Religion That Matters

by Terry Sims

A sermon delivered on August 19, 2007 in the West Valley Unitarian Universalist Church of Glendale, AZ

More than anything else, I want Religion that matters. I mean Religion with a capital "R", not just my own religion or anyone else's particular religion. I want us all to have Religion that really matters to us, to other people, to the world. Well, sure. Isn't that what everyone wants out of religion? Isn't that what even people who say they're not religious would like to find? Some guiding light to live by?

Religion, or better the idea that Religion is important, is in danger today. Actually, I think it has always been in danger, but it certainly is now. The danger comes both from those who take their own particular religion too seriously, and those who don't take any religion at all; who dismiss the religious idea totally, often because of the actions of people who claim to belong to religions. I find that people who take their own religion too seriously, and those who don't take religion at all seriously, both focus almost always on what I believe are the trivial aspects of any religion - things that don't matter. They don't focus on the profound demands Religion makes, nor on the true help it offers.

Let's start by looking at people who dismiss religion entirely. They throw the baby out with the bath water. They recognize and dispense with the trivialities one can find in all religious institutions; unimportant things like special words or forms of baptism. But then they fail to recognize and aspire to the profound lessons religion can offer on the most important question, which is how to live your one life. What I want to explore this morning is how we can avoid the trivial in religion and still make sure it is relevant and vital to our everyday lives.

Most of the lawyers, and many other bright, well-educated people I know, simply reject religion as "an anachronistic way of viewing the world," as Charles Kimball, chair of the department of religion at Wake Forest University, puts it. These people dismiss religion as irrelevant to their lives. They think it is trifling at best; pernicious at worst. That is, they see religions offering speculative, pie-in-the-sky eternal rewards and focusing on unimportant questions - which scriptures were actually set down by God, for example. And then they look at the atrocities committed in the name of some religion against fellow human beings and they run from religion as far and fast as they can. And who can blame them? These people prefer an entirely secular attitude that treats nothing as sacred or holy, but at least avoids sectarian division and violence. They think religion is the problem, as Kimball writes.

Let me give you a personal example of people who reject religion. I was talking the other day with one of my young friends I work out with and play racquetball with. We were talking about his girlfriend and whether they might get married. I mentioned that I had officiated recently at a wedding for a young couple. My friend asked if I ever did premarital counseling. I said I did sometimes, if the couple wanted counseling. He asked what topics the counseling would cover, and I told him I would hit the big issues that come up in a marriage: dynamics in families of origin; sex; money; approaches to conflict; children; and religion. He said that he and his girlfriend could eliminate at least the last one. They didn't need to talk about religion because she is an atheist and he is an agnostic.

Well, of course I tried to explain that within Unitarian Universalism we embrace atheists and agnostics as well as theists. I didn't want him to believe that they had to reject the religious idea because of what they did or did not believe about the existence of God. I wanted him to know that I think the right religious idea can and should provide guidance on all the other big issues that come up not only in marriage but in life, including children; how we handle conflict and misfortune; and how we treat other people. I want him to believe that Religion with a capital "R" can teach us nothing less important than how to live until we die. So from one side, the danger to the idea that religion is important is that some people will simply dismiss it as irrelevant.

The other danger to religion comes from people who take the trivial aspects of their particular religion so seriously that they also lose the great core teachings of all religions. They lose those truly important religious principles just as surely as do those who dismiss religion entirely as irrelevant. A few news stories will demonstrate what I mean.

Item 1. On February 27, 2002, 27 Hindu zealots were returning home from a mission to build a temple on the site revered as the birthplace of Ram, an incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu. When their train pulled into the station in the town of Godhra, a fight erupted between taunting Hindu fanatics on the train and Muslim vendors on the platform. One of the passenger cars was set ablaze, resulting in the death of 58 Hindus. Two days later, Hindus retaliated. Eyewitnesses described Hindus burning Muslim families alive in their homes and cars. During the first half of 2002, more than 100,000 Hindus and Muslims in India and Pakistan died. It all started over a dispute about a supposed "sacred" plot of land.

Item 2. Some Muslims consider any images of Mohammed to be blasphemous. In 2006, a Danish newspaper published some cartoons. One depicted Mohammed in a turban resembling a bomb. Another showed an imam telling suicide bombers to stop because Heaven had run out of virgins with which to reward them. A third showed a picture of Mohammed's head formed by sentences reading "I must not draw Mohammed." European newspapers said publishing the cartoons was an expression of media freedom.

After publication of the cartoons, up to 300 hardline Islamic activists in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, went on a rampage in the lobby of a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta. Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), they smashed lamps, threw chairs, lobbed rotten eggs and tomatoes and tore up a Danish flag. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinians attended a Hamas-organized rally, tearing up a French flag and holding up banners reading: "The assault on the Prophet is an assault on Islam." A hand grenade was thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Center in the Gaza Strip. The editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted the Danish cartoons said he had received 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages. Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa over the drawings.

Iran's best-selling newspaper responded to publication of the Mohammed cartoons by launching a competition to find the best Holocaust cartoon. The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo reprinted cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed and published one of its own on its front page, further angering Muslim groups. The weekly's front page carried the new cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed burying his face in his hands and saying: "It's hard to be loved by fools."

Item 3. Under pressure from Christian conservative groups accusing pop star Madonna of sacrilege, NBC removed footage of the singer performing while suspended on a giant cross from her prime-time concert special last November. Socially conservative organizations had organized a campaign urging NBC affiliate stations to refuse to carry the special if the crucifix stunt remained in the show. Madonna's use of the cross in her concerts drew protests from the Roman Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox Church during her performances in Rome and Moscow. Leaders of the clergy condemned the act as blasphemy.

Madonna issued a statement insisting her act was "neither anti-Christian, sacrilegious or blasphemous. Rather, it is a plea to the audience to encourage humankind to help one another and to see the world as a unified whole. I believe if Jesus were alive today, he would be doing the same thing," she said, adding that her specific intent was to bring attention to the extreme poverty in Africa. Madonna had been making headlines with her efforts to adopt a motherless year-old boy from Malawi.

Item 4. The Vatican urged Catholics everywhere to boycott last year's movie based on the "Da Vinci Code" novel. The Vatican said the book and movie patently "offended" the Christian faith by saying Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, that their bloodline has continued to the present day, and that the conservative Opus Dei sect murdered people to cover up the secret. The Vatican spokesman was baffled as to why Christians were not outraged about the book and movie in the way that Muslims were about the Mohammed cartoons. He said: "If such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising. If they are directed against the Church and Christians, they remain unpunished."

I agree with French President Jacques Chirac who said: "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided." British newspapers, at least initially, refused to publish the Mohammed cartoons, earning the newspapers praise from Foreign Minister Jack Straw. Straw said: "I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong." I, too, believe in freedom of speech and press, but I commend those who respect the religious sensibilities of others, not to mention good taste.

Still, it seems to me that religious people everywhere are staking entirely too much on insubstantial aspects of religion; aspects like what ground is holy, what images can or cannot be shown; what history must be protected as unquestionably true. Such religion treats the trivial as significant, which is to say it mistreats the mundane as something sacred. Which images of God, of Jesus, of Mohammed, are acceptable and which blasphemous; all kinds of ritual; where and how one worships; even the existence of God, heaven and hell. Surely the core teachings of all religions are more important than these things.

There is a story told in the Mishnah part of the Jewish Talmud. A gentile approached Hillel, the celebrated first-century rabbi for whom Jewish campus organizations are named. The gentile said: "If you can teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand on one foot, you can make me a Jew." Rabbi Hillel replied, "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study." Hillel's version of the golden rule reflects the clear biblical imperative found in Leviticus 19:18: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

More than a century and half ago, the brilliant Unitarian minister and prophet Theodore Parker delivered the sermon at the ordination of the Rev. Charles Shackford in Boston. The year was 1841. The title of the sermon was "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity." Today I would broaden its message to "The Transient and Permanent in Religion." And I would include particular beliefs about God and the supernatural among the transient aspects of Religion. Even so, the central message of Parker's sermon, remarkably, is as prophetic today as it was in the middle of the 19th Century. Parker eloquently made the very point I want to make today about what is trivial and what is important in Religion; what doesn't last and what does; what to let go of, and what to hang on to. Parker said:

"The philosophy of the wise, the art of the accomplished, the song of the poet, the ritual of the priest, though honored as divine in their day, have gone down, a prey to oblivion. Silence has closed over them; only their spectres now haunt the earth."

"It must be confessed, though with sorrow, that transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as Religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines, while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to [humankind]."

"For, strictly speaking, there is but one kind of religion, as there is but one kind of love, though the manifestations of this religion, in forms, doctrines, and life, be never so diverse. [People] are burned for professing what [people] are burned for denying."

"The questions of [Jesus'] age, those on which Christianity was thought to depend,-questions which perplexed and divided the subtle doctors,-are no questions to us. The quarrels which then drove wise men mad, now only excite a smile or a tear, as we are disposed to laugh or weep at the frailty of [humanity]. We have other straws of our own to quarrel for. Their ancient books of devotion do not speak to us; their theology is a vain word."

"Now who shall tell us that the change is to stop here? That this sect or that, or even all sects united, have exhausted the river of life, and received it all in their canonized urns, so that we need draw no more out of the eternal well, but get refreshment nearer at hand? Who shall tell us that another age will not smile at our doctrines, disputes, and unchristian quarrels . . . Who shall tell us they will not weep at the folly of all such as fancied Truth shone only into the contracted nook of their school, or sect . . . ? No doubt, an age will come, in which ours shall be reckoned a period of darkness, because [we] trusted a transient notion, not an eternal truth."

"To turn away from the disputes of the Catholics and the Protestants, of the Unitarian and the Trinitarian, of Old School and New School, and come to the plain words of Jesus of Nazareth, Christianity is a simple thing; very simple. It is absolute, pure Morality; absolute, pure Religion; the love of [humanity]; the love of God acting without let or hindrance. It does not demand all men to think alike, but to think uprightly, and get as near as possible at truth; not all men to live alike, but to live holy, and get as near as possible to a life perfectly divine."

"The Christianity of sects, of the pulpit, of society, is ephemeral-a transitory fly. It will pass off and be forgot[ten]. Some new form will take its place, suited to the aspect of the changing times. Each will represent something of truth; but no one the whole. It seems the whole race of [humanity] is needed to do justice to the whole of truth, as "the whole church, to preach the whole gospel."

"Let then the Transient pass, fleet as it will, and may God send us some new manifestation of . . . faith, that shall stir [people]'s hearts as they were never stirred. God send us a real religious life, which shall pluck blindness out of the heart, and make us better fathers, mothers, and children; a religious life, that shall go with us where we go, and make every home the house of God, every act acceptable as a prayer. The question puts itself to each [person], 'Will you cling to what is perishing, or embrace what is eternal?'"

Sometime last year I watched a BBC World News broadcast. One of the stories was about the estimated one million cluster bombs or mini-bombs Israel deposited in southern Lebanon just before the most recent ceasefire took effect. The broadcast showed a 15-year old Lebanese boy lying in a hospital bed. He and his cousin had been out collecting scrap metal to sell to contribute to their families' small incomes. The small bombs sometimes look like scrap metal. Not recognizing one of the mini-bombs, his cousin picked it up and was killed instantly. The boy in the hospital, who had been standing nearby, was wounded in his abdomen and leg by the shrapnel.

If religions are about what is relevant and permanent rather than what is trivial and transient, where is the outrage and grief over what happened to that 15-year-old boy and his cousin? Why are the world's religions not asking how we people of the world can do such things to children? Why are they asking instead how to punish someone who published a cartoon of the Prophet or re-enacted the crucifixion of Jesus, or how to protect some holy shrine or ancient history? What is really important in Religion?

The Golden Rule is not trite. It is not naïve nor a quaint relic. It is the central organizing religious idea on which everyone could agree. It is a religious principle that lasts. It's important in everything we do. Everything else in religion is commentary. Nothing else really matters.

This week, for one week, I am setting a challenge for myself: I will treat everyone else as I want to be treated. If a week proves too much, I will try one day. If one day is too much, I will try one hour. Will you join me in accepting this challenge? Let's come back and share with each other how we did. Let's find Religion that matters. Amen.

BENEDICTION: "God send us a real religious life, which shall pluck blindness out of the heart, and make us better fathers, mothers, and children; a religious life, that shall go with us where we go, and make every home the house of God, every act acceptable as a prayer." Amen.