Missing the Mark
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
3/11 and 3/12/06

 

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”—G.K. Chesterton

 

Meditation

by UU minister Richard Gilbert

 

Jesus wept and upended the temple tables,
Mohammed led violent crusades,

Moses had a temper, even killed an Egyptian,

Gandhi was a tyrannical husband and father,

Lincoln was homely, Jefferson kept slaves,

Augustine was a lecher, Roosevelt packed the court.

We are all hypocrites more or less.

Who among us has not lied?

We have feelings that hardly commend us,

We fall and bloody ourselves—and others.

We stumble in the rough places and stagger even in the smooth.

We hurt our neighbors as ourselves.

A dismal picture, you say?

Of course.

Or is it simply to admit in a homely way—

We all have warts?

Blemishes of the spirit that leave their mark

Even as the messy eruptions of the body?

Is it simply to say we cannot escape our finitude?

That our limitations are as much a part of us

As our skins?

We are children of the divine

And the earthly at once—

Spirit and matter rolled in one

Bundle of contradictions

We call human beings.

May it reassure us that it is part of our fate,

Fate we share with spiritual giants

And pygmies of the race.

May we remember what of beauty there is

Even in the ravaged spirit

And the scarred soul.

We all have warts.

The blessing is the condition is universally

Shared by the ugly and the sublime

All wrapped in the creatures we are.

 

 

Readings

 

Our first reading today is from the book of John.  [John 8:1-11]

 

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.  Early in the morning he came again to the temple; all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.  The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.  Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such.  What do you say about her?”  This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.  Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.”  And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”

Sermon

 

This is one of those weeks when I have chosen a topic that seems too big for any single sermon.  The topic seems bigger than a whole sermon series.  In fact, I could probably preach a whole year of sermons on this topic…and yet, in my almost five years as your minister, I haven’t explicitly talked about this subject even once.

 

Our topic today:  Sin.

 

While I do acknowledge that I have not dealt with this topic head on, I could argue that nearly every sermon I have preached has touched in some way on sin, even if I haven’t mentioned the word itself more than once or twice.  That’s because sin, at least in one common Hebrew translation, means “to miss the mark.”  Certainly, most of my sermons grapple in some way with what happens when our actions and desires are somehow off target…when we miss the mark in our families, in our expectations, in our responsibilities as citizens, as sisters and brothers, as participants in this glorious and complicated life we share.  Still, I admit that I have rarely used the word.

 

Apparently I am not the only UU minister who has consciously or unconsciously veered away from the topic, at least in its explicit form.  From what I have gathered from some extended sessions of surfing on the internet, very few sermons have been preached in UU churches on sin.

 

So, what is it about the concept of sin that makes it so easy for UU ministers (and UU congregations) to avoid?

 

Well, right from the start there is a foundational disconnect between UUism and sin…or at least what we might call the granddaddy of all sin:  original sin.  Historically speaking, to be a Unitarian or a Universalist is to be intrinsically opposed to the Calvanistic idea that we are born tainted by sin…that we are born broken and in need of saving…before we say our first words. Because most of us don’t typically believe in this traditional idea of original sin… the idea that we are fallen and we can’t get up, except through some serious repentance and, depending on your theology, some luck…the need to be saved from sin has taken a back seat for most UUs.  It shouldn’t be surprising then, that salvation is also a word that can be difficult for many of us to get our minds around.

 

I read a newsletter column by one of my colleagues recently in which he reflected on the lack of attention most UUs give to salvation.  He wrote about a survey conducted thirty years ago in which UUs were asked to paste labels with their most and least important religious values in a top to bottom listing. “Salvation” not only fell at the end of the list of things given value, but some of the participants felt the need to paste it upside down or along the margins of the page, if they even kept the word on the list at all.[1]

 

Now I definitely understand the disconnect that UUs might feel with the notions of sin and, therefore, salvation.  One of the things that drew many of us to a church like ours is the general optimism towards life we have found here….the focus on our worth, dignity, and possibility rather than on our failings, shortcomings, and limitations.  We want religion to inspire us, not scare us.   We want church to be a place where self-loathing is replaced with self-respect.

 

This is not to say that UU churches are the only places where a positive, respectful religious message is preached.  I know lots of ministers in town from various faiths who are not interested in beating people down with dogma that says we are not inherently worthy of life’s blessings.  Still, I am aware that many of you have had bad experiences in other churches, communities where you found more emphasis on what is wrong about our shared humanity than what is right.  These bad experiences left their mark…maybe made you suspicious of the idea of sin…so suspicious that you may not want to hear the word at all.

 

I know my first negative feelings about the church of my youth, which happened to be Presbyterian, did not come about because of the miracle stories or angels or even the Holy Ghost.  Like most kids, I was not uncomfortable at all with the possibility of the supernatural…in fact, the stranger and spookier the better.  No my first concerns arose when I began to understand the unison confession of sins we would recite as a congregation most weeks.  I don’t remember the text exactly but the gist was clear:  Oh God. We are miserable people who have done miserable things and we are sorry, oh so sorry for all we have done. Please forgive us for how much we have betrayed you and how miserable we are.  Did we mention how awful we are?  Ok, good, because we’re serious.  We are truly awful…. 

 

I remember sitting there…even as a five or six year old…a tiny UU in the making…listening to everyone confess the same guilt-ridden words, thinking to myself, “Why are we all saying this?  We can’t all be this bad.  Why am I saying this?  I’m not so bad.  I mostly do my best.  I don’t try to hurt anyone.  Oh sure, sometimes I fight with my brother and I might sneak a cookie now and then, but come on!”

 

Still, it wasn’t too long before I started experiencing first hand…even as a six-year old…the complexities of day-to-day life…the ways in which I could find myself driven by selfish or thoughtless impulses, making mistakes that negatively impacted not only other people, but me, too.  I realized that I did do things that I rightfully regretted…things for which I needed to make amends.  There were times that I made choices that led me to feel separated from others…separated from life…even if I didn’t call these choices sins.

 

For example, one dangerous week during the summer of my seventh year, I had a daily habit of sneaking the loose change off my mother’s dresser and spending it on treats from the concession stand at the local park.  When I returned home after the first night of my crime spree, a bag of Sugar Babies in my hand, my mother asked me where I got the money to buy the candy.  “Oh I just found it,” was my reply.  It wasn’t a lie…I had found it.  I marveled at how clever I was…and the Sugar Babies went down like sweet, chewy nectar.  The next few nights, as my mother kept asking where I got the money, the tone of her voice growing increasingly suspicious, I knew that my “I just found it” line was not sounding so good anymore…and the goodies I brought home were not tasting so good either. 

 

I was reminded of this story when I read a similar tale by Phillip Simmons from an issue of UU World a few years back.  He wrote:

 

My career in sin began early in the era of space exploration. At age five, I considered it my patriotic duty to lie on my back in a large cardboard box and practice counting down from 10 to “blastoff.” I knew I had the imagination, guts, and technical know-how to make it into orbit. What I lacked was the wardrobe. For some time (I’ve always thought of it as weeks, but it may have been days), I’d been eyeing a plastic space helmet lying in my neighbor’s backyard, apparently forgotten by another kid in the neighborhood. Then one day when nobody was home next door, I sneaked over and tried it on. It was muddy and scratched, and when you pulled its visor down over your face, the world vanished in a green haze.

Space flight was never the same after I stole it. After a few thrilling missions, fear and guilt overwhelmed me. I kept the helmet hidden, used it little, and eventually lost track of it. I told no one of my crime and did my best to hide the twinge I felt the following Christmas when Santa delivered a new and better helmet, clean and shiny, with a built-in microphone and a visor you could see through. Though both helmets are long gone…I’ve kept in a small niche of memory these icons of my first sin and that over the years I’ve bowed to them, remembering.[2]

 

I imagine that we all could tell similar stories.  Stories in which we can recall making choices as children…or as adults…that may have seemed to offer rewards at first, but that ultimately brought trouble that outweighed whatever advantage we thought we had.   Now I know that some of these memories can torment us…especially the stories when we have caused considerable damage to our relationships…when we have hurt or betrayed those closest to us.  But the most important elements of these stories are not what we might call the sins—the  stealing or deceiving or disregard of ourselves or others…the acts that have intentionally or unintentionally separated us from those we love or from the people we hope to be.  The most important parts of these stories are not that we can use them to beat ourselves up…to remind ourselves again and again what bad people we are.  Rather, the important parts of these stories, the parts that are best kept with us as memories worth bowing to and remembering are the moments of recognition in them…the redemptive—and oftentimes painful—moments when we realized the negative impact these acts have had on others and, perhaps more importantly and persuasively, on ourselves….for these are the places where real change…where real humility…where real transformation could begin. 

 

If missing the mark of what we strive for or who we hope to be is sin, then recognizing where we miss the mark is grace, the source of the salvation in which I can believe…the salvation that is not bestowed upon us via belief in the supernatural, but that emerges when we take the initiative to search for the direct correlation between our actions and their results….the salvation that can lead us to humbly consider the perspectives of others, make amends, learn from the mistakes we have made, and, as a result, be better prepared to make more thoughtful and compassionate choices in the future.

 

Acknowledging the negative results of what we might call our sinful actions has a lot to do with how liberal religion has traditionally viewed sin.  No matter what we do, says liberal religion, we will ultimately get what’s coming to us, not in some afterworld, but in this world.  Even if it seems as though our wrongdoing will give us an advantage, eventually it will weigh us down with unintended consequences.

 

Hear these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong….Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow–man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.[3]

 

Now if we buy Emerson’s theory, this notion that every sin is paid back in this life, we may be tempted toward a laissez-faire attitude toward the wrongdoings in the world, particularly our own wrongdoings.

 

Davidson Loehr, who is the outspoken minister of a UU church in Austin, Texas rails against this kind of “we don’t need to be saved” attitude he finds in Unitarian Universalism.  He says our biggest problem as a movement is that we don’t have a “salvation story.” He thinks that UUs have been too focused on feeling good and avoiding where we miss the mark…passing by the “malaise” of the human condition and refusing to articulate a “prescription for satisfying the deep yearning” that is a part of being human.  He writes,

 

“…our definition of the human condition seems content with asserting an inherent worth and dignity. Only that? Only goodness? Just a big happy face? What about inherent evil? What about our inherent gullibility, foolishness, or selfishness? What about our tendency toward self-absorption and the rest of the shadow sides that complete the make-up of the human condition: what of them? If all these potentialities are present, then we need the ability to make necessary distinctions between the inherent (or adherent) parts of us that are silly, self-absorbed, etc. And you don’t do that by uncritically affirming the inherent worth and dignity of people, as though that’s all that’s in there. 

“If strict Calvinists err by overemphasizing original sin, it is surely more dangerous to ignore it, and to cover the human condition with a childish happy face.”[4] 

 

Loehr’s critique is important because it reminds us that we ignore the shadow side of our human nature at our peril and that only by honestly engaging with it and taking it seriously can we fully appreciate and grow our redemptive side…the good that is always there as well.

 

Still, I think that he is missing the path to salvation that I find in UUism.  My UU-supported confidence in humanity’s ultimate resilience and potential for goodness actually challenges me to thoughtfully pay attention to how my actions impact the world.  My perspective that redemption is possible and that as Albert Camus famously said, “Society has the criminals it deserves,” dares me to put myself in shoes of others and not simply disregard the sinner because of the sin.  And my conviction that we are the ones who are called to bring about the peace and justice that we claim to seek compels me to acknowledge that sometimes my silence or inaction on the issues of our time can be just as sinful as anything others might be doing or saying.

 

The most useful description of the path to salvation that I have found in liberal theology comes from Henry Nelson Wieman.  He described sin as anything that gets in the way of creative interchange…the creative events that he called the source of human good…the opportunities we have, when conditions are right, to engage with life with the expectation that we have more to learn, to understand, to become. For Wieman (and me) creative interchange is God, so anything that inhibits creative interchange is sin.  In this framework, sin is not strictly tied to behavior alone, but to the impact (intended or not) that behavior has.  For example, having a drink is not necessarily a sin, but drinking to the extent that one cannot participate in creative interchange probably is.  Romantic relationships of any configuration are only sinful if the partners cannot or will not fully accept and embrace each other’s humanity.  From Wieman’s perspective, government, religion, education, really anything can be sinful if it doesn’t allow for and encourage creative interchange. 

 

I appreciate Wieman’s description of sin because I believe it not only gives us a way to understand when we have missed the mark, when we have done things that have inhibited creative interchange or as he might have put it, the work of God in the world, it gives us something for which to aim and to honestly evaluate the groups and efforts of which we are a part.  In other words, Wieman gives us something to do other than repent.  He reminds us that any divine grace that comes about in our human world is produced by people able and willing to nurture creative events…intentional attempts to understand others and let those understandings change us, and, in turn, the world.

 

But perhaps the most important aspect of Wieman’s view of sin and salvation and the primary point of my sermon today, is his assertion that “to be conscious of one’s sin is to be that far in the direction of deliverance from it.”[5]

 

Wieman explained that we are most deeply enslaved in sin when we are the least conscious of it.  The more we are able to acknowledge that we have missed the mark, that we have inhibited creative interchange, that we have sinned, the more freedom…and independence…and deliverance from that sin we will earn.

 

In other words, to paraphrase church member and fellow Wieman fan Dr. Erle Fitz, “The more we know what is wrong with us, the more we can know what is right with us.”

 

Indeed, we have to miss the mark from time to time to know where to aim.  Here’s an example of this point from UU minister Mary Grigolia.  She is describing a women’s retreat that she had attended many years ago, a retreat that she had attended, she confesses, because she wanted to hear 125 women singing a song that she had written.  She writes:

 

“When I arrived, I looked around the circle and didn’t connect with anyone. I had a sinking feeling that I was in the wrong place. But I had been assigned to a small group meeting and I glumly attended. The questions focused on what we had left behind to be there and our hopes and fears for the weekend. Each woman spoke from her own life experience. By the end of that first small group meeting, I had been touched by everyone’s story.

I would have never used the word ‘sin’ to describe the attitude that I took with me that weekend. Sizing up the participants, I thought I was being merely discerning and realistic. And yet, I was looking for what separated me. Grace happened for me that weekend because my heart was able to hear the women in the small group. I went in feeling defensive and separate. But grace was stronger than my defenses….”[6]

 

Grace was stronger than her defenses.  Creative interchange was stronger than her defenses. She couldn’t have overcome the separation she felt on her own.  She needed others to be present to her…and she needed to be present to them.

 

This is the salvation that doesn’t just happen…but that we actually bring about in the world.

This is the kind of salvation that requires our participation, flawed as it often is. 

This is the kind of salvation in which I can put my faith because I have experienced it myself and I have seen it happen in the lives of others.

And, I say to you, each time we take the risk to give ourselves to the possibility of creative interchange,

each time we take the risk to give ourselves to the possibility of what Wieman and I would call God,

the closer we are to the beloved community,

the closer we are to the freedom land,

the freedom land where our sins do not doom us to hell, but rather teach us how to bring heaven to earth. 

 

So let’s be on our way,
finding the strength to aim, miss the mark, and aim again… 

To miss the mark and aim again… 

To miss the mark…and aim yet again.

 

 

 

 

 

Missing the Mark
Rev. Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
3/11 and 3/12/06

 

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”—G.K. Chesterton

 

Meditation

by UU minister Richard Gilbert

 

Jesus wept and upended the temple tables,
Mohammed led violent crusades,

Moses had a temper, even killed an Egyptian,

Gandhi was a tyrannical husband and father,

Lincoln was homely, Jefferson kept slaves,

Augustine was a lecher, Roosevelt packed the court.

We are all hypocrites more or less.

Who among us has not lied?

We have feelings that hardly commend us,

We fall and bloody ourselves—and others.

We stumble in the rough places and stagger even in the smooth.

We hurt our neighbors as ourselves.

A dismal picture, you say?

Of course.

Or is it simply to admit in a homely way—

We all have warts?

Blemishes of the spirit that leave their mark

Even as the messy eruptions of the body?

Is it simply to say we cannot escape our finitude?

That our limitations are as much a part of us

As our skins?

We are children of the divine

And the earthly at once—

Spirit and matter rolled in one

Bundle of contradictions

We call human beings.

May it reassure us that it is part of our fate,

Fate we share with spiritual giants

And pygmies of the race.

May we remember what of beauty there is

Even in the ravaged spirit

And the scarred soul.

We all have warts.

The blessing is the condition is universally

Shared by the ugly and the sublime

All wrapped in the creatures we are.

 

 

Readings

 

Our first reading today is from the book of John.  [John 8:1-11]

 

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.  Early in the morning he came again to the temple; all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them.  The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.  Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such.  What do you say about her?”  This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him.  Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And once more he bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.  But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the eldest, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they?  Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.”  And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and do not sin again.”

Sermon

 

This is one of those weeks when I have chosen a topic that seems too big for any single sermon.  The topic seems bigger than a whole sermon series.  In fact, I could probably preach a whole year of sermons on this topic…and yet, in my almost five years as your minister, I haven’t explicitly talked about this subject even once.

 

Our topic today:  Sin.

 

While I do acknowledge that I have not dealt with this topic head on, I could argue that nearly every sermon I have preached has touched in some way on sin, even if I haven’t mentioned the word itself more than once or twice.  That’s because sin, at least in one common Hebrew translation, means “to miss the mark.”  Certainly, most of my sermons grapple in some way with what happens when our actions and desires are somehow off target…when we miss the mark in our families, in our expectations, in our responsibilities as citizens, as sisters and brothers, as participants in this glorious and complicated life we share.  Still, I admit that I have rarely used the word.

 

Apparently I am not the only UU minister who has consciously or unconsciously veered away from the topic, at least in its explicit form.  From what I have gathered from some extended sessions of surfing on the internet, very few sermons have been preached in UU churches on sin.

 

So, what is it about the concept of sin that makes it so easy for UU ministers (and UU congregations) to avoid?

 

Well, right from the start there is a foundational disconnect between UUism and sin…or at least what we might call the granddaddy of all sin:  original sin.  Historically speaking, to be a Unitarian or a Universalist is to be intrinsically opposed to the Calvanistic idea that we are born tainted by sin…that we are born broken and in need of saving…before we say our first words. Because most of us don’t typically believe in this traditional idea of original sin… the idea that we are fallen and we can’t get up, except through some serious repentance and, depending on your theology, some luck…the need to be saved from sin has taken a back seat for most UUs.  It shouldn’t be surprising then, that salvation is also a word that can be difficult for many of us to get our minds around.

 

I read a newsletter column by one of my colleagues recently in which he reflected on the lack of attention most UUs give to salvation.  He wrote about a survey conducted thirty years ago in which UUs were asked to paste labels with their most and least important religious values in a top to bottom listing. “Salvation” not only fell at the end of the list of things given value, but some of the participants felt the need to paste it upside down or along the margins of the page, if they even kept the word on the list at all.[1]

 

Now I definitely understand the disconnect that UUs might feel with the notions of sin and, therefore, salvation.  One of the things that drew many of us to a church like ours is the general optimism towards life we have found here….the focus on our worth, dignity, and possibility rather than on our failings, shortcomings, and limitations.  We want religion to inspire us, not scare us.   We want church to be a place where self-loathing is replaced with self-respect.

 

This is not to say that UU churches are the only places where a positive, respectful religious message is preached.  I know lots of ministers in town from various faiths who are not interested in beating people down with dogma that says we are not inherently worthy of life’s blessings.  Still, I am aware that many of you have had bad experiences in other churches, communities where you found more emphasis on what is wrong about our shared humanity than what is right.  These bad experiences left their mark…maybe made you suspicious of the idea of sin…so suspicious that you may not want to hear the word at all.

 

I know my first negative feelings about the church of my youth, which happened to be Presbyterian, did not come about because of the miracle stories or angels or even the Holy Ghost.  Like most kids, I was not uncomfortable at all with the possibility of the supernatural…in fact, the stranger and spookier the better.  No my first concerns arose when I began to understand the unison confession of sins we would recite as a congregation most weeks.  I don’t remember the text exactly but the gist was clear:  Oh God. We are miserable people who have done miserable things and we are sorry, oh so sorry for all we have done. Please forgive us for how much we have betrayed you and how miserable we are.  Did we mention how awful we are?  Ok, good, because we’re serious.  We are truly awful…. 

 

I remember sitting there…even as a five or six year old…a tiny UU in the making…listening to everyone confess the same guilt-ridden words, thinking to myself, “Why are we all saying this?  We can’t all be this bad.  Why am I saying this?  I’m not so bad.  I mostly do my best.  I don’t try to hurt anyone.  Oh sure, sometimes I fight with my brother and I might sneak a cookie now and then, but come on!”

 

Still, it wasn’t too long before I started experiencing first hand…even as a six-year old…the complexities of day-to-day life…the ways in which I could find myself driven by selfish or thoughtless impulses, making mistakes that negatively impacted not only other people, but me, too.  I realized that I did do things that I rightfully regretted…things for which I needed to make amends.  There were times that I made choices that led me to feel separated from others…separated from life…even if I didn’t call these choices sins.

 

For example, one dangerous week during the summer of my seventh year, I had a daily habit of sneaking the loose change off my mother’s dresser and spending it on treats from the concession stand at the local park.  When I returned home after the first night of my crime spree, a bag of Sugar Babies in my hand, my mother asked me where I got the money to buy the candy.  “Oh I just found it,” was my reply.  It wasn’t a lie…I had found it.  I marveled at how clever I was…and the Sugar Babies went down like sweet, chewy nectar.  The next few nights, as my mother kept asking where I got the money, the tone of her voice growing increasingly suspicious, I knew that my “I just found it” line was not sounding so good anymore…and the goodies I brought home were not tasting so good either. 

 

I was reminded of this story when I read a similar tale by Phillip Simmons from an issue of UU World a few years back.  He wrote:

 

My career in sin began early in the era of space exploration. At age five, I considered it my patriotic duty to lie on my back in a large cardboard box and practice counting down from 10 to “blastoff.” I knew I had the imagination, guts, and technical know-how to make it into orbit. What I lacked was the wardrobe. For some time (I’ve always thought of it as weeks, but it may have been days), I’d been eyeing a plastic space helmet lying in my neighbor’s backyard, apparently forgotten by another kid in the neighborhood. Then one day when nobody was home next door, I sneaked over and tried it on. It was muddy and scratched, and when you pulled its visor down over your face, the world vanished in a green haze.

Space flight was never the same after I stole it. After a few thrilling missions, fear and guilt overwhelmed me. I kept the helmet hidden, used it little, and eventually lost track of it. I told no one of my crime and did my best to hide the twinge I felt the following Christmas when Santa delivered a new and better helmet, clean and shiny, with a built-in microphone and a visor you could see through. Though both helmets are long gone…I’ve kept in a small niche of memory these icons of my first sin and that over the years I’ve bowed to them, remembering.[2]

 

I imagine that we all could tell similar stories.  Stories in which we can recall making choices as children…or as adults…that may have seemed to offer rewards at first, but that ultimately brought trouble that outweighed whatever advantage we thought we had.   Now I know that some of these memories can torment us…especially the stories when we have caused considerable damage to our relationships…when we have hurt or betrayed those closest to us.  But the most important elements of these stories are not what we might call the sins—the  stealing or deceiving or disregard of ourselves or others…the acts that have intentionally or unintentionally separated us from those we love or from the people we hope to be.  The most important parts of these stories are not that we can use them to beat ourselves up…to remind ourselves again and again what bad people we are.  Rather, the important parts of these stories, the parts that are best kept with us as memories worth bowing to and remembering are the moments of recognition in them…the redemptive—and oftentimes painful—moments when we realized the negative impact these acts have had on others and, perhaps more importantly and persuasively, on ourselves….for these are the places where real change…where real humility…where real transformation could begin. 

 

If missing the mark of what we strive for or who we hope to be is sin, then recognizing where we miss the mark is grace, the source of the salvation in which I can believe…the salvation that is not bestowed upon us via belief in the supernatural, but that emerges when we take the initiative to search for the direct correlation between our actions and their results….the salvation that can lead us to humbly consider the perspectives of others, make amends, learn from the mistakes we have made, and, as a result, be better prepared to make more thoughtful and compassionate choices in the future.

 

Acknowledging the negative results of what we might call our sinful actions has a lot to do with how liberal religion has traditionally viewed sin.  No matter what we do, says liberal religion, we will ultimately get what’s coming to us, not in some afterworld, but in this world.  Even if it seems as though our wrongdoing will give us an advantage, eventually it will weigh us down with unintended consequences.

 

Hear these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong….Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow–man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.[3]

 

Now if we buy Emerson’s theory, this notion that every sin is paid back in this life, we may be tempted toward a laissez-faire attitude toward the wrongdoings in the world, particularly our own wrongdoings.

 

Davidson Loehr, who is the outspoken minister of a UU church in Austin, Texas rails against this kind of “we don’t need to be saved” attitude he finds in Unitarian Universalism.  He says our biggest problem as a movement is that we don’t have a “salvation story.” He thinks that UUs have been too focused on feeling good and avoiding where we miss the mark…passing by the “malaise” of the human condition and refusing to articulate a “prescription for satisfying the deep yearning” that is a part of being human.  He writes,

 

“…our definition of the human condition seems content with asserting an inherent worth and dignity. Only that? Only goodness? Just a big happy face? What about inherent evil? What about our inherent gullibility, foolishness, or selfishness? What about our tendency toward self-absorption and the rest of the shadow sides that complete the make-up of the human condition: what of them? If all these potentialities are present, then we need the ability to make necessary distinctions between the inherent (or adherent) parts of us that are silly, self-absorbed, etc. And you don’t do that by uncritically affirming the inherent worth and dignity of people, as though that’s all that’s in there. 

“If strict Calvinists err by overemphasizing original sin, it is surely more dangerous to ignore it, and to cover the human condition with a childish happy face.”[4] 

 

Loehr’s critique is important because it reminds us that we ignore the shadow side of our human nature at our peril and that only by honestly engaging with it and taking it seriously can we fully appreciate and grow our redemptive side…the good that is always there as well.

 

Still, I think that he is missing the path to salvation that I find in UUism.  My UU-supported confidence in humanity’s ultimate resilience and potential for goodness actually challenges me to thoughtfully pay attention to how my actions impact the world.  My perspective that redemption is possible and that as Albert Camus famously said, “Society has the criminals it deserves,” dares me to put myself in shoes of others and not simply disregard the sinner because of the sin.  And my conviction that we are the ones who are called to bring about the peace and justice that we claim to seek compels me to acknowledge that sometimes my silence or inaction on the issues of our time can be just as sinful as anything others might be doing or saying.

 

The most useful description of the path to salvation that I have found in liberal theology comes from Henry Nelson Wieman.  He described sin as anything that gets in the way of creative interchange…the creative events that he called the source of human good…the opportunities we have, when conditions are right, to engage with life with the expectation that we have more to learn, to understand, to become. For Wieman (and me) creative interchange is God, so anything that inhibits creative interchange is sin.  In this framework, sin is not strictly tied to behavior alone, but to the impact (intended or not) that behavior has.  For example, having a drink is not necessarily a sin, but drinking to the extent that one cannot participate in creative interchange probably is.  Romantic relationships of any configuration are only sinful if the partners cannot or will not fully accept and embrace each other’s humanity.  From Wieman’s perspective, government, religion, education, really anything can be sinful if it doesn’t allow for and encourage creative interchange. 

 

I appreciate Wieman’s description of sin because I believe it not only gives us a way to understand when we have missed the mark, when we have done things that have inhibited creative interchange or as he might have put it, the work of God in the world, it gives us something for which to aim and to honestly evaluate the groups and efforts of which we are a part.  In other words, Wieman gives us something to do other than repent.  He reminds us that any divine grace that comes about in our human world is produced by people able and willing to nurture creative events…intentional attempts to understand others and let those understandings change us, and, in turn, the world.

 

But perhaps the most important aspect of Wieman’s view of sin and salvation and the primary point of my sermon today, is his assertion that “to be conscious of one’s sin is to be that far in the direction of deliverance from it.”[5]

 

Wieman explained that we are most deeply enslaved in sin when we are the least conscious of it.  The more we are able to acknowledge that we have missed the mark, that we have inhibited creative interchange, that we have sinned, the more freedom…and independence…and deliverance from that sin we will earn.

 

In other words, to paraphrase church member and fellow Wieman fan Dr. Erle Fitz, “The more we know what is wrong with us, the more we can know what is right with us.”

 

Indeed, we have to miss the mark from time to time to know where to aim.  Here’s an example of this point from UU minister Mary Grigolia.  She is describing a women’s retreat that she had attended many years ago, a retreat that she had attended, she confesses, because she wanted to hear 125 women singing a song that she had written.  She writes:

 

“When I arrived, I looked around the circle and didn’t connect with anyone. I had a sinking feeling that I was in the wrong place. But I had been assigned to a small group meeting and I glumly attended. The questions focused on what we had left behind to be there and our hopes and fears for the weekend. Each woman spoke from her own life experience. By the end of that first small group meeting, I had been touched by everyone’s story.

I would have never used the word ‘sin’ to describe the attitude that I took with me that weekend. Sizing up the participants, I thought I was being merely discerning and realistic. And yet, I was looking for what separated me. Grace happened for me that weekend because my heart was able to hear the women in the small group. I went in feeling defensive and separate. But grace was stronger than my defenses….”[6]

 

Grace was stronger than her defenses.  Creative interchange was stronger than her defenses. She couldn’t have overcome the separation she felt on her own.  She needed others to be present to her…and she needed to be present to them.

 

This is the salvation that doesn’t just happen…but that we actually bring about in the world.

This is the kind of salvation that requires our participation, flawed as it often is. 

This is the kind of salvation in which I can put my faith because I have experienced it myself and I have seen it happen in the lives of others.

And, I say to you, each time we take the risk to give ourselves to the possibility of creative interchange,

each time we take the risk to give ourselves to the possibility of what Wieman and I would call God,

the closer we are to the beloved community,

the closer we are to the freedom land,

the freedom land where our sins do not doom us to hell, but rather teach us how to bring heaven to earth. 

 

So let’s be on our way,
finding the strength to aim, miss the mark, and aim again… 

To miss the mark and aim again… 

To miss the mark…and aim yet again.