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This sermon, preached at First Parish in Lexington, Mass., exists in manuscript form only. I hope to convert it to electronic format at some point, though I’ve been promising this for more than twenty years and it hasn’t happened.

This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Parish in Lexington, 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) 2001 Daniel Harper.

Reading

Now as he [Saul of Tarsus] was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

— New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Acts 9.3

Sermon

Paul is my least favorite figure in the Christian scriptures. I don’t agree with his theology, I don’t like his attitudes towards homosexuality, and I don’t like the way he writes. But I find that I have become fascinated with who Paul was as a human being, his talents, his weaknesses, and how he became who he was.

When you start thinking about how Paul became the person he was, you inevitably come face to face with the story of his conversion. Let me remind you of the story. His original name was Saul of Tarsus. At first, he wasn’t a follower of Jesus, he was in fact someone who “breathed threats and murder against the disciples of Jesus,” and who “ravaged” the early church, “entering house after house, dragging off both men and women [and committing] them to prison.” Then one day he set out on a trip to Damascus, with authorization from the authorities to, if he could, capture some of these disciples of Jesus and “bring them bound to Jerusalem.”

But on the road to Damascus, he sees a flash of light, and hears the voice of God. God’s voice says to Saul of Tarsus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and proceeds to tell Saul to stop persecuting the Christians, the followers of Jesus. Then God leaves Saul blinded, and perhaps not fully convinced. Saul’s companions take him to Damascus, where three days later he is cured of his blindness by one of these very same followers of Jesus.

To make a long story short, Saul wound up becoming one of the leaders of the fledgling Christian movement, the religious group he once persecuted; and he gradually became known by the name Paul. A fascinating story — and since my ministry is centered around religious education, I tend to look at this story through the eyes of a religious educator.

Now in a common view of education, an individual starts his or her life with essentially no learning, at a zero point, and from that zero point you can graph that individual’s education as a more or less linear progression. At the end of a successful education, you wind up with a fully educated person. This is perhaps the dominant assumption of the Massachusetts public school system. You start with a kindergartner who knows next to nothing, and in ten or twelve years, you have a young man or woman who can pass the MCAS exams, which certifies him or her as fully educated.

But while linear progressions might work for the Massachusetts public schools, this idea of a well-defined path of education doesn’t work well in religious education. Saul of Tarsus’s religious growth and education is not measurable by a standardized test.

Liberal religious educator Gabriel Moran believes that we should use a different image when we visualize religious education. Moran suggests the image of a sphere that is defined in respect to its center. In his words:

“My image of [religious] life being ordered around the center of a sphere allows for some long-term circling, some shortcuts, and the permanent possibility until [one’s] death that one can become morally/religiously eccentric….

“In religious terms [says Moran], the center of the sphere is God, who is [always near] but never under our control. I think religions claim to offer help in reducing the eccentricity of our lives in relation to [God].”

So says religious educator Gabriel Moran. I suspect that many people in this room this morning might think of God (if indeed you think of God at all) in different terms than does Gabriel Moran. But substitute “spiritual center” for “God,” or whatever your theology requires, and the image remains a good one.

One consequence of thinking about religious education in this way is that you begin to break down the distinction between teacher and student. I may help a child stay oriented to his or her religious center, but I have also known times children have helped me to get pointed back at my own religious center. This is equally true when I lead adult religious education programs.

Through religious education, we help each other stay oriented to our religious center. Sometimes a class provides that help we need to reorient ourselves. But what interests me, as I continue in my ministerial internship here at First Parish, is how much of ministry is religious education. Or do I mean, how much of religious education is ministry? The distinction between religious education and ministry is not at all clear! When I talk to wedding couples, I might wind up doing a fair amount of religious education. When I spend time with children in the Sunday school, I usually find myself doing a good bit of ministry.

There just isn’t a neat division: this over here is religious education, and that over there is “real” ministry. Sometimes I feel the biggest difference between the ministry of religious education, and the parish ministry, is the context. The main difference between me as a (student) minister of religious education, and Helen and Ellen as parish ministers, is that they are in the pulpit more, and I am in the back rooms of the church more; on the whole, they do more pastoral visiting, and I spend more time with Sunday school classes and youth groups and adult religious education programs. Although in reality, we overlap each other a fair amount in our various ministries.

This takes me back to my fascination with Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul. Paul has his amazing encounter with the flash of light and the voice of God, and it changes him, and he becomes a leader of the emerging Christian church. His ministry is a public ministry, that is, a ministry of preaching and public proclamation. But his ministry is also a back-room kind of ministry, that is, a ministry where he teaches and exhorts and works behind the scenes. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans, our religious forebears here in New England, used this distinction in the early 1600’s. They read their Christian scriptures, and based on the scriptures they decided the ideal was to have two ministers in every congregation, one who was a preacher and one who was a teacher.

From the Puritans, from Paul, and still further back: we come from a centuries-old tradition of Jewish and Christian religious education, a tradition that is always growing and changing and evolving. I just worry that today our ministry of religious education is not always as obvious as it could be. But today is Religious Growth and Learning Sunday, so today let’s make it obvious. I’ll end the spoken part of my sermon here. In a moment, after we sing a hymn, I’ll continue my sermon by leading us all downstairs to visit the Sunday school, to directly experience the behind-the-scenes ministry of this congregation.

And there’s a good chance that while we’re down with the children, someone here is going to learn something from them. For while children learn from adults, adults also learn from children. Religious education is a lifelong process — it is never over.

This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Parish in Lexington, 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) 2000 Daniel Harper.

If you came this morning expecting a political sermon, a sermon extolling the virtues of liberal politics, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Nor am I going to preach on religious education, which is a departure for me — as the religious educator here at First Parish, when I do preach, I tend to preach about religious education — well, maybe I’ll mention religious education in passing.

But no, this morning I am going to speak on religious liberalism. Religious liberalism — a form of religion that sometimes I feel is in decline in this world of ours. We Unitarian Universalists appear to be holding firm — but the liberal Christians are declining in numbers and influence; the liberal Jews, while still strong in the United States, appear embattled in Israel; the liberal Muslims don’t seem to stand a chance against the likes of the Taliban and other fundamentalists.

Unitarian Universalist minister Dana McLean Greeley once wrote, “Liberalism in religion seeks to know the truth from whencesoever truth may come.” It does seem to me that the world is slowly turning away from liberal religion towards fundamentalism, turning away from truth and towards empty creeds and rules. Which makes me want to say — Turn back, o world, forswear your fundamentalist ways! Listen, o world, to our liberal message: Rules and laws and doctrines have been created to serve humanity, but humanity shall not be slaves to rules, nor to laws, nor to doctrines!

So we heard in the reading from the Christian scriptures earlier this morning. One fine sabbath day, Jesus and his disciples headed to the synagogue. Now remember, the sabbath in those days was not like our sabbath today. Today, maybe you go to worship services, or maybe not, and if you do, you would feel no qualms about going home afterwards and painting the house, or maybe even popping into the office to get a little work done. Not so in the days of this story. There were laws upon laws upon laws about what you could and could not do on the sabbath day. You weren’t, for example, allowed to harvest any grain.

So what do Jesus and his disciples do on their way to temple? They harvest grain! How dare they do something so clearly prohibited on the sabbath day? So what if they were hungry, and in need. It’s against the rules!

But as Jesus points out, it’s never quite that simple. The sabbath exists for a reason, and that reason is to provide a day of rest for humankind, to the end that men and women and children may thrive and prosper and give glory to God. If you are hungry, you are not thriving and prospering — if you are starving, it’s far less likely that you’re going to give glory to God. Jesus sums it all up in one beautifully turned sentence: “The sabbath was made for man’s sake — not man for the sabbath’s sake.”

The sabbath was made for humanity’s sake — we were not made for the sabbath’s sake.

I’m sure we could have a long argument with our fundamentalist brothers and sisters about whether Jesus was a religious liberal. I’m inclined to believe that he was, and that Paul was the fundamentalist, but for now I’ll let it pass. What is clear to me, though, is that in this moment, the moment of this story, Jesus was a religious liberal. He is a liberal when he says: rules, and doctrines, and laws exist to serve humankind; we should never make the mistake of forcing humankind to serve the laws, rules, and doctrines.

The old Universalists fully understood this basic principle. Let the doctrines serve the people, not the other way around! Two hundred years ago, the Universalists here in North America were working to better organize themselves. They felt that a common profession of faith was essential to their unity, and for their continued growth as a denomination. In 1803, they came to agreement on a profession of faith which came to be known as the Winchester profession. It was notable for its brevity and poetry, and it read like this:

We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty, interest, and final destination of mankind.
We believe that there is one God, whose nature is love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness.
We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseperably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practise good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men.

I don’t suppose there are many in this room this morning who could wholeheartedly agree with the Winchester Profession. In our liberalism, we have moved on. But the liberal bias of the Winchester Profession is clear: the Bible contains a revelation, not the revelation; God’s nature is love rather than law; all humanity will ultimately be saved, even if you break the rules.

But the real liberalism of the Winchester Profession came in the so-called “liberty clause” appended to it:

Yet while we adopt a general profession of belief…we leave it to the several churches and societies…within the limits of our General Association, to continue or adopt within themselves, such more articles of faith…as may appear to them best.

Even with this escape clause, historian Russell Miller tells us that “the adoption of any statement of faith went against the grain of … Universalists.” Being good liberals, they did not want to be bound to a limited, human, surely flawed, profession of faith. They wanted to be bound to know the truth, “from whencesoever that truth may come.” So they uncovered the treasure of religious liberalism, and made it new, and left it to us for a legacy.

We still hold that legacy of religious liberalism in trust today. In 1984 and 1985, at the General Assembly of our Unitarian Universalist Association, representatives from Unitarian Universalist congregations across North America came together and voted to adopt a profession of faith now knows as the Principles and Purpose. The Principles and Purposes are known neither for their brevity, nor for their poetry, so I won’t test your patience by reading to you the entire document. But allow me to read first third of the document:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search fro truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Notice that it is the congregations that have come together to affirm and promote these principles. Nowhere does it say that the congregations must adopt, or abide by, these principles and purpose. And more to the point, nowhere does it say anything about individual members of congregations.

This document does not tell you what to believe, nor does it tell me what to believe — we are left to the discipline of our own consciences and our own insights, and the discipline of our own local congregation. Our Principles and Purposes were made to serve you and me, not the other way around. So it is that we maintain the liberal tradition of the liberty clause.

And personally, I don’t want to be bound too closely by those seven principles outlined in our Principles and Purposes. I find them selfish, too focussed on narrow individual needs. The Principles and Purposes invite us towards personal growth, and make vague, mealy-mouthed statements about how the world needs democracy, and we should “respect the interdependent web of existence.” Nowhere is there the kind of strong statement we heard in the Winchester Profession, that we ought to maintain order and practise good works. In the Principles and Purposes, we never really ask each other to do anything.

Can you tell that I don’t like them much? Well, they were written in the 1980’s, and I guess they are a product of that greedy and selfish decade. But that I can stand here and voice my objections to the Principles and Purposes of our Unitarian Universalist Association, and not risk excommunication, and not risk losing my job here — that says a great deal about liberal religion. I do not have to serve at the dictates of the Principles and Purposes; instead, the Principles and Purposes must serve us, and if at some time we decide they no longer do serve us, then like the Winchester Profession, we will let them lapse.

And I have to admit, our Principles and Purposes have been serving us pretty well — my earlier objections notwithstanding. As a religious educator, I find them particularly useful in my work with children and teenagers. Children need to know who we are, they need something firm to hang on to. They need to be able to say, “I go to the Unitarian Universalist church, and that means I believe that each and every person is important.” Children need limits — they are not ready to know truth from whencesoever it may come — they need us to point out for them a direction where we see truth.

And the Principles and Purposes are good for youth, too. As they mature intellectually, teenagers can begin to criticize the Prinicples and Purposes. We adults might remind them that the Principles and Purposes aren’t the word of God, nor a revelation handed down to people in the dim past; they’re just the work of another committee that did the best it could at the time. The Principles and Purposes are open to discussion, and to ammendment — they have already been ammended once, in 1995. We can tell our young people that someday perhaps they will be serving on a committee to draft a new profession of faith for Unitarian Universalist congregations. I suppose that’s one of my fantasies as a religious educator — that one of the young people I worked with here at First Parish goes on to comepletely rewrite our Principles and Purposes, making them brief, poetic, and not so selfish. So it is that I try to pass on the legacy of liberalism, proclaimed by sages and prophets, uncovered again and again by our religious forebears, and held in trust by us today.

Here we are, still liberal after all these years. It amazes me how we have held onto our liberalism down through the years. The temptation is strong to give in to the sense of security offered by firm doctrines and creeds. Sometimes we do lapse. In 1870, the Universalists voted to remove the “liberty clause” from the Winchester Profession. But it was formally reinstated in 1899, and in practice it had never really lapsed since individual Universalists always maintained their right to know the truth from whencesoever it may come.

So may it continue to be for us. May we always hold our religious liberalism in trust, for future generations to enjoy. May we challenge fundamentalism, firmly but with compassion, wherever it may arise in the world. May we resist the temptation to give in to the tyranny of creeds and dogma. May we hold on to our liberalism.