Welcome to the Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation

When I was a child, attending the Methodist Churches of my native Southern Illinois, I was a good and faithful Methodist. I believed the stories I heard from my Sunday School teachers were literally true. I loved them. Jesus was a miracle worker who turned water into wine, walked on water, healed sick people, raised Lazarus from the dead, and came back to life following his crucifixion.

The Methodist Church of my adolescence had a very good youth minister. We gathered in talk sessions that ranged over matters of faith and morals. No question was out of bounds. However, I soon learned that the answer to some of my questions was often, "Oh, you have to take that on faith." I felt like I had bumped my head on a ceiling.

When I left for college at age 17 I also left the church. I was a long time coming back. I knew I could no longer accept the Biblical and Faith stories I learned as a child as fact. But I had nothing else with which to replace them.

In Theological School, I learned that this is a usual path for faith develop-ment. Most of us learn a simple, literal faith when we are children, assuming our parents expose us to religion. In adolescence we outgrow our childish faith and reject it. Later, as we learn and grow, we move on to an adult faith, often within the same church in which we learned our childhood faith.

It took me a long time to find an adult faith. For many years I kept religion at a distance. Finally, in my late 30s I found the Unitarian Universalist church in Jackson, Mississippi. I felt like I had come home. Here was a rational religion that did not insult my intelligence. I embraced it eagerly.

Later, after experiencing tragedy, I deepened my faith. I learned that there was more to my church than a rejection of irrational beliefs. I learned that it offered a faith that supported me through dark nights of the soul. Finally I truly felt At Home in the Universe.

Bringing God Home is the title of Unitarian Universalist minister and author Rev. Forrest Church's latest book. In it he traces the development of his faith, much as I just did for you. The title of this sermon, At Home in the Universe, is taken from a concluding chapter in that book. I was captivated by the title; feeling At Home in the Universe seems like a great accomplishment. One must have gone through a great deal of spiritual development to claim that one really feels At Home in the Universe. One must have battled through the demons of doubt and despair to be able to say those words.

One must have confidence in one's current faith stance, one must have experi-enced testing, and comfort, and joy and sorrow to be able to express that one is At Home in the Universe.

So, how do we get there? In crafting this sermon I began by thinking about the nature of humankind. We humans are certainly based in our animal bodies. We can trace our similarities to other animals. Scientists tell us that we share a very high percentage of the same genes as many other animals--including mice! We are cousins to the dolphins and kissin' cousins to chimpanzees. We are certainly creatures--and yet we are also more than animals.

We are animals raised to consciousness. We are able to reflect, and to reflect on reflection. As far as we know, we are the only creatures able to do so. We don't quite fit with the rest of the animal world.

Orthodox religion expresses this as saying that humans are only a little less than the angels. We are seen as all Children of God, with a spark of divinity that re-sides within each human heart. We are more than animals and less than angels.

There is a classic scene in Stanley Kubrick's movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey that illustrates this uncomfortable fact. Ape-like hominids gather in a circle, a fight imminent. One picks up a stick to use as a club, and tosses it into the air--where it morphs into a space ship. Animals have transmuted into humans, raised to consciousness, but carrying with them the needs and some reactions of their animal ancestors.

Faced with this reality, we look around and say, "Who's in charge here? Surely there is something larger than I, something that planned this whole thing--this earth, this universe, this cosmos. What does this all mean? What does it mean to be alive, and to know that I must die? Where do I fit in this immense universe?"

From antiquity, even from pre-history, it has been the task of religion to struggle with these questions. Many religions have condensed these questions into one central one: Wherein lies the Divine?

And the differing answers that humans found have shaped lives and tribes and societies and empires. They have caused wars and struggles and pain and distress. And they have inspired writers and artists and peace activists and people who feed the hungry. Wherein lies the Divine? And what must I do in response to my answer?

Our nation is observing with rapt fascination the effects of two answers to those questions. In Florida a young woman lies, near death now, in a comatose state. Her husband understands his response to the above questions in one way. Her parents understand theirs in another. They have been locked in a political and legal struggle for 12 years over their response to her condition.

I weep for all members of the family of Terri Schaivo. I am a bereaved mother and a widow. I know the depths of grief. There is no good and easy answer to the questions raised by such cases. Michael Schaivo understands the Divine in one way, and he is responding responsibly to that understanding. Mr. & Mrs. Schindler understand the Divine to require different action. How our government has responded and continues to respond to their pleas will shape our society.

How each person and each society answers the question of Wherein lies the Divine? shapes their society and how it responds to the world. Through the course of time, many answers have been found. There are theist and non-theist answers. Within theism there are monotheists and polytheists. Within mono-theism there are competing claims for the name and allegiance to of the one god.

Here, in this faith community, there are also differing answers to the central question. And they reflect the variety within the world at large. We have theist and non-theist answers, monotheists and polytheists, and differing understand-ings within monotheism. The difference is that, unlike the larger world, where people war over their differing understandings of the Divine, here we coexist peacefully.

We honor each person's search for truth and meaning, and if we find different answers, we respect those answers as being true for that person. We gather in classes where faith is explored in four paths; humanism, mysticism, naturalism, and theism.

We select which path is most true for us, and we listen to the truths that our com-panions on the path have found. Then we listen to the truths that companions on the other paths have found. We support all our faith companions on their journeys.

Or we explore together as each person seeks to build his or her own theology. And we respect the answers each person finds. To do so, we use several methods. There is a phrase used by orthodox ministers, Search the Scriptures. We utilize this method also, however our definition of scriptures is broader than the Holy Bible of Christianity. We include the writings of many religions, the learning of Science, and the wisdom found in poems and literature. And we search all these scriptures for truth.

We add to the truth that we find there the wisdom of experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarian minister, poet, essayist and orator, addressed the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in 1838. He told the graduates that it was part of their task to present to their parishioners life passed through the fire of thought. Emerson's phrase highlighted the emphasis of the use of reason that marked Unitarians as different from orthodox Christianity.

Reason has been celebrated as desirable and necessary from the early inception of our faith. We do not check our minds at the door. We do not require a suspension of the laws of Nature to make sense of our faith. We take the wisdom of scriptures AND the wisdom of our experience and pass it through the fire of thought. Then we find what rings true for us, and declare it to be our source of faith.

For Forrest Church, that source changed during the course of his ministry. He was a rational humanist at the beginning, adorning his walls with architectural drawings of great buildings. However, over the course of his life, he changed. The challenges of ministry were part of the change. The challenges of living and especially the challenge of overcoming his dependence on alcohol were parts of the change. Now, he counts himself as a theist, and van Gogh's Starry Night adorns his wall.

However, it is not the god of childhood that he embraces. It is closer to the god of process theology. That is the god who creates good in the world. This god continues to create good throughout history. Since humans also create good, they are included in the godhead. It is this god that he posits as a possible part of a theology for the 21st Century.

Let us return to his metaphor of the Cathedral of the World, with an infinite num-ber of windows through which shine an infinite number of patterns of divinity. He says that,

As with any extended metaphor, this one is imperfect. The Light of God (or Truth or Being Itself) shines not only upon us but out from within us as well. Together with the windows, we are part of the cathedral, not apart from it. We constitute an interdependent web of being. The cathedral is con-structed out of star stuff, and so are we. We are part of the creation that contemplates itself. (Church, Forrest, Bringing God Home, St. Martin's Griffin, New York, 2002, p. 219)

The Cathedral of the World is vast, and our lives are short, so we can only experience a small part of creation. We can only speculate on the truths illuminated by a small number of windows. Church then says,

A twenty-first-century theology based on the concept of one Light and many windows promises its adherents both breadth and focus. Honoring many different religious approaches, it excludes only the truth claims of absolut-ists. This is because fundamentalists--whether of the right or on the left--claim that the Light shines through their window only. Skeptics draw the opposite conclusion. Seeing the bewildering variety of windows and observing the folly of the worshipers, they conclude that there is no Light. But the windows are not the Light, they are only where the light shines through. (Ibid.)

He pursues his argument against fundamentalists, saying, "Not only have they been taught to worship at a single window, but they also incite one another to demonstrate their faith by throwing stones through other people's windows." (Ibid)

Church suggests that the one Light and many windows approach can be called universalism. He says that "a twenty-first-century universalism tempers the consequences of inevitable ignorance and meets the need for focus, while addressing the overarching crisis of our times: dogmatic division in an ever more intimate, fractious, yet interdependent world. It posits the following fundamental principles:

1.There is one Power, one Truth, one God, one Light.

2.This Light shines through every window in the cathedral.

3.No one can perceive it directly, the mystery being forever veiled.

4.Yet on the cathedral floor, and in the eyes of each beholder, refracted and reflected through different windows in differing ways, it plays in patterns that suggest meanings, challenging us to interpret and live by these meanings as best we can.

5.Each window illumines Truth (with a capital T) in a unique way, leading to various truths (with a lowercase t) and these in differing measure according to the insight, receptivity, and behavior of the beholder.

And, Church claims, when we find the window through which our own Truth (with a capital T) shines, we will then be At Home in the Universe.

Whether this truth be theist, as it is for him, or non-theist, as it is for many liberal religionists, it is the truth that will help us find meaning for our lives. It will allow us to explore the Light deeply, to search for its subtle shades of meaning, to see how they relate to the Lights refracted from other windows.

On this Easter Sunday, the millions of people who find their Light shining through the thousands of windows labeled Christianity celebrate the resurrection of their god as experienced in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. For them, this day com-memorates the event that was most significant in their faith. I honor their celebration and their faith.

For many of us Jesus of Nazareth was a great prophet, who taught lasting lessons of how to live justly and kindly in a difficult and dangerous world. We celebrate his teachings, and catch a glimpse of his Light through the windows that shape our understanding of the Divine. I believe that Jesus was At Home in the Universe, as he understood it.

However, like Forrest Church, I believe that there are many windows through which the Light shines, and there are many understandings of the Divine that make us feel at home in a world of trouble and an Universe far more immense than we can imagine. I encourage you to honor your family member or friend who celebrates Easter today, and the one who celebrates Seder next month. I encourage you to explore the radical monotheism of Islam with your friend and the mystical polytheism of earth-centered spirituality with your niece or nephew.
I encourage you to look for the colorful window through which your new acquaintance sees the Light.

Let us all see the Light that gives meaning to our lives, and let us all respect the Light that shines through other windows in the great Cathedral of the World.

Amen.
Blessed Be.
Shalom
Saalat.