I will be preaching from a text this morning, something I do rarely, so I invite you to listen to these words from Seneca the Younger, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
And now to my sermon.
How many of you remember these words?
I believe in God the Father?
And in Christ Jesus, His only Son, our Lord.?
Who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary?
Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried?
And the third day rose from the dead.?
Who ascended into heaven?And sitteth
on the right hand of the Father?
Whence He cometh to judge the living and the dead.?
And in the Holy Ghost-the Holy Catholic Church?
The remission of sins-the resurrection of the flesh?
And life everlasting.?Amen.
This is the Apostles' Creed, written in the year 340 C.E.
It is a creed that millions of Protestants and Roman Catholics still recite on Sunday morning.
But, I am sure that for many in this room there came a time in life when it was no longer possible to believe in the creed.
No doubt for many questions welled up about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Catholic Church and we were filled with questions and doubt about the resurrection, the final judgment, and promises of life everlasting.
From its very beginnings the Christian church has found itself embroiled in controversies of one kind or another.
In the time of Paul, the major point of contention was the relationship between Jewish and Gentile converts.
Then came the debates over gnosticism.
The Gnostics believed that they possessed a special mystical knowledge, reserved only for those with "true understanding."
They believed that this knowledge was the key to salvation. They believed that a human being is essentially a spirit trapped in a physical body.
They believed that Jesus was sent to remind humans of our heavenly origins and to pass on to us the secret knowledge without which humanity will never ascend to heaven.
In the third century the debates were over the restoration of the lapsed. The question here was whether purity of faith or forgiving love should determine a Christian's standing in the church.
For most of Christianity's formative years these rich and wide ranging debates were of a purely scholarly nature. The civil authorities were essentially disinterested in the comings and goings of this nascent movement.
But then, in the words of a song of my youth, along came Constantine. Constantine was one of those "advanced" pagans who believed in a Supreme God: Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.
One day, as it is told, while on the march toward Rome, Constantine and his soldiers saw a flaming cross in the sky, accompanied by the words Touto nika: By this, conquer.
According to the story, the next night just as Constantine was preparing to attack Rome he had another dream in which Jesus appeared, and again showed him the sign of the cross, and told him to inscribe it on his soldiers shields.
The next morning, after consulting with an advisor, and determining that these dreams were significant, Constantine commanded his army to replace their old pagan standards with one's bearing the sign of the cross.
In the ensuing battle for the city Constantine's army prevailed and new emperor became a convinced Christian.
As a result of Constantine's conversion Christian clergymen were soon granted privileges that were formerly accorded only to pagan priests.
But, I suppose to his credit, Constantine's true goal, beyond favoring his co-religionists, was to unite the empire's diverse, often unsettled peoples in one huge spiritual following.
With Constantine's conversion, Paganism was now considered a lesser form of religion. But almost as quickly debates arose over the form and function of the new religion.
The earliest Christians could not agree on theology.
Clearly, the emperor saw the quarrel jeopardizing his own dreams.
So to settle matters once and for all he called together at the Council of Nicaea two of the faith's better-known scholars.
Arius was about 60 years old. By contemporary accounts, he was tall, slender, gray-haired man and a famous speaker.
He was in the habit of putting his theology into poetry and chanting it to enraptured congregants.
Rather than asserting that Jesus was divine by nature, Arius emphasized that he had earned his "adoption" as Son and his "promotion" to divine status through moral growth and obedience to God.
These were explosive ideas for they confronted a problem faced by all Christians since the time of Paul - how to be a monotheist believing in only on God, yet believe that Jesus was God, too. Arius advanced the view that Jesus was a human intermediary between man and God.
Athanasius, an outspoken deacon was only in his twenties. He was already a theologian of note. He believed that compromise with Arius and his allies was out of the question.
The differences between the Arians and true Christians were no mere matters of emphasis or alterable "opinion": they went to the heart of what it meant to be a Christian.
According to Athanasius, Jesus had to be both fully human and fully divine.
Could the death of a mere human being redeem our sins, grant us immortality, and, eventually, resurrect our physical bodies? For Athanasius the answer was an unequivocal, "Of course not!"
As the debates went on Constantine favored the doctrine of Athanasius. But his reasoning had less to do with theology and more to do with the reality of his position as emperor.
The Church he needed was one that would help him keep order among the ordinary citizens. Constantine was convinced that people who would never become immortal unless God decided for reasons of his own to save them.
And thus we have the beginning of religion being applied for reasons of social control and not long after the advocacy of Arian views and the possession of Arian writings would become crimes punishable by death.
But about one thousand years later, Arian beliefs would be espoused by a number of well-known English Protestants, some of whom would go on to create Unitarianism.
The question for Unitarian Universalists of this day is who is this person we call Jesus and how does he fit into our post-modern-humanist-rational-spiritual-intellectual-mind and how does he fit into our faith tradition that draws upon Judeo-Christian history as one of its sources?
Back in December we heard the voices that tell us Jesus is the Reason for the season and urging us to put Christ back in Christmas.
And it is easy to scoff at these superficial sentiments. Yet it is hard to argue with history.The person of Jesus has occupied the minds of the western world for centuries.
As I look at my bookcase I can count a dozen or more scholarly works-amounting to thousands of pages-trying to resolve once and for all who this man-the Nazarene-was. Books with titles such as A Marginal Jew, When Jesus became God, Living Buddha, Living Christ; and The Great Transformation.
Thomas Jefferson, in 1804, set out to edit the Gospels in order to uncover the essence of true religion. Jefferson was convinced that the authentic message of Jesus could only be found by extracting from the Gospel's Jesus' message of absolute love and service, rather than the miracles of the annunciation, Virgin Birth, or even the ressurection.
According to Forest Church Jefferson's interest in the Bible was restricted entirely to the life and teachings of Jesus.
In more recent times the search for the true nature of Jesus has been largely the work of an organization known as the Jesus Seminar.
The goal of a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar is to "separate historical fact from mythology." This goal was originally stated in founder Robert Funk's opening address to the first meeting of 30 "scholars" in Berkeley, California (March 1985):
"We are about to embark on a momentous enterprise. We are going to inquire simply, rigorously after the voice of Jesus, after what he really said. In this process, we will be asking a question that borders the sacred, that even abuts blasphemy, for many in our society. As a consequence, the course we shall follow may prove hazardous. We may well provoke hostility. But we will set out, in spite of the dangers, because we are professionals and because the issue of Jesus is there to be faced, much as Mt. Everest confronts the team of climbers."
Since that first meeting in 1985, the Seminar has rejected the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the virgin birth, all of the miracles found in the Gospel accounts, and over 80% of the teachings normally attributed to Jesus.
All of these Biblical records have been rejected because Seminar fellows have determined that they are merely legendary accretions with no historical foundation. For example, only two words of the Lord's Prayer survive as authentic: "Our Father."
From the earliest days of the Christian Church until our own times nothing has ever been simple about Jesus.
Bishop John Shelby Spong has observed:
"Jesus is ... for me the conduit through which the love of God was loosed into human history. Jesus lived the love of God. This love was and is ... embracing love, inclusive love. It is a love that overflows every human boundary."
That is why Jesus was portrayed by the Gospel writers as stepping across the racial divide to heal the Samaritan; or as stepping across the cultural divide to engage the woman at the well in conversation; or as stepping over the cultic purification laws to embrace the lepers; or as moving past that intensely human divide that enabled him to forgive his executioners . . . "
Jesus confounded and confused people in his own time, and so it is no wonder Unitarian Universalists today are still wrestling with him, his message, and the tradition that claims him as a God.
Yet I believe that people who are attracted to a place of free faith, spiritual seeking, and non-dogmatic religion have much to gain by grappling with the legacy of this teacher whose power and charisma seem undimmed from two thousand years ago.
If anything, we are only beginning to understand the radical nature of his message.
I do not believe Jesus is the sole revelation of the Divine, any more than and I do not know, but seriously doubt, if he was raised from the dead, or for that matter, ever meant to create something called Christianity.
Many Unitarian Universalists choose to turn away from our Christian roots because of experiences we are very uneasy with or troubled by.
While this reaction is understandable, it strikes me that it is not ultimately healthy for a religious movement or for any of us as individual searchers. Why?
Ignoring Jesus' teaching and influence distorts our own past and heritage, which is deeply steeped in Christian origins.
Furthermore, as Unitarian Universalists, we seek to build a religion based not on nay saying or rejection but rather on a positive, life-affirming message.
I can think of no more misunderstood and misjudged figure.
I find him more compelling and inspiring as a human being who suffered and loved and claimed that no one is perfect but God than as the magical entity some of his most devoted followers worship.
It is equally ironic that this prophet of liberation and spiritual freedom, who said that the poor shall inherit the earth, is misunderstood by people attracted to the free faith and justice-seeking tradition of Unitarian Universalism.
The world around us is deeply influenced, for good or ill, by the spirit of Jesus.
And so, in this week in which for a myriad of reasons Christians around the world celebrate the Birth of Jesus, perhaps we modernists should be mindful of his messages of love and compassion.
Perhaps we Unitarian Universalists need to be aware and understanding of our deep Christian roots.
In closing, I share these words from the Rev. Rebecca A. Edmiston-Lange:
"Some people say that Jesus is the light of the world.
We all can be the light of the world if we seek to act in ways that enlarge the realms of love and justice.
When we share another's pain or offer a comforting ear to a friend in need,
We are the light of the world.
When we give bread to the hungry or support ways to house the homeless,
We are the light of the world.
When we fight temptations to wrongdoing within ourselves and treat our neighbors with respect, we are the light of the world.
When we try to overcome differences with understanding and solve conflict with peaceful means, we are the light of the world.
When we look for the good in other people and in ourselves,
We are the light of the world.
When we do not stay quiet in the face of prejudice, but speak our minds firmly and gently, we are the light of the world.
When we fight despair within ourselves and side with hope, we are the light of the world.
When we use our powers justly and in the service of love for humanity, we are the light of the world."
What is it each of us can do to be the light of the world? What is it that you will do to be the light of the world? The answer, perhaps, is for each of us to live more Jesus like lives.
Amen and amen.