What Am I Doing Here?

Rev. Joe Cherry

WONDERFALLS was a gem of a television show that didn't last. It was about a woman, Jaye Tyler, who went to Brown University, got a degree in Philosophy, and returned to hometown of Niagara Falls, NY. Jaye is kind of an over-educated, under-employed slacker, and she takes perverse pride in that. She has a job in a tourist trap souvenir shop. The show starts the day that one of the many souvenir animals that are sold in Jaye's store, Wonderfalls, begins to speak to her. She spends much of the series trying to figure out if God is speaking to her, or Satan, or is she losing her mind. In this episode, Jaye encounters a nun on the run, living in a barrel, in Jaye's favorite bar. Over lunch, Jaye asks Katrina the Nun;

Jaye:
If you're so happy with the sisters in the field, why'd you leave?

Katrina:
It was the cheese. The cheese was my undoing. (Holding up a plate of cheese fries)

This is the miracle of life melted over these chili fries. A bacterial flirtation with enzymes. The commingling of friendly micro- organisms giving birth to curds and whey ... "and from dust He created the universe."

The mirco-organisms in this cheese tell me God exists.

(re: her body) This sack of meat that holds a soul tells me God exists. God himself, however, hasn't told me anything. Not really. Not definitively. And certainly not out loud.

Jaye:
You don't really want the out loud part, do you? I mean, that's gotta be upsetting. I'm sure of it.

Katrina:
Not as upsetting as doubt. It's a sin to live in His house when doubt lives in your heart. And I know the exact moment it moved in. I was in the kitchen nibbling on the fresh Pecorino Sister Louise brought back from Italy and I thought: what if it's just cheese?

What if I'm just cheese? What if this sack of meat is only a bacterial flirtation and my soul is just a co-mingling of friendly micro-organisms?

Jaye:
But God's your thing. You grew alfalfa in the fields and took a vow.

Katrina:
How can I commit my life to something I'm not sure is real?

Good morning! It's really nice to be here! If you are exploring religious faiths and you are here with us today, I hope you'll find something here that you can relate to.

I am a Unitarian Universalist. I do not hyphenate that. I don't consider myself a "fill in the blank" dash UU. I am a Unitarian Universalist who is most often struck with the majesty of the natural world around me. Here in Modesto, after 20+ years of living in large urban cities, I may have landed in paradise!

Today I want to ask the question: What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist?

Part of what it means to be in our faith is to fully embrace our tradition of Liberal Theology. This doesn't mean Liberal politics, by the way. Although there is a high frequency of Unitarian Universalists who vote politically liberal, the two are not synonymous. Liberal Theology is a theology of self-reflexive examination. There is a pull for the liberal theologist, a word I just made up, to consider and reconsider our belief systems. This act of turning our religion around to look at it and rediscover it from a different angle, to us is holy work. Elton Trueblood, a Quaker Theologian, wrote: "The unexamined faith is not worth having." Not every Unitarian Universalist is a theologian, but still we all encounter theology, and I think to lump every person who thinks about faith into that term does a disservice to the professional, academic theologian, as well as to the person maintains an engaged, yet more casual relationship with theology, hence the word "theologist."

We are a curious bunch. I am a seeker among seekers; a seeker of the way. I do not necessarily know "the way." I am seeking my spiritual path.

As a child I refused to believe in Hell. I tried to reason with my childhood pastor, saying "If punishment is supposed to make you behave, you need a chance to prove that. There is no point in eternal punishment except cruelty, and you teach us that God is Love." For me, the two just didn't jibe. And I have been wandering around theologically ever since. Though he was a kind man to me, Pastor Jim would answer my questions by saying "It's a matter of faith, Joe." And I didn't understand what he meant by that. To me, that was not an answer.

I am not the first Unitarian Universalist to take what might appear to be a winding path of spirituality. People in Unitarian and Universalism and then Unitarian Universalism have been seeking for generations. When we think about those who have gone before us, those who have died in the name of religious liberty, we celebrate our forebears.

In the three synoptic Gospels of the Christian New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus tells his disciples "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." This lesson has been of interest to me since I first heard it. I have wondered at the meaning of "rich" in this passage. At first reading, this passage seems to implicate the wealthy as less than desired by God, or less receptive to the salvific or saving message of Jesus. One way in which I have considered this question is to think of "richness" and "wealth" in terms not of cash on hand, but intellectual curiosity and intellectual capacity. Think about that for a moment.

It is, generally speaking, the more intellectually curious who struggle with faith. Those of us who cannot accept things at first glance are perhaps doomed, in all of our questioning, to be plagued with doubt. There are plenty of smart people who aren't intellectually curious, don't get me wrong. But it is those of us who are curious who are in trouble here.

The story goes that Jesus came to Earth to save the people, and through faith, the people will be saved. Now obviously this is a vast simplification, and there are many people of the Christian faith who will disagree about the details-but this is the basic message Jesus leaves his followers: believe in me, and you shall be saved.

Except I can't just "believe." I need to know why. Those of us who need to know why have as much chance of getting into the Kingdom of God, as that camel does getting through that needle.

Doubt is my constant companion in my spiritual life. What if I'm wrong? What if I ask too many questions? What if it really is just that simple, and I'm too obstinate to believe? I spent many years of my life in awe of, and honestly admiring the people of faith who just "know the truth." Okay, to be totally honest, I've been a little jealous of them. It must be very comforting to "know" something that important and that integral in your life which such certainty.

Come with me, and sit with me in doubt.

Like Katrina, the nun in the excerpt from a little bit ago, I am plagued by the question "what if it's just cheese?"

But what if it is, in fact, just cheese? There is still meaning in my life. I do not know the larger, cosmic plan, or even if there is one. I don't know how to define God except in the most nebulous terms. This does not mean that I don't have a responsibility to infuse my life and my labors with meaning. This lack of knowledge does not let me off the hook for making the world a better place to live in. "Better" which means reducing my fossil fuel usage, which is a little sad for a guy who likes to take long drives into the country-side. Now that we're in Modesto, though, and I bought a hybrid car, I'm wondering how many rides in the country-side I can have, because our car gets about double the mileage of my old car!

It also means buying the sometimes more expensive item that comes in packaging that's better for the environment, or the more expensive food item that's better for my body. Things like marriage rights for all people, including gays and lesbians. Things like water justice.

And what about doubt and religious leadership? When a little child comes to me, as minister, and asks me about faith? I can't in good conscience say "Well, Brenda, it's a matter of faith." What will I say? Will I have the courage to sit with this fictional Brenda and say to her "The world can be very both confusing and wonderful, Brenda. What do you think about your Grandma's death?' And will that answer serve Brenda best?

Dolly Parton wrote and sang a song for the movie Transamerica, a movie about a person who is in the middle of their gender transition, and along the way finds out that she had, about 16 years ago, fathered a child. The movie is as much about the transformation of a person as they become a parent as it is about a person who is transgender. In the song Dolly writes: "Questions I have many, answers but a few. We're here to learn, the Spirit burns to know the greater truth." We are seeking the greater truth. This is why we are here: in this church, in this faith. We do not KNOW. We SEEK, and this is in part, what makes us Unitarian Universalists. This is what drives some of us, like James Luther Adams to become ministers. A professor at both Meadville Lombard, and the Harvard Divinity School, he wrote: "Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism."

Often we hear from the non-Unitarian Universalist world that we are the church of non-belief. That we'll believe anything. That we believe nothing. One of my favorite scenes from the Simpson's television show takes place at the Springfield church. At an ice cream social hosted by Reverend Lovejoy, there are featured several "Crucifixins," including Blessed Virgin Berry, Commandmint, and Biblegum. "You can even have a Unitarian ice-cream," says the Reverend Lovejoy. "Oh, I'll have one of those," says Lisa. When presented with the bowl, she exclaims, "But there's nothing in it!" "Exactly," says Lovejoy.

As you might imagine, even though I adore the many Unitarian Universalist jokes on the Simpson's, I disagree with the sentiment. By the way, for those who do not know, the creator of the Simpon's, Matt Groenig, is himself a Unitarian Universalist. Haven't you noticed how UU Lisa is?

While we do not have a creed, nor do we have dogma, we have a tradition of openness and, at our best, respect. We have a tradition of Liberal Theology. We have our tradition of social action based on our religious need to affect change in the world. Some Unitarian Universalists find it frustrating that we don't have a core, or a center. But I think that we do. We are Unitarian Universalists first. Though we may find inspiration in the teachings of the Buddha, or of Jesus or Maya Angelou, we come to Unitarian Universalist churches to be together and explore what these teachings mean to us. We may not come from a single point of inspiration in our congregations, but still we come together. Instead of that single point, we have a hole, and empty bowl(?) a sphere; a space between. Through that space we connect with each other. The Christ inspired person can recognize and honor the wisdom in the teachings of a worshipper of Nature. The Humanist can see the benefit of the meditative practice of a Buddhist.

Though our theologies may not come together in a fine point, we are spiritually relational to one another. That space between us and our theologies is, for us, a holy place. A place of reverence. The place where we try a little extra harder to be our best selves.

In Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching, it says "Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub; it is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges. We make a vessel from a lump of clay; it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful."

We would never know this place between us, our divine absence if you will, if we were not seekers, questioners, brave souls searching for answers. This is not easy work. It is perhaps less satisfying at times than being able to say, with honesty in one's heart, "I put all my trust in Jesus." But it is our work.

And this work of ours would be unknown to us if we weren't at some level doubters. It seems to me that doubt is a holy aspect of our lives. We are not an empty bowl of ice cream. Theologically, or perhaps I should say, religiously, we are that space. That holy place between us.

My home church, The First Unitarian Society of Chicago, is referred to by some as "the Unitarian Cathedral" because it was modeled after a 14^th century gothic cathedral in Scotland. Behind where the choir sings, there is an empty niche. That niche is intentionally empty, so that worshippers can place their own highest aspirations and ideals there. Before I left Chicago I had become one of the unofficial historians there, and as such, I heard many stories. Once, there was a fairly big ruckus because someone put flowers in the niche. How they got them up there I'll never know ... it must be 30 feet from the floor!

But my favorite story about the niche is this one: Once a pair of Catholic nuns came into the sanctuary, because they were curious about it. After wandering around the inside, they found themselves at the steps up to the narthex, one pointed to our empty niche and exclaimed to the other "Look Sister! It's the Divine Absence!" Ever since that day, I have thought about the niche holding the place of the Divine Absence. The divine space between.

Katrina, the nun from the earlier reading, does eventually find her way back to faith, through a series of sometimes comic, sometimes profound mis-steps. She finds what she is looking for, but not anywhere near where she thought she might find it. Isn't that so often the way it goes?

In seeking, we find freedom. In freedom we CAN find truth. Our truth. In truth the world is a wonderful and terrible and confusing place. And we have the freedom to find it's meaning and it's beauty because we question. The questioning mind is not a curse, but a blessing.

There is a beauty in the tension between the stability we long for, and the uncertainty we live in. May we always have the strength to question the world around us with reverence, open minds, loving hearts and hands ready for work.

January 29, 2012

This is from a collection of sermons by Rev. Joe Cherry. We also have sermons by
Rev. Grace Simons, who retired in October 2011.
Our Guests, who include visiting clergy, lay people and one rocket scientist.