Sermon

INTRODUCTION: In President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, he refers to the irony of the religious beliefs informing the War Between the States – North against the South:

"Both sides read from the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes God’s aid against the other."

He also writes about clergymen of all stripes appearing in his office with their advice and direction. Lincoln said of it, "I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that their views represent the Divine will."

One of President Lincoln's favorite stories about his own religion was of two Quaker women who were trying to determine which president would be victorious in the War: Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy or Abraham Lincoln?

One woman said she was confident that it would be Jefferson Davis. Her friend asked, "Why does thee think so?" She answered, "Because Jefferson Davis is a praying man."

Her friend responded, "But Abraham Lincoln is also a praying man." Her friend said, "Yes, but when God hears Abraham Lincoln pray, God thinks he's joking." Which may be why Lincoln wrote:

"I have often wished that I was a more devout man. Probably it is my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did."

As those of you with Christian background will recognize, the allusion is to the disciple of Jesus, named Thomas, who was reported by The Gospel of John to have required personal, hands-on-proof, before he would believe that Jesus had been resurrected. His famous statement was, "I believe, Lord; help mine unbelief." That’s another way of introducing our topic for today: Can we really be agnostic?

Before proceeding, let’s create some context about our planet and this Universe. David Belden writes that:

“It takes at least two generations of exploding stars for there to be enough heavy stuff floating around in space for a planet like ours to form. It takes a vastness of time and space for even one small hard planet to be found spinning around a sun. And when life began on this ball of rock and water with its seething molten core and its slowly floating tectonic plates, it took eons of time for that life to gain complexity.”

At almost the same time that Lincoln became president in America, over in England, Charles Darwin, in 1859, had his book, The Origin of Species, published. It had a profound impact on the traditional religious belief that God had created the world in six days as recounted in the first chapter of Genesis. As a result, many were struggling to articulate what they did and didn’t believe. Darwin’s most famous supporter and colleague, Sir Thomas Huxley, also sought for a way to express his religious stance, namely, what he believed or didn’t believe. The problem for him, as for many others, was that he didn’t think of himself as an atheist…he wasn’t a theist…he wasn’t a pantheist…nor was he a Christian. So how could he describe himself so that both he and others would not misunderstand where he was coming from?

His answer was to use his familiarity with the Greek language and coin a phrase. As we’ve discussed before, he took the Greek word for “knowledge,” which is “gnosis,” and then employed a linguistic practice in Greek usage; namely, if you wish to reverse the meaning of a term, you put an alpha or “a” before it. In other words, agnosis, which when Anglicized gives us “agnosticism” or “agnostic.”

Agnosticism as Huxley used it meant that when addressing whether there is a God, he, Huxley did not know. But, also when addressing the question whether there is no God, Huxley did not know. That was in the 1860s.

Now almost 150 years later, we’ve come a long way. We’ve fully accepted that our origins were not in a Garden of Eden as described in the biblical second account of creation in Genesis 2-3. Rather, as Darwin later wrote, life probably began “in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts.”

In fact, what many are pointing to as a significant breakthrough, scientists are reporting in the current issue of Nature Magazine[2], that they have been able to conduct experiments in organic chemistry that seem to demonstrate that the building blocks of living cells, combined with ultraviolet light, may have emerged from chemicals that are naturally present on Earth’s surface, underscoring that the evolutionary process began here on Earth some 3.8 billion years ago.

(That’s about as far as I want to go with my organic chemistry – Dr. Pat Fish, an organic chemist, just breathed a sigh of relief.)

So let’s agree for our purposes this morning that as writer Tom Mahon puts it:

n “that we are very highly evolved starstuff, seawater and sunshine, come alive and

Now let me repeat that, because it is not only poetic but truly states the alternative to Genesis 1.

n “that we are very highly evolved star stuff, seawater and sunshine, come alive and

And since Darwin…since Einstein…since the 19^th and 20^th centuries…since the awareness of the Big Bang…we’ve begun to discover that the world of which we are a part is a marvelous and awesome place. And this new knowledge…this enormous increase in knowledge…has changed all the rules…for theists, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and those with religious affirmations.

There’s a form which Unitarian Universalist ministers used to fill out when they were seeking a church settlement. It has one question which goes something like this, “Do you consider yourself a humanist, theist, Christian, atheist, agnostic or other.” I remember thinking at the time that I first filled it out, I would really like to answer, “Yes.”

“If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by….

If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”

That’s one response. However, for writer Winifred Gallagher[3], the answer is that she is “a neo-agnostic.” She defines that as “a well-educated skeptic who has inexplicable spiritual feelings.”

Spirituality is any effort to experience life at a deeper level, to realize some part of the more than with which we are surrounded. When we do connect spiritually, our lives are fuller and we are enabled to see reality more clearly. We see its good and its bad, we see its richness and its disparity.

The more spiritual we become, the more we live from inside rather than outside, the more courage we possess to be loving even to the unlovable and the more capacity we have for generosity of time and resources.

Within that same context, what if, in Tom Mahon’s words, we used the word “god” as a “placeholder word” for a reality we can’t fathom. In other words, the Mystery is so incomprehensible, that we use the placeholder word “god” to symbolize the Mystery…all the time knowing, as in Forrester Church’s statement that I keep repeating, “God is not God’s name, but our name for God”…our placeholder name for the encompassing Reality before us which can not be fathomed or understood. As Lao-Tze puts it: “The Mystery that can be named is no longer a Mystery.” We are not naming it, but providing a temporary symbol until we find something better.

But does that work? Will it help you when times are tough? Will it take you through the valley?

In the late Shel Silverstein's children’s book, The Missing Piece, a circle sets out to find the pie-shaped wedge of itself that is missing. (Imagine a pie with one slice missing, rolling along, looking for its missing part.) The circle, with the slice missing, searches everywhere. It finds a whole lot of different pieces that were lost, but none fits the circle. There’s one that’s too big…there’s one that’s too little…there’s one that over-advertises its availability…but none of them exactly fits the empty space in the circle.

As the circle with the piece missing bumps along, it realizes it cannot travel as fast as it used to when it was a whole and did not have a missing piece. Because of this, it has to go slower.

After days of searching, the circle finally finds its missing slice and gets back together – right back where it started from.

But then, guess what? After awhile, the circle lets go of the slice that once was missing. Why would it do a thing like that? The answer: It discovers that going slower enabled it to see and enjoy more along the way. It realizes that there was a lot it had been missing when it was going so fast as a whole circle. Although it had to go slower with a missing piece, the circle was better able to see the world around it.

Which was Shel Silverstein’s way of saying that losing something can be bad, sometimes very bad – but what we do after we’ve lost it can be good.

"Sometimes we are more whole when we are incomplete, when we are missing something. There is a wholeness about those persons who can give themselves away, who can give their time, their money, their strength, to others and not feel diminished. There is a wholeness about those who have come to terms with their limitations. There is a wholeness about the woman or man who has learned that she or he is strong enough to go through a tragedy and survive, the person who can lose someone through death, through divorce, through estrangement, and serious illness, and still feel like a complete person."

I’m not sure that any of us who have experienced one or more of those categories would agree. And yet, probably if there were an outside observer looking in, she or he would probably be able to find areas that we have become much more than we were before.

So what about our topic of agnosticism? One of the most unusual charges against Abraham Lincoln's religious faith was that actually he didn't have any. William Herndon, his law partner in Springfield, Illinois, wrote, "Let it be written in history and on Mr. Lincoln's tomb: he died an unbeliever."

Further evidence of that is supposed to be found in the fact that he never joined a church during his entire lifetime. Because of that, in the election campaign of 1860 -- his first candidacy for the presidency -- of the 23 pastors in his home town, only three were thought to be supportive of him.

Another indication was that he had at one time voted for the legislature to remain in session on Christmas Day. And he was attending the theater on Good Friday evening before Easter, the night he was assassinated.

Lincoln once explained his reluctance in joining a church. He said he had difficulty in giving his assent, without mental reservations, to the long complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterized Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith. He said, "When any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership the statement by Jesus of the substance of both the law and the Gospel – 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thy self' – that church will I join with all my heart and soul."

[1] A sermon given May 17, 2009, the second in a series of four on the stages of faith, 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.

[2] See May 14, 2009 issue of New York Times, p. A15.

[3] Working on God. Modern Library Paperbacks: 2000)