Sermon by John Cullinan
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
October 16, 2005
First Reading:
from Genesis
Now the whole earth had one language and the same
words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of
Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make
bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for
mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with
its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall
be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” God came down to see the
city and the tower, which mortals had built. And God said, “Look, they are one
people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what
they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not
understand one another’s speech.” So God scattered them abroad from there over
the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore, it
was called Babel, because there God confused the language of all the earth; and
from there God scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Second Reading:
from Engaging Our Theological Diversity, by the UUA Commission on
Appraisal
Diversity,
both cultural and religious, has been the watchword of the movement’s recent
past, and insofar as that indicates UUs’ sincere desire to be truly open and
welcoming of people of all sorts in the UU fellowship, that emphasis is all to
the good. And certainly the world today sorely needs communities of faith,
indeed communities of all kinds, that are models of inclusion and pluralism
where human differences do not divide. But, diversity by itself, important as it
is, is an insufficient institutional goal. More pressing is the question of what
we are calling people into community for. If we are a religious
community, shouldn’t we be able to articulate theologically and religiously what
it is that unites us?
Sermon:
"So, how do you Unitarians use the Bible,
anyway?”
I had been expecting this question. From the moment I had
begun my work as an intern chaplain at the hospital, I knew that at some point I
was going to be getting into a debate, or even an argument, about religious
belief and authority. With such a broad range of religious cultures and beliefs
working together in a relatively small space, the theological infighting was, I
believed, inevitable. So, when Michael, the fundamentalist evangelical in the
office, asked me the Bible question, I came back with my prepared response.
“It’s one book out of many that we use. It’s a source of
inspiration, and it’s open to interpretation, but it’s not in any way
authoritative. Some of us don’t use it at all.”
And then I steeled myself, went into an intellectually
defensive stance, and waited with my breath held for the ideological pummeling I
was certain would follow.
Michael paused for a moment and thought about what I had
just said.
“Oh,” he replied, “I guess that cancels out the next
question I was going to ask. Never mind, then.” And then he turned back to his
computer to continue writing up a report on one of his patient visits from
earlier that morning.
And I stood there, stunned.
Where was the fight, the attempt to argue against my
scriptural flippancy and win my soul for Jesus? Where was the theological debate
I’d been expecting?
The answer to these questions was deceptively simple, and
had been staring me in the face for weeks before this exchange with my
evangelical co-worker.
On most of the shifts I worked at the hospital, the intern
chaplains’ suite was usually occupied by three people: myself (Socialist liberal
Unitarian Universalist), Michael, the aforementioned conservative evangelical
fundamentalist Christian, and Wajid, a rare specimen, the oft talked about but
seldom seen up close fundamentalist Muslim.
You might expect dangerous chemical reactions to occur
between such disparate, volatile elements when placed in the crucible of a
shared office. Your expectations, like mine, would be confounded. Michael and
Wajid’s tenures at the hospital had preceded mine by a few months, and they were
already fast friends by the time I arrived on the scene. Their camaraderie
perplexed many who knew them and their religious backgrounds. At best, folks in
the hospital expected of each a grudging tolerance of the other. What they got
instead was a close working friendship between the two. Other chaplains
scrambled for explanations for a relationship that seemed to them impossible.
“It’s their fundamentalism,” one said to me. “It gives them
a shared worldview.” On the surface, that seemed like a reasonable explanation.
But the sources of each of their “fundamentals” came from such different worlds,
it seemed improbable to me that a shared love for literal interpretation of
their respective scriptures was enough to form such a strong bond between the
two. Coupled with this doubt was the fact that, the more I worked with the two,
the more I became drawn into the circle of this working relationship.
Fundamentalism certainly was not the factor that connected me to them.
What was it, then?
After the near miss of the Bible fight between Michael and
myself, we went back to our respective report writing. When a few moments had
passed, Michael sat down beside me.
“I’ve got a patient you need to go visit. I think he needs
a different face besides mine.”
“When you’re done there,” says Wajid, “I need to get both
of your perspectives on one of my visits.”
And there was my answer. None of us had come into the
hospital to debate theology. We had come to the hospital to “do” theology. We
had come to the hospital with a sense of mission and ministry, and our shared
sense of mission, our drive to meet the needs of others – our practical
theology – had trumped our conceptual, ideological theologies.
**********
Here is one of my favorite jokes about Unitarian
Universalists: wherever two or more are gathered, no one will agree and coffee
will be served.
Here is one of my favorite questions from the Hebrew
Scriptures: the prophet Amos asks, “Can two people walk together unless they are
agreed?”
The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on
Appraisal begins its latest study, Engaging Our Theological Diversity, by
asking an important question: where is the unity in our theological
diversity? There is a certain tension in that question that feels something like
the rift that opens in the pairing of the Unitarian joke and the quote from
Amos. It is a tension that has been building up since the time of the merger of
Unitarianism and Universalism in 1961. Two religions with distinct theological
centers join together, but avoid staking any claim on theological ground –
perhaps in keeping with both churches’ traditions of non-creedalism, or perhaps
out of some fear that the theologies might not be at all compatible. The benefit
of this circumstance is the creation of this “big tent” sense of inclusiveness
when it comes to religious belief. The drawback is that, frequently, once you’re
inside the tent, you sit at a table with your fellow believers and rarely
interact with the other tables, at least when it comes to beliefs. This often
translates into a certainty that on some level, we are being excluded from full
participation.
In Unitarian Universalism today, there is more often than
not a fear or mistrust of the theology of the other, that sense of exclusion
leading many to believe that they are somehow in a minority. This fear shows
itself most sharply when leaders in the church begin throwing around phrases and
ideas such as “a language of reverence” or “unity in theological diversity.”
After the Commission on Appraisal presented their report at General Assembly
this past June, I began to hear remarkably similar comments from Unitarian
Universalists who identified themselves along all points of the theological
spectrum.
“That language won’t be my language.” “They’re not talking
about me.” And, most disheartening, “They’re trying to take my religion away
from me.”
The overwhelming sense I came away with at general assembly
was that, whatever is happening to Unitarian Universalism, and something is
happening, it isn’t going to include them.
On the converse side of the feeling that everything would
be lost theologically, was the notion that, for some reason, one’s “side” needed
to have some sort of outright win. Coupled with the desperation felt over the
lack of inclusion, was a seeming urge to play theology as some sort of zero-sum,
winner-take-all game. In one on-line discussion group, the conversation around
the idea of unity in diversity became framed around a question of “tipping
points.” “What are the circumstances,” it was asked, “in which you'd feel you no
longer belong in your own religious home?” It’s discussions such as this that
lead one of my colleagues to refer to the unity question as, “the great
denominational red herring.” It’s a good question on the surface, but one that
ultimately leads to griping and negativity, and not any sort of constructive
discussion about the question of our unity. A sense of fear becomes evident in
the discussion, and much of that fear centers on the use of words.
This is hardly surprising. We are a denomination in love
with words. After all, the high point of a majority of Unitarian Universalist
worship services is when some guy or gal in a nice suit or maybe even a robe
stands up in the pulpit and talks at you for fifteen to twenty minutes or so.
But, are words sufficient for faith? When we talk about a
language of reverence, what do we mean when we say “language?” When we talk
about finding unity in diversity, are we merely focusing on the words of
personal beliefs and creeds?
I believe that language, specifically a spiritual language,
inhabits many more dimensions than just mere words. My attempts to communicate
with you on a spiritual level begin with ideas rooted in personal experience.
Sometimes these ideas are verbal in nature. Often times they are not. I
translate these ideas into the spoken word, and release those words from the
pulpit or in a pastoral conversation, knowing full well that the words I speak
and the words you hear are two entirely different creatures. My words
(hopefully) translate back into ideas in your minds.
What are the odds that our ideas look the same at the end
of this process?
Now perhaps by conspiracy of time and culture we might
share some common, archetypal ideas or experiences that help to bridge the gap
between our ideas and our words. The more concrete the word or experience, the
easier it is to build that bridge.
If I say the word “brown,” the majority of you are probably
thinking the same thing. If I say the word “dance,” some groups of different
images are starting to crop up here and there, perhaps divided along
generational lines.
And what if I were to say the word “grace”? Or “salvation.”
Or even “God.”
Do the words do my ideas justice? Are my ideas and your
ideas remotely connected? Are we even speaking the same language? If mere words
are insufficient, then, what’s left?
I used to keep a Post-it note near my computer when I was
writing my entrance essay for seminary. It read, “Faith is a verb.” Or, in the
words of my undergraduate acting professors: Show. Don’t tell.
The church requires more than our words. It demands an
active, practical element to faith. The action – the mission – becomes the third
dimension of this religious vocabulary, and our faith becomes something
demonstrable rather than something merely debatable.
It is interesting to note that the Arabic word for belief
comes from a root that means, “that which can be shown.” I learned that from a
Muslim.
************
Wajid, Michael, and I continued working out of our shared
office for most of the summer months. As we worked together in our shared
ministry, our appreciation for one another’s faiths deepened. Granted, we
avoided volatile topics such as scripture and interpretation, but what we
learned through the daily exercise of our practical theologies was what it was
about our faiths that impelled us into this ministry. What we would not have
been able to understand had we merely been sitting in a room talking about our
religions, we were able to embrace about each other because we had ministered
together first.
When it came time for Michael and Wajid to move on, the
chaplaincy staff sat down together to worship and wish them well. The two
friends led the service, each bringing a piece of their own faith traditions
into the chapel. Michael read from the Bible, and for a moment I was able to see
what he saw in scripture through the filter of his ministry. More amazing was
Wajid, who opened the service with the traditional call to prayer in Arabic. It
is a language I do not speak, although I am aware of the English translation of
the call. To see Wajid in that moment through the lens of our shared
understanding of our call to service was to see an oft-misunderstood religion
breach barriers of culture and language for one brief moment and become
something beautiful.
Disparate faiths brought us together. The call to comfort
the sick and the dying and their loved ones opened our faiths up to each other.
We left with our faiths enriched by the shared mission.
I was concerned that perhaps this understanding I had
gained of the place of mission in religious dialogue came out of a special
circumstance. Perhaps it was possible that Michael, Wajid, and I had achieved
something special at one time, in one place, with results not repeatable outside
the zone of the hospital.
My first week here in Oak Park proved this fear unfounded.
Within a week of arriving at Unity Temple, I found myself sitting in a room of
clergy and other representatives from multiple faiths: Christians both liberal
and conservative, Jews, Buddhists, and more. We had come together to discuss how
we could better coordinate our efforts in serving the needs of the poor and
homeless in the community. The only audible religious language was the prayer
that opened the brunch. After that, the clergy got down to business, sharing
stories of what they knew of the needs in the community, and building a plan to
create a central place of service where local churches can channel their
resources so that all needy members of the community can find a way back into
society. The word “God” was never spoken. But you’d better believe the language
was one of faith.
Our varied faiths brought us to the table, but the work
kept us there.
*********
The exercise of a
practical theology is by no means an ultimate solution. The mission is not a replacement for honest theological dialogue. We come into the “big tent” of
Unitarian Universalism from many different traditions. Some cherish their
heritage. Others are wounded by it. There is talking that needs to be done, but
sometimes the words get in the way. Sometimes we are left stranded at the table
of those “just like us,” afraid to engage with others for fear of being labeled
“different” or worse, discovering there is no place for us in the tent after
all. But, where do we start when words are not enough?
Do we, like the builders of Babel, abandon the job when our
language is confused? Do we echo Amos, and ask if we can possibly walk together
without being in agreement?
Or do we, perhaps, name our purpose and our mission in the
world, put words aside for a while, and just begin to walk?
© Copyright 2005 John
Cullinan, All Rights Reserved.
