Sermon

INTRODUCTION: There’s a humorous, but illuminating incident in the life of the late great U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. It seems that he was on a flight from Washington to Portland when the plane encountered very bad weather. It began tossing up and down, even violently at times. Passengers were scared and greatly concerned. When the plane dropped precipitously for a brief moment, the woman in the seat next to Justice Douglas, said, “Please! Do something religious.” He answered, “Like what? Take an offering?”

Let’s suppose that the airplane of life we’re riding in is also being tossed about, even violently at times. We’re looking for handholds…for anchors…to hold on to. Does religion have anything to offer more substantive than a liturgical ritual?

To expand on that, let me share with you a telephone call that came in to our office late Friday from Rita Raye Morris-Stewart, who is on our Connections newsletter mailing list. A lifelong teacher, she’s now retired, but is continuing to teach, only now, she teaches English as a second language and has women from five different countries she’s tutoring. Friday, they were at her home for their class, when one of them saw the September Connections, which Peggy JSingh is the editor of.

At the top of the newsletter is a set of religious symbols, that Jan Guardiano worked with a professional commercial artist to design, and for which the cost was borne by Joyce Ramay. Like my stole, there are various symbols of six different religions in the design, even more on the banners behind me.

So if you were teaching English as a second language, how would you answer the question as to what each of those symbols stands for, to people from other countries and ethnicities and languages? Or even, let’s say you’re speaking in English to people who also speak English, how would you answer that question – not simply to say, “This is Hinduism, this is Judaism, this is Christianity…etc.” What do they mean? What do they offer for the living of these days?

All of which helps to pose the question we’re addressing today: “What is the essential component for transforming our lives?” What causes us either gradually or spontaneously to change the way we live, for the better? What part does religion play in that?

Now remember, the one thing we can say about all religions is this: They are an attempt to respond to the profoundly human questions that we all experience – questions about birth, life, and death. Or to put it somewhat differently:

No matter the symbols, the practices, the beliefs, the heritage, or the geography, every religion – good, bad, or indifferent – is an attempt to answer those three questions…questions about the wondrous miracle of birth, the ongoing challenges of life, and the enveloping mystery of death.

Imagine if you would that we are in something like a planetary classroom. And the teacher asks the class the preceding questions:

The students are each representatives of the various religions of the world. One is a Muslim…another is a Buddhist…another is an Atheist…another is a Christian…another is a Jew…another is a Hindu…another is a Mormon…and on the list goes.

When they give their answers to the class, which one is right? Does the teacher serve as a planetary pope to declare which one is the true religion? Is there a Grand Ayatollah to set us straight? Or are there sacred scriptures which directly address the issues posed? How do we answer these most important questions of existence – birth, life and death?

The reason we are here today roots very simply in both the questions and the answers posed by the many religions. By participating in the services of All Faiths, we are first saying “yes” to the asking of questions. It is okay to question one’s beliefs.

Many of us were reared in religions where faith was a matter of believing and doubt was sin. To question was not only to admit to a lack of faith, but also to confess to the sin of doubting. When I first entered the University after attending and graduating from Bible College, I remember returning to the Bible College for counseling with a favorite professor, Dr. Harold Paul. I confessed to him that I was having great trouble holding on to the beliefs I had been taught both at home and at Bible College. For example, on the first day of my introductory General Psychology 101 class, the professor, Dr. Cleveland, gave us a True/False test of 100 questions. So I diligently worked through each one, marking this one true, that one false, and felt quite good after having finished. This was going to be an easy class.

When the test was finished, Dr. Cleveland said, “Every one of the test questions was false. That is what we will be studying this semester.”

I was stunned. I believed at least a third of the questions, and maybe more. He said they all were false!

In my American Literature class, we read the Founding Father, Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. I couldn’t believe what he wrote: I had never ever heard anyone say the things he was writing in front of God and everyone. Ditto for Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger.

Even in the required religion course, I felt like the devil was working overtime. It was a United Methodist University, which required a minimum of six hours of religion. In my New Testament class, the professor, an American Baptist theologian, said that when the bible stated that Paul had heard the voice of God on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, it was probably an epileptic seizure, which was also what Paul was referring to when he wrote of his thorn in the flesh. And Biological Science and Geological Science were even worse. It became so bad that before entering the classroom, I would pray, “Oh, God, help me not to lose my faith.”

I’ve told you before about the Geology class I had where we were required to memorize the different geological ages or periods. On the one hand, I knew that’s not what the Bible said, but on the other, because I was on scholarships, I had to make good grades to keep them. I was loathe to challenge the professor who would be grading me. But in the midst of his delineating the various geologic ages, I couldn’t contain myself. I raised my hand and said, “The Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days…not in millions and millions of years.” Without missing a beat, he answered, “See the chaplain,” and went on with his lecture.

I told Dr. Paul all of this. He was a very caring and compassionate man. I know that as someone trained in counseling, he realized it was an issue I would have to work on. But he also knew I was grasping for straws, trying to find something to hold on to. I just knew that surely the faith of my mother and father, of all those teachers and classes in four years of bible training, were rooted in a reality that could withstand the assault I was undergoing at the University. Dr. Paul listened and before praying for me, he gave what he thought would be a hand hold to hang on to. He said, “Wayne, you have to learn to doubt your doubts.”

I left worse than when I went in. I wanted so much to say, “I believe! I believe! I believe!” But more and more, I believed less and less.

So for certain, be sure that what we mean by faith, is not closing our eyes and saying with enthusiasm that we believe when we don’t. It is okay to doubt, to question. In fact, it’s okay to have an asterisk beside every belief, which states, “Subject to change by life.”

Again, one of the critical components in the building of a foundation of faith is that we go through intensive doubt. It is okay to question.

We are not anti-religion, nor anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Jew or anti any religion. However, it is a “Yes, but….” “Yes, we really respect what you say, but we think there may be more to it than that.”

Here this morning, we have people from a heritage of many of the five wisdom religions. And we’ve learned to appreciate their journey. We’ve also learned to say when needed that, “It’s never either/or, but both/and.” In fact, until we each individually find the positives in our religious past, it will be very difficult to address the promises of our future. What living in the present moment is about is not rejecting the past, rather, it’s intentionally learning from the past to fashion a future.

So how did we get here? What caused the shift…the transformation…the defining moment?

Which leads me to what I think is the essential component for the transforming of our lives. It’s not written in a sacred book; nor is there some prophet somewhere in time who said it; and neither are there millions of converts the world over. But once accepted, it has potentially profound consequences for ourselves, how we relate to others, and to the world around us. Here it is very simply put: We understand that we are a Part of the Whole.

Actually, the words come from Albert Einstein who began one of his more famous quotations with those very same words, namely:

That sounds simple, but here are some of the consequences of understanding ourselves in that way:

1. It means we do not think of ourselves as separate from others. Rather, we are all connected. That’s everyone and everything! Einstein calls thinking otherwise “a delusion of consciousness.”

2. We are not only a Part of the Whole, but the Whole also includes us. Everything that is, includes us, and we include within us a part of everything that is.

Religion at its most deceptive is when it seeks to convince us that there is a realm above and beyond the Whole of which we are a Part, that there is another There up There. No, There is Here. And Here is There.

To illustrate what I mean, I invite you to retrieve your Order of Service for a moment. Okay? On page two at the Awe Break, there’s a gender improved verse from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem uses a reference in the Torah of the Jewish religion to the time when Moses was in the desert taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep. While doing so, he came upon a bush that was on fire. As he observed it, he realized that it was not being consumed, but kept burning long after the fire should have been spent. Then a voice spoke to him from the bush, telling him to take off his shoes, for he was on holy ground.

Our earth is filled with a heavenly cast to it. Every bush is filled with the incandescent. But only those who are aware of It, live their lives with a sense of the holy in all things.

I like to think that religion is in part understanding that when we came into this production we call life, the play was already in progress. We have a front row seat, but we’ve missed so much. Consequently, there is so much that we don’t understand. That’s one of the reasons why we turn to the religions of the past and to the wisdom they proffer.

In his wonderful book, Markings, the late, one-time General Secretary of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold condenses what it all means to him. He writes:

I don't know Who – or what – put the question. I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer, “Yes” to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.

Rather, than take an offering, we will pause for 7½ minutes of brief questions as a part of our Conversation Café. The Service and Support Council will provide microphones for you to speak into.

[1] A sermon presented September 07, 2008, as the first sermon in a series, “Tough Faith for Tough Times,” followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.