Sermon

October 22, 2006

“In the beginning was the Word…,” says the Gospel of John. He alludes to the first book of the Bible, the Book of Genesis, or the story of the Beginning. Liberal religionists interpret much of the Old Testament or Jewish Bible metaphorically or as ancient Hebrew history. You may know that in Genesis is the story of Adam and Eve; Adam means ‘humankind’ and Eve means ‘living’ in the Hebrew language. God separates some of the land from the water and populates the land and the water with creatures and names them. He then gives the power of naming the rest of the creatures to Adam. The Bible says, “So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” [Gen. 1:19]

Bestowing the power to give names or labels assigns authority to Adam as parents have authority to name their children. God renamed some biblical characters. For example Abram, which means ‘father’, became Abraham, which means ‘father of multitudes.’ After a night of wrestling with God on a riverbank, God renamed Jacob to ‘Israel,’ which means ‘he who wrestles with God.’ Although many biblical names were the names of animals or plants, especially trees, others were particular qualities. For example, Abraham’s second wife—or concubine, Hagar, means ‘forsaken,’ and indeed she was driven out into the desert by Abraham, or rather, Sarah. But also implied in this is that naming is supremely important and words are part of the creation itself.

You have probably heard the story of the Sunday school teacher who asked her second graders if anyone knew another name for God. She was picturing answers like 'Lord' or 'Almighty'. After a long moment of silence a little boy raised his hand and said, "Howard."
"Howard?" replied the confused teacher.
"You know," continued the boy, "Howard be thy name!" (Note: That’s how he heard “hallowed be thy name.”)

In many African cultures, a child is named for a quality the parents hope the child will cultivate. I notice that “Barak” is a biblical name that means ‘lightning’ and I thought of the young senator from Illinois, Barak Obama, and wondered whether his father knew the meaning of the name. He probably did.

I find the traditional Native American names curious and beautiful: for men Running Bear, White Eagle, Black Elk, Listening Owl, Dear Walker, Sitting Bull, and for women Meadow Lark, White Moon, Wind Maiden, Victory Woman.

Traditionally, most European cultures named their children after someone in the family—brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. I believe that this was a way of honoring the family member and perhaps also a way of creating a bond between that person and the child. How many of you are named after family members? (About 60% put up their hands, including me!) As you know, in recent times, many of us have departed from this tradition. My two sisters and I are all named after family members—even our middle names—but we did not name our children after anyone we knew. This was not, I believe, a conscious decision; we just wanted names that we liked. I hoped that my children would like their names for I gave them only one—it was so hard coming up with even one. They have both taken my last name as their middle one. Perhaps I was influenced in childhood by the fact that our neighbors across the street changed their last name because they didn’t like it; they changed their name from Pincher to Morrison. I wondered whether their children suffered some cruelty from other children at school. When I was growing up, children suffered terrible teasing whose last name was Shufflebottom. And some people are embarrassed about their names; perhaps you’ve watched the British comedy on PBS whose main character, Mrs. Bucket, insists on everyone pronouncing her name Mrs. Boo-kay (Bouquet)! I also know a woman who changed her first name from Ethel to ‘Star’ and a man who changed all his names and took his wife’s last name. Clearly, our names are important to us, even powerfully important; they are part and parcel of our identity and our feelings about who we are to ourselves and the world. I cannot imagine how it must be for the five sons of George Foreman who are all called George! I hope they all have different middle names and they use them.

Our names carry great meaning for us and so do the words we use to express what we care about the most. In the religious and spiritual aspects of our lives, language is very important indeed to Unitarian Universalists for we want the words we say in church to be true for us. We want to be authentic.  We cannot say words in a Sunday service that we do not mean. You have heard the joke that Unitarian Universalists are such terrible hymn singers (except our choir!) because we’re always reading ahead to see whether we agree with the words or not!  For decades we have avoided certain language that is commonly accepted in other traditions--words like salvation, redemption, evil, sin, heaven, hell, and even God. If we use these words at all, we have to define what we mean or a lot of people will feel uncomfortable. Sometimes I say, “When I use the word ‘God’, I hope you will interpret for yourself what it means for you.” Our famous forebears, Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing and Universalist minister Hosea Ballou, struggled and debated mightily over the concept of punishment in hell. This is simply a non-issue for us today for most if not all Unitarian Universalists have no belief in hell. Sin and evil are likely to be interpreted as ‘doing harm,’ and redemption or salvation is by character, or good works. At the same time, we have wanted to reclaim a language of reverence. What name or names can we use for our religious concepts today that will not make us squirm in our seats when old time religious language is used? A famous theologian of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), gave liberal religionists a way of looking at faith in a non-creedal way. [See Thandeka’s essay in A Language of Reverence, pp.76 to 109] Schleiermacher says that the religious impulse is the naturally occurring perception on the part of people to perceive a oneness or connection to the universe and this perception we tend to call God. Our feeling response to this and our thoughts about it can lead us to choose a moral course of action. He gave the example that if a person is very angry with someone, he may notice this feeling and inquire into the anger and think that the other person is actually in need of help and so shifts from anger to compassion. Many Christian theologians were very angry with Schleiermacher (understandably since he just about said that there’s no use for religion!) but others built on this idea and said that surely reason is the true religious response. Some of you may know that what we are describing briefly here has come to be known as Affect Psychology.

Our own present day UU theologian, Thandeka (how’s that for a name?!?), suggests that we Unitarian Universalists should look closely at these concepts with a view to adopting it as a basis for Affect Theology. She believes that when we gather on a Sunday for a service, we already open ourselves up to this ability to perceive the oneness of humankind and the universe. She believes that we can learn to talk openly about how the feeling, thinking, and sensing are part of our deep down religious response to the world, which is far more powerful when we are together. There is a great deal more to say about this but we’ll leave it for another day! Are you relieved?!?

You can see that we often call God ‘Spirit of Love’ or ‘Spirit of Love and Life.’ We hope that by this we are reaching for what spirit means to us all the while leaving it open to interpretation. We are casting around for other words that can be a language of reverence for us without evoking old religious language that feels oppressive to so many. There is one word that we would like to reclaim that has little baggage for most of us and that word is stewardship.

This is the time of the year when we usually do what we’ve always referred to as a Canvass to support our church community life here. Canvass felt to many of us to be too secular, rather like a political campaign or a PBS fundraising drive. There has been much talk in Society recently of being better stewards of the earth. Being a steward has much deeper connotations. I hope you have read the letter that came to you from the president of the congregation, Jack Dean, explaining the purpose of our special meeting next Sunday after the service. For those of you who are members, we ask you to walk the talk of our fifth principle to “use the democratic process in our congregations and in Society at large” and be at that important special meeting for which we’ve also arranged childcare for parents. Visitors are also invited to be a witness to our process. We need to change the bylaws by which we govern ourselves and one part of these changes is changing canvass to “stewardship.” We believe it is part of reclaiming a language of reverence. We define stewardship to mean “taking care of what we value in such a way that we enable it to grow.”

The thinking, feeling, sensing process that is the religious impulse will no doubt encourage us to ponder the value we give to our church community. The names we were given are important to us and so is the language we use to express that which is of deep and abiding meaning for us. In the beginning was the Word and in modern times we attempt to interpret what the Word means for us today.

Reference

The following has informed and inspired this sermon:

Grodzins, Dean, editor. A Language of Reverence, Chicago: Meadville Lombard Press, 2004.

Reading from HowThen Shall I Live by Wayne Muller

New York: Bantam books, 1996 (pp. 112-120)

            “What we love becomes our language. For Anne Morrow Lindbergh, it was the sea. For Hemingway, it was the bulls; for Melville, the whale; for Matisse, color and shape. The things we love hold our experience of grace. They give voice to our heart and spirit. They provide tangible shapes for those things that, deep inside, are formless….

             Any language—whether it be spiritual, emotional, artistic, or political—forms a paradigm that shows us where to look, teaches us what to listen for, helps us to decide what is most important. Our language affects our orientation, our alliances and our assumptions. It directs all our senses to watch especially carefully for those things that our language holds dear….

             If we undertake a journey of spiritual unfolding, we quickly realize it is difficult to find language that will accurately reveal, portray, or reflect the intricate depth of feeling and experience at the core of our being…. We all struggle to name what cannot be named: the universal force that makes the grass improbably push its way through concrete…the energy that blesses all life…

             How can we begin to develop a spiritual language that feels accurate and precise in naming what we love? Perhaps it is only the essential qualities of the divine—wisdom, grace, fertility, compassion—that can even be approximated in words….”`