Sermon

The Advent of Wonder

The Rev. Jack D. Bryant

Hope Unitarian Church

November 28, 2004

First Reading: Luke 1:26-33

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’

Second Reading: Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase. Pages 297-298

Cantwell Smith was one of the first theologians to make all this clear to me . . .. I remember the extraordinary sense of relief I felt when I read in his somewhat dry, scholarly prose that our ideas of God were man-made; that they could be nothing else; that it was a modern Western fallacy, dating only from the eighteenth century, to equate faith with accepting certain intellectual propositions about God. Faith was really the cultivation of a conviction that life had some ultimate meaning and value, despite the tragic evidence to the contrary - an attitude also evoked by great art. The Middle English word beleven originally meant “to love”; and the Latin credo (“I believe”) probably derived from the phrase cor do: “I give my heart.” Saint Anself of Canterbury had written, “Credo ut intellegam,” usually translated “I believe in order that I may understand.” I had always assumed that this meant that I had to discipline my religious mind and force it to bow to the official orthodoxy, and that as a result of this submission, I would learn to understand a higher truth. This had been the foundation of my training in the convent. But no, Cantwell Smith explained, “Credo ut intellegam” should be translated “I commit myself in order that I may understand.” You must first live in a certain way, and then you would encounter within a sacred presence that which monotheists call God, but which others have called the Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana.

But did that mean that we could think what we liked about God? No. Here again, the religious traditions were in unanimous agreement. The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test for the prophets of Israel, for the rabbis of the Talmud, for Jesus, for Paul and for Muhammad, not to mention Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha, or the sages of the Upanishads. In killing Muslims and Jews in the name of God, the Crusaders had simply projected their own fear and loathing onto a deity which they had created in their own image and likeness, thereby giving this hatred a seal of absolute approval. A personalized God can easily lead to this type of idolatry, which is why the more thoughtful Jews, Christians and Muslims insisted that while you could begin by thinking of God as a person, God transcended personality as “he” went beyond all other human categories.

Sermon

This is the first Sunday of Advent, the season that anticipates Christmas. It is a time filled with theological significance. It is a time that has been elaborated with theological doctrines and dogmas almost without end. It is a time when we are supposed to be reminded of a sense of theological wonder. I am one given to reading theology. The words of the theologians have been important in my life. I would not discard them. But at the same time I have never been more distressed with theologians than at the beginning of this Advent season.

Our world is filled with theological pronouncements. Fred Phelps was here recently to give us his theological pronouncements. Usama Bin Laden issues his on a regular basis. And the wholesale murder of people in Iraq by the insurgents is yet another form of theological pronouncement. Not all are so overtly violent. I looked on the internet for matters related to Advent and found a multitude of websites with theological pronouncements of a less violent nature. And that is fitting, for while all religions have their theologies - and many of them are of seemingly infinite complexity - I don’t believe any religion is fonder of theological doctrines than Christianity, the dominant religion of the western world.

Much of the traditional Advent story is about such claims of theological wonder. There are the stories of ancient prophecies foretelling the birth of a child. There is the mother, a Virgin, it is said, both before and after the birth of the child. And the child himself is, of course, nothing less than God incarnate - although that is a late addition to the story. There is ample cause for wonder. But Christianity does not have a monopoly on the subject. Regardless of one’s faith there are a multitude of religious doctrines and dogmas to amaze the believer. Islam offers the wonder of the Prophet Mohammed taken bodily into heaven. Hindus have millions of Gods, all in fantastic forms. And Judaism offers the creation of the world itself and personal interviews with the Almighty. All is cause for wonder.

But the greatest wonder of all is the attitude that so many people take towards these wonders. Not all can be right. Some must be wrong. Some people, therefore, are able to glory in the realization that they are right and others are wrong. But stop and think about it. What kind of religion would it be if you couldn’t lean over the railing from on high and look down in serene satisfaction on the poor misguided fools below who are wrong? Perhaps that is the greatest wonder of all.

But one should not discount the traditional wonders of the Advent season. It is amazing to contemplate the child who is God incarnate. It is amazing to contemplate the once and future virgin mother. It is amazing to behold the spectacle of God’s great plan for the world slowly working its way to completion. For many people it is a cause for wonder. It is the message taught to countless people, people who are assured that to believe in such wonders will ensure that it is they who will stand upon the heights and others who will suffer below.

Most religions seem to revolve around that basic idea: beliefs that - if true - are extraordinary and cause for wonder. And the more extraordinary the beliefs, the more difficult they are to believe, then the greater that religion must be. God doesn’t just create the world, God creates it out of nothingness. God doesn’t just have a plan for the world, it is so incredibly complicated that it is impossible for mere mortals to understand. God doesn’t just speak to people out of the sky, God walks on the earth - and water - and performs miracle after miracle. But why is it that we require such wonders to have a sense of wonder? The question reminds me of the movies. If you go to the movies you are undoubtedly aware of the sequel phenomenon. Someone makes a movie and it makes some money. Inevitably the sequel follows. In almost every case the formula is the same. For every explosion, for every car chase, for every special effect that was in the first movie there must be two explosions, two car chases and two special effects in the second one. Imagine what it would be like if you went to the sequel and you saw something original and creative - something with a plot - the one element often left out of the sequel. That would be truly wonderful - unusual and wonderful. Suppose something like that happened with religion during this Advent season. What do you think it would look like? I think it might look something like this.

Instead of talking about ancient prophecies, virgins, and God being born in human form, what if we just focused on the news that a child was to be born? Have we become so jaded that we can’t see that each night a child is born is a cause for wonder?

For so the children come

And so they have been coming.

Always in the same way they come

Born of the seed of man and woman.

No angels herald their beginnings.

No prophets predict their future courses.

No wisemen see a star to show where

to find the babe that will
save humankind.

Yet each night a child is born
is a holy night,

Fathers and mothers sitting beside
their children’s cribs

Feel glory in the sight
of a new life beginning.

They ask, “Where and how will this new
life end? Or will it ever end?

Each night a child is born is a holy night

A time for singing, A time for wondering,

A time for worshipping

(Sophia Lyon Fahs)

And why is it necessary that God incarnate walk amongst us? We seem to have forgotten - as Karen Armstrong points out in her spiritual autobiography - that many of the great religious figures of the world have suggested that God is nothing, that God is a human invention - and at the same time, insisted on pointing us towards a paradoxical reality that says the unknown and unknowable God that is beyond explanation or description and is just a human invention, actually and literally appears among us - not by way of virgin birth, but every time one human being acts with compassion and kindness towards another.

Most religions today focus on the idea of creed, claiming that the impossibility and unbelievablility of the statements contained in their creed is the source of wonder. We forget that the word “believe” is rooted in the concept of “I love” and the word “credo” comes from two Latin words which mean, “I give my heart.” What if instead of trying to come up with ever more unbelievable creeds, we reverted to the idea that belief and credo mean love and the giving of the heart? Would we dare to make our beliefs and credos about loving others and the giving of our heart, the commitment to living a life of compassion? Is there not - within such simple ideas more than enough cause for wonder?

Karen Armstrong declares that the true measure of a person’s religion, the true measure of any theological claim, is whether it leads a person to a life of compassion towards others. I believe she is correct. It offers an approach to religion that says it doesn’t matter whether you are right or wrong about what you believe - or don’t believe about the existence or nature of God or Virgin births or prophecies that God will be born incarnate in human form. It means there is no room in religion for staring down from a lofty place in disdain and arrogance at those who have it wrong. My religion, your religion, everyone’s religion is not to be measured against another person’s. The only measure that matters is the personal question: Has your religion led you to a life of compassion?

That is the true measure of all religious and theological claims. It doesn’t matter how incredible one’s beliefs may be. It doesn’t matter how many miracles they require. It doesn’t matter whether the beliefs and miracles are true or false. And it doesn’t matter how logical and rational one’s beliefs may be. It doesn’t matter that one is so intellectually superior that he or she is able to reject all that “nonsense”. All that matters is whether one is led to a life that is “kinder, more empathetic, and impelled . . . [toward] concrete acts of loving-kindness . . ..”

It doesn’t sound exciting. It’s like a movie without special effects. There is no need for a rain of plagues from the sky. The Red Sea doesn’t have to part. A Virgin doesn’t have to give birth. Such events may happen, but their truth or falsity are moot before the larger question: Whether your beliefs lead you to a life of compassion.

In such a world there is sufficiency in the miracle, the every day miracle, of a mother and father anticipating the birth of their child. There is sufficiency in the every day miracle of each child’s birth. There is sufficiency in the every day miracle of a new life that may be the life that inspires others to give their hearts not to hatred and murder, but to love and compassion. In such a world we can become open to the wisdom of the ancient Buddhist poem that says, “May our loving thoughts fill the whole world; above, below, across - without limit; a boundless goodwill toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity.” (Sutta Nipata 118 - Armstong 296)

Thanksgiving is over. It is now the Advent season. But instead of wonder at the miracles of theology, I hope that this Advent season will lead us to recognize a different kind of wonder. It is not a new wonder, it is the wonder that has always been in front of us. It is the wonder we recognize when we realize that the true voyage of discovery is not one that takes us someplace new, but the opening of our eyes so that we see what has been in front of us all the time. It is the wonder that is in our midst right now. It is the wonder that as Christmas draws near there are at least three children in our congregation who will soon be born. Perhaps there are more. But one should be more than enough to remind us that each night a child is born is a holy night. One should be more than enough to remind us that each night a child is adopted is a holy night. One should be more than enough to remind us that parents - in the giving of love and compassion and empathy to their children - bring into reality the impossible idea that is God.

In this season of Advent I challenge you to set aside the disciplines of mind that call for us to accept any religious orthodoxy, any set of theological ideas demanding intellectual assent. Instead, let us have an Advent, a beginning of commitment to what we love, an Advent and beginning of commitment to the giving of the heart, an Advent that leads us to lives of compassion. I can’t imagine any Advent that could be more wonderful.

Amen.