First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
"A Rational Faith"
Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore November 18, 2001

When I chose the title for my sermon, I didn't realize some people might think I planned to talk about Christian Apologetics. As I began researching my sermon topic, I discovered how much has been written arguing for a rational faith in Christianity. Let me assure you, that isn't where I'm going this morning.

We shouldn't be at all surprised that Christians argue for a rational faith. No worldwide religious tradition rejects reason. Just about every religious tradition uses some kind of rational argument to separate true and false teaching and doctrine. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all reason from revealed truth developing the religious duties and obligations that will validate their faith. Religious apologists believe the reasoning process supports and defends the value of their revelation rather than contradicts it.

Well, as believers of applying reason to revelation itself, we would argue for contradiction. This is the foundation for the historical Unitarian view. By reasoning out what they found in scripture and contrasting it with what we know of the natural sciences, Unitarians were led to question the creeds, doctrines and practices of first Roman Catholicism then the Calvinism of our Pilgrim tradition we remember this time of year. Contradictions between revealed text and reason, and similarities between scriptures across different religious traditions, has led many of us to disbelieve in singling out any particular text or tradition as of unique divine origin.

Yet even the atheists among us cannot stand outside all faith statements either. The scientist believes in repeatable experimentation as a path to truth based on the working of immutable and unchanging physical laws. All we have to support this belief is the collective body of experiential evidence we have assembled over the last several hundred years. Yet our experience and observation can be suspect. Magicians can fool us and Gods might be able to violate the laws of nature at will. Post-modern thinking and quantum physics point out the impossibility of true objectivity. We cannot escape our own subjective frame of reference and stand outside ourselves to see things the way they really are. The illusion of being able to do this creates much misery in the world, particularly when those frames of reference are in conflict. In particular, the Jewish, Christian and Islamic frames of reference that organize people's lives and fill them with meaning.

Unfortunately, the unreasonableness of faith doesn't exempt us from trying to reason out our faith. If we all lived on our own islands and could create whatever religion we wanted and believe whatever we wanted there would be no need to reason about our faith. It would be whatever we wanted it to be whether it made sense to anyone else or not. For some misguided individuals, this is their vision of Unitarian Universalism - you can believe whatever you want.

I hope the weakness of this kind of religious perspective is immediately apparent. What works for me may not work for you. When we decide to create a religious community together, there is a need for a way to decide what we will do and what we will say about ourselves. A powerful mediator between individuals in community is reason and democratic decision-making.

Any component of one's religious tradition that engages the emotions becomes a charged subject for discussion and debate. The most highly charged components of any tradition are the rituals that are observed. They offer the strongest sense of cohesiveness and identity while also becoming the source for much strife and division. Yet to abandon all ritual also creates dissatisfaction and drains a religion of its lifeblood and meaning.

This was Emerson's dilemma in 1832 as he questioned the rite of Communion in a Unitarian congregation. The meaning and method of celebration of the Lord's Supper had been a charged subject for early American Calvinist churches. Jonathan Edwards, in 1750, argued that Communion was a sacrament reserved for the Elect, those who demonstrated by their faith and works that they were among those predestined to be saved. He believed the Eucharist was not a rite, by conforming with which, in humility, men were to be made participators in the larger religious experience of the race, but a jealously guarded privilege of the few who already knew themselves set apart from the world.[1] Unfortunately for Edwards, only God, according to Calvinist doctrine, knew for sure who was in and who was out. So proposing that some might be excluded from this sacrament based on his determination was not acceptable to his congregation and they threw him out on his ear.

Emerson approached rite of Communion in a completely different way. He understood the Biblical message of Jesus as not commanding that this ritual be repeated till the Judgment Day. He said in his famous sermon on September 9^th, 1832:

...why did Jesus make expressions so extraordinary and emphatic as these -- "This is my body which is broken for you. Take; eat. This is my blood, which is shed for you. Drink it." -- I reply they are not extraordinary expressions from him. They were familiar in his mouth. He always taught by parables and symbols. It was the national way of teaching and was largely used by him. Remember the readiness, which he always showed to spiritualize every occurrence. He stooped and wrote on the sand. He admonished his disciples respecting the leaven of the Pharisees. He instructed the woman of Samaria respecting living water. He permitted himself to be anointed, declaring that it was for his interment. He washed the feet of his disciples. These are admitted to be symbolical actions and expressions. Here, in like manner, he calls the bread his body, and bids the disciples eat.

As Emerson interprets the Bible he looks beyond the passage and interprets it within the method Jesus uses to communicate, analyzing his method as well as the meaning that can be extracted. Understanding Jesus' speech as symbolic changes the way we understand his message. Emerson continues:

What did [the expression "this do in remember of me"] really signify? . . . . I see natural feeling and beauty in the use of such language from Jesus, a friend to his friends; I can readily imagine that he was willing and desirous, when his disciples met, his memory should hallow their intercourse; but I cannot bring myself to believe that in the use of such an expression he looked beyond the living generation, beyond the abolition of the festival he was celebrating, and the scattering of the nation, and meant to impose a memorial feast upon the whole world.

Emerson interprets Jesus' actions within his Jewish context, saying, as you celebrate Passover, remember me as you eat and drink. As his disciples believed the Kingdom of God was coming within the next generation, keeping alive that ritual made a lot of sense. It made less sense when Jews and Christians parted company. How did Emerson suggest we should remember Jesus? I'll share this last quote from his sermon:

What I revere and obey in [Christianity] is its reality, its boundless charity, its deep interior life, the rest it gives to my mind, the echo it returns to my thoughts, the perfect accord it makes with my reason through all its representation of God and His Providence; and the persuasion and courage that come out thence to lead me upward and onward. Freedom is the essence of this faith. It has for its object simply to make men good and wise. Its institutions, then, should be as flexible as the wants of men. That form out of which the life and suitableness have departed, should be as worthless in its eyes as the dead leaves that are falling around us.

As Emerson looked around his congregation when he served communion, he felt the life and suitableness had gone out of the Communion ritual. When he presented the results of his observations and rational thought to his parishioners, they disagreed. Emerson wanted to change the Communion ritual into a memorial celebration. The members felt Communion must be celebrated as it always had been done. And that is how Emerson departed the ministry though he returned many times to preach from that pulpit and continued to be well loved by the congregation.

Fast forward to today when few Unitarian Universalist congregations celebrate the Lord's Supper. If they do communion at all, it is done with flowers not with bread and wine. And Jesus is not who they are thinking about when they take a flower home with them.

Yet the urge to share food and drink in a ritualistic way persists just as the Jews did at Passover with Jesus and continue today sharing matzo and wine. Many of us have ritual ways we prepare and serve dinner for Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving. Some of us have table blessings we say before we eat. I expect for many of us eating dessert has a sacramental element after a good meal. Even at a secular wedding reception, for example, the toast and the first piece of cake eaten by the bride and groom are important rituals. I'm not sure I've been to a wedding where this hasn't happened.

Of all the American meals, Thanksgiving dinner probably has the highest level of ritual content. It is our national meal based on an historic feast celebrating the bounty of a harvest and cross cultural and inter-religious friendship and cooperation. We might even label it the first diversity day in the free world. The Pilgrims and the Native Americans shared foods from their cultures and it is said they feasted for a week just as we do on leftovers.

As Unitarianism and Universalism trace our roots back to European immigration to this nation, and, today, the celebration of diversity and interfaith cooperation is central to our rational faith, it makes complete sense to me to want to find a ritual way to remember the spirit of that day long ago. As apples are a fruit that took root on this soil as we have and corn is a native grain that sustained the growth of civilization in this hemisphere, it seems logical to eat them together as a way to honor the blending of two heritages to create this great nation.

Our Unitarian and Universalist heritage doesn't come from the Middle East or Europe, it springs up from our American soil. Corn and apples inform our heritage far more than grapes and wafers. The love of the wilderness is integral to the feeling that shaped our religious movements in the 19^th century. From the first explorers, to the Pilgrims, to Emerson and Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, they saw nobility in the native peoples, plants and animals, majesty in the landscape and opportunity in the vast natural resources. This land could and would be the New Jerusalem of a free world.

So when we break corn muffins and drink the nectar of fresh cider this morning, let us reflect on the promise of that first Thanksgiving. Let us remember the uniting of mind and heart that is central to our religious tradition. Let us remember our connection to this soil, honoring it and protecting it for future generations.

Copyright © 2001 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.

[1] From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21).
VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I.