What's the Good News?

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18 May 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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Prayer

We pray not to something, but from something,

to which we must give voice;

not to escape from our life, but to focus it;

not to relinquish our mind, but to replenish our soul.

We pray that we may live with honesty:

that we can accept who we are,

and admit who we are not;

that we don’t become so deafened by pride and fear

that we ignore the still small voices within us,

that could lead us out of darkness.

We pray that we can live with trust and openness:

to those people, those experiences, and those transformations

that can save us from narrowness and despair.

But we pray differently. Some here pray to god or gods; others see it as entirely psychological and internal, some have still more creative routes to this quest for wholeness. We meet to offer our prayers, and to make all sincere expressions of the living spirit safe and welcome.

And we pray on behalf of these hopes

with an open heart, an honest soul,

and a grateful reverence for the life which has been given to us.

AMEN.

SERMON: What’s the Good News?

This sermon came as a request from some of our members who attend the SNL service. When we announced a monthly bring-a-friend Sunday, they wanted to know what they could tell their friends this place or this religion were about. They know that many Christian churches talk about the Good News they have for the world, and they want to know what good news we have to offer.

Some of this is easy to answer; some is harder.

There are purposes, reasons for coming together, that we hold in common with almost all other churches, and all of them count as good news:

1. We come here to take ourselves and our lives more seriously, to live as though this life really matters.

2. The theme of all we do here is becoming better people, partners, parents and citizens by trying to articulate and incorporate the highest ideals we can grasp.

3. Life is a gift and we gather to be grateful for it, and to mark its transitions: dedication of children, coming of age, graduation, marriage, death.

4. And we are here because we know that in return for the gift of life we must give back. We are all sustained by the webs of caring woven by those who came before us. It is our task to learn how to weave and expand that web of compassion to others, so that those in the future may look back to us with thanks, and feel obliged to continue the weaving of these fragile and essential webs of life.

5. We gather to pursue a salvation by character, because we agree with Jesus that a tree is known by its fruits, and our real beliefs are shown by how we treat ourselves and others. The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn has written of salvation through understanding, and many here will share that. It means that nothing is hidden. No supernatural agencies need to be placated. Everything we need is always before us. It takes only the eyes to see and ears to hear it. We gather to practice learning to see and hear with those eyes and ears.

We share many beliefs here. We also differ on many beliefs. Most of the shared beliefs here are secular rather than religious. This may sound odd, but it is not. The word secular means that it is concerned with this world here and now. Also, the people who find a home in Unitarian churches tend to come from the same kind of cultural background.

Most of the values we have learned are learned from our culture. The problem with this is that not all the values a culture teaches are healthy or good.

Our culture is set up for winners and losers. This doesn’t just mean the so-called “reality” shows on television: survivor, the bachelor, the world’s strongest man, Joe the fake millionaire and the rest of them. The whole American culture is shot through with the notion that only winners deserve much. The version of capitalism we have today – which is quite different from the version of capitalism we had after W.W.II – is a zero-sum game. If worker pay and benefits rise, stock prices fall. If American workers are fired because the corporation has moved production to Mexico or China, stock prices rise. If we’re not careful, we can learn to run our lives in a zero-sum game too, if we absorb some of the most unwise lessons of our culture. But looking at interpersonal relationships in this way leads to dehumanized lives.

You could say that all Unitarian churches are filled with a bunch of cultural liberals who are working out their different paths to salvation. By “liberal” I mean that most of you here today share a whole list of cultural values that are usually identified as liberal, though I think they’re really much broader. Let’s check some of this out with an informal poll. You probably didn’t study for today’s sermon, didn’t know there would be a pop quiz, but there is.

The older people here were products of the civil rights movements of the 1950s – 1970s. The ideas of individual rights and individual freedoms are ideas they value highly. They are overwhelmingly in favor of women’s rights, civil rights for all, gay rights, the rights of any and all people to have the ability to pursue both success and happiness. How many of those here over 45 share these beliefs and values?

(Show of hands)

And the younger people here share those values, whether you got them from your parents or your peers. For how many of you under 45 is this true?

(Hands)

The people who come to Unitarian churches and stay tend to have an optimistic view of human beings. Rather than thinking we are all born sinful or evil, the vast majority here believe that while we are capable of both good and evil, we are basically good, and can be trusted. This attitude goes way back. There was a 19th century joke that Universalists said God was too good to condemn us, and Unitarians believed we were too good to be condemned. I suspect most of you here also believe that people are basically good and can be trusted.

(Hands)

You’ll find a broad and deep concern for the environment, expressed in many ways, from our Xeriscaped garden and playground area to the Fair Trade coffee we buy for our coffee hours and the paper we recycle in the office. Virtually everyone here tends to see that we are all interrelated, and that caring for the environment is to be valued over doing long-term harm by exploiting the environment for short-term profit. How many of you share these concerns?

(Hands)

These are secular and cultural values, not really religious ones, but for many here they are their religion. They are the ways we care for each other and our world.

These values came most recently from the civil rights movements. But they go back to the founding of our country: to the Bill of Rights, the whole notion of individual rights, and the line from the Declaration of Independence that says we are all created equal, with an equal right to the pursuit of happiness.

And the history of Unitarians becoming active in social and political causes in the U.S. is a history of people acting to try and make laws more equitable, to favor the masses over the classes, the empowerment of the many over the empowerment of the few, and a sense of equality for all, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation or belief.

The secular values that come from the civil rights and individual rights movements are mostly compassionate. Even when they didn’t do well they meant well. There are plenty of arguments that school busing was a bad idea, that affirmative action became a quota system that left many black people worse off than they were before, while discriminating against other minorities. Women scholars have criticized the excesses of the women’s movement for, among other things, weakening alimony and child support payments that made the lives of many women worse rather than better. Others say that paying huge sums into education didn’t work because the liberal educational philosophy was too permissive and loose, centered not on educating children but on making them feel good about themselves.

So the deeds done by cultural liberals may not always be wise or good, though the intent was.

And this goes all the way back in our history. Unitarians have almost always acted on behalf of the weak rather than the strong. The one time I know they did not do this is instructive. In the 1850s there was a progressive Unitarian preacher named Theodore Parker who fought for the abolition of slavery, for women’s rights and for prison reform. The more elite Unitarians of Boston – referred to then as the Boston Brahmins – would not allow Parker to preach in any Boston pulpit because some of them supported slavery, and others didn’t think it was polite to mix religious beliefs with political action. Today, we look back on Parker with pride, and seldom mention the others.

The notion of enslaving people with chains or with unlivable wages, of treating them like tools we can use for our own ends, has run counter to some strains of American culture since the nation began, and the overwhelming majority of people who find a home in Unitarian churches come from those more altruistic strains. So you’re surrounded by people, most of whom will stand for the masses against the classes, for the rights of the disempowered against those whose power enslaves them. Yes, it is a kind of political orthodoxy.

Like all orthodoxies, the political orthodoxy found in Unitarian churches tends to exert a pressure on what you feel comfortable saying out loud. This isn’t good news.

The problem with orthodoxies of any kind is that we tend to exalt our kind of people. You see it in political gatherings all the time. A Republican writer like Ann Coulter goes on national press shows to say that while there are both good and less good Republicans, there are no good Democrats. And local Democrats put bumper stickers on their cars that say, “Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.”

The few times I’ve attended the Unitarian General Assembly, it has always felt like a political assembly of Democrats and Green Party activists, not a religious gathering. When we’re surrounded by people who share our biases, it is almost impossible to avoid slipping into the narcissism that sees “our kind” as saved, the other kind as damned, or at least as second-rate citizens: “There are no good Democrats…. Friends don’t let friends vote Republican.”

The reason that our shared secular values count for so much here, and count as good news, is because they are the values that shape our world and our lives. People say that Unitarians can believe anything they want, but that isn’t really true. Our individual religious beliefs are like variations on shared themes. But the shared themes are not negotiable. They are those basic aims that all decent and noble people have always had. Things like:

1. becoming better people, partners, parents and citizens. That’s not negotiable. If you don’t want to do this, you’re in the wrong place.

2. trying to become a blessing to the world as we pass through it. Again, that’s not negotiable.

3. trying to take ourselves and those around us more seriously, to treat them in the way we would hope to be treated by compassionate people. If you don’t care about this, you won’t – and shouldn’t – be comfortable in this church.

4. feeling ourselves to be integral and important parts of the world, interrelated with all others and with the earth itself, with an appropriate feeling of gratitude and responsibility for this gift of life. Again, this isn’t negotiable.

But how we find our way to these ends, the individual spiritual paths we take, here we have many differences. As we say even on the cover of your order of service: One church. Many beliefs.

Some think in terms of God, or several or many gods. For others, god-talk doesn’t play a role in their beliefs. Perhaps they find their home within nature, or within a more political picture of helping others through trying to enact more compassionate laws. Some are not involved in social activism at all. Some are more mystical, needing first to feel a strong inner connection to the world, to others. Perhaps outward action will come from that later.

And let’s be honest, the real day-to-day beliefs that get many of us through the day don’t have much of anything to do with any organized religion at all. There are more astrologers alive today than at all times in history combined. In France, there are more professional astrologers than priests. And many here trust astrology, more than they trust any bibles or catechisms. All those beliefs and superstitions are here, just as they’re all throughout American culture.

Don’t worry: I won’t ask for a show of hands on astrology, or on how many of us always read the fortunes hidden inside of fortune cookies.

Some of what any church is like depends on the particular gifts and style of the minister. Some preach mostly from within the Christian tradition. I try to preach in ordinary language, drawing from many different religious traditions. I agree with the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hahn that one important way in which we’re saved – by which I mean made more whole, more authentic – is through understanding. I’m interested in finding and sharing insights and stories from the wisdom traditions of the world, those teachings designed to help us live more aware and compassionate lives, not according to a creed but according to the more enduring rules of human conduct as seen in the lives and stories of our noblest specimens.

So what’s the good news to be found in a Unitarian church – specifically, this one? It’s of several kinds:

1. Cultural and secular values. Whatever your political affiliation is, my experience of you is that you have brought some of the most compassionate and altruistic values to be found in our culture, and stand at the end of a long tradition of social activism on behalf of just the people on whose behalf all the worlds religions say we should act: the disempowered, the poor, the outcast.

There are many ways in which we give form to these beliefs here. In what passes for winter in Texas, we house about fifty single homeless people here on “Freeze nights,” where around forty volunteers cook dinner and breakfast for them. It’s the largest number of single homeless people served by any church in Austin. Within the church, we have a “helping hands” group to tend to some of our members’ needs, and a first-rate listening ministry of fifteen or twenty people who went through forty hours of training plus an internship, just to learn how to become a listening minister, a quiet presence for people who could use a good ear during some tough transitions.

We have monthly split-the-plate offerings that donate over $12,000 a year to about a dozen charitable organizations outside the church. This is a place where altruism and generosity are taught and expected of us all. As I tell new members and visitors during our monthly meeting, I ask members to support the church with at least a half-tithe, to pledge 5% of your gross income before taxes. We are working toward giving at least that much of our annual budget amount to charities outside the church. We’re not there yet, but we will be.

2. And though we borrow from many religions, we are always looking for those same high and demanding values of compassion and altruism. We gather to try and become better people, partners, parents and citizens, and to try and shape our character, and our children’s’ character, into a form that can equip us to live lives of compassion and understanding, so that when we are through we can be proud of the way in which we lived, the values, the causes and the people we served.

3. We pass through here once. Let our time here be spent trying to leave the world a little better than we found it, trying to become a blessing to ourselves and others. We seek to serve our highest values, and to serve those values through our treatment of our fellow humans.

Twenty centuries ago, Jesus described such a world as the kingdom of God. Before him, the Jews had called it the world to come, and their highest teaching was also to love God with all their hearts and to love their neighbors as themselves. The Buddha believed that when we could see through the illusions that cause us so much suffering, we would see that every creature on earth calls for our understanding and compassion. And Hindus bow when they meet you: not to you, but to the god within you.

Many of you have seen sets of those little Russian dolls that all nest inside each other. We’re like that. We each contain many people, and the influences of all who have touched our soul. And deep down, we contain more. Buddhists say we each contain a Buddha seed. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart called it a God seed. But it’s there, it’s there inside us all. With the right kind of nourishment and care, those seeds can sprout, then bloom, and transform the world. The process can start any time, any place. Even here, even now. And that too is Good News.