In the summer of 1923, President Warren G. Harding was fighting an illness that would eventually claim his life, as well as the Teapot Dome scandal involving his Cabinet. Yet he took time out to address one of the truly important issues of his day. What could that be? It was the revelation that silversmith and statesman Paul Revere, who heeded the two-lantern warning in the Old North Church on April 18, 1775, and rode up the Concord road, was captured before he could warn the locals that "The British are coming!" Harding spoke to the story immortalized in a Longfellow poem by saying, "I love the story of Paul Revere – whether he rode or not."

I thought of that during one of our adult religious education sessions in April, led by our own Ward Riley. During a roundtable discussion, Hank Carlsen commented on the ministry of Jesus by saying, "And you know, Jesus might not have existed."

Indeed, there’s a whole school of thought, based on scholarly research, that says the story of Jesus is just that – a story, written by human beings, that was carefully crafted in order to be disseminated among the peoples of the Middle East. The whole idea was that Jesus’ entire life story fulfilled prophecy, particularly the prophecy of Isaiah. These scholars say that none of the stories of crucifixion that survive to this day takes place in Jerusalem, or within 20 years of when Jesus is said to have died. They also argue that many of the place names given in the Gospels didn’t actually exist in the first century of the common era. Rather, they are as fictional and allegorical as Theophilus, the person to whom the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are addressed.

Much of this research has a home on the Internet – on the Web site of American Atheists. Granted, they have good reason to tell this side of the story, as they’re carrying the torch of one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century, Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Certainly, there is plenty of scholarly research out there that tells the other side of the story, that backs up the existence of Jesus as an historical personage.

This morning, I stand before you to argue that the existence or non-existence of the historical Jesus is moot – or, to paraphrase President Harding, "I love Jesus, whether he existed or not!"

Legends and myths have been effective learning aids throughout history. We don’t know for sure that an entire battalion of Greeks emptied itself from the body of a large wooden horse three thousand years ago, allowing for an invasion of Troy from within. Yet the story of the Trojan horse lives on, as does its message.

Likewise, much of the Torah – the five books of the original Hebrew Bible – can be construed as allegory. I doubt anyone in this room believes that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. (If you are visiting us this morning, having made a wrong turn on your way to a Christian fundamental church, you have my sincere apology.) In the same way, Moses didn’t receive the Ten Commandments on stone tablets handed to him from on high. Yet for the people who lived in the Middle East around the start of the common era, these were effective stories.

And there’s absolutely no doubt that the story of Jesus is a powerful and inspirational one. I’ll give you another example that goes back to the American Revolution.

On this day 227 years ago, Thomas Jefferson was wrestling with the charge he had been given by the Second Continental Congress two weeks before. He had been assigned by the Congress on June 7 to draft a document, on which the body could vote, based on a resolution by fellow Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee which asserted that these British colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states."

The Continental Congress finally voted on Lee’s resolution on Tuesday, July 2, approving it by a count of 12 colonies to none, with New York abstaining ... courteously. (In the 1971 Broadway musical "1776", much is made of the New York delegates being forced to abstain because they had not yet received instructions from their legislature. Their spokesman would say, "New York abstains, courteously." The clerk would dutifully intone, "New York abstains," and the spokesman would repeat, "Courteously.") Two days later, Jefferson presented his declaration to the Congress, which again passed it unanimously. In just the second paragraph of his declaration, Jefferson included some of the most famous words ever written:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

All men are created equal. Think about that for a second. In 1776, all men were certainly not living equal lives. There was quite a bit of class stratification in the New World as well as the Old. Like most delegates to the Continental Congress, Jefferson himself was part of the landed gentry. He owned slaves. He even stands accused of fathering several children with one of his servants. Yet he felt compelled to include in the Declaration of Independence an assertion that all men were created equal. What possessed him to make such a bold statement? I’d like to believe that he was inspired by a preacher who may have roamed the Middle East a millennium and three-quarters before – the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth.

My original title for today’s talk was "Jesus Before Christianity". I stole that title from a book, ironically written in our bicentennial year of 1976, by Albert Nolan, a member of the Maryknoll Fathers. In his volume, Nolan explores what this man from Galilee was really doing when he addressed his contemporaries in his homeland and in Judea during his brief and ultimately tragic ministry nearly two thousand years ago.

Much is made, by Christians and others, of the acts ascribed to Jesus in the gospels. It is said that Jesus multiplied five loaves of bread and a couple of fish into enough food to sate the appetites of five thousand. Believers say that Jesus cured the sick, raised the dead, and ultimately gave his own life for the salvation of the world. Now we as Unitarian Universalists have a heritage of questioning the veracity of Bible stories. The Unitarian branch of our denomination was founded on a belief that Jesus was no more divine than you or me. Still, there must have been something about what this man actually accomplished that stirred such passions and made believers out of thousands. And there must still be something about his message that’s compelling enough to have more than 20 percent of the earth’s population – and the vast majority of the Western world – calling themselves Christians. What was it?

Among the many things Jesus has been called over the years, Muslims refer to him as a prophet. While Jesus doesn’t rate with the Great Prophet Muhammad in their eyes, he is still seen by practitioners of Islam as one of a long line of messengers of God. Nolan, too, ascribes prophet status to Jesus. He was apparently seen by his followers as a good candidate to be revered as a prophet, much along the lines of Isaiah a century or two earlier, and in contention with his contemporary John the Baptist.

What did Jesus prophesy? No less than the destruction of the Temple, an act that was begun in the year 70 of the common era – about forty years after Jesus’ death – and finished off sixty-five years later. Jesus foresaw the loss of this great symbol of Judaism and the continued cycle of suffering that has haunted the Jews ever since the Exile eight centuries before the Christian era.

Jesus tried to tell his fellow Jews that a confrontation was imminent because of the very nature of their society. That nature was one of massive class stratification. You had a pyramid of sorts. At the top were the chief priests and elders, the interpreters of Mosaic law. Right below them, you had the landowners, the moneyed class. These folks tended to be seen as the most observant Jews because they had time to display their fealty to the law on account of their status. Next in line were the skilled laborers. Jesus, a carpenter, fell into this middle class, who were somewhat respected in that time because they did provide valuable services. Below them were the unskilled positions, the day laborers, along with all the folks who held positions that carried little respect, like the tax collector. Finally, there were the Great Unwashed – the unemployable, the sick, and also most of the women in the population.

What was a carpenter turned preacher going to do about all this? He was going to remind his listeners that change could not occur until, as the prophet wrote, "the lion lies down with the lamb." Until that happened, the kingdom of man, with all its vulnerabilities, would prevail. But once the classes were disregarded and man saw his fellow man as just that, no more nor less, that was when the Kingdom of Heaven would arrive on earth. That, more than a piece of real estate, would be the Promised Land.

Jesus demonstrated that he was serious about what he preached by flouting the class structure at every opportunity. Often, Jesus is portrayed as a champion of the poor and oppressed. This is true. In his day, for a man of the middle class to mingle with the people of the lower classes was unheard of. Scorn would be heaped upon anyone who tried it. But Jesus didn’t care. To him, the publican and the prostitute were as worthy of respect as the priest, the landowner, and the observant Jew. Jesus thought nothing of taking a meal with someone in a lower class. He made himself one of them. Jesus applauded the woman who gave her last penny at the Temple over the well-to-do who tithed faithfully. He never wasted an opportunity to emphasize that "the meek shall inherit the earth" – that while the upper classes had their rewards in the society of today, it would be the downtrodden who would reap the benefits of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In his book, Nolan makes a point about the Kingdom of Heaven. This was not meant to be indicative of an afterlife, but rather of a future time. If he could get enough followers, Jesus would be heralding a new time in history, one in which class distinctions went out the window in favor of the equality of all human beings. The lower classes would indeed rise, as they realized that they were no longer bound by their station. And the upper classes would fall, only because their advanced station would be meaningless in this future time.

Naturally, this didn’t make the upper classes too happy. But Jesus had an answer: Make yourself as a child, and you shall reap the benefits of the Kingdom of Heaven. After all, a little child doesn’t see class distinctions. He sees people, young and old, large and small, as people. Class distinction is a learned trait – and, admittedly, a difficult one to unlearn. But that’s what is necessary to partake of this great future kingdom that Jesus promised – if everyone bought in. Indeed, some of the early Christians took it upon themselves to forsake the excesses they had enjoyed before. They retained only what objects of value were necessary to live simply, and shared the rest of their wealth.

This sharing of wealth was the real "miracle" of the loaves and the fishes. The gospel story tells us that after a morning of preaching to a crowd of five thousand, Jesus called a lunch break. Certainly, at this point, some folks would have departed for the village shops to get lunch. But he held the crowd in place for a moment. He polled his closest disciples, who had five loaves and two fishes among them. Now that was more than enough food for that small group, so he encouraged them to share their lunch with those nearby who hadn’t brought anything with them. Certainly others had brought provisions for a day’s worth of preaching; they were moved by his disciples’ generosity to share with their neighbors as well. Soon, the entire congregation was sated, with a dozen loaves left over. There was no "multiplication" here; the only "miracle" was that everyone got to see how good it felt to share their bounty with others.

Nolan also addresses the personal miracles attributable to Jesus. In what might well be apocryphal stories irrespective of the existence of the historical Jesus, he is said to have cured lepers, raised the dead, and so forth. This can be explained, too. Back in March, during the Joys and Sorrows segment of our service, I mentioned my friend Ellen from Ridgewood. She was diagnosed with breast cancer back in September, and she had to go through the whole routine of chemotherapy, radiation, etc. Fortunately, she finished that regimen in May and I can now proudly pin the label "breast cancer survivor" on her. She had an excellent prognosis, as her cancer was detected early, but she also had a doctor who was her cheerleader, as well as family and friends who were behind her 100 percent. All these factors helped shorten her recovery time. Well, in Jesus’ day, a time long before the advent of modern medicine, people who were injured or fell ill often lost all hope. They started to wither away, knowing death was imminent. What Jesus would tell these people is that there was hope – that they had the power within themselves to get better. "By your faith you have been healed," he’d say. And the turnaround might not be instant, but, just like the story of The Little Engine That Could, they’d slowly recover. Jesus was part of the support group.

There’s one more facet to the story of Jesus that I’d like to address. We see in the Gospels that Jesus made a conscious decision to forgive and love in the face of absolute hatred. According to the story, when he carried his own cross to Calvary and was nailed to it, he was jeered, taunted, even stoned by onlookers. Yet even in that ultimate moment of debasement, he continued to turn the other cheek. "Father," he said from the cross, addressing the God of his understanding, "forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was in this moment that Jesus proved himself worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Each of us has the ability to reach deep within ourselves and meet adversity head-on, if we face our adversaries and deal with our trials and tribulations in the spirit of love – the love that each week we affirm as the spirit of this church. Each of us in this room, indeed each of us in the world, is capable of this. Jesus himself put it best: "You must love your neighbor as yourself."

In the end, the story of Jesus’ life, and the preaching attributed to him, give us an example that we are right to follow. The story was written by humans two thousand years ago, in a language their contemporaries would be able to understand. It might not stand up to historical scrutiny – we don’t have microfilm of The Jerusalem Post going back that far. But we acknowledge that the stories of the Hebrew Bible, like the story of the Trojan horse, have much to inform our generation as well as they informed our forebears. In the same way, there is much to learn from the story of a humble carpenter from Galilee, who may or may not have grown up in a town called Nazareth two thousand years ago, who may or may not have come to Jerusalem to meet his fate and fulfill prophecy. My life is guided, in large part, by his example. I love Jesus ... whether he existed or not.