THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
OUR FREE FAITH STILL HAS ITS PRICE
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
January 31, 1999The church that I served in Tampa, Florida, was out on the outskirts of town. We used to joke that we lost people. They would start down the cow path at the "Unitarian Universalist Church of Tampa" sign and lose hope that they were going to get anywhere. It is one of the characteristics of many Unitarian Universalist churches that you have to find us despite our serious attempts to hide from you.
The church in Tampa had, at the opposite end of the long country road, a very interesting religious institution. On the grounds of Calvary Temple was a huge complex of the kind of equipment circus performers use. They did a circus act at the church that was taken all around the Southeast. As the mostly teenage and young adults performed on these pieces of circus equipment they were delivering their Christian testimony. One certainly had the impression that they were able to do the double-back somersault with the double twist because of the assistance of their particular faith. This was very impressive, I am sure.
One of the things that they did was to train people in bearing witness. It seemed that I came to be the test subject for those who had been through their witness training program. I never figured out for sure whether they sent the person down to me that got the best grade in the class, hoping to convert me; or the one that got the worst grade in the class, as some kind of punishment. All I knew was that I could always tell when they had finished their training program. A very nice, well-presented young person would come down to the church on a weekday afternoon and knock on the door saying, "I've seen your sign out front for a long time and I'm curious about what a Unitarian Universalist is."
Dumb me, I would actually start to answer the questions until I commenced to encounter the endless "Well, but, don't you believe--?"
On the one hand the faith of the young person coming to me was something that I had a great deal of respect for. It took a lot of courage and commitment to one's tradition and heritage to go into the lion's den in this way, voluntarily. On the other hand, this became for me a kind of paradigm of the constant problems that Unitarian Universalists have in trying to present themselves to the community out there. In trying to be honest with them about what our heritage was, I was driving them absolutely nuts! Every one of their assumptions was incorrect. As I tried to correct their assumptions and help them ask what for us are the correct questions, I got nothing but consternation back. We were simply not addressing the questions to which they had been trained to witness.
It is a constant problem. A few years ago I was invited to do a program at the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute, which we called "the nickel tour." This is a week-long summer conference. People come and take classes about all kinds of things, from nature and caving and hikes to how to tell stories and theological stuff and musical instrument lessons -- it's a wild summer conference. We expected maybe a dozen people would be interested in a course that would teach you how to tell that five-minute summary of what a Unitarian Universalist is. We had 40 people sign up for it! I was absolutely blown away.
How do you tell people about this heritage? We Unitarian Universalist clergy haven't got it straight amongst ourselves. We are still arguing as to whether or not there is a set of principles, if not beliefs, that you should follow if you're going to be a Unitarian Universalist. We have squabbled about this from the very beginning of this heritage over 400 years ago. At least eight times in our history we have walked right up to the edge of saying to one group of people or another, "I'm sorry. If you're going to continue to talk about religion in that way, you're just going to have to leave." And then, just in time, we backed off and said, "Oh, all right, you can stay."
Most recently, we have done that with the pagans. The pagans are an especially difficult problem. The difficulty we have interpreting Unitarian Universalism to the rest of the religious community is bad enough. Now to have to try to explain to them somehow that paganism fits into this, too ? Oi !
It is often difficult to explain ourselves to folk who simply don't make the kind of assumptions that we do about what being religious is about. For the average citizen out there it is still a radical notion that God knows when you're putting him on. Therefore only what you really do believe, not what you think you are supposed to believe, makes any difference. The notion is still widespread that being religious means turning your belly button two turns to the left, jumping sideways, and suddenly being able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Even those who don't believe think that.
It continues to surprise to people that there is a religious community that insists that not only do we not have a nice, neat wrapped package with a bow on it to hand you; but also we think that's totally misunderstanding what religious experience is about. A part of the price of being a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, if you let anybody outside of the church know that you are one, is that you are going to have difficulty explaining it and they won't get it. If you're not prepared to accept that, don't join a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
The other part of that is that if you join a Unitarian Universalist congregation, you should be prepared for the fact that there will be other Unitarian Universalists in that congregation that will offend you and you have to accept it. We occasionally have people come and visit for a while, sometimes even join, and then something happens. Somebody says or does something that is offensive to that person and they withdraw, feeling that somehow we have deceived them because all of the rest of what they saw seemed consistent with what that person was looking for.
No wrapped package and no expectations that those who share this adventure with you will share all of your mostly deeply held assumptions. Another way of saying that is that it is our conviction that a religious community's job is not to teach you the correct stopping place in your religious growth. It is, rather, to prod you and poke you, to both nurture and challenge you, so that you stay alive and growing. Most people, when they're looking for a church to join, are looking for a congregation that will tell them that they're right. I mean it would not make any sense to go join a religious community with which you had significant disagreement. Who needs the hassle? And yet the bargain that is made when one joins a Unitarian Universalist congregation is that we are going to assure you that you are wrong, at least to the degree of not being through yet. We assume that we are incorrect, that we are wrong about issues of religion, if only to the degree that our ideas must inevitably be incomplete because we're human and we're still alive.
There is a theological tradition known as the via negativa, the "negative way." It is the way of trying to say what God is, what the core of being a human being in the face of this awesome mystery called Universe is, a way of saying that says only negatives. "Not this, not that," because anything that can be formulated in positive assertions is going to inevitably be to some degree always a distortion. That is a very ancient and honorable tradition which Unitarians have taken with seriousness. One of the regular criticisms of our tradition, both from without and from within, is that Unitarian Universalists are essentially followers of a negative faith. We can tell you very clearly what we don't believe, but find it very difficult to tell you what it is that we do believe. And it's true. At least with respect to the general culture's assumptions about what a religious community is supposed to do and to be, it is true. The question is therefore almost always asked wrongly. This is, of course, where my young persons coming to witness to me in Tampa always got driven up the wall. For to answer the traditional religious questions in the traditional terms is to make us sound quibbly and wishy-washy, if not merely anti-Christian, or even non-religious or anti-religious.
Getting Unitarian Universalists, even long-time Unitarian Universalists to make this leap of imagination is hard enough. It's not surprising that others, coming to us for the first time, find it also difficult.
I think Christianity, as it is generally understood in this culture, is mistaken. It is mistaken in its doctrines and those mistakes need to be critiqued regularly and critiqued publicly, even outside the bounds of our church. The culture out there is deeply imbued with assumptions out of a misunderstood Christian heritage; assumptions about what it means to be a human being, about how human beings are supposed to be. It needs constantly the countervailing arguments, suggestions, nudges from our heritage.
Christianity has become the unconscious arbiter and repository of so much of the very ways in which we ask the questions about the deep experience of being a human being. It determines what kinds of answers are acceptable answers. The very vocabulary that we use is deeply conditioned by misunderstandings of the historical Christian tradition. Those misunderstandings have been around long enough to replace some of the ancient Christian perceptions.
But Christianity is also mistaken in its assumptions about what religion and spirituality are, I think. Among the mistakes is the idea that a religious community ought to be defined by your intellectual assent to a list of propositions. It may come as a surprise to you but a great many of my Christian colleagues rely on us to provide that function. It makes it possible for them to move their congregations a little farther than they would be able to move them without upstart traditions like ours as a part of the dialogue.
So often, people come to visit our congregation expecting to find here a more acceptable version of what they see and saw as a religious community out there elsewhere. They hope that ours will be like those in all of the ways that were comfortable to them but different from those in all of the ways that they had trouble with. One of the ways that they were comfortable with is that a church is, of course, expected to be a representative of, a defender of, the culture's status quo.
People come up to me and ask, "What's a Unitarian Universalist?" As I mention a few things or I use some words they don't care for, I am told, "But a minister isn't supposed to be like that." This is not too disconcerting when it's encountered out there in the community. It is very disconcerting when it is encountered from within one's own congregation. It is the notion that somehow there is a way of being and behaving and speaking that is ministerly. If I don't do it the way they expected me to do it, I'm doing something wrong. The double irony is that the kinds of things that I'm often expected to do and to be and to say are the very ones that they left their other denomination for the minister doing and being and saying.
A Unitarian Universalist congregation is not necessarily a defender of the community's status quo. There have been times in our history when we were. Those Boston Brahmin Unitarians in the early 19th century definitely saw themselves as the upstanding pillars of their society to whom it was given to determine what was good and acceptable behavior for civilized folk in their community. We have, more often throughout our history, been the nudge at the edge saying, "Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's not quite fair or just. That's not all. There is more. It is not only O.K. but necessary to doubt, to challenge authority, to suggest that the culture's values might be just a bit askew."
Related to this is the tendency for people who walk in our door to expect that a Unitarian Universalist church is supposed to be a kind of public utility. You're supposed to be able to go over there and turn the faucet and water comes out. But being a part of the community is seeing to it that the piping is maintained, that the washer in the tap is replaced periodically, that the water is even there to go through the pipe in the first place. The experience of creating what we have to offer is a part of what the religious community has to offer.
This is, in that sense, very much not a spectator sport. Oh, you are welcome to come and to participate in almost everything we do, but if that's all you do you're ripping yourself off. And, fair warning. If you do that, we will periodically gently remind you that you are doing it.
I have a great deal of respect for the Buddhist temple that is almost right next to my house up in Kalihi Valley. Chosen-ji is a really fascinating Buddhist community. Out front there is a little sign that says you're not welcome there without an appointment. So I made an appointment and I found out what it was that you get told before you're welcomed there. They say, "Here's what we do. There is a training program that's going to result in your ending up a Zen master. There is a martial arts program that is a part of it. There is an arts program. (And they do some incredible art up there.) If you wish to come to Chosen-ji you are welcome to come do what we do. If you are not willing to come do what we do, you are not welcome here."
One is not welcome to treat them as a smorgasbord, to come and have this but not that. Now, I have a great deal of respect for that. I find it to be a pain in the bottom, because I would like to be part of some of the things that happen in that community. However, the time demands and expectations they make are quite inconvenient to somebody who is also a Unitarian Universalist minister. But I have to respect the expectation that you will come and do what they do.
What we have to offer comes as much in the process of being a part of the creating of that religious community as any of the other aspects. Certainly, being a part of a religious community is much more than merely coming to the sermon or church service. I have been occasionally told by people, "I only come to church on the Sundays you are preaching." They think they are giving me a compliment.
They're quite surprised when I tell them, "Gee, I'm really sorry. If that's what you think a Unitarian Universalist Church is you've missed the point entirely." No matter how good or bad Mike Young is as a preacher, the Sunday morning sermon is not what a Unitarian Universalist community is about.
This concerns me because there is pressure within the denomination, and pressure within every Unitarian Universalist Church, to escape the fact of our being so difficult to interpret to the outside community. If we want to grow, people say, we've got to do and to say who we are in ways that can be easily heard by those folks out there. We must accommodate ourselves to the expectations about being a religious community out there in the larger community or they're not going to come and stay. And, of course, there are others in every Unitarian Universalist congregation who say, "Well, we are precisely not that thing out there. We aren't willing to do any of that." These folk generally would be just as happy if we stopped calling this place a church because that implies that we're just like the Methodists. They would like us to stop using the traditional theological language entirely for the very good reason that it miscommunicates badly.
I am stuck with the fact that I want Unitarian Universalism to stay in dialogue with the larger secular and religious communities we live in. I want us to tell Christianity when we think it's wrong. Buddhism, too, occasionally. Because that's something that the religious community needs to hear. We need to stay a part of that dialogue. They need us to stay a part of that dialogue. And if we accommodate we will become something else than what we are, something other than we have envisioned ourselves to be.
So I urge you to engage, to actually try to get your own faith and our peculiar heritage straight enough in your own minds that you can say it to those people out there. Help them alter the expectations and assumptions so that they can begin to hear the difference in our heritage. I encourage you to participate as players, not as spectators; and to give of yourself and your resources generously.