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You Just Can’t Know Enough A Worship Service by the Reverends Mark W. Christian & Jonalu Johnstone First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday March 12, 2006
Reading From Guiding Principles For A Free Faith By James Luther Adams in: On Being Human Religiously Religious liberalism depends…on the principle that "revelation" is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism… The ground for this … is the human dependence for being and freedom upon a creative power and upon processes not ultimately of our own making…We find ourselves to be historical beings, living in nature and history, and having freedom in nature and history… Whatever the destiny of the planet or of the individual life, a sustaining meaning is discernible and commanding in the here and now. Anyone who denies this denies that there is anything worth taking seriously or even worth talking about… One way of characterizing this meaning is to say that through it God is active or is in the process of self-fulfillment in nature and history. To be sure, the word "God" is so heavily laden with unacceptable connotations that it is for many people scarcely usable without confusion… (A)mong liberals, no formulation is definitive and mandatory. Indeed, the word "God" may in the present context be replaced by the phrase "that which ultimately concerns humanity" or "that in which we should place our confidence." … This reality that is dependable and in which we may place our confidence is, then, not humanity. Nor is it a mere projection of human wishes… It is a reality without which no human good can be realized and without which growth of meaning is impossible. Theists and religious humanists find common ground here. They differ in defining the context in which human existence and human good are to be understood. The liberal's faith, therefore, is a faith in the giver of being and freedom… (W)e not only participate in divinely given being and freedom; through the abuse of freedom, we also pervert and frustrate them… Hence we cannot properly place our confidence in our own creations; we must depend upon a transforming reality that breaks through encrusted forms of life and thought to create new forms. We put our faith in a creative reality that is re-creative. Revelation is continuous.
The Free Mind William Ellery Channing I call that mind free which master the senses, and which recognizes own reality and greatness: Which passes life not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting and seeking after righteousness. I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself to a passive or hereditary faith: Which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come; which receives new truth as an angel from heaven. I call that mind free which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, and is not the creature of accidental impulse: Which discovers everywhere the radiant signatures of the infinite spirit, and in them finds help to its own spiritual enlargement. I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, and which does not cower to human opinion: Which refuses to be the slave or tool of the many or of the few, and guards its empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically copy the past, nor live on in its old virtues: But which listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions. I call that mind free which sets not bounds to its love, which, wherever they are seen delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering: Which recognizes in all human beings the image of God and the rights of God's children, and offers itself up a willing sacrifice to the cause of humankind. I call that mind free which has cast off all fear but that of wrongdoing, and which no menace or peril can enthrall: Which is calm in the midst of tumults and possesses itself though all else be lost. Prayer and Meditation “Matins,” by Denise Levertov Matins are the traditional morning prayer. Here are excerpts from Denise Levertov’s version:
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You Just Can’t Know Enough A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City Sunday March 12, 2006 It seems most theological liberals are convinced that they live on “The Buckle of the Bible Belt.” Unitarians everywhere complain about the dominant conservative religious nature of their locale. When I served the Unitarian Church of Las Cruces, New Mexico, congregants told me about the dominant religious conservatism of the area. “You don’t understand,” I would explain, “In Oklahoma, the Baptists ARE the liberals.” Actually, when compared to the Assembly of God, Church of Christ, the Nazarenes, and the non-denominational Mega-Churches, the Baptists ARE positively liberal. Continuing on that theme, I would tell those in Las Cruces, “There are even people running around town with Darwin-Fish, or bumper stickers that proclaim ‘The Religious Right is Neither’—and I don’t know them. Oklahoma City is about 12 times as large as ‘Cruces,” I continued, “But if I see “Honk If You Love Darwin” in traffic, it is an even bet that I know the driver!” Through this series of sermons I have been exploring the mortar that binds religiously liberal persons together as a church. I have come to call this connecting matrix the Core Revelations, or Meta-Beliefs, of our faith. These notions don’t usually come out as credo statements. They don’t rise to the specificity of saying “I do, or don’t, believe in God, or an afterlife, or in the efficacy of prayer.” These Meta-Beliefs and Core Revelations do, however, profoundly influence the wide range of beliefs that we hold in this church. Today I want to explore the open-ended nature of the religious quest as the fifth of these Core Revelations. To review, this list of Core Revelations began with the notion that life is a gift and that it is our religious duty not to waste the gift that is life. Next I observed that we have a direct and unmediated relationship with life’s ultimate forces—that our humanity inherently provides us with the tools, skills and ability to live fully religious lives. My third Meta-Belief is that Good and Evil are each real—independent of each other—one drawing us toward being whole persons and the other luring us to understand ourselves above, below or beyond finite human realities. The fourth of these connecting pieces asserts that faith must be freely chosen; that coercion has no place in religion. Today I add to these Core Revelations and Meta-Beliefs, the idea that our spiritual odysseys are open ended. As humans, we are driven to explore the things that matter to us—and when it comes to religion, there is never a point that one says, “That’s it. I have seen all there is to see. I have read all there is to read. I know all that I need to know.” Ours is an infinite quest and “You Just Can’t Know Enough.” A bit earlier, I quipped, that here in Oklahoma, “The Baptists are the liberal ones.” That was more than hyperbole. And it may be useful to explore this fifth Core Revelation by doing some comparing and contrasting between Baptist and Unitarian theologies. I think that it is very fortunate that the two ministers of this church have significantly different religious histories. I grew up Unitarian, in this church. Jonalu’s religious path began as a Baptist. I enjoy listening to her comment about her religious trajectory. Many times, I have heard someone observe something to the effect of “Wow, you’ve come a long way from being a Baptist to being a Unitarian minister.” Her response is always graceful—but she observes that it really isn’t as far as one might think. The Baptists, you see, observe Congregational Polity—each church is an autonomous entity responsible for deciding who is and is not a member, who will minister to them and how they will raise and spend their money. At the polity level, there is very little difference between Baptists and Unitarians. Furthermore, both traditions rely—at least historically—on the centrality of the individual believer when it comes to matters of belief. “From that standpoint,” I have heard my colleague observe, “Unitarians and Baptists aren’t so very far apart.” Jonalu is right. The truth is that we Unitarians are not as blessedly unique as we sometimes like to imagine. By considering the centrality of the individual to belief as similarities between Unitarians and Baptists, I think we can find an important clue to the strand that links the members of this church together in similar, although rarely identical, beliefs. I should first observe, as Jonalu does, that these observations about Baptists are historical. Internal forces in the last 20 years have profoundly effected the centrality of the individual interpretation within much of the Baptist tradition. The Baptists have, historically, held that God’s revelation is in the Bible and that no other person, no man, no woman, has the right to interpret or limit what the individual believer draws from “God’s Word.” Understanding the demands that faith places on a person is, historically for the Baptists, between God and the believer. Period. This is a common theme among Protestants—Protestantism, when compared to Catholicism, relies on the individual believers ability, above church doctrine, to know God and do God’s will. This is particularly true for those of a liberal faith. When it comes to revelation—that is how the ultimate and holy is revealed—we differ from the rest of Protestantism not so much in kind as in degree. We, too, believe that no one, no minister, no church elder, no ecclesiastical official, no one from the government, no neighbor, no friend, no parent, can discern the shape and demands of the ultimate and holy for another. Where we differ religiously from other traditions, and make no mistake we do differ, is evident when we look at the sphere and scope of revelation. Almost every church in this city will tell you the answers are in the Bible. Whatever the question, the answers are captured, perhaps even dictated, directly from God—preferably in plain, King James, English. At this point, as you no doubt know, we take a different path. Ironically, our unique institutional character first surfaced because we took the Bible seriously. Our religious ancestors could not affirm things that didn’t balance with the Bible. The Universalists couldn’t believe that only the elect would be saved, they couldn’t affirm Hell because the Bible says Jesus offered salvation for all. The Unitarians, on the other hand, could not bear to hear the Bible abused with the insertion of trinitarian interpretations they saw as extra-biblical. Those biblical arguments, however, were just the beginning of our divergent path. Last week, I told you that a good response to the question of where the Universalists “stand” is to note that “Universalists don’t so much stand as move.” This is equally true of the Unitarian side of our ancestry—and much of the Unitarian migration has to do with revelation—where we look for signs of the ultimate, the eternal, the holy, the divine. In fact, it is in the sphere of revelation that we can best see what is unique about this tradition. Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker that depicts an open Bible with the words “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” We might respond—“Err, not so much.” It’s not fair to say that all Christians believe that God stopped being available for observation and encounter outside the Bible. Still, for many, there was an era of revelation—a time, captured and codified in the Bible—when God made known the religious and spiritual realities that would be binding for all persons, in all cultures, at all times. “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” That simply isn’t our way. You see, we believe in continuous revelation. We believe that revelation is not sealed. Our religious ancestors didn’t question that God’s revelation was in the Bible. What they said is that God isn’t so much in the Bible as in the minds and hearts and souls of people who experience the revelation. Furthermore, what they said (and what we still say), is that no matter how much we can find in the Bible there is more to God, more to the holy, the divine, than the Bible can capture. Revelation is neither sealed nor sealable. Historically, Unitarians started with the notion that God’s wisdom wasn’t so much in the Bible as it was in the encounter between the believer and revelation. From this stance we can see, in retrospect, how Emerson, Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists could take the bold step of asserting that one can learn as much of God on a walk in the woods as one can in Bible study. The sphere of revelation widens. From there it is not too big a stretch to believe that if one can encounter God in the Bible and in nature—then perhaps other religious traditions have seen, encountered and recorded something of this divine encounter. At some point in the late 19th century we expanded the sphere of revelation to include Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and other religious traditions. The sphere of revelation again widens—proving that we still didn’t know all there is to know about God, the ultimate and the divine. From there, it is not an enormous step to imagine that everyday people, poets, playwrights, novelists, philosophers—normally seen as secular—may have touched on the holy. Thus we began to search humanity, human ventures, for clues of the revelation of that which is ultimate. A parallel path at this point began to ask if “God” is a necessary part of the equation at all. By the middle of the 20th century, Humanism hits its zenith in us. The sphere widens. As the sphere widens—it becomes evident that humanism and the more traditional religious sources have tended to be blind—or worse, dismissive—to wisdom revealed in a more feminine voice. At this point—and now we are entering the 1970s—we begin to see interest in feminist theology and in the Goddess arise. The sphere again widens. The path of ongoing revelation has led us to the Bible, through Nature, World Religions and Literature. It has called us to Non-theistic Humanism, through Feminism and even Paganism. In important ways each of those stages has built upon the others. None are really jettisoned for something new. The question today is: Where does it call us now? Where does it beckon us now? The unity amid this diversity of belief is the sanctity of the individual believer and the affirmation that revelation is not sealed. We hold a wide array of religious beliefs in this church. My sense is that whatever shape our personal credo takes it will be consistent with an open ended search and an ongoing process of revelation. We may describe our beliefs as Humanist or Pagan, Christian or Buddhist, Deist or Theist, Hebrew or Hindu, Athiest or Agnostic, Secular or Sacred, or an amalgam of these things and more. We welcome spiritual diversity in this church but that doesn’t mean that our beliefs aren’t important. Nor does it mean that one can believe anything one chooses and still find a religious home among us. There are realities, similarities, currents, that can be found amid our diversity. These connections between our differences are real—though they are at times challenging to articulate. One of those connections is that revelation is ongoing. The truth about the ultimate aspects of Life and God are made manifest in a variety of ways—through human interaction, through nature, through the thoughts and actions of others who serve as teachers and exemplars, through that ineffable reality called “the still small voice within.” These truths come to us through the Bible, through world religions and even through books and experiences many deem irreligious. Clues to the ultimate are constantly inbreaking, evolving with successive revelations, holding forth the possibility of clarifying that which has been previously revealed. Revelation is neither sealed nor sealable in its source or message. The spiritual demand of all this is that we can never rest easy thinking we have it all figured out—that we know all we need to know, that we have experienced all we need to experience. Those of us in the Liberal Tradition are part of an evolving and changing church—forever open, forever free, forever attuned to new understandings and revelation. Ours is a faith that evolves and adapts. Ours is a faith that believes new truth, new goodness, is constantly being born in the world. Ours is a faith that believes the highest spiritual task—the calling we all share—is to encounter the world and learn all that it has to teach us—every day and in every way. The truth is that no matter what you have read of religion, no matter what you have experienced of the Spirit, no matter what you have discerned—it is only part of the story. Our task is to forever remain searchers, pilgrims on odyssey of the Spirit, because “You Just Can’t Know Enough.” We can never know enough. AMEN
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