Homily Credo for Red River UU Church

Rev. Daniel Kanter

0ctober 15, 2005

One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. He decided to send an angel down to Earth to check it out. So he called one of his best angels and sent the angel to Earth for a while. When she returned she told God, yes it is bad on Earth, 95% is bad and 5% is good. Well, he thought for a moment and thought maybe he'd better send down a second angel to get another point of view. So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time too.  When the angel returned he went to God and told him "Yes, the Earth is in decline. 95% is bad and 5% is good."  God said this was not good.

So he decided to send e-mail to the 5% that were good. He wanted to encourage them, give them a little something to help them keep going.
Do you know what that e-mail said?    Oh, you didn't get one either, huh? Bummer.

That can’t be right can it? Let’s face it god doesn’t email. And I don’t believe in a god who is in person a male, looking down, worried about if the people are good or bad, or calling on angels or sending them out.

What a strange thing for a minister to say? Not a Unitarian Universalist minister. But before you launch off in your minds thinking about that let me say this, I do believe in God. I believe in a God of many names and a god of mystery beyond naming that draws us on, that is an overarching purpose for humanity, which is the reason we are here. This God need not be manifest in one form but does expect that we practice love of self, neighbor, and mystery and that we make a difference in the world with this precious life we are given.

If you can’t get there with the word "God" then think it over. Many people here learned that word or others like it in rigid traditions by rigid people who had rigid ideas about the world. Ideas like the one that god is a man with a flowing beard who judges and manipulates humanity. Many people here learned that God cares about what you do, how you act, who you associate with and what you believe.

But how could we have given over to such a small conception of God… to have God become something that actually cares about what each of us believe in our heads? That makes God too small, too petty, too narrow, and too concrete for me. And some of us learned creeds to help prop up such ideas. They helped us know what to believe and what not to believe like a nicely divided batch of fruit—this one goes in my basket, this one I leave on the shelf…such credos teach what to believe, what to think, and divide the messy world up into easily digested bites.

But the world isn’t that simple.

The Latin word credo doesn’t mean ‘I believe’. It does not mean ‘I hereby agree to the literal factual truth of the following statements…"

It really combines to mean ‘I give my heart to.’

And heart is a word I use a lot because to me heart takes us to the self at its deepest level, a level below the intellect, a level of soul and body and meaning that is less about what we think than it is about what we love. The real meaning of credo is to say, "I commit my loyalty to this, or I commit my allegiance to that." I commit my heart.

Before the 17^th century the word "believe" didn’t mean believing in truth statements or propositions…the object of believing was not statements but the person of God…it meant to hold dear, to prize, to give one’s loyalty to, to commit to, to love—like beloved.

So I have turned the idea on its head a bit…we write credos or we read credos…and we think credo means ‘I believe’…but its original meaning asks you have to get out of your head to your heart and ask yourselves what ultimately matters…what do you truly love in life…what are you loyal to…what are you ready to commit to…not easy questions. They are not easy questions because for us, for Unitarian Universalists the answers are not easily given like, "I believe in a God who sits on a cloud to judge, Jesus who walked on earth to save, heaven to which we go if we are good…."

We unabashedly seek out the freedom to doubt as a guide toward growth and change. John Patrick Shanley, the author of the play, Doubt, says, "There is an uneasy time when belief has begun to slip…it is the most dangerous, important, and ongoing experience of life. The beginning of change is the moment of doubt. It is that crucial moment when I renew my humanity or become a lie." Shanley continues, "Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite—it is a passionate exercise. We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That’s the silence under the chatter of our time."

Doubt we say is a guide…not an easy one to follow for sure…when our loved ones are dying doubt is hard to hold onto…when our relationships are broken, doubt is a difficult companion. When our world is turned upside down by flood or earthquake doubt is a unwelcome guest…but ultimately it frees us to embrace those events as real, as teachers, as holders of the meaning of our lives…

But if doubt isn’t good enough for you and you want some things to believe I will give you some…they may be better companions than doubt but they have a roominess imbedded in them that welcomes debate…Our answers to those tough questions of meaning might be more like: we commit to a God who is the purpose of all life, we commit to making a difference in humanity which we see as inherently good not sinful, and we commit to salvation in life as something that happens in the bringing about of wholeness in human relations, in self, and in spirit.

And our answers vary with who we are… what ultimately matters…what do you truly love in life…what are you loyal to…what are you ready to commit to…

To come of age in our church is to be ready to ask those questions. And we ask them in the context of a church like this which is ready to hear your answers….that is why in many of our churches, each year we celebrate our coming of age group—those adolescents who are approaching adulthood…because they say to us, "we are ready to be more deeply a part of this church…and we are ready to take to heart what ultimately matters, what we truly love in life, what we are loyal to and ready to commit to." Of course coming of age can happen at any age.

I myself as a Unitarian Universalist young man of 13 or 14 came of age in my church…my friends were all having confirmations and bar mitzvahs …we called our coming of age a ‘barformation’…we didn’t like it that much you can tell that I think…but we were gathered in by the church, asked to confront our deepest yearnings…and every one of us preached from the pulpit on Sunday…I preached on sportsmanship…the best I could do to connect what mattered to me as an athlete at the time.

Even though I didn’t know it at the time…there was one lesson my church was saying to me. And this is what I want you to remember….if you don’t remember anything I have said today…remember this…despite all of what we believe in or don’t believe in…we believe in you….we believe in your potential to change the world, to be shining lights in society, to stand strong for who you are, and what you are committed to…we believe in you…

Will you say it to each other?

Do you hear it? We don’t need a god who determines who is good and evil, who is saved and lost…we need companions in the search for meaning and we need to be companions that believe in the human potential to transcend the brokenness of the world as we push toward wholeness. We need credos like---We believe in you…a credo worth keeping for the day…lets sing