Accountability for God 

The most difficult question for people who believe in God is, "Why?" There is no simple answer to that question. 

Order of Service - Script 

for Sunday May 15, 2022 

NIUU, Jeanie Donaldson, Pastor Fred 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Prelude: 

Jeanie Donaldson

Welcome and Announcements: 

Come into this circle of love and compassion,

Come into this community where we can dream and

Believe in those dreams—

Welcome to North Idaho Unitarian Universalists where we accept, we support, we transform:  Ourselves, Our Community. Our world.   

Offering Information 

Charity of the Month:

Family Promise of North Idaho

"Family Promise of North Idaho is an affiliate of 

Family Promise® which was created in 1986 in response to the growing need to provide shelter, meals, and comprehensive support to families without homes. We are a nonsectarian charity and we welcome all clients who meet our eligibility and admission requirements. Our staff and board of trustees work together with our interfaith and community partners to extend support to the homeless families in North Idaho."

NIUU 

P.O. Box 221 

CDA ID 83816

Lighting the Chalice: 

We light this chalice to celebrate the inherent worth and dignity of every person;

To reaffirm the historic pledge of our open-hearted  faith to seek that justice which transcends mere legality and moves toward the resolution of true equality; And to share that love which is ultimately beyond even our cherished reason, that love which unites us.

Opening Words: 

Amid all the noise in our lives,

we take this moment to sit in silence --

to give thanks for another day;

to give thanks for all those in our lives

who have brought us warmth and love;

to give thanks for the gift of life.

We know we are on our pilgrimage here but a brief moment in time.

Let us open ourselves, here, now,

to the process of becoming more whole --

of living more fully;

of giving and forgiving more freely;

of understanding more completely

the meaning of our lives here on this earth.

Hymn #120 “Turn Back, Turn Back” 

1. Turn back, turn back, forswear thy foolish ways.

Old now is earth, and none may count its days;

yet humankind, whose head is crowned with flame,

still will not hear the inner God proclaim —

”Turn back, turn back, forswear thy foolish ways.”

2. Earth might be fair, its people glad and wise.

Age after age our tragic empires rise,

built while we dream, and in that dreaming weep:

would we but wake from out our haunted sleep,

earth might be fair, and people glad and wise.

3. Earth shall be fair, and all its people one;

nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done.

Now, even now, once more from earth to sky,

peals forth in joy that old undaunted cry —

”Earth shall be fair, and all its people one.”

Covenant: 

Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace,

To seek truth in love,

And to help one another. 

Greeting each other  (Those present in person can leave our seats for this, if we wish.) 

Joys and Concerns (with lighting of candles of caring) 

Story: 

The Shattering of the Vessels

By Amy Petrie Shaw

A Free Retelling of the story from the Kabbalah. 

At the beginning of time, before anything else at all existed, Love was all there was, and it filled up everything in the whole universe.

But Love got bored and lonely. There was no one to be in love with. So one day Love decided to make a world.

First it took a deep breath. Can you take a deep breath? How deep? let me see!

Deeper! A little deeper.

Love got all squished up taking the deepest breath ever, and was sooooo squished that it squeezed out darkness.The darkness was all around: thick and shiny and black. It was beautiful but now Love couldn’t see anything! Love waved its arms and legs around, but the darkness was everywhere.

“I have to do something about this,” said Love. It thought for a minute, and tried to think of the most wonderful beautiful warm thoughts ever. Love thought harder and harder and all of a sudden Love called out “I want light!”

And pop!

All of the warm and wonderful and beautiful thoughts exploded outward in ten different directions and shaped themselves into ten big glowing glass balls. Each ball was filled with a spinning lump of pure light and warmth. Some of the spare good thoughts that couldn’t quite fit in the glass became dust and water vapor and seeds and molecules that could form animals.

And Love said, “This is amazing. I better make something for the light to shine on.” So it waved its arms and kicked its legs and all of the dust and water vapor and molecules that had been scattered around when the glass balls formed began to form into another huge ball, this one of dirt and water and plants and animals. Love called this the Earth.

The ten balls of light started toward the Earth, and if they had made it here in one piece, the entire planet would have been exactly the way Love wanted it. But the glass balls were too fragile to contain such strong, powerful wonderful good thoughts. They broke open and shattered, and all the good thoughts shattered and flew out like sparks and were scattered like sand, like seeds, like stars. Those sparks fell everywhere on the Earth in tiny bits instead of big clumps like Love intended.

“Oh NO!” said Love. “I’m too big. I’ll never be able to find all of those tiny sparks. I have to make one more thing.”

So Love waved its arm and kicked its feet one last time, and people appeared on the Earth. They didn’t know it, but they were created with one job: to find these sparks, these tiny pieces of wonderful goodness, and to bring them together again in big clumps.

“When enough clumps are there, I will recreate the big glass containers to hold them, and this time I will set them down a little more carefully,” Love said.

So all of us, from the time we are born, have a job, and that job is to help find love and more good and warm and wonderful things. If we do that we are reparing the world (Tikkun Olam). 

 

Meditation: 

HYMN TO MATTER by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

‘Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. 

‘Blessed be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untameable passion: you who unless we fetter you will devour us.

‘Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.

‘Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.

‘Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: you who, interposed between our minds and the world of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena.

‘Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists.

‘Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

‘I bless you, matter, and you I acclaim: not as the pontiffs of science or the moralizing preachers depict you, debased, disfigured — a mass of brute forces and base appetites — but as you reveal yourself to me today, in your totality and your true nature.

‘You I acclaim as the inexhaustible potentiality for existence and transformation wherein the predestined substance germinates and grows.

‘I acclaim you as the universal power which brings together and unites, through which the multitudinous monads are bound together and in which they all converge on the way of the spirit.

‘I acclaim you as the melodious fountain of water whence spring the souls of men and as the limpid crystal whereof is fashioned the new Jerusalem.

‘I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay moulded and infused with life by the incarnate Word.

‘Sometimes, thinking they are responding to your irresistible appeal, men will hurl themselves for love of you into the exterior abyss of selfish pleasure-seeking: they are deceived by a reflection or by an echo.

‘This I now understand.

‘If we are ever to reach you, matter, we must, having first established contact with the totality of all that lives and moves here below, come little by little to feel that the individual shapes of all we have laid hold on are melting away in our hands, until finally we are at grips with the single essence of all subsistencies and all unions.

‘If we are ever to possess you, having taken you rapturously in our arms, we must then go on to sublimate you through sorrow.

‘Your realm comprises those serene heights where saints think to avoid you — but where your flesh is so transparent and so agile as to be no longer distinguishable from spirit.

‘Raise me up then, matter, to those heights, through struggle and separation and death; raise me up until, at long last, it becomes possible for me in perfect chastity to embrace the universe ''

Sermon: 

There are many questions 

  that people would like to ask God 

    or ask about God, 

      depending on what and how they believe. 

For believers, an important question 

  would probably be, "Why?" 

    as in, "Why me," 

      or, "Why is this happening to me?" 

For non-believers, the similar question would be, 

  "How can anyone believe in 

    an all powerful, good God, 

      if God allows terrible things to happen?" 

These questions are all similar 

  to the ones that the book of Job 

    attempted to deal with, 

      but the questions are both broader 

        and more complicated

          than anything we can answer from the Bible. 

They apply for people of all religious persuasions, 

  and they may be meaningful for anyone. 

The wonderful book by Rabbi Harold Kushner, 

  When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 

    gives a strong answer, calling into question 

      one of the most popular concepts about God, 

        His omnipotence, or all powerful nature. 

I mentioned the Rabbi and the book 

  in my last sermon, 

    regarding the biblical book of Job, 

      since the biblical book seeks to answer 

        at least some of the same questions 

          as Rabbi Kushner's book. 

Of course, no idea that would weaken 

  a believer's concept of God 

    would pass biblical muster. 

At the same time, 

  it's necessary to entertain the questions. 

The doctrines of omnipotence (all power) 

  and omniscience (all knowledge) 

    are held by most believers 

      in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 

        but they are not necessarily supported 

          by the traditional scriptures of those faiths. 

Approaching the questions raised by theology 

  with a sense of humor 

    is especially important 

      if we are to think about the subject 

        of accountability for God (theodicy). 

One of my personal favorite ways 

  of applying humor to our understanding of God 

    is the movie, Oh God. 

In that movie, from 1977, 

  the part of God is played by George Burns 

    and his prophet is played by John Denver. 

Having those two at the center of the plot 

  is a perfect setup for comedy. 

Related to our subject for today 

  were several funny statements and interactions. 

God, as portrayed by George Burns, 

  admitted that He had made mistakes. 

My personal favorite was the avocado. 

God said, "I made the pits too big." 

As I see it, some of the greatest signs 

  of God's sense of humor 

    may be seen in the animal world. 

Whether in the understanding 

  of mythology or scripture, 

    the Creator of the giraffe 

      and the duck-billed platypus 

        has to have a sense of humor. 

Similarly, in all of literature, 

  my heart and mind tell me

    that one of the greatest humorists 

      in all of human history 

        was Jesus of Nazareth. 

It's sometimes called a parable, 

  but I think it's a great joke: 

    Jesus once told us all 

      not to be too worried about the speck of sawdust 

        in our neighbor's eye

          until we take the plank out of our own eye. 

Likewise, He was an expert 

  at catching His enemies in their own traps. 

One of my personal favorites 

  among the examples of His humor 

    in the New Testament 

      is the story of questioners whom He trapped 

        in more ways than one 

          because of their attempt to trap Him. 

It must have infuriated them 

  because they thought 

    they really had Him that time, 

      when they asked Him about taxes. 

"Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" 

He asked them to show Him the coin 

  in which the taxes were paid, 

    and then asked whose IMAGE and inscription 

      were upon it. 

Caesar's, they said. 

Their very act of carrying a coin with a graven image 

  of the emperor 

    who claimed divine nature for himself 

      was a violation of the kind of law about which 

        they were trying to trap Jesus. 

They tried to create a conundrum for Him: 

If He told them that payment of the tax was legal, 

  His revolutionary followers would desert Him. 

If He told them that the payment was not legal, 

  the Roman soldiers who were everywhere 

    would likely have arrested Him on the spot 

      for advocating disobedience of Roman law. 

Jesus gave the perfect answer. 

"Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, 

  and give to God what is God's, 

    He told them. 

One aspect of the humor of the situation

  is something we can easily miss in our time.

Jesus created a conundrum for His enemies. 

By even carrying the coin with the image of Caesar, 

  they were shown to be hypocrites, 

    violating the very religious law 

      they demanded must be upheld. 

By paying the tax, which they must have done, 

  they showed themselves to be unfaithful 

    hypocrites twice over. 

Humor doesn't really answer 

  the issues and questions we are looking at today, 

    but at least it gives us different angles 

      from which we may look at them. 

Humor can call us to have compassion. 

Our having compassion for God 

  could be a reflection of the compassion 

    He is believed (by many) to have for us. 

After all, in one of the great moments in history 

  for the people of ancient Israel, 

    a Midrash (commentary) on the event 

      shows God's compassion 

        in a new and different light. 

Pharaoh and his armies were drowning 

  in the waters of the Reed Sea, 

    and the Children of Israel 

      were singing and dancing for joy.

God said, "Stop singing!" 

"Those are my children who are drowning there!" 

This approach to the story 

  brings a view of my own personal faith 

    when it comes to calling God to account 

      for His works and His ways. 

God is far beyond 

  our understanding and knowledge. 

Yet at the same time, 

  God is far closer to us than our next breath. 

God is intimately involved in the multiverse, 

  so much so that what happens to us 

    happens also to Him (or Her, of course). 

This view is called Process Theology, 

  and my description is an extreme 

    oversimplification of it. ‑

To speak of it as I see it, 

  God's sense of humor 

    and God's personal humility 

      are signs of His involvement 

        in the process of the evolution of all things, 

          including us. 

To use a powerful metaphor from popular culture, 

  the Force in Star Wars 

    is a reasonably good descriptor 

      of God in Process thought and theology. 

A theology that sees the presence of God 

  in the processes of evolution 

    is not a perfect answer of accountability for God, 

      but it does enable us to hold God accountable 

        and ourselves as well. 

We all make choices in what we think, say, and do. 

Our choices matter. 

One way they matter is 

  that we drag our concept of God along with us 

    to face the consequences. 

With the words of a song by Joan Osborne, 

  we hear that God may in fact be one of us 

    a part of us, incarnate (in a physical body) like us. 

The song says, 

"What if God was one of us?

... 

  Just a stranger on the bus

    Tryin' to make his way home?" 

There may be more to God 

  than what we think about Him; 

    there may be no more than that, 

      but we know for sure that He is part of us. 

So the best way to understand 

  accountability for God 

    is to understand it 

      as part of our own accountability. 

As we hold God accountable, 

  we also hold ourselves accountable 

    for what we think, say, and do. 

We can then have more effective compassion 

  for God and for ourselves, 

    and that is deeply important. 

If we fail to have compassion for anyone 

  whom we are holding accountable, 

    we are moving toward a truly bad place. 

We can transcend hypocrisy  

  in our self understanding

    by recognizing our own accountability. 

Faith is built on realities 

  that are both within and outside ourselves. 

We can believe or not 

  and yet find meaning in a faith 

    that calls on believers to question 

      and non-believers to hope. 

Amen. 

Let it be. 

Blessed be. 

Congregational Response 

Extinguishing the Chalice and Closing words: 

As we extinguish the Chalice, cherish your doubts, for doubt is the servant of truth.

Question your convictions, for beliefs too tightly held strangle the mind and its natural wisdom.

Suspect all certitudes, for the world whirls on—nothing abides.

Yet in our inner rooms full of doubt, inquiry and suspicion, let a corner be reserved for trust.

For without trust there is no space for communities to gather or for friendships to be forged.

Indeed, this is the small corner where we connect—and reconnect—with each other.