UU Q & A 

Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

June 9, 2002 

There is a joke attributed to Joseph Ernest Renan, about UU prayer. The prayer begins, “Dear God, if there is a God, if you can, save my soul, if I have a soul.”¹

The Rev. Suzanne Paul claims that, “U.U.s like asking good questions, but they shy away from giving good answers.”² Well, this sermon is a shot at giving some good answers. I don’t promise they’re good, never mind perfect, but they are rooted in a Unitarian Universalist tradition and sensibility. And they are mine. Make them yours or pass them by as you wish, as is our UU way.

This is a so-called question box sermon, in which the minister solicits questions from the congregation and responds to them. In it, I carry on a tradition that the Rev. Bruce Southworth practices at the Community Church of New York, where I became a UU. He preaches a question box sermon at the end of each congregation year, and so do I. I find it a refreshing change from coming up with sermon topics myself, and it allows me (as well as the congregation) to know what people are thinking about and struggling with. I always enjoy responding to sermon suggestions throughout the year.

The first question is a long one that I’ve shortened somewhat. The questioner wants to know:

How do we become more tolerant of people who are different from us ethnically? I can accept gays with no problem—I have marched for that (as well as ERA)—there are cultural things about ethnic groups that bother me—I also find myself becoming intolerant of people from similar backgrounds as myself, whose acceptance of personality differences, character differences in people are not up to the standards I have always expected and have tried to live by—I get frustrated when I hear someone say “oh, he/she did the best he/she could!” the best is not good enough sometimes…

How many people feel worried about their attitude, if it is like mine--? I want to be more open, but I often wonder how we are thought of when we are in another culture—we are criticized (The ugly American)—

There’s a lot more to this—can UUism attract these people… I don’t know where I’m going with this—but I guess I have trouble with “the inherent worth of each individual”

First of all, I’d like to thank the questioner for her honesty. I don’t think she’s alone in that she wishes to be more open and accepting of people but sometimes finds maintaining that attitude in the real world difficult. Life tends to be a bit easier and more familiar with others who look like us or think like us. I think that’s just a trait of human beings. We tend to like our own.

But there’s a lot we miss when we cut ourselves off from those unlike us. Maybe those unlike us make money than we do (or less). Maybe they have a different skin color, religion, nationality, political persuasion, sexual orientation. What ridiculous walls enclose ourselves and others in! People fighting over what makes us interesting as human beings. Forget that we’re supposed to not be prejudiced and get along with other groups. Imagine what it would be like if we actually took that extra step beyond where we’re comfortable. For instance, to take some extra time to really communicate with someone who speaks English as a second language or is hard of hearing. Or go up to someone from another group and start up a conversation. There’s a wisdom and intelligence to be found when we exchange life across boundaries. I guarantee you will expand your world. Perhaps you will gain a friend.

Above all, don’t give up. No one is perfectly at ease with everyone. Each of us is on a journey of understanding. And we don’t have to like everything we see in others, nor do they have to like everything about us. We just need to keep the lines of communication open and never forget the other’s humanity. The inherent worth and dignity of every person applies to everyone or to no one. We cannot apply it to ourselves to the exclusion of others, for its universality is its guarantee.

In January or February, I intend to lead a service in conjunction with the UUA’s Journey Towards Wholeness program. It will allow us to have frank discussion about race, diversity, and our faith. I hope that it will lead to some concrete steps toward become more welcoming and lessening racism. 

For the next section, I’d like to combine the similar questions of two different people: end

What is the UU position on Jesus? Where in the Bible does it say Jesus died for my sins? What do you say to your friends who say Jesus is the only answer?

Of course, there’s no “UU position” on any theological question. Instead, each of us is encouraged to be engaged in a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” There are a variety of opinions held by individual UU’s on Jesus. Our congregation is no exception. According to a survey from a couple of years ago 35% here at UUSIS say that ethical Christianity is a part of our own spiritual identity. Only 3% claimed theological Christianity. In other words, a sizeable minority of us find that the moral teachings of Jesus are an important part of who we are and how we live our lives. A few even draw on Jesus as a significant way in which we get in touch with the divine. Continentally, there is a active group known as the UU Christian Fellowship, whose members publish a newsletter and a scholarly journal as well as leading worship services at General Assembly. Some UU congregations even designate themselves as intentionally Christian, seeking to explore that religious path together in a way that concentrates on the openness and diversity of viewpoints UU’s are known for. Other congregations, to one degree or another, observe Christian holidays and rituals.

A symbol for the Universalist Church of America, this congregation’s denomination prior to 1961, was a cross in a circle. The curious thing about the cross was that it was off-center. In this way, the Universalists signaled that, while Christianity was important to them, it wasn’t the only voice. To one degree or another, I believe that’s still true, as the Christian tradition continues a dialogue with other traditions in Unitarian Universalism.

To continue, there was also the question of where in the Bible does it say Jesus died for our sins? There are a number of passages that claim this. To just mention a few:

In Mark 10:45 to Jesus is attributed the statement, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." “The Son of Man” is a title the Jesus of the Gospels often refers to himself as.

Ephesians 1:7 says, “In Him [that is, Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.”

And in 1 John 2:1-2 we read, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

There are various ways to read passages such as these. Our Universalist forebears took them literally, perhaps more literally that their more orthodox contemporaries. They were very fond of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (KJV)” They liked to emphasize the “all” in that verse. The Calvinists said that God only deemed a few elect as worthy of saving, but the Universalists took the Bible at its word as saying that all shall be made alive—without exception!

Contemporary Unitarian Universalists might well question how these texts came to us in the first place. I find it incredible that Jesus ever would have talked about his life being a ransom for many. That’s the kind of thing that gets added on by admiring followers, especially as the years go by. None of the Gospels were written until several decades after Jesus had died. Furthermore, they’re not intended as biographies. Rather, they were written in the idioms of Jewish storytelling. They’re not histories but theological statements by early Christians struggling to express what they felt in the emerging church. Many of the writers of the Gospels and epistles sought to fit Jesus’ untimely death into the context of Jewish animal sacrifice, which it’s practitioners believed could remove sins. It was natural for them to look to Jewish images for their metaphors, since every single writer of the New Testament was Jewish.

And it was fine for them to choose such a metaphor. The difficulty comes when the metaphor no longer makes sense to many people. Jewish temple sacrifice ended almost two thousand years ago. Cutting up animals (or anybody else) to help us get over feeling guilty isn’t really a thought that has the same appeal to many of us as it used to.

That leads us to last of the Jesus questions, “What do you say to your friends who say Jesus is the only answer?” In a Masonic lodge, two topics are quite sensibly banned: politics and religion. They seem to be the subjects that still up the most trouble between people. When you come up against someone who insists that “x,” whatever x happens to be, is the only answer to life’s questions, you can be fairly certain that you’re not going to change their mind.

There’s no shortage of mutually exclusive only answers: Jesus, the Koran, Marxism. Even UUism can become an only answer if we’re not careful. Such only answers simplify the world and promise to make it safe. They also cut off thinking and genuine dialogue. If I’m in possession of the only answer, why do I need to listen anymore?

If your friend expresses such an opinion, you can either smile and change the subject or engage them. It might be quite true that Jesus is the only answer—for that particular person, for that particular point in their life. It might be interesting to ask them what Jesus or x or y means to them and try to see the world from their point of view. Of course, you may insist on equal time to talk about what’s important to you and to what gives your life meaning. Staying close to individual experiences and feelings tends to avoid getting stuck in abstractions. You and your friend will probably agree to disagree, but once in a while there’s an exciting moment of transition.

I think back to when I was in England for a semester of college. At a youth hostel, I met an Australian in a leather motorcycle jacket. We got on the subject of religion, and he expressed a questioning attitude toward the fundamentals of the evangelical Christian faith I held onto strongly at that point in my life. His freedom from a system that I felt increasingly bound by was at once threatening and enticing. That young man never knew it, but he helped me leave the Mennonite Church, just by being who he was and being willing to talk about it. You never know the impact you might have on even the most seemingly closed-minded people. I know, because I was one.

There was a question about why God allows evil in the world, especially the September 11^th attacks. I will respond to that question when I can do so more in depth, at a service marking the one-year anniversary of the tragedy on September 15^th.

That leaves only one last question:

"If all faiths are equally true [the questioner writes], are they equally false? Is it more honest or simpler to just believe in nothing?"

The question reminds me of a proverb of Discordianism, one of the more lighthearted of the new religious movements, “All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense—including this one!”

One would be hard-pressed to find a totally false religion. (What, you show up on Sunday morning, ask for directions to the bathroom and they lie to you?) One would be equally hard-pressed to find a totally true religion. Though fundamentalists of every stripe are eager to volunteer their own religion for this honor, they never agree among themselves.

I think the questioner is quite astute in implying that all faiths have some mixture of truth and falsehood. As for which parts are true and which false, each of us is called to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. In the end, what we’re left with are the parts of each faith that satisfy or fail to satisfy our own minds and souls. That is not to say that the next person will not come to opposite conclusions.

As to the second part of the question, “Is it more honest or simpler to just believe in nothing?” there’s something to be said for a healthy skepticism. George Santayana said, “Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.” There are those who might be considered lifelong intellectual celibates—the various types of agnostic among us who never settle for one fixed point of view. There are even those who go beyond agnosticism, calling themselves zeteticists, who don’t believe in anything—even agnosticism and nihilism, the belief in nothing.

We in the modern West tend to think of belief as merely an intellectual or mental exercise. But there is an older and deeper meaning of the word “belief.” The Old English root of belief is related to the word “love.” Belief in this other sense has to not so much to do with our mind as with our heart and our gut. It is place of conviction and commitment. It is in this sense that we believe in Unitarian Universalism, in each other, and in making a difference.

¹ Gwen Foss, ed. The Church Where People Laugh: A Treasury of Jokes, Quotations, Observations, and True Stories about Unitarians, Universalists, and U.U.s (Royal Oak, MI: Flying Mice Press, 1995), 43.

² Ibid., 42.