Spiritual But Not Religious, Part II

Sermon

Last month I started a sermon that has turned into this sermon series: Spiritual But Not Religious or The Separation of Church and Faith. In that first sermon I asked, When did religion become the "R" word? How do we balance our spectrum of beliefs in this congregation, and what is the relationship between different points within that spectrum? How do humanists and theists and those of Jewish or Christian or Buddhist or atheist or spiritual or religious descent or orientation share and speak a faith in which we all find meaning and belonging? Where does our individual spirituality end and our shared religion begin?

I tied these questions to the larger issue of the Language of Reverence that is currently alive in our denomination. I’ll recap again for anyone who wasn’t in church last month that a sermon initiated this issue of reverent language back in May 2001 when a leading humanist UU minister, the Rev. David Bumbaugh preached to the Chicago Area Unitarian Universalist Council. Building on the Rev. Bumbaugh’s humanist vision of an imperative for reverent language, our denomination president, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, delivered further reflections on the theme to the First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth in January, 2003. Because a local paper misquoted him as saying that he wanted to insert the word God into the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes, a tempest erupted, with hot-blooded debate via email, in sermons and speeches, in letters to the denomination, to Rev. Sinkford, and even in some major media coverage. Even since the mistake was clarified, the issue has continued to evolve and engage Unitarian Universalists, in such venues as the recent publication of this book, A Language of Reverence, which contains 6 sermons or essays on the topic from very different points of view.

In answer to the general question of whether we need a language of reverence, I concluded that the answer is yes, for three reasons. First, because we need to honor different religions and world views, as well as the range of theologies we find right here in our church home, from humanist to Christian, pagan to Jewish, and so on. Second, because we have been, and continur to be, a religion and not a philosophy. Third and perhaps most important, we need language of reverence because as human beings we experience reverence. I said: "We all experience reverence on levels that spark our souls and move us even if briefly, even if only momentarily; they lift us, unutterably and repeatedly throughout our lives. It seems inarguable that experiencing reverence, we should have language to express it. Anything less than that is a denial, even a silencing, of that awareness, that precious dimension to what makes being human worthwhile."

What that leaves us with, though, is the issue of what would a language of reverence be? What does reverent language look like, sound like, come from? What would be fresh and enlightening, or venerable and renewing about it? Here is Rev. Bumbaugh’s opinion, delivered at the 2003 General Assembly, a response to Rev. Sinkford’s take on the issue.:
"[A]s God and the sacred texts are drafted to support political agendas of questionable merit, the very langauge of faith is emptied of meaning. Empty words begin to evoke a Pavlovian response from the public at large – an invitation not to conversation but to salivation. The once powerful images and metaphors that enabled the religious community to stand in judgement on the powers and principalities of the day are now servants of the status quo, of conventional thinking and practice.

"If there is any truth in this evaluation, then to call for us to used traditional language and symbols and concepts to speak about what is deepest and dearest, about what is the focus of our ultimate commitment, about what is the source of human good, about what is so precious to us that we cannot betray it without losing our own souls in the process is to ask us to employ a tongue that has been so corrupted and exploited as to fail to convey the very depths of reverence the times call for.

"How, then, can we speak with power to this generation, which continues to flee a sterile secularism in search of deeper meaning, this generation that pleads for bread and is given stones? To attempt to regenerate the old language seems beyond our capacity at this moment. Worse the attempt seems likely to prove to be another distraction. Clearly we need to engage a different language of reverence." (GA sermon, ALOR, p. 20-21)

Rev. Bumbaugh is a brilliant writer and expositor, one I am grateful and proud is part of our Unitarian Universalist movement, but I don’t agree with his take on traditional language, if I rightly understand him to be condemning language from the Western traditions and scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. He seems to be saying they have done to death, though not so much by overuse as by abuse and co-option. And while at times I too would like to throw up my hands at the latest outrage perpetrated in the name of the bible or Jesus or God’s plan, I don’t actually believe that’s the way to go. I am often outraged not only at the wrongness of the initiative thus being pushed, but also bercause I know too much, so much that I’m very clear that, for instance, Jesus does not ask us to war or kill, and that the bible, as Unitarian Theodore Parker said, was written by people for people. But, not only do I disagree with Rev. Bumbaugh on principle, I also disagree in spirit, because I personally am still moved and compelled by the bible or Jesus or my yearning for a just divine plan. There is more to this issue, such as the place of world religions and their languages of reverence, as well as what a different, fresh language of reverence might look like, and that will be part of my third sermon, wrapping up this topic after the holidays. But for this morning, the more immediate and central issue is what to do about"‘tradtional" Western language and references.

One problem with Rev. Bumbaugh’s reasoning is that I don’t believe the language of Judaism and Christianity was ever so pure as to make them now so contrastingly corrupt. To be sure there were ancient prophets and leaders standing in judgement over the powers of the day, but there were also other prophets, other messiahs and frequent accusations back and forth as to who was authentic and who was not. And winners write history – or, in this case, scripture; those judged authentic according to the books we have inherited in the bible are not necessarily the more valorous or sacred, but certainly those whose views prevailed in the long wake of circumstances, fortune and endgames.

Moreover, we religious liberals know plenty of examples of biblical language and values, condemning what was then considered corrupt, which we view very differently today. If we consider now consider bible sources wrongheaded in condemning divorce or homosexuality, or in condoning slavery, religious warfare, and animal sacrifice, we can surely not dismiss them in their entirety as once powerfully and rightly inspired, now sadly wronged. Because of this, I asked last month ‘is Biblical language truly fallen, become its own Whore of Babylon, or is it merely, again, a Jerusalem that has been overtaken and inhabited by forces currently prevailing? Answering this means looking at what the Jewish and Christian traditions actually offer or impose, also considering whether traditional language can ever be "reformed," invested with new meaning or interpretation or at least differently nuanced.

If we start with these languages of reverence we know, biblical languages, what would keep it from being merely trammeling, or Christian, or outdated, or tired, or even worse bringing us back emotionally to experiences that were painful or damaging? Bill Sinkford suggests that this is rich ground with much still to yield even to our liberal plows. David Bumbaugh disagrees, he says: "Returning to that language and to those categories will not make us relevant; it will make us partners in a conversation about a world that is gone." (ALOR, p. 18) Instead Rev. Bumbaugh feels our language should be shaped by the revelations of human understanding and science, saying, "It is incumbent upon us to challenge the parochial and limited claims of traditional religions with the enlarging, enriching and reverent story that is our story and their story: the Universe story. This religious story needs to be in conversation with other religious traditions, but that conversation cannot take place if we allow our vision to be poured into the old wineskins of impotent categories: the language used to sell… morally bankrupt political and economic agendas; the language that disguises and eviscerates the radical alternative it offers. We must offer a powerful religious vision conveyed in a language of reverence appropriate to the faith it represents in the marketplace of ideas. If we are able to do that, perhaps we can provoke a real conversation." (ALOR, p. 22)

His words here are radical, and yet, to me, who was raised UU in the 1970s, they are also familiar. In his original sermon on reverence, Rev. Bumbaugh condemned the usual misunderstanding and disdain with which Unitarian Universalism often engages the larger realm of religion. And here, though his critique rings with truth and righteousness, it also rings with disdain at least, and I would also argue, misunderstanding. Imagine my surprise when, raised myself to ignore the bible as outmoded, narrow, ugly, and the province of the ignorant or stupid, I found, on engaging with it in divinity school, that there was actually some beauty there, some truth, even some comfort. Imagine my shock when I found not only my own struggles and yearning but also much beauty to admire in the lyrical expressions of human need, hope, despair and renewal in the Psalms and Lamentations, instances of justice and inspiration in Leviticus and Jonah, admonitions to a larger and more open heart in the words and deeds of Jesus, imperatives to study and debate in the epistles of Paul, a world wholly parallel to ours: the complex, multi-faith, multicultural world that is the setting for, and stuff of, the bible and other contemporaneous writings and writers. There is no question that biblical language and idioms are not enough to comprise the whole of our language of reverence, not even so much perhaps because they have been tainted by contemporary applications as because they employ a vocabulary and worldview that is as often outdated as it is timeless. Which of us cannot find a potent contemporary interpretation for this ringing condemnation from Ezekiel:
"Ho, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat,, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the crippled you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they are scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts." (Ez. 34:2-5)

And yet it is made quaint by what was once a metaphor as mundane and immediate as it might now be to refer to the commuter or the working parent or the runaway. It is satisfying to note the potent parallels in Ezekiel’s narration, but it is not enough. And no one in Unitarian Universalism suggests that to draw merely on the reverent language of Western biblical tradition would be enough. But surely, that language holds still an undeniable place in our vocabulary and our psyches. In fact, Rev. Bumbaugh might be considered to make this point himself, contravening his own words when he writes:
"Humanism…gave us a doctrine of incarnation that suggests not that the holy became human in one place or at one time to convey a special message to a single chosen people, but that the universe itself is continually incarnating itself in microbes and maples, in hummingbirds and human beings, constantly inviting us to tease our the revelation contained in stars and atoms and every living thing. A language of reverence for Humanists begins with our understanding of this story as a religious story – a vision of reality that contains the sources of a moral, ethical, transcendent self-understanding." (Chicago Sermon, ALOR, p. 14)

His theology rests as much on language made powerful for us by its biblical roots as by his poetic inclusion of hummingbirds and microbes; holy, incarnation, revelation, these words are as much or more grounded in the Jewish and Christian traditions, as in any other religious traditions, certainly inevitably heard by us with the echoes of those Western traditions sounding behind them. I read Rev. Bumbaugh’s words, and Denise Levertov’s poem "The Fountain" fills my head:

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water….

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

In the first UU church I served, a congregation that went back to the 1600s, they kept a giant, ancient, gilded bible in the pulpit cubby. You couldn’t hold its great weight or split its heavy gilt-edged pages or feel its deeply-etched leather cover without thinking of all all the hands that had touched it and leafed through it, all the people who had read it and all the people who had heard it, all the decades and lifetimes of clergy and laypeople and then myself, one more in the chain of who had handled and worked from it, on Sundays and at Christmas. Part of what satisfies us in religion is what we remember or recognize, to the extent perhaps that it is even hallowed by familiarity and memory and depth of context.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want….Honor thy father and mother…In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…When you enter the land…, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord….Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer, from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint…My child, if you acept my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, if you indeed cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures – then you will understand…and find knowledge…for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die…a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace…How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal…In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking 'Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?'… Pay attention to what you hear; the meassure you give will be the measure you get….Do not fear, only believe…Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown…My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations….for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an oppportunity for self-indulgence…You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The bible is not only the stuff of impotent categories and morally bankrupt agendas, and we disempower ourselves, render ourselves ignorant and narrow, when we dismiss it and its language and its vision.

Moreover, when so much current national and local religious and political discourse is grounded in those tropes, is clearly behooves us, if we wish to add our voice to the discourse, to be able to speak, support or counter, in those idioms. But I’ve spoken already in other sermons about Unitarian Universalism’s need to engage and add our relevance to the public sphere, and my motivation for exploring the language of reverence is different from Rev. Bumbaugh’s; it is not to establish a vocabulary that supports our public engagement, but to nurture and express our religious experience and hopefully the deepening of our searching faith and the answers we find. Why should any and all moments that might feel biblical, historic, traditional be bad for us? What about that sense of tradition in the great old bible, the great old texts, that is often such a rich and part of religious experience – the relationship through ritual or language to centuries or even millennia of shared experience that is both human and spiritual, of seeking or power, communion or ecstasy or revelation?

The relevance of religious words, even in contexts far divorced from religion, is clear in many modern, secular contexts. Consider, for example the word mission. "Mission" has widely travelled between religious, military and corporate milieus, and now, in such forms as faith and justice missions, mission statements and military missions, pertains powerfully in all walks of life. Or consider the word selah. That’s a tougher one because we don’t know what it means anymore. It doesn’t illustrate the relevance of the religious to the secular, it illustrates what happens to terms and meanings when we abjure them.

"O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying to me, ‘There is no help for you in God. Selah. But you, O Lord are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head. I cry aloud to the Lord and he answers me from his holy hill. Selah." (Psalm 3, v. 1-4) And Psalm 3’s conclusion: "Deliverence belongs to the Lord, may your blessing be on your people! Selah."

What a beautiful, mysterious word it is. Selah – it finishes those verses of psalms like a blessing, like a promise, like a confirmation or a letting go. Just the sound of the word is beautiful – it would make a great name. So evocative it sounds, and what does it mean? We have no idea. It occurs most in the Psalms: 73 times, and only appears elsewhere in the brief Hebrew bible text Habakkuk, and there only 3 times. Psalm 4, v. 4: "When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds and be silent. Selah." If you look in a dictionary you will read something akin to this definition: "an ancient Hebrew word of unknown meaning and uncertain grammagical status that appears in some books of the Bible and is therefore, when included in English translations, left untranslated."

For some reason it fell out of use in Hebrew, and so no one, no scholar, no linguist has the least idea. It always holds its own place in a text, and stands alone. Selah. The conclusion of Psalm 9: "O Lord, let the nations know that they are only human. Selah." What did it mean to those who spoke it, what would we know if we knew it? In Habakkuk, it appears only in the 3rd chapter, the prayer of prophet Habakkuk, each time amidst lines recounting divine appearance and retribution to hearten a people suffering and awaiting redemption and freedom from persecution, though never at the end of the prayer. Selah. We can mak anything of it now; it is the name of a contemporary Christian praise and worship music group, part of the name of a Jewish-Arab association for children and family, a US Christian church music publisher, a city in Washington state, a year-long Jewish study program in Ukraine, the name of a Morgan horse stable which defines the word on their website as a word from Psalms denoting a musical pause for meditation and reflection. My study bible allows only that it may be a liturgical or musical direction of unknown meaning. It does not come at the end of every line in Psalms, nor at the end of every Psalm, nor at the end of the book of Habakkuk, in fact its instance is rare, which adds to the mystery. There is no common factor in when or how it appears to illuminate its meaning. Is this really what we would contemplate doing? Shunning language to indicate our displeasure at its applications until we end its existence as comprehensible or meaningful? To me, it feels almost like burning a book.

I could nitpick here, by asking which traditional words would make the cut – Love? Redemption? As someone joked recently, we redeem our pledges in this church, but that’s the only redemption we speak of, right? What about rapture or prophecy or prayer or God? I will speak in the concluding sermon more about language, new language, and classes of religious language such as lyric theism and poetry, the language of yearning, as well review UU theologian Thandeka’s take on a new language of reverence and Marcus Borg’s analysis of how we define religion itself. But in the meantime, I agree with Rev. Bumbaugh that too often we waste precious time and energy on unworthy tasks, and to pique myself and you further with provocative or essential traditional religious words for our judgement would, I think, be a wasteful distraction. In the end, the world shows us still myriad examples of the relevance of traditional language that we can learn from. Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback mega-church and the Purpose-Driven Life fame spoke on NPR recently regarding his role in a peace initiative in Rwanda. He talked about a huge rally in a stadium there in which he quoted famous lines from Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. He said: "There is neither slave nor free, male nor female…" and he added, "neither hutu nor tutsi, all are Rwandans!" and a and huge roar of enthusiasm greeted him. Is that the language of the bible irrelevant and corrupted beyond all redemption? If a stadium of traumatized, hopeful Rwandans don’t think so, who’s message is irrelevant now?

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts. I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water….

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.”

Amen.

OW: Toward a Humanist Vocabulary of Reverence, excerpt (p. 9)
Meditation: First Lessons – Philip Booth – ALOR, p. 30
Reading for 2nd sermon:
Sinkford’s further reflections from delivered at Starr King UU seminary in California:
“I’ve …. learned that the language which would pit the “Humanists” against those desiring “Greater Spirituality” is truly unhelpful. To frame this conversation as a process which will separate the sheep from the goats, the right from the wrong invites argument and debate, but not discernment, reflection and learning. The reality is that, in the broad definition, every Unitarian Universalist is a humanist. We know there are no other hands on earth but ours. We know from all of our work as a faith community on oppressions of various kinds about the dangers of thinking in categories. It is not that categories have no reality or place in our analysis. I would be the last to argue that case. But placing persons in categories obscures the reality of individual lived experience…. I’ve learned that the response to Unitarian Universalist “Humanists” needs to begin with gratitude. These persons supported our congregations and institutions for decades. Without their faithful support there almost literally would not be a Unitarian Universalism today, or at least not one that we would recognize. It is also critical to affirm that there will always be a place in our faith for persons who name themselves “Humanist.” The great virtue and value of our faith is its ability to live as a religiously pluralistic faith, where our religious differences are seen as blessings rather than as curses. We live that reality imperfectly to be sure, but we hold fast to that vision. This is one of the great gifts we offer to our wounded world. These first thoughts are, as I read them, quite institutional rather than theological. Not surprising, I suppose, as I was elected to be an institutional shepherd. But let me offer at least a few initial words of a more theological nature. There are, for me, at least two important threads woven into the fabric of this conversation. One is whether we can name the holy, can we speak of that which transcends our ego and which calls us to the making of justice? Can we speak about God? But there is a second thread. Can we engage with the Judeo-Christian tradition? Can we reflect on those stories, using them to help us grow our souls,just as we reflect on stories from every other faith tradition on the planet? Or, because they carry too much emotional baggage, must be avoid the challenge and the wisdom of the tradition out of which we grew? I believe that both of these threads of conversation need to be a part of our dialogue.”
Meditation: First Lesson, Philip Booth, ALOR, p. 30
CW: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works.” (Matt 5:14-16)