Let me start by talking about the reflections of an elder. In 1994, I went to a program called “New Warrior”. It is one of the men’s programs. It has an absolutely hideous name, but it is one of the best programs I have ever been to. I would consider it the equivalent value of about five years of good AA. If you want to know, “Is New Warrior something like the Promise Keepers?” No! It is not like the Promise Keepers; it is diametrically opposed to anything Promise Keepers is about. The New Warrior is for the older folks, persons fifty years and older. They have a special elders training for men. I went to the elders program about this time last year, so I am now an official “New Warrior Elder”. I am going to say some things about being an elder.

My topic, as you know from the program, is, “Re-Visioning the Christian Life”, and my question is, very simply, “Within the re-visioning that I am suggesting, what does the Christian life look like?” For that older conventional way of seeing Christianity that I sketched in my talk yesterday, believing was central to the Christian life. Indeed during the period of modernity, being a Christian meant, to a large extent, believing in Christianity, and Christian faith meant, to a large extent, believing. How does the Christian life look within this framework of seeing Christianity again?

Prophecy in the progressive church does not mean being doctrinaire. It does mean speaking out as a child of God. It probably means that we have just forgotten to ask the questions. The prophets asked the questions. Biblical ones did. And we often forget that asking questions can be the real way to God. Let’s think along that line for awhile.

I should say at the beginning that when I was asked to do this, I asked Jim Adams what the subject matter of my remarks should be, given the title of this session, and he couldn’t tell me. We all have our own ideas on this subject he said and he didn’t want to constrain me. So I can only say that these are my own ideas about “rethinking religion and redefining virtue in the modern world.” I don’t claim more for them than that, but I hope they will be stimulating enough to generate some good discussion. My background is I think very different from most people here, although I have run into a number of academics, so I don’t feel totally alone.

I wish I had a better word, a better superlative than enormity, but I can’t think of one. What I want to say is, we live in a time of enormity. And the church is operating on a little, pea-shooter basis in contrast to what is going on in our world. What I am going to take a look at is how that unfolds and what might we do so that the church’s vision is as enormous as the times in which we live.

The place I want to begin is on an evening in 1993, a November evening in Chicago, where I had been invited to the Muslim Community Center on the 4300 block of North Elston, to meet with local Islamic leaders to talk about the emerging interreligious movement in metropolitan Chicago. This came four months after the 1993 Parliament of the World’s Religions, which was held in Chicago for eight days at the Palmer House Hilton. Eight thousand people from around the world, representing one hundred twenty-five different religious traditions, movements, denominations, and sects had gathered there. Growing out of that, the local religious communities of Chicago had said that they needed to continue to talk and work together. I had begun visiting these communities, and I was going to meet for the first time with the local Islamic leadership to talk about their participation.

I’m going to be talking about three things in my lecture this evening. First, I want to talk about Jewish views of Christianity, historically, but with primary consideration of the modern period. And then second, I want to talk about certain contemporary American Jewish problems – what I see as the problems in the American Jewish community because I want you to know about them. And I want you to help us with them. Then I’ll end with something about the state of Jewish-Christian dialog: how it should develop, what we need from you, and perhaps what we would like to tell you in return.

Jesus cured blindness repeatedly. What happened to Bartimaeus, therefore, is not unique — except perhaps in one detail. I say “perhaps” because I can find no other reference in the Gospels to blind people who, earlier in their lives, had been able to see. One man we know about from John’s record was born blind, but only in the case of Bartimaeus is it explicit that at an earlier time he had been among the “sighted”.”My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him. “Go; your faith has made you well.”

as i approached the doors to the chapel, i saw that the entire congregation had been given palm branches and had been instructed to stand in a large circle, as they sang this song from JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, and wave their branches. the pastor and pianist sang alternating lines of caiaphas the high priest and whatever other various and sundry dramatic roles there are in that scene from the broadway musical. i turned and went immediately into the bathroom in order to avoid walking into the middle of this show tune gone awry. i looked at my face in the mirror and thought, “i’m never coming back here again.” why was i mortified?

O God
we have taken liberties with many things You have created
the air we breathe is contaminated
the water we drink is polluted
the soil that nurtures us with its products is poisoned
the food we eat is genetically modified
we even try to alter the life you have given us
we forget how precious life is to You.

Interestingly, at least to me, the answers are similar. The perpetuation of an idea, the spreading, the evangelism, is always something that puts us at risk, personally. We live in a tension of wanting to make sure our friends find out something important but not wanting to confuse them in case it is irrelevant to them or misleads them if we are later proven to be wrong. This is related to what I call “the liberal person’s burden,” the burden of never being 100% certain of your own rightness. But to live in community we must share ideas (otherwise why bother to call it a community) so we risk, we reach out, we tell. Sometimes we miss the mark, many times we hit it when we attempt with a certain humility.

We have some very important things in common. We are family, however diverse we may be. We are family. I think that it is a major opportunity for us at least to think about what it means to be family.

In times like these where many of the faith feel that there is a crisis among us, when we feel that there is a transition, we talk about paradigm shifts. Where there is uncertainty, in times like these, I think we find born so often apocryphal narratives. They provide us instruction, insights, and at least intuitive truth. And they are usually based on forms and events of other narratives within the canon of traditions, whatever those traditions may be. As we gather here in the whirlwind of times of transitions and uncertainty, we hoping to come out of it living a vision.

Why we have creeds, doctrine. Do they help or hinder? Are there new ways to express old truths?

In P.D. James’ novel. ‘Death in Holy Orders’ there is a bluff business man, Sir Alred, who unexpectedly asks Inspector Dalgliesh about the Nicene Creed. We know just the sort of Christian Sir Alred is: a few paragraphs earlier he has said that he ‘shows his face in church from time to time’. Dalgliesh, a vicar’s son, searches his memory and tells him the Creed was formulated by the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, and that the Emperor Constantine had called the Council ‘to settle the belief of the Church and to deal with the Arian heresy’.

Here in our own gathering, in this place, for the past two days, there is a growing sense of good will. There is a sense of wanting to be here, to remain here, feeling good about being here, at least good enough to not want to get on the next plane flying out in the next five minutes. A sense of participation and, to that extent, a sense of buying into what’s happening, or at least participating in it. On some level there’s a community that’s begun to gather. Here we are beginning a journey together. Whether the journey will continue beyond this point, or end we don’t know, but at least we begin together. It seems to me that underlying all of that is the sense of a desire for connection, connecting, rather than orbiting as little individuals scattered through lots of space.

I’m going to tell you a little about myself by way of introduction and how I happened to get into the work that I do – of working primarily with congregations and occasionally with other religious organizations around issues of human differences. For about 15 years, I was the rector of a church in Washington, D.C., an Episcopal church, and that church, when I went there in 1979, was a very – I would call it – monochromatic congregation. It was interesting. Everyone liked to talk about how much we valued our diversity, but there was none to be identified.

For all of us, I suspect, the world feels a different place this Christmas from the way it did this time last year. The events of September 11th in America – and all that has arisen from …

That frolicking dance didn’t last long. That frolicking is no way to win a game or to keep score and we had to get back at it again. So we stopped that dancing and frolicking all together and got busy again.

God kept trying to find us and to slow us down. God kept saying things like “Remember, remember the strangers. Remember the widows and orphans. Remember when you cut your fields to leave some at the edges, to leave some for the sojourner in your land.” That was no way to get ahead.