Food for Thought

I’m asking for your help making sense of this sermon. Rather than just read it, I need you to participate in it. If you don’t have the time right now for some meditative introspection, then please wait until you do before going further. When you are ready to proceed, do this: recall your very first memory of something “religious” ….
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How I wish that we were all present in real time so that we could share our recollections! (Maybe some of you will be courageous enough to share them on the Bulletin Board.) Our individual perceptions undoubtedly compose a remarkable diversity, but I’m guessing that our respective memories have some things in common, as well.

First, I’m willing to bet (I do live in Las Vegas!) that no one’s earliest religious memory is of reading the Bible. For some it may be of hearing the Bible read to them, but even that seems rather unlikely. More probable is the impression made by some parental figure. It is important to interject here that our first religious memory may not necessarily have been a positive or favorable one. In other words, we may well have received the explicit or implicit message from this significant person that religion/spirituality is just a lot of hooey.

For others, though, this primary impression was – in a word – holy. It is into this category that my earliest religious memory falls. I was literally born into the Church, and so it makes sense that the first conscious religious awareness that I can recall was church-related. It centers on Christmas and all its attendant stimulation – the sounds, smells, and colors – that gave to my formative mind the very clear impression that this was a celebration of something extraordinary.

Culture and environment combined to make my primitive worldview Christocentric. No one told me this, of course, nor would my young mind have had any way of understanding what they were talking about if they had tried. In the preceding sermon I stated that, while I do regard scripture as foundational, I do not understand the validity of the argument for scripture alone. In an admittedly simplistic way I have tried to illustrate that yes, the “revelation” transmitted to my young mind from across the millennia unarguably had scripture as its source, but it was immediately assimilated via experience and reason. Such is, to the best of my understanding, the universal human condition.

Further, my earliest exposure was not to scripture alone but to the tradition that had formed as each preceding generation went through the same process. Even those who had first-hand knowledge of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed – or, for that matter, Buddha, Confucius, Joseph Smith, et al. – immediately integrated their experience with their ability to think and produced an understanding – or tradition – that either conformed with or deviated from the original scriptural source. In other words, there is nothing to support that “religion” is directly infused into the human psyche in such a way that it bypasses experience and reason. The end product, therefore, is interpretation, and those interpretations most widespread and long-lived develop into definitive traditions.

Another example of what I’m trying to say has been brought to light by the controversial Mel Gibson film, “The Passion of the Christ”, that has so appropriately coincided with the Christian observance of Lent (I have found it interesting that many of the reviews have referred to Lent as a Catholic observance, since it has always been a significant aspect of my Protestant upbringing). There is no question that the crucifixion of Jesus is critical to the four canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament. This has traditionally been represented by the crucifixes commonly associated with Roman Catholicism (Gibson’s background).

But the Resurrection symbolized in the Protestant tradition by the open cross is equally significant to the scriptural story. So upon which aspect are we to focus our attention? The fundamental question being raised by Gibson’s film is whether or not the last twelve hours of Jesus’ earthly existence is truly the most important part of the story? What of the preceding thirty-three years of his life, including the content and the character of the final three spent in ministry? The whole story is contained in scripture, but I personally find it impossible to discount that human experience and reason almost immediately began to dissect it into various interpretations that eventually took on the authoritative weight of traditions that today are presented as “gospel”.

Perhaps the most important outcome of this exercise in “thinking” about our religion is to have an increased awareness of how the combination of the theological elements of scripture, tradition, experience and reason have inalterably affected the way we look at everything, whether we realize it or not. Even if we don’t think of ourselves as particularly religious persons, what we assimilated and integrated into our newly forming personalities abides with us into the present moment as our ethical and moral being. This is why the ongoing review and reassessment of what we assume to be true and significant is crucial to our development as mature and responsible human beings.

As we progress through this season of Lent toward the foot of the Cross, let such an understanding provide us with a focus for our journey. May we come to discover that this is not so much a time to forego cigarettes and chocolate as it is an opportunity to draw nearer the Truth which is the Bread of Life! Amen.