A particular congregation had great affection for their parish priest, Father John. Even the children adored him. There was only one thing wrong: his sermons were terrible! They were long and rambling. He seemed to forget what the point was. No one knew what he was talking about. A committee from the congregation went to see the Bishop. They told him that the only thing they didn't like about Father John was his rambling, incoherent sermons. They asked him to give Father John some good advice on writing sermons.

         The Bishop called Father John to come and see him. The Bishop said, "Look here, John. It is really important to get the attention of the people. Begin by telling them something about yourself. For example, I once told my congregation that I was in love with a woman. I thought about that woman day and night. I dreamed about that woman. I prayed about that woman. They were really listening! I told them that the woman was the Virgin Mary. And then I told them what she meant to me. Do you see what I mean?" Father John said that he did and that he'd try it.

         The next Sunday, Father John began his sermon. He said, "The Bishop is in love with a woman. He thinks about her day and night. But I can't for the life of me remember her name!

         So now that you're listening, what is Jesus of Nazareth to you? Bishop Spong says, "We must lay down…the primitive claims we have made for our religious traditions." (p.225, Spong) He believes that at the heart of these "primitive claims" are the stories of a virgin birth, a physical resurrection, and a cosmic ascension. Most modern biblical scholars tell us that the story of the virgin birth was added onto the gospels of Matthew and Luke some 90 years after the death of Jesus. This add-on may have been an attempt to give Jesus a noble birth. It is also likely that Mary was a single mother. In the Gospel of Mark, a man said, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" (Mark 6:3) In those days, it would have been insulting to call a grown Jewish man the son of a woman as if his paternity were not known. In another place, we read that his mother was seeking to "put Jesus away" fearing that he was "beside himself" or not in his right mind. (Mark 3:21) This was hardly the proud and well-respected mother.

         What if Jesus of Nazareth was born of a lowly woman, perhaps one who had children by different men and thus had little status in the culture of her day? And what if Jesus died a death as any other man and the story of a resurrected body was the invention of imaginative writers? Would Jesus be anything special to us if we removed these two myths? The window behind this pulpit with its warm tones and a halo of light on the dullest of days, teases us with possibility.

         Many people do find Jesus' teachings alone compelling. British Unitarians say openly that the teachings and actions of Jesus of Nazareth are sufficient. One day a lay woman walked up to Bishop Spong and asked him, "Bishop, is it possible to be a Christian without being a theist?" He went on, "Her question stopped me cold. Church people do not normally ask this kind of question. . . .She was also framing for me in a public setting the very issue that my study was forcing me to examine." (p. 56, Spong)

         Spong's thinking focused on whether theism-the concept of God being a person, "a terrestrial Mr. Fix-it", who lived above the sky and who responded to all that we did and said on earth. He wondered whether this God concept stands in our way of appreciating who Jesus of Nazareth really was.

         As we heard in the reading, Bishop Spong thinks of God, not as a person but a force-a Ground of Being, of Being itself that under-girds all life. He acknowledges this as being like the Buddhist idea of Being. In the reading, we heard that Spong thought that Jesus was a God presence, a person who revealed in his personality and his actions the understanding and ability of how to move through life being, saying, and doing precisely what would bring about greater justice in the world. We could say that Jesus brought love to bear in word and deed. Let's take a few examples.

         Foremost in the Gospels is Jesus' inclusion of the outsider. We see Jesus healing the servant of a Roman official. In his most famous parable, the Good Samaritan, Jesus shows how the despised Samaritan was kind to a man in need when Jews ignored him. (Luke 10:29) In days when women were considered subhuman property, Jesus associated with a group of women lead by Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:3) and also spoke to individual women. He spoke to and healed a woman who was an outcast because she was unable to stop menstrual bleeding and was considered unclean. (Mark 5:24) He did not hesitate to help the mentally ill. (Mark 5:1)

         Jesus' actions and teachings must have astonished and deeply impressed his followers. When they began to also help others, regardless of whether they were Jews or gentiles, that is, non-Jews, they must surely have impressed themselves as to the effect of the loving actions they performed, encouraged by Jesus' teachings. Jesus was free from social constraints. He was free to love truly.

         In 1995, Bishop John Spong came to give a talk on his new book, Seeing the Bible with Jewish Eyes, at Emerson Unitarian Church where I was an intern minister. His words and perspective of God and Jesus spoke deeply to me. Perhaps you have had the experience of hearing someone put into words so well what you held to be true for yourself. Bishop Spong did this for me. The next morning, I was invited to breakfast with him and his wife and 25 other people. I sat with him and he spoke most kindly to me, giving me his utmost attention for a while. Then he left me with his wife, Christine, who was British and we got on famously! (Dear Reader, I am originally from Great Britain!) While I talked with Christine Spong, I watched John ("Jack" to his friends) move from table to table talking to everyone in that room and giving each his undivided attention. I couldn't help wondering whether he was like the Nazarene.

         Like the woman who asked Jack whether she has to be a theist in order to be a Christian, many Unitarian Universalists wonder whether they can call themselves Christian. Many UUs cannot relate to the concept of a personal God who fixes things. And yet the historical Jesus of the Gospels, without the miracle birth and the unlikely resurrection seems compelling to them. I believe the answer is "Yes, you can define your own Christianity for yourself."

         Historically, the unitarian idea that God was a unity of one and not a trinity of three-in-one went back to the Nicene Council in 325 of this common era (CE). The unitarian idea of both God and Jesus has continued to change through history. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an intense debate arose amongst our clergy about who God and Jesus were and this ended with the split in the congregational churches. Conservative clergy who wanted to adhere to the established doctrine forced the more liberal clergy to declare their belief and they labeled the liberals "unitarian". This whole debate caused one third of New England churches to split off from the congregational churches. The label stuck.

         The Universalists, however, were always convinced that God is Love. The Unitarians and Universalists never stopped inquiring into what we believe. The result is that we are a people who make room for ongoing inquiry and diversity of belief amongst us.

         I have said before that for me God is Love or Love is the creative force at the center of this religion and that this force calls us together to struggle with life, ideas, relationships, activities, and knowledge. When we say that which is informed by love and we do that which is inspired by love, this world works much better and there is greater justice and happiness all around.

         We can ascribe to Jesus the attributes of the ideal man who can be, an exemplar for us. But we might acknowledge that such individuals as the Buddha and Lao Tzu have also trodden the path of love and, like Jesus, neither of them wrote down a word! In my own life, rather than being a Buddhist, I am a Unitarian Universalist who emphasizes Jesus because his example is more culturally accessible to me.

         It is also important for me to acknowledge those individuals who exhibit enlightened behavior, people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu and in our own ranks William Ellery Channing, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Dorothea Dix. There must be hundreds of others from whose words and lives we can learn.

         One of my wisest teachers said to me that if I want to read things that are truly useful to reflecting on a spiritual life, I should read the biographies and writings of great people. I dearly wish that Jesus had written his own life story and teachings in his own hand. We have the story of only one-year of his life in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and three years of his life in John. And in the letters of Paul, Jesus only ever appeared to him in a vision-intense, ecstatic psychic encounter.

         The Hindus tell us that if we want to progress spiritually, we should choose a spiritual path and follow it to interpret life's meaning. It is unlikely that any religion has THE truth. You might have seen the bumper sticker "God is too big for one religion. If we want THE truth, we may each have to take something that is scripture for us and ponder it and work with it and evolve our understanding. The important thing is for us to come into touch with the Eternal Now.

         Meanwhile, Christmas comes around each year to offer us the opportunity to indulge exclusively in the cultural experience of brightening the darkness with myths and gifts and enjoyment. Or we may choose to include a more somber theme of truth and love and yes, also, the Infinite Ground of all Being, and perhaps reflect upon where Jesus of Nazareth fits into it all. We'll continue the theme of what light there is in the world on Christmas Eve. May our search for truth be one that enriches our lives and adds joy to this holiday season.

References

The following has inspired and informed this sermon:

Spong, John Shelby. Why Christianity Must Change or Die, San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.