Sermon

INTRODUCTION: Consider for a moment how this planet we call home came into existence: It was once dust and rocks, a piece of mud sculpture that was plastered together in chunks. And on this piece of chaos, elements shuffled and recombined in a recipe of carbon, phosphates, enzymes, proteins, and elements hidden in the mystic mists of the past.

Out of that planetary creation came a fertile broth that included the mixing of a thousand compounds, some donated from beyond, and others hidden in the bodies of meteorites. Also on the menu was a stew of bacterial slime that produced oxygen and enabled the metamorphosis of the biological world. Then wonder of wonders, sex, or more appropriately, reproduction, became the fundamental innovation to insure that mutations could spread throughout those early populations. And out of that planetary culinary wonder, came species after species, eventually including the ascent of our species to its place today.

Nonetheless, cosmic remodeling is still underway. The continents – the tectonic plates – are moving and when they do earthquakes and tsunamis occur. Although they’ve been happening over geologic time spans for millions upon millions of years, when it happens as it did last week in Japan, it reminds us that terra firma is not so firma. And Planet Earth is still a work in progress.

Today is the first day of Spring, the Vernal Equinox, a time when the centers of the Sun and the Earth are on the same plane. Daytime and nighttime are approximately equal in length, a rarity that happens only twice a year.

While the prospect of Spring looms here in America, across the continent and the Pacific Ocean, in northeastern Japan, a devastating earthquake and tsunami has hit, causing not only widespread devastation and death, but triggering serious issues regarding the nuclear reactors located in the area.

So maybe it’s a good time to ask, do events such as these tell us anything about our lives? Is our faith related to happenings in the Cosmos?

"Religion is not primarily a set of facts in the historical sense, but a matter of meanings. People and books may speak endlessly of gods and rites and beliefs, but the heart and soul of religious faith is how such things help people to meet such problems as isolation, tragedy, and death."[2]

How the cosmos functions, or how it came in to being, or when life on the planet will end, is not in the domain of faith.

As judges would say from the bench, faith has no standing when it comes to how the world began, what makes it tick, and when the tick will not tock again. Faith has no portfolio there despite what any sacred book may say, any Mayan prediction may make, or any doomsday prognostications by Nostradomas. The issue is never whether they are right or wrong, sometimes, or none of the time. Simply put, that’s not what faith is about!

Faith is not about predictions of the future. Nor is it about making claims of when everything will come to a screeching halt.

However, there are probably many of you who are not aware that a group is predicting that Judgment Day is coming May 21, 2011, and that the end of the world will occur October 21, 2011. And it’s all based on the mention in the book of Daniel 12:04: “But you, Daniel, keep this prophecy a secret; seal up the book until the time of the end.” That time is near we’re told, and the secret has been revealed.

Many, many decades ago, while preparing for ministry in the Pentecostal Holiness Church at the Southwestern College of Christian Ministries in Oklahoma City, I took a course on the book of Revelation, at 7 a.m. in the morning. I have to tell you, no matter what faith family you’re from, studying the book of Revelation at 7 a.m. in the morning, gives you a different lookout on life. I mean, suicide doesn’t seem so bad. Every class day seemed like a drizzly November day. I’m sure that the canary in the coal mine had died and we didn’t know it.

So when I saw a billboard the other day proclaiming that Judgment day is May 21, 2011 and that the end of the Earth is October 21, 2011, I was sure that I had fallen into a time warp and was back in bible class.

Here’s a promise: The group sponsoring this is going to have some big time membership problems come after May 21; and even bigger ones October 21. It’s actually quite sad to read about some people who’ve given up their jobs and hit the road to tell their Chicken Little story: The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Judgment Day is coming, May 21; the end of the world will occur Oct. 21.

So what should our response be when anybody claims that the Book of the Revelation in the New Testament, or an ancient tablet of the Mayans, or a 16^th century prophet makes claims about the future and the closing down of the Cosmos? Our response can be very simple: “How long have you been off your meds?” Or, “When did you first begin having these kinds of problems?” Or, probably even better, “Does your mother know you’re saying this?”

I don’t know how many of you remember April 19, 1993, when our government set fire to the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas, and in the process murdered some 85 women, men and children. As some believers and conspiracy theoreticians would have us believe, the Davidian leader, David Koresh, was close to unlocking the secret of the seven seals of the book of Revelation. Supposedly he begged the FBI to give him a little more time to unseal the seven seals, but according to the conspiracy theorists, the FBI killed him because they didn’t want the information in the seals to be revealed to the public. You can read about it on the Internet, so it must be true.

My late brother, who sold the Davidians their milk from his dairy, told me he knew them to be harmless, devout followers of a man who simply misled them. They didn’t deserve what our government did to them.

But they are not the only ones: The 7^th Day Adventist Church came into being when their founder David Miller convinced tens of thousands that Jesus was coming on a specific day in 1844. That prediction was also based upon his study of the books of Daniel and Revelation. The Jehovah’s Witnesses even claim that Jesus came to Earth in the late 19^th century.

You may not know it, but I know the secret to seal of Daniel and the seven seals of the Book of Revelation. It’s this: There is no secret. The Book of the Revelation is a poetic attempt to dramatize the role of the church in the Roman Empire. Like Martin Luther 500 years ago, I agree that it should never have made it into the canon of Christian scripture.

So whatever someone’s sacred text may claim about the secrets to the Cosmos, please know that the end of the world is not near, because there will always be a world, and hopefully a Planet Earth. We just don’t know a lot about some parts of how it will be. Neither does anyone else. More realistically:

People and books may speak endlessly of gods and rites and beliefs, but the heart and soul of religious faith is how those things help people to meet such problems as isolation, tragedy, and death."

So how do we do that? Dr. John McMurphy, in Secrets from Great Minds, suggests three steps:

I realize that I’m more biased in my perspective than most, but I really believe that much of the success of the winners who took office this January was due to their success in negative campaigning during the preceding year. Their one mantra was, “America is going to hell in a hand basket and only they can stop it.”

Maybe it is. Maybe they were right. Maybe they can change it. My point is that whether it's Democrats or Republicans, it is absolutely critical for us as a people and a nation to look with hope and optimism toward the future, regardless. That means it's critical how we view life and living. In Images of the Future, sociologist Fred Polak wrote that his study of civilizations of the past showed that those which began to lose their self-image as a positive and flourishing society began to decay and lose their vitality. That will be true about Japan as well.

That's another way of saying that we understand that we have an important role to play in the overall scheme of things. One person can make a difference. The reason is that every action we take affects others, which affects others, and affects others. We are not islands unto ourselves. The smile we express, the positive words we offer, have an impact. They make the other person feel better. And because of feeling better, they will act differently with others they encounter.

Unfortunately, persons who constantly spew negative comments, who are always critical of others, their acts are much more deadly. Someone said that it requires ten compliments to offset one criticism. Think of how you felt when someone criticized the outfit you were wearing. Suddenly, you were self-conscious. And if you asked someone, “Does this really look bad?” it didn't matter what they said, we doubted that it was so.

That’s true in religion as well. The constant vitriol against Muslims in America is so damaging to our future. It belies all that we say about the uniqueness and specialness of our U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Faith calls upon us not to concentrate upon our differences, but upon our similarities. We honor the lives of people who think differently, but contribute positively. We recognize that we all are in part seeking, rather than having found the truth.

Consequently, we not only tolerate others who differ, but we affirm them in their enterprise. We wish them well. We hope the best for them. And we ask only that they will grant us the same right to seek to know the truth and do it.

Several years ago, I had a contract with Delacourt Press to write a book about The Texans. The research was one of the most enjoyable I've ever engaged in. Because wherever I was in Texas was where I needed to be – in Texas. Every town or city, every highway or country road, every restaurant or motel: you name it, and it was all grist for the book. And even though one night I might be planning to sleep in El Paso, that was not my destination. My destination was to be wherever I was, including El Paso.

And so it is with religious faith for Unitarians. We don't seek to convince any one that we’ve found the way. Rather, we are on the way.

I do believe however that there is an intuitive capacity in our species that enables us to apprehend truths about our world that exist outside logic and reasoning. But how do we access them? How do we learn about those inner capabilities?

-- Sir Isaac Newton, the father of classical physics, gazed at the stars for hours on end and found himself able to enter a dreamlike, yet comprehensible mental state where many of his best ideas took shape.

-- Beethoven, Emerson, and Wagner took long walks through the woods with no other purpose than to leave ordinary awareness behind and experience universal awareness.

-- Shelley sat by lakes and allowed the water's ebbs and flows to induce a dreamy state of awareness in which his poetic ideas took shape.

And on the list goes. But the lesson is clear: We have to develop an intuitive capacity to reach our inner depths, to stimulate our creative powers, to tap into our spirit dimension.

That’s why I say to us this morning, that the very existence of this planet, and the millions of species that inhabit it, are a testimony to impossibilities…that became improbabilities…that became possibilities… that became probabilities…that became the stuff of the stars: which is you and I.

And to the Japanese peoples, for whom a message of hope and promise seems far away, we join in sending them best wishes for a speedy recovery…that their nuclear nightmare will be resolved…and that their dreams of a meaningful future can be realized.

[1] A sermon given on March 20, 2011, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, 2756 McGregor Boulevard, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne A. Robinson, Minister

[2] (The Religions of Man, p. 12).