ThisWeeksSermon, The 3d Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009 "Look for the trace of the Divine."

[Jerry Brooks]

"True story?
You decide.
Either way, I suggest that Christianity is beyond that story, or any other story.
I suggest that Christianity is beyond belief.
The essence of religion is compassion.
That was the attitude that Jesus called for, and it was how Jesus lived his own life.
It’s the way I desperately want to live out my own life as well."


Click here for streaming audio version of the sermon.

May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you, in the name of God our Creator, our redeemer, and our sanctifier.

I’m hungry. Got anything to eat?
Jesus appeared to them and said, “Peace be with you.”
They thought they were seeing a ghost.
They were scared half to death.
Then he asked, “What do you have to eat here?”
They gave him a piece of leftover fish they had cooked.
He took it and ate it right there, right before their very eyes!

We get these stories now
It’s a charming story, I think.
The resurrected Jesus, back from the dead, once again hanging out with his friends.
He’s the same friendly, approachable rabbi, now somehow known to be from God, yet still accessible even in his other-worldliness.
We get these stories during the weeks of Easter.
Jesus popping up here and popping up there, showing the scars, passing through locked doors, cooking breakfast on the beach, posing as a gardener.

A common purpose
Such stories of post-resurrection appearances recorded in the four gospels had a common purpose, I think.
And the purpose was to convince people who had not experienced Jesus directly, to convince them that Jesus truly was The One Sent from God, the one who was to change things forever, change things for all of us.
Life need not end in death.
Death is not the end of something.
Death the beginning of something else.
Jesus lives on, and so can we.
New and abundant life is offered to everyone, absolutely everyone.

The stories: convincing?
My thought, actually, is that stories of supernatural post-Easter appearances, materialization of a physical flesh-and-bones Jesus, such stories would have been less of a stickler in the ancient world than in our world, would have been more acceptable in the first century than now.
Seems to me that ancient people, who were already living in a world of angels and devils and magic, would have been less worried about phenomena that violate the laws of nature.
My guess is that they found it easier to embrace “mysteries” than people in our world.
At the same time, I recognize that I could be wrong about that.
Statistically, more than half of American adults believe in ghosts.
A third take astrology very seriously, believing that the movement of planets and stars affects what happens to us.
Three fourths believe in angels.
And four-fifths believe in miracles.
Nonetheless, my inclination is to believe that post-modern people, generally prefer to take a more metaphorical path with the stories, treating them more as creative writing than as history.
My take on this
For me, I’m standing here right now not at all because of miracle stories, physical appearances of a risen Christ, or anything else like that.
I call myself a “Christian,” a follower of Jesus, because of what we know the historical Jesus said, and because of what we know the historical Jesus did.
It’s what Jesus said and what he did that has changed my life.
The things that Jesus said and that Jesus did are the epitome of what it means to be “human”, human in the very fullest sense of the word:
generous, open-handed, open-minded, selfless, and compassionate.
Those are the things that convince me that it was God we saw in the life of Jesus.

What Jesus said
Jesus didn’t talk about the importance of believing certain things.
For Jesus, the essence of religion was compassion, not belief.
Actually, all religious traditions teach that it’s the practice of compassion, and the practice of honoring the sacred in the other, in the other person, those are the things that bring us into the presence of God, into a state of Nirvana, into the realm of the Tao.
Those are the things that bring us into harmony with the natural order.
The kind of compassion Jesus lived out wasn’t about “feeling sorry” for people.
It had nothing to do with “pity.”
It didn’t mean “understanding the other,” “learning” about the other, “learning about what’s motivating” the other, or “learning about their grievances.”
The kind of compassion Jesus lived out was the golden rule.
Rabbi Hillel was an older contemporary of Jesus.
When he was asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, he said, “The Golden Rule.
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.
“That is the Torah.
“Everything else is only commentary.”
St. Augustine said that scripture teaches nothing but charity.
Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.
If you don’t like to be attacked, don’t attack others.
As Confucius said, Confucius who was the first to propound the Golden Rule, 400 years before Jesus.
Confucius said, first seek to establish yourself, then seek to establish others.
If you don’t like your own traditions spoken badly of, then have the discipline not to speak badly of the traditions of others.
Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

The rule: it’s not easy
It’s difficult, the Golden Rule.
It’s not just a simplistic idea.
Anyone who would say it’s easy, really hasn’t tried it.
As Confucius said, it’s something you have to do “all day and every day.”
This means that you constantly have to dethrone yourself and your own ideas from the center of your world and put another’s ideas there.
Living the Golden Rule means that you have to realize that even in the most unlikely person, there is a trace of the Divine.
Living the Golden Rule means that when we disagree with one another, it’s not enough to simply try to get at the truth.
When we disagree with one another, and we prepare to talk with one another we must prepare to change, not to bludgeon the other into accepting our own point of view.

This is it
Jesus appeared to them and said, “Peace be with you.”
They thought they were seeing a ghost.
They were scared half to death.
Then he asked, “What do you have to eat here?”
They gave him a piece of leftover fish.
He took it and ate it right there, right before their very eyes!
True story?
You decide.
Either way, I suggest that Christianity is beyond that story, or any other story.
I suggest that Christianity is beyond belief.
The essence of religion is compassion.
That was the attitude that Jesus called for, and that was how Jesus lived his own life.
It’s the way I desperately want to live out my own life as well.
Prayer

Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life.
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer.
Amen.

[Jerry Brooks]

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