March 30, 2008
This is the eleventh and final sermon in my series on the Unitarian Universalist principles entitled “How Shall We Live?” I want to begin with a review of where I’ve been and end with some reflections on what I’ve actually said.
There were two reasons I decided to preach on the principles. First, The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal is beginning a review of the principles, a process which, based on the Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws, is supposed to take place every fifteen years. Second, and more fun, last year Roland Chirico asked me to preach one sermon in response to a 2004 address by the Rev. Davidson Loehr entitled, “Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying,” in which he claims the principles are not the core of a great religion, but rather only mirror the social and political biases of late 20th century liberals.
In response to Rev. Loehr I began the series with a plea not to confuse the darkness of death with the darkness of the womb. Unitarian Universalism began in 1961 with the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. Since both denominations had changed radically since their beginnings in the post revolutionary war era—at least in terms of theology—Unitarian Universalism in 1961 was, in many ways, a new religion. Today it is not dying. It is still being born. Patience: the birth of a religion takes time. Let us understand the principles not as mere liberal biases, but as midwives to the long, slow beautiful birth of Unitarian Universalism.
I also said the notion that our principles emerged from the social and political biases of late twentieth century liberals is historically inaccurate. I spoke about the principles’ origins as liberal Christian theological claims in early American Unitarianism and Universalism. I showed how, as the value of religious and spiritual pluralism grew within both denominations, theological agreement became untenable, and the principles evolved into claims about how we shall live rather than how we shall believe. Today, we don’t begin with theology; we begin with principles that guide our living, trusting that relevant, useful and personal theologies will emerge from our living.
I also made the claim—in what some of you felt was possibly the most boring sermon I’ve yet given—that our principles are modern. That is, they developed out of and are consistent with many of the core ideas of Modernity which has its roots in the European Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the age of European exploration and colonization, and the European and American Enlightenments. There are easily 500 years of tradition behind these principles. However, while Unitarian Universalism derives much of its uniqueness and power from being the first modern religion, it also has to face the fact that modernity was born out of a relentless skepticism and often bitter hostility toward religion. Modernity tends to strip away from religion anything it cannot prove; it readily dispenses with gods, goddesses, myths, scriptures, rituals, ceremonies; it is ambivalent toward spirituality. Any religion born of modernity will always risk running dry. Remember Bishop Carlton Pearson of Tulsa, OK who said to me, “Unitarian Universalism needs more moisture.” The question I’ve been asking implicitly with these sermons is “Where is the moisture in Unitarian Universalism?” Where is the moisture in this religious child of modernity?
I took out my metaphorical divining rod and searched for moisture. What was I actually looking for? What do I mean I say moisture? I was looking for feeling and passion to augment our modernist reliance on the intellect. I was looking for the goodness, love and beauty in humanity—but not only that: I want my principles to speak honestly to me about the whole human condition, about our failings and frailties, about our capacity for evil and how we respond to it. I was looking for community to balance our keen modernist focus on the individual. I was looking for a basic, clear starting place for ethical reasoning. I was looking for keys to our survival—not just our day-to-day survival, but the long-term survival of humanity and the planet. I was looking for an embrace of spirituality. I was looking for paths to ongoing growth and transformation. If I could find these things then, I believed, I could show you moisture. I could show you a religion springing up like willows by flowing streams.
Perhaps the best way to begin assessing whether this project—this divining rod—has located moisture is to echo back my answers to the question, “How shall we live?” But before I review my answers, I want to introduce an idea which I’ve picked up recently from Rev. Loehr. He tells this story:
Fifteen or twenty years ago I belonged to an ecumenical ministers’ group of about forty ministers. Every Thursday, we had lunch together, and the different churches took turns hosting and preparing it. One Thursday I arrived fairly early at the small rural Presbyterian church that would serve us, and got to overhear a remarkable conversation between three Presbyterian woman who were setting the tables.
I entered in the middle of it, and pretended to ignore them, so that they would keep talking and I could eavesdrop. They had been trashing some religion, either Baptist or Catholic, and finally one woman exclaimed, “Well, thank God we’re Presbyterians!” There was a silence. After a few seconds, the second woman said, “I don’t think we’re supposed to be Presbyterians. I think we’re supposed to be Christians.” Another awkward silence, and after a few more seconds the third woman spoke. “No,” she said, “even that’s too small. We’re supposed to love one another, that’s all.”
With this story in mind, let me caution you that in answring the question, “how shall we live?” I’m not ultimately talking about a Unitarian Universalist life. I’m not talking about a life based on any denominational identity. It is possible to live a life filled with integrity and grace; we can all get there—but our denominational or religious identity is, at best, a path to that life. We must not confuse our denominational or religious identity with that life.
With that said, with the Unitarian Universalist principles as our chosen path, how shall we live? We shall recognize we do nothing in isolation; everything we do has an impact on our surroundings because we are interdependent. We shall respect the earth. We shall recognize and confess the damage our technological short-sightedness has done—and will continue to do—to the earth until we radically transform our ways. Fully aware our survival depends on this recognition, confession and transformation we shall promote sustainable living: sustainable ways of harnessing, using and conserving energy, sustainable ways of organizing our communities, developing our land, growing and distributing our food, building our buildings, etc. We shall foster an ethic of global citizenship based on sustainability and build partnerships with people around the world who are themselves struggling for the creation of sustainable ways of life, for self-sufficiency, for self-determination, and for cultural and religious survival.
How shall we live? We shall live with a deep and abiding faith that every human being on this earth matters. We shall treat others in the spirit of the Biblical commandment to love neighbor as self. And in those moments when atrocities are committed, when a line is crossed, and we cannot honestly profess this faith because we cannot feel it, together we shall still sustain this faith. For I trust that when my faith wanes because I am confronted with some evil out of which I cannot make sense, someone else will carry my faith for me until I am ready to believe again, ready to heal, ready to forgive. When your faith wanes because you are confronted with some evil out of which you cannot make sense, someone else will carry your faith for you until you are ready to believe again, ready to heal, ready to forgive.
How shall we live? We shall love one another. We shall accept one another. We shall encourage one another.
How shall we live? We shall strive to create and practice justice. We shall
strive to create and practice equity. We shall strive to create and practice
peace. We shall do so with a loving spirit—with a humble, heart-centered
concern for the suffering of others, a humble, heart-centered compassion.
How shall we live? We shall live in democratic fashion, demanding, creating
and managing common spaces wherein all who wish to express the dictates
of their own conscience, either through word or deed, are able to do so;
and where such expressions of conscience lead to collective decision-making
favoring the majority view while integrating dissenting views to the greatest
degree possible and protecting the rights of all those who hold minority
views.
How shall we live? We shall be honest about the limits of human nature—the faults, the mistakes, the apathy, the lethargy, the sins, and our deep social and institutional conservatism in the face of injustice. We shall be mindful of the human capacity for evil. In response we shall be among those who build the social, political and economic power necessary to confront and transform abuses of power, confront and transform oppression, confront and transform evil, confront and subvert the large moneyed entities that demand the attention and loyalty of government and make it difficult for the demos to assert itself for the sake of justice, equity and peace. In these moments of confrontation and building power, we shall value courage, will, endurance, sacrifice, and non-violence.
How shall we live? We shall search. We shall search freely and responsibly for great spiritual depth. We shall be among those who listen to the deeper voice within in search of our deepest, most authentic selves, so that, having found our true selves, having come to know our true selves, having come to love our true selves, we may offer ourselves into the embrace and service of the larger, commanding reality which we know by many names—names such earth, nature, universe, god, goddess, mystery.
How shall we live? We shall savor the air and call each other “cousin.” We shall savor the water and call each other “brother.” We shall savor the soil, and call each other “sister.” We shall savor the green things and the animals, and call each other grandfather. We shall savor the mountains and the valleys and call each other “grandmother.” We shall savor the sun and all the stars and call each other “family.” We shall know ourselves, finally, as star ash; we shall grasp our relatedness to all existence; we shall believe in our common origin; we shall call each other “beloved.”
Rev. Loehr recently preached at the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Large Church Conference in Louisville, KY. He said something I like very much. Religion, he said, is “about behavior, not belief – it’s about being, not saying. After all, only members of our club or some equally foolish rival club care what we believe. Those are just turf battles…. In any tradition, [belief is] just the second-hand religion for their masses, whether it’s called Presbyterianism or Unitarian Universalism. Those outside our club only want to know whether we can sing them a song of active caring rather than a self-righteous little ditty.” Well, I’ve said a lot now about the Unitarian Universalist principles. And, yes, I think what I’ve said is meaningful. I think what I’ve said is good. I think there is moisture here—deep underground reservoirs waiting to be tapped: feeling and passion; the limits and failings of humanity as well as its goodness and beauty; community and carrying each other; a starting place for ethical reasoning in our common physical origin; keys to our survival; the embrace of spirituality; paths to growth and transformation; poetry, music, eating ashes, digging in the dirt, “Daoona Nayeesh,” dinosaur air, love for one another, “I Will Change Your Name,” “Let us be one people,” “Everything is Holy Now,” The Wood-of-no-Names, “there is a field,” “Rock of Ages Let Our Song,” Burning bushes and bare feet on holy ground. I say, yes, in all these ways of answering the question, “How shall we live?,” in all these explorations of ways of being rather than ways of believing, there is a religion being born here. There is a religion springing up like willows by flowing streams. There is reason not to mistake the darkness of the womb with the darkness of death!
But do you see the circularity of my argument? I see it I own it. Liberal Biblical scholars are often critical of Biblical listeralists who say, “The Bible says it is true, therefore it must be true.” Well, this is pretty much what I’ve done here. The minister sets out to find moisture. The minister uses words that indicate moisture. The minister proclaims he has found moisture! This is no more than a case of ‘the minister says it’s true because the minister says it’s true.’ This cannot possibly be the end of asking the question, “how shall we live?” Whether there is moisture in Unitarian Universalism is not about what I say, or what Rev. Loehr says, and it is not even about how we shall live. It is about how we do live. As long as these pretty “we shall lives” remain spoken words rather than lives lived then Rev. Loehr is absolutely correct: our song is nothing but a self-righteous little ditty about the social and political biases of late 20th century liberals—a second-rate, second-hand religion for the liberal religious masses.
The greatest reservoirs of moisture in any religion reside in how its people live, how they extend hospitality and caring and justice-seeking to each other and into the world. This is my experience: when I’m conducting my life as well as I am able based on Unitarian Universalist principles, nobody asks me what Unitarian Universalists believe. They simply say “thank you.” In 2000, when I was serving the Unitarian Universalist Church in Norwich, there was a Pentecostal church—the Tabernacle of Deliverance and Praise—that was kicked out of the space it was renting on Easter weekend. It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, the white neighborhood where they were renting didn’t want a black church worshipping there. The Norwich UUs stood with them through the whole, depressing experience of losing their home. We were the only religious body to stand with them. And when they finally had to leave, we opened our space to them for worship for two years. It was a defining moment for the UU Church. It was a moment of moisture. It was a moment of springing up like rivers by flowing streams. It didn’t matter to this Pentecostal church what Unitarian Universalists believed or what we said from the pulpit. What mattered was our behavior. A few years later this was brought home to me when the pastor of the Pentecostal church said to a group of local Christian clergy, “When we were getting our butts kicked, how come the only people who behaved the way Christians ought to behave were the atheists at the Unitarian Universalist Church?”
Moisture comes when we live our principles—when they are more than the words we pronounce. Perhaps the greatest barriers we face in moving the principles off the page, out of the realm of words and into our real, daily lives are, ironically, those very same questions that emerge from our modernist skepticism and mix with our natural human anxieties and fears: Will it really make a difference? Do we really have sufficient means to challenge the powers and principalities that otherwise obliterate all religious and moral aspirations? Is this spiritual searching all a bunch of magical thinking? Do we really believe there is a purpose and meaning to our lives? In the end we can’t know the answers until we’ve actually taken that leap of faith and lived as if what we do will make a difference; as if we actually do have the means to prevail over the powers and principalities; as if this spiritual searching is more than magical thinking; as if there actually is a purpose and meaning to our lives. In our reading this morning Vanessa Rush Southern says, “This living ‘as if’ is not fanciful. It is not lightheaded or light-hearted. In fact, it imposes some of the toughest life requirements there are. When we live in the world “as if,” we do something quite stunningly mad: We risk disappointment in committing to a world more beautiful and more just and more compassionate than any we have yet seen or touched or known.”
Are we too fearful of being disappointed? Would we rather just play it safe and say the words but not live by them, which I think is ultimately what Rev. Loehr accuses us of doing? Or do we want to see Unitarian Universalism come fully into the world through this long, slow beautiful birth process? Do we want Unitarian Universalism to grow and mature so that it can be our path to profound lives—lives of integrity, grace, and ‘love thy neighbor?’ If we want to behold this birth, then let us live “as if” and may our living—not our saying—serve as testament to the awesome power of our principles. Amen and Blessed Be.
Loehr, Rev. Davidson, “Size Matters,” a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Large Church Conference, March 13, 2008.
This paragraph makes reference to Shaffer, Nancy, “In the Beginning” in Instructions in Joy (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2002) pp. 3-4 and Reanney, Darryl, Music of the Mind: An Adventure Into Consciousness (London: Souvenir Press, 1994).
Loehr, Rev. Davidson, “Size Matters,” a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Large Church Conference, March 13, 2008.
The list that follows here is made up of references to worship services that have taken place at UUS:E through the course of this sermon series.
