Revelation is Not Sealed

This is the text of the sermon I delivered to the congregation of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist on Sunday, August 16th.  If you're interested, you can listen to the podcast on our congregation's website.  (I'd like to note that this was the first sermon written in what I hope will be my new norm -- I wrote it early enough in the week that I could post it to the Wiki of our Worship Weavers Guild so that they could all provide input.  Because of that input I was saved from some of the errors that come with being your own editor, and I learned things -- that are included here -- that I didn't know before! Thanks to them this last draft of the sermon is considerably different, and improved, from the .)

Opening Words:  "Hey Ain't That Good News," by John Corrado

There's a story told in the Hebrew Scriptures that I'm pretty sure you've heard before and almost absolutely sure you at least know the names of the two main characters.  You can find it in the book of 1 Samuel, chapter17, if you're looking.  It's the story of David and Goliath.

A quick refresher:  the army of the Israelites is facing off against their most fearsome foe -- the Philistines.  The Philistines are camped together over there under their banner, and the Israelites over there, with a clear strip of no-man's land in between.  The story says that every day -- twice a day -- the Philistine champion, Goliath, would walk back and forth in that no-man's land, daring the Israelites to send out a champion their own, mocking and deriding them for not being able to do so.  After several days of this, someone who was not a soldier but a shepherd, not a man but a boy, a boy named David, stepped up to answer the challenge.

Now Goliath was a giant of a man; a man who was like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ving Rhames, Michael Clarke Duncan, and The Rock all rolled into one.  As if that weren’t enough, he was wearing the absolute best heavy armor of the day, and carrying the most massive weapons imaginable.  When David was offered the King's own armor, he refused saying that it would only make him slow and clumsy.  And though he no doubt had his pick of the best weapons from the Israelite army, he decided to trust his own little sling and the "five smooth stones" he picked up at the river.
You no doubt know the rest.  Although it might seem that Goliath had every advantage, David was able to slay his opponent with one well-aimed stone that sunk itself into the middle of the Philistine's forehead.  Malcolm Gladwell, in his book David and Goliath:  underdogs, misfits, and the art of battlinggiants says that David's seemingly inexplicable victory was actually quite predictable.  It's true that Goliath had all the advantages ... from the perspective of business -- or "battle" -- as usual.  But David had no intention of engaging his opponent on his enemy's terms.  Unencumbered by heavy armor he was faster and more agile.  And that sling?  A stone slung from a sling strikes with the force of a bullet shot from a .45.  Goliath never had a chance.

I bring all of this up for a couple of reasons.  First, and most immediately, the story says that David armed himself with "five smooth stones" when he went up against his seemingly implacable foe.  Several thousand years later, the Unitarian minister and theologian James Luther Adams returned to that image when he titled one of his now most well known essays, "The Five Smooth Stones ofReligious Liberalism."  This was an attempt to lay out the essential elements of liberal religion, perhaps to help us arm ourselves against one of today's most implacable foes -- conservative religion.  So much damage, so much harm, so much evil has been done, and is being done, under the banner of religious conservatism.  I need hardly enumerate. 

So, back in 1976, in his book On Being Human Religiously, Adams names these "five smooth stones":

1. Religious liberalism depends on the principle that 'revelation' is continuous.  Meaning has not been finally captured. 
2. All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion.
3. Religious liberalism affirms the moral obligation to direct one's effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism.
4. We deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation.
5. [L]beralism holds that the resources available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism.  This view does not necessarily involve immediate optimism.

There have been innumerable sermons dedicated to unpacking these five foundation building blocks, and I have no doubt that, now introduced, you'll hear them come up again from time to time here as well.  This morning, though, we'll be looking only at the first -- "revelation is continuous; meaning has not been finally captured."  Earlier, in that invigorating call-and-response, we said it a different way, "We believe there is holy writ yet to be written."  As we sing our last hymn in a moment -- a poem by Samuel Longfellow set to some stirring music -- we'll affirm again, "revelation is not sealed."

This may not seem like much.  It may be, for us, so commonplace as to be hardly worth noticing.  Much like, I dare say, a shepherd might not give much thought to their simple tunic or the sling in their pocket.  But look around, friends.  Look at the culture -- the dominant culture -- we are submersed in.  The idea that revelation is ongoing, continuous, is actually a pretty radical one.

How much of what happens in our world -- and I'm thinking mostly of the bad stuff now -- how much of what happens in our world happens because somebody thinks that The Truth was set down sometime in the past and that it should remain as it was?  Because when you think that The Truth was set down sometime in the past and should remain intact as it was, you're probably going to be pretty serious about trying to defend it from people who'd change it.

The battle cry of those who oppose marriage equality say that it goes against "traditional marriage" for people of the same gender to marry.  Let's for the moment, leave aside the fact that it is demonstrably untrue that there ever was one unchanging understanding of marriage.  What matters here is that there are people who think that there was, who are certain that there was, and who will do whatever it takes to ensure that how it was is how it is and how it evermore shall be.

That's just one example, of course.  It wouldn't be much of a challenge to think of a myriad of others, and I'd argue that so, so many of them are rooted in the assertion that revelation is not continuous, that it was set down in the distant past, was sealed, and that our job today is to defend it at all costs.  And that's true not just here at home but around the world as well. 

In his book Christ in a Changing World, the Presbyterian Minister and Professor of Theology Tom Driver asserts that if you were to extend traditional Christian theology to its most logical conclusion it would naturally lead to something as homophobic, racist, misogynistic, and in every other way heinous as what we see in the religious right today.  Since he believes deeply, since he would say he knows, that that's not the proper end-point for Jesus' life and teachings, he argues that therefore it is traditional Christian theology must be wrong.   

He wrote, and I'm paraphrasing here, that the greatest sin Christians have committed is locking God in that time and place back then, when if the Bible shows anything about the nature of God it's that God is always out in front, calling people into the new and the unknown.  So although I do not remember him using these words specifically, I'd say that the thrust of his book is precisely what we're talking about this morning -- that revelation is continuous, not sealed; that meaning has not finally been captured.  For many, a really radical assertion.

But so what?  What's the point of all this?  Hold that thought ...

Unitarian Universalism is a small denomination.  There are somewhere around 1,000 Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States, and maybe something like 250,000 individual Unitarian Universalists.  Compare that to the roughly 80 million individual Catholics in the US, in something like 20,000 parishes, and it's pretty clear that we're a minority of the minority.  (To further drive home the point -- the top eleven megachurches in the US have more members than we do in total!) 

Yet not only are we small, there are many among us who think that we're also a little lost.  Directionless.  It’s true that we do a pretty good job of providing a safe haven for folks who are looking for a community of like-minded people where they can be free from dogma and demands.  But if that’s all that we are?  If that’s all that we do?  Many suggest that this might be the reason we're so small. 

This morning I want to affirm that Unitarian Universalism has good news to share.  Our message literally saves lives and I believe it can help save the world.  To be sure, we're not the only religious liberals around.  The United Church of Christ – the UCC – has a pretty good track record, as do Quakers, and some parts of both the Methodist and Episcopal churches.  There's also a pretty radical justice-seeking streak within the Catholic Church.  And that’s only thinking about the Christian traditions!  There’s Reform Judaism, and Engaged Buddhism, and so many others manifestations of liberal religion.  There are a whole lot more religiously liberal folks out there than you might think if all you do watch the evening news or listen to the radio.  In mainstream discourse the word "religion" is most often used as if it is synonymous with "conservative religion," yet you and I know that that's just not so.  There is an alternative.

And that's the "so what."  We have something worth sharing -- not just with our families, our friends, our co-workers even, but with the wider world around us.  Our liberal religion, our "way" of religious liberalism, has never been needed more than it is today.  And it matters, I think, that we're a religious people, that this thing we do here with each other is a religion.  I think that matters.  So whether we're talking about the climate crisis, systemic racism, violence against transgender persons, heterosexism, multicultural sensitivity (a phrase I like better than, "political correctness") -- whatever the issue we need our voice, our religious voice, our Unitarian Universalist voice to ring out loud and clear.

When was the last time, do you think, one of us invited a friend to come to a Sunday service?  How often, would you say, one of us during a conversation with someone says that it's because we're a Unitarian Universalist that we hold the viewpoints that we do (or, at least, that because we're UU these viewpoints are affirmed and encouraged)?  I don't intend these questions to be merely rhetorical -- I want us to actually ask them of ourselves.  What have you, me -- you and me specifically -- what have we done lately to share the good news of our religiously liberal faith?

The Philistines faced off against the Israelites, and the Philistines dared them to do something about it.  That's how sure they were of their superiority.  Yet one young boy was sure that their confidence was misplaced and that their victory was not assured.  Armed only with something that seemed so small and insignificant, he accepted their challenge and, in the end, despite all appearances and expectations, he proved that they could not stand.

Five smooth stones.  Thanks to James Adams we can identify five smooth stones that we have in our pouch today.  The thing is, though, it doesn't matter that we have them, that we think about them and admire their beauty, that we appreciate their heft in our hand.  What matters is our willingness to let them fly -- to let them fly and see where they land.

Revelation is not sealed, my friends.  Revelation is continuous and meaning has not been finally captured, no matter how many people assert that it has.  The ever-changing, always evolving, never containable world is before us, and all around us, and we are part and parcel of it.  And no matter how unremarkable this may seem to us, let me tell you that it is good news that needs to be shared.  So let's share it.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

They Shall Beat Their Swords Into Plowshares

This is the text of the sermon delivered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist.  You can listen to the podcast if you prefer to hear a sermon rather than read it.

Opening Words:

On this Memorial Day, as even those who abhor war pause to recognize those who’ve died in service to their country, we offer these as opening words.  They are adapted from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of chapter 31 of the Tao te Ching.

Exploration:

In a relatively recent movie that explores the potential dangers involved in too single-minded a pursuit of security no matter the cost, there’s a scene in which two battle-weary soldiers are talking.  They’ve both seen too much … been through too much.  They’re both questioning it all.  And one says to the other, “Isn’t that the mission?  Isn’t that the ‘why we fight’?  So we get to go home?”

Okay, so this was Iron Man talking to Captain America in the newest Avengers movie, but it sounds about right, doesn’t it?  My dad didn’t talk much about his service in World War II – he was a radar technician in the Navy – but he did say that the guys on the ships, and in the air, and on the ground weren’t thinking all that much about the big picture of the war.  It wasn’t geopolitics that had their attention, it was trying to survive … trying to survive this firefight or that long bout of boredom. 

Yes.  Absolutely.  No question.  The men and women who served in World War II wanted to defeat the Axis powers – they believed that they were the good guys and that they were trying to stop the bad guys – but mostly they just wanted to be able to go home.  They wanted everyone to be able to go home.  Not everyone could, of course.  Not everyone did.  That’s why we have Memorial Day.

“The War to End All Wars,” that’s what World War I was called.  President Woodrow Wilson is often credited with the phrase but it’s really H.G. Wells we have to thank.  A collection of articles he’d written in the Times of London was titled, The War That Will End War, and later he used a shortened version, calling the campaign “the war to end war.”    British Prime Minister David Lloyd George is reputed to have been a little more pessimistic, saying, “This war, like the next war, is the war to end war.” 

Sounds a little oxymoronic when you say it that way, doesn’t it?  But don’t you think that that’s somewhere in the minds of most of the people who are doing the fighting?  (And the dying?)  This war will bring peace in our time.  This war will put a stop to all those unconscionable atrocities.  This war will ensure that our nation is safe.  (And maybe all nations?)  This war … and then I can go home.  Then I can go home and we all can go home.  And we’ll never have to do this again.

Maybe that’s one of the ways faith, our theme for the month, gets into our conversation this morning.  The soldiers’ faith that the war they’re fighting has meaning.  That the danger they are putting themselves into is worth it.  The faith that if they were to die in this battle, in this war, they would not be dying in vain.

And there’s the faith too, I suppose, that those around them have their back.  Faith in their comrades, faith in their training, faith in the skill of their leaders, faith that they will somehow get out of it all alive.  Faith that they’ll ultimately get to go home.

Which is certainly the faith on the home front.  Anyone who has seen a loved one go into war knows that they can’t let themselves think too much about the dangers she or he will be facing.  It would be too much, unbearable.  So they hold on to the faith that they will see their daughter, mother, sister, son, brother, father, friend again.  Faith in the face of war.

I think we can agree that at least among the people who are actually called on to fight our wars, nobody – or, at least, next to nobody – really likes war, really wants war.  Even those who concede a need for war are, in the final analysis, hoping for peace. 

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.”  It’s found in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Book of Isaiah, in a passage where the prophet is describing a future in which the people of the world all come to God’s holy mountain to seek out the guidance and leadership of the God of Jacob: 

“And [God] will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

Let’s “unpack” that a bit.  First, notice that a reason for the change that’s being described here is that God is now in the driver’s seat.  God, a higher authority, will be settling disputes among peoples.  No more petty squabbling and limited self-interest.  Nations won’t any longer be trying to save face, or protect strategic oil reserves, or show the world how tough they are.  Instead, God will be judging between nations and will be settling disputes among peoples. 

Now, for those of us who don’t find the word “God” all that relevant or meaningful, remember that our Universalist ancestors would remind us that God is Love – “God” is just another word for “Love.”  So Isaiah could have been saying that it’ll be Love that is judging between the nations, and Love that will be settling disputes.  Love will be in the driver’s seat.  And as Jimi Hendrix told us, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

But there’s something else going on here, too.  As Adam and I were bouncing ideas around we noticed what seemed to us to be an important word – they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  It doesn’t say that their swords and spears will magically disappear or somehow be transmogrified into plows and pruning hooks.  No, the passage says that the people will beat them into their new form.  I looked at nearly twenty different translations, and the verb to beat is used in all but six of them.  Two use hammer – they shall hammer their swords into plowshares – which is much the same thing; one says that they will forge their swords into plowshares; and two simply say that the people will turn the one into the other. 

Yet whether the people hammer, forge, or beat their swords to turn them into plowshares it is clear that it is not going to be an easy process.  It’s going to be work.  Hard work.  Call up in your mind the image of a blacksmith – the forge hot and smoky, the hammer heavy, and the metal hardly malleable.   Listen to the clanging of the hammer and anvil, the sound of the bellows as they blow air into the fire, the crackle as the coals are heated, and the shhhhhhhh as the hot metal is put into the cold water to harden it.  Feel the heat and the ache in your arms and back; smell the smoke and the sweat.  They shall beat their swords into plowshares.  It’s not going to be easy.

Adam caught still one more nuance – they shall beat their swords into plowshares.  This vision isn’t of a world in which people have put down their swords and taken up their plows.  They haven’t created a cache of weapons “just in case” even though they’re now focused on their farming tools.  This is the end of all wars because the people will have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  There are no more weapons.  They’re gone.  No longer needed.

Adam shared with me a lyric from a song in the musical Rent: "The opposite of 'war' isn't 'peace', it's 'creation'."  Listen to that again:  The opposite of war isn’t peace … it’s creation.  The absence of war isn't enough in itself. It's simply a foundation upon which to build other things.  New things.  Life-giving things in the place of life-taking things.  Creation in place of destruction.  The swords have been re-forged, beaten, into new forms, and these new forms are tools of creation.

But that’s not what we see happening around us, is it?  It seems, instead, that we are turning our plowshares into swords.  And we’ve been doing so for more than a while.  It was over 60 years ago that Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech, only three months into his Presidency, that has come to be known by the name “A Chance for Peace.”  It includes these now nearly immortal words:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this [and remember that this was in 1953]: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

And yet we continue to turn our plowshares into swords.  And we keep on studying war.

There’s one cost, though, that Eisenhower left out.  The most important, really.  Humanity’s hunger for the tools of destruction costs not just the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hopes of children – it costs the lives of the women and men who are called on to use those tools as they fight our wars.  Young women and young men, mostly, who should have had long lives ahead of them.  “Virgins with rifles,” Sting calls them in his song Children’s Crusade.  And far, far too many never come home.

Even many of those who do come home do so with such devastating physical and mental wounds that the person they were when they left is not the person who comes home.  And you know that you only have to turn on your TV, radio, or computer for just a little while to learn about some new study revealing ever more inexcusable treatment – or, maybe better, non-treatment – of the women and men who have given so much – and had so much taken – in the service of our country.

However much you or I want to live in a world at peace, we live in a world at war.  There’s a factoid that’s been making the rounds saying that the United States has been involved in war for 222 out of the 239 years since 1776.  That means we’re at war 93% of the time, or that we’ve only been at peace for a total of 21 years since our founding. However much you or I want to live in a world at peace, we live in a world at war. 

Yet we needn’t give up hope.  We can choose to renew our faith; renew our efforts.  In the 8^th century BCE a Jewish prophet gave us a vision the fulfillment of which can fuel our aspirations:

“The people will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”

On this Memorial Day let us remember those who were never able to get back home, and pray for the day when no one will evermore have to.  And let us fire up the forge – we’ve got some beating to do.

Closing Words:  The Young DeadSoldiers, by Archibald MacLeash

Wondering Through the Bible

Several years ago my wife and I learned about Edgar Cayce, famous in his day as "America's Sleeping Prophet."  His was a truly fascinating life, and I'm sure that now that I've brought him up I'll get around to blogging about him at some point.  But what makes me think about him today was his habit of reading through the full Bible annually, year after year after year.  I was so inspired at the time that I purchased a copy of The One Year Bible, which takes the Christian Scriptures and divides it up so that there is a reading (Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, Proverbs, and Psalm) for each day of the year that will, over the course of the year, take you consecutively from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 21:27.

I've already done this once or twice.  I recently decided that 2011 seemed like a good year to do it again.

Now, why would one want to read the entire Christian Bible from cover to cover?  Isn't there a lot of excess and repetition in there and things entirely irrelevant to life in the 21st century?  (After all, wasn't Reader's Digest able, when it came out with its version of the Bible in 1982, to cut the New Testament by approximately 25% and the Old Testament by a whopping 55%?)  And for somebody, like me, who grew up within the Christian tradition(s), don't I already know pretty much what the thing's about anyway?

Well, yes and no.  I must say that I'm only on my fourth day of reading -- I started on 1/1/11 -- but I've already come across some fascinating things that I've never noticed before.  You see, I'm reading with an eye open for surprises, with a wondering perspective -- "why does it say that?  what could this mean?"  Some day I may find myself learning Greek and Hebrew so that I can go even deeper with this, but for now even reading in translation has revealed some wonderful things to wonder about.  Here are a few:

• In Genesis 3:22, after Adam and Eve have eaten that apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and, then, been discovered by God, God says, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”  Yet back in Genesis 2:16 God had said, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”  Does this mean that it would have been okay for Adam and Eve to have eaten from the Tree of Life?  God had only forbidden them from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that makes it sound like the Tree of Life was okay.  How things might have turned out differently . . .
• Genesis 5 begins like this (1-3):  "This is the written account of Adam’s family line. When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind”when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth."  Two questions here -- first, what does it mean that Adam and Eve were "made in the image, the likeness of God," while Seth was made in the likeness and image of Adam?  Second, this wasn't said of Adam's first children -- Cain and Abel.  Why not?
• In Genesis 9:4, after Noah (and company) have left the ark, God commands, "But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being."  I'm intrigued with this statement that God will demand an accounting from every human being and from every other animal.  Is this the answer to the classic question, do animals have souls?

These may not seem like very weighty issues.  Not when there are hungry people living on the streets, and the devistation of disesase and natural disasters causing untolled suffering, and people wondering how they're going to make it past the next paycheck, or through their divorce, or . . .

And yet, the Christian Bible -- like the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Three-fold Lotus Sutra -- is an attempt by our forebears to wrestle with "the twin facts of being alive and having to die."  It is one of humanities depositories of wisdom.  Reading it with a wondering eye, asking questions, looking for meanings, is one way of continuing the exploration that our forebears began.

That seems like a worthwhile use of time in 2011.

In Gassho,

RevWik