A THEOLOGY OF SORTS
A Sermon by Kenneth W. Phifer
Delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Ann Arbor, 7/20/2003


The President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, William Sinkford,
has issued a challenge to the members of the 1200 or so congregations of the
UUA.  He is calling upon UU's to reclaim "a language of reverence."

Beginning in January in a sermon in Fort Worth, Texas, he has made a
number of speeches, including his presidential report at the recent General
Assembly, in which he talks of finding a language that "allows us to capture
the possibility of reverence, to name the holy, to talk about human agency in
theological terms." Comfortable with God-talk--as many in our movement
are and many in our movement are not--he is disturbed that in many of our
congregations God-talk is not permitted.  He says of the Seven Principles
found in the UUA By-Laws that they "contain not one piece of traditional
religious language, not one word."

Sinkford calls this campaign to find and use a more "explicit religious
language...(that will) better acquaint people with life's 'religious depths'
and 'ground them in their personal faith" a main goal of his presidency.

According to a New York Times report in late May, "Sinkford's initiative
has generated more e-mail, letters and telephone calls than any other issue in
history."

Several people in this congregation have taken time to express their views to
the president, including my wife, Tawnya.  In his response to her, he wrote
that "I have no interest in trying to move Unitarian Universalism toward a
creed or even toward 'God' talk...My hope is that we can have a
conversation at a personal level, about what is 'holy' for us.  I hope that we
can talk without expecting agreement, but with a deep appreciation of the
questioning, the searching and the finding that is part of every examined
life."

What on earth are we to make of all this theological talk, this assertion that
we do not speak a language of reverence and that we ought to, and that that
language ought to include at least some traditional religious terms?

I have been thinking about this challenge since the misreporting of
Sinkford's January sermon in Texas.  The first articles said that he wanted to
put God into the UUA Purposes and Principles, which is not what he said.
The implication in these articles was that he was trying to impose a creed on
us.  Nothing could have been and nothing is further from the truth.

My response to this brouhaha is to say that, like most such controversies, it
is in some measure blown out of proportion.  Things are not so dire that
humanists, atheists, and agnostics should worry about "creeping creedalism"
or begin fleeing from "God-ism" in our congregations.  As the Rev. Kendyl
Gibbons, a leading humanist thinker and the current president of the UU
Ministers Association, put it, "I don't think Sinkford's use of theological
language means he's unwilling to be disciplined by reason."

On the other hand, Christians and theists who make statements about being
denied the right to speak of God or who suggest that they must always speak
"around God" need to just speak their minds and hearts.  In our movement,
the pulpit is free just as the pew is.  That is a bedrock principle of
Unitarian Universalism.  There is no climate of repression nor has there been,
certainly not a climate of repression regarding theistic expressions and
traditional Christian religious language.  To my generally humanistic ears,
that music has been played constantly.  Hooray! We all need to use the
language that speaks most clearly the truth of our minds and hearts

It is, in other words, a controversy blown out of proportion, but in
our society that is usually what is required to get media attention.
That we have, more of that attention, and more favorable attention
than has been true for a long while, is to be cheered.

So three cheers for Bill Sinkford for initiating this interesting conversation
and for conducting his part of it fairly and usefully.  Our place on the map
of American religions is much more noticeable than before.

Nonetheless, I find myself puzzled by some of the assertions and
presumptions that Sinkford makes.

The suggestion that we must "reclaim" a language of reverence implies that
we have not been using such a language.  I have heard and used reverential
language from the moment I became a UU some 32 years ago.

Throughout my experiences at General Assembly (GA) for the past 30 years,
I have found ample evidence of a wide diversity of religious language,
especially traditional Christian language of reverence.  This is most
prominently displayed at the Service of the Living Tradition, the service that
honors new, retiring, and deceased ministers.  It is always the best attended
event at the GA.

For example, at my first GA in 1974, there was a prayer, there were hymns,
there was a call to worship, and a benediction.  All of these terms are
traditional terms of reverence.

The next year, one of the hymns was Praise to the Living God.

This year we had a call to worship and a benediction, a prayer that began
with the words "Dear God" and a recessional hymn that began "For all the
saints. " As always there were traditional words of reverence commonly
used in Christian worship services as part of our central worship service at
our annual national gathering.

I admit that raising a ministerial robe to the rafters of the Fleet Center,
where the Celtics play basketball and the Bruins play hockey, would not be
considered reverential, and it is certainly not traditional, to anyone not
a fan of the Celtics and/or the Bruins.  Since I am, I do consider this
ritual to be a sacred one, and would have no objection to its becoming a
part of the annual service.

Our hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, is full of songs  from many
traditions that express reverence: "O God of Stars and Sunlight" (11), "Holy,
Holy, Holy" (26), "God of Grace and God of Glory" (113), "Your Mercy,
Oh Eternal One" (185), Haleluhu (280), Duermete, Nino Lindo (230), and
many others.  There are readings in the back of the hymnal from many
religious understandings, with a variety of reverential terms.

Or consider the language of our UUA Principles.  The president feels that it
does not "capture our individual searches for truth and meaning." He is
struck by the fact there is no "traditional religious language" in the
Principles.

It may not be traditional language, but what more reverential words are there
than "the inherent worth and dignity of every person" (Principle #1) and
"respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part"
(Principle #7)? If those words do not stir us in our search for truth and
meaning, I cannot imagine what words could.

In any case, our movement embraces people from a wide variety of religious
backgrounds, from no religious upbringing to a very strict one.  In most of
them there was a great lack of something or a great harm done.  How better
to state the principles by which we abide than in language that is not
traditional but still conveys the power of many traditions to see the divine
in all that exists and to point us toward ideals that will make the earth
a fairer, better place?

To use so-called traditional language is to bind us into a particular
tradition.  There is no universal language of reverence, though that is what
we are striving to create both in our religion and in various international
charters of human rights.  Each of the great religious traditions has its own
language to express the Inexpressible and our gropings towards a faith
commitment of some kind with regard to that which is ultimately Mysterious.

I have never counted but I am guessing that I have spoken in at least 25 UU
congregations and possibly a good many more than that.  I have spoken about
God, prayer, worship, myth, symbols, grace, sacrifice, heaven, hell, ritual,
the Bible, humility, and a good many other topics frequently spoken of in
more traditional religious communities.  With one exception (a man objected
to my speaking on Christian themes three weeks in a row), I have never been
criticized for speaking on these themes or for using words in doing so that
are considered to be traditional.

I know some people may feel more hesitant than I if their views are known
to be in a minority.  My hope is that very few people will ever feel this way.
One of our core principles is tolerance, which means that we expect that
different views will be held and we allow for the expression of different
views without being judgmental about them.

To encourage the expression of these quite different views, we in this
congregation offer a wide variety of religious education programs, forums,
and in the last year a post-service sermon discussion.

Anyone who thinks this congregation is theologically uniform should read
our annual publication of Credos prepared by our 8th graders in the Coming
of Age program and adults in the Building Your Own Theology class.  We
range all over the theological and philosophical map, from Pentacostal
Christianity at one extreme to vigorous atheism at the other, with many
Jewish, Christian, Buddhist., Hindu, pagan, humanist, earth-centered,
Islamic, Taoistic and other stops along the way in between.

Reclaim a language of reverence? We do not need to reclaim that language.
We just need to recognize it in our midst and respect the varied ways in
which people express their spirituality.

Because I stand before you Sunday after Sunday, I suspect you already have
a pretty good notion of how I express my spirituality.  But as part of my
response to Bill Sinkford's challenge, I want to spend a little time trying to
describe briefly what I am calling "a theology of sorts." I mean by this a
theology not fully deserving the name theology.

I have read Aquinas's SUMMA THEOLOGICA.  I have read in Karl Barth's
DOGMATICS.  I have read Paul Tillich's three volume SYSTEMATIC
THEOLOGY.  I look forward to Unitarian Universalist Thandeka's multi-
volume theological magnum opus.  Those are real theologies!

Mine is not a theology of this comprehensive, structured, carefully sentence-
by-sentence put-together argument for a particular theological
understanding.  I can read and sometimes even understand this stuff.
I certainly cannot write it.

What I can do, and I do this every Sunday, is tell you some things I hold to
be true about life as I experience it.  That is as much theology as I can
muster.  It is sometimes contradictory, even paradoxical--and one of you
always informs me when this happen--but it is an honest report of what I
perceive to be true.

The first thing I perceive is that appearances are deceiving.  As William S.
Gilbert once delightfully put it, "Things are seldom what they seem, skim
milk masquerades as cream; high-lows pass as patent leather, Jack-daws
strut in peacock's feathers."

When we are small children, our parents are monsters and doctors beasts for
making us take shots that hurt our arms.  Of course, as parents we do the
same thing to our children because we know the tremendous health benefits
of vaccinations against and medicines to cure ravaging diseases.

Teachers and coaches who expect a lot of us are infuriating at the time
because they make us work hard and seem never to be satisfied.  Later in life,
these are the ones to whom we are most grateful for making us do our best
and learn our lessons well.

I read an amusing story the other day about an airplane being delayed and
the passengers being told they could get off the aircraft while it was being
repaired.  A blind man stayed seated with his seeing-eye dog.  Obviously a
familiar figure on this flight, he was approached by the pilot who asked if he
wanted to get off and stretch his legs.  The man said no but that his dog
would probably like to.

The people in the gate area came to a complete stop when they saw the pilot
with his wraparound sunglasses walk off the plane with the seeing-eye dog.
Then they quickly scattered and not only tried to change planes but to
change airlines as well.

Appearances can be deceiving.

Grounded in this truth of life, I am usually quite cautious about accepting
the first reports of bad or surprising things.  Remember Oklahoma City and
the excited reports that Muslim terrorists had bombed the federal building
there.  Remember the initial news stories about President Sinkford's
Fort Worth sermon.  Remember, those of us who are a bit older, that
Thomas Dewey won the presidential election in 1948!

This is the reason why the American principle of innocent until proven
guilty is so important, as is the whole system known as due process.  It is a
protection against injustice posing as justice because sometimes things are
not as they appear.

One of the most frightening aspects of the past two years is the seeming
incapacity of the Attorney General, fully supported by the President, to
understand this vital truth of life.

God? Talk about appearances that can be deceiving, God or what we think is
God is never the same any two times.  God is, as John Montgomery put it,
"the Great Pretender, a chameleon who is forever changing." There is no
way to get a handle on God, whatever we might mean by that over-used,
little understood three-letter word.

Some of us say things like "God is poetry" (John Haynes Holmes) or  "God
is Nothing" (Richard Rubinstein).  Others of us mostly do not use the word
because of the historical baggage that comes with it and the lack of clarity
about what it means.  Other than Mystery--which carries its own deceiving
appearance--how can we say God without deceiving ourselves at least a
little.

Things are not always what they seem.

That thought leads to a second spiritual notion of importance to me,
acceptance.

One of the wisest attitudes we can adopt in life is to learn how to accept
the universe as it is, to accept things we cannot change as they are,
and to accept our own selves in the ways that we cannot alter them.

It is not always easy to accept any of these things.

Sometimes we want to scream NO in the face of the universe, whether for
petty or profound reasons.  It may be the rain that spoils our picnic or
it may be the death of a loved one that we just do not want to be true.

Sometimes it is the circumstances of life in our society, such as the results
of an election where our candidates lost or even a sports event in which our
team did not emerge victorious.

Sometimes it can be difficult to accept our bodies.  We think we are too big
or too little, we have a funny voice, we have a chronic malady.

Acceptance means to avoid useless indignation at things we cannot control.
By avoiding or minimizing such wasted effort, we free ourselves for
struggling to change the things over which we do have some influence.

An inspiring example of such acceptance and such responsibility are those
women who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  To lose a child is
such a devastating experience that it would be understandable if parents
simply retreated into their own misery, and some do.  Lives have been saved
and injuries avoided because of the work of these parents and other
supporters to keep alcohol and driving separate.

The key to responsible acceptance is to be able to judge the difference
between the inevitable and the merely difficult.  Learning this can bring real
serenity, maybe even sainthood.

A third perception is that the personal matters deeply in life.

We cannot know much, if anything, of what is happening on the distant
planets of our solar system or in the far reaches of our galaxy or beyond that
in the vast spaces of our universe.  What we can know is this earth.  Here we
experience life in a very personal way.

Consider that humans have imagined the creative and sustaining forces of
the universe as persons.  Gods and goddesses abound in human cultures, and
they carry very personal traits.

The Christian God has a list of attributes, like Love, Power, Creativity,
Mercy, Justice, and others that are all also human attributes.

The Greek deities were full of personal characteristics, warring amongst
each other to secure better position in the pantheon of the gods, loving one
another and loving human beings, creating mischief, determining the
outcome of human wars, balancing the injustices with acts of restorative
justice, watching over cities.

As the Talmud says, "God has no other language than human beings."
Many people feel that human beings likewise have no other language with
which to speak of the divine than human beings.  William Blake wrote that
"Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face; And love the human form,
divine, And Peace the human dress."

There is something sacred, divine if you will, about human beings.  We are
not just flesh and blood and bone.  We are persons.  Each of us matters.  That
is what the first principle of the UUA By-Laws points to when it speaks of
"the inherent worth and dignity of every human being."

Some among us are studying how we might apply such a noble concept to
our animal cousins, awarding them rights at least somewhat akin to the
rights of human beings.  This is a theoretical extension of  simple, personal
acts of love and respect for animals, like giving them names, feeding them,
tending their wounds, and feeling when they die a stab of great pain that we
have lost such a good companion.

We see the world through personal eyes, human eyes.

These human eyes see hunger and want to feed the hungry, see pain and
want to relieve it, see injustice and want to bring justice.  Even when we do
not know those who suffer, we do know them in a way because they are
human.  Our desire to help is very personal because that is how we see the
world.

The richest, deepest, strongest, and happiest way of life is found in
relationship to persons.  Whether we are speaking of lovers, parents and
children, friends or close colleagues, there is something magical, beautiful,
moving, and meaningful about our personal relations.  We need one another
in the most personal way, to touch and hold, to talk to, to face hardship and
share success together.

And when we think of God, many of us think of the deity in a very personal
way, like Ellen Bass in her poem, In Times Like This:
"I want an old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes God,
one with calloused hands and grease
under his nails, Who'll reach down and twist
our arms and legs into position.

I want to knock the father off the sweaty
terrified body of the child, and drag him back
and back into his own infant skin...
And let there be enough
Sandwiches.  And bikes.

I want a god who'll flick the knife
out of the boy's hand, hear it rattle
on the scuffed wood, then sit him
back at his own kitchen table
where his mother's peeling potatoes...

And while he's at it, spreads the doctors
evenly around the globe...

and redivide the money, like at the start
of Monopoly..."

That such things do not happen by divine action is one reason I do not
believe that such a "meat-and-potatoes" God exists.

Most UU's, whatever their theology, hedge their bets by doing all they can
to accomplish these things themselves.

So UU's among others are laboring diligently to bring the United States,
every single one of the 50, to the point of decency and common sense that
Canada attained recently by providing that same sex couples can be legally
married.  Not God, but some worthy judges and politicians took care of
honoring the inherent worth and dignity of every person in our neighbor to
the north.

We'll get there too some day.

Life is very personal.

A fourth piece of my theology of sorts is words, the power, the beauty, the
magnificent miracle of verbal communication.

"I take you as my wife and I will love you and honor you all the days of my
life." (from my wedding vows, May 8, 2003)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all... are created
equal...endowed  by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." (from the
Declaration of Independence, 1776)

"In this conflict, there is no neutral ground.  If any government sponsors
the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers,
themselves.  And they will take that lonely path at their own peril."
(from an address to the nation by President George W. Bush, October 7, 2001)

"To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing them end them?..." (from HAMLET, by William
Shakespeare, 1602)

"Dear God,Esq.: My family, the Sandersons, is pleased to invite your family,
the Gods, over for bread and wine (I figured you might like this)...Please
respond in writing or on a tablet.  Very truly yours, Sheila Sanderson." (from
CHILDREN'S LETTERS TO GOD)

Elizabeth Lea du Pont Carpenter, in her Graduate English Address at the
Harvard Commencement this year, wrote that 'Words Can Comfort Us.
Words Can Change us." She was talking of one of W.H. Auden's most
famous poems, "September First, 1939," one of whose closing lines is "We
must love one another or die." She continued, "Auden did not say, 'We will
take no prisoners.' He did not say, 'Victory shall be swift.' He did not even
say, 'The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.'"

Carpenter goes on to say that in later years Auden eliminated the line
because he thought it was "trash." On re-reading it he said of it, "Well,
that's a damned lie! We must die anyway." It was removed, but later put back,
put back, as Carpenter points out, because it has meaning for us.  Auden's
words transcend even his judgment of them.  Martin Luther King, Jr. would use
those words and the sentiment they express in various speeches because it
was the very fundament of his campaign for racial justice in this land.

"We must love one another or die."

Words have power and beauty that help us to live.

Then there is humility.  Humility has several meanings.

One of these is a true sense of our place in the world.

Humility teaches us that the universe is vast in both space and time, and we
are very, very tiny in both space and time.  We are not the point of the
universe.  Its enormity and its wondrous processes of both order and
randomness are beyond anything that we could ever have imagined much
less created.

To know our true place in the world is to appreciate the earth itself as our
home and us as a part of it.  We are not its masters.  We are its stewards.

We must learn better than we have ever known how to nurture the soil and
the plants and the waters and the air so that we have a clean home, a safe
home, a home wherein the billions and billions of  planetary flora and fauna
might prosper in ecological harmony.  None of us is bigger than the earth.
None of us has the right to despoil this lovely planet.  Nothing could matter
more than taking care of our Mother.

To know our true place in the world is to know the times and the culture in
which we live and what the particular historical burdens of our era and our
homeland are.

For us Americans in the early 21st century, that is not a settled matter.
We are struggling to determine whether the path of safety and welfare is
through a Pax Americana or through an international effort to bring comity
to the nations and the peoples of this planet.

Humility is knowing our true place.

Humility is understanding limits: limits to our own desires and selfishness;
limits to what humans do to the life that swarms around us and with whom
we are involved in an interdependent web; limits to the share we take of the
earth's natural resources and produced goods to be sure that all have enough
to live well.

Humility means that we know our limits.

Humility is an understanding of the importance of small things.

There's an old pop tune with the title, "Little Thing Mean a Lot." Do they
ever!

Sue Bender writes of how important it is that her son sends a weekly card to
his 92 year old grandmother.

Think of the small courtesy of the friendly people I have dealt with at the
Internal Revenue Service as I requested and received their correction of a
mistake they made.  They even paid me interest!

Think of the difference it makes when we are undergoing medical exams or
procedures if the doctors and nurses treat us like human beings and not like
pieces of meat.

Humility means that we know that small things matter.

Humility is the beginning of wisdom, according to both scientists and
religionists.  Marcelo Gleiser, an astronomer, speaks of living with doubt, so
we cannot be arrogant.  Rabbi Harold Kushner writes that "the first important
element of a personal relationship with God is a sense of humility."

Paul Woodruff, a professor of Humanities, in his book on REVERENCE:
RENEWING A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE, writes that "reverence begins in a
deep understanding of human limitations: from this grows the capacity to be
in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control--God, truth, justice,
nature, even death.  The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the
capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all.

Micah said it well: "For what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Humility is a key part of a worthy life.

These are some of the pieces of my theology: appearances can be deceiving,
accept what cannot be changed, life is very personal, the power and beauty
of words, and humility.

There is much else that is of importance, like learning how to wait, like the
inspiration of music and its ability to express the inexpressible, like what
the Dalai Lama calls true religion, namely kindness, and other things.

I do not know if the language I use can be considered part of President
Sinkford's reclamation project, or if it is part of what he considers the
problem.  I am going to send him a copy and find out, and I will let you
know.

Meanwhile, I hope that you will undertake, in however modest a way, your
own adventure in theology.  Take time to sort out for yourself what language
expresses the sacred for you.  What do you consider holy? What words and
actions have the aura of reverence about them in your understanding?

This is the great privilege of our religion.  We create our own theologies.
Wide as the world and as deep, we can explore without being condemned as
heretics, till we find a language through which we can communicate truth
and yearning, justice and hope.  None of us is likely to pen a mighty System
of Theological Understanding, but each of us can do what I have done,
create from lived experience and thought a theology of sorts.

I wish you well and look forward to hearing progress reports from you!


Copyright 2003, Kenneth W. Phifer, All Rights Reserved