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The
Religious Impulse and the Liberal Spirit
Sermon
delivered at All Souls Community Church
in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Sunday September 7,
2003
©
The
Reverend Doctor Brent A. Smith
SERMON
This past summer we had the privilege of hosting as our summer preacher Rev. Tom
Burdett, who was a student with me when I was Minister at our sister
congregation, All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have had the
honor of working with several student interns in 20 years of ministry, and one,
Rev. Mark Christian, who heads our sister church in
Oklahoma City, offered these insights into the meaning of metaphor, the foundation of
religious language:
It seems worthy to
revisit what a metaphor is and what it does. Linguistically, we employ a
metaphor to use something we know more about to describe the nature of something
we know less about. For metaphors to remain elastic (and therefore useful) we
must recognize that there is always an "is not" element in the comparison. When
we lose this "is not" function the metaphor becomes concretizes and we confuse
it for a definition or (worse yet) substitute meaning.
-Rev. Mark Christian,
email correspondence, August 2003
“My
love’s like a red, red rose,” wrote the poet Robert Burns, and my love for my
wife Pat and a red, red rose are two different things. But, while I can touch a
rose, smell a rose, see a rose, grow a rose, I cannot know love as tangibly as
this. Yet, the touch, and fragrance, and sight, of my beloved grow a feeling
inside of me whose beauty is as a rose. So I use what I know, the rose, to
express what I cannot know, love, but I can’t go outside my house and pick my
love off of a rose bush!
I would
maintain that if you cannot make this distinction you cannot understand
religion, which concerns the life of the spirit and the way the human
imagination creates a connection with an unseen order to existence.
William
James in his classic of the 20th century, The Varieties of
Religious Experience, talked about what he called “live” issues. Now,
issues don’t breathe, yet some feel as close to us as our own breadth.
Metaphorically we know some issues feel as close to us as the presence and
fragrance of our beloved, or even our own heartbeat.
And
some issues are “live” ones to us that we’re not immediately aware of. The well
being of President Bush is a “live” issue for each one of us, even though we may
rarely think about it. Were he to die suddenly, like President Kennedy, we
would know how “live” the issue is. And none of us here, I think, even knows
President Bush personally. So, issues can be “live” to us that we are not even
aware of, and they can involve people whom we do not know personally but,
somehow, through event and circumstance, are connected with, bound by destiny.
There
are religious issues that are “live” to us, although one of the most difficult
challenges in modern life is to see and understand something as a religious
issue. Today we tend to look at issues politically, psychologically,
historically, even in terms of physics or biology before looking at an issue
religiously. This is due in part to our inability to describe what is
religious; our limited capacity to engage the religious impulse that lies within
human nature, a unique modern situation that has no parallels in the past.
To the
religiously orthodox in our culture religion is largely an issue of belief or
non-belief, right or wrong, good or evil. The more liberal minded usually do
not possess the capacity to describe a religious issue because like the
orthodox, thinking religious issues are issues of belief, the liberal minded
often just shrugs off issues with the disposable and forgettable phrase, “I
don’t believe [fill in the blank].” But what if the issue is an issue of
the spirit that engages the religious impulse?
Take,
for example, the situation last week of Paul Hill, the former Presbyterian
minister who murdered Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard, retired Air Force Lt.
Col. James Barrett, and wounded Barrett’s wife, in Pensacola, Florida as they
were walking into the medical clinic several years ago. Dr. Britton performed
abortions there and the Barrett’s regularly escorted him from his car to the
clinic door. Hill was executed this past Wednesday for those murders, and this
was what was reported of his last hours:
An unrepentant Paul
Hill boasted Tuesday on the eve of his execution for the shotgun slaying of an
abortion doctor: ``I expect a great reward in heaven.''
Will he receive the
reward he expects?
To the
religiously orthodox in our culture this would be understood as a “live”
religious issue concerning the truth of Hill’s belief and society’s ethics and
morals. Is it true that life begins at conception? Is it Godly for society to
care for the “unborn” in the same manner as those already living? Is murder
evil in this instance? The problem with these questions is that they have, as
Hill’s actions demonstrated, no certain answers but certain life and death
consequences. Hill believes abortion is murder and murders in return, certain
of his beliefs and God’s delight!
The
modern religious liberal disposes of the question by saying, “I don’t believe in
heaven,” or, “I don’t believe in God.” The question isn’t a “live” one as asked
because, says the religiously liberal, I do not believe that.
But,
what if this question is an issue of the spirit? What if it is a “live” issue
because what engages the religious impulse in a person is more than just what a
single, finite, limited, blind to many things, individual believes?!?
This
church is a spiritual community because it focuses on questions of the spirit,
like, “What is the nature of the religious impulse residing within human
beings?” This church is a spiritual community also because it intentionally
understands engaging and the religious impulse as involving a journey. The life
of the spirit is like a walk. It is a walk with others, described in the
opening parts of the worship service as written in your bulletin. It is also a
walk with those who are unseen, those who came before us and stood, like we do
now, within this particular religious tradition. It is a walk with those who
walk with us in spirit. We engage our religious impulse in part by considering
theirs. Walking beside you, and among religious communities in Grand Rapids you
alone, metaphorically, this morning, are those Universalists who 100 years ago
worshipped at the church building they built on Sheldon, now housing the 7th
Day Adventists. And in their worship they acknowledged the Universalist
declaration, older than Christianity and Judaism, that God loves all souls,
accepts all into his bosom, and consigns no one, not even Paul Hill, to
everlasting punishment.
Regardless of your individual belief in heaven and God, walking next to you is
someone whose belief you, and as a religious community you alone, have to
engage, if you are Unitarian Universalist and conceive the life of the spirit to
be a walk. Paul Hill said, “I expect a great reward in heaven.” Whether you
believe in God or heaven really isn’t the question. You walk in a spiritual
tradition that affirms God loves all souls, and in the past has pronounced that
God accepts all souls. You can change or ignore those who are metaphorically
walking right next to you right now, but they remain there. This is a “live”
issue for us to consider spiritually.
And,
this issue has an additional spiritual “aliveness” for us. The escort and his
wife, Lt. Col. James Barrett who was murdered and June Barrett who was wounded,
are both Unitarian Universalists. I didn’t know him and don’t know her. I
doubt anyone here does. But, on many occasions, responding to the religious
impulse within me shaped by a religious tradition that pronounces individuals
are moral agents and are accountable to God through individual conscience, I
have escorted, too. Maybe you have, or will. It is possible, if you are
walking in this tradition, with this community of faith, that you, too, could
have been murdered for your faith as a Unitarian Universalist. In other words,
to us and only us in the Grand Rapids area, Paul Hill is also a religious
murderer of spiritual companions who walk alongside of us!
Unlike
any one else in this area, this question is a “live” spiritual issue: “Will he
receive the reward he expects?” Personally, the question can be disposed of,
dismissed, or ignored but not if you see your spiritual life as, metaphorically,
a walk, as this community has declared. You cannot dismiss it if you are part
of this church community, however you see yourself as related!
We do
not know how those Universalists believed in God or in heaven. We do not know
what nuances they gave to each term, subtleties that are now lost to us. We do
not know the circumstances of their lives that led them to profess what they
did. We cannot understand the depth of their metaphors as they understood them,
and often we dismiss proclamations of the past because we cannot understand.
That’s part of the problem of modern religion. But those who declared that God
loved all souls and would restore every soul to heaven, surely saw a spirit
moving in this world of hard knocks that is difficult to see today. A liberal
spirit, a generous spirit, a broadly loving spirit, a noble spirit, an abundant
and bountiful spirit, full, large, and a free gift to all souls. And the best
way for them to express what they saw and felt and were caught by, was to
declare their universalism. These unseen companions were willing both to
declare the presence of this loving and forgiving spirit amongst human beings
and to attempt to shape their life in that form.
I’ll be honest with you, that because this
issue is “live,” and I know how Paul Hill could have had you or my wife,
daughter, or son in his sights that day, that I would not be able to love or
forgive him. I am too weak. I am too weak and too tied to self-interest to
declare that God would welcome him into heaven, and that statement would be
sorely misunderstood if anyone thought it had to do with my belief in God or
heaven. It is about recognizing my own humanity: Its limitations, its
boundaries, and its restricted vision. It is about me and about human nature,
and the way I fall far short of what a human being could become and the love a
human being could bring into the world.
But my faith tradition declares something
more than what my miserly and stingy sight cannot see. There is a spirit alive
in the world that is loving, forgiving, broad and generous in ways I at best
struggle to be. Paul Hill murdered and declared God would reward him. But
there is a larger, more generous spirit alive in the world over which his
personal belief has no dominion. There is a larger, more generous spirit alive
in the world over which even his desire to deal out death to others, has no
dominion. It is the mission and purpose of this church to liberate and
cultivate the human spirit. To liberate the human spirit by the witness of our
church’s presence, by our faith tradition, and by our spiritual walk. To
cultivate the human spirit so that the succeeding generations can see this
generous, loving, forgiving, liberal spirit alive in their time and can shape
the life of all souls towards that. This is the religious issue above all other
issues. It is the one most alive to us, because it is our faith, the faith of
our forbears, and the reason this church existed and had existed before. There
is a spirit alive in the world over which death has no dominion. And to all
souls, everywhere, of all times, let us speak of it to the world in words and
actions of peace and goodwill.
AMEN.
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