Faith Versus Belief 

The opposite of faith is not doubt. All too often, the opposite of faith is belief.



I have heard many wonderful sermons in my life.

There are three whose themes have stayed with me,
  with at least one concept that continues
    to be an inspiration to me.

The first of those sermons was an Easter message
  with the simple title of, "Mary!"

I heard the sermon while I was in seminary
  in South Carolina.

It was about the moment that Mary Magdalen
  recognized the risen Jesus.

When she first saw him,
  she thought he was the gardener.

He spoke her name,
  "Mary!" he said, and 
    instantly she knew who he was.

She said to him, "My Teacher!"

The concept that has stayed with me
  is that Mary recognized Jesus
    when he called her by name.

In the second memorable sermon
  the preacher spoke about
    the confession of sins
      with which Lutherans begin
        every Sunday worship service.

She said that we are really simply confessing
  our failure to acknowledge
    our dependence on God.

As UU's we interpret the idea
  a little differently than many Christians:
    We could say simply
      that we depend on the spark of the Divine Spirit
        that lives in each and every one of us.

The helpful concept is the same for me either way:
  I don't have to search my conscience
    for thoughts, words, and deeds
      that I have to define as sins.

I can simply remember that I can lean on
  the best of my true Self, the divine life within me.

The third sermon that has stayed with me
  includes a concept that I'm still working on, 
    the concept on which I'm basing
      my own sermon for today.

It was a UU sermon,
  delivered by the Rev. Marlene Walker,
    who was at the time a most effective
      interim minister at the UUCP in Moscow, ID.

She said that the opposite of faith is belief.

For me at the time, it was a startling statement,
  but of course being startled
    only caused me to pay closer attention.

The concept that unfolded
  has been a continuing part
    of my own spiritual formation,
      and it is my hope that it will be meaningful
        for you all, too.

Faith is our own deeply personal exploration
  of the meaning of life.

Belief is the conclusion we come to
  regarding the meaning of our own life.

Exploration is active.

A conclusion stands still.

Faith has to keep moving.

Belief has nowhere to go.

As UU's our faith is solidly built
  upon critical thinking.

Those who focus on their beliefs
  are generally not so interested in critical thinking.

We also have beliefs,
  but those are, like the beliefs of Buddhists,
    subject to change
      if they are proven wrong
        by investigation and experience.

It would not be too unusual
  to find that someone considers
    the opposite of faith to be doubt.

In fact, doubt is a vital part of faith,
  and not just for UU's.

Today is often nicknamed, "Low Sunday"
  among those who follow a liturgical calendar.

You can probably guess why.

Easter Sunday often sees the highest attendance
  of any Sunday in most years.

The Sunday after Easter
  often sees the lowest attendance,
    (except for maybe the Sundays around
      three day weekends
        like Memorial Day or Labor Day).

Whether today has the lowest attendance or not,
  the story of the day on liturgical calendars
    is (nowadays) the story of "Doubting Thomas."

I prefer to think him as Believing Thomas
  because of the transformation he experienced.

For us UU's, being called a doubter
  would not be any sort of insult.

We sometimes even doubt our doubts!

After all,
  one of our most sacred symbols,
    and one that I treasure in my heart,
      is a question mark.

  One of my favorite things to see
    on a UU Christmas tree
      is all the question marks!
        (along with all the Darwin fish -
          the ones with little feet and legs
             sprouting from their underside)

Our faith is in science,
  not dogma.

Religious doctrine is rightly understood
  as our human attempt to describe
    our personal, spiritual experiences.

Dogmas and beliefs try to normalize the experiences
  and insist that everyone
    must have similar experiences
      and define the experiences in similar ways.

Such an approach
  actually stifles faith and spirituality.

This is not to say
  that all traditional faiths
    engage in stifling real faith
      by their emphasis on dogmas and beliefs.

Many people in traditional faiths
  are much more open than that.

We find people of good will
  in every faith and every kind of church.

As UU's we can surely afford
  not to judge anyone.

There is in fact an entire tradition
  within Christianity
    that takes a dim view of beliefs and dogmas.

They are known as
  the Society of Friends, the Quakers.

They refer to dogmas and beliefs
  as "notions."

They do not insist
  that people must believe certain notions
    with one notable exception:

They believe that every person
  has within themselves a spark of divine light.

For this reason they are pacifists.

No one has the right, they say, to kill anyone
  who carries within themselves
    a spark of divine light.

This sounds to me very much like
  our First Principle:
    The inherent worth and dignity of every person.

UU's are not traditionally known as pacifists,
  but our First Principle stands.

There have certainly been UU pacifists,
  and our church authorities
    have vigorously defended
      their commitment to pacifism
        within our faith tradition.

During the Vietnam War, for example
  the UUA established a denominational registry
    for conscientious objectors.

It's just that we don't require everyone
  to agree about much of anything.

I see that as a good thing.

There are UU Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists,
  and representatives of many other faith traditions,
    atheists, agnostics, believers and non-believers
      in many kinds of spiritual ideas and practices.

We are generally pretty good
  at agreeing to disagree,
    at being civil to each other
      even when we strongly disagree
        about principles that are important to us.

We do agree about our seven principles,
  but those are not in the form of beliefs.

They are more like commitments we have made
  to value each other because of our differences,
    not in spite of them.

I believe that this is a key to our UU faith
  in this understanding:

We treasure the variety of human expression.

We do not insist on conformity.

We even value variety in our approach to
  spirituality and the development of our faith.

We do not worship science,
  but our faith and practice are informed by it,
    including the scientific study of religion
      as part of human social psychology.

A UU sermon is not just a treatise
  on the analysis of issues,
    but there is often that element.

Like all good preaching,
  a sermon is an expression of good news and hope
    even in the midst of difficult circumstances
      such as those we are all going through now.

Today's good news
  is that our beliefs are not frozen.

We do not believe everything we hear;
  indeed we often only believe half of what we see,
    as the song by Marvin Gaye says,
      "Believe none of what you hear
          and half of what you see."

Thus our faith is steeped in doubt,
  and beliefs, as frozen notions
    about religion and spirituality,
      can truly be understood
        as the opposite of a faith like ours.

If you remember anything about today's sermon,
  I hope it will simply be
    the understanding
      that it's OK to question everything.

Don't believe everything
  you hear, see, or even think! 

This principle will be especially valuable
  in our time.

There is so much information
  and misinformation
    that some healthy skepticism will be important,
      even to keep us healthy!

As we do for our own UU faith,
  we can do our own investigations
    and come to our own conclusions.

Indeed, the process
  will be vitally important for us all.

Amen.

So let it be.

Blessed be.

Easter

We celebrate this High Holy Day of Easter as a festival of hope with Pagan and Christian origins.


On Good Friday morning,
  I heard one of my favorite historians,
    Jon Meacham, say,
      "Returning to the roots of our faith
        is a way forward."

For us UU's the roots of our faith
  are many and varied.

To quote from the "About Us" tab
  on our NIUU website,

"Unitarian Universalism affirms and promotes seven Principles grounded in the humanistic teachings of the world's religions. Our spirituality is unbounded, drawing from scripture and science, nature and philosophy, personal experience and ancient tradition as described in our six Sources."

Those are beautiful words
  for us to live by in our faith.

We can and do draw from those six Sources
  as the roots of our faith.

For Easter Day, I want to highlight
  two of the six Sources:

Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves,

and

Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

(I'm full of quotes in this sermon, and I'm not done!
  These really do come
    from our own congregation's web page,
      https://niuu.org, under the About Us tab.)

Speaking of Jewish and Christian teachings,
  today we are thinking of Passover and Easter.

Both are remembrances of deliverance.

They are in no sense identical,
  but they are clearly related.

Passover is a celebration of Liberation,
  and it has been and will always be
    a source of hope for people who are oppressed
      in all kinds of times and places.

Easter is a celebration of Resurrection,
  and it has been and always will be
    a source of hope for people
      who are facing fear of death
        in all kinds of times and places.

In thinking of the spiritual traditions
  of Earth based spiritualities
    instructing us us to live in harmony
      with the rhythms of nature,
        we are learning to draw strength
          from the fits and starts
            of the arrival of Spring.

Spring brings to mind the Goddess, Persephone,
  whose story sings in harmony
    with the stories of Passover and Easter.

Spring brings new a beginning of life and growth,
  as in the story of Persephone herself.

Liberation brings a new beginning
  of the freedom and self-determination of a people,
    as in the story of Passover.

Easter brings a foretaste of fulness of life,
  now and in the world to come,
    as in the story of Easter.

All three of these Sources of our faith,
  Earth-Centered traditions,
    Judaism, and Christianity
      bring us hope
        in this time in which we need it most.

In our own times
  we are in particular need of hope.

Hope is by no means certainty.

We face many unknowns these days,
  and what we do know can appear
    overwhelming and terrifying
      if we stop to look carefully
        and wake up to the realities
          we and the whole world may be facing.

There will be a lot of suffering and death,
  especially among the most vulnerable people.

It can be difficult to sustain hope
  in the face of some of the information
    we are having to cope with.

Hope is still important, no matter what.

Speaking of hope brings me
  to yet another quote,
    one that is especially important to me,
      the great poem by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune without the words, 
And never stops at all, 
 
And sweetest in the gale is heard;         
And sore must be the storm 
That could abash the little bird 
That kept so many warm. 
 
I’ve heard it in the chillest land, 
And on the strangest sea;       
Yet, never, in extremity, 
It asked a crumb of me.

I love that poem
  because it sings so beautifully 
    about hope, and I am trying to say
      that hope in abundance
        is exactly what we all need right now.

I have high hopes that our physical separation
  will result in a collective victory over
    the apocalyptic scourge
      that is threatening all the humans
        on our small planet.

I have hope for many other things, too,
  above all that we will learn some vital lessons
    as a result of the experience we are sharing.

We need each other so much
  that we cannot afford to be as divided
    as we were becoming in our society.

United we stand, divided we fall,
  is more than just a saying.

It is a reality that we are living.

Even a Public Service ad has been saying,
  "We stay apart now
    so that we can be together tomorrow."

What we are doing
  in physically separating ourselves from each other
    is fulfilling the call of our Source of faith
      in Judaism and Christianity,
        responding to the Love of God
          by loving our neighbors as ourselves.

I even have hope for those who are suffering most.

So many people are being hurt
  by the struggling economy
    that they are inspiring compassion
      in other humans.

Part of the compassion we are seeing
  is beautifully expressed in the following saying
    from freedhearts.org:

And then the whole world walked inside and shut their doors and said, "We will stop it all. Everything. To protect our weaker ones. Our sicker ones. Our older ones." And nothing in the history of humankind ever felt more like love than this.

I want to carry this concept of hope
  even further:

I have come to believe that no one ever dies alone.

One of the saddest phenomena
  of the fatalities of the coronavirus
    is that families and loved ones
      cannot be present at the bedside
        of its victims as they die.

Yet I take comfort from believing
  that no one dies alone.

The experience of people
  who have had near death experiences
    is that someone they know comes for them.

They do not face death alone,
  even when it is not yet certain
    that they will in fact depart this life.

Many of us have had experiences
  that affirm that experience,
    often from the words of loved ones
      who are near death.

My step-Dad's mother,
  on the afternoon she died,
    told him that two of her sisters
      had come to see her.

He said, "But, Mama, they died years ago,"
  and she replied, "I know, but they were here!"

Such experiences give me hope
  in times like these.

Despite all the appearances,
  I really am convinced that no one dies alone.

Despite the appearances
  of our present circumstances,
    I do believe that we can rely
      on the benevolence of the Universe.

That in any case is my hope.

At times like ours
  we need to reach deeply within ourselves
    to draw on the roots of our faith
      as a way forward.

Amen.

So let it be.

Blessed Be.

Shall We Break Bread?

Sharing a memorial meal can give us a time to be aware of the continuing presence of loved ones who have transitioned into the after life. Remembrance is the key.


Today is an important day for me in many ways,
  on many levels.

I'm immensely grateful
  to be able to share it with you all,
    my dearly beloved spiritual community,
      even though we have to do so via the internet.

First of all, I have to mention
  that today is Palm Sunday
    on the Western Christian liturgical calendar,
      the first day of Holy Week.

Palm Sunday is so called
  because according to tradition
    on that day Rabbi Jesus rode into Jerusalem
      on a young donkey.

A large crowd of people cut branches from the trees,
  laying them as a carpet before him
    in order to welcome the one
      they hoped would rescue them
        from the Roman government.

The following week is called Holy Week
  because its remembrances
    comprise the High Holy Days of Christianity.

A very different crowd,
  not at all the same one as the Palm Sunday crowd,
    called for the death of Rabbi Jesus on Friday.

Those events, from the highs to the lows,
  constitute the central events
    of all four Gospels of the New Testament.

For most of my life,
  my career and personal devotions
    have been organized by the liturgical calendar,
      and that calendar centers
        on the events of this week.

There are also several deeply personal reasons
  why today is important to me.

April 5, 2020 is the 110th anniversary
  of my mother's birth.

Palm Sunday every year is for me
  the anniversary of my father's death,
    regardless of the calendar date.

He died on Palm Sunday, April 14, 1957.

I have shared thoughts before
  about how important anniversaries can be
    in all our lives.

Among the most important of those
  are anniversaries of births and deaths.

Those, after all, are the events
  that mark the limits of our lives in this world,
    beginnings and endings.

We remember these and other anniversaries
  in a wide variety of ways.

One of my personal favorite ways
  of remembering important anniversaries
    is a memorial meal.

The most common memorial meal as such
  is a gathering around food, shared
    by friends, family and loved ones
      immediately after a funeral or burial or both
        of the person being remembered.

In our difficult times of physical separation
  to protect ourselves and each other
    from contagion,
      one of the most painful experiences
        is our inability to gather
          for these deeply comforting memorial meals.

Religious Holy Days and worship services
  often center around memorial meals.

This year, the evening of April 8 marks the beginning
  of the eight days of Passover
    on the Jewish calendar.

The passover meal is a memorial meal
  for the remembrance
    of the liberation of the Jewish people
      from slavery in Egypt.

Moses was not only a law giver.

He was also a leader of the liberation movement
  that brought his people out of slavery
    into the freedom of a promised land.

Enslaved people of many times and places
  have been inspired to seek their own liberation
    by the example of Moses
     and the children of Israel.

A passover meal
  shared by Rabbi Jesus and his disciples
    is called by different names:
      the Last Supper or the Lord's Supper,
        Holy Communion or Holy Eucharist.

No matter the name we use for it,
  the memorial meal
    in which Rabbi Jesus said,
      "Do this for the remembrance of me,"
         has become the central worship obervance
            for most Christians.

We can say many things about the meal,
  and various Christian groups certainly do so,
    but a simple fact of experience and history
      is that it is a memorial meal.

Rabbi Jesus himself proclaimed it so
  when he spoke of bread and cup saying,
    "Do this for the remembrance of me."

As I've spoken of it before,
  the spiritual renewal movement known as Cursillo
    has been an important part of my life,
      especially the Lutheran expression,
        known as Via de Cristo, 
          and the non-denominational expression,
            sponsored by the Methodists
              and known as the Walk to Emmaus.

The bread and cup of Holy Communion
  are near the heart and center of every expression
    of the Cursillo movement.

Now before I say more,
  I don't want anyone to start worrying
    that I'm trying to introduce
      a specifically Christian practice
        into our shared worship experiences.

All of you who know me best will know
  that that is something I would never do.

At the same time,
  I do want to propose a simple ritual
    like the lighting of our chalice
      that can remind us of important memorial meals
        in all our lives.

You see,
  a spiritual director of an Emmaus walk
    tried to develop a simple, meaningful act
      that could make any meal,
        even one eaten in public,
          into a spiritual experience.

He would pick up a piece of bread and say,
  "Shall we break bread?"

He would then break the bread and say,
  "We remember."

The others at table can then pick up
  their own piece of bread,
    break it, and say, "We remember."

Then all who wish to participate
  can eat of the broken bread.

We can claim this simple act
  as a memorial meal
    for any person or event, time or place
      that we may wish to remember
        individually or together.

And so,
  I'm picking up my own piece of bread
    and saying, "Shall we break bread?"

We remember.

And you can respond, in your own place and time,
  breaking your own bread and saying,
    "We remember."

As we break bread together,
  we share a simple memorial meal,
    however each of us may choose to define it
      in our own hearts, minds and even words
        as we share the experience.

There are many people we miss
  from our own lives,
    some of whom are in remembrance
      because they have moved on
        to whatever form of life may be found
          after this life.

Some of the people we are holding in our hearts
  and not in our presence
    are not with us because of physical distancing.

What we are doing in staying apart
  is a profound act of love,
    hoping to protect each other
      from grave danger.

Still, it hurts.

So our memorial meal
  holds in remembrance
    the times we have been together in the past
      and the times we will come together again
        in the future.

Our shared worship online
  can be a meaningful reminder of each other.

It isn't the same as physical presence,
  but it is a meaningful adjunct
    to the spiritual experience of remembrance,
      and it can be profoundly comforting.

As we remember,
  I hope it may be so.

Amen.
So let it be.
Blessed be!