I have a very low threshold for Jesus

The title of this post is a quote from one of the people I interviewed after worship at Micah's Porch. I have a very low threshold for Jesus, he said, in response to a question I had asked about why he found this church to be a place he felt at home. He meant that in order for him to feel comfortable in a worship service, he couldn't have it too filled with Jesus.

I was surprised. Even more surprised when he told me he was raised Unitarian, since generally I find that those who have the most resistance to Jesus in UU churches are those who were raised in a Christian faith. But actually, it is fairly common sentiment within our communities. We have a collective low threshold for Jesus. But I had expected a different attitude at Micah's Porch. Their pastor seems Jesus-oriented, though he hasn't told me that himself. In one of our first conversations, though, he told me that he was a traditional Unitarian. He even half-joked that while there are UU groups for polyamory, we don't yet have a clear acceptance of UU Unitarians. After talking with him further, I am pretty sure that he was not saying that there wasn't acceptance of the upper-middle-class-well-educated-reason-driven-white-male-orientation that is a big part of the Unitarian tradition. No, I think he was talking about Jesus. (And God, but I have to come back to God later. As a Unitarian, we can have these conversations separately. :) )

Despite the signficant presence of the UU Christian Fellowship, a good portion of contemporary Unitarian Universalism has a low Jesus threshold. As one of my good friends observed, UUs are much more likely to turn to Mary Oliver or Rumi than to the Sermon on the Mount for guidance and grounding in our worship.

When I went seeking a welcoming community with whom I could worship and heal - just about 10 years ago now - I confess to my own low threshold for Jesus. I do not know for sure if our collective intolerance is about injury, but mine was. I could not see my way to any kind of healing if it was to be wrapped up in Jesus. The word, the person, the ideas, the religion, even if just a shadow of the religion. I was angry at the church for being against me, and my love, for teaching me that God is love, and then backtracking and revising, asserting that God was only some kinds of love. But I took them at the original promise - God is full love, large love, complicated love, indivisible love. And that understanding and faith meant that I could not find God through the symbol of Jesus. Because Jesus had come to mean division, disintegration - distrust of the body, dis-ease of the heart.

I was relieved to find no mention of Jesus in that first UU church I attended. I don't know if I ever heard his name in the time of our attendance, and I was grateful. It offered me a kind of space and time to recover and rediscover my sense of truth and wholeness among religious community.

Jesus is a real issue for Unitarian Universalism today. I cannot even count how many times people have mentioned to me that they would be Unitarians if they could find a UU church that was willing to welcome them in their love for Jesus, and offer them a worship space and community that allowed Jesus to be a central part of their spiritual practice. I hear it from my classmates, I hear it in my community, and I see it in popular dialogue around religion - I mean who hasn't read Marcus Borg and thought - this guy is a Unitarian! But he's not.

Three or four years after I first attended a Unitarian Universalist church, I was reading a copy of the UU World magazine, and I had an epiphany. Seriously, it came to me suddenly, overwhelmingly: I loved Jesus. And if I was to really follow Jesus, to take seriously the message of Jesus, I would be forever a better human being. And if the world were to follow the ways of Jesus, we would be universally transformed. This was not a rational moment, but rather a deep feeling of confidence. And just as quickly as it came, it left, and in its place, I was afraid. Because I did not know exactly how to reconcile this deep understanding and peace with Jesus with my sense of being called to minister to those who - yes - had a very low threshold for Jesus.

I do think a lot of us UUs keep Jesus at arm's length out of a sense of injury. Whether a personal or societal injury, I do think we have been hurt by the use of Jesus in our world today. By the distillation of God into the image of Jesus dying and bleeding on the cross - which I think also distills humanity into sinful creatures who require the suffering of God to attain salvation. I know this isn't the first thing people usually articulate as the source of their injury as it relates to Jesus and Christianity, but for me, it is the theologically central struggle I encounter as I attempt to rebuild my understanding of Jesus and his message.

What are we going to do about Jesus? What are we going to do in Unitarian Universalism to make a safe and full space for those who are Unitarian in the traditional sense? Those who not only have a high threshold for Jesus, but seek Jesus as a central symbol for their path to the divine? Do we wish them well and best of luck, and send them all to the nearest UCC church? And simultaneously, what are we going to do with all of this anger and resistance we have built up in our communities towards Christianity and Jesus specifically, and theism and God generally? Or the sense as articulated here, that Unitarian Universalism is a 200 year movement away from Christianity? Is it possible for two members of the same religion to see Unitarian Universalism as a movement away from Jesus and the faith that most allows them to follow Jesus?

When I was first working through my project for the FTE, I returned repeatedly to a sense of injury within our Unitarian Universalist communities. And as I shared these thoughts with others, they assured me that this is not unique to Unitarian Universalism. The religously wounded walk into all kinds of faith communities, every Sunday, seeking recovery and rebirth. But what they find there, to be truly healing, to be bread for their journey, and not stones, as Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza asserted - cannot shirk away from addressing this injury directly. By acting as if Jesus is a taboo subject (a love that dare not speak its name?), what possible way do we have for healing what is finally a distortion and misrepresentation of all that Jesus spoke of? If the only way we speak of Jesus is with derision or dismissal, what hope do we have of understanding our true historical inheritance, which includes many who were so committed to their sense of the Christian message that they were willing to die for it? And if we call ourselves open to all spiritual paths except the one which calls itself Christian, what way do have to know ourselves as fully interdependent with all of those who, as the central message of their lives, feel saved by their relationship with Jesus Christ?

Although I walked into Unitarian Universalism with a very low threshold for Jesus, I am coming to believe that now is the time for us to re-make our relationship with him and his teachings. Now is the time for us to heal these wounds once and for all, to offer worship and fellowship which is truly welcoming of those who find in his message life, joy, and healing. To offer counseling and support for those who find in this work buried pain and profound injury. To create systems of life which can, over time, meet all those who enter our sanctuaries seeking recovery from their own religious injuries, and offer them a greater path of life. To re-image Jesus for ourselves and for our world as a teacher of love, of a giver of life, of sign of hope. To foster imagination and strengthen relationships within our communities as we allow this work to draw attention to our differences in spiritual beliefs and practices. To encounter Jesus in a way which honors the true pluralism of our world, in a practice and exploration of what it may mean to find Jesus beyond notions of belief or creed, imperialism or colonialism. And to seek this and all of our spiritual healing with the faith that diversity reveals to us the divine, and that by being in a community which celebrates and relishes in its differences, we are ultimately made whole.


The amazing artwork on this post is from janet mckenzie. You can find a great summary of her work on the Tikkun Blog.