Answer Sermon to Questions Asked by Congregation
Sermon for 4-30-2006
First let me thank you for all your questions. The children started off this project several months ago and we are glad to have them with us during the sermon today. Preparing these answers and organizing them into a sermon was not as easy as I thought it might be. After writing 7 plus single spaced pages of answers, I decided I would have to eliminate some of the topics for this week. So I ended up cutting out the topics of suffering, salvation, and prayer. My thoughts are to keep these questions and answers for another time; Another possibility is to put these questions with their answers in the newsletter or on our website. Let me know if you have a preference.
Although I knew most of the answers, there were some that I spent too much time on trying to find answers: for example, one of the most difficult questions was the meaning of the symbols on the large gold cross. My best guess is that this is a Greek letter or letters related to Jesus name. I did find out that the initials I H S, often found on church crosses, are the first letters of the phrase Jesus Hominum Salvator, meaning Jesus, Savior of men, although last night I was talking to Janet Barry about this symbol and she thought it was the Latin for I H S, meaning in his place. So I’m still not sure but my guess is that the Sign that looks a lot like a $ sign is the Greek S for Savior. This S may be transposed on the I for Jesus; I can’t really see an H. I finally decided I was spending too much time Googling and went on to other questions.
I have organized this talk into the following categories, first questions about God, followed by questions about Jesus, and then on to the Trinity. Next I will answer questions about the church, touch on truth, as well as some miscellaneous questions. Many of these topics could take our whole time so most answers are not in a lot of depth and detail. If any of you want me to go deeper with certain topics, please let me know for a later time.
What I want to say first is that there are often many ways to answer the same questions. My answers may not be the same as yours and that doesn’t make me right and you wrong even though I am the minister. Among Christians we have groups that are very conservative, often called fundamentalists, and those that are very liberal, sometimes called Progressive Christians. I tend to me more on the liberal side although not the most liberal. Even among our denomination there are great differences in beliefs; each local church is autonomous—meaning it can make their own decisions, such as deciding on their mission statements, hiring and firing pastors, and in general making their own rules. When my opinions are much different than the majority in our denomination I will let you know.
When we talk about God in our statement of faith (which can be found in the back of the hymn book, #884) we say that God is a creator of the whole universe and that human beings are made in the image of God—to me that means we have abilities and characteristics like God, especially intelligence, creativity, and love. Out of this great love, God seeks us out to save us from aimlessness and sin to quote our faith statement. Two questions from the children: “Is God really living?” and “Was God ever alive?” God was alive before anything else was alive. God was the very first to be alive. God lives still. God is a Spirit that will live forever. We can’t see a spirit; a spirit is like the wind. Although we can feel the wind and see what the wind does, we can not actually see the wind. So to the question of why is God so invisible and why we can’t see God, it is because God is a Spirit. Is God with us every second? Yes, I believe that God is always with us no matter where we are. Psalm 139 says this so beautifully: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (vv 7-10). However, we can close our hearts and minds to God so that we are not aware of God’s presence. God gives us all free choice about how to believe and how we behave with God and with each other. We can always call on God for strength and courage, for help in knowing what to do. We can open our heart to God in prayer. God always wants to be in relationship with us, loving us, guiding us, comforting us, as well as judging us. Sometimes when we are not doing the right thing, we get a strong feeling inside of us that we should stop. That feeling may come because of what our family or teachers have taught us. It can also be from God. God wants there to be peace and love throughout the whole universe. God doesn’t want us to fight or do unloving things. I believe we can talk to God, ask for help from God. It’s important to spend time being quiet and listening to God. In the UCC we say that God is still speaking, revealing God’s desires for how we are to live. So to the question of why is God here, I believe it is to love us, to teach us, to correct us when we are going the wrong way. Also it is because God is the spark of life, here before anything else, and here forever. In the words of William James who wrote about religious experience, God is the More of all religions, sometimes called Allah, Brahman, Tao, Father, Mother, Yahweh, the Holy, the Sacred. A very good question is why do people make God look like a human being? I think it is because it is so hard to relate to a Spirit, something you can’t see or touch. Jesus talked about God being like a father. Most people can grasp that image better; however, it poses problems because not all human beings have a good image and experience of “Father”. Some people feel more comfortable calling God mother and that’s perfectly okay. In the Bible there are lots of different words for God.
In the history of Christianity there have been two primary ways of seeing God: one is called supernatural theism, seeing God as a person-like being who long ago created the world and is separate from the world. This belief sees God as being up in the heaven, beyond the universe. The belief is that this God can intervene in the world and does so especially in response to prayer. The other way of imaging God is as the encompassing Spirit in whom everything that is, is—called by a big word many of you may not know: panentheism. It’s this kind of God the Bible refers to when in Acts it describes God as one in whom we live and move and have our being. God is right here, in us and all around us. Recent writers such as Bishop Spong and Marcus Borg and other Jesus Seminar people, define God this way. Instead of talking about divine intervention, they talk about divine intention and divine interaction. In recent years I think more and more about God in this latter way. We don’t have time to go deeply into this shift today and let me know if you want more information—another sermon or class on this topic. The last question under the topic of God is why does God have followers. I think people want a God to relate to in order to have some one to thank for their many blessings, to help them feel safer—take away their fears, to help them make sense of the world, to feel unconditional love. There are probably as many reasons as there are followers but all for this topic at this time.
We now go to the questions about Jesus ancestry. First, if Joseph is of the house of David, is Mary? Mary is a virgin, how can we understand that Jesus is of the house of David? To answer this question, I must point out that the first Gospels that were written did not say anything about Mary being a Virgin. Some scholars also argue that from the lexicon and style the first two chapters of Luke,which describe the virgin birth, were probably a later addition to that Gospel. The word translated virgin can mean “young woman”. Some scholars believe that the earthly father of Jesus was Joseph; therefore, an easy connection to the house of David. Mary is not known to be of the house of David; however, in the patriarchal, male influenced days of Jesus birth, the female’s background was not very important. Matthew and Luke both wanted to make Jesus fit prophecies concerning the virgin birth from Hebrew scripture. Each Gospel has quite different accounts of the “facts” around the nativity and Christmas stories. Remember that most liberal Christians do not accept what is written in the Bible as literal, exact meaning of the words. I believe that the Bible was written down long after the events happened. It was translated by many scribes from many inexact languages, originally by hand with many errors possible. It also was bound by what was happening in the history and culture of its time. I believe that most of the Bible is not the exact literal meaning of the words; yet I do believe that there is much truth in the same way that there is truth in metaphor and myth. Myths have their own truths. They provide people with a view of the world and a set of values that are just as important as scientifically verifiable facts.
To the question of how did Jesus awake from the dead, I can’t really say. No one else was around. Jesus was in the tomb so it was something that happened without eartly witnesses. We do know that Jesus himself had awakened or raised up people that had died, such as Lazarus, by just calling his or her name or by praying.
Our church teaches that Jesus was both human and divine. That God came to earth in the form of Jesus is believed by the majority of Christians. The reason we have two candles on our worship table is to symbolize the humanity and divinity of Christ.
The last question about Jesus is what is the minimum we must believe about the Resurrection story to remain in the Christian community? This question depends on what Christian church you want to be associated with. In our denomination, it is not necessary to literally believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. It could be thought about more as metaphor, as new life. I’ve heard people say that if you don’t believe in a literal resurrection than there is no basis for your faith. I disagree. The reason I am a Christian is that I want to follow the teachings and way of life that Jesus showed us. Whether or not I believe in the resurrection is not the point for my identity as a Christian. As I said in my last sermon, the main reason I believe in the literal resurrection is because of the changes that happened in the disciples after they saw the resurrected Jesus; however, if the resurrection story is myth, it does not shake my faith in any way.
We have talked about God and Jesus. The other part of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. I had probably 5-6 hours of lecture in seminary on this concept, and here I will only say a couple of things. The Trinity is made up of three different aspects of the Divine or the Sacred. Many people call this whole God and the first person of the Trinity Father. I prefer to call the first person of the Trinity, God, the second, Jesus, and the third Holy Spirit. Others say Creator, Son, and Holy Ghost. These three 'persons' share the same essence, making them the same being. All three aspects make up one whole, somewhat like by being a wife, a mother, and a minister (as well as other parts), yet I am one whole person. Another example that is often used to help explain the trinity is that H20, which we most often think of as water actually comes in 3 forms: liquid, steam, and ice yet they are all aspects of water. Within the Trinity, each of the three Persons can act separately from each other Person yet they achieve the same one purpose in unity.
Now a couple of questions about truth and about the church that I will briefly answer. Why does it seem so many Christian groups throughout history believe they have the ultimate truth and unite to persecute and kill members of other groups? We all like to think we have the right answers. When groups are told that they are the only ones that have the truth and that they are responsible to go forward and baptize/convert all nations, they have a tendency to do this by any means possible. Fundamentalism is part of all religious groups; it is those believers that believe in the exact, literal meaning of what has been written, don’t want any change, and focus much more on righteousness than love.How do you know what to believe? It’s really hard to figure out the truth. Many folks feel so much more comfortable in a church that tells them exactly how to believe. I sometimes yearn for that myself. I believe that God is still speaking. We have guidance through scripture, prayer, tradition, and revelation—the still speaking part.
Why go to church? Our Statement of Faith says we are called into church to accept the joys and cost of discipleship, to serve others, to share in Christ’s baptism and Communion—our two sacraments. To me the most important thing about church is community. I can worship and praise God by myself; I can pray by myself; I can theologize by myself. It is only by joining together in the community of others that I can experience the joy and cost of discipleship.
One last question on the church: How can Protestant churches like our own attract and keep a wide variety of people who may disagree on many things, but still want to be Christians? This is a very difficult thing to do. I’m still looking for better answers. In small rural communities we are often limited by the population being pretty homogenous to start with. In Deering we certainly have some age and class differences as well as attitudinal differences. I believe we have to do a better job of asking others to come to church, not just the pastor, but each of you trying to overcome your resistance to “telling the Good News”. Open discussion in a safe atmosphere comes from pastoral leadership as well as lay leadership, yet it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years to trust each other to share our prejudices as well as our gifts and blessings. We have to keep working at it, pray for it, and never give up on sharing the love of Christ. This topic again needs more time and exploration.
There have been a couple of questions that I just don’t have time to answer specifically. I’ll end with an easy one, God created Adam and Eve and we are told they had 3 sons. Genesis goes on to describe all the kids they had. Where did the wives come from for Adam and Eve’s sons? Actually Adam and Eve had many children, both sons and daughters (see Gen. 5:4; and the sons married their sisters. Intermarriage was not forbidden or frowned upon in those days; in fact it was the only thing that could propagate the world at that time.
First let me thank you for all your questions. The children started off this project several months ago and we are glad to have them with us during the sermon today. Preparing these answers and organizing them into a sermon was not as easy as I thought it might be. After writing 7 plus single spaced pages of answers, I decided I would have to eliminate some of the topics for this week. So I ended up cutting out the topics of suffering, salvation, and prayer. My thoughts are to keep these questions and answers for another time; Another possibility is to put these questions with their answers in the newsletter or on our website. Let me know if you have a preference.
Although I knew most of the answers, there were some that I spent too much time on trying to find answers: for example, one of the most difficult questions was the meaning of the symbols on the large gold cross. My best guess is that this is a Greek letter or letters related to Jesus name. I did find out that the initials I H S, often found on church crosses, are the first letters of the phrase Jesus Hominum Salvator, meaning Jesus, Savior of men, although last night I was talking to Janet Barry about this symbol and she thought it was the Latin for I H S, meaning in his place. So I’m still not sure but my guess is that the Sign that looks a lot like a $ sign is the Greek S for Savior. This S may be transposed on the I for Jesus; I can’t really see an H. I finally decided I was spending too much time Googling and went on to other questions.
I have organized this talk into the following categories, first questions about God, followed by questions about Jesus, and then on to the Trinity. Next I will answer questions about the church, touch on truth, as well as some miscellaneous questions. Many of these topics could take our whole time so most answers are not in a lot of depth and detail. If any of you want me to go deeper with certain topics, please let me know for a later time.
What I want to say first is that there are often many ways to answer the same questions. My answers may not be the same as yours and that doesn’t make me right and you wrong even though I am the minister. Among Christians we have groups that are very conservative, often called fundamentalists, and those that are very liberal, sometimes called Progressive Christians. I tend to me more on the liberal side although not the most liberal. Even among our denomination there are great differences in beliefs; each local church is autonomous—meaning it can make their own decisions, such as deciding on their mission statements, hiring and firing pastors, and in general making their own rules. When my opinions are much different than the majority in our denomination I will let you know.
When we talk about God in our statement of faith (which can be found in the back of the hymn book, #884) we say that God is a creator of the whole universe and that human beings are made in the image of God—to me that means we have abilities and characteristics like God, especially intelligence, creativity, and love. Out of this great love, God seeks us out to save us from aimlessness and sin to quote our faith statement. Two questions from the children: “Is God really living?” and “Was God ever alive?” God was alive before anything else was alive. God was the very first to be alive. God lives still. God is a Spirit that will live forever. We can’t see a spirit; a spirit is like the wind. Although we can feel the wind and see what the wind does, we can not actually see the wind. So to the question of why is God so invisible and why we can’t see God, it is because God is a Spirit. Is God with us every second? Yes, I believe that God is always with us no matter where we are. Psalm 139 says this so beautifully: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (vv 7-10). However, we can close our hearts and minds to God so that we are not aware of God’s presence. God gives us all free choice about how to believe and how we behave with God and with each other. We can always call on God for strength and courage, for help in knowing what to do. We can open our heart to God in prayer. God always wants to be in relationship with us, loving us, guiding us, comforting us, as well as judging us. Sometimes when we are not doing the right thing, we get a strong feeling inside of us that we should stop. That feeling may come because of what our family or teachers have taught us. It can also be from God. God wants there to be peace and love throughout the whole universe. God doesn’t want us to fight or do unloving things. I believe we can talk to God, ask for help from God. It’s important to spend time being quiet and listening to God. In the UCC we say that God is still speaking, revealing God’s desires for how we are to live. So to the question of why is God here, I believe it is to love us, to teach us, to correct us when we are going the wrong way. Also it is because God is the spark of life, here before anything else, and here forever. In the words of William James who wrote about religious experience, God is the More of all religions, sometimes called Allah, Brahman, Tao, Father, Mother, Yahweh, the Holy, the Sacred. A very good question is why do people make God look like a human being? I think it is because it is so hard to relate to a Spirit, something you can’t see or touch. Jesus talked about God being like a father. Most people can grasp that image better; however, it poses problems because not all human beings have a good image and experience of “Father”. Some people feel more comfortable calling God mother and that’s perfectly okay. In the Bible there are lots of different words for God.
In the history of Christianity there have been two primary ways of seeing God: one is called supernatural theism, seeing God as a person-like being who long ago created the world and is separate from the world. This belief sees God as being up in the heaven, beyond the universe. The belief is that this God can intervene in the world and does so especially in response to prayer. The other way of imaging God is as the encompassing Spirit in whom everything that is, is—called by a big word many of you may not know: panentheism. It’s this kind of God the Bible refers to when in Acts it describes God as one in whom we live and move and have our being. God is right here, in us and all around us. Recent writers such as Bishop Spong and Marcus Borg and other Jesus Seminar people, define God this way. Instead of talking about divine intervention, they talk about divine intention and divine interaction. In recent years I think more and more about God in this latter way. We don’t have time to go deeply into this shift today and let me know if you want more information—another sermon or class on this topic. The last question under the topic of God is why does God have followers. I think people want a God to relate to in order to have some one to thank for their many blessings, to help them feel safer—take away their fears, to help them make sense of the world, to feel unconditional love. There are probably as many reasons as there are followers but all for this topic at this time.
We now go to the questions about Jesus ancestry. First, if Joseph is of the house of David, is Mary? Mary is a virgin, how can we understand that Jesus is of the house of David? To answer this question, I must point out that the first Gospels that were written did not say anything about Mary being a Virgin. Some scholars also argue that from the lexicon and style the first two chapters of Luke,which describe the virgin birth, were probably a later addition to that Gospel. The word translated virgin can mean “young woman”. Some scholars believe that the earthly father of Jesus was Joseph; therefore, an easy connection to the house of David. Mary is not known to be of the house of David; however, in the patriarchal, male influenced days of Jesus birth, the female’s background was not very important. Matthew and Luke both wanted to make Jesus fit prophecies concerning the virgin birth from Hebrew scripture. Each Gospel has quite different accounts of the “facts” around the nativity and Christmas stories. Remember that most liberal Christians do not accept what is written in the Bible as literal, exact meaning of the words. I believe that the Bible was written down long after the events happened. It was translated by many scribes from many inexact languages, originally by hand with many errors possible. It also was bound by what was happening in the history and culture of its time. I believe that most of the Bible is not the exact literal meaning of the words; yet I do believe that there is much truth in the same way that there is truth in metaphor and myth. Myths have their own truths. They provide people with a view of the world and a set of values that are just as important as scientifically verifiable facts.
To the question of how did Jesus awake from the dead, I can’t really say. No one else was around. Jesus was in the tomb so it was something that happened without eartly witnesses. We do know that Jesus himself had awakened or raised up people that had died, such as Lazarus, by just calling his or her name or by praying.
Our church teaches that Jesus was both human and divine. That God came to earth in the form of Jesus is believed by the majority of Christians. The reason we have two candles on our worship table is to symbolize the humanity and divinity of Christ.
The last question about Jesus is what is the minimum we must believe about the Resurrection story to remain in the Christian community? This question depends on what Christian church you want to be associated with. In our denomination, it is not necessary to literally believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. It could be thought about more as metaphor, as new life. I’ve heard people say that if you don’t believe in a literal resurrection than there is no basis for your faith. I disagree. The reason I am a Christian is that I want to follow the teachings and way of life that Jesus showed us. Whether or not I believe in the resurrection is not the point for my identity as a Christian. As I said in my last sermon, the main reason I believe in the literal resurrection is because of the changes that happened in the disciples after they saw the resurrected Jesus; however, if the resurrection story is myth, it does not shake my faith in any way.
We have talked about God and Jesus. The other part of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. I had probably 5-6 hours of lecture in seminary on this concept, and here I will only say a couple of things. The Trinity is made up of three different aspects of the Divine or the Sacred. Many people call this whole God and the first person of the Trinity Father. I prefer to call the first person of the Trinity, God, the second, Jesus, and the third Holy Spirit. Others say Creator, Son, and Holy Ghost. These three 'persons' share the same essence, making them the same being. All three aspects make up one whole, somewhat like by being a wife, a mother, and a minister (as well as other parts), yet I am one whole person. Another example that is often used to help explain the trinity is that H20, which we most often think of as water actually comes in 3 forms: liquid, steam, and ice yet they are all aspects of water. Within the Trinity, each of the three Persons can act separately from each other Person yet they achieve the same one purpose in unity.
Now a couple of questions about truth and about the church that I will briefly answer. Why does it seem so many Christian groups throughout history believe they have the ultimate truth and unite to persecute and kill members of other groups? We all like to think we have the right answers. When groups are told that they are the only ones that have the truth and that they are responsible to go forward and baptize/convert all nations, they have a tendency to do this by any means possible. Fundamentalism is part of all religious groups; it is those believers that believe in the exact, literal meaning of what has been written, don’t want any change, and focus much more on righteousness than love.How do you know what to believe? It’s really hard to figure out the truth. Many folks feel so much more comfortable in a church that tells them exactly how to believe. I sometimes yearn for that myself. I believe that God is still speaking. We have guidance through scripture, prayer, tradition, and revelation—the still speaking part.
Why go to church? Our Statement of Faith says we are called into church to accept the joys and cost of discipleship, to serve others, to share in Christ’s baptism and Communion—our two sacraments. To me the most important thing about church is community. I can worship and praise God by myself; I can pray by myself; I can theologize by myself. It is only by joining together in the community of others that I can experience the joy and cost of discipleship.
One last question on the church: How can Protestant churches like our own attract and keep a wide variety of people who may disagree on many things, but still want to be Christians? This is a very difficult thing to do. I’m still looking for better answers. In small rural communities we are often limited by the population being pretty homogenous to start with. In Deering we certainly have some age and class differences as well as attitudinal differences. I believe we have to do a better job of asking others to come to church, not just the pastor, but each of you trying to overcome your resistance to “telling the Good News”. Open discussion in a safe atmosphere comes from pastoral leadership as well as lay leadership, yet it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years to trust each other to share our prejudices as well as our gifts and blessings. We have to keep working at it, pray for it, and never give up on sharing the love of Christ. This topic again needs more time and exploration.
There have been a couple of questions that I just don’t have time to answer specifically. I’ll end with an easy one, God created Adam and Eve and we are told they had 3 sons. Genesis goes on to describe all the kids they had. Where did the wives come from for Adam and Eve’s sons? Actually Adam and Eve had many children, both sons and daughters (see Gen. 5:4; and the sons married their sisters. Intermarriage was not forbidden or frowned upon in those days; in fact it was the only thing that could propagate the world at that time.
posted by Sermons given at Deering Community Church @ 1:49 PM
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