Today, the second Thursday after Easter, is the beginning of the 12 Days of Blessings, which is the first of the three dozenals of the Ascension Season.
The 12 Days of Blessings are a celebration of the open-minded virtue of Hope (ἐλπίς in Greek), and Joyful Thursday is a day to feast in optimistic happiness. Hope is the virtue of open-minding thinking, the antidote of despair, and with Faith a vital half of the highest Christian virtue of Love.
One of the more controversial aspects of traditional Passion plays is the scene wherein Pontius Pilate offers to release one prisoner to the Jews, as part of what the Gospels indicate is a Passover custom in Roman-occupied Judea.
The crowd gathered below chooses the criminal Barabbas, and insist that Jesus be crucified. The scene is often decried as anti-Semitic for its negative portrayal of the Jews as a violent, criminal mob, politically motivated and spiritually blind. Indeed it has often been used to stir up hatred against Jews.
But, a deeper meaning available in this scene is entirely missed by most. It begins with an understanding of the symbolism in the name Barabbas, which is Aramaic for “Son of the Father.” In the context of Christian theology, therefore, those gathered before Pilate chose the man who was named “Son of the Father” rather than the man who was the Son of the Father.
They chose outward appearance over inner reality. Continue reading
During the the Sermon on the Mount, while expounding on anger, adultery, oaths, and retaliation, Jesus repeatedly emphasized the importance of intention over action. It is not the act of adultery that makes us adulterers, but the desire. It is not the voicing of our hatred that is the sin, but the hatred itself.
The moral character behind our decisions, that inner seed of the actions which are regulated by Law, was at the core of Jesus’s teachings. Continue reading
[Please see the updated, 2010 version of this here.]
Palm Sunday commemorates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a colt (or donkey) with throngs of Messianic enthusiasts paving the way with palm fronds. Celebrations of this holiday therefore often include palms.
In some regions, however, this tropical plant has been difficult to acquire, particularly in the past when shipping methods were primitive. For this reason, local trees were often substituted for palms, and the name of the holiday revised to match.
Were Christians who celebrated “Yew Sunday,” because their culture knew yews and did not know palms, practicing a heresy? Other-Than-Palm Sundays certainly could be described as “un-scriptural” but are they un-Christian? We don’t think so, and we think that this is a critically important point that supports our idiomatic, rather than dogmatic, approach to religious creed. Continue reading
Typically, Reform Unitarianism avoids the use of the cross. One reason is that the cross did not become an important symbol in Christianity until well into the 4th Century, after conflationist corruptions had begun to undermine Christian theology. The cross simply does not represent original Christianity.
More importantly, however, veneration of the cross puts salvific power in the murderous actions of Romans and the foolish decision of the mob of Barabbas. In AUR, we believe that the moment of salvific power during the passion narrative was not at Golgotha but at Gethsemane, when Jesus of Nazareth committed his soul to the will of his Father and ours: the Creator of all things.
The metaphorical Cup of Gethsemane (“take this cup from me”) which Jesus ultimately accepts (“nevertheless, Thy will be done”) is the universal key to salvation. The cross is merely the local instrument of Jesus’s punishment and execution. Suffering and death were indeed necessary for Jesus — as they are for us — but it is “Thy will be done” that effects salvation, not the Roman whip, thorn, nail, and spearpoint.
Still, although the chalice is a more spiritually accurate symbol of salvation through commitment of the soul, the cross remains a potent material reminder of what that commitment meant for the founder of our religion. To use the cliché that has arisen from the passion narrative, each of us has our own “cross to bear” — but the cross born by Jesus Christ was one of the thousands of actual crosses on which so many were tortured and executed in ancient times.
On this day, as a reminder of the material consequences of our spiritual commitment, Reform Unitarians join with other Christians in taking the ashen mark of the cross to remember that we are dust, and to dust shall we return.
Today is Carnival Thursday in Reform Unitarianism, the first of the “dozenal” called the 12 Days of Carnival, which culminates two weeks from now on Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. As the day to introduce the themes of revelry in this movable feast time, Carnival Thursday is one of the many Little Thursdays that have set themes for worship and homilies.
This is a time to celebrate life, youth, and the bounties of Creation, but also a time to prepare for the fasting and solemnity of the upcoming Lent season.
_
(The following liturgical seasons have been added to the blog’s Liturgical Calendar : Carnival, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost.)
Today is John Hancock Day for Americian Unitarian Reform, the 6th Day of Defiance on the AUR Interval Season liturgical calendar.
Not only was John Hancock a prominent Unitarian, but he has become iconic in American culture for a single, famous act that has outshined (or overshadowed, depending on your point-of-view) everything else he did during the Revolution: he signed his name almost absurdly large on the Declaration of Independence.
He has become so iconic, in fact, that his name has become slang for signature.
The moral lesson to be drawn from the icon of Hancock is the importance of commiting oneself publicly to a good cause, regardless of the consequences. At the time, Hancock’s signature was an act of treason, and he was putting his own life at risk. By making his decision known in such a public and non-repudiable manner, he was enacting a sort of ritual, the same sort we see at weddings, confirmations, and in oath-taking like that in the upcoming presidential inauguration. Continue reading
Nicholas of Myra punching Bishop Arius at the Council of Nicaea
While it is widely known that the Santa Claus of Christmas is derived from St. Nicholas, few know much about the original Saint Nick beyond the fact that he did not live at the North Pole, own flying reindeer, or employ a workshop full of elves.
Like his political ally Athanasius of Alexandria, Nicholas of Myra is rumored to have come into power at an absurdly young age through dubious means.
The legend begins with Nicholas as a young man either rescuing an overboard sailor on his way back home from studying in Alexandria, or calming a sea storm with his prayers after visiting Jerusalem. His ship then made port in the city of Myra.
At this same time, the bishop of Myra had died and one of the church leaders was instructed in a dream to choose a “conqueror” as the next bishop. The root of the name Nicholas (Νικόλαος) is nike, meaning “conquest” or “victory,” so when astounded sailors spread the name Nicholas around Myra the leaders of the church felt they had no choice but to elect Nicholas as bishop. Continue reading
A celebration of the Nativity was never a foregone conclusion. Tertullian’s list of major holidays among North African Christians in the 2nd Century makes no mention of Jesus’s birthday. Origen specifically denounced the idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus in the 3rd Century as something more fitting to the followers of a “pharaonic king.”
Despite this evidence that the earliest Christians did not observe Christmas, ironically some have used the December 25th celebration of the Nativity as “proof” that Jesus was a fictional character, invented as the last in a long series of sun gods considered by ancient mystics to be born/reborn on the Winter Solstice.
While this absurd and counterfactual argument holds no water historically, the evidence certainly does demonstrate that aspects of this pre-existing Middle Eastern holiday were added to Christian worship just as northern European traditions associated with Yuletide—including the tree—were also adapted to Christianity.
Indeed, Christmas continues to accrete moving imagery and morally-instructive traditions (like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) even today.
A Revival of Tradition
The Protestant movement that spawned modern Unitarian Christianity was in part a rejection of traditions seen as materially false or fraudulent, eventually leading to a complete rejection of all beliefs among certain Congregationalist churches that, despite having no explicitly Unitarian creed, continue to call themselves Unitarian.
But, as US News and World Report recently observed, members of all denominations are seeking to revitalize ancient traditions, but in a more voluntary and less authoritarian way. For many, this revival of tradition is not a renewed insistence on the facticity of sectarian dogma, but rather a reclaiming of the ancient cultural idiom through which communities of the faithful express their devotion to universal truth and good.
Having gained some emotional distance from the stifling use of tradition as a weapon to impose conformity, people are returning to tradition as tool for building community.
American Unitarian Reform, emphasizing salvation by character according to the spiritual teachings of Jesus, has little concern for the material facticity of our Christmas traditions. It is time, however, to fully embrace the power and importance of these traditions for nurturing a community of faith supportive of the individual commitment to character.
Christmas as Parable
And, the Nativity story celebrates virtues that transcend material facticity, providing spiritual teachings in the same way that Jesus’s fictional parables do. The selection of humble Mary as mother of the Messiah, the trust and sacrifice of Joseph, the tyranny of Herod, the attendance of simple local shepherds alongside powerful foreign intellectuals, all provide images that are moving, meaningful, and instructive.
The “Three Kings” themselves also represent an ecumenical interest from a completely different religious tradition, the Zoroastrian Magi, an ecumenism that Jesus later confirmed when he chose the hated, rival Samaritan sect for his exemplar of charitable behavior, and when he testified to the faith of the pagan Centurion.
The entire story of Christmas is informed by powerful spiritual and moral messages that echo in the teachings of Jesus. Rather than being edited out (as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted) these stories should be embraced and celebrated for the ways they exemplify our commonly-held beliefs and ideals.
Thanksgiving is often recognized as an inter-cultural holiday, celebrating the cooperation of Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it is also an interfaith holiday. After all the Wampanoag were not Christian.
For American Reform Unitarians* the interfaith nature of Thanksgiving actually reinforces its Christian importance, for we see Christianity not as a religion defined against others, but as an idiom of Truth that can be translated into other idioms.
True Christianity has from its inception been a religion that sees the good in members of other religions. Jesus praised the faith of the pagan centurion over that of his fellow Jews, and used a member of the hated Samaritan sect as a symbol of goodness in explicit contrast to members of his own faith community. When ministering to the Greeks, Paul even went so far as to claim that the “Unknown God” long worshiped in Hellenistic religion was in fact the very same God of Abraham and Jesus.
Some might dismiss Paul’s assertion as a marketing technique, and perhaps so. However, the willingness to seek Christian truth in other religions validates Christianity as a religion about reality rather than a religion merely about itself.
There is, in every religious community, a moral tension between loyalism and realism. By realism here, we do not mean the Christian Realism of Niebuhr, but realism in the sense that religion is seen as an idiomatic description of reality, therefore open to other forms of description, as opposed to the loyalist view in which that description becomes a mere catechetical shibboleth turning the religion into an entrenched camp isolated from the rest of reality.
A religion about the Creator cannot be an enclave in Creation. The truth of God does not have to be spread across God’s own work by a tiny minority of creatures; God’s truth is evident throughout the universe.
Justin Martyr, despite his sainted status, is likely the primary culprit in this God-denying loyalist tradition as he was the first to attribute other religions entirely to the action of devils. One step more “realistic” is the approach of Paul and other missionaries who attempted to exapt the language and imagery of the cultures they encountered for Christian truth. But, while this approach treats idiom properly as a tool rather than the stuff of religion itself, it is still prone to error due to the implication that only the language of other religions is valid, not the underlying reality that language describes.
Again, this is the religion of an agoraphobic god who fashions a vast universe only to cower in one tiny corner of it and beg mere humans to brave the immeasurable remainder. Religion that worships the Almighty Creator does not degrade God this way.
The idiomatic approach of Reform Unitarianism takes realism one step further and recognizes that some of the underlying ideas of other religions must be valid if the God we worship is indeed the God of all Creation and not merely an idolatrous god of ethnic or sectarian autolatry.
For us, the Thanksgiving story represents two groups of God’s children, speaking in different idioms, coming together for a precious moment of peace and communion. The words and labels each used to discuss the ultimate nature of reality and its moral implications may have differed, but if there is such an Ultimate Truth then it must be the same Ultimate Truth for all, despite the difference in languages used to describe it.
The political, sectarian, God-denying, and autolatrous view is that the Native Americans were un-Christian heathens. The truly Christian, universal, Creator-affirming, moral view is that while the compassion the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims may not have been “Christian” charity, it was certainly Christian charity.
Have a wonderful feast day, and give thanks for all of the blessings in your life!
* American Reform Unitarians revere Thanksgiving as one of the Four Great Thursdays alongside Declaration Thursday, Garden Thursday, and Ascension Thursday.
