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To Love Alike

© Aaron White

 August 17, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I went to my culture asking in search for the meaning of love, and this is what I found: The film, Love Story, told me that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” St. Paul told me that love is “patient” and “kind.” He said that “I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains – but if I have not love, I am nothing.” [1]

The other St. Paul, along with St. John, told me that “All you need is love.”

I found in one database 3,419 songs with “love” in the title, and only 124 with “work” in the title. [2]

I was told by others that love looked like diamonds or chocolate. Still, others told me that love looked like sex, or marriage, or friendship. Some say God is love. And yet, if I am to believe what I find in my newspaper’s comic strip section, Love Is apparently what happens between two strange looking naked people. I went to my culture asking in search for the meaning of love, and these are what I got: mixed messages!

It is not unusual for me to find in life that what causes religious reflection for me often comes from very unexpected sources. And this time, the main catalyst came from the television comedy, Scrubs. In one scene, the main character, J.D., is daydreaming about a visit to a friend’s church. I don’t remember too much about the scene, except that in ending the worship service, the very charismatic minister turns to the gathered congregation and says, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In our modern expression of Unitarian Universalism, I often hear us talk about some things as if they were inevitable – unavoidable. We talk about the inevitability of truth or sometimes the fact of an ever growing complexity and diversity in life. We speak of inevitable knowledge and understanding that comes with experience. But what I don’t often hear described as unavoidable, what I don’t often hear is talk of this type of irresistible love, one that would say, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

However, running through the core of our tradition, deep within the DNA of our religious heritage, is the understanding that a profound, mature love has the power to break so many barriers. In 1568, the first (and only) Unitarian king in history, John Sigismund of Transylvania, enacted the first recorded law of religious toleration in a nation’s history. While this law included all varieties of the Christian religion only, it was a radical move at the time. He was counseled by his Unitarian court minister, Francis David, who is famously quoted as saying, “We need not think alike to love alike.” But what is it that we love?

Religious thinkers and practitioners, philosophers and scientists alike have been aware for many years that our identities are shaped to a great degree by what it is we hold dear, that we are transformed by what we love. The term “worship” derives its meaning from an older word meaning to give worth, to assign “worth-ship” to something. And at least this form of devotion, this love assigned to people, things, and ideas, seems inevitable in this life.

Our own Ralph Waldo Emerson famously noted, “A person will worship something – have no doubt about that. We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts – but it will out. That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.” [3]

The liberal Christian theologian Paul Tillich also noted for him how powerful and, sometimes how dangerous, this type of love can be. For Tillich, “idolatry” simply meant assigning our ultimate love, our “worth-ship,” to things that did not deserve it. In his assertion, everyone, even atheists, make gods out of things that do not deserve the title or the concern.

Our misplaced love can make gods out of money or power, can have us chasing after status or esteem; our highest loyalty and love can easily be paid to the shabby deities of a flag or tribe. Like Emerson and so many before him, he knew that as humans, we will worship something, but that our ultimate love should be directed toward the most ultimate things possible. What/whom is it that we love?

I know that in my own life, it is so easy to misdirect my love – to give ultimate attention to things that don’t ultimately deserve it. I know that I love my wife, my friends, and my family. I love my church, and I devote my love to the emergent, creative process in the universe that I call “God.”

But I am willing to bet that I am not the only person in this room today who has found that it is so tempting to fall in love with other things, too. Maybe it’s my ego – sometimes I fall in love with the idea of being right. I’ve found that it’s tempting to fall in love with possessions, a specific cause, to fall in love with one way of doing things, or even just being liked.

On the other side, it seems like it is also easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that we can tell WHO deserves love in this world and who doesn’t. I know that for me, personally, it is so simple for me to talk about a world in which all people deserve love, but it is a lot harder to live in that world.

I can get revved up on a Sunday morning, convinced that all creation is one big family, and then hours later turn on my television and thing some very unlovely thoughts about people who vote differently, think differently or spend their resources differently. It’s hard to live in that world where we don’t have to think alike “to love alike.”

Sometimes, things get tuned around such that we begin to wonder if we ourselves aren’t less deserving of love than others. I wonder if anyone else here has ever felt like they screwed up so bad that there was little chance of being liked, let alone deserving love? I know deep down that I’m never disconnected from the world, never cut off from what is sacred or an opportunity to grow in wholeness, but sometimes it’s very easy to feel as if I am disconnected.

This is certainly not a new issue in religion. We know that at least one branch of our Unitarian Universalist heritage was forged out of this question of who deserves real love, who deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the world, of the sacred, of God. Although there were certainly believers of Universalism before him, the minister John Murray is often credited as the “Father of American Universalism,” because he founded the first explicitly Universalist congregation in our country.

Murray and our other early Universalist Christian ancestors spread what they called the “doctrine of universal salvation,” the notion that no loving deity could possibly condemn one of its creations to eternal punishment. As you might imagine, in a time of much fire and brimstone preaching, this wasn’t always the easiest position to hold.

After one sermon in which Murray drew a lot of applause, one local orthodox minister, the Rev. Bacon, and some of his supporters left the worship space, “came back with some eggs, and started pelting Murray with them.”[4] For all of you who are fans of corny jokes and puns, you’ll be happy to know that the very witty Murray immediately responded that day, “These are moving arguments, but I must own that I have never been so fully treated to Bacon and eggs before in all my life.” [5]

In our historical heritage, there is a long-standing tradition of people who affirmed that while we are surely defined by what we love, we are equally defined and transformed by what loves us! It seems like a somewhat strange idea for us today. It was this notion of an irresistible love that brought into being one of the most influential figures in our movement that you’ve probably never heard of, or at least don’t hear much about lately.

In 1794, at the age of 22, Hosea Ballou was ordained at the Universalist General Convention without even knowing he was going to be ordained. This young Universalist minister, although he didn’t preach on this often, became Unitarian in his theology, and thus was one of the first true Unitarian-Universalists in our tradition. At the age of 33, Ballou wrote a text that is one of the most influential in his history of our movement. It is called A Treatise on Atonement.

I’m going to do this work a great disservice and boil it down to just a few sentences. Basically, Ballou’s asserted that if our failings are finite, as we are, it makes no sense religiously for an infinite God to bring the infinite power of the universe down to punish one individual, finite being for doing what finite beings do.

He then turned the entire thing around and said that in this divine relationship, it is humans who are the dissatisfied party, not God. For Hosea Ballou, it wasn’t God who needed to be reconciled with human beings, but the other way around. Has anybody else ever felt this way, that it’s not life that has a problem with us, but we who have the problem with life?

Like many before, he asserted that in matters of doctrine, etc, a generously placed love was the safest bet: “Be cautious in any system of divinity,” he warned. “The moment we fancy ourselves infallible, everyone must come to our peculiarities or we cast them away.If we agree in.love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.”[6]

Ballou said some things in 1805 that are radical in many settings today, including our own, I think. He said, let’s get over quibbling with each other about the literal meaning of religious or philosophical terms. Our religious lives aren’t only about having someone’s anger resolved; they are about growing together in love. Salvation isn’t about getting saved from some eternal punishment, but with falling in love with life, real life.

It makes sense that in the religious tradition of his past, when the teacher Jesus was asked to sum up the most important Jewish laws, he said here were only two things: to love your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. [7]

I wonder if that much has really changed for us. If we are going to commit our deepest love, our devotion and “worth-ship” to something, if we are going to make a god out of something, it had better be something worthy of our attention, and when we do, let us serve that life and all our human and non-human neighbors with every inch of our being.

What is it that you will choose to love? What would it look life for you to be reconciled to life, to your god, or to the world? With so many troubles coming in our direction from life, it’s pretty hard sometimes to imagine that we are the dissatisfied party in the relationship.

We can assert, like so many before us, that there is no group of people damned to hell because of their religious beliefs, yet, in a way, we are “saved” every day. As we read together this morning, we are warmed each day by a sun we did not create, we are fed by food we could plant, but not grow, and we are held in a community of friends and loved ones we did not earn and could never buy. [8]

Whether you are joining us for the first time or one time of many, know that you belong here. We can be a people stuck in our heads, curious for new knowledge, constantly working out the details of an argument or idea, ever in search of new truth. But just as deep within our religious family is the desire to live in a reality where our night language poetic minds could imagine God, or the universe, or reality saying, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” We can affirm that all people take part in what is sacred – we need all people to make meaning, and all, without exception, are worthy of love.

How is it that you would respond to such a world? What will you spend your life loving? How is it that you will fall in love with life? This kind of love is not easy; it’s certainly not the kind that can be summed up on one song, or one item, one newspaper page or one verse. It is being reconciled with life.

Those who have loved a parent, a sibling, a child, partner, or friend know that love never means perfection – it has tremendous waves and can be very hard. I think the same will be true of our response to life. So many people in the world, and so many in our community here today, are having a hard time believing that life could be on their side. Let us show one another with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, that while so hard to understand, it can be a life worth loving.

My spiritual friends, hundreds of years ago, John Murray issued this call: “Go out into the highways and byways of America, your new country. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling [religion], something of your new vision. You may posses only a small light but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men [and women]. Give them, not hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.” [9]

It was obviously a successful call and a compelling message, as at one time in the 1800s, Universalist churches alone had over 600,000 members – around 4 times what our UU churches have today. It was the 5th largest denomination in the country. In fact, they did such a good job that they almost put themselves out of business! As more and more religious groups affirmed that eternal punishment did not await outsiders, Universalism lost some of its bite.

It seems as is part of our own time is similar to that of Murray. So many people are blanketed in ideas of religion that no longer work, that are crumbling in the face of a new world, and many of them have no idea there is an alternative. Let us not hide it from them. Let us, too give our society something of our new vision, a world in which all beings participate in the sacred, a world in which we value a sincere love over correct doctrine, a world in which we know that when we agree in love, no disagreement can do us lasting harm. In fact, let’s do it so well that we put ourselves out of a job – where this vision of inclusion and tolerance seems commonplace.

So much of who we are is shaped by what we love, and how we respond to a world that gives us life. Who here is ready, in the face of so many imperfections and hardships, to get right again with life? What is it that you will choose to love? May we find together those things that are truly worthy of our devotion and love them with all we have.

What better time than now?

Amen.

——————-

[1] 1 Corinthians 13:2

[2] http://www.hopstudios.com/nep/unvarnished/five/1730/

[3] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quoted in Singing the Living Tradition, reading #563.

[4] Charles A. Howe, The Larger Faith (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993), 5.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 28.

[7] Mark 12:29-31

[8] Singing the Living Tradition, reading #515

[9] The Larger Faith, 9.

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Aaron White

 August 10, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

A few years ago I heard the story of a woman named Rue. Rue had recently decided to purchase a home in what was becoming the very expensive location of Sag Harbor, New York. When she thought her luck was exhausted, she found what could be described as the deal of a lifetime. But there was a catch. The home Rue was looking to purchase was listed under two different prices. The more expensive price for the home included as she expected “a house, a shed, and a little garden.” The less expensive price for the home ($110,000 less expensive) included “a house, a shed, a little garden, and Ned.”[1]

Ned was the former owner of the home, an older man who was growing quite ill. In exchange for the drastic reduction in price, Ned could live in his larger downstairs portion of the home for his remaining days, while Rue would inhabit the two rooms upstairs. Jokingly, Rue refers to him as the “man who came with the house.”[2]

When Rue first bought the house, it seemed no problem to her. She didn’t take up too much space, was single, and Ned would surely not be around for too long. Within the year, though, she had “[acquired] a puppy, a husband, and a baby.”[3] And Ned was still very present. Now she feels somewhat bad about even talking about the situation, as everyone involved knows, a significant part of her is waiting for Ned to die. “I never expected to live that long,” said Ned. “I’m aware that the other side can’t be thrilled that I’m still here.”[4]

I can’t help but think that a lot of us share an experience similar to that of Rue. Here is a woman, cramped in her own home, feeling as if something drastic needs to change before she can start really living. How many of us here have felt, or are feeling, the same way? So many of us spend our time waiting for something to be different – for something to be over – waiting for something to leave us before we really start to live.

I figure I’ll just throw out a few of the things I know I have thought or said in my life and see if they resonate with anybody else here: “Just after this project is over, then I’ll start really spending time with my partner again – I’ll be in better touch with my family when this crazy month winds down – I’ll have time to be a good person again when this to-do list is a little smaller – I’m just too busy to have a spiritual practice.” And yet I am somehow consistently surprised that the to-do list is never empty, there’s another project after the one I finish, and my spiritual practice doesn’t practice itself. Anyone else? I once heard a Christian monk say that he prayed every day for one hour, and if he was going to have an especially busy day, we would pray for two hours. I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely not there yet!

The rhetoric we hear so often about our modern lives is that we are fast-paced, over-booked and constantly busy. But busy doing what?

I refer to a line by the Quaker author, Parker Palmer, quite often because it resonates with me so much. He says there are “moments when it is clear – if I have eyes to see – that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me.”[5]

There is often so much life that wants to live in me, and instead of living it, I’m waiting for Ned to die and leave the house before I get started! I can only speak for myself, of course, but so often I feel like some part of who I am needs to be different or be gone before I can start living like I want to live. How often are we waiting for that perfect moment in life or that perfect version of ourselves to be present before we start living like we want to live?

The truth in my experience, though, is that there is no perfect moment in the future to start really living, that no flawless version of me is ever going to show up that can take risks for me – Ned is never going to leave, and if he does, he’ll be replaced by someone or something very similar. If we wait for that “perfect” moment, it will be too late.

Theologically, most of us as UU’s assert that heaven and hell are not places but states of mind that we experience here on this earth. We talk about believing in “life before death.” But how many of us miss it? Often, it is not the external busyness of life that has me waiting to live, but the busyness of my mind. It is so easy to get caught up in remembering times in the past when I took a risk and failed, or work out the most detailed scenarios of all the things that go could go wrong in the future.

The Buddhists refer to this aspect of our being as our “monkey mind,” and scientists would identify the part of our brain that does this as our neo-mammalian brain. We can be very thankful that our ancestors millions of years ago developed it – it is exactly what helped them to make sense out of patterns and make choices between options. But that doesn’t means it is always easy to live with it now.

We even do this as a religious community. I’ve heard it said that we can’t make the difference of a “real” religious community until we’re bigger than we are, or that we need to all agree on some more things before we get started making communities of justice. I hear all the time that people want their church to grow, but not to look different than it is right now. We can easily spend much of our time as a people worrying about what a newer future would look like with us as a vital voice in our society, but if we wait for that to happen on its own, we will have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

We spend so much of our lives waiting to live, so much of our lives worrying about the past or the future. But as we know, we have such a brief time to live the life that wants to live in us.

It doesn’t take much to remind us of our finitude, our mortality: a close call in an accident, a scary diagnosis, the loss of a friend or family member. But in the midst of this reality, it is sometimes hard to really believe that one day we will not exist!

One of my favorites musical groups, Spiritualized, summed this notion up in a song, from which I got the title of today’s sermon. Here are a few lines from the song:

“Though my body gets tired, my mind does it no favors at all

And there’s so little time, to do something, something, anything more

And there’s no use in crying about the damage that you’ve done inside

And there’s so little time, to do something, something, anything more

…Don’t cry, baby, cry – as long as you and I

Do more than just survive, don’t cry, [we’ll] have a real good life

…There’s so little time, so do something, something, anything more.”[6]

It brings me some comfort to know that we’re certainly not the first people in history to live with this tension. We may feel busier than ever – our bookstores are filled with texts helping people to live in the present moment, dealing with worry and anxiety, but this has been the human condition for a long, long time.

Spiritual teachers have been addressing this concern for millennia. In the language of the early Christian writings, Jesus reminded those around him that the Kingdom of God was present here and now, not somewhere else! Just as now, this teacher knew that much of our human life is consumed waiting and worrying about our problems around food, safety, money, status, etc. It is almost as if the authors of this text could have been writing today. In the book of Matthew, the text has Jesus saying, “Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing…Can all your worries add one day to your life?”[7] He charged those around him to live their lives now. Verse 34 of the same book reads, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”[8]

An author of one of the Psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures says something I feel all the time, just in a little different language. He writes in Psalm 35, “Oh Lord, you know all about this, Do not stay silent. Do not abandon me now…Rise to my defense…take up my case…Then I will proclaim your justice, and I will praise you all day long.”[9]

And yet here we are again: I’ll be happy and grateful for life, just after these good things happen to me. I know I feel this urge to live a life of peace and justice within me – I just need to get all my affairs in order first. There’s so much that could go wrong! I just need enough money to be secure first, have the right job first. Once that happens, I’ll definitely start living the life that wants to live in me.

This issue has not gone unnoticed in our own historical tradition of Unitarian Universalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay titled, Prudence, noted this same problem in his own time. “Life wastes itself while preparing to live,” he says, “…How much of human life is lost in waiting?”[10]

In a letter to a friend, Henry David Thoreau also noticed that people seemed too busy to live. He writes, “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”[11]

My friends, what is it that you are busy about, and what is it that you are waiting for? What great dream of yours, what type of life and love have you wanted to live that you’re waiting on? There is so little time to do something, anything more.

For me, this challenge is not an expression of only one side of liberal religion, that side which continually calls for freedom of conscience and personal expression. This is a vital part, but only one part. It is not the whole story. A true understanding of our finitude calls me to serve life and others as only I can while I am here. I owe it to the life that I affect to live more nobly and lovingly in the time that I have. There is no one exactly like you, never has been, and never will be again.

Here’s one way of putting the length of our time on earth in perspective. If the entire history of the Universe was compressed into 100 years, every day would equal 400,000 years, and each minute would be 250 years long.

In this cosmic timeline, all hydrogen in the universe is created on day two. Our solar system comes into existence in year 67. On this timescale, the dinosaurs died out in May of year 99, and we Homo Sapiens appear on December 31st of the 99th year. Rev. Michael Dowd had this to say about the timeline, “If we show up on the last day of a 100 year process, maybe it’s possible that the whole thing wasn’t meant for us.”[12]

We are so big and yet so small at the same time. Some of this information is very humbling for me. I think, “You mean to tell me my ego is not the most important thing in the universe? But I spend so much time defending it!” This perspective also helps me when I think about my screw-ups. In cosmic time, they are pretty small. Some of this information lets me off the hook a bit for the mistake that I thought was the end of the world, and especially for that load of laundry that went undone last week and caused me so much stress. It just puts things in perspective.

This doesn’t mean, though, that each of us does not matter. We know that what we do lives on, that we make a make upon life itself, each of us affects lives. All of us in this room share a common ancestor somewhere way back. I’m able to speak here today because millions of years ago, some individual primate had the gumption to move out of the way of that falling branch, or thought it was better to gather in community to face an opponent. So don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t make a difference! Who knows what life will live because of you?

My point here is this, we have so little time, yet so much is possible. In his book, Canticle to the Cosmos, the physicist, Brian Swimme says, “Four billion years ago the planet Earth was molten rock; now it sings opera!”[13] Friends, in the last 2 minutes of this cosmic time-line I described, we have experienced the coming into being of harnessed electricity, social democracies, the protestant reformation, airplanes, the internet, vaccines, Beethoven, and of course, the IPod. What will the next minute look like because you were alive?

We’re not very big in cosmic time, but we know that in this history of the Universe, shared common interest has driven complexity and cooperation among elements and living things. When there was crisis, it was the cells that joined together, the animals that cooperated, the societies that served one another, who survived to live life. We UU’s affirm that reality is interdependent, that no part of existence exists separate from another – that we can’t easily draw boundaries around one part of reality and call it sacred and that profane. As Emerson noted in The Over-Soul:

“…there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where [a human], the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away…”[14]

We know that what we do makes a difference. If we do share a common home and a common good, then what your life has to offer this process can be given by no one but you. It does not always have to be grand or seemingly ground breaking, just the life that wants to live in you. What are you waiting for?

It is sometimes hard for me to even think in these massive cosmic terms, how my life fits into the history of the universe. It’s a little overwhelming to tell you the truth. So it sometimes helps me to scale it down a bit.

How many more times will your friends smile because you have lived? Who will learn something they did not know because you were there to teach them? What stranger might be convinced that people can be good because of your small acts of kindness? What song, poem, painting, family, garden, church, community, would not exist in the same way without you? And what great piece of life have you yet to express?

What are you busy about, and what is it that you are waiting for? What is keeping you from living, as Christians might say, as if the Kingdom of God really is present here on earth, or as our Buddhist friends might say, what is it that keeps you from living in the only moment that is, this present moment?

Friends, in this life, we have so little time. So much of what we focus on in our anxieties of the past or future – so many of our worries – bind us to imperfections or mistakes that remain so small in perspective. Yet at the same time, we are able to change lives; we are able to affect the course of life itself.

It is up to us to offer what we can while we are here. It will be made up of the common elements of life: One more conversation, one more smile, one more song, one more act or forgiveness, of kindness, one more act of justice.

May we realize that there will be no more perfect moment that now to begin living the life that wants to live in us. May we join together, finding the strength of community and friends to build the life we wish to see on earth. As the song says, “there’s so little time, so do something… anything more.”

What better time than now?

Amen.

——————–

[1] This American Life, “It’s Never Over.” Produced by Alex Blumberg (Chicago: Chicago Public Radio, June 23,2006)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 2.

[6] Jason Pierce, “Anything More.” Spiritualized. From the album Let it Come Down. BMG, 2001. Audio CD

[7] Matthew 6: 25-27

[8] Matthew 6:34

[9] Psalm 35:22-28 (Paraphrased)

[10] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Prudence – http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-1st_Series_07_Prudence.htm

[11] Henry David Thoreau, Personal Letter to Harrison Blake. November 16, 1857. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau

[12] Michael Dowd, Beyond Sustainability: A Hopeful, Inspiring Vision of the Next 250 Years, online video broadcast – http://www.wie.org/unbound/media.asp?id=57 (Accessed August 6, 2008).

[13] Brian Swimme, Canticle to the Cosmos, quoted in Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution (Tulsa: Council Oaks Books, 2007), 121.

[14] Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Over-Soul – http://www.rwe.org/works/Essays-1st_Series_09_The_Over-Soul.htm

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© Aaron White

 August 3, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I believe it was Lilly Tomlin who said that “no matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

I tend to fall on the optimistic side of the spectrum, but this week I, and I know many of you here too, were hit with a very harsh version of reality. This week, individuals in one of our communities had their foundations shaken. Yet again, a location of worship, sought for its safety and comfort was turned into a place of violence. A community in celebration has become a community in mourning.

As many of you might know, on the morning of last Sunday, July 27th, a man walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville with a shotgun hidden in a guitar case. He entered the sanctuary, and during a performance by the congregation’s children of a song from their musical, Annie, he began shooting at those in attendance. At this point, two adults have died as a result of the attack, and a handful of others remain wounded. Some notes in the shooter’s car gave voice to his anger at the liberal community for our views and specifically inclusion of the GLBT community, but overall, this appears to be the action of a very sick man whose frustrations found a focal point in one of our churches.

As human beings, it is natural to want to make meaning out of a situation like this, but when things appear so senseless, communities of faith can very quickly become communities of doubt. As Unitarian Universalists, we’re often quite comfortable bringing our doubt with us to church and our religious lives. We’re usually quite proud of this fact, and rightly so. However, I think that when we talk about bringing our doubt with us, what we mean most of the time is a skeptical stance toward any creed or doctrine, a questioning mind about the details of any scientific, philosophical, or religious truth.

But the events of this week highlight realities that many in our community bring with them every week into our sanctuary – “doubts and questions that run so deep, it challenges our very being.” It has not taken me long in ministry to realize that in any gathering within our walls, someone is asking questions like these: “Will I make it through tonight? “With all that is happening in the world, how can we make any difference?” “How could anyone love me?” “Do I have what it takes to be a good person again?”

Overall there is so much evidence of good in the world, so many things that go right that we hardly even notice. Just the simple act of getting in our car and driving across town involves thousands of acts of social cooperation, and this very superficial example highlights that our lives are filled with this reality. Yet in the face of all this some events can shake us to the core. I’m sure that most everyone here has experienced something like this, I know I have. Some personal failure, some betrayal, an accident, the loss of someone we love that threatens to call into question our assumption about a good life.

One writer on doubt is the author, David Michaels. In his recent book, Doubt is Our Product, Michaels explains how easy it is for one action or thoughtfully placed question to cast doubt on what we believe to be true, even in the midst of much evidence. He explains that in modern history, our society has been unaware for the most part that there is a doubt industry existing right under our noses. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, when the dangers of cigarettes were becoming more of a public issue, tobacco companies started to hire scientists and spokespersons whose entire job was to create doubt in the minds of the public that cigarettes were actually harmful, that what evidence was telling them was true. Michaels took the title of his book from a cigarette company memo. It reads like this:

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” David Michaels’ book is about how this strategy today is being used again today in science, business, and politics. Some of the same people have been hired again to challenge he science of evolution or global climate change. He says that the motivation behind this creation of doubt is explicit and simple. If we are focused on the controversy, if we spend all our time debating the facts, we are involved in very little action. Many people’s best interest rests in our doubt about ourselves and what we know.

We have been fed doubt, not just this week in events that shake us, but our whole lives. So much of our current consumer society thrives off us doubting who we are as individuals. We’re meant to wonder if we’re good looking enough to attract a partner (I’d better buy something to fix that), wonder if we are smart enough to land that job (I’d better buy something to fix that), wonder if we have enough stuff to look to our friends and family as if we really have value (better buy something to fix that). Much of this society feeds us doubt in the hope of making us find our trust in something we can buy, not something that will last. As one of my favorite musical artists says, “Making you think you’re crazy is a billion dollar industry.”

But we know that in real life no product you can buy can bring back a loved one; no thing you can buy can erase an experience of trauma or restore hope to someone for whom life has become a threat. And so, we gather together in a community like this to offer something different, a different “product.” But what we offer in a place like this is certainly no set of easy answers.

In a reading in the back of our gray hymnal, the Rev. Robert Weston is quoted as saying, “Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth – doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false – it is a testing of belief – those that would silence doubt are filled with fear,” he says, “their houses are built on shifting sands…” I do think that Robert Weston is correct. However, I don’t know about you, but it’s easier for me to praise doubt when I have the luxury of ambiguity, when things seem easy or simple, when my friends and family aren’t suffering, when I am not scared.

But what do we do with such doubt when we encounter events like those that happened in Knoxville last weekend? To me, Weston’s reading points out that doubt is NOT meant to be a final product of anything, but a part of the process, a tool. We use doubt, he says, in order to find trust in something else. We UU’s are fairly good at discovering what it is we doubt. But what is it that we here will choose to trust?

The Rev. Forest Church had this to say about our religious foundations: “We Unitarian Universalists have inherited a magnificent theological legacy. In a sweeping answer to creeds that divide the human family, Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from a common source; Universalism, that we share a common destiny.” In other words, we’re all in this together.

My friends, let us not doubt our power and value as a people gathered here. Do not think that because we do not give easy answers here that we do not give something of value. We have given and will continue to give a voice for justice, a home for inclusion, and loving community that does indeed save lives. So many people have been told they do not matter in this world ? that they do not deserve the love of someone’s god, or any love at all. No matter what, we will continue to build a community that strives to offer more and more love to any and all who would seek it.

People often ask me what consolation Unitarian Universalism has to offer those facing sickness, death, or fear if we have no version of God or an afterlife we all agree on. We have seen a part of the answer to this question lived this week.

Annette Marquis, the District Executive for the Thomas Jefferson District of the UUA, where the shooting took place, said that in her experience of seeing our communities come together in the wake of the tragedy that she had “never been so proud of being a Unitarian Universalist.”

She watched our values being lived as congregational and denominational leaders joined in a response effort, partnered with the outpouring of help from other faiths, and ministered to the pain and fear that was so present in the children and adults affected that day.

She was proud, as am I, that our hopeful faith does not retreat when the hardest of times are present. During the candlelight vigil held in Knoxville on Monday evening, UUA President, Bill Sinkford, said this, “None of us can allow our pain and anger to keep us from living our faith, from welcoming all people, from standing on the side of love. We will not let that happen. We will continue our commitment to welcoming all”

We have been taught so many times what to doubt. What is it that we will trust? Once again, I think that life has shown itself worthy of our faith, worthy of our trust in community and in love. In the response to one man’s act of violence, we saw so many stand up in courage. Even in the midst of so much violence and confusion, the members of the Tennessee Valley Church lived their values.

One of the individuals who died in the attack was said to have placed himself in front of the shooter’s weapon, shielding others, and sacrificing his life for theirs. When it would have been so easy, so understandable, to respond in violence to the attacker, members of that congregation restrained him until the police arrived.

There is no question that for this brave group of people, our liberal religious values withstood a tremendous test. In response to one act of violence, thousands have gathered in solidarity, millions expressed their compassion and good will. We can trust our human connection in this world.

There are many events of human suffering in the world, but this week, members of our religious community especially took pause because in a way, this hit so close to home. Some members of our congregation have friends and family who were present for the attack. Their sanctuary, their gathering in community, and their worship feel so familiar to our own.

Yet this single event serves also as a reminder of our place deep within the human condition and never outside of it – a place where, yes, violence and fear exist in a very real way, yet they do so alongside community and hope. This is not simply bright-eyed liberal idealism, but a fact, a reality we have seen this week and in so many other places.

We are reminded that it is our human experience that is familiar, that with fresh perspective we might see our minor disagreements and labels for exactly what they are, minor. While we would certainly never wish for THIS type of opportunity for reflection, it calls us to see that the work of our lives and the work of our religious communities serve something far larger than ourselves. We can trust that this is true.

We know that there is more to life than the labels we wear, and that one act of violence is not the end of hope. We know that, as a colleague once said in a sermon, “life wants to live,” that creation was not something that happened once long ago being corrupted further and further, but rather that the great story of the universe, the evolving, emergent creative force that has brought us into being continues to create right now – “in the cells of our bodies, in our families, our communities, in our response to life and death.”

We may trust that all humanity and indeed all life is as interconnected as we say it is, literally tying us all to the same ancestors, the same family. As we said in our last hymn, “what touches one affects us all.”

We know that violence will continue, that bad things will happen again to liberals and conservatives, to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs, to people of every color and creed. Yet we also know that communities of every sort will continue to join together and form lives of meaning and care.

Some have this week been left in doubt about when and where we can be safe in practicing our religion. Even a place called a ‘sanctuary? became a home for violence. The events in Knoxville certainly affected many outside of that congregation, but this was one incident, and we can trust that we are as safe today as we were last week, as we have ever been. We are as secure as anyone can be who professes to live a life of radical love and inclusion. And what we read in the paper or see on TV is certainly not always helpful in making me feel safe. Trust in life does not sell papers or increase ratings. Hope will not keep us in front of our TV’s watching coverage; hope would have us living our lives and the values we proclaim.

Nothing is ever certain, and there are things in life far beyond our control. But, a Unitarian Universalists, we know that how we respond is up to us. As First Church’s own Mary MacGregor put it this week in an interview, “How can we close the doors of our churches? We can’t do that. We have to have our doors open.”

My friends, we do have to have our doors open, not only our physical doors, but those which leave us open to continual love and trust in this world.

I am suggesting something a bit unusual in a UU church – I’m suggesting that we give up some of our doubts. I’m asking you to give up doubting that your life is sacred just as it is, to give up doubting that communities such as this can change lives in radical ways, and to give up doubting that in the midst of confusion and pain, life is still precious and good.

Let us have our doubt, as Robert Weston said, so that we may trust in something else, too. Let us have doubt, so that we may have faith. This is not a faith like many associate with that word; this is not a blind faith which would ask you to believe something without evidence. The type of faith we have to offer is that of the theologian, Paul Tillich, who asserted that faith is a verb, the “act of being ultimately concerned.”

In this faith, we join together in devoting our worship and our lives to that which is worthy of devotion, and nothing less. Let our faith be in life itself, faith that love exists, that we know it to exist here on earth and can make it real in our very lives.

Let’s continue to bring a cynic’s mind to creeds and doctrines, but friends, please carry no doubt about the potential of human care, the sacred nature of all creation, and that in an evolving universe, there is potential around every step – or as we say in one of our hymns, “there is more love somewhere.”

The children of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church expressed something similar when they gathered on Monday evening during a candlelight service and sang the song they had been practicing this summer. As rain poured outside and congregants held candles high, the children sang, “The sun will come out tomorrow.”

We know that it will.

May we continue to realize that while we welcome doubt into this place with open arms, doubt is not OUR product. Our products, our ends, are faith, hope, and love, with which we will all continue to build our beloved community on earth.

When we reflect on events such as these and so many others in the world, may we be called to recognize the preciousness of our life and others. Let us live and love as if it is our only chance.

What better time than now?

Amen.

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© Aaron White

 July 20, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Although I was laughing, I had to cringe a bit when I first heard it. It was one of the most accurate portrayals of someone stumbling through a definition of Unitarian Universalism that I had ever heard, and I saw it on a 2006 episode of The Colbert Report. After reciting the entire Nicene Creed, the host asks a staff member, Bobby, what religion he is a part of. When Bobby responds, “I’m a Unitarian,” Colbert asks, “So you’re a Christian, too?” Here’s Bobby’s response: “Well, I incorporate Christian values as well as aspects of many other religious traditions in my belief in God, and I don’t mean to imply that I necessarily think God exists or doesn’t exist, or that it even maters to Him, or It, or Whoever, what I do or do not believe. What’s important is that it’s my choice, and that’s what holds the Unitarians together.”

A very confused Stephen Colbert asks Bobby, “So, do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah?” – to which Bobby replies, “Sure.”

To hit this close to home with the satire, one of the writers must have known us well.

Has anyone else out there ever felt like Bobby ? tripping over our words and apologizing, doubling back as we try and explain exactly what it is that we do here? It is not necessarily a simple thing to explain a liberal religions community in a few breaths. It would be a lot easier if our religious tradition had its own version of the Nicene Creed, but that’s just not the religion that we signed up for.

I think that my mixed reaction to these types of portrayals of UU’s comes up because it hits on my personal feelings about what it is that we do in this community and how we present ourselves to the world. Most of the time, when friends or family ask what it is we are about, I give them a brief explanation, and then lately I have gotten in the habit of saying, “But the best way to really know more is to come and experience us for yourself; here’s where we’re located.”

After some time and experience, most of the people close to me get it.But not always, and there’s one response that really gets me. Often, a stranger who sees me wearing a UU t-shirt or the person sitting next to me on an airplane will ask me what I do for a living. When I explain to them our vision of universal inclusion of humanity and freedom of conscience in religion, of deed not creeds, I sometimes get the response, “Well, Unitarian Universalism sounds like a pretty easy religion.” I don’t know about any of you, but in my experience of trying to live fully in this dynamic community and tradition, that couldn’t be further from the truth. At its best, Unitarian Universalism is no easy religion.

When I try to live out the values that we hold up as a community in my daily life, it is far from easy. It is not a simple task to assert that no one religious tradition can hold all of the truth, even my own. It is not simple to be humbled in the face of such grand questions of meaning, community, and the sacred. It is not simple to cast aside superstition, and yet stand in awe of the beauty and mystery of the universe, attempting to speak truth while allowing for poetry and metaphor to make its way into our spiritual lives. To imagine that each part of creation, that every individual on this earth (no matter how much I disagree with them), participates in the sacred and deserves love ?this is one of the hardest religious tasks I can ever be asked to do.

At their best, our religious lives are certainly not easy. But they can be sometimes. It would be easy for me to call myself a tolerant and open minded man ? to ride around with a “Coexist” bumper sticker on my car and continue to become enraged at other drivers or look down on others whose vehicle expressions don’t match my “open minded” views.

It is easy for me to think I know all I need to know about someone because of the way they voted in the last election, to assume the worst motives of someone who believes differently and then become enraged when my views are misrepresented.

It would be easy for us as a religious community to call ourselves a “welcoming congregation” and then ignore guests who join us for coffee after the service ? and this happens all the time. How many times in church have I finished singing a hymn like “We’re Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table” or “Enter Rejoice and Come In” and then noticed that I had not met the person sitting right next to me in the pews?

It is easy to talk about how many religious beliefs are welcomed in a community like ours and then never really share them with the people who join us here. And it would be easy to imagine that the reason we join together in a religious community is to only learn new facts or be surrounded by like minded people, and not to be transformed in love.

This kind of spiritual life, this kind of community like we find in a Unitarian Universalist church can certainly be easy. But at its best, when we are truly responsible for the vitality of our spiritual lives and making real the things we say we believe, it will be one of the most difficult journeys we’ve ever begun. But I think it will be worth it.

One hundred and eight years ago, the Universalist minister, Rev. Frederic Williams Perkins, wrote an essay titled, “Why I am a Universalist.” In one section of this work, Perkins explains that for him, the core of his Universalist Christianity of the time rested, not in the correct facts, but in living in the reality of love – that easy religion thinks it is done when it finally gets things right, but a challenging faith calls us deeper than that. Here’s part of what he said:

“The heretic, to the Universalist, is not the man who denies the accuracy of a method of creation portrayed in the book of Genesis; he is the one who distrusts the deathless love of God . . . . It is the depth and earnestness of the religion, and not the correctness of the scholarship, that is of primary concern.”

It is not easy to go deep in our religious lives. It is temping for me to think that if I simply learn enough, I will be at peace or become a better person; that if I just start getting all the facts straight, I’m well on my way. We Unitarian Universalists are pretty good at getting the facts ?we tend to be very curious people, people who yearn after new knowledge. But it seems like the temptation for us, our easy route in religion is to believe that the whole reason we are here is to get those facts.

A teacher of mine once challenged me to ask three questions in all of my spiritual life: “What, So What, and Now What?” We UU’s have the “what” part of the equation down. Also, it is getting much easier to gain information in our world. With every portable electronic device imaginable, we can carry libraries in our pocket. We can “Google” almost anything. It is going to be hard to take that new information we gain and ask, “So what?”

How will my life be transformed by this knowledge? How might this help me to fashion a life of justice or grow to better love and trust this world? An easy move in our religious life is to believe that our community, which calls us to self expression, values that above understanding and compassion.

I can believe that my highest virtue was sitting strong in the face of someone’s anger, or really proving myself to friends or family that disagree with me (and these can be great things). However, the challenge for me, in the face of that same anger or disagreement, is going to be asking, “How is that they are hurting?” A responsible religious life calls me to see the fear in defensiveness and the pain behind ego. It calls us to bringing what the Zen Buddhist, Suzuki Roshi called a “beginner’s mind” to our relationships and to the world. In terms used commonly in the Unitarian Universalist world, a search or truth and meaning that is both “free” and “responsible” is going to take some radical new forms of understanding.

I think that one of the most profound and yet simple examples of this type of depth in religion came from a man named Krister Stendhal, a recently deceased Swedish theologian who formerly served as the dean of the seminary I attended. In 1985, as a response to much opposition to the building of a Mormon temple in Stockholm, Stendhal developed a brief set of guidelines to use in responsible ecumenical and interfaith work. Now, since almost everything we do in a UU church is in a small way “interfaith,” it seems like these might be valuable for us in many ways. He called them, “Three Rules of Religious Understanding.”

They are phrased in very simple language and some appear to be self evident, but I think they leave no room for the easy road in religion. Here they are:

1) “When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion, and not its enemies.”

Our society has lately become one that is more and more comfortable with black and white, right and wrong, with little shade of grey. How much confusion, misinformation, and fear might have been avoided in the last seven years if the majority of our citizens learned about Islam, for example, from Muslims, instead of cable news or emails form a friend? I am afraid that we religious liberals have not been immune from this infection of polarity and simplicity either. I wonder how much of our understanding of traditional Christianity, for example (especially the evangelical sort), has come to us from its enemies and critics, and not its followers.

2) Stendhal’s second “rule of religious understanding” is this: “Don’t compare your best to their worst.”

I think this is probably the rule that I have the most trouble following. I think that we have a lot of “best” here. In fact, if I didn’t think that this was the best religious tradition I could be a part of, I would be somewhere else this Sunday morning. I am so proud of the history of our tradition – that the Universalists were the first denominational body to ordain a woman in this country, that we have led the pack in our support and inclusion of the GLBT community in our religious life, that we have made great efforts toward anti-racism and social justice, and so many other things.

However, how many of us (myself definitely included here) start off our definitions of who we are by saying what we are not? How often do we introduce this place by saying, “As opposed to religion X where they tell you that you can’t to this or that, we say”… Many of us are fresh out of another religious home, or trying out a spiritual community for the first time in a long time, and it’s completely understandable to define ourselves somewhat by some distance from this past. But as we grow together in our religious journeys, it will be easy to continually say, “I know who I am, because I am not one of “them.” When we begin taking responsibility for our religious development, it will be challenging to say, “I know who I am, because this I know, this I believe, this I have experienced – we know who we are because we believe in life and the radically transformative power of love, inclusion, and justice.”

3) Stendhal’s third rule of religious understanding goes like this: “Leave room for “holy envy.”

By this, he means to find some part of another’s tradition that you admire and wish was incorporated into your own. For me, the easy path often looks a lot more like holy pride than holy envy. During my least admirable moments, I can get so caught up in the excitement of being in a community of like minded people, of finding a place where I can be authentic and religious, that I sometimes catch myself thinking that we might somehow be more evolved, more human, than others. Anybody else?

I catch myself thinking that I’d just assume never have to talk to one of “them” again because, as we know, they don’t talk to anyone who disagrees with them. This is when I begin to use my holy pride to build up walls, and it is very easy to feel safe inside them. I have to say that I think Krister Stendhal’s rules could be pretty helpful in understanding ourselves as well. Ask the adherents, not the enemies, don’t compare your best to their worst, and leave room for holy envy. I wonder what it might look like during a period of overwhelming self-doubt or criticism to turn those rules around and say, “When you are trying to understand yourself, ask your supporters and not your enemies – count the “yes” votes in your life, not the mistakes. Don’t always compare the best of others to the worst in yourself, and do leave some room for holy envy, but don’t think that what you stared off with isn’t sacred already.

The responsibility that comes with a free religious life is certainly no simple thing, and it is definitely not easy. Nowhere in our literature or our history do we find a promise of an easy answer or a simple journey together.

I find it very interesting that in the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Israelites wait exactly one verse after celebrating their release from the Egyptians before complaining about their newfound freedom. In Exodus 14 and 15, Moses has just led this small group of escaped slaves out of their camp, miraculously through a parted sea that swallowed their foes, to celebrate with song and dance at their new location. At their camp the people sing a celebration hymn that reads, “With your unfailing love you lead the people you have redeemed. In your might you guide them to their sacred home.”

They begin their journey in the first verse of chapter 16, and the second verse reads, “There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron. “If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into the wilderness to starve us all to death.”

This freedom and responsibility in religion and in culture is hard. How much of our society has felt like it might be easier back in Egypt lately, where there are many more constraints, but more security also? In our community here, too, how many of us have longed sometime for a simpler faith where at least we all agreed on what it is our church believes? But we know that it wasn’t better in Egypt, and we have chosen together a free religious life. The word “heretic” merely means one who chooses. We have chosen to walk together in a place (like the invocation often says) where questions are more profound than answers, where we have cast off the security of the simple fix in religion, to seek new truth every day, and to affirm that we “need not think alike to love alike.”

My friends, what this community, what this history and this free religious vision has to offer us will not be easy. I know that for any visitors here today, I am not offering you a simple sell on our religion. But I can tell you, it is worth it. This free and responsible spiritual life calls us to be transformed by participating in it, and to therefore transform the lives of others. It calls us, not to simply throw away the old stories of our religious past, to define ourselves by what we are not, but to reuse and recycle that past, to retell those stories in a way that makes meaning for us now. It calls us to use our freedom, not to build walls, but to go deep and dig wells from which we can all draw – to see the best in others and ourselves.

In this tradition, no minister, no denominational figure, no staff person or district official bears the responsibility of coming up with answers, with a statement of faith. It is not that one person is responsible for the future of a free religious life, every person is, and each of us has enough of what is sacred inside us to play a significant role.

I’ll conclude today with the words of the UU minister, Rev. Rebecca Parker. They might be familiar to some of you:

“Your gifts, whatever you discover them to be, can be used to bless or curse the world. The mind’s power, the strength of hands, the reaches of the heart, the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting,”

My friends, in a free religious community, it is the responsibility of each of us to offer such a blessing. It is not easy, but it is ours to make real.

What better time than now?

Amen

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© Aaron White

 July 13, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

A few months ago I received an email forward. You know, one of those forwards that has a new piece of information that will shock me, something I am supposed to send to all of my friends and family before it is too late. No, this email was not the one informing me that one of our presidential candidates is a secret Muslim intent on turning our government over to Iran (although I have received that one), nor was it one of the string of emails warning me of evil men lurking in the parking lots of Wal-Mart, Target, or my local gas station waiting to attack at any moment. Has anyone else been getting these, or is it just me?

No, this particular email forward wanted to shock me by bringing some truth to light about a public figure who was not who he appeared to be – someone who represented our highest aspirations of innocence, education, and family. This email was about Mr. Rogers.

I was told that Fred Rogers had a violent criminal past he hid from us, that he was forced to work on public television for children as part of his parole, that he had served in the past as a sniper in the Navy Seals with many confirmed kills – that the real reason he wore those sweaters was to cover up his many tattoos from his time in battle.

Of course, this email was far from honest, but I got sucked in for a moment. The truth about Mr. Rogers is far less shocking. He had never served in the military but instead was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, and his trademark sweaters were all hand-sewn by his mother.

After spending some time online debunking this email, thinking to myself that my beloved internet had once again stolen another hour of my life, I found something that moved me. In an interview on the television show, Hour Magazine, in the 1980’s, Fred Rogers discussed the philosophy behind his show and his interactions with children. “I’m sure you know this,” he said, “but the best thing you can ever do is just be yourself.” The best thing we can do for children and others, he said, is simply to “give them one more honest adult in their lives.”

Throughout the last few years, this church has been placing ads in the newspaper, one of which reads, “Honest Religion.” After seeing this interview, I got to thinking: “What does honest religion look like on the ground?” What would it look like for a place like this to call us each to give to the world “one more honest adult?”

Our Unitarian Universalist community has a long tradition of its members searching to build an honest religion and an honest spiritual life. We have hundreds of years of experience attempting to build a faith whose members don’t have to take for granted what they hear in church. A faith like ours challenges each and every one of us to ask whether what we hear and experience here honestly fits with what the real world looks like, with what our lives teach us.

This is not a simple religion. In an honest faith like ours, none of us can have our worth determined by what some book, some society, some theologian, or any other person says. Each of us is constantly, every day, called to ask these questions for ourselves: “Who am I, really? What moves me? Am I living the life that wants to live in me?”

In my own experience, when I slow down and take this challenge of honest religion in my life, I experience two things that seem to contradict one another at first. One the one hand, I discover that there are places in my life where I could be doing a lot better, that I could be in much better relationship with my family, friends, with what I call God. On the other hand, though, I find that no person in the world deserves more love by birth, that the world is not divided into “saved” and “damned,” that what is sacred is infused within all people and creation. It is funny ? I find that we are not yet as good as we could be, and yet more precious than we can ever know.

I’m willing to bet that there is at least someone else here today whose has found it’s not simple to live as an authentic person. It is not always easy to be honest, even with ourselves. A struggle in much of our society today is people trying to appear as something different, something they think would give them more value. The lower and middle classes are buying themselves into poverty trying to look like the upper class. So many of us spend our time and money trying to appear thinner, smarter, more educated – or just anything but ourselves. In the film version of the book, Fight Club, one character laments, “Advertizing has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so that we can buy [things] we don’t need…we’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars??

Our culture often has its own suggestions as to what we should strive to be. What is it that honest religion would ask to us to be? Long before modern movies, of course, people were dealing with issues just like ours. In the book of Luke, the teacher Jesus cautioned his disciples not to be deceived, that a person’s life is not measured by the sum of their possessions. The Buddha, too, knew this when he proposed that in a world full of deception, full of distractions about who we are, a world in which we can constantly cling to attachment, one of the most radical things we can do is be aware in this moment, present for life as it really is – living instead of labeling.

I cannot speak for you, but in my life, this honest religion is easier said than done. It is so tempting for me to have others believe that I’m strong enough to deal with any adversity. It is tempting sometimes not to ask for help, to present this version of myself to the world that is smart enough and competent enough to handle anything that comes my way. Anybody else? It is almost too compelling to wear the label of most talented, best looking, most creative, the perfect friend, parent, or partner. I wonder what it would look like to live such an honest life, to let go of those masks, to shake off the weight and the stress of trying to be perfect people that we cannot be – that no one can be.

For me, honest religion means finding out who I am in this world without the negative stories we tell about ourselves as well. How often have I told myself that because I failed once, I could not succeed again? How often can we replay that mistake, that dumb thing we said or did over and over again until we start to believe that’s who we are?

Let this religion call us to give the world one more honest adult. Many of us left traditions that told us human beings, just for being born, were so depraved and sinful that we would deserve hell without someone’s assistance – that real change in the world would not be possible if a supernatural force did not do it for us. Let’s be honest, we can’t wait for that to happen if we want justice in this world.

However, it seems that in liberal religious communities, we’ve also sometimes told a false story about what it means to be human. Many of us, including myself, have sometimes let ourselves believe that human beings were born so inherently good that we will continue every day to progress onward and upward. We get shocked when evil things happen. An honest religion, I think, is going to have to live within the tension that the 20th century brought us – that human beings can be beautiful and frightening, all at the same time.

And a religion such as this is not just a challenge for individuals, but for our communities as well. Honest churches must continually face with courage the core questions of our identity. Who are we? What are we called to do? Whom/What do we serve? We have to ask ourselves, “Are we called to be a sanctuary for the like-minded? Are we called to be the religious wing of the DNC? Is our purpose in this world to be the best kept secret in religion?” I don’t think so.

But in being honest with ourselves, again this means that we are confronted not only with our imperfections, but also with our best selves – our amazing selves. This means also that we must live up to the honor of this religious tradition (and this is a good thing). To be honest with ourselves, we do have something to offer this world. We have something to offer people who come looking for community, who come looking for change. As a community, we DO have history. We didn’t just arise from the vapor somewhere in the 1960’s. Thousands of years and countless individuals brought us to where we are.

I think it is safe to say that, for many here, our past selves would be pretty surprised to see us sitting in this church on Sunday morning. I know mine would be. An honest religion knows that you aren’t a bad person for not going to church, but that those of us who do have come for a reason. We seek to renew our minds, to learn more about life itself, to find community, to call our best selves into the world. Each of us had a lot of choices of where we could have been this morning: sleeping, seeing a movie, reading a good book, catching up with friends. But something brought us here, together. If I am a UU Christian, something has me here this morning instead of the liberal Christian church down the road. If I’m a UU Buddhist, something calls me to a place like this instead of the Zen center or local sangha, etc.

For those that might be newer to our community, you’ll find that there is a tremendous amount of theological diversity in a Unitarian Universalist congregation. However, this strength can sometimes lead us to believe that we’re more different than we are alike. But we can see the unity in this diversity; we can experience the shared values that bring us to a place like this. When we are honest, we know that there is something to sink our teeth into here. But it’s hard to admit that what we do matters, because if we do, we have to live up to it.

Last week, I talked about the well known UU theologian and ethicist James Luther Adams. In the book, On Being Human Religiously, Adams points out what he believes to be the central, necessary assumptions of religious liberalism, and, using an image from the biblical David and Goliath story, he calls them the “Five Smooth Stones of Religious Liberalism.” Here’s what Adams offers:

1) “Revelation is continuous.” Here, an honest faith proclaims that there is always more truth to be found in our religious lives. All the truth of the world cannot possibly be contained in one book, one teacher, one tradition, and so we keep searching.

2) All relations between people should be based on consent, and not coercion. The honest religion cannot make you believe something or join its congregation. It is an invitation into a shared life together. It invites you to bring your mind with you.

3) We have a moral obligation to direct our efforts toward justice in this world. In other words, the honest church knows that we do not only serve ourselves; justice is shaped with human hands.

4) We deny “the immaculate conception of virtue.” Here Adams means that there is no abstract good, we must bring goodness into the world. “The good” is brought about in our history, in our relationships, in good partners, citizens, friends, and leaders.

5) The resources that are available for achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism. There is hope in the ultimate abundance of the Universe. Adams was not naive about the evil in the world. Indeed, he saw it firsthand when we worked with the Underground Church movement in Nazi Germany. However, he asserted, as can we, that the honest religion knows things do not have to be the way they are. We can change the world.

Finally, Adams concludes this essay with an optimism about the core of liberal religion: “Thus, with all the realism and tough-mindedness that can be mustered, the genuine liberal finally can hear and join the Hallelujah Chorus, intellectual integrity, social relevance, amplitude of perspective, and the spirit of true liberation offer no less.”

I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of honest religion I would like to be a part of. We know that religiously liberal does not have to mean religiously timid, but it must mean honest; it must mean humble. When it comes to addressing questions of the sacred, of God, of value and meaning, a common statement coming out of an honest church is going to have to be “We don’t know yet.”

When asked to define the call of a religious life, the prominent Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Forest Church, offered this: “Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”

What does an honest religious life call us to do? If anything at all, to give to the world one more honest adult. We cannot make each other compassionate, we cannot remove human greed or all violence from the earth, but we can be present and real for this world as it is and each other as we are. Honest religion is not always grand. In fact, it seems that it is made up for the most part of the common moments of life. It might mean saying what we mean when we mean it, like “I love you,” or “I’m sorry.” It might mean giving voice to that uncomfortable fact or emotion in the room that everyone feels but is afraid to admit. It might mean living with our imperfections, our vulnerabilities knowing well that we are not the only ones, that we are not alone.

It asks of us each day, “Who is this self I’m presenting to the world? What masks am I wearing to protect me, and what are they keeping me from doing?” It calls us to speak up, not to remain silent and complicit in the midst of bigotry, racism, or injustice when we know that there is more potential for our beloved community to become real. It calls us to speak up when injustice is done in our name, especially when injustice is done in our name. The prophets of the biblical tradition focused on Israel first.

My spiritual friends, let us give to the world one more honest adult. If we “believe” as Rev. Adams said that revelation is not sealed, then let us search for more truth together. If we can believe that honest religion invites and does not coerce, let us begin the conversation now, let us invite others here. If we know that no supernatural force will bring justice in the world, let us prepare for much work. If we can say unashamedly that there is more hope in this world, let us not be quiet about it, let us make it known in our words, our songs, and in our lives.

Let us offer the chance for some real “honest religion,” because this world needs it. May this place and our communal lives together give the world for each of us, one more honest adult. What better time than now?

Amen.

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© Aaron White

 July 6, 2008

 First UU Church of Austin

 4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

 www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I’ll begin somewhat unusually for a Unitarian Universalist service today with a reading from 1 Kings:

“And He said: ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.’ And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”

On July 17th of 2006, I found myself on the 11th floor of Massachusetts General Hospital, sitting on the ground, in the dark, testing out my broken Spanish with a patient for the very first time.

J. was an elderly man, a Spanish speaker, and a victim of a very serious recent stroke. J. could barely speak, and the little I could hear I strained to understand. My religious and medical vocabulary is almost non-existent in Spanish, and I have trouble speaking in anything but the present tense. J and I had communication problems, to say the least. But there was one thing J said to me that I know I understood.

Jesus was in the room.

His head jerked back, yelling as he called out to God, I watched J slowly move his finger in the air as he pointed to the space above his bed. This UU seminarian asked, “Is Jesus here in the room with us?” He gripped my hand and pointed right above our heads. “Yes, there.”

My visit with J was part of a ten week unit of training in ministry called “Clinical Pastoral Education” that I completed a few summers ago at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A frequent issue that arose there for me and my fellow students was one of spiritual authority. I asked and heard this question many times, “What gives me the right to say anything here?”

Now, I shared my story about J with my other student colleagues as part of a “verbatim.” Basically, a verbatim as a weekly assignment, in which you record one of your more memorable patient visits as accurately as you can. You then take this into something like a small group setting, and you read them aloud and reflect on this in your CPE group. In my CPE group, we had one woman from the United Church of Christ, one Reformed Jew, three Catholics, and one UU. It sounds like one of those jokes where everyone walks into a bar together, but it was every day of my life for a summer.

After recounting this visit in my verbatim, one of my colleagues, a devout Catholic seminarian preparing to be a missionary, asked me if I really believed that the man I spoke to saw Jesus in the room. Now, from what he knew of me as a Unitarian Universalist, I think he expected me to say “no.”

But there was something more to my experience here, and so I told my friend “yes.” I could tell he was a little surprised. He then asked me if I saw God in the room that day. This is where my natural “Aaron defines Unitarian Universalism” self began to step in. I was about to explain how that word “God” means many things to UU’s and how what I say can’t represent everyone. But before I could get my usual anxiety-filled routine going where I apologize for my faith, I simply said, “Well – yeah, I mean, we were already talking in translation.?

After our weeks together, I think that my colleagues expected me to do my normal shuffle around such questions. And they were completely right for doing so. For the longest time, I tried to provide informational facts about our church or make statements I thought would represent every UU. In a setting where my job was to make sense out of my religious experiences with others, I had yet to be honest about any of them with my colleagues, or myself for that matter. I had been so worried about my inability to say something entirely true about my experience of the Divine, that I said nothing at all.

Lately, this question of religious expression has been at the front of my mind, and its manifesting itself in one common word: prophesy. When I say “prophesy,” like many UU’s, I don’t mean the ability to foretell what will happen in the future. For me, prophesy means the courage give expression to my experiences of the world, of the Holy, no matter how imperfect my expressions may be. People sometimes call it ‘speaking truth to power.? At its most authentic, prophesy is a radical act.

The late Unitarian Universalist ethicist, James Luther Adams, spoke much about what he called the “prophethood of all believers.” Adams wanted to extend Luther’s call for the priesthood of all to extend to our prophetic witness as well. “The prophethood of all believers.” This is a phrase that has stuck with me since I first heard it, and it is crucial to my understanding of Universalism. All human beings, simply by the fact of being alive, have some access to the ground of our being, from which we can speak.

Now, our age in society makes us well aware of the dangers that can arise in assuming a voice of prophesy. Just turn on the television or read a newspaper and you can see that prophets don’t always do well for the world. What we see of fundamentalism, the post-modern condition, our training in schools, and the liberal nature of our own churches often caution us against assumptions that lead to simple grand statements about the world, and rightly so. Yet I cannot help but think that as people of the spirit, we have a place from which to speak. In our prophetic voice, should our inability to say everything keep us from saying something?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the biblical prophet, Amos. Amos was a people’s prophet. He came not from the stock of politicians, but from farmers, and raised his voice loudly against a government that would not care for the poorest of its people. Not surprisingly, Unitarian Universalists have historically taken a liking to Amos. We sing his words in our Hymn, “We’ll Build a Land,” when we talk about creating a society in which “justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like and ever-flowing stream.” In a decadent society crashing down around him, Amos, the text says, was visited by God in the form of visions which served as the start of his ministries.

I don’t know about you, but I have to say that I am very different from Amos in this regard. I’ve yet to have a vision, and more often than not, my religious inspiration resembles the ‘still small voice? of Elijah that I read about at the beginning of the sermon. Elijah is portrayed on a mountainside amid storms, earthquakes, and fire, none of which contain the word of God. When all is settled, he strains to hear the message in a ‘still, small voice? that passes by. (1 Kings 19:12). I love this image, a still, small voice.

The 20th century musician and Zen Buddhist, John Cage, had his own experience of hearing something amazing when he visited Harvard some years back and stepped into what’s called an anechoic chamber, a room without echoes.

Here is what Cage says about the experience:

“I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.”

I feel something similar with respect to religion. Again, this for me is Universalism. It is the conviction that there is some reality within the world that all human beings have access to, not just a chosen group, a chosen time, not just those who have the grace of god and on and on. Our Universalist ancestors put forth the catalyst for a theology which affirms that all human beings, simply by the fact of being alive, can have connection with that which sustains all the web of life, with a spirit of community and love. Until we die, I believe there will be for every human being the sounds of the Divine, that still, small, astonishingly inescapable whisper of the sacred.

I can, of course, speak only for myself. But it is in these experiences of awe of the world around me, of feeling a force greater than myself surge through my veins, that I find my inspiration to speak to my greatest values. It is not always the source of my beliefs, but it is always the energy from which I speak about them. What happens, though? Why do I fall into the role of politician instead of prophet? Why is it so easy for us to shy away from being honest with our friends, family, and strangers about some of the most important experiences of our existence?

We are worthy to speak. Each and every one of us. Despite what others might have said; despite the constant messages we hear in our culture that we must become something different than who we are before we can give ourselves and our voices to the world, despite the dominant religious voice we hear in the American religious landscape ? in the face of all these things, you, me, and all those who will join us, our voices are worthy of being considered prophetic.

But why don’t we always use them? Often for me, it is fear. Fear of ridicule mostly, or not being understood. But I don’t think I’m the only one. Looking to the Hebrew Scriptures, even Moses was afraid to speak prophetically. He was a stutterer and didn’t think people would listen.

Sometimes I stutter spiritually. Sometimes my best efforts at giving voice to my religious life, even in times where like-minded people surround me, they just fall short. I find that often when I voice the earlier question I mentioned from the hospital – “what right do I have to speak?” – what I mean most of the time is “I’m so afraid that you won’t believe me.” But we remain called to speak.

There is a great story about the 18th century minister John Murray preaching in Boston. At the time, his notion of Universalism was even more radical than it is today, and it was not always well received. During one of his sermons, a rock came flying through a window and landed by his pulpit. Almost as if it were planned, Murray reached down and picked up the rock, saying: “This argument is solid and weighty, but it is neither reasonable nor convincing – not all the stones in Boston, except they stop my breath, shall shut my mouth.”

In our speaking as prophets of liberal religion in this world, there will be stones, my friends, but which ones will shut our mouths? Which ones are shutting our mouths right now? Real prophesy is a radical act. We hear the stories and see the images of those speaking truth to power facing death or violence, and many times meeting it.

The truth of the matter here, I think, is that most of us won’t face physical death for expressing our faith. I’m worried that we as prophets die spiritual deaths, because we did not hear the voice within us, or did not feel worthy to speak it when we did.

Our voice of liberal religion has something to offer this world. At this point, we have not only the right to speak, it is our duty. On this week of July 4th, we take time to celebrate the greatest principles of our nation. And yet the news speaks also this week of increased secret plans for war with Iran, of a despicable widening gap between the richest of our citizens and those who starve daily in this country. In yet another election cycle, I find myself being told to hate my neighbor, to fear the foreigner and the immigrant, to feel God’s love for my country over all others in the world.

Our history, our vision for a world made fair has so much potential. My friends, we have not been marginalized as a community, but we have been on the margins ? we have been too silent.

It is time for a different religious voice to make itself heard in our society, for a different religious voice to be the one featured on the news. It is time for us.

Our messages of tolerance, of peace, our dedication to individual freedom of conscience and equal voice for all in religion. Our religious commitment to the rights and dignity of every human being, of all the world around us – I cannot keep these messages to myself anymore.

There are things to be said. Let us say them. What would it look like if just the people in our congregations ? in just this room – really took their religious voice, their prophesy seriously? I think that it would be life changing. We will not always be right, and each one of us cannot know the truth alone. This is why we join together in community. This is why we have one another.

My friends, my prayer for us is that we may live fully the sometime terrifying task of the religious life, which challenges us to speak clearly and unashamedly our most intimate religious experiences, with the knowledge that we are not alone. We are not alone. May we, as if for the very first time, take seriously the voice within each of us, and the voice that this community of faith has to offer – not only in our places of worship, but with our family and friends, in our whole lives.

Like Elijah atop the mountain, may we strain to hear that still, small voice ? on hospital floors, in classrooms, in nature, in subway cars, and indeed within our very hearts; and may we have the courage to say with all of our breath, I hear you. It is waiting to be heard. What better time than now?

Amen