Last week I shared in my sermon some about my own experience of leaving the religion of my ancestors – Christianity – out of disgust with hypocrisy and abuse and self-righteousness and superiority. I shared some about how I explored other wisdom traditions, in particular studying and practicing Buddhism as a young in Northern India. And I shared that what I discovered was what I was most truly seeking is inside my own home, so to speak. I needed to return to the religion of my ancestors, but in a fresh way to honestly sift through my Christian inheritance to separate what gives life and restores the soul from what is deals death and suffocates the soul. The key to all that for me has been to keep the focus on Jesus, rather than the religion built up around him. And having some perspective and some tools from what I’ve learned from other religions has been a gift for that work.

Now, many of you this past week have been thanking me for that sermon. Many of you have shared with me how you relate to parts of what I shared about myself. For example, I know I’m not alone in this room with wrestling with wanting to reject some aspects of “Christianity” while being drawn to embrace others, all for deeply moral reasons.

I have to warn you, when you all give me positive feedback, all that does is encourage me!

And what I really feel encouraged to do is to encourage all of you and to encourage us all together to share with each other honestly what you truly most sincerely believe, and why, and what you honestly don’t believe, and what you are not so sure about, and what you wrestle with, and what you really want to learn more about. I’m eager to explore with you all, honestly, about big important questions about God and Jesus and the soul and sin and suffering and right and wrong and failure and resentment and forgiveness and life and death and heaven and hell and love and truth and beauty and meaning and, you know, that stuff in the Bible that’s just weird, and that other stuff that’s just terrible, and the other stuff that moves one to tears, and why’s there so much heartbreak in the world, and what’s the purpose of one’s life, and on and on.

I love how that exploration happens around here. And I think we’d benefit from intentionally deepening that kind of sharing together.

One of the gifts of the United Church of Christ is that we have the freedom to explore questions of ultimate concern without worrying about the heresy police storming in. We can honestly share and listen and explore together about faith and belief and spirituality, in a way that can truly deepen our living relationship with the Divine.

In my own case, for what it’s worth, being able to explore in an atmosphere of mercy rather than coercion has meant that I have in fact discovered a life-giving richness in many traditional Christian theological beliefs that my younger self was eager to reject, even as I have clarified what I find unhealthy and untrue from my Christian inheritance, and why.

It is wise and healthy to be honest about the ambivalence of our inheritance as Christians. What has been used for good? What has been used for evil? What has been life-giving and soul-saving? What has been death-dealing and soul-suffocating?

Here’s one thing I want to name now as an ambivalent Christian inheritance:

On the one hand we have the legacy of truly unconditional love.

         You are loved as you are.

         God loves you. Period.

         Our Holy Creator loves every one of God’s creations.

         All people bear within them the image of God.

         Therefore, we should treat everyone with fundamental respect and dignity – that’s what you deserve, that’s what everyone deserves.

This has been a truly revolutionary legacy of Jesus’ teaching and spirit and very being. So many people’s lives have been changed by hearing this good news and taking it into their hearts and having it shape how they know their own worth and how they care for the worth of others.

But, on the other hand, there is the legacy of withering guilt and shame. This is another message conveyed by those doing the work of the Lord:

         You better watch out, or you’ll get shut out from God’s love. Because that’s in fact what you do deserve, you wretched, miserable sinner.

A lot of us have had to contend with this kind of guilt and shame that Christian authorities have been dolling out for generations. And especially when you’ve been taught this from a very young age, this a the guilt or shame that is different and deeper than just what comes when we realize we’ve done something that we know is wrong. Rather it’s a fundamental guilt or shame, that one’s very essence, one’s very being is wretched, depraved, worthy only of God’s eternal wrath. So we’re constantly feeling guilty even if we don’t have anything particular to feel guilty about, we’ll find something.

It’s important to name these two legacies, and the tension between them. It’s important to become aware of how they have both shaped ourselves and our culture. Then it is important to claim the legacy that we are called to claim, and to let go of what we need to let go of, for the sake of what gives life and restores the soul. How can Grace truly free us from guilt?

When we bring it back to Jesus, to Creator Sets Free, it’s clear which side he was on, in this tension between grace and guilt.

He went out of his way to embrace those who had been made to feel shut out from God’s love. He went out of his way to recognize the dignity and show respect for the humanity of those who have been rendered worthless because of their guilt or shame.

Jesus embodied God’s unconditional Love. And he embodied that love explicitly in ways that defied how religious authorities establish their own self-righteous separation through their damning judgmentalism.

Unfortunately, religious authorities have continued that strategy of sowing guilt and shame, even in Jesus’ name. Otherwise how are we going to get people to behave? If they aren’t cowering in guilt and fear before the wrath of a god whose love certainly has conditions. Well, how’s that been working out?

Jesus offers the antidote. An unconditional love, a heart of mercy and grace, that embraces each of us and all of us as we are. When we know our inherit worth and value as beloved Children of the Living God, bearing within us reflections of the very image of our Creator, that’s how true transformation starts. We become free from the craving to do what harms that essential dignity in ourselves and in others.

People don’t change their lives because of withering guilt and shame. We change our lives because of a change in heart in knowing that we can do better and we deserve to do better. Grace helps us to be morally accountable without being defensive or downtrodden.

That’s how lives change, through a true change in heart that can free us to grow in that unconditional love.

Sincere followers of Jesus have been receiving and sharing this good medicine throughout the generations, in ways that truly have changed lives and changed the world. We can claim this legacy of grace.

Are there ways you need to receive that now? That unconditional love of our Holy Creator? Are there parts of ourselves that have been made to feel shut out from worthiness?

Are there any people we know who need to know that love, who have been made to feel shut out from worthiness?

What’s it like to receive that love, to say “Yes”, to surrender to our belovedness in the eyes of our Creator, the Creator who sets us free?

Delivered Sunday, August 4, 2024, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.

You can watch video of this sermon here.

Image by Paul Henri Degrande from Pixabay