SERMON: Our Uncommon Faith

Rev. Tom Capo

September 7, 2003

Sermon

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. This was on the first day, but God did not create the sun or the stars until the fourth day. What is the Christian Bible talking about here? Perhaps what was created was the light of spirit. Perhaps what was created was the light of mind. How can we know the meaning of such scripture? As Unitarian Universalists, we bring both spirit and mind to the task of trying to understand the wisdom of scripture, the revelation of prophets, and the meaning of life experiences as we search for truth.

We are gathered here to celebrate our uncommon denomination, Unitarian Universalism. However, what is the core of our uncommon faith? This is not an easy question to answer. Even our denomination has set aside resources and personnel to explore this question.

The UUA Commission on Appraisal has been asking questions of ministers and laypersons alike, trying to determine what they believe is the core of our faith. They have asked: Do we have any spiritual practices? Have we had any mystical experiences? What is the significance of our Principles and Purposes to our faith? Do we separate the natural and holy parts of our world or do we see the world as an interdependent web of all existence? What does God, Goddess, universal guiding source, or spirit mean to us? What is the mission of our faith? Do we have any teachers or prophets that guide us in our faith journey? What is the center of our personal faith journey? What is the center of our congregation’s religious perspective? What is it that unites us?

These are questions that we must explore, even if we have no solid answers for them. Our religion is not an easy one to pin down. We hold in common the seven principles, which describe a path toward ethical and spiritual living: we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the rights of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We hold in common our living traditions, which describe the many paths toward enlightenment, toward spiritual connection, or toward some understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. The living traditions from which we draw: are direct experience of that transcending mystery affirmed in all cultures; words and deeds of prophetic women and men; wisdom from the world’s religions, Jewish and Christian teachings; humanist teachings and earth-centered teachings. Searching for our own personal creed to live by is a core tenet of our faith.

We gather in religious community to explore religious understanding. Perhaps we gather as a religious community because, as Susan Sontag puts it: “Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.” Some of us might feel that blowing our minds is less important than exploring with mind and heart the various religious traditions.

James Luther Adams in 1946 described this exploring with mind and heart: “There can be no reliable faith for free people unless there are faithful men and women who form the faith into beliefs, who test and criticize the beliefs and who then transform and transmute the beliefs. This process of forming and transforming the beliefs of the free faith is a process of discussion; it is a co-operative endeavor in which people surrender to the commanding, transforming reality. The only way in which people can reliably form and transform beliefs is through the sharing of tradition and new insights and through the co-operative criticism and testing of tradition and insight. In other words, we must sincerely work with each other in order to give reliable form and expression to faith.” We, as Unitarian Universalists, gather to work with each other to give reliable form and expression to our faith. Each of us brings our beliefs and traditions; each of us shares these with the community; each us has the opportunity to form and transform our beliefs through this sharing with one another. This is what draws many of us to this uncommon faith.

We work together with mind and spirit in this community. We aid each other in bringing ourselves into balance with the faculties of feeling, intuition, spirit, and imagination with the faculties of rational inquiry. We integrate mind and spirit as we search for meaning, purpose, truth, and understanding. We co-create our individual and collective faith. And we co-create Unitarian Universalism.

Mathematician and Process Theologian Alfred North Whitehead, speaking in a Boston Unitarian Church, said, “there is a creative tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things, and moments come when we can work with it and it can work through us. But the tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things is by no means omnipotent. Other forces work against it. This creative principle is everywhere. It is a continuing process. Insofar as you partake of this creative process you partake of the divine and that participation is your immortality, reducing the question of whether your individuality survives the death of the body to the estate of irrelevancy. Our true destiny as co-creators in the universe is our dignity and our grandeur.”

Our Unitarian Universalist forebearers created a faith that is still in the process of creation. We are part of that process. As we work together, co-creating our uncommon faith, we take part in a worthwhile endeavor. We partake of the divine and participate in the immortality of our religion. Our gathering here is one part of a vast network of Unitarian Universalists who are part of this co-creation process.

As we co-create, we stand for our uncommon faith uncompromisingly and openly. We have a dynamic faith that we need to share with others, but which many others may not understand or accept. At times, we may have to describe our uncommon faith, and we may not find our position easy to hold. Describing Unitarian Universalism can feel like trying to hold onto a greased watermelon—large, unwieldy, and slippery. But we must share our faith; we must get the word out that we exist. There are many people out there who are searching, just as we are. They are out there without community support to affirm their beliefs and support their search. We must let the greater Beaumont area know that we have something special here, and we want to share it with all those who find us.

Czech playwright Vaclav Havel wrote, “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” In our process of co-creating our faith, sometimes we have conflict, sometimes we have indecision, sometimes we do not grow. But we will continue to work with the conviction that our searching with mind and spirit and our sharing our diverse beliefs with one another makes sense to us. We believe that Unitarian Universalism is a religion that we may have to struggle with to understand at times, but it is worth the struggle.

As Unitarian Universalists, we will continue to co-create our uncommon faith. We will work together to co-create our personal credos. We will work together to co-create this community. We UU’s are part of a universe that we are co-creating with mind and spirit. We are part of the whole universe, spiraling and spinning, whirling and twirling to this very day. We are leading, and we are following as we co-create the dance of life.