"To Learn, To Celebrate, To Serve"

READING

The coverage of the recent debate among Unitarian Universalists about
theological language was wider than usual. Not just our own magazine,
UU World, but the daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times,
found our exchange to be newsworthy. This article comes from the liberal
journal Christian Century.

The president of the nation's most liberal denomination has touched off
a theological brush fire by suggesting that the Unitarian Universalist
Association needs to reclaim a "vocabulary of reverence" by not being
afraid to talk about God. William Sinkford, in a series of sermons and
articles this year, said the creedless denomination needs to reexamine
its beliefs because its principles "contain no hint of the holy."

"I'm not suggesting that Unitarian Universalism return to traditional
Christian language," Sinkford said in January in his opening volley to a
church in Fort Worth, Texas. "But I do feel that we need some language
that would allow us to capture the possibility of reverence, to name
the holy, to talk about human agency in theological terms."

Sinkford's call has worried some atheists and humanists who fear that
the tradition may no longer have room for the liberal theology that has
been its hallmark. ...

According to Sinkford, if the church wants to be taken seriously,
particularly by other faiths, it needs to move beyond "reactivity"
to religious discourse. "For us to be more effective in that realm,
we have to be comfortable with people for whom religious language is
where they live," he said.

(legal notice: Copyright 2003, Christian Century. Reproduced by permission from the
June 14, 2003 issue of the Christian Century. Subscriptions:
$49/year from P.O. Box 378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054. 1-800-208-4097
http://www.christiancentury.org)

SERMON:

Every Saturday morning
I open the Los Angeles Times to the religion section,
to catch up on the news of other faith traditions.
I rarely expect to read about Unitarian Universalism on those pages.
We're a small community
with an even smaller presence in Los Angeles,
the most religiously diverse city in the world.

But we Unitarian Universalists did make the news
when our president, Bill Sinkford,
went public with his call for us
to "name the holy"
and develop a "vocabulary of reverence."
Newspapers and journals picked up this provocative message right away.
The revelation that we Unitarian Universalists
have grown lax - or possibly allergic - to religious language
must have seemed odd
to the rest of the world's peoples of faith.

I can't tell you whether this was good publicity or bad.
But it can't hurt us
to give some thought
to what we name the holy
or find worthy of our reverence.
The words we use might or might not be religious.
I happen to think that does not matter much.
What matters is that our words
be honest and simple
and anything but glib.

We are reactive, this I know.
I reacted just a few days ago
to a voicemail message from someone
who breezily signed off,
"Blessings on your weekend!"
I admire and respect the sender of the message,
but it bothers me when people talk about blessings
the same way they might say "have a nice day."
It's too glib for something as wonderful as a blessing.

My reaction leads me to ask
whether our difficulty with religious language
is that not that we don't take it seriously.
Rather it is an indication
of just how serious we are.
We are acutely sensitive
to all the ways in which
that which is worthy of reverence
has been exploited and trivialized.

And if we were to find the words
I wonder how much they would still mean to us
by the time we were done with them.
The artist Ren? Magritte once wrote,
"If one looks at a thing with the intention
of trying to discover what it means,
one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself,
but thinking of the question that has been raised.
One cannot speak about mystery;
one must be seized by it."

Religious language is evocative and imprecise.
Sometimes it is good to be evocative and imprecise,
but important meanings can be lost that way.
The longer I deal in words about our religious lives,
the farther away I drift from religious language.

Life may be full of blessings,
but a blessing comes in many different guises,
and it is the particular shape or form
that deserves to be acknowledged
in all its specific and unique significance to us.
I want to name what is specific and unique.
I want to say that what is a blessing in my life
is that I found
my work and my partner and even my dog.
I don't want blessings in general,
I want to name this work and this partner and this dog in particular.

At the same time, what matters to us
cannot always be reduced to words,
even religious words.
What we feel most deeply
we cannot always name.
Unitarian Universalist is a creedless faith
in part because we recognize
that words are inadequate to describe
what we feel most deeply.
This attitude is essentially one of reverence.
We let the mystery seize us,
we do not parse it
until it is smaller than we are.

We are also creedless
because we have long understood
the power of words to divide us.
Religious language, because of its ambiguity,
can also be confusing.
So we have tried to reach
beyond division and confusion
to affirm what we know
and understand in common,
what we sense is universal,
what we express
in the way we live our lives.
For us, it is what we do,
not what we say,
that is the true test of our faith.

Our tradition may be weak in religious language,
but it is strong in exhortation to act
in ways that make a difference.
We believe that it matters what we do.
It matters ultimately,
even beyond our own interest or fulfillment;
perhaps in some larger cosmic pattern
we know only as mystery,
but it matters.

What we do is not necessarily heroic
or courageous
or unusual.
Every day people act in ways
that make a difference,
good or bad.
We can see them everywhere we go.

While we were in Boston earlier this summer
for the General Assembly,
the annual meeting of Unitarian Universalists,
David and I had a memorable urban adventure.
Walking back from the convention center late on a very hot Saturday afternoon,
we noticed a group of young people
huddled around a parked car.
They were typical urban youth -
skateboards and cell phones in hand.
We nearly passed by them,
not seeing what they were doing.

But then we noticed
that they were gathered around a locked car
with the windows rolled up tight.
A cracked open sun roof let in a small amount of air
and a lot of hot sun.
A panting dog waited patiently inside.

The young people told us that they had called the police
and animal control,
but that neither would do anything
because the dog was still conscious.
So they were holding a kind of vigil
until they could figure out what do next.
Someone had told them
that the owner had gone to attend a service
at the church down the street.
I volunteered to go to the church
and see if I could locate the owner.
It seemed like the sort of thing
I should be able to do -
as if I had some insider's knowledge
of how best to penetrate
someone else's worship service.
My plan was to find someone
to take a message to the worship leader,
who could make an announcement..

But the people at the church wouldn't let me.
David and I confronted one officious gatekeeper after another
and watched helplessly from the rear of the sanctuary
as the rituals of the church
were carried out without concern
for the fate of a dog.
I considered standing up
and saying something,
but there was a formidable lineup
of Boston police officers
at worship that afternoon
and I didn't want to take any chances.
As we stood there wondering what to do,
I couldn't help but think of the contrast
between the situation unfolding on the street below
and the ritual activity going on above,
its leaders oblivious to the danger and the suffering
we were trying to avert.

All turned out well in the end.
The man with the dog locked in his car
had not been attending services
at the church after all.
When he arrived at his car,
he was greeted by a crowd of angry young people
and a dog who was still breathing on her own.

The experience left me with a fresh appreciation
of the religious value of action.
People doing what they can
in response to need or injustice or suffering
is the best religious expression there is.
I witnessed reverence for the mystery of life
demonstrated by the youth on the street.
Upstairs, at church, I could see only reverence
for the trappings of religion,
for the rite and the ritual,
which are not the same as life itself,
at least, not to me.

I want my religion to be about life,
about all the ways we can nurture growth
in ourselves and others.
If there are no religious words to describe what that is,
I can live without them.
We can always tell stories instead.

In the children's story we heard earlier,
young Anna spends every Wednesday evening
with her grandmother.
They're working on a birthday gift for Anna's father.
When the birthday finally arrives,
the gift, which is a big surprise,
is that Anna has taught her grandmother to read.

The story illustrates how life-changing
a human interaction can be.
It reminds us that anyone can learn at any age.
And it gives us an appreciation
of the possibility for growth
inherent in any loving relationship.

The story also teaches us how simple actions
can have great meaning.
To learn,
to celebrate,
and to serve
are just three ways anyone can make a difference.
One little girl just showed us how to do them all.

To learn, to celebrate, and to serve
are the central activities of our church community as well.
We need each other
for the encouragement to grow and develop,
to live fully,
to help each other and the larger world.
It sounds simple,
but what can come from it is positive change,
joy,
and reverence,
for we are in the presence of the mystery of life itself.
This is why we gather.
We are a community for learning,
because everyone can grow,
everyone can nurture,
and everyone can bloom in ways they never thought possible.
We are a community for celebration,
because everyone wants to feel joy.
And we are a community for service,
because everyone wants to give
in gratitude for the gift of life.

The response to life that wants to act in positive,
joyful and thankful ways is a deeply religious motivation.
It is what we want
when we are seized by the mystery
and have nowhere else to go but to church.
We want to know how to live,
how to make a difference,
and how to be -
in our own inimitable and human way -
a blessing on the world.