Sermon, May 20, 2007 Fay Oliver

THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE

First, I want to say how much fun it is for me to stand in this

pulpit again, even though I realize there is a bit of desperation involved

here- with most of our ministers at Asilomar .. I was surprised to hear

that when Matt announced this last Sunday. (I was at All Church Camp) He

called me the Wise Old Woman, I don’t mind the “Wise” but…

However, having no ministers to hear my sermon gives me a certain

leeway. I can say harsh things about the Church with less hesitancy. –

Not our congregation - but the Church with a capitol C . Some of you may

indeed think my message outrageous. Nobody has ever walked out on me while

I was preaching, but there is always a first time. This might be it. .Just

remember that this is not UCC dogma; we have none. It is not the message of

Foothills Church. This is Fay talking. You may not agree with all I say.

You may not agree with any of it. That’s the beauty of Foothills. You

have that freedom; you can think for yourself. Next time the Executive

Council is desperate, you can preach your concerns.

The topic, “The Truth Will Make You Free”, could be developed in

personal ways, talking about the choices we ourselves make as we live our

lives. I might do a little “meddling” as in the old joke. The one in which

his parishioners thought when he became too personal that maybe he had “quit

preaching and gone to middlin.” Mostly I am developing this topic looking

at the Church ( with the big C) the Christian church worldwide because in

our day, we are at a pivotal time. The choices we are making today will

determine the future, not just of the Church but of our planet.. I am

hoping that we the Church will have the courage to look at our history,

understand where we are, and look AT THE BIG CHALLENGES OF TODAY,

take the opportunity to follow the teachings of Jesus as we shape our future.

In our scripture today Paul is writing to the followers of Jesus in Ephesus,

talking, among other things, about intellectual honesty and freedom. He is

praying for WISDOM, for KNOWLEDGE, for HEARTS OF ENLIGHTENMENT,

so that the HOPE to which God has called us can be known., realized, This sounds

to me like we are being encouraged to be open to TRUTH as we seek to

faithfully follow Jesus’ teachings. Our scripture in John says “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. “

The Church has not always been focused on being a channel of either

truth, wisdom. Or compassion. Of course we do not have the time to go

through all the tragic choices made by the Church throughout its history,

but to help us understand where we are now, I’ll mention a few times the

Church has chosen power instead of truth and wisdom, times when the

teachings of Jesus have been ignored, and the direction of the church changed.

The first such choices were in the early centuries. This happened

in order to unify and strengthen the growing institution, particularly after

the Roman Emperor Constantine endorsed Christianity, in the fourth century.

In these early centuries the church SHUT DOWN the many groups who followed

Jesus in different ways, destroying their books, exiling their leaders,

sometimes killing them, effectively silencing all but their own voices.

Their own voices were magnified as they formulated as sacred canon, those

books that said what these church fathers wanted said. It is only recently

with the discovery of the NAG HAMMADI TEXTS IN EGYPT in 1945 with its

fifty-two treatises, often called the Gnostic Gospels and THE DEAD SEA

SCROLLS, in the Holy Land found in eleven caves beginning in1947 with parts

of over 800 texts, many from the Old Testament, but some other texts

revealing unknown groups such as the Essenes - that we have learned about

all the many other followers of Jesus in those early days, their practices

and their sacred books. We have studied some of these, such as the Gospel

of Thomas, in our Truth Seekers group. They were numerous and they were

devoted to Jesus. These discoveries are factors in the evolution going on

in the Church today. These early Church fathers were trying to preserve what

they thought was the only truth; but we need to understand that this

happened, and it was wrong. Because of their actions we have functioned

with a limited view of Jesus’ teachings for much of Church history.

Wow, that’s harsh history! For most of us, we don’t know or care much about our church history. We like to live in the NOW. But to make good choices now, we need to know about these earlier mistakes. Can we hang in here a little longer?

During long centuries, the Church made many choices in favor of

power instead of following Jesus’ teachings.. With the decline of the Roman

Empire, the Church took over as the Holy Roman Empire, and in their quest

for power instead of truth and wisdom raised armies, waged wars, ignored the

poor and the peasantry. The growing power of the Papacy and the Church at

Rome, blessed the Crusades, from the 11th through the middle of the 13th

centuries, endorsing Holy War, killing uncounted thousands in the quest to

defeat the power of Islam. During the 12th and 13th centuries dissident

groups searching for and trying to practice the truth as they understood it

were halted through the Inquisition. The most effective method of silencing

these dissidents was to kill them, often burning them at the stake. We got

in on that here in America during the Salem Witch Trials. In the 16th

century even Martin Luther, one of our heroes, sanctioned the killing of

peasants who were protesting injustices the German rulers were perpetrating.

In all these instances the Church ignored Jesus teachings that we should

love our enemies. They endorsed war, and we continue to do this today.

The suffering caused by these decisions cannot be overestimated.

The Church Councils also in my opinion, often made decisions that

were limiting and distorting. One stands out to me as most damaging. At

the Council of Nicea in 325, in their attempt to resolve the question of how

Jesus and God are related they used words like “God from God, very God from

very God, begotten, not made, of one substance.” By accepting these words,

they erased the teachings of Jesus who said, “anything I can do, you can do.

“ Yes, Jesus was filled with the Spirit of God, but they erased the

teachings that said God’s Spirit is also available to us. There are numerous passages in our gospels in which Jesus extends his oneness with God to us. In John 17 there are such words that have been adopted by the United Church of Christ – “I pray …that they may all be one – I in them and Thou in me , that they may also be in us.” There are many such passages in which Jesus teaches that we can be filled also with God’s spirit, but the

choice is ours. Jesus as a man made the choice to live true to that spirit, so much so that the Church had trouble distinguishing between him and God. But we are children of God also and that Spirit of God is available to us. Much of the Church chose instead to believe that Jesus was “the only beloved Son of God”. What a tragedy!

Only one more direction-changing choice will I name. Hang in here with me. The inerrancy of the Bible. Although recent groups of fundamentalist Christians have made this a rallying cry, even from the time of Calvin, a 16th century French protestant theologian, this belief began to make an idol of the Bible. I think this is a damaging mistake and one that

weakens the power and beauty of the Bible

So we’ve looked at some major errors in Christian history. Of

course throughout this history there were also groups and individuals who

understood what Jesus was saying and tried to live that way. The miracle of

Christianity is that there were enough of them for the Gospel of love Jesus

taught to make it the 21st century.

So where are we today? To make a broad statement of it, we still

are not following with passion the teachings of Jesus. Jesus gave a concise

summary of his teachings when he quoted the Jewish Shema. “You shall love

the Lord your God with all your hearts, with all your minds and with all

your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” As one

theologian said, the rest of his teachings were just commentary. He talked

about feeding the hungry, ministering to the sick and in prison, clothing

the naked, and we do a lot of that. He talked about seeking first the

Kingdom of God, and that is not always our priority. We are still killing

each other to settle our differences – killing to get our way. We ignor

Jesus’ teachings about loving our enemies. We have almost never tried this.

This brings us to the crises of our day. We know what it is, but we may

have never connected it to having a passion for following the teachings of

Jesus. ‘May never have thought of it as something the Church needs to

address. ‘May think it ridiculous to suggest to our small congregation

that we could do anything about itl

The crisis and challenge for our age is this, - WHETHER OR NOT IN THE TIME

WE HAVE LEFT, WE WILL HAVE THE WISDOM AND COURAGE TO PRESERVE LIFE ON THIS PLANET., THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE HOMO SAPIENS HAVE EVER FACED. ……….. (I pause

here to let the magnitude of this statement sink in.)

It is not just a Christian Church problem. ………– There are two paths we are

now following that are leading us to the extremely real possibility that it

could become impossible for us to exist on this little beautiful planet.

During the Cold War with the Soviets we started facing the fact that

resorting to war to settle our differences could annihilate life on this

planet – because we have the weaponry to do it. We made it past that period

but we are at it again with more nations having more and deadlier weapons

available. We face that crisis again today and we will continue to face it

until we follow the teachings of Jesus and begin to love our enemies. We

cannot love our enemies and continue killing to settle our differences. We

must find an alternative to war. This is one facet of our dilemma. We have

never found an alternative to war to settle our differences. The history

of every country in our world is a history of one war after another. We

must find another way; we must not keep killing one another.

We also face the crisis of Global Warming, another way we can make

our little and beautiful planet uninhabitable. They are some who do not

believe in the reality of Global Warming. There is also still a Flat Earth

group who do not believe the earth is round. I believe the crisis is real.

What can we do? And why is it a Church Crisis?

We Christians, like others, are already are doing many things; we

recycle, We are driving cars with better fuel efficiency; we are changing

our light bulbs to save energy; some are putting solar panels on their

houses to use clean energy from the sun. We have started with little things

that become huge when enough people do it.

How can following Jesus’ teachings turn this around? Isn’t this

more of a political problem than a religious one? Is the spirituality of

Church powerful enough?

First, I believe every problem is a spiritual problem because we

are spiritual beings created for eternity. Some of our brothers and sisters

spend their lives here on earth trying to get into heaven. We in UCC do not

worry about that because we believe in a God of love and mercy – who will

give us as many opportunities after this life as we need to learn the

lessons of love, even if we fail here.

So then why does it matter? It matters because that is why we are

here. To enjoy living a physical life as we learn to love. Jesus said “I

have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. He also

said the most important laws were to love God (the highest and holiest that

we can conceive) with all we have, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Saving our beautiful planet is honoring that Creator who gave this beautiful

planet on which to live.. Saving this planet is also showing love to all

those on it.

Our work of the 21st century church is not to compete with the

Muslims, the Buddhist, or even the Fundamentalist Christians or any others

who believe differently from us. We are all on a Divine Path. All of the

world’s great religions have injunctions against killing. We all know that

the higher path is to love each other. Our path as Christians is to follow

the teachings of Jesus as we face the Challenges of our Day.

You may think that one church can’t do much, but don’t underestimate us.

We already have a Peace group that meets in our church. Beginnings in these

two areas are everywhere. We must add our strength to theirs. We must never

underestimate our influence.

I am an admirer of Sojourner Truth an illiterate slave in the 1800’s.

Convinced that God was talking to her, after having served many years and

many masters, she got her freedom, felt called to become a preacher -

preaching emancipation and women’s rights, she traveled around the country

often on foot. She became a very influential woman in that cause. Only an

illiterate slave who saw most of the children she bore, 12 or 13. sold off

into slavery. Her most famous sermon was “Ain’t I a Woman?” A remarkable

personality, she spoke with much effectiveness. She gave her power to that

cause, trusting God to make her work meaningful. It was. She was one of

the strong influences in our country’s history for emancipation.

As we love God with all our hearts, strength and minds, and our neighbors as

ourselves, we can follow Sojourner Truth’s example. We can give our

strength to these important causes, trusting God to make our work

meaningful. It is meaningful. We can do it, my brothers and sisters. With

God’s help, we can do it. Amen and Amen