First Parish Bedford UU

“What’s Right About Our Theology?”
A sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons
Delivered on Sunday, December 5, 2010
At The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

Reading
from The Talmud and the Internet by Jonathan Rosen
My wife and I visited my mother’s mother in the hospital before the operation that preceded her death. The hospital chaplain, a Rabbi, was there as well, and he asked my grandmother if she wanted to say a prayer. “No thank you,” she said in her dry, humorous, no-nonsense manner. My grandmother was a practical woman, and prayer, at least public prayer, was not how she expressed herself. Though her own mother, who had been born in Russia, was by all accounts pious and superstitious, warding off evil spirits at every turn… As with many children of immigrants born at the beginning of this century, conspicuous displays of religion violated an unwritten code of decorum.
Stretched out on the gurney, my grandmother, even if she would not pray, looked consumed with large concerns. My wife … asked my grandmother what she was thinking about.
“I’m hungry,” my grandmother said.
“For anything in particular?” my wife asked.
Without hesitation my grandmother, who had not been able to eat solid food for several weeks, said, “A pastrami sandwich.”
“On rye?” my wife asked.
“Of course,” my grandmother said.
“With mustard?” my wife asked.
“What else?” my grandmother said.
With that we kissed her and watched as an orderly rolled her away.
In some sense, nothing summed up my grandmother, born on the Lower East Side and quickly elevated into American comfort, better. What she wished for, at least out loud, was not to see God or her parents or her long-deceased husband, but to have more life…
It was… an act of defiance in the face of eternity. And yet I know… that I would have loved some mystical intimation, some sign of spiritual hunger from her… The great German poet Goethe… wished, on his deathbed, for “more light.” My grandmother wished for pastrami.
This is not to say that my grandmother altogether lacked a spiritual side. I remember one Saturday afternoon eating lunch with my grandmother and her two sisters. The sisters brought the food (pastrami, rye bread, mustard – what else?) and my grandmother provided the meeting ground. On this occasion it somehow happened that one of my grandmother’s sisters ventured the opinion that she wasn’t sure she believed in God. My grandmother, who was not exactly given to Talmudic disputation, turned a withering look on her and said simply, “What are you, an idiot?”

Sermon
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.
 —Rumi

One often-told anecdote among elder Fraters who attended the Universalist theological school at St. Lawrence University is that of a professor of preaching who would listen to student sermons and then – quite usually – pronounce a one-word judgment, in heavily accented German, “Inadequate!” A half-century or more later, his word still rings in the ears of those who heard it!
Peculiarly, that one-word judgment also rings in my ears now!  How can any sermon about theology – and most especially a sermon of mine – be anything but inadequate?  Theology is an ultimately and quintessentially vast topic and anything less is inevitably half-vast (a witticism oft-uttered by another Frater).
That intimations of inadequacy or half-vastedness should ring today in my ears, however, is tell-tale of theology:  one need not have heard those words when they were originally spoken; one need not have known these long-dead Fraters personally to come under their influence; indeed it may make no difference at all whether these stories are remembered or imagined or conjured out of thin air.  Fictions can be true, of course; truer sometimes than that which appears truthful.
As James Luther Adams has said, “everyone is a theologian, either conscious or unconscious, in the sense that everyone has some conception of the nature of reality, of the demands of reality, and of those elements in reality that support or threaten a meaningful existence.”  If you’re not a theologian, well, that Jewish grandmother might ask, “What are you, then, an idiot?”  Recall that in Athenian democracy, an idiot was someone who was entirely self-centered, unconcerned with public matters or things outside of one’s small self.  Theology is the attempt to describe or imagine the greatest realities of which we are essential but only a part.
I have respect and some envy for classical systematic theology with its sub-headings of ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, missiology and more (and in a future sermon I may get around to saying more about these big words) but the theology of ours that I think is most right is unsystematic and evolutionary and experiential and, of course, quirky.
When I’m trying to conjure a sermon, you know, it’s dangerous to run into me in the produce aisle at Stop&Shop because whatever you say is likely to be quoted.  When I’m cogitating, everything sounds like a sermon illustration and, fortunate for you, I take most of today’s illustrations not from your comments in the produce aisle but from this week’s news.  The science news, in particular, brims with cautionary theological tales:
“The night sky may be a lot starrier than we thought,” the Globe reports.  “…The universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated.  For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300 (followed by 21 zeroes).  That’s 300 sextillion.” The article goes on to say, “This recalculation is ‘creating a bit of a stink among astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos.’ One astronomer says this news is ‘shaking up the field like a cat among pigeons.’  Frankly, it’s a big pain.’”
Cat-among-the-pigeons theology is the kind I like; theology that is a big pain to those who want a more orderly cosmos.
A cat-among-the-pigeons is pretty much what the Inquisition thought of Galileo when they tried him for the heresy of thinking the earth moves about the sun.  That’s pretty much what happens when any system – or theology – presumes to have signed, sealed and revealed the capital-T Truth.
And never mind the notion, ensconced in each of the millions of every biology textbooks around the world, that all life on Earth requires the element phosphorus as one of its six essential components.  You noticed that this week as well?  One of the researchers who uncovered a bacterium that replaces phosphorus with its look-alike but toxic cousin, arsenic (of all things, who would’ve thunk?) declares, “Our findings are a reminder that life has we know it could be much more flexible than we generally assume or can imagine.” 
Now ain’t that the truth!  Any theology worth its salt (or phosphorous or arsenic) must be much more flexible that we generally assume or can imagine.
It was in a work of fiction that Horatio said, “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!”
And Hamlet responded, “And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I’m saying two things here.  On the one hand I’m saying that things don’t need to be conventionally real to be true. Theology, so says Wikipedia, “is the study of God or, more generally, the study of religious faith, practice, and experience, or of spirituality,” to which I might flexibly add, “or something” – for even theology is an attempt to name the unnamable, to contain the uncontainable. 
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 
My intent is in no way to debunk good theology but if we’re to name what’s right about our theology we need also acknowledge that there’s a lot of bad theology with a lot wrong with it. 
If you’re going to drink of good theology, take the advice of Unitarian Charles Dickens: “Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler and a corkscrew.”  The stories we tell and the fictions we embrace are our best attempt to describe our experience of the world, but we ought never mistake our descriptions for the bottled lightning thing itself.
Even the “reflection for the day” in Friday’s Globe reverberated to me of theology.  It was a Kahlil Gibran quotation: “To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he (or she) has achieved, but at what he (or she) aspires to.”
Theology is that to which we aspire.
But the second thing I’m saying is this, Watch out!  Every description is inadequate.
Which is the answer to what is probably the most frequently asked question by newcomers to Unitarian Universalist churches, “How come they don’t talk much about God?”  It is not – or it ought not – be because the g-word is in any way anathema or taboo.  By itself, though, the g-word is inadequate.  Shorthand, maybe, but too often a kind of bottled perfume, not the bottled lightning that God is.
Annie Dillard, remember, said, “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does any one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
Yes, every description is inadequate and the shelves of theological school libraries sag with the weight of – it would be mean to say wasted – but woefully inadequate words.
So I am asked, What’s right about our Unitarian Universalist theology?  From what I have said thus far, there are two things that are right.  First of all, we do not have a single unitary, universal one-size-fits-all theology.  We have many theologies.
There was a time when God and Jesus were not so welcome in our churches, but those days are passing fast.  I recall, with amusement, a parishioner’s reaction to finding a Christmas nativity scene set up in this room. “What’s that doing here?” she said in shock.  After Jesus was the topic of a visiting minister’s sermon, another parishioner said to me, “I never thought I’d hear anything like that in this church!”  A few years ago, maybe for Christmas, my son gave me this sign; and I’m not altogether certain of his intent, but it would be fine with me to post it here.  Jesus and all others are welcome here, including you. 
The Fraters group includes at least one UU minister who is also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest; others are Christians and humanists of many stripes; and by tradition we always conclude our retreat with an inclusive communion – a eucharist thanksgiving – of bread and wine.
Members here at First Parish also include many hyphenated sorts: UU-pagans, UU-Jews, UU-Christians, UU-humanists, UU-Mennonites, UU-none of the above, ad infinitum.  Our kids have participated in our coming-of-age program, some have been confirmed at St. Michaels, one was tutored in Hebrew, another was bar mitzvahed.  A Catholic priest has been a member here and today we welcomed in membership a minister in good standing of the United Church of Christ!
Did you notice that newly-elected Florida senator Marc Rubio has touched off a religious firestorm because he identifies as a Roman Catholic but he also attends and contributes financially to an evangelical non-denominational Protestant church.  The true believers are shocked!
One blogger spouts, “As a devout Catholic, it would never cross my mind to attend Mass, genuflect when it is over and then head to a Protestant service. And I know the little old ladies, you know the saints who stay after Mass to say their rosary, could never understand being Catholic one minute and not Catholic the next.”
Frankly, I’m not at all surprised.  A website aptly named Silobreaker yawned at this news.  We live, I believe, in a silobreaking age and something right about our UU theology is that silobreaking is at its core.
I remember the era when, with Catholics and Protestants, never the twain shall meet.  One did not enter one another’s churches.  There was the Catholic funeral home – and cemetery – and the Protestant funeral home – and cemetery.
I’m reminded of my beloved but nonetheless racist father watching TV and periodically he’d ask, “What is that actor or newscaster?  Are they black or white?”  He understood black and white but mixed race people just short-circuited his silos. 
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.
Traditional theology is primarily concerned with beliefs and ideas. Lately I’ve been wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned “Cardinal Gibbons.”  Mostly it’s whimsy:  Cardinal Gibbons is the name of several Catholic high schools and they are named after Cardinal Gibbons, author of the 19th century Baltimore catechism, the definitive statement of Catholic theology. When I explain this, I’ve been surprised at how the Baltimore Catechism has been tattooed on the brains of current and former Catholics.  I’ll show you.
1. Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.
2. Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of Heaven and earth, and of all things.
3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of a body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.
Theology, most often, is assumed to be the right answers to religious questions.  Theology is assumed to be about beliefs, what you believe.
Unitarian Universalism, I submit, is primarily concerned with experience – and especially our experience of awe and wonder.  And, lo and behold, I think that experience-based religion is catching on everywhere, even among Catholics!
As I say, when I’m conjuring up a sermon, everything fits.  There are four new books I’ve read recently and, though only one mentions Unitarian Universalists by name, all confirm what is right about our theology.  The four are theologian Harvey Cox’s book, The Future of Faith; the second is James Carse’s The Religious Case Against Belief; the third is business professor Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind; and the fourth – the one that mentions us - is A House of Hope, a book of theology by UU ministers John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker.
Cox, the most Christian of these authors, suggests that globally we are entering a new era of religious expression.  In the first few centuries after Jesus, the People of the Way were Jews whose communal life emulated the life and teachings of Jesus: loving kindness, faith in God, simplicity and resistance to the powers and principalities of empire.  Women were leaders among these egalitarian and decentralized People of the Way.  Differing interpretations, innovations and emphases of the good news flourished side by side. 
Gradually, instead of an emphasis on experience and living the life imagined by Jesus, the emphasis turned to correct ideas and beliefs; to creeds and doctrines, and to the authority of the male church leaders. 
This, of course, culminated at a Council in 325 when the bishops met, not in a church building, but in the Emperor Constantine’s seaside palace at Nicaea, a council forever known for its promulgation of the Nicene Creed.
No longer resistant to people of wealth and means and power, the Christian Church became full partner to Empire.  In short order, the official canon weeded out heretical interpretations from the Bible (most often those that affirmed egalitarianism and women), bolstered the clerical caste, and it was in 385 that the first heretic – named Priscillian - was executed by the church, Christians killing other Christians.
The authority of the church only increased over the centuries but, for a variety of reasons, Cox sees a dramatic shift happening now.  Old authorities are crumbling; scholarship is recovering many of the long-banned heretical gospels; and the church is challenged, not only by the exposed abuses of its power but by the rising influence – certainly of women, but also of those in the global south, the poor, the oppressed and people of all colors from around the globe who are inspired – not by creeds or doctrines or even ideas or beliefs – but by the radical bottled lightning – the awe and wonder - of the gospel and those who live it, not in stained glass sanctuaries or megachurches or among the rich and powerful but in base communities of spirit among People of the Way. 
Christianity, which began in an era of faith, was succeeded by an era of belief, but Harvey Cox is saying that era is now falling and we are entering an age of the spirit.
“Far from Vatican’s Orthodoxy, a Flemish and Dutch Rebellion” is another newspaper headline from last week.  Newly flourishing Christian communities there – you might call them People of the Way – “are discreetly pioneering a grass-roots movement that defies centuries of Roman Catholic Church doctrine by worshipping and sharing communion without a priest.”  O mon dieu!
The current Pope, by the way, has said that the places of greatest heresy today are Latin America, due to the influence of liberation theology and its preferential option for the poor, and also in Africa, where a kind of syncretism mixes Catholicism and traditional religion.  When I was in Africa last month, I saw this first-hand as orthodox ritual mixes with rituals that exorcise and summon both good and evil spirits. 
Unitarian Universalism has always been a tradition – not of creed and doctrine, not of clerical authoritarianism (God knows) and not even of ideas or beliefs…but always of spirit.  Spirit of life we sing; spirit of love we summon; gather the spirit, harvest the power.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.
I still recall my first meeting with another Universalist minister, Ray Baughan.  Asked his religious beliefs, he responded that he had no beliefs.  He had no beliefs.  He had only religious experience. Then I was incredulous, but now I get it.
Ray Baughan presaged the book I mentioned by Carse, The Religious Case Against Belief.  Religion is about fresh first-hand experiences of awe and wonder; belief is about mummification and catechism.
Unitarian minister Theodore Parker once remarked that it took the Egyptians only 70 days to make a mummy out of a dead person, but that it only takes Harvard Divinity School three years to make mummies out of the living. His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, added that it took only a few Sundays to mummify those forced to listen to their sermons.
Even the business professor’s book speaks of what’s right in our theology.  Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind is about the rise of right-brained thinking.  We will always need the left-brained knowledge workers who specialize in logic and analysis but - at least in the west - the future may belong to the professions of designers, inventors, teachers and story-tellers, the right-brained ones who discern beauty, meaning and creativity.
Of course it is an over-simplification but our Unitarianism tends to left-brain ways, and our Universalism tends to the right-brain.
Finally I note the work of John Buehrens, our minister in Needham, and Rebecca Parker, president of our Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA.  Parker, especially, recounts the way that Christian theology has, well, perverted the Christian story, the story of Jesus.  In the first centuries after Jesus, the birth narratives – you know, the Christmas story – were far more prominent than the crucifixion story, that of Jesus’ death on the cross.  The crucifixion story, Parker explains, has been used to justify violence and used to sanctify suffering, most often the suffering of women.  What would it be like if the birth story – the Christmas story – were the preeminent story of Christianity?  You will not be surprised to know that you will hear more from me on this topic at 8pm on December 24, Christmas Eve.
What’s right about our theology is that it begins and ends in awe and wonder.
Mary Oliver’s poem:
When death comes
Like the hungry bear in autumn;
When death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

To buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

What’s right about our theology is that it begins and ends in awe and wonder.