African Time

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 first reading, an excerpt from the poem “Of the African Eve” by Everett Hoagland, is not included here due to copyright restrictions. Mr. Hoagland is the former Poet Laureate of New Bedford and member of this congregation.

The second reading this morning is from an essay titled “African Indigenous Religions” by James Cox:

“African indigenous religions can be called a form of humanism, because religious activity focuses on how positive benefits for society can be enhanced…. This humanism is a communal humanism and is not individualistic. Fulfillment comes for individuals as they participate in family and community relationships.

“Because religions focuses on communal wellbeing, Africans are concerned with the present moment and not with a future existence after death. There is no sense of the past moving through the present to some future event; the past and the future find their menaing in the present. Hence, distance from the present is more important than the direction time takes…. The fundamental concerns of African societies with health and well-being are expressed primarily through ritual activity. Festivals, feasts, dances, and artistic expressions celebrate communal existence, both of the living and the dead.” [pp. 127-128]

SERMON — “African Time”

For the past three months, I’ve been exploring our Western religious tradition in my sermons on Sunday morning. That is to say, I’ve been talking about the religious heritage of Judaism, Christianity, and the indigenous European traditions currently being revived as paganism. Now I’d like to turn our attention on Sunday mornings to a broader field, and spend a little time engaging in conversations with non-Western religious traditions.

I say we “engage in conversations with” other religious traditions, and I am careful to use exactly that phrase. In the last century, Unitarians and Universalists occasionally tried to adopt liturgies and other practices from other religious traditions. We have come to recognize that that sort of thing is wrong; we now have a term for it, “cultural misappropriation.” Rather than trying to steal the religious traditions of other peoples, we instead are coming to re-evaluate our own religious tradition, and we are finding great richness within our Unitarian and Universalist traditions; in short, we are becoming more comfortable with who we are, and we’re not trying to pretend we’re something else. Yet we also recognize that there are non-Western religious traditions out there, and we recognize how important it is to engage those religious traditions, not in the sense of trying to adopt them wholesale, or trying to co-opt them, but in the sense of engaging in conversations with equals.

In honor of Black History Month, I thought I’d start us off by engaging in conversations with traditional African religions. I have been fascinated by traditional African religion and philosophy since 1983 when, as a philosophy student in college, I was introduced to this tradition by Lucius Outlaw, a philosopher and one of my mentors. I still remember when Lou had us read a book titled African Religions and Philosophy by John S. Mbiti. Mbiti was trained as a theologian, and I suppose you could say this was the very first book of theology I ever read.

Mbiti was a Christian; he went to seminary and served as an Anglican priest, and only later became a scholar. As a Christian, he was of course concerned to a certain extent with missionary work, and if you read his work carefully, you get the sense that one of his motivations for his scholarly work was how to communicate Christianity to persons embedded in a traditional African framework. Coming from that perspective, he believed the way people look at time, the way Westerners and traditional Africans experience time, was the fundamental problem for the Western tradition as we try to understand Africans.

You see, we Westerners believe that time is like a line. For us, time begins at some point — maybe with the Big Bang, or maybe with God creating the world. After that, everything moves forward in time. But one day, time will end — maybe time will end when entropy overtakes the universe, or maybe time will end with God’s last judgment. The specifics may differ, but whether you’re a traditional Christian, or a Jew or a Muslim; or whether you follow the insights of Western science; either way, we Westerners believe that time has a beginning and an end.

Time considered as a line is so fundamental to our culture that we don’t even question it. We assume that’s the way things are, that there can be no other way of thinking about time. I mean, what could be more basic than a timeline? It’s so basic that we learn about timelines as children.

But if you’ve ever taught younger children, you quickly realize that thinking of time as a line is a fairly sophisticated concept. If you show a timeline to a preschooler, he or she will simply not get what you’re taking about; preschoolers like timelines, they think they’re pretty, but they don’t really understand them. And when children start to learn how timelines work — really learn about timelines, to the point where they can create their own timeline without outside help — you can see the pride they take in this accomplishment. I can remember when I first learned how to make a timeline as a child; I remember feeling a sense of wonder at this fascinating new concept; it was something I quite literally had never thought of when I was younger.

So we Westerners train our children to think of time as a line. But John S. Mbiti tells us that traditional Africans think of time differently. Mbiti says in traditional Africa

“…time is a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present, and virtually no future. The linear concept of time in Western thought, with an indefinite past, present, and infinite future, is practically foreign to African thinking…. What is taking place now no doubt unfolds in the future, but once an event has taken place, it is no longer in the future but in the present and the past. Actual time [as opposed to potential time] is therefore what is present and what is past. It moves ‘backward’ rather than ‘forward’; and people set their minds not on future things, but chiefly on what has taken place.” [pp. 21-23]

Since I first read this passage, twenty-some years ago, I have been fascinated by this idea that there could be a very different way of understanding time.

It should be obvious that a linear notion of time is essential to Western religions. For Christians and Jews, time begins when God created the universe, time unfold in a linear fashion, and one day God will bring about an end to time. All the indigenous European pagan traditions I’m familiar with have a similar understanding of time: time begins when the universe is created, and it flows in a line from that point to the present, and an many European pagan traditions the universe will someday end — think of Norse myths for one example. And non-theistic humanists are pretty sure that the universe started with the Big Bang, time proceeds in a linear fashion from there, and the universe will end when everything cools down from entropy.

It’s my guess that most of us here this morning think of time as a line, and for most of us, religion is unthinkable without linear time. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing to think about time as linear. Unitarians of a hundred years ago used to say they believed in salvation by character and progress onwards and upwards forever — progress onwards and upwards forever requires us to think of time as a line headed in one direction. At some level, we still retain that belief, which is why we are so dedicated to social justice work: we know, given time, that we can overcome injustice and make the world a better place. The good side of thinking of time as a line means that the Western tradition holds out the possibility of working towards greater justice in the world.

However, the traditional African concept of time challenges us to understand things in a new way. And this brings me to the first reading this morning, the poem by Everett Hoagland.

In the poem, Everett Hoagland points out the great irony of Westerners who claim to have discovered certain things. Christopher Columbus claimed to have discovered the Americas, while ignoring the native peoples who discovered the land thousands of years earlier. Livingston claimed to have discovered a waterfall in Africa, which he named after a British queen “to keep it from going native.” And now, says Everett Hoagland, based on the analysis of mitochondria in human DNA, there are scientists who claim to have discovered an ancient African woman who is the ancestor of all, and these scientists have named this hypothetical woman “Eve.” She was an “African Eve,” says Everett Hoagland, and these scientists who discovered and named her, “they acknowledge eden was/ and mother africa is.” And then later in the poem, we hear: “she is more than isis aphrodite madonna/ even more than eve.”

She was even more than Eve. And I’d like us to try to understand what the poet means when he says she is even more than Eve. For me, one way to understand how she is more than Eve is to understand time in a different way. So I’m going to ask you to bear with me for a moment — we’re going to go back to John S. Mbiti, get a little better understanding of how traditional Africans understand time, and then return to the African Eve.

First, back to John Mbiti. Mbiti did research in East African languages, and discovered that in some ways these East African languages have a richer understanding of time than do many Western languages. Mbiti found nine verb tenses in these languages. There are three future tenses: East Africans can talk about a far future of perhaps two years worth of natural cycles; an immediate future of within the next short while; and then a future that places one event after another event. East Africans have three present tenses: what’s in the process of happening right now; what has happened in the past hour or so; and what has happened today since morning. Then there are three past tenses: one which speaks of yesterday; one which speaks of any day before yesterday but within living memory; and then a tense which refers to the deep past of no specific time.

From a theological or religious point of view, I am especially fascinated by this last past-tense, which speaks of the deep past, a past of no specific time. If we had such a verb tense in English, it would solve lots of religious problems for us. In our Western languages, we are stuck on the timeline of historical time. When we speak of something in the past, we can only speak of it as if that event actually truly happened as history. This has caused us much confusion. For example, when we speak of God creating the world, we can only speak of that as if it actually happened, which confuses things badly. It confuses things so badly that there are people who are convinced that you can assign a historical date to God’s creation of the world: they say that God created the world in the year 4004 B.C.; so if you want to know exactly when the Biblical Eve was alive, it was 4,000 years ago. I was recently reading a news article about a Christian company that offers tours of the Grand Canyon, where they assume that the Grand Canyon is less than 6,000 years old, and they point out alleged evidence that the Grand Canyon was not carved out by the Colorado River over millions of years. These tours are very popular, but the only reason they exist is because in our Western tradition, we confuse the past-of-no-specific-time, and the actual historical past. Timelines are powerful, but they can be dangerous!

And in his poem, Everett Hoagland points out another danger. Those scientists who say they discovered an African Eve are actually using their verb tenses incorrectly. They need to distinguish between the past-of-no-specific-time, and the past-of-scientific-inquiry. Eve, whether she is an African Eve or a biblical Eve, lives in the past-of-no-specific-time. Eve did not ever live in the historical past, the past that can be explored by scientific inquiry; Eve is no more real than Anasi the spider, and in fact Anasi and Eve live in exactly the same time. It is extraordinarily presumptuous for those scientists to presume to name that hypothetical woman, the source of all human mitochondrial DNA, to name her “Eve.” Worse yet, those scientists give her a Western name, straight out of the Western religious tradition. And that’s as bad as Christopher Columbus claiming to have discovered the Americas; that’s just as presumptuous as when Livingston decided he would name that African waterfall.

Not only that, but once you call this hypothetical woman who was the source of all human DNA “Eve,” why that raises this funny possibility that the “African Eve” lived in some kind of “African Eden.” And from there, it would be easy to find ourselves right back in the same trap that certain fundamentalist Christians fall into, when those fundamentalist Christians try to tell us that when human beings lived in the Garden of Eden back in 4,004 B.C.E., the world was perfect and then woman sinned and it’s all been downhill from there. My friends, if we can just remember to distinguish between the past-of-no-specific time, and the actual past, we could save ourselves a lot of problems.

We challenge ourselves by exploring other religious traditions. Traditional African religions can teach us something about ourselves: they can show us that our religious tradition has us understand time as a line. Traditional African religions can also help us see that we have to be careful with our religious understandings of time as a line. For if time is a line, that timeline will come to an end sometime in the future. From a religious point of view, we Westerners have to watch our for a deep-seated belief in the inevitable end of the world. This kind of thinking can be most destructive: if you believe the world is going to end someday, maybe sooner rather than later, you have less incentive to make this present world any better; if everything’s going to end and die anyway, why clean up the environment, why feed the hungry, why correct social injustice?

So it is that by exploring other religious traditions, we learn more about ourselves than about those religious traditions.

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

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 and story copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

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.