[This reading, adapted, is the Benediction that I use in almost every situation of worship, from Sunday morning congregational worship to the gathering of people at the time of marriage and at the time of death. –Brent Smith]   

14Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men.

15See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.

16Rejoice evermore.

17Pray without ceasing.

18In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

19Quench not the Spirit.

20Despise not prophesyings.

21Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

22Abstain from all appearance of evil.

23And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly…

In the tavern are many wines – the wine of delight in color and form and taste, the wine of the intellect’s agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabernet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grape skin of ego breaks and a pouring begins. Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols for human transformation. When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don’t know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern’s mud-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings.

But after some time in the tavern, a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qur’an says, “We are all returning.” The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out into the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home.

It’s 4 A.M. Nasruddin leaves the tavern and walks the town aimlessly. A policeman stops him. “Why are you out wandering the streets in the middle of the night?” “Sir,” replies Nasruddin, “if I knew the answer to that question, I would have been home hours ago.”

There is no God but Thou.

Thou, who transcends all embodiment, or division, or naming!

There is no God but Thou.

Thou, who is exalted beyond concept, or type, or simile or metaphor or locality or direction.

There is no God but Thou.

Thou, who is not perceived entirely or wholly, nor made visible all together in the imagination, nor comprehended fully and perfectly through the suppositions of the mind, nor grasped completely by thought or experiment.

There is no God but Thou, the One, the only Permanence.

Transcending our mates and partners, our offspring and companions, our cities and locales, our imaginings, propositions, and all the forms of this world.

There is no God but Thou, and you alone we praise.

AMEN.

(Rev. Mark Belletini, adapted)

The value of a religious community in our faith tradition is not that it tells you what beliefs and theological doctrines are true, and then requires you to conform to them. The value and genius of a religious community in our tradition is to give one guidance and structure in analyzing the human religious impulse in general, and in testing how that impulse can thrive as distinct and unique as it is in you. The aim, therefore, is to understand human nature, especially its religious aspirations and limitations, its spiritual prospects and impediments, which in many ways only our faith tradition can do; so that as a unique individual you can then know yourself better; better discern how you engage the meanings your life might have and better experience the most direct relationship with God as is possible. First, observe in depth all the varieties of religious experience reasonably, dispassionately, and generously, and, secondly, look at the self honestly and realistically.

It requires looking at expressions we may consider contemptible, as well as those we revere. For example, one of the most fascinating expressions of the human religious impulse is the beginning of the worship service led by televangelist Joel Osteen at the Houston, Texas megachurch, Lakewood Church. The church purchased the Compaq Sports Arena and is renovating it as their church home, and Osteen boasts the church may one Sunday serve 100,000 in worship! The size of these kinds of congregations elicits fear in many liberal religionists who frequently dismiss them offhandedly rather than analyze them seriously.

The worship service “begins with each congregant standing, raising his or her Bible above [the] head, and declaring together: ‘This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. I am about to be taught from God’s holy word. I will never be the same. I will never be the same. I will never be the same.’ (Paraphrased, but quite close) Thus pronounced, the teaching sermon begins.” (“I Will Never Be the Same,” Rev. Danny Reed, Prairie Group paper 2004).

I would invite you to disregard the first sentences of what is repeated, a theology different from ours. Instead, focus on the last, thrice repeated sentences, a kind of covenant by the gathered community that places each individual at the vortex of the human religious impulse that is part of our nature: “I will never be the same.”

This declaration of transformation, “I will never be the same,” sums up the aim of religious experiences of any kind. After having a particular experience, an individual is to be “never the same.” A conversion experience is supposed to render one “never the same.” Baptism or bat mitzvah is supposed to render one “never the same.” A Hindu participating in a friend’s funeral rite is supposed to be rendered “never the same.” The slaughter of the bull in ancient Greece, or the sacrifice at the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, was to render the participant “never the same.” Our Sunday worship is suppose to render one “never the same” as the hour before, lest you should stay home or do something else! Islamic ordered prayer, called Salat, is a daily worship ritual that is to render the Muslim “never the same.”

Yet, modern religionist Thomas More points out what we secretly know about human nature: Nobody really wants to change! A profound experience of deep joy often yields a clinging to the experience in nostalgic fixity. In serving a Unitarian Universalist church of 230 in Wisconsin and a Unitarian Universalist church of 1500 in Oklahoma I heard parishioners in both say, “I don’t want this church to change because I know everybody here and I like it that way!” Often communal religious life is about ensconcing oneself in a comfortableness that doesn’t elicit change. Human beings can even take narrowness, prejudice, limited human views and ideas of ultimate reality, and declare them God as a justification for not having to change! It’s why religious communities of all traditions and characters, from orthodox to liberal, are easy prey for surrendering to the past by resisting change. It’s more than just in religion. Could you change political proclivities without having your friends declare you a traitor? It may be more the practice of human living not to declare, “I will never be the same,” but instead insist, “We will not be moved!” or “Never again” when it comes to change.

Yet, in essence, spirituality begins in the same place that science does, with the notion that our grasp of existence at any moment isn’t complete. It never is. We are incapable of understanding perfectly, thoroughly, entirely, and all together. That moves the scientist to examine continually the natural world to discover what wasn’t known yesterday, and let go of it when something new is found tomorrow. The scientist must change a view of things when new evidence becomes persuasive. And this human capacity moves the religious impulse within an individual towards something new as well. A change, towards greater life, more abundant life, more fulfilling life, more meaningful life, more purposeful life than what is now possessed, this is the heart of faith. I would venture to say that each person in this room took time out of their Sunday morning schedule to come here not expecting to return home the same. And, yet, the resistances to change abide as strongly within human nature as does the prospects of something more to which we change and turn.

This morning we will investigate one path towards that more, which requires change in order to see and possess that something more.

Salat, the Muslim practice of daily ritualized prayer, is the most central of the five pillars of Islam, so much so that its regular practice is considered the line between disbelief and belief. One is not asked by another Muslim whether he or she is a Muslim, but “Do you do Salat?” Daily prayer can be performed in almost any area that is clean, with a capacity to face Mecca. There are approximately twenty thousand Muslim cab drivers in New York City who use restaurants that provide space in basements and back rooms. Salat is prayer performed five times a day, a bargain struck between Muhammad and Allah as an old story goes, to assist humanity in resisting its idolatrous tendencies of mistaking materials, ideas, and notions of this world for ultimacy, and, thus, helping to bring one closer to God. And lest one thinks it is the repetition itself that is most important, it is the intention of performing such a rigorous practice that establishes the individual’s connection with Allah, upholding one’s religious identity as a Muslim. Allah understands a person’s intentions. So if a prayer is missed it can be made up later.

Salat can be performed at home, in restaurants, or alongside of the road during the week but on Friday at noon it is performed in a community Mosque, bringing the community together to share in fellowship as well as prayer. You might recall in one of our Michigan towns last year, non-Muslims protested the call to prayer or adhan, done five times a day and being broadcast over a Mosque’s loudspeakers, which violated the local noise ordinance.

“In non-Muslim countries, Muslims may determine the time of prayer by consulting a computer program, printed prayer charts, or Muslim web sites… Generally, the times for Salat are: 1) early morning before dawn, 2) noon, 3) mid-afternoon, 4) sunset, and, 5) evening, between an hour after sunset and midnight.” (“The Second Pillar in Islam: Salat,” Dr. Laurel Hallman, Prairie Group paper, 2004). The essence of Salat is submission, the meaning of Islam itself, spoken in the prayer phrase, “There is no God but Allah,” and felt and experienced when the individual prostrates himself.

It is in the meanings of this prayer phrase, “There is no God but God,” that deep connections between Islam and Unitarianism are found. Historically, our oldest Unitarian forebears arose in Eastern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, in a part of the world that, through the Ottoman Empire, held abiding Islamic roots. And Spain, with its Moorish history, was the other part of Europe where Unitarian ideas arose. In each the connection between our two faiths influenced one another. The commonality is apparent and theological. Unitarians, believers in God’s unity, the oneness of God, grew as a theological resistance movement within Christianity to the “many Gods” of Christian Trinitarianism and the idolatrous practice of icons and ornate statues and busts and stain glass depictions of Jesus, Mary, the disciples, Christian heroes, and God himself; all beautiful, true, but all of which come to endorse and eventually to uphold superstitious devotion and allegiance to the material objects themselves instead of a God who is Spirit. Depictions become conceived of and treated as though they were real, and people begin to pray to statues, light incense to icons, and imagine stain glass windows as bearing the light of God, the superstitions of everyday folk under the encouragement of learned clergy! In fact, our early Unitarian ancestors in the United States were called “Mohammedans” by their Christian opponents because of their refusal to submit to Jesus as God and their refusal to participate in unreasonable and idolatrous superstitions and practices.

The prayer routine of Salat as central to Islam reconfirms in word and practice that the worshipper should not submit to any earthly order or authority or object as if it were Allah, for there is no God but Allah. The language of prayer is Arabic, regardless of the native tongue of the one praying, as in Islam Arabic is the universal language. All Muslims throughout the world face Mecca for Salat. This common aim of faith, common language of the prayerful, common practice of facing Mecca, in a common daily ritual individuals willingly submit to, brings the individual out of solitude and into a great circle of connection. A community of individuals all aimed in the same direction and for a time reciting the same thing, draws out something easily hidden from our eyes: There is something additional to the individual’s perspective. Being a part of a community of faith, of those both living and dead, gives one a new view from that which subjective, culture bound, historically finite solitude offers.

For as long as I have been a Unitarian Universalist minister I have seen various spiritual fads come and go: meditation, labyrinth walking, chanting, and various private spiritual practices, some of which I have participated in and others not. And I affirm with all my intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength that it is through the individual’s free mind and creative imagination, and the ever-enlarging love of the heart that transient idolatries of religion fall away and what is really real and ultimate and holy and sacred can be seen and experienced. Yet, when spiritual practice is done exclusively as a solitary endeavor there is something radically incomplete in this. There is not the transformation that is possible when men and women of good will and noble purpose look outward together in the same direction.

When we as individuals submit and give our consent for a moment each week, to looking outward together in the same direction, and at the opening of worship sing and recite and sing again, in the presence of the Most High and in the midst of a symbol of all those living and dead (the flaming Chalice), who form one community of love that transcends the boundaries and divisions of this finite world and limited existence, then, too, we face the same direction and use the same language, submit in other words, to an aim and direction larger than any one of us. Yet such a practice, in our faith tradition, protects the sanctity of each of us. And in so doing, to paraphrase the words of Unitarian forbearer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the half-gods go and God arrives. And the time of our change and transformation is at hand.

But after some time in the tavern, a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qur’an says, “We are all returning.” The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out into the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home.

AMEN.