Sermon

INTRODUCTION: I think we would all agree that the following is the quintessential Unitarian story:

A rather petite middle-aged woman goes to a shopping mall department store and asks the clerk to cut her 40 yards of pink chiffon. Since the clerk has never had a request for that much pink chiffon, she inquiringly asks, "Wow! What in the world are you going to do with 40 yards of pink chiffon?" The woman explains, "I'm making a nightie for myself."

The clerk responds, "But you're so small. You don't need 40 yards for a nightie." To which she answers, "Yes, but my husband is a Unitarian and he'd much rather look for something than actually find it!"

I heard the late Rev. William Sloan Coffin, once say about Unitarian struggles with God: "You Unitarians get right up to the door where all that's required to open it is to say, ‘God,’ and the door will open; but just as you're almost there, you start backing up and saying, "O Source," "O Spirit of Life," "O Divine Presence."

In an age when there is the perception, at least, that people are much more responsive to simple answers, and to questions which presume simple answers, Unitarians do stand apart sometimes with more questions than answers, and more doubts than traditional faith.

I have no desire to change that. I do believe that at the heart of the drive to understand life is the need to struggle with the changing nature of the questions, rather than accepting a once‑for‑all kind of answer. It may be that Unitarians are in fact people who enjoy 40 yards of chiffon…who had rather search than discover…who feel that sometimes asking the right questions is as important, if not more so, than the answers. But why is that?

"Imbedded deep in the instinctual makeup of every species is a drive to 'reach out': it's never to be content.”

From earliest geologic time to now, there has always been a constant dissatisfaction with the status quo. There has always been a need for more, to know more, to have more, to be more. There is a constant desire for the new and the different.

One of the reasons of course is that our planet and its species are still evolving. I think sometimes we make the unwarranted assumption that evolution was a thing of the past. Evolution was something that went on in geologic time until "presto chango," here was homo sapiens…human being. And once human being arrived, there was no longer any need for evolution.

It's as if we sent a message to the universe, and to all the millions of other species on the Earth, and said: "Whoa, stop. We humans are here. No need to evolve further. Enough."

That's not how it works. In the same way that one of our ancestors so many aeons ago, found its oxygen supply in the watery swamp inadequate, and started experimenting with breathing out of the water, so those same kind of miniscule innovations are going on today.

In the same way that our ancestral first fin‑type creature crawled out of the swamp and moved to one further away where there were more adequate supplies of oxygen, so today, leaps in evolutionary change are still going on. And from that primitive beginning, the drive to reach out, to search out a new path, to know, to have, to be more, has continued.

Amazingly, in that drive to have more, we developed the ability to project our own feelings and conscious awareness on to others. We learned to put ourselves in the place of others, even when they were not part of our family or our community, or our nation. We developed a spiritual connection to the rest of the world.

But there’s an unfortunate, yet necessary, caveat. We have the capacity to break that sense of spiritual connection – what Einstein calls, “the illusion of separateness” – we began to see others as separate from us. We don’t share their pain, their hunger, their need. They are a “thing,” even sometimes an object at our disposal to misuse and even to abuse.

No longer are we connected. No longer do we share any sense of reverence for all things. Rather, there is a disconnectedness between us and all that is. There is "I," and there is "It."

Some of the most inhumane experiences occur when we see people as separate from us, whether it’s Nazi Germany or Bush America. We label them as less than human. They become enemy combatants …terrorists… Islamofacists. They are "its"…not fellow human beings.

The torture by America of prisoners of war, as reported in memos released by our government this past week, are shocking examples of the diminution of other human beings. That psychologists, physicians and enlightened, educated human beings could do what those memos stipulate that our government did, harks back to the horrors of the Holocaust. How inhumane…when all the time “our government” was saying, “We don’t torture.” They should have been saying, “We don’t tell the truth.”

Even though war is awful – it kills and maims and destroys – there still are rules of war…rules of engagement. It’s called the Geneva Convention. And America was one of the prime signatories to that document. But it was “America the Beautiful” which elected a president who thought he alone as the president of the United States could decide when those rules could be set aside. And the results were a tarnishing of everything our nation has stood for.

Human beings, whatever their nationality, their ethnicity, their religion, or the color of their skin, have innate worth and dignity. To purposely torture…to submit them to near drowning…to strip them naked and spray them with ice cold water and refuse to let them lie down for days on end…to blast them constantly with loud music and not let them sleep…is a violation of all that we cherish as a nation.

A fundamental premise of our form of government is that those charged with a crime, no matter how horrendous, must be presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. America doesn’t torture, but most of all, it doesn’t presume guilt…and if it does, it doesn’t deserve to be thought of as a bastion of liberty and justice for all.

We care. Our faiths proclaim that we care for others. That even those who are homeless, hungry, sick, and in prison, are human beings worthy of our concern.

One of the programs that the Summer Services Task Force is planning for this summer, thanks to Roy Kennix’s efforts, includes a presentation by the assistant rector at one of the local Episcopal Churches. I love his title: “God’s Grace to the Unlovable – Ministering to Folks that Others Throw Away.”

Faith says no one is a throw away…a disposable. I would suggest that our capacity to care for others is not instinctual. It is not something that is rooted in our primordial past. It is a learned behavior that benefits us all when we practice it, and it diminishes us all when we don’t.

At its roots, it is one of the things we mean by "spiritual." It is a conscious act of awareness on our part of our relationship with, and our connection to, others…to all that is.

n Why do we have to die? Why is it that just when we have developed these marvelous insights and understandings of what life really is all about, our time here runs out. We can do so many things and enjoy so much…why does it have to end?

In the lexicon of our species, there are many who say they have the answers. In fact, here in the West in Christian sacred scriptures, there’s a word, eschaton, which when translated means, “last things.” Ergo, eschatology is “the study of last things.” The best-selling fictional series entitled, Left Behind, stems from a fervent belief that there are all of these eschatological events which will occur as the world moves towards the end of time, or the eschaton. (They use the word, “end times” to designate that coming period.) Jesus is going to come back to Earth, and the faithful are going to be swept up to meet him in the clouds, and then things are really going to be hell for those who are left. And it will all be capped off by his coming back again for a climactic battle in Israel – at Armageddon.

But let’s look at it for what it really is: a poetic attempt to soften the reality that we die. But having said that, don’t think for a moment that I don’t love the poetry of it. For example, listen to these poetic words of the Apostle Paul:

“Behold, I show you a mystery….In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised….So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthians 15:51-57)

I promise you that in my earliest ministry, I’ve quoted that verse with raised voice and increased intensity, and we all cried tears of joy.

To someone raised in that tradition as I was, it still resonates emotionally…but it’s poetry, not an actual prediction of events that are going to happen. It’s one of the Christian responses of poetic verse that has been passed down through the centuries. It’s a poetic response to the Mystery of existence…a metaphorical answer to “Why do we die?”

My point is this: None of what I quoted is false. Rather, it’s a poetic presentation in response to the reality of death: We die. Why? We don’t know. It may be that in the end, life is simply, “Wow! What a ride! What love! What gifts! What pleasures! What pain! What hope!”

But even if that be so, hopefully there will be a memorial service for each of us where it’s said, “She did it.” Or “He did it.” “They lived. They loved. They died.” Just like millions and millions of others. And we recite this wonderful poem in their behalf: Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. The Lord giveth. And the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Amen.” Poetry lovers all.

We are then transported to the next dimension. What? Where? How? That’s one of the human questions. Our answers are some of these beautiful poems quoting what the ancients have said.

There are a whole host of other questions we could ask. But whatever the question may be, we have found that one of the most meaningful places to ask those types of questions is within a community of faith full of caring and informed people. To experience a service of worship where we ask, “Why?” gives an unseen and unknown tilt in favor of finding inner peace about the question. The acts of singing, or listening to music, listening to sermons, to sharing our joys and concerns, end up having a positive effect upon us that has something more to it than the exercise itself. It’s as though deep in our vestigial past, our ancestors always took time to take time…to address and face the questions which life poses for us all. There is something about ritual and liturgy that are healing of our psyches, our souls.

As I near the end of this my 20^th year of serving as a Unitarian Universalist minister, I’ve discovered something I’ve had confirmed over and over again: Religious language is a wonderful tool in the search for self-understanding. It enables us to attempt to address issues that fall outside the realm of facticity…of the senses…of logic. It provides a fluency in addressing the dimensions to life beyond the scope of human understanding. It connects us to our ancestors...to our family…to our civilization…to our culture.

Let me give you an example: I like to use the word, “god.” When I do, I use it in the sense that Forester Church defined. He said: “‘God’ isn't God's name. It's our name for God.” Let me say that again: “‘God’ isn't God's name. It's our name for God.” I love that. It’s wonderfully poetic. And it’s good for the soul.

I close with the final paragraph from the book, Man's <sic> Search for Meaning, written by Dr. Viktor Frankl after his years in the concentration camps of the Nazi's. He writes:

"A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but human beings are ultimately self‑determining. What we become – within the limits of endowment and environment – we make out of ourselves. In the concentration camps, for example, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine, while others behaved like saints. Human beings have both potentialities within themselves; which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions."

“Human beings have both potentialities within themselves; which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions."

I might add, not the conditions surrounding 9-11, not al Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein. It’s decisions, difficult and momentous though they may be, but decisions nonetheless, made in the clear light of day.

[1] A sermon given April 19, 2009, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation of Ft. Myers, FL, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, Minister.