinius and Servetus, to Channing, Emerson, and
John Luther Adams.
These seminal teachers recalled us to the religion of Jesus, which is
a distilled and enhanced version of the teachings of the 500 BC
Prophets: love your neighbour as yourself, judge not that you be not
judged, do unto others as you would have them do to you, let justice
and mercy flow down like waters, feed the hungry, cloth the naked,
visit those who are sick or in prison.
Harnack knew his ideas concerning the distinction between the religion
of Jesus and the religion about Jesus was controversial, and he resisted their
publication. But a student took his lectures down in shorthand, and
they were published. An English translation under the title of "What
is Christianity?" was republished in 1957.
Some have maintained that the Aramaic word translated in Greek and
then English as "carpenter" to describe Joseph really meant "learned",
and that Joseph was a Rabbi, as Jesus himself is called in the Gospel
accounts. This would certainly explain his very deep knowledge of
Jewish scriptures, and his ability to utilize them in his teaching.
Notice that I said "scriptures" not "scripture".
The Bible, and what we call the Old Testament, is not a book. The Old
Testament is a library. It is a collection of the literature of the
Jewish nation for about 2,000 years, and New Testament of Christianity
for about 200 years. Different writers of different books of the
Bible can be quoted on the opposite sides of most questions (as can
the writers of the different books in your local public library
branch).
The books which make up our Old Testament were not gathered until
after the destruction of Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. A
remnant of Rabbis in Alexandria and in Israel each gathered those
texts they felt most important. It was those gathered in Alexandria
that were used by Jerome to translate scripture into Latin, which
became the so called "Vulgate" and the basis of the Catholic Old
Testament. It is Catholic teaching that the Vulgate has inspired and
without error, even though older manuscripts have revealed errors in
the text from which Jerome translated, Luther used the collection
created in Israel to translate into German, and that became the
Protestant canon.
The Jewish scriptures collected in the "Old Testament", make up by far
the larger portion of the Bible. The literature produced by early
Christianity is relatively scant. Nothing in the New Testament was
written by anyone who heard or saw Jesus. Paul, the writer of the
letters to the congregations he had founded, became Christian after
Jesus' death. The four Gospels were written after Jesus death. Luke
tells us this. "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a
narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as
they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also,
having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an
orderly account for you ,,," (Luke 1:1-3)
Some have said that because of this remoteness, it is not possible to
know the historic Jesus. I disagree, Much can be known or inferred.
The three first Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the
Synoptic Gospels, because they tell a parallel story. If you
attempt to line up together the texts of the first four Gospels, the columns
for the first three have text, and there is blank for the fourth, John.
Where John has text, there is blank for the Synoptic Gospels. This is
because John was written a century later, and is a sermon about Jesus,
rather than an account of his life and teaching. If people quote John
to you to prove what Jesus taught about something, ignore them.
The oldest and most historic Gospel is Mark. In Mark, there is no
virgin birth, and Jesus' ancestry, his descent from David, is traced
through Joseph, not Mary. In the empty tomb, there is a young man, not
angels. Then why do we not just use Mark, and ignore the others?
Because Mark contains very little of his teaching. In a Gospel parallel
of the Synoptic Gospels, you have text in all three columns for events
in Jesus' life, but often blank in the Mark column for teachings.
The Jewish scripture which forms our Old Testament was written in
Hebrew. The books of the New Testament were written in Greek. Jesus
spoke neither of these languages. He spoke Aramaic. Whether his
teachings were ever written in Aramaic, or whether the Greek version
we have of them in Matthew and Luke are translations from an oral
tradition, we don't know. Norma told you of one widely accepted
theory during the reading. Basically what the authors of Matthew and
Luke did was to take Mark's historical narrative, insert supernatural
myths which had grown up (from virgin birth to angels in the tomb),
and Greek translations of his teachings.
Tradition says that Matthew was a poet, and Luke a physician. Certainly
their different backgrounds and interests are evident in their
translations of Jesus' words, for example, Luke wrote "Blessed are the
poor", while Matthew wrote "Blessed are the poor in spirit". Which you
believe Jesus said probably depends upon whether you are one of those
older humanist Unitarians, or one of those newer spiritual Unitarians.
So what should we as Unitarians take from Jesus this Christmas season?
Even with the discrepancies between the translations of Matthew and
Luke, a picture of Jesus teaching emerges. His Sermon on the Mount
some of which we listened just now is very familiar, perhaps too
familiar. Those revolutionary ideas just flow past our ears without
seeming revolutionary.
In an effort to introduce a young man to things cultural, I took him
to a Shakespeare play. As we left, I asked how he like it.
"Interesting" he said, "but it had too many cliches". I tried to
explain to him that Shakespeare was the first to write those phrases,
and that they have become cliches through many repetitions since.
Some of Jesus' words were just as new when he first spoke them.
Jesus also made great use of the ideas of the 500 BC prophets, which he
would have known as a Rabbi's son. Jesus was himself called Rabbi,
as I have already noted. He recalled Jewish customs from observation of laws to
a love of justice and mercy as taught by those great Prophets. He
recalled Jews from seeking to follow God's will by observing laws, to
attempting to act from good motives. "You have heard it said ... but I
say unto you ..." Jesus repeatedly said. It was a revolutionary
change from rule (don't kill) to motive (don't hate), as the spring of
our actions. The Sabbath was made for man, he said, not man for the
Sabbath, when he was reprimanded for feeding the hungry on the
Sabbath.
Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the Prophets as the basis for
his teaching going beyond the law, is that of the woman taken in adultery.
According to the law as recorded in Ecclesiastes, she should have been
stoned to death. You remember the story. He told her accusers that
any among them without sin should cast the first stone.
Bishop Spong in _Jesus For the Non-religious_ calls this humanism
before law.
Jesus taught by parables, by stories. When asked concerning the
Jewish prophetic statement that we should love our neighbour as
ourselves, he asked "who is our neighbour?", and told the story of the
"Good Samaritan". To get the full impact of this story, we must
remember that Samaritans were mixed blood heretics. If a Jew passed a
Samaritan, the jew would spit. If the Samaritan's shadow fell upon him, he
was defiled. But in Jesus story, it was the Samaritan that rescued
the man who fell among thieves, after one of each of the prestigious
groups in Jewish society had passed by on the other side. It was the
Samaritan who proved to be a neighbour.
Bishop Spong calls the wholness before theolgy.
This parable shows what we today would call a humanist perspective on
our lives. The evil which befell the traveler was not a punishment
for sin, or the work of the Devil. It was evil done by other men. He
was not rescued by divine intervention, but by the goodness of one
man.
In conclusion, let us consider these words of Jesus as translated by
Luke and Matthew.
First Luke 6:37-42
"Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not
be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be
given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running
over, will be put in your lap, for the measure you give will be the
measure you get back."
Don't you love that simile of the full measure? That's another aspect
of Jesus' teaching, the use of homely similes familiar to his listeners,
even house work and sewing.
Second Matthew 25:34-45
"' ... I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me
drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked and you
clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came
to me'. Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee
hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we
see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothed thee? And
when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King
will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren you did it to me.'
The thing which occurs to me about this story, is that both the
justified and condemned are surprised, and that there is no mention of
belief. Values over doctrine is a very Unitarian thing.
Let us be increasingly comfortable with this portion of our Christian
heritage. May we seek to exemplify in society Jesus' concern for
loving human kindness over the letter of the law; his concern for the
motives behind our actions, over rules to be obeyed. It's tempting to
launch a whole new sermon here about what this might mean for drug law
reform, or American war objectors in Canada, and several other
concerns of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice.
But I will resist that temptation, but will probably not resist the
temptation to have a second helping of turkey dressing. I find the
older I get, the more relatively enjoyable gluttony is as a sin.
May each of you have a wonderful and rewarding season full of hope and
joy.
We gather this morning in bleak midwinter, and the day after winter
solstice, in celebration of light. During this time many religions have
chosen to rejoice in light. Earlier this month our Jewish friends lit
Hanakuh candles; our Muslim friends earlier celebrated the festival
of lights. On the 15th our Hindu neighbours observed the birth of
Ganesh. North American Blacks will light candles for Kwanza December
26th, which is also the anniversary of Zarathustra, founder of
Zoriatorism, for whom light is the central symbol. For Wiccans,
yesterday was Yule. Baha'i will celebrate two feasts this month.
Norma lights this candle as a symbol of warmth and joy we all seek in
our lives, and in recognition of you kinship with all who observe this
season in anticipation of the return of the sun.
SERMON
Many conservative Christian are fond of telling us that Christ is the
reason for the season, as the Christmas season approaches. This is
not entirely accurate. The winter solstice had been the largest pagan
festival for a very long time before it was "baptized" as Jesus'
birthday. We know from the Gospel accounts that Jesus was probably
born in the spring, when shepherds were in the fields with their
flocks. But it suited the purposes of early Christian church liturgical
year better to celebrate his birth in midwinter, and his resurrection in
spring.
It's interesting that the discovery of Jesus' tomb, making the
ressurection celebrated in spring even less likely than we Unitarians
have assumed for some time, received less media attention than the
fictional "Da Vinci Code", or the earlier display of Joseph's ossuary
stolen from that tomb.
The fitting of these celebrations to season works very well in the
northern hemisphere, but pity the poor Unitarian minister in Australia
or New Zealand who can't talk of the hoped for return of the sun at
Christmas, or the burgeoning spring at Easter.
Personally I'm quite comfortable with the Christian adoption of the
winter solstice celebration for Christmas. Christianity has a long
history of adopting features it finds useful. It was Martin Luther
who asked why should the Devil have all the good tunes, as he adopted
popular tunes for use with hymns.
Mistress Ford's in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", warns
that Falstaff's apparently modest words don't go with his actual
disposition, "they do no more adhere and keep place together than the
Hundredth Psalm to the tune of 'Green Sleeves.'" (Act 2, Scene 1).
But we found the tune of Greensleeves to adhere quite well to the
carol "What Child is This" we just sang.
So let us not quibble about this not really being Jesus' birthday the
day after tomorrow, but instead consider how this man's life and
teachings relate to us as Unitarians, most of us considering ourselves
post Christian, and a few of us identifying with other traditions
ranging from Pagan to Buddhist.
Many of you in my generation are humanists, and some of you perhaps
became Unitarian in flight from more conservative denominations. Some
of us have tended to throw the baby out with the bath water, in terms
of Jesus and his message. Many of you who are younger, entered
Unitarianism from a secular background, and are more open to our
Jewish and Christian heritages.
Let us consider the concept of the religion *of* Jesus vs. the
religion *about* Jesus.
Adolf non Harnack (1851-1930) gave a series of lectures in Berlin in
1890 in which he made this distinction, between that which Jesus
himself believed, taught, and lived on the one hand; and the religion
*about* Jesus, that which has been believed and taught about him after
his death.
The religion about Jesus, beginning with the Gospel of John and
letters of Paul, but taking full form with the writings of early
theologians such as Aquinas, concerns a divine being, part of the
Trinity, sacrificed for our sins, and risen from the dead. The word
"Church" in our name keeps some, whose values are in accord with our
own, from being among us, since they assume mistakenly that a "Church"
of necessity must have some allegiance to these christian doctrines. We have
gradually departed from this view of Jesus, from 325 AD Arius,
through Reformation Socinius and Servetus, to Channing, Emerson, and
John Luther Adams.
These seminal teachers recalled us to the religion of Jesus, which is
a distilled and enhanced version of the teachings of the 500 BC
Prophets: love your neighbour as yourself, judge not that you be not
judged, do unto others as you would have them do to you, let justice
and mercy flow down like waters, feed the hungry, cloth the naked,
visit those who are sick or in prison.
Harnack knew his ideas concerning the distinction between the religion
of Jesus and the religion about Jesus was controversial, and he resisted their
publication. But a student took his lectures down in shorthand, and
they were published. An English translation under the title of "What
is Christianity?" was republished in 1957.
Some have maintained that the Aramaic word translated in Greek and
then English as "carpenter" to describe Joseph really meant "learned",
and that Joseph was a Rabbi, as Jesus himself is called in the Gospel
accounts. This would certainly explain his very deep knowledge of
Jewish scriptures, and his ability to utilize them in his teaching.
Notice that I said "scriptures" not "scripture".
The Bible, and what we call the Old Testament, is not a book. The Old
Testament is a library. It is a collection of the literature of the
Jewish nation for about 2,000 years, and New Testament of Christianity
for about 200 years. Different writers of different books of the
Bible can be quoted on the opposite sides of most questions (as can
the writers of the different books in your local public library
branch).
The books which make up our Old Testament were not gathered until
after the destruction of Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. A
remnant of Rabbis in Alexandria and in Israel each gathered those
texts they felt most important. It was those gathered in Alexandria
that were used by Jerome to translate scripture into Latin, which
became the so called "Vulgate" and the basis of the Catholic Old
Testament. It is Catholic teaching that the Vulgate has inspired and
without error, even though older manuscripts have revealed errors in
the text from which Jerome translated, Luther used the collection
created in Israel to translate into German, and that became the
Protestant canon.
The Jewish scriptures collected in the "Old Testament", make up by far
the larger portion of the Bible. The literature produced by early
Christianity is relatively scant. Nothing in the New Testament was
written by anyone who heard or saw Jesus. Paul, the writer of the
letters to the congregations he had founded, became Christian after
Jesus' death. The four Gospels were written after Jesus death. Luke
tells us this. "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a
narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as
they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also,
having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an
orderly account for you ,,," (Luke 1:1-3)
Some have said that because of this remoteness, it is not possible to
know the historic Jesus. I disagree, Much can be known or inferred.
The three first Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the
Synoptic Gospels, because they tell a parallel story. If you
attempt to line up together the texts of the first four Gospels, the columns
for the first three have text, and there is blank for the fourth, John.
Where John has text, there is blank for the Synoptic Gospels. This is
because John was written a century later, and is a sermon about Jesus,
rather than an account of his life and teaching. If people quote John
to you to prove what Jesus taught about something, ignore them.
The oldest and most historic Gospel is Mark. In Mark, there is no
virgin birth, and Jesus' ancestry, his descent from David, is traced
through Joseph, not Mary. In the empty tomb, there is a young man, not
angels. Then why do we not just use Mark, and ignore the others?
Because Mark contains very little of his teaching. In a Gospel parallel
of the Synoptic Gospels, you have text in all three columns for events
in Jesus' life, but often blank in the Mark column for teachings.
The Jewish scripture which forms our Old Testament was written in
Hebrew. The books of the New Testament were written in Greek. Jesus
spoke neither of these languages. He spoke Aramaic. Whether his
teachings were ever written in Aramaic, or whether the Greek version
we have of them in Matthew and Luke are translations from an oral
tradition, we don't know. Norma told you of one widely accepted
theory during the reading. Basically what the authors of Matthew and
Luke did was to take Mark's historical narrative, insert supernatural
myths which had grown up (from virgin birth to angels in the tomb),
and Greek translations of his teachings.
Tradition says that Matthew was a poet, and Luke a physician. Certainly
their different backgrounds and interests are evident in their
translations of Jesus' words, for example, Luke wrote "Blessed are the
poor", while Matthew wrote "Blessed are the poor in spirit". Which you
believe Jesus said probably depends upon whether you are one of those
older humanist Unitarians, or one of those newer spiritual Unitarians.
So what should we as Unitarians take from Jesus this Christmas season?
Even with the discrepancies between the translations of Matthew and
Luke, a picture of Jesus teaching emerges. His Sermon on the Mount
some of which we listened just now is very familiar, perhaps too
familiar. Those revolutionary ideas just flow past our ears without
seeming revolutionary.
In an effort to introduce a young man to things cultural, I took him
to a Shakespeare play. As we left, I asked how he like it.
"Interesting" he said, "but it had too many cliches". I tried to
explain to him that Shakespeare was the first to write those phrases,
and that they have become cliches through many repetitions since.
Some of Jesus' words were just as new when he first spoke them.
Jesus also made great use of the ideas of the 500 BC prophets, which he
would have known as a Rabbi's son. Jesus was himself called Rabbi,
as I have already noted. He recalled Jewish customs from observation of laws to
a love of justice and mercy as taught by those great Prophets. He
recalled Jews from seeking to follow God's will by observing laws, to
attempting to act from good motives. "You have heard it said ... but I
say unto you ..." Jesus repeatedly said. It was a revolutionary
change from rule (don't kill) to motive (don't hate), as the spring of
our actions. The Sabbath was made for man, he said, not man for the
Sabbath, when he was reprimanded for feeding the hungry on the
Sabbath.
Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the Prophets as the basis for
his teaching going beyond the law, is that of the woman taken in adultery.
According to the law as recorded in Ecclesiastes, she should have been
stoned to death. You remember the story. He told her accusers that
any among them without sin should cast the first stone.
Bishop Spong in _Jesus For the Non-religious_ calls this humanism
before law.
Jesus taught by parables, by stories. When asked concerning the
Jewish prophetic statement that we should love our neighbour as
ourselves, he asked "who is our neighbour?", and told the story of the
"Good Samaritan". To get the full impact of this story, we must
remember that Samaritans were mixed blood heretics. If a Jew passed a
Samaritan, the jew would spit. If the Samaritan's shadow fell upon him, he
was defiled. But in Jesus story, it was the Samaritan that rescued
the man who fell among thieves, after one of each of the prestigious
groups in Jewish society had passed by on the other side. It was the
Samaritan who proved to be a neighbour.
Bishop Spong calls the wholness before theolgy.
This parable shows what we today would call a humanist perspective on
our lives. The evil which befell the traveler was not a punishment
for sin, or the work of the Devil. It was evil done by other men. He
was not rescued by divine intervention, but by the goodness of one
man.
In conclusion, let us consider these words of Jesus as translated by
Luke and Matthew.
First Luke 6:37-42
"Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not
be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be
given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running
over, will be put in your lap, for the measure you give will be the
measure you get back."
Don't you love that simile of the full measure? That's another aspect
of Jesus' teaching, the use of homely similes familiar to his listeners,
even house work and sewing.
Second Matthew 25:34-45
"' ... I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me
drink; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked and you
clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came
to me'. Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee
hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we
see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothed thee? And
when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King
will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren you did it to me.'
The thing which occurs to me about this story, is that both the
justified and condemned are surprised, and that there is no mention of
belief. Values over doctrine is a very Unitarian thing.
Let us be increasingly comfortable with this portion of our Christian
heritage. May we seek to exemplify in society Jesus' concern for
loving human kindness over the letter of the law; his concern for the
motives behind our actions, over rules to be obeyed. It's tempting to
launch a whole new sermon here about what this might mean for drug law
reform, or American war objectors in Canada, and several other
concerns of Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice.
But I will resist that temptation, but will probably not resist the
temptation to have a second helping of turkey dressing. I find the
older I get, the more relatively enjoyable gluttony is as a sin.
May each of you have a wonderful and rewarding season full of hope and
joy.
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