C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for October 7, 2007 Let’s begin with some fun, shall we? Ten Ways the Bible Would Have Been Different If Written by Progressives: 10) Instead of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden- it would have been Adam and Steve in the local, organic farmers market of Eden 9) The Forbidden Fruit would instead be the forbidden trans-fats 8) The Ten Commandments would become the ten generally held, hard to interpret, and not morally binding, suggestions 7) Protestors at Joshua’s invasion of the Canaanites would hold up signs saying “No blood for milk and honey.” 6) Jonah was in the belly of the whale as an insider for Green peace’s Save the Whales project 5) The gospels or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would be consolidated into one Gospel known as the Gospel of Marx. 4) Just for fun, the story would have been included of the time when Jesus was a boy growing up. He heard a scream and ran outside- he said to Joseph “You called me?” Joseph replied- ‘No, I hit my thumb with a hammer!” 3) The story of Jesus and the 5 loaves and 2 fish would become 5-grain loaves and 2 non-endangered fish 2) Paul wouldn’t write an epistle to the church of Corinth to tell them that he was moving on; he would email asking them to support Move on.org 1) It would have been Three Wise Women instead of Three Wise Men- Perspectives on the Bible The Bible! A best seller for centuries, which is hardly fair, because for many of those centuries people were forbidden to read anything else. But in any case, the Bible has been a hugely significant book, used for both good and not so good purposes. In a community such as ours, there would be a range of different reactions and perspectives on the Bible- some people will have been hurt by the Bible and want nothing to do with it. Some people will have been hurt by people’s misuse of it to justify violence and hatred against them and those they care about. Those people may want to leave the Bible well behind. There will be people sitting here this morning that will find the words of the Bible irrelevant to their lives, and may be happy to leave the Bible behind. Then there may be others still who are seeking a new way to understand the Bible so that it may still have some meaning in today’s world. Here is my perspective: I’m not ready to give the Bible up. I’m not ready to give it up to those who use a literal reading to justify their own prejudices, as this so often leads to violence, bigotry and hatred. I’m seeking a new way of reading the Bible, a way that is life affirming, affirming self-expression, love and humanity. I’m looking for a new way to read the Bible so we can still take from its wisdom and inspiration, and so that it doesn’t get hijacked by literalists. They can’t have it. I won’t stand for it! We are part of a community that will seek new meaning and refuse to give the Bible up to narrow agendas. So I want to spend some time seeing how we can come to some new understandings of even the most difficult texts, like that in Leviticus 18: 19 You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her I wonder if that reading makes you uncomfortable? It is an uncomfortable experience, so what do we do with a text like that? I want to make three points. First, the Bible is a story. First and foremost the Bible is a story, and it has a context. Second, the Bible has been misused for centuries by literalists to justify prejudice, hatred and violence. Enough of this abuse! Prejudice is the last thing a church and its sacred text should encourage. I stand for the separation of “church and hate.” I demand the separation of “church and hate.” Is that ambitious enough for one sermon? I feel a little like a mosquito on a nudist beach- so much to do, and I don’t know where to begin! The Bible Is a Story Nowhere in the Bible does it say that its teaching should be taken literally. Nor does it say that the stories are morally prescribed absolutes for all time. Nowhere does it say that. That is something that has been read back into the text through the centuries, because it served certain agendas. The Bible is a series of metaphors, stories, poems, and parables, and doesn’t contain moral absolutes. We would not expect to take parables or poems literally, would we? The best example of this is when the Bible describes Jesus as the “Lamb of God.” You may want to try this out with some of your friends that read the Bible literally. Ask them if the image of Jesus as the Lamb of God is literally true. Did Jesus have hooves and wool? I’ve never met a single person who literally believes that Jesus was an actual lamb. Have you? No one in the world thinks that Jesus was literally a lamb. So why then do some people think that Jesus was literally the Son of God? What’s the difference? Jesus wasn’t literally the Lamb of God. It’s just an image that made sense in the first century as a way to describe peoples’ experience of Jesus as being self sacrificial. Jesus was not literally the Son of God. That was just an image to describe some peoples’ experience of Jesus as being self assured. If you don’t take Lamb of God and Son of God literally, how do you decide which parts of the Bible you might take literally? Those who say that the Bible has a moral authority for all time are inconsistent. I’ve not met a single person in my life, amongst those who read it literally, who follow the commandments fully or consistently. Stop and think for a moment. It says in the Bible that it is immoral to touch the skin of a pig. That means that football is immoral! Football is immoral, and not only that, but it is punishable by death. I’ve never met a single person who is prepared to say that football players should be executed because touching a football is immoral. Similarly, I’ve never met anyone prepared to go so far as to advocate the death sentence for anyone who works on the Sabbath. Yet the Bible, if read literally, says that should happen. That would certainly put a bit of a dent in the retail industry. No one thinks we should put to death those who work on the Sabbath. Or those who eat shellfish. They are gone too! That is a no-no, immoral and punishable by death, as is someone who wears clothes that are a mixture of wool and linen. That’s what the Bible says. It’s immoral, according to a literal reading of the Bible, to wear clothing of mixed material. I’ve never met anyone in this day and age who justifies slavery or polygamy, yet these are also things that the Bible affirms and encourages. The point is that no one takes the Bible literally. People claim to be taking it literally as the word of God, but all they are doing is picking and choosing the parts that make sense to them or justify their agenda. No one is completely consistent in following the commandments of the Bible. Now we come to the Leviticus text, which is a very strange reading for church. I hope it made you uncomfortable, that was my aim. It is a reading that has a context. What do we do with words such as those from Leviticus? Bishop Spong says we should remove them, they are wrong and unhelpful, and we should take them out of our lexicon. I take a slightly different perspective. I don’t believe that these words were ever directed at anyone other than the Hebrew people. Nowhere in those words does it say that these commandments are morally binding for all people and for all time. If we understand the context to these readings it gives us some new understanding. These words came at a point when the Hebrew people had just come out of Babylonian exile. The whole aim of the exile was ethnic cleansing, racial genocide, to breed the Hebrew people out of existence. Having survived that, this remnant, this small group of survivors of the exile had a very particular task. They had a need to breed. It was to breed in order for their culture to have longevity so their culture could be strong going forward, both in number and identity. The moral and ritual code of Leviticus was an attempt to build the number, the strength of the identity of the Hebrew people, nothing more and nothing less. The only sexual ethic in Leviticus was pragmatic. It was the need to breed. To suggest that this text has some moral relevance today is nothing short of ridiculous. We have the opposite problem today, the need NOT to breed. To suggest that the words of Leviticus at a time that there was a need to breed would still hold today in our over populated world is nothing short of absurd. Read as a literal ethic for all time is absurd. However this is a very useful text if we get out of our head that it is a moral edict for our time. Rather it tells the story of a group of people trying to make sense of their context, come to terms with the cultural devastation, and devise what for them would be the boundaries of their cultural identity. That is fascinating, useful and inspiring. Walter Wink said that there is no one sexual ethic in the Bible. There are many. That too is inspiring. What we have in the Bible are stories of lots of different groups doing the best they could to make sense of their world, and come up with a code of behavior that would mark them out as being distinctive in their context. The Separation of Church and Hate Many people justify their own prejudices with an appeal to a literal reading of certain Bible texts. A month ago, a Nigerian bishop in the Anglican community made the most violent of statements. Some of you may be following the news about the division in the Anglican or Episcopal church, divided over the issue of sexuality. The African bishops are taking a lead on the conservative perspective, and many American churches are looking to leave their local dioceses and join with the African church. This is what the Nigerian Bishop said: “Homosexuality and lesbianism are inhuman. Those who practice them are insane, satanic, and are not fit to live because they are rebels to God’s purposes for man.” Could there be a more hateful statement than that? What about God’s purposes to be kind to each other? What about God’s purposes for us to be decent in our humanity and encourage others to the full expressions their humanity? There could not be a more hateful statement, one that incites hatred and violence against a segment of the community. A few weeks ago the Iranian president gave a speech in which he said that there is no homosexuality in Iran. With that one statement, he wrote out of existence a whole portion of the community in Iran. Of course there are gay and lesbian people in Iran. Otherwise they would not have laws that make it immoral, and they would not have spent the last decades punishing people who practice homosexuality openly. With one statement the president wiped out of existence a sector of the community. When you wipe a sector of the community out of existence you take away all their basic human rights. I could give you so many more examples where people use text from the Bible to justify their bigotry, prejudice, hatred and violence. I won’t have it. The Bible should not be used that way, a Bible that is all about self-expression and the affirming of humanity. I believe in the separation of church and hate. I demand the separation of church and hate. Jesus was all about the separation of church and hate, removing prejudice and hatred from religion. Rescuing the Bible from Literalism As progressive religious people we need to ensure that the Bible is not hijacked by particular literal interpretations. We need to ensure that there is a progressive perspective on the Bible and that this voice is clear and intelligent. Contemporary people need to know that there are other ways to read the Bible that are life affirming. This new interpretation of the Bible must be made publicly known so that it’s clear that not all religious people are bigoted and hateful. There is a new way of understanding the Bible, that is not literal and the keys to unlocking this new interpretation of the Bible are found in the very words of the Bible. Several hundred years before Jesus, these words from Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” Hundreds of years before Jesus, the prophet pointed to a subjective ethical standard. That is, each person will know what is right and what is wrong by their own conscience. One won’t teach another or indoctrinate another. One won’t tell another what their moral standard must be. Each person will express themselves and find their own truth and moral standard. Each will know what is right and wrong according to their own conscience because the Bible is written on their hearts. The New Testament takes this subjective standard a step further in John’s gospel, where the writer speaks of “The word becoming flesh.” The word, or the Bible, became flesh. The Bible affirms self-expression. All that is human, including our sexuality, is affirmed. Its not just about human rights, this self expression is nothing less than a manifestation of God. The God within is expressed through our humanity, and our sexuality. Torah, the subjective standard, the Word, the Bible, words that reveal a liberating truth that is in our expression of humanity. Tell the Story Self-expression is the ultimate theology. So in this community we make an emphasis out of encouraging people to express themselves. Tell your story. Manifest God through your humanity, including your sexuality. Tell the stories. One of my favorite stories about telling the story is about an ancient rabbi who, every time he sensed he was losing his core or center, would go out to a particular place in the forest, light a fire in a particular way and recite certain words from the Torah. As he did that he would become grounded in his own core as a divine manifestation. It was a profound experience. His students saw that and wanted to emulate him. So after he died they went to the same place but did not know how to light the fire, so they would go and recite the same words from the Torah, and for them that would be enough. They would become grounded in their own experience and expression, a manifestation of divinity. Then the next generation didn’t know how to light the fire or recite the Torah, they would just stand in the forest. They would state that they did not know to light the fire nor did they know the words of the Torah, but they would just stand together, and know that this would be sufficient. And it was. The next generation couldn’t even find the spot in the forest, so they would sit in their homes in a circle, beginning their words by saying, “We cannot find the forest, we don’t know how to build a fire, or recite the Torah, but we know that just sitting together and telling our story will be sufficient.” And it was. Simply telling stories together is sufficient. This community invites your story. And your story is sufficient. As it is said in the words from today’s opening hymn, you are words within the Word. You are words of God being manifested in a particular time and place within the larger cosmic story, which is the Word that transcends time and space. You are words of God manifesting divinity in your particular humanity, in your sexuality, in your personality. You are words within the Word of God. Tell your story. Tell your story about the times when you have suffered abuse and violence at the hands of religious bigots. Tell your stories of what it is like to be trapped in a closet of fear. Express yourself. Describe what its like to be liberated from this closet, to share in full humanity and have others affirm your expression of humanity. Tell your stories, and that will be sufficient. It will be part of the healing of the planet. Consider the Bible in this context. Read it as no more and no less than a wonderfully inspiring story, a series of metaphors and poems and parables that describe certain cultures, doing the best they could to manifest full humanity in their time and place. And let us be inspired by their example in our time, to do the best that we can alongside each other, in the full array of our sexual diversity, to live more fully, love more freely and be all that we can be.
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