Sermons

READING ~ Faith of Unitarian Universalist Humanists – UUA Pamphlet series

Unitarian Universalist Humanists hold a religious perspective that is grounded in the natural, not the supernatural; emphasizes the worth and dignity of human beings rather than the glory of God; and considers social justice and social responsibility far more important than personal piety. Humanists are part of a broad, worldwide tradition that has been a vital part of Unitarian Universalism for nearly a hundred years. Among the sources of our Unitarian Universalist tradition is “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”

The emphasis on reason and on human agency does not preclude religion or spirituality. While respecting science and reason, Humanists experience a sense of awe and wonder in contemplating the mysteries of life and death in the natural world and the human place in that world.

READING ~ Landmark Webb telescope releases first science image — astronomers are in awe

Galaxies from near the dawn of time pepper the deepest-ever look into the night sky.
The Journal NATURE on July 11, 2022
The wait is over. The first scientific image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has dropped, and astronomers are mesmerized. US President Joe Biden released the historic picture, which is the deepest astronomical image yet taken of the distant Universe, during a press conference at the White House on Monday. NASA will publish more images on 12 July.

The first image, closely guarded before the reveal, showcases the telescope’s transformational capabilities. It shows thousands of distant galaxies in the constellation Volans, fainter than any galaxies seen before, in a patch of sky no larger than that covered by a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

It shows “the oldest documented light in the history of the Universe, from over 13 billion — let me say that again — 13 billion years ago”, said Biden when releasing the image. “It’s hard to even fathom.”

“I’m just amazed,” says Vivian U, an astronomer at the University of California, Irvine.

SERMON

Can you be good without God?

This is not an idle question.
Nor is it a question which invites one to respond by saying “Well, Duh.”

This is a serious question, and it is a serious question because so much of our culture these days seems to operate from an either/or worldview.  There is just the binary – Yes or No.  Religious or Irreligious.   Believer or nonbeliever.  Theist or atheist.  Good with God or Not good without God.

Now, as Unitarian Universalists, I think we are particularly good at rejecting this sort of false binary distinction. We totally understand that there may a host of answers to a question that at first glance seems to require a yes or no answer. We see the gray areas all too easily and perhaps all too readily.

Because of our positive experience with people of so many different philosophical and theological orientations to life, we might find it rather curious to ask if one can be good without God.  I am going to go out a limb here and suggest that we would say, “Of course, a person can be good without God.  Heck, with the way many who profess a sincere belief in God are behaving, we wonder if it is any longer possible to be good with God.”  But, that would be snarky – so we won’t go there …. much.

Greg Epstein is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University. His bestselling book, “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe,” published in 2009[1], continues to be influential years after its initial publication helped popularize the notion that the rapidly growing population of secular people can live lives of deep purpose, compassion, and connection. Deep purpose, compassion, and connection.   In other words, people are good – whether or not they claim God.

As the number of people who claim no religion and/or no theistic belief increases, we need to pay attention to their worldview, their convictions and their influence.

So, let us agree that God is not required for a person to be good. How then, shall we respectfully describe this growing number of good people without God? Humanism is the word that is most inclusive and least binary.

First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis describes itself as leaning heavily toward Humanism.  Here is what they say at the very top of their WHO WE ARE section of their website.
What is Humanism?

Humanism is the proposition that human beings can solve human problems. By this proposition, Humanists accept moral responsibility for humanity, all living things, and the planet itself. 
Humanism asserts that religious and philosophical traditions are created by human beings and are therefore at their best when they best serve the human need for meaning and purpose in this world, now.
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Do you need to hear that again?  Maybe so – it’s a good statement.

A bit of history.  How did Unitarian Universalists and Humanists grow up together?
Humanism goes back to Greek philosophers.
I’m not taking us that far back.
20th Century America is ancient history enough for us.
Humanism was developing as a separate worldview, or life stance, during the 1910s and 1920s.  There were a few Unitarian ministers preaching and teaching Humanism – theirs was a distinctly and intentionally religious Humanism.

It was in 1933 that that these ministers joined with secular humanists to formulate the Humanist Manifesto. A soaring document with 15 points of humanist affirmation.

First Affirmation: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

Fifth Affirmation:  Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.

Fifteenth and last Affirmation: We assert that humanism will: (a) affirm life rather than deny it; (b) seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from them; and (c) endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few. By this positive morale and intention humanism will be guided, and from this perspective and alignment the techniques and efforts of humanism will flow.

There were 34 signers. Several Unitarian ministers and one Universalist minister (Clinton Lee Scott), philosophers, professors, politicians, rabbis, and attorneys.

The Manifesto of 1933 was bold in its content and radical in its reach. Indeed, the reach was, ultimately, too far. The optimism of human ability to solve the problems of our world could not be sustained.

The human tragedy, horror and depravity of WWII, chief among many global realities, shattered the confidence that humanity was on an upward trajectory that would result in our own salvation and world harmony.  Humanism itself, however, continued to do what reason, science, and compassion do – – persevere and revise – – and by 1973 there was a Humanist Manifesto II and, not surprisingly, Humanist Manifesto III, “Humanism and Its Aspirations” in 2003.  This last document is a single page and says:
This document is part of an ongoing effort to manifest in clear and positive terms the conceptual boundaries of Humanism, not what we must believe but a consensus of what we do believe. It is in this sense that we affirm the following:
and then follow six affirmations.
Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience.

Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals.

Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships.

Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.

The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone.
The final sentence of this 21st Century Manifesto is what sets humanism apart from those systems and religions that rely on God or supernatural power to effect change in our world.  The responsibility for our lives and the kind of world in which we live is ours and ours alone.

Now, let me ask a question.     ………….
How many of you find you are in agreement or deep sympathy with the aspirations and affirmations of this religious Humanism?

Right.  So many Unitarian Universalists are humanists even as they may simultaneously claim additional identities or life stances.

The Rev. Dr. William F. Schulz is a former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  On the occasion of Manifesto III in 2003, he wrote for the UU World “Our humanist legacy – Seventy years of religious humanism.”
Of course, nothing is wrong with any of these affirmations. I agree with all of them. But I would venture to say that so do millions of other Americans, who would be shocked to learn that they are thereby considered humanists. I doubt if there is a single theist, Christian, or advocate of earth-centered spirituality within Unitarian Universalism today who would not affirm these tenets. Most of them would just not stop there.   ……..

What is of supreme importance is that I live my life in a posture of gratitude—that I recognize my existence and, indeed, Being itself, as an unaccountable blessing, a gift of grace. Sometimes, it is helpful to call the source or fact of that grace God and sometimes not. But what is always helpful and absolutely necessary is to look kindly on the world, to be bold in pursuit of its repair, and to be comfortable in the embrace of its splendor.
Gratitude and Community are brightly colored threads that run throughout and hold together Unitarian Universalism, so it is no surprise that UU Humanists make up those threads of our tapestry of faith as much as Transcendentalist or Christian or Pagan or Buddhist, or Agnostic UUs or the thousands of non-hyphenated Unitarian Universalists.
Being a Humanist calls me to my better self. It holds me in blessed community during the good times and the hard times and allows me to continually search for more meaning and understanding in both the worlds of science and art. And my Humanism is shaped by love. Participating in a religious community makes my Humanism whole because I don’t exist in the world as a lone entity. I am a part of that whole; I knew this even as a child. Being a Humanist is a religious act for me. …..

I am stopped in my tracks at the wonder of life. The miracle, the science of cells and bodies, the unlikelihood that all of this could come together and create life itself, causes me to pause with great awe. And I am thankful. My religious Humanism is filled with gratitude.
—Rev. Ginger Luke, minister emerita, River Road UU Congregation, Bethesda, MD[2]

When I look out at the congregation I serve on Sunday morning, I feel so grateful that we exist—that the families and individuals sitting in those chairs have found a home with us. Time and again, newcomers will say to me, “I stopped being able to believe in what my church taught when I was a teenager. I thought the idea of a community was lost to me forever. I can’t believe you’re here, that there’s a place where I can be part of a congregation and believe everything we say here.” Newcomers look at our community like a present they didn’t even know they would be getting, a place where they can be fully themselves.”
—Rev. Amanda Poppei, senior leader, Washington Ethical Society, Washington DC[3]
Here is another book in the Skinner House series on UU Voices.  Humanist Voices in Unitarian Universalism.  And here is a tiny taste of those voices……..

Humanism Is Community by Emerson Zora Hamsa
A Black Christian church seems an odd place for Humanism to find its roots, but my Humanism is firmly rooted in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Yes, my Humanism flourished in the midst of Bible-quoting, Bible-believing Christians who cared deeply about each other and about life itself and who worked together to make meaning in a world in which they had been othered, marginalized, and all but rendered invisible by the pervasiveness of antiblack white supremacy. Perhaps, without even knowing it, these beautiful people of faith planted the seeds of my Humanism. They modeled for me the possibilities for practicing the kind of Humanism that relies upon human activity to make change in the world and seeks pleasure and joy in the struggle against injustice. They taught me that Humanism is the work that we do—and the practices we cultivate—that help us survive and thrive in the midst of the absurdity of existence. The church family of my childhood is the reason that the Humanism that guides my life is rooted in the love and care of other human beings. My Humanist approach to living prioritizes practices of community. The love and care that were given to me―and required of me―during my childhood in the A.M.E. [4]
Kendyl L. R. Gibbons “Essentials of Humanism”
In the end, Humanism is not a faith for the mindless, the heartless, those without integrity, or those who are merely cynical in their skepticism. It is not a feather bed for the spiritually lazy who want to believe and do as little as possible with their all-too-brief, mortal lives. Humanism encourages those of us who embrace it to live as fully as we can, in all the authentic wonder and curiosity that the human spirit can generate. It summons us to a persistent obedience to evidence and reason, to recognize in our deepest and most beautiful longings not the world that is, but the world that might be, if we, by our courage, intelligence, and dedication, will make it so. Humanism invites us into compassionate connection with others, so that we may build the common good and, in that enterprise, make our own days glad. …….   And, by no means least of all, Humanism summons us to gratitude, not because some judging deity needs its ego stroked, but because that is how we become most fully human. To live well is to live with intelligence and integrity, with justice and compassion, with wholeness and beauty, and, finally, inevitably, with thanks and praise, for all that is our fragile, tragic, precious life.[5]
And so, finally, this brings me to the James Webb Space Telescope.  The images can take our breath away.  Even those of us who have little understanding of what we a re seeing. Those who do know and are learning about what they are seeing cannot put into words their response, their emotions, their inspiration.

Humanism relies not on a supernatural divine power somewhere ‘out there’ or even ‘in here,’ but on the evidence we collect, the reason we exercise in looking at evidence, and the benefits of science and experience to know when we are rightly oriented and when we might need to change direction.  For all of its reliance on human institutions and structures, Humanists can be awe-inspired and dumb-struck by the beauty and mystery of all that we know and may yet discover.

Looking at a universe that is over 13 billion years old gives one a sense of how vast everything is and how each of us humans is at once utterly insignificant and breathtakingly unique.  Our Humanist friends might tell us that what we do with the mystery unfolding and the knowledge that science brings into our lives is not a matter of divine intervention, but rather, a matter of our own determination to take full and ongoing responsibility for our world and how we live with each other in community and gratitude as part of our interdependent web of existence.

May it be so for us.

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.

[1] Epstein, Greg M. Good Without God, What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. New Yor, Harper, 2009.

[2] Faith of Unitarian Universalist Humanists. UUA pamphlet series.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Gibbons, Kendyl L. R. and Murray, William R., Editors.  Humanist Voices in Unitarian Universalism . Boston: Skinner House Books. 2017. Kindle Edition.

[5] Ibid.