"What We Believe"

READING

The author of today's reading is Jane Rzepka, minister to some two thousand Unitarian Universalists in the Church of the Larger Fellowship. The Church of the Larger Fellowship is a ministry by mail, email and phone to Unitarian Universalists who live too far from a congregation to have a place to go on Sundays. Jane's sermons and writings are published in "Quest," their monthly newsletter. Her April column addressed the question of what we believe.

She writes that people often interpret our tradition of freedom to mean that we have no limits and that we can believe anything we want. But that is far from the truth. As Jane asks, "[As Unitarian Universalists, could we have] worship by sacrificing chickens? Is that recognizable as Unitarian Universalism? [Could we] conduct a service in Boston [or in Santa Monica] entirely in Hebrew or Arabic or Tibetan? [Could we] do a Trinitarian baptism, absolving an infant of original sin? Is that Unitarian Universalism? Where is the line? What is 'the language of the people?' What pieces of theological identity are we promoting and protecting? If we were forced to leave our homes as a group and head for the promised land, what common practices would we take along?"

Though she admits it could be much longer, here is Jane's short list of what beliefs we Unitarian Universalists carry with us, wherever we go:

"If we believe in a god at all, we believe in a benevolent god, not a frightening god . . . .

We believe in the humanity of Jesus, whom we view as a wise and wonderful teacher, but not a god.

We reject the doctrine of innate depravity. We do not believe in original sin . . . .

We believe in free will, not predestination. Events are not preordained nor 'meant to be'; we have the power to act in the world.

We believe in the freedom of conscience, that creeds do not serve us well.
And we believe in the use of reason as part of determining religious truth."

"We carry other aspects of identity with us too: the flaming chalice, our hymns, our rejection of the Trinity, our personal approach to memorial services and funerals, our self-governance, our commitment to social justice in the world here and now, our reverence for nature, our love of community.

. . . When we go on our journeys, they are ours to take along."

SERMON

If we Unitarian Universalists had a creation myth, it might sound quite similar to the story I read to the children earlier in the service. In the story, the Creator is a benevolent, slightly mischievous woman who enjoys putting planets together as a hobby. We don't know what her day job is. She doesn't follow any particular guidelines, just uses her intuition and a whimsical flair for combining ingredients. As a result, she gives us everything from daffodils to mud puddles, people, puppies and chocolate chip cookies, feelings and smells, blue jeans and churches. She gives us more than we need, but holds back just enough to create some mystery. And she gives us freedom, which makes life very interesting.

It's the kind of story we tend to like, with positive, earnest values. It neatly combines a sense of randomness with the responsibility of free will. And it depicts the creator as having real feeling for us and all her creatures.

This creation story is no more believable than any other. Its purpose is not to describe what really happened. Rather it evokes the spirit of our tradition by appealing to the imagination, where all religions first come into being.

And it names an important value for us, freedom. Freedom is the ability to make choices, as the story tells us, and choices have consequences. If free will is "the power to act in the world," as Jane Rzepka defines it, then our lives have moral impact. Our choices can be good or bad. And freedom of conscience, the ability to discern truth for ourselves, gives us a responsibility for how we live.

Unitarian Universalist tradition places great emphasis on individual freedom, its power and its possibility. Not only do we affirm individual choice and expression, but we imagine our community as a place where freedom thrives because our minds are open. Anything that attempts to define where we stand - a creed, a scripture, a sermon - fails to understand us, for we can and must think for ourselves.

This insistence on freedom gives the impression that Unitarian Universalists can and do believe anything we want. This is a misconception we must correct wherever we go. At worst, some see us as fickle and freewheeling, turning from one enthusiasm to another in a cloud of permissiveness and moral relativism. Whenever I see an article about Unitarian Universalism in a local newspaper, I brace myself for such misrepresentations. I remember that Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose spiritual adventures were as radical as the nineteenth century could handle, once wrote "to be great is to be misunderstood." And I hope that the same is true for us.

My sister-in-law recently sent me a clipping from the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Argus Leader. I was pleasantly surprised to read an appealing story about the Unitarian Universalist church there. The article contained accurate historical references and incisive comments from local UUs. They were quick to declare that "It does matter what we believe," as one member stated to the reporter. "We pursue the truth as best we know, knowing that everything we know is an imperfect truth." Another member added that she sees her faith "not as a creed that I have to believe but as a way of life I choose to live." And I thought, we're not so hard to understand.

"Creeds do not serve us well," as Jane Rzepka writes, because our faith is about how we live. We do have beliefs that matter to us, however; beliefs that lay out the landscape of our faith and set the limits that help us know who we are. These are the beliefs she listed: about the nature of god, the humanity of Jesus, the rejection of original sin, the reality of free will, the right to freedom of conscience, the value of reason. This is not an exhaustive list, and any one of us could vary it somewhat, with different language or emphasis. But it shows us that our beliefs are assumptions we share. They are the common foundation on which we build our faith.

The fact is that we don't believe anything we want, despite the freedom and encouragement to seek that are also part of our faith. We do have and care about our beliefs, but our faith consists of much more than belief. Our faith is a way of life.

Unlike other religious traditions in which belief is a mental leap you must take - often a leap beyond reason into another realm - our beliefs are grounded in reason and the only realm we know, our every day world. Our tradition has rejected beliefs based on miracles. If we have an image of god, we probably associate it with the cycles of nature, or the interdependence of all life, or the emotional bonds we cherish. Our beliefs come out of our experience of every day life, and everything we have learned about the world.

But they are still beliefs. And we hold them as dearly as any other person of faith. They say more about us than we realize and give us more than we can say.

Belonging to a religious community is a way of defining who we are, identifying with the common beliefs and sharing in the common practices. That is as true for us as it is for any other faith tradition. Because of our common beliefs, however, the questions that we seek to answer ask how shall we live and what shall we do with our freedom. Our common practice is the search for a meaningful life.

Perhaps I'm the only one, but I do not find myself searching for more to believe in. I never ask myself, would my life be different if I could believe that Jesus was the son of God. Or how would I live if I believed that I were going to heaven or hell after I died. Despite the fact that many other people have searched and found answers they can believe in, my own search does not take me in that direction. My search is for experiences and insight that keep my faith in humanity, that preserve my sense of humor and optimism, that allow me to grow old without becoming cranky. Some days I need to take a mental leap to keep going - days filled with bad news, rude drivers, and an impending personal sense of futility - and that leap has everything to do with the fact that I believe anything at all. I keep going because I believe it matters.

Holding beliefs in common - even the common sense kind of beliefs we like to hold - seems to have the power to generate and sustain an attitude of good faith, even when times are hard. It matters what we believe, because our beliefs are foundational to our way of life. But it also matters that we believe: that we have forged an attitude of good faith amid the challenge and confusion of being alive, and that good faith is precious to us, and we do not want to lose it.

If we Unitarian Universalists lose our beliefs, we lose our hardy, optimistic affirmations that keep our faith in life and people. We lose our one big hedge against nihilism and selfishness. We lose our hope that our freedom is power to use in good ways.

Our beliefs may be modest, but our stakes are high. They are nothing less than a profound sense of trust that our attitudes, our actions, our loves and our struggles, all matter in this big universe of which we are only one small part. Without this sense of trust, our way of life is empty.

It matters that we believe. It also matters that we have found a way to build a faith on these beliefs that helps us in the way we live our lives. It matters that our faith tradition and community are here for us week after week, here to receive us in our strength and in our doubt, to revive our spirits and to remember - as the children's story put it - "what is important in life."

There are differences among us. The freedom we cherish also encourages different views and ways of living what we believe. But these differences are built on a foundation of common belief, our trust that whoever we are, it matters what we do. It may not sound like much. But it is everything we have. And we believe it is enough - just enough - to remember what is important in life. And that is all we need.