Progressive Faith Sermons - Dr. Roger Ray

The best way to totally misunderstand a good story is to try to take it literally. The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are not historical, not even close. They are mini sermons in the form of a story. While they are really bad history, they are actually really good sermons if we can dismiss literalism and hear the story the authors are trying to tell us.

In the Marvel Universe, the Norse god, Thor, takes his place alongside of Iron Man and Spider Man without theological comment on the improbability of either human superheroes or gods from Asgard existing. Most of the time we easily can tell the difference between what is real and what is fantasy but when it comes to religion, it seems that most people are all too willing to suspend reason and to at least pretend to dive into myths and fantasies. Such religion does us little good and more often does a great deal of harm. So, let's free ourselves from mental slavery since none but ourselves can free our minds!

Americans are dying from gunshot wounds in America at a rate of about 47,000 per year. That number looks more like the casualty count on a battle field! In fact, it is about the same as the number of deaths in the Gaza Strip during the two years of the recently ended war with Israel. But for us, this is a death toll that goes on year after year, almost entirely due to the Republican Party's unwillingness to support sane gun laws at a federal and state level. It is time to stop voting for Republicans until hey agree on a cease fire with America.

How do we know what we know? Philosophy tells us that knowledge can be inherent, deductive reasoning, or it can be based on experience. What it cannot be is just imagination or personal prejudice. Science, which looks for knowable facts, depends upon something being at least 3 things: observable, repeatable, and testable. Everything else is either personal preference or something we should be more suspicious of than gas station sushi!

We have always had both priests and prophets but we are quickly growing beyond our need of priests who provide the rituals, religious texts, hymns, and institutions of organized religion. But the prophets, the ones who inspire us and challenge us to be and to do what it really means to be spiritual people, to embody courage, work for justice, and guide our society in ways of compassion, where will we find them when the church is no more?

230 years ago, in his Age of Reason, Thomas Paine implored his fellow Americans to break free of the mental prison imposed on them by monarchs and priests and to embrace a mental freedom found in reason. The pendulum has swung more than once since that time but clearly, we are living in a time in which propaganda is more warmly embraced than is critical thinking. As Bob Marley sang, "Free yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds."

We inherit prejudices from our family of origin as well as the culture around us and in the media. The first time our irrational prejudices are confronted, it is unlikely that we will give them up. For most of us, overcoming gender, racial, sexual orientation, or religious prejudices was a process of many steps taken over several years. Once free of that curse, we will do well to remember that our transformation took time, reflection, critical thinking, and no small amount of patience out of other people because we need to become the prophets who challenge the many prejudices that remain a part of our society.

For centuries the world's religions have constructed a mental prison in which they try to control the conduct of their adherents through threats of eternal torture or, for the very good, promises of eternal reward. However, once you awaken to the reality that these are empty promises and threats, in a world where there is not heaven or hell, then there are no moral absolutes . . . then we are left to discern for ourselves, "how shall we then live?"

By the end of the first century of the common era, the message of Jesus the preacher had been entirely transformed into a message about Jesus, turning the spokesperson of radical compassion into a magical symbol who hods out a promise of life after death. We have no reliable sources to tell us much about the message of the historical Jesus since the authors of the New Testament had their own agendas which had little or nothing to do with what the historical Jesus had to say. We have only hints and suggestions of what really happened on the first Easter but this message attempts to strip away the dirt and stones that both Rome and the early church tried to bury Jesus' message under.

The greatest moral failing of the modern world may be our quiet acceptance of what Dorothy Day called "our filthy rotten system." Every year the income gap grows wider and the gap in ownership of capital becomes more stark. If we cannot change course it is not hyperbole to predict that the USA is on its way to becoming what we have too easily called a "third world country."

The Bible doesn't speak with one point of view nor does it teach a singular message. Religious people have to be willing to enter the debate which is found even within the pages of scripture in order to choose the right path towards a healthy spirituality. You can find harsh judgement and prejudice in the Bible, and, if you look, you can find the cure for harsh judgement and prejudice. It just depends on what you are looking for.

This week's inauguration of Donald Trump was painful for most if not all of our listeners. Still, short of resignation, illness, or an implausible impeachment, his chaotic administration will be a threatening fact of life for the world for four more years. How then can we adapt ourselves to a reality we wanted so desperately to never face? How do we protest or resist his insanity while trying, at the same time, to heal the lethal divide of our nation?