Sermon

INTRODUCTION: In 1876, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Incredibly, it transmitted speech electrically. With several adaptations and inventions following, soon towns all over America had their own telephone service with a “Central” switchboard. That means there was a pair of copper wires running from every telephone customer in town to a central switchboard.

When a person with a telephone picked it up to make a call, it lighted up a small light on the downtown, central switchboard. The operator would plug her headset in to the jack socket beneath the light, ask the person calling what number they wished to call, and then send a ring signal to the other person’s telephone. When the person being called picked up the phone, the operator would then connect the two jack sockets and the two people could then begin to converse. That’s a variation of the old PBX switchboards that were in offices for decades. (Did any of you ever operate a PBX switchboard?)

The reason I tell that story is that I want to give you an example of how our theology sometimes imitates the technology we possess. We do that through the use of “metaphor.” A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that describes one thing is used to suggest a likeness or analogy between another.

For example, here’s a 1919 metaphor for “prayer” using the imagery of the telephone, as it was available at that time. It’s entitled “The Royal Telephone.” Now I promise you, it’s much better with chording on a guitar in accompaniment, but just to give you a taste of what you missed by not being raised Pentecostal, I’ve asked Dan to play along on the piano, while I sing one verse and a chorus. Think of the 1919 telephone service I described, and then think of the theology implied in this song as well:

In the imagery here, when we have a need, we can get on the royal telephone and call heaven. “Central is never busy.” God hears our prayer, and connects the jack socket of our need to the jack socket with the answer. So when you get in trouble, just get on the royal telephone. And unlike real telephone calls, on this line you never get a busy signal, no “out of service,” or like today, press one for help, two for a lot of help, or three for gobs of help. It’s a 24/7 divine line…or so the song promises.

But that was 1919. It was written for the South in America. It was rural. It was a time of poverty. It was a time when the Genesis vision of creation was pervasive in the South and public schools were really Protestant schools. In 1925, six years after this song was published, the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” would be held in which Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan contested evolution’s being taught in the school system of Kentucky.

But today, in 2007, you and I have access to knowledge of a much different world. It’s a world in which our place in space has shrunk so exponentially. Once Earth was the center of the Universe…now we know that not only are we not the center of the Universe, we’re not even the center of our solar system, much less our galaxy, or the billions of other galaxies in our known world.

We are spinning on our axis at 1,000 mph, our planet is orbiting the sun once a year at a speed of 66,000 mph, our solar system is hurtling out into space at a speed of 43,000 mph, and all the time we are orbiting the center of the Galaxy every 225 million years or so at a speed of almost one-half million miles an hour. In other words, our Universe is not only expanding, but also racing through space.

Those are data learned from science. Now listen to these words from the sacred scriptures of Judaism some 3,000 or so years ago.

Genesis 1:26-27: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

And in the second creation story that follows, the formation of human being is told this way:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 02:07).

That imagery has pervaded our story. Throughout our culture people think of God as being physically like themselves. Hence, we talk about “the hand of God,” and then sing a song entitled, “He’s got the whole world in his hand.” Or describe God as “seeing” or “watching.” In fact, just a few years back, there was a hit Gospel music song entitled, “God is watching you.” And it’s not only hands and eyes, but also King David was described as a man “after God’s own heart.”

Also, many people think it’s very important to address God as male, and not female. Our prayers reflect that predilection. The most oft repeated prayer among Christians is the “Our Father…” or the “Lord’s Prayer.”

But as Copernicus and Galileo taught us, we’ve learned that the Earth is in no sense a focus or center of even our tiny sphere, and as we’ve learned since Einstein, Earth is infinitesimally insignificant compared to the magnitude of the Universe.

So it seems to me that an important issue when addressing God and religion is to ask this question: If our views of religion were informed by such a limited understanding of the Universe, shouldn’t a significantly increased awareness of the Universe expand our understanding of religion? Or to put it another way, if much of the religion of the world was formed when we thought of the Earth as flat, is it possible that much of our religion is informed by an equally outdated, flat earth theology?

To put it more distinctly, can we extricate the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and father of Jesus Christ, the one God of whom Muhammad is his prophet, from the cosmology – that is, the primitive worldview in which it is packaged. To give another analogy, can we retrieve the message from the baggage it’s carried in?

1. What we know as conservative evangelicalism: Despite the date, the package and the message are as timely and relevant now as ever.

Let’s imagine you are going to the grocery story to buy some milk, or sushi, or bread. Most people check out the date stamped on the milk, especially on the sushi, and I do on the bread, or at least mash it to see if it’s soft. The date on the outside says something to us about the freshness of the product inside. Given a choice we will take the most recent.

However, one of the options in theology is just the opposite. In fact, most churches and most Americans believe that both the message and the packaging of religion are acceptable, and that the theology contained in the outdated packaging is untainted, and the expiration date on the package should be ignored. So if in the 15^th century, Copernicus said the earth revolved around the sun, and Galileo and Newton expanded that notion even further by the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the theology packaged two to three thousand years ago in that flat-earth cosmology is still fresh and relevant. It may require some special opening techniques to get at it, but the contents are as real as when first packaged by Moses, and the way they are told is okay too.

Here’s an example of that kind of thinking: Years ago, I was ghostwriting a book for the number two cop in the Los Angeles Police Department, six feet two, athletic, college graduate, with a masters from Northwestern University in Evanston. He told me as I interviewed him for his book of a daunting experience at a crucial time in his career. He was facing losing his job and perhaps even having charges brought against him while Captain of Venice. But the LA earthquake hit on the morning he was to appear before the investigating commission. His appearance slid off the radar screen.

But according to Bob, it was not a commission oversight. Because just the night before in his devotionals he had read in the Psalms, “Though the earth quake, I the Lord will be your strong arm and stay.” He told me that God had saved him from losing his job.

When I left that part out of the first draft, he was incensed and said, “Wayne, you left out the heart of the story.” I said, “Bob, there are some people who will find it hard to believe that all those homes which were destroyed by the dam breaking, and the families of the 20 persons who lost their lives, all that happened just so you wouldn’t have to go to a committee meeting.”

So that’s one answer – the most popular: the packaging and the message – though with expired science and dated theology – they are as timely as ever. But, there’s a second alternative: It’s the opposite of the first:

It’s all garbage. We don’t even need to explore it. We can read the expiration date on the outside. Plain and simple: When in doubt, throw it out.

There is no mystery to life, only problems waiting to be solved. Consciousness is a fiction. The notion of purpose in the Universe is meaningless. We are all part of a “perpetual perishing.” There is no god and Jesus is his son. Two plus two equals four. Cause produces effect. What you see is what you get. There’s no there, there.

I’ve mentioned before when at another congregation, in the printed copy of my Christmas sermon, I capitalized the “s” in spirit, in the statement, the “Spirit of the Season.” An atheist engineer in the congregation was certain the capitalization was proof positive that I was a “closet theist.”

The truth was that I didn’t believe in the god he didn’t believe in. Who would? It was an infantile, monarchical, medieval, patriarchal, irrelevancy. But he was convinced that to use the word God could only refer to the god he rejected. To him, it was either or: supernaturalism or atheism, believing or not believing. It was always, is there or is there not a supernatural god.

So a second option is to be a fundamentalist atheist. But is there another option that is neither uncritical supernaturalism, nor closed-minded atheism. I would suggest that the key is in how we pose the question, which instead of either/or, exist/doesn’t exist is this:

3. The real choice: How do we choose to address the mystery before which we stand?

Do we close our mind or do we open it? Do we only accept those who believe as we, or do we seek the truth that is in every manifestation?

I do not believe there is a royal telephone that I can pick up and call Glory for instant intervention. I don’t believe that God will swoop down like an eagle to save me from my mistakes or the mistakes of others. I hate to tell some of you this, but God is not opposed to George Bush, nor even to Dick Cheney. God is not struggling with the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on late term abortion, nor choosing sides in Iraq. God is not even involved in Israel and Palestine. God doesn’t stop hurricanes or change the course of tornadoes when the faithful pray. Even when Pat Robertson says so.

This comes from a colleague:[2] “God is not God's name. God is our name for the mystery that looms within and looms beyond the limits of our being. Life force, spirit, ground of being, these too are names for the Unnamable.

“God's answer is not a what or a how, not a when or a why, but a yes. Choose life and trust life. Grow in service and love. Take nothing for granted. Be thankful for the gift. Suffer well. Dare to risk much. Consecrate your world with laughter and with tears. Know not what I am or who I am or how I am, only that I am with you. This is God's answer to my prayers

“Perhaps that which I call God is no more than the mystery of life itself. I cannot know, nor do I care, for the power that emanates from deep within the heart of this mystery is redemptive. It is divine. Without hoping or presuming to understand it, opening myself to it, I find peace.” Amen and blessed be.

[1] Given Sunday, April 22, 2007, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] The Rev. Forrest Church.