faith

To Know and Be Known

August 24, 2024

Rev. Douglas Taylor

Sermon video: https://youtu.be/lMpSscmevI4

Last month I was invited to preach up at First Unitarian in Rochester. It is the church where I grew up, where I attended Sunday School and youth group, where my mother was on staff and eventually was ordained to serve as their Minister of Religious Education. I’ve been invited back a few times to preach in the church where I grew up, and it is always a joy.

This summer I had the extra joy of sharing the service with a worship associate named Jenna Cohen. Jenna is a young adult who grew up here in our Binghamton congregation and as an adult is now a member up there is Rochester. Jenna snapped up the chance to be my worship associate when she saw my name on the schedule.

I mention all this to be able to tell you about a particular experience I had while I was there. They do the Open Words there service each Sunday morning in a particular way. It is now a well-worn tradition among them. The worship associate tells a personal story – they call it a “that’s why we come to church” story. Each week, someone tells a short, personal anecdote – often light-hearted, occasionally poignant – that reveals a basic, human experience of connection or insight. And the story always comes around to make the point “And isn’t that why we all come to church?”

Jenna’s story – which I am not going to share, because it’s her story, not mine to tell; if you want to you can ask Jenna some time to tell you her story – Jenna’s story was a bit of a sneak attack because while it was about her, I played a supportive role. “And my minister at the time, Rev. Douglas Taylor, supported me …”

Her conclusion, “And that’s why we come to church, isn’t it! To support each other through the good times and the hard times.” It was touching, and very relatable.

Why do you come to church? Ponder this question for a moment. I know I’ve already given away the answer I’m aiming at this morning with my title: “To Know and Be Known.” But ponder for a moment anyway and consider this question: why do you come to church?

Perhaps you show up because the people here are willing to partner with you in the work of justice – perhaps your passion is building a better world.

Perhaps you show up because you crave intellectual stimulation and the sermons are often intellectual enough to keep you showing up; or you find the classes and workshops and discussions fill that need you have to have new ideas.

Or maybe it is less academic and more about intellectual honesty – you want to you don’t have to pretend you believe a particular creed or doctrine to be allowed to participate.

Perhaps you show up because you are trans or gay and it’s just too rare to find a religious community that welcomes you. You can attend and not have to hide parts of yourself to be here.

It could be that you really like the music – the choir or our Vicky our music director, or the guest musicians we bring in to play. Or you really like to sing and you’re welcomed into the choir or just to sing along with the hymns – out loud, in public, without someone staring at you funny.

Or maybe it’s the opposite – not the music but the silence. Where else in your life do you get to sit with other people in silence for over a minute … on purpose.

Perhaps this is more personal – perhaps you come to church because you feel a little lost or you are hurting, and being in a spiritual space that accepts you is a balm for your weary soul.

Maybe you show up because it is one of the things that helps you stay sober, or because you have a friend who drags you along so they don’t feel so awkward coming alone, or because your kids need something religious and this place at least doesn’t teach them they are sinful and bad.

There are lots of reasons why a person might come to church, to this congregation. You may have several answers to the question yourself. I suspect for many of us one of the answers is about community. Everyone wants to be part of a community. We want to belong.

People do not usually join Unitarian Universalist congregations to be forgiven of their sins, or to be taught the right way to believe, or because their family expects it of them, or to get in to heaven when they die. We come – more often than not – for community, to be together with other people who share our values of respect and curiosity, compassion and justice, truth and love. Our work as a congregation is to establish ties, to build those connections, to create a congregation together.

There are many reasons why you who are here have chosen to keep showing up. You may be here for the amazing music or the uplifting message, you may be here for the stories or the rituals of candles and silence. It might be for the free coffee after the service, or something less tangible like the feeling of belonging or of being part of something larger than yourself. A very common reason is for community.

My colleague Cynthia Snavely once summed up our faith saying, ‘Connection is our holiest word.’

All around us are forces pulling us apart. We live in disconnected and alienating times. There are powers that want us isolated and lonely so as to be more easily manipulated and controlled. I don’t mean this at a conspiracy theory level – it’s just become a tactic for our consumeristic culture. And we are better consumers when we are isolated and lonely.

There is also the current politics on top of that driving us apart and keep us distracted and angry. As Unitarian Universalists we make a commitment to reconnect. Our distinctive religious work as a faith community, is the work of connection. Our work as a faith community is to create a space where people can know each other and be known.

So how do we do that? What does it look like when it is working? Here’s the rub: you have to risk something.

In our reading, Cole Arthur Riley says “To admit your desire to be known would mean acknowledging the shame asleep in you that says you aren’t worth knowing.” Our hunger to belong is a basic human trait – and as such there are countless ways that hunger is manipulated and used in the service of others. The risk is in trusting that a community like ours is not going to do that.

The way to learn if you can trust a community like this one is to test it, to risk a little or to do something with lower stakes that does not make you as vulnerable. The work of building trust and developing an authentic community of belonging is long, slow work. We’ve been at it for a long time. This congregation is far from perfect on this count, but we keep at it, we keep building and rebuilding trust together. Because we know it as our true work. 

To shift from the abstract to the specific, allow me to give examples of what I’m talking about. Low-stakes ways to risk trusting this congregation are all over the place. If you attend Sunday morning worship regularly, that is certainly a good thing. And it is not a significant risk. On the other hand, how well do we get to know each other during that hour? Certainly we are holding the silence together, we are listening to amazing music and uplifting messages together. The candles of Joys and Sorrows ritual will open some invitations to connections with the other people in the room. But most of this hour of worship is preparation time for the connections that we make outside of this hour in our congregation.

To really become known, to deepen your relationships in this congregation, it helps to do more than just show up on Sunday mornings, to take the risk of participating more. Join the choir, host a table at the Art and Gift Show or help in the kitchen, help serve food at one of the Beloved Community meals, serve as an usher or on the Caring Team. One reliable way to establish ties, and to really become a member of this community, is to serve in some fashion: to offer your gift, volunteer, be of use in some way.

The other reliable way is to receive. The announcement this morning about the Chalice Circle Sample session happening right after this service is an example of ‘receiving.’ Joining a Chalice Circle, attending a class or workshop, signing up for a book discussion: these are all ways to engage and learn something new; but often as important – they are opportunities to meet people and get to know them … and to get known.

Unitarian Universalism does not work well as a spectator religion. We are here to build community together, to participate in creating what we are as a congregation. You have a role in that process, some risk of putting yourself out there – in the giving and receiving that creates this community of connections in which we thrive.

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.)

This yearning for ultimacy that Adams talks about is not done in isolation. These aren’t two separate endeavors. Seeking the ultimate is done while also seeking this sense of intimacy. We are social creatures and we need each other to be fully ourselves. Wrestling with life’s ultimate questions is best done in community. Our rich connections can lead us into the deeper meaning we long for in our living.

Our wellbeing thrives when we find spaces where we can know and be known, where we have connections with other people, where we can risk having ties that nourish us and lead us deeper into ourselves in the service of that which is greater than ourselves. And isn’t that why we come to church?

Come, let us build this congregation together, that we may all thrive.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Prayer for Freedom                             Rev. Douglas Taylor                       3-23-25

Gracious and Loving God,
From Whom all things come and to Whom all things return

We give thanks this morning for the opportunity to again gather together as a people of faith in search of meaning and grace and a path toward justice.

Some of us here today have barely made it through the week. Life has been hard and we need the presence and prayers of good people and of thee to sustain us on our journeys.
Some of us here today have arrive excited and curious, looking for new ideas and new opportunities to connect and to build something good and beautiful.
Some of us here today have heavy hearts for the suffer happening just beyond our front doors, for the poor, the immigrant, the incarcerated, the unhoused, the disenfranchised and disempowered.

We gather this morning as Unitarian Universalists seeking freedom and liberation for ourselves and for all people. We gather to be co-creators of a sacred space together guided by the deep values of our faith.
We recognize that a faith like ours needs to be enacted, it needs to be lived in action.
We know that freedom for one of us needs the freedom of all of us; that the freedom of our faith community needs the freedom of all the faith communities

We hear our own cries for relief amid our struggles are mingled and blended with the cries of immigrants like those who build this city years ago, and the immigrants who continue to show up today. It is the same cry from people incarcerated & dying in our county jail. It is the same cry from our transgender siblings and from people of color and from the poor and from all those abused and marginalized in our society today.

Hear our cries, oh God, be with us in our difficulties.
Help us to find the courage to face the continuing injustices of our days.
Help us to reach out from our own heartache and become partners in the transformation of our world.
Help us to know, despite the messy complexity of life, that we do not struggle alone, that liberation is possible, and that hope is a powerful response in the face of what seems impossible.

Be thou an ever-present strength on the journey, O God.
In the name of all that is holy,
May it be so.

Spending Your Privilege
Rev. Douglas Taylor
March 23, 2025

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/2tZED6qed5A

There was a reddit post that’s been around for a few years about how dads are native to Home Depot while lesbians are native to Lowe’s. The premise being that these two common types of home improvement shoppers can’t mix. But then a follow up post claimed it was perhaps true at one point but they’ve mixed around so much that trying to separate them back out into their respective original ranges would do more harm than good to the delicate ecosystem of chain hardware stores. https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/a0yj5o/dads_are_an_invasive_species/?rdt=59894 Personally, I’m glad for the mix because I am a dad but like hanging out with the lesbians.

I was recently at one of these big chain hardware stores buying a few things. The cashier was a big man who smiled as he was ringing me up, complimented my t-shirt, and commended my brave choice to wear it in the store. I looked down because I had forgotten what t-shirt I was wearing. “Have a Gay Day” it says in big letters on a rainbow background. The cashier went on to say he didn’t have a problem with my shirt, liked it in fact. But he knew other guys in the store would take issue with my attire.

Honestly I had not spent much time that morning thinking about the message on my shirt before he brought it up. It did not feel like a risk to me. That’s part of my privilege. I felt safe wearing a shirt that could conceivably trigger a unpleasant response – possibly a verbally threatening response, or more. But I didn’t even think twice about it when I walked out the door on my way to the hardware store.

Now, that’s not entirely true. I did think about it way back when I bought the shirt at Hot Topic. I thought about it when I was walking around in a park and a pair of younger people said ‘cool shirt’ as they walked past me. I thought about it when my gay niece said “Uncle Douglas has more gay shirts than I do.” I thought about it when a Methodist colleague nodded in appreciation a month or so before their General Conference voted to lift the ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages.

I was aware of the impact my t-shirt might have when I bought it, and was reminded a few times along the way of the impact my t-shirt did have. But up until the comments of the cashier saying I was brave to wear my ‘Have a Gay Day’ t-shirt at the hardware store, all my thoughts had been about the positive impact my shirt could have. 

Sometimes being an ally means showing up in ways that can make me uncomfortable, or to take a risk that a more vulnerable person, a less privileged person, might not be safe taking. In the reading this morning [“What’s the Difference Between an Ally and Accomplice?” by Annalee Schafranek

https://www.ywcaworks.org/blogs/ywca/tue-12212021-1103/whats-difference-between-ally-and-accomplice], one of the definitions of an ally was this: “Being an ally is about recognizing your privilege, then using it in solidarity with marginalized groups to challenge the status quo.”

That word ‘privilege’ is important in this conversation. I have noticed that sometimes conversations about privilege can be misinterpreted as conversations about guilt or about making people ashamed. If your conversations about oppression – about land acknowledgments or bathrooms or reparations – if your conversations as a person of privilege get stuck in guilt and shame, something is off about those conversations.

It doesn’t serve you or any vulnerable communities for you as an ally or potential ally to get stuck in feelings of guilt or shame. It serves the status quo. It serves the oppressor. It serves the dominant culture that does not want change when good liberals to get stuck and stop trying to change. James Baldwin once said “People can cry much easier than they can change.”

Remember, the point is about changing the situation so the people who are getting hurt stop getting hurt. The point is not to flip who gets hurt. The point is not to start oppressing the oppressors. White people feeling bad about slavery is not the point. Straight people feeling unsafe in the bathrooms is not the point. The point is not to flip who gets hurt. The point is for the people who are getting hurt to stop getting hurt.

In a 1966 speech, delivered at Illinois Wesleyan University, Dr. King said,

It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me. And I think that’s pretty important also.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

What Dr. King is highlighting is how changing attitudes is important, but changing behaviors is often enough. Usually when we think about Inclusion and Diversity, we are talking about perspectives and attitudes, frameworks, ways of looking at the world. I would like to shift that conversation into behaviors, practices that promote these attitudes and perspectives.

I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and here are a few practices I’ve found. To be an ally and eventually perhaps an accomplice, an important practice of inclusion we can do regularly is about listening.

I need to listen, but I am listening with a specific goal: to learn more, to educate myself about what’s going on and about the experiences of people different from me – experiences of people with marginalized identities in our society. This is a great tip for life in general. Listen to children, listen to your neighbor, listen to the cashier, listen to elders, listen to anyone out there … with the goal of learning more about the experiences of people who are different.

And then, here is a justice twist: give a little extra credence to people who are marginalized and vulnerable in our society. Any listening is good and worthy. And, listen with a little preference for people who historically marginalized and vulnerable. I’m not saying people who share my identity are always wrong and people different from me are always right. There are liars and con artists among all types of people. But when people say things like: ‘amplify the voices of people of color’ and ‘believe women’ and ‘walk a mile in another person’s moccasins;’ the suggestion is to counter the near-universal bias people have to dismiss the experiences of those who are suffering.

One regular practice of inclusion is to listen in this way. A companion practice is to get into relationships with people who have identities that are different from your own. It will help with the listening. You can’t get everything second hand – meet people and learn from them.

Another practice is to spend your privilege. Once you have a good understanding of your privilege, the thing to do is use your privilege for something good. I remember a scene from a movie I’d watched years back but can’t remember the title or much else about it. Two friends had grown up in the same neighborhood and are teenagers now – one black, one white. They are getting into trouble together and police show up. The cops have caught the black teen and his white friend jumps on the cop. The black friend gets free and runs off while the white friend is arrested. In an unjust incarceration system, the white friend will have an easier time in prison than the black friend.

That’s certainly accomplice-level behavior. I’m still working on the ally-level work walking around in my gay t-shirt. But my point is we can all find ways to leverage our privilege for the good of vulnerable people and communities. “Being an ally is about recognizing your privilege, then using it in solidarity with marginalized groups to challenge the status quo.” (Annalee Schafranek)

When we talk about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we are refuting the values of Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion. The goal is to build something that is more fair, allows more people at the table, that expands the circle.

And do you know what else a person needs to do to be a good ally? Do you want more practices you can do? Heal, rest, the world does not need your exhaustion. The better world we are building includes being better for you. Give love, receive love. It’s not all shouting in the streets. It’s mutual aid and highlighting resources. It’s laughter and holding space for others to just breathe.

Aboriginal elder, activist, and educator Dr. Lilla Watson has a fabulous quote that sums it up well: “If you have come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”

Step up and engage with the injustice you see. Because it is an injustice that includes you. Spend your privilege to make things better. Through practices of inclusion, through actions of equity, through behaviors that build the beloved community.

As a congregation, we’ve been trying to serve the needs of the broader community without reinventing the wheel. Instead of creating our own community dinner, we are partnering with another organization that already knows what they are doing. Instead of becoming the folks who visit the encampments of unhoused and homeless people, we are hosting the folks who are already doing that work. Instead of trying to be the center for Trans people to gather, we are becoming one of the places Trans leaders know they can call on for space. We are using our building to support good work. We are spending our privilege.

When I eventually level up to being an accomplice as described in the reading from this morning, I’ll probably offer another sermon about how to be an accomplice. I know several of you are already functioning as accomplices. But the goal here is not for me or any of us to climb the liberal achievement ladder. Our goal is to build the Beloved Community. For that we need to each keep doing the piece we have for us to do. For that we need each other as we are, listening, learning, healing, acting for justice.

Ina world without end,

May it be so 

The Substance of Things Hoped For

Rev. Douglas Taylor

2-23-25

“I believe in the sun even when it is not shining,” our choir sings. “I believe in love even when I don’t feel it.” This phrase, repeats over and over. And “I believe in God,” they offer at the end, “even when God is silent.” This piece was composed roughly 10 years ago by Mark Miller, and was added to the Whitbourne choral work about Anne Frank life as an uplifting coda to the emotional performance.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT-VdH2lwZk&ab_channel=maestroz25

The text which serves as the basis for the lyrics of this choral work comes from an inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne, Germany where a number of Jews hid themselves during World War II.  Composer Mark Miller said he wrote the musical arrangement during a troubling time in his life.

“I was feeling down about a few things in my life and in the country [… the] government, being black, being gay…when I discovered the words again. […] And I decided, I’m still going to believe in love. I sat down at the piano, and five minutes later, it just came.” https://morristowngreen.com/2014/03/02/bold-choices-define-harmoniums-anne-frank-tribute-in-morristown/

My sermon title is from that well-known passage in scripture from Hebrews, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. There is a lot going on in our world and in our hearts that is not good. And faith calls us to believe in love, even when we do not feel it.

I want to pause and step back from the poetry and dig into what this means. First, I’ll remind us that faith and belief are two different things. Poetry is important and we all understand what the line is saying. But I’m parsing it out to lift up a point about how we can understand faith in a Unitarian Universalism perspective.

Faith is a form of trusting, a confidence in life or in God or in yourself. Saying ‘I believe in God’ can translate as ‘I have faith in, trust in, a reliance upon, God.’ And saying “I believe in God’ can translate as ‘I believe God exists.’ And the second interpretation is more etymologically accurate, while the first interpretation is more common in our vernacular use – certainly in the way the song is offering.

Christian theologian and ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr put it this way: “The belief that something exists is an experience of a wholly different order from the experience of reliance on it.” This song is about the reliance upon the sun, love, and God. It is a song about faith.

In his classic book Stages of Faith, James Fowler writes about the human development of faith as something separate from beliefs and a person’s religious tradition. Fowler writes about faith as an ongoing journey of deepening and maturing. The opening pages of his book ask questions like:

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?

From this perspective we can talk about faith not as a set of beliefs but as the way we live a life. We can talk about faith as what we trust, what we rely upon. And it is important to notice the context of how faith shows up. It is not when the sun is shining, but when it is not shining. Faith shows up when we have trouble and pain, when things are broken or messy or in chaos.

I remember watching my mom while I was growing up in the church. Churches are always messy, busy, slightly chaotic places when things are going well. Some people would respond with much anxiety and running around. There would be always several things up in the air and none of them were going as planned, or at least they were demanding the full attention of several people who could not give their full attention. I’m sure many of you know what that can be like because that happens here in our congregation as well. 

Anyway, while I was a youth, my mother, who was the Director of Religious Education for many years and then Minister of Religious Education for a few more years, she would remain calm in midst of all this and just continue to do the next thing that needed to be done. She was a walking example of the axiom: this too shall pass. I’m not sure I would have used these words then to describe what I was seeing; but now I can tell you, I learned a great deal about faith watching my mother move through church chaos with such calm. She trusted that we would get done those things that needed to get done; and whatever we didn’t get done, well, we would figure that out when we got there.

In the face of recurring struggle and trouble, my mother’s leadership style did not rely on frantic panic or reactive posturing. She kept calm, did the next right thing, and trusted that we would get where we needed to be in good time. Even when it was hard.

Buddhist writer Sharon Salzberg says “Faith is about opening up and making room for even the most painful experiences.” She says one of the meanings of the Pali word translated as ‘faith’ is hospitality. And Lea Morris sings: You gotta keep your heart wide open. Though these wave wanna push you around.

The part where your heart stays open is faith. Finding your way back to solid ground will come, but first, be open.

If I could be willing to make room (Salzberg continues) for my aching numbness, and the river of grief it covered, allowing it, even trusting it, I would be acting in faith. Perhaps this is how suffering leads to faith. – Sharon Salzberg

Til your faith brings you back to solid ground. Faith is not the solid ground. Faith is the openness while you are out in the storm. Faith is not the solid ground, but it will travel with you back to the solid ground.

Brene Brown said it like this:

I thought faith would say, “I will take away the pain and the discomfort.” But what it ended up saying is “I will sit with you in it.”

When you turn and face the struggle with an open heart, it is an act of faith. Admittedly, this is not a guarantee. That’s part of how it is an act of faith. But remember what James Baldwin once wrote:

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Keep you heart wide open. Even when the sun is not shining. Even when the evidence to date does not support your conclusion that something good can still come. Even when the God you love has been silent. Even when the struggle is all you can experience at the moment: the struggle and the suffering and the cruelty and the hate. Even when, even when you don’t feel it, you can still believe in love.

I uncovered a powerful story about the lyrics of the choir piece we had this morning; about that inscription found on the wall of a cellar in Cologne. “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.”

The small poem has a complicated history and has been at the center of many stories. Sometimes the story says it was scrawled on the wall of a cave outside the Warsaw ghetto, or in a prison at Auschwitz, or at a shelter where some Jews were harbored by Catholics. Sometimes the poet is unknown, sometimes the poet is part of a collection of Jews who survived in hiding, sometimes the poet is a dead girl. Each version of the story adjusts the details a little bit in the telling.

My colleague Everett Howe had a blog “The Humanist Seminarian” which he kept while studying to become a Unitarian Universalist minister. Back in 2017 he wrote a four-part series about this poem – he did a remarkable amount of research. Interestingly, it was a fifth post he made four years later in which he wrote about finally finding the original source of the poem. https://humanistseminarian.com/2021/04/04/i-believe-in-the-sun-part-v-the-source/

Rev. Howe found a 1946 Swiss newspaper which contained the story and the poem in its earliest form. In the article, the reporter talks about visiting an old underground shelter where nine Jewish fugitives had lived for several month.

When I visited the shelter, I had the opportunity to see the emergency housing, fully equipped with a kitchen, bedroom, living room, radio, a small library, and oil lamps — evidence of a stunning experience. Meals could only be prepared at night so as not to attract the Gestapo’s attention, who would have noticed the smoke during the day. Food had to be supplied by friends who willingly gave up a portion of their rations to help those unfortunate people living for weeks in utter darkness.

The following inscription is written on the wall of one of these underground rooms […] “I believe in the sun, though it be dark; I believe in God, though He be silent; I believe in neighborly love, though it be unable to reveal itself.”

This version of the story is more human, I think; more relatable. I believe in the sun even when I must hide. The fugitives had to stay underground to remain safe. The darkness was protection. The darkness was not the problem. In fact, the darkness is part of the action they had taken to be safe. Their faith is not a crying out in powerlessness. It is trusting that they are doing the next right thing to get through the struggle.

Analogously, the line about believing in God even when God is silent can be heard not as an indictment against God’s silence, but as recognition that perhaps God is with them in hiding. That is a stretch, I’m just saying it is possible.

World War II certainly produced many indictments against God from Jewish people – so that line could easily be that. But I note that the line doesn’t say God is absent, or that God has abandoned us; only that God is silent. The atrocity is ongoing around them. The injustice has not been answered yet. The war continues. And God is silent.

And finally, in the third line – the climax of the poem rather than stuck in the middle, our author writes: I believe in Love. And translating from the German, it might be charity or compassion or neighborly love, Rev. Howe points out. Much like the Greek word Agape getting translated as ‘love’ but is best understood to mean a particular form of love.

The fugitives did experience charity or neighborly love from those who helped them remain hidden. I believe in love even when it “must remain hidden,” even when it is “unable to reveal itself.”  Rev. Howe suggested a few possible translations to amplify the more likely intention of the original scribe.

Perhaps faith is not asking us to believe in love when there is zero evidence for it. Perhaps faith is asking us to believe in love even when it is hidden or masked, even when the injustice has not yet been answered. And we decide to believe in love anyway.

Yes, the storms are raging, chaos is erupting around us and we struggle to maintain our balance. Yes, evil does prosper. Truth be on ‘the scaffold and upon the thrown be wrong’ But that is not the whole story.

What do you rely upon? Keep faith that you can do the next good thing; that we can keep our hearts wide open through any struggle. Trust that our faith will bring us back to solid ground. And perhaps you also will discover that even in hard times, you still believe in love.

In a world without end,

May it be so.

Spirit Ablaze

Rev. Douglas Taylor

12-15-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/tWcWKxFP1ZQ

I recall reading somewhere years ago, but could not put my finger on the quote this week, a small story of a rabbi kissing his spouse and children goodbye earnestly each sabbath before going to lead prayers for the congregation; for who could know what might happen between the moment we invoke the name of the holy and moment immediately following when we offer suitable supplication.

I step into this topic knowing full well I preach unto a community that consists largely of atheists and agnostics; and of those remaining who do believe in God, most do not believe in a God like that. A god of arbitrary smiting and wrath. I know this. Truth be told (and I trust this is not surprising), I don’t believe in a God like that either. And yet I bring this topic before us all the same and will make suitable effort to translate in such a way as I hope will still be edifying to the full range of belief among us.

Here we are, each Sunday. And like that hapless rabbi kissing his family goodbye, I invite the holy each week to abide among us as we worship together.

In her book about prayer, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard frames the question this way:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk.)

Do we? Do know what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Annie Dillard is a poet and author; her writing is a blend of naturalism, mysticism, and self-reflection. I discovered her work while in seminary and it had a profound impact on my view of the world. Her theology does not line up perfectly with mine, but there is enough overlap for me to find resonance.

When she cites our audacity to blithely invoke the holy, for example, I don’t quite resonate with the suggestion that an angry father God might strike us all down. But I do find it compelling to read her passionate plea as if to declare – this is real, you know, all this ritual and gathering we do! It’s not just a bit of pomp or fluff. It’s real. I like that part.

I am reminded of a description from Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd’s book After the Good News that came out just before the pandemic. It is a book about the future of Unitarian Universalism. In it, she writes:

A universalist God for a tragic era is not a gauzy, hymn-singing force of personal devotion that draws us endlessly toward itself, but a fierce and compelling power that grips us by the collar amid our rebellious descent and calls us to choose the will to mutuality all over again, even when that choice is so risky that it could utterly remake us.

And that, my friends, is the risk Dillard is referring to when she suggests we wear crash helmets and issue life jackets in place of orders of service each week. The risk is that the holy we are invoking each week may remake us. We risk actually becoming compassionate toward the vulnerable; we risk acting on those ideals we mention each Sunday.

There is a joke bouncing around social media lately about how some conservative Christian pastors are warning their people against watching the new Wicked movie lest it lure them into evil ways. The tongue-in-cheek response is, “you’re worried about the influence of a 2-hour movie on your parishioner’s morals, yet weekly worship has not made your people more compassionate and Christ-like.”

The risk is we might invoke the holy together and be changed by the encounter. Or I can say – we risk invoking our deepest values and find ourselves compelled to realign our behavior to match our values. Or I can say – we risk inviting God to be with us and discover God accepted the request.

This thing we are doing every Sunday morning, there is some contradiction built into it. As Unitarian Universalists in particular, we are several steps off the beaten path in terms of religion and belief; and yet our Sunday morning practice looks a lot like the usual beaten path! We attract people who are seeking an alternative to organized religion and we jokingly say we are very disorganized – and yet, we are an organized religion. It’s just we have organized around something radically different than what most other religious communities gather around. We gather around values and a promise to be with each other across our differences.

We Unitarian Universalists live in the religious realm of individualism and freedom of conscience; and we carry an abiding distrust of authority. One result of that is the way we compensate and push ourselves to be community-focused, to lean into the concepts of covenant and accountability and liberation. Another result is an undercurrent in which we keep faith at arm’s length. We intellectualize our experiences; we talk about things and learn about things. That is in important aspect of how we create community together.

The trick here is not to stop doing that, but to balance it with more trust. We need to allow ourselves to be impacted and changed by the experiences we create together, by experiences of the holy. Our shared experiences on Sunday morning can be transformative; they can impact our living and our behaviors. We can risk growing and changing, risk being transformed, healed, or as Rev. McDonald Ladd put it – remade.

I am not suggesting we swing wildly into the over-trusting end of this conversation. Dillard offers a deep warning against that as well. She warns us not only against faking it, against being tourists in religion. And she offers a warning for when we take it seriously and we do experience the transformative power of love; that we not lose ourselves in the light we seek. Let me spend a minute in this extreme with you.

Her 1977 book, Holy the Firm, is a thin little text exploring a three-day time span of events on an island in the Puget Sound where she was writing. The crash of a small plane and a seven-year-old girl burned in the accident become a focus for Dillard to talk about beauty and cruelty, faith and suffering, and a moth caught in a candle flame.

It is that last bit that so captivated me when I read the book as part of theology class in seminary. Dillard describes how she would often read by candle light every night. Moths were constantly fluttering around her flame, many suffering the clichéd result.

“One night,” she writes early in the book, “a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled, and fried in a second.” (p16)

Dillard goes on to describe the event in vivid detail for several more sentences. Quite poetic, quite horrifying.

After, she writes,

“And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax roses in the moth’s body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side.” (p17)

I don’t bring this story to say – don’t succumb to burn-out friends. We can have that message in the workshop immediately after the service today. Instead, the message her is a spiritual warning. When you find the light, when you find your calling, when you are alive and afire with a passion for something life-giving – be mindful of what ese is happening in your life around you as you burn with your passion.

This is a bit like the proverbial question for the dog always chasing cars. What would they do with it if they ever caught one? What would you do if you ever did set your spirit ablaze?

There is a lot going on around us these days, my friends. There are calls for us to step up and live our values out loud, to be visible allies for the vulnerable and the marginalized. And this is not just a call to do justice – it is a call to live our spiritual values together in community.

Much of it will come out as a call to do justice – Who is taking care of our trans siblings? How are the undocumented in our community? Where are unhoused people sleeping tonight? When can we feed the hungry again? A lot of this will sound like a call for justice. But deeper down it is a call to faith, a call to trust that the holy to go with you on the call.

If we gather on Sunday mornings like this, invite the holy to show up, and experience growth and change in ourselves – the spirit will call us into places where we will need our communities around us and … and we will need faith to trust that God is with us in the work. Or, to trust that our values are true.

If we invoke the holy here and feel Love grab us by the collar and utterly remake us – we do well to trust that Love and not try to be our own wick and flame. We must trust Love to travel with us where we are called. To trust God, to trust our values as true, to trust the holy. If you feel a change, a growth, a call – don’t fall for the idea that you must be the moth and burn yourself up in response.

Instead, grab you crash helmet and heed to spirit. Let love be your guide in the days to come. Dare to respond, take a risk to reach out and live your values more boldly, trusting that Love will travel with you as you go. Let love be the burning wick. Your work is show up with that love, and to trust that love will travel with you as you go.

In a world without end

May it be so.