Western Religious Traditions – Page 12 – Dan Harper

The End

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The reading this morning is from the Christian scriptures, the book called Revelation, chapter 22, verses. 1-5:

1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4 they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. [New Revised Standard Version of the Bible]

The commentary on the reading comes from an essay titled “Alas for the Earth! Lament and Resistance in Revelation 12” by Barbara Rossing, from the book The Earth Story in the New Testament:

For us, the issue is to understand how Revelation’s ecological lament takes shape in our own global situation. Escapist scenarios of a “rapture” can only serve to deflect attention away from earth and away from the book’s critique of imperialism. There is no rapture of people up to heaven in Revelation. If anything, it is God who is “raptured” down to Earth to dwell with people in a wondrous urban paradise (Rev. 21.3; 22.3). The plot of Revelation ends on Earth, not heaven, with the throne of God… located in the center of the city (Rev 22.3) that has come down to earth. [p. 191]

SERMON — “The End”

One of the central stories of the Western Christian tradition goes like this: God create the world out of nothing. Everything was wonderful at first, but then somehow evil crept into that perfect world. Human beings wound up living lives of suffering and sorrow, but if we’re good enough then after we die we might get to go to a place called heaven. And one day, the world and everything in it will come to an end, because God is going to have the last day of judgment, and the earth will go away, and those who got into heaven will spend all eternity walking streets of gold through alabaster cities.

Does that story sound familiar? I expect it does. I expect many of you have heard this story over and over again. Some of you were taught this story as children; and although this is not the story we teach Unitarian Universalist children, nevertheless even those of us who grew up as Unitarian Universalists know this old central story of the Western Christian tradition.

This old story does not come from the Bible. It is based on some of the stories in the Bible, but there are other stories in the Bible which contradict this story. No, in spite of what some people may say, this old story does not come from the Bible. This old story is, in fact, a myth: the dominant myth of our time and for our culture. It is a myth that may be rooted in certain parts of the Bible but really it is a myth that is passed down from parent to child, from friend to friend. It is a myth that has so permeated our culture that even those of us who reject traditional Christianity still tell ourselves this myth.

And yes, even those of us here this morning: at some level, we, too, believe in this myth. We may tell the myth a little differently, but we still tell each other this myth. We might tell the story of this old myth like this: The universe came out of nothing, and began with the Big Bang. After billions of years, our solar system formed, and our planet formed, and life appeared on our planet. Life evolved until one day there were human beings, and we lived in harmony with the earth. But then we started polluting the earth, and we developed nuclear weapons that could end all life as we know it, so now we live lives of suffering and sorrow. If we’re good people and work very very hard, and live lives devoted to making the world a better place, we believe we might get to a point where we create a world of peace and justice and happiness. But the way things are going, either there will be a nuclear holocaust or the oceans will rise due to global warming or overpopulation will turn earth into a kind of hell; in any case, the earth will go away and that will be the end of everything.

This second myth is pretty much the same as the first myth, except that there’s more science, in it because it mentions the Big Bang and evolution and so on. But the basic trajectory of the story is the same: we come from nothing, for a time we lived in harmony with the universe, but now this is a world of suffering and woe, and someday soon everything will come to an end. Or to paraphrase Monty Python, from the movie “The Life of Brian”: “We’ve come from nuffin, we’re going back to nuffin; what ‘ave we lost? Nuffin!” Yes indeed, even if the world ends we really haven’t lost anything.

I worry about these two myths that permeate our culture. Our culture seems to assume that the world is going to come to an end. And you know something? — if you spend your time absolutely convinced that the world is coming to an end, that tends to make you a little passive. You tend to throw up your hands and say things like: Oh well, why worry about the homelessness problem, global warming is going to kill us all anyway. Or: Oh well, why worry about the way suburban sprawl is killing off woodlands and farmlands, overpopulation is inevitably going to kill us off anyway and there’s nothing we can really do about it.

But we can do something. We can stop telling ourselves the story in this way. We can start telling a new story about the way things are. And I’ll tell you where I think we should start: we should start with the book of Revelation in the Christian scriptures. The book of Revelation has been twisted and deformed by people who claim it’s a book about God putting an end to the world; people who claim it’s a book about death and destruction and violence. This twisted version of the book of Revelation has permeated popular culture. Have you heard of the “Left Behind” books? “Left Behind” is an enormously popular series of popular novels about the so-called “last days of earth,” when God comes back to earth, and all the good people get to go immediately to heaven (do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars), while the rest of us have to stay here on earth to deal with wars and rumors of wars and pestilence and God knows what else, with every expectation that God is going to send us straight to hell before long. The millions of people who read these books assume that they are going to be the ones who go straight to heaven, and they assume that people like us heretical Unitarian Universalists will wind up in hell. That’s the way popular culture twists the book of Revelation.

It’s time for us to reclaim the book of Revelation. Now Revelation is a pretty strange book, no doubt about it. I have some friends who survived the nineteen-sixties drug culture, and they assure me that the book of Revelation sounds an awful lot like a description of a bad hallucinogenic drug trip. Those of you who are into the arts might think that the book of Revelation sounds much like some of the stranger Surrealists who were writing in the early part of the 20th century. Have any of you actually read Revelation? Don’t you wonder how on earth we are going to do anything positive with it? And so you will ask: how on earth am I supposed to do anything with this crazy-talk book?

It’s easy. Remember this basic principle: religion rests on myths that require poetic thought in order to be understood. Do not attempt to apply rational, linear thought to myths, because if you do, you will find that the myths twist and turn and slide away from you; they will not change, they will simply take up residence elsewhere in the realm of myth. No, what you have to do with myths is you have to own them and retell them in a way that makes mythic sense. If you are an artist or a poet or musician or a dancer, you will be practiced at doing this; but if not, remember that this is a skill that can be learned by anyone.

Let us, therefore, see what we can do with the book of Revelation.

First principles again: do not take this book literally. Let me give you an example of how we might do that. I have picked a random selection from the book of Revelation, which I will read to you shortly; and after I read this selection, we’re going to apply mythical, poetical thinking to it, we’re going to retell it in a way that’s true for us. Here’s the random passage, from chapter 9, vv. 13-21

13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’ 15 So the four angels were released, who had been held ready for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, to kill a third of humankind. 16 The number of the troops of cavalry was two hundred million; I heard their number

(…now I’m wondering about the wisdom of choosing a passage randomly….)

17 And this was how I saw the horses in my vision: the riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur; the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of humankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they inflict harm. 20 The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts. [New Revised Standard Version]

OK, that’s pretty strange — I mean, what on earth can we do with this crazy passage? The heads of the horses were like lions? with breath smelling of sulfur? and tails like serpents? What are we to do with that?

But then we read, “The rest of humankind… did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or talk.” I think I find an ecological message here. I look around me at our culture, and I see people worshipping things; in our culture, we place a high value on accumulating things; and we place a correspondingly low value on living beings, both human beings and other living beings.

This passage I randomly chose goes on to say, “And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts.” So it is today, that our culture finds nothing wrong with accumulating personal wealth and possessions, even while homeless people roam our streets and a quarter of all children in the United States live in poverty; our culture finds nothing wrong with conspicuous consumption even though we are destroying whole ecosystems to support those patterns of consumption.

We are beginning to make some progress in our reinterpretation of the book of Revelation. Now I will tell you that a big part of the book of Revelation compares the mythical city of Jerusalem with the mythical city of Babylon. Babylon is the mythical fallen city, the city of sin. In chapter 18, the book of Revelation says:

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.

Jerusalem, on the other hand, is the good city, the perfect city where everything is going to be all right. In chapter 21, the book of Revelation says:

1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Remember, these are not the actual historical cities of Jerusalem and Babylon; these are mythic representations of cities. And some ecological theologians have become very interested in the contrast between the two mythic cities. Babylon, they say, is the city of environmental disaster. Babylon is haunted by foul spirits, which could be taken as pollution or the like; it is haunted by foul birds and foul beasts, maybe like the many invasive species that are destroying our ecosystems. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is the city that is to come: a new earth, the new urbanism; a place of ecological balance, which we will get to as we solve the ecological problems we’re now facing.

My friend Ellen Spero, the minister at our church in Chelmsford, Mass., pointed out to me years ago that Revelation can easily be interpreted as telling the story of an oppressed people, trapped in the mythic city of Babylon, who will one day achieve economic and social justice; and after much turmoil this people will one day live in a new land, the mythic city of Jerusalem, a city where God (whoever God may be) will come down to live, too; and according to Revelation, a loud voice will proclaim:

See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God will be with them; God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.

That sounds lovely to me. I wouldn’t mind living in a city where there was someone to wipe every tear from our eyes, whether it’s God that’s doing the wiping away of tears, or whether we finally get ourselves to the point where we can reach out and wipe away the tears from our neighbors’ eyes.

The way Ellen Spero interprets the story is closely related to the ecological interpretation of the story, as has been pointed out by a number of contemporary theologians. According to these theologians, the book of Revelation was written at a time when the early Christian communities were suffering under the oppression of the imperial Roman authorities; and these theologians assert that Roman imperialism is related to the kind of consumerism allows natural resources to be wasted and despoiled. (Interestingly, some of these theologians are conservative evangelical Christians, not just the usual liberal theologians!) Thus, while the writer of the book of Revelation did not know the term “ecological theology,” there is a real connection between the situation when this book was written, and the global situation today.

In the central story of the Western tradition, of course, Revelation is interpreted in a very different way. For many (but not all) traditional Christians, Revelation tells of a time when God will come back to earth to reward the righteous and punish evildoers. In this interpretation of the book of Revelation, you and I might be among the evildoers; Unitarian Universalists in particular get in trouble simply by virtue of not following a traditional Christian creed. In this interpretation of the book of Revelation, the people who tell the story this way usually put themselves in the position of the righteous persons whom God will save — with some caveats, they have to keep leading a righteous life and so on. They tell a story where God will come and whisk them off to heaven, leaving the bad old earth behind to be consumed by wars and environmental disaster.

We have all heard this other interpretation of the book of Revelation. And in general, we have conceded that this is the correct interpretation of Revelation. We are more likely to reject the Bible completely as a stupid book, or at least reject Revelation as a crazy book. In so doing, we think we have won. Reject the Bible, or at least reject Revelation; that will take care of them! But it doesn’t take care of them, because that means they get to have control over the myths that we tell ourselves in this culture. They get to tell us that the world will end; they get to tell us that only a few people (no plants or animals) will survive the end of the world; they get to tell us that they don’t think we’re going to survive the end of the world; they get to tell us to doubt ourselves.

I have come to call myself a “post-Christian.” People will ask me, Well are you a Christian?; and I respond, No I’m a post-Christian. I am post-Christian, meaning that I am not bound by the myths and creeds of traditional Christianity; but I am post-Christian, meaning that I acknowledge that my Unitarian Universalist tradition has been shaped by the old stories of the Christian tradition, and therefore those old stories are still mine to shape.

This is our work together. We cannot allow the old central story of the Christian tradition to continue unchallenged. That old Christian story tells us that the world is going to end soon, it sucks the hope out of our bodies, it leads us to act in ways of destruction; for if the world is going to end anyway it doesn’t really matter what we do with our lives aside from gaining as much pleasure as we can while we’re here.

We must challenge the old story of the Christian tradition from our Unitarian Universalist post-Christian perspective. In our retelling, Revelation is not a book about the end of the universe. Instead, it is a book that tells of a people who have been oppressed, and it offers a vision of a world without oppression; and it is a book that tells of a land that is being spoiled, and if offers a vision of a land of plenty where all beings can live together peacefully. We can retell the Christian stories so that they become stories of economic justice, stories of ecological justice.

But you can not delegate this work to your minister to do alone. If you have friends, acquaintances, or co-workers who tell the old Christian stories, listen to what they have to say and then retell their story to yourself so that it becomes a story of economic and ecological justice, so that you don’t fall into the trap of believing their story at any level of your being. If you have children in your life, you have a special responsibility: that old Christian story permeates every aspect of our culture and they will learn it from friends and popular culture, so you must tell them your version of the story so that they have an alternative, less destructive, interpretation on which they can draw; this is why our Sunday school is such a critically important part of this church, because our Sunday school supports parents and grandparents in inoculating children against that old interpretation of the Bible story.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to be an artist or performer of any kind, or a writer, or a scholar, or an educator, help reshape the Bible story for our time. You are the ones who are really going to make a difference, because you are already dealing in mythic and poetic thinking. Lead the way for the rest of us as we reshape the central myths of our culture; reshape those myths so that instead of telling us that the destruction of the world is inevitable and oh by the way most of us are going to hell, instead of that those myths become myths of economic and ecological justice, myths of hope, myths that affirm life and living beings.

Two Commandments

Readings

The reading this morning is from the Christian scriptures, the book attributed to Mark, chapter 12, vv. 28-34.

28 One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; 33 and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.

Story for All Ages

One day, Jesus (and remember, Jesus was Jewish) Jesus was talking to a lawyer about the laws the Jews received from their God. Jesus asked the lawyer, “How do you understand what is written in our religious laws?”

“That’s easy,” replied the lawyer. “We are supposed to love our God with all our hearts and minds; and we are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

“Do you really believe this?” said Jesus.

“Yes,” said the lawyer. “But I have a question. I’m supposed to love my neighbor as much as I love myself. But who is my neighbor?”

To answer this question, Jesus told this story:

*****

One day, a man from Jerusalem was going from Jerusalem down to the city of Jericho. On the road, the man was ambushed by robbers. The robbers beat him up, took all his money, and even took most of his clothing. The robbers left the poor man, bruised and unable to move, lying by the side of the road.

Now by coincidence, just a little later a priest from the great Temple at Jerusalem was going down the same road. The priests were very important religious leaders, sort of like super-ministers. The priest saw the man lying there, but instead of stopping to help him, the priest looked the other way and hurried on by.

A little later, a Levite came down the same road. Levites were the official helpers of the priests of the great Temple at Jerusalem, and only a little less important. Like the priest, the Levite took one look at the poor man lying by the side of the road, looked the other way, and hurried on by.

A little later, a man from Samaria came walking along the road. Now people from Jerusalem and people from Samaria did not like each other, and when the poor bruised man from Jerusalem saw a this Samaritan walking along, he was sure the Samaritan would walk on past him just like the priest and the Levite.

But this Samaritan was moved to pity at the sight of the poor man lying by the side of the road. The Samaritan went up to him, bandaged his wounds, and poured healing oil on his wounds.

Then the Samaritan hoisted the poor man onto his donkey, brought the poor man to an inn, and looked after him. The next day, the Samaritan went to the innkeeper with some silver coins and said, “Look after that poor man until he gets better. On my way back, I’ll make sure to pay you back if there’s any extra expense.”

SERMON — “Two Commandments”

The first reading this morning tells a story about the itinerant teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and about some people who were asking questions about their religious tradition. The reading ended with the words, “After that, no one dared ask him any question.” Obviously, there were no Unitarian Universalists in the group listening to Jesus of Nazareth, because this story only raises more questions for us. Lots and lots of questions. Like, when the scribe responds to Jesus, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other'” — and Jesus agrees with the scribe — well, doesn’t this mean that Jesus is not God? And what does Jesus mean when he says back to the scribe, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God” — does that mean the Kingdom of God is actually here and now and we can each attain it in this lifetime? I also want to know who this anonymous scribe is, because it sounds like this scribe is just as wise as Jesus.

For us Unitarian Universalists, this little story in the Bible raises more questions than it answers. We can only wish that there had been someone like us in that crowd listening to Jesus, someone who was willing to stick out her neck and say, Wait a minute, Jesus, just what do you mean that the two greatest commandments are ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ — and — ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’?

But you know what? There’s nothing to keep us from asking these questions. So let’s do it.

I’d like to start with that second commandment, the one that says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I want to start with that statement, because it is a statement made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr., who asked us: Who is our neighbor? and who asked us: Does it matter what color skin your neighbor has? and who asked American Christians, If you really believe the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, don’t you think it would be wise to pay attention to the story of the Good Samaritan? Since today is Martin Luther King’s birthday, it seems especially fitting that we ask questions about this matter of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

So here’s a question: if we are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, in what way are we supposed to love ourselves? The more I think about this business of loving our neighbors, the more important it seems to think about what it means to love our neighbors the way we love ourselves. I know some people who, quite frankly, hate themselves; and if they were to take literally the commandment to love their neighbors in the same way they love themselves, I personally would not want to be their neighbor. Then, on the other hand, I know other people who love themselves with all their hearts and all their minds and all their strength; I find it somehow unlikely that they can find room in their souls to love their neighbors as they love themselves, for they love themselves with an all-consuming love that allows for competing loves. It’s tempting to think that Jesus was a sort of first century Dr. Phil, and he’s implying that we have to love ourselves in a psychologically healthy way. It’s a sort of Goldilocks way to love yourself: not too much, and not too little, but just right.

We ask that one question, “In what way are we supposed to love ourselves?” which leads us to another question: if the people of Israel were commanded to love their God with all their hearts and all their souls and all their minds and all their strength, how does that leave any love left over to love yourself, or for that matter to love your neighbor? This does not make sense; and suddenly we find ourselves in a realm of mythic and poetical thinking. This story from the Bible is not offering logical, linear checklists for your behavior: number one, love God, check; number two, love self appropriately but not too much, check; number three, love neighbor as love self, check; checklist completed, I must be a good person. That’s not the way this story works; the Bible is a book of stories that do not necessarily make logical sense, because they are written in the mythic poetical vein.

Instead of asking logical, rational questions of this story, let’s retell the story and see what we can get out of it:

The story goes like this: that itinerant rabbi and teacher named Jesus of Nazareth has bee traveling all through the countryside around Jerusalem. At last, he decides to go into Jerusalem itself, Jerusalem the seat of Roman power in Judea, Jerusalem of the great Temple the seat of religious power for the land of Judea. Jesus goes to the Temple, and finds himself debating with representatives of the religiously powerful: Pharisees, Herodians, Sadduccees, and so on. As Jesus is debating, a scribe, that is, someone who is part of the religious hierarchy, overhears them disputing with one another. The scribe is impressed with the answers Jesus gives, and so asks Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” What an interesting question to ask! because you could answer in one of two ways: you could cite the ten commandments of Moses and say there is not one commandment there are ten we must follow; or you could understand the question to really mean, what lies at the very heart of the religion shared by Jesus and the scribe. What an interesting question to ask, as we witness legalistic debates in our own day about what Jesus’s teachings mean, and about whether it is legal to engrave the Ten Commandments in stone and place them in an Alabama courtroom.

Jesus does not give a legalistic answer to this question. Jesus gives a religious answer, citing the Hebrew Bible: “The first commandment is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one”; that is the first part of Jesus’s answer. Jesus continues his citation of the Hebrew Bible: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Then, still citing the Hebrew Bible, Jesus says there’s a second commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

While the other powerful religious personages had not liked Jesus’s answers, this anonymous scribe does like Jesus’s answers, replying, “You are right, Teacher [note that he acknowledges Jesus as a Teacher]; you have truly said that our shared God is one, and besides him there is no other’; you have truly said that we are ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and finally you have truly said that we are ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself.” Then the scribe makes one last comment that is really quite radical: these things, that God is one, to love God, to love one’s neighbor, “this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices”; that is, these things are more important than doing the conventionally religious actions of that time, of offering animal sacrifices at the Temple.

To close out this funny little story, Jesus makes one last remark that reminds me of something a Zen master might say. You know how Zen masters are delighted when someone comes along who is just as enlightened as they are? In our story, Jesus is delighted that this scribe is just as enlightened as he, Jesus, is. Jesus answers the scribe as one equal addressing another, saying, “You are not far from the kingdom of God”; saying, The two of us, we are not far from the Kingdom of God, we are both enlightened about the true nature of religion.

This story still speaks to us today. It speaks to us in spite of the fact that too many people want to make it into a legalistic, linear, non-poetical story. Too many people today focus on one little facet of the story, and those people say to us: You have to believe in God with all your heart and mind and soul. What they really mean, of course, it: You have to believe in our God, the way we define God, with all your heart and soul, and maybe you should leave your mind out of the equation so you don’t start asking difficult questions.

Heretic that I am, I’m going to ask a difficult question: when we hear this story, how are we to understand God? Are we to understand God as a being that requires animal sacrifices in the Temple at Jerusalem? –in other words, are we going to get a literal, logicalistic answer to this question? No, of course not. This is a mythic, poetical story. “God” in this story functions as a way for us to understand how we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. God represents that which is good, that which is best in the universe; God represents the essential oneness of the universe; God represents the love that ties our universe together. Jesus offers a statement that is like a Zen koan, that is, a statement that cannot be understood through regular logical thought. Jesus says, the universe is one; you are to love it with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength until there is nothing left of you for you are not separate from the universe, you are a part of it; you are a part of your neighbors and so you love them too with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength. Jesus is not making a rational argument here; instead, like so many of the great religious teachers, Jesus presents us with a mythic poetical truth; you have to know it in your body not understand just it in your mind.

I have to admit, I am not particularly comfortable with the mythic, poetical truth that Jesus throws at us. At the most basic level, I’m not sure I want to love all my neighbors; there are one or two people in this world for whom I harbor a certain amount of resentment and I’m not sure I want to let go of that resentment. And what about this notion that God is one, and I’m supposed to love this God notion with all my heart, et cetera, et cetera? Personally, I find that a little creepy, mostly because I have no interest in turning into a Jesus freak who puts bumper stickers on my car like, “God loves you,” and “Honk if you love Jesus.” Yech.

And therefore, I like to take the easy way out. I like to say: hey, Dr. King said we should love our neighbors like ourselves. I’m fine with that statement. I know part of that statement was addressed to me as a white guy, and Dr. King was telling me that I have to love all persons regardless of their skin color. OK, I can do that, I can stand up against racism, I can recognize the racism in my own heart and I am committed to eradicating it. So I’ll just understand “God” [in quotes] as a metaphor for the oneness of all people regardless of skin color. I’ll just understand loving my neighbor very abstractly and very narrowly, as treating everyone the same regardless of their skin color. That’s relatively easy; I can do that.

But that avoids the wholeness of poetical truth of this story. In the best Zen master fashion, Jesus has thrown something that cannot be encompassed by rational linear thought processes; Jesus has thrown something at us that stops me dead, something that I find impossible.

But as I think that it’s impossible, I realize that maybe nothing less is possible. As much as I’d like to cling to my resentment, to my hatred, I know there’s something bigger than me out there. That “something bigger” is what Jesus identifies with the God of the Israelites. Now if I were thinking linearly, I might think that I should take Jesus literally, and that I should start worshipping the God of the Israelites; but I cannot do that literally in the way that Jesus did; I cannot go to the great Temple in Jerusalem and offer animal sacrifices; I cannot think literally in that way.

When I hear those two commandments, in my heart I think of them in this way: to love the world in all its interconnected relationships with all my heart, mind, and soul; to see it as one interconnected wholeness of being; and to realize that in that interconnected wholeness of being somehow I must learn to love everything for everything is a oneness.

These two commandments are not two, but one great commandment for life, telling me, telling all of us, how to live in relationship through love. Love your friends and loved ones, yes. Love your neighbors, no matter what their skin color, no matter whether they are lying broken and bleeding in the gutter at the side of the road, yes. Love all living things, for that matter, the way you love yourself, yes.

Martin Luther King taught us about these two great commandments, just as prophets down through the ages have taught us the same thing. It’s up to us to live these commandments. And you know what? –if we manage to do that, we just might bring about a kind of heaven on earth.

The Garden

Readings

The scripture reading this morning is from the Pentateuch or Torah, from the book we know as Genesis, chapter 1 verses 27-28:

“27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

“28 God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ ”

Next, a commentary on the reading from Rosemary Radford Reuther, a Christian ecological theologian, in her book Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing:

“First, I assume that there is no ready-made ecological spirituality and ethic in past traditions. The ecological crisis is new to human experience. This does not mean that humans have not devastated their environment before. But as long as populations remained small and human technology weak, these devastations were remediable by migration, retreat from to-heavy urban centers, or adaptation of new techniques. Nature appeared a huge inexhaustible source of life, and humans small…. The radical nature of this new face of ecological devastation means that all past human traditions are inadequate in the face of it. Whatever useful elements may exist in, for example, Native American or Taoist thought, must be reinterpreted to make them usable in the face of both scientific knowledge and the destructive power of the technology it has made possible.

“My second assumption is that each tradition is best explored by those who claim community in that tradition. This does not preclude conversions into other traditions or communication between them…. But the plumbing of each tradition, and its reinterpretation for today’s crises, is a profound task that needs to begin in the context of communities of accountability. Those people for whom Taoism or Pueblo Indian spirituality are their native traditions are those best suited to dig those roots and offer their fruits to the rest of us. Those without these roots should be cautious in claiming plants not our own, respectful of those who speak from within.” [p. 206]

SERMON — “The Garden”

We all know that wonderful old story about how God created the heavens and the earth, and all living beings including human beings; and then God tells the human beings that they will have dominion over all over living things; and then God has the human beings live in the Garden of Eden until they get themselves thrown out by eating a piece of fruit. We all know that story; that is, we all think we know that story; because when you really start looking at the actual story as it is written in the book of Genesis, it really isn’t the story you think you know.

For example, you know that God created male human beings in God’s image, right? –and then God took a rib out of the first man to make a woman, right? Well, wrong. That’s the way the story is told in a later part of the book of Genesis, but we get quite a different story in an earlier part of the book of Genesis, which we heard in this morning’s reading:

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

In other words, there are two stories of the creation of human beings in Genesis. In this first story, both male and female human beings were created in God’s image. Take this a step farther: if a God identified as “he” or male can create female beings in “his” image, we are not talking about a living being made into a literal copy of God’s image; this is not a literal statement, but a mythic or poetic statement; and the opinions of our fundamentalist brothers and sisters notwithstanding, none the less true for being poetic and religious truth.

Genesis is a big, sprawling, complex book. It’s really a collection of myths, tales, poetry by several different authors living in several different eras, and eventually collected or redacted together by an anonymous editor or editors. We think we know the wonderful old story told in the book of Genesis, but when you actually read it carefully you find that maybe you don’t know it quite as well as you think you do. Our culture tries to reduce Genesis to a simple linear narrative, but when you do that you wind up with all kinds of things that simply aren’t in the book. “Original sin” is another example: not a phrase that appears in the book of Genesis, it’s an invention of Augustine and Milton. Another example: the belief that Genesis presents one unified story of how human beings came to be, when you can find three different stories of the creation of humans [Gen 1.27; Gen 2.4-7 & 20-23; Gen 6.1-4]. You can’t reduce Genesis to a simple, linear narrative; you have to approach it with mythic poetic thinking. Genesis is a story written by poets, it is not a blueprint written by engineers or a mathematical proof written by physicists.

Which brings us to the second half of this morning’s first reading:

“God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'”

In our second reading this morning, the one by Rosemary Radford Ruether, we heard her say, “there is no ready-made ecological spirituality and ethic in past traditions; the ecological crisis is new to human experience.” She also charges us with the task of reinterpreting our religious tradition in light of the ecological crisis.

Now if you ask me — not that you did ask me, but anyway — if you ask me, this passage in Genesis where the God of the Israelites says to the two freshly-made human beings, “Subdue the earth, and have dominion over it” — this passage is one of the roots of the current ecological crisis. If it’s not the taproot, it’s definitely one of the big, main roots. Because this passage, my friends, has been interpreted over and over again as giving human beings license to “subdue” the non-human world by any means at all; it has been interpreted over and over again as giving human beings the right of dominion, or domination, over all other living beings and over the inanimate world, too. This passage from Genesis has been interpreted to mean we get to do whatever we want with the world, no matter what the consequences. I’d say this attitude towards the world lies at the root of our current ecological crisis; this attitude towards the world is why New Bedford harbor is a Superfund site, it’s why the Bald Eagle is an endangered species, it’s why Georges Bank fishing stock continues to be threatened.

It is my belief that one of the deepest roots of the current ecological crisis is, in fact, a matter of religion. A certain narrow interpretation of Genesis from our Western Christian tradition has legitimated actions that cause ecological problems. Obviously, as Rosemary Radford Ruether would say, we need to do some reinterpretation here. And we Unitarian Universalists are perfectly placed to do exactly that kind of reinterpretation: because we are a non-creedal faith, we’ve gotten pretty good at questioning and reinterpreting religion; and because we have our roots within the Western Christian tradition, we are perfectly placed to reinterpret this particular tradition.

So let’s see if we can do some reinterpretation of this passage from Genesis. In a twenty minute sermon, we’re not going to finish the task, not by any stretch of the imagination. But we can make a start at it, see what it feels like, and see if we want to go on and do more of this.

Back to the passage from Genesis. The first question that occurs to me is this: what does it mean, in a poetical-mythic-non-linear sense, when the God of the Israelites tells the first man and the first woman that they have “dominion” over other living beings?

First part of the answer: clearly human beings are somehow different from other living beings. We are told explicitly in this passage one way in which human beings are different from other living beings. God tells the human beings to “be fruitful and multiply,” but God has already said that to every winged bird and every creature that lives in the sea; so here again, the human beings are not unique. But then God says to the human beings that they will “fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” over every other living being. Human beings are to be different from other living beings: they will fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over every other living being. This in fact tallies with our own observations of the world: we human beings certainly have been fruitful, we have multiplied, and we do indeed have dominion over other living beings. Right away, this passage is beginning to make a kind of poetical sense.

A second part of the answer seems to lie in the word “dominion.” For those of us who speak English, the word “dominion” has some specific connotations. Were these connotations part of the original Hebrew text? For the Western Christian tradition, it almost doesn’t matter one way or the other, because in the Western tradition we trace our understanding of the Bible back to Jerome’s translation of the Greek text into Latin, and his translation uses “dominamini” in this passage, to rule over, to govern, to be master of. No matter what the original sense was, we wind up understanding that God gives human beings dominion over other living beings in the sense of mastery, domination, non-democratic rule. And as we look at the place of human beings in the world today, we see that in fact is true; we have dominion over the rest of the world; we have dominated all other living beings to the point where we find it quite easy to drive them to extinction. And in the old interpretation of this passage, that’s fine and dandy — God put it there for us to do with what we want.

In our new interpretation of this passage, however, we like to point out a poetical, mythic truth that was ignored in the old passage. We like to point out that God does not say: use everything up, and destroy it too if you want. We like to point out that God does not say: all this used to be mine, but now I’m giving it to you humans to use any way you want. Nor does God say, now that you’re rulers over every other living thing, be sure to act like the worst kind of tyrant, torturing and abusing all those other living things.

In our new interpretation of this old passage, we readily admit that human beings have subdued other living things, and we do indeed have dominion over other living things; we’re pretty much rulers of this planet. But we also like to point out that we can be good rulers, or we can be bad rulers; we can be benevolent tyrants or we can be malicious dictators.

Then there’s the third part of our answer to the question: “when the God of the Israelites tells the first man and the first woman that they have “dominion” over other living beings?” For this third part of the answer, I’d like you to suspend your own personal beliefs about God for just a moment: if you don’t believe in God, forget about that for a moment; and if you do believe in God forget about whether you believe in the God of the book of Genesis or not. Remember that we are reinterpreting this influential passage from an influential book; and to reinterpret the mythic poetry of this book, we have to suspend whatever disbelief we might have. At this stage of reinterpretation, we have to take the book on its own terms. Once you’ve suspended whatever disbelief you might have, we’re ready to take the next step.

God gives the human beings in this story dominion over all other living beings, over the fish in the seas, the birds in the air, every growing thing on earth, and all the animals of the earth. God gives the human beings dominion over all other living beings, but God does not give total possession to the human beings. In other words, it is quite clear that God still owns all living beings Godself. I’m sure you see the logical conclusion of this. If we human beings cause some living being to go extinct, God is not going to be happy. God created that living being that we caused to go extinct. God looked at all those living beings at the end of one of those days of creation and said, “It is good.” What do you think is going to happen if you cause one of God’s creatures to go extinct? Trust me, it won’t be pretty. You read the rest of the Torah, and you’ll see what I mean. Remember what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah? When the God of the Israelites gets angry, you’re going to want to run and hide.

Good thing I’m a Universalist, because we Universalists believe in universal salvation, where everybody gets to go to heaven. What with all the extinctions going on right now, if I believed in God, but I didn’t believe in universal salvation, I’d be seriously worried about facing the consequences of God’s wrath. To quote the old bumper sticker: “God is coming, and boy is she teed off.”

So you see, we have begun to reinterpret that old passage from our Western religious tradition, just in the way Rosemary Radford Ruether said we could. We could go much further than this, too, and I’ll quickly sketch out one direction in which we could go much further.

One of the great things about the Christian tradition is that, at its core, it is specifically designed to resist and overcome domination; this in spite of the fact that Christianity got coopted by Roman imperialism, and became a tool of oppression. Most of what we dislike most about Christianity today has to do, not with the teachings of Jesus, but with the later appropriations of Christianity by imperialists.

Indeed, we find that over the centuries some Christians have used Christianity, not as a tool of domination, but as a way to understand that if you’re in power, if you in fact do have dominion over other beings, you had better understand how to use that dominion wisely. Jimmy Carter comes to mind as one such Christian leader, although perhaps he became better at this after he was President. Martin Luther King is a wonderful example of someone who gained power and influence, understood that he was a steward of that power, and used that power to effect good in the world.

We do have dominion over other living things, and we have started asking if we are using that dominion wisely. The Christian tradition places a moral and ethical burden on having dominion: we haven’t taken dominion by ourselves, bootstrapping ourselves into power; rather we are given dominion over other beings by God, and ultimately we are going to be answerable to God. Even if you personally don’t believe in God, you’re still within the Western tradition, and you can put the same concepts into different words: dominion is as a gift that has been given us as a result of the quirks and chances of evolution that happened to give us opposable thumbs and a big brain and great social skills including language; ultimately we are answerable to ourselves, and our children, as to how we use the dominion that chance has thrown in our way. We know that ultimately we are answerable for our actions — and that, my friends, lies at the root of our reinterpretation of the Christian tradition.

This kind of ecological theology, or ecotheology, is going on all around us. Many liberal Christians, like John Cobb and Wnedell Berry, are already doing ecological theology, and some evangelical Christians are also starting to do ecological theology. Then, too, many neo-pagans are doing ecological theology from yet another Western religious perspective. Our Unitarian Universalist congregations — this Unitarian Universalist congregation — should be at the center of the ecotheological movement. We are really good at reinterpreting old mythic texts. we have already done pagan/Christian dialogue, and we also know how to have productive theist/non-theist conversations. It fits into our commitment to social justice, because ecotheology has the potential to really change how people behave; and it also ties in to our historic commitments to feminism and anti-racism work.

I’m offering this as a possibility for you, for this congregation. I’d say we’re looking for a new theological direction, a new direction for this community. Ecotheology could be that new direction, it could be an important contribution this congregation makes to the greater New Bedford community, and to the wider world.