Dr Davidson Loehr and Cathy Harrington each give their Christmas Homilies.

Cathy Harrington

Bah humbug. In the past few years, I have grown to dread Christmas like a toothache. Why do we have to get into such a frenzy every year? I used to love Christmas! There is no avoiding it! It's everywhere. Even my jazzercise class this week was exercising to an entire hour of Christmas music. Not the good Christmas music, either. The tacky stuff, like 'Rockin' around the Christmas Tree.' Can you imagine? I worried that I might throw up. I even put off writing this sermon until almost the last minute...

I think Christmas is a tough time of year for an honest preacher. We say this church offers a religion for both head and heart. We say you don't have to check your brains at the door, but you don't have to leave your heart outside either. It's a bold boast, and the Christmas season always threatens to make a mockery of it.

Who would dare to tell the truth about Christmas during the Christmas season? We know all the supernatural stuff never happened. The world isn't built that way. Not now, and not two thousand years ago. We know it, but how could you say it? Especially now?

Some few people do say it, of course. Nine years ago at this time of year, the Jesus Seminar published their book The Five Gospels: the Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. In it, they said that an eight-year study of every saying attributed to Jesus had convinced a large international group of scholars that fewer than 20% of the sayings should be considered authentic, the rest written by the people who wrote the gospels, or taken from other sayings and sources at the time.

What the heck is Advent? We have some sense of what Christmas is, and Hannukah, and the winter solstice. Whether we find any of those stories compelling or not, we have some idea what they're about. Hannukah is past now, the other two aren't here yet. But according to the calendar of Christian festivals, we're now in Advent. So what the heck is Advent?

One answer is that Advent is the time of massive advertising hooey designed to make you feel guilty unless you buy at least $600 worth of Xmas presents in the next two weeks, and spend a total of over $1300 on holiday expenses. That's about the American average, including about $300 spent online. It will take an average of six to eight months to pay off the credit card debts. Some people just pay off last year's Christmas bills in time to begin shopping for the next one. Retailers in America make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So Advent also means we are paying the highest prices of the year for a lot of stuff we didn't even know we needed a month ago.

If this doesn't sound like a spiritual exercise, it's because it isn't. The idea of giving gifts for Christmas only began about a century ago. Before that, gifts were given on St. Nicholas Day, December 6th, until merchants decided the two days could be combined to mix the secular and religious holidays together into one big frenzied buying spree....

Though I've had an article of my experiences in Vietnam published, I'm very uncomfortable talking about it for a reason that may seem perverse: they were sacred experiences. But if we're going to war, let's not pretend it's a video game in which people you love won't be killed, wounded or broken. I'm one of many, many thousands of Americans who had the experience. Perhaps I have a duty to share some of the stories, to talk about real wars.

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 10 November 2002

Many of you know of the battle of Galipoli in the First World War, or have seen the Australian movie. Thousands upon thousands of men climbing out of their foxholes, obeying orders to march into machine gun fire and dying in huge heaps. Tens of thousands killed on one day. One of the stupidest single days in the history of warfare.

You can see it a lot closer to home too, as people who work with battered women can tell you. To the frustration of everyone else, women who are battered usually return to the home where they will be beaten again because they prefer the suffering they know to the fear of what might happen if they leave.

It's also what makes it hard for so many people to leave an old religion that seems to own their soul even though it does not nourish them. We are an easy species to manipulate; we're slow to leave old habits and ruts.

You have probably been asked at one time or other whether you "believe in God." Pollsters love it; everybody writing about religion seems to think it is the most important question to ask.

But the question is incoherent, as are answers to it. It is the oddest thing: we think this "God" business is so important, yet nobody ever wants to say just what they mean by the word. That's the elephant in the room of religious discussion, and has been for a few centuries: what exactly do you mean by the word "God"? Once that's clear, it will be pretty clear whether many people would "believe in" that sort of a god. Let's just take three definitions for the word "God," you'll see the question of "belief in God" dissolves once you've settled the definition....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 20 October 2002

The text for this and other sermons delivered before March 16, 2003 can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/

That's probably the first time you ever heard that question asked in a sermon! Did you ever wonder why? Why do churches, synagogues, mosques and seminaries so studiously avoid this most obvious, most fundamental, question?

Maybe there's something vaguely offensive about wondering, in church, whether there is or isn't a God. Maybe something blasphemous, like there are church rules and one of them is that churches are supposed to tell people, above all else, that there is a God, then tell them what that God promises them and asks from them.

Like you don't know, but ministers know because we went to preacher school, and in one of those courses a hidden, secret course that you people don't get to take we learned the secrets about what God is and what God wants and so now we come out here to enlighten you, and you pay us for it.

If that were true, it would be easier just to offer that special secret course to all of you, so we could eliminate the middleman and we wouldn't have to keep meeting like this. Unfortunately, no one has met or seen these gods, and those who do claim to talk to God are usually locked quickly away. There are no photos, videos or DVDs. It's all just hearsay evidence. What we have are the stories and histories told by religious scriptures and historical sources.

I've grown to like the story of Jesus feeding four or five thousand people when he had only a few loaves of bread and some fish. When the story is taught as merely magic, it's insulting to religion and boring to listeners. But as a many sided metaphor, it's less fishy. This is our first annual Commitment Sunday, when we will bring our offerings and pledges forward to place them in a large offering bowl.

Originally delivered by Dr. Davidson Loehr on 15 September 2002

The text for this and other sermons delivered before March 16, 2003 can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/

You may wonder why I chose to preach this sermon now, this sermon about the two kinds of justice. One reason was because the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks is upon us, and most of the voices we're hearing from our media and our leaders are demanding God's justice from the angry God they have ordered to bless America.

We can't let that be the only voice we hear. We must be reminded that there is a higher calling, a calling higher than the trumpet calls of the flag-waving God who wants to declare unending war on anyone in the world who might not like us. I thought we learned in Vietnam that when you bomb and kill thousands of innocent people, you don't win their hearts and minds, you simple create more people who hate you....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 8 September 2002

The text for this and other sermons delivered before March 16, 2003 can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/

The sermon title came from one of my many favorite Buddhist stories. It's a modern story, about a Buddhist who was trying to be present, as Buddhism teaches you should be, but was having trouble understanding just why you're supposed to be present. He knew the teaching he needed might come from any place if only he was open to it, so he was trying to be open, whatever that meant. While he was in this open and aware mood, he heard what had to be the noise of several hundred people in a large rental hall he was passing, so he went in. It was a big Bingo game going on. And there, right there on the front wall of the Bingo hall, was the lesson he had been seeking. It was a huge sign that said, in large block letters, "YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN." When the student is ready, the teacher appears; it can happen anywhere.

The story also says we must choose to be present, or it isn't likely to happen at all. And it helps to look in places where we're most likely to find some wisdom and healthy connections. After all, it isn't likely to happen at Bingo games very often. We have to be in the right place.

What are we filled with, when we're full of ourselves? We're not filled with others; others are different and have different interests. We're not filled with the world. And we're not filled with life, for life is so much more unbounded. We're not filled with things others are very interested in, as we discover when we can't stop talking about ourselves.

Whatever we're filled with when we're full of ourselves, it doesn't seem to be very satisfying in the long term, if the cries of loneliness and yearnings for authenticity we hear and feel around us are to be trusted.

However you would describe the trap of being stuck only inside of ourselves, how do we get out of it? What is the path that leads out of self-absorption and into a more satisfying kind of life?

These are among the ultimate questions of our day. We gather to pursue them, in the hope that there may be something of value to be found and felt, even here, even now.

I first heard of the idea of "living under the gaze of eternity" in graduate school. A professor said that's how to understand the ancient Roman advice that noble people should live sub specie aeternitatis.

At first, I had this picture of pretending I was living while everyone who had ever lived was watching everything I did. That was not an appealing idea! I had had a few experiences of feeling watched when I didn't want to be watched, and I didn't like it.

For some people, that's what it's like imagining that God sees their every action. This has never seemed like such a good idea, either. When I was a little boy, I heard that Santa Claus did this you know that terrifying song, "He sees you while you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!" Well, I never liked the idea of his knowing all that. I wanted to deny him access - set up a password or something.

It is an odd idea, living under the gaze of eternity. I can't imagine that it's very attractive to very many people anywhere. You've probably had some experiences of this, too.

This week, I was given an article from the paper written five years ago that compared the education of 8th graders in 1997 and 1907. Among the ten questions in geography were "Name two countries producing large quantities of wheat, two of cotton, two of coal and two of tea" and "name three important rivers in the United States, three of Europe, three of Asia, three of south America and three of Africa."

The professor of humanities who wrote this article in 1997 said reading this exam took his breath away, and he bet that most university students today couldn't pass it. "We have come a long way since 1907," he said, "but it is certainly not the high road we have taken." And he concluded by saying, "A small world is long gone, as are the standards that made this national exceptional."

And we reap what we sow. We're not only slipping badly in basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic as they used to label "the three R's"; but in our awareness of the size of the world, and the role decent citizens of the world's most powerful country should be striving to play in this world....

Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 19 May 2002

I have heard a conservative described as a liberal who has been mugged. I have a new understanding of that this week. My bicycle was stolen from my car rack this Tuesday while I was having a dinner meeting with our church's Executive Committee. And a few months ago, I had a small Sony mini-CD recorder, a Nikon camera and a black leather bag taken out of my office. Both times, I felt angry and violated.

But it didn't make me feel more conservative. It made me miss, even more, the liberal humanities education that our students used to receive but receive no longer. It made me miss the teaching of morality in public schools, and to teach morality in a pluralistic society like ours, it has to be a liberal curriculum. I miss that. No, it won't stop theft. But it could help.

Under the cover of war, stories circulate that all is not well with our nation, that serious things are amiss:

• Hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned from our economy and given to selected corporations
• Civil liberties being curtailed and threatened - some say dangerously
• Growing evidence that our government knew of the September 11th attacks in advance, and may even have known specific details, including the targets.

As people of faith who are also proud Americans, these things must both concern and disturb us. If true, they have profound implications for our lives and for the soul of America. This morning and next Sunday, we gather to ask some hard and necessary questions. Our gathering is sanctified by the high and serious purposes that collect us....

All over this world today, about a billion Christians will be retelling the same story, of a son of God who was crucified and resurrected and who, if we believe in the story, can be our own personal savior.

Anyone living in the first century would have known a whole host of similar stories about gods who died and were resurrected. They knew the stories of Dionysus, born of a virgin and the great sky-god Zeus, whose followers gathered annually to eat flesh and drink blood symbolizing the flesh and blood of the dead god, and believed to impart his spirit to them. They knew the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, where Osiris was killed, resurrected much later, mated with Isis, who gave birth to the baby Horus. Everyone knew the image of Isis holding the baby Horus: it was the model for the Christian pictures of the virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. And the people knew the stories of other dead and resurrected gods, including Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis.

All these stories belonged to a mythic genre born into the ancient scientific worldview of 2000 years ago, where heaven was just up above the sky, hell was just below the earth, and the whole universe was a local affair. In such a small place, the gods could routinely sport with human females, and bodies might well come back to life or float up above the sky to live forever.

The Church's role had been immoral for centuries, conspiring with the wealthy to keep the poor desperate and overbred. And the religious argument always came down to the same passage from the Bible, one that anyone raised in a very conservative religion has heard before. It's from Genesis, after Adam and Eve had been thrown out of the Garden of Eden, that the line occurs. 'By the sweat of your brow you shall live,' the writers have God saying: By the sweat of your brow you shall live. You see, life just is nasty, brutish and short. It's hard, it's unfair, and that's God's plan, an enduring punishment for the fact that Adam and Eve preferred development over blind obedience. That line had been used for hundreds of years to keep the lower classes of people in their desperate, overbred, hopeless state.

What Pope Leo XIII did in 1891 was to use the same Bible passage to justify the opposite position, and to lay the foundation for workers' unions which the Church would support through its offices. Leo did it simply by emphasizing a different word in the sentence. 'By the sweat of your brow,' he said, "you shall live!" And what, he asked, does it mean, "to live"? Does it mean merely to exist, to subsist at starvation level? Does it mean to live like lower animals do, or maybe like slugs or plants do? Are we promised, by this God in the Old Testament, only the absolute lowest possible quality of life? Is the mere quantity of life, the mere fact that we breathe and can move all that religion offers? Is it, to keep it in the language of theism, all that God demands, the absolute minimum quality of life?

This is the first of two connected sermons, and should be read in conjunction with the sermon "The Morality of Abortion," delivered 10 March 2002.

For about 30 years, America's cultural liberals have understood abortion as a secular matter of individual rights where the mother, but not the baby, is seen as a rights-bearing individual. Conservatives have framed it as a moral issue based on the assumption that life is sacred in and of itself and everyone has a right to it. Under Roman Catholic teaching, when push comes to shove the baby has a greater right to life, since it stands to get a bigger quantity of life.

I expect the Roe v. Wade decision to be overturned during President Bush's term, and I think the majority of our citizens do believe abortion is primarily a moral issue.

If this is the case, America's liberals now need to begin doing what we should have done thirty years ago. We need to reframe abortion as a moral issue rather than an issue of individual rights. And if we believe abortion is morally justified, we need to develop moral arguments for it that can be persuasive not only to us, but eventually to a majority of the voting public. I have believed this could be done since I first preached on abortion over 15 years ago.

Like most religious literalists, I think religion is about our search for salvation. Unlike religious literalists, I think our salvation comes here and now or it never comes at all. I'm not inventing a new meaning for the word, I'm returning to its original meaning. It comes from the same Latin root as our word "salve," and means health or wholeness. So what is salvation about for religious liberals? What makes us most healthy and whole?

Originally delivered by Dr. Davidson Loehr on 6 January 2002

The text for this and other sermons delivered before March 16, 2003 can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/