"Looking for the Way"
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
January 22, 2012
READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN
Our ancient reading is Chapter I from the Tao Te Ching, (The Way) by Lao Tsu. It has been primarily translated by Peter Merel:
The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.
To experience without generalization is to sense the world;
To experience with generalization is to know the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.
Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.
Our modern reading is from Thomas Paine, 18th Century philosopher, American founding father and revolutionary:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
SERMON: "Looking for the Way"
Three weeks ago tomorrow, my wife Judy and I arrived in the Spanish town of Sevilla. It was one of the five major stops on our two week tour of Andalusia, along the Costa del Sol, the southernmost edge of the Iberian Peninsula. Some of you may remember that my vacation last summer was anything but vacation-like. I was ready for a little serious (or not so serious) time off. This hit the spot! The trip was excellent; even the weather was ideal with sunny days, consistently reaching up into the 50’s and upper 60’s.
Along the way we visited Málaga, Cordoba, Granada and Terifa, as well as Sevilla. I was musing in our Adult Ed. Class the other night that one of the things that draws me back to Europe is the sense of history that’s a part of every breath one takes there. A permeating energy emanates up from the ground and out of the stone and mortar palaces, cathedrals and other ancient structures, as well as from the brass and marble monuments that are everywhere. For me, it oozes up out of the ground into my limbs and then spreads throughout my being. And as it does, a sense of hope spreads with it, as I physically experience the continuity of hundreds of generations and thousands of years. “We have made it this way before,” the visible history says to me. “And look, here is evidence of those who have passed this way before us. Here is evidence that what we do does matter.”
That’s pretty much how the whole trip was – just absorbing the incredible sunlight, food, wine and the expansive narrative that was all around me. That’s pretty much how it went… but not completely. That wasn’t my experience when, three weeks ago tomorrow, we arrived in Sevilla. I’d have to say that my experience there was a little more like when a phonograph needle (to date myself just a bit), after gliding seamlessly through countless revolutions of an old 33 record, suddenly hits a glitch in the groove between the ridges and goes bouncing in a harsh kkkkkkkkkkhhh.
Sevilla, as I’m sure many of you know, is one of the grandest cities in all of Spain, let alone the jewel of Andalusia. Among its magnificent buildings is the Alcazar, the 10 th Century palace built for the governors of the then Moorish (Islamic) state. The Alcazar is often considered second only to the Alhambra in Granada, as an example of excellence in European Moorish architecture. From my perspective they were both quite exquisite!
Sevilla is also home to one of the most incredible Catholic cathedrals in all of Europe, Santa Maria de la Sede. It’s the third largest church in all of Europe after St. Peter’s at the Vatican and St. Paul’s in London. And it’s the largest Gothic church anywhere in the world. The patron saint of travelers, Rick Steves, known to many who are familiar with his work, wrote of Sevilla, “When they ripped down a mosque of brick on this site in 1401, the Reconquista Christians bragged, ‘We’ll build a cathedral so huge that anyone who sees it will take us for mad men.’ They built for 120 years!”
It doesn’t matter from what direction one approaches the cathedral. From any viewpoint its steep spires, titanic towers, dramatic domes and arabesque archways are strikingly apparent. It’s nearly impossible to capture the grandeur of this building with mere words.
On our initial approach to it we mistook the exit at the rear of the cathedral for the main entrance. Just a couple of hayseeds from the U.S., I suppose. And not only had we come to the back door, but our arrival coincided with the end of that day’s visitors’ hours. It was late in the afternoon of the first of three days we’d have in Sevilla. No big deal; we’d come back the next day. Before we left to explore another part of the city though, we sat down on a nearby ledge in the warm Spanish sunshine with our Rick Steves tour book to read about Santa Maria de la Sede. We wanted to be better prepared for our visit when we did return. That’s when the metaphorical phonograph needle hit the rather monumental glitch on the album of historical reassurance.
What we learned was that during the Spanish Inquisition of the late 15 th Century, just there in a courtyard of the cathedral, literally a few feet from where we were sitting, over 4,000 Jews had been brutally slaughtered at the hands of the Reconquista Christians. Jewish men, women, children, even infants, were put to a brutal, bloody death. In the same courtyard and adjacent neighborhoods, untold thousands of Moors (Muslims) had met their fates in similar bloodbaths. I was sickened by the sudden and shocking realization of what had occurred in the space just before me. I knew at once that I would not be going inside… at any time.
My mind was flooded with thoughts. It struck me that just a couple of countries away in other parts of Europe, there were other places where millions of Jews and “others” had been put to death, such as Dachau, Auschwitz and Treblinka. There though, there are plaques and memorials to remind everyone of the heinous brutality that took place at those sites.
In Sevilla at Santa Maria de la Sede, there wasn’t a single word posted in memory of the thousands of innocents that had been slaughtered there. There were only signs indicating gates and fees… and praise for the magnificent cathedral, which was now beginning to seem to me an arrogant expression of a barbarous episode wrapped in a veneer of piety for the Madonna and her infant son. It’s incredible to note that prior to the cathedral’s construction, prior to the Inquisition, there were communities of Moors and Jews and Christians that had lived together in the same neighborhoods in peaceful harmony for hundreds of years. For centuries!
You might remember that I was raised Roman Catholic. I left that religious tradition in my youth for two primary reasons. First, as my intelligence, reason, curiosity and spiritual sensibilities evolved, I could no longer hold as tenable those theological tenets that demanded a personal infidelity to everything I was learning through my experiences of the world. Second, I left because I felt that the ecclesiastical structures of the church had lost touch with the universal values that I’d thought the church had been created to maintain.
I was angry in those years. I was pretty sure that if Jesus had been around, he would be angry too. Jesus wasn’t all about Jesus. Jesus was all about loving one’s neighbor.
In the intervening years my theology has grown further and further from the dogmas I’d been taught to abide and fear. But also, since then, I’ve managed to let go of much of the anger that I’d felt toward the church. It became okay with me that the ecclesiastical structures, which I found to be ponderous at best, were meaningful to millions of people around the world. I found that I just didn’t need to be angry about them anymore.
And then there I was again, sitting outside of the once blood-filled courtyard at Santa Maria de la Sede. After the initial reaction of nausea, I found myself feeling angry at the disdain and pride of the institution and of a culture that claimed to be the religious expression of the Prince of Peace. By failing to acknowledge the sins of the place in any way, it seemed the church and the culture had lost track of any aspiration for peace, for the practice of loving one’s neighbor, and instead had become inured in the attempt at self-righteous control of others. Because they had terrorized and mostly eliminated anyone in opposition to their dominance, there wasn’t much of a voice around still saying, “Love your neighbor. Love even your enemy.”
It’s sadly ironic that the faithful of these three traditions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) moved from living peaceably in their Mediterranean community during the Dark Ages, to ever increasing hostilities in the world today. The Catholic Church once dominated the Western world by way of the Roman Conquest, the Crusades and finally the Inquisition (not to mention their missionary invasion of the Americas). Through time, their military prowess has ebbed, and along with it, their moral authority. Much of that is a result of an educated class of Catholics who can read scriptures for themselves and make many of their own determinations. Another factor is an ongoing, ever more, difficult history of scandal.
At the same time, the once victimized Jews and Muslims have grown in an ardency of the faithful. And simultaneously both groups have grown in military prowess. Jews have done so primarily, I think, as a means of seeking security for the state of Israel, however guided or misguided their actions might be in that regard. Muslims have done so, and quite ironically, in what appears to be an effort much like that of the Medieval Catholic Church – to convert the world through Jihad to Islam. Of course there are all kinds of sectarian issues in the mix, but that is the stated purpose of the fastest growing branches of Islam.
It was impossible for me to keep thoughts like these from running through my mind as we sat there, now in the latening shadows of the spires of the cathedral. I found myself thinking about the evolution of religion itself, particularly these three religions that occupy a great deal of religious airspace, as well as ink in the headlines of our media. I found myself wondering how some religious ideologies take root and others not so much.
I found myself wondering how a guy, already ancient in years, sired a pair of sons through two different women; sons who went on to become the patriarchs of two out of three of these monogamous religions. I wondered how and why people were willing to attribute to these and kindred patriarchs some sort of special relationship with a deity who was more of a superhuman than he was a force of creativity, a deity who gave the patriarchs dominion over the tradition. How does that happen? I don’t know.
And I found myself wondering how a Hebrew revolutionary in the Roman Empire, an outlaw, was put to a death and was then redeemed by the adoration of his disciples, and who was, again, lifted up by the conviction of his having had a special relationship to a superhuman-like god. Not just a relationship, this one, but actually somehow was a portion of that god. And again, how did others gain hold of his ministry in ways that have interpreted and misinterpreted that ministry to the masses throughout history.
How does this happen? How do they become the arbiters of history not just of a nation, but an of entire civilization? And how can it happen, time after time, that these three traditions are seemingly able to abandon their core value of compassion and still maintain the allegiance of their ardent faithful?
I don’t know how this all happens, only that it does. I am not here to judge on anyone else's beliefs. I don't know how this all works, but I don't have to know in order to understand that this is what others accept. I am not here to judge anyone else’s beliefs… unless those beliefs inspire people, encourage them, to see themselves as specially human in ways that do harm to others in the defense or promotion of those beliefs. When that occurs I think it is our obligation to judge, by calling people, even entire faith communities, to be accountable for any discrepancies that exist between the morality of their religious tenets and any reasonable understanding of what is ethical in this world.
If our religion condones us treating those who are outside of it in ways that are less – less affirming and promoting – than our those inside of it, then our religion, any religion, fails to meet a basic human standard of religious value in a world that is coming apart at the seems. And that is what is happening as our world is reduced technologically, as the boundaries and borders between various peoples disappear.
There are far too many religionists calling for crusades and inquisitions from far too many quarters. Such heinous onslaughts are no longer a local issue. The future of the world, to a significant extent, hangs in the balance of religious tolerance. Contemporary poet and essayist Kathleen Norris writes, “What religious conversion is not: if it serves us a bit too well, if it reinforces all our prejudices and allows us to call ourselves holy at the expense of others whom we can now judge to be unholy, it is probably not the real thing.” When religions fail to be religious, it is up to the rest of us to hold them accountable, just as it is up to them to hold us accountable for our values.
A primary purpose of religion ought to be the gathering together of people into a community of faith. It ought to be to provide people with a common understanding of, or approach to life’s abiding questions… about existence, about life, about death. A primary purpose of religion, which was created as a social institution – by our human race, ought to be to provide us with opportunities to make and find meaning in and through the experiences of our lives.
Believe what you will; I need to know how my beliefs uphold the spirit of life, not how they give me permission to abuse it. Believe what you will; I need to know how my beliefs are integrated into some kind of eternal and universal Way that is accessible to all of humanity, to all of creation. I need to know how my beliefs are integrated into some kind of eternal and universal Way that defies isolated interest and promotes the sanctity of All-That-Is. I don't, we don't, need to find the Way. We just need to find a Way.
Religion really ought to be about an understanding that we are all on this human journey together; that we may or may not have answers to life’s most challenging questions, but if we do, that they have come out of our earnest experience, and that they may or may not be in anyway applicable to another person’s experience. Massacres do not accomplish that kind of understanding. Affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person does.
20th Century theologian Martin Buber, a Jew who knew something about the universality of religion, wrote:
“When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, ‘Have faith and take your troubles to God.’ Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help – only yourself.”
I came away from my experience in Sevilla with the thought of how truly grateful I am to have found this faith community and tradition. Rather than name a god and then kill others in that god’s name, we leave it to the individual to determine what is the great and mysterious cause of being. We leave it to the individual to name that cause… or not to name it at all. We leave it to our community, this community of faith, to act as if there is no god, as though we are the only ones who can help. I suspect if there is a sentient deity, that deity could only be appreciative of the help. And if there isn’t, I hardly think we'd be wasting our efforts.
I came away from my experience in Sevilla grateful to be a religious heir to the great traditions that preceded us and that are still our partners along the way. But even more, I’m grateful for the prophets and the priests of liberal religion that preceded us as well saying, "We will create a religion based in tolerance, based in freedom of conscience, and based in reason. We will create a religion that is filled with hope, because in it, we will recognize that no one is saved unless we are all saved."
Some religious ideologies take root and others not so much. It’s time we make much of what we have been given.
I'm not saying that we have it all figured out; we do not. From time to time the phonograph needle will continue to hit those glitches. But that's part of being on a journey together, isn't it? It's about figuring out the next steps in creating a world that is the expression of the beloved community. It's about holding ourselves and one another accountable for living, truly living the values that we hold dear.
I want to tell you that it really was good to get away for a couple of weeks. But more, it's even better to be back home with you, attempting to create a history that one day, too, may be discovered in antiquity. And someone looking upon our efforts might remark, "Oh, I am here because they were here before me." May we set our goals for today and for the future, that we might find such a way.
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