Atoning and Facing the New Year

Living Your Faith, part 3

Rosh Hashanah this year began in the evening last Sunday, Sep 9. Yom Kippur ended on Wednesday evening, Sep 19. In between were the Days of Awe and Repentance. It's the Jewish New Year. How are you going to live your faith this year?

We have options for ways to exercise your caring and compassion muscle on behalf of justice for a bruised and hurting world. We have SJTs -- Social Justice Teams – pick one. Maybe two, but at least one.

Our social justice teams each have a chair, or two co-chairs. They each have a leadership core of five people. Then there are the active members, who show up at the monthly meetings and at events that are the work of the team, who answer and share emails about the team’s activities. Finally, each social justice team has its “on-call” list. These are the folks who don’t go to most of the monthly meetings, who quickly skim and delete the emails about the team’s activities and deliberations, but who have agreed to be “on-call” – to receive those emails, and willing to be called upon for those times when a big project needs all the help it can get.

Some of our Social Justice Teams need some core leaders. Maybe you. All of our Social Justice Teams need all the active members they can get. And if you can’t be an active member, at least be an on-call member of at least one of our Social Justice Teams. (On Sun Sep 16, after the service, CUUC had a Social Justice Team Fair -- with each of the teams staffing a table and display about their activities. A list of CUUC's SJTs is HERE.)

As we think about the new year and atoning, let us consider how we will, in the coming year, engage in healing the world -- tikkun olam. Our SJTs provide us with structures and resources for making a difference, for healing the world, for nuturing our spirit -- for nurturing our spirit BY healing the world, even as our worship experience help us heal the world BY nurturing our spirit.

Rabbi and poet Chaim Stern wrote “Atonement Day”:

Once more Atonement Day has come.
All pretense gone, naked heart revealed to the hiding self,
We stand on holy ground, between the day that was and the one that must be.
We tremble.
At what did we aim?
How did we stumble?
What did we take?
What did we give?
To what were we blind?
Last year’s confession came easily to the lips.
Will this year’s come from deeper than the skin?
Say then: why are our paths strewn with promises like fallen leaves?
Say then: when shall our lust be for wisdom?
Say now: Love and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall embrace.

We are called to follow the right path, and to atone for straying from it. What does this require? The prophet Micah considers the possibilities:

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

No, none of these, says Micah.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

So let us be recommitted in the year ahead to doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly the way that seems most right.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur call us to consider how we have lived in the year past, and how we may live in the year to come. Traditionally the faults and failings the Jewish people are particularly enjoined to examine at this time are these:

“We failed to work for peace
We kept silent in the face of injustice
We have ignored the poor in our own midst
We have withheld our love from those who depend on us
We have distorted the truth for our own advantage
We have conformed to fashion and not to conscience
We have sinned against ourselves and not risen to fulfill the best that is in us.”

The invitation of Yom Kippur is to reflect on how, in the New Year, to go deeper – deeper into connection, care, love. And thereby into a fuller life of joy and peace.

Yes: next year we will confess the same faults. That doesn’t mean we haven’t done better – it might mean we’ve raised our standards on ourselves. Last year’s work was too easy only by the higher standards we are now expecting from ourselves.

And it’s not all on you. Peace and justice must be built together, collectively.

There’s a name for this constant re-adjusting of our balances and our expectations for ourselves, constantly seeking to care more and more effectively: it’s called life. May you be inscribed in the book of life. G'mar Hatima Tova.

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This is part 3 of 3 of "Living Your Faith"
See also
Part 1: The Infirmary and the Gym
Part 2: At the Center of Joy and Peace

At the Center of Joy and Peace

Living Your Faith, part 2

The "infirmary model" emphasizes to role of the congregation (and the practices and faith it helps its members develop) in tending to spiritual needs of the soul-weary and the heart-broken. The "gymnasium model" emphasizes the role of the congregation in encouraging the exercise that strengthens our spiritual muscles. The "insurance policy model" just says that if you pay the premiums of participating in your congregation and its faith and practices, then God will smile upon you -- in this life (as in, prosperity theology, especially), the next, or both.

The interplay between "gymnasium" and "insurance policy" runs through the debate in the Christian tradition between between “salvation by works” versus “salvation by faith alone.”

The Catholic tradition has emphasized salvation by faith AND works, highlighting such passages as the Christian Testament’s Epistle of James, chapter 2, which says:

“Show me your faith apart from works, and I by my works will show you my faith. . . . Faith apart from works is barren . . . “Faith [is] brought to completion by works . . . A person is justified by works and not by faith alone. . . . For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (18-26)

But through the medieval period this idea was gradually corrupted until the primary meaning of “works” was paying money to the Catholic Church. So when Martin Luther in the 16th century rebelled against the Catholic Church, he defended a doctrine called sola fide -- faith alone. Luther was trying to undermine the corruption that had developed around "salvation by works."

Thus, the Protestant tradition has emphasized different passages, primarily from Paul’s epistles. The epistle to the Ephesians, for instance, says:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Both sides can be seen as versions of the insurance policy model. Where “works” is understood as payments and service to the Catholic hierarchy, then works isn’t so much exercise as it is buying insurance. And if “faith alone” is merely an internal act of believing, then, that, too, is a kind of payment in return for which a pay out comes later.

Catholicism has taken steps to correct the corruption of which Martin Luther complained (arguably, it has not completed that task). Catholic theology since Luther has developed a robust understanding of works as having more to do with service to the poor and oppressed and less to do with payment into church coffers. In the 1950s and 60s, Latin American Catholic theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, as well as Jon Sobrino of Spain developed Liberation Theology that particularly emphasized social concern for the poor and the political liberation of oppressed peoples. Liberation theology has never been orthodox teaching throughout Catholicism, but it has been influential within and without Catholicism – including on Unitarian Universalism. It provides a grounding for a view of spiritual development through works of justice, and thus for a view of the congregation as providing a sort of spiritual gymnasium for building strong compassion.

LoraKim and I read Gutierrez and Boff in seminary, as most UU seminarians still do. We found liberation theology insightful and inspiring – and congenial with the Unitarian emphasis that our faith must be lived.

From Unitarian Universalist beginnings, faith must be lived. Our slogan has been “deeds, not creeds.”
Ours is not an insurance policy faith. “It matters what you do” – as Laila Ibrahim put it when she wrote the four noble truths of Unitarian Universalism for a Chalice Camp song for UU kids.

Ours is a faith that must be lived, not merely believed, our Unitarian and Universalist theologians and preachers have insisted from our beginnings. Our Rev. Marilyn Sewell writes,

“Not all UUs are inclined by personality or temperament to be activists.
But do UUs need to care about social justice? Yes.” (UU World)

Takiyah Nur Amin, a member of our Church of the Larger Fellowship and the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism organizing collective, adds,

“Unitarian Universalism as a faith and philosophy calls us to work toward building a sustainable, equitable context for all of us to live and thrive, and there is no getting around that. If you embrace and believe in our Principles—dignity, justice, equity, and compassion—you can’t sit idly by in the absence of those ideals in our society. We are supposed to uphold, as a matter of principle, the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. How does anyone propose we get there if we don’t take action to make it happen? This … is about being a person who lives out their principles in their home, at the job, in their congregation, and anywhere else their life might take them. This faith requires something of us in return for being our ideological home, and that requires that we get up, get out, and build the world we dream about. If you aren’t called to act in, on, and through our Principles, maybe you shouldn’t call yourself a Unitarian Universalist.” (UU World)

Unitarian theologian Paul Rasor notes:

“There are many ways to express and live out the Principles and values we hold dear. Activism is certainly one of them. But not everyone has to take to the streets. . . . At the same time, I hope that those called to other roles could support our activists (as one expression of our values), and that the activists could equally support those who undertake other equally important tasks in our communities.” (UU World)

Our faith prepares and strengthens people to campaign for justice in small and big ways – whether marching in the streets and organizing, or in other ways. Our religious movement, from its beginnings has been devoted to transformation: our own spiritual transformation and the social and political transformation of the world. Our faith calls us to love actively in the face of a broken world – and justice is what love looks like in public.

Faith must be lived. It’s not like an insurance policy. It’s like a gym membership. Here’s your place where you can strengthen the muscles of care and kindness.

And it’s like an infirmary. If you’re sick at heart and soul weary, let’s talk about that. I’m here. Your Journey Groups – and caring people all around you -- are here. Here’s your place where you can get back your strength for care and kindness.

For care and kindness, compassion and love are at the center of a life of joy and peace. Helping each other flourish into such a life is what our mission is all about: nurturing spirituality, fostering compassion, engaging in service. Because that’s the life of joy and peace. We’re here to help each other realize that life.

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This is part 2 of 3 of "Living Your Faith"
See also: Part 1: The Infirmary and the Gym
See next: Part 3: Atoning and Facing the New Year

The Infirmary and the Gym

Living Your Faith, part 1

There’s a saying about the function of a congregation, I've mentioned before. The two-fold function of the congregation is:

to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

It sounds like two different things: comforting afflicted and afflicting comfortable. You might read this as separating the comfortable from the afflicted in much the same way the sheep are to be separated from the goats: the comfortable being the goats, are to be afflicted.

I don’t believe in a separation of people into sheep and goats. I resonate with Alexandre Solzhenitsyn who wrote:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

There’s no separating sheep from goats.

It’s not just that all of us are part sheep and part goat. The impossibility goes deeper than that. We can’t tell the difference between our own sheep parts and goat parts.

What we all are is: a bundle of competing drives and needs, and sometimes some of them need to be at the fore and sometimes others do, and we aren’t always perfectly skilled at knowing which drives to attend to when, and we aren’t always perfectly skilled at attending to those drives without collateral damage, so we make mistakes and cause harm to ourselves and others. There are no sheep and goats, and likewise no division into the afflicted and the comfortable.

I think what’s trying to be said is simply: Care about people.

Your congregation is not here to judge you as too comfortable and thus set out to afflict you in various ways. Your congregation is here for joy and peace – to learn about, to practice, to model, to embody, lives of joy and peace. As we go, we soon learn that caring, kindness, compassion -- love -- is at the center of joy and peace.

If you’re not living that way, then you’re not comfortable. This we know: as Benjamin Franklin put it,

“A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.”

A person concerned only with their own protection and aggrandizement is a fundamentally unhappy person, never at ease, never comfortable. A certain public figure, perhaps, comes to mind: fundamentally unhappy, never at ease, never comfortable.

Your congregation is not out to afflict the comfortable. We are here to help each other care more, become kinder, less complacent and thereby grow more comfortable with ourselves and our world. Whether you are suffering from a general complacency or a specific grief, the path forward is the same: connect with people through compassionate service to others. Thus there is no two-fold function for a congregation, but a single function, which takes thousands of forms.

Another way the idea of a two-fold function is sometimes expressed is to say congregations have a pastoral function and a prophetic function. The pastoral is care and guidance for grief, loss, and heartache. The prophetic is a reference to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible – Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, et al. The traditional meaning of prophet is one who speaks for God, or by divine inspiration, to guide the people of Israel. Unitarian Universalism has been particularly influenced by strands of thought that view these prophets primarily in their role as social critics. The prophets were the ones who called out injustice – who spoke truth to power – who urged the people (particularly the powerful) to change their ways and turn away from evil.

I once characterized the pastoral and prophetic as the infirmary and the gym. In its pastoral function, the congregation is a spiritual infirmary. When you come here sick at heart, soul weary, broken-spirited, the congregation provides care, sustenance, replenishing rest to help you get better. In its prophetic function, the congregation is a spiritual gymnasium. Here we offer each other the exercises and disciplines which cultivate and strengthen our wisdom, compassion, and equanimity. We’re here to work out together.

Both the infirmary and the gym are concerned with health, as the congregation is concerned with spiritual health, so, again, there’s ultimately one function – though good health requires both rest, on the one hand, and exercise, on the other.

Throughout western religion – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – theologians and faith leaders have also grappled with and sometimes promoted another model: call it the insurance policy. On the insurance policy model, congregational life is your insurance that God is on your side -- that, as one insurance company advertises, you’re in good hands. You will be provided for on earth – and, afterwards, heaven. You pay your premiums by giving assent to doctrines and tithing to a congregation and when the time of need comes, God will issue the check to cover your need.

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This is part 1 of 3 of "Living Your Faith"
See next
Part 2: At the Center of Joy and Peace
Part 3: Atoning and Facing the New Year