 he first Sunday of a
new spring: to whom or to what should we give thanks for such a gift?
Traditionalists, if they think about it at all, will praise their God for
this awesome blessing; Humanists, if they think about it at all, will
simply take it and move on. But what about the rest of us, those who
neither worship a biblical God nor are content to place humankind at the
center of existence; what about us?
Most peoples’ beliefs start out the same as their parents,’ mine from my
mother. I’ve told you how she’d been raised in a devout Christian Science
family and suffered a series of extremely painful childhood eye injuries.
Not allowed to receive traditional medical treatment or even pain-numbing
medication, she concluded that there could not possibly be a loving God
that would allow his children to suffer so terribly so all organized
religion was a sham.
I accepted this adamant bias: I was an atheist. I never attended any
church until my own children began to grow, reluctantly going as part of a
family (their mother having chosen a Unitarian church). That church did
not spend a lot of time on God, so I continued as an atheist...even after
a so-called “terminal” illness; even after going off to train for the
ministry.
In the late-’60s, the Thomas Starr King School for the Ministry in
Berkeley was even less- likely to speak God-language than the church I had
been attending, so all was well...until I started taking classes at other
seminaries, nearby. Gradually, I became less comfortable maintaining my
stance as a full-fledged atheist, but old dogs resist learning new tricks,
so I thought I’d hedge my bets and became an agnostic! (Actually, the only
truly-honest position one can take about God is that of an agnostic; we
humans will never know about God or even if there is a God, and so,
underneath whatever beliefs we may hold, we are all, of necessity,
agnostics.)
Eventually, though, it seemed to me that remaining an agnostic was taking
the easy, strictly rational, way out, a cosmic cop-out…but I did not come
to that conclusion until I was ready to leave the parish ministry.
I don’t know exactly when I knew that there is something I could and do
call “God.” If you asked me to describe that image, the best I could do
would be to speak of it as “the life force,” similar Rabindranath Tagore’s
image in our Unison Reading, earlier, that “stream of life that runs
through me and through the world, dancing in rhythmic measures.” But, over
the years, it has become increasingly important for me to hold some image,
some symbol I may acknowledge and inadequately appreciate, something
worthy of my reverence and worship.
In my sermons I use the word “Life” as often as the word “God” and I could
as easily use words like “Love” or “Mystery” or “Spirit”...or a favorite
image of mine, taken from the Sufis (a mystical arm of Islam), who speak
of the most holy as simply, “Friend.” But, no matter what word I use, each
of you will do your own translating to give meaning and power to your own
image of the divine, your own idea of the source and spirit of life. For
the truth is that we are, as a culture and as a religion, not monotheists
but polytheists; we do not believe in just one God; there are as many Gods
amongst us as there are people who believe.
Theologians have their own ideas on who or what or where God is, but they
agree on this: God is truly and ultimately unknowable; God is the hidden,
immeasurable One, unfathomable, indescribable. And that is because
theology is not like science; theology is poetry. In contrast, religion is
practice, the ultimate goal of all reputable religions is cultivating the
practice of compassion in our relating to other beings in our midst; but
theology is poetry, its goal a glimpse of transcendence, of ultimacy.
The poetic experience is psychologically mediated through our own
predispositions; thus our images of God are private, relative and, of
course, as with all poetry, symbolic. Thus, all images, all descriptions
of God, must fall short and will say more about the subject who utters
them than the object they are attempting to describe. Any and all images,
then, can be criticized as wholly incomplete and completely
inadequate...but they may not be criticized as false! For something to be
false, it must be compared to something that is the truth...and the truth
is (as Annie Dillard put it): we don’t know beans about God.
Church historian and theologian, Martin Marty, perhaps the expert on
religion in America today, states: “90% of the American people believe
somehow in some sort of God, and over-80% check in on a biblical God.”
While many UUs consider themselves to be unbelievers, I’m sure there are
some here, this morning, who fit into that “over-80%” who accept a
biblical image of God; the rest of us may criticize such understanding as
being inadequate and incomplete, but we must guard against smugly
believing that others’ images are wrong, to proclaim that our equally
inadequate, incomplete image of God—or no-God—is superior to anyone else’s
image.
It is unfortunate that the “G-word” is so upsetting for so many. Years ago
I was invited to speak at a Fellowship in southern California, but when
they saw my sermon title had the word “God” in it, I was told that “we
don’t speak that word here.” (So much for freedom of the pulpit, let alone
freedom of belief; needless to say, I did not speak there.) One time,
recently, when I spoke at All Souls Unitarian church in Colorado Springs,
I must have used the “G-word” too often for, afterwards, a woman charged
up to me, saying that her grandfather had been a Methodist minister and if
she wanted to hear “that kind” of sermon she would go to that church, and
I should have been a Methodist minister. (Well, my wife is a life-long
Methodist and, trust me, she surely knows that I would never make it as a
Methodist minister!)
Some of you may remember the infamous comedian and social-critic, Lenny
Bruce, who would tackle the hypocrisies of the day, including censorship
of certain words used freely in society but banned in public
performances...in particular, that most-offensive four-letter word. To
make his point, he would repeat that vulgarity over and over to show it
need not be all that powerful or fearful. While we all understand the same
meaning for that word, it is a different matter when we use the “G-word.”
I’ve thought about using Lenny Bruce’s method to desensitize us to the
terrible images that arise for too many when the word “God” is spoken:
God, God, God, God ...see, it’s just a word, no big deal.
But, of course, it is a big deal; this is not just any old, ordinary word.
Our image of that word is chosen in a particular context, one which
theologian, Paul Tillich, defined as the “dimension of depth.” He wrote:
“The name of this infinite, inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is
God. And if that word has not much meaning for you,” he went on,
“translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, the source of your
being, of your ultimate concern. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must
forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps
even that word itself. For if you know about depth, you cannot then call
yourself an unbeliever. For you cannot think that life has no depth; that
being, itself, is surface, only.”
It is an exercise in frustration when we try to communicate in
God-language, because the word is a symbol whose meaning is different for
each person who uses that word. A symbol is a signpost; it points the way.
The problem comes when we cling to the signpost, refusing to let go of the
symbol’s image, and become unable to move toward the truth it is
suggesting; we think the image is the truth and, inevitably, feel betrayed
when we learn that the signpost is not all there is.
Ancient rabbis used symbols and images that the people of their time could
comprehend: Kabbalists sketched God’s form, each of his attributes
associated with a specific part of his body; Midrashim presented a God
bound in chains, forced into exile with his people. Jewish wisdom evolved
into Christian images of God as a rock, a shield, a shepherd, as father
and as king. But all these images are metaphors, not meant to be clung to,
literally; they merely point towards something we can imagine but never
fully understand.
One very modern rabbi, Margaret Moers Wenig, writing in The Book of
Women’s Sermons, imagines that: “God is a woman, and she is growing older.
She moves more slowly now, sometimes she has to strain to hear, her smile
no longer innocent, yet she remembers everything. God sits down at her
kitchen table, opens her Book of Memories, and begins turning the pages.
There are pages she would rather skip, things she wishes she could forget:
her children spoiling the house she created for us, brothers putting each
other in chains. She remembers the dreams she had for us that we never
fulfilled, remembers the many times she sat by our bedsides weeping that
she could not stop the process that she had set in motion. God sits at her
kitchen table: ‘Come home,’ she wants to say to us. ‘Come home.’ But she
won’t call. She is afraid we will, again, say ‘No.’”
For most theologians, it is unimaginable to think that there is no God at
all, or that God is not good, so most discussion, especially since the
Holocaust, has been about the limits of God’s power. Some suggest that God
created the world and then stepped back to make room for further creation
from us, like God sitting at her kitchen table without any power to
intervene in history.
The imperfection and unpredictability of life forces us to see God
differently as we come to see ourselves and our world differently,
eventually abandoning our earlier images. Rather than—as did my mother—
rather than projecting our own childhood frustrations and inadequacies
onto an unloving God, what if we focused on our experiences of support and
transformation and grace? If we’ve experienced anything like that, then we
may imagine God as something accepting and sustaining and inspiring, and
God may speak to us and work through us, as we are moved by Its mysterious
Spirit.
Albert Einstein wrote: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. This insight
into the mystery of life, even if coupled with fear of the unknown, is
what also
gives rise to religion.” Einstein went on: “To know that what is
impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom
and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only
in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the
center of true religiousness.”
In his novel, City of God, E. L. Doctorow writes: “Einstein was one
scientist who lived quite easily with the concept of a Creator. He had a
habit of calling God the Old One. That was his name for God, the Old One.
He was not a stylish writer, Albert, but he chose words for their
precision. One way or another, God is very Old…and One, because God is by
definition not only unduplicable and all-encompassing but also without
gender. So the phrase is really very exact: the Old One.
“Not much in the way of a revelation, of course,” Doctorow continues.
“Albert thought of his work in physics as tracking God, as if God lived in
gravity, or could be seen now and then indolently moving along at 186,000
miles per second...not exactly the concerned God people pray to, but it’s
a start, it’s something...if not everything we have, if we want to be true
to ourselves.”
Suppose that—just as our understanding of ourselves and our world has
evolved—suppose that God, too, is evolving; suppose that—just as we have
had to grow—that this evolving God would also grow, like us, from an early
stance of rebellion to one of cooperation, from judgmentalism to
tolerance, from vengeance to forgiveness. If we must evolve through these
maturing stages to reach our full humanity, perhaps God, too, must have to
evolve.
The question before us, then, is this: have we evolved enough to meet God;
have we grown past our adolescent petulance of feeling betrayed by a God
who—just like our parents—is neither all-powerful nor all good? Have we
evolved enough to avoid either elevating God-images in idolatry or
rejecting them out of self-centered cynicism?
Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace: a Vocabulary of Faith writes: “God-talk
is a form of idolatry, a way of making God or Jesus small and manageable.
Like all idolatry, it is a symptom of our desire for control, a way to
keep the Spirit neatly packed into our human comfort zones. In this way,
talking “God this” or “Jesus that” becomes “spiritualized jargon” seeking
to manipulate what is beyond us, much as we humans seek to manipulate each
other. If we seek a God that can be so easily manipulated, that’s exactly
what we’ll get.” No wonder so many, then, cynically discard any notion of
God because their feeble spiritual imaginations make him/her/it too much
like themselves, forgetting that “God” is not literal but poetry.
But, listen to the poetic imagination of Alice Walker in The Color Purple,
a conversation between Celie and Shug: “Here’s the thing I believe,” says
Shug. “God is inside you and inside everybody else. But only those who
search for it, inside, find it. And sometimes it just manifests itself
even if you’re not looking, or don’t know what you’re looking for.” Celie
asks: “But what does it look like?” Shug says: “Doesn’t look like
anything. It isn’t a picture show. I believe God is everything that is or
was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel
that, you’ve found it.... We must be loved very much by whatever It is to
find ourselves here on earth.”
The issue, then, is not whether God has evolved enough to meet our needs,
but whether we have evolved enough--have grown enough, with sufficient
courage and imagination--to, finally, meet God…maybe even sitting down
with her at her kitchen table. In the 13th century, Meister Eckhart said:
“We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be
born.”
We were born to evolve…to grow older with God, to greet each new
springtime in awe and expectancy, awakening to each new day we are given
with eagerness to wonder: what shall I learn today? what can I create?
what will I notice that I have never seen before? And to ask, anew: what
makes me most alive? what is worthy of my worship? And, finally and most
importantly, to ask: to what or to whom do I give thanks?
I leave you with
this from the eminent psychologist, Carl Jung, who had these words carved
over the front door of his house in Zurich: translated from Latin, they
say, “Whether we seek God or do not seek God, God is present.”
(Amen!)
CLOSING: (from Alice Walker)
All people deserve to worship a God who worships them; a God that made
them and likes them. ...a God who adores our freedom...and will do all
She can to support our choices. We are born knowing how to worship as we
are born knowing how to laugh.
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