A Religion of Your Own

A Sermon by Rev. Dr. Patrick T. O’NeillDelivered at First Unitarian Congregational Society Brooklyn, NYJanuary 6, 2008As I remember it, it was sometime around the fourth or fifth grade, when I was nine or ten years old, that I first discovered that religion could be very complicated business.  Abraham Lincoln was the first theological problem I ever pondered as a boy - I remember it well.    We were learning about Abraham Lincoln in school that year, and what a great President he was, and how he saved the Union in the Civil War, and how he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves.   I was very impressed with Abraham Lincoln, but I was very worried about him, too.  I remember asking my mother, with great concern, whether Abraham Lincoln went to heaven when he died.  “I’m sure he did,” said my mother, rather surprised by my question.  “He was a very good man.”     “But how could he get into heaven,” I asked, “if he wasn’t a Catholic?”    This was very serious business to me at the time (and still is, I suppose).  I had been taught to believe that the Catholic faith was the One True faith, and that “outside the Church there is no salvation.”   Later on in theology classes I would learn the Latin translation, “Extra Ecclesiam non salvus est.”       And this was the problem, you see.  Because if this teaching were true, then poor old Abraham Lincoln, devout Protestant that he was, was not going to make it into heaven, and this just did not seem very fair to me.  And so I asked my mother how this could be.    I can tell you that my mother knew her way around a catechism pretty well, and though I don’t remember her exact words, she assured me that, even if they were Protestants, good people got to go to heaven when they died, because they were God’s children too.  This was a great relief to me at age ten, for it reassured me of God’s basic fairness in these matters.  But I suppose it was also my first theological conflict with Catholic doctrine, and it forever shifted the way I viewed all other faiths.     That was the first time I ever considered the doctrine of the “Church Universal” - the notion that all people of faith, no matter what their formal religion might be, shared equal claim to virtue and honor; contributed accordingly to the store of faith and hope and charity in the world; and merited accordingly their status and place as God’s children, one and all.  It was the first time in my religious consciousness that I viewed all good people as potential equal instruments of social justice.    These many years later, it sounds funny to tell people that my journey to Unitarian Universalism actually started with Abraham Lincoln, but in a way, that is where it all began for me.    I wasn’t quite sure at age 10 exactly how Catholic adults like my mother and like my pastor seemed to be able to read between the lines of the catechism and interpret significant theological problems like Abraham Lincoln’s salvation.     Like all the other Catholic children of my generation back in those pre-Vatican II days of the 1950’s, my early religious education consisted almost entirely of memorizing the Q and A format of the Baltimore Catechism.  The Baltimore Catechism, for those of you who did not grow up Catholic, was the ingenious publication that all Catholic school children in America learned by rote in Catholic school, not just those in Baltimore.  We memorized the answers until we could recite them back rapid fire in religion class. And we were taught as children to follow the letter of the definitions in the book.  No interpretations allowed, it was underlined for us: it means what it says, and it says what it means.    So you can imagine why it would be difficult for a kid like myself to think up a problem like whether Honest Abe could get into heaven even if he wasn’t Catholic.  Even though it said right there in the catechism, Outside the church there is no salvation.     Anyway, my mother’s word on such matters when I was ten carried more weight with me than a boxful of catechisms, I can tell you.  Still, I really don’t think my mother fully appreciated the import of her lesson to me that day.     You know, parenting is full of these moments in a child’s life, when you never know if what you’re about to tell them will stick with them for a lifetime, or permanently imprint them with a radical idea or notion.  Especially if you have a curious child or two who’s always coming to you with Big Questions on the Meaning of Life from the age of five.  You’re busy doing the dishes or balancing the checkbook, and your kid asks, “Mom, what happens to us when we die?”  And you mumble forth some kind of answer, and your kid goes skipping out the door, seemingly satisfied enough with what you said.     My mother had raised seven such children before me, and by the time I came along, my mother was a hardened veteran at fielding deep philosophical questions from children.  I wonder if she had any idea that her answer to my innocent question that day about Abraham Lincoln would actually color my religious philosophy for life.     Because what she told me that day planted a very big idea in my young heart, a very radical notion for a Catholic school boy to ponder.  I would eventually find more sophisticated ways to phrase it as my education deepened and as my study of theology and philosophy broadened all the way through to my doctoral studies, but the basis of my own lifelong faith was contained really in the simple answer that my mother gave me that day.     She said: all good people are God’s children, no matter what religion they practice.  She said it was goodness and integrity of character that counted over the particulars of any one religion.  She said there was salvation for all good people, even for Protestants like Abraham Lincoln, even if they lived their whole lives outside the church.     She planted the notion in her son’s brain that day, that maybe God was a larger idea than any one catechism could ever contain.  And maybe, if that were so, then maybe there are many ways to be a good person, a person pleasing to God, and maybe there are many kinds of religions that are possible in helping people to become good and decent and loving in their own ways.     Maybe that’s what salvation means, ultimately.  Maybe salvation is what happens to us whenever we discern a religion of our own heart, a religion of our own choosing.  That by striving to be a person of depth and integrity we save ourselves from lives of pettiness and meaningless materialism.  Maybe salvation is not something you can ever find in a catechism of narrow definitions.  Maybe it is all both simpler and more profound than that.  Maybe salvation is what happens to us whenever somebody loves us, or forgives us, or heals us.  Maybe that’s why a loving, healing teacher like Jesus was called a Savior.  Maybe there are many such saviors in history, some of them alive in the world even today.       Did I have all these notions clear in my mind that day when I was ten years old?  No, not at all.  But I think I started to get it that day, for the first time.  I began to see that the world is not divided between those who live inside the walls of the church and those who live outside; that God’s children are not divided between the Saved and the Unsaved, the Enlightened and the Ignorant, the Saints and the Sinners, those who follow the True Faith and those who follow the false.     I started to understand that it was all more gloriously complex than that.  That if there is a god at the center of this life, then god deserved more credit for a richer design than that.  And if there is no god after all, if god is only a name we give to the mystery and the wonder of life, then is it not time that we rose above the petty divisions that separate us by the beliefs we hold or fail to hold?    I think sometimes when people get hung up on the differences between religions, they completely lose sight of that which lies beneath and behind all natural religious impulse. There’s an old joke about the fellow who was  walking across a bridge one day, he saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.  He immediately ran over and said, “Stop!  Don’t do it!”"Why shouldn’t I?” the man said.”Well, there’s so much to live for!”"Like what?”"Well … are you religious or atheist?”"Religious.”"Me too!  Are you Christian of Jewish?”"Christian.”"Me too!  Are you Catholic of Protestant?”"Protestant.”"So am I!  Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”"Baptist.”"Wow!  Me too!  Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”"Baptist Church of God.”"As am I!  Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”"Reformed Baptist Church of God.”"Me too!  Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915.”To which the fellow said, “Die, heretic scum!” and left the other one standing there on the rail.    No church or tradition is an end in itself.  The whole purpose of a religion is to bring us to lives of meaning and wholeness.  Any religion that does that for you is the right one for you.     No catechism is an end in itself.  It is a mechanism, nothing more, designed to help us think about and ponder that which is greater than ourselves, that which joins us one to another, that which touches our lives with grace, with dignity, with a sense of the sacred, with a sense of the holy.  Any teaching that does so for you is the right teaching for you.  You should rejoice when you find it. The right to choose a religion of your own, a religion that makes sense of who you have become and who you wish yet to grow into; a religion that calls you to greater love, greater hope, great faith, greater integrity - that is simply a wonderful thing to find in your life; it is something you should feel proud of and proud to claim.    And yet, how often do I talk to new Unitarian Universalists who have the experience of being judged and scorned by their family of origin simply because they have chosen a path different from their parents or grandparents. “You know, I love this church, Reverend, and I love what my children get here in this community, but I haven’t worked up the nerve to tell my parents yet that I attend here.  You don’t know, it would break their hearts.  It would kill my mother to tell her that.”    To tell her what?  That you actually take religion seriously enough to want to be in a church of your own choosing?  That you want your children to be grounded in tolerance and acceptance of others?  That’s what they’ll learn here.  Do you really think your parents will die or that you will be permanently banned from the family rolls because you want to claim your adult right to have a personal and original search for meaning in your life?    Maybe it’s time to reach a more honest place with your family if you feel you have to be deceitful or dishonest about something so important to you.  Or maybe you need to give your family more credit than to think they will absolutely die if you become a Unitarian.    It’s not likely.  They may pray for you - which is not a bad thing.  But if they love you, really love you the way you love your kids, then you can cross that rift between you with time.  Love is strong enough to do that.    There will always be those who think that religion is about formalities, about reciting the proper catechisms, about following the proper rituals, saying the proper prayers, lighting the proper fires, believing the proper dogmas - and then holding heresy trials for anyone who dares to be different.  I think Elie Wiesel is closer to the truth when he says religion is about understanding our stories.    I will make the same invitation today that I make almost every Sunday.  If by chance you have been attending church here for some time now and you find yourself to be spiritually at home here amidst these good people, I invite you to consider signing the membership book today.  Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to welcome you to a religion of your own.  I’ll even write a letter to your mother if you think it would help.