Renegade Christians in the UUA are sometimes known as come-outers.  I don’t have statistics to prove it, but I believe that this is at least half of us in this country.  Ex-Catholics make up a big part of the congregation in my home fellowship of River Falls.   Come-outers often carry a lot of baggage.  After testing the waters of UUism, we may jump in like children on a hot day, shouting wah-hoo! as we cannonball into the refreshing coolness of religious freedom.  Later on, we become aware of the baggage—strong feelings that add up to a love/hate relationship with the Judeo-Christian culture.  After 30 years as a Methodist minister I went back to square one, back to the books (different books), now I’m nearing the end of my first year as a UU minister, and I think I’ve thrown out  the baggage, but you can judge that for yourself after this message.    

If you’re not a come-outer, don’t say this subject doesn’t concern you.  Nobody can live in America and not be affected by the Judeo-Christian culture.  Trying to dig out that influence from your mind and heart is like trying to remove sugar from your diet.  It’s next to impossible because there’s some kind of sugar in almost everything, and there’s religion everywhere you look.  Even the most ardent lifelong Unitarian or fire-breathing atheist cannot escape the crosses rising above the rooftops of every city and town.  You cannot watch TV news without seeing the Pope and the troubles of the Catholic church.  Counselors say that when we have been abused, we cannot be expected to forgive the abuser if he/she/it still has power over us.  Many UUs are conflicted about Jesus.  We cannot quite overcome the vague feeling that we MAY have thrown out the baby with the bath water.  Even if we say the hell with it, I don’t care, the culture we live in still has power over us.    

The cure for most feelings of conflict and uncertainty is knowledge, but when it comes to the man called Jesus, the knowledge we need is buried under piles of mythology that has been declared sacrosanct.   This is a personal question, but I hope you don’t mind. Do you have a copy of the Christian bible in your home?  Why do you keep that book?  Is it just for reference, to look up the answers when Jeopardy has a category called the Bible?  Is it the ancient history you may find there?  Or have you thought of it as  a  resource for information about Jesus?  If you detect a chip on my shoulder toward the Bible, well that’s part of my baggage.  This book was written by people and each one of them had personal agendas—it is an artifact, no longer relevant, filled with the laws and norms of dead cultures and history that is seldom accurate.   I’ve given myself permission to leave it alone.  The story of the man named Jesus is told much more accurately and believably in the books of modern authors such as the scholars of the Jesus Seminar (e.g. Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan). 

I miss the late Jerry Falwell, who kept me supplied with humor.  Jerry claimed to believe every word of the Bible came straight from God, and he then became God by interpreting all of it through the lens of  his own beliefs such as hatred for homosexuals, feminists, Democrats, and intellectuals.  Jerry said God rewards obedience and punishes rebellion in THIS life, so if you end up poor and sick, it’s your own fault.  Although he’s gone to his reward now, this pernicious, foolish fundamentalist ideology is alive and well all around us. 

Jesus was a Jew, the son of Mary and Joseph, one child in an ordinary Hebrew family, born out of wedlock.  Never ever did he call himself the son of God.  Charismatic and intense, critical of the religious establishment and passionate about social justice, he soon came into direct conflict with both the Temple authorities and the Roman Empire, and they conspired to execute him, but his career had touched so many lives that his name never died.  People who knew him or knew about him began writing his story, embellishing it according to their own agendas.  The author of Matthew, for instance, merged his biography of Jesus with the old Hebrew scriptures in order to influence Jews, while the author of Luke portrayed him in the context of Greek philosophy in order to influence the Hellenistic world.  That process continues today, as writers pander to modern readers, using Jesus to make millions from books and movies, and/or to mislead honest seekers in an effort to control other people.  Now we come to the United States of America, where conservatives profess to honor the Christian founders of this nation.  Ask any Presbyterian or Baptist what ‘Christian’ means, and I guarantee you that the conversation will include one biblical verse.  John 14:6:  No one comes to the Father except by me.  The implications of that verse are totally incompatible with the real Jesus and therefore he  could not have said it.

Our founding fathers were Christian in the same way that I am.  Steeped in the inescapable Judeo-Christian culture, we make the best of it, finding ways to preserve intellectual integrity.  Thomas Jefferson chose to keep what he called his Bible, but only after he had torn out and thrown away 90% of it.  Jesus  considered himself just one more human being like all others, and called himself the Son of MAN..  He did have a mission, a sense of consuming purpose, and that was to preach love and hope—the Good News.  The real message of the real Jesus was all about this life, not about heaven.

The evolution of Jesus images in this country was researched by Stephen Prothero, author of American Jesus.  While Catholics cling to the emaciated Christ on the crucifix, other segments of our culture have transformed him into Superman, warrior and movie star.  A painting called Yo Mama’s Last Supper was created by an Afro-American feminist artist.  Renee Cox portrayed the same setting as in the famous DaVinci painting, complete with all the same figures at the table, but this Jesus at the center is a naked female.  Evangelicals have now transformed Jesus’ message as well as his person.  In their hands he has become Rambo, complete with blazing guns.  You have to earn his love, bow down, sing and weep, fawning before his magnificence.  His message of good news to all humanity has been transformed into good news to some and very bad news to others, mostly the very ones Falwell hates. 

Reacting against this perversion and lacking the knowledge we need, many religious liberals have thrown in the towel.  We have allowed the evangelicals to provide false information, distorting our view of Jesus and alienating us from the theology in which Unitarianism was born.  The media has accepted the evangelical definition and now most Americans think that’s the one and only correct image.  I don’t mean to deny the sincerity of evangelical Christians.  Their theology is simplistic, but they cultivate a close relationship with the transformed Jesus and their worship experience is intensely spiritual--that’s why their churches are growing.  Mainstream Christian denominations such as the Episcopal church have liberal wings, where the image of Jesus is closer to reality, but they lack the spiritual vitality of the evangelicals.. 

Attempting to recover the real Jesus from history, scholars have used every relevant discipline from literary analysis to archeology, but it’s just not possible.  Albert Schweitzer said despite all our efforts, Jesus slips away from our time back into his own.  Mythology prevails over truth, and there is a lesson here for everyone.  Most UUs, no matter where our spiritual journey began, have a hard time finding a theological model that FITS.  We question ourselves endlessly, always looking for the spiritual garment that feels right.    Avoiding the racks of one-size-fits-all, we travel in and out of different doors, tasting all the ISMS old and new.

I recently hosted a meeting of seven teenagers, all the children of avowed, active UUs.  Some of them declared themselves to be atheists, but when I questioned them about the image and nature of this God they reject, I saw clearly that it’s the traditional Christian God.  They cannot move on to the essential step of reconstruction, building an original spirituality, until they finish the work of deconstruction.  Authentic adult faith cannot be found outside ourselves.  It must grow within us, fragile and green on the ruins of rejected theology.  Finally we will gather the materials for reconstruction and become ready, willing and able to raise the image of our own Higher Power,   honoring our own spirit with a unique creation.

I’m also still deconstructing.  The anger I still harbor is mostly against the USE of the Bible as a weapon.  But that’s really unfair to the book itself—it’s only words on paper, nothing more.  Some of those words have been inspirational to me, especially the few biblical nuggets that show Jesus as a community organizer, breaking the rules of his culture, and advocating for marginalized people—women, the physically and mentally ill, all the outsiders, and especially the poor.  For me, this is the real Jesus. His encounters with women give the clearest example. 

They say that he was in the Temple on Shabbat, and saw a woman who was bent over.  There was no obvious burden on her back, but she clearly could not stand up straight.  She did not approach him, but he called to her.  Whoever put this story into the gospel of Luke said that this woman had been in this painful shape for eighteen years.  Her name is not given—most women in the Bible are not named, but just called by their function or condition—widow, daughter, wife, harlot, and so on.  That’s because the authors were MEN in a culture where only men were people.   Jesus called to this woman and we are told that whatever he said or did, she stood up straight.

Back in 1984 when I was in seminary I attended worship at a Black Presbyterian church, where I was one of a few white people in a throng of Afro-Americans.  The preacher that day was a tall Black woman who taught at my seminary, and this story of the bent-over woman was her text.  I suspect the women in the congregation sensed what was coming, as they began murmuring Amen, and preach it, sister.  The preacher had been hunching over the pulpit, but suddenly she stood up to her full height—she was not a shrimp like me, but about six feet—and she raised her voice, calling now who do you suppose that daughter of Abraham was carrying on her back?  Was it her husband or her kids?  Was it the bill collectors or the politicians?  Voices came back at her out of the congregation—YES, YES, TELL IT.  And who’s on your back, the preacher shouted, how many women do you know who can’t stand up straight because they’re carrying their menfolk, their worries and debts, and they’re carrying the burden, YES I say the BURDEN of being black in a white world and female in a male country.  These prophetic words sent a chill down my spine.  

We will never, can never know exactly what Jesus said and did that so electrified ordinary people and so enraged the powers that be.   Historians speculate about the reasons why the Christian establishment chose to spiritualize his message and distance themselves from his politics.  The truth of his message has been buried, and those of us who have heard only the bastardized version have often said the hell with it.  But I believe the real Jesus spoke a message that is entirely faithful to the principles of UUism, and he spoke it that day from the mouth of a Black woman.  Community organizers and demonstrators who seek justice, defending the inherent worth and dignity of every person also carry that message.

Finally, I want to end with a demonstration of the teaching style of the real Jesus.  He knew his audience, knew what they believed and how they felt, knew the hardship and misery of their lives.  He started there, right where he knew they were.  I know what you’ve heard, he said, you’ve heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  BUT I SAY TO YOU….    And then he turned them away from hatred and violence toward love and hope.  Now in that spirit I say to you, I know what you’ve heard.   You’ve heard that nobody gets into heaven unless they turn their lives over to Jesus, whatever that means.  You’ve heard that the God of Jesus hates homosexuals, feminists, and those who worship other gods or none.  You’ve heard about the ten commandments and the fires of hell, about the so-called virgin birth and turning water into wine, BUT I SAY TO YOU, use your brain and don’t waste energy being angry at the Bible-thumpers.  THOSE WHO TALK HATE AND FEAR, those who would exclude most of humanity from full personhood, DO NOT KNOW THE REAL JESUS.     

I’ll be preaching as long as I live about the Son of Man as he exists in my spirit, transformed by my journey to Unitarianism.  His message belongs to all of us, liberal-minded Christians, come-outers, agnostics, atheists, pagans, and pantheists, all genders, all colors, all ages.  This message of love and hope, of respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person is enough to make all of us stand up straight.  Nobody, no church, no preacher, no denomination, not even the Pope owns that heritage.  WE can define the good news according to OUR principles, and KNOW that the real Jesus stands with us.    Amen.