Best God-Given View

Every year the East Bay Express newspaper offers awards
like the best places to meet, meditate, move,
hang out, hike, wine, dine, dance.
The paper awarded this Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
Best God-Given View.

When you stand out on the terrace on a day like today,
the view is expansive.

Our view of God and of human beings is expansive too.

What we try to do is all sit down together and reverence life—
atheist, theist, agnostic, panentheist, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist,
naturalist, humanist, mystic…
We are a community of people who are bigger than categories.

We want to meet and greet the mystery and miracle of one another
and of the wonders of the universe.

We strive to be a little microcosm of what we long for in the world.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote of God
as the “infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being.”
“If the word has not much meaning for you,”
he said, “translate it, and speak of the depths of your life,
of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern,
of what you take seriously without any reservation.
Perhaps in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional
that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself.”

God is a word for the infinite, the depth, the ultimate.
God surpasses the word God.

This week Congressional Representative Pete Stark
was declared to be the highest level non-theist holding elected public office.

Representative Stark stated he is a Unitarian who does not believe
in a Supreme Being.

He wants to work to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs
in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services.

Sounds like Representative Stark wants to speak
to the depths of human learning through science,
to the depths of human loving in marriage contracts.

Sounds like he is concerned with fairness in opportunity in the military,
equality in access to social services.
He seems to know what he takes seriously without reservation.

Isn’t this what the man from Nazareth taught
as loving your neighbor as yourself?

When you’ve got an expansive view of God,
you’ve got a pretty darn good view of humans too.
You see us humans as capable of being in touch with our depths.
You believe we can take things seriously.

A best view of God, I think, makes humans responsible.
A best view of God ought to make us more grateful,
more generous, more loving.

Three prophets of religious liberalism from our heritage
are Channing, Emerson, and Parker.
(Sounds like a rock band, doesn’t it?)

Rep. Stark seems to me to be true to the teachings of these three prophets.

I’ve been rereading their beautiful words.
When I open to an expansive view of their more traditional language,
tears come to my eyes in recognition of truths they speak.

In 1819 William Ellery Channing in an ordination sermon
spoke what was seen as heresy.
The Bible, he said, is a book written for humans in the language of humans.
Meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books.
We read exercising our reason, looking beyond the letter to the spirit,
studying to discover meaning and interpreting new truths.
This view gives humans conscience, responsibility, power, worth.

Our country is doing things most of us don’t want our country to be doing.
So much seems beyond our control.
The world around us is rapidly changing.
On the one hand, you might, like I do, want to have one little corner
of the world be something you can rely on to be unchanging,
something permanent, secure.
That’s how I sometimes feel about this community.

Other times I feel what better place to practice change than
in a community of people who share most of the same values,
who try to create a place of care and love.

This afternoon Bill and I will give the charge
to the congregation of Stockton
as they install their new minister.
(I don’t expect our charge to make history:
Channing, Emerson, Parker, and Hamilton-Holways.)

The new minister is the congregation’s seventh minister in ten years.
They have known a lot of change, unsettling, coming and going.
I don’t have to go into it, but you can imagine how with each change
there have been lots of differing opinions.
It’s been hard.

And in some ways, it has prepared them for life.
There’s a security that comes when you make it through change.
You know there’s something larger that binds you together.
You know you will be okay. This too will pass.

You know there is what passes and what is lasting.

In 1841 Theodore Parker in a sermon
on The Transient and the Permanent said,
religious forms and opinions change and perish,
but the call to new life is permanent.

“Send us a real religious life, which shall… make us better fathers, mothers, and children; a religious life, that shall go with us where we go,” he said.
Jesus “told what he saw-the Truth; he lived what he felt-a life of Love.”
We are not to bow down to him but to go and do likewise.
“Truth speaks in a thousand tongues.”

This is an expansive view of us humans.
Just us regular folks can be like Jesus
see, speak the truth, live a life of love.

Our expansive view of humankind does not exclude the atrocities
of which we humans are capable.

Here we are at the fourth anniversary of this War.
The waste of life breaks our hearts, ignites our protest.
The fear and polarization fed by the media can immobilize and isolate us.

A news shot showed a raging anti-American mob in Pakistan
burning the U.S. President in effigy.
Such new coverage makes us think the Moslem world hates us.

Then the camera backed up to show
a more expansive view of the whole block.
People were going in and out of the shops
with purchases of food and flowers.
Several were enjoying coffee at a café.
People were stopping to talk.
It looked like an American street corner.∗

Some of you have been through some of the worst of stuff,
horrible life-threatening, spirit-endangering stuff.

I long for the camera to back up to reveal a more expansive view of you.
There you are still a little girl with spunk, a trusting boy,
a sweet baby full of spirit, promise and possibility.

Then like daylight savings, I want the camera to spring forward.
There you are in the days to come, opening to something more for yourself.
Something good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1838 address
at the Harvard Divinity School said,
View “Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost.”
You are a child of God. You have a divine nature.
Be love’s poet.
You are more resilient than you know.

“O my friends,” Emerson said,
“there are resources in us on which we have not drawn.”

Draw on our human resources,
our beautiful expressions of our human promise.
Draw on our community’s and your own deeper well of wisdom.

The force of creativity, of goodness, of wisdom,
of love is working in history,
in our congregation’s story, in your story.

We are relational beings, soul mates on this journey, companions.
And at our best, we bring forth the divine possibilities in one another.

There were several Thursday nights in a row
where I tried to make sure I got home
from the church’s Thursday night programs by 10:30
so I could catch the Sarah Silverman T.V. comedy show,
followed by the Daily Show and then the Colbert Report,
two funny takes on the day’s news.

I need this to relax I’d say.
Relaxing? Commercials and banter right up until midnight?

I need to laugh I’d say,
but it kind of made me feel cynical, selfish, snide,
and like everything was meaningless.

So now, if I want the news, I read the paper.

And laugh?
Thursday night at the 7:00 worship service church member
Marsha Saxton led people in laughter yoga.
Carolyn Margrete played spirit-filled, light-hearted music.
Our bodies moved, tension loosened, laughter came easily,
imagination was freed up.

Later when I got to the Board of Trustees meeting,
there was such presence, sparkle, energy, hope.
All that felt good.

What I want is a big picture of the world.
I don’t want to avoid the pain, and I don’t want to miss the beauty.
I want words that touch my soul, inspire me.
I want to feel spirited, enlivened, connected.

At a recent meeting, a committee member said something like—
“We participate in worship by showing up.
Sing fully from your heart.
Listen to draw forth the truth.
Greet one another with kindness.
Welcome strangers as friends.”

Yes, oh yes.

Our coming together here reminds us.
We are not just plodding through life,
entertained by shopping and sensational news,
numb to the evil done to us, by us, around us,
closed off to the beauty,
driven or drifting through our days to our deaths,
eventually to be forgotten. No.

Here where we take in this beautiful God-given view,
through beautiful words, music, and people,
through expansive outlooks,
we are connected to the source of our being,
something infinite and inexhaustible
that began long before you, continues after you, always is….

Whatever it is, it won’t be confined in words.
It is found in human encounter — with one’s own depths, with others,
with the truth expressed in a thousand tongues,
with the beauty before us.

This expansiveness, depth, truth, spirit, love, God
restores the soul,
makes all things new,
will not ever let us go.
This ineffable something is in us, among us, all around us.
It can be covered over, denied, abused but never fully destroyed.
It is not transient but permanent,
always with you.
Always, always, always.
Amen.

Benediction-
May this force of creativity, of goodness,
of wisdom, of love lure us forward,
make us ready for the coming day.
 ♦