Today we are reflecting on the easy and challenging aspects of being UU. To get us warmed up, here are a few “the hardest part of” jokes:
What’s the hardest part about eating a clock?
It’s time consuming.
What is the hardest cult to get into? Difficult
What’s the hardest thing about rollerskating?
The floor (or the ground)
What’s the hardest thing for an alcoholic law student to do?
Pass the bar
What’s the hardest part of becoming a vegetarian is?
To quit cold turkey.
Perhaps for some of you the hardest part of coming to church is making it through the jokes at the beginning of my sermons.
The 3 hardest things to say:
I was wrong.
I need help.
Worcestershire Sauce
People say the first year of marriage is the hardest
I think many would agree that the last year is way, way harder.
What is the hardest thing about being in Hypochondriacs Anonymous?
Admitting that you don’t have a problem.
A man had been shipwrecked on a remote island in the Pacific, and was alone for 20 years. When a ship finally arrived, his rescuers were impressed with the three buildings he had built and asked him about them.
“Well,” the man replied, “this is my house, and that building over there is my church. It’s a wonderful church and I hate to leave it.”
“And what is the third building over there?” a rescuer asked.
“Oh, that is the church I used to go to,” the man replied.
Many UUS have a “church they used to go,” So I thought that joke might work. Sometimes it’s most difficult here when UU is not our the church where we used to go. Sometimes the challenge comes because of ways that it like the church or temple we used to attend. We have many different upbringings. We may have different belief systems. We definitely have many different worldviews represented here, and we like it that way!
UU celebration of diversity was part of what first attracted me to UU. I am person of mixed religious heritage. I was given a formal Jewish education, and became a Bar Mitzvah, a son of the commandments, a member of the Jewish community. However, my mother was the oldest of 14 in an Irish Catholic family, and three of my aunts were nuns. When “Jesus Christ Superstar” was on the charts, I about wore out my 8 track tape. I got “Godspell” on vinyl. When I went away to college, I sang the Doobie Brothers song “Jesus is just all right with me!” (sings)
And I found I had problems with Christianity. I could not accept atonement theology, the idea that Jesus died for our sins, and that I needed to profess him as my savior, and the only son of God, to avert the fates of an eternity in Hell. The idea that Jews, Buddhists, and everyone else would go to Hell, uh no! I would never believe that!
After college, I discovered my local UU congregation. It read a few pamphlets and declared: “This is me!” Attending services, I found a culture of exploration, discussion and learning. Passionate discussions about socially relevant ethical issues were something I had missed from Rutgers University. The UU congregation hosted a Peace Center and was a hotbed of progressive activism. It was religion concerned for establishing heaven on Earth! It was a community that looked to more than one religious tradition for answers and inspiration. I didn’t have to convert or change my beliefs to become UU.
I could celebrate aspects of Judaism that were meaningful to me, and Jesus was no longer off limits. This religious community celebrated my faith journey. I felt at home.
Welcoming and embracing diversity is core UU spiritual discipline. In UU all relations are to be consensual. Voluntary participation is the UU way. Domination and coercion are forbidden. This is traced to 1563 in what is now Romania, when Unitarian King John Sigusmund led the Diet (parliament) to issue the Edict of Tolerance, which gave citizens the right to choose their religion without persecution. It proclaimed that faith cannot be achieved through force.
This spirit continued. Our Universalist ancestors affirmed God as love. They proclaimed Universal Salvation and renounced the teaching of eternal damnation. Unitarians also became leaders in the establishment of religious freedom in the USA. Without promise of eternal reward or fear of eternal punishment, Unitarians and Universalists followed the way of life that Jesus advocated and demonstrated. Unitarians and Universalists sought the kingdom of God, not by worshipping power but by caring for the “least of these,” respecting those who have been marginalized and oppressed, hearing their cries and responding with compassion.
When congregations offer a taste of the beloved community, people’s desire for it grows. When we practice love rather than domination people develop faith.
If it were easy to create the beloved community, we would have already accomplished it long time ago. This beloved community, this divine order has been a long time coming. As Jesus said, this divine order has been with us since the beginning. He also said that this kingdom is within us and that it is at hand.
We have inherited a great treasure in our theological history. Our tradition also affirms that this wisdom has been carried in other cultures and religious traditions.
These UU gems are simple and profound. Simple doesn’t mean easy. Doing what is simple is often a great challenge.
In our religious community we share our experiences of what has been easy and what has been challenging. As we share, revelation continues.
I believe that the easy aspects and the challenges are interrelated. For example, freedom is a wonderful treasure. If we want to plan and create a memorial service, a wedding, a baby dedication, or just a Sunday service, we can choose readings, songs, stories from any source of inspiration. We can also choose the perfect setting.
When I was serving the UU congregation in St. John USVI, we had a memorial service for a member who loved birding. We gathered in a marsh in the early morning. The power of life emerging eternally presented itself and surrounded us with green leaves, and with sounds of the birds that came to witness and pay their respects. As Marty’s friends and family shared memories, we felt Love holding us as one beloved community.
That service came together magically, with forces beyond what any one of us could create. Creating a service is a labor of love, emphasis on the word labor. So too is the creation of a beautiful sanctuary. Greater still is to create a congregation that is filled with the holy spirit of love.
That challenge consists of many little challenges, many little and not so little labors of love. It is an honor and privilege to have a share of our ministry, to participate in the creation of a something beautiful. It’s a living thing that no one can create by themselves. It requires us to work together.
Our freedom is a blessing that comes with a great challenge! In other traditions, clergy across the continents share the same passages from the same holy books. Sometimes having so much choice can be a burden.
Other traditions draw on the power of repetition, symbolic and nonverbal expression embedded in old rituals. We have great freedom in creating services, ceremonies and rituals. We do not have the ability to give our congregations rituals that have been done by UUs the same way for hundreds or thousands of years.
Another example of ease and challenge in our tradition grows from our faith that revelation is continuous. Continuous revelation means that our knowledge is incomplete. Imagine a religious tradition that admits that it is not in possession of absolute truth!
I don’t know about you, but there have been plenty of times I have spoken as if I possessed the absolute truth. There have been many times I wished I did possess absolute truth! I have wished someone could tell me exactly what to do or say in facing seemingly impossible situations. I have wished that I could have what they claimed to have, a book that made clear what was right in each and every situation. I remember in school, sometimes the texts had the answers written in the back of the book. I have wished I knew with absolute certainly that my side was right, and that I didn’t need to worry about the consequences of my words and deeds.
“Revelation is continuous is an unusual religious gospel!” We proclaim there is greater truth. We say it’s possible to attain greater knowledge and deeper understanding of the divine, the sacred, the holy. We say that we can have communion, direct experience of the divine in nature. We can gain more wisdom. We can find or create life’s meaning and purpose.
Every experience offers the potential for continued enlightenment. This awareness helped me to survive and thrive through broken bones and the seeming obliteration of life as I had known it. When things seemed worst, I knew that some great wisdom or insight could be gained. Something tremendous could emerge from emerge or be built from my ruins.
It is a blessing to be part of a community that values learning. Our tradition suggests that we approach Truth humbly. It asks us to be willing to trade in our truth for greater truth. To admit we constantly judge our experiences, and frequently we are in error. UU tradition suggests that any person we meet has the potential to lead us to greater enlightenment and sweeter connection to all there is.
This can help us to see Jesus in the least of these, the immigrant, the minority, the downtrodden, the marginalized. We can be willing to receive revelation at any time. We can connect with the transformative power of love anywhere. We can learn. We can grow in compassion for the person who has been deceived by (Earthly) powers and principalities. We can choose to have compassion for the person trapped in patterns of greed and selfishness. We could choose to learn how not to hate the ones who really challenge our faith in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We can gain skill in interrupting oppression.
I hope that I have pointed us toward the great treasures of UU tradition. I pray we can learn together to have life more abundantly, with ease and with challenges. I pray for our willingness to learn through ease and challenges, that we become inspired to engage in the labor of love that is our shared ministry. I look forward to Congregation Responds and to learning from what you have found easy and challenging about UU tradition.
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