Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Albert Schweitzer, who died at age 90 in 1965, was an internationally recognized concert organist and musicologist, a prolific author, a Lutheran pastor, a physician and surgeon, a Ph.D. in theology, the founder and administrator of a 500 bed hospital in French Equatorial Africa (now “Gabon” in Central Africa), and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1952.

It’s hard to believe that he gave his first organ concert at age 9. Or that he was author of a groundbreaking book on Johan Sebastian Bach that changed organ technique, which he published first in French, then rewrote in German and published two years later, in addition to writing another book on organ building. And while writing the book that I want to turn your attention to, he was also attending medical school.

But even more astonishing: With these kinds of credentials: music, organ, theology, writing, and medicine, he left them all behind so as to serve as a medical missionary to the heart of Africa.

While there during WWI, he and his wife were put in a French detention camp; after the war was over, he went home to Europe for six years, took additional medical classes, wrote four books and served in ministry at his old church.

As you can imagine with those kinds of credits, he has much to say on a lot of things. But before looking at that, let’s talk about the religious process itself:

So how do we make the decisions that shape our religious self-understanding? Midge Magstadt is the daughter of an American Baptist preacher, and her sister is a Baptist minister. Lou and Barb Pizzini were reared as Roman Catholics, and have degrees from Roman Catholic universities including Lou’s doctorate from Notre Dame. Hank Shapiro’s grandfather was a Jewish Rabbi. Norma Silverman was reared Jewish. Al Jazzim was a Muslim in Baghdad. Flo and Dick Nogaj are “red letter Christians,” who are part of a movement which emphasizes peace, building strong families, the elimination of poverty, and other important social justice issues. What caused us severally also to pick up a little Buddhist or Hindu meditation, a generous portion of New Age thinking, and a healthy respect for humanism, all served on a Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist tray? How does that happen?

I remember one Sunday on a whim, in January, 1990, I decided I would go to the worship service of First Unitarian Church in Oklahoma City. The United Methodist Church I was going to had a great pastor, superb music, and I had many friends there as well. But I increasingly had the feeling that I was translating another language, rather than participating in a service of worship. It was like reading poetry: There’s only so much I can enjoy at one time. My enjoyment of Methodist poetry had peaked.

And to the Unitarian church I went. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t have to translate anything. It was as if this was my home all along, and I had been lost and unable to find it.

It’s a matter of symbols and how closely they represent the reality of which we’re a part. Here’s the process:

For example, when I say “water,” everyone here knows what I mean: “h20.” The cheapest and best drink there is…good, clean, wonderful water. So let’s drink some: “water.” “Water.” Wait a minute. I didn’t taste anything. Let me try again: “water.” Oh, man. I’m thirsty but saying “water” not only doesn’t address my thirst, it doesn’t do anything.

Ta da! When I say “water,” I’m saying something very important and basic, but the symbol, that is, the word-sound “water,” is not the same as what it symbolizes. This <hold bottle of water> is water! This is the stuff that can be the difference between life and death: cool, clear water.

Okay. Lesson learned. The words we say are symbols for other things. They in no sense are the things themselves.

But one thing more: Some symbols are broken! Let me give you an example: Toyota Corolla… Oldsmobile… Hummer. There was a time when, if I said, “Toyota Corolla,” many of us would think: number one selling car in America and one of the safest. But something happened. It had acceleration pedal problems and accidental deaths; and now that sound, that symbol – Toyota Corolla – isn’t quite so good anymore, right?

And Oldsmobile? I’ve owned four or five of them. I thought they were great cars. What happened to them? They no longer are even manufactured…obsolescent. In the Automobile Museum in Lansing, Michigan.

What about this symbol: Hummer? Wow! Did they ever bite the dust! They were the symbol of unregulated prosperity and too much too much. Guzzle the gas and run everybody off the road: I’m in a Hummer. Now General Motors can’t even get the Chinese to buy them, much less Americans.

My point is that symbols break…they change in our public perception. They no longer are what we thought they were. And we either repair them or we find some others to replace them.

I’m going to suggest that for many of us here the symbols of our past religious heritage are broken. It’s the reason we are not at the Baptist, or Catholic Church, a synagogue or mosque, because of this one thing: “We felt we belonged, yet we felt disconnected spiritually.” Like having a passport, but not being able to get through customs, because of a language barrier.

Something like that was happening with Albert Schweitzer and his religious quest. At the turn of the 20^th Century, there were at least two major religious perceptions of Jesus:

One, Jesus was the one who was born of the Virgin Mary, the miracle-working, omniscient-able-to-read people’s mind, warrior against devils and Satan, could walk on water, heal the sick, multiply a dozen fish so as to feed 5,000, intellectually engage lawyers and biblical scholars, and always come out on top…the precursor to the supernatural Jesus in the Gospel of John, the Messianic Jew described by Paul; and the cosmic Christ described in the book of the Revelation. It’s the view of Jesus, whom we would most probably associate with the fundamentalist view of him today.

The second perception of Jesus was an effort on the part of liberal religion to make Jesus a prophetic reformer, a preacher of love, a transformative figure who overcame the limitations of poverty and sectarianism to proclaim a unique kind of care and concern for the poor and the hungry – one who identified with those who were hungry, thirsty, and in great need.

Schweitzer doubted that either one of these was an accurate historical reflection. To support his conclusion, he decided to study as much of the previous 200 years of New Testament scholarship as he could and determine based on that, who Jesus was.

In some sense, he was like Thomas Jefferson, who thought of himself as a Unitarian. Jefferson took the gospels and scissor and paste and cut out all of what he considered the objectionable parts, leaving what we call The Jefferson Bible. But it leaves the heart out.

Although each of the Gospels had a distinctive message, one theme was consistent throughout each Gospel: They all strongly believed without any question whatsoever, that Jesus died, was buried and rose again from the grave in three days: crucifixion, burial, resurrection.

And fundamental to that belief was the conviction that anyone who believed it, would share in eternal bliss with the saints of all time in life eternal. In fact, there was no time to pussyfoot around: Jesus was coming back any second, and he was only taking to heaven those who truly believed.

Relative to this, a couple of weeks ago, as I’ve mentioned before, I had the opportunity to visit with Dr. Amy Jill-Levin when she spoke at Temple Shalom in Naples. Later, I asked her, as a New Testament scholar who is also a practicing Jew, to what did she attribute the incredible transforming power of Jesus and Christianity, especially in an environment of hostile Jews and pagan Romans? Because the reality is that this little Jewish sub-sect initially, eventually took on the entire Roman Empire and won! How did that happen?

She said, “It was because of the promise of eternal-life-after-death which could be had simply by believing in Jesus as the Christ.”

Think about that for a moment: In those days as well as now, sometimes things are awful, and life is unfair. Think of all the bad things that happen to good people. But to the writers of the Gospels, only for believing certain key beliefs about Jesus, then after death, everything will be balanced out. (Informing this, I’m sure, was the fact that Schweitzer had written his dissertation on Immanuel Kant, who felt that heaven and hell were the balancing acts of the Universe to right the wrongs and injustices of life on Earth.)

And as I remarked last week, when Karl Marx spoke of religion as “opium for the people,” it’s very possible he was saying that from the perspective of compassion, knowing the terrible working conditions that capitalist industrialists were inflicting upon women, men and children. In some living situations, the appeal of a future, a heavenly “bye and bye” in religion may well have been the only thing that could enable oppressed workers to make it through the pain of the moment. Hence, the opium of religion, so to speak, might well have been comparable to the palliative offered by Hospice patients for their pain in terminal situations.

I still remember singing gospel songs in little evangelical churches filled with big, poor families. When we sang gospel music, we used first person pronouns – I and We – and we meant something very individual, very personal.

For example, listen to these words, and think poor, think economically and culturally disadvantaged:

Schweitzer discovered that everything we have in the Gospels was written from that perspective: resurrection, death, and life…not the other way around. Hence, any event told or retold, no matter its source, was couched and conditioned by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s unwavering faith in the resurrection event.

Which meant that the Gospels of the New Testament were written with theological purposes in mind…not historical. And the chief theological aim was not only to proclaim belief in the resurrection of Jesus, but in the coming end of time. The Gospels are not historical biographies, but collected and edited testimonials from believers whose concern is to evangelize unbelievers by telling them the stories told to them that were told to them and told to them. So how does this apply to us?

At the end of his book on the The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Schweitzer resorts to poetry. The last words he writes about Jesus are:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.

Finally, in one of the Gospels, there is an imaginary judgment day foretold. The judge condemns one group, and blesses another. When an inquiry is made as to why one and not the other, one of the things the judge says is, “When I was in prison, you visited me.”

Mary Lynn Canton, in our congregation, devotes an inordinate amount of time to those in prison with no advocate…to disabled prisoners needing handicap resources…to sick prisoners who can’t get the right meds…things none of the rest of us would ever consider.

Here’s a poem by one of the men on death row she communicates with that uses Christian poetry in the context of the brutal environment that prisons are:

[1] Presented March 14, 2010 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, located at 2756 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, temporarily meeting this Sunday and next at the Crestwell School, 1910 Park Meadow, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.