jimrigby.org

I know lots of clergy who say they do not speak up publicly for marriage equality, yet support it privately. They say they want to minister to all of their congregation no matter what their political beliefs. They say the people who are fighting marriage equality are kind and wonderful people who are hurt when confronted on their homophobia. They say to make people uncomfortable in their prejudice is itself a kind of intolerance. And, I have little doubt, had these clergy served two hundred years ago, they would have used the same excuses not to address slavery.

(this is the handout for today’s class)

DHAMMAPADA (OF BUDDHISM, TRANSLATION BY THOMAS BYRON)
“TWINS”

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
”Look how he abused me and hurt me, How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
”Look how he abused me and hurt me, How he threw me down and robbed me.”
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.

(Did you notice the part MLK quoted?)
JAMES (CHRISTIANITY): “TAMING THE TONGUE”
3 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.
3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4 Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Modern religion faces a tremendous challenge in maintaining the claim that life has a purpose. After Darwin showed that a creationist view does not fully explain our world, it is no longer fully honest to derive our life’s meaning from a creationist narrative. Entropy appears to be a law of the universe. The universe seems more like a temporary wind up toy than an eternal progression. Whatever meaning is found in such a universe cannot be to amass any treasure or to accomplish any goal. In an evolving universe, there are no such final resting places.

Still, we do experience meaning in living. When we build a sand castle, we do not need to pretend that our accomplishment is permanent. When we eat a meal, it does not diminish our pleasure to know that we will soon need to eat again. When we go to Las Vegas, the randomness of the situation is part of the fun. A roulette wheel that was rigged in our favor, might be profitable, but would lose the thrill of the game.

The Stoics believed in a cosmos such as ours. They taught that our purpose is to be like an actor who cannot control the script but still finds great meaning in his or her art. We do not need an outside plot line to give our lives meaning. Our “purpose” is found in manifesting what it means to be human no matter what is happening. This, for us, is meaning and peace and happiness; not to find these treasures, but to create them in whatever circumstance we find ourselves..

Meaning is found in knowing we are the ephemeral expressions of an eternal music, and in joining the dance.

Every animal in nature comes into the world with a set of instructions. Birds are born, if not knowing what to sing, with a predisposition to join in when they hear the song of their species. Birds are born with a predisposition to build a nest, to fly in certain directions at certain times of the year. Seeds are also born with instructions, as are insects.

I do not believe that human beings, alone in the world, are born without instructions, I do believe our consciousness is so complicated that we can easily lose our homing beacon.

We are not the orphans of nature. We are not truly outside of nature at all, it just looks that way to our frightened and confused minds. One purpose of religion, whether or not we call it by that name, is to reconnect, to re-establish contact. Whether or not we find the symbol “God” helpful in expressing it, religion is remembering our home in that primordial mystery out of which everything shines.

When I was a child I often felt like I was suffocating in church. I knew that truth could not be as small as what I had been taught. When I got to college I went to a nearby bookstore called, “Grok.” I asked the clerk to introduce me to new ways of approaching reality that weren’t covered in my Sunday School. One of the books he recommended was the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism. As I read the following verse, I remembered the “I am” sayings of Jesus. I began to explore the possibility that Jesus wasn’t calling us to Christianity (which didn’t even exist at the time) or if, perhaps, like Krishna, he was speaking poetically as life itself and was calling us to our own cosmic roots:

“That one who sees me in everything
and everything within me
will not be lost to me, nor
will I ever be lost to that one.

That one who is rooted in oneness
realizes that I am
in every being; wherever
that one goes, he or she remains in me.

When one sees all being as equal
in suffering or in joy
because they are like him or herself,
that one has grown perfect in yoga.”

– Krishna, speaking in the Bhagavad Gita

I trust in the source, parent of all being, ultimate power, creative principle of all that is,

And in the human one, our guide, a unique manifestation of the source,
Conceived by the spirit of love, born of faithfulness,
suffered under political oppression, was executed, died and buried,
Descending to the very depths of nonbeing; on the third day was
found alive again in human solidarity: rising to the highest, perfectly
at one with the source, thereafter, became a standard for living and dying.

I trust in the spirit of life, the universality of faithfulness, the unity of 
all who are kind and just,
that no mistake is final, that love does not die with the body, and that
life itself is eternal.

Every orthodoxy was a heresy in its own day. 

Not all heresy is true, but every new truth begins as a heresy to someone. 

Heresy is often what truth looks like as it is being born. 

Orthodoxy is often what truth looks like as it dies.

What orthodoxy cannot establish by reason,

It imposes with scepter

Still new truth triumphs inevitably

As grass cracking up through the pavement.

The people of a village once looked out to see one of their most pious neighbors tied to a tree. Rushing out to release him, they were stunned to discover that he had tied the knots himself. “Moses tied his ass to a tree,” the man said sternly, “and I’m going to follow the Moses!”

“But the word “ass” originally meant “donkey, not rear end,” someone replied. ”Moses wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.” The man shook his head, “God’s word is unchanging. If you want to pick and choose what you’re going to obey that’s fine, but I take it all literally.”

Eventually, there was just a skeleton tied to the tree. The people were so impressed by the faith of the man that they built an altar with a sign that read, “You can be like this man if you will take the Bible literally.”

As promised, I will be posting various quotes this week from what is called “negative or apophatic theology” which is the approach that something which is infinite cannot be thought by the human mind and so we draw closer to the sacred by negation than affirmation. I will show examples of negative theology from both great Christian theologians, but also from other faiths.

“Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.”
-Gregory of Nyssa

“We do not know what God is. Even God cannot say what God is because God is not anything.. Literally God is not, because God transcends being.”
-John Scotus Erigena

“We cannot say what God is, only what God is not.”
-Aquinas

When I first graduated from seminary and began to preach, I barely noticed the flag that stands by most pulpits in the U.S. If we see a flag on a ship at sea, or on the car of a diplomat, we understand those vehicles are set aside to represent the United States. It did not occur to me that the flag by the pulpit bore the same meaning.

If a Roman emperor required a statue of himself to be placed in an early church, everyone would understand what that statue really meant. The statue would be a reminder that people could worship however they wished, so long as their first loyalty was to the empire. The flag can also stand as a boundary that American preachers are not to cross. We may pray for our troops, but not for our enemy’s. We may pray for healing, but not for health care. We may pray for the poor, but we must never question the capitalist system that makes them poor.

What does it mean when we tell preachers not to be political, but place a flag by the pulpit as though the flag were not itself a political statement? Is the flag not a warning? Does the flag not bear a command? “You shall not speak of any other politics than that of the American Empire. You are not to worship a God who is bigger than your nation. You shall not hold the actions of your nation to a universal standard.”

The flag by the pulpit reminds us that the American Empire and the capitalism for which it now stands, lies in the background of everything the church can do, or even think, so long as nationalism is the context from within which we try to be ethical. Knowing this, who would not take the flag down? We should take down very cross itself, if it ever prevented us from showing the love of Christ to those who are not Christian. There is one universal love to which every other lesser loyalty must submit. We do not love America less, for loving humankind more.