Where Do We Find Absolution?

4 April 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH:

Bill Reid

My name is Bill Reid. I have been a member of this church since 1973. For certain periods during this time I was very inactive. I have enjoyed being more involved over the last three or four years. I have become a member of the Worship Associate Program. In this program we suggest topics for the worship services and we participate in the worship services. I posed the topic for today: Where do Unitarian Universalists find absolution? What I mean by absolution is from my dictionary – it is to set free, or release as from some obligation, debt, or responsibility or from the consequences of guilt, sin, or penalty. It is forgiveness for an offense or shortcoming.

In posing the question, I am reminded of the Peanuts cartoon: Linus asks questions like: what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is truth? Lucy turns to Charlie Brown and says, “There are more questions than answers, so it’s better to be the one asking the questions.”

How this question arose. I was raised a Southern Baptist. I have since learned that not all Southern Baptists are fundamentalists and believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. However, the branch I was in was fundamentalist, and I was an enthusiastic and unquestioning Baptist through high school.

Baptists believe that religion is a personal relationship between the human soul and God. The grace of Christ and the mercy of God are available without mediation of any priest or minister. For Baptists, the formal act of baptism is the closest thing they have to absolution. Baptists believe in Baptism by full immersion the way John the Baptist did it in the Bible. It is a public demonstration of faith. The old life of sin is washed away and a new life of faith emerges. Baptism was limited to adults, those mature enough to understand the meaning of baptism. I was baptized when I was about 11 years old. In the Baptist view, I guess I am carrying around all my sins since that time.

Baptists believe that each believer has a duty to proclaim his faith and urge others to accept Christ. This was one of the beliefs that first got me to thinking and doubting. I was supposed to bring others to Christ and the Baptist church, and if I (or some other Baptist) did not make that effort, then the poor unfortunate soul who had never heard of Jesus would die and and go to hell. This seemed like an overwhelming responsibility to me, and it made me feel guilty. Sometimes I would wonder about the Catholic Church and what it would be like to be able to go to confession on a regular basis and be relieved of all my sins by the priest. I did not pursue this.

In any event, I graduated from high school and left home for college and also left the Baptist church behind me.

I had nothing to do with churches for the next 14 years. Then in 1970, I was married, had two young children, had finished law school, and was working in Washington D.C. My wife and I joined a wonderful Episcopal Church and got involved in it. In that church, there are prayers of confession and absolution in the communion service. However, I do not recall a specific ceremony for absolution.

When we returned to Austin in 1973, we joined this church. Our own ceremonies do not include an express confession and absolution, although I have attended ceremonies in this building, such as the winter solstice celebration, in which letting go of old burdens was part of the ritual.

I suspect that nearly all of the world’s religions deal with this problem of how to obtain forgiveness or relief from our shortcomings.

The Lord’s Prayer from the New Testament includes the request for God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I have found this prayer to be a very helpful mantra when I am seeking calm or relief from stress. Often when I am going to sleep, I just repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Whoever wrote it was very wise. I realize that it is in language that many here do not feel comfortable with, but I feel free to use my own definitions and it lets me remind myself that there is somebody or something–other than me–running the world, and that my part in it is relatively minor. It reminds me that I only have to deal with each day as it comes and “our daily bread” is all we really have to have. It reminds me that I have to acknowledge my own shortcomings before I can do anything about them or get help in dealing with them. The prayer helps me remember that it is just as important to be willing to forgive others as it is to ask for forgiveness. This very common and well known prayer helps me find some relief, or absolution. At least it is a start.

The question remains – How do Unitarian Universalists obtain Absolution? I am looking forward to hearing the sermon on this subject.

PRAYER:

God of many names, spirit of life, great mysterious:

Forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

May we keep it that simple.

May we see that often our greatest sin is to not let our hearts

receive the blessings that surround us;

may we wake up to the present moment.

May we see that the more we give, the more we can receive, that to forgive ourselves is to enable us to give more freely to the world.

In order to give, we must learn how to receive, first.

May we find the courage to distinguish our own sins from the sins of others. May we admit that sometimes it is easier to focus on the shortcomings of others, rather than our own.

May we recognize that our greatest peace lies in acceptance, that it is great wisdom to absolve ourselves of false power. May we recognize how little control we have over so much of what happens.

And yet, may we connect with the source of our true power, may we take action and make use of our greatest strengths.

May we see the places in our lives where we can choose.

May we keep close to our hearts and our minds that forgiveness is a prime messenger of love, and that it requires no special occasion.

On a daily level, amongst our relationships both precious and incidental, may we contribute to the spirit of a more forgiving world by seeing past the faults of others to their beauty, instead.

Rather than listen for the judgements, we can listen for the beauty.

May we listen for the goodness in others, as others listen for the goodness in us.

Amen.

SERMON:

I began one of my last sermons by talking about the psychic I saw last June. That seemed to work so I’m going to try it again. I felt like this woman gave me a lot of helpful information about my family. She said that people tend to inherit their parents’ battles, who inherited the same kinds of battles from their parents and so on. Certain subconscious beliefs are passed down through the generations. She told me about one that my family had, that she thought went back many generations, and was on both sides of my family, both my mother’s and my father’s.

She said that we harbor a very, very subconscious belief – deep within ourselves – that we cannot be forgiven. This rang true to me as soon as she said it. Of course the question arises, what do we think it is about ourselves that is unforgiveable? But that doesn’t matter. All of us do things time and again that we’re not proud of, that we experience shame over. If we believe we CAN be forgiven, over time we let go of those negative feelings about ourselves and are free to grow in character. But in my family’s case, according to the psychic and for whatever reason, we believe somewhere down deep within ourselves that we cannot be forgiven. And regardless of why this belief exists, what’s important to understand is what effect this belief can have on how we live our lives.

The reason I bring up this personal family business is because it’s a good way to frame what the heart of the matter is when we talk about absolution. Because I think that this subconscious belief that one can’t be forgiven is probably not unique. Perhaps I’m projecting here, but to be hard on oneself seems to be an archetypal American trait, going back to the stringent standards of the Protestant work ethic that this country was built on, that still runs it. Our earliest ancestors on American soil had to work very hard – and to this day, I think we hold ourselves to very high standards of hard work and accomplishment. It’s a very prominent source of our identity; many of us depend on it to tell us who we are. I know I do.

But what if you think you aren’t who you ought to be? What if you don’t think you measure up to the high standards you set for yourself? I suppose this might lead you to think that there’s something wrong with you, that you’re not good enough; that there’s something about you that can’t be forgiven.

So when we talk about absolution, we’re not just talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of those loaded terms that can lose its integrity if it’s given or received too easily. Before we can be forgiven, what is at stake is whether or not we believe we are WORTHY of that forgiveness. We can throw the word forgiveness around all we want, but what’s really in question is whether or not we believe we DESERVE it. Underneath the fancy theological word absolution, and even underneath the more user-friendly word of forgiveness, is the very plain matter of self-worth.

Because we can’t receive anything that we don’t allow ourselves to receive. We are the gate-keepers of our own hearts. Things like love, compassion, and forgiveness – we only get as much of these things as we allow ourselves to, no matter how much is freely offered to us. Whatever we believe is true about ourselves has a tremendous effect on who in fact we are. Luckily we seem to have more control over the beliefs we are conscious of. But what about the beliefs we don’t even know we’ve already convinced ourselves of?

From thinking a lot about this matter of unforgiveableness in my own family, I’ve come up with some observations of the consequences of it. The effect of this subconscious belief seems to go one of two ways. The first is that you try to make up for it. You go through life with this deep dent in your self-worth and are constantly trying to compensate. You over-achieve, you work too hard, you’re rarely satisfied with what you do accomplish. You notice the flaws more than the victories. And what ends up happening is you do indeed accomplish a lot, and while you gain the respect and admiration of those around you, you have a hard time giving yourself the same credit. You think, well, I could have done this better . . . you end up doing so many different things all the time that there’s never really a chance to breathe and just be. You’re constantly on the go, and to sit idle becomes so foreign to you that it’s actually uncomfortable.

The second set of tendencies you have if you subconsciously believe you can’t be forgiven is to live life in fear. A self-fulfilling prophecy of penance unravels. You don’t try for fear of failure. You get stuck in places you’re unhappy in, but don’t have the courage to get out of. Of course the resentment and anger builds up over time where you forget you’re the person who made yourself angry in the first place – the anger spills over to those around you.

Perhaps what is most damaging about both of these mind-sets is that we are cut off from our spiritual selves. What is true for both of these is that we never believe we are good enough just as we are. Just as I am without one plea . . . there’s a reason that song is so powerful when Christians are called to the alter at revivals. What is damaging about being cut off from our spiritual selves is that we cannot think of ourselves apart from the outside factors that define us – factors like career success, material wealth, our reputation, our family’s reputation. We cannot think of ourselves beyond these things because WE DON’T KNOW WHO THAT PERSON IS. We are estranged from the part of us that makes us whole. Do you know who your spiritual self is?

There are lots of metaphors to describe the spiritual self. I’ve always been fond of thinking of my spiritual self as the child within me – that little girl who I think is good no matter what. It’s the part of you that you can just be with and not judge – not hate and maybe not even love – but just know is good.

I’ve always loved the beginning of Genesis – it’s probably my favorite part of the Bible. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good . . . And God said, ‘let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear’ . . . and God saw that it was good . . . Then God said ‘let the land produce vegetation’ . . . And God saw that it was good . . . And God said ‘let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years’ . . . And God saw that it was good . . . And God saw that it was good” and on down through creation.

It’s a beautiful beginning to the Bible because it says that life is from goodness. After 7 days of making everything, including humans, “God saw all that he had made, and it was VERY good.” This story doesn’t have to be true for it to be true – in the same way that there doesn’t have to be a God to believe in God. All of us come from this – from this beginning, from this goodness.

I’m pretty sure this is close to what the early Universalists had in mind when they reclaimed the notion of universal salvation, the belief that everyone – no matter what – is saved. The modern translation is that we are held in love, and we return to love. AND – the reason this is so is because we are forgiveable.

But what if being forgiven by God has no meaning for us? I think this is what Bill had in mind when he came up with this topic. Confession seems like such an easy out; you can even do “virtual confession” on-line nowadays at www.confession-online.com. Baptism might also seem like play-acting and superstitious. But I have to admit when I read Bill’s affirmation of faith, his description of the ritual really struck me: “For Baptists, the formal act of baptism is the closest thing they have to absolution. Baptists believe in Baptism by full immersion the way John the Baptist did it in the Bible. It is a public demonstration of faith. The old life of sin is washed away and a new life of faith emerges.” I looked at Bill and I said, “Wow. What if it really was that simple?”

Again, it makes me wonder that such a ritual doesn’t have to be true for it to be true. That’s the power of ritual – we make a public statement, or perform a ritual in community with others, in order to affirm: this is who I am. This is what I believe is true about myself. If what we believe about ourselves becomes in large part who in fact we are, then again, it is this matter of self regard that we really need to hone in on.

Perhaps religious liberals such as ourselves have a hard time with simple rituals because we don’t want to admit that in fact it is that simple; it doesn’t need to be complicated. Maybe all our high brow talk and intellectualism is preventing us from admitting what is just simple and always true: that we’re all children of God, children of the universe. That in the beginning it was good, and it’s STILL good. That for all our faults, screw-ups, and shortcomings, nothing can change this and we will never lose the capacity to be forgiven.

Like the Baptists, the early Unitarians believed that the grace and mercy of God was available to us without the mediation of a priest or minister, and eventually we felt that it was available to us without the need of a God. We trusted that we ourselves could choose the correct path in life because humanity was endowed with free moral agency. In other words, we can empower ourselves “to do the right thing.” There’s a phrase that sums up the early theology of our forebears pretty well: ‘the Universalists believed God was too good to damn them, and the Unitarians believed they were too good to be damned.’

I think there are three things that need to be in place in order for us to find absolution. The first is what I’ve been talking about already, this business of making sure we are ready to receive it, that we really believe we are worthy of it. I guess this will come easier to some than others.

I think that when each of us reach a certain point of maturity, we can become aware of what the recurring theme is of our life. It’s like an entrenched script written on our souls that we find ourselves reading again and again. It creates the subconscious beliefs we don’t even know we are convinced of. Likely it does go back many generations. Do you know what yours is? Because that seems to be the first step and only way to ensure that we get to write our OWN scripts, and not the scripts that were passed down to us.

We have a choice in life – we can think of ourselves as warriors or as victims. As a warrior we know we have to take action. No one’s going to do it for us. We acknowledge our free will, that we get to choose, and we take advantage of it. So it is this first step of absolution that is up to us, that essentially we do have to do on our own, which can involve the support of others, but in essence begins only with ourselves. We have so much power! I don’t agree with the early Unitarians, that we can be trusted to act out of a self-initiated morality – that doesn’t ring true to me. I think we are too self-indulgent for that. I do, however, think that we constantly underestimate the extent of our own power to dictate the direction our lives take. As soon as we fall into victim mode, we give up this power.

The second thing we have to do toward absolution is make sure we understand what we need to be forgiven for. This is about boundaries. Often we take on guilt and remorse that isn’t really ours. We blame ourselves for the mistakes and shortcomings of someone else. We let our sense of responsibility for ourselves spill over to others where it doesn’t belong. The operative psych. jargon here is co-dependency. Sometimes we think it’s easier to take on the faults of others than to face our own. It does take courage to figure out whose sins are whose. In close relationships, we sometimes think we’re the ones who are doing something wrong, when actually we haven’t done ANYTHING wrong. Sometimes instead of seeking absolution we need to instead identify what could be emotional abuse. Sometimes we need disillusionment more than absolution. It’s interesting that both words share the same Latin root of the verb, lucere, to shine, be light, be clear, to be apparent. In both disillusionment and absolution, we are being led toward the light, toward the safety of awareness.

I think it goes without saying that, when we do really make a mistake, we must have willingness to admit to our wrong-doing, to seek amends. Anyone who seeks absolution has probably gotten that far. The third and final thing that has to be in place is very important, and it’s what saves us from our isolation and reintroduces us to our spiritual selves. As powerful as we can be as individuals, no absolution can take place without the aid of another human being. Our self-sufficiency has its limits. It doesn’t need to be a priest or a minister, but it can be. Whether it’s to make amends to another person, or to admit to another human being the nature of our wrongs, this exchange between yourself and another has to take place.

It’s an incredibly important part of the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, because it’s believed that if you don’t find the peace absolution offers, you will not be able to stay sober for any considerable length of time. Alcoholics can’t afford to have things like guilt, remorse, anger, and resentment troubling us because it will lead back to drinking. That’s why we learn to be more forgiving and let things go more easily, and make more amends than is probably necessary. “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Like Bill, that’s also my favorite part of the Lord’s prayer. It’s simple and uncomplicated. It’s a good way to live. And it’s not about the “Lord.” It’s just about being able to let go.

We can’t repair the relationship to our spiritual self alone – we need the help of others to do it. It’s give and take. It is just as important to forgive as it is to be forgiven.

So this is where we find absolution – when we reunite with the spiritual part of our world that makes us whole. This healing of relationship can only be done in community because the spiritual self does not exist in isolation – it is the part of us that connects to all of humanity – and it is “good.” It’s remembering this that reminds me that I am good – good enough, as I am.

I come from love, I am held in love, and I return to love. That’s the script I’m learning to follow. My soul re-writes and re-reads it all the time so I don’t forget.

What re-writing do you need to do? Re-writing our scripts in life is how we let go, it’s how we forgive. It’s learning to love. We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.

So let us go seeking peace, and offering love.

Amen.