Being Made New

An Easter Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone

The First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 16, 2006

Reading

From “Resurrection”

By John Shelby Spong (pg. 41-42)

Recapturing truth from the ancient world is not nearly so easy as…people like to imagine…  First century people (held) certain presuppositions that were then universally assumed to be true.  With the march of science and knowledge, however, those assumptions have been abandoned and are regarded today as relics from a world of pre-modern ignorance.  In that period of human history, miracle and magic were assumed by the general population to be both normal and commonplace.  This planet Earth was not thought of as a planet at all but as a flat space at the very center of the created order.  A blue canopy called the sky was believed to separate the earth, the realm of the human, from heaven, the realm of the divine.  …  Not infrequently it was assumed that this God from beyond that sky would intervene in human history to perform a miracle, heal a sickness, win a battle, call a prophet, or establish rules for human conduct.  For this God to come down to sojourn among humans was neither so commonplace as to be mundane nor so unusual as to be unimaginable…  It was in this kind of world and inside this interpretive framework that the life of Jesus was lived.  But people at the down of the 21^st century cannot possibly accept this frame of reference.  The question is, Can the truth embedded in that story, interpreted in that ancient context, escape those limitations and find a way to live in our generation?

From “Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras”

By Diana Eck

Reincarnation and resurrection have some things in common as ways of thinking.  Both are affirmations that death is not decisive.  Both presuppose a life, a Godward life-energy which, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, “does not die when the body dies.”  Both address the mystery of that ongoing, irrepressible life that cannot be done in by death.  But there are critical differences as well.  Reincarnation is not what I as a Christian mean by resurrection.  Reincarnation has to do with a wide understanding of life, one that includes both birth and death.  Resurrection has to do with the meaning of life itself, no matter how long its trajectory might be.

Meditation and Prayer

From the AUA 1956 Lenten Manual

By Dr. Frank O. Holmes

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Gospel of Matthew)

Into thy hands I commend my spirit.  (Gospel of Luke)

What will happen to me after I die, I do not know, but of this I am sure, that it will be just and right.   (A Maine farmer in conversation)

….One fact which has been made completely clear in our time is that the energy present in the universe is sufficient to meet all of [our] prospective needs…

            A second equally important truth now demonstrated is the impressive reach of intelligence.  The mind has devised symbols and measurements by which [hu]man[ity] is laying increasing hold upon these vast energies.

            The question by which we are still confronted is whether love, in its reach and sufficiency, is equal to energy and mind.  A satisfactory answer can come to us only through faith… I must dare to believe that the life of my soul is itself evidence of the ultimately spiritual character of reality.  God, of whose Presence I become dimly aware in my best moments, is the living Soul who speaks through all events.  In [God’s] continuing will and goodness is the assured triumph of all that is or can be of worth.

PRAYER

O Thou who art Alpha and Omega, our Source and Home, Thy Power is sufficient.  Thy Love is complete.  Into Thy hands I commit my spirit, knowing that in Thy victory is the assurance of my true good, and of the good of all souls, now and evermore.  Amen.

Being Made New

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday April 16, 2006

This week I had lunch with a United Methodist pastor from a small town in southern Oklahoma.  As we visited, he said something that made a piece of the puzzle click for me.  He observed that for most folks theology isn’t very important.  “They aren’t so much interested in creeds, philosophies or the latest scholarship,” he said.  “What is important,” he pointed out, “is a sense of authentic community.”

He is right—and there is very little new in that.  Many of you have heard Jonalu and I opine on “Intimacy and Ultimacy.”  You have heard us say that what people crave is the sense of being known on a real level and using their life for something larger and more lasting than everyday living.

It was not my colleague’s observation that people aren’t so interested in theology that struck me.  What happened was that I realized that this statement is less true here, less true at First Unitarian, than it is most places.  Theology, philosophy and scholarship do matter to us—inordinately so.  They aren’t the only things that matter—but they are high on our list of values.  What is odd in that is that we, in the church least committed to creed and belief, probably place more importance in theology than do most mainstream religious communities.  Go figure.

One does not come to call oneself atheist, agnostic, deist, panentheist or an amalgam of religious labels like “Taoist-Christo-Rationalist” by accident.  One has to work to come to those understandings and that takes an appreciation for philosophy, scholarship and theology.  This, of course, is born out in the old Unitarian quasi-dilemma.  As a traveler you come to a fork in the road—one arrow points toward heaven, the other a discussion about heaven.  Which way do you go?  I called this a quasi-dilemma because in our case the road to the discussion would be well worn, while the road to heaven would be “less traveled by,” so to speak.

Theology matters to us.  My email was abuzz this week with suggested links to the newly published “Gospel of Judas.”  My UU ministerial sisters and brothers busily discussed how to draw this latest piece of scholarship into their Easter sermons.  The only observation I will make about this new Gospel is to say that it is not particularly new.  It differs little from the other non-canonical gospels which exist.  It is a gnostic document which provides a highly spiritualized portrait of Jesus as a purely divine being and that this “new” gospel, while interesting, really offers little to the study of religion except to underscore that the early Christianity was remarkably diverse.

Theology, though, does matters to us.  Before us is way-marker.  Can you see it?  Heaven, discussion of heaven?  Religion, discussion of religion?  Life, discussion about life?  How far away do you think those various places are?  For us?  Discussion of heaven one mile; heaven, one light year?

Part of our authentic identity is built into that quasi-dilemma.  We crave understanding and knowledge.  I can’t deny it.  I wouldn’t if I could.  I don’t want to take away this part of who we are.  Today, though, I am called to tell you that this is only part of the story—only part of our identity.  It is said that humans not only live by things but by the “meaning” of things.  That “meaning,” I would tell you, includes but is not limited to knowledge and rational understanding.  The “meaning” of life and religion cannot be fully captured in the words and expressions of theology, philosophy and scholarship, no matter how hard we try.

I feel particularly called to this message today on Easter.  My guess is that very few of us gathered here today take the story of Jesus’ death and physical resurrection as “gospel,” as literally true.  This leads us to be very wary of Easter as irrational and supernatural.  If Easter doesn’t “mean” that there was a body, it died, and then it was alive again—then our logic tells us—it is meaningless, superstition, false.  Well, maybe not.

A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a church member who asked, “If one doesn’t believe in a literal, bodily, resurrection can one be a Christian.”  My answer that day was “yes.”  That was the point in John Spong’s reading on the mindset of the ancient world.  That answer was given, between the lines perhaps, but born out, in my United Methodist colleague’s observation that theology doesn’t really matter to most people. 

Certainly there is a very vocal and visible camp within modern Christianity who maintain that belief in the literal truth of every word of the bible is a pre-requisite for the religious life.  Their way, though, is not the only way.  Their way is not our way.  In fact, in some odd way, those folks are following their own sign posts to a discussion of what matters and not gaining ground on the things that matter, themselves.

Today is Easter and I stand committed to finding not only an idea that helps explain this holy day—but to touching and experiencing the holiness of this time.  To do this I have to unfold for you what I believe about the life of one whose presence was so transforming that others came to see him as a unique incarnation of the divine.

Imagine living in Palestine some 2000 years ago.  You are not among the wealthy and powerful—there was no “middle class” and even fewer persons lived above poverty then than now.  Life is hard.  Death and disease are common, and rarely unexpected.  Hunger is real.  The only real protection, the only real insulation, one has from starvation and sickness is community.  Communal life is ritualized.  The Temple Priests hold sway over the great ceremonies, feasts and sacrifices of the day.  The only way to participate in that common piece of hope and community is to be ritually clean and pure.  This purity is important because not only does one connect with God through the Temple, one also connects with other humans—through feasts—at the Temple.

The Temple, though, is not the only source of power in the world in which you live.  You are part of a people—a nation—but you are an occupied people.  The real power of the secular government—Rome—is brutally unquestionable.  Rome allows the Temple culture to exist as long as you pay your taxes and don’t rise in revolt.  An unholy alliance develops between the Temple and Rome.  Rome needs the Temple to keep the peace and guarantee cash flow.  The Temple can continue to hold its religious ceremonies only if the people are peaceful and pay their taxes.

In this ancient world which you find yourself there are few civil rights.  Death is common.  Cruelty is common.  The life of a single peasant, such as yourself, is cheap and carries little concern for the unholy Temple/State alliance.  Oppression, dehumanizing oppression, is the way of life.  You accept it, simply, as the way it is.

Into this world comes one who seeks not just to break free from of the oppressors—but to live in such a way that the oppression can’t reach you in the first place.  He teaches love of self and God and neighbor.  He tells people that God finds them whole.  He tells you that whatever others have said, whatever you have told yourself, that God loves you and finds you whole and complete just as you are.  He teaches forgiveness and creates a beloved community.  To the outsider, the excluded, the oppressed, he says come to the table, sit and eat.

You, yourself, sit and eat.  Then, as now, when we are burdened and our lives don’t always make sense.  You sit and you eat and you become part of a community.  An odd, and unexpected thing happens.  As you become part of this community, as you sit and eat, the doubts and demons that have haunted you diminish.  You sit and eat and become part of something larger than yourself.  As you do you get stronger, your physical infirmities diminish, you become healthy.

Is this a miracle?  I don’t know, maybe.  The thing I do know is that life is still precarious.  You are OK for now—but what about tomorrow?  Life, then as now, carries few assurances so you come to anticipate the coming of a new life, a new time, a new world—where justice and compassion will unseat oppression and cruelty forever.  You imagine that you are living in the very beginning of that new time.  Someone calls it the Kingdom of God, the Realm of God, and that seems right.

Then something happens.  You shouldn’t be surprised, but terror grips you nonetheless.  The one who you love as no other—the one who is brother and father and teacher and lover and hope-incarnate is cruelly taken from your midst.  No wheel can hold without its hub and you expect this realm of hope and community, of health and healing, to die as quickly as it came to be.  It doesn’t. 

Somehow, against all odds, the community survives.  It feels this loss in ways none could have imagined.  Great love is accompanied by the risk of great loss.  Somehow, though, despair does not overwhelm the good that has become incarnate.  Somehow, despite the clear and unambiguous knowledge that one who was loved as no other is dead, a divine presence is still felt.  You and your companions can still hear his voice.  You can still see his face.  You can still feel his touch.  It is a miracle.  What should have been destroyed and consumed by death and terror is still alive.  It still offers hope.  It still offers direction and inspiration and you rejoice.

Theologians have come to call that experience a resurrection.  It is not a resuscitation.  It is not reincarnation.  Whatever it is, you and those who come after you talk of this and tell of it and write of it in the only way you can—with words.  There is, though, some meaning in all this that can’t be captured by words.  There is something here that is real but can’t be passed on as an understanding equal to the experience.  Stories are told, not what happened so much as what was felt and known and believed.  Still, it surpasses common understanding.  Stories are told, not to record what happened, but to testify to meaning.  The story is told to keep the love alive.

That is Easter and to the best of my ability, I tell you, that is what this day is about.  It is about something being made new when being made new is neither deserved nor expected nor dreamed possible.  This experience is part of the human condition.  My guess is that it preceded Jesus and that, in part, is why it continues to this day.

Make no mistake—the Easter miracle is not made holy just as an act of remembrance.  That would severely limit its meaning and power.  The Easter miracle is alive today because we still need to be made new.  We still need that spirit of life and hope in our lives.  Here in the 21^st century, the externals of our lives are different than they were for a Mediterranean peasant but we still suffer.

We pause for Easter because there is loss and death in all our lives that cries to be made new.  Perhaps you, and if not you then someone sitting near you or someone you know, feels the loss of love—a relationship has died and love seems impossible.  Easter can make love new.  Perhaps you have seen the loss of a dream and now life doesn’t seem to matter much.  Easter makes life new.  There are losses of jobs, of status, of health, of our very grip on the world.  These things threaten those who we know and love—and those who we know not—Easter means that things are being made new.

It may sound odd on this most holy of Christian days—but theology doesn’t really matter that much.  Easter transcends belief and theology.  My United Methodist friend was right.  What matters are life and love and hope.  Life and love and hope that can, and do, inspire faith.  The faith we ultimately hold, an Easter faith encoded for millennia in the story of the risen Christ is that things may never be as they were before but love is forever made new.  The Jesus after Easter was not the same Jesus as before—but what was lost was replaced by something larger than a single life.  What was gained, and what we rejoice in today is the Easter miracle.  Today it is enough to know that things are “Being Made New.”  AMEN