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Nothing More Required A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 12, 2006
First Reading “The Oversoul” Ralph Waldo Emerson (SLT 531) Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our own minds. As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us. Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable. It comes to the lowly and simple; it comes to whosoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grandeur. The soul’s health consists in the fullness of its reception. Forever and ever the influx of this better and more universal self is new and unsearchable. Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love. Second Reading “The Courage to Belong” By William Earnest Hocking There is no choice but to immerse oneself in the stream of history, accept one’s time-location, breathe in—with shared memories and hopes—the contamination of tradition, become defined as (a person) of this cause, this party, this emergency. Failure to accept responsibility, refusal to take a stand on vital issues, timid rejection—as one must reject false tags—of the ties of a true belonging, these are denials of life—in effect they are deeds of death. To understand the times in which we live, to add our weight to the scales on the side of (humanity) and equality within valid difference, this is ‘life with shape and character’—the one eternity worth having.
Meditation and Prayer From the 13th century Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi [translation by Coleman Barks]: I am dust particles in sunlight. I am the round sun. To the bits of dust I say, Stay. To the sun, Keep moving. I am morning mist, and the breathing of evening. I am wind in the top of a grovw, and surf on the cliff. Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel, I am also the coral reef they founder on. I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches. Silence, thought, and voice. The musical air coming through a flute, a spark of a stone, a flickering In metal. Both candle, and the moth crazy around it. Rose, and the nightingale lost in the fragrance. I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy, the evolutionary intelligence, the lift, And the falling away. What is, and what isn’t. You who know Jelaluddin, You the one in all, say who I am. Say I am You.
Nothing More Required A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday February 12, 2006 We Unitarians can be a conscientious but confusing lot. To wit, a joke that is floating around the internet that adapted slightly goes like this— A visitor to a Unitarian Church walks in, observes that the room is a bit dark to read the materials she picked up from the visitor’s rack. She asks if she can turn on the lights. She is immediately handed the following statement—“We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey, you have found that light bulbs work for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb. Present it next month at our annual Light Bulb Sunday Service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life, and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.” We can complicate almost anything. We usually do so in a compassionate desire to be accurate, transparent and unassuming but the truth is we can complicate—or should I say “obfuscate” even the most basic things. To wit—when asked about the beliefs of this church, I am quick to point out that we are “Covenantal, Non-Creedal Tradition.” The response I give is accurate—almost obfuscatingly so. Today I worry that I’m guilty of explaining the physics of electricity to someone who simply wanted a little more light by which to read. Don’t get me wrong. We are a covenantal, non-creedal, tradition organized more around promise than belief. Our church does not set forth a particular creed or set of dogmatics that the individual must affirm before becoming members. That, however, shouldn’t be construed that beliefs don’t matter to us. Neither should it be interpreted to mean that you can believe anything at all and still find a comfortable “fit” in this church. Although, at times, I have been guilty of perpetuating both of those fallacies. This is why I embarked on this series of sermons on Core Revelations and Meta-Beliefs of the Liberal Tradition. My thesis is a bit of a corrective. You see while we don’t dictate particular creeds or specific beliefs, there are a series of things that we hold in common. These theories about life are the Core Revelations and Meta-Beliefs that produce the constellation of our individual credos. Last week I started with the notion that “This Life Matters.” Our common belief that “Life is a gift” finds form in different ways but always eschews beliefs which diminish person-hood or sever humanity from the rest of creation. Those kinds of beliefs, things that lead us away from the primacy of life, are beyond the horizon of our beliefs and are unlikely to set down roots in our tradition. Core Revelation Two is, in many ways, an extension of the first. Stated affirmatively it maintains that ours is an Unmediated Anthropology. We tend to hold in common an understanding that Human beings are created with the capacity to recognize, respond and interact with that which is Ultimate. We live an unmediated existence. We experience life directly. This meta-belief holds that nothing is required beyond what is inherently human to interact with or appreciate the Ultimate—Life, Death, God, Love, Forgiveness, Human Potential, Pain, Suffering, or any other part of existence. This means that we set aside the world view of the ancient Greeks and Gnostics who held that there is—somewhere—a real and unchanging world that projects an image of itself forward so that we live and move only in its likeness. Some of you no doubt remember Plato writing of the shadows of people dancing before a fire that come to life on the walls of the cave. As insightful as that may be—it is not our way. We don’t hold that there is a perfect and unchanging world somewhere that is beyond our ken and control. Things that point us toward believing that this world isn’t real or that we must find some intermediary to act in our stead simply don’t fit well around here and tend to be discarded. This notion of an unmediated relationship with the divine is one of the dividing lines between Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christianity. Catholic theology holds that there is no salvation outside the church. That the church is the intermediary between God and Human Beings. The church becomes the intercessor, or the agent, for the individual in any divine dialogue. That’s why Catholic priests can instruct individuals to do penance. The believer tells the priest, the priest as a rightful agent of the church, offers God’s absolution to the individual. One way that Protestantism differs from Catholicism is that it holds that the individual has a direct and unmediated relationship with the divine. In many ways we Unitarians are the most protestant of the Protestants. This is particularly true when it comes to the idea of this direct, unmediated, relationship with the divine. The classical statement about this core revelation of an unmediated anthropology comes from 17th century Dutch Reformed theologian Jacob Arminius. In contrast to most dominant strands of Protestantism, Armius held that human beings have—as part of our inherent make up—the capacity to recognize and respond to God and God’s will. We have the capacity to know God and to choose actions that either conform or diverge from the will of God. We, then, become direct actors in creations, agents in enacting—or failing to enact—the wish and will of God. Arminianism is either bad doctrine or outright heresy depending upon who among “orthodox” Christians you consult. Keep in mind that the meaning of “heresy” when traced directly back to its Greek root means “I Choose”. Knowing this, I will tell you that many of the Core Revelations and Meta-Beliefs I offer in this series will vacillate somewhere between “bad doctrine” and “heresy” in the minds of many Christians! Ours is a heretical way—perhaps that should have been my “Core” Core Revelation! A bit before Arminius was developing his theology—or perhaps more accurately his anthropology. Our religious ancestors in central Europe—particularly in Poland and Transylvannia—were running afoul of the dominant protestants and the Catholics in a way that indicates how deeply we draw from this well of an unmediated anthropology. Our unitarian ancestors in the early 17th century were attacked—often figuratively but frequently fiscally and physically—as Judaizers. You see, as a group that didn’t see Jesus—the Son—as part of the Trinity they could find little reason to address prayers to Jesus. They could find little reason to pray through Jesus to get to God. In less than reverent terms they decided to cut out the middleman. Think for a moment about most prayers you have heard—the Lord’s Prayer being the dominant exception. Most of our public prayers—you know, the one’s you don’t hear in schools or at ballgames anymore (or at least aren’t supposed to hear). Most public prayers begin with a “Dear God” clause—maybe it’s “Heavenly Father” or “Creator God” or “Spirit of Life and Living” but most prayers begin with a “Dear God” of some kind. Somewhere before they end, however, the addressee changes—as the pray-er concludes with “In Christ’s name we pray” or some variation thereof. This is more than the theological equivalent of an email “CC.” This is a theological statement that one has to pray through Jesus to get to God. This is one of those places where I maintain that we Unitarians prove ourselves the most protestant of the Protestants. We take that notion of a direct unmediated relationship with the holy so seriously that we won’t let Jesus get in the way of it. That is what got our central European religious ancestors in trouble. They quit addressing their prayers to Jesus—and presumed to have a direct relationship with God. They therefore were accused of trying to convert Christians to Judaism. And to think that we are often accused to being opposed to proselytism! Why does all this matter? How does Judaizing and Arminianism really play out in our religious and spiritual lives? Anthropologically, we maintain that everything you need to live a complete spiritual life is nascent in you—it is part of your make up, standard equipment of your humanity. This differs from the dominant strands of religion in our culture which see human being as fallen, cast aside, save for accepting the salvific grace of Christ Jesus. Our understanding is that Jesus doesn’t bring us anything we didn’t already have—he may perhaps instruct and lead and serve as an example—but Jesus was not set apart from the rest of creation and neither are we. This sets us aside from most who maintain a creedal orthodoxy in religion. Some maintain that without the salvific gift of Jesus’ death and resurrection—and without our accepting that he did this as an intermediary for us—that we would have no way of knowing God. That is to say that without that intermediary act, if Jesus were to come in and sit down and teach all that he taught we would be unable to understand it. It would be like being taught by someone who spoke a different language with no interpreter present. This is not our way. We hold a meta-belief, a core revelation, that everything we need to live a fully whole and holy life is here among us and always has been. There are limits to this unmediated anthropology. We don’t create our own reality but we do participate directly in it. We may help shape our world—but despite our direct participation in it we don’t, of our own accord, define what is real and what is illusion. I also caution that directly experiencing life doesn’t mean we are automatically self-actualized beings. We’re not. Henry Whitney Bellows, serving as the head of the National Conference of Unitarians in the late 19th century, said it best. I paraphrase, “Nothing so characterizes humanity as its improvability.” That means nothing so characterizes what we know of ourselves as our ability and our need to be improved—our ability and need for self-improvement. We don’t require intervening, outside, forces to tell us to live lives of goodness and mercy and love and justice. Of course, sometimes these outside forces do act upon us and call us to be better people than we dream we can be. Importantly, even when these outside forces act upon us they act on us naturally. Perhaps the outside force comes from witnessing the miracle of creation or hearing the still small voice that comes from both within and without. Perhaps you see suffering and know deep down that compassion demands a response. Maybe you are confronted with injustice and discover that love calls you forward in ways you never imagined. Even when these outside forces act upon us I tell you they do so because we are hard wired for it. Part of our human makeup is as a receiver that lets us—when we will—tune into these things and respond from a depth of our being where there is no wall separating our humanity from divinity. That is what it means to live an unmediated life. That is what it means to hold in common an understanding that Human beings are created with the capacity to recognize, respond and interact with that which is Ultimate. That is the Core Revelation of our unmediated existence. This Meta-Belief holds that nothing is required beyond what is inherently human to interact with or appreciate the Ultimate—Life, Death, God, Love, Forgiveness, Human Potential, Pain, Suffering, or any other part of existence. This notion of an unmediated existence informs and shapes the varied beliefs that we hold. It shapes the beliefs that are so essential for you to find and fit to your form that sometimes we unfairly hesitate to suggest a shape. Despite our hesitancy, they are still there. Despite handing the visitor who wants to turn on the lights a treatise of light—know today that we do indeed have lights and switches. More importantly, I promise you we do know how to use them. AMEN
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