What is Church For?

What is it that church is for? Is it a social club? Or a general purpose social justice non-profit? Is it an entertainment? A show? A musical performance? A Sunday morning day-care respite? Is it a lecture? A ceremony? A ritual? A backstage pass to the preferred afterlife? Why, when so many of us have experienced trauma and disconnect and worse at institutions called churches, are we at one again? What are we searching for? What are we hungry for? Why do we keep coming and keep coming back when it can be so hard, when there are times that it is yet another place where we must confront our own demons and many of the same difficulties with the community that we struggle with at work or with family, with friends, with neighbors… It’s not a trivial question — especially at a time like this when so many are unchurched and even more self-identify as spiritual but not religious.

I’m going to make some propositions, see how they land for you:

• You say you want a community — and while this is both true and important, it isn’t why you’re here.
• You say you want your kids to get exposed to world religions in an unbiased and inclusive way, or you say that you want to provide such a place for the next generation, also important, also true, but still not WHY you are here.
• Maybe, you say, you want to be surrounded by like minded people, or to have some co-conspirators in your plots and schemes to bring some justice to the marginalized, or the unhoused, or the oppressed… maybe so, but still not why you’re here.
• You want music, you want some ritual, some quiet time, some time for reflection, you want some edification, some challenge, something new to think about, something that helps you shift your perspective… all true, all good, and yet still not why this place exists, although with each of these nudges, perhaps we inch a bit closer.

The uncomfortable truth is that you’ve got a nagging suspicion that just won’t go away that there must be more to life than this… more than all the banal money and power play that passes for important out there in the culture, more than the next protest against the ways we keep hurting each other or the planet, more than the latest self-help book or diet guru or exercise regiment, more than the latest vacation to some exotic place so that you can feel, however briefly, alive again…

That’s what Church is for.

It is the unshakable suspicion that there is something larger and that you are important to it, that it needs you too, as desperately as you need it. That’s the string that keeps pulling on your heart and your head and your gut and your awareness until you’re back in a pew or on a meditation retreat or doing rosaries or whatever practices you’ve discovered that alleviate that pull, that help you feel — however transiently — back in touch with yourself and with that something larger that keeps finding subtle ways to let you know you’re not as alone as your own mind would have you believe.

That’s what Church is for.

We aren’t a lecture series to convince us intellectually of the existence, or for that matter the non-existence, of God. We are at a church to deepen our relationship with the divine, whatever name we give it. We are at a church that will use words and intellect and knowledge and stories and myths and song-lyrics and poetry and whatever symbols it can find to destroy the hard-won certainties that litter our field of consciousness, preventing us from apprehending the truth. The simple truth — that we are divine, that the divine is in us and all around us, that it cares about us, that the caring we have for each other is but a weak reflection of how deeply we are all cared for. I know it’s hard to believe. That’s why I’m not trying to convince you. I mean, I will… I will spend our time together searching for the right words, the right stories, the right myths and song lyrics and poetry… and I will pour them into your ears, on purpose. Hoping that they will seep into the tiny cracks in the boulders of your certainty… and as the seasons of your mind progress, and that water-of-life poured into your cracks freezes and thaws, well… maybe some of your certainties about how life is, and about how it isn’t, will begin to crack. Maybe they’ll crack enough that they can become part of the soil in the garden of your mind, boulders giving way to growing, and flowering, and living things. And maybe, if we’re very lucky, we’ll be together long enough to see those seasons come again, for your first crops to die and decay and become soil again, for a new generation of sprouts to push through the surface of your garden and bring new life out of that necessary, beautiful death, to bring new thoughts and insights and wisdoms into that garden of yours. Maybe even, you’ll decide to share that garden with the rest of us, to let us wonder and awe and relish the fruits of your spiritual labor.

That’s what Church is for.

It is the unshakable suspicion that there is something larger and that you are important to it, that it needs you too, as desperately as you need it. That’s the string that keeps pulling on your heart and your head and your gut and your awareness until you’re back in a pew or on a meditation retreat or doing rosaries or whatever practices you’ve discovered that alleviate that pull, that help you feel — however transiently — back in touch with yourself and with that something larger that keeps finding subtle ways to let you know you’re not as alone as your own mind would have you believe.

That’s what Church is for.

We aren’t a social justice non-profit. Don’t mistake me, I’m glad that we show up for our marches and protests, and I’m glad we show up for others, at their marches and protests. I’m glad we’re engaging in the work of social justice. But the Church is a calling to push the roots of that justice work deeper. The Church is a catalyst to more transformative justice work, not just MORE justice work. Given where we’re at in this moment, I’m sure most of you have heard, at least in passing, that concern of ‘performative justice work’. Am I right? Can I get an Amen? And I know that’s not what you all want… But not ‘wanting it’ isn’t enough, not by a long shot.

The key to turning the corner from performative work to justice work IS the moment when your comfort is lower on the list of your own priorities than the health and wellbeing and safety of the least among us. Jesus didn’t preach about the ‘least of these’ because he was being cute or clever, he was trying to teach us one of the deepest truths of the human condition, of the condition of life in this universe as we know it. You will suffer the depredation that is imposed upon the least living thing in your world… The pain in your heart will not go away as long as there are human beings in bondage and in cages and in prisons and in solitary confinement. The pain in your heart will not go away as long as there is war and murder and genocide. The pain in your heart will not go away until hunger and famine and disease are priorities being addressed around the world. The pain in your heart will not go away as long as the factory farms are running, and the fields polluted with chemicals, and all of it. Because the pain in your heart is not yours alone, it is the pain in the divine heart to which you are inextricably connected. So, we will learn to be heartbroken together. We will learn what so many have tried to teach, that only in accepting our own heartbrokenness can we show up to the work that we are called to do. When we can’t accept it, we run around hypervigilantly overfunctioning, trying to stick our finger in every crack in the dam, wondering why we can’t make progress. When we learn to live heartbroken, we learn to be still enough to answer the call of the divine in our lives, to show up to the work we were made for… I know it’s hard to believe, but there is a spot in that dam that was made just for you, no one else can plug it, because no one else is YOU. But that work requires the lion’s share of your attention and your awareness and your love and gumption and tenacity… and you can’t find any of that within yourself if you’re convinced you’re all alone. And we live in a world that is working hard to convince us that we are alone. Am I right? Can I get an Amen? Here is the toxic story: ‘You are alone in an uncaring and mechanistic universe that cares neither for your or for your people or for any people or for life — which is just all happenstance anyway!’ That’s our scientism, isn’t it? Our banal materialism wrapped up in pseudo-science masquerading as a metaphysical fact? We’re here to kill that toxic story, to replace it with a story that is true to life, true to our lives, and as true an expression of the divinity we share as we are capable of. In the words of Charles Eisenstein, “I am surrounded by many, many other people who themselves, imperfectly as I do, hold the same story. Together we move deeper and deeper into it. Enlightenment is a group activity.”

That’s what Church is for.

It is the unshakable suspicion that there is something larger and that you are important to it, that it needs you too, as desperately as you need it. That’s the string that keeps pulling on your heart and your head and your gut and your awareness until you’re back in a pew or on a meditation retreat or doing rosaries or whatever practices you’ve discovered that alleviate that pull, that help you feel — however transiently — back in touch with yourself and with that something larger that keeps finding subtle ways to let you know you’re not as alone as your own mind would have you believe.

That’s what Church is for.

Oh friends, we are not a social club. To be sure many churches function in this way… and we will have sermons on the topic in the coming year. I think we’ll even revisit a 20 year old sermon from one of my early mentors, Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr called Why Unitarian Universalism is DyingI… lest you think that my iconoclasm isn’t part of my lineage, learned from my own elders. Now Rev. Loehr’s sermon doesn’t talk explicitly about exoteric versus esoteric religion — and there are volumes of debate about the proper usage and application of those terms… but here’s how they relate to what we’re talking about this morning.

For all intents and purposes, and as an example, the exoteric religion of Unitarian Universalism is the Seven Principles (or the new thing that’s about to replace them), it is the chalice and the chalice lighting, it is the practice of joys and concerns, and the flags and icons of all the world’s-religions that we hang on the walls, it is the UU identity that so many are keen on fostering. It is the flower ceremony and the water ceremony and the blessing of the backpacks or laptops or whatever iconic thing the kids of the next generation will carry. And it is all fine, just fine… but, in the spirit of today’s inquiry — it is certainly NOT what church is for. It is the window dressing of church, it is the costuming of church, it is the way in which we differentiate church from other aspects of our lives, but it is NOT the WHY, it is not what church is FOR.

Now, and I’m going to skate on some thin theological ice here, many before me, centuries worth, millenia worth, have argued that we needed exoteric religion. That the exoteric religion is the house, inside of which we build the altar — in this analogy the altar is the esoteric religion. This view purports that ‘most people’ just aren’t ready to really practice religion deeply, so we give them a shallow religion for the masses — but smuggled inside that religion for the masses is the deeper, more mystical, more divinely connected and inspired, true-religion. As the word esoteric suggests, it is the religion that is too radical to be known by everyone, so it is kept secret. I might be compelled by this logic if there wasn’t an obvious historical pattern of the exoteric religion’s leaders constantly and consistently burning their esoteric practitioners at the stake, or crucifying them, or having them drawn and quartered, or, in terms more modern: excommunication, fatwa, smear campaigns… you get the picture.

I’m not convinced that any exoteric religion has ever passed the smell test of being worth the paper it was printed on. I’m not convinced that you’re not ready for deep religion, or that this was true of those who came before you. Was Jesus really that much more of an outlier 2,000 years ago than Dr. King was 60 years ago, or Gandhi 80 years ago, or, for that matter, Gautama Siddhartha or Laozi or Mozi 2,500 years ago? No, I don’t think so. They were outliers then and would be outliers today. So I’m not convinced that we need a big cultural house within which to build our altar. I think that proposition was made by people who were interested in building big cultural houses over which they could have dominion. I think we would be just as well off building our altars out in a field under the stars, or by the side of a brook under the canopy of an old tree, or up the side of a jagged mountain exposed to the chill winds.

I want you to connect to the divine within yourself, to the divine in your siblings and neighbors, to the larger divine that is the source of all that divinity. That is the heart and soul and center of all esoteric religion, regardless of the window dressing. Regardless of the buildings or costumes or languages or rituals. If a ritual, however beautiful, ancient, or avowedly sacred, fails to connect you to the divine, it is, for you, exoteric and not esoteric… you should leave it behind as quickly as you can. Your search is for ritual that resonates with you, for practices that connect you with your own divinity and with the larger divinity… I hope that we can do that together. I hope that we can invite other neighbors in our community to join us, for that! Because…

That’s what Church is for.

It is the unshakable suspicion that there is something larger and that you are important to it, that it needs you too, as desperately as you need it. That’s the string that keeps pulling on your heart and your head and your gut and your awareness until you’re back in a pew or on a meditation retreat or doing rosaries or whatever practices you’ve discovered that alleviate that pull, that help you feel — however transiently — back in touch with yourself and with that something larger that keeps finding subtle ways to let you know you’re not as alone as your own mind would have you believe.

That’s what Church is for.

I leave you with this Benediction from Rev. Dr. Davidson Loehr,

May you find:

Questions more profound than answers.

Vulnerability more powerful than strength.

& A peace that passeth all understanding.