Oh God – Is It My Turn? – First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin

September 23, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER:

An ancient prayer said, “The heart daily hopes, yet daily fears that for which it daily hopes.”

We hope for miracles, changes of all kinds, wondering how much else would change for which we’re not ready. We’ll quit a bad habit like smoking, drinking or drugs, to find that now we can feel the deeper problems those habits had tried to hide, and it can make the old demons look attractive. We often do fear that for which we hope.

How much of our behavior comes from wanting to be safe – financially, professionally, personally safe? How much of our behavior comes from just wanting to be adequate? How powerful the feeling of inadequacy is! As though we’re broken, not knowing how to be fixed.

Where is the still center that might offer a kind of calm for which we yearn? If it can’t come from outside – from buying, owning, driving or wearing it – how can we find, inside of us, that “peace that passes understanding”?

We are not broken people, and not inadequate. We come here unfinished, but not broken. There are things we would add, would change, to help find a more fulfilling home for our thoughts and feelings.

We seek these things here, now in this place. We seek these things together. We seek these things.

Amen.

SERMON: Oh God, is it my turn?

What I’m doing in the three sermons this month is a kind of Unitarian heresy because I’m revisiting the idea of a trinity. The 19th century Unitarians rightly rejected the notion of a supernatural trinity, where the man Jesus was physically fathered by a sky god, and the Holy Spirit was an actual presence connected with God and Jesus. That is superstition, and not very interesting. But as early as the 3rd and 4th centuries, some of the best Christian thinkers had been defining the trinity as a psychological concept rather than a supernatural one – and that’s both more interesting and more universal. So that’s what I’m looking at this month.

It’s still probably easier to understand this three-part idea by looking at the Buddhist version. They also see religion or life divided into three different but complementary arenas, which they call Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. “Buddha” means a source of insight and wisdom. We need a source of insight into the human condition and wisdom about living well. You can call that God, or Buddha, Allah, Science or Reason – or you can just call it Truth or Goodness or other abstractions. We need something there, and something that will stand up to our toughest questions and most personal needs. That’s part of what last week’s sermon was about.

But Buddha, God, Allah, Truth, Goodness or the rest of the grand abstractions won’t do a thing unless we make them ours, and try to guide our lives by them, embody them. In Christian thought, this is called “incarnational theology.” Others see it as a kind of existentialism, meaning ideals aren’t real until we give them the form of our own life. The Buddhists call this dharma, meaning the personal work we need to do to recognize our Buddha-nature, to nurture the Buddha-seed they believe is in each of us.

Others might put it differently by saying that we have to become the change we want. But the message is about the same in each of these ways of talking.

And the third part of this trinity of living within a new kind of awareness is what Christians call the Holy Spirit, which I’ll talk about next week. The Buddhists, as always, talk about it in more down-to-earth ways, as the sangha. That means the community where these important life concerns are held to be sacred, and protected.

This morning, I want to talk with you about how, in liberal religion, the first two parts of this psychological trinity connect: how high ideals can be transformative for you. Or, how do you go from potential to actual change?

Almost every Sunday, you’ll hear stories here about the kind of ideals and insights into the human condition, that have been transformative for many centuries and may be transformative for you. Think of those stories each week as packets of seeds being passed out. They’re good seeds, from good stories that have mostly been around a very long time. They seldom sprout quickly. They mostly just sit there in the background of your mind, like possibilities whose time hasn’t come.

But sometimes your life will take a turn and some of the ideas and stories will come alive for you, when it’s the right time. Here’s a story about what that can sound like. It’s taken from Anthony de Mello, who was born into Indian Hindu culture, then became a Jesuit priest. He saw all religions as variations on deep themes common to all people, as I do and as many religious liberals do. He collected spiritual stories from all over the world, and had a gift for reducing them to short, bite-sized things. Here’s one:

Parable: Who are you?

A woman in a coma was dying. She suddenly had a feeling that she was taken up to heaven and stood before the Judgment Seat.

“Who are you?” a Voice said to her.

“I’m the wife of the mayor,” she replied.

“I did not ask whose wife you are but who you are.”

“I’m the mother of four children.”

“I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are.”

“I’m a schoolteacher.”

“I did not ask what your profession is but who you are.”

And so it went. No matter what she replied, she did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, “Who are you?”

“I’m a Christian.”

“I did not ask what your religion is but who you are.”

“I’m the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy.”

“I did not ask what you did but who you are.”

She evidently failed the examination, for she was sent back to life. When she recovered from her illness, she was determined to find out who she was. And that made all the difference. Anthony de Mello, Taking Flight, p. 140

This “Who are you?” question is a question that is always hanging in the air in any good church. A good church is an invitation to come into a space where we are committed to holding up very high ideals and given the chance to see how we measure up, and what we might like to change.

It’s like being able to study with masters: stories from many of the world’s great religions and spiritual thinkers. Since we’re religious liberals, they’re all welcome. We’re not trying to make you into theists, Christians, atheists or anything else. We’re here to become more whole, more integrated, more authentic people. And any teaching or story from any source that’s in touch with the possibilities that lie within us is holy thread from which we can weave the fabric of our fuller humanity. That’s one of the great freedoms of liberal religion: all is holy that can connect with life in deep and more life-giving ways.

But traditional religion usually uses such dramatic terms it can feel like going before a god who wants to know who you are and will only accept answers more perfect than almost anyone could give. Then you think, in a fearful voice, “Oh God, is it my turn? Is it my turn for this test I’m bound to fail?” That drama lets churches and priests use fear to exalt not God but themselves and their church’s dogmas. They claim to mediate your salvation, which empowers them far more than it empowers you. That’s not honest religion.

Making it all sound so dramatic can create a lot of fear around the idea of changing your life story – for that’s what religious transformation is about: changing your life story, living out a different part in a different script.

Literal or authoritarian religions often try to protect your soul, spirit, by molding you into the shape of their beliefs. They mean well, but it’s a kind of salvation by obedience and conformity, a “cookie-cutter” salvation that seldom fits actual human beings. It’s easiest to see when they talk about the place of women or gays or people who ask too many questions. They often have a kind of cookie-cutter to put you into the shape they think everyone should have. There’s some comfort in that, I imagine, but it’s not how liberal religions do it.

Liberals try to protect your soul, your spirit, by providing a kind of greenhouse where it’s safe, and you can find the spiritual nutrients to grow and change, in an atmosphere that offers you courage rather than fear. Liberals religions are about a salvation by empowerment. I mean liberal Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or atheism. The liberal, open, style of religion is about salvation by empowerment.

Still, it’s a do-it-yourself kit. Most of the time here, you’re not thinking about changing your story or changing very much at all. You’re doing your life, and you find something interesting or stimulating about coming to a place where these stories are told, and so many others seem willing to ask questions that take them beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy. So you file these things away somewhere and get on with your life.

But sometimes that “Who are you?” question can come at you with real force, and you can’t find a good answer in the way you’re living. Maybe you just need to talk it out. That’s one of the things our Listening Ministers are for here. They’re people who have had about thirty hours’ training in learning to be good listeners, to provide a space where you can just talk confidentially, and tell your story. Often, that’s the first step in discovering the wisdom you have inside of you. Most of us really do know what we should do, if we stop to think about it. If you’d like somebody to listen, just call the church office and ask for Extension 18.

Changing your story is crossing over a boundary, breaking rules you once lived by, disappointing some people’s expectations of you, and there’s no way around it: it’s hard.

The classic story of wrestling your way across an old boundary in the Bible – one of the best in any tradition – is the story of Jacob wrestling with something supernatural at the Jabbok river. It is one of the more ancient stories in the Bible, from a time when it was believed that all boundaries were guarded by spirits that didn’t want you to cross over beyond them. Today, we know there’s a lot of truth to that. There is something that makes it hard to break out of old ways, old stories and roles.

So Jacob was to cross over, and in the middle of the night this thing – a god or an angel, depending on whose interpretation you take – began wrestling with him. Jacob wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t let go. The spirit was powerful, and dislocated his hip. But still he wouldn’t let go. Then the spirit pleaded with him to let go because the sun was coming up. That’s another way you know this is an ancient story – the forces of the night can’t survive in broad daylight.

There’s a lot of truth to that too, psychologically speaking. The light of day makes most monsters disappear. So Jacob wouldn’t let go unless the spirit blessed him. Finally the spirit blessed him and gave him a new name – his spiritual name, perhaps his deepest name. He was named Israel, which meant “One who has wrestled with God and with men and has prevailed.” And though the struggle gave him a limp, he became father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The Jacob story is a myth, of course, which means it isn’t about something that happened in history, but something that can happen always and anywhere, especially when we cross over old boundaries. These old demons are very real. Today, we may call them primitive psychological scripts that still run our lives, and it can be quite a struggle to get out of their grip, to cross beyond the territory where they rule.

Jacob’s was a dramatic, extreme kind of awakening for a dramatic, extreme character. Most of us are less dramatic. But for anything to happen, we have to take it inside ourselves and let it help transform us.

It’s about defining yourself in a different, higher, currency, and we do wrestle to do that. When we do, we come to embody, to incarnate, higher ideals and aspirations than we had been settling for. That’s what’s meant by “incarnational theology,” or doing your dharma. It’s about living your life in the key of life, the key of integrity. If you look at it through that musical metaphor, then a good liberal church is trying to play sacred melodies. The difference from more conservative churches is that we draw our sacred melodies from all over the world, because our goal is to see ourselves as children of the universe, rather than just children of one local creed or dogma.

I remember a liberal Baptist minister I knew a dozen years ago, who made a point in one of his sermons by reading from the Bible, the French existentialist Albert Camus and the Indian Hindu Gandhi. Parts of the sermon were read on a local radio station, and at our weekly ecumenical luncheon, a more conservative Baptist asked him how he could quote atheists and Hindus. “We can’t reduce God to the limits of our own understanding,” he said. “The Holy Spirit includes everything that is holy.” That’s the spirit of liberal religion.

Anything that can help us toward the kind of awakening religion is about needs to be welcomed in, to help the seeds sprout, to help turn potentiality into actuality.

And when the potential begins to become actual, it releases its power, and some magic happens. Denise Levertov wrote a short poem about that magic moment:

“Variation on a Theme by Rilke,”

by Denise Levertov

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me-a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day’s blow

rang out, metallic-or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.

I can. I can wrestle with this. I can change this. I can do this, because I’m not alone. A mighty spirit of life and health is in me, helping me, becoming me. I can. It’s the moment of rebirth, of knowing you’re a child of God, a child of Nature, a child of the universe, and no one can take that away from you. Not by threats, violence, injustice, put-downs, nothing. When this becomes our most fundamental identity, when we believe this – and it’s always a matter of faith, not being able to prove it scientifically – it is transformative.

It can give birth to a kind of hope that’s otherwise hard to come by. We are then living under a blessing there may be no other way to get. Despair can come when we feel that life is through with us, and hope comes when we realize that life still expects good things of us: expects us to come alive. Like the woman who woke up wanting to know who she was – and just wanting to know that made all the difference. It’s being born again, taking our dharma seriously, incarnational theology. This transformation is the miracle some people come to church every week hoping for.

Still, It can sound so dramatic, you think Well, my life isn’t lived on such a dramatic scale, and I couldn’t begin to be that dramatic or bold. But it isn’t always such a dramatic thing. I was talking with the medical assistant at the doctor’s office this week, asking what he’s doing, what he wants to do. He said he wants to learn X-rays, then hopes to be a technician with MRI and CAT scan machines. Then he said, “I used to be pretty bad, and then we had my daughter. She’s 2-1/2 now and the joy of my life. She’s changed me. Now I want to raise her right, and do what’s right for her and my wife.” There’s a man who has had a change of heart that led to a change of focus in his life. That’s a religious transformation. It doesn’t have to involve God-talk at all. It’s being transformed to live in the key of life – your life.

Theologians can make anything sound so remote you can’t imagine relating to it. But honest religion is very down-to-earth. We’ve all had those moments when we were moved to take ourselves more seriously, to serve higher callings, and they’re moments we’re still proud of. When those moments come, we reach for higher aspirations, and try to find a place where higher aspirations are taken seriously. At it’s best, that’s what a church is for.

We know from thousands of news stories that churches are very often not at their best. Dishonest religion leads to hypocrisy, bigotry, hatred, and a whole host of values that make our lives and our world worse rather than better. At its worst, religion is an enemy of much that is decent and noble.

But at their worst, so are politics and “family values”. Honest religion, like honest politics or healthy family values, is about rejecting lower ideals and serving higher ones: rejecting bad stories and choosing better ones. These paths of honesty and courage are some of our best routes toward becoming better people and a better society. That’s part of what this church is about.

Here’s another way of putting it – another one of those stories. Traditional religions exist to empower themselves and their story as much or more than to empower their people. So many of them will say that whatever we need that’s good can only come from God, and of course they know what God wants of us better than we do. So what we need isn’t in us. We are unworthy, and we have to go begging for it. That kind of theology gives nonsense a bad name!

Religious liberals live within a more abundant story that says the purpose of religion is to awaken us to possibilities that are already inside of us, like a Sleeping Beauty. So one of the best myths of religious transformation that I know of doesn’t come from the Bible, but from “The Wizard of Oz.” I especially like the deep theological reading of the story done by the rock group America, where they say, “Oz never did give nothin’ to the Tin Man that he didn’t, didn’t already have.” The message is as good as the grammar is bad.

The characters were in the land of Oz, which is one of those mythic boundary places like the banks of the river Jabbok. And like Jacob, they start by thinking only the great Wizard can give them what they need: a heart, a brain, courage, home. That’s like begging a god or a church for approval, as though they had the authority to give it. But Jacob, if you think about it, didn’t get anything from that strange night spirit that he didn’t already have. He beat him. He held on, he wouldn’t quit. He earned his new name. God never did give nothin’ to Jacob that Jacob didn’t already have.

And God, or Oz, can’t give you anything you don’t already have, either. But sometimes the stories of gods – or of great wizards from the Land of Oz – can reawaken those buried treasures in your heart. And then, for a moment, you know who you are. It is like a being struck on the shoulder with the flat of a sword, granting you honor, and a task. And you know, for that moment, that you can. In that moment, it can feel like anything is suddenly possible. And it may be, you know – it really may be.