Sermons

"The Religion of Tomorrow Here Today:'

"The Religion of Tomorrow Here Today:  Our Part in the Creation Story"
A Sermon by Charles Blustein Ortman
April 14, 2002
At the Unitarian Church of Montclair
67 Church Street, Montclair, New Jersey 07042
973-744-6276  WWW.UUMontclair.org

I generally choose my sermon topics by about mid-month of the month prior to their delivery in order to meet our newsletter deadline. The process of selection is always an interesting challenge. To me, the topics are always religious ones, but I try to make sure to use an array of approaches so that, at least occasionally if not more often, the selection will provide a religious experience for you as well.

Sometimes the calendar, through holidays or seasons, helps to determine the themes; sometimes it's events in the life of our congregation. At other times, I draw on our Unitarian Universalist principles, tradition or history for sermon topics. And sometimes I feel it's important to respond to the very current events of the day, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, through he light of our religious principles. This year, more than most, current events have demanded much of our attention.

Last month, when I anticipated this day, I thought it would be good to go with a Unitarian Universalist traditional/historical theme, thus the title: "The Religion of Tomorrow Here Today: Our Part in the Creation Story." But we never really know what's going to come down the pike in a month's time. And so, once again this morning, I don't really know how to preach anything for you, without taking into account the events of our day. Still, I can't imagine how another title other than this one could summarize what I want to relate to you - especially as it has been forged in the fiery headlines of our daily news.

Someone who understood the needs of a religion for tomorrow was Albert Schweitzer. He understood the lessons of Lau Tzu - that the universe is abundant in balance and in truth. He understood that one does not give solely to receive, but to participate responsibly and responsively in that abundance of creation. Schweitzer understood, as Unitarian Universalist minister, Marc Morrison-Reed points out in our reading this morning, that the central task of the religious community is to provide its members - and the world - the opportunities for connection within community so that we might better understand the same kinds of connections in all life.

In a sermon preached on February 16, 1919, Schweitzer asked, "How are we to build a new humanity?" And he answered with a prescription that we will need to fill, if religion is even going to allow for the possibility of a tomorrow.

"How are we to build a new humanity? Only by leading [humanity] toward a true, inalienable ethic of our own, which is capable of further development. But this goal cannot be reached unless countless individuals will transform themselves from blind [beings] to seeing ones and begin to spell out the great commandment, which is: Reverence for Life."

There is a religious way that is synonymous, I think, with reverence for life, and that way is our own Unitarian Universalism. There may be other ways, I suspect there are many, but ours is certainly one. The central task of our religious community is to help us realize, with reverence and commitment, the connections that hold us in life. The central task of our religious community is to provide us with opportunities to try new ways of experiencing and responding to those connections as we find them.

"There is nothing rigid or set which can lead [us] to reach integral truth," Lao Tzu wrote. Life is not-cannot be-rigid or even static. Life is dynamic. In the dynamic flow of time we don't find ourselves in isolation with life. When we look at life, we find ourselves connected. We come together in community in order to allow those connections to widen our vision and to renew strength.

Sometimes we Unitarian Universalists sell ourselves quite short. I think that's especially the case when we say, or allow others to say, that we don't believe in anything. I think we believe passionately, and what we believe in is life.

In the 1950's our own Dr. Fletcher, responding to the issue of our beliefs as attacks were levied in the NY Times, wrote back that the members of this church were steeped in deeply held beliefs, but that those beliefs simply were not subject to the common limitations of creeds. That's the way it's always been here, the way it still is. And though that may work for us here, that's not the way it is everywhere.

I know that the living tradition we share draws on many sources. And I know that we often bend over backwards in an effort to be accommodating to a wide range of religious beliefs. But what I'm here today to tell you is that we need to take very seriously the idea that there are indeed limitations to our tolerance. The sources section of our Principles and Purposes say that we draw upon..."Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and openness to the forces that create and uphold life; "This is synonymous with a reverence for life.

We do ourselves and the world a great disservice when we fail to decry religions that uphold false gods in a practice that diminishes, cheapens or denigrates life.

I've got to tell you that I'm angry. Everyday, as I read the stories in the paper and listen to the reports on public radio, I get more angry. And I'm mad at religion - not true religion - but false religion, static religion, religion which has the audacity to claim a divine right to inflict murder, pain and mayhem; religion which has the audacity to claim divinely sanctioned land and water rights; religion which has the audacity to claim a divinely fashioned superior footing on the ground of human being.

I detest the God of Abraham, when that god is used to exonerate theft and revenge and self-justified bloodletting. I deplore Muhammad's Allah, when that deity is used to exploit terrorism, deceit and hypocritical moral claims of righteousness. In Christianity, even though he is not intricately connected to the current battles raging on the West Bank, I abhor the Jesus that is used to disparage women, gays and lesbians, and the many ethnicities it has through the centuries. And not totally unrelated to the saga of today, I should list the god of the U.S. dollar, when that "divine" character is employed to seize and control and to squander the world's resources under the guise of manifest destiny or divine election. I'm not America bashing. I love this country and our many efforts to better the world. But our arrogance too often blinds us of our own addictions to over-consumption, and to the impositions those addictions place upon the world. And we fool ourselves, I think, when we fail to recognize the religious zeal in our efforts to pursue the almighty dollar.

So many of the world's problems are based in religion - based in the shortcomings of religion really - based in false gods. It's said that we are made in the image of God but I think it is quite the other way around. The world over, gods are raised in the image of humankind. Too often they are created and institutionalized in order to protect and defend human shortcomings. That's what we are seeing around the world today.

There are no gods that can justify what's going on in the Middle East. Moslem, suicidal/homicidal bombers are not acting out of a divine script. They are not helping to unveil the "...bonds that bind each to all." They do no connect us to any kind of a Universal Integral Way of truth and balance. They are acting out of frustration exacerbated by centuries of mistrust and hatred. And the same can be said of the Israelis and for their state-sanctioned terrorism. A plague on both their houses, and to hell with their gods, so steeped in hatred, because hell is what those gods have created - or more accurately - what has been created in their names.

These are false gods, gods of death and that's what they will create if we and the world continue to tolerate and honor such gods who are the antithesis of the Spirit of Life and the Spirit of Love. When our own Unitarian Universalist religion led the "God Is Dead" movement back in the 1930's through the 1960's it was with full knowledge that these false gods had to go. We are better off with no god at all than to accept such a Moloch, a demon, who would not serve creation, but who would bless its demise.

It's small wonder that many of us here have such resentment for the word, God, altogether. God is supposed to stand for all that is good and positive. It's supposed to represent what is life giving in the universe. Humanity has taken the concept of this sacred energy, packaged it in human forms, invested it with unquestioned power, and then claimed that power for its own parochial use. Yesterday in Paris, Moslem students attacked a group of Jewish soccer players. As they cracked them with baseball bats they chanted, "God is great." This is what we're dealing with.

It's time to stop it. I don't know how we get out of this colossal situation that we are in at the moment. I only pray that we can. What I do know is that we need to pay more attention to the long haul. We can no longer afford to have only 200,000 Unitarian Universalists in this world. We don't need to be out there claiming that our way is the only right way in religion. It isn't. (The chalice on the front cover of our order of service this morning is set off to one side of the circles to show that we are a way; not the way.) We don't need to be out there telling anyone that our understanding of the divine is more accurate than anyone else's. But we do need to take a stand against evil; no matter what god it might fly on its banner.

We do need to be out there saying that we're all in this together, and that we need to work on a way of making it altogether, we do need to be out there saying that life is good, that we have a debt to pay to life and that it is our obligation to serve it in a way that promotes reverence for life. We do need to be out there saying that in life, love is the salvific agent that can carry us from separation into wholeness, from brokenness into connection, and that if we all work together, we can promote those possibilities of love, so that we can move our world toward the peace that religion ought to promote.

The vestiges - the very worst vestiges - of yesterday's religions still create much of the world's grief today. The enemies of the generations before are the enemies of too many of this generation. To let go of the old enemies, perhaps it's time to let go of the old gods. Perhaps it's time for those gods to either grow up or simply go away. However steeply rooted in tradition, they are also rooted in destruction and they are too limited and limiting. It is time for transformation from blindness into seeing.

The religion of tomorrow is here today. We are not the founders of this particular faith path. Its foundation is made up of the very faiths that have been betrayed by the fundamentalists who claim god's blessings on their murderous acts.

But there have been others who have kept the faith, a faith in the possibilities of goodness, and they too have moved forward through the ages. That is the stock from which I believe our Unitarian Universalism has sprung. And our forebears in this movement have left something for us to find, something for us to build upon now, as we come into this, our time, to do our part in the creation story. The world needs our message and we have a job to do. It does matter what we believe, and it matters that we are out there sharing our beliefs!

Ours is a life affirming religion: We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every human being; we encourage spiritual growth, democracy, world peace based in respect; we affirm and promote the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

Our religious goals are to save this human enterprise on every level, by finding and upholding the spirit of life within ourselves, within our interpersonal relationships, among our communities, and throughout all of creation.

We live in a world that is disintegrating as a result of warring gods that stand for limitation of the human spirit. But some beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies. Some beliefs do unveil the bonds that bind each to all. Some beliefs do encourage us to take our place in the Universal One. Some beliefs inspire us to act for justice. Some beliefs widen our vision and renew our strength.

Let our gods, let our beliefs be filled then, with a reverence for life and let us go out and share those beliefs with all who might hear the call. Tomorrow depends upon it.