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This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Church, Unitarian, of Athol, Massachusetts. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2003 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning is by Dana MacLean Greeley, a minister, and president of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1961 to 1969. It’s an excerpt from a sermon he wrote in November of 1978:

The greatest need in the world today is the need for a belief in peace. I have never believed in violence; and I think that I have not used it in any general sense; yet I have yielded to it in a few instances in the past, I am sorry to say. I have felt the urge for it countless times, and sometimes in serious fashion; but I have never believed in violence….

I believe that there is an instinct for violence within us. And anger and self-defense, if not aggression, are normal for human beings. But we have to control ourselves or discipline ourselves and overcome that anger. The Buddha said that “he who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.”

Impulsive anger, impulsive words, impulsive violence, and even impulsive killing, have to be understood, and perhaps forgiven, in the context of the anger that prompted them. War is planned, more than it is impulsive. And therefore it can be avoided. Of course it is as human to overcome anger as it is to commit violence. All the religions have taught that violence is wrong….

I suppose that it was once asked by a few idealistic cannibals, “Can we get rid of cannibalism?” and most of their fellow cannibals thought not. And it was asked by some minority moralists, “Can we get rid of dueling?” but most people did not think so, until Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804. We need to outlaw war, and put it behind us, like cannibalism and dueling.

We can have peace; but it is a very precarious situation today.

The second reading is a poem by E. E. Cummings….

(Copyright law does not allow entire poems to be reproduced. The reading was the poem that begins:

plato told
him:he couldn’t
believe it(jesus

Sermon

I’ve been trying to make sense out of the possibility of war in Iraq. That is to say, I’ve been trying to make religious sense out of the possibility of this war in Iraq. And I realized that what worries me most — from a religious point of view — about the war in Iraq is that so many people seem so certain about the rightness, and justice, and even holiness of this war. As for me, I find I lack certainty.

Remember — I am talking to you from a religious point of view. I’m not approaching this problem as a political liberal or a political conservative. Besides, if I were to speak in political terms, I’d be more certain what I am supposed to say. Political centrists and moderate conservatives generally support the war in Iraq; the political liberals and the far right seem to be opposing the war in Iraq. But when I speak as a religious liberal, certainty disappears.

We just sent the children off to Sunday school. I went to Unitarian Universalist Sunday school myself. People often ask what UU children learn in Sunday school, besides juice and cookies. Well, our children are also learning how to argue effectively and be critical of everything, important skills for the day when they wind up serving on a UU committee. But perhaps the best answer is something like this: in a UU Sunday school, children learn to distrust certainty. The children’s story today ends with a moral that could be the motto of any UU Sunday school: it’s better to ask the right questions than it is to know all the answers.

As a Unitarian Universalist to my marrow, I find I am extremely suspicious of certainty. If someone says to me that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, I immediately get suspicious. I ask: How do you know that is so? If someone says to me that meditation is the only way to achieve enlightenment, I get suspicious and ask: Are you sure? Are you sure there’s no other way to reach enlightenment? I extend my suspicion and lack of certainty to Unitarian Universalism. We UUs have a tendency to get a little smug and self-satisfied, a little too certain that we have all the answers — or at least all the questions! — and that makes me immediately suspicious of us. Are we sure that we all agree with the so-called seven principles? Are we sure that the flaming chalice is an appropriate symbol for our faith?

In the first reading this morning, Dana Greeley said, “All religions have taught that violence is wrong.” Anger, aggression, self-defense — these, he says, are normal for human beings. The religious question to ask is: how far can we let anger and aggression go?

When we think we have an answer to that question, then the world changes. One day we are cannibals, questioning ourselves as to whether we can end cannibalism. I can see myself at that committee meeting — a whole tribe of us cannibals sitting around the stew pot, deciding whether or not we should cook up the missionaries we captured and serve them in a stew. Perhaps we are cannibals who believe in democracy and we vote on the matter.

We decide to free the missionaries, and the next thing you know they have converted us from our cannibal religion to Christianity. We are given a new form of certainty, a religion that tells us how to get to heaven and how to avoid hell. And two hundred years later, we begin to rule our own country at last. Instead of a stew pot for missionaries, we have guns and tanks, and finally weapons of mass destruction. Rapid communication — planes, highways, trains — bring our neighbors even closer to us. We enter the world community of nations, our neighborhood is the world, and the rules of the game change again.

The rules of the game changed radically fifty-odd years ago, after the atomic bomb was developed. All of a sudden war was not just a matter between two armies, or two nations. All of a sudden, war turned into something that was going to involve everyone in the world. There have always been innocent bystanders who are killed in wars — but now the whole world became innocent bystanders. It was to this change in reality that Dana Greeley was responding — he was writing in 1978, at the height of the Cold War, when it seemed that nuclear war between two nations could involve the whole world in disaster and annihilation.

We haven’t had to worry about a nuclear war with the Soviet Union for the last decade. Now we have to worry about terrorism. We know how to fight a Cold War — we spent fifty years learning how to fight the Cold War. We knew it was between us, the United States, and them, the Soviet Union. We came to know the rules of the game.

No war might be with a well-defined country, or it might be with that ill-defined entity, the terrorists. With the war on terrorism, the rules of the game have changed once again, and the certainty we held on to throughout the Cold War has eroded away under our grasp.

In the religious liberal world view, one of our fundamental presuppositions is that things do change. Traditional religion, has a kind of certainty we lack. We don’t know that we will get to heaven, or even that heaven exists. During the course of our lives, we know in our bones that our whole viewpoint can, and probably will, change.

An example: Most of you are probably familiar with our principles and purposes, a series of religious statements that most Unitarian Universalists can affirm. You may also know about the most important part of the principles and purposes, the clause that says that we have to re-examine these principles and purposes at least every fifteen years. Every fifteen years, the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly has to revisit the principles and purposes and make sure we can still affirm them. I call this “the incompleteness clause.” With the incompleteness clause, we affirm that certainty changes as time goes by. The incompleteness clause recognizes that there can never be a final statement of what we affirm.

Although I’m not talking about Unitarian Universalism as a whole, I am not talking about individual religious liberals. If you want to go on for the rest of your life believing exactly what you believe now, you are welcome to do so, and I for one am not going to try to stop you. But as a whole, as an organization, we religious liberals know we have to be open to change, however uncomfortable and painful that change may be.

Our religious attitudes towards war have been changing throughout the twentieth century. In the past, war had been an acceptable means for resolving disputes. Early Unitarians and Universalists were active in the War for American Independence — Caleb Rich, an early Universalist minister, fought in the Battle of bunker Hill.

But our attitudes towards war have begun to change, perhaps beginning with the horrors of the trench warfare of World War I. Thirty years later, the development of atomic weapons had entirely changed what it means to go to war. The ongoing development of chemical and biological weapons, the rise of terrorism, have changed the religious value of war even more. it can be hard to tell who is an innocent bystander; and it is too easy to kill truly innocent bystanders. We are fast coming to the point where it is no longer morally, ethically, or religiously possible to have a just war. Or perhaps we have already come to that point.

In my teens and early twenties, I was ready for nuclear annihilation. I remember wondering whether I should worry about finding a good job, when nuclear annihilation seemed so close. We are no longer fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Union. One thing is certain, a nuclear war can never be a just war.

But surely the impending war in Iraq is a different matter. It is quite clear that Iraq doesn’t have nuclear weapons (yet, anyway). And while Iraq could launch a frightening chemical or biological attack on the United States, it seems very unlikely that they could annihilate our entire country, or even that many innocent bystanders from other countries. Yet I think from a moral and ethical standpoint, from a religious standpoint, this cannot be a just war. We lack certainty. We are all so close to each other now. Any war is likely to have massive repercussions far beyond the original intent. Not that the impending war with Iraq is unjust — but it is not just. It is in a kind of limbo, it is neither an unalloyed goodness nor a complete evil. It is a moral vacuum.

It used to be so easy: we knew who we were, we knew what the threats were, and we knew how to fight back. A hundred years ago, we could still think of ourselves solely in terms of being citizens of the United States. A thousand years ago, we could have thought of ourselves as being under the protection of a feudal lord. In the time of Moses, we would have thought of ourselves as a part of a tribe.

And in the time of Moses, when we thought of ourselves as a part of the tribe of Israel, we would have known — known it in our bones — that God was on our side. Our God was going to help us defeat those other tribes, the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Our God would also help us defeat the Canaanite and Egyptian gods and goddesses. A thousand years ago, God still would have been on our side. Before our feudal lord went off to war, he would have been blessed by the local priest. But as World War One began, America lacked that simple certainty.

We can no longer think that God is on our side. Of course that’s easy enough for those of us who don’t believe in God — but then, this really isn’t about God at all. More precisely, we no longer believe that our people, our little group, has all the answers. Thus we no longer believe in the white man’s burden. We no longer believe that it is up to men to make all the big decisions for women. We no longer believe that cannibalism is a necessary part of human society! Things have changed again, and in the midst of the uncertainty of change, we have to find new ways of looking at the world.

More easily said than done. It is hard to leave certainty behind. I know for certain that I am a citizen of the United Sates, and when I was a child I know that every morning in school I said the pledge of allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; and to the country for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.”

We have begun to learn what it means to be citizens of the world. When I was a child growing up in a Unitarian Universalist Sunday school, I recall seeing two flags in our church — the United States flag, and the flag of the United Nations — and I recall hearing excerpts from the United Nations charter. These words could serve as yet another pledge of allegiance, as we begin to think of ourselves as world citizens:

“We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war; to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small; to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom … have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.” In fact, you’ll find this excerpt from the United Nations charter in our hymnal.

As religious people, we find that we have at least two levels of allegiance — at least two levels of patriotism. We support our country, recognize our allegiance to the land that has given us so much. We also recognize our allegiance to all of humanity, we find that we must support the world.

Of course, this is precisely what Jesus and Socrates and Buddha and many others have been telling us down through the ages. They have been telling us right along that we have to be able to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. That’s what we heard in the second reading this morning, in the poem by e. e. cummings. Jesus told us, we wouldn’t believe it; Lao-tsze certainly told us, but we still didn’t believe it. Sometimes you just have to get hit on the head in order to believe something.

The presence in this world of weapons of mass destruction is as good as getting hit on the head is in the poem. In centuries past, you could easily ignore the teachings of Lao-tsze, Jesus, Buddha. But now all our fates have intertwined. Like it or not, we have to be able to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. The Golden Rule, present in one form or another in all the great world religions, tells us to treat our neighbors as we would like to be treated. Not only can we no longer ignore the Golden Rule, but now the whole world is our neighbor. In religious terms, it has become very hard to justify war any more. Like it or not, we are not just American citizens any more — we have all become world citizens. Now we must ask the questions that follow on this change: What does it mean to be a world citizen? How have our moral and ethical and religious responsibilities changed now that we are world citizens?

So I don’t have any answers for you this morning, all I have is questions. It looks like a war in Iraq is inevitable, and all I have for you is questions. But as the Scotty dog in the story learned, sometimes it’s better to ask the right questions than it is to have all the answers. Here is where we religious liberals can make a distinctive contribution: we are good at asking tough questions. In the weeks ahead — in the years ahead — let us continue to ask ourselves, to ask our country, what it means to be world citizens.

This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at Unitarian Church of Norfolk, Virginia (Unitarian Universalist). As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2003 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The reading this morning is from the Christian scriptures, a story from the travels of the wandering rabbi and teacher named Jesus:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept these commandments since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Sermon

Just before the offertory, I read a story from the Christian scriptures. A wealthy man comes to the rabbi Jesus and tells Jesus all the good things he has done with his life. He has led an exemplary life, and Jesus praises him, but says, “There’s just one more thing you have to do — give away all your money.” You noticed, of course, that reading came just before the offertory, and not long after an eloquent statement about the pledge drive. I promise, this was a coincidence, and not a ploy to increase your pledge or the amount of money you dropped in the plate this morning. Although if you did drop more money in the plate, more power to you.

In any case, Jesus tells the rich man to give away all his money. The man is shocked, and he goes away grieving. Of course he is shocked! All his life, people have been telling him how fortunate he is to be wealthy. He has kept all the commandments, he has led an exemplary life, but then Jesus tells him it’s not enough. All his meritorious conduct, the fact that he has honored his father and mother, refrained from committing adultery, neither lied nor cheated — this is not enough, he must give up all his money besides.

Isn’t adulthood like that? We try to do everything we’re supposed to do. We try to stay more or less honest, we take care of family as best we can, we put money in the collection plate most Sundays, we do all those things that we’re supposed to do. And it seems to me that every time I get to the point of feeling a little bit comfortable, something comes along that that causes me to question what I’ve learned: one of your parents dies, you get laid off, much to your surprise you find yourself separated from your spouse or partner, — a war begins.

The children’s story this morning told a similar kind of story. The scholar from the university at Kyoto is writing a treatise on evil. But he gets stuck at a certain point, travels to visit with the Zen Master. He wants to ask her what she thinks about evil, but being a good academic first he has to rehash all the authorities he has consulted, he has to tell about all the research he has done. And what does the Zen Master do? She pours hot tea all over his hands and into his lap.

Haven’t I been in that situation myself? I’m living my happy little life, chattering on about this, that, and the other thing, when suddenly reality painfully intrudes. I get into hot water, either literally or figuratively. And like the Scholar, every time this happens I am surprised by it. You’d think I would have learned by now.

It was so easy when we were little kids! I remember when I was about seven years old, my older sister was learning long division. I had no idea what long division was, but I knew that once I learned it, I would be a big kid, too. It seemed like there was such a clear progression through life: you learn your multiplication tables, then you learn fractions, then long division, and algebra, and next thing you know, you’re a grownup and you’re done.

By the time I was a teenager, it was starting to seem less clear-cut. I got my driver’s license, and then I found out that I had to pay for the insurance and the gas myself — that was a shock! And by the time I reached adulthood, nothing seemed simple any more.

Psychologist Robert Kegan tells us that the kind of learning we do in adulthood is indeed different than the kind of learning we do in childhood. In childhood, we pretty much know where we’re going: we are on the way to becoming adults. Kegan writes we have learned that the minds of children are indeed different than the minds of adults. When we see a child expected to handle something beyond his or her capacity, like working 12 hours a day in a factory at the age of ten, something inside says, “That’s just too much to ask!” We feel protective, we feel outraged, we feel sympathy.

But, Kegan contends, once we get to adulthood, we aren’t yet finished. Adulthood is not a finished state of being — we keep on growing and changing as adults. Nor is there any one correct way to grow as an adult; we adults face many possibilities. Kegan calls these many possibilities “a vast evolutionary expanse.”

As Danny told you, I am the interim religious educator for the Church of the Larger Fellowship, also known by its initials “CLF.” CLF is a Unitarian Universalist congregation that serves isolated religious liberals around the world, both through our print publications and through Internet services. And what I see in our members is a real hunger for adult religious education of all kinds. Our ministerial intern offered an online “New UU” course this winter, and it filled up almost immediately. Parents who are doing Sunday school at home tell me that they want religious education material that’s for their children, but that they can learn from, too. We have online discussion groups going on. There’s this real hunger for adult religious education out there, and we just can’t meet the need.

Religious education for children is a lot simpler than religious education for adults. We know what the basic goal for children is: we want them to grow up knowing to be moral, ethical, and religious persons. But we adults are already grown up. We’re already supposed to know how to be moral, ethical, and religious beings, and I don’t know about you, but as I ease into my forties there are times when I feel less sure of myself rather than more sure of myself. Children grow up, constantly increasing in competence, heading towards adulthood. It’s not that straightforward for adults.

This is what I see in the story about the rich man who comes to talk with Jesus. Even though the rich man has kept all the commandments, Jesus tells him to give away all his wealth and focus instead on the Kingdom of God. You can interpret Kingdom of God in any way you want, but in essence Jesus is saying that there is something more important than acquiring and keeping wealth; there is something more important than doing what the rich man thought he was supposed to do; there’s another whole set of rules out there.

Not that money is necessarily bad. Jesus doesn’t say that. I know have been in moderately precarious financial situations, and I’m here to tell you that it’s just fine to have enough money to buy food and keep a roof over your head. I believe Jesus is trying to tell us not to get obsessed with money — or not to get obsessed with anything, for that matter. Life is bigger than that.

Life is big enough to contain both good and evil. Jesus certainly knew about evil, just as he knew about goodness. But we can be distracted by trivial things, like lots of money, and try to ignore the big things, like good and evil. One of the things we have to do as adults is to confront evil.

Evil is out there in the world, there’s no doubt about it. We are at war right now in order to confront evil — of course, some of us disagree with war as an appropriate method for combating this particular evil, and we may disagree if this is the evil we should be confronting first.

But I don’t want to look at evil from the point of view of politics, I want to look at evil from the point of view of religion. We are religious liberals, and we have never found evil to be simple or straight-forward. We do not see simple black-and-white outlines; we see shades of gray. More importantly, evil for us is not simply something that is “out there” somewhere — evil for us can be found anywhere, in families, in institutions, even within ourselves. We know that evil can be right here next to us, or right here inside us, and this knowledge tends to make religious liberals cautious: we want to be sure of our ground before we actually go and do something. We would rather argue and discuss and take classes for an extended period of time before we actually go out and do something. I’m sure you all know the old joke: a Unitarian Universalist is on the road to heaven. After she gets over her surprise that heaven actually exists, and that there is a road to it, she comes to a fork in the road. She reads the sign there: to the left, heaven; to the right, a discussion group about heaven. And of course she turns right.

As a religious educator, I hear a call for more classes, and for more discussion groups. They have their place, no doubt about it. But we can’t always step aside from the main path to talk and argue. At some point, we have to get ourselves back on the road to heaven — assuming heaven exists. Learning, being, and doing must coexist all at once.

Right now, the force of daily events requires immediate action from some of us. If you are in the military, your course of action is clear: your vocation requires you to put aside any ambivalence and act. If you are a peace activist, your course of action is clear: your convictions require you to put aside any ambivalence and act. Such people don’t have time to take a course or go to a discussion group before getting started. This may be true of all of us: we soon may all be swept up in the events of this time.

What Jesus is telling the rich man applies equally to us, however different our circumstances might be. The danger for the rich man is that he will be swept up by his wealth, so much so that he ignores what is truly important. The danger for us — in these confusing, overwhelming times — is that we will be swept up in the events of this time, so much so that we ignore what is truly important. Jesus has a name for what is truly important — he calls it “the Kingdom of Heaven.” We don’t have to call it that, but we can mean approximately the same thing if we say that what is truly important is a world where peace reigns supreme, and where all persons live in dignity and without fear.

We must hold on to this vision; in the words of the civil rights song, we have to “keep our eyes on the prize,” and hold on. I know of at least one way to hold on to that vision, and that is to do what we are doing right now: to gather together as a congregation of loving and caring people. Edward Frost, minister of the UU Congregation of Atlanta, Georgia, recently wrote: “We [must] hold each other in love and respect, regardless of our disagreements, regardless of how deeply at odds we may find ourselves with the convictions of others. This is the meaning of community. In time of crisis, our religious task is to be united in our desire for peace but united also in our fervent prayers for all who grieve, for all who suffer, and for all whose conviction of duty has placed them in harm’s way.”

I want to go back to the story of the rich man and Jesus one last time. Most of the time, when you hear this story, whoever retells it assures us that the rich man has failed; he is not going to give up his money, he is not going to follow Jesus, and he is not going to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. But I understand the story differently.

At the end of the story, we hear that the rich man was shocked by the words of Jesus, and that he “went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” I believe he is grieving because he knows that he is going to go and give up his wealth and his many possessions — he is grieving the loss of his wealth. He knows he is going to find it hard to make this change, but he is going to do it. In my telling of the story, after he goes and gives up all his possessions, he returns to Jesus, and joins the little community of people that has gathered around Jesus. He misses all his money, all his fine possessions, but he also knows that by finding a community that will support and nurture him and love him, he has found something infinitely more valuable.

In my telling, this becomes a story of hope — the hope that when confronted with a difficult choice, we can sometimes make the right decision. It is a story of courage — the courage of someone who accepts the hard lesson life has to teach him, the courage of someone who gives up precious possessions in order to gain even more precious community. And of course, it is a story of love — the love that we human beings are capable of giving to each other in blessed community.

May it be so with us. At the best of times, it is not easy to learn how to be an adult. At the best of times, we need one another, we need this blessed community. Today we live in times of trouble, times of gathering uncertainty. We know the way to overcome evil is to build goodness, to reach for heaven and bring it down here to earth. In times of trouble, we need each other even more, we need this blessed community even more, we need to build up the goodness in our lives. So it is we set aside time each week to come together, to remind ourselves of our vision of a world filled with goodness; we hold on to that vision together:

Our small, blue planet spins through the infinite void, headed towards a destiny that we are determined shall be ruled by peace.

This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Church, Unitarian, of Athol, Massachusetts. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2003 Daniel Harper.

Note from 2025: This sermon was written a long time ago. Today, I would change some things in it. But I’m leaving it here because it gives a little insight into another time.

Story

Back in the olden days, two thousand years ago, in a far away land called Judea, there lived a rabbi named Jesus. In those days, in that land, it was illegal to do any work on the sabbath day. The sabbath day began on Friday when the sun went down, and ended on Saturday when the sun went down. for that whole time, no one was allowed to do any work.

This rabbi by the name of Jesus was wandering around the countryside. He would go from town to town, and he would tell people how to be good people, how to be the best people they could possibly be. As he traveled, he began to attract followers, people who liked what he said and who wanted to stay with him to learn more.

Jesus and his followers were traveling one day. It happened to be a sabbath day. They were walking along, and they were very hungry. They hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and they didn’t have anything to eat that night. They came to a field of grain, and they decided to pluck some of the grain so that they could have something to eat that evening.

As they plucked the grain, some Pharisees came along. The Pharisees were people who were in charge of enforcing all the religious laws. The Pharisees saw the followers of Jesus plucking grain. But wait! It was the sabbath! No one was allowed to pluck grain on the sabbath, because plucking grain was work, and you weren’t supposed to work on the sabbath day!

The Pharisees came up to Jesus, and said, “Why are all your followers plucking grain? Don’t they know that it isn’t lawful to pluck grain on the sabbath?”

But Jesus said to them, “I know that’s the law of the sabbath. But I also know that the whole point of that law is to help people. We do no work on the sabbath so that we can take the time to think about what is most important in life. If we worked every day without ever taking a rest, we would soon forget what is important.

“You guys have it backwards,” said Jesus. “You think that the law about not working on the sabbath day is more important than people. Well, it’s not. When it comes to religion, the most important thing is the people.”

I think Jesus is absolutely right, and most Unitarian Universalists would agree with him here. Another way to say the same thing is to say that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people. In our religion, we believe people are what’s important.

Readings

This morning’s first reading is from the Hebrew Scriptures, the book of Leviticus, chapter 18, verses 1 through 3, verse 9, and verse 22:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not follow their statutes…. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether born at home or born abroad…. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination….

The second reading this morning is from The Women’s Bible Companion, from the article on the book of Leviticus:

Illicit sexual relations and pollution

The Holiness Code — a scholarly designation for chapters 17 through 26 [of Leviticus] — sees illicit sexual relations as sources of cultic pollution…. The sexual regulations begin significantly with an admonition not to imitate the practices either of Egypt, whence God had delivered them, or of Cannan, the promised land to which God would bring them. The ensuing list of forbidden unions covers various degrees of incest, including brother-sister marriage — historically practices by Egyptian royalty — and male homosexuality — apparently practiced by Canaanites. The point of the warning is that the Israelites must set themselves apart from the surrounding nations, in their sexual practices as well as their dietary laws, which likewise distinguish between the cultically clean and unclean…. The Israelites…are required to set themselves apart…by observing strict rules of cultic purity in the two aspects of life most crucial to personal and national survival: food and sex.

Sermon

In the children’s story this morning, we heard a story of two competing points of view. On the one hand are the Pharisees, who believe in a literal — we might almost say fundamentalist — interpretation of religion. You can’t work on the sabbath, say the Pharisees, even if you’re starving you can’t do any work because it’s against the law. On the other hand, we have Jesus who understands that religion always requires interpretation. “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.”

The same kinds of debates are going on today. One in particular has caught my attention of late: the place of gays and lesbians in churches and synagogues and other religious institutions. On the one hand, there are those religious groups who condemn homosexuality. Some Mormons say if gay and lesbian persons don’t “renounce” their sexual orientation, they are guilty of sin. The Catholic church seems to be pursuing a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The United Methodists are close to splitting on the issue of same-sex marriage. Orthodox Jews condemn homosexuality. On the other hand, religious liberal groups like the Unitarian Universalists, the United Church of Christ, and the Reform Jews all recognize same-sex services of union, and are working actively to discourage homophobia in their religious institutions.

Or to put it another way: one the one hand, we have those who believe that humankind was made for religion; on the other hand, we religious liberals believe that religion was made for humankind.

Like it or not, we are in the middle of this debate. We have to understand this debate.

As near as I can tell, it all comes back to the Bible, at least for Jews and Christians — and Unitarian Universalists, because we do come out of the Christian tradition. Unfortunately we Unitarian Universalists have this tendency to ignore the Bible. This is a mistake on our part. We live in a society that is dominated by the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. We cannot afford to ignore the Bible, because the Bible is setting the agenda for the debate that is swirling around us.

Besides, I believe that we religious liberals have the same right to interpret the Bible as do the fundamentalists and the religious conservatives. The Bible — along with the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects, the Tao te Ching, and the Diamond Sutra — is one of those books that belong to the world. We have the same right to the Bible as do all the others, and we have our own way of interpreting the Bible, because we always apply reason and intellect to religion. Faith is not enough — you have to think about religion.

So let’s think together about gays, lesbians, and church, and see what conclusions we come to.

We can start with the issue of marriage, because same-sex unions seem to encapsulate the whole debate about homosexuality and religion. Unitarian Universalists, along with Reform Jews and the United Church of Christ, support same-sex marriage. Some of my gay and lesbian friends tell me that no, we do not support same-sex marriage, we support same-sex unions. In their view, a marriage isn’t a marriage unless it carries with it all legal rights and responsibilities or it isn’t really marriage. [Editor’s note: Remember, this dates back to before same-sex marriage was legal in the United States.] They’re right, of course. But if I officiate at the wedding of a same-sex couple, in my eyes, in the eyes of my religious community, that couple is married.

In my seminary class on worship services, we had to write both a complete wedding service and a complete service of union for same-sex couples. I decided it was a trick assignment in a way: you didn’t have to write two different services, you only had to write one service. Wherever you had to mention the gender of the couple, you just inserted “he/she” or “bride/groom.” From my point of view, there is absolutely no religious difference between mixed-sex and same-sex weddings. Yes, there is a difference from the point of view of the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If I officiate at a same-sex wedding, those two people are not legally married even though they are religiously married. That just means that there is an unjust, hurtful law on the books.

Our conservative Christian friends want to go further. They want to deny any legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Why? In their view, same sex marriages can not be religiously sanctioned. And why is that so? Because that’s not what it says in the Bible. The Bible specifically says, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman.” Forget for a moment that this passage says nothing about women who lie with women. It’s right there in black and white, say our conservative Christian friends — homosexuality is a sin, an “abomination.”

True. That’s what it says in the book of Leviticus. But, as we heard in the second reading this morning, Bible scholars tell us there is no simple black-and-white answer. First of all, the scholars say, when the Bible talks about holiness and purity, they mean something different from our contemporary notions of holiness and purity. Maybe the best way to explain this is to talk about what happened to you if you engaged homosexual acts. By transgressing against the laws of holiness and cultic purity, you could not come directly before Yahweh. Yahweh didn’t want any unholy or impure persons coming before him. But guess what — women by definition were not holy enough or cultically pure enough to come directly before Yahweh.

It is at this point that the religious liberal says, “Hey, this is ridiculous — what do you mean, women aren’t holy enough or pure enough?” It is at this point that the religious liberal says, “Hey, it looks like I cannot accept everything in the book of Leviticus; there is something in that book that is really alien to me.” Doubt and scepticism have set in. The religious liberal finds herself or himself compelled to look carefully through the rest of the book of Leviticus.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately — I have been looking very carefully through the book of Leviticus. Can I accept without question everything in this book? What else was this book trying to tell me to do? As I asked myself these questions, I ran into Leviticus chapter 11 verse 10: “Anything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales… they are detestable to you and detestable they shall remain. Of their flesh you shall not eat.”

Do you realize what this means? This means no lobster! This means no clams or mussels or quahogs. Don’t try to tell me that quahogs are sinful! Sorry, but this New Englander is not going to give up quahog chowder just because Leviticus says so. In the words of George Gershwin’s song: “The things that you’re liable/ To read in the Bible’ They ain’t necessarily so.”

Then there’s chapter 3 which tells us how to properly perform religious animal sacrifices. The book of Leviticus specifies that religious people shall slaughter and burn animals as offerings to God. Sorry once again, but in this church we are not going to burn up the “fat covering the entrails” and “the appendage of the liver” so that God can enjoy the smell.

Oh, yes, and if you take the name of the Lord in vain, according to Leviticus we are supposed to stone you to death. Sorry once again, but I’m not going to do this. If you drop a hammer on your toe and slip and say “God damn it!” I am not going to take you out the edge of the village and stone you to death.

In the Bible, we are going to find things we can no longer believe. At the same time, as I look through the book of Leviticus, I find it contains things I can believe, things of deep wisdom. For example, Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself….” This is the so-called Golden Rule, and Jesus tends to get the credit for saying it first, but Jesus was just quoting Leviticus.

Then there’s Leviticus chapter 23 verse 3: “Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest….” I can see the wisdom in this rule. A couple of years ago, I started keeping one day a week as a sabbath day because I found myself working longer and longer hours, to the point where I was ruining my health. Funny thing is, I still get the same amount of work done, but now I have one day a week for resting and taking care of my spiritual life.

As you read the Bible, you find both the good and the bad. You can find gems of real wisdom, and you can find statements that sound stupid or appalling to us today. But we religious liberals simply can not suspend judgment when reading the Bible, or anything else for that matter. With anything we read, or hear, it’s up to us to sift through it and decide what makes sense and what does not make sense.

I’m convinced that all the great religious figures of the past were in fact religious liberals. In spite of whatever else you might have heard, Jesus was a religious liberal — as we heard in the children’s story today. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath,” said Jesus. He found people in his day who used religion to punish others. But Jesus — and Confucius, and Buddha, and Socrates, and Gandhi — they all knew that religion was made for people, and not the other way around.

In the Bible, the point is not to obey the letter of the law, but to understand the spirit of what is being said. The point, actually, is not the law at all: the point is to live with the understanding that all persons are worthy of love. Or as Leviticus itself states it in chapter 19 verse 18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Indeed, based on Leviticus 19.18, I have to say that there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for discriminating against gays and lesbians. Now you can go back and talk with your conservative Christian friends, and if they tell you that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, you can say, true, but you can quote Leviticus 19.18 to them. And you can tell them that eating a lobster is also a sin!

I’ve made us Unitarian Universalists liberals sound pretty good, haven’t I? I’ve made it sound as though we are all such reasonable people, and we always agree on what is right to do. But we don’t always agree. Unitarian Universalists widely agree that same-sex unions are part of what we do, but that wide agreement is fairly recent. Beyond that, there is a certain amount of disagreement about whether or not Unitarian Universalists should take a stand on gay rights in the wider community.

I’ll give you an example of one issue that has proved divisive in a number of our congregations recently. As you may know, many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people recognize a rainbow flag as a symbol of a person or institution that welcomes persons of any sexual orientation. In recent years, some Unitarian Universalist congregations have been displaying rainbow flags in front of their buildings to make it clear to everyone in the community that here is a place where we don’t care about your sexual orientation. But a significant number of UU congregations find that when this idea is raised, some people in the congregation do not want to display the rainbow flag. Some of us are still not sure how homosexuality relates to our religion. We have rejected what Leviticus says about homosexuality — but what is it that we affirm about homosexuality, and about the sexual orientation of human beings?

I don’t have a complete answer, but based on my experience I have found one or two things I affirm about homosexuality. I’m a religious educator at my core, and I care deeply about children. I have watched as children grow up, reach adolescence, and slowly confront their sexuality and their sexual identity. I have watched young people who have questioned their sexual identity, who have struggled with accepting the fact that they are gay, or lesbian, or bisexual. And from what I can tell, there is no religious difference — there is a difference in sexual orientation, but no religious difference — between young people who are gay and young people who happen to be straight.

Let me put it another way: Linda and Paul are the same age (and while I am thinking of real kids, of course I am not using real names). As I watch them grow from children into adolescents, it becomes clear that Linda is gay, and Paul is straight. I am not going to reject Linda, or tell her that she is sinful, just because it turns out she is gay; I am not going to treat her any differently than I treat Paul.

When I watch young people grow up, when I hear their stories, then I know that we, as a religious community, have to support them no matter what their sexual orientation. I know, too, that teenagers who are gay or lesbian are much more likely to commit suicide than are their straight peers — they experience so much hatred and rejection! So for me, as a matter of moral and religious truth, the way it must be is this: a person’s sexual orientation can make no difference to me.

And for me, as a matter of moral and religious truth, our religious institutions must welcome all persons, no matter what their sexual orientation. Religion is made for humankind — this I believe. Religion is made for humankind, no matter whether gay or straight — this, too, I believe.