Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown

3/31/13 Sermon

Reclaiming Jesus

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

Jesus’ life and crucifixion and resurrection complete the circle of life we all experience. We transition from life unto death and from joy and hope too pain and despair and then back again, as the flowers do each spring.

 

This extraordinary human being, this Jesus of Nazareth, offers us the hope

of redemption when we face life’s existential questions. Our Unitarian Universalist faith and seven principles embrace the Christian story and are inspired by the love and hope Jesus offers. We are enriched by this life affirming human’s message embodied in his spiritual wisdom and teachings.

 

 

This is true even for those of us who do not identify as Christian.  UUs need to acknowledge our faith stems from Christian roots. We also must acknowledge our centuries old struggle about the nature and personhood of Jesus. We have from our beginnings in sixteenth century Transylvania accepted the unity of God but not the Trinity.

 

Following in this tradition, UU minister William Ellery Channing in 1821 said of Christianity, “it is an exalting and consoling influence, a power to confer the true happiness of human nature, to give that peace which the world cannot give.”

 

Over generations, Jesus has offered

UUs profound hope, courage, and comfort; central to all religion. To the extent that our UU faith embodies these teachings, we can with integrity share the values and ethics for which Jesus died.

 

Christianity offers us an important and comforting source of strength, if

we are willing to accept and honor the long-held Unitarian Universalist relationship with Jesus as a worthy exemplar but not necessary part of a triune God, father, son and holy ghost.

 

Rev. Bruce Clear writes, “The distinction between a Unitarian Christian and a Trinitarian Christian is

perhaps best explained, “by the distinction Unitarian Universalists often make between “the religion of Jesus (the religion that Jesus taught) and the religion about Jesus” (the religion that centers on who Jesus was).

 

If we examine only the words Jesus spoke, we will find nothing remotely resembling a Trinity in the

New Testament that asks us to worship him as if he were a god.

 

All such talk came from those who lived after Jesus’ death. Easter, the holiest day of the Christian calendar  

 

 

an important part of both our American culture and UU faith. Many UUs turn their attention at Easter time only to Jesus’ as human prophetic voice. His teachings are enough for us to believe in a rebirth of hope and the possibility of spiritual resurrection. It is true that Christian theological language is understood in different ways within this congregation, from literal to mythic. The vital thing is that we honor the many ways we experience Jesus and the Christ. As a Jewish, non-Christian UU, I find the message of hope Jesus offers can be universally renewing and healing.

 

Perhaps those who deny their Christian heritage might find it helpful

to change focus, away from Jesus’

violent death on the cross and the

mythic story of bodily resurrection;

towards the more peaceful loving humble gardener as he first appeared to Mary Magdalene when she found the tomb empty. That’s how he was solely depicted into the tenth century.

After that he was portrayed mostly as the agonized Jesus of the cross. A dark turn to be sure. 

 

Perhaps most of us resonate with the simple human pastoral Sheppard, healer of the sick at heart and the lame; or the social justice warrior prophet, defender of the poor and oppressed.

 

I wonder if the idea of Jesus as the Christ is just too distant, too impossible to contemplate that we to can attain the status of a God.

Isn’t the human Jesus more accessible and a worthy exemplar to follow? Surely, we would become my loving and compassionate people if we were to follow the prophet Jesus and live a life of love, simplicity and humility.

 

I wonder why we sometimes hesitate to follow his example, Why, we fail to demonstrate devotion to a cause, Why, do some of us hold back from offering public witness to a principle or value. or exhibit moral courage

and strength in face of adversity and challenge. I believe following Jesus’ example can lead us to a rededication to our values, a reanimation of our lives, and a rebirth of hope.

 

The teachings of Jesus were primarily ethical and a precursor to our own seven principles which teach us how to live in right relations, how to treat others with dignity and respect. When Jesus was asked, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He did not answer with a creed to be believed. He answered by saying, “You must love God, and you must love your neighbor as yourself.” That is all you are required to do.  The ethical and moral religion of Jesus is reflected in the love he felt for humanity and in his willingness to die on the cross for human salvation.

 

The Sermon on the Mount  and other preaching’s are one of the more often quoted sayings of Jesus.  His words there are a beckon for light to bring us back home safety to our moral and ethical core.” So, whatever you wish others would do to you, do so to them”. Seek reconciliation with those with whom you are in conflict—

in fact, love your enemy as yourself

and pray for those who persecute you.

 

His advice came from a place of moral humility: “Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” He offers comfort and healing to those who are troubled: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth…Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted….” He advises us to live a life of spiritual humility, practice your piety,

your prayer,

your spirituality, in private.

 

And he offers hope and inspiration:

“You are the light of the world…

Let your light shine so that others may see your good works. Such messages are universal across all faiths….  Long before Jesus, Mica of the Old testament prophet said the same, the “LORD requires that we,

act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

 

The Koran similarly tells us: “Peace be upon you. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

And this from their God, I have forbidden injustice from myself and forbade it for you. So, avoid being unjust to one another.” (Saheeh Muslim)

 

Today Christian, Jewish and Islamic wisdom are part of our faith and practice: love your enemies, care for the needy, practice your principles over power and structures of evil,

accept all diversity and the worth and dignity of everyone within the connected web of existence. Do that and your life will preach the good news of Unitarian Universalist

to heal the poor and sick, release the captives of all colors and nations,

free the oppressed and marginalized.” Bring the goodness of Jesus and all faiths back into your conscious purposeful living.

 

Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly. This is the powerful and meaningful religion of Jesus, the story of the holy living among us

in human form that I believe Unitarian Universalists can accept. This is the spiritual meaning of Easter. It is one of human transformation into a better more loving being. Remember, he had faith enough in us to sacrifice his own life; while preaching about the worth and dignity of every human being. We UUs can rationally hope to

More easily follow Jesus if he is human, occasionally afraid, fallible and weak. We can also rise to his challenge to; becoming humbler,

more loving, more compassionate,

more dedicated to justice and more authentically human.

 

Jesus’ life celebrates the divine nature of in all of us. Therefore, we celebrate Easter and honor our pluralistic heritage at the same time. By doing so, we can finally achieve

real healing, a rebirth of hope and a renewal of the spirit that these flowers before us represent. The paradise of the humble Sheppard then is not lost.

 

Jesus waits for us in the peaceful garden here on the earth that we co-create,

if we but open or hearts to him.

 

Happy Easter!

3/26/17 Sermon

Spiritual but not Religious

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

 

How many times have you said or heard, I’m Spiritual but not religious?

 

Spiritual but not religious…really?  What does that even mean?

 

I think this notion; this artificial split creates a false dichotomy.

 

Spirituality and Religion are not in competition, but rather

 

complement each other, as if they were two sides of the same coin.

 

The same could apply to our understanding of body and spirit,

the sacred and the profane, and

rational verses the mystical.

 

Over the centuries, literature and common usage have yoked these ideas together.

 

In our inclusive UU religion, we have

 

created a bridge connecting the secular and mundane to the sacred, which we identify as spirituality.

 

The Catholic Mystic theologian Thomas Merton, admonishes us not to split these two concepts. He writes, “When these two dimensions become split, one turns into egotistic secularism and the other into jealous and defensive religious demagoguery”.  

 

Even so, many people make this distinction.

 

Statistics tell us more than 20% of Americans, mostly the “un-churched”, often millennials describe themselves as spiritual but not religious.

 

Robert C. Fuller writes, “Religion is spiritual and spirituality is religious. Spirituality tends to be more personal and private while Religion tends to incorporate public rituals, such as sharing our joys and sorrows, reciting a mission statement or our seven principles.

 

The lines between one and the other are not clear and distinct —they are each point on the spectrum of a belief system called religion. Religion like spirituality calls us to do something, take some action to enhance our human connection to the transcendent. Religion is how we put into practice the love our ethical and moral values call us to in the real world.  

 

Neither religion nor spirituality excludes the other. These concepts probably mean different things to each of us.

 

Confusion stems from the fact that the words “spiritual” and “religious” are really synonyms. Both suggest a belief in transcendence, a longing for an intense relationship with mystery beyond our own understanding and consciousness. Both call us to a deeper connection with the holy that some find within themselves and others within community in shared public worship. Some call this love, other God or nature; the ground of all being in the philosopher Paul Tillich’s word. They both embody all those things and more.

 

Both spirituality and religion are relational. They embody a solo and corporate interest in rituals and practices each designed to enrich relationships with ourselves, with other and to that which we find transcendent and holy.

 

Historically, the terms religious and spiritual were used interchangeably until the 20^th century when it became fashionable for rationalist to accentuate the differences between the “private” and “public” spheres of life.

 

I suspect we humanist’s, agnostics and atheists can take some credit for this.  Fuller writes, “The increasing prestige of the sciences, the insights of modern biblical scholarship, and greater awareness of cultural relativism all make it more difficult for educated American to sustain an unqualified loyalty to religious institutions. Many began to associate genuine faith with the “private” realm of personal experience rather than with the “public” realm of institutions, creeds, and rituals that we create together through group worship and church activities.  

 

Several social scientists studied 346 people representing a wide range of religious backgrounds to clarify what is implied when individuals describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”  They found, those describing themselves as religious were associated with higher levels of interest in church attendance and commitment to orthodox beliefs.

 

Those who describe themselves as Spiritual showed a higher interest in mysticism, experimentation with unorthodox beliefs and practices, and negative feelings toward both clergy and churches.

 

Most respondents in this study did however try to integrate elements of religion and spirituality.

 

The 20 percent who described themselves as “spiritual, not religious” were less likely to evaluate the idea of religion positively, less likely to engage in traditional forms of worship such as church attendance and prayer, less likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth. More likely they would describe themselves to be agnostic or atheist, more likely to characterize religion and spirituality as different and non-overlapping concepts, more likely to hold nontraditional beliefs, and more likely to have had mystical experiences.

 

Sociologists tell us, those who seek a more individual path, often are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships outside the church. Many felt a greater sense of isolation due to a lack of person to person interactions.

 

Like Merton, I see both of equal value. Each one serves to connect us in an intimate way to ourselves and to the holy in another. They join us to holy mystery, the sacred source of love. Both help us to find, the moral and ethical core of our lives that serve to guide us to living authentic individual lives within community. Albert Schweitzer held, “Spirituality means human to human connection where we learn to connect to the great chain of life…with all life that comes within our reach”.

 

These two elements exist whenever we struggle with the issue of how our lives connect with the rest of humanity and how we fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things.

 

Religion helps create a framework to support our spiritual questioning, which occurs every time we wonder where the universe comes from, what is our life’s purpose, or what happens when we die.

 

Spirituality embodies an emotional response to the world around us

which we experience as beauty, love, or through creativity. These emotions reveal meaning beyond our conscious knowing.

 

Religion helps to place those emotional responses in context in the real world.

 

An idea or practice is “spiritual” and/or “religious” when it reveals something about our personal desire to establish an emotionally connected relationship with the deepest meaning that governs our inner lives. It is the link, between and beyond our isolated selves, to something larger, more powerful and more enduring then ourselves. We start this journey to find our spiritual home in silence, entering the stillness within our souls.

We begin by first coming to accept and love ourselves and then through our faith, our religion, we are empowered to move outward to engage the rest of humanity. Home is within the self. 

 

As my friend, mentor and colleague Ken Collier wrote: “This is the starting point. It is the long overdue journey to re-merge religious and spiritual love and yearning. It is time to bring spirituality home, close to the heart and connected to our ordinary lives”.

 

Spirituality and religion unite at the cusp of conscious life and spirit. Together they embody the love that enriches our lives and connects us to all that is holy and sacred.

May it be so!

 3/5/17   Sermon Fourth Principle Finding Meaning and Truth

Rev. Paul D. Daniel, Minister

 

We all travel different paths to find personal truth and meaning.

 

Perhaps like many of you I had to leave my faith of origin to

 

find what resonated and made rational sense to me.

 

Judaism and the Old Testament stopped speaking to me at an early age soon after my Bar Mitzvah yet,

 

I still have great love for the Jewish people and our history.

 

 

Perhaps, once a Jew always a Jew,

 

once a Catholic always a Catholic.

You get the idea.

 

I suspect we all still carry some

 

of the roots and trappings of the faith in which we were raised.

 

It feels embedded in our genes.

The final straw that turned me away from Judaism was the

 

violence of a vengeful God in the Hebrew bible appalling.

 

Why would a loving God 
torment Job,

 

destroy all of humanity in a flood or enslave his/her chosen people?

 

Why would the Christian God allow

 

Jesus to be tortured and crucified to prove his love and devotion?

 

How can a Christian rationalize the crusades and the inquisition? Inhuman treatment in God’s name has no place in any religion.     

 

We all need to believe in something more humane,

more Unitarian Universalist as it turned out for most of us here today.

 

We UUs covenant to live by a set of values

 

developed through a process of personal and collective discernment, moral reasoning and rationality, not blind faith.

 

We UUs need a faith that is open to both science and myth and

 

places right human relations with each other and the holy as the highest good.

 

Faith doesn’t need obedience, but rather moral and ethical precepts and love eternal without dogma or creeds.

 

We live the questions of our life and learn to accept that life has no easy answers.

 

That is our way.

 

This search for meaning and connection is universal.

 

It calls UUs to use heart and intellect to find

 

values and principles by which to live,

raise a family,

interact with the world and

ultimately find comfort at the end of our days.

For many of us this experiential search is fundamental to our existence,

 

our sense of well-being and spiritual contentment.

 

We like that our faith is built on freedom,

 

but it is not the freedom to believe whatever we want.

We know by experience that with freedom comes

responsibility embedded within

Fourth Principle,

 

“a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”.

 

Unitarian Universalism encourages
us all to follow

 

our own unique spiritual path to create our own belief systems,

 

with a belief in God or not.

 

Whatever the nature of our journey we travel together in spirit.

 

Walt Whitman said it this way,

“We will go where winds blow,

waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

 

Forward after the great companions!
And to belong to them!

 

They too are on the road! …

To see nothing anywhere but

 

what you may reach it and pass it.

To look up or down no road but

It stretches and waits for you—

 

To know the universe itself as a road—

As many roads—

As roads for traveling souls.

 

That curiosity, is what beckons many of us, that

 

non-judgment openness to change and growth that

can come with fresh ideas and new connections.

 

As fellow spiritual explorers, we have a responsibility to each other, to honor our differences,

 

to reserve judgment on what we don’t understand,

to be open to a wide range of beliefs.

 

We are here to find our own

 

sacred truth that gives meaning to our lives.

 

Without that faithfulness to our own agency and our fellow travelers

 

our search can become self-serving, narcissistic, even destructive.

 

We are all, less we forget, part of

 

the interdependent web of existence.

 

As part of that connected whole

 

we must consider how our lives intersect with others and how we

are called to work for their integrity, safety and security as well as our own.

 

Paige Getty writes,

 

“too often we abandon this responsibility in our insistence on

maintaining our so-called freedom.

 

Remarkably, somehow, we seem to have convinced ourselves that

 

freedom implies an affirmation of rampant individualism—

 

 justifiable and legitimate,

 

regardless of our actions or their consequences.

 

We UU secular, atheists, agnostics and humanists can,

 like many fundamentalists,

deepen the schisms that creates

 

an “us” and “them”,

 

the religious right from left,

 

liberal from conservative,

 

rather than acknowledge that

 

another’s faith, though very  
different still has worth and validity.

 

While tolerance of religious diversity is embedded in our faith

 

we sometimes fail to grant legitimacy to

 

certain political, religious or social perspectives that vary from our own.

 

Acceptance of one another can be challenging at times but

 

we must overcome our own prejudice and resistance to diversity if

 

we are to breathe life into our faith.

 

It is a stony road we trod when

 

we set out to live with commitment and certainty

 

about our own closely held truth.

 

It also takes an open mind and a

 

loving heart to change our cherished beliefs when confronted with new insights, experiences and information.

 

If we are to honor a

 

free and responsible search for truth and meaning,

 

we are called to be intentional about our daily living including our spiritual search.

 

We must be candid about

 

what we do and say and

 

take responsibility for the

consequences of our
actions that can also affect others.

 

We must live our truth with integrity

 

 and in the words of Francis of Assisi.

 

“Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

 

In a similar manner, the great UU William Ellery Channing

 

admonished us to “live holy lives, rather than being skilled disputants”.

 

I rather think that the holy

 

eludes many of us in favor of
a good argument,

 

but life and faith are more than being right and winning.

 

It needs to be about doing
right by one another.

 

Living in harmony,

even when we disagree.

 

That ultimately, is far more satisfying and comforting than being disagreeable.

 

Sharing our spiritual truth can yield its own rewards.

 

We might ask ourselves when we face our own death

 

which of our personal truths

 

will sustain us and have meaning enough to make death bearable?

 

That is what the fourth principle is all about,

to illuminate great truths,

 

define the human condition and

provide new insight to shape the world into

 

the heaven we seek in the here and now.

 

Our unique journey happens side by side with

 

other seekers after spiritual truth.

 

Our responsibility to ourselves is

to bring reasoning to the search,

 

to accept alternative wisdom

 

that makes sense, but to not

 

rely on our own perspective alone, before we come
to a conclusion.

 

We must be willing to open

ourselves to the unexpected that some might call mystery.

 

Our common humanity, our common experience of loss and death, birth and hope

 

brings us together in this search.

 

Our free church calls us to think, reason

 

and reflect on all that we encounter in life.

 

The meaning we attribute to our experiences shapes

 

our mind and spirit and calls us to act in the world.

Beyond freedom, we are

challenged to seek authentic truth responsibly,

 

that balances freedom and responsibility

 

grounds our search for truth and meaning.

 

We must each intellectually question in what we put our faith.

 

Onward, ever onward fellow seekers and supplicants Whitman might say. 

 

The challenge is great for the road leads through the

 

unknown mystery that some call God and others love. The rewards of that journey can be life transforming.

May it be so!