A Gift of Faith

Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
November 13, 2005

A Story for All Ages:

A little boy named Billy had an awful lot of energy, and his teachers and relatives often didn’t know how to respond to him. Billy was a boy who loved to play, to run, and to laugh. But he didn’t always notice everything around him, that is, he didn’t always realize when it was a good time to play, to run, to laugh.

There was the time in the third grade that the class was walking to the bus for a field trip and there in the yard were several geese. Billy bolted. He ran toward those geese so excited, one of the teachers, Mr. Scruggs started yelling at him. Billy heard him but he was too excited to stop. The geese flew, and one of them pooped and the poop landed on the head of Mr. Scruggs. When Billy saw this he started laughing. Mr. Scruggs got so red and said to Billy, “Billy, you are a bad boy. You’re going to stay here with me!” and Billy didn’t get to go on the field trip. Do you know anybody that gets into trouble all the time? Well, Billy was one of those people.

When he went to a church camp, he took the toilet paper out of the bathroom and rolled it across the cabin. On a hike, he went off the trail and it took so long for the counselors to find them and they got back so late that they missed lunch. The people running the camp told Billy that he was a bad boy and if he didn’t shape up, then they and God would never love him.

That’s when he started crying. He cried and cried and cried, because he was believing that he would never be loved. His mother talked to him and learned why he had changed, and she said, “That’s it, we’re going to another church. We’ll go to that church with a rainbow flag in front of it—and where it says, “Love is the doctrine of this congregation.’”

Billy got involved in the junior high youth group, but he was too scared to say anything or do anything. Then one day, everyone was eating hot dogs, and Billy was using the ketchup and all of a sudden it splattered all over the director of religious education, the guy who was the principle of the program. All the kids laughed, and Billy laughed too for a moment, and then he remembered the words, Billy you are a bad boy. The director of religious education must have seen something in Billy’s face because he said, “ Billy, I love you and there is nothing you can do about it.” Tears filled up in Billy’s face.

Then during coffee hour, Billy’s class came in to get cookies, but there was someone from school who said to Billy, “Why are you here? You are a bad boy.” Billy knocked over the table, and cookies went everywhere. A religious education teacher overheard what happened, and he came over and said, “Billy, I love you and there is nothing you can do about it.” She then explained that she didn’t like Billy’s behavior of knocking down the  table,but that she did love Billy—no matter what he did. Well, Billy then went to a camp like Marwood. There he started yelling at one of the counselors, saying that he hated himself, he hated everyone, and he hated everything. The camp counselor told Billy he could yell all he wanted but said to remember, “I love you, and there is nothing you can do about it!”

First Reading:
"Saint Francis and the Sow" by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing,
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down though the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Second Reading:
from William Ellery Channing

The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs;

Not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden the memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought; not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment. In a word, the great end in religious instruction is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.

Sermon:

 

People come to my office to talk with me about all sorts of issues, struggles, hopes, concerns, joys, sorrows. Over the past year one particular issue surfaced more than any other and it is this: as a liberal faith community that puts the responsibility for discerning truth and meaning in the individual conscience, what do we teach our young people who have not yet developed their faculties of examination? In other words, how do we provide our younger children with a solid religious foundation? How do we provide a positive faith identity within a tradition that respects other faith traditions? How do we provide our children with the gift of faith?

These were the questions that I took to General Assembly in June. My primary focus of attention was on how our ministry of religious education here at Unity Temple can be enhanced, with a specific question of how to engage our youngest children. I got to know one of the main presenters, Cathy Keith, the Director of Religious Education at All Souls Unitarian Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After I had shared with her about what all is going on here at Unity Temple, we were walking to a meeting and she asked, “So how many children do you have?” I said, “None yet, but Angie and I hope to have children.” She stopped and looked at me with a sly grin and said, “Wrong answer. You have two hundred children! As the minister of Unity Temple, you are ultimately responsible for the faith development of the children in your congregation’s care.”

I gulped! I have long struggled with the question how we as a liberal religious community can cultivate within our children a healthy faith upon which they can lean in times of struggle and from which they strive for compassion and justice. Our faith tradition calls for an examined faith, but at age 4 or 5, one does not yet have the skills of critical inquiry or abstract thought. We do a disservice to our children if we simply provide them the seven principles, albeit in simple language, which is the normative practice in Unitarian Universalist congregations. I am appreciative of our Director of Religious Education, Bob Fox, for trying to find innovative, thoughtful ways to do just this. As important as these values are, they are abstract enough that they need something more which sparks their imagination.

Most of our children here grow up understanding that Santa Claus is a robust older man who lives at the North Pole and visits the homes of people all over the world on Christmas Eve. When children get older they often believe other things, yet many grow up with a faith that there is a spirit of generosity in the human heart. Similarly, I would encourage belief in the tooth fairy to allow children to relish the magic of their universe. No matter how old you are, there is something precious about looking forward to the visit of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Indeed, I still believe in Santa Claus, perhaps not as I did as a child, but I believe in the generosity and kindness of love. I believe love can multiply and be shared all around the world, that it spontaneously regenerates, that when you give love, you don’t lose it, and when you receive it, you don’t take it away, instead it just grows and grows.

I’d like to suggest a similar development of belief in what we may call God, Spirit of Life, or Higher Power. If we come to cherish an examined faith, what we learn about the creator of the universe as a child won’t be the same beliefs we hold on to throughout our lives. It is helpful for children to have images and stories of the ultimate, metaphorical vehicles in which to get some grasp on the most difficult questions in life, but those metaphors will change. For faith education is not all that different from sex education. If children don’t learn anything from their parents or their religious education program, then the children will learn it from their peers.

I was in the first grade when my classmate who lived a couple houses down was with me in front of the house in which I grew up. Little Laura said to me, “Alan, put your ear to the driveway, and you can hear hell.” I put my ear to the cement, and sure enough, there was a sound. Only later would I learn it was a similar sound to a shell, but then, it made an impression on me as Laura said, “Yep, you can hear the devil down there, all right.” It made such an impression on me that I went to my mother and asked her about hell. I remember her answer with vivid clarity. “Your father and I don’t believe there is a hell. Instead, I believe there are many stages of heaven. How good you are in this life determines which level of heaven you’ll go to.” And for years I had this picture in my head that everyone goes to heaven, which was like a several storied building. It served me well as a child. The funny thing is that my mother has no memory of that conversation and no memory of ever holding the belief of a multi-storied heaven. What mattered was that she provided me an honest answer to my religious inquiry, which served me until I could discern the truth for myself.

I am a big proponent of understanding the ultimate ground of existence in metaphors and narrative images, whether as children or adults. However, just because we have a concrete image at one stage in our life doesn’t mean we will forever hold on to it. In college, I constantly disagreed with one roommate about God. He’d say something about God, and I’d respond that it was true for his concept of God. He’d respond, “I am not talking about a concept, I am talking about the reality of God.” And I’d reply, “No, you are speaking out of your concept of God. There are other concepts of God for which the things you say would not be true.” I’m lucky he didn’t hit me.

If anything is at the center of our faith tradition, at the center of Unitarian Universalist theology, it is the transformational power of love. Let me repeat that more clearly: at the center of our faith tradition is the transformational power of love. It is ironic that in the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism forged twenty years ago, love is not mentioned. This is why the seven UU principles are not enough. If in our classrooms, there is no invocation, reference, or stories about the transformational power of love, then we are failing to provide our children with a foundation for their faith.

I know one woman who left Unitarian Universalism for a conservative Christian nondenominational church. She said, “No one ever told me that God loves me or, at the very least, that I am loved, that love is ultimately what we human beings ought to be about.”

I too often hear Unitarian Universalist parents and children complain about the over-emphasis of world religions and the under-emphasis of Unitarian Universalist identity. Too often curriculums teach about the holidays and customs of other people without ever providing a foundation of beliefs for our own. One parent told me that his child said, and this was many years ago, “If we do world religions one more time, I’m going to puke.” Now don’t get me wrong. I think learning about other religions is important, especially when children are of junior high and high school age. But for our youngest, the question that nags at me is how we provide them with a center, a foundation for their journey, a faith in the transformational power of love. And, when our children graduate from high school, I sincerely hope they will have a better understanding of our own faith tradition than any other, or else we likely won’t ever see them again.

Two weeks ago I gave what I believe was my most challenging sermon to date. In it I challenged this congregation to bring forth a resonant faith for today. One thoughtful member then challenged me, pointing out that it is the responsibility of the minister to midwife such a faith among the people—and that the UU clergy have typically been too timid to explore and make manifest the transformational power of love—that which I claim is the heart of our tradition. With you as my witness today, I commit to doing exactly that as best as I can, not only for the sake of our adult members but for the sake of all of our members.

It matters how we go about providing religious education if we are to provide the gift of faith. Most of us know all too well the traditional form of teaching that seeks to impart information as if the human mind was a bank into which and from which information goes and comes. Of course there is a place for didactic forms of education. However, the greatest learning, I believe, comes from a different educational philosophy, an educational philosophy that comes out of our Unitarian religious heritage.

How many of you have heard of William Ellery Channing? He is known as the granddaddy of American Unitarianism. For in one famous sermon, he gave voice to the Unitarian beliefs on the Bible, on human reason as a source of religious authority, and that Jesus was fully human, not fully divine. As important as this sermon was in American history, this was not what made William Ellery Channing one of the greatest theologians this country has ever seen. What made him great was his understanding of the human spiritual life. Throughout his writing, Channing was clear that the primary goal of religion was not about teaching a doctrine. The aim of religion was the development of a person's spirit. Channing called this process 'self-culture.' By self he did not mean the psychological entity we think of today when we hear that word. He meant something more akin to soul or spirit. And with the word culture, according to Roy Phillips, Channing had resonances of horticulture, agriculture--cultivation. Self-culture was the cultivation of the spirit--spiritual development.

I chose Galway Kinnell's poem for a reading this morning because the bud that stands for all things is as much a human being as a sow. Though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing, a human being, its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of this precious flower and retell this human being in words and in touch it is lovely until the inner child flowers again from within, of self-blessing. 

What do I want for our children here at Unity Temple? I want our children to know there is indeed hope in the world, that there are morals, that there is such a thing as right and wrong and that there are differing degrees of rightness and wrongdoing.

I want our children to become human beings of compassion, achievement, integrity, and discipline.

I want our children to learn of the inspiring heritage we have.

I want our children to develop what I call critical inquiry, the capacity to think critically and inquire out of a sense of genuine interest.

I want our children to learn how to make good decisions, drawing on the authority of personal experience, the authority of reason, and the authority of tradition.

I want our children to know where we human beings have failed and to have the hope that we can move forward,

I want our children to learn that they are the authors of their lives, that they are free to explore the wide wonders of the world, free to compose their lives as the seed within them dictates.

I want to dare our children to be creative rather than passively accept the world just the way things are.

I want our children to discern what is truly important to them.

Finally, I want to spark our children's imaginations, so they may dream and envision a world that is better than the one we've got so they can bring it into being.

I want all of these because I believe that in each child and adult there lays dormant life's longing for itself.

I believe it is possible to develop an environment where children can flower from within, of self-blessing. And I believe in developing a religious education program, a faith development program, that provides both a foundational center from which our children can trust the transformative power of love and an ethical framework from which our children can develop their own morals.

Nearly 200 years ago, Channing professed the value of liberal religious education. He advocated for creating an environment that challenges and encourages growth and allows the latent seeds of creativity and insight to grow within. But this environment must be fostered, it must be tended, it must receive energy and attention by adults and a well-crafted program to create the opportunities for growth and personal exploration. He saw a religious education program as a garden to be tended, loved, and nurtured.  Children then will more likely cultivate their best selves. But it takes the love and attention by many gardeners to make this garden flourish.

Children learn best by example. This means everyone here plays a part in our children’s development. If we want to provide our children with the gift of faith, our children need to see people being faithful, living out one’s values in community. Your minister and the director of religious education aren’t the only people that are involved in the faith development of our children. Actually, the lion’s share of that work comes from our members, both in and outside the classroom. I understand that Bob welcomes more teachers. I urge you to consider serving here in this capacity. Teaching is a spiritual practice in and of itself, but that is another sermon. This morning, my message is that we are here to inspire our children to live out of love, spreading hope, faith, and courage in our world. There are too many people who are like my childhood playmate who live in fear, who see the bad in the world and in themselves instead of the good, who don’t cultivate the inner capacities for bringing about truth, beauty, and justice. I so want our children to know they are loved. How about you?

 May it be so. Amen.

© Copyright 2005 Rev. Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.