By Rev. Kirk Ballin
February 23, 2025
UNISON READING – “A PERSON WILL WORSHIP SOMETHING” – R.W. EMERSON
“A person will worship something—have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts – but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
READING #1
JOHN 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Matthew 21:12-13
And making a whip …Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers…. / And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’
READING #2
“…See, people forget that billionaires have political ideologies just like everyone else. And remember, most people’s political ideologies are generally tailored to improve the life of the person holding the ideology. Democracy sounds great if you’re a peasant living under a king and you have no say in how things are run. But in what way would democracy improve your life if you’re a multi-billionaire who can buy politicians ? Once you’re up that high in the food chain, democracy is no longer a step UP, it’s a step DOWN.” – The Trumpland Diary
READING # 3 -The Limits of Tyrants Frederick Douglas
“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will. Find out what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice which will be imposed upon them. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
SERMON: WHAT TO DO ABOUT JESUS : WHAT TO DO ABOUT BILLIONAIRES
Jesus finally attends the National Prayer Breakfast
Jesus! OR I can say that name that way or I can say that name in a different way — JUEEEZUSS! GEEZUS. JESUUUS CHRIST! JEESUS CHRIST! We can say the name profanely or divinely or academically or dispassionately. But every one of us, when we hear the name, goes to some kind of image, association, critique, reaction, judgement, belief system, opinion, you name it! None of us are lacking an opinion, a perspective about Jesus. Whether we like it or not, Jesus is embedded in our cultural makeup. Each of us has had to come up with some way to deal with the presence of Jesus in our culture. Jesus is a potent and ubiquitous meme. And by meme, I mean what Richard Dawkins the Evolutionary Biologist coined to mean “a unit of cultural information spread by imitation. A noun that “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation”. Since the day he died (whether as an actual human being or in some story with a character named Jesus) Jesus has been an ever-circulating meme making its presence known in a profoundly influential way within human cultural manifestations worldwide. In present day jargon, Jesus was and still is in death, a serious influencer. And his role as a meme, as an influencer, like a gene, has gone through thousands of mutations to serve specific cultural manifestations; so what is called Jesus is whatever suits the cultural milieu that claims him. To me the person, the teaching of, the ministry of Jesus was co-opted, stolen early on for various political purposes.
Ultimately, Jesus was hijacked by the Church, by Christianity, locked up by the Nicean Council in 325 AD. …Christianity took ownership of the Meme Wars, and it’s been an ongoing use and abuse of that ownership for subsequent centuries. Efforts to resurrect (pun intended) the actual ministry of Jesus based on snippets found in the New Testament have always had to compete with the authority of the Church, the authority of the dogma and doctrines of the Church’s interpretation of Christianity for political purposes. i.e. to control the populace. Just witness what happened at the National Cathedral following Trump’s coronation. Here you had a Christian clergy person, Marriann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., no less, preaching the heart of what was most likely the essence of Jesus’ ministry – “love thy neighbor” and the response of course from Trump and his supporters was Bishop Budde is a “Radical left hardline Trump hater” and denounced her for bringing “her church into the world of politics in a very ungracious way”. Jesus just can’t get no respect!
A personal aside here. In the early 1970s I took it upon myself to read the Old and New Testaments (in addition to other world religion texts) in their entirety. Reading around the political agendas of the writers of the gospels, etc. in the New Testament I was profoundly touched by what I discerned to be the Ministry of Jesus. It didn’t matter to me whether he had actually lived or not! But that planted a seed for me about what ministry could be like.
But Jesus as the Church is what most of us know as Jesus. Instead of reflecting the Ministry of Jesus, Christianity mostly created a lot of suffering and blood shed for the purpose of the political control of others. To this day, the Church in its different manifestations has held tightly to ownership of the meme wars over the person of Jesus. Recently, I’ve been reading a brief history of Britian. Britian was the conveyor of Christianity to what became the U.S. The battle over which Church (Catholic Church, the Church of England (Anglican) or other Protestant versions (Puritans or the Dissenters) would stand for the true version of Christianity, defined the emergence of Western Christianity. As I said, a lot of suffering and bloodshed were part the battle for the right to be the true keeper and enforcer of Christianity. To this day, the meme of Jesus is used to justify war, wealth, political control, moral authority, racism, sexism, elitism, etc. isms. Witness the effort to impose Christian Nationalism on this country. For example, the group called The New Apostolic Reformation is committed to destroying the secular state. This abusive meme of Jesus as Christ and others like it isn’t going to go away.
So, because the use of Jesus as a meme in our culture is so pervasive, so influential, so intentional, I think it is imperative, it is critical that we push our version of the meme. As I mentioned to the kids – Jesus is someone who taught to love everyone – a healthy place to be. “Love thy neighbor as yourself”… And as he says, in the John 13:34 reading, “Love one another as I have loved you”. The Gospel of John, btw., has the least political agenda of the Gospels. The agenda appears to be — Love. We need to counter, wherever and however we can, any meme of Jesus that is not grounded in Jesus’ serving Love. End of discussion with anyone who wishes to argue otherwise. When we find ourselves in a position to respond to Jesus-talk – revert to the statement that Jesus taught people to love another. This is especially needed when confronted with the Jesus memes that foster divisiveness, hate, inequity, violence, oppression, and exploitation. The defilers of the Temple.
So, what to do about Jesus? It doesn’t matter whether he actually lived or not you need to have an opinion about Jesus and you need to voice that opinion – especially in the face of the memes of Jesus that foster harm to other people. So, frame your opinion of Jesus in the enclosure of Love. Such an enclosure cannot be destroyed.
That is why Love is at the Center of Our UU Identity. Article 2. Love can be served by our values and Principles – Love cannot be destroyed; Love can only be strengthened. I find inspiration in The James Baldwin excerpt from the Fire Next Time, which I have shared before: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” So the Image of Jesus dispersing those contaminating the Temple.
Which brings me to, What Do We Do About Billionaires?
As some of you know, Robin and I like to spend time on a 1 ½ mile by 3 miles rock-of-an-island in the English Channel called Sark. No cars, a dark-sky island, 550ish people — but certainly NOT a tropical resort get away! Sark is a complicated sermon unto itself! But it is important to note that it only became a democratic form of government (Chief Pleas Council) in 2008. Up until then it was the last remaining feudal government in Europe looked over by a Seigneur!
But right next to Sark, maybe a 100 feet away, is an even smaller island bought by 2 Billionaire Scottish brothers, the Barclays, in 1993. (Photo above) They built an actual castle on the Island! Some consider it the largest home built inf Europe in the modern era! With their wealth and personal self-serving commercial agendas, they also tried to insert themselves into Sarkian life and politics with some significant success. But the ultimate outcome was the grassroots push-back by the Sarkese. There was a concern about losing the island’s unique identity and control over the future of Sark. Consequently, Investments, buildings, vineyards, homes, etc. that were owned by the Barclays were mostly abandoned and negelected, and left to environmental and other socio-economic forces. The Barclay billionaires weren’t interested in what the people wanted. Again, “Once you’re up that high in the food chain, democracy is no longer a step UP, it’s a step DOWN.” Sark was left to try to clean up the mess left by the Barclays which is complicated by property and financial laws, and by factions created as a result of the Barclays billionaire tantrums.
I share this story because it highlights for Robin and me the reality of the role of Billionaires in the world. In my opinion most Billionaires, even the so-called Benevolent ones like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ former wife, and even Gov. Pritzker, of Illinois, who is a billionaire, live in a social stratum outside of the normal operations of democracy. Because they are the ultimate examples of success in a dominant culture that values financial wealth as success; they operate in a world divorced from the rest of us within a democracy, or at least they are true-believers in the system that made them billionaires. Again, “Once you’re up that high in the food chain, democracy is no longer a step UP, it’s a step DOWN.” … As Senator Bernie Sanders put it: “We live in an oligarchic society in which billionaires dominate not only our politics and the information we consume, but our government and economic lives”. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the current regime masquerading as a democratic government with several billionaires directing the unchartered destination of the Good Ship USA, vying for the title of Titanic 2! And no one better represents this billionaire crew than the non-President-President, Elon Musk! These billioaires are most representative of the money-changers in the temple of Jesus’ time. Billionaires are the royalty of the status quo of wealth-first, and maybe people later — and even then, not too much. Like the Barclay brothers on Sark, they want it their way, or no way, or they take their money and leave the rest of us to reach up and clean up.
We can’t let that happen. Too many already are and will be severely suffering from this malignant version of human society. We all suffer from this malignant version as this antipathy towards humanity and the Earth’s ecosystem will only produce an inhospitable world for humans and other life forms. And no, going to Mars ain’t gonna save us! An AI induced vision without human reality, which seems to be what is driving the Muskivites.
So, how are we going to upend the tables of the modern-day money changers? Rid the Temple of the den-of-robbers? The ruling class of billionaires?
I think we and millions of other folks are trying to identify those means. This is a struggle and will only grow in its intensity. But Douglas said, this struggle may be moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. And part of identifying and empowering this struggle is being clear what each of us worships – as Emerson underscored, “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character” An as Douglas also suggested the use of our agitation growing out of what we worship, that agitation then demands change and transformation in confronting the Powers of oppression. A formidable task, no doubt. But if what I worship is Love, for me that Love is the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and spiritual/emotional growth as I appreciate Love to be, and it is served by life-affirming values, including those in our UUA Article 2 in Service to Love and this Love seeks to agitate by demanding justice, equity, compassion in our society, in our world community, in our Biosphere then my possibility for confronting this global human and Biosphere crisis always extends my ability to expand my limits of being oppressed.
In closing
ADAPTED FROM BUDDHIST TEACHER PEMA CHODRON’S BOOK: WHEN THINGS FALL APART: HEART ADVICE FOR DIFFICULT TIMES
“Instead of trying to transcend the suffering of the situation we find ourselves in of struggling to love our neighbors, the heart of the Jesus meme, and to condemn the forces that foster exploitation, the tyranny of wealth, we need to move toward the turbulence and doubt. We need to jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move towards it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes days, weeks, months, years we take it as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down into the reality of the world we live in. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta, the Love that will not die. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the Love that will not die.”
Go to: Sidewithlove.org ACTION CENTER – suggestions on how you (UU) might agitate even more…