The teachings of Jesus, the teachings about Jesus, or something else? Unitarians in Ringwood gathering 9 October 2022

Welcome
Welcome to this table
Whatever path has brought you here
Whatever load you carry
Let us rest a while together.
May our hearts be open to accept what comes to us as a stranger,
May our minds be open to wonder at what we do not understand,
And may our spirits be nourished by our time here together,
Before we again take up our loads and set off upon our many paths.
Welcome !

For some time now we have deliberately focused our gatherings on the heritage endowed by our forebears in the Unitarian tradition, recognising that, while there are many wisdoms in the world, in the UK most cultural references derive from Christianity since the later Roman times.  We do sometimes marvel at the insights from other cultures, are sometimes thrilled by some ideas, and sometimes even pick out parallels, to emphasise a point.  But, in general, we feel ill-equipped to understand the rich nuances of other faiths.  We don’t want to misappropriate or mis-ascribe, and we feel on firmer ground when giving priority to what we were exposed to in our own backgrounds.

We claim no superiority for Christian wisdom.  We do not think there should be any hierarchies when it comes to classical systems of faith, as it is likely that in any long-established faiths the same human conditions will have been addressed sufficiently, somewhere along the line. 

It’s simply that if we can find what seems needed in the moment right there, within the boundaries of our inherited faith, we do not think it necessary for us to go anywhere more exotic.  

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And so it was that on 9th October our small group, meeting once again, found that the readings for the day were taken from our current favourite book about Jesus: the Gospel of Mark.

This is the book that opens with the words: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.”  For the avoidance of ambiguity, we remember that the word “Christ” is not a surname but a descriptor deriving from the Hebrew words meaning ‘one who has been anointed by God’, and that in the Hebrew histories several notable characters, including Hebrew kings, have been “God’s anointed”. Also we note that the term "son of God" is used in the Hebrew Bible as way to refer to humans who have a special relationship with God. 

The first reading was the tale in chapter 14 of Mark, in which a woman brought to Jesus some very expensive ointment — or lotion, as we might imagine it — and poured it on his head.  This act was interpreted by the people in the story in two different ways.  It was a meaningless waste of an asset that could have been sold to raise funds to aid the poor.  Or it was an act of devotion to Jesus, a teacher and friend whom the woman worried she might lose, her act being a metaphor for the cleansing ritual necessary prior to death.   

When we watch a movie, we can tell from the soundtrack that something sinister is about to happen — the director makes a musical reference that we have learned to understand.  But Mark only had the written word at his disposal.  By including this second meaning in the story of the woman with the ointment, Mark is giving us those warning chords, warning us that Jesus is going soon to be in danger, as we see from the next chapter in the story. 

The second reading came from the next chapter of Mark, chapter 15.

The Roman soldiers, who had Jesus in custody, mocked Jesus for the charge that had been brought against him.  It had been told them that Jesus had claimed the role of kingship over the Jewish people.  So, they dressed him in the Imperial purple and they wove some thorny twigs together to make a crown, ramming it on his head.  They beat him and spat upon him, and then took him out to be executed.  Passers-by, including some of his strongest religious critics, continued the mockery as he hung on the Cross dying — they challenged this person who had been involved in the mending and healing of others to save himself also from suffering.

So what is the something new in these texts, promised us at the outset?  

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It is often said within Unitarian circles, and you may well have read it in many different phrasings, that, where they are interested in Jesus at all, Unitarians follow the teachings of Jesus, rather than believe what is taught about him. This is said outwardly, too, on Wikipedia, and on many Unitarian leaflets and webpages.  This is to convey that our prime interests are ethics and spirituality, and not the oft-quoted, rather blunt perception of religion as a set of beliefs involving (what are often rather derisively viewed as) supernatural attributes of someone who may have lived a long time ago, a long way away.

The 'teachings of Jesus' view can appeal to some types of Christian but is also welcoming and open to anyone who sees Jesus as simply one thinker or visionary amongst many others that they value.  It is a phrasing that has appealed to those who have fallen out of love with the established Church but retain a link in some way to that heritage.

But it seems to us that there is something we need to consider here: a new way of approaching this same thing, or at least new to us.

Our first scene is of the woman who anoints Jesus with a costly and calming scented oil.  It has featured in countless works of art as well as in theatre and film, living up to the words Mark places in the mouth of his Jesus, “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”  Yet familiar as this scene is, it is all too easy to miss something rather astonishing — though it is there in plain sight.  When Jesus talks of the good news to be proclaimed he is clearly talking about the telling of a story.  

Perhaps the startling thing becomes clearer when we realise what he is not talking about.  Mark’s Jesus is not talking about the passing on of certain teachings, rules, or ideas.  The good news isn’t a collection of wise sayings or thought-provoking aphorisms.  The good news, as Mark would have it, is a story.  It says so, right up there in the opening credits.  This is the good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.  This is to be a story in which there are characters and plots.  And it is in the telling of the story that good news is proclaimed.

It was common practice in Israel to gather the sayings of teachers; indeed, we have many examples of Rabbinic texts and Wisdom literature.  There were also collections of the sayings attributed to a historical Jesus, such as the Gospel of Thomas, for example, or the imagined Q document. That was not, however, what Mark wrote.

Mark did not present us with the teachings of Jesus but, rather, the story. 

Mark did not present us with a history of Jesus but, rather, a story.

Mark presents us with a story focused around Jesus, around the things this protagonist did and said, and that were said about him, and done to him.

We are not given a programme to follow.  We are not given a philosophy to expound.  We are given a story to engage with, to be inspired by, and to see our own stories through.  We can ask if that changes the story.  We can ask ourselves who we would be in the story Mark gives us.  We can ask if we are always the same person in that story.  We can ask what we would have done. 

We can be challenged and encouraged by images and phrases from it.  We can learn phrases and lines off by heart, as children learn rhymes and teenagers learn the words to raps or pop songs.  We can strive to emulate the parts we love.  We can see the parts of the story we wish were different and see parallels with parts of our world we wish were different.  Inspired by the story, we can work to change the parts of our world that we wish were different.

So perhaps Unitarians need not be people who follow the teachings of Jesus, in bald, abstracted form.  Perhaps they can be people who cherish the story of Jesus.  

Perhaps rather than argue —  over history, what Jesus did or did not teach; or theology, who or what was Jesus; or what authority we give to those teachings, from where does the final arbiter emerge — we could share a mutual love of a story, and simply and excitedly engage with how it touches us and what it means to us personally? 

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So much for what we get from the first reading.  When we left the story of Jesus and the woman with the expensive lotion those warning chords were sounding, about the danger to Jesus coming in the next scene.  All the best stories need some suspense.  And bearing in mind that, in the world in which Jesus as teacher was proclaimed, they saw little new or even interesting in what he said (we know this from the responses of Roman and Jewish authors of the time), what is the suspense all about?  What exactly was it that caught the world alight?

The storyline goes on with Jesus being mocked and beaten, then executed.  The scenes are very powerful.  Whatever one’s beliefs, it is hard not to feel the pain and sorrow of these scenes.  But as with any good tale, there is also something else going on here.

Firstly, look how here, even more than in any nativity tale — or any other tale —  from the other Gospels, Jesus is presented as an alternative to Caesar, dressed in the Imperial purple, crowned, surrounded by soldiers.  The very mockery itself gives the audience a striking and memorable key to the Gospel. There is the kingdom of Caesar, of the State, and there is this kingdom of Jesus the anointed of God.  And the one fears the other, and wants to cast it down.

Secondly, and very much linked to the first point, Jesus is crucified with rebels.  Both the punishment, and the company, make it clear that the Jesus of this story is tied up in the resistance to oppression.  The good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Jesus story that Mark tells us, is about two ways of living in the world, and about placing ourselves at any given moment on the one side or the other.

The good news is a story of resistance to oppression, and Jesus is written in the style of a Greek hero, though cast as a Jewish Holy Man.

And thirdly, perhaps most shockingly, see what was said of Jesus here: “He saved others, he cannot save himself !”  Let that sink in.  The Jesus of Mark’s story has travelled far and wide, helping in word and deed the weak, the sick, the impoverished, the outcast.  Jesus faces down religious and State power to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves. The hero of Mark follows another law, another way of living, bravely, and aware of what the final consequences will be, as we see in the first reading:  “....you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”  

He saved others and hoped for his own saving, as Mark tells us between the two scenes we have looked at, in how Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane.  But ultimately, despite all that we might wish for him, Jesus living in truth as he experiences it cannot save himself.  The Jesus story challenges and inspires us to save others while we ourselves also live in hope of being saved, without any certainty.

So this is what caught the imagination of the world.  The good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Jesus story, is not a path or practice that promises to spare us suffering.  Nor is it a collection of wisdom that leads us to personal contentment or prosperity.  There are, and always have been, versions of both of these things out there. 

Instead, the new of the Jesus story is the tale that inspires us to see ‘the world as it is’; yet to embrace the joy of being part of the breaking through of ‘the world as it should be’.  To gaze into the abyss as unflinching as any; yet, moment after fading moment, to dance in the flickering light of something brighter, something better, being passed from torch to torch. 

Jesus is crushed by the Empire of Caesar, by the weight of oppression, and yet the empty tomb Mark leaves us with at the end of his Gospel lets us ask if Jesus too wasn’t finally saved by another.  Is there, in fact, a sequel?  Can we save Jesus in the alternative sequels we play in our heads and hearts?  Nothing tantalises better than the end of a story that half-promises a sequel.  This story has all the ingredients; no wonder it set the world alight.

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Perhaps it’s more complicated for Unitarians, than aiming to follow the teachings of Jesus.  Perhaps the dance with a narrative, with all that it may invoke in us throughout the weavings of our own lives, is what gives purpose and meaning.  Perhaps some Unitarians are among that broader circle of diverse people who cluster around the Jesus story; who engage with and are inspired by the story of a man who offered another way to be, who did not accept oppression; a man who could save others but could not save himself.

Maybe none of us can save ourselves in this world of ours, but just maybe, if we play with alternative ways of being, and sequels, we all can save each other.

Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019) — Emma Green, writing for The Atlantic, notes that Evans "was part of a vanguard of progressive-Christian women who fought to change the way Christianity is taught and perceived in the United States."  Green goes on to argue that Evans' legacy is "her unwillingness to cede ownership of Christianity to its traditional conservative-male stewards" and that her "very public, vulnerable exploration of a faith forged in doubt empowered a ragtag band of writers, pastors, and teachers to claim their rightful place as Christians.” (Wikipedia)