Probably many - if not most - of you remember the Bible story of what has been called the “Good Samaritan.” It is a parable that is attributed to Jesus in the Christian scriptures and is found in the book of Luke (10:29 - 37). I first heard it as a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, as a Methodist; and it made a strong impression on me. And you will be glad to know something that I discovered long after my childhood in Atlanta - the fact that the members of the Jesus Seminar believe that it is one of the few stories in the Christian Scriptures that scholarship supports as being almost certainly authentic.

This morning I would like to begin this sermon by telling the story (adapted from the work of Sophia Lyon Fahs, a Unitarian religious educator) to refresh all of our memories.

It seems that a certain Jewish merchant decided that he needed to make a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho even though a guard at the city gate warned him of the dangers of robbers along the way. But he decided to go anyway; and sure enough, he was attacked, beaten, robbed, and left for dead.

So, there he was lying on the side of the road when a priest came along. He called out to the priest, but the priest passed by on the other side of the road, fearing that the man would die and become his responsibility. Next, a rich merchant passed by but did not stop for the man because he was afraid that he too would be attacked by robbers.

Finally, a third person came upon the man, who was now almost dead. Seeing the injured man, he recognized that the poor man was a Jew and that he, a Samaritan, was an outcast in the eyes of the Jewish people. But he had compassion on the injured man. Instead of passing by, he stopped, gave the man water, and dressed his wounds as best he could. Then, he placed the man on his donkey and led him to an inn where he continued to care for the man throughout the night.

The next day, when the merchant was better, the Samaritan, who had to leave on his own business, gave the innkeeper money to take care of the merchant until he was fully recovered, telling the innkeeper that he would pay him for any further expenses when he returned on his next trip.

In this parable, we find that Jesus was a real radical, pointing to the fact that many in his day were not living up the best that they knew, including the priests who should have been setting an example for others. In this story, and others, Jesus called people to task for their prejudice and lack of compassion - a powerful message for his day and ours.

But, when I became a UU, I pretty much abandoned the Bible, including the story of the Good Samaritan, from 1965 when virtually all UUs, including me, were humanists who had little use for anything traditionally spiritual - until 1995, when I entered the Claremont School of Theology to study for the UU ministry. What I did not know back in the 60s was that I would spend three years - from 1995 - 98, to be exact, recapturing the relevance of the Bible for my life through reading, study, and serious biblical scholarship. It was grueling - reading, analyzing, exegeting biblical passages, and writing numerous papers in which I tried to resignify biblical ideas from a Unitarian Universalist perspective. But during those years I came away with a new appreciation for this ancient book.

Now, please do not misunderstand. I did not go back to my earlier, simplistic understanding of the Bible but to a new appreciation for the book and the lessons that it held. What I learned at Claremont, a school that is affiliated with the United Methodist Church - making my parents hope that I would see the error of my backsliding ways - was that not all Christians take the Bible literally. In fact, one of the favorite expressions used by a world-renowned professor of the Hebrew Bible at CST was “Don’t take your camera.” What he meant by that was that we needed to look beneath the literal interpretation of the Bible to a deeper meaning that could have relevance for our lives.

But we UUs are fond of pointing out all the contradictions and scientifically impossible events in the Bible and then using them to disparage the Bible as having no importance for us and to judge anyone who believes such foolishness as intellectually lacking. In fact, for the incredibly tolerant people we profess ourselves to be, we are remarkably intolerant when it comes to anything related to the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures. Now, I might have a different sermon if I were preaching to a group of Christian fundamentalists; but I am speaking to this audience, including myself, so I need to talk about us. We make jokes about the Christian fundamentalists and then become Unitarian Universalist fundamentalists - believing ourselves superior to those who believe all that absurdity - when we have the answer.

It reminds me of a story about a man who played the cello. After he had been playing the cello for quite a while. His wife remarked that she noticed that while other cellists played many notes, he played only one. At which point, he patiently explained to her that they were still looking for the note and he had found it.

It seems to me that we UUs often feel that way about the Bible. We are all too willing to “throw the Bible out with the Holy water.”

Here are examples of some of the things that we might find absurd about the Bible. I received them awhile back on the internet - and I have to admit, they are pretty funny.

With reference to the Gay Marriage issue, something that we UUs have taken very seriously, particularly in light of the recent events in Massachusetts in which our UUA president Bill Sinkford has been a active participant and a vocal commentator, perhaps you have heard that The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: “Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage.” After all, it has recently been reported that he is convinced that he was called by God to be the United States President during this important time in our history. So we are being urged to pray that any laws that are made about the “freedom to marry issue” will be according to Biblical principles. With some forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, we are to pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government.

So here, in support of the Prayer Team's “admirable” goals, is a series of biblical foundations, adapted to the present day United States in support of a constitutional amendment, codifying marriage as a union only between a man and a woman, entirely on biblical principles:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a nonbeliever shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Now these are tongue in check references showing what can happen when historical and metaphorical documents are taken literally. But they also point to our own willingness to make fun of others while convincing ourselves of our own superiority. We take these passages literally and then assume that all Christians do too, judging them because of our own misinterpretations. Each one of these references has an historical context that explains its relevance for the time in which it was written, and we need to know a great deal more about the context of these statements before we make judgements. If we neglect their historical context and the purpose for which they were written, we miss the point and are likely to misjudge both the stories and those who believe in them.

Now, jump ahead with me to the year 2000 - the second year of my ministry in Thousand Oaks, when Proposition 22 was put on the ballot. As most of you probably remember, it was the California initiative that defined marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. Many in our congregation and others from a nearby United Church of Christ worked diligently to defeat what we considered to be an unconstitutional and immoral act. But we all lost.

During that time, we co-sponsored a forum on the issue at which a number of panelists expressed their views about the question of whether marriage should be defined as being only between a man and a woman. At a question and answer period after their presentations, a man near the back of the auditorium stood and asked how several of the panelists could support Gay Marriage when the now infamous passage in Leviticus 18:22 clearly called a sexual relationship between two men “an abomination.” The Chair of the Department of Religion at California Lutheran University, and moderator of the panel, responded that many of the laws in the Hebrew Bible gave him great difficulty - for example, the one that said: “Thou shall not touch the skin of a pig.” Then, after a pause, he said, “There goes the NFL.”

So what am I really trying to tell you about the Bible this morning? Three things:

First, I am trying to say that we need to “walk our talk” as UUs when it comes to supporting ALL people in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning even if they do not come to the same conclusions that we do and even if they do not show us the same courtesy. We need to get over ourselves and really believe it when we say that we “covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Those people who believe in the importance of the Bible (and I am sure there are some in this congregation) are also searching for their “truth and meaning,” and we need to support them in that journey rather than judging them as “less than.” The next time we start to tell a joke or story that makes fun of someone who believes in the importance of the Bible, we need to stop ourselves. (Yes, I am giving this sermon for myself too. Thanks for listening in.)

Second, I believe that we need to make an effort to get to know this important book that is so much a part of Western culture. We need to study it and find out what it really says. If we do not, we run the risk of missing a great many things in literature, music, and in life. And it can also be a rich source of inspiration if we go beyond the surface level and really plumb the depths of its message. John Buehrens, the former president of the UUA, has written a book called Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals; and I commend it to you for further reading and study. In our congregation not long ago, I facilitated a Bible study class, using Buehren’s book, along with a UUA curriculum for adults; and the members of the group decided that they wanted to continue after the class ended. I am happy to report that it continues to be a rich experience for many of us.

What we discovered in that group was that the Bible did not have to be just about Samaritans or others in the ancient Middle East but also about modern day people and situations. Who are the Samaritans in our society: people of different races, genders or gender expressions, ages, sexual orientations, religious traditions, mental or physical abilities, classes, nationalities or ethnicities? There is a lot to learn when we start looking for the parallels in our own life and times.

Third, I am convinced that we need to oppose those who would try to limit the interpretation of the Bible to their own narrow point of view - whether they are religious fundamentalists or liberal fundamentalists. We need to write letters to the editor of our local newspapers, call or write to our senators and representatives, speak out at public forums, join in protests, get people to register and vote, join other UUs at General Assembly in Long Beach in June to share our understandings and to gain inspiration for our informed actions, or simply express our opinions to those who need to hear our “good news.” We need to remember that our UU principles encourage us both to “affirm” and “promote” those things that we believe in.

I was heartened recently when the writer of a letter to the editor in our local paper said that he had asked his wife if she thought that opening marriage up to gay and lesbian people would endanger their happy twenty-five year old marriage and was greatly relieved when she said she didn’t think so. Who knows what the effect of his letter will be, but it was gutsy of him to challenge the prevailing political climate of our community and the assumptions of our current U.S. administration.

But it is not just the politicians that want to impose their morality and religious beliefs on others. There are those who would use the Bible to justify their acts of homophobia and other prejudices. We have seen it in newspapers in letters to the editor - and it makes me weep. In his book Living In Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Sexuality, retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong takes on those folks with a thoroughgoing presentation and analysis of all the oft-used biblical supports for homophobia. I encourage you to read it and some of his other books such as Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Rescuing the Bible From the Fundamentalists to see what one very brave Christian has to say about the misuse of the Bible. He seems very Unitarian Universalist in his point of view, but as my husband pointed out to me, he probably has a great deal more influence as an Episcopal clergyman than as a UU. After all, people expect UUs to say some of the things that he says. And I am constantly amazed that he, and others from mainline denominations, feel called to stand up for things that their traditions oppose. They are truly heroic people.

So what is it that we should not do as UUs in relation to the Bible? I believe that we should not forget the positive messages that the Bible presents just because of the ways in which this book has been misused or to judge others for their beliefs because they may not be our own. I am concerned that as Unitarian Universalists, it is easy for us to fall into criticism of “those Christians” because many of us grew up in one of the expressions of that tradition and know its shortcomings all too well. There are even those among us who have been deeply wounded by our experience of Christianity.

But on this Sunday morning I challenge us as Unitarian Universalists to acknowledge the powerful message of Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan; to delve deeply into study and analysis of this parable, as well as the many other stories of the Bible; and to live its meaning of acceptance and compassion so that the world will be a better place because we have been here. - May it be so.