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In 2004 Mel Gibson released his film "The Passion of the Christ". It caught my attention, interest, and action. I did more than watch the film: I prepared by reading the Passion story of each of the evangelists. Reading these separate accounts of the same event, I was struck by their differences. Which made me wonder, "Why??".

This began a quest of study, reading and reflection about the Bible, its history, and deeper issues about God: Who is God? What is God? A similar query occurred about Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. With conversations with Reverend Dick Haynes, his coaching and suggestions of readings, I journeyed for eight months.

My religious heritage is Roman Catholic. The core of the Roman Catholic belief as I learned it is The Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. It's best version is in The Apostle's Creed.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
AMEN.

Either you believed this or you were not a believer according to my heritage's precepts.

Today, at age fifty-six, after Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul III, during a which time I left the church,and came to Unitarianism some twenty-years ago, this service is a statement of what I believe.

I believe God is the father of creation, the mother of nature, is everlasting before any time, during and after any time. My God is pantheist.

God is both imminent and emmanent. Present with in this world at this moment and exists outside of our natural world and its time and space. God created both genders and all species. God manifests him/herself most commonly as natural phenomenon.

The winds that cool and press, the sun's warmth and light, the darkness because the earth has turned, that the earth turns, the wetness of water, the fusion of hydrogen and oxygen. God also manifests in tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and tsunami.

Mankind is God's creation. Whether with his dextrous hand shaping clay, or with process of evolution. This creation continues through mankind by the things we make and do. Agriculture, paper making, writing, tool making, music and conceptual thought. All of these seminal creations are evidence of this.

Among the conceptual thoughts is peoples perception of God and communication. People do not need the setting of a church for this.

Martin Buber's philosophy of God is condensed as "claim and response". Something in the natural world will affect you. IT may be a waterfall, a sunrise, a rock, a river, and IT will make a "claim" on your consciousness. Even if you just pause briefly, your subconscious self will make the connection. Then you will have "response". That is God making a connection.

For me God has been making claim and response in a recurring setting. It is quiet, usually dawn or dusk or late at night. I will "zone out" and be oblivious to the conscious world. The sublime and unconscious will over take me. This will last some time, nearly a half an hour at times. The place can be my back porch, sitting in a chair at Bergfried or just relaxed in a quiet space. At the end, a thought or insight will be in my mind about some issue. It can be resolution to a problem or a clarifying thought.

If we could interview Issac Newton, Albert Einstein or some other person who has had an original idea that altered the world, and they were honest about it, I am certain they would admit to such moments in their creative process.

God the Father is the first step of the trinity, and is considered indivisible from the the Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. So how does Jesus fit in my view of Deity?

I believe that Jesus was a real person who lived and walked on this earth. And was conceived in the usual way. Jesus had his encounter with God also, was it claim and response as Buber would call it? My judgement is Jesus's encounter was called prayer. I don't know, but I have no doubt that Jesus encounter was cataclysmic.

Still, I think that God got into Jesus's mind. Jesus decided to commit himself to God. The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River is reported by each evangelist. For all of the discrepancies, there is one rock solid consistency.

Each reports with identical words: that when he was baptized and came out of the water, "The heavens opened and the Holy Spirit, as dove descended upon him." This event was witnessed by many who reported it and it was recorded in the gospels.

This ordinary person was regarded as the "Chosen One", "the Redeemer", and "Emmanuel". Because this event was foretold in the Old Testament that was passed in the oral tradition. It was written as Isaiah XI, v2-4.

Jesus went into isolation for forty days, and spent it in prayer, the biblical term for Buber's "claim response", or Gene Hutchins's "zoning out". And there Jesus decided to make a difference. Jesus realized he did not need a Temple and priests to mediate his dialogue with God.

Jesus could be called a kind of savant. A savant of the spoken word. In the short period after he returned, he spoke to whoever would listen, did miracles and also gave hope to those who lived in fear to have faith.

Life in biblical Judea and Nazareth was not easy and assured. It was very rugged, and grueling just to have a meal. Because of that life coupled and an oppressive political structure, it was hard to be positive, enthusiastic and upbeat about tomorrow.

He gave good news and hope: To trust in God, trust in themselves and venture out and live a better life. Have faith and not fear.

Please join with me in reading the Beatitudes. [**** Read the Beatitudes***]

The time limit of a lay service does not allow me the time to give a full measure of the new Way of Life of taught by Jesus. It is recorded in the parables and aphorisms. Its essence: you do not need a temple and priests to change your better life, you can have faith with God without mediators.

We can be assured it was radical and a threat to the Temple and the Roman Empire.

I believe that Jesus conspired with others, perhaps they were not witting about it, but Jesus knew what he was doing. The events were not planned but were calculated.

Lazarus's father was probably the agent who Jesus had arranged to have a donkey outside of the gate of Jerusalem. Jesus had two followers go ahead announce Jesus was arriving. He calculated that the crowds would greet him and this would get back to the authorities.

Certainly when the word got to the Romans that Jesus had entered Jerusalem with a welcome that an Emperor would have never gotten and would be jealous of.

Shortly, after that events followed and Jesus was arrested, tortured and crucified.

In that era, crucifixion was common place but it was done on what we would call a Monday or Tuesday. Death by crucifixion took three or four days. So for Jesus to be crucified on Friday by noon, would only leave three hours to hang on the cross. No doubt he was in a stupor, and shock, that he appeared lifeless. Yes, he probably was lanced, but was the wound fatal??

My belief is that Jesus's confederates removed him from the cross, while cleaning his wounds, they realized that he was barely alive. But none the less alive.

They also were not going to tell the Romans. In the biblical period, medicine and first aid was not anything like it is today. They were doing all that they could.

They put him in a tomb, knowing there was not much else to be done. Later on in the night of the Sabbath they returned and recovered him. I believed that Jesus survived. Whether for two days or two years, the fact that people would see him alive would be powerful. Thus the article of faith that he died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead.

Jesus of Nazareth was a person who acted out a role for mankind. The successors to his movement were not shy. They became stronger. So much so, that in 50 A.D. the Romans could barely contain the fervor and political revolt. Jerusalem fell to the Nazorean revolt. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the era, recorded that the inspiration of the revolt was the crucifixion of a Nazorean whom the populace called the Redeemer.

Clearly his ideas and spirit did not die. The Holy Spirit lived on. The legend of Jesus was largely an oral tradition but writing, and paper production increased. A written record emerged the earliest being about 100 AD. The writings and their successive copies, being written again became the sources of today's Bibles.

The evangelists were probably dead. I believe that the descendants of Matthew Mark, Luke and John actually wrote the Gospels using their ancestors name.

There is great similarity between Matthew and Mark. Imagine a a high school study hall. Matt and Mark are sitting next to each other, showing their writing to the other. Now Luke is in the same room, but he is sitting across from the other two. Occasionally exchanging ideas. John on the other hand, he is out of the room. He is writing with out much exchange. His has some similarity but is different nonetheless.

The archeological finds of the parchment, and papyrus remains have been carbon- dated, the oldest single remain is 70 AD, the next remains, about a dozen, are dated 100 A.D.

The followers of Jesus, keepers of the written word, were haphazardly organized but were zealous and fearless and unrelenting. So much so that it undermined the Romans.

This Holy Spirit, so strong and persistent, that in the 3rd century AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine called the Nicea Conference to amalgamate the Christians and Roman and remaining vestiges of Greek culture into a 'state church'.

I believe that in the three years of the conference, greedy people recognized opportunities. And deals were cut, The 'Roman Church' was formed. A parallel institution to the Roman government. They issued the Nicea Creed which is today's 'Apostle's Creed'.

Issues of the immaculate conception, the Christmas story, were adapted to conform to the folkways and story telling conventions of the day.

The last paragraph: 'I believe in the Holy Spirit, the catholic church, the communion of saints..' This is the mustering call of the Holy Spirit, through the march of time, by generations of people who believe in God, to continue the word of God.

So what is my Unitarian view? God is one, Jesus was a creature of God, who had a 'claim/response' with God. The message of God is to have Faith and not Fear. The Holy Spirit is alive in all of those who go forward.

Please join me in the unison reading "We avow Our Faith".

Reading List

The following books are in the Eliot Chapel library:

• Honest to Jesus by Robert W. Funk
• A History of God by Karen Armstrong
• Meeting Jesus for the First Time by Marcus Borg
• The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield