Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

Not everyone is equally interested in Jesus, but, we need not see Jesus as our personal savior to sense his importance both to our culture and to many individuals. My goal in this sermon series on the images of Jesus is to present a corrective to much of the popular approach to who Jesus was and what his importance can be for people today, even those who do not see him as God. After all, as Jesus said, we do not want the blind to lead the blind.Biblical scholars may disagree with one another about all sorts of other things, but clearly, Jesus was a wisdom teacher or sage. Marcus Borg identifies two different kinds of wisdom. First, there is the conventional wisdom that we find in the Parables of Hebrew scripture, or in Ben Franklin’s The Farmers Almanac. These are sayings that promote standard wisdom such as “a penny saved is a penny earned,” “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” “live right and all will be well,” “the early bird gets the worm,” or “work hard and you will get ahead.”

Such wisdom teaches us how to live. There are the basic lessons, like the modern day lesson about driving on the right side of the road, or if you are in England on the left. There is the practical wisdom that we should not chew with our mouths open. As a parent, I continue to remind our youngest child that her job at college is to study and learn. You see, I want her to get ahead in this culture.

An important aspect about conventional wisdom is that it is based on rewards and punishments. If you stay up to late at night, you may not wake up in time to get to work. Therefore, you might be fired. If you do not work hard you are less likely to get a promotion. And, if you drive on the wrong side of the road, … you get the picture.

The second kind of wisdom is unconventional. It is wisdom that is found in the Hebrew books Job and Ecclesiastes. It is the wisdom of the 6th century Chinese teacher Lao Tzu recorded in the Tao Te Ch’ing. Much of what the Buddha said was unconventional and subverted the traditional Hinduism of his area. Also, recall that Socrates was put to death because of his unconventional and subversive teachings. Jesus also taught unconventional wisdom and like Socrates, he too was punished by death.

“You cannot get grapes from a bramble bush”
“Leave the dead bury the dead.”
“You strain a gnat and swallow a camel.”

Jesus used many short one-liners like those to challenge people. It worked in his day and continues to challenge people today. These short one-liners are called aphorisms. They are terse formulations of a truth or sentiment. Jesus taught this way getting people to look outside the conventional box. It is when we are able to see the outside world more clearly and honestly that we can more accurately see ourselves.

Scholars say that these short aphorisms along with slightly longer stories or parables make up the essential core of what was remembered by Jesus followers and then told and retold to others. Gospel writers gathered these sayings and grouped them together in ways that at times appear as though Jesus told many of them one right after another. That is how it is portrayed in the Sermon on the Mount. Realistically, that would not have been effective. Had Jesus used that method, by the time he got to the last one-liner, no one would have remembered the first ones.

We remember the sayings because Jesus, like any good itinerant preacher, took his time and told his one-liners slowly, one at a time. He went from village to village, repeating his wisdom over and over. Thus, a multitude of people, heard and remembered his one-liners and stories in the different context in which they were told. Then, people passed them on to others by retelling them. The short aphorisms and the longer stories or parables were invitations. They got peoples attention. “What was that I just heard?” “You cannot get grapes from a bramble bush.” “That is true, what’s his point?”

Jesus invited people to stop, listen and open their ears to what he said and open their minds to the wisdom he taught. Often, they were able to see themselves as they truly were as opposed to what they were taught to be, conditioned to be by their personal history and the many cultural pressures to conform.

If you were talking to someone about moral issues today, urging them to behave in a certain way and they responded to you, saying, “You are straining out a gnat while you are swallowing a camel,” what would you think? Well if it was one of my children, I might feel like my parents felt during the Vietnam War when I was one of those who figured I could not trust anyone over 30. Sure, I might be a bit put off and offended. Yet, if I was not too defensive, I might find it not only antagonizing but also a bit humorous and maybe something that kept nagging at the back of my mind.

Obviously, Jesus was responding to someone talking with him about some part of the purity system. Religious and cultural purity was a major concern. The kicker to the one-liner about swallowing a camel was that a camel as well as being too large to swallow was also religiously impure. Therefore, Jesus was indirectly challenging the conventional purity system that everyone had to follow or be punished. He was saying that the constant effort of trying to follow their purity system might very well keep them away from little impurities, but in the process they were missing the point of it all and swallowing or doing things that were far more damaging. We may not have the same conventional purity rules. But are not there lots of things that we blindly do just because we have been conditioned to do them.

One of my favorite stories is about a young couple. The first time they baked a ham for a special occasion the wife who did most of the cooking cut off both ends of the ham before she put in the baking pan and into the oven. Her husband, whose family had not done that, asked her why she did so. She said that she did not know but that her mother had always done it. So the next time they visited her parents he asked his wife’s mother why she always cut both ends of a ham before baking it. The woman looked at her son-in-law and said, “You know, I really do not know why, but my mother always did it that way.” Wanting to get to the bottom of this special way of cooking a ham, the new husband had the same question for his wife’s grandmother when they visited her. She responded in a mater-of-fact way, “Oh, it’s just that my roaster was not big enough for the ham, so I cut a little off both ends.”

We, too, do many things that do not always make sense. We complain about the price of gas and yet, is not some of our driving needless? Also, how many of us drive cars with high gast mileage? We complain about the price of heating fuel, and yet, how mindful are we of checking the temperatures on our thermostats? We complain about the price of electricity, yet what are we personally doing to conserve?

The real camel that we are swallowing with over consumption of energy is the growing insecurity of our world through our funding of political unrest with the dollars we pay for oil and of course global warming. The camel we are swallowing without even realizing it increases terrorism, war, famine and petulance.

It is not easy to see ourselves as we truly are as opposed to who we are conditioned to be. That is true of nations, groups and individuals. It is hard to get out of our skins and see with eyes that have not become clouded with years upon years of built up cultural conditioning. That steady conditioning unconsciously reinforces our daily preconceptions.

Jesus jolted people awake. He wanted them to see with eyes that could really see and hear with ears that could really hear. He wanted them to start living authentically, uncontaminated by years of conventional conditioning. He wanted people to realize who they really were as human beings. That was also what got him in trouble with both the governmental and religious leaders of his day. They benefited from people going along, not seeing things clearly and definitely not rocking the boat.

An example of our own government leaders swallowing a camel while straining out a gnat, is the story in the NY Times this week. Federal appellate judges in San Francisco ruled that, a terminally ill woman using marijuana “…was not immune to the federal prosecution simply because of her condition…” She has an inoperable brain tumor and a battery of other serious ailments. But, she lives in California where the medical use of marijuana is legal. Her doctor recommended the medical use of marijuana. The judges sympathized with Ms. Raich’s plight. They even admitted that they had seen ‘uncontroverted evidence’ that she needed marijuana to survive. Her problem was that she lacked the legal grounds to exempt herself from federal law. Therefore, she has no right to medical marijuana use. (03-15-07by Jesse McKinley)

I would call that straining out the gnat of legal “federal” policy while swallowing the camel of inhuman stupidity. There are those who want to protect the sanctity of marriage by opposing same sex marriage. To me it seems like they are going after the gnat of conventional tradition while swallowing the camel of oppression and inequality. Many examples of contemporary ways that we strain out a gnat and swallow a camel exist. I am sure that you can think of many other examples.

Jesus used his one-liners to say: “Stop right there. I invite you to open your eyes, open your ears, open you minds, open your hearts to what is really important in life. Off with the blinders of the status quo of always doing it that way, just because, and on with moral glasses of compassion and grace.”

Jesus taught wisdom inviting people to set out on a path of transformation. That path lead away from a life of requirements and constantly measuring up to some second hand set of rules handed down from one generation to another. He did not specify whether it was culture, religion or even if it was said that God had set down the rules. The wisdom Jesus preached invited people to set out on a path that led to a life lived in dynamic relationship with God. We might prefer to translate the word God into a word or phrase that better captures our personal sense of the mysterious spirit of life and compassion.

The alternate wisdom taught by Jesus was meant to lead people from a life of anxiety to a life of peace and trust. Life is much more important than food, and the body much more important than clothes. Even today, we lead lives that are too often in bondage to our self-preoccupation and conventional conformity. What should I do? What should I wear? What should I say? What if people think I am weird or a loser?

Jesus taught an alternative way, a way less traveled, based on grace and compassion, not judgment and punishment. The God of Jesus’ alternative wisdom is the spirit of radical compassion and acceptance. It is important to remember the word in Hebrew Scripture most often translated as compassion is a derivative of the word meaning womb. The spirit of divine compassion is based on the imagery of a woman feeling compassion for the children of her womb.
The second part of this alternative wisdom taught by Jesus is that everyone is invited to join in an intimate and ongoing relationship with this gracious and compassionate spirit of life. Jesus’ theology is relational and based on compassion not judgment and punishment. The spirit of divine compassion, based on the imagery of a woman feeling compassion for the children of her womb, this is the less traveled way. I invite you to take this less traveled path, the path that follows the spirit of compassion for all of creation.