“BIBLICAL EXEGESIS FOR A FREE RELIGION”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
My text for this morning comes from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter Three, verse Six:
“(God) has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
(I know what some of you may be thinking: “Last week he preached on ‘sin,’ and now he begins with a biblical text. Did I stumble into the wrong church here?)
I grant that it is not customary for me to begin with a scriptural reference, though I do from time to time. Today I couldn’t create a better overview of the free religious perspective on scripture: the written code kills, but the spirit gives life.
I am often asked how Unitarians view the Bible. Like most general questions about our tradition, there is no one single answer. There is a wide diversity of views, which is to be expected whenever a religious tradition is rooted in freedom of belief.
But by and large, the views we have cluster around the ideas offered in the reading by two diverse voices of liberal religion: Theodore Parker and Albert Schweitzer. In both cases, they see the Bible as an inspirational source for the fundamentally ethical religion that Jesus taught. Both of them are concerned that tradition has evolved since Jesus’ time which has placed metaphysical beliefs above ethical religious living, and has turned the Bible itself into a golden-calf-like idol to be worshipped. They see this trend as the corruption of the simple religion taught by Jesus of Nazareth.
I can add to these two names that of the Unitarian Thomas Jefferson, who it seems had a little extra time on his hands while he was President. He ordered copies of the New Testament in Greek, Hebrew, French and English, then spent a few evenings going through the Gospels, scissors in hand, cutting out the parts that seemed inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus, but keeping the parts that seemed consistent with his teachings. The result was a book, still in publication, called The Jefferson Bible. He gave it the simple title: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
He shared this project with his good friend, Universalist Benjamin Rush. In a letter to Rush, he summarized his view of how we must consider the New Testament Gospels:
Jesus’ teachings have been “disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust and to view Jesus himself as an imposter. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man.” (letter to Benjamin Rush)
“To the corruptions of Christianity, I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.” (letter to Benjamin Rush)
What these three examples have in common – Theodore Parker, Albert Schweitzer, and Thomas Jefferson – is their attempt to identify the spirit of the Gospels and lift that above the text itself. What they find there, all three of them, is a profound ethical religion – the finest ever taught. They also conclude that Jesus’ religion has been clouded over the centuries by those who would smother the spirit of Jesus’ message with the fastidious reading of arcane biblical comments, and making the molehill of theology into a mountain.
What they argue has been said before. It can be found in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians:
“(God) has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
These words, to me, are a warning not to take scripture literally, but rather as a document that inspires support and guidance on the spiritual quest to a life of real integrity. Contrary to what some might say, it is not a handbook or “how to” manual about life; it is a treasured source of deeply-thought-out wisdom of life’s principles. It is a book of inspiration, not memoir of events. When used to inspire the human spirit, it gives life. When used as a rigid code of unchangeable rules, it denies life.
By the way, there is some irony that the words of Paul, written in the form of a letter, would be treated by those who came after him as scripture – “scripture” that would become “written code,” rather than simply spiritual advice to the new Christian communities.
But the meaning of scripture transcends the written code. The effect of Jesus’ ministry was to reform the fundamentalisms of his day, to question the literal interpretation of scripture as it was known then, the rigid strict rules of behavior that had nothing to do with ethical principles of religious life. His ministry was anti-fundamentalist. He questioned strict adherence to dietary laws, strict observance of the Sabbath, strict requirement for the rite of circumcision as entry into God’s fold, and so forth. Based on his leadership in those days, I believe he would be aghast today to see, in his name, religious voices that require strict adherence to pietistic rules, rather than ethical and spiritual living, as the fulfillment of his teaching.
So far, what I’ve said probably doesn’t startle Unitarian Universalist ears, I know. This is not the message UUs need to hear. But stay with me. I believe there is much we do need to hear.
Draw a continuum. At one end put those who believe we should approach the scriptures literally – that it means exactly what it says, that it is not a great metaphor with deeper meaning to be explored. At the other end of the continuum, put those who approach the Bible as a book of wisdom and inspiration, who find meaning not in the truth of the stories, but rather in the relevance of the stories to the issues of living we face.
Draw that continuum, and I suggest that both the fundamentalist and the anti-biblical, anti-religious secularist are at the same end. Both take the Bible literally, at face value. Both believe the Bible should be understood at surface value – that it means what it says, and nothing more. There are many at the other end of that continuum, though – both religious and secular – who believe the meaning of the biblical text is deeper than the factuality of its narrative. They look for inspiration behind the story itself. At this end of the continuum, the value of the story has nothing to do with whether the event actually happened.
So, there are those who take the Bible literally and think it’s true. There are those who take the Bible literally and think it’s false. These two types have more in common with each other, I think, by their literalism, than they have differences.
Take for example the miracle stories about Jesus: turning water into wine, healing the lepers, the blessing of the loaves and the fishes. Only if you read these literally would the question “is it true” make any sense at all. Only if you read this literally would the answer “yes it happened,” or “no, it didn’t happen” matter at all. But if the Bible is inspiration and spiritual guidance, rather than a literal textbook of history, the question of whether it actually happened is irrelevant. If the Bible is taken for inspiration, the question about whether the story it tells is truth or legend doesn’t matter in the face of whether the stories have meaning for you.
If the message of the loaves and fishes story concerns how our positive thoughts and faith sometimes make things work out in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, is the question of whether it really happened important?
There is a difference between taking a story literally or taking a story seriously. I doubt if anyone believes, for example, that Romeo and Juliet were actual people who walked the earth. But their story, as told by Shakespeare, is real and serious. It tells how love is so often a struggle, that lovers often faces challenges from society around them, and that love can lead to great tragedy, though it is ultimately more powerful than the tragedy itself.
Does it really matter to anyone whether Romeo or Juliet ever lived? Would taking the story literally be more meaningful than taking it seriously? Would anyone say that believing it actually happened is more important than learning from its lessons, or that those who think of it as fiction are any less inspired by it than those who might think of it as history?
I say all this, making a distinction between being literal and being serious, not because I want to defend the fact that the Bible has value before those who hold it to be literal and true. I make this distinction to defend the value of the Bible before those who believe it to be literal and believe it to be false.
Unitarian Universalists don’t need a sermon about what is wrong with taking the Bible as literally true. That would be preaching to the choir (my apologies to the All Souls Choir). But in my experience among UUs in general – and I confess in my own religious search as well – we would profit from being reminded there’s something equally dangerous in taking the Bible as literally false as there is in taking the Bible as literally true. Both cases hold the Bible to a different standard than any other human book of wisdom, and both cases ignore the wisdom beneath the text.
When it comes to how the Bible is often used in our culture today, many Unitarian Universalists are the walking wounded. Many of us have, since childhood, been targets of those who would use the Bible as a weapon to punish anyone who strayed from their understanding of the Bible.
“The Bible says you’re going to spend eternity in Hell.”
“The Bible says your lifestyle is a sin against God.”
“The Bible says all you really need to know about anything.”
“The Bible says you were born in sin and will die in sin unless you are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.”
Many UU’s have a knee-jerk negative association with the Bible because of how they have seen it exploited by others to condemn all who disagree. I understand that. I’ve been there.
But too often, such wounds become fatal, and those wounded are too ready to dismiss, or worse, deny the value that is found in scripture. The Bible is, without question, the most influential book in Western history; it has offered guidance to more people and for a much longer time than anything else in history. Too many who have been wounded by a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible seem dangerously willing to surrender its powerful legacy to the people who wield it as a weapon against others.
John Buehrens is a former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and author of an intriguing book called “Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, Religious Liberals.” In that book, Buehrens presented it this way:
“Today, many otherwise well-informed people – religious liberals, seekers after wisdom and justice, even skeptics and the news media – often speak as though the Bible says and means only what those fundamentalists say that it says and means!
“This shows not only a lack of understanding but also a failure of maturity and wisdom. Those who reject or neglect the Bible fail to recognize that to ‘throw the Bible out’ because others have turned it into an idol, or because you don’t accept what you take to be the conventional understanding of its teachings, doesn’t mean that it ever goes away. Rather it simply means that it ends up only in the hands and on the lips of others – often reactionary others – where it can and will be used against you.”
I think John is absolutely right. To reject the Bible is to deliver it as a gift to into the hands of those who will use it, and misuse it, to shape a world that is exclusionary and dogmatic.
The Bible, I believe, belongs to all of us. But to claim our part of that ownership, it may be necessary to understand a different approach to the wisdom of scripture than many are used to. I am not talking about a new approach – it goes back at least to Jefferson, Parker, and Schweitzer.
“Exegesis” is the word we use to describe how scripture is studied to find its meaning. The tools used are many: historical analysis, literary analysis, and so on. It turns out there are a multitude of ways we can study the Bible and find meaning to it. I will wind up my comments this morning by mentioning only one such way.
Most scholars agree that of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Fourth Gospel, John, is astoundingly different from the other three in both style and content. The Jesus of the first three Gospels preaches a down-to-earth ethical religion, offers many parables for people to reflect on right and wrong, and speaks in brief sayings that are easily quotable. The Jesus of the Gospel of John is almost entirely different: a mystic who preaches about his own divinity (something never hinted at in the other Gospels), and who never uses parables, but delivers long and complex speeches.
Since the first three Gospels were written earlier, and since they largely agree with each other, most scholars are inclined to believe them to reflect more accurately the original story of Jesus. Albert Schweitzer, for example, wrote extensively about the historical Jesus. He found the Gospel of John to be useless in trying to understand the true nature of Jesus. He called it “unhistoric.” Thomas Jefferson, who carefully studied the historical record of the Gospels, found John to be a corruption of Jesus’ teachings which the other Gospels outlined far more reliably.
It has been the tradition of free and liberal religion to embrace the religion of Jesus taught through the story of the first three Gospels rather than the very different religion found in John. As a result, we find a religion taught that encourages compassion, that asks us to love our neighbor, that offers courage and guidance in facing life’s challenges. It is an ethical religion far more than metaphysical theology found elsewhere.
It is an inspiring story that has been the inspiration for so many groups and individuals who have known life’s suffering. It is a story that invites us to re-claim the Bible as a treasure of wisdom for humanity.
Yes, it is true that the Bible may have been the source of so much anti-Semitism over the centuries, but it is also true that it has been the biblical stories of Exodus that sustained the Jewish people, as it sustained Jesus and those around him, in the face of oppression.
It may be true
that the Bible was used to justify slavery in early
It may be true that after slavery, the ruling classes used the Bible to continue oppression of African Americans and contain them as second-class citizens, but it is also true that without the prophetic voice of the Bible against such oppression, voices like that of Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference would not have been as effective as they were in tearing down those walls of oppression.
I will close with the words used by John Buehrens as a kind of summary in his book:
“The text (of the Bible) deserves critical thought, to be sure. But so do our own prejudices against the texts. If you are a skeptic, seeker, and liberal, yet want the Bible to reveal its wisdom to you, only this is required: that you do the texts justice, and look for how the texts themselves can serve justice; that you practice imaginative compassion in your readings; and that you walk humbly in your quest for liberating wisdom.”
READING: from Theodore Parker, A Discourse on Religion.
The good influence of the Bible, past and present as of all religious books, rests on its religious significance. . . . Some people fear the Bible will be destroyed by freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Let it perish if such be the case. Truth cannot fear the light, nor are people so mad as to forsake a well of living water. All the free thinking in the world could not destroy the Iliad; how much less the truths of the Bible, which. . . has already endured the greatest abuse at the hands of its friends, who make it into an idol, and would have everyone do it homage. We need call none our master, but the Master of All. Yet the Bible, if wisely used, is still a blessed teacher. (In) spite of the superstition and folly of its worshippers, it has helped millions to the fountain where Moses and Jesus, with the holy hearted of all time, have stopped and been filled.
We see the
mistakes of its writers, for though noble and of great stature, they saw not
all things. We reject their follies; but
their words of truth are still before us, to admonish, to encourage, and to
bless... The light that shone at
Can truth decease, and a good idea once made real ever perish? The human quest, moving solemnly on its appointed road, from age to age, passed by its imperfect teachers, guided by their lights, blessed by their toil, sprinkled with their blood. But before and above us forever.
(adapted)
READING from The Psychiatric Study of Jesus by Albert Schweitzer (1913)
“Even if liberal Christianity has to give up identifying its belief with the teachings of Jesus in the way it used to think possible, it still has the spirit of Jesus not against it but on its side. Jesus no doubt fits his teaching into the late Jewish Messianic dogma. But he does not think dogmatically. He formulates no doctrine. He is far from judging any man’s belief by reference to any standard of dogmatic correctness. Nowhere does he demand of his hearers that they shall sacrifice thinking to believing. Quite to the contrary! He bids them meditate upon religion. In the Sermon on the Mount he lets ethics, as the essence of religion, flood their hearts, leading them to judge the value of piety by what it makes of a man from the ethical point of view. Within the Messianic hopes which his hearers carry in their hearts, he kindles the fire of an ethical faith. Thus the Sermon on the Mount becomes the incontestable charter of liberal Christianity. The truth that the ethical is the essence of religion is firmly established on the authority of Jesus.” Pp 24-26