THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
THE LIFE OF THE (NEW) AGE
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
April 11,2004It isn't very often that the Greek that I learned in theological school is of any use whatsoever. I dutifully learned to translate sections of the New Testament. The Greek that I was taught only works there. If you use it in Greece, they look at you funny. The place that it is of value is with a few of the terms that are used in the New Testament. The translators over the generations have often gotten them wrong. The irony here is that practically every theological school student has to learn Greek, do those translations and learn the same thing I learned. Most of my colleagues, as we were accused by one of the professors, go into their parishes and never bother to mention the fact that they learned those things.
One of the most interesting ones is the New Testament term that is translated in your Bible as "eternal life." The Greek word has no implication about length of life. The Greek term is zoe aeon, the life of the age. As you may recall from the Christmas Story, the reasons why the Wise Men were coming from the East was that the constellations were in the position of the change from the era of the Ram to the era of the Fish. That was the Age that was just then dawning. So the life of the age is the life that Jesus teaches that will characterize, if he's successful, that New Age. That is the zoe aeon, the Life of the (new) Age, that the New Testament translators mistakenly call "eternal life."
Every now and then, three holidays from three different religions come close together at this time of year. Once in a while they coincide. This year they're close - they fall in the same week. Last Monday was the first day of Passover, Thursday was the Buddha's birthday, Hanamatsuri, and of course, today is the culmination of Easter week. It's not an accident that these each fall at the beginning of Spring. Each of them is a Spring celebration. Each of them is a celebration of new beginnings, a celebration of a new community, a new idea of community, and a celebration of a new way of living in community. Not surprisingly, there are commonalities in the themes of these new beginnings.
In Passover, the celebration, of course, is about the liberation from slavery in Egypt and also in that escape, the creation of a new people, the creation of a new community, and a new way of living in community.
Buddhism, also, celebrates liberation. That's what nirvana means. It is interesting that as Christians found out about Buddhism historically, we assumed, of course, that nirvana meant "heaven" - going off someplace after you die. All of my Buddhist teachers have insisted, "No, nirvana is not about what happens after you die." Nirvana is liberation.
Easter coincided originally with Passover. Its images are quite different from those images we're familiar with from Buddhism and Judaism, but its themes are similar. This celebration is, first of all, about liberation, about freedom. Jesus said, "And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free." It is most especially, about a new community. For what happened in that interesting time after Jesus' crucifixion was the birth of a fascinating new community. Outside of Christian literature, the earliest references to Christians contain the phrase "how those Christians love one another." They even impressed Roman authorities.
Until fairly recently, none of those traditions thought in the individualistic terms that we take for granted. Liberation was understood as something that is mediated by community: You come to be free in living in community. And that community was to be characterized by a way of being together that was at odds with, and still is at odds with, the dominant culture.
For Judaism, the behavior expected within the community extended not just to kin and clan and village, but extended also to "the stranger within your gates." This may be so familiar that we don't realize that twelve hundred years ago that was a peculiar notion, that the kind of behavior that characterizes intimate community is also to be extended to the stranger. An unheard of idea!
For Buddhists, the behavior necessary to keep one's own spiritual path alive and growing was required toward all sentient beings. Without it suffering hurts not only one's self but also sows suffering in the world around them. The sangha. There are three jewels in Buddhism, the Buddha, the dharma, which is the teaching, and the sangha. The sangha is the community. Theoretically, at least, that community is without bounds and it is the source of the transmission of the teaching. One learns to be Buddhist within such a community of practice.
Christianity was from its inception, first of all, a faithful community. The way that one behaved in that community was to be extended not just to fellow Christians, not just as it was in Judaism, to the stranger. But in those early communities, slave and free were equal and Jesus and the early Christians pushed it one step even farther. No religious teacher had ever had the audacity before then to say "You ought to love your enemy." Even Buddhism says the way you convert an enemy is to be good to them, but to love them? No.
Have these traditions always lived up to that vision of what community is and can be? Of course not, nor have I who cherish and honor all three of those traditions. But at their best, this is the vision that has animated them. At their worst this has been the vision that inspired them, the aspiration that motivated them and that challenged them to reform. More than the particularities of their theology, the diversity of their stories and symbols, this vision of the beloved community has characterized their self-expectation. This is their message to those outside the boundaries that the vision says doesn't exist. When they have strayed - and all of them have - this is the vision that has sought to bring them back together, back to community.
Unitarian Universalists insist that we don't have a religious theological ideology, a set of beliefs that every body is supposed to believe. Yet we insist that we are indeed a religious community. It is because what has characterized religious communities at their highest and best has not been the theology or even the literature or the symbols and images. It has been really "being" community. When religion works, this is what works, not individual spirituality, not theological orthodoxy, not ritual purity, not even correct techniques or mystical ecstasy. When it works, strangers say of them, "Behold how they love one another."
It is therefore appropriate that the mythic images of this vision be celebrated regularly, for that vision is constantly being degraded by the pressures of the mundane and the ordinary. All of us find ourselves looking for perfectly good reasons why we don't have to be "nice" today, or to that particular irritating person, why we don't have to include that abrasive one in our community. Yet that challenge is indeed what religious communities are about. We need the annual reminder, for all of those themes come as a challenge to the habits that so easily supplant them.
This vision of community also makes demands upon our credulity because that vision has been born in and nurtured in particular cultural contexts that bring their own baggage with them. It's not possible for the most thoroughly believing Christian today to go back and be a First Century person. It's not possible for a Jew today to go back and be a "standing at the foot of Sinai" Jew. It's not possible for a Buddhist to go back and be a sixth Century B.C. follower of the Buddha. Those teachings come with cultural baggage appropriate to the time and place of their emergence. But the vision transcends those symbols and images and stories every time. These visions make demands upon our attitudes, on our credulity, but more importantly, they make demands upon our behavior. Too easily, we some-times let the demands upon our credulity--"Well, I can't believe that !"- excuse us from dealing with the demands they make upon our behavior.
I don't know how many of you will be successful in sorting out the pieces in the reading below from the Buddhist Dhammapada and from the New Testament. If you're like me, you'll have to look at the footnotes to be able to tell which of those pieces came from which document. They come out of the same vision of community, the same vision of what it can be like for us to live together. And it is our behavior that is so often the problem. We look at things that are unfamiliar and different, at people that are unfamiliar and different, and are uncertain whether we should expand the boundaries of community to include "those people."
I find it really interesting, exciting, fascinating, ironic that all across the country, for the last several months, in places you wouldn't expect as well as in a couple of places that you might, people are defying the law and are issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. At the opening session of the annual meeting of the Pacific Central District last week we did a wedding reception for couples who had gotten married in San Francisco over the previous weeks. It was quite a wild and wooly party because there were about a hundred couples. Almost all of them had been together longer than many of the heterosexual couples who were at that assembly. Many had been married in Unitarian Universalist marriage ceremonies, though without benefit of any license. This one challenges deeply whether or not we can expand that circle of community and invite "those people" fully into our midst.
This is the challenge that we face, at the moment, with Islam. Can our imagination stretch far enough to recognize that, from the outset, that religious tradition, too, was founded on a vision of community. It has picked up a lot of "stuff" from the cultures that it has come through. Much of what we are told about Islam-- particularly the negative things-- in fact, have to do with pieces of Middle Eastern culture that are unrelated to anything specifically Islamic. They are a particular cultural overlay that has accrued. Some Moslems are beginning to be able to see through that, to transcend it and to let the genius of their religious heritage, that sense of the beloved community, come through.
As I read the news and wrestle with the economic issues facing the world today, I am concerned about what is going on around the world in the name of Western free-market capitalism. I find myself wondering how we can stretch those ideas so that the economic system also serves the beloved community. It will stretch us significantly to find the ways to make that happen.
I think we have the genius for it, we human beings. I look at the genius of voluntarism. I see the ability to transcend the imagined boundaries of community, to see where need is and to respond to it, whether it is "us" or not.
The vision challenges us to live as if no one is outside that circle. The social justice challenge of that vision is to strive to arrange our structures of power and relationships so that no one is required to remain outside the circle of community. Is it easy? No. Is it idealistic? No. Over the years, the word "idealistic" has acquired the connotation of something that is perhaps "pious" and perhaps "nice" and "Gee, it would be good but it is completely impractical and can never be really done." In that sense, no, it is not idealistic. It is, in fact, in everybody's enlightened self-interest. Will we ever permanently accomplish it? Probably not. But it is the vision that is ultimately in our own, and each and every one of our own, self-interest.
It is what "next year in Jerusalem," the line that comes near the end of the Passover Seder, ultimately means.
It is what the sangha means, what it came into being for and what it seeks to birth.
It is what "eternal life," zoe aeon means, the life of the new age dawning in our midst.
Liberation, so that we can indeed live in community; communities that challenge and nurture each of us to liberty, so that we can once more expand the circle of community.
Quotations from the Dhammapada and the Sermon on the Mount
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. [1]
As we think in our hearts, so are we. [fudging. --Paul]
'He insulted me, she hurt me, he defeated me, she robbed me." Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. [3]
O let us live in joy, in love amongst those who hate ! [197]
An enemy can hurt an enemy, and one who hates can harm another; but one's own mind, if wrongly directed, can do one far greater harm. [42]
Resist not evil. . . . Love your enemies . . . . [5:39, 44]
Overcome anger by peacefulness: overcome evil by good. Overcome the mean by generosity; and the man who lies by truth. [223]
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. [7:1,2]
If one should conquer in battle a thousand and a thousand more, and another should conquer himself, his would be the greater victory, . . ; for neither powers above nor powers below can turn such a victory into defeat. [103-105]
No one can serve two masters. [6:24]
One may find pleasure in evil as long as evil has not given fruit; but when the fruit of evil comes then that evil is found indeed. [119]
You shall know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles ? [7:16]
Hold not a deed of little worth, thinking, 'this is little to me'. The falling of drops of water will in time fill a water-jar. Even so the wise becomes full of good, although they gather it little by little. [122]
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. Truly, I say to you, they have had their reward. [6:1a, 2b]
One who can control one's own rising anger as a driver controls the carriage at full speed, this one I call a good driver: others merely hold the reins. [222]
Let what you say be simply 'yes' and 'no'; anything more than this comes from evil. [5:37]
Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. [6:25]
Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. [6:34]
[Brackets with numbers only refer to the verses in the Dhammapada. The brackets with a number, colon and numbers refer to verses from the New Testament, Sermon on the Mount.]