A San Francisco Examiner reporter says: “I don’t know why people are waiting around for the second coming of Jesus, He’s popping up on everything from Skittles to bacon skins to guava seed smoothies”(Dan French in the SF Examiner March 30, 2005).

In 1980, Oklahoma evangelist Oral Roberts spotted a 900 foot Jesus straddling a hospital complex he was building next to his university. Roberts, interpreting the divine image as a plea for financial assistance, appealed to his followers and took in millions of dollars in donations. (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 1992).

7 years later, Jesus appeared on the chimney of a suburban bowling alley. The four- foot high image was formed from rusting metal. Local truckers were split on whether the rust pattern on the chimney meant anything other than it was time to buy a new chimney. Some say it looked like Popeye; others say it is Christ. A bowler at Town and Country Bowl had spotted the figure and immediately notified a Chicago television station. Town and Country owner Irwin Korzen says he and his employees noticed it months earlier but didn't think it was a big deal. (Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1987).

Still later, Jesus made national news as the centerpiece of a Pizza Hut billboard in Atlanta. Joyce Simpson spotted the face of Jesus in the advertisement immediately after praying for a divine sign.

She couldn't decide whether to stay in the church choir or quit and sing professionally. The shadowy image of Jesus' face in strands of spaghetti hanging from a fork meant she should stay with the choir.

John Moody, a marketing director for Pizza Hut, said the picture, one of 35 put up in the area, is a standard food photograph that the Wichita headquarters provides franchises. Moody said several people, however, called his office to say they see other notably less religious images in the picture: rock star Jim Morrison, a puppet, and even Willie Nelson. (Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1991).

A year and a half ago, An Ontario man burned a fish stick at dinner, saw an image of Jesus on it, and auctioned it off on Ebay. At about the same time, a Florida woman declared she had found an image of the Virgin Mary on a burnt grilled cheese sandwich.

She too, auctioned it off, selling it to GoldenPalace.com for $28,000. In her Ebay ad, she wrote:"I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God. That is my solemn belief. People ask me if I have had blessings since she has been in my home. I do feel I have, I have won $70,000 on different occasions at the casino near my house" (http://www.goldenpalaceevents.com/auctions/grilledmary01.php).

By the way, you can get your own Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich tee shirt for $20. I saw the picture, it does look like the face of a woman, but nobody really knows what Mary looked like, much less Jesus or Moses or Buddha or Muhammed, peace be upon them.

On your order of service cover, you can see another theophany– theophany is a word meaning a visual appearance of God. This time, it was in the wood door of a church.

But I wonder about the significance of the worker permanently locking his cell phone up behind the door. Is that a divine message. What if God is trying to call him?

In the olden days, God would appear in a burning bush, in a flood, in earthquakes, in fire. The overpowering presence of God was enough to kill mere mortals who tried to look at God's face or otherwise got too close.

And now what? Intimations of divinity show up in more profane ways. Consider the Nun Bun.

Back on the morning of October 15, 1996, the manager at the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville, TN looked at a pastry and found an image of Mother Teresa staring him in the face.

Thus was born the legend of the “NunBun.” The media converged for a treat that became known as “The Immaculate Confection,” “The Divine Dough” and “The Cin-a-Nun.” Some believed that the bends of the roll perfectly captured Mother Teresa’s face, draped in a shawl, while skeptics claimed the cinnamon roll more closely resembled Doc from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Apparently, Mother Teresa asked him to stop selling tee shirts with her name on it, which hedid, but the bun still remains on display at the coffee shop.

Are divine appearances limited to food, wood, and bowling alleys? Perhaps no matter what we think about these quirky theophanies, they point to something. They point to a yearning to find signs of the divine in everyday life.

We look for confirmation that we are on the right path. Some people consult the I Ching; others, the bible; still others, tarot cards; the ways and rituals of seeking divine guidance or numerous.

But in the United States, most people look for these signs through the phenomena of Jesus of Nazareth. You know I grew up Unitarian Universalist, in a religious education program much like the one here. I grew up with an understanding that there was more than one way to view religious subjects. So when I look at statistics of religion in America, I am more or less constantly amazed.

According to Stephen Prothero, the chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University roughly 85% of the U.S. population is Christian. This includes people who may not have been to church since they were an infant, but even subtracting those, there are a lot left.

In fact, according to Prothero, 2/3 of contemporary Americans say they have made a “personal commitment” to Jesus, and 3/4 of our fellow citizens say they have sensed Jesus’ presence at some time.

So, you’re in a grocery line, you’re at a party, you’re at an event at your children’s school, and 2 out of 3 people around you have made a “personal commitment” to Jesus. That kind of boggles my mind. Two out of three.

But that’s not all. Again, according to Prothero, almost half of America’s non-Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and resurrected from the dead.

That statistic throws me a little, too. I’m sure it upsets evangelicals who like to think there is only one correct version of Jesus. But if you talk to a Hindu, she might tell you that Jesus is an avatar of the god Vishnu. Ask a Jew and you might be told that he was a great rabbi.

Mostly, I grew up thinking that various religions fought against each other to try and have their particular religion “win.” Also, that it was worthwhile to kill someone if they didn’t convert to your religion.

Your religion had the true God, and everyone else’s had the false god. It was important to hate false religions. How is it that now in the 21^st century, Jesus has been adopted by so many?

In a best-selling novel from 1925, Bruce Barton described Jesus as The Man Nobody Knows. Perhaps, today Jesus is the man nobody hates.

I think an interesting thing for Unitarian Universalists though has always been– which version of Jesus are you talking about? There was a woman on an airplane trip sitting next to a UU minister. They chatted a bit but when the woman found out the man was a UU minister, she quickly said, “oh, I don’t believe in God.” And the minister asked some more about this, and after a bit, he said: oh, I don’t believe in that God, either.” And the woman was flabbergasted, because she assumed everyone knew who God was and she rejected that, and now was confronted with the idea that there could be more than one version.

Some people might think it flippant to say: believe in God? Uh, which version?

In Prothero’s book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon we learn that Americans have a history of continually remaking Jesus to resemble whomever our current hero types happen to be.

Over the years of America’s history, the remaking of Jesus gradually separated him from orthodox Christianity. Some people– notably religious liberals– claim that the religion about Jesus and the religion of Jesus are very different things. We claim that what really matters is what Jesus did and taught, not what Paul and the church have said about him.

And in post-modernism and through biblical scholarship, Americans of any religion and even of no religion have felt free to embrace their own version of Jesus. This is what freedom of religion means, and evangelicals don’t like it. They want to insist on a single vision of Jesus– theirs, and they have already lost the battle.

Prothero identifies four different Jesuses.

First, is the “Enlightened Sage.” This is whoThomas Jefferson envisioned. Although Jefferson never signed a membership book, he was essentially a Deist unitarian When he was president, he spent a few evenings scissoring out of the gospels all the references to miracles and Jesus’ divinity, ending up with a slim volume he called The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jefferson’s Jesus prayed to God and believed in an afterlife, but he did not die for anyone’s sins. In fact, that Jesus did not come to save, but to teach. Many believe that in our own day, the people of the Jesus Seminar are the children of Jefferson and enlightenment thinking. Many, perhaps most UUs, believe in this Jesus.

Another Jesus is what Prothero calls the “Sweet Savior” who was a product of the evangelical fervor of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The call of evangelism was to an intimate walk with Jesus — so intimate, in fact, that preachers felt compelled to talk more about Jesus as a buddy whom we could come to know and hang out with, rather than an historical figure or an object of faith.

A third American version of Jesus, says Prothero, is the “Manly Redeemer,” a muscular reaction to the girly-man Sweet Savior. This Jesus is a testosterone-powered hero. Books with titles like The Masculine Power of Christ and The Manhood of the Master appeared.

This Manly Redeemer was no more linked to orthodoxy than was the Sweet Savior, but at least he was more vigorous — a Savior with sex appeal. This Jesus brought with him strenuous demands, and he was the one who was ready to lead Christians to war against the social ills of the culture.

The fourth and more recent incarnation of the American Jesus is the “Superstar.” In the 1960s, a Jesus movement sprang from the youth counterculture, and some started to see Jesus as a revolutionary, a leader of an underground Christian liberation movement.

In the 1970s came the rock musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell. I think I learned more about the life and death of Jesus from Godspell than I ever did in Sunday School. You see, my mother was the music director at the Rockville Unitarian Church in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. And she led the choir in a production of the musical Godspell. I can still remember most of the lyrics.

It’s also true that the Mormons have their version of Jesus, as have American Jews, as did the black liberation movement, as have still others.

The upshot is that while many Americans cannot agree on much when it comes to religion, social action, music, or politics, a great many find common ground of a sort in Jesus, or at least Jesus as they picture him.

Evangelicals may argue that theirs is the only correct version of Jesus, but since this is America, we can simply disagree and ignore that if we want to.

But something pulls us back to the big questions about divinity, about theophany. Despite comical stories, there is a very real human yen to seek a touchstone of the divine. I think we seek these for two main reasons.

One is to gain a certainty for things which are only known through faith. And perhaps if we find a sign– whether it is an old chimney, a rainbow, a bird flying overhead, or even an old sandwich, fish stick, or church altar– our awareness can open up to a new level.

I remember when my grandmother died, and later when my mother died– both times after their passing, women in my family saw a bird take flight in an unusual way, and it gave them solace at the passing of their mother or their sister. I know some of you have had a similar experience after the death of a loved one.

Another reason to seek a touchstone of the divine is to offer thanks for the gifts of life. But how can you offer praise & thanksgiving to the Great Mystery, when it is encapsulated into a little commodity on Ebay?

Some have said that the worst part about being an atheist is having no one to thank. I have thought about that idea quite a bit. Here’s how I frame it. I think many UUs acknowledge a greater reality than their own sense perception. How far, and in what way, we characterize that greater reality is matter for individual faith discernment.

With my children, most every night, we begin a prayer with these words: Dear God, thank you for this day. Thank you for all the people who love us, all the people we love, and all the people in the world.

It is important to say thank you out loud. And I think it is more important to say thank you than it is to be sure who or what– exactly– you are thanking.

Let us agree that we human beings emerge from a Great Mystery. We can know the physical processes of birth, life, and death, but they still hold a great mystery.

Once upon a time, we weren't here. We weren't born yet. That was ancient history to us– and especially our children. Imagine a novel. The book opens with 2 characters in a room. Where were they before this? Where will they be after the book ends? We can make guesses, but the book doesn't tell us explicitly. What we have is the book. The book we are writing with our lives. This is a great mystery.

When we are aware of the blessings in our lives, it is good and natural to want to give thanks, to express gratitude. Doing this as a regular spiritual practice reminds us of who we are in the world, and it reminds us to put things in perspective.

If we get caught up in seeing what we don't have, we can feel sorry for ourselves. Sometimes counting our blessings ends with a reminder: you think you have problems? You think you shouldn't be stuck in line at the grocery store or in traffic?

Turn on any news outlet. Mass murders, gunmen going on killing sprees, You think you have problems? Children being killed in drive by shootings. I see stuff like that and I have to remind myself– I think I have problems? I have no problems! Not compared to that! And I remember to give thanks.

To give thanks to the Great Mystery is a worthwhile spiritual practice. I hope every UU can manage this one.

We did not make the Great Mystery. You and I are born out of it, we are made in Mystery's image. We can learn to love the Mystery and even to feel loved by Mystery.

The hymn we sang this morning, The Lone Wild Bird, captures this relationship to the Great Mystery. When I was talking to Reverend Bonnie about this, she told me she thought of that hymn as encapsulating her call to ministry.

So, I had to go look at the words more carefully:

The lone, wild bird in lofty flight is still with thee, nor leaves thy sight.

And I am thine! I rest in thee. / Great spirit come and rest in me.

Perhaps we are lone, wild birds. We proceed out of the Great Mystery, and we live within it. It is natural to seek to explore and rest within Mystery, and to have Mystery come and rest in us. This ache, this reality is not something easily captured– just like a lone, wild bird.

Let us rise & sing to the Spirit of Life, #123.