Sermons

INTRODUCTION: Peanuts creator, cartoonist Charles Schulz, said of his cartoon strip of so many years:

And yet, we laughed. We shared our favorites. There was something heroic about the constant failures of Charlie Brown, the loveable devotion of his dog Snoopy, the intrepid Lucy, along with Beethoven and Linus. The kite that wouldn’t fly. The dog house that became a plane. Somehow, it minimized the reality that sometimes life isn’t so great, and living isn’t so wonderful. And yet we can live it with grace and humor, with insight and understanding because of a comic strip.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That may or may not be true for you now, but I would submit that sometime in the past, or maybe this present moment, or sometime in the future, it will be so.

I’m sure some of you remember having read the great Muslim poet of the 11^th century, Omar Khayyam’s famous lines about God from the Rubaiyat,

There are certainly some beautiful dimensions to our world: gorgeous sunsets, starry skies, and rainbows, mountains, rivers, oceans and valleys. There are so many beautiful things to see and amazing places to go…with fascinating experiences to live through. The list could go on and on.

One could also list alongside the beauty of our world, the terror and destruction of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, lightening, wind, storms, and the ensuing death they bring.

n I’ve prayed for cancer-ravished mothers, and days later stood by their gravesides to pray a prayer of committal to the Earth, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”

n I’ve held the hand of a parent who lost her senior high school son to a drunk who was driving 90 miles an hour near a residential area. Later, I realized that she couldn’t face me again because of the painful memories it triggered.

n I’ve tried to minister to a 10-year-old whose six-year-old sister broke loose and raced out into rush hour traffic and was killed. I sat shocked as her grief stricken mother said to the ten-year-old, “Why didn’t you hold her hand tighter?”

We use to frame the equation as, in the light of the good or the bad, is there or is there not a god? And we mounted arguments to prove our point and to disprove the points of others. But for many of us, that whole approach has become quite trite. We’ve passed Philosophy 101. We’re not struggling to believe or to disbelieve, as much as we are debating how the whole framing of the question is perceived.

And the difficulty in framing the question is that life never stays the same. Just when we had the answers down pat, the questions changed. Just when we had memorized all the equations, new ones were needed. We cried, Stop the world, I want to get off, but we were ignored. We asked to see the manager but she was out. We tried to return our faulty products, but no one would listen.

We called for a time-out, but the game of life kept racing along faster and faster. We developed special needs, but there was no Universal Disabilities Act. It was as if we were Shakespeare’s actors on a world stage, the script had been written, and we were merely actors with no say, no chance of changing the play’s final act. There seemed to be an unstoppable motion to the tide of events, and we were mere observers of its ebb and flow.

“God does or does not exist.” How trite. That is not the question. Rather, it is, how do I get up in the morning? How do I make it to Monday? How do I make it to Friday? How do I make it?

The problem with the question of, whether there’s a god, is that it’s an intellectual exercise. It’s a mind game. I say this, and you say that, and all the time the grains of time in the hour glass of life speed on through. How do we live? That’s the question. How do we cope? That’s the issue. How do we survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? That’s where we live. Arguments for and against the existence of God are mental constructs with little relationship to the human encounters that we face from day to day.

Al Jassim invited me to lunch a week or so ago to meet a longtime friend of his visiting from Minneapolis, who had been a professor on the faculty at the university. He came to our services the past two Sundays. Yesterday Al told me he had to call 911 and they rushed his friend to Lee Memorial suffering a severe stroke.

Only days ago, his friend and I had discussed the problems of the world, the hopes and aspirations of the peoples of Israel and Palestine. We had cussed and discussed the latest incredulities of our government in that region, after seven years of neglect. Or the image of the president of the most powerful nation in the world going with tin cup in hand to the Saudi king begging for him to release more oil and set lower prices – the king of a nation that birthed Osama bin Laden, the king of a nation from which most of the terrorists on the planes of 9-11 came.

Al and his friend sat in one of the chairs in which you’re sitting. He’s now been flown back to Minneapolis where he will struggle with recovery. Only days dividing walking and talking, good and bad, living and almost dying.

Who in their right mind would ask of Al’s friend, is there or isn’t there a god? The presumption of the universe, the presupposition of existence is that even though life may be long or short, it’s enhanced when we can affirm the innate faith with which we all were born. And whether we use Jesus, or Moses or Muhammad to explicate that doesn’t matter. If we choose the Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tze, or the new physics, isn’t the question. They’re tools for understanding that, which can never fully be understood. They are measuring sticks for the immeasurable.

There is within every species a deep seated trust in the very meaning of life itself. Before I rise in the morning, I trust that the sun will be there. Before I retire in the evening, I trust that the enveloping arms of darkness will hold me secure until the day dawns and another tomorrow springs forth.

The question is not is there a god on the throne out there somewhere passing out crumbs of blessing from the heavenly table, to which we will one day at death be able to join for the full entrée. The question is not if we say, “I believe, I believe, I believe” three times with enthusiasm that the natural process will be disturbed, and divine intervention will occur and a miracle of divinity will be enacted before our very eyes.

No, the question is not how to get the attention of God up there. The question is, how do I get up in the morning down here? How do I live when life itself is a burden? What should I do when all my plans have been shredded? And not only have the doors closed but the windows have been shaded. How do I live?

Too many weeds with the flowers. Too many unanswered prayers. Too many tragedies. Too much destruction. Too much wasted hopes and dreams.

Is there an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful divine presence in our Universe? The answer is not, no. But neither is it, yes. Because life itself is not a yes or no question. Existence is not a true-false quiz. Sure, reason, logic and experience have a case to make if that’s the way the question is posed. But that’s not the real question being posed for any of us.

Rather, it’s this: In the universal scheme of things, knowing what we know about the Universe, and the way things work, how do we live? What brings meaning and a sense of purpose? How do we address the world? That’s religion’s role. In Macbeth, Shakespeare writes:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

If that be true, does religion help? Are great myths and music, scripture and story, ritual and liturgy, enriching of the human experience? Is our worshipping together not only informative, but inspiring? Does it help us face tomorrow and tomorrow and the tomorrows after that? Does it build community and help us better to live together? Does it strengthen us for the living of these days? Does it encourage and enable our inner lives so that we take time, to take time? Does it push us to connect with the vertical dimension of our lives – not a God in outer space, but a deeply felt need of divinity in our inner space? Does it inspire us to reach out of the horizontal dimension to those in need?

I would like to propose that after we’ve concluded that this Universe is a Mystery beyond which we will never discover its secret…

After we have studied our sciences and articulated our theories, and demonstrated our experiments…

We will then be faced with this opportunity: To use the wisdom of religion to address our lives. But not the religion bound up with primitive Creationist theories, or gender limiting practices, or diminishing notions of sexual orientation. Rather, a religion that’s as free to doubt as it is to believe. A faith that is rooted in trust in the created order, and whose beliefs stem from not only the wisdom of the religions of the ages, but life as it is lived from day to day not only in Paradise, but in every corner of the globe and every nook and cranny of our planet.

Because of science – not in spite of science – because of science, we conclude that the Universe is a wondrous Mystery. Faith’s name for that is God.

Because it’s a Mystery, it renders all religious language into poetry, some good and some bad. It gives us a vocabulary to explore the meaning of life, and to face its hurdles with hope and inspiration. “Naked we came in to the world and naked we will leave,” but in the meantime, we have the opportunity not only to clothe ourselves but to be part of the divine outfitting of others in need.

For whatever our belief, it is incomplete as only an intellectual exercise: I believe this and this, and you believe that and that. So what! It must be validated in the arena of human existence, along with other species and in care and concern for our environment, and in the continuing search for social justice.

The belief in god is not a condescending notion for folks who have to have it, while the rest of us are able to live above that kind of need. No. The question to which atheism is responding is the same as that to which faith responds:

n Or was this Universe and our planet a chance cosmic moment…a glitch in the inner workings of a world that is driven by phenomena beyond our comprehension?

Just below the surface of my supposed theological sophistication, there lives one who loves the language and poetry of faith, including its creeds and prayers…who cherishes songs about Jesus that we will never sing at All Faiths…who treasures the incredulous stories of Muhammad, and Moses, Jesus and the Buddha.

What I want to say to you is, whatever the portfolio of faith that you brought with you this morning, it may be a little more than mine, or a little less, but that’s not the question. I’m not right and you’re not wrong. It’s whatever floats your boat when the tide seems to be racing away. Our beliefs are handholds for climbing life’s mountains. They keep us centered and focused, able to face the moments before us.

So if you would, I want you to join with me in this closing. Please repeat after me:

Let’s do it one more time with feeling. Remember, it’s not a description of life, but an affirmation.

[1] A sermon presented on January 20, 2008, third in a series of sermons at the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

-- Thank you Maggie Mullins for your contribution to this sermon.