Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, October 20, 2019.
The other day I was having a conversation with two of you who are leaders here, and one of you said she didn’t really think of herself as a church person. She didn’t grow up going to church, and started coming because one of her children was curious about church. So sometimes she wonders, “How did I end up here?” And I understood what she was saying, and confessed that sometimes I wonder the same thing!
Then the other person said, “I definitely am a church person. I grew up Presbyterian, and I’ve been a UU for decades now. I can’t imagine my life without the church.” And that resonated with me too, because I grew up in the church too; it was what we did, every Sunday, and I’m grateful for how that shaped and formed me.
I love the church, and our potential to be a place of healing and transformation, for individuals and for our world. I love being here, and am so grateful you want to be here too! I’m so glad that you eight lovely souls who joined this congregation today. We are so glad you’re here!
There’s a hunger in our society—for connection, for meaning, for some kind of spirituality—and I don ’t know a better place to find that than in a faith community like this one. I sense there are so many people out there, right now, feeling lost or worried or disconnected or afraid, who need a place where they can feel the care and companionship of fellow humans; where they can sense presence of God or Spirit. As St. Augustine said so long ago, “You have made us for yourself God, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” But finding a spiritual home is not so simple these days. Lots of folks have given up on the church because they see it as inflexible, authoritarian, patriarchal, one size fits all. In some settings, the church is still a place where the answers are carved in stone; there’s little room for questioning and exploration. I continue to be surprised and sad that so many people still equate faith with certainty. As if to be a person of faith is to have all the answers!
Our free faith, and our long name, comes from two Protestation denominations, the Unitarians and the Universalists, who joined together in 1961. The Unitarians go all the way back to the Protestant Reformation, 500 years ago in Europe, and there are about 120 Unitarian churches in Romania today. They articulate their faith this way: “God is One and indivisible. The man Jesus is an example. The Holy Spirit is the power for good within.”
Universalism began as an American denomination in the mid-1800’s, in response to the Calvinist doctrine of human depravity and the belief that only a few people were going to get into heaven. Universalism says the nature of God is love, and that in the end, all people will be restored to a right relationship with God. A shorthand version of these two theological expressions is this: “One God, nobody left behind.”
Something both traditions had in common was a deep aversion to excluding people because of differences of belief. Neither the Unitarians nor the Universalists ever had a creed, a written statement of belief, because they didn’t want it to be used to keep anyone out. In this way, our forebears were ahead of their time. Rather than top-down religious doctrine and authority, they put their trust in the human mind and heart, in the power of the people, in the saving Love of the Divine Spirit.
Early on in my time as a UU, on the day when our first child was baptized, a teenager in that church gave a testimonial and said words I will never forget: “This church doesn’t damn me to hell for believing what I can’t help but believe.” Last week Sophia preached a beautiful sermon that started with the story of an anesthesiologist, about to put her under, who asked her about UUism, and said, “Oh, that’s the religion where you can believe whatever you want.” And she wasn’t able to say, “No! That’s not it at all!”
There’s a significant difference between “You can believe anything you want,” and “What I can’t help but believe.” The former seems shallow and trivial, like deciding what flavor of ice cream to buy; the latter comes from searching your heart and mind, engaging in deep reflection alone and with others, like in a Chalice Circle group, and coming to understand, “This is what is deep and true for me; what I can’t help but believe, what I give my heart to, without reservation.” This church is here to hold open a space where you can do this deep work and find the way that is your own, and have companions for the journey.
On that same morning when our son Will was baptized, we read some words to him, that had been shared in that church some months before, words that expressed our hope for the kind of parents we wanted to be. I’ve shared these words by Theodore Roszak before, because they sum the kind of spiritual friendship and support a church ought to offer:
You and I, we meet as strangers,
Each carrying a mystery within us.
I may never know who you are,
I may never know you completely.
But I trust that you are a person in your own right
possessed of a beauty and a value that are the earth's richest treasures.
So, I make this promise to you.
I will impose no identities upon you but will invite you
to become yourself without shame or fear.
I will hold open a space for you in the world
and defend your right to fill it with an authentic vocation
For as long as your search takes,
You have my loyalty.
“What kind of a church is this?,” you could rightly ask. “You have these traditional stained-glass windows, this beautiful image of Jesus front and center, but you don’t say that Jesus is the only one. You have Buddhists here, and Pagans here, and atheists and agnostics here, and some Jews and Christians too.”
The Universalists who built this church were free-thinking Christians. They saw Jesus as a prophet and as an example of God’s love embodied in a human person. They placed those windows over there, telling the story of the Prodigal Son, to remind us that God is like a loving parent, who only wants us to come to our senses and come back home. Over the years we have become more theologically diverse; we don’t all follow the same path. Our holy books range from the Bible to other sacred texts to contemporary poetry. We put our faith in direct experience, our glimpses of that Mystery around us, and in the words and deeds of prophetic people down through the ages.
In some ways we’re quite diverse, and in others, not so much. Not yet, anyway. What is beautiful about this church is that we see each other in our particularity and our complexity, and we companion one other on the way. This requires us to stretch and grow and be open which can be challenging and hard. And it’s good for us!
What kind of church is this? It’s a congregation, not a building. As grateful as we are for this sturdy and beautiful place, and for all that has happened here, the church is not the building. It’s you. You are the church. You good-hearted, generous, down-to-earth people, trying to grow and heal and help make ours a better world. We are meant to be a cathedral of Love, a place of healing and liberation in the heart of this city. And we are on our way. Do you feel it? Isn’t it good?
My prayer is that we will, more and more, dive in and sing out and celebrate the holy joy of gathering as the body we call church—so we can do and be what we can’t do all on our own. What Lindy Thompson finds every Sunday:
I might be exhausted and the children might be cranky,
but I will be going to church on Sunday.
Don’t know who is preaching, doesn’t matter –
the sermon may be helpful or not, holds my attention or doesn’t –
it’s the singing.
I go to sing.
I get up,
get clean,
get dressed,
possibly get mad (at not-ready kids, at empty coffee pot, at traffic)
get going,
get there,
get seated,
get comfortable,
get focused
and when the music starts,
get saved.
It’s the singing.
I go to sing.
It’s the willingness to stand if you are able,
the common agreement on page number,
the voluntary sharing of songbooks with people on your row,
even ones you rode there with –
but most of all,
it’s the collective in-breath before the first sound is made,
the collective drawing upon the grace of God,
the collective, if inadvertent, admission
that we are all human,
all fragile,
all in need of the sustaining air, freely dispensed,
all in need of each other to get the key right and not sound discordant –-
it’s the hidden life-celebration
in the act of making a joyful noise,
all together.
We don’t even have to sound that good.
Singing together still brings home
the we-ness of worship,
the not-alone-ness of life in God,
the best of all we have to offer each other.
When we are singing, I think that I might actually be able to forgive you
for being so terribly human,
and you might be able to forgive me
for being so terribly not there yet,
and we might be able to find peace now,
not postpone it for some heavenly hereafter
but live and breathe it today,
drawing in the grace of God,
voicing out our need and hope and gratitude and longing.
When we are singing, I can feel the better world coming,
and if I get to be a part of it, you do too . . .
so sing with me,
and we’ll make our way down that blessed road together,
collectively better
than we ever thought
possible.
Now will somebody say “Amen”?
Amen.