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Rev. Jonalu Johnstone
May 14, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Whether you came from a different religious tradition or grew up purely UU, you have probably encountered religious concepts, phrases, and words that rub you wrong. Today we consider those words – some that you’ve provided – and what it means to consider, reclaim, or reject the words that we love to hate.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
ON THE BRINK
By Leslie TakahashiAll that we have ever loved
And all that we have ever been
Stands with us on the brink
Of all that we aspire to create:
A deeper peace, A larger love,
A more embracing hope,
A deeper joy in this life we share.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Pastoral Meditation/Prayer
CIRCLE OF CARE
By Lisa Bovee-KemperIn this circle of care, we make space for the complexity of life, the myriad experiences that bless and break our hearts. The truth of human experience dictates that on any given day, we each come to the table with hearts in different places. It is especially so on this day, invented to honor women who nurture.
In this circle of care, we honor the truth that mothering is not and never will be quantified in one single descriptor. Mothering can be elusive or infuriating, fulfilling or confusing, commonplace or triumphant. It exists in the every day experiences of each person. There is no human being that is not connected to or disconnected from a mother.
And so we honor the complexity of experience, writ large in flowered platitudes, but here in this space laid bare, honoring the truth in each of our hearts. There is room for all in this circle:
If you have carried a child or children, whether or not they came to be born, we see you.
If you have fervently wished to do so, and circumstances of fate made it impossible, we see you.
If you love children we cannot see, whether because of death or estrangement, we see you.
If you never wanted to be a mother, we see you.
If you are happy to mother other people’s children, as an educator, an auntie, or a foster parent, we see you.
If your mother hurt you, physically or emotionally, we see you.
If you had no mother at all, we see you.
If your mother is or was your best friend, we see you.
If your gender says you are not a mother, and yet you take on the role of nurturer, we see you.
If you wonder whether your mothering has been enough, we see you.
And if yours is a different truth altogether, we honor your unspoken story.
Reading
TOWARD A HUMANIST VOCABULARY OF REVERENCE
by David E. Bumbaugh
to Chicago Area UU Council at Unitarian Church of Hinsdale, Illinois
on May 12, 2001As an observer of and participant in contemporary Unitarian Universalism, I have found myself wondering what has happened to the Humanist witness among us. How has it happened that we, who once seemed to set the agenda for religious discourse, now find ourselves increasingly on the defensive, if not engaged in a monologue? I would submit that to some degree at least we are talking to ourselves because we have allowed ourselves to be defined by the opposition. We have dismissed traditional religion as an atavistic aberration. We have given up the hope of a constructive dialogue. We have manned the ramparts of reason and are prepared to defend the citadel of the mind against a renewal of superstition until the very end. But in the process of defending, we have lost the vocabulary of reverence, the ability to speak of that which is sacred, holy, of ultimate importance to us, the language which would allow us to enter once more into critical dialogue with the rest of the religious community. If this be so, then the recovery of a vital vocabulary of reverence is a task of great urgency for those of us who cherish the Humanism tradition.
Sermon
We have to acknowledge that if we want to talk about what is deepest, most valuable, most awesome, our tools are limited. Silence might be best, yet humans that we are, we seem driven to share our experience. The tools we have are the inadequate ones of symbols, and the symbols we use most readily are words. And when we want words that are hefty enough to represent what is most profound, they are often religious, or spiritual, words.
That’s tough for many of us who came as religious refugees to Unitarian Universalism. We have felt hurt and excluded by those who claim only through Jesus Christ or only through the Catholic Church or only through anyone particular way is one fully accepted and acceptable. I particularly loved seeing an article in the satirical paper “The Onion” some years ago that proclaimed in its headline, “Jesus is MY personal savior, not yours.” Seriously, the exclusivity claim can wound deeply.
Spiritual wounds come from “coercive belief systems and spiritual practices,” according to Flora Slosson Wuellner, a spiritual director, writer, and retired United Church of Christ minister. Insistence on belief and emotional manipulation in a spiritual setting, often by a charismatic leader harms people spiritually, no matter what that leader’s or belief system’s particular perspective. The wounds that come from these settings can produce guardedness around our beliefs, a desire to keep them private and protected. It can lead to passivity around religion, leaving one’s decisions to someone else. Or, it can lead to defensiveness and defiance, anger flaring whenever religion comes up.
I needed spiritual healing when I came to UUism. It took decades before I could fully and positively name and articulate my own positive beliefs instead of simply denying what I had been taught, and even coming to embrace some of it. That was a process of healing.
Religious words and concepts have hurt, yes, and they have been powerful healers and comforters as well. The “Plowshare Song” Katrina sang this morning shifts religious concepts into a healing embrace, beating swords into plowshares. If something has survived for centuries, there may be something there worth exploring. And if we want to understand our neighbors and family who embrace them, maybe it’s worth poking around a bit.
Also, when I am doing social justice work with other religious people, they sometimes will use their religious language and if we’re going to be able to work together, I have to at least be able to tolerate their expressions of faith, and I have to be able to explain how my own faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism, relates to my work.
And the deeper reason for dealing with religious language relates not to our external work, but to being a community together. If a congregation is to be a safe haven, then people need to share their full selves without defensiveness, especially the essence of their spiritual journeys. That means that atheists, agnostics, theists, Buddhists, Pagans, existentialists, Christians, and others somehow need to bring their full selves here and talk about their experience without making it an unsafe place for those who disagree with them. This requires some finesse in how we talk together. Each of us has to be able to name our personal experience without the assumption that others share it. At times, we do need to name our communal experience, and in that case, we need to be sure that others agree with that naming, or at least can go along with it. And, we have to be careful not to confuse the two – what I individually endorse and what we communally endorse. A delicate balance.
We need not always use the same religious language.
Prayer, for example, may be powerful for some UU’s, while others have long resisted the cultural imperative of prayer, and find it distasteful and even oppressive. We don’t tell non-praying UU’s that they must pray or tell praying UU’s that they must not pray.
The many shades and shadows, ambiguities and associations, of religious words, differ from one person to another. We have to be able to say to one another, “What do you mean when you say ‘x’?” or “That’s an interesting idea. Here’s how I see it,” without accusing them of being wrong.
I encourage what I’d call a radical agnosticism, a basic acceptance that none of us knows with certainty any of the fundamentals related to religious or spiritual life.
With that, let’s talk about some specific words. As I read the words that you all sent me for the sermon, I’d like you to listen to see if anything surprises you, and to see if there are words on the list that are meaningful to you.
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God’s will The Bible Church hymns “You have to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior in order to get into heaven” Jesus Cult Communion: Eating Flesh and drinking blood Salvation Saved God Obey Obedience “Deeply felt convictions and beliefs” Confession Sacrament Holy Mother Holy Sinner trespasses blessed Holy Father Holy Spirit Kingdom Glory Hallelujah gifted communIon |
confirmation last rites priest nun convent rectory “the cross” cross to bear the host resurrection excommunication baptism “I’m praying for you.” “Thanking Jesus” “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Trinity “God is good” Worthy/unworthy Worship Pagan babies Perpetual Suffering Crucifixion Lent Virgin? Penance Sacraments Chastity and celibacy Sin Bible |
Apostolic Orthodox Devout Praise Prayer Amen Worship Hymn Tithe Pledge My God My Jesus Blessed Blessed Be God/god Spirit Holy Masculine pronouns associated with god Standard-language-Bible “Or however you choose to think of… (insert traditional religious word here) “Life in the world to come” Original sin Sin nature Being thought of as “religious” Catholicism teachings from the Bible Stewardship Pledging |
As we continue to look at these words, who was surprised by one or more of these? Who looked at one more more words and felt it was something that was meaningful for them personally?
Many of these words come out of the Christian tradition.
I don’t ever hear UU’s say that words from other traditions like “enlightenment” or “non-attachment” or “Tao,” are too religious. It feels like there is much more tolerance for religious language from non-Christian traditions than there is for the words identified with Christianity. And in this church, at least from the list I got, especially with Catholicism.
Let me say something about a few of these words.
Worship, despite our preconceptions, need not be a ritual dedicated to a god. Rather, the etymology frames the word in terms of respect and honor. For me, UU worship is a process of discerning and acknowledging what is worthy of respect and honor.
A whole subset of submitted words cluster around the idea of salvation: original sin/sin nature, saved/not saved, trespasses, obedience. All of these imply or flat out state a distinction between who’s in and who’s out, who has God’s favor (we’ll get to God in a minute!). We UU’s don’t divide people into saved and damned, and often figure that others put us into that ((damned” category. However, if we reject the whole tenet that some are saved and some are damned, as we do, these words can fall away as irrelevant for us. “I can’t go to hell; I don’t believe in it.”
I might even be able to find something of value in the concept of sin and redemption, as long as I realize I’m not talking about two rigid separate categories of people, but of problems we all face as human beings. “Sin,” in the classical rabbinical formulation, is “missing the mark.” We all have to deal with our tendency to sometimes miss the mark. What do we do to make up for where we have fallen short, to seek forgiveness from others, or to offer forgiveness when it’s needed? These are useful human skills we need to talk about.
So what about the whole “god” thing?
Even the writers of the Bible did not agree on the definition or characteristics of God; they even used different Hebrew words for God. For UU’s, God may be Nature, or Love, or the inexplicable Mystery. For some, God is Creativity or process or the spirit that invigorates life. It can be useful to have a label. For others, God is not a useful image. On this concept, on this definition, we agree to disagree. And value one another anyway.
I want to touch on “Blessed” and “Blessed be.” To bless something is to invoke divine favor, or to name the divine in someone or something. I think about Peter Meyer’s song, “Everything Is Holy Now,” where he describes how when he was a child in church only certain things – the holy water or the book were holy, and now, he can see the holy, the spark of the divine, in the dawning sky, in the chirping bird, in everything. Or about Emerson’s talk of the miracle of the blowing clover. If we can find awe, we may be able to name blessing. That, I think, is why Pagans adopted the phrase “Blessed be,” to define the goodness of the universe – all of it as divine – and to offer the wish that all might be holy, that all might have that spark and that we might all see it.
So, we’ve considered this morning a few of the words that people in this particular UU congregation struggle with. I invite you to continue the conversation, to find ways to be beat hurtful words into healing plowshares. May you all have the chance to speak the words that call you to your best selves, that evoke for you a sense of the sacred, that you find most worthy and honorable as you make the gifts of your lives, trying to create the world you wish to see come into being.
Benediction
BLESSED WITH QUESTIONS
By Ma TheresaSome came here to be blessed with answers in a tumultuous world.
Let us hope too, however, that many of us have been blessed with questions to direct us with a clarity of mind to steer our logic towards kindness and justice always.
So may it be.
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