Then I said, "Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel. Should you not know justice, you who hate good and love evil; who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones; who eat my people's flesh, strip off their skin and break their bones in pieces; who chop them up like meat for the pan, like flesh for the pot?" Then they will cry out to the LORD, but he will not answer them. At that time he will hide his face from them because of the evil they have done.

This is what the LORD says: "As for the prophets who lead my people astray, if one feeds them, they proclaim 'peace'; if he does not, they prepare to wage war against him. Therefore night will come over you, without visions, and darkness, without divination. The sun will set for the prophets, and the day will go dark for them. The seers will be ashamed and the diviners disgraced. They will all cover their faces because there is no answer from God."

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the LORD, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression, to Israel his sin. Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, who despise justice and distort all that is right; who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wickedness. Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes [seek luck] for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, "Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us."

Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

The man who said, “I’d rather be lucky than good,” saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back; with a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or, maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.

James Luther Adams, Unitarian Universalism’s great 20^{th century theologian, described our faith tradition as a step beyond standard Christian Protestantism. I would say it is the step that takes us beyond the Christian tradition from which we came, certainly the creedal and doctrinal Christianity, and into something new. Adams said Christian Protestantism grew out of the 16th century European “protest” against the complete, totalitarian authority of the Christian Church to govern all the daily affairs of men and women, and especially the power the Christian Church claimed to tell individuals what God willed and wanted them to do. Protestantism countered with the idea of the “priesthood of all believers.” In other words, individuals didn’t need the church and its priests to mediate God’s presence to them. Every individual is his or her own priest. Modern Unitarian Universalism exemplifies “the priesthood of all believers,” and now emphasizes “priesthood” and not what is believed.}

But, our faith tradition took this metaphor itself a step further. To us the spiritual dimension of every individual’s life is that each person lives as a prophet as well as a priest: “The priesthood and prophethood of all believers,” was the phrase coined by Adams.

The priest’s role is to mediate between the individual and God, like an agent negotiates between an athlete and a team. This mediation you do for yourself declared the Reformation and our forbears as part of that Reformation; the Church does not do that for you, is not your intermediary, does not triangulate itself between God and you. You negotiate directly with God. The Church’s role is something different. The Church cannot properly tell you what to believe theologically, to such an extent that individuals can even deny God’s existence and the Church is not threatened; nor are atheists to be denied fellowship. Theology is between you and your mind, heart, and conscience, fulfilling “the priesthood of all believers.” The Church’s role is to protect that for all of its members, and for all humanity.

But to this “priesthood of all believers” Adams declared we Unitarians added the role of the prophet. The prophet is a critic of the world of human relationships, the world of human affairs. The free press, declared sociologist Max Weber, is the modern version of Hebrew prophets like Micah. The problem we have today is that the press, print and video, serve not freedom but Nielson ratings, ultimately to curry the favor of advertisers.

But in our tradition our religious role is also to critique all forms of human connection and relationship. You as an individual possess the authority to influence and shape all of society’s relationships, from home to school, from Church to State. And, you as an individual have the responsibility to shape all relationships rightly, that is, in the form of love and justice. Every individual has this prophetic authority and responsibility as surely as the authority and responsibility of personal belief, of being a priest.

But, like a tennis court, where the boundary lines for playing singles are inside of the boundary lines for playing doubles, the individual lives inside of the boundaries of both these roles. The boundary line for the priesthood of all believers is this: You can only believe what you deem is true. The boundary line of being your own priest is your individual, personal conviction. And the boundary line for the prophet is this: Your life stands for and means something vastly more than just what you think or want it to. The prophet understands that his life and how he lives it, is a symbol of the Ultimate character of existence. And these two boundary lines make every moment match point.

In Woody Allen’s movie, “Match Point,” the main character Chris Walton is quiet, polite, nice, and likeable. He’s great to join for a few rounds at the pub, and generous enough to buy the rounds if he could. He has pulled himself up from his poor circumstances to become a tennis pro playing on the international circuit. But he has wearied of that and when given the chance to be a club pro does so and, as luck would have it, teaches a lesson that opens up his future.

One of his students, a man about his age, introduces him to his sister. Chris and this sister begin dating, get married, and the family he has married into, is wealthy and, like British wealth, has been for generations. Chris’ father-in-law sets him up for life with a lucrative job. All is well. Chris has hit the jackpot and is living with Lady Luck.

“Everybody’s afraid to admit what a big part luck plays,” he explains to his wife, his brother-in-law, and to his brother-in-law’s girlfriend. “It seems scientists are confirming more and more that all existence is here by blind chance; no purpose, no design.”

And when his brother-in-law quotes the local vicar’s proclamation that “Despair is the path of least resistance,” Chris, whose father was a religious fanatic, counters vigorously, “I think that faith is the path of least resistance.” A man of luck would. A man who through the happenstance of having played tennis with another guy, is introduced to that guy’s sister, who falls in love with him; who marries into a family of wealth and prestige, whose father-in-law likes him enough to give him a job for life. Chris fell from the sky into comfort, and his luck seems not to be running out. In fact, it seems to be increasing. By movie’s end he and his wife have a son, Chance, and nothing is hinted at that anything will ever derail his winning streak.

There is one problem in Chris’ life. He is madly and passionately and lustfully in love with his brother-in-law’s girlfriend. He has a torrid affair with her, over years, which doesn’t end when his brother-in-law breaks up with her. But she is a threat to his lucky streak. She wants a relationship. She wants him to be her husband and companion, to leave his wife and be with her. She becomes pregnant, by luck or her design we never know. And she threatens to disclose to Chris’ wife and his wife’s family the part of his life he has lived “out of bounds.” And he sees how his life of comfort and ease, what he got from Lady Luck, could be wiped away.

The man who said, “I’d rather be lucky than good,” saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back; with a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or, maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.

So he serves for match point and acts with intent. In fact, he does the very opposite of one who believes in luck. He has seen his life shaped by luck up to this moment, and has reveled and benefited by it. But now he is taking matters into his own hand and taking responsibility for his life. So he meticulously and malevolently murders his pregnant mistress. And, as luck would have it, someone else, a vagrant down on his luck, is caught and punished for Chris’ crime. Chris Walton, quiet and polite, the guy you’d have a few rounds with at the pub, goes on with his life.

In Woody Allen’s updating of Doesoyevsky’s classic, “Crime and Punishment,” Allen explained its philosophy: “Hard work is important, and practice and all the disciplinary virtues are meaningful. But in the end, you have to have a lot of luck in your human relationships for them to work. You have to have luck in your career, and with your health. You have to admit how much out of control so much of life is… [and its scary] to admit the enormous part that chance plays in life.”

There’s the rub for someone holding to the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. Chris Walton’s individual conviction is that luck governs existence, and hence he’d rather be lucky than good. Gaining the favor of Lady Luck yields the good life. But, the individual’s life stands for something vastly more than just what he thinks or wants it to. The prophet lives his life as a symbol of the Ultimate character of existence.

And if the Ultimate character of existence is that it is completely governed by luck, and you see a path where your luck will surely run out, then it is only human conscience that would keep Chris Walton from murder. There is nothing more meaningful than the individual. There is nothing more meaningful than what the weakness of individual conscience can yield. And good character means nothing other than what it can “do” for the individual, which is little if anything!

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?... So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.

Chris Walton believes in luck. But if his life stands only for the Ultimate character of existence being itself luck, if he is a prophet of the God Luck, then life itself eventually comes to be despised. He murders to for the sake of the goodness of his Luck, to keep his Luck alive and well. And the evidence is his guilt: “It would be fitting if I were apprehended and punished,” he says towards the end of the film when as it becomes apparent he will not be. “At least there would be some small sign of justice, some signal of hope for the possibility of meaning.” He doesn’t have the strength of conscience to rebel against Lady Luck and worship something larger. So, he gets away with murder and lives out his life in comfort.

It is dissatisfying to the deepest yearnings of the human spirit.

Of course right next to the court where Luck is worshipped, is the court where the tennis match completely follows God’s Will. God has a plan for every match, and one will win and another lose by the Will of God; which is equally dissatisfying to the human spirit, unless, of course, you conceive of God favoring you. God seems to be enacting his Will when we are favored. So, the winners are God’s chosen and the losers receive a befitting punishment in some way; all by our human measurement of course.

Or, our sufferings are part of a Plan of God that we are just not privy to or understand. Of all of the inconceivable things that a life in the ministry has brought to me, this is the most incomprehensible: When human beings suffer and no one knows why, there will always be someone who steps up to pronounce the undeserved suffering as part of “God’s Will” and “God’s Plan,” and usually it is not the person who is suffering! So if you win, it was in God’s cards, and if you lose, God justifiably dealt you a bad hand. We justify the will of God for rewarding some and punishing others. And we justify the will of God for allowing such suffering when genuinely good men and women are the recipients of incomprehensible sufferings they did not deserve. Or, as one of my colleagues put it, religion is often about justifying the ways of an evil God to good men!

This is equally dissatisfying to the spirit because we human beings end up justifying God’s Ways and Plan in a manner we have no business doing. Said Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of a war where both sides claimed God’s favor and both claimed that in slaying the other they were acting out God’s Will: “The Almighty has his own ways.”

The ball is in the air, will fall on one side or the other, by luck or God’s will? It is match point.

But what if we conceive of this whole thing differently? We do not know why the ball is going to fall where it does any more than we know where. We just know that it will fall, partly as a result of our effort, partly as a result of factors we cannot control. What if the “why” is not something human beings can grasp fully and completely, or maybe even meaningfully because of our limitations of sight, understanding, compassion, will, and wisdom? What if the “why” is not something human beings can grasp fully and completely because we have this tendency to take our narrow explanations of things, our self-interest and make them God’s, make them into gods we worship? What if the “why” is only something we can dimly see at best, “through a glass darkly” as it was written at one time? And instead, what if our dim sight of the “why” only begins slightly to clear up and who something discernible when we live the “how” of our lives properly? As in, how do we treat others? How do we love our neighbor? How do we “live justly, love mercy, walk humbly with our God,” as the prophet Micah said? What if we live as if we are seeking to love God in others, instead of living as if we are loving a commodity we can dispense with? What if we lived not as if Luck ruled all things, or as if there were a preordained Will and Plan to all things that we could ever discern fully or even partially? What if our lives stood for the prospect that Goodness, Love, Freedom, and Justice – God - could grow, and did so in part by how we lived our lives?

The deep problem of living a life of faith in this spiritual community is that it is of the tradition of the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. You can’t just believe something is true and then inflict that belief on everyone else for weal or woe. You can’t just believe something without it having real world effects. You are a prophet, too. Your life stands for something larger and more Ultimate than can ever be fathomed by you or anyone else. An individual’s life is a symbol that the individual can help shape the quality of existence itself towards malice or affection; and by our actions more than our words, our deeds more than our creeds, we openly declare to those who have eyes to see, what malice or affection forms our faith.

Or, to say it this way. The ball hits the net, shoots straight up in the air and life freezes to allow us to reflect upon what we know will happen. It will fall on one side or the other. By luck, or God’s will, these two we cannot know. But we do know this: Of all that exists, human affection, love, a regard for others and especially for all souls, is the most powerful and regenerative spirit in existence. That is a statement of faith our tradition bequeaths to us, an understanding of what unifies existence. And although we cannot say or control where the ball will fall, we can know this, too: As prophets, human beings are called to discern, after the ball has fallen, what is the way to live life so that the bonds of human affection are multiplied, the immense store of human affection is increased, and justice becomes possible. We can say there is Providence in existence to the extent that we see that life, when it is lived through love, becomes more just and free. It’s not saying always to look on the bright or sunny side of life. But, to be realists about what human nature and behavior is capable of. Yet, always to look with the eyes of faith for how we can be on the side of what ennobles living, even in enduring the sufferings human beings do. It is to look for how we can give dignity to human existence even when facing fears. It is to see a path towards a regard for others, all others, as differently as they have been created. It is to say “there is a freedom and unity of the spirit expressed through a love for all souls” and then to endeavor to build up the will, and use the resources and gifts given us, to make that statement of faith a living reality.

Luck or God’s Will? How about neither? How about a Providence that can be seen when we seek it, and built and made more glorious when through humanity, love seeks justice.

AMEN