Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, Pastor
"Joseph Campbell said all the problems that we are experiencing - economic disparity, ecological meltdown, crime, alienation, atomization, war, starvation - are the result of us having no communal myth. A story that unites us, defines us, in relationship to ourselves, other people, and nature. Campbell says the myths that we do have are antiquated and irrelevant 'desert myths.'" Russell BrandIn truth, I hardly know her, though she has a key to my house for five years and she comes over every two weeks to do the housekeeping that I don't want to do myself. I ran by the house this week to make a quick change of clothes into a shirt and tie that did not have bits of my lunch on them and there on the kitchen counter were the broken pieces of an old hand painted china plate. She was very embarrassed and offered, "Can I replace it."
"No," I said, "it had been a gift from an elderly aunt, something she had given to me just before she died about 30 years ago. I'm not the kind of guy who would choose to hang a piece of painted china on my wall, regardless of its value or artistry. I'm gay friendly but not actually a member of the club.
I assured her not to worry about it. Accidents happen. It's no big deal. But when I got home that night, she had left her paycheck behind with a heart-felt note of apology. I will get the money to her, of course. I am certain that she does not clean other people's houses for the entertainment value of it.
What has captured my attention about this little exchange is this person I hardly know has such a clear set of values, that she is so earnest to take more responsibility for her actions than anyone could reasonably expect.
They have not made much of it for a couple of centuries now but Catholics used to talk about deeds of "Supererogation" which literally means going above and beyond what is required but it carried the implication of trying to be even better than God expects you to be. I mention it now because there are so few opportunities to meaningfully say supererogation in polite conversation.
In a world where the Catholic hierarchy has moved pedophile priests and my own former denomination, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) hid pedophile denominational leaders by moving them from state to state to evade criminal prosecution.... Where elected officials in this ostensibly Christian nation will torture prisoners, turn the mentally ill out onto the streets to die from exposure to the winter weather, and invade nations on false pretenses, where people you have supported in their times of greatest need will betray you for nothing more than the power they feel in being able to hurt you.... Comes a stranger with more evidence of character than is often found in congress, cathedrals or even in your backyard at a family barbeque.
I'm currently preparing to go on my first real speaking tour and I have the good fortune to be doing that in Scotland and England. I asked my Scottish host to suggest some readings that would help me to understand my audience in Glasgow. He sent me several articles about the recent vote around Scottish independence and wrapped that up with a suggestion that I read a recent book by the British author, Russell Brand, entitled, Revolution.
I regularly have lunch with our good friend, Dr. Charles Hedrick, and this past week, when he asked me, as he usually does, "What are you reading these days?" I felt obligated to name several other things and avoid mentioning Brand's book because, Brand is a well known alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, and I wasn't sure that I should offer that particular bit of information.
But, I have to admit, I've really liked Brand's book and have been shocked to discover how much I have in common with him.... Other than the alcoholic, drug addicted, womanizing, famous, millionaire movie star, part.
Brand became a famous and wealthy person on the strength of his stories about his exploits as a spoiled and self-serving addict but this book is about his recovery in the AA movement, his discovery of a largely rational and social justice based spirituality. He is no intellectual but he has become an avid reader and he has been willing to analyze his personal faults in a very public way.
Like a lot of us, he found it increasingly necessary to dismiss the creedal religions that lost all credibility for us in the face of the reality both of science and of the undeniable human suffering caused by irrational religion and governments controlled by the super-wealthy.
In sobriety he has found the gratitude we so often hear expressed by former addicts who find the bliss of sobriety and a life lived oriented to reality. But, again, like many of us, he has found it difficult to give an account of his new found spiritual enthusiasm to his peers who have found religion to be all too easy, and dare I say, necessary to abandon.
I suspect that we are likely to be the only church on earth where a Russell Brand quote is the wisdom lesson for the day but this comment he made about Joseph Campbell seems to really speak to our current challenge. The stories that come to us from wandering Palestinian shepherds and barely settled agricultural societies of first century Judah no longer have the power we have tried to give them by claiming that God wrote them.
Campbell's observation that we need new communal myths to guide us into relevant moral living seems to be right on to me. I have been inclined to think that we can replace those with modern biographies... the recent release of the movie, "Selma," seems like a good example. The problem, however, with lifting any modern leader into that role is that we also have access to information about their faults.
Jesus may have been guilty of some of the racism of his culture but we have little to go on to make that point. He is protected by two millennia of the fog of memory. But when you talk about Gandhi, or King, or even such bright lights as Dorothy Day or Mother Theresa, we can also enumerate the ways that they disappointed us.
We have difficulty in appreciating anything that anyone does without also wallowing in their more salacious failings. This is almost as true of public figures as it is of religious leaders. Though he has recovered a lot of popularity, history will likely remember Bill Clinton more for his tryst with Monica Lewinsky than his rise from Arkansas poverty to the White House.
We've watched the conservative world trying to find a soft place in Barack Obama where they can stick a dagger in for six years. Their attempts often seem rather desperate, such as in Mike Huckabee's criticism of the Obama's poor parenting in allowing their daughters to listen to music by Beyonce'.... In spite of the fact that Huckabee's son was found guilty of hanging, torturing and killing a neighbor's dog..... this is not a game of moral finger pointing that he is likely to win in the universe of bad parenting wars.
We have got to be able to praise the decision of 18-year-old John Lewis to kneel in prayer on the Evan Pettus Bridge during the Selma march while Alabama State police mercilessly cracked his skull with their batons.... We have to be able to tell the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery, AL bus that started the bus boycott that fueled the civil rights movement without trying to go through their garbage to tell ourselves that we don't need to follow their example.
Gossip is used to destroy reputations of leaders to give ourselves a pass on all of our own shortcomings. We have got to rise above these false diversions so that we can be more concerned about virtue than we are about trying to drag everyone down. I'm guilty of it too but I can tell you that the 21st century is starved for meaningful myths and examples to guide us, to inspire us, and to motivate us to deeds of kindness, compassion, and liberation.
All the while, we are being fed false heroes. At the same theaters that are now showing "Selma" larger crowds are going to see "American Sniper,".... A hero tale about a man who evidently killed more than 200 Iraqis.
The self-aggrandizing auto-biography of a soldier who claimed to have beaten up Jesse Ventura in a bar fight which has been proven to be false in a libel suit, and who claimed to have killed two car-jackers in Texas and shot looters during the Katrina aftermath.... None of which was true.... Nor was his claim to have given all of the proceeds of his book to charity.
Clint Eastwood claims that the movie is not political but the twitter feed of those who have seen it would seem to contradict that, as enthusiastic movie goers have reported that they came out wanting to shoot as many Arab Muslims as they could. If there is a vacuum of real heroes in modern culture, it seems that we will create role models that we really shouldn't follow.
Athletes, movie stars, rock stars, and snipers may be pushed up in the public consciousness because they are famous, or wealthy, or even because they are portrayed as being brave but I come back to this house-keeper who, without much thought, has a reflex reaction to do the right thing, even more than the right thing..... I'll say it again.... To commit an act of supererogation..... you know that you'll want to use that this week....
Largely unchurched Western Europe seems to do a better job of showing compassion to the poor, the mentally ill, and even to those guilty of crimes than in our heavily church populated country.
But it doesn't have to be that way. My fear is that without spirituality, pure reason can lead human kind into a moral vacuum. We just have to acknowledge that there are good and bad myths.
There are popular role models who are dangerous and there are others whose virtues are to be praised and imitated. And there are very unhealthy forms of religion and very helpful and promising forms of faith. As the famous scholar, Karen Armstrong, has written:
"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."
Let's not leave the future up to chance. Let's think, and act, following in the pathway that leads to liberation, courageous compassion, non-violent transformation, and into a consistently loving community.
Our progressive faith should free you from bondage to old myths that no longer work in our modern society but that liberation should not lead to either cynicism or rabid individualism. Together, we really must learn anew how to be the people we always inherently admired for their good deeds and to learn again the way of living that leads us to love one another.
