Unitarian Universalist Congegation of Castine

Readings

1. From the Rev. Peter W. Marty, a ELCA Lutheran pastor, “Betting on a Generous God,” The Christian Century, May 17, 2011

   When first-time guests walk up to our door on a Sunday morning, what runs through their heads? … Many of them join our congregation only after sharing painful church stories from their past. … They have seen enough judgmental Christianity and heard enough baloney- filled expositions of the faith to be permanently wary. …

   At the top of the wound list, injuring the faith and spirit of many innocent believers, is the encounter with what I call “arrogant certainty.” When Christian people convert their spiritual confidence into theological certainty and then apply that certainty to their account of God, faith becomes ideological. … The absence of spiritual modesty among people of faith is what caused Marilynne Robinson to write, “There is something about certainty that makes Christianity very un-christian.”

2. From Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, HarperOne, New York, NY, 2010

   Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them the gospel does … God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being for them forever. A loving heavenly father … would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony.

   If there was an earthy father who was like that, we would call the authorities. If there was an actual human dad who was that volatile, we would contact child protection services immediately.

The Sermon

The inspiration for this sermon is a recent book by Rob Bell titled, Love Wins. Bell is the founding pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church, a non-denominational Christian mega-church, in Grandville (near Grand Rapids), Michigan. He sounds like someone I wouldn’t ordinarily quote, especially since he wrote an earlier book titled Velvet Elvis.

Although, who knows? Maybe that would be fun.

Pastor Bell has been accused of universalism, which to many evangelicals is heresy. Actually, in Love Wins, Bell outlines a number of theological views of the idea of hell, including universal reconciliation (or universalism) – the idea that all souls will ultimately be reconciled to God. He leaves the door open for universalism, but he does not choose any specific doctrine of hell for his own. Bell says he believes that a person can choose isolation and despair, thereby creating their own hell. So, while he isn’t exactly a “small u universalist,” his theology leaves an open door to the possibility that everyone can have a place in the kingdom of heaven.

Bell puts it this way: "It's been clearly communicated to many that this belief (in hell as conscious, eternal torment) is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our world desperately needs to hear."

Yes, you heard that correctly. He says that the doctrine of eternal torment in hell is “misguided and toxic.” You can see that would make some Christians nervous. If Christianity got rid of eternal torture in hell we would be left with – a loving God. And we can’t have that!

Is Mahatma Gandhi in Hell?

So here’s Pastor Rob Bell in his own words: “Several years ago we had an art show at our church and there were a lot of paintings and sculptures, and there was on piece that had a quote from Gandhi in it. And lots of people found this piece compelling. ... But during the course of the art show someone attached a hand-written note to the piece, and on the note they had written: ‘Reality check. He’s in hell.’

Bell asks, “Gandhi’s in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure, and felt the need to let the rest of us know?”

The Gandhi question is a personal question for me, since I have relatives who think I’m going to hell because I’m a Unitarian Universalist. And I have a niece who used to be a Wiccan priestess, but now does Yoga in the Hindu tradition. Does she go to hell, too?

Gandhi was a great and good man, and a Hindu. What kind of petty, vindictive, little god would send a good person to hell just for being Hindu?

When I was a teenager I asked my father, a Methodist minister, if Jews could go to heaven. Dad said, “I believe there is a place in heaven for good Jewish people.” So, based on my dad’s answer I reasoned that if good Jews could go to heaven – Jews who do not accept Jesus – then why not good people of any faith, or good people of no religious affiliation?

Specifically, if the Jewish Albert Einstein can go to heaven, then why not the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi, the atheist Mark Twain, the Buddhist Dalai Lama, and the Muslim boxer Muhammad Ali? How about people who were born gay? Or does God send all the interesting people to hell, and only people like Calvin Coolidge, Anita Bryant, and Pat Boone go heaven?

What gets you into heaven?

Many Christians will insist that only people who believe as they believe will get to heaven. Many think they know the one, correct, magic formula for eternal life. Some will tell you that you must say a specific prayer asking Jesus to come into your life. Or that you must accept Jesus as your personal savior. Or that you must have a personal relationship with Jesus.

The Bible itself says different things in different places. In Matthew 19:16-24, a rich man asks Jesus, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus tells him he can have eternal life by keeping the commandments. But which commandments? The Bible has not ten, but 613 commandments. So, which ones? Jesus mentions five: “Do not murder; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

The rich man says he has obeyed all of these. Jesus replies, “Go sell everything and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come, and follow me.”

But the rich man went away unhappy.

So – is that the correct formula? Do we have to follow the commandments and give our money to the poor? This is not the answer most evangelical Christians would give. Jesus didn’t tell the man to have faith, to believe, or to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Why?

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus says that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, visit those who are in prison, and welcome the stranger, will receive eternal life. Those who do not do these things will receive eternal punishment. Again, there’s nothing in Matthew 25 about believing. Nothing about being born again. So, are we saved by the good that we do?

On the cross, with Jesus crucified between two thieves, one of the thieves said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus told the man, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43). The thief didn’t ask for his sins to be forgiven; he didn’t invite Jesus into his heart; he didn’t announce his faith. He simply asked to be remembered in the age to come. So – is that all you need to do? Just say, “remember me”?

The fact is, different biblical passages give different answers. The Bible is not one book. It is a collection of 64 books, by many different authors. The Gospel of John has a different theological outlook than Matthew, Mark and Luke. Paul’s epistles are not the same as James. Those who try to evangelize others, those who are so annoyingly sure that they know the truth, think they have the one and only biblical magic formula for salvation. But they’ve missed the rich complexity of the Bible.

So Bell suggests, “Eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts now. It’s not about a life that begins at death; it’s about experiencing the kind of life now that can endure and survive even death.”

What kind of God is that?

And the larger question to Pastor Bell is similar to the one asked by our Universalist ancestors, “What kind of all-powerful, all-knowing God would create us so flawed that most of us have to be tortured in hell for eternity?”

The great John Murray, who established a Universalist church in Gloucester, Mass., in 1774, and served as a chaplain in George Washington’s army, decided that “God is Love,” as the Epistle of 1 John says. And a loving God simply would not torture anyone forever in hell. There may be some temporary punishment for some very bad people, Murray thought, but by and large we create our own hells right here on this earth, and that’s hell enough.

Bell puts the question this way, “And then there’s the ... question of ‘what is God like?’ Because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message, the center of the gospel is that God is going to send you to hell unless you believe in Jesus. And so what gets subtly taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that, that we need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good? How could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be ‘good news’? This is why lots of people want nothing to do with the Christian faith. They see it as an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies and they say, ‘why would I ever want to be a part of that?’”

Bell suggests that a lot of Christian preaching is “bait and switch.” We are told that God is love. God offers us everlasting life by grace, freely, through no merit on our part. But, if you do not respond in the right way, God will torture you forever in hell!

That would be an abusive, untrustworthy God. “If there was an earthy father who was like that,” Bell says, “we would call the authorities.”

This is similar to the argument that Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou (1771-1852) made. Ballou said that no good, kind, earthly father would torture his own children forever. So why would we believe that God is not as good, as kind, or as fair as we are?

Murray, Ballou, and the other early Universalists were very biblically based. They looked at passages like 1 Corinthians 15:22, “As all die in Adam, so will all be made alive in Christ.” Here and in other places the Apostle Paul says that all are justified, all are “made alive” by Christ. Not just those with the correct theology, not just those who go to the right church, not just those who are straight, not just those who call themselves “Christians,” but everybody!

And there’s what Jesus said in John 12:32, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” And there is Titus 2:11, “For the Grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” I could go on with more texts, but you get the picture. A banquet is set for everybody, and no one is kept away from the welcome table. The Universalists of 200 years ago read their Bibles, used their reason, and concluded that God is love – and love wins.

Bigger than any one religion

Peter Marty, writing in the May 17, 2011, Christian Century magazine, says that Rob Bell does not go as far as universalism, although he’s been accused of it. As I mentioned earlier, Bell says a person can choose isolation and despair. We still have the freedom to choose hell for ourselves, the hell of our own human fear and anger.

Let me illustrate that idea with a parable, not from the Bible, nor from Bell’s book, but from the Zen Buddhist tradition. Once upon a time there was a monk who was said to know the secrets of heaven and hell. A great samurai warrior went to see the monk saying, “I want you to teach me the secret of heaven and hell.” The monk had been reading when the samurai entered, and he didn’t even look up. He simply asked the warrior, “Who do you think you are?”

Deeply insulted, for it was clear he was a samurai by his splendid uniform, the samurai pushed out his chest and began to recite all of his achievements. When he finished, the monk again did not look up, but simply turned and spit on the ground, a gesture of great insult.

Furious, the samurai drew his sword and was about to avenge the insult by killing the monk. But the monk lifted his head and, looking the great warrior straight in the eye said, “Now the gates of hell are opening before you.”

The samurai stopped short, frozen by the realization that he had allowed his pride to overcome his better judgment. He dropped his sword and bowed his head. “And now,” the monk said quietly, “the gates of heaven are opening before you.”

The monk knew the secret of heaven and hell because he understood people. Likewise, Jesus understood the way to heaven and the way to hell because he, too, understood human motivations and behavior. We can create our own hells out of fear, despair, anger, greed, prejudice, and other human frailties. But when we live by the principle that “God is love,” we have the ability to create a little bit of heaven right here on earth. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus told his listeners (Luke 17:21).

“The glue holding Bell’s project together,” Peter Marty writes, “is the firm conviction that Jesus is bigger than any one religion.” Marty also notes how refreshing it is that Bell doesn’t fall into the trap of Christian triumphalism. “Time and time again, Bell challenges the reader to be open to surprise, mystery and all the unanswerables contained within the ‘wide stream’ called Christianity.” Bell is asking his fellow Christians whether they are open-minded or closed- minded. Do we have enough faith to let others disagree with us? Can we bless our neighbors who may have a different political view, or a different religious belief? Many can. And if we are able to be tolerant, wouldn’t a loving God do even better?

My own beliefs are unconventional. My theology doesn’t qualify in some people’s eyes. I love and honor my Protestant Christian heritage. I attend a Buddhist meditation and discussion group, and practice meditation. I’m grateful to have discovered the long history and liberating message of Unitarian Universalism. I’ve spent a lifetime thinking about religious questions, and still my questions lead to other questions. I’m a seeker; a hopeful skeptic. I'm betting that a loving God won't torture me for having the wrong theology. And so it is refreshing to find, in Pastor Rob Bell, not the annoying certainty of so many evangelists, but the open-minded, optimistic message of a big-hearted gospel, the good news that love wins.

Amen.

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