Who Is He For Us?

The menorahs are back in the closet. The solstice candles carefully packed. My neighbor's tree was laid with apparent fatigue on the curb, waiting for the garbage truck to scoop it up into it's new found glory. The holiday season is over: of lights, song and celebration. And it is now that I start my January routine.

In January I find myself reflecting on that baby Jesus. Or rather the man that baby became. You see, I'm not the Jesus lover in our house. Scott, my husband, is. He grew up in the Anabaptist movement (think Amish with zippers), that have central to their understanding of Jesus humility, service and peace as their holy trinity. My husband went through an intensive course in high school to reflect, study, process, and register as a conscientious objector. I, on the other hand, grew up in a UCC (Congregational) church. Some call the UCC church - playfully - Unitarians Considering Christ. Which was my experience and certainly me. When I was 12 my grandmother, a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran with perfect attendance, wanted one of her grandchildren to go through confirmation. I ended up the most likely candidate; since my dad was the choir director and I sang in the choir, I hardly had an excuse. Of course, I didn't tell my grandmother that I had spent most of my middle school years earnestly searching for god, and trying to figure out who this Jesus character was, to no avail. A part of me reasoned to go along with it because maybe I'd finally "get it" and the other part was drawn to my great grandmother's ring. You see, I was to receive my great grandmother's ring as a gift when successfully confirmed. So, part bribe, part curiosity, I embarked on the four-month endeavor. For two months, I asked questions, queried about what passages meant, pushed on miracle stories, and prodded on inconsistencies. I didn't like or get the answers I was after, and the minister didn't like the questions I was asking. It was about this time, two months into the class, I distinctly remember him walking toward me in the hallway, stopping mid-stride and performing a perfect pivot, then heading back from where he came. So, for the second two months of class, I cheated. I copied off of Martha Getche's papers for our homework assignments while sitting in the back seat of the car on the way to confirmation on Sunday evenings. I didn't do any of the work, I goofed around in class, which was uncharacteristic for me usually around authority but I had given up. Jesus, God and the like had slipped off into oblivion and I was glad to be done with them. Then I lied. To end the confirmation class, the pastor had a meeting with each of us in his office, where we asked us to confess our faith in Jesus Christ in order to be confirmed. Pastor W asked: "Kaaren do you believe Jesus died to save your sins?" Hmmmm. Well, not really. Not at all, frankly - but I'm not gonna' tell you that. "Yes, I do." "Good, done," he said, short and not so sweet. I have no doubt he closed the door that day, and breathed a sigh of relief, I was out of his hair. And I walked out of his office a confirmation liar and cheat, ready for confirmation. If there is a hell, believe me my biggest knock may be that wrong move right there. I bet you there is a sign in hell that says - Those who lied and cheated through confirmation - hell burns most fiery for you! In the end, I got the ring, and don't ever wear the ring, because of what it conjures up for me.

Soon after that holy debacle, we moved to Madison Wisconsin, that bastion of liberalism in the Midwest. My parents promptly joined the meeting house - the Unitarian church - built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and I remember feeling at home, in love, and captured all at the same time. This was my new, and grounded religious home.

So I had said good riddance and bye-bye to Jesus. Then I went to seminary; liberal Christian seminary. I brought in with me the standard image of Jesus - the one I had rejected as the divine savior, the messiah, the Son of God, the light, the truth and the way.

I left with a new perspective. Not one where I wanted to follow the fellow again or believe in him, but one in which he became more human, more real, more of a rebel and social agitator.

And I was fine with that version of him for years. The Christ figure still confused the heck out of me, but Jesus was starting to emerge. But I didn't have a place for him until, well, I met the Jesus-loving atheist I'm married to. It was Scott who confounded me more than anything. How can you love Jesus so much and be a non-theist. What has captured you about this guy, what has you in awe of him? And Scott has just gently and firmly turned me in the direction of these radical Mennonites to answer what he loves.

And each year in January, I try to immerse myself in the endeavor of unraveling more of Jesus. Of trying to find the possibility of what he could mean for me and us. For a variety of reasons.

One is this. We are a tradition that grew out of the Judeo/Christian tradition. That is where our roots are. We often say, that we try to follow the life and living of Jesus rather than his death and the Christ he became to many. He is a human figure to us, infused with the holy surely, like we all are but a figure who was not immaculately conceived, sacrificed on the cross for our sins, or resurrected from the dead.

But because of this disconnect with the rest of "Christianity" we fail often in our congregations to even talk about Jesus. Christ we have banished from our churches for about a hundred years, but Jesus, the man, often slips away too with a similar passé and outgrown theology. Possibly appropriately, as many of us showing up here on Sunday mornings are hurt by our traditions of the past, don't believe in the Christology we grew up with, or are from different faith traditions, where it took a lot of energy even to make it here because we call this building a church. But here is the rub. I want us to think about it this way.

Each of us it seems to me in a Unitarian Universalist congregations has a little cadre of spiritual advisors we use to help us figure out how best to love and live in the world. Many of us have advisors that are the same, each of us has others we replace and add in.

You see over here, is Darwin. He's in an 19th century suit, with tousled hair near the end of his life, articulate, wise, curious, our hero of evolutionary theory, a man who worked on being courageous though it didn't come easily to him. A man who did not want to disrupt his social standing or class, yet in the end did.

Then here is the Buddha, the large happy enlightened Buddha, who helps us stay calm and centered when we are feeling anxious, discontented, possessive or clingy. This Buddha offers reminder and techniques to be mindful and present. Awake.

Then many of us have Gandhi, the slope-shouldered vegan of contradictory human behavior who created a new social order. He was not always nice, pleasant or kind to his family, yet changed an entire society around with a practice that shook, awoke and yielded many.

Many of us embrace the goofy Sufi mystics - like Nasrudin or the romantic mystical ethereal writers like Rumi and Hafiz. They remind us of the questions of the ages and the ephemeral quality of life.

There are many others of course, these are but a few we each go to as advisors.

We go to these advisors when we are in need of inspiration, courage, a comfort, a reminder that we are loved or affirmed. We consult these advisors when we need reminders of what humans are capable of, what possibilities could await us.

Now in my mind, I have come to find, whether atheist of theist, we are missing the gifts of one advisor that the others don't breach in the same way. And that figure is Jesus, an agitator of compassion, love and a captivator of the holy.

So I listen to my husband and go check out the radical Mennonites, I find there people searching and wrestling with very tough questions about Jesus and yet they call themselves Christians. What I love about these folks is they don't know if they dig Jesus that much as he is not cuddly and soothing. They affirm that to live like Jesus - to act like Jesus - isn't an easy message to follow. As one Mennonite, Bill Blaikie, puts it, "Living like Jesus, it's going to get you into trouble and people aren't going to like it. Because it challenges the behaviors of society."

As Laurel Mathewson says: "The more I read the bible the less I am sure that Jesus loved me or that he would be a nice person to have living in my heart even if he wanted to be there. Jesus of Nazareth is not a sensitive new age guy. Frankly he seems a little erratic. Wild-eyed. Harshly truthful. Often impatient. What interpretation of the bible were the teddybear Jesus believers reading? I want(ed) their version. . .(but) .We do ourselves a disservice when we try to tame Jesus. If Jesus remains somewhat wild eyed and mysterious in my reading and imagination it's not surprising. Would we expect to fully know and befriend God? The crazy things he says, like love your enemies, are the reason I think, the spirit of the lord was upon him at all. In rubbing away his rough edges, his otherness, I risk rubbing away the spirit of god."

And on a class level, these folks interpret Jesus' life and message as an admonishment to the norm. Dan Schriber: "A nagging suspicion follows me around, that my middle class American lifestyle is incompatible with the gospel of good news to the poor. On the other hand, everyone needs to recharge. Occasional comforts can be like food - we all have to eat, and it's not a sin to spend a little time and resources preparing a delicious feast to sustain us. The important thing is to know what I am recharging myself for and not to mistake my comfort for God's will."

So Jesus for many of these Mennonites is one radical figure. I mean, he makes them live not in this world. They are often anarchists, pacifists, socialists, and give up their possessions to live with and among the poor. Think the Catholic Worker movement here. These Mennonites do not understand how you can be of the establishment that Jesus was so strongly against, nor do they get how you could participate in something that allows you to have power over another human being. Ever. Period.

In the end, they are too radical for me. But I get their point. I think if you decide that you have a council of spiritual advisors of one, and it is Jesus for you, then these folks are doing it with the most integrity that I have found. There is no discord between what they believe, who they knew Jesus to be, and how he called for a radical upturning of the social order. They are living into his teachings not from the outside, but from the inside of creating a new egalitarian social order.

But there am I, with more people - advisors - in the room with me than just Jesus. I'm not a follower of just one, and you aren't either or you likely wouldn't be in this room right now. So where does that lead us?

Well I go back to the readings I shared with you earlier. The first. By Barbara Ehrenrich.

The Jesus she imagines gagged, and tethered to a pole in the parking lot outside of the church she attended, is the pre-Easter Jesus. The man from Nazareth who is as Marcus Borg (a historical Jesus scholar) says: ". . .(had) a radical social and political edge to his message and activity. He challenged the social order of his day and indicted the elites who dominated it. He had a clever tongue, which could playfully or sarcastically indict the powerful and proper. He must have been remarkably courageous, willing to continue what he was doing even when it was clear that it was putting him in lethal danger."

This pre-Easter Jesus did not see the kingdom of heaven in some afterlife; he wanted a new social order for all within his lifetime, which he would have thought of as heaven on earth. He also would have been confused about people calling him the messiah, the king, or the second coming. That is not how he talked about himself; rather it was how others came to talk about him centuries after his death.

This pre-Easter Jesus is the spiritual figure we somehow need to incorporate. Now, the second reading gets to a rethinking of the traditional paradigm of Jesus as our friend. The kind of guy who is there for you when your girlfriend breaks up with you, when your spouse just yelled at you, when you need courage and faith to go into a job interview. The Pre-Easter Jesus is not that figure. He would have been perplexed by that familiar song:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and grief's to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Ev'rything to God in prayer!

Though as an aside, it is a catchy tune and once I start it, it's hard to stop. I've hummed it in the grocery line - to mixed reviews mind you - so I know what I'm talking about.

But seriously, the sentiment, Jesus as friend, was not his ministry. His ministry was one of the radical. And if we look honestly at our circle of advisors, we need such a radical there, someone who just is gonna' push us; say that is not good enough, until it is good enough. I think if we let him in the circle this is what he would do.

He would stand by our side and say things like this:

Good for you, you just organized a brownie troop. Now go imagine the possibilities that would come about if you helped organize people who are working for scud pay, have no health insurance, and need just your organizational skills to pull off an opportunity for a just wage.

Good for you that your children have a good education, are loved and thriving. Now go imagine the possibilities if you put that same energy and love into the children at school 22, kids who live below the poverty line. Imagine what the city would look like with those children thriving!

Good for you that you can help provide a safety net for your grown up children. Now go imagine the possibilities for others if you invested some of that money into micro-financing projects or a fair trade business practice.

Now I know this sounds or feels finger-wagging. That's because it kind of is. Many of you who love me, sometimes come up to me after my sermons and say - "I love you Kaaren, but that sermon, I just can't handle it. I don't want to feel guilty, I feel depleted and you're not helping me." Well, I gottcha, I don't want to be giving the sermon. I feel the same way you do when addressed with this kind of radical message. I do. Jesus wears me out. I, like you, don't want to be told that I'm not doing enough. If I could take his message and make him a good supportive friend, I would. But when I'm at my best, and can get in a non-defensive place, that's when I start to see his finger-wagging differently. When I can get by my own guilt for maybe not doing enough, I start to see his hand not as a finger pointing at me but a hand turned upwards waving me in. Inviting me in, saying not so much your not doing enough, but come join me, think of all that we can do together. Not a message of not being proud of what you've done, but let that pride connect you to your power, and all the other possibilities that are out there if we join our power together in working for the common good. Imagine all that we can do. For them and for all of us.

You see, if you let him into the circle of advisors, he will be there with a strong radical presence. He will not be your friend. In fact, you might not really ever like him. But he will open up the world to you. Because you will see the results of what such radical compassion, love and justice can do to the spiritual wellbeing and health of not just the least of these, but us as well. And in the end, I think it's worth not really liking him for that kind of transformation alone. Hopefully it is for you too.

So may it be. Amen.

Kaaren Anderson, Parish Co-Minister
January 10, 2010