Readings
Rabbi
Harold Kushner:
What
religion offers me is not fellowship with God, but fellowship with other
human beings who are looking for the same things I am. Loneliness is today's
greatest spiritual problem. People who have no intention of shopping go
to shopping centers because they need to be where other people are. People
come home and turn on the television set, not to watch the program, but
to hear another human voice because they're lonely.
Religion
should offer us that sense of community, that sense of "Here are people
who share something important with you." You don't come to church or temple
to find God - you can find God on a mountaintop or in your bedroom. You
come to church or temple to find a congregation, to find others who need
the same things from life that you need. By coming together, you create
the moment where God is present. This is the one indispensable thing that
organized religion offers us, which our vague individual sense of spirituality
cannot.
Fredrick
Emerson Small:
How
much of our time and attention in the world are devoted to ultimate things?
And yet how we hunger for them! The mass media baptize us in a bath of
brand name loyalty, sex appeal, and stylized violence until we come to
believe that our most vital freedom is the freedom to consume, our most
profound question which brand name to wear, our most compelling conversation
about last night’s episode of "ER," our greatest personal challenge the
firmness of our bellies and thighs. In the midst of unprecedented affluence
shocking in its ostentation our souls are starving. In this empty feast
of Twinkies and Ding-Dongs we hunger for soul food, for soups and stews
and root vegetables. Coming to church on Sunday morning we dedicate an
hour or so to the contemplation of ultimate things and to the nurture of
our inmost and highest selves.
Out
of intimacy and ultimacy emerge identity and service. Identity because
our connectedness with each other and our contemplation of matters worthy
of our attention lead us to a clearer sense of who we are, what we affirm
and what we care about, and where and to whom we belong. And service because
church brings us out of ourselves and into compassionate relationship with
the universe, where hoarding our gifts becomes unnecessary and giving them
away a pleasure.
What
shall I do with this precious gift of life and with whom will I share it?
The
more one suffers, the more important these answers become.
I
remember vividly, over thirty years ago, weakly looking out of my hospital
room window at the graveyard next door, frightened and alone.I
was thirteen years old, weighed 85 pounds and suffered from a wasting disease
that the doctors couldn’t identify.Life
was ebbing out of me at the very time most of my peers were bursting with
youthful vitality.I tasted the agony
of losing my grip on living as my friends were seizing the day.In
that moment, looking at the tombstones outside my window, I was intensely
aware of just how precious life was and how much I wanted more of it.
Thankfully,
I recovered my health but my early initiation into suffering deeply changed
me leaving a permanent mark.My innocence
was stripped way as I experienced great pain and suffering.Always
a sociable child, I experienced a level of isolation and aloneness I’d
never felt before.The childish
pastimes I formerly enjoyed now didn’t satisfy me.Big
questions of meaning haunted me.Given
the suffering I might continue to endure in my life, what was worth the
effort?Would this experience of
the unpleasantness of reality demand more of my juvenile relationships
than they could endure … or open up new ones?The
questions of ultimacy and intimacy have been central to my existence ever
since then, eventually leading me into the ministry.
Questions
of ultimacy and intimacy are central to the purpose of religion.Twentieth
Century theologian James Luther Adams used these two words to describe
why people joined our congregations.Born
in 1901, Adams served for twenty years as a minister then taught at Meadville
Lombard, Harvard and Andover Newton seminaries.He
was a strong advocate in our movement connecting social justice and religion,
deeply understanding the positive difference organized groups can make
for individuals and society.
Adams
recognized people come in our doors to wrestle with life’s ultimate questions
and find at least provisional answers.They
ask, we ask, “Who am I.” “What is worth the brief time I have on this earth?”
“In what or whom can I trust?”“Where
do I belong?”They ask, we ask, “Will
this be a safe place where I will be accepted and loved as I seek answers
for myself and my family?”
These
questions are not idle speculation.Many
of us have tasted the bitterness of life, confronted our mortality, and
agonized over the innocent questions of our children.We
need a place to seek an expansive meaning that will not slip through our
fingers, as do the sand grains of time.
We
want big answers.We want really
big answers.We’d like, if possible,
ultimate answers we won’t have to rethink in five or ten years as the state
of science and technology changes.
I’m
pleased to say we do have some answers here.For
many here, these answers are both satisfying and sufficient for living
a good life.And, these answers
are fairly unusual for a religious tradition to offer.
Central
to our answer is recognizing that no religious tradition has a divinely
mandated exclusive franchise for Absolute Truth.At
best, each religious tradition is a different telescope to ponder the vastness
of what is beyond us.Many religions
convey great truth that captures the section of the sky they see clearly.But
no telescope can see all of the heavens, just as no religion can encompass
all Truth.Each religion arose at
one time and one place within a specific cultural context.Each
religion was interpreted, told, retold and recorded by minds fixed in that
time and place.Science has taught
us what is true cannot be fixed in one time and place. Truth is much bigger
than what our limited intellectual faculties can grasp and express in a
limited historic revelation.
We
Unitarian Universalists express this recognition in the language of an
ongoing search for truth and meaning.This
puts us in conflict with revealed religious traditions that fix truth in
a revealed document such as the Torah, the Koran or the Gospels.While
we do not dispute the great value and wisdom to be found in those documents,
while many of us express appreciation of them, and while some of us even
venerate each prophet’s example and words, we resist giving their words
the status of Ultimate Truth.If
the Laws of Moses have value, we will also be able to validate them in
human experience.If the Prophet
Mohammad, peace be upon him, if his words be true, they must find validation
in the natural world as well.
The errors describing the natural world and historical events found in revealed text has led us to give priority to what we can learn studying the natural world as we seek truth. Ancient descriptions of Jesus walking on water and calming a storm are not going to coax us out of our boats or cause us to abandon our umbrellas – unless we know where the rocks are.We put our faith in natural law as revealed by scientific inquiry knowing that scientific truth is limited and open to new discovery.
Our
appreciation of the natural world and the beings inhabiting it makes the
interdependent web of life of high value to us.We
accept life’s existential value as an end in itself.We
do not see the purpose of the planet as merely a backdrop for the drama
of human salvation.Life on this
planet (including us) is of ultimate value.
How
do we know life is of ultimate value?As
we do not put our trust in any one authority or revealed text, we must
take personal responsibility for coming to this great truth.Rather
than accepting truth second hand, we must test any truth claims in our
own minds, hearts and souls before we accept them.
This
is not an easy way to do religion.Taking
personal responsibility for seeking truth is an awesome task most people
shun.Most would rather have someone
else tell them what to believe, abdicating any personal responsibility
for their religious journey – except to be obedient.
Unitarian
Universalists are not obedient.
We
accept the personal challenge of a free faith.Many
of us can do no other as we have felt or actually been betrayed in our
obedience to a traditional faith.But
this challenge of accepting personal responsibility is daunting and can
feel pretty lonely.There are hundreds
of truth claims to sort through.Thankfully,
being part of a liberally religious community means we do not face our
spiritual journey alone.As part
of a group, we find our way together.
I’ll
confess it now, I’m a groupie, I love being part of a group.I’ve
had many positive experiences of belonging in my family, on teams, in work
groups, on committees, and now in community organizing.I
remember fondly a group of us in junior high that met at each other’s houses
for games, refreshment, music and fun.I
played on the chess team in my high school.My
enjoyment of groups ranges widely from sitting silent and motionless in
the middle of a group of meditators and chanting the praises of Krishna
in a Hindu ashram with a thousand others to playing volleyball and swinging
my partner at a square dance.I delight
in forming a group to accomplish a task as much as relaxing lazily with
a group at the pool on a hot summer afternoon.
Unfortunately, typical group life resists stimulating individuality and usually seeks to establish norms and control its members.The larger the group, the less significant is the individual.In a large corporation or a nation state, the individual is quickly reduced to an expendable means that subsumes the individual’s identity to the larger whole.Step out of line and get crushed.Times of war make this clear as I heard expressed in a story on NPR this past week.A reservist refused to go to Iraq and leave her children behind.If you are an active duty military couple with children, your wants and needs and your children’s wants and needs are subordinate to your commander-in-chief's.You are man instrument of state power.Express your individuality outside legal boundaries and go to jail – or die.
Historically,
religion often has been an agent of the submission of the individual to
social need.The caste system in
India, the oppression of women in many religions, the historic Jewish temple
purity laws all functioned to devalue some as opposed to others.This
is what makes the record we have of Jesus’ living ministry so engaging.Jesus
cast off all wealth and became homeless.He
kept company with social outcasts.He
healed the unclean and praised children.To
Jesus, everyone had inherent worth and value, including the mentally ill.Jesus
believed in the ultimate value of human beings.He
didn’t use society’s measurement of their worth such as their social station,
their suitability for parenting, generating tax revenue and consuming products.To
Jesus, every person had ultimate value.
Jesus
knew real intimacy happens when we confer on each other ultimate value.This
is the purpose of a religious organization like ours.Inherent
worth and dignity is not what society is interested in affirming for everyone.Society’s
prime directive is survival and continuity.Religion
at its best challenges social denial of individual value and helps each
person move toward ultimacy and intimacy.
Let’s
face it, the government of the United States of America isn’t interested
in my personal search for truth and meaning – unless it can turn it into
tax revenue.I love how Fred Small
puts it so eloquently:
The
mass media baptize us in a bath of brand name loyalty, sex appeal, and
stylized violence until we come to believe that our most vital freedom
is the freedom to consume, our most profound question which brand name
to wear, our most compelling conversation about last night’s episode of
"ER," our greatest personal challenge the firmness of our bellies and thighs.
In the midst of unprecedented affluence shocking in its ostentation our
souls are starving. In this empty feast of Twinkies and Ding-Dongs we hunger
for soul food, for soups and stews and root vegetables. Coming to church
on Sunday morning we dedicate an hour or so to the contemplation of ultimate
things and to the nurture of our inmost and highest selves.
What
is particularly interesting about Unitarian Universalism is how ultimacy
and intimacy work together.In most
churches, it is shared ultimate beliefs that define the community and create
the limits in which intimacy happens.Because
a group all believes in God, the Torah, the Quran, the Prophet, the laws
of Moses, the death and resurrection of Jesus, they can unify their community
and define their relationship with each other.
Unitarian
Universalism takes the opposite approach.We
find ultimacy
through intimacy.Through
intentional community in which we share our religious journey and the truths
we have found, we grow and change in response to those around us.As
I take in your experiences and interpretations, I’m influenced.As
you hear my stories, you are touched.In
our appreciative dialogue sharing the truths we find with each other, we
move together magically and mysteriously toward ultimacy.Out
of our diversity, we find our unity.
In
a twenty-first century’s increasingly pluralistic world, our diversity
affirming approach to religion is a powerful path to world peace.We
are not all going to decide to follow one religion.We
are never all going to be Christians, or Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or
Taoists.We need a respectful approach
to religion that honors the truth found in each religion.The
ultimate truths in these religions are really different.They
contain unique elements that do not translate into other faith traditions.The
Islamic concept of God is not the same as the Jewish concept of God.The
Buddhist concept of Nirvana does not have a parallel in Christianity.The
linear concept of time in Western religions is very different than the
circular concept of time in Asian religions.
But
when individual Buddhists and individual Christians and individual Moslems
and individual Jews and individual humanists and individual agnostics and
individual pagans and individual atheists engage each other respectfully
and really listen to each other, an intimacy can develop that opens the
way to an elemental experience of humanity from which contact with ultimate
truth becomes possible.
Why
does this approach work?It seems
counter-intuitive.Religious groups
around the world are at each other’s throats seeking vengeance rather than
transcendence. This approach works because intimacy is another name for
love.The presence of love is the
ultimate of ultimate truths and the way to that truth at the same time.
This
is our grand Unitarian Universalist experiment.We
are learning how to practice love in a way that transcends the limitations
of sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology.We
are crossing the artificial boundaries of ideology as human heart touches
human heart touches animal heart touches plant vitality touches the earth
and reaches for the sky.Our religious
tradition is in the throes of inventing a world-transforming way to find
meaning that flies in the face of conventional wisdom – just as Jesus did
in his day.
I
predict that we will look back on the last 40 years as the gestation period
of this new way of doing religion.Perhaps
it is in the birth pangs now as we gather this morning.We
are living at a particularly fecund time in human history as the Internet
and international business break down the walls of separation around the
world.
Unitarian
Universalism is not the religion for everyone as we all have different
needs we bring to our spiritual journey.For
the one driven toward a personal search for ultimacy and intimacy in an
atmosphere of mutual support, love and respect, and willing to accept the
personal responsibility for deciding what to accept and what to reject,
our way is one of the best religious traditions available today.
And
there is always room for one more.
Copyright
© 2003 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore.All
rights reserved.