Channing Memorial Church
Unitarian Universalist
Ellicott City, MD
The Reverend Susan LaMar
February 15, 2004

"To Try the Heart"

First Reading Jeremiah 17:5-10

This is what the LORD [Truth] says:

"Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD [Truth].

He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.

He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD [Truth], whose confidence is in him.

He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit . .

I the LORD [Truth] search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to what his deeds deserve.”

Musical Interlude

Second Reading Excerpt from Finding Your Religion, by Rev. Scotty McLennan

[During his college years, Rev. Scotty McLennan spent the monsoon season with a Hindu Brahmin priest and his family in northeastern India.]

It turned out that this priest knew the bible better than I did. Even though he was Hindu, he kept a copy next to his bed. He'd also read the Qur'an from cover to cover and recited passages from its suras (chapters). He seemed as familiar with the Buddhist scriptures as the Hindu. He spoke of many avatars - incarnations of divinity - throughout history, including Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. As I sat cross-legged each day in my white cotton dhoti and kurta, I began to think, Maybe this is the way to spiritual maturity. Be open to all religious traditions. Pick and choose from what rings true for me in each. Yet the priest kept emphasizing getting on a path, following a discipline, becoming committed to a teacher and a set of teachings. "There are many paths up the mountain," he would say, "and they all reach the top, but you need to follow a path and you can't be on more than one at a time."

By the end of the summer I had decided I wanted to become a Hindu. On the morning I approached the priest with my request, he took me to sit with him in the front room on a Persian rug. The rain was coming down in sheets and banged loudly against the roof. I was stunned by his response. "No, no!" he chided. "You've missed the point of everything I've taught you. You've grown up as a Christian and you know a lot about that path. It's the religion of your family and your culture. You know almost nothing of Hinduism. Go back and be the best Christian you can be."

I remember how the rain against the roof seemed to rattle my brain. I was upset. "But I don't believe Jesus was any more divine than Krishna or the Buddha," I pleaded. "And Christians would condemn you for knowing about Jesus and not accepting him uniquely as your Lord and Savior." His response was simple: "Then go back and find a way to be an open, nonexclusive Christian, following in Jesus' footsteps yourself, but appreciating others' journeys on their own paths." The more I could learn about others' paths, he explained, the more it would help me to progress along my own and deepen my understanding of it. Those words have remained my marching orders for life.

Hard rain always reminds me when I forget.

To Try the Heart

Last November, I preached a sermon entitled "Unitarian Universalism and State." In that sermon I spoke about the confusion among many Unitarian Universalists as to whether our religion is, in fact a religion or if it has become so secular that it closely parallels the general non-sectarian American culture. I took the position that we are a religion, not simply an affiliation or a society or civic association or club. The three reasons I gave were:

First, that Unitarian Universalism is about God - by whatever name or no name, whatever form or formlessness, external or interior, intimate or awesome. Unitarian Universalism provides a safe context for exploring what God might or might not be.

Second, I claimed love - a persistent and steadfast turning toward - toward our neighbors, toward our enemies, toward truth and justice and equity.

And third, I claimed our own Unitarian Universalist history - a progression from the Ancient Near East, through early Christianity, into the reformation, and the radical reformation and the enlightenment - a history that closely paralleled that which led to the creation of the United States, but that also led to the development of the free church. A church that continues to evolve openly and joyfully.

As I have continued to think about this, though, and talk to many of you about that sermon and about your own struggles to find a religious and a spiritual identity, I've had another thought. This thought springs from what seems to be another point of confusion about what it means to be Unitarian Universalist.

I guess I can best summarize this thought by saying, "And we're not the academy, either." We're not the academy, either.

That thought came to me because over and over again I have heard Unitarian Universalists talk about "studying world religions" as being at the center of our religion. We want to do it ourselves (I certainly do—I am fascinated by other religions and other spiritual paths). We want to make sure we offer it to the children in our Sunday School.

But you don't need a church to do that! You can take courses in other religions in a lot of different places - colleges, both private and public. Even public schools can teach about religions of the world - I would think it almost impossible to teach any social studies (if that is what it is called any more) - let's say any history or culture or anthropology without including the peoples' religions. You can go to the library and find books directed at various age levels describing different religions.

What's the point of having a church? A religious - a spiritual - congregation if all you are doing is studying other people's religions?

In my own case, I was first able to discern my call to ministry through practices offered by a secular organization called The Philosophy Foundation. They teach a meditation practice, and offer teachings from many world wisdom traditions. And they are quite proud of what their students discover through the deep meditation practice they learn at the Philosophy Foundation (most of their students are seekers, coming from varying religious paths). What their students tend to discover is that they are drawn in a very powerful way back to their religion of origin. The Christians are drawn back to Christianity, sometimes to their original denominations, but sometimes they are able to discern a different match. The Jews are drawn back to Judaism. Muslims are drawn back to Islam. In my own case, drawn back to Unitarian Universalism.

But here is what is most important- the Philosophy Foundation's students are drawn back to their religions of origin with a depth of understanding far beyond anything they ever imagined was possible from the recollections from their childhoods. They are able to separate the ultimate or eternal truths from the dogma and the rigid doctrine. They have a depth of understanding far beyond that which many of the religious leaders in their religious communities may have. That would depend, of course, on how attentive the religious leaders have been to their own continued spiritual development.
So, why do we need - or want - a religious community? A spiritual congregation? What is the point?

Well, I'm not sure what the point is, or if there is only one.

But I do know that there is something very different between studying about something, learning about something, and encountering, engaging with, doing and practicing something. I used to teach swimming. I had been swimming since I was tiny, and of course took lessons along the way. When learning to be a Water Safety Instructor, you read books and study about the physics of swimming - the human body in water. If I had only had the shoreline or poolside lessons as a child without ever entering the water, and only had the books on the physics of swimming, without ever getting wet . . . well, you can imagine the kind of swimmer or swim teacher I would be! Technically, I suppose one could become an academic expert on swimming without ever swimming.

Religion and spirituality take us swimming. But even still, some religions provide a life jacket and point toward a particular island, or place us in a wading pool, or require us to swim back and forth in prescribed lanes. They suggest - or require -- particular answers.

A few weeks ago when Cheryl, Evelyn and I were all in the office, the advertising sales person for the Penny-Saver stopped in. It was a young woman, probably in her late twenties or early thirties. Her first words were - very excitedly - "What kind of a church is this???" I said "Unitarian Universalist." "But I mean, what are you like? Are you Christian?," she asked. Those are always such hard questions, to answer. "Some of us consider ourselves Christian," I said. "Some of us don't. That is not where we place our focus. Each person here focuses on their own journey, and we support that search." She looked at me like I was totally crazy, and immediately started to evangelize, telling of her own path to Jesus Christ and how he had changed her life. When she paused, I said, "I am delighted for you. It sounds as though you have found a path that is exactly right for you." After a few more exchanges, in which she continued to expound on her own faith, informing us that if we would just do the same thing we would no longer have to waste our time on a search, and not getting anywhere with us, she finally turned around, mumbling and shaking her heard, and walked out. She never even got around to asking if we wanted to buy any advertising.

It occurred to me when she left that in a way she has found a life jacket, not a path. There is nothing wrong with that. Life jackets are good and can keep you safe if you are not in a position to swim. But anyone who is a swimmer cannot stand wearing a life jacket to actually swim. They get in the way and prevent you from diving deep.

Prefabricated answers to religious questions, too, get in the way and prevent you from diving deep.

But there is something else that prevents diving deep - or climbing high, in Scotty McLennan's metaphor. That something else is studying all paths, or learning about all the different swim strokes without ever actually jumping in the water or beginning a climb.

Spiritual congregations ask very different kinds of questions from academic communities, or at least the scientific part of academic communities. I recently came across this succinct summary of the issue:

"Science engages what one academic called the "well-posed question" - a problem for which there is a definite solution, even if it takes a lifetime or more to discover it. Scientists shouldn't waste their time on problems that are not well posed, ones for which there are no solutions. But there are many interesting problems that can't be well posed in this sense: For instance, 'Does God exist? Or, What is love? Or, Would we be happier if we lived a thousand years?" Science has no answer for these questions, yet they are 'still fascinating questions, questions that provoke us and bring forth all kinds of creative thought and invention.'^¹

Unitarian Universalism claims the luxury of engaging the groping, mumbling, bumbling, inarticulate, wondering, I-don't-get-it- kinds of questions. Let's call them the ill-posed questions, rather than the well-posed ones. Despite our penchant for being intellectual types, we don't develop religious or spiritual hypotheses and then set out to test them, to "try" them.

What do we do? If it's not science, is it literature?

I remember thirty years ago, when I took a college course in Literature of the Old Testament, as Hebrew Scripture was still called then. That was when I first learned that the word "L-O-R-D" as used in Hebrew Scripture did not necessarily mean a human-like, all-powerful God sitting up in heaven pulling strings. That was when I first learned that there was a very different way of thinking about L-O-R-D -ship. But although the idea was presented to us, it was presented as literature, not as religion, and certainly not as spirituality. I was able to write about it - probably did so on a final exam, although frankly I don't remember. But that course didn't ask us to engage with it and wrestle with it - no, let me go back to my previous metaphor. It didn't ask us to go swimming with it. It didn't throw us into the water.

So no, it is not literature, either.

So here are my (this week's) thoughts on why Unitarian Universalism is not the academy:

First, we are not the academy because the questions we ask you to ask and work on the answers for are ill-posed questions about you and about God. What, for you, is that which is of the absolute, utmost importance? That upon which you can depend? That which is the water that you are planted beside and because of which you can bear fruit? The water without which your life is parched? We ask you to try lots of different attributes for that L-O-R-D-ship. Whether the answers for you are clear or whether they are groping and inarticulate, then that, for you, is probably getting close to some inkling of God.

Second, we are not the academy because there are no theological standards by which you will be measured. In fact, you don't have to pose any of those questions if you don't want to. You can just come hang out with us. And if you pose them but have a low threshold of tolerance for diving deep, no problem. There are no limits on those who simply want to audit. But there are likely people all around you diving deep and climbing high, so we ask that you find a place for yourself assisting them - packing lunches, lending a helping hand, cheering us on.

Third, we are not the academy because we center ourselves in a particular history, scripture, and approach to theology. That does not mean that we claim a single universal truth derived from that history. Nor does it mean that we necessarily reject any other history, scripture, or theology. It means that we continue to grow from a particular history. We have a taproot. The way I like to say it is that what makes us Unitarian Universalists isn't our rejection of scripture but our open interpretation of scripture.

Fourth, we are not the academy because we are with you throughout your lifespan and through all life passages.
Each time a child is dedicated here, each of us asks again, "What am I dedicated to, here? How is this child, or any child, loved here, and in the world? What is the water that will help this child bear fruit?"

Each time a youth participates in a Coming of Age program and ceremony, grappling for the first time with these questions about that which is of ultimate importance to her or him, each of us renews our own search once again.

Each time one of us forms a life partnership, witnessed and blessed by this community, each of us engages the wonder of that kind of love and commitment to spend a lifetime together.
And so on through all of the passages - partnerships that unravel, death, illness, disability. Passages that call forth our hurt and our rage, as well as our love. Together we face new contexts to explore that which gives us ultimate meaning.

So come hang out with us, diving as deep as you want, drawing on our taproot, but bringing your own experiences of the sacred. Bring your questions, as ill-posed as your heart desires. Rededicate yourself to your own search for ways to articulate that which is of ultimate importance to you. Walk along together, sharing good food and conversation through weakness and strength, through green grass and drought, through desert and pasture land. No grades. Not even pass-fail!

1 Daedalus, Fall 2003. Quoted in The Christian Century, February 10, 2004.