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A Whole World of Religion A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 9, 2003
Reading From Beliefnet.com http://www.beliefnet.com/story/120/story_12076_1.html
The crew of Columbia represents an extraordinary variety of faith traditions: Kalpana Chawla - Hindu and Sikh background, William McCool - Roman Catholic, Ilan Ramon - Jewish, Rick Husband - Charismatic, Laurel Clark - Unitarian, David Brown - Episcopalian, Michael Anderson - Baptist. This is just the way America is right now. Seek the best and the brightest, and you'll invariably scoop up a great assortment of faiths… At Laurel Clark's childhood Unitarian church in Racine, Wisconsin, the minister's remembrance focused not at all on the hereafter but celebrated the doctor's joy in life, expressed in an email that she had sent from space: "I hope you could feel the positive energy that beamed to the whole planet as we glided over our shared planet." Each astronaut followed a different spiritual path, each with a different style of mourning. Commander Laurel Salton Clark, 41, a Unitarian, was deeply connected to the Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church in her hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. She was married there, and her younger brother, Daniel Salton, is an active member and Sunday School teacher. The Rev. Dr. Tony Larsen, minister of the church for 27 years, met her when she was a teenager and officiated at her wedding… “On Sunday we held a remembrance for Laurel…Although we grieve for Laurel's loss, we know she was doing what she really wanted to do. She really believed in the space program, and the scientific and medical work they were doing in outer space. And it's fitting that all those astronauts of different cultures and nationalities could get along and work together. It's a model for how we might do that on earth. We must be joyful for all of the things she represented.” Dr. Larsen also read a portion of a remarkable e-mail that Clark had sent from the shuttle on Friday to family and friends. In many ways, Clark's mission embodied some of the core principles of the Unitarian Universalist faith, which welcomes all spiritual beliefs and emphasizes social justice and world peace. Respect for "the interdependent web of all existence" - a Unitarian principle - was acknowledged by Clark in an interview she conducted with a reporter from the shuttle. Clark spoke of a silkworm cocoon she had seen hatch onboard. "There was a moth in there," she said, "and it was just starting to pump its wings up. Life continues in lots of places, and life is a magical thing."
Prayer and Meditation From “Explanatory,” in A Free Pulpit in Action Clarence Skinner, Editor
Recognizing the need… to withdraw from dull routine and fret of circumstance, let us climb the Alpine heights of the spirit, whence we can draw deeper breath and see wider visions. May we feel the gates of the mind open outward toward the beauty and grandeur of the universe, and may each one of us become larger …with the infinite. We pray that a cosmic consciousness may be born in us that will lift us above the trivial to the great and that will transform our weaknesses into strength. May the sense of this larger fellowship go with us through trial and tribulation, sweetening the bitterness that so easily corrodes, ennobling our aims that so easily become selfish, giving us power to stand unsurrendered in the midst of temptation. We pray that in each of our hearts there may be renewed an appreciation of the beautiful until we become so sensitive that we shall see and feel beauty everywhere. We pray that we shall renew our determination to follow the gleam of truth, even though it take us o’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, gaining strength to be true, even when it takes from us comfort and happiness. We pray, above all, that we shall solemnly dedicate ourselves to the eternal search for the good life and the enduring satisfactions which shall make our days flow like a river, transforming the desert places, blessing the whole family of [humanity]. May our hearts know inward peace, and may our hands help… [people] of all races, creeds, and classes until justice shall cover the earth as waters cover the sea. Amen.
A Whole World of Religion A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 9, 2003
“The Living Tradition we share draws wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.” That statement is the third of six statements about the sources of inspiration for our religious tradition. I feel compelled to tell you that I approach this morning’s sermon with a certain degree of trepidation. This sense of trepidation comes in part from the comment that a Christian minister once made to me. He observed that one of the differences between our callings is that a Unitarian minister is something akin to a veterinarian whereas he was more like a physician. My friend was not saying that UUs are animals while Christians are people. What he meant is that as a Christian he only had to be conversant with one system of theology. A Unitarian minister, he continued, is more like a Veterinarian because we have to understand several distinct theologies in the same way that a Vet has to be able to understand the anatomies and pathologies of different species. I think he meant it as a compliment, or at least as an acknowledgement of one of the difficulties I faced in my ministry. That difficulty feels particularly real right now. I suppose it is always wise for the preacher to climb into the pulpit with fear and trembling. This morning, as we consider World Religions as sources of inspiration, I feel particularly vulnerable. Despite my friend’s confidence, World Religions have never been the focus of my passionate interest or in-depth study. Add to that the fact that there are about two dozen of you who attend the World Religions course that Jonalu is leading before the service, and I get the serious feeling that many of you know much more about this topic than I do! That’s OK, though, my real task in preaching is not to prove that I am smarter than you—my task is to help you see the light that shines on hope, to help you live into the fullness of life that creation and the Spirit hold forth. We in the Free Church exist as an institutional body alive in history. In this series of sermons, I have been exploring the notion that the sources of our inspiration offer insight into what defines and refines us. This morning, we consider World Religions. The unspoken part of my friends observation about Veterinarian Unitarianism is that to our more orthodox neighbors nothing is quite so baffling as our infatuation with things like Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and the like. A Parable perhaps underscores this most effectively. There once was a man for whom money was no issue. He loved art and desired to surround himself with the finest pieces that had ever been produced. His home was a museum—it held works from Stone Age Caves, from Renoir and Van Gogh, from Remington and Russell, from Picasso and Warhol. Everywhere in his home the best artists from all the schools of art could be seen. When asked about his eclectic collection, all the man would say is that “I know art. I just don’t know what I like.” To the outsider, I think our connection to World Religions may be similarly puzzling. We are accustomed to knowing what we like and admitting to ignorance about the topic writ-large. It may appear that we know more about religions—in toto—than we do about what we believe. Our orthodox neighbors sometimes accuse of us of picking and choosing and being unable to make up our minds. This is the tension behind the joke about the Unitarian and the Jehovah’s Witness. What do you get when you cross the two? Someone who will knock on doors for no apparent reason. For the Jehovah’s Witness, the path to salvation is clear, straight and narrow. Our paths tend to wander and we linger at a different set of springs along the journey. This same tension draws forth a critique on us as a cafeteria—or smorgasbord—religion. Some people criticize us, perhaps rightly, for grazing our way across the religious landscape. They wonder, can you really take parts of traditions and cobble them together into a functioning whole? It’s a little like a Johnny Cash song I remember from 30 years ago where an assembly line worker had smuggled a car out of the factory “One Piece At A Time.” As the chorus reminded us “It was a 1950, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 automobile.” I am not sure what that car would look like. Perhaps like the animal that the committee blind observers from this morning’s Not For Children Only might come up with if they had to assemble an elephant as opposed to merely describing it. To some outsiders, and perhaps sometimes to insiders, our interest in world religions raises serious questions about the kind of religion we practice here. “The Living Tradition we share draws wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.” We claim to use world religions to help us live our lives—we don’t just claim to study them as a kind of academic or esoteric enterprise. We say we use that wisdom to live our lives. That is the challenge for us. I suspect it is also a source of opportunity as well. Critics sometimes describe our approach to World Religions as a form of New Age thought—but the reality is that our interest and attraction to World Religions is far from new. It has been with us for well over 150 years. World Religions are woven into the warp and woof of our religious fabric. For the Unitarians, our exploration of world religions began shortly after we claimed our name. It is part of the natural outgrowth of Transcendentalism. The Universalists, in turn, by the late 19th century began to take their name to mean a commitment to “Universal Religion” as opposed to the doctrinal concern for “Universal Salvation.” It is no accident that the most significant modern scholars of Religions of the World have connections to our movement. Mircea Eliade was for many years on the faculty of our seminary in Chicago and Houston Smith is a member of a UU Congregation. In addition, the earliest scholarly works on World Religions came from Unitarians and Universalists dating back to at least 1871. Others may find our commitment to World Religions esoteric—but our connection is deep and quite organic. Our institutional embodiment of World Religions is clearly evident in an event from the final years of the 19th century. 1893 was the year that this congregation was gathered. It is also the year the first World Parliament of Religions was held in Chicago. The Parliament was the first ever gathering of leaders from a wide variety of World Religions. Not only were Protestant, Catholic and Jew gathered together—but delegations of Hindus and Confucians and Buddhists also attended. Unitarians and Universalists were not only present, but we were also the prime forces behind the Parliament. One cannot consider the Parliament without recognizing the role that Jenkin Lloyd Jones, leader of the Unitarian’s Western Conference, played in the gathering. He was the prime organizing force. “The Living Tradition we share draws wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life.” In the years after the Civil War Unitarianism and Universalism were swept up in a larger push away from denominationalism in American religion. This is when the Christian Church—Disciples of Christ arose in the self understanding of themselves as a unifying force away from sects and denominations. Similar desires were woven into the Unitarianism and Universalism at that time—but instead of wanting to draw all the Protestants together under a single banner—our goal was even grander. We wanted to draw all the world's religions together. Our institutional ancestors understood their task to include bringing all the worlds religions together into a single faith. The Universalists came to see the notion of Universal Salvation as too small for the heart of their faith. They understood themselves called to explore the wider world of religion in search of real Universalism—a circumscribed Universalism they observed was no Universalism at all. Likewise for Jones and the Unitarians a desire to free universal religious truths from the constraints of varied religious practices was their first and foremost concern. Following the lead of Theodore Parker some 50 years earlier, they sought to liberate the permanent truths from the transient truths in all religions. They hoped to bring all these Truths (Truths with a capital T) together within our religious tradition. While I find these tendencies attractive and even noble—I have to admit that they trouble me. Unity does not trouble me. What troubles me is our instantaneous assumption that whatever it is that unifies religious thought and belief is consistent with and best observable from our point of theological reference. There is an arrogance in our historical approach to Unity and Universality, born out in this source of our living tradition. This sense of our own self-importance embodies a kind of arrogance. We are the ones who are smart enough, insightful enough, enlightened enough to do what no one else can. We can bring unity from difference and singular purpose from diverse practices. Now we don’t actually say it that way, but I don’t think that kind of thinking is very far below the surface of our religious approach sometimes. If this is what we mean when we observe that “The Living Tradition we share draws from Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life” then I don’t want much to do with it. A different way, though, is available to us. As usual, our highest ideals and the truest sense of our history point us past ourselves. As Americans, we include in our cultural mythos the notion of the melting pot. People from across the world come to us and are somehow, mysteriously and magically, forged into a common people. That’s the myth anyway. The reality is, I think, somewhat different. A drive around Oklahoma City shows not so much a melting of cultures as a mosaic of settlement. Go up Classen a few blocks and see the growing community pride and development of Little Saigon. A trip to Capitol Hill alerts the observer to the very real presence and significance of our Hispanic community. Even the old separations of race along black and white lines are still present. A trip east on 23rd speaks of a different set of values and concerns than a trip to Bethany or Moore. Human nature is not so much a melting pot as it is a mosaic or side by side pieces of stained glass. Differences are rarely erased. We don’t so much blur boundaries as we find tension, hopefully creative tension, in our differences. I am not saying that we should not be seeking Equity. We should do so vigorously and tirelessly. I am not claiming that all these communities have gotten a fair deal—quite the opposite, really. What I am observing is that it isn't really natural to find universality in the different manifestations of our lives. While some of our differences fade, and clear similarities surface. The real tendency in human affairs is not toward a “melting pot.” Furthermore, it shouldn’t be. If you dump a box of crayons in a pot and turn on the heat, what happens? You get a non-descript Grey-Brown gooey mess. How much more beautiful—and useful—were the crayons before melting them together? If we maintain autonomy in cultural perspectives why would we expect to be able to level the differences between different religious practices? I don’t think that our approach to world religions should be to try and create a space where the Buddhist will feel as comfortable as the Christian or where the Hinduism looks like Taoism or Judaism or Islam. There is a uniqueness in each and every religious system that can probably only be experienced in media res—in the midst of things. That was one of the lessons I draw from the theological diversity of the astronauts who died on board Columbia just over a week ago. The astronauts were of diverse faiths—but more importantly they were engaged in the task of living which utilized their differences to create a more accurate picture of humanity. Perhaps that is the commitment to World Religions to which we should aspire. Importantly, there are real differences between the monotheism of our Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, the polytheism of Hinduism, the A-theism of Buddhism and the ethical monism of Taoism. What is most valuable, that which we can learn the most from in all these traditions, is born of its difference and may not be readily accessible through its similarity. To strip off the nonessential may well mean casting away the most precious part of a religion. To try and isolate these religions, to lift them out of place and hold them up for forces an artificiality on them that they were never meant to have. It is like those oddly-beautiful weird-looking deep-sea creatures with the tentacles and pointy fins that you see on National Geographic specials. I remember Jacques Cousteau hauling the creatures out of their natural environment thousands of feet below the surface. The changes in pressure and temperature tore them to pieces. To really understand them one had to go to them—one could not pull them out of their environment. So too with religion I think. One can only get so much from a book—and even less if the book’s intent is to syncretize and explain away all difference. As Unitarian Universalists we have a deep curiosity and a historic connectedness to religions from around the world. I think we have to be careful though. We may study these things but let us be careful in our sense that we really understand them. We may find elements in them that connect to our lives, help us make sense of the world and make us feel at one with the Spirit. We should though move cautiously in our appropriation of symbol and ritual. The only people who really know what the symbol and ritual really mean are the people who live them. We must bask in the light of the Spirit from wherever it calls—but we can never think that we wholly understand the light or fully possess the Spirit. It would be absolute arrogance to say that everything that is important about life and living comes from within the confines of our tradition. It is also hubris to say that all religions say essentially the same thing just in different ways to different people in different places at different times. On this day, I hope that our commitment to the religious path will draw us to appreciate the sincere differences and not just the easy similarities. In art, light and shadow intertwine to form contrast. In music different pitches create harmonies that lift us above all individual knowing. So, too, in religion let us seek the fullness of the spirit by recognizing the fullness and uniqueness of difference as well as the comfort of synthesis. One of my favorite hymns observes that the “Seekers Of The Light Are One.” I am not sure that is true. The lesson I think we can learn from our commitment to differing sources of enlightenment is that the seekers of the light are different. There is though, still a One-ness. It is the Light that is One. Let us stand in that Light, see it reflected in each other’s eyes and throughout creation. Let us use that Light to find our way through the incredible diversity of the Spirit. If we commit ourselves to this we will have done our part to live into one of the sources of our religious inspiration. At that point we will be ready to fully partake in “A Whole World of Religion.” AMEN
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