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The Essence of Christianity
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Roger Fritts
on February 21, 1999
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
When I was a small child, I visited my Baptist aunt in Kentucky. She took me to church where the teacher taught me to sing "Jesus loves me, this I know, `cause the Bible tells me so." I learned that being a Christian is to trust in a gentle, kind father-figure who would take care of me. I enjoyed the lesson, although I failed to pursue a singing career.
When I was a teenager, I visited my Mennonite grandmother in Idaho. She taught me that to be a Christian was to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we shared that belief, we would see each other in heaven. It was a comforting thought, but I was already becoming a skeptic.
As a college student, I looked for guidance about the military draft. I found it in the writings of the radical pacifists, all of whom were Christian. For example, I read Tolstoy's writings on Civil Disobedience and nonviolence. He taught me that to be a Christian was to refuse to serve in the military. It gave me direction during a difficult time in my life.
When I entered a seminary to learn to be a minister, I studied both the history of Christianity and the variety of denominations. I learned that the word Christ was first used about forty years after the birth of Jesus and it is the Greek translation of the Jewish title "Messiah." I learned that we can divide Christianity among three principal groups: the Roman Catholic church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Protestant churches. In addition, today 22,000 separate churches, sects, and denominations make up the Christian tradition. In seminary, besides Unitarian Universalist teachers, I took classes from Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Also, I took courses in three Catholic Seminaries: the Franciscan school, the Jesuit School, and the Dominican school. I discovered that many diverse convictions, beliefs, and doctrines make up Christianity. It includes different traditions, customs and rituals. It consists of many styles, ceremonies and celebrations.
People hold many different opinions about what it means to be a Christian. At lunch one day I watch a Jesuit priest try to pick up a young woman. "What about your Christian vow of celibacy?" I asked.
"Celibacy just means I can't get married," he explained to me.
The diversity astonished me.
During my student internship in Charlotte, North Carolina, I observed the "Praise the Lord Club," the ministry of Jim and Tammy Bakker. During a summer, while working at a camp in the mountains of North Carolina, I attended Quaker meeting on Sunday mornings. Both the Bakkers and the Quakers called themselves Christians.
Given this enormous variety, what is the essence of Christianity? The dictionaries and the encyclopedias do agree on a general definition. Christianity, they say is "a religion that stems from the life and teachings of Jesus." The answer to the question "What is the essence of Christianity?" raises another question. "What is central in the life and teachings of Jesus?"
For the Jewish followers of Jesus, he was the Messiah. They believed that at the end of history the Messiah will come from the House of David and establish the Kingdom of God. This would be an earthly kingdom in which the anointed of God will gather the tribes of the chosen people and from Jerusalem will establish a world kingdom of peace. This was the center of Christianity for the first Christians -- Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
As time went on and Jesus did not return to rule the earth, church leaders developed rituals to hold the church together. The anthropologist Emile Durkheim wrote that strong religious communities form after people suffer through a crisis together. People create a ritual that reenacts crisis experience regularly. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke contain a description of the last supper, the Passover meal, of wine and bread:
While they were eating he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, "Take; this is my body." Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
For some, Jesus was a creator of ritual and liturgy, and this became the essence of Christianity.
For still others the central focus of Jesus is the promise of life after death. In John's Gospel it is written:
". . . whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
Christianity helps many people overcome their fear of death, and gives them comfort at times of loss. This is the center of Jesus' teachings for many people.
Still others believe that Jesus is their guide to wealth and success. You can find television programs and books and churches that promise if you pray to Jesus you will have more money and more friends. Rev. Robert Schuller, in his book Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do, describes how he got a brand-new Lincoln car because of his positive outlook on life, which came from his Christian faith. Apparently Rev. Schuller reads a different Bible than I read. The passage I find on the subject of wealth and riches is:
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
For still others the story of Jesus' life inspires religious mysticism. Christian mysticism refers to the human being's direct experience or consciousness of ultimate reality, understood as God within the context of Christian faith. Thomas Merton is an example of a modern Christian mystic. The essence of mysticism is the sense of some form of contact with the divine or transcendent, frequently understood in its higher forms as involving union with God. The author of Luke's gospel wrote:
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, `Look, here it is!' or `There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you."
Others see Jesus as the great healer. The author of John's Gospel wrote:
Now the son of a royal official lay ill. When the official heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe." The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies." Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he himself believed, along with his whole household.
Several such accounts of healing appear in The New Testament. They have inspired people to pray, to build hospitals, to become medical professionals and to lay on hands. Although their approaches are dramatically different, for both Albert Schweitzer and Oral Roberts the central focus of Jesus' life was healing others.
These are some ways people have defined the essence of Christianity: as the story of the Messiah, as a guide to ritual, as an answer to the problem of life after death, as a guide to wealth and success, and as a story of healing. However, I do not believe that any of them fully expresses the central core of Jesus' message.
After reading the gospels, I believe the essence of Christianity is Jesus' teachings about love. Jesus provided new approaches to living rooted in a radical love ethic. The message appears repeatedly in the Gospels:
You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?"
For Jesus love was not poetical, or theoretical or sentimental. Love was not talk, but courageous action which made clear the nature of love. It was concrete, visible, and practical. For example, the parable of the Good Samaritan draws on the longstanding animosity between Judeans and Samaritans. It subverts the negative stereotyped identity of the Samaritan and throws the conventional distinction between "us" and "them" into question. A Samaritan goes to the aid of a person, probably a Judean, whom a robber assaulted and left for dead, after two representatives of the establishment religion have ignored him. The Samaritan has stepped across a social and religious boundary. Judeans made up Jesus' audience and they would have viewed the story through the eyes of the victim in the ditch; the parable prompts them to think of the identification of their neighbor as a different ethnic group. In the story, the possibility of a deeper love has come into view. Jesus said:
If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
Christianity is enormously diverse and filled with contrasts. From the seven story altar in St. Peter's to a simple wooden church in Appalachia . . . from a 10,000 member "mega-church" in the suburbs to a silent nun praying in a convent . . . from the song of an African tribe to the choir of an English cathedral . . . from the incensed altar of an Orthodox mass to the hot sweaty air of a revival tent in August . . . from the snake handlers to the sophisticated Manhattan intellectuals . . . from Jerry Falwell to Jesse Jackson . . . enormous diversity exists under the umbrella called Christianity.
I believe a standard exists by which we can judge all of them. That standard is the life and teachings of Jesus as described in the Gospels. The center of those teachings is about love, the love of people. Do not just love the people that you already like, but force your self to love the people that you have a hard time loving. Jesus said:
Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.
The story of the Good Samaritan has no qualifications. The story suggests no compromises. Danger is not a factor. The parable calls on us to walk the extra mile. No other religion is more sacrificial.
The essence of Christianity is a story about a man who walked around the countryside, without position, without possessions, telling parables. He embraced the poor, the outcast and the sick, while protesting their condition. He did not found a church during his lifetime. He did not require vows or oaths. Instead the gospels describe a man who was casual and spontaneous. Jesus granted equality to women, to children and to foreigners. He lived with people who existed on the edge of society. They were the children of God. For them he went to a painful death. Jesus placed no limit on the demand of love. Love was not simply one virtue among others, but the root and the heart of all virtue.
What Jesus suggested was an inner revolution. He urged people to liberate themselves from the inner evils of hatred, selfishness, envy and prejudice. A disciple asked:
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Jesus set such a high standard that strictly speaking no one can be a Christian. It is simply too hard for most of us to live up to the standard that Jesus set. We all struggle with our own failures and our own temptations. Clergy cannot really preach the essence of Christianity from a pulpit. Who is going to say: "Help everyone! Forget the consequences!" Not me! I can only preach what I am willing to do myself, and that is a meager portion of the original gospel.
However, speaking less strictly, if among all the leaders in the religions of the world you find yourself returning repeatedly to the story and the teachings of Jesus as a model, a guide for living, and if among all of the authorities in daily living the example and the message of Jesus form the basis of your thought and your behavior, then I would say you are a member of one of the great religions of the world. You are a Christian.
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