Just about every year, the governing board of this congregation, a group called the Parish Committee, goes on a one-day retreat at the start of the new church year, and they did that again eight days ago. The ministers and the intern go, too, and often others, like last year, the newly-installed lay ministers, or this year, various committee chairs.

Standing in the parking lot a little before eight on a beautiful late summer morning, waiting for folks to arrive to carpool to the meeting, which was at Larry Athan’s office in Boston, this minister got to thinking about the spirit behind an event like that. In mean, it’s part of my job to be there. There are lots of other reasons that I am truly glad to be part of that day every year, but even if there weren’t, I’d be there. Like Kimi and Steve Landale, I have to be.

The others did not. They could have slept in, gone for a long walk, taken the kids to the museum, whatever. And I dearly hope that is just what they get lots of chances to do. But for this one Saturday, they thought it important to get together and talk about church and its well being – as nearly all of them, and many more of you, will go on doing in meetings and activities throughout the church year.

I suppose partly what that’s about is some people’s commendable sense of personal responsibility. They were asked to do a job, or they knew one needed to be done, so they said yes, and they mean to do the job well. And I suppose partly it’s a pleasure some people take in getting together with others, for the joy of human company.

But standing there in the parking lot, and all day long, I couldn’t help supposing that among the reasons that people turn out to make a church like ours so vital is that we have such a clear, devoted sense of who we are, as a congregation and as a religious movement.

The very next day was our first Sunday back here in the sanctuary after the summer, and I felt it again: a strong, stirring sense of being in a community gathered in self-assurance and joy. I feel it again today, and in the life of the community between Sundays, too: in all the effort that Joan Brinckerhof and others have poured into making the picture directory a success (including all of you who had your pictures taken – and those who still will); or that Cindy Battis and others have dedicated to this Saturday’s antique sale.

Over in the parish house, along with our wonderful children, are our equally wonderful teachers; and many, many of you (although not quite enough) have signed on to teach in some upcoming season. Also over there, every month, volunteers gather to collate, staple, and fold our church newsletters. Every week, archivists gather here downstairs. And this past week, every day, there in the carriage sheds was Rita Anderson, creating the wonderful signs that you can see there, and that everyone will see soon, heralding church events.

This is one of those lists it seems crazy to begin, because in a group as active as ours, I could go on all day and I would still leave people out. But it is also one of those lists that it seems crazy not to begin, because grateful pats on the back are so deserved. So while I’m going to stop my list right now for today, long before I’ve named a lot of folks I know I should, my hope is that between us we’ll remember to thank them all over time, one way or another. It never hurts to write a note of appreciation, or talk to someone at coffee hour, such as the Sunday school teachers our children have just now.

Maybe I’m wrong about what motivates people to care so much about the religious community we share. Maybe some people just like old federal buildings, or tracker organs, or places that are easy to find, right in the middle of town. But I can’t help thinking that for most of us, one more important factor is that between ourselves, we are a community which knows why it comes together, a community with a firm sense of shared values, hopes, and commitment.

Church experts have been saying for decades that a sense of identity and mission is critical in the health and growth of church communities. It seems to me that it’s true in our case. Year after year, we keep growing, here at First Parish, and in UU societies all over North America, while many other denominations struggle to arrest their decline.

I want to be very careful not to suggest that growth validates a religion in any simple way. If that were true, we should all become Mormons. But standing there in the parking lot Saturday before last at 7:53 a.m., or sitting in church last Sunday or now – not to be vain or proud – the thought did occur to me that perhaps many mainline Protestant denominations struggle with drastic decline because the differences between them just don’t matter much any more in a world where there are so many other options.

One of which is us. And it is not too hard to distinguish us from any of them, or from various forms of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or the rest. Again, I need to be careful: among us are, or could be, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus, as well as Christians, Druids, Pagans, agnostics, and even a few existentialists like me.

But being an Unitarian Universalist, I do not expect you all to be followers of Albert Camus. I don’t even imagine you will know who he was, until there’s an occasion for the sharing of our stories. Meanwhile, I expect that you have your story, your own spiritual mentors, guides and experience, and I look forward to hearing it. I expect to be enriched by our interchange.

We all do. That is who we are, or at least a half of it. We are people who will not be confined by creed or doctrine. The new and novel idea does not outrage but is more apt to intrigue us. We don’t expect to agree on our theologies. Many of us don’t even agree with ourselves from day to day, or over the years, anyway.

My colleague Ken Warren relates that he and his sister grew up as members of the Disciples of Christ, but as adults, they both left, he to become a Unitarian Universalist, she to join one denomination after another. He writes that "my sister each time she adopted a different point of view had to leave one church and go to another. I, too, changed my mind several times and probably shall continue to explore various ideas. But I did not have to move from one denomination to another.

"This is one of the best, perhaps the best feature of UUism — one of the most important if not the most important one," he goes on. "You can change and grow, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually without having to leave our Church, without having to learn a new catechism, get used to new ways of worship, leave friends and go to an unfamiliar congregation. We not only allow, we encourage everyone to think about and if and when it seems right, to embrace larger and broader and higher beliefs. And all this can be done with the companionship of people who are also continually seeking the highest and the best."

But it’s funny: that critically important feature of who we are – our creedlessness, our freedom, our breadth of toleration, that half of our identity, is what makes some people think it is identity we lack. Even some of us find the substance of this religion of ours hard to grasp, and even after years.

David Rankin once asked, "What is a liberal church? The critics say it is a haven for people who cannot make up their minds; a decompression chamber for those who are traveling from orthodoxy to the golf course.

"One wit has written that a liberal religionist is a person who walks the thin line between confusion and indecision….

"Yet the critics are mistaken," Rankin retorts. "Diversity and pluralism [are] not the same as confusion and indecision. There is even something redemptive about the ready acceptance of people from all traditions and backgrounds: with no theological dogmas, with no intellectual restraints, with no prohibition on religious expression. It points to an ultimate sense of security, where differences are seem as opportunities for growth and not as occasions for alarm. A free, open, and creedless church is a radical experiment in tolerance."

And that is our identity, or the first half of it, though to others it can seem the lack of one. Perhaps it depends upon what questions you expect a religion to answer. We actually do have some answers, and I am going to get to them in what I’ll call the second half of our identity. But I want to say as clearly and strongly as I can that our agreement to have our own personal answers to some fundamental religious questions is not a lack of identity but the very soul of one. It is who we are.

What makes it hard to grasp, I guess, is that most other religions do have definite answers to those very questions. And they are good, important religious questions, like, Is there a God? Is there an afterlife? Is there a purpose to life? Is there a plan for the universe? Our belief is, no one knows for sure. We all get to make up our own minds. We give each other a whole lot of lea way when it comes to our beliefs about what cannot be known for sure.

Our response is not indifference. These are questions that matter. We just think that no one knows the answers, not any book, nor even the reverend clergy (as strongly as I for one happen to believe what I believe – but that’s just me). And so a half of who we are is a fierce protection of difference in matters beyond human certainty. That’s half of our identity, and it seems strong and clear to me.

But it is only half. Ours is a movement whose roots go deep into history, as old in some ways as Ahknaten, Moses, Isaiah, and Jesus. This congregation has been at the effort of fostering faith for 359 years, in liberal form as long ago as the mid-eighteenth century, and under the banner of Unitarianism since 1828.

Unitarian and Universalism have been evolving side by side for centuries, and as one movement for over a generation. We may have no creeds or doctrines to proclaim that establish our identity. But there are ways that are ours, things we tend to care about, ways we have of doing things, values we treasure, wisdom we try to pass on to our children,

One way we have of conveying that identity is our statement of principles and purposes, not creeds or dogma but agreement about what we think we’re up to – our identity, if you will. You can find that statement in the front of your hymnbook and in slightly updated form on bookmarks and little cards you can give out to curious friends or look at yourself from time to time. I know at least one household in Wayland where a copy of the purposes and principles is right on the refrigerator door.

There have been other, individual efforts made at stating that exciting sense of our religion’s identity, "fundamentally different in our response to the world," as in these words of David Rankin:

Unlike those who believe in authority and obedience,
we believe in freedom and independence. [But more:]
Unlike those who believe in self-denial and surrender,
we believe in self-realization and creativity.
Unlike those who believe in hell and damnation,
we believe in life and beauty.
Unlike those who believe in security and salvation,
we believe in risk and adventure.
Unlike those who believe in conformity and adjustment,
we believe in an inner harmony which leads to ethical action.

Any of us might add to that waterfall. There are outlooks that distinguish us, not uniquely in every case, but clearly and well. We tend to be socially active, whether it be serving on the Library Board of Trustees, contributing to the Nature Conservancy, or picketing with striking farm workers. More than we yearn for the life hereafter or the second coming, we hunger for justice in this world now; we ache at oppression, despise discrimination, and long for world peace.

We tend to think of science as an ally in the search for truth, and to value our powers of contemplation and thought. We tend to be open to new forms of worship, as our hymnbook demonstrates, and to novel attempts at deepening or expanding our spiritual awareness.

As the years go on, the list will go on. But there is one feature of our religion that has distinguished us for so long, and still does so strongly, I want to highlight it this morning. It is our positive attitude about the possibility for change, both individual and social. As much as anything else, it is our identity to be the religious voice of human possibility.

Like the fourth-century British monk Pelagius, ours is a religion that believes that society can be transformed. Like Pelagius and the sixteenth-century Italian reformer Faustus Socinus, we believe in free will. Like Socinus and nineteenth-century Unitarians like Theodore Parker, we believe Jesus was not a part of the Trinity, but a person like us who raises the hopes of human achievement. Like Parker and his contemporary, William Ellery Channing, ours is a religion that tends to stress the power of human goodness.

So we do not do much with guilt or shame or sin. We are the folks who are more inclined to talk of need and potential and hope. Needless to say, we are not alone in this. We meet in the midst of the Days of Awe for Jews, a time of repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and rededication – which is to say, a time to come to terms with wrong things done, in the hope of doing better from now on.

I think it’s not easy, but I think that it’s possible, and I think ours is a religion that believes in the effort. Centuries ago, we emerged in reaction to a Calvinist faith that before we were born, God pre-ordained our salvation or, far more likely, our eternal life in hell. We don’t believe that. We believe in the human potential for renewal, and the possibilities of greater social good.

It is part of our faith. It goes with our freedom. In the balance of common belief and freedom, we define who we are, a religious movement where they both coexist. It may get tricky  at times, but we persevere. Because that is who we are, that is our identity, and that is our religion.
 
 
 

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