A sermon by Bill Neely
Summer Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford, IL

August 28, 2005

Reading

Heaven, by Richard Lehnert

What if you could know

you're better than someone else?

Not better in one small way -

a better lover, listener, cooker of pasta,

writer of poems - but entirely,

absolutely better?

What if you had to choose life

for one of you, for the other, death?

And what if, after long, careful,

anguished thought -- because,

after all, you're the better person

you make the right choice?

And what if, later, when you die,

there really is heaven and God

and perfection isn't boring

but endlessly interesting, satisfying,

a challenge you only just meet -

like life, but the rules work?

And what if one day -- it's raining or bright

perfect either way -- God takes you aside

and you sit down with a favorite drink,

hot or cold depending on the weather,

in your throat its ideal mate of thirst,

and God smiles, lays on your hand

a huge scarred paw, says

That day you choose the better person?

Well, you were wrong. But stay

as long as you want --

we like having you here.

And patting your hand

God rises, eyes already gone

in that galactic reach,

looking for the next fool who,

between heaven and hell,

expected a difference.

Reading

Voices, by Mike Niemczyk

And he heard a poet

and tried to imitate

that particular voice

heard through

the confessional window,

and she heard a poet

and got down on her knees

praying and praising,

and yet another hard a poet

and walked through the woods,

the rain barely ended,

and they kept writing and writing,

sometimes hearing

entirely different voices than before,

and they wrote 'til they fell over

and then got up again and wrote,

and sometimes

in the dead of night

or at the earliest crack of morning

you'd swear all their voices

sang together

or perhaps just created

a glorious cacophony,

the main thing is

they kept on writing,

throughout it all

they kept on singing.

Sermon

"Together, Through Tensions"

Bill Neely

At my home church in Norfolk, Virginia, we had an annual Blues Sunday every February. The components of the service centered on some aspect of the music and its history and the sermon itself was usually sort of bluesy in content and tone, but the real highlight of the service was the live music. We would invite a local blues band to come in and play for the services, often just a few hours after they had finished playing their Saturday night gig at a local club. They came in kind of bleary-eyed and a little wrinkly, but they played wonderfully, infusing the worship with the feeling of the blues, adding depth and experience to our reflections on the meanings of that moving genre of music. They enlivened the topic in a way that spoken words never could and the result was an experience of the message, an experience of the music.

And it meant something for the musicians, as well. Used to playing in crowded clubs and competing with conversations and plenty of other ambient noise to be heard, they enjoyed playing before a mostly silent congregation who engaged their gifts with our full attention. Our closed eyes showed them the richness of their offering, or our open eyes connected their vision with our embrace. The space we made for the music deepened their enjoyment of creating the art, something that was summed up by the lead singer of the band who said one year that playing in our UU church sure beat playing in bars.

A few months later our teens were offering their graduation service that they always created and were speaking about what the church meant to them. After some truly touching stories about how the church provided them with support and acceptance and the room to grow, it was the turn of the final teen to share his testimony. He was a quieter kid, really nice, really cool, dressed well, always around the church, and liked sports a lot. He said that church was, you know, all right, and that he liked coming. It’s not as good as baseball, but it’s all right. From then on I thought that our faith's next marketing campaign should be: "Unitarian Universalism: Better than a Bar, Almost As Good As Baseball."

The band and the boy were both onto something fundamental about the nature of our religious communities when we’re at our best. The band, a visitor to the church, understood quickly the value that we are to each other when we break away from our daily routines and more fully savor the feast of gifts that we bring to our communal table. They understood in an overt way what those of us committed to this living faith experience in more subtle ways all the time-the injections of creativity and inspiration that we can offer each other as we seek union with the Holy. The boy’s knowledge was more intuitive, expressed more through his consistent presence in the church than through his few humorous words. It was expressed not by the ranking of baseball over church, because for this boy, everything ranked below baseball. Rather, it was expressed by the ease and confidence with he shared this truth with us. It was expressed by the ease and confidence which he and other boys and girls his age moved through the church in general, engaging adults in conversation before the service started, then caring for their babies in the nursery while the adults went to worship.

The band, a kind of flashy dance partner that jolts the church alive with energy and inspiration and the boy, the kind of constant, regular dance partner in whose eyes and life we can see the possibilities of this nourishing faith, and the rest of us, dancing in our own ways during our brief interludes in the enduring masterpiece. Each of us, moving in rhythms timed not just by our own sense of pace, but also by the eternal heartbeat heard in the evolving music of these days, heard and seen in those we would humbly journey with along the paths of justice and wisdom, of compassion and love comprise the Unitarian Universalist journey. The music of our faith is comprised of beats and understandings from sources near and far that join in one common song of hope, service, faith, reason, and love. And we're not the first to do this.

For part of its history, practitioners of several religions in China became adept at paying attention to the rhythms and teachings of theologies other than the one of their primary identification. Particularly, Taoists, Confucists, and Buddhists in China beginning in the 12th century through the early part of the 20th century, were often appreciative of the different approaches to living spiritually that the other religions advised. For example, Confucianism on the whole believed in a very legalistic, humanistic code of conduct that would create communities of respect, deference to authority, and deference to elders. Strict and elaborate rituals sought to bring into the open the basic human goodness that animated the lives of all, a basic human goodness that could only be fully harnessed when the laws and culture of a society provided clear, complete, and enforceable codes of behavior. The many schools of Confucist thought generally believed that the religious life was to be focused on by working toward fully realizing human goodness here and now, in this life, and that whatever happens in the spiritual realm will take care of itself.

Taoism, on the other hand, concerns itself with the spiritual pursuit foremost, believing that to move in harmony with the Tao, or that mystical force of being that is eternal, will lead one to proper relationships among people. The Tao is impossible to fully define, for the Tao Te Ching advises us that the Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao, only a human representation of an all-pervading eternal mystery who force can be felt but never fully understood. Compassion, moderation, and humility are the Three Jewels of Taoism, principles to be embodied and practiced if one wants to journey on the way of the Tao. And if one commits to that journey, one's earthly life will be one of more meaning and service.

And Buddhism, the third of what are sometimes called the Three Friends of Traditional Chinese Religion, includes a general understanding of some sort of karmic nature to the universe, a cosmic give and take that manifests in many ways, but most notably in cycles of rebirth and suffering. Confucists and Taoists often found this understanding complimentary of how they viewed the interconnectedness of all life. Zen Buddhism in particular is a fusion of Taoist principles and Buddhist meditation practices, aimed at provoking a more universal and spiritual sense of enlightenment than other schools of Buddhism.

And the result was that for centuries, a Taoist would operate her or his civic engagements under Confucist principles, understanding the practical value of operating within those rules and regulations of society that provided for clarity and structure in relationship. A follower of Confucianism might, at the end of the day, worship in a Buddhist temple to succumb to an inner lure not satisfied by legal codes and purely human relational ethics. It was perfectly understandable that a Buddhist might familiarize her or himself with Taoist scripture, and moreover, might find meaning in that scripture that could deepen the personal spiritual life of the Buddhist.

Because ultimately, all religions were trying to name and move toward an infinite mystery full of such infinite meaning, and it was reasonable and rational to think others might have something valuable to say about that journey. The three friends pushed and pulled at the same eternal source, paying attention to the moves of the others, embracing some of their steps that spoke to something within. Sometimes this dance created new schools of religion that explicitly drew from the Three Friends. Sometimes, the dance just meant that a local Buddhist looked forward to sharing a meal with a Confucist friend, then taking a walk with a Taoist friend, as the three had many insights for each other. There were certainly some notable exceptions to these relationships. There were certainly times when humankind's warring tendencies blinded people to the value that they could be to each other should they live in gratitude for the other. But generally, particularly on the local level, practitioners of the religions of the Three Friends respected and appreciated the existence of the other two.

In our churches, we have many more than three friends. I can't even quite figure out how many friends we have, our beliefs about God and spirituality are so diverse. We actually have as many friends as we do people in the church, something that we are not unique in, but something we might acknowledge a touch more explicitly than other religious communities. No two members of any church, mosque, or synagogue are exactly the same in their practice of the religion of that house. There are as many different forms of Christianity in a Lutheran church on a typical Sunday as there are Lutherans in attendance. Certainly, there are commonly held beliefs that make their chosen communal religious identification valuable and central in their spiritual lives, but one's relationship with the divine is ultimately as unique as is the life and experiences of that person. We bring all of who we are into those relationships: our doubts and questions, our affirmations and songs, our pains and struggles, our glories and our promise. All creating relationships with the ultimate that we see through the frames of our lives, that we feel through the beats of our hearts, that we know as the sun's warmth on our skin, that we hear through the voice of our consciences within.

And when we approach each other as friends, aware and appreciative of the unique perspectives that we each have about what's of ultimate concern, and if we respectfully and generously risk the engagement with each other about what we think to be true, our understandings of the divine will broaden and our spiritual lives will deepen. We know this to be true, this is a central covanental idea in our faith. It's what we say we appreciate about belonging to an explicitly theologically pluralistic religion. But the practice is harder than that. It's hard to avoid entrenchment and debate in our theological engagements with each other. It's hard, and sometimes seems threatening, to risk rowing from the islands of our declared theologies across the sea of the mystery to see what the view is like on the island of someone's else's. It's hard, and sometimes seems threatening, to risk rowing from the island of humanism, or paganism, or Christianity, across the sea of the mystery to see what the view is like from the island of one of our other friends. It's hard and sometimes seems threatening, to practice a central principle that binds us together as a religious community-that we come together as individuals to support and nourish our own and each other's spiritual journey's. It's hard, and sometimes seems threatening, to risk the transformation that might come with true, deep, abiding engagement with the theological diversity that sometimes sits in our presence as an unopened gift. It's as though we're sometimes afraid that the gift will change us, that the tension of the transformation will discomfort our beliefs and trouble our vision so that the world, the ultimate, and our lives will look different. When in reality, that is the process of spiritual growth. That engagement and transformation is what we should be seeking in our theological diversity.

I don't worry about our theological diversity, I embrace it. I don't worry about the difficulty that we sometimes have defining our faith, I just lean into that and do my best. I worry about ideological entrenchment. I worry that some of us, and I know I've been in this category myself at times, think revelation is sealed in our minds and there are no new perspectives that will move us. I worry when my skepticism turns to cynicism, and my doubt turns to disdain. I worry because what insight, what idea, what emotion, what connection with God am I missing because I presume to have it all figured out. I worry that sometimes I, and sometimes we, choose entrenchment rather than engagement. When we're fully realizing the potential of our religious communities, engagement is our practice. When we're mirroring a larger world of divisiveness, insecurity, and false pride, our practice is entrenchment. We have to always keep in our hands the planks of proactive engagement that evidence our humility before the Eternal and our respect and appreciation for each other, planks that we can then use to bridge the trenches of dismissal and judgment that we all fall in sometimes. Bridges that will serve as architectural models in a culture that so desperately needs more ways for people of different ideologies, religious and otherwise, to come together and form something that represents a greater good.

One last story about my home church, which, I know, from becoming familiar with more and more churches in our movement, is representative of many of our religious communities. Somewhere in between the blues service and graduation service was the Coming of Age service, the one where the middle-school students offer the congregation their own personal credos or statements of faith. This service is consistently one of my favorite Sunday services each year and this year in particular was one in which there were several young people whom I had gotten to know pretty well participating in the program. One boy in particular stood up and offered a statement of faith that has stuck with me. After a minute or two of his statement, he summed it up by saying, "I believe that people should be treated fairly, boy or girl, black or white, gay or straight."

Two things immediately struck me about his statement. One was that he said this not long after Matthew Shepherd, the young gay college student in Wyoming, had been murdered in a hate crime. It struck me that my young friends affirmation of equality was being voiced into a world that all too often seemed opposed, sometimes violently opposed, to the very core of this young man’s kernel of faith. And yet, he voiced it anyway, calmly and assuredly giving voice to a faith-centered ethic of relationship that our church helped teach him.

And the other thing that struck me about his statement was that when I was his age, I myself didn’t believe his affirmation. I believed in equality among genders and races, but not sexual orientation. My own personal questions about sexuality and the overall cultural attitudes toward same-sex love had me, when I was his age, unwilling to extend beliefs of equality toward the very people whom he was standing up for. Furthermore, if I did believe it, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to say it. And if I did believe it and had the courage to say it, there was no group of adults in my life, religious or otherwise, who would have received and embraced a truth like that, especially coming from a young person.

And while I had come around to fully support and advocate for equality and fairness toward BGLT persons by the time I heard this young man’s words, in the moments after he shared a piece of his truth, I could feel a little bit of my past being redeemed, and a little bit of our future looking a little bit brighter. My own heart, which beats heavier when I recall my own past insensitivity to BGLT issues, lightens when I find that my lot is cast with the sort of people who teach their young that religion is about equality and fairness, even when it’s unpopular. And when all of our hearts beat a little heavier at the reality of a world far from paradise, the work that we do in our churches affords each of us a smile, or a tear, or a song, or a shout of hope as we create in the generations that follow and recreate in ourselves a vision of the world and lives to which we aspire.

We create and recreate in ourselves and each other the senses of compassion, of justice, of the appreciation of freedom, and of the ethic of openness, that serves us all, and serves the Holy, without end. Through the constants of time and space, we generate in each other the renewal and creativity to again and again affirm the potential of humankind to know the Holy in each other and to serve the Holy by serving each other. That our highest path is one humble service to a greater good that we understand in different ways at different times in our lives. And our continued engagement with each other about how we know and feel the lure of that greater good can lead us to life affirming, soul-stirring, and justice-creating moments of sacred fire and holy passion.

We can be each other's lure toward of ongoing revelation, trusting the discernment of our minds and the wisdom of our hearts to embrace what moves us and respectfully pass on what doesn't. These new revelations can inspire us to new visions of the lives we aspire to lead, can allow us to see a little deeper into the lake of eternal love from which we've emerged and to which we'll return, can allow us to see the beauty in the mundane, can uncover the sadness hidden in anger, can salve the pain masquerading as pride. Together, with abiding faith in the promise of our united efforts and loving engagement, we can spread compassion as the wind spreads the seed, shape justice as the wind shapes the sand, soothe hatred as the wind cools our brow, and rise with the mountains and dip with valleys before dissolving into the ethereal mystery without beginning or ending. We can move with and be moved by that timeless mystery seen in acts of love and service, of justice and compassion. And sometimes, it is indeed a child who shows us the way.

May it be so, and Amen.