First Parish Sermon

This morning I would like to give you my take on a Unitarian Universalist approach to the Bible. It is good to do so from time to time for our own edification and as a reminder why it is that though Unitarian Universalists do indeed honor the Biblical heritage both for ourselves and our children we do not make a fetish out of it nor believe it to be an absolute and infallible guide in all matters of faith and morals. There is much in the Bible that is worthy of continuing inspiration and comfort for both worship and spiritual reflection, but there is also much that is dated and obscure and no longer fit to be an authoritative guide for our time and era. We need to know both and to use our intelligence and critical judgment in deciding what is still helpful for us today.

Many parents want their children to learn about the Bible in religious education classes to give them a grounding and base in the Judeo-Christian heritage which is still the predominant spiritual orientation of our western culture. It is true that other religious traditions are having a greater impact and influence upon us, and we need to know about these things too, but how can we appreciate Buddhism and Hinduism or Islam if we do not understand and appreciate our own Jewish and Christian heritage? It is not only a matter of teaching our children well, but of teaching ourselves well also so that we can have an intelligent conversation with our young people when they ask questions about what we believe about God and the Bible in comparison to others. So it is important for adults to stay in touch with what is happening in the world of Biblical scholarship and historical critical understanding. I hope my sermon this morning will shed some light on this subject.

One hundred fifty plus years ago the great Unitarian preacher, Theodore Parker, said, "As a master the Bible were a tyrant; as a help, I have not time to tell its worth." At one time Parker himself had been close to a fundamentalist in his view of the Bible. But as he studied the Scriptures and applied the emerging critique of the Higher Biblical Criticism of his day he realized the shortcomings of his former views. He had the good sense to amend his theology in the light of a new and larger truth. He followed the lead of the Father of American Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing, who stated in his famous 1819 Baltimore Sermon, "the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books....We profess not to know a book, which demands a more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible." 

Following in the footsteps of Channing and Parker I offer to you my own view of "An Intelligent Approach to the Bible." In my humble opinion the Bible is one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted and over rated books in our culture. No book is bought more, read less, and if read, understood least, then the Bible. People read what the Bible says in a particular place and ignore the question of who, what, where, when, and why it was said in the way it was, and what, if any, relation it has to the problems and concerns of today. It may have a very important relation, but not necessarily in the way that some people think when interpreted from a narrow religious or theological perspective.

When people say "the Bible say this" or "the Bible says that" it is very misleading because it gives the impression that the Bible speaks with a single voice, usually understood as "the Word of God." What is really the case is that someone said something to someone else at a particular time and place for a specific reason and purpose which can usually be determined by the historical context. What they said may or may not have meaning and significance for us living today. 

For example, we know that Matthew quotes from a Greek translation of the Prophet Isaiah to proof text his doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. We now know that the original Hebrew text (which Matthew did not have) referred not to a virgin but to a young woman who would give birth to a child, not as a saviour of all humankind, but as a sign of victory for the king of Israel over his enemies. Matthew was just plain mistaken in his use of that text. He could not have known that, but we do, and that changes our understanding.

Which means that the Bible is not and cannot be the Word of God in any absolutist sense. It is the words of men, (women unfortunately had little input or recognition in the Biblical writings), written over many generations, words that describe their attempts to find and understand God and the meaning of their existence, within the limits of the knowledge and idiom of their own time and history. God is sometimes one among many (a tribal deity among a polytheistic pantheon of many), sometimes a jealous nationalistic tyrant (henotheism), sometimes a universal creator God of love and justice (monotheism at its best). 

The Bible needs to be studied and understood  from an evolutionary or developmental perspective. We can see a movement from primitive barbarism, polytheism, and religious exclusionism to monotheism and the religious ideals of universal moral justice and compassion. Everything in the Bible is not of equal value or worth. We need to read with a critical moral and intellectual eye.

The concept of God in the Bible is heavily influenced by the political imagery of the day. To quote the late philosopher Alan Watts:

the God of the Hebrews, the Arabs and the Christians is a mental idol fashioned in the image of the great monarchs of Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia. The veneration of God as "King of kings and Lord of lords" borrows the official title of Persian emperors. We need to ask ourselves, "Is the portrayal of God as an absolutist monarch—sometimes jealous and tyrannical, sometimes merciful and compassionate--an appropriate image for the inconceivable divine energy that underlies the universe?

If everything in the Bible is the Word of God what are we to make of such things as the Mosaic injunction for the stoning to death of unruly children and the execution of those who pick up sticks on the Sabbath? Hang up your rakes gang on Sundays if you know what's good for you? Saturdays if your Jewish. And what of the crude and vulgar Old Testament practice of animal sacrifice--endless bodies of animals cruelly put to death and burned for the delectation of God? What kind of deity is it that delights in the odor of burnt flesh? Has God changed his habits over the centuries or has our concept of the divine changed with our growing knowledge of the world? Obviously the latter is the case.

It is quite evident that the Bible speaks not with one but with many voices. The Bible, after all, is not one book, but a library of 66 books (39 O.T., 27 N.T.) written by almost as many authors over a period of about 1300 years on three continents. As Allan Watts once noted, it is "an anthology of ancient literature that contains sublime wisdom along with barbaric histories and the war songs of tribes on the rampage." Joseph Campbell is less kind in his description. He says of the Bible that it is "the overinterpreted parochial history and manufactured genealogy of a single sub-race of a southwest Asian strain, late to appear and, though a great and noble influence, by no means what its own version of the history of the human race sets it up to be."

Various rabbinical and church councils decided which of the many ancient books would be included in the Bible and declared Holy Writ, and which would be left out. Why was the so-called Apocrypha declared good enough for Catholics, but not for Protestants, and why did Revelation, Jude and II Peter make it into the canon and not the Shepherd of Hermas, Enoch and I Clement, equally worthy books? Fallible human beings made those decisions, not the Holy Spirit. 

The idea that a select group of human beings could declare the canon of Scripture to be closed and complete is itself a presumption whose authority rests on mere opinion. I happen to think it is a mistaken opinion. But that's my opinion. You may disagree. That's your opinion. No matter how hard we try we cannot escape the authority of our own judgment and experience.

To be accepted into the canon of Scripture books had to be of apostolic or prophetic origin and authorship. We now know that most of the books of the Bible would be thrown out on that basis. Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the first five books of the O.T., sometimes called the Torah. At least four editors, over a period of some 400 years, had a hand in it, and they didn't get around to it until Moses had been dead at least half a millennium. We know today that none of the four Gospels were written by those whose names are attributed to them except perhaps portions of the Book of Acts by Luke. None of the writers were eyewitnesses to the events they described. They drew upon an oral history which may have been first set in narrative form by Mark and then added to by the writers of the other Gospels from teaching sources and woven into the story some 30 to 80 years after the death of Jesus. 

Many of the Letters attributed to Paul do in fact come from his own hand, but a number of them do not. In any event when he wrote those letters he never dreamed they would someday be considered Holy Writ because he was convinced the world was soon coming to an end and that Jesus would return on the clouds of heaven to judge the quick and the dead. It did not happen. He was wrong. Which means that when he wrote such things he could not have been divinely inspired. 

Moreover, Paul knows nothing of the human history of Jesus of Nazareth or of his Teachings. If he did why did he never mention them in his letters? All he seems to know about is a cosmic savior god not unlike the saviour gods of surrounding pagan cults only more universal in outreach. Paul did indeed transform Christianity from a minor Jewish sect into a new universal religion, but that does not make his letters infallible Scripture nor his theological opinions the absolute truth of God.

We should recognize the vital role the Bible has played in the development of freedom of religion and thought. Translations of the Bible were copied first on parchment, then on vellum scrolls. They were accessible only to educated scribes and clergy. Jerome's Latin Vulgate (390-404 C.E.) was the authoritative text in the Catholic Church for centuries. Translations into the common language of the people (the "vulgar tongue") was forbidden by the Church. John Wycliffe's first English translation (1380) was ordered confiscated and burned and Wycliffe's bones dug up and burned for heresy.

The invention of the printing press and movable type by Gutenberg in 1450 turned things around. Translations of the Bible into German (by Luther) and then into English (by Wm. Tyndale) flooded the market place of towns and villages. The Bible became the property of common folk who learned to read and write using the scripture as teacher and guide. People began to make their own judgments and interpretations of what they read and it did not always agree with what the Church said it meant. Luther's "solo Scriptura" became a two-edged sword--splitting with Rome on the one hand, and then splitting hairs and creating a host of Protestant sects on the other. The end result was that for a hundred years Europe was torn by religious wars all in the name of God and the Bible.

The Bible has played an important role in the development of both Unitarianism and Universalism. Servetus read the Bible and refuted the doctrine of the Trinity as unscriptural which it was. John Murray read the Bible and declared eternal hell a lie and universal salvation a reality. Channing read the Bible and proclaimed the unity of God, the humanity of Jesus, the dignity of human nature and the use of reason in religion. Jefferson read the Bible and wrote his own expurgated version of the Gospel based solely on the moral teachings of Jesus. Everyone--Catholic, Baptist, or U.U.--has his or her own canon within the canon and a few canons outside the canon. 
In 1836 Emerson wrote in his journal: "Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul." I, too, would urge you--make your Bible--and don't restrict yourself to the Bible as you do so.

Aristotle once said of Plato--"Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth." Likewise, the Bible has been dear to Unitarian Universalists, but dearer still is truth. As UUs we live with no closed canon of Scripture, but with the open Bible of human inspiration and religious experience past and present, Christian and Non-Christian, humanist and theist, pantheist and naturalist. We "welcome light from whencesoever source it may come." (Channing) Your Bible can grow to the extent of your capacity for spiritual growth and enlightenment. 

Jesus is reported to have criticized the Pharisees as today he would no doubt criticize the Biblical literalists. He said to them, "You search the Scriptures daily, for in them you think you have have life." He was saying what the poet Walt Whitman later wrote: "I do not say bibles and religions are not divine; I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still; it is not they who give the life--is you who give the life."

O Thou who art the giver of life and love and freedom, may we learn to find you, not confined between the pages of a book gathering dust on the shelf, but still active and alive in the human heart and conscience, and in your glorious creation which surrounds us and is in us. Amen.