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Who do UU Say that I am?
An Introduction to Jesus for Unitarian Universalists

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Lauren Hill,
―Every Ghetto, Every City‖
― Every ghetto, every city
and suburban place I‘ve been
make me recall my days
in the new Jerusalem.‖

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U2, ―One‖
―Did you come here to play
Jesus
To the lepers in your
head?‖

+ Archbishop Oscar Romero
―If they kill me, I will rise
again in the Salvadoran
people.‖

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Dom Helder Camara
―When I give food to the
poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor
have no food, they call me
a communist.‖

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Alpha and Omega
We‘ll begin and end with Jesus‘ question to Peter:
Who do you say that I am?
After all, that is really the only important question when it comes to
Jesus. Not who I say he is or what he means. Not what any church or
catechism or creed says, but what do you say?
So, what do you say and think and feel about Jesus?
We‘ll take some time both now and at the end of the presentation to let
you consider and/or discuss what you think.
Maybe at the end of the session, what you think may have changed a
bit, maybe not.

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First Images: The Gospels
The first images we have
of Jesus are the Gospels.
Each writer of the
canonical Gospels paints a
different portrait of Jesus
based upon how his
community of Jesus
Followers interpreted the
teachings, life and ministry
of Jesus.

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The Gospels are / aren‘t
The Gospels are documents
written by 2nd or 3rd generation
members of Jesus movement
communities.
They are documents that
represent the different ways
different groups thought about
and interpreted who Jesus was
and what he said and what it all
meant.
The Gospels are NOT
biographies or history books.

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Jesus in Mark‘s Gospel
 When Jesus heals, he tells the healed person or the evil spirit
NOT to reveal his identity as the Messiah of the Jews.
 Mark keeps Jesus‘ identity as a messiah secret because he doesn‘t want
Jesus to be seen as a Theos Aner or Divine Man.
 Divine Men were wandering charismatic healers and philosophers and
snake oil salesmen. One of their stocks-in-trade was that they wanted
EVERYONE to know who was doing the healing and to bring friends.
Divine Men would preach and heal in town squares and market places,
proclaiming their powers and greatness for all to see and hear. They
would ask for money for their services. Many, if not most, were fakes.
 Mark doesn‘t want his Jesus to seem like one of these to his reader, so
he sets up the secret messiah persona.

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Jesus in Matthew‘s Gospel
Jesus is a prophet, rabbi, and teacher in the Jewish tradition.
He is the promised Messiah of the Jews.
Like the rabbis of his time, he teaches his disciples seated, using catchy,
clever sayings, stories, parables and allegories.
He uses the phrase ―Kingdom of Heaven‖ because observant Jews
would find it disrespectful to use the phrase ―Kingdom of God,‖ thus
unnecessarily invoking God‘s name.
Matthew focuses on the Jewish tradition by presenting Jesus‘ ―New Law‖
in 5 major sections to parallel the five books of the Torah:
5:1-7:27 - Sermon on the Mount
10:5-42 - Missionary Teaching
13:1-52 - Parable Collection
18:1-35 Teachings on Community
24:3-25:26 - Apocalyptic Discourse

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Jesus in Luke‘s Gospel
Jesus is the ―perfect Christian‖ in Luke. He prays,
preaches, heals the sick, feeds the poor, ministers to
the outcast (women, the poor, tax collectors,
prostitutes, etc).
Jesus is a missionary, moving from his home town to
the center of Jewish faith in Jerusalem, and then his
followers carry the mission to the center (at the time)
of the world, Rome.

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Jesus in John‘s Gospel
An obvious Divine Man sent to earth to teach those
who would listen.
The perfect being as God incarnate.
A mystical messiah, who seems to know he is playing
the theological role assigned to him by a higher
divinity (or later theological interpreters).
Here is a character very different from Mark‘s secret
but human messiah, Matthew‘s rabbi, and Luke‘s
pastor.

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Commentators, Theologians and
Believers
The next step in the evolution of Jesus, if you will, was that people who
found meaning in the Gospel and Biblical stories, continued to have
different ideas about what it all meant.
People began to write commentaries on the Gospels, began to discuss
Jesus‘ relationship to God, and this influenced how groups of believers in
the Jesus story related to Jesus and the story they told.
In the centuries following Jesus‘ death some came to believe Jesus was
God, sharing in the divinity of God and spirit of divinity called the Holy
Spirit. This would come to be formalized in Christian Creeds in an
attempt (successful) to define a Christian orthodoxy or right belief.
Yet, from the earliest days of the Jesus movement others resisted this
attempt at a formalizing orthodoxy. They were called heretics. They are
our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors.

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Origen (Origen Adamantius, 185–254, CE)
Believed the mortal body of Jesus was transformed by God into an
ethereal and divine body, the activity of Jesus was essentially example
and instruction, and his human life was only incidental as contrasted with
the immanent cosmic activity of the ―Logos.‖ Origen regarded the death
of Jesus as a sacrifice, paralleling it with other cases of self-sacrifice for
the general good.
He also believed in "the fabulous pre-existence of souls," and "the
monstrous restoration which follows from it" thus making him one of the
earliest Universalists (everyone is saved).
He was formally declared a heretic in the 6th century.

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Proud to be Heretics
Unitarian Universalists have always been considered heretics by
othordox/traditional/mainstream Christians.
‗αἵρεσις = hairesis (from ‗αἱρέομαι = haireomai = "choose‖)
A heretic is one who has not given up the right to choose what to think or
believe.
Heresy stands in opposition to orthodoxy, also from the Greek, ortho-
"straight" + doxa "belief.
Who is to say what is right to believe?
In a responsible search for truth and meaning, might the best thing to
think and believe change as time goes on and we learn more about our
world, our circumstances, our past, and/or as more information comes to
light? Or might we just change our mind(s)?
Right belief also means little without right action (orthopraxis).

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Some Major Christian ―Heresies‖
* Adoptionism- God granted Jesus powers and then adopted him as a
Son.
* Apollinarianism- Jesus‘ divine will overshadowed and replaced the
human.
* Arianism - Jesus was a lesser, created being. Not God, but more
than your average human. William Ellery Channing‘s Jesus.
* Docetism- Jesus was divine, but only seemed to be human.
* Gnosticism - Dualism of good and bad and special knowledge for
salvation.
* Modalism - God is one person in three modes.
* Monarchianism - God is one person.
* Monophysitism- Jesus had only one nature: divine.
* Pelagianism – Humans are unaffected by the fall of Adam and can
keep all of God's laws.
* Socinianism - Denial of the Trinity. Jesus is a deified man.
* Tritheism - the Trinity is really three separate gods.

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Michael Servetus (1511-
1553)
On the Errors of
the Trinity (1561)
Servetus - was one of the most
outspoken critics of the
established Church of his time.
It earned him the singular
distinction of being burned to
death by the Catholics with the
aid of the Protestants .

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On the Errors of the Trinity
―The philosophers have invented a third separate being truly and really
distinct from the other two, which they call the third Person, or the Holy
Spirit, and thus they have contrived an imaginary Trinity, three beings in
one nature. But in reality three Gods, or one threefold God, are foisted
upon us under the pretence, and in the name of a Unity.‖
―Any discussion of the Trinity should start with the man. That Jesus,
surnamed Christ, was not a Hypostasis but a human being is taught both
by the early Fathers and in Scriptures, taken in their literal sense, and is
indicated by the miracles he wrought. He, and not the Word, is also the
miraculously born Son of God in fleshly form, as the Scriptures teach -
not a hypostasis, but an actual Son. ―
―The doctrine of the Holy Spirit as a third separate being lands us in
practical tritheism, even though the unity of God be insisted on.‖

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Faustus Socinus (1539-
1604)
Racovian Cathecism
(1605) – Rakow, Poland,
The Polish Brethren or
Polish Reformed Minor
Church

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The Racovian Cathecism on Jesus
Is Jesus God? The Socinians answer, ". . . there cannot be more beings
than one who possesses supreme dominion over all things."18 This one
supreme being is the Father of Jesus Christ. God the Father is the one
true God. The Holy Spirit is the power of God.‖
The Socinians reject the traditional description of God as a Trinity. To
worship the Trinity is polytheism and is contrary to the way of
salvation.19 The writers of the catechism find error in the doctrine that
"there is in God only one essence, but three persons."20 Instead, it is
asserted that "the essence of God is one, not in kind but in number . . . it
cannot contain a plurality of persons, since a person is nothing else than
an individual essence."21
Socinians acknowledge that Jesus is rightly called "God" in the
Scriptures in the sense that he has received from that one God superior
authority "in heaven and earth among men, power superior to all things
human, or authority to sit in judgement upon other men."22 Jesus,
therefore, can be called God in some sense, but he is separate from and
totally dependent on the one true God.

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Rationalist Unitarians
Regard Jesus as a non-
divine and human Prophet.
Rationalist Unitarians
include Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Theodore Parker
and American Religious
Humanists.

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Marcus Borg‘s Spirit Person
Although Borg is not a
Unitarian Universalist, his
conception of Jesus as a
―Spirit Person‖ resonates
with many UU‘s. This
image of Jesus comes
from his 1994 book,
Meeting Jesus Again for
the First Time.

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Jesus as ―Spirit Person‖
Spirit persons are known cross-culturally. They are
people who have vivid and frequent subjective
experiences of another…dimension of reality…. They
share a compelling sense of having experienced
something "real"…. Their experiences are noetic,
involving not simply a feeling of ecstasy but a knowing.
What such persons know is the sacred. (pp. 32, 33)
"Spirit persons share a second feature: they become
mediators of the sacred. They mediate the sacred in
various ways" (p. 33)

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Jesus as ―Spirit Person‖
It is important to note that the experience of spirit
persons presupposes (a) reality very different from the
dominant image of reality in the modern Western
world. [Which], derived from the Enlightenment, sees
reality in material terms.... The experience of spirit
persons suggests that there is more to reality than
this—that there is...a non-material level of reality,
actual even though non-material, and charged with
energy and power. The modern world view is one
dimensional; the world view of spirit persons is
multidimensional. (p. 34)

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Some contemporary UU Thoughts
on Jesus
―I find spiritual wisdom in Jesus' affirmation, even to
the nobodies of the world, the marginalized and
oppressed, ―You are the light of the world.‖ Everyone,
each one of us, is precious.‖
Rev. Bruce Southworth
The Community Church of New York
New York, NY

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on Jesus
While much energy has gone into finding ―the
historical Jesus,‖ I find myself drawn in a different
direction. I am not so interested in knowing who Jesus
was, but I am very interested in knowing who Christ is.
The distinction may surprise some, but it is helpful.
Searching for Jesus as he really was is a quest limited
by historical distance and by the presuppositions of
the searchers, as Schweitzer, among others, has
pointed out.

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on Jesus
Christ, as the incarnation of God's love in human flesh, is not just a
figure of the past; he is a present reality. This living Christ is found in
the Church, the community of those who speak his words, eat at his
table, and become his hands, feet, and voice in a needy and often
crucified world. Even those who are uncertain about God can recognize
the presence of a Christ-like spirit in the people of a redemptive
community. There are also those who, in recognizing his presence in our
midst, know there is a gestalt of grace by which the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts we contribute.
Rev. Thomas D. Wintle
First Parish Church in Weston
Weston, MA

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on Jesus
When someone asks me point blank how I feel about Jesus, dark
clouds fill my vision. I hear a dialogue in my imagination:
Q. Who can disagree with a message that has offered such consolation
and inspired such sacrifice and commitment?
A. Who can support a message that has been used for such
oppression? The bottom line is that I cannot and will not separate the
message or the person of Jesus from the history of oppressive acts
undertaken in the name of Christianity. The institutionalization of Jesus'
message has caused untold harm and prevented untold good,
and it would be wrong, after two millennia, to forget. One cannot
recapture Jesus of Nazareth in any direct way; the road is too cluttered.
In the words of Melville's inscrutable scrivener, Bartleby, ―I would prefer
not to.‖
Dr. Leonore Tiefer
The Community Church of New York
New York, NY

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on Jesus
For most Christians, Jesus remains a mythic figure, a
touchstone for spiritual focus or feeling. But the best of
today's scholarship—which I identify with the work of
the Jesus Seminar—reveals a man who is believable
but problematic:
• His personal lifestyle fits with that of itinerant cynic
sages from about 400 BCE to 600 CE: He had no job,
no home, and no family, and he begged for his food.
He wanted people to reject the world's values and
realize what he called ―the kingdom/sovereignty of
God.‖

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on Jesus
• He was best known as what we would today call a faith healer.
• His ―Golden Rule‖—turn the other cheek, repay injustice with
forgiveness—was youthful idealism, not seasoned wisdom (ask anyone
who works with battered women). Most today find it easier to defend
Confucius' earlier advice: Reward goodness with kindness, but repay evil
with justice.
• His ideal world (the ―kingdom/sovereignty of God‖) was potentially here,
within and among us. This would be a world in which we treat one
another as brothers and sisters, children of God—period. End of sermon.
End of religion. The mythic Jesus remains appealing partly because the
real one is, in spite of his flaws, both disturbing and challenging.
Rev. Davidson Loehr
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin
Austin, TX

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on Jesus
Injustice results less often from malice than from willed
inattention. In Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan,
the priest and the Levite did no active harm to the
wounded man on the highway. They just passed by on
the opposite side of the road, distancing themselves
from the uncomfortable sight. Relentlessly, Jesus
keeps bringing the oppressed back into our field of
vision.
Guy C. Quinlan
The Unitarian Church of All Souls
New York, NY

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Alpha and Omega
So, I ask again:
Who do you say Jesus is?

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Who Do UU Say That I Am?

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