Sermons from the Pulpit

They called him by the title of "Rabbi." We don't use the word much. It's Jewish. We tend to think of a rabbi as a "Jewish minister," but rabbis are not ministers. They're teachers. A pastor or minister is not the same thing as a rabbi or teacher. And Jesus was Jewish.

Let me tell you a story about rabbis. There was a young rabbi who had a problem in his new synagogue. On his very first Sabbath with them he discovered that during the service, half the congregation stood for the prayers and half remained seated, and each half shouted at the other, insisting that theirs was the true tradition. Nothing the rabbi said or did made any difference toward solving this impasse. Finally, in desperation, the young rabbi went to visit the synagogue's 99-year-old founding rabbi. He found the old man in a nursing home, and he poured out his troubles. "So tell me," he pleaded, "was it the tradition for the congregation to stand during the prayers?"

And the old rabbi answered, "No."

"Ah," said the younger man, "then it was the tradition to sit during the prayers?"

But again the old rabbi answered, "No."

And the young man said, "Well, what we have is complete chaos! Half the people stand and shout, and the other half sit and scream."

"Ah," said the old rabbi, "that was the tradition."

From which we can conclude that people are going to squabble with each other, even when they gather to worship and serve God. They just are. And their spiritual leader, whether teacher or pastor or both, is not there to settle the squabble, but to lead them in prayer. I like this. Don't you?

But about their argument: There is something to be said for praying while seated. There must be, since we do it, even if we have no idea why we're doing it. Right?

A friend of ours who came to the United Church of Christ after growing up Catholic was amazed the first time she saw the way we pray. She had never seen anything like it before. She was used to praying on her knees, on one of those hinged kneelers that you find in Catholic and Episcopal churches, and for those of you who have never done it this is an entirely different posture from ours, because it does not involve bowing.

We bow our heads and close our eyes and fold our arms and hands inwards in prayer, as a gesture of humility before God and as a way of distancing ourselves from the world around us to center ourselves on God. But we do not get down on our knees. They get on their knees, but they do not bow. From the knees up they are entirely upright, often with their arms or elbows resting on the pew in front of them and their clasped hands raised before their faces, and their heads held high, aimed toward the heavens or toward the altar, and their eyes might very well be wide open, although if you keep yours closed you will never notice that, will you?

It is an entirely different way to approach God, and although our friend was quite happy to become part of the United Church of Christ, she remained critical of this one aspect of our ways, and she captured the difference with devastating incisiveness by referring to our prayer posture as "the Protestant cringe."
Ouch.

Now, standing to pray, standing at one's full height, looking outward, not inward, and maybe even holding one's hands out, palms upwards, instead of folding and clasping them: that is the way Charlton Heston as Moses did it in the Cecil B. de Mille version of "The Ten Commandments," and we all know how thoroughly Biblical that was. So it's very easy to see how people could get into an argument over proper prayer posture. And it is also easy, if you think about it, to understand the different underlying theological ideas and feelings about God, all of which have validity and all of which make a contribution to the larger picture. It's not that one way is right and the other is wrong and we have to decide which is which. All are right when done in the spirit in which they are intended to be done. As the bumper sticker says, "Celebrate diversity!"

So far so good, but here's something that will put that celebration to the test. In anticipation of the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, someone reminded me that in what we used to call the black church, (and I still call it the black church even though I've been told to say "African-American,") there are pastors, scholars, and laypeople who think of Christ as black. The black Christ. Malcolm X, who was assassinated many years ago, said Jesus was black. In a latter-day episode of iconoclasm, some black congregations have rooted out and destroyed images of Jesus with white features in their churches, like the portraits that many churches have hanging on their walls and the pictures in some children's Bibles. They say that a white Christ just reinforces the self-hatred and sense of inferiority caused by racism.

This isn't Louis Farrakhan we're talking about, some kind of reverse racist, anti-semitic loudmouth. These folks are Christians. They belong to the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. They consider themselves our sisters and brothers in Christ. We sing their songs, which we call "spirituals," and we treasure their contribution to our faith. So what are we to make of their black Christ?

Well, is Christ white? What does "white" mean? Anglo-Saxon features, fair skin, blue eyes and straight hair? Is it OK if the hair is curly, as long as it's not kinky? This gets tricky!

You won't find any reference to the white race in the Bible. They had no words for it, no concept of race as we understand it. They also had no words for some other things we talk about all the time, like adolescence and sexual orientation and feminism. They lived in a world without teenagers. Imagine!

It's risky to take our own ways of organizing reality, and the words we've invented to express them, and use them on a culture that knew nothing of them. I'd rather avoid doing it. Does this mean we don't know what Jesus looked like? I reckon Jesus and all his folks would have belonged to what is broadly called the Mediterranean type because people sort of like that are common from Portugal to Turkey and from Syria to Morocco. But what does that tell us about the color of Christ?

John the Baptizer says, "Look! There goes the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and baptizes with the Holy Spirit!" So two of his own followers take off after this person he's pointing to. What color is the Lamb of God?

And Jesus notices them and says, "What are you looking for?" An excellent question, which I daresay is aimed at all of us. And they answer him with a question: "Rabbi, where are you staying?" What they mean is, "Rabbi, we want to stay with you. We want to devote ourselves to knowing you." Like Ruth saying to Naomi, "Whither thou goest, I will go; where thou lodgest, I will lodge." We shall be one another's people. No matter who we are, what color, what tribe, what sex, what sins, whatever. As Paul said someplace, "We are all one in Christ Jesus." So what color is Christ?

The idea of a black Christ or a white one or an Asian one or any other kind has nothing to do with what Jesus actually looked like. It is a theological statement about the nature of God, not about any particular human being. Just as the posture with which you pray expresses a whole attitude about yourself, and God, and the relationship between you and God.