An Opening Quote from The God of Jesus by Stephen J. Patterson

“When most people today say something like “Jesus is God’s Son,’ they mean to say that there was something about Jesus that was essentially different from all other human beings. It is not just that he behaved in an unusual way. He was different in his essence, in his being. This idea may be seen in the words of a placard hoisted aloft several years ago by a protester outside an Atlanta theater during the showing of the controversial ... film The Last Temptation of Christ. . . [The sign] read, “My Savior is not human!’ These are the words of a zealot, but they express ... what many Christians think about Jesus. They think that in his essence Jesus was not really human after all. He was divine. The problem with this ... approach to Christology, ... is that for many modern folk it has become incredible in a way that was not so for the ancient folk who created the texts of the New Testament. For ancients, the idea that a human being might essentially be divine made sense. In a worldview in which Gods sometimes mated with human beings, ... a divine human being was a distinct possibility. Today, ... no one believes this. But many still believe that Jesus was essentially divine, accepting this as an article of faith, even though the mythic framework within which such a belief might have made sense has long passed from our cultural consciousness. It remains, ... as a rallying cry. But it is a claim without much meaningful content in the modern world. It is perhaps the centerpiece of a modern Christianity that has been drained of most of its content and meaning.

            ...[Another approach to Christology] is based on the idea that the early followers of Jesus did not make claims about him because they had somehow sensed in him a different essence, a palpable divinity. When they said of him, “Behold, the Son of God,’ ... It was because they had heard him say and seen him do certain things. They experienced him acting in their lives. And what they experienced in the company of ... Jesus, moved them deeply. They heard in his words profound truth about the world, about human nature, and about God. They experienced in his actions what authentic human being[s] can and should be. In his life they experienced a depth of meaning that tapped into what they knew to be true, ultimately true. Such truth is [usually] called ... God. God is that ultimate reality running through and beyond all things, in which all things have their grounding, in which life, ... must also be grounded. In their experience of Jesus, the followers of Jesus had experienced God. In his fellowship they had found the true meaning of their lives. And so they said of him, “Behold, the Son of God.’” (p.53-54).

Jesus. When anyone says his name, thousands of different pictures spring to mind. Every person in this room probably has a different view of who and what exactly Jesus is. As in the reading by Patterson, the followers of Jesus experienced a divine reality through him, and this reality takes on many forms.

There are different views of Jesus found in almost all major religions. In Judaism, most see him as a Jew with differing ideas. Most of them also pretty much ignore him. Some of them don’t believe he existed, most just don’t believe he is of any importance to their own religion. In early rabbinic literature, the followers of Jesus are referred to as “deviants” or “heretics” and he is said to be the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier. There is, however, a very small sect who call themselves Jews for Jesus, but they are not recognized as Jews by the main body of Judaism. Jesus also appears in Buddhism. There is a story, that before Jesus began his preaching in Galilee, he traveled east and studied with a Buddhist master. This is an interesting thought to consider. I have heard about a small sect of Buddhism in the Middle East/Western Asia area that believes that Jesus was a reincarnation of the Buddha. I’m not sure if they are still in existence today or not, but they are an example of a different way that the divine reality experienced through Jesus can be interpreted. Muslims believe that Jesus was an important prophet. A short excerpt from the Koran sums up Muslim’s beliefs about Jesus: “When the angels said: “O Mary, God gives you news of a thing from Him, for rejoicing, (news of one) whose name will be Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in this world and the next, and one among the honoured, Who will speak to the people when in the cradle and when in the prime of life, and will be among the upright and doers of good.’ ... When God said: “O Jesus, I will take you to Myself and exalt you, and rid you of the infidels, and hold those who follow you above those who disbelieve till the Day of Resurrection (3:45-46, 55a).  This reading shows that Muslims believe many of the same things that Christians do. They believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, taught the Jews new things about the scriptures, and suffered and was raised up by God to a high place. And finally, of course there are also Christians and they believe many different things about Jesus. An early group of Christians that are definitely worth mentioning are the Gnostics. One distinguishing feature of the Gnostics is their creation myth which is an elaboration of the Genesis creation myth. In the beginning the divine power, God, expanded to fill the spiritual universe. A nonspiritual being, called Ialdabaoth, stole some of that power, but was deceived and as a result, the stolen power was transferred to part of humanity, the Gnostics. Gradually, God recovers the power as gnostic souls return to Him. Now this is a great shortening of the myth. There are many versions of it, and they all get quite complicated. Another important element in their creation myth was the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve. Ialdabaoth, the one who stole power from God, was the one who created Adam and Eve. A messenger from God came to Eve in the form of a snake and convinced her to eat the forbidden apple, thereby releasing her and Adam from the power of Ialdabaoth and allowing them to find the truth of the universe and God for themselves. In their myth, this was not a fall, but the beginning of hope for human beings. And so as a result of this story gnostic’s believe that “only the soul is the true self; that the body is a negative element, a “prison’ of the soul; and that salvation entails escape from the “bondage’ of bodily existence.” This is quite different from any kind of modern Christianity that I know of. The reason that this form of Christianity died out was that it concentrated so much on individual salvation, that it never formed a strong community outside of individual groups in different cities. This made them easy targets for the early Catholic church when they began to root out heresy. Finally, there are all the other forms which sprang from the Catholic Church and spread throughout the Western world. I think we all probably know the basic teachings of all of these churches. Of course there are many differences. However, I think these differences occur mostly over rituals and authority. How do we express our faith? Who needs to be involved in this expression of faith? How involved should they be? Here is an example to show these types of differences. The Catholic Church, more in its early life than today, relies highly on rituals to accomplish these things. Communion shows faith in the saving power of Jesus and his death for us. The ritual of confession, including both confession, repentance, and, hopefully, forgiveness, is necessary for the remission of sins. In both of these rituals, a priest or higher authority is needed to be an intermediary between the people and God. With the possible exception of prayer, a priest is deemed necessary for almost every type of communication between the people and God. The need for an almost constant intermediary is what led to the Reformation. Lutherans still take communion for the same reasons as Catholics. However, they believe that confession, repentance and forgiveness of sins is something between you and God and no intermediary is necessary in order for this process to take place. Constant differences about these issues continued to cause splits within the Christian community. However, what is really the difference between Christians today is a different matter entirely. This difference is something that is less of an interdenominational split than an inner denominational split. It is a split between liberal and fundamentalist Christians. The largest difference between them is how literally the Bible is to be taken. On one extreme are the people that believe that every word of the Bible is true and should be taken literally. The other extreme are the people that believe that the Bible is true, but really only in a metaphorical sense. People holding beliefs from both sides often go to the same church together, say the same creeds and take confession side by side. They both will tell you that they believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, as the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world. There are so many different beliefs about Jesus. But, where do UUs fit in? Here is an excerpt from “Jesus: A Life” by A.N. Wilson. “We, too, the readers or hearers of the Gospel come to Jesus by night; that is to say, blinkered with the desire to make sense of things, bounded by common sense, decency, and by ethical and scientific notions which are containable within the kosmos rather than being wholly outside it. ... We want to know if the stories [the Gospel] relates are in any sense or in any small particle, verifiable. That is the nature of our coming by night. The Gospels themselves would appear to invite us to test their evidence by just such a scale of “realistic’ values. Take the story of Doubting Thomas. ... Many thousands, millions, of readers of that story must have been comparably arrested by it, challenged by it; and in precisely this way. ... Perhaps, of all the stories which this supremely skillful writer tells in his short book, John, this one has the greatest power. ... Is it true? Did the story of Doubting Thomas take place?... Did [Jesus], as a matter of actual, observable, verifiable historical fact return ... and offer Thomas the chance to put his hand into that wounded side?” (p.65-66). My answer is “I don’t know”. We can neither prove or disprove that this event ever took place. There are many plausible explanations for it, but still the answer is “I don’t know.” However, the second of that is, “Does it matter?” Does it really matter if this really happened?

This question leads me into my own personal beliefs about Jesus, and I might as well start from the beginning. This Christmas, I found that I was quite confused over the whole celebrating Jesus’ birth thing. I understand it in the sense that we often celebrate the birth of important people, and people who have touched many lives, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Shakespeare. And, if we are to celebrate people like them, Jesus is definitely a person to be celebrated. But it is the birth stories that I find confusing. If everyone knew he was the Savior when he was born, as the gospels would indicate (Luke 2:11-18, Matthew 2:1-2), then why did people wonder about him when he began to preach later in his life? It is said several times that people marveled at his miracles and wondered who he was to have such power. But I thought that they knew who he was when he was born? I agree with many biblical scholars that most, and possibly all, of the story of Jesus’ birth is prophecy historicized. This means that the writers of Matthew and Luke knew nothing of Jesus’ birth, but felt it was important to write about it, so they searched the Old Testament scriptures in order to find prophecies regarding the birth of the Messiah. Using these, they constructed a birth story. As far as the virgin birth is concerned, science has shown that is possible, but that it is a very rare medical phenomena. But I am not concerned about whether or not it really happened. For many Christians the belief in an immaculate conception is of paramount importance because he was a divine being and if he was not born in a miraculous way, how could he be divine? The reading from The God of Jesus talked about this issue. In Jesus, people saw the divine, and so called him divine even though, in his essence, he was human. As I see it, Jesus had to be human in order to do what he did. It is for these reasons that I say it doesn’t really matter if he was born of a virgin or not. I will now skip to the end of his life, the other very controversial event in Jesus’ life. There is no doubt that Jesus was crucified. Both Josephus and Tacitus, two important historians of the time speak about it in their histories. As for the rest, there is much scholarly debate about the historocity of the passion narratives. I leave that debate to scholars. The rest is faith and personal belief, and I leave that decision to you. To me, the most important thing about Jesus was his preaching. He said and did things that no one else would say or do. Some of my favorite examples of those things that Jesus said are the beatitudes. As I read some of them again, think of the implications of these statements in today’s society as well as Jesus’. “Blessed are you poor. The realm of God is yours. Blessed are you who hunger today. You shall be satisfied. Blessed are the humble. They will inherit the earth.” Today, many people would say, “those that are hungry and poor, it’s their own fault, why don’t they work? They are just a burden to society and not as valuable as good, hard-working citizens.” These are what I would call “human values.” Here is a section, again from The God of Jesus: “In speaking of God’s Empire as that place in which human values are reversed, in which those who are expendable to the regnum status quo become the center of attention, an Empire which belongs to beggars, Jesus gave expression to the idea that God is no respecter of human values and judgments about the relative worth of people. A human being has only one value to God, an ultimate value. To God there are no expendables. This is also the theological point in Jesus’ critique of purity and piety. No one is unclean to God; there is no one unfit for the presence of God. God’s love embraces all, as they are, even prostitutes, tax collectors, sinners. ... There is nothing one need to do in order to be loved by God. When one realizes this, the result is a human transformation that Paul described as freedom from sin, and empowerment to embrace a new way of life grounded in love and care for others.” (p. 114). Here is how I would translate this reading into terms of my own beliefs. Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God here on earth. Recall how Patterson defined God in the reading earlier: “God is that ultimate reality running through and beyond all things, in which all things have their grounding.” Sounds like the interconnected web of life, doesn’t it? So, the kingdom of God is a kingdom where that ultimate reality or interconnected web of life rules. This is a kingdom where we, as human beings, and part of the interconnected web, stop making value judgments on each other. We are all human and therefore we are all equal in value. Why should there be expendables? And we, as individuals, what do we need to do, besides be ourselves, in order to be accepted by fellow humans? Aren’t we all a part of the greater whole? We shouldn’t have to do anything in order to feel accepted. When we realize this we undergo a human transformation. I believe that this idea is the main theme behind all of the teachings of Jesus. This idea of “human transformation,” which I have now mentioned twice, I see as enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and because of this I would say that I believe that Jesus was an enlightened one. However, he became enlightened during his life, he was not born that way. There is a story of a Gentile in Mark 7:25-29. “But straightway a woman, whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, having heard of him, came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Syrophoenician by race. And she besought him that he would cast forth the demon out of her daughter. And he said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs. But she answered and saith unto him, Yea, Lord; even the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the demon is gone out of thy daughter.” In this story, a Gentile begs Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus tells her that she is not as valuable as the Jews, and therefore must wait until they are served before she can be served. The woman rebukes him for this, and he then heals her daughter. I see this as one of the learning experiences of Jesus. Why should a Gentile be less worthy than a Jew, if all are equal in the eyes of the interconnected web? This is one of the reasons that I believe strongly in Jesus’ humanity. How can his life be an example to us if he did not face the same trials and tribulations that we face as human beings. I am more amazed by a human being that endured what Jesus did and still became the man he did, an enlightened, loving and compassionate person, than a perfect divine being who came to earth to attempt to communicate ideas of perfection to us. How could such a being really communicate with us? Jesus did, and that is why I believe that he wasn’t such a being. He was a human who learned to see all people equally and tried to teach us how this is possible.

The ability to see all human beings as truly equal is a very difficult thing to do. I think that few people have accomplished this in their lifetime. How many of us here can say that we never look down on a person with lower intellect? How many of us can say that we never look down on a person because of their profession, for example, janitors or people at McDonald’s? How many of us can say that we never look down on a person whose beliefs disagree strongly with our own? How many of us can say that we never look down on people that were hurtful to us or others? These questions refer not only to the past, but to the future. We can see ourselves thinking these things in future. These are tough situations. How can we deal with them? I will share with you how I try to.

Last November, I went to a young adult CON in Salt Lake City. In case you still don’t know what I’m talking about, a CON is a weekend gathering of UUs, and in this case, UUs between the ages of 18 and 35. While there, several of us went to tour the temple visitor’s center. Several people began to ask questions about the beliefs of the Mormons.  Because I have read the Book of Mormon and also know a lot of Mormons who I discuss religion with, I felt I was a good person to explain these beliefs, especially when no one else volunteered any information. After briefly describing the events in the Book of Mormon to the group of UU’s, I was asked, “But is it true?” Typical UU response. I began, “Well, they think that it’s true...” and was quickly interrupted by a native Salt Laker who said “It’s not true.” I was bothered by this, and it took me awhile to figure out why, especially since these were not my beliefs. I soon realized that it bothered me because, here we are in a Mormon building, casually dismissing beliefs that people there hold dear. If someone believes something, it is true to them, and therefore, in some sense, true. It doesn’t matter if it is historically verifiable, it is still true to that person, even if it’s not true to you. An example is Baby Bear in the story. He believes that he went to the moon. We all know that, 1) bears don’t live in houses with chimneys or bathtubs, 2) no one can fly to the moon in a cardboard box wearing a strainer and rainboots for protective gear, 3) a chimney will never work as a launching device, and 4) no child could manage to launch themselves from the chimney, travel to the moon and be back in time for bed, especially, without his mom noticing. However, Baby Bear, believes undeniably that he went to the moon. This is an experience that could change Baby Bear’s life, especially because he believes it was real. Because Baby Bear believes it, isn’t it, in some sense, true? It becomes even more true if he then acts on this belief because then it affects more than just him. This brings me to the idea of individual realities. Despite the fact that we all live in the same world, we all live in a reality that is unique to us. Each of us has certain beliefs that shape our actions as well as certain experiences that shape our beliefs. These beliefs and experiences form our individual reality. This idea of individual reality should never be used as an excuse for one’s actions. I think that it is best used in understanding ourselves, and why we do what we do and feel what we do. Things get much more complicated when we begin interacting with other people. This is where our beliefs come into play, and at the same time get tested. Going back to the Mormon Temple story, when someone stated that the Book of Mormon was not true, they denied the reality of many people in this world. We all must take the reality of other human beings very seriously. Especially when taken seriously, reality is a key way to deal with people that we might look down on. A tragic example very close to home, is Dylan and Eric, the shooters at Columbine. In their reality, they truly believed that the world was against them. It started with teasing and jibes from people who probably didn’t see them as serious or important, but Dylan and Eric saw them that way. Kids around them would probably say, “Oh, you shouldn’t take it so seriously.” But they did, and they were hurt. This hurt became part of their reality, and eventually built to a tragic end. And some people still say that they shouldn’t have taken it so seriously. But just because they “shouldn’t” doesn’t mean that the hurt they felt was any less real. Just because someone says that you shouldn’t believe in Christ doesn’t mean that the belief is any less real to someone who does. In the Epilogue to his book Who Killed Jesus?, John Dominic Crossan talks about this, and I think he has a valuable insight. He says: “To be human is to be absolutely particular, that is, absolutely relative or relatively absolute. In anything that is of supreme importance to us, be it spouse or family, hobby or passion, job or profession, language or country, there is an inevitable slippage from a to the, [as in a person or the person]. It is considered most imprudent to wake up next to a beloved spouse whom you consider to be the most beautiful person in the world and say, however correctly, “If I had not met you, I probably would have met someone else.’ Shown a newborn infant and asked, “Isn’t that the most beautiful baby in the world?’ the wisest answer is always in the affirmative. But out of the corner of our minds we recognize that a has become the, and we know that such is perfectly human and presents no problem - unless it is taken literally and the equally relative absolutes of others are negated. So also, or especially, with one’s faith or one’s religion. It must be experienced as the manifestation of the Holy, but we must never forget or deny that it is actually a manifestation for me and for us. To be human is to live in a as the; to be inhuman is to deny that necessary slippage.” (p.216). This is a wonderful illustration of individual reality. In our our own reality, everything is the, but we can not forget that among the many realities it is only a. I have seen and experienced examples of how two people with very different realities can learn to care for each other and to be able to discuss their differences in a none hostile way. Over winter break I read a wonderful book called the Meaning of Jesus. It is written by Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright. They are both Jesus scholars and devout Christians, but one is quite conservative and the other quite liberal. In this book they share their thoughts about the historical Jesus. When it comes right down to it, the differences in their beliefs are slight, but the result is two very different visions of Jesus and what a good Christian life will be. Throughout this book, there is a sense of the respect and care that these two men share despite their differences. I also have a personal example, the friendship I share with Joel Hillian. Joel is a very devout, very believing Mormon. He truly believes that Mormonism is the only way. Despite these vast differences, we still discuss religion openly. We are still able to see each other as equals despite our differences. When we discuss religion we discuss each other’s beliefs as a way or truth. And that is the key. We need to be able to share our realities with each other in order to begin to see others as equals. This in itself is still a difficult task. How can we begin to understand the reality of a welfare mother or a serial killer? They are so alien to us, and that is why it is easier to devalue them. Another part of these realities that we must understand, is that often they are influenced by human values. Values that tell us that we must do certain things in order to be accepted. But isn’t that what Jesus wanted us to try to break free of? I think that we, as UUs, are constantly trying to break free. The more we try to understand the realities of others, the more we see the need to help others break free. I think that one of the best ways to try to do that is to do it through the realities of others. We must be able to speak to people in a way that speaks to them through their realities. Jesus spoke to his followers in a way that touched their realities. This is why I see Jesus as a model for my own life. As you saw in the opening section, Jesus has managed to speak to people of all different religions, like Buddhists, Muslims, Gnostics, and of course Christians, as well as people of different races and social classes. And, as you saw in the second section, Jesus struggled as a human being to become enlightened in a way that allowed him to accept all human beings no matter what. This is what I am striving for, and I think that the UU community should be, and is, striving to achieve this also.