I love this sermon by the late Rev Forrest Church, I have read it many times, so I thought I would share it here.
ONE LIGHT, MANY WINDOWS
by Forrest Church
October 6, 2002
I have a question for you. If somebody were to ask "What do you believe?," do you have a ready answer? Every year our eighth graders in the church school prepare a three minute credo statement and deliver it to the congregation during the worship hour on Coming of Age Sunday. Afterwards I often hear their parents and others in the coffee hour musing about whether they themselves could do the same. I loved what Matthew Diaz said last year in his credo. He stood up straight right in front of everyone and said–proclaimed, confessed–"I believe in magic." Indeed. The magic of life itself, riddled with mystery, imbued with wonder. He sounded just like Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Imagine yourself at a dinner party, the only person there who goes to church. When this telling bit of information about you somehow inadvertently leaks out, you pique the curiosity of your companions–all of whom graduated from organized religion years ago. They want to know why. They want to know more. All of a sudden the dinner party is in jeopardy. Feeling more defensive than evangelical, you start pushing spin control buttons. "Well, not really church. You see, I’m a Unitarian Universalist."
"I’ve always wondered about Unitarians, what do they believe?" one of your dinner mates asks.
"Actually, nothing," you sputter. "Well, not really nothing, more like anything." Sensing from the half-amused, half-bewildered expressions of your companions that more of an explanation than this might prove necessary before they will let you change the subject, and worried lest anyone conclude that you harbor any silly or childish superstitions, you rush to assure them that you don’t believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or resurrected on the third day; you almost never read the Bible; and you certainly agree that religion is a dangerous force in the world, especially today. To which your friends gently and proudly proclaim that these are the very reasons that they don’t attend church.
Do you know what happens when you cross a Unitarian and a Jehovah’s Witness? Someone who knocks at the door for no apparent reason.
Let me tell you something. I am an evangelical Unitarian Universalist. For me evangelical Unitarian is not an oxymoron. When I ask people to unlock the doors shuttering their minds, I do so for a reason. This morning, I will share that reason with you. Not only for those of you who are new to our faith but for all who find it easier to explain what they don’t believe than what they do, I bring you our good news.
First, to quote Matthew Diaz, we believe in miracles. Not in the stopping of the sun. Not in the parting of the Red Sea. But in the miracle of the sun shining upon this earth and the miracle of the oceans teeming with life. The miracle of a newborn child. The miracle of consciousness. The miracle of hope. The miracle of fluttering leaves, felt tears, and open hearts. Fundamentalist and orthodox believers find their miracles in Scripture. Skeptics and materialists discount the very idea of miracles. Unitarian Universalists follow Ralph Waldo Emerson and say "All life is a miracle," from "the blowing clover to the falling rain."
All religious experience springs from two deep sources, awe and humility. Neither awe nor humility is served by those who refuse to go beyond the letter–either of scripture or of nature–to explore the spirit. We are the religious animal, not the animal with tools or with advanced language. Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. Knowing that we are going to die, we question what life means. Our answers may be anti-religious answers, but our questions are religious questions. To answer them, the fundamentalist turns to the Bible and says that it is not myth but fact; the skeptic turns away from the Bible and says that it is fact not myth. We say, what is wrong with myth?
Myth is poetic imagination, projecting our experience of human power and wonder upon a cosmic screen. Theology itself is poetry not science. During our brief span, as best we can, we interpret the greatest and most mysterious masterpiece of them all, the creation itself. The creation is our book of revelation, not a bound book, not a set of teachings vouchsafed to us by some equally human guru. We rely on the oracle of our own experience, drawn from our reading of the book of nature and of human nature, including our reading of the Bible and our study of philosophy. The text of meaning is vast, its nuances many and various. Honoring this reality, Unitarian Universalism enshrines freedom of thought. We also insist upon mutual respect in so far as it is earned by the reciprocal granting to us of the freedom to follow our own conscience.
Are these principles of belief? Of course they are. True believers define religion narrowly and embrace it. Our skeptical neighbors define religion narrowly and reject it. We define religion broadly and embrace it.
There are fundamentalists on both right and left on the religious spectrum. Fundamentalists of the right enshrine a tiny God on their altar. Fundamentalist of the left reject this tiny God, imagining that by so doing they have done something creative and important. Both groups are in thralldom to the same tiny God. That our orthodox neighbors should circumscribe wonder and meaning in too small a circle doesn’t force us to abandon wonder and suspend our search for meaning. Instead, it prompts us to expand our circle of inquiry. To those standing fiercely within a narrow circle this may seem like heresy; from those standing without, it may seem unreligious, for they too have defined religion no less narrowly. This is why secularists are as likely to make fun of Unitarianism as are those whose religious faith fits into a smaller spiritual circle than we find comfortable. My own father, a renegade Catholic, believed that the Catholic church was the one true church; it just happened to be false. Those of you who come here to All Souls from a Catholic background have chosen instead not to let the Catholic church define religion for you. You are free here to define your faith more broadly, to widen your circle of inquiry, as a religious act, not an irreligious one.
If you really want to make that dinner party interesting, you might tell them that in many ways Unitarianism is the quintessential American faith. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams threw off the yoke of political bondage to the crown head of England, they did so because they believed in liberty and democracy. It is hardly surprising that both men exhibited the same free spirit in their religious lives. As Unitarians, they rejected the authority of the mitered heads of Christendom, exercising freedom of religious belief even as they exercised freedom in political association. As advocated so vigorously by Jefferson in particular, the separation of church and state is a founding principle both of the United States and of Unitarianism. We can protect our own religious freedom only by protecting the religious freedom of both those who draw their own circle more tightly and those who stand outside the circle of religion altogether.
In writing The American Creed, my biography of the Declaration of Independence, our Unitarian Universalist principles were therefore never far from mind. How could they be, for–like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights–they spring from the same source. Listen carefully to our denominational principles. We believe in:
That’s not believing in nothing. And it’s not believing in anything. It is believing in the same spiritual values that inform our own American experiment in self-governance. The ideals we embrace are lofty ideals, not only politically but spiritually. We will never live up to them fully. But, if we devote our lives to them, they challenge us daily to hearken to what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Jefferson himself said, "It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read." As a slaveholder he suffers the consequences of being judged by such high ideals to this very day. But his definition of religion remains valid. Deeds not creeds, that is what we stand for as Unitarian Universalists. Our theology itself–embracing so many angles of vision, so many distinctive experiences of life’s meaning–is founded on the nation’s saving principle of E pluribus unum (out of many, one).
If one of your dinner companions challenges you by asking what E pluribus unum has to do with theology, which–by definition must either be true or false–after gently pointing out that theology is more like poetry than algebra, you might share with the group my cathedral metaphor. In the cathedral of the world there are millions of windows, each telling its own story of who we are, where we came from, where we are going, each illustrating life’s meaning. Every religious, philosophical, even scientific worldview has a window, or many windows, through which the one Light shines, refracting Truth, bringing illumination to worshipers and seekers.
No one can see the one Light (Truth or God, call it what you will) directly, only as refracted through the cathedral windows. Every great religion teaches this insight. We cannot look God in the eye any more than we can stare at the sun without going blind. This should counsel humility and mutual respect for those whose reflections on ultimate meaning differ from our own. Sadly, this is not always the case. Some religious leaders, perceiving the Light shining through their own window, conclude that theirs is the only window through which the Light Shines. If they forget that it is in our lives and not in our words that our religion must be read, they may go so far as to incite their followers to throw stones through other people’s windows. Skeptics, on the other hand, perceiving the bewildering variety of windows and worshippers, conclude that there is no Light. But the windows are not the Light, only where the Light shines through.
This metaphor is a perfect description of Unitarian Universalism. One Light (Unitarianism) shines through many windows (Universalism), illuminating human minds and hearts in many different ways. In our congregations we honor this truth by encouraging our members to reflect on the Light through whatever set of windows they find most illuminating. We only require that this same freedom be honored for others. For this reason, this church and those like it are nothing less than little laboratories for the practice of E pluribus unum, out of many, one.
To appreciate how enlightened and redemptive our approach to religion is, consider this. If others disagree with your personal theology, short of changing your mind you have only four options. You can convert, destroy, ignore, or respect them. Fundamentalists of the Right usually attempt conversion, but sometimes–as we know first hand from recent experience–they choose to destroy in God’s name. Fundamentalists of the Left (secular materialists) tend to ignore such disagreements as irrelevant, but they too may choose destruction. One need witness only the gulags and crematoria to recognize that religious zealots alone have not cornered the market on eliminating the exercise of religious and political freedom by resorting to mass murder. In the United States of America and as reflected in Unitarian Universalism–a quintessentially American faith–we embrace the fourth option: mutual respect. There is only one caveat to abridge such respect. We do not and must not permit stone throwing in the cathedral.
So why do we choose to join together rather than exercise our full freedom to believe what we will in the privacy of our homes on Sunday mornings? Simply because experience has taught us that we need one another. We need guidance in recognizing our tears in one another’s eyes. We need prompting to raise our sights and companions in the work of love and justice to enhance our neighborhood and to strengthen our witness in the world. And yes, we choose to gather here because we know how easily we slip back into mechanical habits that blunt our consciousness. We need and know we need to be reminded week in and week out how precious life is, how wondrous and magical, how truly miraculous. Not only to be reminded of these things for our own sake, but for the sake of our loved ones and neighbors as well. For without cultivating a reverent spirit, our lives and deeds will not reflect the highest of all human virtues–a reverence for life itself.
Once the three subjects considered taboo for a polite dinner party were politics, sex, and religion. Sex and politics went by the wayside years ago. Religion continues to be dicey, but surprisingly enough one or two of your companions actually now seem interested. Rising to the occasion you dare to proselytize. "My church has no final answers to life’s unanswerable questions," you say. "Neither do we hand out heavenly insurance policies. We choose to be saved in the world and for the world, not from the world. With Unitarian sage Henry David Thoreau, we prefer to take things one life at a time.
"After all, for every living human being there are, by latest estimate, 1.6 trillion stars in the cosmos. With such a ratio, anyone who claims to have insider information on God or the creation, anyone who claims that his or her truth is truth with a capital T, may, I would suggest, be at least slightly guilty of the sin of pride. We are far more alike in our ignorance than we differ in our knowledge. All we surely know is this: the same sun sets on each of our horizons; the mortar of mortality binds us fast to one another. In the only ways that finally matter, we are truly one."
Unitarian Universalism is not an alternative to religion, but an alternative to being religious or irreligious in absolute ways. Do that make us relativists? In a way, yes. But more importantly, no. Because our humanistic values help us to differentiate between good and evil, between that which heals and saves and that which harms and divides the one body, the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. Not apart from–isolated either by our beliefs or our disbelief–but a part of this one body with many members, reflecting on the one Light through many windows, struggling to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.
Do you believe in magic? Matthew does. I do too. In a world riven by both religion and irreligion, for this we can dare to be thankful. We might even express our gratitude by offering it to our friends. By enhancing our appreciation for the gift of life, this faith we have chosen is itself a gift, one well worth sharing.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.