Who Shapes Us? A Sermon Preached at the First Religious Society Carlisle, Massachusetts September 12, 2010 Rev. Diane Miller

Transcription

1 Who Shapes Us? A Sermon Preached at the First Religious Society Carlisle, Massachusetts September 12, 2010 Rev. Diane Miller A church member was telling me about a friend who is Roman Catholic who is thinking about coming to this Unitarian Universalist church. She said, half jokingly, We are all Catholics who come here to this church, aren t we? It s true -- many people in this congregation started out Roman Catholic, and along the way they chose a different religious path, and arrived here. Many others were Protestant, Jewish, or from another world religion. Of course some grew up Unitarian Universalist, here or elsewhere. You ve heard the barbed jokes that we are the place for people who are becoming less spiritual who are going from more religious to less religious. Hence the old joke describing us as a halfway house on the way to the golf course. Or the open door out of organized religion. There is a pinch of truth in them. Yet increasingly, people are finding their way to our congregations who have had no religious affiliation, who have been brought up in families without any exposure to church or religion. They are seeking us out. Our congregations are the destination, the way in, not out. I do like that comment, We re all Catholics who come here, aren t we? when I think of catholic with a small c -- in fact, the word catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning universal. We aspire to be universal, all inclusive, to pertain to all humanity, to be free of provincial prejudices, which is what catholic, lower case, means. Universal. One thing about us Unitarian Universalists, we are more interested in affirming than renouncing. When people come to our congregations, there is no demand that they leave behind what they were before. We have a lot of hyphenated identities: Buddhist-UU, Lutheran-UU, Jewish-UU, Atheist-UU, pagan-uu, and so forth combined identities people use to describe their beliefs and spiritual journey. It certainly is true that those of you who grew up Roman Catholic, with a Capital C, were given an answer to the question, Who Made You? The answer is in the catechism is you know this God made me. The catechism goes on to teach that God created everything, and details what went down in the Garden of Eden. Paradise and the Fall is the origin story of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. We understand this as a metaphor, a story to explain beginnings. We appreciate the story, but I think you would be hard pressed to find someone in our congregations who believes it literally. We speak of being born of dust from the explosion of stars, the Big Bang, the wonder of evolution. We have no first hand knowledge of the Big Bang, since the magnitude and speed and power of that event are so far outside our range of experience, it is hard to grasp. Yet we take it on faith. It reminds me of the guy who asked, Why does someone believe you

2 when you say there are four billion stars, but needs to check when you say the paint is wet? Some concepts are too big to comprehend in all their magnitude, so we point toward them with a label, a phrase, a word such as The Big Bang, or God. Another central story of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is the idea that God has intervened in history, God has gotten involved, to guide people and show them how to live. The religious term for that involvement is Covenant a mutual pact between people and the divine. This concept of Covenant is part of our tradition and practice here at the First Religious Society. We have a Covenant we speak together on Sunday mornings when we gather, beginning with Love is the Doctrine of this Church. It inspires us, guides us, and no doubt, shapes us. What we say, what we do in church is important it makes a difference in our lives. And it may well make a difference in lives beyond our own. People have known for a long time that when a group gathers to affirm values, to speak aspirations, to explore, to name the truths of our lives, we change each other, we grow in ways we might not on our own. I ve heard it said by many religious educators that faith is caught, not taught, that somehow we pick it up by being part of it. I consider Religious Education extremely important, in a way that goes beyond lesson plans and imparting information. A label for this understanding of how we shape each other is social contagion. This is the idea that our emotions and behavior are shaped in part by the people around us, and that we in turn have an impact on others. It isn t new. It has long been part of the nature versus nurture debate, part of psychology and sociological studies and human intuition. This past year our understanding of human connection was advanced by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, two social scientists who drew upon the data in the Framingham heart study. In their book, Connected, they describe their observations that health outcomes were very closely related to the people you were socially connected with, at least things like being fat or thin, smoking or not. Drinking, happiness, loneliness, seem to be spread socially. They saw good behaviors passed from person to person like a rhino virus in winter. Infectious and contagious were terms used. It might seem obvious that the behavior of our best friends or our spouse will affect us. But their findings were interesting because they found that social connections had an impact even when they were indirect. A friend of a friend. Individual influence stretched out three degrees before it faded out. They termed this the three degrees of influence rule about human behavior: We are tied not just to those around us, but to others in a web that stretches farther than we know. We have known for a long time that we are part of an interconnected web of all existence in fact, it is one of our principles. This book gives more background on how our connections translate into influence. We are also impacted by others for negative

3 behavior, unhappiness. It might seem like an argument to live alone in a cave. But people who are highly connected with others benefit overall, because positive influences are conveyed more than negative influences. So, the message here is that what we do in church matters which we already knew and it has a greater impact on others than we probably would have guessed. Our ministries of service and love reach out beyond our direct connections, and change lives. Since we do our best to do good, albeit imperfectly, the impact of our actions is increased through the social networks we are all part of. Our congregations are non-creedal we do not require specific beliefs. Our common ground lies in shared values, expressed in our covenant, and in the UUA principles. No one must conform to these, but they express the impulses at the core of our tradition. We seek to promote diversity of all sorts, so that our doors are open to the wide glory of human experience. So in theory you might expect us to be highly diverse communities. However, the pull of social connections tends to make us more alike! Nevertheless, there is work for us to do in diversity. We have long been part of interfaith dialog, learning from people of other religious traditions. This past week, UUA President Peter Morales, at the International Association for Religious Freedom meeting in India, engaged in a dialog with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Our history of interfaith cooperation is extensive. This past week there has been a national frenzy of attention to a wackadoodle pastor in Florida. His threatened Qur an burning was cancelled, but he linked himself into the debate over Park51, the planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan. There is a rising intolerance and anger toward Muslims, and toward Islam. Our interfaith perspective can help. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all religions stemming from God s covenant with Abraham, and adherents are sometimes called People of the Book because all three have scriptures with much common ground. However, it is a mistake to assume that Mohammed is the Muslim equivalent of Jesus, and the Qur an is the Muslim equivalent to the Christian Bible. In fact, Mohammed was the messenger, and God was revealed in the sacred scripture itself. Islam understands the Qur an to be the revelation, the presence of the holy given by God to transform human life. All week we have heard about a grotesque plan to burn the Qur an. To destroy the Islamic scripture is to desecrate not ideas the usual sad intent of book burnings but divine presence itself. It is more analogous to sacrilegious treatment of statues of Christ. Of course, they are objects, but they represent the central heart of Muslim and Christian faith traditions.

4 When we can glimpse the perspective of another faith, we better understand our own religious selves. The path to peace and understanding is not with offending the heart of another faith. We are shaped by the path we choose in life, and by the people on that journey with us. Sometimes the response is simply an expression of love. On September 11, 2001, as darkness fell in Colorado, members of the UU congregation in Golden gathered at a Denver mosque, held hands, and created a human chain around the building. Love is the doctrine of this church. It matters what we believe. What spiritual practices do we need to cultivate in order to live as compassionate neighbors in a conflicted world? We are asked to stand up for the values and sentiments of our covenant, at times in hostile environments. We shape each other in ways beyond our knowing, three degrees of influence. But life and our lives are not as ordered and predictable as we often wish them to be. Robert Graves wrote in a poem of butterflies their honest idiocy of flight, lurching here and there by guess and God and hope and hopelessness. In these final weeks of summer, butterflies are all around, reminders of the turbulence that is part of our being, part of our world. It is good to know that we are linked to each other, and we are connected in all the lurching flight, the updrafts and the downdrafts, the nectar and the beauty of life. May it be so. AMEN. OPENING WORDS on September 12, 2010 We are here to tend to the spirit, to repair the brokenness of the world, to celebrate the mystery of being, to gather in wonder, awe, and thankfulness to honor the great gift of life, Welcome! to this place made sacred by our covenant to walk together in the ways of love and service, as best we can discover our path, with encouragement we offer to one another. Welcome to this Unitarian Universalist congregation! We honor the diversity of faith traditions among and around us. Eid Mubarak! The month of Ramadan has ended.

5 Chatimah Tovah" "Shanah Tovah" We are in the midst of the Days of Awe, the High Holy Days which began Thursday with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and culminate in Yom Kippur. From sorrow we rise anew. Blessings upon us all! May we find awe in each day we draw breath. May we be blessed by peace and understanding.