James Luther Adams, "Faith"

Faith is by no means dead in the world. A devil’s plenty of it is loose on the planet. "A man bears beliefs," said Emerson, "as a tree bears apples." He bears beliefs about himself, about his fellows, about his work and his play, abut his past, about his future, about human destiny. What he loves, what he serves, what he sacrifices for, what he tolerates, what he fights against — these signify his faith. They show what he places his confidence in.

Right or wrong, our faith must needs express itself and have its consequences for woe or weal. There is no escape. We cannot escape history, whether it be the history around us, the history behind us, or the springs of history within us… Down among the nerve cells and fibers, up in the brain cells as well as out in the world around us, faith is at work — or, rather, a multitude of faiths is at work.

The question concerning faith is not, Shall I be a person of faith? The proper question is, rather, Which faith is mine? or better, What faith should be mine? For whether a person craves prestige, wealth, security, or amusement, whether a person lives for country, for science, for God, or for plunder, that person is demonstrating a faith, is showing that she or he puts confidence in something.
 
 

JOYS and SORROWS

Into our lives come both joys ands sorrows. I light the candle of joys and suggest you recall all that has brought joy and happiness to your lives this past week. I light the candle of sorrows and suggest you remember the sorrows of the past week. This morning we invite you to come down and light a candle, sharing your joys or sorrows with the congregation either silently or with a few words.

Into each of our lives come both joys ands sorrows. May you find in this congregation those who will celebrate with you the joys in your life and those who will sit with you in times of sorrow.
 
 

MEDITATION

Please join with me in the spirit of prayer and meditation. After the spoke words will be a period of silence and a musical response.

Some folks think that religion is only about beliefs. I do not. Most UUs also make this mistake, and in the negative. They do not believe certain doctrines in their "faith of origin" (as the academics say), so they become UUs in part because of our flexibility in this area. However flexible in our admission requirements about beliefs, we UUs demands that actions as well as beliefs become the basis of religious life.

It is not what we believe, just as it is not what we do, that makes us religious, or leads us to affiliate with a certain congregation or religious organization. This is the hard part, folks: it is our character, both who we are and what we do over some considerable time melded into our personal identity that defines our religion. That is, our religious identity is partly what we believe, partly what we do, and partly how we reconcile belief and action into a unique personal life.

Religion is a summary of where we have been and where we are trying to go, of our history and our dreams for the future. It is never a thing one has or eschews, believes or simply does. It is not a thing (a nothing for all you proto-Buddhists out there). This concept of religion has a great many consequences, as you might imagine. I will sketch out a few of those consequences this morning under the rubric of our religious labor, the tasks we undertake to determine, clarify, and present to the world our beliefs, our faith, our character.
 

1. The tasks

There are four large areas of religious labor, and I will briefly sketch them out for you. Of course, we UUs believe you fill in these areas independently, individually. Yet, just as none of us escapes the labor of eating, breathing, or sleeping, so we cannot escape this labor, for, as Emerson said, "A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples." It is just something we do, as naturally as we breathe. As Adams reminds us, our faith will show itself in our actions, as well as in our words, our deeds as well as our beliefs.

The first broad area is the task to "know thyself". Adams liked to alter one word of Socrates famous saying to read, "An unexamined faith is not worth having." This is the role of reason and rationality in our heritage. We are not really a rational faith, for all faiths have a rationale. We believe that all persons must know their own mind, study the depths of their being, look at both their strengths and their weaknesses, who they love, who they hate, and what are their priorities. This process can be carried out with a certain ignorance and prejudice, or with the best attempts at using reason.

The second broad area is social justice. Freedom is not a personal value. Our freedom as Americans is inextricably linked with the freedom of others, as our soldiers in Afghanistan have discovered. We do not all have equal freedoms, not even in this land, but we must understand that freedom cannot be restricted to one race, one people, one class, or one group. So our faith includes a strong element of justice and peacemaking. In two weeks we will acknowledge this primacy with a service honoring the four little girls who died when their church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed.

The third broad area of religious labor is the somewhat less rigorous but nonetheless necessary world of society. Sometimes we UUs forget, in our emphasis on justice, that civility has the longer record as an interest of religion, and for this reason: we live most of our lives in the small world of family, neighborhood, and work. By forgetting this, we have ceded to the religious right the moral high ground regarding the family and civic duty. This is a great mistake, and I encourage you to remember all the small details of living, even as you end starvation in Africa, the oppression of women in certain religions, and the destruction of nature.

The final broad area of religious labor is that unique form of community known as the congregation. As I conclude the planning for the class I teach at Wesley Theological Seminary, the American University, I am constantly reminded that our identity at Unitarian Universalists is completely caught up in our sense of congregationalism, of the value of congregations, of their authority, their social necessity, and their role as sources of knowledge, discipline, and inspiration for the individual.

So, there are the four broad areas of religious labor: self, justice, society, congregation. Even a brief moment’s pause will suggest to you that while we UUs emphasize the first two (the self and justice), so much of what we do lies in society, in our daily lives, in our politics, etc. It is mostly in that fourth area, however, that we consciously consider religion and its effects, purposes, and duties. Thus, one religious task is to maintain a healthy, happy, and effective congregation of generous, dedicated and friendly people within which to consider religion’s demands and duties.
 

2. a free faith

James Luther Adams wrote,

Today we are "free" of two constant companions of our ancestors: (1) the authority of might and birthright that limited personal development and freedom and (2) the unfortunate habit of requiring all beliefs to have been believed by someone else first. Actually as I age, I find there to be more honor in ancestor worship than I once believed. However, we cannot be limited to the beliefs of others in ancient sources, no matter how saintly or prophetic.

This is not because they are wrong. Rather, we must work beliefs out in our own lives, today, in the mix of tasks and demands that characterize our personal lives. We will find much that is insightful, helpful, critical, challenging, and truthful in the works of the past, as well as much that is foolish. So, we must make choices for ourselves on our own, mixing ancient sources with the input of friends, neighbors, work, our society, and all sorts of other things before we say, "This I believe."

The congregation is the greatest environment for us to develop our religious roots and spread our spiritual wings. Here, in an atmosphere of trust and security, we can adventure into realms unfamiliar to us, question the most basic of our beliefs and habits, and test the beliefs of both society and our personal history. The congregation also serves as our "extended family." Here we celebrate weddings and anniversaries, honor those who have died, and come to know one another’s children.
 

3. Worship

Some observer might note that in the four areas of religious labor I have mentioned, there was nothing about worship, the Sunday morning gathering, theology, or, really, anything that sounded specifically religious. This was, of course, purposeful on my part. I did not want to begin with anything that might limit our understanding of religious labor to our particular movement or the Jewish and Christian heritage of the West. There are many separate questions about the nature of religious activity that I cannot consider in so short a time a this sermon, but worship must be mentioned.

Worship is the central act of the congregation. It ties together all four religious tasks, weaving them into one design. In modern life this is not easy, nor is there consensus on how to do it. Furthermore, with increasingly diverse memberships and outspoken members, finding some process to unite both the four religious tasks and the individuals that compose a congregation is difficult. Indeed, any one of the two tasks might seem enough, and the success of those huge "mega-churches" can be explained, in part, by their concentration on the latter task. Many of them have a greater racial diversity and a greater class diversity than do we UU congregations. Their worship services are wonderful examples of how psychology and advertising can be combined to give birth to effective worship services that cross all kinds of borders and unite large crowds in common spirit and enthusiasm.

However, these churches are seldom known for their social justice work, although some may be politically active along a narrow right wing agenda. The work of religion, for these folks, is narrowed considerably. For them, religious work includes Bible study and obedience to authority.

A great many liberals consider the task too difficult and religion unnecessary because it fails to accomplish these tasks. If it does not weld society into one great whole (a primary purpose in ancient societies) and if it does not explain the world to us (a task now allocated to science), then why bother with it? Yet, these two pragmatic tasks of religion down through human history inadequately describe the human need for, and use of, religion.

Worship is the effort to bring together all four areas of religious labor, to make sense of our world, to unite passion and reason, personal and social needs, to celebrate both joys and sorrows -- the inescapable effort of human beings to create an extended family of friends and neighbors with whom they may have a more intense and effective relationship.

Worship allows us to extend ourselves into a larger identity. It teaches, affirms, celebrates, honors, recognizes, supports the various parts of our lives. It challenges us, calling us back to the values we proclaim but often lose amidst the welter of competing claims for our time and energy. It reminds us that we share so much with our friends, even though we differ from them in so many ways — and it reminds us to search for these similarities. Worship allows us moments taken from the steady stream of life’s demands, much like Sunday is a Sabbath the work week. In this gathering we practice all those duties and tasks that will help us make the world better for ourselves and for everyone. We practice expressing worth and dignity for every person. We hear the call to do justice, to live peaceful and virtuous civic lives, to improve and develop ourselves, and to commit ourselves to living with our friends, creating a community that lives its values in a religion of both beliefs and actions.