welcome
welcome to the thoughtyard. Here will be the history that made my thoughts what they are to-day. To start with I was born confused - neither a Gemini nor a Cancer. Should it really matter what a birthsign means? Well, if the universe is in constant motion and changing from moment to moment, the particular gravity of the moment has its effect on the watery body that enters the world at the same time. What a way to start with an individual influence from the universe!
posted by Unknown @ 6:11 AM
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An Easter Sunday sermon for Unitarians
‘Do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to my Father’ Jesus is standing outside the tomb where the stone has been mysteriously rolled away - where the disciples have seen that his body has gone and Mary Magdalene has seen instead of his body, two angels dressed all in white.
She turns from the cave and sees a person she thinks must be the gardener. Only when he speaks does she recognise Jesus. ‘Do not touch me’ he says.
‘Do not touch me! Do not hold on to me’ Why not? Perhaps it was because he was in the spirit form and not the physical -
Compare this with the story of Lazarus who was raised from the dead - he was restored in his physical form and returned to his family. In all the Bible stories about Jesus, he is always shown as being superior to events and above normal mortal activities.
Although I am not a card carrying Christian, I find the Bible and the stories of Jesus a rich resource in the understanding of life and spirituality.
Of all the festivals in the Christian calendar, Easter often provokes the most debate. People used to say to me ‘ You will be so busy over Easter with all the services - but actually I never was because we never did more than have a service on the Sunday morning.
The Bolton Town Centre Churches used to have a joint service on Good Friday - followed by a walk in the countryside in the afternoon. I used to enjoy the walk but the Good Friday service mostly made me cringe - except when I was preaching the sermon of course - then everyone else would cringe.
I just don’t like the fuss they made of Good Friday - there was always the macabre ritual of banging nails into a cross - and displaying whips -but the symbolism and meaning of the story was rarely mentioned.
Unitarian preachers often groan inwardly when they receive an invitation to take a service on Easter Sunday.
To many, Easter is the great divide between what the Unitarians think about the story of Easter and what the mainstream Christian church thinks about it.
Easter is the great divide between Jesus the healer and teacher and Christ the God.
Unitarians are moving further and further away from the gravity field of traditional christianity - away from creeds and dependence on the Bible; away from rituals and structures.
We are moving into uncharted spiritual territory - and sometimes I think we are like pioneers seeking new worlds and new meanings. We have left the old spiritual planetary system where God is the sun - and we are looking for new systems - and new worlds - and when we see a new sun we don’t quite dare to call it by the old name -God - we want a new name - but in our hearts we know there is no other word available.
So we each have our own way of understanding God - and if we dare to use the word publicly - everyone assumes that we are talking about the old one we all knew before when we were in Sunday School.
One of our critics said recently that Unitarians don’t seem able to talk about anything else but God - and of course he assumes we are talking about the od guy from the Hebrew Bible. Strange - what words can do to meaning and understanding.
Sometimes though, if we refrain from always looking to the horizons of our unknown galaxy and turn back to what is familiar, we can yet learn some lessons and have some new idea to mull over.
When I was looking for to-days reading, I came across a sermon which William Ellery Channing had preached on Easter Sunday 1834.
His text was taken from the Epistle to the Ephesians, ‘He raised him from the dead and set him at his own right-hand in the heavenly places.’
When he wrote this sermon it was a very short time after the death of one of his best friends - and this seems to be very much on his mind.
William Ellery Channing is one of my heroes because he sets out a different view of Christianity. In one of his sermons he proudly proclaims that he is a Unitarian and shrugs off all the criticism that came his way. In 1834 he would have been considered a real heretic - but it is his view of Christianity I find the most inspiring - and most close to that of the very early Christians before they were organised and told what and what not to believe.
In this Easter sermon he looks at the significance of the resurrection and comes to a view it is a message about life after death which even to day would challenge people’s traditionally held views.
When Jesus stands outside the tomb and speaks to Mary Magdalene and says ‘Don’t touch me’, William Ellery Channing sees not just a revelation of the risen Jesus but a revelation of a specific truth. And that truth is - that life after death - immortality is for all of us - that is the real message of Easter.
We might want to say that the resurrection is also a symbolic story that encourages people to overcome situations which seem like death in life and start all over again - and it can be done - but Channing was taken with the meaning of immortality.
Here was Jesus in a spirit form - that is why Mary must not touch him - there is nothing physical there to touch -
but says Channing, that is how we are anyway - part of ourselves at least - when you think about a person, they are there in your head even though you cannot touch them physically.
What Mary sees is Jesus as the higher self - that immortal part of him - his soul - and we all of us - each one of us have this higher self - though it might not yet be awake - the teachings of Jesus - the acceptance of the God of Jesus were the keys to waking it according to Channing.
And Jesus would go to heaven where all souls - all higher self's go at death. Heaven is a higher spiritual life.
Human minds try to imagine heaven as a physical place with physical people in it - but it is not that he says. Not that at all.
Heaven is not where you go but to whom you go - to that spiritual realm where the love of God is real and enlarged for all.
Heaven encompasses the whole universe - and not just this planet but all planets - why should we be so arrogant as to think we are the only place in the whole universe he asks. Just look how huge the universe is -
The higher self in this higher spiritual world continues to develop he says. There is still contact with home and the love of those who remain. The spirits of those who have gone before can help and guide those left behind and can help and guide those on other planets too.
Heaven is a society passing through successive stages of development as this world is. Channing would not believe that on death the spirit was made to forget about its earthly existence nor could the spiritual realm of heaven be isolated from what went on in this world, or any world
The more a person understands those teachings of Jesus, the more a person responds to the love of God and the more a person lives a life of love for their fellow beings - the more their higher self becomes attuned to this heavenly realm - the more a person lives, concludes Channing.
The Christianity Channing believed in was similar to our own today - no matter what we call it.
It is not a religion of rules and oppression, control and fear.
It is a religion of intellectual freedom and love for fellow beings - a religion of individuality in community with like minded beings.
This religion needs no controls or councils (though the organisation might, the individual doesn’t)
This religion needs to wear no special clothes, no special headgear or sacred symbols - no set times for prayers, no demands of abstinennce or self harm, no restriction on happiness, fun, song, dance or laughter.
No marks on the skin and no holy symbols and badges to display.
This religion is about developing the higher self, the spiritual self - coming close to the true meaning of life and being close to the heavenly realm and happy in the earthly one-- for they are very close.
This message of 1834 is, I think, a good one to take on our voyages of discovery.
Amen
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