WEIGHING IN. A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City November 10, 2013

Transcription

1 WEIGHING IN A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City November 10, 2013 Last Sunday morning, I went to church. My guess is that this does not come as a surprise, given that I can almost always be found in church on Sunday mornings. But I wasn t at All Souls last Sunday morning, nor was I preaching elsewhere. Rather, I attended a service in Washington, DC designed to worship a God I don t believe in. I went to Washington for an event at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that featured my wife, Dr. Holly Atkinson. Because of her human rights work in Burma, she was invited to be part of a program on the plight of the Muslim Rohingya, often called the most persecuted people on the planet, and the wave of Buddhist-led anti-muslim violence that has swept across Burma in recent months. I took the opportunity to attend the 9 AM service of the National Community Church. Held in a former theater in the Capitol District, the service was one of a dozen the church holds each weekend in six theaters across the city. I arrived five minutes early, and I had to sit in the very front row of the 300-seat theater. All the other seats were taken. Why would I attend a service designed to worship a God I don t believe in? National Community Church is regularly touted as one of the fastest-growing and most innovative churches in the country. It has succeeded in attracting a generation of young people the Millennials who famously tend to describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. Nearly three-quarters of NCC s worshippers on a typical Sunday are young people in their twenties. I was there to see what they were attracted to especially at 9 AM on a Sunday morning. My motivation was more than mere curiosity. While the steady decline of organized religion has been in the news for years, the rate of decline in recent years has increased. Forty years ago, Protestants made up 66% of the US population. Today, they make up less than 50 percent. The relative decline of Unitarian Universalism has been even steeper. Over the past half century, our membership as a percentage of the population has dropped from about 0.09% to about 0.05%. Last year, the aggregate attendance at Unitarian Universalist worship services across the nation fell by 2.5%. My guess is that this decrease in participation is mostly an aberration and not a trend. If it is a trend, however, Unitarian Universalism as we know it will be out of business in another 50 years. Why does this matter, you may ask? As long as All Souls is flourishing, which it is, why does the fate of Unitarian Universalism matter or even the fate of religion in ~ 1 ~

2 general? It matters to me for several reasons. As a human being, it matters to me that we develop and maintain religious institutions that can translate the knowledge gleaned by modern science into a modern way of life that yields meaning and purpose. You can know all the facts without knowing how to live your life in light of what you know. As a straight man, it matters to me that we develop a viable and aggressive religious antidote to the entrenched patriarchy of the religions of the book. Organized religion is one of the greatest impediments to women s rights and women s safety, and LGBT rights and safety, in every nation of the world, including ours. As a parent, it matters to me that my daughter s children and her children s children have a means of setting their moral compass and developing a spiritual discipline. We have rightly banished religious instruction from our public schools and our public squares. But if no one goes to church, where will future generations learn about virtuous living? As an American, it matters to me that we realize that we ve been living off the inherited moral capital of our Judeo-Christian heritage. But as the ranks of the nonreligious and the anti-religious grow, our moral capital is not being replenished. We certainly won t replenish it by raising our children on vacuous reality television, violent video games, and vicious pornography. The good news is that what we re doing here at All Souls works, at least for now. But the overall trend lines for religion in general and for Unitarian Universalism in particular aren t good. National Community Church appears to be bucking the trend. I wanted to find out why. The worship service itself was visually high-concept: lots of graphics and lots of images, both on the screen and on the printed materials. The music was contemporary, as I had expected, but the musicians and lead singer were all male, which I did not expect. Most of the songs were difficult to sing. Some people tried to emulate the two female backup singers and sing along, but many just hummed or listened. The service itself was conducted with what appeared to be a calculated nonchalance. The preacher wore jeans, with his shirt tail out and his shirt cuffs unbuttoned. The service switched from wave of the future to flash from the past during the sermon, which was more than 30 minutes long, loosely structured in form, and extremely traditional in content. Indeed, one of NCC s core values is that, although they are as they put it a little unorthodox in practice, they are, nonetheless, absolutely orthodox in doctrine. God is Father, Jesus is Lord, the Bible is infallible, and so on. The sermon text was a single verse from the book of Judges in the Old Testament: After him came Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; and he also saved Israel. The preacher explained that Shamgar was a shepherd, not a warrior, and he wasn t even a Hebrew. All Shamgar had, according to the Bible, was a goad that he used to herd oxen. But he was willing to let God use him and his oxgoad to kill six hundred Philistines and save Israel. ~ 2 ~

3 In addition to the biblical text, the sermon included a quote from the movie We Bought a Zoo, in which one of the characters says, You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage... And I promise you, something great will come of it. It doesn t matter who you are or what you want, the preacher said. What matters is who God is and what he wants. And he wants you to take whatever you have in your hand, whatever he has given you, and use it to fulfill his plan. Walk around with your oxgoad tomorrow and wait for God to tell you how to use it, the preacher enjoined. When God shows you what to do, it will only take twenty seconds of insane courage for you to change the world, as Shamgar did. Here s my assessment of last Sunday s service at National Community Church. The mostly-young people who packed the theater on Sunday morning at 9 AM weren t there mainly because the service wasn t in a church building, though church does need to be in the middle of the marketplace. Nor were they there mainly because they could try to sing songs set to a rock beat, though church does need to engage popular culture. Rather, they came to hear someone tell them, with utter assurance and complete authority, that they had a vital role to play in human history. It doesn t matter how lowly your job nor how small your bank account, the preacher said, almighty God has big plans for your life. Surrender to his will and his control, and you ll help him change the world. National Community Church has wrapped an archaic message in a hip new package. They re packing the seats because the human need they re addressing is an enduring one: the need to understand our place in time and our role in history. The human religious quest is ultimately about agency about what we have in our hands, and what we can do, and what difference we can make. No one wants to feel trivial or marginal. No one wants to feel unneeded or unnecessary. NCC reinforces this fear, and then transforms it. You really don t matter, they say, except as you become the obedient servant of almighty God. It s a message that a lot of people today, especially young people, apparently want to hear. What s wrong with them hearing this message, you may ask? What does it matter if people believe things that aren t true? It matters because the belief that human beings are vassals of a supernatural God is making a god-awful mess of the world, from Burma to Afghanistan to the United States of America. Our sometimes-laudable tendency as Unitarian Universalists leads us to respect all religious beliefs and to honor every religious conviction that s sincerely held. In many situations, however, our instinctive tolerance flies in the face of our theological commitments and our ethical standards. It tempts us to tolerate the intolerable. As most of you know, I believe the experience of God and the practice of religion are necessary in the modern world not permissible, or optional, but necessary. But our experience of God must encompass everything we know about ourselves and our world, not force us to set our knowledge aside. And the religion we practice must champion human virtues that will make us better people and our world a better place, ~ 3 ~

4 not supposedly divine decrees that disdain non-believers and subordinate women. What sometimes keeps me awake at night is the question of whether we re on the cusp of a Copernican revolution in religion or the precipice of a long slide down. As a human being, and as a straight man, and as a parent, an as an American, I pledge to do everything I possibly can to foment the revolution. In his poem titled Weighing In, the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, who died two months ago, admits how easy it is to stand idly by while malevolent forces throw the world out of kilter. But, he implores us: Still, for Jesus sake, do me a favor, would you, just this once? Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone. Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes But every now and then, just weighing in Is what it must come down to, and without any self exculpation or self pity. Every now and then, just weighing in is what it must come down to. National Community Church may have figured out how to fill theater seats on Sunday mornings, but they haven t figured out how to ground their religion in the modern world. To be fair, our Unitarian Universalist approach also falls short, though for a different reason. For the most part, we haven t yet developed the unity of message, clarity of purpose, and authority of mission that enables us to extend our values and sustain our commitments over the generations. The evidence today indicates that everything is not OK not for women and LGBT people who feel oppressed, not for marginalized people who feel powerless, not for seekers who feel lost. We re not making the religious difference we need to make in the modern world. We need to weigh in but without, as the poet says, any self-blame or any self-pity. We need to prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone. Unless someone weighs in against scripture as usual, scripture as usual will continue to stand. Unless someone weighs in against God as usual, God as usual will continue to rule. Unless someone weighs in against religion as usual, religion as usual will continue to exercise its power. I spent the past two days in the Boston area, leading workshops on the role of religion and theology in the modern world on Friday for ministers and yesterday for lay people. Yesterday morning, one attendee confessed to the group that she had come to find out whether she needed to keep going to church. My two children have left the nest, she said, so I don t need to take them to church school any more. Why shouldn t I stay home and watch a 20-minute TED talk instead? Later in the day, in the middle of a conversation about why people need religion in the modern world, someone else turned to her and answered her question. You need to come to church, he responded, because TED won t hold you when you cry. ~ 4 ~

5 The reason we come to church is because of brokenness the world s brokenness and our brokenness as well. Religion is about healing and transformation. The problem with traditional religion is that it contributes to keeping the world broken. We have a different gospel, one that s attuned to the modern world, grounded in everything we know, and sustained by everything we aspire to become. Ours is a faith that understands divine agency in modern terms. The divine work of transforming our lives and our world will get done only if we do it. There is no supernatural puppet master calling the shots from on high. You and I are the divine in human form the agents whereby necessity engages possibility and the past becomes the future. For us and for our broken world, weighing in is what it comes down to. ~ 5 ~