Belief and Authentic Living
Easter 7, Sunday May 4, 2008
Scripture: John 17: 1 - 11
Easter 7, Sunday May 4, 2008
Scripture: John 17: 1 - 11
What a truly amazing experience it was to go on a tour of western Turkey. It’s going to take quite a while for me to assimilate all that I have seen and heard during the 15 days. It was wonderful to see all of the incredible archeological sites and to enjoy the marvelous scenery. Through it all, I believe I have come to a deeper understanding of a region that could well be described as a birthplace of civilization. While I’m still dealing with some jetlag and haven’t yet been able to collect all of my thoughts, it was serendipitous to read an article in Saturday’s journey entitled “A new ‘road map’ for Islam in Turkey.
Turkey is a place of contrasting and at times conflicting beliefs. Officially Turkey is a ‘secular’ country that has enshrined in its constitution freedom of religion. In practice about 1% of the population identify with religions other than Islam. The government has decreed that everyone who does not profess a different faith is considered Moslem. However, within Turkey, about 30 of 70 million people would be secular or non-practicing Moslems. It’s rather like saying that Canada is still a Christian country because the majority of the population is Christian. In fact, the majority of people in Canada do not participate regularly in faith communities.
One of the first things you notice upon arriving in Turkey is that there are mosques everywhere. Five times a day the call to prayer, chanted by a muezzin, is played over loud speakers from the minarets of all of the mosques, so that as we were preparing to sleep and before we were ready to rise, the call to prayer was played. At the same time on the streets, it was as if everyone was oblivious to the chants and people carried on their business as if nothing was happening. If you were near to a mosque, people could be seen at the fountains washing their faces, hands and feet in preparation to enter for prayers.
The article that I alluded to a few moments ago in yesterday’s Journal talks about a group of Turkish scholars who are spearheading a reinterpretation of the literary foundations of Islam and some are comparing it to the Protestant Reformation that occurred in the 15th century. A team of 80 Islamic academics from around the world is preparing to release a revised collection of the Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds. At the end of the article, one of the scholars, Fadi Hakura said: “The Turkish experiment may inspire future debate, and that in itself would be a significant achievement for the West to dramatically show clearly that religion and modernity are not contradictory, but compatible.”
We live in a time when Christian people hold an amazing diversity of perspectives concerning Jesus. While I have been in Mill Woods United, I’ve met people who believe that Jesus was a man of history—a prophet, and teacher who lived in the first century, a Jewish peasant, a social revolutionary, a healer, a religious cynic, a great example or model for courageous and ethical living. I have also met people who believe that Jesus is the Christ of faith. He may or may not have existed in history, but regardless, he is lord, or savior, or Son of God, or mystic, or the Word, or consciousness, or any other number of metaphors. Others believe that Jesus definitely did not exist, that he was not a historical figure, that the gospels were fictitious creations of the early disciples. There are also people who hold all sorts of various combinations of those perspectives, as well as people who don’t really think about it much at all, and are not particularly interested in who Jesus was or is, because their lives have led them to embrace different traditions or imagery.
All of these different perspectives on Jesus are valid positions for people to take. As well, every single one of them is permissible in this faith community. Today I want to ask you how firmly you are attached to your beliefs. Whatever your understanding of Jesus might be—whether as a historical figure, or the story around Jesus—how attached are you to your beliefs?
In the 1970’s there was a Carmelite nun named Phyllis Graham. She had given her life to her religious order. Graham had spent her life studying the Jesus of history. At a certain point, she came to the very firm conclusion that Jesus had never existed as a historical figure. At the point she decided this, she gave up her order, and wrote a book called The Jesus Hoax. I want to say that it doesn’t have to be that way. It was because she had built her faith around the need for a historical Jesus that it all had crumbled when her own study led her to the conclusion that he hadn’t existed.
This morning, I want to suggest that each of us needs to build a belief system without being overly concerned about details. Hold lightly to your current perspective because it will no doubt change tomorrow, next week, and next year. You can still be inspired deeply by your beliefs. Whether Jesus existed, or whether some people had such a profound experience that they had to capture it with this fictitious character, either way this tradition has lasted, and gone from strength to strength for 2000 years, and continues to inspire us today. That’s what is significant, not the particular understanding.
Whether you believe that Jesus was a historical figure or a myth, it is helpful to understand that this story did not just come out of the sky and land 2000 years ago. The story of Jesus emerged at a particular time in history, and it is helpful to understand the context into which this story emerged. That context was the Axial Age. Axial is another word for pivotal, or transformative, and in the centuries before the life of Jesus, it has been suggested that the world had moved into an Axial Age, where in China, India and Greece, some of the same patterns emerged, even though there was no significant communication between those places. Confucianism and Taoism emerged in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, and rationalism in Greece, and the story Jesus emerged out of this same Axial period.
The Axial Age was marked by four characteristics. The first was to question everything. Test everything you hear empirically. The second feature was that it is more important how you behave than what you believe. In other words, it’s more important to treat people right than to be right. The third was compassion, a new form of compassion that came from a very deep place within, that understood its connectedness to other. That became the basis for the Golden Rule. The fourth was that these new religious movements emerged at a time of great turmoil and social chaos. The axial message was to find that place deep within of peace and steadfastness, even when everything around is in turmoil. The Axial religions were a movement toward individualism, to self-empowerment and self-knowledge, so you can understand that the stage was set for Jesus.
This axial age pattern prevents us from getting too dogmatic, because as Christianity was evolving, so was Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism and many other religions, and they all had essentially the same message. That stops us from holding too closely to a belief that Christianity is the only true way. We can appreciate the Christian tradition, we can be inspired by Christianity, we can claim it as part of our identity—but we can’t claim that it is unique.
Something else took place after the time of Jesus, which also keeps us from holding too tightly to particular beliefs: the arrival of Mohammad, about five centuries after Jesus. There is more solid historical evidence for the existence of Mohammad than there is for Jesus.
Mohammad was surprised to discover that Christianity was a separate religion from Judaism. He believed that they were one and the same and this was 5 centuries after the story of Jesus emerged. Mohammad’s message was similar to the message in the story of Jesus, and similar to the heart of the Hebrew story, and that is that it doesn’t matter what your beliefs or rituals are, if your heart is not right. You can do all the right things, and say all the right things, believe all the right things, but it doesn’t matter if you are not caring for the poor. It doesn’t matter if externally you look to be just the right religious person, if you are not showing compassion for the least in society. The message was the same across all of those religions, and that is helpful for us to understand. Our Christian tradition grows out of the same roots as Islam, and what a profound message for our world at this time. We have the same basic message, that of compassion and self-empowerment.
There is a famous story about a rabbi named Zusya, who went to paradise and stood before God. The question that came was not “why were you not Moses?”; the question was “why were you not Zusya?” The question I want to put to you today is not why are you not more like Jesus, but why are you not more yourself? Why are you not living more authentically?
Each of us is being called to live our lives authentically, to know ourselves and to be true to our own perspectives on Jesus. Let me suggest to you four things that will enable us to live out our lives with authenticity. One: question everything, including everything I say to you. Two: consider that how we behave is more important than what we believe and that it is more important to treat people right than to be right. Three is compassion: let us find that place deep within ourselves that senses a connection with all of creation and practice compassion out of that place. Four: when we are surrounded by chaos, and everything seems to be in turmoil, let us find that place deep within us that is peaceful and steadfast.
