In some ways, this morning’s sermon follows from the sermon I gave here last week, but don’t worry, you don’t have to have been here for that one. I will tell you, it was an acknowledgment and even a celebration of the fact that ours is a religion that expects and accepts change, uncertainty, ambiguity, and mystery in matters of faith. But in good, ambiguous fashion, I also said I would return this week to talk about some of the things many of us do feel pretty sure about, and things our religion stands for, which I like to think are often the same.

 I began last week with a common scenario: "You’re [chatting] with someone you know well enough that it isn’t strange for him or her to inquire what you think about some question of large religious import: what happens after death, for example, or the nature or existence of God, or the reliability of biblical truth….

 "And it may come to you, as you try to fashion your answers, that on a number of points of great religious moment, your own thinking is not as clear, convinced, or finished as others may seem to expect. They may press you, and wonder what it is your church believes about some of these matters; and it may come to you that the very movement itself is less than clear, convinced, or finished in its thinking about some pretty basic matters of faith."

I conjured up a contentious relative at Thanksgiving dinner who seems to know exactly whom God likes, where our souls go when we die, and what Jesus thinks about a variety of contemporary issues; and noted that, most of us, we’re not so sure.

But as I said at the end, and I quote, "I think there’s a deep wisdom in our tentative style of belief. I think it comports well with the fundamental facts of the human situation that we are willing, even eager, [to borrow a phrase from the scientist and columnist Chet Raymo] ‘to accept the evolving nature of truth and … to live with uncertainty’ – and with ambiguity and mystery to boot.

"I hope you think so, too," I said, "and that that’s what you proudly tell your [relative]. And then come back next week to hear when it is I think we have a message to send that is unambiguous and very nearly certain."

That’s what I said. And here it is, next week, and my turn to make the case that we are not without our beliefs, and some we hold with some assurance. We have our individual convictions, and there are even some matters we tend to take for granted as a movement, even if not all of us are always in absolute accord.

For example, on one of the questions that most engages some denominations, the literal truth of the Bible, and hence for many people, the historical reality of Adam and Eve, who are believed to have co-existed with dinosaurs as well as with the species of plants and animals we know now, each of which was created in just the form and number they have now … when it comes to all that, any one of us could conceivably concur, and we wouldn’t ask you to leave. But you would probably note in time that around here, we believe in evolution, whatever the Bible says, read literally, as we do not.

It’s a balance Raymo tries to have as well in his delightful book, Skeptics and True Believers, to which I referred last week. As much as he talks about the tentative, evolving nature of truth, he also talks about our ability to be pretty good at determining – through observation and thought -- that some things are more likely than others to be true – and some things MUCH more likely, so much more likely, that it’s not worth repeating, even though it’s true, that there is always the possibility that things are not as they seem, like in the movie, The Truman Show, where a man lives for years before realizing that all his life he has been the star of a television show, that his wife and friends and everyone in his life are paid actors, and his whole town is just a giant sound stage.

It may be that you’re all actors and I’m on TV. I recall hearing of people who have the delusion that they are human, and everyone else is a cleverly-designed robot. It may be that Jonah and Noah really lived once, and did what the Bible says. But it is not likely. And in our religion, thought and evidence count; there are things that we believe.

And then there are beliefs we hold, not so much on the evidence as articles of faith. There are things we know – in our own way, for sure, never immune from challenge and evolution – and not just that the sun comes up more or less in the in the east and rivers flow downhill, but facts of the spirit, soul-deep beliefs, things that we profess, either on our own or as part of what it is that we believe in our religion.

Let’s go back to the Thanksgiving table. Your contentious relative informs the gathering that because he is a person of faith, he knows for a fact that there is a heaven where souls go after bodily death; and you may agree or not, though probably without as much assurance as he, the actual evidence being skimpy at best. But many a Unitarian or Universalist has believed there is such a plan. Indeed, in the last century, it was commonly believed in both movements, especially among Universalists, although it is one of those points of belief that has evolved over time into one about which we have a larger sense of ambiguity, uncertainty, change, and mystery. Who knows, he could be right.

But then our argumentative relative informs the table that the only people whose souls will go to this heaven are those who belong to the religious group of which he is a member. He goes on to declare that everyone else can count on spending eternity in the fires of hell.

And maybe at that point, enough is enough, and you tell the gathering, I don’t believe that. And maybe it is a statement you make with assurance, without any more evidence than he has for his scenario. Because while it’s not the kind of knowing that tells you that two and two are four, it seems equally clear that if there is a heaven, the rules for getting in cannot be rigged in such a cruel and unjust way. If there is a God, it’s not one who would operate that way. (And furthermore, the relative’s view seems transparently self-serving.)

I could pick any number of other examples of positions an adherent might make about which one of us might feel compelled to say, I believe otherwise – or even, if you want, In our religion, we believe otherwise. Our relative could say, as one national religious leader did not long ago, that God does not hear the prayers of those in some religious groups. And we may or may not even believe in prayer or in God, but we know – we KNOW – that if there is a God, and if God listens to prayer, God does not care what religious team a person is on.

Parts of the old faith fall away over time, or are modified, like the Universalists’ original key affirmation that God being all-loving and all-powerful, everybody ends up in heaven sooner or later. By the end of the nineteenth century, the part that persevered most strongly, and was echoed among the Unitarians, was a strong sense that God, or the Spirit of Life, or the sacred, or the divine by any name called, was at work throughout the world, and not uniquely revealed to some one group or just in some one way.

But our contentious relative could find other ways to force our hand, to bring us to the point of saying, Here I stand, I can do no other. They aren’t all theological, although I might note in passing the joke the folk singer Don White tells. On one of his CDs, he has a little patter about his gratitude to Unitarian Universalists, because so many folk concerts are held in our churches. So White says he’s eager not to say anything to annoy us. This idea amuses him, since we’re such a lenient lot. He decides the only thing one could say to irritate a Unitarian Universalist is, "God is a man, a white man."

Which does bring up another of those things where we have a belief, one that feels religious to me, one expressed in the first of our Purposes and Principles, the one about the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, and then again in the second, the once about justice and equity. It means that if our contentious relative makes demeaning remarks about a person or people out of prejudice or hostility, we hope that’s our voice saying, In our religion, we believe it’s wrong to even think such a thing.

In case it isn’t obvious, what I’m suggesting is that for all our tolerance and diversity, there is more to our religion than just that. It is not just a social club.

But an outsider, and even the more religiously libertarian among us, might object that we claim to be creedless, and proud to be so. But as former UUA president Bill Schulz once said, "…creedlessness is not the empty vessel it may first appear – if it were, it would not be a vessel worth sailing in….. To affirm creedlessness – i.e., freedom – alone may be to get the process right but to lose one’s vision of what is most important along the way…. If Unitarian Universalism is to be a religion worthy of the name, it must provide a faith in substance, and not just in style, in meaning and not just in manner, in power and not just in process." [Finding Time & Other Delicacies, 19]

But wait a minute, one might still object; what is all this talk about our being a religion? Are we really?  It is a long-asked and often-asked question, with all sorts of ways of hearing it, and even more ways of answering it.

In a crude oversimplification, there are two competing sides. One says, no, a religion is a whole set of beliefs that some people hold in common, and we don’t have that set. Instead, what we have as UUs is a way of being religious, an open-mindedness, a willingness to covenant together to be a congregation without expected conformity of outlook.

And why shouldn’t that be the right answer, given what I said last week? To quote myself one last time, "Thinking about the four qualities I have tried to celebrate– the degree to which we as a religious community expect and accept ambiguity, uncertainty, change, and mystery in matters of faith – I am impressed at how much it should – and, I like to think, it does – affect the way we hear each other and the other ways we interact.

"When we hear another parishioner voice an opinion with which we may not now agree, isn’t there strong cause to think that we may believe that ourselves some time, or already once did; or that the other person might be right; or that we’re hearing him or her wrong; or that this is in the area of life’s mystery where there’s just no telling who’s right or who’s not?

And I believe it, all of it. But I believe it needs to be balanced with an appreciation for the degree to which Unitarian Universalism is a religion in the sense of its having a heritage, a set of saints and seers whose higher truths call to us still [paraphrasing a line from the morning’s first hymn], commitments, and indeed, a set of beliefs.

Maybe it’s a tension as much as a balance. One hopes it is generally a creative tension. On the one hand, we believe in giving each other a lot of freedom, we always have. Even before Unitarianism claimed the name, two hundred years ago, one of the central beliefs of the religious liberals of the day, like most of the folks who attended First Parish, was freedom of conscience in matters of faith beyond the most basic agreements of their time.

The religious conservatives, who would eventually secede throughout eastern Massachusetts and found congregations of their own, like the Trinitarians of Wayland across the street, believed that members of a congregation should be unified in matters of faith much more broadly. For them, the making of creeds was a way of insuring that truth was protected in its fullness. For our predecessors, creeds were to be avoided as an encroachment on the individual’s freedom of conscience, on the sacredness of every person’s own experience of his or her encounter with religious truth and the divine.

Still, once the break came, the majority back here at First Parish had their covenant, their statement of basic agreement, and they came up with another within a generation. It has always been a dance we do, an interplay of freedom and agreement, of respect for our differences and allegiance to some sense of communal commitment.

How this can come up is, someone says, I like Unitarian Universalism (or, for that matter, I dislike it) because everybody can believe anything they want. Wow, is that a powerful statement, both positively and not. Positively, good heavens, how many people have discovered with great relief and delight that there is a religion that accepts them in all their doubt and eccentricity, that honors the notion that each person much find his or her own truest picture of religious truth.

But the idea that here, we can believe anything we want, cries out for correction. This isn’t just a smorgasbord of religious ideas and interests, equally open to any view that may come along. Our Purposes and Principles call for the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" – and that pairing, "free and responsible," says a lot.

It’s not just a freedom we have. The denomination put out a pamphlet five years ago, titled, "Can I Believe Anything I Want?: A response to youth who want to know what Unitarian Universalists believe." "You have the freedom to form your own beliefs," writes the author, Elizabeth Strong. But catching the balance of which I’ve been speaking, she goes on that "There are responsibilities that go with this freedom. Some are:

· understanding why you believe as you do;
· learning from your experiences;
· using your mind to reason and find answers;
· exploring the beliefs and practices of the world’s religions;
· and learning about Unitarian Universalism, past and present."

And then she goes on to tell her readers of some of our basic beliefs, the ones recorded in the Purposes and Principles [which the congregation read responsively earlier in the service].

 It is a subtle balance, but one that is powerful and dynamic. It arises over and over, as we try to keep the balance right. In one of our professional journals just last month, one of my colleagues [Roger Bertschausen] tried to defend his congregation’s recently-introduced practice of Trinitarian baptisms on the grounds "that the normative principle within Unitarian Universalism today is freedom." [First Days Record, 1/99, 5]

 Response has been polite but for the most part clear: freedom of belief is only one among the powerful principles among us. We are a religion, one that has a past and a continuing conversation about matters of common conviction. Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for denying the Trinity, because it wasn’t in the Bible and it didn’t make much sense to him. It didn’t to Priestley or Channing or Emerson or Hosea Ballou. We could go and change our minds now, but why? Just to prove that absolutely anything goes? Why would we want that? The country is chock full of Trinitarian churches, why would a Unitarian church want to seem to be yet another?

 I want to assure any newcomers that there is a not a whole lot of such heavy baggage we carry. But there is some. There are things we have stood for over the centuries. Some we changed our minds about. But others have served us well, and to fair degree, they define who we are. And one of those beliefs is freedom of faith. But there are others.

 We don’t believe in the Trinity. Instead, we think Jesus was a human being, conceived like any one of us. We think that, even those of us who think of themselves as Christians, who seek to live lives that mirror the divinity that Jesus embodied and taught.   We don’t believe in original sin or native depravity; instead, we believe that every child comes into this world full of promise.

 We don’t believe in election, the notion that God has decided in advance that most people will go to someplace called Hell, and forever. Instead, we believe in free will, and furthermore, as I said before, that if there is a god or goddess in control of all things, no one will go forever to Hell, even if there is one, which few of us believe.

 We believe in racial equality, harmony, and justice. We believe in confronting and trying to correct social ills. We believe in trying to live good and loving lives. We believe in the separation of church and state.

 And yes, in the paradoxical dance we do, we believe that many of our beliefs might be errant in ways, and we believe in loving those who disagree (and now and then that’s we ourselves) every bit as much as those who buy it all, lock, stock, and barrel (which is also us at times). We are descendants of a Transylvanian bishop [Francis David] who said, we do not have to believe alike to love alike.

 And love each other, in all our diversity, we will go on trying to do as best we can. But the freedom that comes with the effort must go hand in hand with our faith that over time and still today, the community of faith has its own sense of mission, of virtual assurance, of inspiring belief.

 [The sermon title comes from the reading from Finding Time & Other Delicacies by Bill Schulz: "Consider that I can preach the same sermon in San Diego as I do in Newburyport and Toronto – a sermon which attempts to disclose ‘those things commonly believed among us,’ to quote Ezra Styles Gannett – and have all three congregations, very different in size and age and theology, nodding in agreement … or maybe just nodding." (88)]
 
 
 
 

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