Roger Ray, pastor
Springfield, MO
Dec. 4, 2011
"Living the Good Life to Become the Good Person" A sermon based on sayings of Confucius
When people ask you, "Why do you go to church?" I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear your answers. Unlike Fundamentalists or Catholics or most Evangelicals, we do not believe that there is an angry or punitive God who is so ego deficit that the divine self sits enthroned in the clouds, hungry for our adoration and praise, pillorying heaven with prayers and sacrifices. I doubt that many of you have any concern about either being cast into the fires of hell or designing a heavenly mansion. So why are you here?
I suspect that most of us have found that we can be improved. That is, we can be better people, have deeper character and we can live more compassionately and meaningfully if we participate in a spiritual community, expose ourselves to moral deliberation, education and direction, and if we work collectively towards those things which we believe make the world a better place and make us better people.
And if you said that in the middle of an Evangelical conference you might well be told that you are not really Christian, or maybe that you are not even religious.... You might be called a Humanist because your spiritual concern is not with satisfying a supernatural deity but in reshaping yourself to reflect the values you believe to be holy, pure, good and commendable.
Of course, the greater likelihood is that none of you would participate in that conversation in the first place because we have learned not to care very much about how other people criticize us or try to categorize us.
But if we did, we might find ourselves in the middle of the same debate western religious people have had about Confucianism for the past millennium. Most scholars tend to say that Confucianism is not a religion because they do not have a theistic world view, even though they do have temples, rituals, a written text, sacrifices and a certain worship of the spirits of Confucius and other great teachers.
And, I suppose that you can say that they have hymns since our closing hymn today is comprised of sayings of Confucius.
Jesuits who first went to Japan declared that Confucianism is a philosophy and not a religion which gave them permission to not go on a crazy rampage burning books and tearing down temples like they did in other places. Confucianism as a system of ethics was deemed to be compatible with Catholicism as it has been seen as a supportive partner by many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
But when it comes to typical religious themes, Confucius neither denied nor confirmed religious speculation. In eastern thought, worship of or veneration of the spirits of deceased relatives is the most common expression of spirituality but when Chi-lu asked him exactly what is due to the ghosts of the dead. The master replied, "We fail in our duty to the living; can we do our duty to the dead?"
I know that it frustrates some of my more traditional religious friends but it doesn't make much sense to me to talk about what cannot be known. If there is life beyond our mortal bodies we surely don't have any information to go on to build a belief system around it. When Confucius was asked directly about death, he said "We know not life, how can we know death?"
That is not to say that we know that there is nothing, just that we do not know.
Confucius taught that we should focus on being a person of character in the here and now without obsessing about a life we do not and cannot know anything about. I am always reminded of Sören Kierkegaard's comment that there are things that are true when they are whispered that become false when they are shouted. Humility and reality dictate that all sincere people of faith spend their time and energy doing a better job embodying our philosophy and practicing our faith where we are today and leave what cannot be known in the hands of God.... Or, the universe, as Confucius might say it.
I really cannot emphasize this enough. The general impression people seem to have that religion exists to guarantee their adherents a cushy place in eternity is absolutely misleading and, in the end, really very foolish. Religion is not about life after death..... it is about meaningful living right now and into tomorrow..... that time line may go on for eternity but the truth is we don't know that we'll live until the next sale at Joseph A. Banks.
If you believe that repeating certain creeds or reciting certain magical incantations will send you to heaven then I've got some e-mails from a Nigerian Princess with a lot of money to send to America that's really going to excit you!
I was talking with a recent visitor to our church right after our team had served lunch to the homeless people we care for at Bill's Place on Thursday. As we talked about how our church tries to practice our faith, I said, "I just handed out 70 turkey sandwiches to homeless people.... Do you think they would have preferred that we just gather and pray for them?" Of course, the guys I know want the sandwich but for me, and I suspect for many of you, handing out the sandwich is a form of prayer. As the African proverb goes, "when you pray, move your feet."
In that I think we share a spirituality with Confucian thought that teaches a kind of inward virtue that expresses itself in social virtue and civic virtue. If you read Confucius, you will be surprised by how often he speaks of being a gentleman but what he means by that is to become a person of character, embodying honesty, civility and avoiding hypocrisy.
He said: "I hate those who mistake spying for wisdom. I hate those who take want of deference for courage. I hate evil speaking, cloaked as honesty." He expected people to live in such a way that they treated one another with sincere respect.
Asian culture emphasizes courtesy but Confucius wanted it to be more than just polite deference. He wanted it to be real. He said: "A man of worth can always talk, but talkers are not always men of worth."
Like Jesus, Confucius eschewed personal wealth and made fun of people who pretended to be scholars or political leaders just to make money. He said, "Living on coarse rice and water, with bent arm for pillow, mirth may be ours; but ill-gotten wealth and honors are to me a wandering cloud." Which is to say, that if you learn how to live comfortably in poverty you don't have to sell your soul to bet a better living.
If I may be allowed to skip around the continents for a moment to quote a
Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of Confucius, Diogenes was visited
by another teacher, Aristippus as Diogenes was making a dinner of lentils. He
said, "If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on
lentils."
Diogenes said, "And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to
flatter the king."
Confucius was concerned with sincerity of motive. He once said that "I have
met no one who loves the good as much as they love women." .... Which is a
tad personal I suppose but we know what he means. A great deal of the
hypocrisy in religion that has been disappointing to us is wrapped up in the
pretense of piety without the more substantial foundation of actually wanting to
do the right thing.
There are those who insist that Confucianism is not a religion because he does
not give lessons on eternal life, heaven and hell, and a supernatural theism but I
think that we are more likely to keep company with the likes of Confucius and
Buddha when it comes to those issues and as best I can tell, so would Jesus.
I believe that the challenge for the emerging church of the future is to be willing to boldly separate ourselves from the religious habits and practices that turn God into a divine Santa Claus in the clouds and reduce the teachings of Jesus to a kind of super spiritual ranting that is all about an unseen other world, ignoring the very real issues of our present existence.
We are not a flat-earth society engaging in magical rituals. We move our feet when we pray. Our most vital sacraments involve working to end poverty, to restore the earth and to create peace among nations, among families and within ourselves.
Confucius was concerned about individual character, meaningful civilization and the alleviation of suffering.... so was Buddha and so was Jesus.... And shouldn't that be what we are about as well. And so, we keep kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
