Toward a Post-Christian Christology

As we reflect on the Christian roots of (among many other roots) of our Unitarian Universalist heritage, what can we say about Jesus Christ?



I promised last month to say more about the War on Christmas
 in the sermon in December, so...
What are we to say about the so-called War on Christmas?

The first thing I think we can say
is that there is no such thing.

There is a contrived concept of persecution of Christians
by non-Christians who don't like the celebration of Christmas.

In fact, many people who are not Christian
have a deep appreciation of the secular holiday
in the United States and Western Europe
that goes by the name of Christmas.

Saying Merry Christmas is a reference to that secular holiday.

Since I'm still Christian in some respects,
Christmas is a holy day to me.

To another Christian, or someone who appreciates the meaning of the holy day,
I would more likely say, "Blessed Christmas."

The secular holiday that goes by the same name
really has very little in common with the holy day
except the name.

No one is trying to stop Christians from celebrating their holy day.

No one is objecting to the traditional greeting of Merry Christmas
except maybe a few grumpy grinches
who have been inspired (or infuriated) by the attempted insistence
that everyone must act like Christians of some description
around the holiday.

As I pointed out last month,
"Beware the holidays
and celebrate the holy days."

Our Unitarian Universalist congregations
joyously celebrate Christmas as a holy day
even though slightly less than half of our members are theists
in the traditional sense.

The holidays, especially Christmas, it would seem,
lead us to expect certain things of them.

We treasure memories of the magic of some holiday in the past
when we ourselves were children
or our own children were very young.

Sometimes our memories are very selective
so that we remember only the good parts
and no holiday of today
could ever live up to that kind of standard.

Even if we experience something as close to a perfect Christmas
as it would be possible to imagine,
after it is over, there is an inevitable let-down.

Many of us Unitarian Universalists may especially experience
a sense of loss around the holiday of Christmas
because we have left behind
the more traditional forms of Christianity
that may have been part of our childhood and youth.

I hope as we think together today
we can focus more clearly on positive possibilities
that can help us to celebrate Christmas as a holy day for us too.

The birth of Christ is worth celebrating for us all,
because Christ is a metaphor for the divine transcendence
alive in all of us.

Christmas is a universal celebration
that predates Christianity by thousands of years.

Obviously, it was not called Christmas.

That word comes from the earlier term,
Christ Mass,
like Michelmas for Michael mass for the celebration of
the Archangel Michael,
Christ Mass was the worship service
in celebration of the birth of Christ.

The secular celebration of the same name
has taken the place of the Christ Mass
in our culture.

Many people still share in the Holy Day of Christmas
even if they do not attend the traditional Midnight Mass
on Christmas Eve.

For us Unitarian Universalists,
Christmas can also be a Holy Day on many levels.

Without hesitation we can look at the ancient roots
in celebration of the rebirth of the light
at Solstice,
a Holy Day for all of us who find our spirituality
affirmed and taught in the world of nature.

Because the Holy Days are varied and numerous at this time of year,
I find myself more often saying, "Happy Holy Days"
than "Happy Holidays"
first because it feels inclusive
and second because I much prefer the holy days to the holidays.

So what is it that makes Christmas a holy day
for those of us who do not necessarily subscribe
to the Christian doctrines that surround
the traditional holy day?

I want us to think together about my favorite
specifically Unitarian Universalist
Christmas hymn.

It is like our own version of Silent Night:
"Every Night a Child is Born is a Holy Night"
it sings.

It's based on a poem by Sophia Lyon Fahs.


For So the Children Come...

    For so the children come
    And so they have been coming,
    Always in the same way they come
    Born of the seed of man and woman.

    No angels herald their beginnings
    No prophets predict ther future courses.
    No wisemen see a star to show
    Where to find the babe that
    Will save human kind.

    Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
    Fathers and mothers----
    Sitting beside their children's cribs
    Feel glory in the sight of a new Life beginning.
    They ask, Where and how will
    This new life end?
    Or will it ever end?"

    Every night a child is born is a Holy night-----
    A time for singing
    A time for wondering,
    A time for worshipping.


So you see,
the point of Christmas,
the true reason for the season,
is to call our attention to the
holiness of every child's birth.

A Hindu proverb says: 
Every birth is a reminder
that God has not yet given up on humanity.

So we celebrate the birth of Jesus
as a reminder that God continues
to dwell among us,
to live within each and every one of us.

Speaking of Jesus as the Son of God
teaches us all that God lives in us.

The myth of Christ, the Incarnate Word of God
has the same meaning:

The divine being,
however we conceive of Her,
lives in every human being.

All life comes from the same source.

All life is sacred and precious.

Because Quakers believe in the Divine Light of Christ
living in every human being,
they are pacifists.

How would we dare kill any person
in whom Christ lives?

It is the best argument for pacifism I know.

We can say a lot about the spiritual reality
of Christ who lives in us,

but we can't say much with certainty
about the Jesus of history.

No less of a scholar and Christian humanitarian
than Albert Schweitzer
wrote in his 1904 book,
The Quest of the Historical Jesus
that we would not find anything reliable
to say about the Jesus of history.

As I have said before,
Reza Aslan
writes in his book, Zealot,
about the Jesus of history.

He admits that anything he can say
about Jesus of Nazareth
can be interpreted in different ways.

In other words,
we may think we know about Jesus of Nazareth.

Yet from the point of view of demonstrable history,
there is little or nothing we can say.

On the other hand,
you can have your own personal Jesus
as the wonderful song by Depeche Mode says: 

"Someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares."

In fact, to have one's own personal Jesus
can be a very healthy thing,
so long as we don't try to force others to receive
our own personal Jesus
as their own personal Jesus, too!

Christianity as we have known it
all too often takes on a quality
of aggressively seeking converts.

A more healthy way of sharing one's faith
involves dialogue,
where people who think about spiritual things
seek to learn from each other.

The word, "evangelism,"
comes from the Greek word for good news,
but we don't always think of good news
when evangelists
or evangelicals come around!

When we are faced with the more
tacky - or attacky -
forms of evangelism -

and the so-called war on Christmas
is simply one more example -

we can offer our own kind of good news

with a more Unitarian Universalist twist on the concept.

I have no problem saying Merry Christmas
to anyone.

I also have no problem with anyone's saying
Happy Holidays
to me, even though, as you know all too well by now,
I take a somewhat dim view of the holidays.

I also like to say Happy Holy Days
because it feels like good news
and it has the potential to be
an interesting conversation starter.

Unless people are trying to force
their own personal Jesus on me,

I find no need to attack their understanding of who Jesus is.

At the same time,
it can be helpful to any of us
and all of us

to come to realize that the Jesus story
is a great resource
for learning to recognize
the living Christ,
the divine light,
in ourselves and others.

The Jesus presented in the New Testament,
born of Mary in Bethlehem,
living a life of love and helping others,
crucified for sedition under the Roman government,
and raised by God as a witness to his victory over evil

is a story of human fulfillment.

It is a picture of what a human life can be.

All kinds of people have been inspired by this story
to do good for others
and to change human society for the better.

St. Francis of Assisi and Pope Francis

Albert Schweitzer

Mahatma Gandhi

Martin Luther King

Nelson Mandela

These are a few people who come to mind,
all of whom openly said
that they found Jesus of Nazareth and his story
to be a meaningful example for their own lives.

This can be true for all of us.

The mythology surrounding Jesus Christ
and what we say about it
tells us many things we need to know and understand about ourselves,
much more than the historical person about whom we know nearly nothing.

To call the story of Jesus a myth
does not mean that it is false.

Clearly the story as told in the New Testament
is not history.

Most objective historians would say
that there is no reliable factual information about Jesus
to be derived from the New Testament mythology.

But mythology is not about facts.

It is about deeper, universal truths.

Sometimes those truths are expressed in symbols.

Jesus himself, in the pages of the Gospels,
told stories from everyday life
to present basic ideas about being human
and participating
in the unfolding of what is right and good in life.

His birth at Bethlehem was itself a symbolic story.

Prophecies had predicted that the Son of David,
the Hebrew Messiah,
would be born there.

To make that claim about Jesus,
even though he was universally known as Jesus of Nazareth,
it was necessary to provide a context
by which he would be born in Bethlehem.

The singing of angels and the visit by the shepherds
provided a link to Heaven and Earth at the same time.

The shepherds were a despised and lowly class of workers,
not unlike fast food minimum wage workers of our own time.

They were the first to hear the good news of the birth of Christ,
and so they were in a privileged position from the beginning.

One of the consistent themes of the teaching of Jesus
would prove to be the importance of the poor
and how we treat them
in defining what it means to be truly human.

The visit of the Wise Men from foreign lands
was a symbolic story to show that the Jewish Messiah
was the Universal Christ,
born and living and dying
for the whole world.

The mythology reveals to us the deepest truth of all about Christ:
that the living Spirit
shown in the life of Jesus
is the universal spark of the Spirit of the Divine,
living in every person,
then and now.

The Mormons are actually onto something good:
In that Christ lives in us,
that is,
the divine spirit is in each of us,
we are all gods and goddesses deep within...

although it's not necessarily such a good idea
in our culture
to tell 12 year old boys that they are gods.

It seems to turn them into very unpleasant people.

A deep understanding of the underlying spiritual meaning
of religious mythology
can help us understand our friends and family
who are people of faith,
and maybe we can communicate with them, too.

Especially around the holy days,
that can be very helpful.

Just a comment or two about the deeper meaning of many doctrines
can be helpful in conversations that might otherwise become difficult.

Best of all, we Unitarian Universalists
can celebrate and enjoy the holy days
of all the religious traditions that form our roots.

We are not limited to one set of metaphors or another.

Our spirituality can be broad and deep:
Just as as we understand that Christianity
can teach us about the indwelling Christ,

Hinduism can help us understand the value of avatars,
the appearance of divine personality in human form, 

and from Shinto we can learn the beauty of nature
as an expression of spirit.

It goes on and on.

Our spiritual resources are not limited to just one tradition,
and we can see the true spiritual meaning of many faiths,
sharing them with those who are able to listen
and keeping watchful silence with those who are not.

As learners about the inner life,
we need not feel that we have left anything behind.

We have just come to understand it better.

The more Christ-like we become,
that is, the more fully we reflect the living Christ
the more truly ourselves we become.

That also means we become less and less like any other
truly Christ-like person.

I think that is why so many deeply spiritual people
are also quite eccentric!

Amen.

So mote it be.

Blessed be.