SERMON: "Living Tradition: A Collective Outer Life"
Rev. Paul Beedle
February 18, 2007
This morning I am concluding a three-part series of sermons titled “living tradition,” meant to address the question, “how do we live our tradition?” In the first part, I set forth my theological starting place. I classify myself as a Unitarian Universalist mystic, because of the three basic elements of religion – the traditional (which has to do with the institutions and resources of faith), the speculative (which has to do with its ideas and assumptions), and the mystical (which has to do with spirituality and direct experience) – I believe that the mystical, or experiential, is the most basic: it's where religion starts. Hence my theological starting point – the fundamental question upon which I build my religious ideas – is “what do we know from experience?” And I believe the most basic thing we know from experience is the life that is in us, which we experience as our will and vitality.
We are expressions of life, and like all living things we are centers of creativity and transformation. We are not simply knocked about by the universe, we take in its forces and experiences and even its physical matter and store it and mold it and transform it into our own substance and direction, into decisions and actions, interpretative ideas and meanings. The foundation of religious life is our consciousness of ourselves as vitality and will, as centers of transformation in the universe. Inwardly, religious life is about our individual groundedness and inner peace and conscience and alignment with the highest and deepest values we know about, and our collective sense of community and connection and synergy and alignment with the values we affirm as a body. These are the reasons we strive to make meaning of our lives. Outwardly, religious life is about manifesting our personal and shared values and convictions through our manner of living and working in the world, embodying those values and convictions so that the world can see them in and through us.
In the second part of this series, I described the model of human nature that our tradition supplies to help us cultivate a collective inner life, in order to name and know and affirm the depths of our connection to one another and to the universe, and to articulate and put into practice the values and goals of our shared ministry in this community of faith. William Ellery Channing, the first theologian of American Unitarianism, asserted that “true religion ... desires and seeks ... the perpetual unfolding and enlargement of those powers and virtues by which ... [we] become what we praise.” [1] He employed the same basic argument for this that liberal and mystical theologians in the Christian tradition had used for centuries, that since scripture says we are made in the image of God, our religious purpose should be to grow in our likeness to God. The God of liberal and mystical theology, even back in the Middle Ages, tended not to be a great big human being, but rather a force within and around us, beyond description, that connects us to one another and all that is, and moves us toward the highest and deepest values, toward becoming what we praise. Mystics and theological liberals today tend to describe that force in the language of process, especially organic self-organizing process, which encompasses the same concepts of universal connection, creativity and transformation. Where process language is used outside religion and theology, for example in the work of the organizational consultant Peter Senge, [2] it circles around to language used by medieval mystics to talk about God, such as “presence” and “transformation of heart,” and ideas they emphasized, such as aligning ourselves with something larger than ourselves and having the feeling that something of value seeks to emerge through us. Another link between liberal God-language and process language is an orientation toward biological imagery, especially the phenomenon of growth and the human activity of cultivation. When we are in touch with the Spirit of Life, these are the ideas and images that draw us and move us.
The simple, and most human, art of conversation is the collective discipline, or group spiritual practice, most lauded as a means of cultivating our collective inner life, and it is recommended on liberal-mystical theological grounds. Like life, conversation is messy, but the messiness is the gateway to the depths of wisdom and love, truth, beauty and goodness that we seek in making meaning of our lives. The art of conversation requires our openness, courage, curiosity, creativity, and willingness to hold uncertainties and polarities with an uneasy calm. When we bring these skills and energies to a conversation, we can reach, or at least glimpse, the depths we seek.
Many years ago, a comedian named Anna Russell devised a concise summary of Wagner's four-opera “Ring Cycle.” Toward the end, as she begins to describe the fourth opera, “Götterdämmerung,” she notes that at the beginning of it certain characters retell the whole story that was performed in the first three operas. “So,” she says, “actually you can miss out parts one, two and three and come in at the beginning of `Götterdämmerung' and you'll be just as far ahead.” I hope I've just accomplished that for this sermon series. But if you did miss part one or two and would like to read it, it can be found on our website: click on “past sermons” and you'll get a menu of sermon titles that you can click on to read the sermons. Anna Russell finishes up her summary of Wagner's “Ring” by showing that the last scene in “Götterdämmerung” is identical to the first scene of the first opera of the cycle, and she remarks: “after sitting through this whole operation ... you're exactly where you started twenty hours ago!” Well, I hope that by the end of this morning – even if we are exactly where we started three weeks ago: striving to embody our faith within and beyond these walls – we'll feel that we're a little further ahead in our efforts.
To that end, I want to tell you about a Unitarian church that flourished about 150 years ago. It was founded in Boston during William Ellery Channing's lifetime, by an enthusiastic core of folks and their minister, 31-year-old James Freeman Clarke. Thirty years younger than Channing, Clarke was of a generation who were “sure of the real presence of God, and sure that society was to be made over again within fifty years.” Edward Everett Hale wrote of them that: “They were not quite sure what they were to do about it, but they knew something was to be done.” [3] In that spirit, Clarke and his congregation began what was to be called the Church of the Disciples. There was meaning for them in that name. There were Unitarian churches called “Church of the Messiah” and “Church of the Redeemer” (Chicago and St. Louis had one of each!), but they chose “Church of the Disciples” to signify that their church belonged to the people, not the ordained leader. In those days, folks in Boston would refer to churches by the minister's name: the Federal Street Church was “Dr. Channing's church,” for example. Clarke and the members of this new congregation were known for correcting people who called their church “Mr. Clarke's church,” making them say “the Church of the Disciples” instead. They were strong believers in the shared ministry of their congregation.
Edward Everett Hale described what as novel about the Church of the Disciples: “It was to be made up of people who wanted more life, and came to God for it. These people united to take a part in worship and in the forms by which worship was conducted. ... the people of the new church wanted to know each other, and expected to give and take, to and from each other, the best results of religious experience. Meetings on weekdays, less formal than those on Sunday, meetings for conversation and for work in charity, were not to be accidents ... but an integral part of its life. ... All was to be done by the church itself, which had covenanted together for closer intimacy with God. ... the management of the whole enterprise [was] subject to the vote of the majority of the regular worshipers, and [was] not left, as in most New England congregations, to the vote of the holders of the church property. ... A board of trustees [held] title to the church, and [gave] the use of it for such purposes as are agreed upon by those who unite in its covenant. The new church devoted itself ... to all such enterprises of public spirit as came within the wide range of the sympathies of its members. The most resolute and loyal of its members regarded ... its Wednesday evening meetings as taking precedence [over] all others. At these meetings there was familiar talk on every subject of large and vital interest. ... the Church of the Disciples ... earned for itself the honor, for which every church should strive,” wrote Hale, “of being a church for weekdays, quite as much as it was for Sundays.” [4] All of that was novel in the 1840s!
Another unusual aspect of that congregation for that time was that it was not a neighborhood church. Most churches in Boston served their immediate neighborhoods. Many members of the Church of the Disciples commuted in from outlying towns. People began as a joke to call it the “Church of the Carryalls” because so many members packed a bag to come to church.
Of course, all of these novel and unusual practices are now what we expect to happen in a congregation. The vision of Clarke's congregation flowed naturally from the liberal theology that Channing had pioneered and that Clarke and his generation took for granted. If, as Channing said, “true religion ... desires and seeks ... the perpetual unfolding and enlargement of those powers and virtues by which ... [we] become what we praise,” then the practices of conversation and good works developed at the Church of the Disciples were natural means of unfolding and enlarging the powers and virtues of those folks “who wanted more life, and came to God for it.” The messy, meandering process of conversation, reflection and discernment that bears likeness to Spirit of Life itself, leads or surprises us with the depths of wisdom and love, truth, beauty and goodness that we seek, from which we make meaning and find our sense of calling or purpose. The members of the Church of the Disciples understood that to embody this spirit in all that they did together, in all their ministries within and beyond their walls, was the path to becoming what they praised.
We are striving similarly in our long-range planning process this year. The process is designed to be open and inclusive, organic and self-organizing, in order that we may discern together the depths of our connections and shared values, and how we are moved by them, and what we are drawn or called to do together within and beyond these walls. We are following the energy that our conversation releases, following the inspirations, so that we can honor and empower as we go along the leaders who emerge to carry the conversation further and deeper or to develop new or existing ministries in ways that we recognize are needed now. We are watching for what enlivens us, what nurtures our vitality and will and courage for ministry, because like those members of the Church of the Disciples, we want more life. Like them, we come to the Spirit of Life to find it, through this organic messy discipline of conversation that brings us to the depths to know our collective will and shared values, and to become what we praise. In short, we're doing theology in this process where it is most appropriately done: in a congregation, where we are motivated to practice and embody the wisdom and love, truth, beauty and goodness that we discern together.
What would it mean to embody all this in our collective outer life, so that those beyond these walls would see the Spirit of Life in and through us?
Here's a thought: what if Thoreau were the place where hopeful conversations among diverse folks were expected to happen? What if we learned and practiced the philosophy and methods of organic processes so thoroughly that any of our leaders could design a program for the larger community where complex or difficult questions could be explored creatively, with all the needed perspectives represented, so that hopeful and productive action could be organized to leave our larger community – be it Stafford or Fort Bend County or whatever – a better place than we found it? Let's see how we feel when we are closer to actually having a written draft of our new long-range plan. Let's engage the process, holding in the back of our minds the thought that we might wish to develop our skills for this kind of creative discernment as a ministry in and of itself, both within and beyond our walls. If we did establish ourselves as a place where hopeful and deep and meaningful conversations that make a difference are expected to happen, I believe the larger community would indeed see the Spirit of Life in a very concrete way acting in and through us.
We live our tradition by keeping its spirit alive, not its forms. We keep its spirit alive when we nurture ourselves individually through spiritual practices that cultivate our inner lives, and especially when we engage in practices that cultivate our collective inner and outer lives. A group of people, such as a congregation, does have organic properties of its own. A congregation is an organic whole with its own history, character and calling. [5] In our shared ministry, we can cultivate practices that put us in touch with the larger calling that we share. Conversation and shared theological reflection are such practices. “American liberal theology began as a pastoral enterprise,” historian Gary Dorrien tells us, “and in its heyday it was led by academics at seminaries and divinity schools that maintained vital ties with ... religious communities.” [6] Church consultant Loren Mead has put forward the idea that the future of theology is in congregations rather than at seminaries. [7] And here we are, proving him right, I think!
May we live our tradition in all these ways: through conversation, shared reflection, and discernment of the larger organic whole that we constitute as a congregation, may we cultivate our collective inner life, discern our collective calling in the world, and ever deepen and adapt our ministries so that through all that we do together we feel the vitality of our tradition within ourselves and embody it for all the world to see. So may it be. Amen.
[1] “Likeness to God,” in The Works of William E. Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1888), p. 296.
[2] especially in Senge et al, Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations and Society (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2005).
[3] Edward Everett Hale, ed. James Freeman Clarke: Autobiography, Diary and Correspondence (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), pp. 90, 87. The story of the Church of the Disciples is in Chapters IX and XII.
[4] ibid, p. 145-148.
[5] See Gil Rendle and Alice Mann, Holy Conversations (Bethesda MD: The Alban Institute, 2003), p. 149.
[6] Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, & Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), p. 523.
[7] Loren Mead, More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow (Bethesda: The Alban Institute, 1993).