"The Search for What Saves Us"

 Have you ever seen a sign, usually small and handmade, that says, "Jesus Saves" staring at you from some unlikely location?  Usually on a tree on the side of a throughway. I have seen many of these signs in my lifetime put up by some anonymous hands seeking nothing except to get their message out, in hopes of perhaps converting, saving, even one soul. I remember once many years ago a friend telling me she had driven past one such sign that was noticed by her young son who noticed it and muttered cynically to himself, "Jesus saves - yeah, at Stop and Shop."

 My UU colleague Steve Eddington from Nashua NH, says that every religion acknowledges some sort of vision of wholeness - a state of complete harmony -  oneness with themselves, with Life, with Creation, with God--however understood. But something happens to rupture or pollute the relationship. In other words, each of  us has a fundamental sense of disharmony.  The goal of the religion, then, is to restore that broken relationship to wholeness again--if not in this life then in the next, or in some other realm of existence or being.

 Judging from my own experience, of myself and those I have known, I think he's right. And whatever it is that brings us into better harmony with all that is, is a saving process.  In that sense, we UU's like any other human beings, want to be saved. Today I'd like to touch upon a few different views of what salvation is.

 Today, Palm Sunday, is an apt day to talk about salvation. For Christians, the idea that Jesus saves grew out of the events that took plave between Palm Sunday and Easter. This week is known to Christians as Holy Week.  For those of you who have no Christian background, Palm Sunday is also the day when the account of Jesus' betrayal and death, known as the Passion, is often read. The idea that Jesus saves came out of these events.

 So let's begin. Picture, if you will, Jesus and his disciples headed toward Jerusalem which is crowded with people who are in the city to celebrate the Passover feast. Jesus' appearance seemed to be drawing more people than usual, possibly because he caused a stir recently when he raised Lazarus from the dead. Jesus was said to perform miracles, but he also taught a healing message of love, mercy and forgiveness - and walked his talk. Noting the large crowds, the Apostles sense an opportunity. and suggest that Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem, and get one for him from a nearby farmer.  In order to appreciate the impact of this image you have to know that every educated Jew who knew their Scriptures was familiar with the passages that foretold that a future king would one day ride into Jerusalem on a humble donkey.  (who said there was no such thing as political spin in those days - those disciples knew what they were doing!) This messiah-on-a-donkey symbolism couldn't be missed.

 As the word of his arrival spread, believers greeted him carrying palms, a Roman symbol of triumph, shouting, " Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" , "Hail King of Israel!", and crying out "Hosanna"! a word that means savior. There was already a buzz in the city about Jesus, so people flocked to see him out of religious fervor, out of plain old ("Who is this guy?") curiosity and out of contempt for those who held him in esteem. But once they got a closer look, this rag tag carpenter from lowly Nazareth being followed by a band of misfits would certainly have brought them all up short. 

 The Scriptures described a different kind of messiah - a warrior. There were many Scripture passages like Numbers 24: 17  which says, "a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of the Shethites…" They expected a messiah who would put the people of Israel back in power. They were looking for a strong, worldly king like David who could conquer their enemy with military might. Frankly, salvation was pretty straightforward concept for ancient peoples - it meant having your enemy overpowered because your God was stronger than their God. This guy didn't look like he could crush anyone. What kind of salvation could he deliver?

 Clearly, if Jesus saved, it was not in the traditional sense - the word was going to have to take on a new meaning. And, as Paul Harvey likes to say, you know the rest of the story. Not only did he not rise up and seize temporal power, Jesus was condemned by the authorities and died, innocent of any crime, a slow and painful criminal's death on the cross. This was a bitter cup which  he accepted as the will of God, even though he didn't understand it.  "Thy will, not mine, be done", were among his agonized last words.

 But there were many followers who had walked with him and knew him, and to them he was the real thing, and the message he had taught them rang true. So they continued to walk and preach his message. But given his ignominious end how could Jesus be understood as a savior for those who would emulate him?  If there were a positive, life sustaining message in this painful narrative, what was it?  The answer, developed carefully over centuries following his death, and which has served to shape the Christian tradition in significant ways, is called the Doctrine of Atonement. Shades of it can first be seen in the Nicene Creed in the 4^th century which reads, "[Jesus] who for us and for our salvation, came down, took flesh, was made man; and suffered."  The 5th century theologian, Augustine, comments on the significance of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem saying:  "The master of humility is Christ who humbled himself and became obedient even to death, even the death of the cross.  But the full answer to "How does Jesus save?" the Doctrine of Atonement, was not crafted until a thousand years later at the Council of Trent.

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 Van Harvey's Handbook of Theological Terms, describes the Doctrine of Atonement as follows:  Humankind, since Adam has been born in sin, which is an affront to the infinite majesty and honor of God. Such an affront requires an infinite satisfaction. (I assume the word satisfaction here means punishment.) But since no creature can offer such satisfaction, God himself must offer [or accept] it, although in human form since it is on behalf of humanity.  Therefore, Jesus took upon himself the punishment properly due humankind and thus satisfied God's just demands."  In short, Jesus died for the sins of the world. Those who believe in him, would, through him, achieve everlasting life. In this structure, salvation has changed and is now understood as the deliverance from a sinful or fallen state into a redeemed or "saved" one.

 There is no doubt that for many of millions of people who have modeled their lives on their understanding of who Jesus was, and sought to emulate him and to live by his teachings, personal, saving transformation has been real and lasting.  In this sense, I am not going to question the reality of whether Jesus saves. It is my belief that the teachings of the humble man who was Jesus,  are indeed a saving force in the world.

 But Jesus himself never taught the doctrine of Atonement as the meaning of his life. I believe that to focus on his death as a saving act - to suggest that it is possible for an innocent to suffer and by so doing to somehow cleanse the sins of others twists the  message of his life and confuses any conception of a God that is good.  John Dominic Crossan, a respected, if controversial, Jesus scholar and author of Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, called Atonement "the most unfortunately successful idea in the history of Christian thought." 

 Rita Brock, a research associate at Harvard Divinity School and Rebecca Ann Parker, president of Starr King School for Ministry, would agree.  They have co-written an interesting study of suffering and its role in the Christian faith entitled, Proverbs of Ashes.  They argue that many Christian women have remained in abusive situations because they have been taught that suffering is necessary for spiritual deepening. They charge that the theological assertion that God required the death of Jesus to save the world sanctions violence and encourages individuals to accept suffering passively. They charge that Christianity cannot promise healing for victims of intimate violence as long as its central image is a divine parent who requires the death of his child. 

 “[Brock and Parker] make an eloquent argument using their own life stories as well as stories of other women whose faith has caused them harm. The book opens with the story of Anola  - a woman who stayed with a husband who beat her in order to keep her family together. A very religious woman, Anola thought a good woman should be willing to accept personal pain, and keep the good of family unity as her highest value. She would say, ‘Your life is only valuable if it’s given away’ and ‘This is my cross to bear,’ Jesus didn’t turn away from his cup of suffering when God asked him to drink it." When this woman died at the hands of her husband, Parker felt she was a victim of her own misguided theology that innocent suffering could be redemptive.

 Although Brock and Parker reject the traditional idea of atonement, - they accept the teachings of Jesus, but not the passive suffering he modeled on the cross.  They do not let go of their faith, their God or their search for what saves. Out of their own struggles they come to assert that we are saved by  "diverse supportive communities of loving persons, in whose presence we experience God."

 
Are you wondering where we UU's fit in with all this? I had to smile when I looked at the headline of our weekly write-up in the Middleboro Gazette this week.  It said, "Unitarians Search for Salvation." I can imagine that some of our neighbors might have read that and thought, "Well, it's about time they came around."  But if they had read further they would have come across a reference to Crossan's accusation that the doctrine of Atonement was an unfortunate idea, and then they would have likely decided that we are still hopeless.

And by traditional Christian standards, perhaps many of us are. Most of us reject doctrinal arguments out of hand. But that does not mean we do not seek salvation.  The headline was accurate I think. We UU's do not believe people are born into a state of sin from which they must be saved. Since we believe in neither original sin nor hell, we do not feel a need to be saved in that sense. I think it is fair to say that we do believe we should be judged by how well we live our lives and serve others, not in what a redeemer will do for us.  I think it is safe to say, too, that no one can redeem another by the shedding of  innocent blood.  We certainly respect religious and spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Moses and Buddha for what they can teach us about living, but not as redeemers in the traditional sense.

So what would the meaning of salvation be for a UU? Many Unitarian Universalists use the word salvation and wholeness interchangeably. For ancient peoples salvation meant having a God that was strong enough to give you the power - and this could be military - to defeat your enemy. Salvation later came to be understood as being freed from one's sins through the suffering of Jesus on the cross. What does salvation as wholeness mean?  There is not one answer, but I have a few thoughts that touch upon an answer. One part is that we are not saved from without but from within.  We approach wholeness by entering into responsibility for ourselves just as that little boy did in our children's story this morning. He listened to that still, small, voice of conscience within and took responsibility for what he did wrong - he admitted to himself that he lied, confessed and vowed to tell the truth. He was thinking about how to be a good person - and trying to practice it. This is one step towards wholeness. Another thought comes from the song that Ed sang for us this morning, "Watch With Me". The lyrics describe Jesus, lonely, afraid of what was to come, enduring a dark night of the soul. Jesus asks his companions to stay with him for an hour as he prays.  They try to "watch with him" as he requests, and they mean well, but they cannot do it.  They fall asleep.

I don't know that we need to assume that his companions were literally asleep so much as that they were spiritually asleep, unconscious to the great suffering of their companion, or unwilling to face it. Wholeness means being emotionally awake to what is going on around us - to our joy and our pain.  Salvation comes from supporting one another as Parker and Brock say, in diverse, supportive communities. If we can stay awake - here we will glimpse God, as they suggest.

Since this is Holy Week for Christians I don't want to be interpreted as being disrespectful toward the notion that Jesus is a saving presence in history. Unitarians tend to express their search for salvation more as a search for wholeness.  Can the life and teachings of Jesus offer a means of continued growth toward wholeness?  Absolutely.  And so can the teachings of Moses, Buddha and Mohammed.

These are dark and troubled times - times that call for us to listen to that still, small voice within. Some today still seek salvation from without in the form of military might.  Others seek it by emulating the life and teachings of a given religious leader - still others through a variety of spiritual practices such as meditation or in seeking to be in harmony with the earth. But if salvation is to be understood as wholeness - as a union with all that is, then it cannot be achieved in isolation. We need one another in spite of our differences and disagreements, no matter how impossible that may seem.  Perhaps this ultimately explains Jesus' refusal to lash out violently at those who would do him harm. And on that dark night in the garden at Gethsemane he needed his companions and asked them to be with him.

Although our lives are spent in a search for wholeness, the word implies a completion that is only possible for fleeting moments in a world in which change is the essential condition. The search itself is our own to pursue. As we seek it serves us well to remember the messages that come to us out of the life of Jesus.  Go in peace.