Of Guidance and Comfort

A Service for the North Unitarian Universalist Church

October 6, 2002 Rev. Dr. Susan Ritchie, Senior Minister

This past Monday, I played a doubles tennis match that kept me feeling demoralized well through Wednesday morning. And it’s not that we lost either. My partner and I won three sets of three. It’s the quality of the victory depressed me.

You see, our opponents weren’t actually in the game. They certainly could have been. Both of the women looked strong and tall—ok, they were taller than me. They obviously had some skills that suggested they’d been playing tennis for some considerable amount of time. One of the women had an incredibly hard, fast and low serve. Yet they were both a little, well, disembodied. They looked like they were scared of being too physical. It was as if they felt apologetic and self-depreciating about the space that they took up on the tennis court, and that above all they just didn’t want to get hurt. So they weren’t hard to beat. Winning, though, felt pretty mean, as if it were a participation in this culture of ours that teaches so many of us, women especially, to neither trust nor enjoy the physicality of our own bodies.

On the whole I am really enjoying my tennis. I call it my anti-ministry. If the ministry is about identifying people’s weaknesses so you might nourish them to greater strength, tennis is about identifying people’s weaknesses so that you might exploit them for your personal gain. Ah, hah. You don’t like backhand volleys? Well here’s a half a dozen for you, right down the line. Scared of the ball? Here it is. I spend most of my week trying to cultivate and practice gentleness; tennis gives me a couple of hours in which to get in touch not with my inner child, but with my inner competitive and selfish jerk. My pro said something a couple of weeks ago about my killer instinct. I was thrilled. Of course, in pro-speak, that really meant that the way I had gone after a particular ball was both senseless and beyond my capabilities. But hey, I’m not beneath hearing what I want to!

Besides, if my amateur tennis playing is a path away from ministry, there is probably not a lot that separates the ministry from the job of the tennis professional. Consider those women we played on Monday. Obviously they aspire to a different relationship with themselves and their bodies than the one they exhibited, or they would not have presented themselves on the court in the first place. And so they came to the tennis court--vulnerable but also aspiring. So they came—wounded by some past experience that taught them to deny their strength—but so they came, wanting something different.

But how do you teach someone to forget their feelings of inadequacy long enough to trust themselves and enjoy their gifts? How do you teach that an occasional serve in the back of the head is a small price to pay for real engagement? How do you teach that more we seek to avoid injury, the more damaged we become, and the more we cut ourselves off from the consolations that would otherwise be available to us? How do you teach that a life deeply lived is worth the cost?

And so, for only the second time in my entire career, I would propose a sports metaphor for the experience of gathering in religious community. We all come here both vulnerable and aspiring. We want to learn and know our own strength; but we come with all the wounds of our past that can so easily lead to a fear of the future. Frightened, we fail to engage; disengaged, we remain separate and alienated. The Rev. Jack Mendelsohn, one of our greatest ministers of the past generation, once said that church is that place where we ride lifeboats of aspiration over a sea of vulnerability. But you know I’m not sure that it is quite like that. Vulnerability and aspiration: yes. But I’m pretty sure that neither aspiration nor or religious community can keep us fully removed separate from our vulnerability. This is one boat ride where we all get wet.

And so today’s sermon is a response to a question I received as a part of last spring’s question box sermon process. The question was, “Is Unitarian Universalism a religion?” The question, to be honest, really befuddled me. Of course Unitarian Universalism is a religion. It is this religion to which I devote my life. So what could the question possibly mean? But for as much as the question confused me, I knew I had to put it on the schedule. While I didn’t understand the question, I certainly could feel some sort of pain behind it. Clearly, we had disappointed someone in someway. Clearly someone was looking to us for something they felt they had the right to expect from a religion, and clearly they were not finding that something. Someone came to us, vulnerable and aspiring, and it seems like more likely than not, they did not find what they needed, or at least, what they expected.

Not knowing what that something was, then, I was happy to be able to turn my self and this question over to our sermon talk-before group this past Monday night. We had a good conversation about possible candidates for what it was that someone might miss in Unitarian Universalism that they would expect to find in religion. We spoke about how perhaps, since we do not require persons here to subscribe to any particular creed, if this might lead to the conclusion that we don’t have a coherent belief system. Of course, in fact, it is our belief that Absolute Truth will always be bigger and more complex than any single teaching that causes us to be anti-creedal, but it is surely possible to see how this might be confusing. If there is one thing I feel called to say over and over again about Unitarian Universalism it is to remind that our interest in a plurality of teachings and sources does not indicate that we are open to everything. Rather indicates that our adherence to the singular and particular, and in history of religion, rather unusual teaching that our way cannot possibly be the only way. It means that we believe there must be something of value to be learned from the generations of intelligent, spiritual, thoughtful persons who simply happen to come from other cultures and other traditions. It means that we do not think that religious truths or untruths come to us packaged in text form, already true or already false. It means we believe that humans must wrestle with the truth within their own consciences, and then seek to embody the truths they have found with their lives.

But that’s an answer of the intellect. What emerged for me during our discussion was the painful possibility that what is missing for some people is not necessarily just the intellectual sense of coherent belief but the emotional sense of having this religion serve for them as a guidance and comfort. And here is where your minister became completely unhinged. Unhinged because not only because it is difficult to think about people who feel loss and pain, but because I know the profound guidance and comfort that this tradition offers me on a daily basis, and I would hate to think that there has been any failure in freely offering that up, and I would want everyone to know that such a failure is one of circumstance, not of tradition.

So first let me offer a little bit of personal testimony. Unitarian Universalism does and can offer guidance and comfort. If I am perplexed, I can and do turn to our tradition and do receive from it genuine direction. When I am in despair, I can and do turn to our tradition to provide a meaning-generating context for that despair.

But here’s the hard part. No religion can or should offer to you an easy sort of guidance erase for you any feelings of despair, loss or grief. That is not the comfort that religion provides. Religion is not a narcotic to which we can turn when we need to dull the pain, nor is it a form of denial. Some of you pointed out to me the excellent Frontline special that was done relative to September 11 anniversary. The interview I enjoyed the most was the one with the rabbi who served as a chaplain at Ground Zero. The interviewer asked what it was that he said to people to make their pain go away, and to restore their faith in God. He did an admirable job of making it clear that neither of those things were his proper objective. He said no, I do not provide easy answers for people; rather, I seek to help them continue to live with the painful questions. His remark reminded me of another interview I heard with a different rabbi who was being followed by a reporter in the course of his regular day. During that time he was called to the hospital to meet with a family who had just lost a very young woman to a sudden infection. Again, the reporter wondered what he would say to make their pain go away, and to explain why this terrible thing had happened. The rabbi again was very clear. He said he was going them in order to serve as God’s punching bag. That all he could say was he had no idea why something so terrible would happen, and then, he would make himself the recipient of the people’s anger that there would be no easy resolution of their loss.

I’ve used the example here of two rabbis deliberately. Judaism, more than any other tradition, has learned the high cost of easy answers or facile comfort. It would be obscene to suggest that the Holocaust, for example, has either a rational explanation, or that it fits in any way some hidden plan of God’s. Religion should not seek to take away the loss or despair that one feels for loved ones—grief is in so many ways the ultimate and necessary testament to love. Religious should not seek to take away the outrage we feel when injustices occur. We do not want a religion that would teach us not to feel injured when bad things happen to really good people for no reason at all. Religion must offer comfort and guidance, yes. But facile answers which numb or destroy a healthy human emotional engagement with the world, never. Religion lies if it promises to take away our human vulnerability. The challenge of religion is to ask us to live boldly even in acknowledgement of our vulnerability.

Which is why I am reluctant but willing to see it as a good thing I was unhinged Monday night but the suggestion that people might be missing here the guidance and the comfort for which they seek. I mentioned that Unitarian Universalism asks that we wrestle with the truth in our own consciences, which is true. But part of what does make us a religion is that we acknowledge that it is only dangerous and quite possibly insane to wrestle with matters of ultimate concern all by your self. We all require the tempering and challenging effect of religious gathering where ideas and spiritual experiences are freely shared and freely challenged. I’ve been finding a new sense of that challenge and engagement in these sermon talk-befores, an experience that has me thinking about other venues we might explore for providing other venues for us to explore our spiritual journeys with each other. For this is an ultimate and appropriate comfort that we can offer.

Last Saturday I performed a wedding in Gahanna at a place that it called “The Old Sanctuary.” It’s a beautiful old Lutheran church from around the turn of the century, but which is not longer in service as a church but as a community center which rents space out to groups from yoga classes to weddings. I arrived at the sanctuary early, and I had a wonderful time exploring the building. Nothing makes me happier than exploring old churches. You can tell simply from the way the building is set up a lot, both about the theology of the people who built it, and about what their specifics hopes were for that place. For example, the room that was originally designed as the minister’s study was a beautiful space that was accessible from a small and almost hidden door located behind the altar. Clearly this community wanted a minister who was contemplative and prayerful, and who had a powerful ceremonial role—but not one who would be very intrusive into the business of the church. And the social hall was more dignified and better appointed than the sanctuary. This was clearly a place to which people wanted to bring their celebrations. This was the sort of place where families would dream of seeing their children and grandchildren baptized and married. Sitting on the one ancient pew in that room, I thought again about the aspirations of the vulnerabilities of those who had come to that space. I wondered if they had had their aspirations realized, and I hoped that they had found consolation in their disappointments.

I was having a great time, then, at least until I went back the sanctuary and freaked out a little while studying the stained glass on the back wall. It featured the saying “God is Love,” over which there was an angel like man with wings, and here’s the hard part—no face. The face had an outline, but its interior was only clear glass. I couldn’t decide if this was a provocative and advanced theological statement or the result of accident, and I wanted to ask someone. And then I realized that there was no one to ask who knew still the history of the building. And all of sudden this place that seemed so rich and wonderful to me began to feel a little obscene—a place where all of the trappings of religion lived on in the absence of any meaningful human gathering. A place where indeed, God had no face whatsoever.

This brings me to the comfort you might find here that you will not be likely to find elsewhere. Know that whatever changes might await you in your life, here you do not have to worry about outgrowing this religious community. This is no small consolation, either. When I was in seminary at the Methodist school up the road, I was witness to a number of persons who very painfully found themselves precisely to have outgrown their religious communities.

There was the woman who as a lifelong Presbyterian came to a non-orthodox understanding of the atonement during the theology class we took together. She realized right away that she would not pass the theological part the interview with her ordination board, and she felt like honor required her to immediately give up on her dreams of ministry, and to abandon the faith of her family. She said she did not know it was possible to feel so alone. And why? All because of her personal interpretation of a complicated doctrine formulated over fourteen hundred years ago by human beings who were themselves certainly something less than perfect. Of course others grew and changed and made different decisions about how to handle their relationship to their tradition. One man I knew came to doubt the divinity of Jesus during his training. Rather than give it all up, though, he persists to this day as minister of a Methodist church where he simply tries to avoid mentioning the Trinity. When I run into him now, I am immediately struck with how tired he looks. Ministry can be tiring work; I can’t even imagine how tiring it would be to do without the benefit of an honest spiritual relationship with both the institution one represents and the people one meets. Then there was the man I always jokingly called “John” simply because he was so thoroughly Methodist in all ways that I liked to tease that he was the reincarnation of John Wesley himself. John’s revelation during seminary was a personal one. He realized he was gay. But since nothing mattered to him more than his faith, he decided that he would pay the cost of living a closeted life in order to do the ministry he felt called to. He now has a church and a marriage of convenience, but he’s about ready to loose the church, and not do to any lack of talent on his part. It’s just that having no authentic emotional life, he finds that he has nothing to say on Sunday mornings. And finally there was the woman who during seminary became racked by doubts—but they weren’t doubts about anything in particular that would lead her to a different religious tradition, they were just doubts. I think largely because of this, she is an incredibly gifted chaplain—there is no agony of uncertainty with which she cannot empathize. Yet she knows that to maintain her standing in her denomination, she may never publicly state her doubts, that her doubts would cost her affiliation.

Watching these men and women suffer so very much, I realized my own great fortune. What a consolation to know that I would not ever have to worry that some new understanding on my part about the world or my place in it would change the support I could receive from religious community. And this, this is the great consolation of this place. There is no discovery about your sexual or personal self that would make you unwelcome here. There is no metaphysical understanding arrived at in good conscience that would bar you from this gathering. There is no doubt which may not be spoken. Here, you will never have to lie or misrepresent yourself in exchange for our positive regard or support.

And that sounds like true religion to me.