The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, March 29, 2009.
You may not know much about Emma Curtis Hopkins, but in the late 19th
century, Emma Curtis Hopkins was a powerful figure in American spirituality.
She died in 1925, living most of her life before the global conflict of World
War 1, and she died before the devastating Great Depression, before the
horrifying Holocaust, the nuclear demonstration of World War 2, and long
before the viral menace AIDS would terrorize our planet.
These events of the 20th century have taught us that our choices
impact others and that the choices of others impact us, that we are part of a
universal web of existence that includes all life and that in reality we are
an interdependent collective rather than just a bunch of individuals sharing
the same space.
So Emma Curtis Hopkins wasn’t a product of our time; she wasn’t shaped by
the realities that we have known. She was influenced by a science that viewed
the universe as a mechanism and by a philosophy that stressed rugged
individualism. She was also influenced by a new religious movement called
Christian Science.
Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy believed that the healing
miracles of the bible actually occurred… liberal Protestants would suggest
that the miracles were allegorical, but Mary Baker Eddy thought they occurred
in history and that they could be repeated if we could understand the formula
that made them possible. She thought she had come to understand the method and
she called the healing method Christian Science.
Eddy believed, as did Emma after her, that the discovery of the method that
could make healing miracles possible in our own day was in fact the parousia,
or, Second Coming. Christ had returned in the replication of Jesus’ healing
miracles. So, in their thinking, Christian Science was a philosophy that when
effectively applied amounted to the return of Christ on earth.
Emma Curtis Hopkins would eventually part company with institutional
Christian Science and her thinking would go on to include the insights of
Eastern religions.
In a time when many diseases didn’t have medical cures, when women couldn’t
vote, when travel was difficult and higher education was considered a
privilege for the elite, Emma Curtis Hopkins offered people the power of hope.
She taught people that they could choose their thoughts and their attitudes
and by learning spiritual principles they could empower themselves and lift
themselves above their circumstances, their pasts, or their station in life.
To be such an independent and influential woman in her time seemed to offer
some credibility to her message. And, of course, there were the people she
taught who claimed to experience benefits in their lives from her teachings.
In fact, just as Mary Baker Eddy influenced Emma Hopkins, Hopkins
influenced the founders of
the Unity School of Christianity,
the founder of Religious Science,
and the founders of Divine Science.
Later, a Divine Science minister, Emmet Fox, would influence Methodist
turned Dutch Reformed minister Norman Vincent Peale who is of course famous
for his Power of Positive Thinking. And Peale’s positive thinking has had an
impact on people within and beyond Christianity.
Because of her profound influence on so many schools of thought and on the
people who would become the leaders of positive thinking and personal
empowerment movements, Emma Curtis Hopkins has been called the teacher of
teachers.
And though most of her writings predate women’s suffrage, World Wars, and
AIDS, many of her ideas, even if filtered through Twelve Step Programs, Word
of Faith churches, or Positive Thinking writers like Peale and Louise Hay,
have proven helpful and comforting to people facing challenges in their lives.
She tells us that it is possible for us to see everything as pointing to
the divine presence in which we live. And if we live within a divine presence,
then comfort is always possible. Hope is always possible. Courage is always
possible. Even in the midst of apparent chaos, there are blessings,
opportunities, there is a divine presence to hold us when we are weak, to
affirm us when we doubt ourselves, to share our tears, and to remind us that
our sacred value cannot be dimmed nor denied by the troubles at hand.
And just maybe, there is a way out of the chaos; but come what may, we are
not now nor will we ever be separated from the love of God.
Well, almost two thousand years before Emma Curtis Hopkins became the
teacher of teachers, there was another great teacher who lived in Palestine.
Of course, I’m referring to Jesus.
Jesus seemed to know that he lived within a divine presence, and that the
presence also lived within him. He seemed so aware of his comm-union with the
divine, that people believed they encountered the divine by being near him.
Jesus somehow pointed people to the divine spark within them. The light of
God shining through him touched and uplifted people in such a way they felt
joy even while their land was occupied; they felt hope, even while oppression
seemed to flourish. They felt empowered even though the systems of power had
intentionally excluded them. And when someone like that touches your life in
such a dramatic way, you feel the need to talk about it.
So, Jesus’ friends and followers, and those who learned of Jesus from his
friends and followers did talk about the difference he made in their lives,
the hope he added to their lives,
the dignity he restored to them even when the storms of life raged against
them.
They told stories not only to honor him, but to let others know that the light
within him continues to shine,
and it still helps us find the light within us that will always shine.
St. Paul told stories in his way, using the idioms and metaphors that he
preferred.
The writers of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke told stories in their
way, using the idioms and metaphors and symbols that they each preferred.
Likewise, the writer of John’s gospel tells stories in his own way for the
benefit of his own audience, using the literary tools he preferred.
These writers don’t agree in their details; they don’t see Jesus in the
same way. Our churches have often tried to synchronize the biblical narratives
as if they were written at one time by a single author with a narrow point of
view, but a careful reading of the scriptures will not allow that. The writers
were diverse in their experiences and in their opinions and in their writing
styles. And those who have read these sacred texts have been diverse in their
interpretations of those texts from the very beginning.
But what they agree on is that there was life that lived among us that was
so full of the presence and the love that we call God that it called us to be
more than we realized we were; it called us to hope when hope seemed
ridiculous.
It called us to not give up even after our defeat seemed certain.
The writers agreed that in Jesus they discovered a way of being in communion
with God, a way of being so authentically human that it felt divine!
And they wanted to share that experience with as many people as possible.
Our theologies differ; they always have. They always will. Catholics differ
from Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Orthodox differ from Anglicans. High Church
Anglicans differ from Low Church Anglicans. Anglicans differ from Methodists.
Methodists differ from Presbyterians. Presbyterians differ from Lutherans.
Lutherans differ from Baptists. And people within each of these traditions
differ from one another.
And in MCC, we come from many of those traditions. We differ from all of
them; and we differ from one another in the ways that we differ from our
former churches. That’s the way it’s always been.
Still, for all the differences… we all seek meaning.
We all deserve hope.
We all want to live with dignity.
We all need compassion.
And somehow, in some way, we find those needs being met as we look to Jesus.
I don’t see Jesus the way the writer of John’s gospel did; but that’s
OK…neither did Mark. Neither did Matthew.
But like all of them, I do find in Jesus a model that reminds me of my sacred
value, and that calls me to want to live into that revelation.
And as I do, I’ll help others do the same… and so will you. That’s what we
mean when we say we are sharing the light with the world. And it may be what
John means when he has Jesus say, “Now is the time.”
Now is the time for the prince of this world… greed, violence,
colonization, war, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia… the ills that so often
seem in control… now is the time for all that to be cast out… at least out of
us.
And if we will be intentionally progressive, positive, and practical,
following Jesus’ example, we will be lifted up and we will lift up others as
well.
Whether we hear it from Emma Curtis Hopkins or from the writer of the
Gospel of John, there is a message of universal hope and empowerment for us;
it is needed, and now is the time to embrace it.
This is the good news. Amen.