Sermon

A few thousand years ago, God’s job was relatively simple. He had only to answer a few million daily human prayers, keep the sun and planets rotating around the Earth and make certain a few constellations hung in their proper places in the heavens.

Then along came Galileo, with his telescope, and the size of God’s job increased daily and exponentially. Today, God has to manage more than a hundred billion galaxies, with more than a hundred billion stars, and a universe that is ever expanding.

Consequently, God has no time left for humans, either for their prayers or their miniscule planet circling a minor star. When God will have any time for earthly matters, is a matter of conjecture, for God is obviously otherwise occupied.

Though that’s intended to be humorous, the absence of God actually reflects the religious understanding of the Founding Fathers in America and their religion of Deism – a derivative of deity. Namely, God created the world, wound it up like a giant clock, and went away to work on something else. It’s been ticking away all on its own, ever since.

But what is the world really doing? Two or three summers ago, we focused on what was happening in some of the new sciences, such as physics, and what it said about our worldview and self-understanding. Much to our surprise, we learned that it said something very different from what most of us have been taught.

Yet, despite what we learned, there is a certain sense of comfort in understanding the world as we once thought it. We use the words “up” and “down,” “sunrise” and “sunset,” in purely pre-Copernican ways. We seek solace behind creeds and beliefs, heroes and sheroes, documents and practices. And when we repeat some ancient practices, it gives us a sense of belonging and being a part.

I experienced that this past summer. One of the 39 constituent colleges under the umbrella of Oxford University is New College, which was founded in 1379. A unique facet of its history is that when its founders sought land and permission to build a new college, the city fathers of Oxford agreed, but with one proviso: namely, that New College would maintain the wall that was then part of the old City of Oxford, right at the edge of the land given for the New College campus.

The founders of New College agreed, and to this day – 628 years later – every three years or so the mayor of the city of Oxford and his retinue come to New College. And with great fanfare, a ladder is placed against the wall, and the mayor climbs up on top of the wall. He walks from one end to the other. Through the years, every visit Oxford’s mayor makes, he has declared that, yes, New College has continued to maintain the wall of the City of Oxford, even though the rest of the wall has long since disappeared. Then they all have a party with much food and drink.

Afterwards, as I was walking from New College back to Christ Church College, I thought to myself, “I’m glad that somewhere in the world, there are people, who not only think our historic commitments and practices are important, but that they make a big deal of them on a regular basis.”

That’s another way of saying that it is our commitments, our covenants, our conventions, our treaties, our constitutions, and our declarations, which define who we are as a civilized people. When they are ignored, when they are discounted as quaint, then we as a people have lost our roots and our moorings.

That’s especially so in regard to our topic today. For next Wednesday, October 24^th, 2007, is United Nations Day. It recalls a time in San Francisco, June 26, 1945, when 51 nations of the world signed the Charter of the United Nations as founding members. They also agreed to put into place an organization, and to sign documents whose intent would be to insure that a world war could no longer happen. And if the prospect of war were to arise, this supreme organization would be empowered to mitigate its happening.

A driving force in the creation of the United Nations was America’s President Franklin Roosevelt. Winston Churchill said, “He is the greatest man I have ever known.” Even though he suffered infantile paralysis at age 39, the world at large never knew he was physically disabled, because he refused to be photographed or filmed, either on crutches or being pushed in a wheelchair.

Yet he led America out of the despair of the Great Depression. He led us to victory in World War II. Four times he was elected President of the United States.

But if you would, think for a moment: If the United Nations were formed in June, 1945, how was that possible when for the previous several years, the whole world had been in a bitter and deadly war in which almost 500,000 Americans died, and millions from other countries? Who was planning for peace…for an international peace organization?

Incredibly, once World War II began, President Roosevelt determined that although the World War I creation of the League of Nations had failed, the world had to learn why it failed and try again. Even while fighting a war, the process began for establishing another international organization aimed at preserving world peace. After nearly four years of planning, the international community established the United Nations in the spring of 1945. President Roosevelt’s widow, Eleanor, was the chair of the group which presented the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in Paris in 1948. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the most translated document in the world.

So what does it say? In its preamble, it describes a world in which human beings shall enjoy four things: freedom of speech, freedom of religious belief and practice, and freedom from fear and human hunger and want: speech, religion, want and fear – the four freedoms.

One of the lessons we learn in trying to understand any historical document is that times change, and what was originally meant may no longer be relevant. Freedom of speech and religion, freedom from hunger and want, and freedom from fear are still very relevant concepts, but they probably mean something different today than when they provided the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For example, there is no freedom more important than freedom of speech, whether it’s spoken or written. Dictator types the world over, including in the United States, only want to hear one side of things.

That shouldn’t be too hard for any of us to understand. We all want our way. We all like our ideas. Many times after a meeting, even one at All Faiths, I will be frustrated because my idea was not immediately recognized as the best one. I’m well aware that on things that matter to me, I have a great deal of difficulty tolerating dissent. I mean, “Anybody can see that my idea is right, and everyone else’s is wrong.” But in a democracy, everyone’s voice is important and needs to be heard. That includes All Faiths.

One of our most caring and committed members told a group of us some time back that I get my way sometimes simply because I’m the minister. But it’s important for all of us to remember that it’s only the pope who claims always to be right. The rest of us must muddle along testing and trying new ideas and thoughts. Not to voice your idea is not to live up to your own capabilities and responsibilities.

The test is not who said it or why; rather, is it right? The reality is that many times we all are stumbling along in the dark trying to discover the light.

Sometime back, I received a gracious card from a person who had gone through a very difficult time, including losing her husband to cancer. She went on to give testimony to her religious perspective in language that I could never use.

For one thing, it was gender inappropriate. Whatever the concept “God” means, it doesn’t refer to a man or Father, despite what the Mormons and George Romney say. The language in the note was pre-Copernican, as if God had a unique relationship to this little planet and its inhabitants, as though we were somehow special to the Universe. And the language was also supernatural, as though God had intervened in the course of things to change happenings to this person’s benefit.

But even after saying that, I also knew that those very things had been part of her perspective of reality, enabling her to survive. It had helped her to put one foot in front of the other during her husband’s dying and death. It had strengthened her in a time of severe loneliness. And it had enabled her to reach out to others at the very time of her greatest need.

Which says to me that what religion is about is never only about its language or its beliefs, but its effect. And while I shudder at the constant use of the male pronoun for God, if a woman wants to do that, it certainly is her right and privilege. And as for God acting on us, rather than through us, that’s semantics.

The real test is never our beliefs, but it is how those beliefs are lived out. Let me say that again: We can line up ten people here in front of us, each of them with a different religion. Some of their beliefs may appeal to us, and some may not. But the test isn’t whether they appeal to us; rather, it’s what difference those beliefs make in the person who holds them…in their relationships to others, to the world of which we’re a part, and to themselves. The real test is never the beliefs; rather how those beliefs are lived.

“I believe,” though it has a subject and a verb is an incomplete sentence. What completes that sentence is not an object to believe in. No, what completes “I believe,” is to be able to say “I practice what I believe.” Our beliefs are a way of saying that we want to be the change that we wish to see in the world. And hopefully our beliefs energize us towards that reality.

Whether it’s the United Nations Charter or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one theme is constant throughout: the concern that the have’s should have for the have not’s.

Rather than fomenting war, our beliefs should call us to a new sense of the interdependence of all peoples on each other. They should call on us to uphold sustainable life on this planet, based on being human rather than on human beings having things.

When coal mining first went deep into the Earth, methane and other poisonous gases would sometimes collect in poorly vented mine shafts. It was toxic and often deadly to miners working the shafts. Also, these gases sometimes caused subsurface explosions that killed miners.

Before the invention of mobile testing equipment, miners started taking a caged canary into the mine with them. If the canary got sick or died, they knew it was time to get out of the mine and get it properly ventilated before returning. That symbol is also important for us today. We have a sick canary in our society.

n Sick in the way we treat poor undocumented workers, imprisoning them, and leaving their families unaware where they are, and leaving them to fend for themselves.

n Sick in the way that we respond to Islam, and paint with one brush stroke all Muslims as the same.

n Sick with our attitude towards women and men with different sexual orientation than our own.

We recently did an exercise in the class on civic engagement which I teach at Florida Gulf Coast University. It told of a young woman whose husband had died of cancer leaving her with two children, no savings, no health insurance and having to find a job that would allow her to take the bus to work and still be able to pick up her kids.

We figured up her income on minimum wage, and her outgo. Despite our best efforts, she was $800 short every month. We also agreed that when you read about those horrible incidents with children, when a boyfriend of the mother has abused or even killed her children, it’s easy to be enraged. But in 9 cases out of 10, if you look a little closer, having a live-in-boyfriend was the only way she could provide food and lodging for her kids.

The canary is sick in our economic system. Whether it’s health care insurance, or money enough to cover the basics, the thrust of Washington today is not the working poor. It’s not the working middle class. But it’s the richest of the rich. In the last 20 years, CEO salaries have jumped from 30 times the amount of the lowest paid employee, to as much as 700 times that of their lowest paid employee.

The class I mentioned has been engaged in a community project in which it has been registering to vote, underrepresented populations, such as nursing home residents, the homeless, landscaping and construction crews, Hispanic and African Americans.

Based on their experiences, I asked them to respond to the plight of the young widowed mother with two children. What would be the political issues she would be most interested in? Without question, it was a variation of the presidential slogan of the 90’s: “It’s the economy stupid.”

On this United Nations Day, that’s not only what a significant minority of Americans are say, but the majority of the world is saying: “Keep your bombs, your vaunted military, and your political system. What we want are food, clean water, health and a decent job.” Religious beliefs that don’t understand that are as clueless as the neo-cons who said we would be welcomed into Iraq with flowers. We must find a way to find our way back to the values that led to the founding of the United Nations…both for our sakes and the world’s.

[1] A sermon on October 14, 2007, United Nations Sunday, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] By Herschel Sternlieb, in Green Horizon Quarterly, p. 2.