First Parish Sermon

I remember when I was in elementary school we would listen once a week on a Friday afternoon to a half hour radio program on Bible stories. This was before separation of church and state became such a critical issue. I can remember listening to dramatizations of stories about David and Goliath, King Saul's madness and young David's music therapy sessions with his soothing harp, and other stories. 

I sat enthralled and learned more about some of the great stories in the Bible than I ever learned in Sunday School. Many of them became favorites even before I read them in the King James version, which was the only version anyone ever read when I was a young lad. The printed stories were never as good as the radio dramatizations of them. They caught my imagination and became part of my subconscious lexicon of myth and  metaphor. They were part of the heritage of my culture. I took them in and made them my own.

I can remember learning about the two creation stories in the Book of Genesis in my Christian Science Sunday School classes. The first story was about the creation of Humanity in the image and likeness of God, spiritually perfect and without sin. The second story was about the illusion of the material creation, a mist fell over the earth, clouding our minds, and making us believe that God created us from the mud of the earth, finite and  mortal, and subject to death and disease, all because someone ate some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Why that was wrong I never could understand. 

I know it puzzled my young mind that Eve was made from Adam's rib, meaning that Woman was born from man, but after that men and women were all born from Eve and her female descendents. Why should women be the only ones to experience giving birth? If the first man, Adam, could give birth, why couldn't other men also give birth? The Bible never explained that mystery and neither did my Sunday School teachers. 

I'm still trying to picture Adam going to his doctor and saying to him, "Doc, I think I'm pregnant. I hope it's a girl, a full grown girl, because I'd like to start a family." Did you ever stop to think that if Eve was literally born from Adam, she was both his daughter and his wife, a confusing state of affairs indeed. But since there were presumably no other human beings in the world at the time it didn't really matter.

Which brings us to Cain and Abel, the first children of the first parents of the human race. You remember the story. Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel a keeper of sheep. Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground while Abel brought the firstlings of his flock. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. Naturally, Cain went into a blue funk, got into a fight with his younger brother, in the course of which he killed him. After that he was driven away from the face of the Lord, a fugitive and a wanderer. 

To this day the chances of your being murdered by your own kith and kin are far greater than your being bumped off by a violence prone criminal and stranger. So, if you're going to get a gun to protect yourself from a potential intruder, you'd better get another gun to protect yourself from your own family. 

It always bothered me that God showed favoritism toward Abel's offering and rejected Cain's offering? Why on earth would God do such a stupid thing? Any intelligent parent knows what happens when you play favorites among your kids. Jealousy, envy, strife and sibling rivalry are the inevitable result. They're inevitable anyway, so why stir the pot? It would seem that Yahweh could have used a good lesson in how to raise children. 

If the Lord wanted to foster healthy self-esteem in both Cain and Abel he was clearly going at it in the wrong way. What was wrong with Cain's offering?  Maybe the fruit was rotten. We don't know. The Bible never tells us. After all, Abel engaged in animal sacrifice while Cain offered produce from the earth without the taking of sentient life. Maybe God was not a vegetarian. He wanted good red meat and wanted nothing to do with broccoli. How would Cain know?  I can hear God saying to Cain, "I'm the Lord of heaven and earth and I'm not going to eat any broccoli, ever. You can take your offering and give it to Mrs. God."

Of course, I didn't know at the time, that this story reflects the conflict and transition from a stable farming community, a people of the land, pagans with their various gods of vegetarian growth, and the rootless wandering tribes of those who herded sheep and cattle and moved from place to place where the grazing lands took them. Yahweh, the God of the Mountain, of a particular place and locale, became the God of a people wandering in the desert from place to place, whose abode was the temporary abode of a tent in the wilderness, the God of the Ark of the Covenant, portable and on the move. 

That's why he didn't care for Cain's offering. He was no longer a god of vegetation. He definitely favored animal husbandry over farming. Poor Cain should have had the wits to say to Yahweh, "Where do you think Abel got the wheat and grain to feed his flocks? From good old Cain's farm grazing lands, that's where."

Another thing that puzzled my young mind about this story was that when Cain went away from the presence of the Lord to dwell in the land of Nod, east of Eden, he took to himself a wife, and started a family. Where did his wife come from? Did Adam and Eve have a daughter? If not, whose daughter was she? And where did they come from? These were troubling metaphysical questions which my youthful mind could not quite grasp when I first read these marvelous Biblical tales and legends. Of course, I didn't know they were legends when I first came across them. I thought they really happened. Now I know they do happen, every day, only the names change, but the story goes on, the story of our loss of innocence, of envy, jealousy, murder and mayhem.

I always had trouble reconciling young David's slaying of that Philistine bully, Goliath, with Jesus' nonviolent admonition to turn the other cheek and to forgive seventy times seven. I can remember being egged on by a fat head bully in a high school gym class who wanted to start something because for some reason he took a disliking to me. He wanted me to throw the first punch so he would have an excuse for pounding my face in. Believe me I wanted to oblige him in the worst way, but I knew if I did I would take the blame for starting a fight in gym and would risk suspension. I know because the gym teacher warned us. 

Plus I might also get pulverized. My challenger wanted to meet me somewhere after school with his buddies in tow and have it out. I decided that was not such a hot idea. So I held my aggressive instincts in check and avoided trying to be David taking on Goliath. I was not about to turn the other cheek, but neither was I about to start something I would later regret. It was a practical political decision, not a religiously motivated choice. 

Nowadays I would be stabbed or shot. Sling shots, you see, are not very effective weapons at good old Philistine High these days. David versus Goliath is a romanticized hero story rooted in male power fantasies. It's a grand old story, one of my favorites, but it is no longer, if it ever was, a realistic model for solving conflicts in today's world. What model can we offer our young people today? We need to take away the guns and knifes and drugs at the high school door and get back to the business of education rather than gang wars. There's something seriously wrong when teachers and young people have to take their lives into their hands when they go to school. We should be seeking wisdom, not male macho myths gone awry.

Which brings us to the wisdom of Solomon. Solomon had a dream in which God said to his kingly servant, "Ask what I shall give you."  Solomon could have asked for riches and honor, long life and power and glory, but instead he asked for "an understanding mind to govern thy people" and to "discern between good and evil." Because he asked for wisdom instead of long life and riches and honor, God promises to grant Solomon his wish and to throw the other things into the bargain gratis, so long as Solomon keeps the statutes and commandments of the Lord. 

A wonderful story. It matters not that Solomon was in fact a power hungry rapacious ruler, that he satiated his lust with a harem of beautiful women, or that he honored the altars of pagan gods in addition to the worship of Yahweh, a wise political tactic to keep his enemies in check. Yes, he built a glorious temple for the Lord in Jerusalem, but he was no model of virtue or religious and moral integrity. Far from it. But none of that matters. People have forgotten the history. What they remember is the story, and since the story is better than the history, we honor the Solomon of the story.

It is in fact better to seek wisdom than riches and honor, but like Solomon we try to have it all if we can. Most people would rather be rich fools than wise paupers, but in our heart of hearts we know that Jesus was right when he said, "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?"

Solomon the Wise is asked to mediate a dispute between two harlots who each claim to be the true mother of a living child. A second infant was dead because his mother had lain on it in the night and then tried to substitute the live child for her own. Solomon puts the two women to the test by suggesting that he divide the live child in two with a sword and give half to one and half to the other. The real mother says, no way, give my son to the other woman and let him live. The other woman says, fair enough, if I can't have a live child then why should she. Solomon recognizes the true mother in her desire to preserve the life of her child even at the cost of losing him to another woman. In today's world Solomon would have a more complicated problem to resolve who the true mother is.

Do you recall the court cases (some years ago) involving single surrogate mothers who had agreed to be birthing vessels for some childless parents? I think there were two different cases. In the first one the surrogate mother received the father's semen artificially inseminated, and was paid $10,000 to bring the baby to full term and then turn her over to her adoptive parents.  After she had the baby she changed her mind and wanted to keep her. 

The case went to court and the judge ruled in favor of the adoptive parents. They were better able to provide for the child and the biological father's rights had to be considered along with those of the biological mother. Solomon didn't have to deal with that issue. The biological mother had also signed a legal contract with the adoptive parents. The judge recognized the existence of the contract, but it was not the deciding factor. In fact the judge ruled that any future arrangements would have no legal standing in the eyes of the court. 

The other case involved a surrogate mother who received a fertilized egg from both biological parents, which was then inserted in her womb to bring to full term because the biological mother was unable to host the embryo. Another case involved a woman who gave birth to her twin grandchildren because her daughter had no uterus. How would Solomon decide who was the true mother in this scenario? And what about those bewildered single mothers who leave their new born infants in other people's cars in a shopping mall parking lot, or worse yet deposit them in the trash? 

We now know that becoming a biological mother or father in no way transforms one into a nurturing and caring parent. Solomon didn't have to consider these kinds of issues, or the ethical dilemmas that some women must face when considering whether to bring a developing fetus to full term or to seek a medically safe abortion. Mandatory motherhood cannot be imposed from without, but must come from within, freely chosen by women who wish to become vessells for new human life. Solomon never had to consider that question, after all he was a man, and his many wives and concubines had no choice in the matter either. We live in a different world today. 

I have learned that life is often more complicated than the wonderful stories and tales in the Bible would lead us to believe. That does not make the stories any less worthwhile. It only means that we should use them for our own further growth and education and not be bound to their literal outcome and interpretation. Bible stories do give us pause to think and ponder and probe our human values and religious beliefs. I have shared with you some of my favorites. 

In closing I would remind you of some lines from Whitman: “ 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. It is you who give the life.”

May we continue to give birth to Bible stories old and new, and may we continue to grow in our capacity to live and love and learn and to be givers and receivers of compassion, justice and mercy without measure. Amen.