Sermons

Spiritual Maturity
Rev. Douglas Taylor
5-2-10

This past fall, while I was on sabbatical and serving Meadville Lombard Theological School as its Minster in Residence, I taught a class on Adult Religious Education. My class met once a week for three hours and I led six students, who were on the path to becoming Unitarian Universalist ministers, through religious education theory and practice. I focused on the spiritual path of teaching and on the stages of faith development. James Fowler’s Stages of Faith is one of those books that I and many of my contemporaries, heard about, read synopsis of, but never actually read or worked with directly. So I made these students actually read the book, learn all six stages, and make some attempts to apply the theory to our work as ministers leading adult religious education classes.

Fowler talked about the human development of faith as something separate from beliefs and a person’s religious tradition. It may be helpful to see a distinction between religion as a set of answers and beliefs, and religion as an ongoing journey of deepening and maturing. This is almost a distinction between beliefs and faith. James Fowler saw it that way. His ground-breaking work on faith development asked questions like:

What are you spending and being spent for? What commands and receives your best time, your best energy? What power or powers do you rely on and trust? To what or whom are you committed in life?

These are not questions about beliefs; these questions do not lead a person to answer in a way that assumes one religious tradition’s answers are the best answers. Instead these questions are open to the lived experiences of each person, they draw out of you answers that are likely to change and grow as you continue on your own journey of growth and discovery, of development and maturity. It is not about arriving at the ultimate set of timeless and permanent truths, rather it is about developing the qualities of spiritual maturity.

Fowler listed six stages of development. The sixth and final stage is the one that excites people. It is that stage which includes persons like Gandhi and Mother Teresa, saints and people who have reached enlightenment. The great mark of the rare people who are considered to be in this stage is that they live in a kind of Universal understanding of life. More often there are people in whom there are glimpses of this way of seeing and living in the world. It is a hard way to actually fully live. One synopsis has this description (from a UUA curriculum manual), “They live with a felt participation in a power that unifies and transforms the world. For this reason, many times they are seen as subversive by the establishment and often die at the hands of those they wish to change.”

There is something about such people, they are grounded in life, but they seem to be larger than life as well. And it is not just the famous people who are counted in this list. Many extraordinary souls are out there. In the same sermon I used for our reading earlier, Kendyl Gibbons writes this about Spiritual Maturity:

It is obvious to anyone who has any historical or international awareness that there is something that the world’s most acknowledged spiritual leaders have in common; some attributes that characterize the Gandhis and Dalai Lamas and Mother Teresas and Martin Luther Kings of the world, no matter what historical religious tradition they identify with. And of course, these qualities are not limited to those who achieve wide recognition; they exist as well in French villagers who hide Jews from the Nazis, in Rwandan hotel keepers, in neighbors and teachers and elders everywhere, who exemplify for us what it means to grow into the radical acceptance of others, self-awareness, active compassion and sacrificial love that are the highest expressions of any faith.

Kendyl’s list of characteristics is this: self-awareness, radical acceptance of others, active compassion, and sacrificial love. That is a pretty tall order. Fowler points out that many of us are fascinated by the lives of such people. Most of us are not going to find ourselves in monumental scenario so as to be thrust upon the world stage for all to see and note our spiritual maturity. Most of us will only ever be the everyday people living our lives as neighbors and teachers and elders. But the point is to see even the small moments as rife with opportunities to grow and mature spiritually.

And we don’t need to be stage six saints to be spiritually mature. Fowler insists that the real work is not to get through each stage until you arrive at the last one. He said the real work is to discern your own faith and how you can live more fully in the stage in which you currently reside. I don’t want to get lost in trying to teach you about Fowler’s stages of faith development. Instead let’s get lost in the defining questions Fowler asks at the front of his book. Let’s get lost in the basic questions of ‘what is spiritual maturity?’ The reason to bring Fowler into all of this is the way he characterized faith as something you develop rather than as something you either have or do not have. Faith is a continuing journey of discovery; it is a process of maturing, of growing. The core questions Fowler asks are these:

What are you spending and being spent for? What commands and receives your best time, your best energy? What power or powers do you rely on and trust? To what or whom are you committed in life?

To ever achieve a decent level of spiritual maturity, we need to be able to know what power or powers we rely upon and trust. Faith is the ground for spiritual maturity. We need to trust enough to move beyond ourselves. We need to trust, to have faith, in something larger than ourselves – however it is named and recognized. We will know it by our commitments and by where we spend ourselves. The more worthy the object of our faith, the more solid will be the ground of our faith for future growth.

Such is true for any person in any religious tradition. We might well ask, however, what does it look like to be a spiritually mature person within the context of Unitarian Universalism? What is our distinct and integral way of growing in faith? Rev. Tom Chulak (in a document entitled “10 Characteristics of Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Maturity” which can be found at: http://www.sld.uua.org/newspackets/Aug09packet/2_10CHAR-TomC.pdf ) wrote, “The starting point for spiritual maturity within [the] Unitarian Universalist tradition is openness.” He further identified our openness to the ‘free and responsible search for truth and meaning.’

This sounds spot on to me. The way to begin, for anyone, is to be grounded in your personal faith. And the way the Unitarian Universalist tradition has done this is through openness. Other traditions may offer other avenues: saying certain prayers, doing certain practices, visiting certain holy sites. For us the practice we lift up is simply openness: opening yourself up to the perspective of others, opening yourself up to truth as you search it out, opening yourself up to the hard work of listening to your own life.

Listening again to that short list Kendyl Gibbons offered, we hear openness echoing. How else can you begin a journey of spiritual maturing but through opening yourself up? Gibbons says the marks of spiritual maturity include: self-awareness and a radical acceptance of others. Self-awareness and a radical acceptance of others. This is very Unitarian Universalist place to begin! Open yourself up to the free and responsible search for truth and meaning; open yourself to the deepening journey of self-understanding and self-awareness. Allow yourself to open up to others, offering a radical acceptance of those who are different from you. Relax, you don’t need to control your interactions, be not afraid of other people’s differences. Instead, be open. Learn and grow from the encounter. This is the Unitarian Universalist starting point for spiritual maturity: Openness to yourself and your journey, openness to others and new perspectives, openness to being changed, to growing.

This so easily leads to a letting go. Letting go is a huge step in spiritual maturity. In our openness, we let go of who we have been in favor of who we are becoming. We let go of who we have perceived others to be if favor of learning who they really are. We let go of our labels of other people, we let go of our initial perspectives for the sake of something larger. This leads us back to faith. If you will be open and if you will let go, then you will need to be firmly grounded in something both trustworthy and larger than yourself.

In that well worn passage about love in the apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, he says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians, 13:11) The path of spiritual maturity is the path of leaving behind earlier ways that may have worked well in the past but are no longer suited to what you need now. The path of spiritual maturity is the path of leaving behind old patterns that never really worked well in the first place. It means being open to the new and letting go of what’s no longer moving you forward. It means letting go of grudges and your status as a victim, and moving into a place of forgiveness and of accepting yourself and the consequences of your choices and your actions. It means letting go of greed and selfishness and the desire to have what you want, and moving into a place of generosity and working to satisfy your own needs as well as the needs of others. In means letting go of trying to get other people to make you happy, and opening yourself up to the full measure of joy and sorrow that pours though every day of your living. It means letting go of expectations and opening up to ambiguity and paradox and apparent contradiction so prevalent in love and compassion for all people and all of life.

Oh, it is a life of virtue, the stuff of enlightenment and sainthood. But it is also available to you and me and anyone who will begin in faith to open up and let go. In the write-up for this sermon I told you I would explain just what Spiritual Maturity is and I said I would also talk about how we can cultivate it in ourselves.

Growth and maturation can happen in a number of ways. This is true cognitively, physically and emotionally as well as spiritually. The first way is in keeping strictly with developmental theory, that it is the natural order of life for us to mature. There is directionality and a natural pacing to our development. This form of growth and maturation is almost unnoticed as we go through our lives. It is just automatic like a seed growing. Unless something goes wrong, we naturally mature. It is also true that occasionally we develop more quickly when some outside influence causes sudden growth or transformation. There may be a teacher or a book that suddenly opens up an insight for you, or there has been a loss that was unexpected, or perhaps a major transition is one aspect of your life that triggers an unlooked-for opening in what seemed like an another unrelated aspect of your life. Physically, this is like when little kids go through growth spurts. They are suddenly hungry ALL THE TIME and can sprout up an inch in height over a weekend. This second form of maturation is not unlike the third form, which is the really exciting one. The third form of spiritual growth is to go looking for it, to create sudden growth or transformation; or perhaps more accurately to create opportunities within your life for transformation.

You can train your body to run a marathon physically, you can meet with a therapist to work on your emotional life, and you can take a class in various subjects to cultivate your mind. You can also participate in various spiritual exercises or programs to cultivate your spiritual growth. Like going to school to improve your cognitive maturity you can go to church to improve your spiritual maturity. Rev. A. Powell Davies said a church is where people come to grow a soul. Is that something that is happening here in this congregation? Are people growing wiser, more spiritually mature, as a result of anything we are doing here in this congregation?

Now, for the same reason schools do not offer only intellectual opportunities and instead seek to feed the whole student with music and Phys. Ed. and social events like dances and such – similarly religious communities such as this one will offer a range of things including intellectual stimulation, social opportunities, ethical and moral encouragement, and so on. But the basic function of a religious community is to aid people in becoming more spiritually mature. One of the current phrases used by the UUA in its advertising, its current tagline, is “Nurture Your Spirit, Help Heal the World.” The first part of that tagline is squarely focused on each person’s spiritual growth and maturation.

I think deep down many of us yearn to be more spiritually alive and mature. In the same way that we want our physical bodies to be healthy and balanced at whatever age we find ourselves, in the same way we want our emotional needs to be met – to be loved and to share our love with others in, in the same way we find our minds demanding truth about the world in which we live, truth about life; … in this same way we yearn for a spiritual grounded-ness in our lives. We yearn to be more open and accepting, more compassionate, more self-aware, more generous with our gifts that can bless the world and bring more peace.

The basic function of any religious community is to feed that hunger, to help people develop their faith, to nurture their spirit, to become more spiritually alive and mature. Here we encourage one another in spiritual growth. Here we hallow a place and a time to grow more spiritually mature. Here we open ourselves to the journey of faith.

In a world without end,
may it be so.

Banish the Edges
4-25-10
Rev. Douglas Taylor

According to the reports and articles, the movie “Avatar” by James Cameron, is a blockbuster. It broke the record to become the highest-grossing film of all time in the world. Steven Spielberg said this movie is “The most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars.” So I’m thinking it is a pretty safe bet to assume that most of you have seen this film or have at least heard about it enough to know something about the film.

It is a science fiction piece: ten-foot tall blue humanoids, giant floating mountains, six-legged horses and pterodactyl-like flying animals. There are enough high-action chase and fight scenes, and falling in love scenes, and cool technology scenes for the average sci-fi film lover to be truly satisfied. The film is a little light on the plot and character development, high on the use of tropes and clichés. But that is not so bad for this sort of movie; Star Wars, after all, was one cliché after another and that was a great movie! What I most liked about it, and why I am mentioning it in the context of a sermon, is the way it presented the relationship of the Na’vi – the big blue people – with nature.

The Na’vi are portrayed as living in harmony with nature and worshiping Eywa, the great mother goddess. There are strong overtones of Native American spirituality and Hindu spirituality. There is a very clear moral to the story that has to do with environmentalism and imperialism. Cameron said in an interview [Press, Associated, August 18, 2009] that he wanted this to thrill people but also to touch the conscience of people, “that maybe in the enjoying of it makes you think a little bit about the way you interact with nature and your fellow man.” Cameron was working to create a myth for our times. In another interview James Cameron has said that he “tried to make a film that would touch people’s spirituality across the broad spectrum.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_in_Avatar#cite_note-TOI-60]

Here is a fascinating piece of this that I wish the film had done more with: The Na’vi have a biological connection point with nature. They have a cord, a tendril coming out of the backs of their heads which feeds directly to the brain. It is a sensory organ that can link with the biology around them. The Na’vi can connect with a tree or an animal through an electrochemical neural link and transfer signals such as thoughts and memories. It’s like a biochemical USB port. We mostly see this used in the movie as a means for the protagonist to ride other animal and for the Na’vi to connect to the trees. It offers a whole new concept of ‘communing with nature!’

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a direct link like that with trees or animals around me. I was just up at a retreat center this week, the ministers and religious educators meet for three days together just ahead of our annual Unitarian Universalist District Assembly. We were on a beautiful lake with trees around us. Whenever I am at a retreat I make an effort to go out and find a wild place. Usually we meet by a lake or in the woods so it is rather easy for me to find a trail or a path to start with. Invariably though I have to get off the path. I want to wander through the trees and weave around the undergrowth. I want to duck under branches and step over logs. I need to be surrounded by nature and let my spirit feel the wild places. Growing up I was able to do this regularly, weekly or even more frequently as there were wild places around my neighborhood. I stand (or sit if the ground is dry) and just breath, listening to the wind and the animals around me. My spirit needs this.

What would it be like to have a more direct link, to feel that connection? I’ll be honest; I can’t get my head around that idea very far. It is an intriguing starting point, but I can’t imagine what the sensations would be like coming to my brain from a completely foreign sense organ.

I was recently offered a poem that uses the sensation of sight to talk about this sort of experience. It talks about a different way of seeing the world and our connection to nature. It is from poet Lisel Mueller and imagines a response from Claude Monet to a suggested surgery for his eyes. It is fictional – Monet did have cataracts removed when he was in his 80’s.

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.  The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.  Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
~ Lisel Mueller ~

What might it be like to have a different way of sensing the natural world around us? What would we see or perceive? Our Unitarian Universalist theology talks about a connected and interdependent world. Science certainly supports this idea of a ‘web of connections.’ For example, researchers in the genome project have shifted from looking at single genes to sequences and patterns of genes for clues about issues ranging from illness to evolution. When scientists and theologians and poets start to offer similar perspectives it is worth taking note – This is not just a fad or a cultural delusion. This is real. We are interconnected; we are not a mere cacophony of diverse isolated individuals. We exist in a pattern, in relation to other things and other people. Isolation is not real. As John Muir put it, “when we try to pick anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

So when I am on retreat and I wander off the path into the undergrowth and ramble around among the trees, I am not isolating myself. I am softening and blurring the edges between what is me and ‘not-me’. As the poet wrote, I eventually banish the edges, the lines of division. At some point the air around me ceases to be air and becomes my breath. It moves through my body in an intricate way I do not fully understand and then back out. And somewhere along its way out the breath ceases to be me and becomes the air that is part of the world that is not-me. Or we can banish the edges and allow the connections in.

When I try to imagine having a biochemical cord, like the aliens from the movie “Avatar”, I think I would be overwhelmed by the sensory information. If I really let the divisions slip, would I lose all sense of individuality? I must admit I am not ready for that entirely. I like the occasional experience of being one with all that is, and the times of communing with divinity – but I am not ready to loss all the edges. I would like to see them softened and blurred from time to time.

There is an underlying unity we notice and connect with, a pattern through existence that matters. The environment we live in is a part of us, defines us in a way. The ‘edge’ between what is me and what is not-me is less a wall and more a semi-permeable membrane. Someone pointed out that perhaps a better biological phrase to use is to say we are ‘selectively permeable.’ We choose what we let in. That would certainly be the point – to develop our sense of connection to all that is to the point where we can actively choose what we let in.

I sit among the tall trees and the grasses and undergrowth and these things become part of me. The trees and the lake and the people and my small self become part of an intricate connected pattern that is me. The edges blur. Such a way of seeing is the reason I care about the environment and about peace among people and about racism and healthcare and war and so many other social issues. I am a part of the pattern, I am a partner in all that is; the edges are blurred. Oppression, destruction, suffering of others people and of the earth is part of my life and my existence. This is why I care. This is why it matters to me that we deal with the social ills of our world.

Let me end with one last story, this from Anthony DeMello, cautioning me to stay grounded in the midst of my flights of mysticism.

“There are three stages in one’s spiritual development,” said the Master. “The carnal, the spiritual, and the divine.”
“What is the carnal stage?” asked the eager disciples.
“That’s the stage when trees are seen as trees and mountains as mountains.”
“And the spiritual?”
“That’s when one looks more deeply into things – then trees are no longer trees and mountains no longer mountains.”
“And the divine?”
“Ah, that’s Enlightenment,” said the master with a chuckle, “when trees become trees again and mountains, mountains.”
(DeMello, Anthony, One Minute Wisdom p 47)

In a world without end,
may it be so.

“Grace Knots”
3-28-10
Rev. Douglas Taylor

I think I picked “grace” as a sermon topic primarily because I like to sing the hymn. My mom used to tell me that we Unitarian Universalists can be very intellectual and ready to argue about doctrines and beliefs at the drop of a hat, but if asked to sing Amazing Grace, we do so with gusto – many even singing the line about being a “wretch,” despite the option to insert the word “soul” instead. I mean, that right there should tell you all kinds of information about Unitarian Universalists: We give people an alternate line in our hymnal according to their conscience. Sing about being a soul or sing about being a wretch – either way is fine. But choose quickly because it is coming up in the seventh measure of verse one.

I trust most of you have a sense of where this hymn came from. It is the story of Englishman John Newton (1725-1807), slave ship captain turned Anglican priest. According to one version of the story, our captain was sailing with a hold full of human cargo when a fierce storm overtook the ship. Fearing for his ship and his life, the captain, in desperation, began to pray. Surviving the harrowing storm, John Newton had a conversion experience that made see the evil of slavery and set on the path to being an abolitionist and a priest. That, as I said, is one version of the story. It is not true, but it is a good story.

In truth, our captain retired after earning quite a lot of money from the slavery business, returned to England to become a well respected and accomplished preacher. As a priest, he also had a talent for writing hymns and indeed wrote and co-wrote a great many hymns during his years. Over time, Newton’s views on slavery shifted and he grew to be an advocate of abolition. And it was out of his experiences working against slavery as a priest that he came to write the hymn Amazing Grace. It was not an “all of a sudden” conversion from sinner to saint, from slaver to abolitionist, from captain to priest. It evolved over time. You could say grace made its way though his life as a slow and subtle thread rather than as a sudden flash, as so many assume.

Grace is one of those religious words that has made its way into secular usage and thus lives on in our vocabulary. Credit cards and insurance companies provide a “grace period” between the due date of your bills and the date upon which they charge you for being late. Composers will sometimes add “grace notes” to their score — notes that are not essential to the melody, yet add flourish and flare. “Grace,” in these uses, refers to something extra, they are gratuitous. (from Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing about Grace?, p 12)

Even when we keep a more religious sentiment, the meaning of “grace” can shift, as in the example of “saying Grace” before a meal. In this case, “grace” refers to a prayer uttered before eating. One colleague, reflecting on this form of grace, writes:

The intent of such a prayer is two-fold: one is to encourage the spirit of gratefulness for the food, and another is so that the food will benefit us spiritually. Grace before the meal also takes the event of the meal out of just ordinary time and into sacred time. In this way, a simple table grace can induce the feeling of being blessed or having a sense of well being. (“A Question of Grace” Rev. Ann Fox, December 3, 2006, Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven)

Of these examples, the words of the hymn and the story behind the hymn – both the real version and the fanciful version – are closer to the original religious understanding of Grace than these secularized versions of the word.

Grace is (according Van Harvey’s A Handbook of Theological Terms, p. 108) “the most crucial concept in Christian theology because it refers to the free and unmerited act through which God restores his estranged creatures to himself.” This idea of grace, stripped down to its most basic definition has to do with connection. In the theological vocabulary of Christianity, we have the words “free and unmerited” and I am quite used to seeing those adjectives attached to the concept of grace. Theologians and poets are amply capable of showing this aspect of grace. Robbie Walsh’s wonderful reading illustrates this: “Some say we get what we deserve in life, but I don’t believe it. We certainly don’t deserve Bach. What have I done to deserve the Second Brandenburg Concerto? … Life is a gift we have not earned and for which we cannot pay.”

But the part that struck me anew recently was the bit about connection, or as it is worded in my Handbook of Theological Terms, the restoration of estrangement. The free and unmerited part is old news. Theologians have been gnawing on that one for some time. It is undeserved, you’ve done nothing to gain it or earn it or win it. It is just there for you unexpectedly, unlooked for.

Christian author Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of taking out the trash one evening. It was just about sunset, and the bag was heavy. As she struggled to get it from her back door to the garage, she passed by her garden. Glancing through the gate, she noticed that the light was hitting the garden just so and, she said, she got “the whole dose of loveliness at once” as the setting sun turned the scene golden. But she had to dump the trash before she could really experience it, and when she went back just a few moments later, the light had changed and the garden had returned to normal. Taylor had noticed this moment of grace, but she passed it by. (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, p. 26.)

Beauty happens, if you can notice it. The earth pours this beauty out regularly, have you eyes to see? Grace is blessings and abundance, undeserved.  It didn’t have to be like that, it might not have happened that way, but it did.  What did you ever do to deserve ripe cantaloupe or true friends or lilac bushes or this church community?  Have you noticed the beauty of the moon, or perhaps the sunset last night? The sun does this every evening.  It does not care what your day was like or if your actions warrant this gift, it is there for you all the same, all you must do is notice.

Do you remember when I said, a few weeks back, that connection is our holiest word? At times, we feel disconnected from the world, from ourselves, from other people, from all that is holy. At times, we feel isolated or perhaps caught up in our own busy-ness. And then we’re taking out the garbage and see the fading sunlight falling on the garden just so. We reconnect with the beauty around us or within us or between us.

So, some would call this “God restoring his estranged creatures to himself,” and others would say it is our awareness of ourselves as connected with, indeed embedded in, that which is larger than ourselves and is also our larger self. Grace is that sense of connectedness that is also a profound respite, allowing you to release, for a time, the troubles of your life. It is that felt sense of something larger than yourself that holds all.

I think of the farmer who plants the seed. The work of the farmer is to plant the seed, not to grow the seed. The farmer is not in charge of the rain or the sun or the nutrients of the earth. Something larger is in charge of that: the laws of physics, the nature of seeds, the way the world works … the point is the farmer is not in control of that part. The farmer’s work is to plant the seed. Similarly, when you have trouble in life, when you’re working to make things happen, it can be restorative to allow a space for grace in your life to say, “I’ll do my part and trust the universe to do its part.” Because when we get too caught up in ourselves and our work and our efforts, we can lose sight of the beauty around us and within us. If we make space for grace in our lives, we can see we are not alone in our work.

The meditation by Wendell Berry has the word grace in the last line and I think it fits here. “For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free.” Worried, concerned, distracted, fearful, isolated … the word Wendell Berry uses is despair. “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake … in fear…” At times we feel disconnected. Grace is that reconnecting, that “act through which God restores his estranged creatures to himself.” And while it is “unmerited and unearned” and all that – as Wendell Barry shows, there are steps you can take to find it, to open yourself up to it.

In speaking of grace this way, as a way of noticing the world, as a way of being in the world, we would do well to not lose sight of that old traditional interpretation whereby Grace was the demonstration of God’s love for you. Liberal Christian author and apologist Frederick Beuchner characterizes grace this way: “The grace of God means something like: here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It’s for you I created the universe.  I love you.” (Listen To Your Life)

I like the way Beuchner talks about grace in this regard. He says, clearly, that it is a gift which you cannot earn or win but he adds, “There’s only one catch.  Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it.”  You do have some work to do.  As the meditation by Wendell Berry indicates, you can’t stay in bed with your despair and fear, you must “go lie down where the wood drake rests … and the great heron feeds.” Grace will find you, but you need to work with it, and you’re allowed to go looking for it.

Existentialist theologian Paul Tillich talks about the profound sense of grace, when it is most amazing. He speaks of grace, not as the gentle moment while taking out the trash or watching wood drakes and herons. He speaks of the level of grace alluded to in the hymn, when you are really at the bottom of your rope.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when year, after year, the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsion reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness. If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience, we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. (from Shaking the Foundations, Paul Tillich)

Grace is that moment of reconnection, of turning back to God and discovering you are accepted and loved. Grace is the unanticipated felt knowledge that all shall be well.

This leads me to the story for which I have titled this sermon. There is a story that says each of us has a thread that connects us to God; when we sin, we cut the thread; when we seek forgiveness, we retie the thread. The story says each of us has a string that connects us to God, a thread running from our soul to the oversoul, a line tying the spark of divinity within each of us to the divinity of the whole – whatever theological framework you need to use – there is a thread. When we turn away from the holiness of life, when we sin or cause hurt, when we allow fear to command our actions, there is a cutting of the cord – we cut that thread of connection. We grow estranged, alienated, disconnected from God. When we turn back to face that which is holy, when we seek forgiveness, when we notice the angle of light upon the garden as we take out the trash, when we “go lie down where the wood drake rests … and the great heron feeds,” we are reconnecting. We are being restored with God. We are re-tying the thread.

When you re-tie a line, you create a knot and the string is shorter, causing you to be closer. Think of the occasions you have had a fight with someone whom you love – a parent, a spouse, a very dear friend. Not even necessarily a fight at the level where you might feel as though the deep connection between you has been severed – just a regular fight. When you get back together, when you make amends, when you weather that storm, are you not closer? Is not the fight and the fact that you are still together in love and loyalty a part of the depth of the relationship? So it is with grace. So it is with this story about knots along the line connecting you with all that is holy, with that which holds all.

Bill Moyers did a PBS documentary on the hymn Amazing Grace 20 years ago. One of the really striking scenes is at a concert in celebration of the changes that were happening in South Africa. The concert featured a variety of bands, mostly rock bands, but they had set the closing act as a black opera singer named Jessye Norman. Jessye comes out on the stage and the huge audience is all pumped up and shouting for more rock music. Jessye starts singing Amazing Grace, a capella, all alone on the stage, very slowly. As she sang, the crowd of seventy thousand unruly fans settled into a silence. By the second verse, she had them in the palm of her hands. “Jessye Norman later confessed she had no idea what power descended on (the crowd) that night.” (p. 282, Yancy.) Surely the answer is not that hard. The hymn evokes the feel of grace, evokes the remembered experience of it in the lives of people. Whether it is the dramatic sort of grace that Tillich speaks of or the gentler, subtler version we hear about from Wendell Berry, people understand what the song is about.

As we sing Amazing Grace for our closing hymn, I invite you to consider all the words of the hymn, not just the ones set apart with an asterisk. Consider how you can make room for more connections in your life, for more grace. You don’t need to earn it or win it, just plant the seed and let the seed do what seeds do.

In a world without end,
may it be so

“Intimacy, Ultimacy, and Efficacy”
3-21-10
Rev. Douglas Taylor

According to an article dated March 11, 2010 in Forbes magazine, “We all have three basic human needs.” This article in the leadership section of the premier business periodical goes on to tell us, “We need to be connected to other people, we need to know that our work matters, and we need leaders who respond to those first two needs when times are tough.”

“Intimacy and ultimacy” the article tells us, “are the two universal human quests. Our deepest desire is to have close personal relationships while we’re on this planet and to make a contribution that will last when we’re not.” Theologians generally agree with this business magazine on the basic needs of human beings: Intimacy and Ultimacy. The article, written for business leaders, adds a third basic need: business leaders who can tell employees how to get those first two needs met.

Leaders who actively reinforce and nurture these core desires engage people on a level that transcends money and market conditions. People are eager to be part of something bigger than themselves. In fact, when deprived of the chance to do so, they grow desperate for it. Leaders who connect on an emotional level and provide their people with meaningful context can ignite a passion that transcends [financial] uncertainty. (Forbes magazine, 3-11-10, “How To Keep Your Employees Focused And Functioning, Even Now” by Lisa Earle McLeod)

A couple of generations back, a great Unitarian Theologian named James Luther Adams said that people come to churches for “ultimacy and intimacy.” (Robert L. Hill, The Complete Guide to Small Group Ministry: Saving the World Ten At A Time, p. 3.) Colleague Rev. John Morgan writes about a time he heard Adams speak in which the theologian explained that “they come to wrestle with life’s ultimate questions. Who am I? In what or in whom do I trust? In what community do I belong? And they came for a sense of intimacy, a safe place in which they could be accepted while making connections with others.” (John Morgan’s The Devotional Heart)

Occasionally, in prayers I write for worship, I will include the phrase “Deeper meaning and richer connection.” Intimacy is finding richer connection, and ultimacy is finding deeper meaning in our lives.

Do you remember when you first came to Unitarian Universalism? Or the first time you came to this particular congregation? What were you looking for? What were you hoping to find? A lot of times people will be seeking after exactly what James Luther Adams was talking about: “ultimacy and intimacy.” We may not say it such grand words, but pared down to the phrase “deeper meaning and richer connections,” the assertion seems to carry for the majority of situations. People come seeking ultimacy and intimacy.

When I think about all this, however, I wonder if there might be a third component needed to round out the message, a third element to really cover what is drawing people and keeping people in faith communities such as ours. And I don’t think the third “basic human need” is leaders to remind people of their connections and their meaningfulness – despite the arguments presented in the Forbes magazine article. Rather, I suggest the third basic human need is efficacy or maybe the word would be agency, I’m not settled on how to name it so as to make it fit both accurately and poetically with ultimacy and intimacy.

The current PR slogan offered by the Unitarian Universalist Association is “Nurture your spirit, help heal our world.” There is an element of activism in the central workings of Unitarian Universalism and it is in response to a basic human need to make a difference in the world, a need perhaps to serve life is some way. For Unitarian Universalists, it is to live our faith out loud in the world, to put our faith in action.

Perhaps the search for deeper meaning, for ultimacy, covers the call to make the world a better place. And maybe the yearning for richer connections, for intimacy, already encompasses the feeling we get when we reach out to people in need. I think an argument could be made that the terms “ultimacy and intimacy” are sufficient, that a third element is not needed. Yet when I look around this congregation and see what draws our attention, I am convinced the yearning to fulfill a third basic need is at work among us.

Colleague Peter Bowden talked about this in his blog (uugrowth.com/2009/10/30) last fall: Intimacy, ultimacy, and efficacy. He called it connection, meaning and inspired action. “Inspired action” may be a better phrase. Efficacy feels a little too much like a business model word. Were our goals actualized to their maximum potentials? How effective were our programs? What is the efficacy of our mission objectives? Maybe it’s just me, but efficacy doesn’t quite sound right.

One of the responses to Peter Bowden’s blog also took issue with the word efficacy. He wrote that a person could log on to a Charity Navigator website to find a highly efficient charity and send them pile of money. That would be highly effective. Such action, however, will probably not “feed the spiritual hunger for service.”

What I’m trying to convey is the sense that in this congregation we work to have integrity between our beliefs and our actions, for our faith is lived out in our behavior, that our search for meaning lead us to inspired actions in the world. I suppose with some translation, efficacy can mean all that. If you think about it, the word intimacy does not usually convey a religious sense of connection so much as a romantic and private feeling of closeness with one person. These three words – intimacy, ultimacy, and efficacy – would need basic translation and clarification for use even in a religious setting.

If you went outside and someone asked you – Hey, you just came out of the building, what is that place all about?’ and you answered saying “intimacy, ultimacy and efficacy,” that person would probably run the other way. But if you were to say “richer connections, deeper meaning, and inspired action” – well, now you’re having a conversation.

In a way, I think these three basic human needs are as close as Unitarian Universalists come to offering a salvation message. This is our salvation story: that you can come into a community like this one for connection, meaning, and a call to service.

Congregational consultant, Loren Mead of the Alban Institute writes, a congregation is called to “… assist more and more people to identify what needs of the world cry out from them; and nurture and support each person and send each one forth to respond to these needs with his or her unique gifts.” (Loren Mead, Transforming Congregations for the Future) Such a sentiment reminds me of that quote from Howard Thurman: “Ask not what the world most needs. Ask instead what makes you come alive, and then go do it. For what the world most needs are people who have come alive.” (Paraphrased from memory)

Our faith must be embodied. As Unitarian Universalists, this is an important piece of how we do religion. Historically, Unitarians are characterized as fiercely free thinkers. The great documents of our Unitarian history highlight rational arguments about such doctrine of the Unity of God, the Humanity of Christ, and the Freedom of Conscience of human beings. The Unitarian side of our lineage is a litany of careful thinkers. At least, that is one fair representation of the Unitarian side of our heritage. Of course, there is more to it, but it is not inaccurate to say that as Unitarians we are a rather heady, intellectual bunch.

The Universalist side of our family, on the other hand, is commonly contrasted as the heart of our merged faith. The Universalists say the God’s love is the biggest part of life and all else follows. In the same way that the characterization of Unitarians as all “head” is generally fair though certainly inaccurate, so, too, can we say that the Universalists were all heart.” I am blurring some nuances and distinctions, but I will say our heritage brings us the quest for deeper meaning and ultimacy from our Unitarian side and the search for richer connections and intimacy from our Universalist side.

There are, however, several striking examples in our tradition of individuals who combined head and heart, who merged the call for deeper meaning and richer connections together. Witness these lines from a prayer by Unitarian preacher and activist Theodore Parker,

O God, may we join the human race in daring to live in the prophetic spirit: seeking inspiration like the seers and sages of this and other lands, judging the past as they, acting on the present like them, envisioning a new and nobler era of the spirit.

May we have communities for the whole person: truth for the mind, good works for the hands, love for the heart; and for the soul that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith in life, which like lightning in the clouds, shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark.

His prayer calls for “communities for the whole person: truth for the mind, good works for the hands, love for the heart.” It’s not exact, but pretty close. Parker could be tugging on the same themes I am this morning of ultimacy and truth for the mind, good works and efficacy for the hands, love and intimacy for the heart.
There is a conservative Fox news pundit celebrity named Glen Beck who talks about conspiracy theories and odd ideas. A week or so ago he urged his listeners to check their church websites to see if they had “social justice” programs or anything of that sort that advocated for justice. And if they found such programs in their churches, Beck said they should leave those churches immediately.

But he was trying to be a centrist when he said if your church leans left (I’m guessing he means politically?) and talks about social justice, then you are worshiping among Communists, and if your church leans right (politically?) and talks about social justice, then you are worshipping among Nazis. He lists issues such as “economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and (the promotion of) democracy” as typical social justice issues.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother mentioning such mindless, fear-mongering but this bubbled up just as I was preparing this service and I thought: this talking head wants to block people of faith from working for justice. He wants people of faith to be docile and uninvolved. Well, if I have conveyed Mr. Beck’s position with any accuracy, I must admit I am wholly flummoxed as to how he reaches such conclusions. To each their own, I suppose, and those who follow such a man do so surely for reasons other than logic and clarity of thought.

For me and mine, I say social justice, inspired action, efficacy, working to heal the world – however you call it – is as core a reason for this congregation’s continued existence as intimacy and ultimacy. It is part of our work to build a better world, to co-create the beloved community.

To truly seek intimacy and ultimacy, one would do well to be thoughtfully engaged, to be involved in actions that live out the commitments one has found through intimacy and ultimacy.  To abstain entirely from justice work, from striving to heal the world and make it a better place, to say you are not going to muck around in that “justice-stuff” is a disservice to the faithful pursuit of a spiritual life.  “Faith without works is dead.”

For if we are not the ones who will change the world and bring a better day, who will? As I close, let me give a nod to the business world. I began the sermon with a tweak at Forbes magazine’s presumption, but in truth, I am impressed by the way some in the business world see clearly to the heart of life. Hear these words from a commercial for “Apple,” but also as a call for each of us this morning to be more radically human and alive than otherwise.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

In a world without end,
May it be so.

“God Is Not Fair”
Rev. Douglas Taylor
2-21-10

Cain and Abel, that familiar pair of brothers from the story in Genesis, are where I begin today. It is a frustrating story in some parts. It begins with a problem that strikes me as a problem of fairness, or perhaps as a question of how to deal with disappointment in the face of unfairness. Cain, the eldest, tills the land like his father before him. Abel, the youngest, raises sheep. They both bring something of their work as an offering and God favors one brother’s offering over the other. There is no overt explanation given in the text, though over the generations explanations have arisen to justify God’s regard for one and not the other. But in the text alone, there is no indication. Instead of God offering any reason for accepting Abel’s offering and not accepting Cain’s, God chooses to issue Cain a warning. “Sin is lurking at your door.”

I’ve never liked this part of the story; it’s hard to work with. Later, Cain kills his brother. Cain rises up in anger and kills his brother and when God asks him where his brother Abel is, Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s Keeper?” I can work with that part of the story. Yes, we are each other’s keepers. Yes, anger leading to violence is a core piece of what is wrong with the world today. Yes, forgetting that we are all brothers and sisters and that we have work to do to care for one another, that we are each other’s keepers … Yes, this is powerful stuff, great story, it’ll preach!

But the earlier part, the set up for Cain’s anger, that part of the story I have trouble with. I have a colleague who rewrote passages like this, like a modern UU psychoanalytic midrash. My colleague has Cain challenge God and God basically says, “Yeah, you’re right Cain. I’m sorry I’ll try to be a better parent.” Ed Freidman wrote a fun case study piece about the first dysfunctional family featuring Cain and Abel as well as Adam and Eve. It’s really unsatisfactory to me to reduce the story of Cain and Abel to a question of sibling rivalry and parenting technique. prefer the interpretations that see Cain and Abel as aspects of our human nature or of the evolution of society.

But I actually want to set all that aside for today and look at the character of God in this story, rather than Cain or Abel. Because in this passage, God seems quite unfair. This is the beginning of the “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It’s the beginning of the questions of “Why does anything happen to any person?”
Life is unfair, that’s not news. Everyone has noticed that. “Every night and every morn some to misery are born. Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.” (William Blake) These earliest stories in the Bible are records of the questions people asked thousands of years ago. So I work in the fields raising sheep and my neighbor works in the fields raising fruits and vegetables. Or maybe I catch fish in the bay and my neighbor hunts gazelle on the plain, it doesn’t really matter – but in this story one is a shepherd and the other a farmer. And life is unfair. One of us prospers at the work and the other does not. I and my family remain in good health while my neighbor grows ill, while disaster strikes, while trouble compounds. “Every night and every morn some to misery are born. Every morn and every night, some are born to sweet delight.” Why?

I subscribe to a daily poem and one morning my poem was actually a brief story accompanied by a photo and its explanation. The photo was by Rashid Un Nbi from the MILK collection, MILK stands for Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kindness. The MILK collection is quite remarkable. The photo I opened this particular morning was of a man carrying another man along a busy street. The explanation reads “These twin brothers were caught on film as they made their way down Elephant Road in Dhaka, Bangladesh. One brother, crippled since birth, is carried by his twin.”

The story posing as a poem to accompany my photo is this: There is an old Sufi story about three men who found a bag of 17 gold pieces in a field they could not decide how to share the gold so they went to Mullah Nasrudin and asked him to decide. He asked them, “Would you have me divide it as I see fit or as God would do it?” “As God would do it.” They all said at once. “Here, then,” said the Mullah, “ten for you, five for you, and two for you.”

Anthropologically, in pre-scientific times, God has been a place holder for any unexplainable aspect of life. If it doesn’t make sense, it is the work of the gods. If we don’t understand life, God is the clarifier. As our understanding of life and biology and psychology has grown over the ages, so our understanding of God’s place in it all also shifts. So much of what we had pinned on God we now understand to be the products of natural laws, physics, biology, sociology and psychology. And yet the question seems to linger: Why do I prosper when my neighbor does not? Maybe my neighbor did something displeasing to God.

In the story of Cain and Abel, there is no indication that God did not accept Cain’s offering because God was displeased with Cain – God is displeased with Cain later when he murders his brother. But the reason why God did not accept Cain’s offering is asking a different question. Neither Cain nor Abel did anything in particular to warrant God’s favor or disfavor. God’s actions at the beginning of this story come off as truly capricious! It’s not tied to what Cain or Abel offered or how they behaved.

The question is not “Why do bad things happen to good people?” in this story. The question is more like “Why do bad things and good things happen to people unevenly?” “Why is life unfair?” And the answer to that mystery in this story is that God is unfair. And why is God unfair? It’s a mystery. And isn’t that bit of circular logic frustrating and unsatisfactory. When you are faced with disaster and suffering and loss, and someone says, “God moves in mysterious ways,” it is bordering on cruelty. “Sorry for your loss, it is awful what you are going through.” That is helpful to say, comforting. “It’s all part of God’s plan, God moves in mysterious ways.” That’s akin to saying, “God is not on your side anymore. God has deserted you. And I’m going to be over here with God.” God had no regard for Cain’s offering and God appears to have no regard for your pain, your loss, your offering.

Surely it would have been better to say Life is unfair and leave God out of it. But then in a thorough monotheism, God cannot be left out of any of it. That is the problem. One brother can walk, the other is born cripple. What has God to do with it?

There is a classic conundrum in Christian theology called the theodicy issue. God is all powerful, and God is good and loving, and yet evil and suffering exist. Why? Many people have wrestled with this intellectual puzzle over the years. One of my favorite examples is from the movie Shadowlands, a portrayal of the life of C. S. Lewis, the children’s author and Christian apologist. In the movie, Lewis is regularly giving lectures explaining how suffering is God’s way of helping us grow up. When he finally experiences his own deep suffering, when someone he loves is dealing with a great amount of physical pain, he changes his statements to questions. He says, “even I want to take her pain away, why doesn’t God?” (paraphrasing) It all comes down to a question of either God’s capacity for compassion or God’s breadth of power. Either God can’t or God doesn’t care to.

There is a Bette Midler song from 1990 called “From a Distance” that I think offers a perspective on this. God’s view is the big picture, the whole universe. Our individual lives and worries are miniscule in that big picture. Harmony and beauty shine though from the big picture. It offers comfort in the sense that God is watching and ultimately all is well. The lyrics of the song, however, show what some see as the hidden negative inside an otherwise very elegant theology.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

It sounds like God doesn’t see the hungry mouths, the disease and war, what with being so far away from us and focused on the beautiful harmony of all life. I read somewhere that the artist who wrote the song (Julie Gold) interprets her song to be about an imminent and beneficent god. But when I hear the song it sounds to me like a very transcendent and uncaring god.

In exploring this issue among Unitarian Universalists, I have discovered many of us, if we do hold to a monotheistic sense of divinity, hold truer to the God of Universalism, the God of Love. And most Unitarian Universalists are ready to see limits in the scope of God’s power. We solve the classic Christian Theodicy issue by saying God is not all powerful. God cares, God’s love is true, but limited by our human capacity to bring fairness and justice into our lives – and thus allow God’s power to be manifest. God’s power is in our response.

In the story, God is used to show that life is unfair – on brother’s offering is accepted while the other brother’s offering is not. But a Universalist reading of this would say life is unfair and God’s role in the cause of that unfairness is irrelevant. Either God created the world this way or it evolved randomly this way, or God created the world so as to evolve randomly or chaotically or whatever. The greater point is that this is what we have. Life is unfair. God is in the response. God is love and love’s power is nothing in isolation, but when an opening is made, love can pour in.

In the story, God plays a second role. God warns Cain about how he can respond. “Sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” When you most feel the bitter disappointment that life is unfair and seems to be unfairly tilted away from you, when disasters strike, when hurricanes destroy all you love, when tragedy tears your life to pieces, when one single simple loss hangs on your heart forever, be careful.

Be careful for in the midst of the suffering, there is something else also at your door waiting. In that story from thousands of years ago the author called it “sin.” I name it despair. And its desire is for you, but you must master it. God’s power is in our response. Despair turns us inward and tempts us to believe that no response is possible, the suffering is too great. Cain, the story says, grew angry. Some people turn their anger inward, others turn it outward. Cain turned his outward.

Our world is filled with anger over the injustice and unfairness of life. Fairness is a human concept. There is no fairness in nature. The cry for things to be fair comes early in our development. Children understand the concept of fair, perhaps better than adults. Justice is a human concept. Love transcends humanity. Dogs and deer and elephants show signs of love. The natural world is replete with indications that something like what we call love is well known and understand by all manner of life.

God is that spark of love within each of us; and more, God is that call of love to make the world a better place. Life is not spread evenly for all people, but by reaching out to others we can even it out more. Life is not fair, but by watching out for and supporting one another we can make it more fair. Blessing and suffering are not parsed out in an orderly fashion. There is always a little more here, less there, just barely enough for this and near overflowing for that. But that is not the end of the story, because how we respond greatly effects the outcome. It is not even or fair or just. That is our work: to bring more fairness and justice and love into life. And through this, God is fair. Through our work to make the world more fair, God is fair. God is in our response to suffering and disaster and pain and in this way, God is fair.

In a world without end,
May it be so.