"The Myth of Human Divinity"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
April 12, 2009

Reading: The Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Lotus Sutra
Today we use a Buddhist text in honor of Buddha’s Birthday, which is celebrated on April 8th in Japan and later in other countries.  The “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is found in The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma. The Lotus Sutra, as it is also known, is the principle book of scripture for many East Asian Buddhist organizations including Rissho Kosei-Kai, (pronounced Ree-Show, Ko-say, Ki – as in “kite”) a liberal Buddhist church with longstanding ties to the Unitarian Universalist Association.

“There was once a boy who left home and became a wanderer. Until he was fifty, he wandered from place to place, working as a poor hired hand, but as the shadow of age crept upon him, instinctively and in spite of himself he found his way to his father's place.

His father had grieved over the loss of his only son and had gone everywhere in search of him but, never finding him, at last had settled in a certain town.  He was a man of exceedingly great wealth, and he built in this town a magnificent mansion.

The son at the end of his wanderings happened upon this place and passed before his father's house.  Thinking to get some work here, he looked in and saw a person so magnificent that he seemed to be a king, attended by crowds of servants in the midst of gorgeous surroundings.  He was overcome with fear, for this surely was no house to employ a man like him, and  alarmed at the thought of being seized and put to work if he loitered, he started away to find some poor place more suited to him.

Meanwhile, his father, who never for a moment had forgotten that face, had at once recognized the poor man before his gate as his son and immediately sent servants to bring him in.  But the son, who had no idea of what was in his father's mind, feared that he might be killed, and he fainted as he tried to break away from the servants sent for him.

Seeing all this, the father told the servants not to force the poor man to come.  A few days later he sent two servants in shabby clothes to the wretched hut where his son now was, having instructed them to allure him with the offer of twice the usual wage for the lowly work of removing a heap of filth.  By this means they were able to bring him back to his father's house. The rich man himself dressed in poor clothes and was thus able to calm his son's fears and to ap­proach him, talk with him, and encourage him. After a time he told him he wished to treat him as his own son.

The poor son, for his part, rejoiced in such treat­ment but could never shake the feeling that he was an underling.  The father bit by bit gave him more and more important work to do until at last he made him manager of all his property.  The poor son worked faithfully and discharged his duties beautifully, but still he could not throw off the consciousness of his lowliness.

In time the poor son's feeling of inferiority lessened and the father, in anticipation of his death, called together the king and the principal citizens to announce that the man he had taken in was actually his son and that all his property belonged to this son.  It was only now that the poor son realized that this very rich man was actually his father, and his joy was unbounded as he learned that his father's vast prop­erties were his own.”

Sermon: The Myth of Human Divinity by Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
Susan’s reading of the parable of the prodigal son is a little different from the one in the book of Luke in Christian Scripture with which we are familiar.  The differences are instructive; the two stories have a somewhat different moral.  In the Christian story, the father with an inheritance to give represents God.  In the Buddhist story, the rich man stands in for Buddha, while the wandering son isall living beings.  Both stories give the message that no matter how far you stray from the love of the father, you will not be forgotten, and there is nothing you have to do to be welcomed back into his good graces and the good life.  Nikkyo Niwano, president of Rissho Kosei-Dai, interprets the parable this way, “Though all of us are children of the Buddha, we are not aware of our lofty birth, and so of our own accord we turn our backs on the Way of the Buddha and go out to wander ina world of sufferings…  Though we may roam the world in ignorance of our buddha-nature, at some stage we instinctively draw near the abode of the Buddha.  This can only be an affirmation of the true nature of the human being, and it is ineffably precious.”   I would put it this way; there is at least a touch of divinity in each of us, even if we are not always aware of it.  By acting from our best natures we can all be Buddhas, that is, compassionate people. 
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The story of the Prodigal Son is a Parable, one form of the stories collectively known as Myths.  Myths usually serve to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of humans, or the customs, institutions, or religious rites of a people.  In this regard they share one element with science – explanation.  At the heart of explanation lies causation.  People may observe that the immediate cause of something was an impersonal event, like an avalanche, but we aren’t often satisfied unless we know the ultimate cause, and we often impute personal meaning to these causes.  Was the avalanche an act of God, or did a careless skier who ignored out of bounds signs tempt the gods and cause the avalanche?

Until the advent of science, myths gave the only possible answers to the ultimate questions of life, such as, “How did we come to be?”, “How were the earth, sun and moon created?”, or “Why do we die?”  Myths helped us organize our lives – they gave us explanations for the way things were.  They helped us deal with the great mysteries and quandaries of life.  And “Myths were not merely explanations, [they] also functioned to assure, encourage, and inspire.”   Do we still need Myth?  Myth has a negative connotation in our culture.  After all, science explains much of the natural world we encounter in life.  Do you ever wonder that science hasn’t ended the need for myth?  It hasn’t.

There seems to be an unquenchable thirst for mythic narrative.   In recent years there has been an increased interest in fantastical tales such as the wildly successful Harry Potter book and movie series and the perennially popular Lord of the Rings trilogy.  In these fanciful stories, we witness legendary battles between the forces of good and evil.  The plots are complex, and the heroes face not only demons and dragons, they also confront contradictions within themselves, moral dilemmas.  These mythic adventure tales contain insight into how an ordinary person, someone like us, might respond to a situation in which one must choose between unpleasant alternatives.  The heroes, even those purported to be divine, have foibles, are not perfect, and struggle to find answers just as we do.  In our Prodigal Son parable, the father whose heart was aching wanted to reveal himself immediately; instead he remained incognito and used skillful means to entice his son back home.  The predicaments in truly mythic tales do not contain obvious solutions; they leave a bit of the quandary for us to ponder.  After all, in our lives there are no pat answers.
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People want answers not just for themselves; they want to know how the whole world operates, too.  Mythical stories work on both the personal and the global levels.  That’s why communities of people turn to mythology.  A mythical story has the power to shape culture.  When many people are exposed to the same myth, it tends to make them see the world in a similar way.  It enables the formulation of a shared worldview which makes a common culture possible. 

In the 19th century a new myth came along, the myth of progress – enlightened humanity would inevitably move onward and upward forever.  This new myth of progress shaped much of European and American culture.  It was then we began to use the word myth to derogate others’ stories.”   That they weren't literally true wasn't the real problem with the old myths; modernists felt the old myths, which they called religious superstition, could hold back progress.  Reason was the weapon they used to try to obliterate the old myths. The myth of progress said, through the reign of reason, civility, and republicanism, education would gradually conquer all evil.  It would be slow, but eventually reason was bound to triumph!

The myth of the inevitable progress of reason held sway well into the 20th century, but eventually, the evidence of the two World Wars, the Holocaust, the Nuclear Arms Race, the plight of third world peoples, the degradation of the environment, and the persistence of racism and sexism combined to prove that history will not inevitably move in the direction of Reason.  The progress myth has failed.  Because of this, many conclude that history has no direction and further that there is no divinity in the world.  The Reverend Alice Blair Wesley characterizes our time as one of mythic confusion, a result of disappointment in the failure of the progress myth.  Many liberals despair of any meaning in history while fundamentalists wildly call for an artificial “return” to irrational religion.

Well, at least you landed in a rational religion, we are not giving up on reason.  The failure of the progress myth is an indictment of triumphalism, not reason itself.  The fault with all triumphalist theories lies in their assumption of inevitable victory based on the correctness of a political theory.  Time and again, triumphalists have promised, “If everyone will just believe this theory, it has to succeed.”  There are three big problems with this.  1) Everyone believing the same way will never happen, 2) the circumstances in which a social theory is hatched keep changing over time, necessitating modifications to the theory,  and 3) all theories proposed so far for the organization of humanity have proven to have holes in them.  Have we yet learned to refrain from putting all our eggs in one political basket? 

Conversely, the horrors of the 20th century notwithstanding, our worldview need not end in nihilism, the belief that there is no meaning or purpose in existence.  This is just the flip side of triumphalism; it is an assumption that humanity’s fate is inevitable and negative.  Granted, history does not move in a straight line, but we can influence its direction.  Nature created humans with the freedom to examine the purpose of humanity and with the concern to determine humanity’s own future.  Because of our freedom, we have a responsibility to act in ways that will birth a wholesome future for all of humanity and the rest of nature.  I believe in the possibility of Justice, which Wesley defines as “the historically-made-real and concrete love of others and their well-being.”   I’ll say that again, “Justice is: the historically-made-real and concrete love of others and their well-being.”  I believe in the possibility of justice because I believe at the core of human character is love.  This gives me hope, hope that the love which is intrinsic to human nature can be translated into justice.

For human history to lift itself out of triumphalist dogmas to new embodiments of love, a great many individuals will have to turn toward working for justice.  The choice to turn toward justice will have to be made freely, without coercion, and it will not happen inevitably.  Any turning of a great many toward new justice is always an uphill struggle, but given the example of those who have turned in this direction before us, it can happen.  Human character, when guided by the integrity of reason and the compassion of love naturally seeks the truth and compels us to do what needs to be done to bring about justice.   The father of the prodigal son was very patient, as he demonstrated fairness and kind behavior until the son’s fears subsided, and then the son became more optimistic and a became a good steward himself.  A creative mythology based on our capacity for love is what we need to turn individuals of ordinary human character away from ignorance and violence and turn them toward other people, toward the earth and toward justice.  We need stories that help us imagine a more just society.  We need mythology to help us envision a more wholesome future.
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But wait, we Unitarian Universalists hold reason as one of our highest values, we believe in science, why do we need myth?  We strive to conduct most of the business of our lives very carefully and very logically.  Why don’t we just follow the advice of Plato and most of the philosophers after him and use reason to order our lives?   Well, because using logic on the really difficult problems of life doesn’t always work.  Sometimes there is just no good answer for why something happened.  Because there will never be a time when everyone on earth believes in the same way, and because history keeps changing the circumstances within which we exist, creativity in our daily living is called for.  When our logic fails, we have to step back, think outside the box, and use alternative ways of knowing.  I encourage careful thinking, and I don’t prescribe a naïve belief in the factuality of myths, but imaginative thinking uses reason and can help people see things more completely.  In fact, “Imagination can be a prerequisite for recognition of the less obvious aspects of what is really there.”  I don’t think we undermine truth when we escape from our daily realities to fantastical worlds that don’t conform to the natural order of life.  Myths help us break out of ruts in our reasoning; myths help us remove ourselves from our familiar existence so our minds can play with metaphor.

Myths open our view to new perspectives; they help us see the world in different ways.  In the Lord of the Rings trilogy there is one scene deep in the woods where the elves live.  When the traveling adventurers first come into their presence, the elves are hidden from them.  You get the impression they have magical powers to fly and disappear behind trees so quickly the eye can’t catch up to them.  Then the travelers notice transparent platforms high up in the trees, and before you can say “Gandalf!” they are swept up into the air to meet the elf prince and princess.  After reading this passage years ago, I fell in love with tree houses.  I seriously considered building treehouses for a living before I decided to go into the ministry instead.  Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that – now you’ll think my sermons are coming from somewhere about 20 feet off the ground.  But anyway, you can see my point, the myth of elves living in trees opened me to the possibility of approaching life differently.

Writing about mythology Wendy Doniger records the way Sudanese storytellers often begin their tales:
            The storyteller says, “I am going to tell a story.”
            The audience responds, “Right.”
            “It’s a lie.”
            “Right”
            “But not everything in it is false.”
            “Right.”
Maybe we should start our worship services that way.
I can tell you elves don’t live in the trees around here, in fact elves don’t exist (Aww).  It might be fun to poke holes in myths, but the fact that the stories aren’t literally true is not that interesting.  What’s thought-provoking is where the story takes us.  Getting hung up on whether a myth is factual represents a failure of imagination.  Metaphors and stories offer creative ways to imagine ourselves out of the quandaries that perplex us.  They take us out of our quotidian existence, but invite us to come back and to look at our lives in a fresh way.
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Each of us is capable of interpreting the story of the prodigal son for ourselves.  What are we supposed to do when our child doesn’t phone home or gets into trouble with drugs?  Love them anyway.  We get it.  Sometimes parents can see beauty in their children that others don’t see.  Years ago, after my divorce, when I was having a hard time seeing myself as a good person, I could see divinity in my children.  I came to believe that if there is divinity in my child, it must be in me, too.  Myths give us not so much great moral messages, but more a sense that life is a journey and a struggle for meaning that we share with all of humanity.  The meaning we find in myth comes from our shared life experience and our shared hopes.

Making meaning out of our lives is not just spin control.  Myths can be a key to helping us visualize a better future.  I want myths that help us reach the aims of providing a wholesome church community in which people experience intimate, meaningful and healing relationships, where they have support for dealing with the ultimate issues of life and where they find life-sustaining hope for their future.  Myths that tap into the human potential for love and compassion can help us project those ideals and realize a more wholesome and just world.