Have you ever wondered why you are here? I don’t mean in the cosmic sense, although that too is an interested wonderment. No, I mean why you are here, at Emerson? In some ways, that I am somewhat reluctant to mention, participating in this religious community might not be a very cost efficient means of satisfying your spiritual needs.

Think about it. What do we offer you in comparison to the other brands? Most obvious, we do not provide you with answers which have been tested by battalions of hired loyal scholars. Other brands do. We do not give you any guarantees about a life hereafter. Other brands do. We cannot say unequivocally that some deity is carefully watching over you and yours. We are not that comforting. Other brands are. We cannot guarantee that everyone here will nod their heads in agreement when you believe you have said something profound. We do not have an “amen corner.” Other brands do. We cannot hold up a book or a scroll and imagine that everything we need to know is contained somewhere in those words. Other brands do. We cannot guarantee that you will be readily accepted or understood by the community at large or your family. Other brands can frequently make that claim. It is not hard to be a Baptist or a Catholic in Houston, Texas. People would think you were normal.

So what do you get instead? You get the opportunity to be challenged. Wow, that’s something to look forward to. You get the opportunity to take responsibility for what you believe. Oh, how unpleasantly adult. You get no guaranteed spiritual paycheck, as it were. Here—you are entirely a freelancer. And not only do you get these extra burdens, but also, we ask that you contribute financially and with volunteer effort so that we can further enhance our capacity for being a burden in your life. Such a deal. And once we have you trapped in our interdependent web—bwahaha!

Even given all this, however, here you are. What were you thinking? Well, that is precisely the point. For whatever reason, you reached a spot in your life where you just couldn’t accept what you were being told. Whatever you were told, it didn’t make enough sense to you and for good or for woe, for you—things just have to make sense. So here you are. I am sorry, not really, that you are afflicted by this need for things making sense. The need for things to make sense is not a recipe for happiness or serenity. If anything, the need for things to make sense has a tendency to induce their opposites. But I would also ask you to hold onto the hope that there is a lot of power in the need to make sense of things. I would also suggest, in passing, in that inasmuch as we are all struggling with this same issue, we each are in need of a little extra TLC, not less. As we do not get great buckets of heavenly reassurance from this faith tradition, it is imperative that we practice the lovely art of reassuring each other, the lovely art of simple human kindness. I think that is actually a pretty good trade off. If someone where to ask me which I’d prefer, the soft brush of an angel wing or a human hug; I’ll take the hug every time rather than wait for a potential angel wing. And who knows, maybe those are the same thing.

So the need to make some sense because you couldn’t quite believe what you had been led to believe has brought you here. It is not unusual, then, for people to imagine that, since you felt some dissatisfaction with what you were told you should be or do; you are therefore against the religion from which you may have strayed or did not consider. This is not an unusual suspicion because it is common to imagine that if you are “for” what one religion says than you must be “not for” what everyone else says. And so being “for” Unitarian Universalism must mean that we must not be for, oh gosh, this list is long. Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, Jainists, Shintos, Hindus, Buddhists, Zorastrinians,.... After all, if we were truly “for” any one those brands then we would be that. Since we are not, then we must be “not for” them.

People are frequently very fastidious about these boundaries of “for” and “not for.” Interestingly, I most often encounter this perspective in the reverse. That is, some visiting liberal Christians or staunch humanists leap to the conclusion that we are not “for” them. The humanists can have an intellectual meltdown because “God” is mentioned, indeed, even be the focus of a prayer. The liberal Christians, on the other hand, become concerned because we do not seem to use some customary confession of faith in the “Lord Jesus Christ.” When they see and hear things which do not seem to support their point of view, they assume that we must be “not for” them.

It is an understandable observation, and I have not been able to always assuage people’s concerns about this even as I tell them that we are not even remotely against any faith tradition. As individuals we may not agree with several, and sometimes many, things of any one religious tradition. And, yes, those who are here clearly prefer to be here. But that preference is not framed in an “us versus them” context. If anything it is more of a “not only...but also” context.

What is really true is that within this congregation we have individuals who think of themselves as Jews, and carry that identity with some pride. After all, the Jewish faith has introduced some novel and life-giving insights for humanity’s well being. And other people think of themselves as Christian, and carry that identity with some pride. After all, the Christian faith has introduced some novel and life-giving insights for humanity’s well being. And other people think of themselves as Muslim, and carry that identity with some pride. After all, the Muslim faith has introduced some novel and life-giving insights for humanity’s well being. And other people think of themselves as humanists, and carry that identity with some pride. After all, humanism has introduced some novel and life giving insights for humanity’s well being. I could go on but I believe you get the point.

But it is also clear to all of us that as much as there is much to admire and take seriously, none of these faith traditions can claim to have a lock on virtue. There are saints and sinners in each and every case. Some, in order to defend their own point of view focus on the sinners of other faiths and make the mistake of imagining that one faith or another has some fatal flaw that makes it particularly dangerous. But the humanists who wonder at the capacity for some Christians to adopt an arch tone of righteous judgment should also wonder about the Amish families who mourned their precious children and prayed for the spiritual well being of their murderer. And the Christians who imagine that humanists should worry endlessly about a pointless life because they do not believe in the resurrection should watch Randy Pausche’s Last Lecture. If you have not seen the video on You Tube, I would recommend you give a listen. He was a professor at Carnegie Melon who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 47, wife, two young children, and given six months to live. There is a tradition at Carnegie Melon that retiring professors give a “last lecture” upon retirement. Randy’s was tragically premature and it was videotaped almost as an afterthought. His lecture went viral on the internet and is an extremely moving testimony to the human spirit. He was, by the way, a member of the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh. But I feel some compulsion, in view of my claim that all religions have saints and sinners, that Unitarian Universalism looks great when we can claim Randy Pausch. We look something less than wonderful when we learn that the naval architect for the Titanic, Thomas Andrews, Jr., was a Unitarian. Apparently a nice guy but just a tad bit over-confident.

So it is not that difficult to find examples of outstanding heroism and profound thought in any religious community, just as it is not that difficult to find some blemish or fault in any religious community.

Unitarian Universalists have long been aware that there are striking similarities among all the world’s faiths. Rather than pass judgment, we have imagined that it would be our task to understand and learn from all these traditions. It had been customary for us to imagine that a typical Unitarian Universalist congregation could be thought of as something like a United Nations of religious loyalties. In this United Nations of faith we could compare and contrast all the different elements of many different religions—imagining that in some fundamental way or another they were all the same. That last claim, however, has come to be viewed as overly simplistic. Yes, they are all religions. But is that a very meaningful claim, much like claiming that a sparrow and a sea gull are both—birds? That’s what we call a firm grasp of the obvious.

Perhaps more problematic for us, consider this: viewing religions primarily as objects of study in which we learn many fascinating details is an appropriate perspective in a classroom. But is that perspective appropriate for a religious community? One should ask, are the problems we face “knowledge problems” or are they “living problems?” Are the problems we address here focused on what you know or is that increased knowledge itself a strategy directed to a larger goal, growing your soul? Are you interested in being simply a smarter you, or a better you? Certainly it is important to be knowledgeable—but is that sufficient? Is it our purpose to help everyone become remarkably knowledgeable—or is it our purpose instead to help everyone become remarkably religious?

This is often a difficult question for Unitarian Universalists. We are good with the becoming knowledgeable part—the other thing—the being religious part—that’s very tricky. How do we do that? Do we pray to “To Whom It May Concern” because there are so many different names for God? Do we celebrate Passover and Easter and Eid and Divali? And when we do are we in danger of just being dilettantes—a little sample here, a little sample there? Do we obligingly swallow anything that could be identified as religious? Try a little Native American smudging, do a little crystal therapy, try a little bit of this and that from the broad smorgasbord of all things that have been identified as religious? But then, when we try the sampling approach do we turn off the critical part of our brains, enter into a sort of “suspension of disbelief?” Indeed, how do we discriminate between those things which have value and depth and those things which seem pretty sketchy? And how might the numerous potential practices and beliefs fit together? The more you think about it, the more you can see why Unitarian Universalists are sometimes reluctant to step away from our great capacity to be knowledgeable about religion, rather than being religious. The latter, being religious, seems like an almost impossible project.

And yet it is not. Hard? Yes, but hardly impossible. Consider this, all religious traditions do have important insights to offer, but there is nothing intrinsic to any faith tradition which supports the idea that being Christian, or Jewish, or Islamic, for instance, is all you must or need be. Many adherents of each faith tradition want to make that claim and so assert that Torah is supreme, or Jesus is Lord or Allah is the one true God. It’s a great theory which, however, always breaks down in practice. For would that be the Orthodox Torah or the Reformed Torah? Would that be the Mormon Jesus or the Russian Orthodox Jesus, the Sunni Allah or the Shiite Allah? You see, in practice it is not enough to be, for example, just a follower of Torah. One must also be a particular follower of Torah, and those separate factions that support different particularities do not between themselves agree. Since there is disagreement even when factions look at the exact same source it cannot be that the Torah itself is the deciding factor. Rather the disagreement must be derived from something external to the Torah. And, if it is true that the Torah is not itself determinative, what’s to prevent a Unitarian Universalist from saying, “I am a Unitarian Universalist follower of Torah,” a sort of über reformed Jew? What I want to suggest is that the boundary which is thought to surround what is claimed to be the true version of some faith tradition is considerably more elastic than many adherents would wish to admit.

That inherent elasticity is even more pronounced when you consider that all faith traditions are themselves syncretistic, born of many different influences and insights. At some point, by a theological process we’ll call “smushing,” different things are brought together to make something else. Judaism borrowed heavily from Mesopotamian faiths. The Noah story is almost copied word for word from the Mesopotamian tale of Utnapishtim. But then Moses merged his ancient tribal semi-Mesopotamian faith with monotheism he adopted from Jethro of Midian and voila—Judaism. Christians indebtedness to Judaism is obvious but they also borrowed heavily from Greek mystery religions. Mohammed clearly borrowed from both Judaism and Christianity as well as Arab tribal faith. So there is no such thing as any religious tradition which arrived, innocent and entirely brand new—without precedent. It’s always been something of a hodgepodge. And why would we be any different? Why can’t we go and make our own hodgepodge? We could simply assemble what we believed were all the best pieces from all the religious traditions and smush them together.

Well, one can’t just go off and invent a religion—at least a real one. There is one important rule about effective smushing. It is easiest to understand the rule by thinking about the difference between a mixture and a compound. In the world of chemistry not everything binds well with everything else. Dump an ounce of pure gold into a cup of water and the two chemicals will remain ever apart. So too, if we take a bit of Judaism, a bit of Christianity and a bit of Islam and stir; chances are great that we will not get anything other than bits of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam slopping around next to each other. This would not be an effective hodgepodge. This would be what is technically called a “mishmash.” It would be only a mixture. And considering how well these traditional faiths have gotten along, it would be a mixture that would keep slopping out of its container as the internal inconsistencies keep rubbing each bit the wrong way.

What we seek instead is a compound, something that has internal integrity and is unified. How we might get to that compound will have to wait until the first Sunday in July lest I overstay my homiletic welcome this morning. A few little hints, however, are in order. Some unusual compounds can be created when a catalyst is added. And we happen to possess a very potent catalyst in our compulsion to make sense of things. It is a very reliable instinct and can carry us very far. And that reliable instinct can yield something profound when we realize that there is a greatly under- utilized unity among the world’s many religious traditions. However, that unity need not be built upon matters of belief and practice. Rather, while Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah are all very different; the people worshiping Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah are all very similar. As Richard Gilbert aptly wrote, we are all, emphasize all, more human than otherwise.

So, here you are, framed by a hunger that will not be satisfied by things which just don’t add up. We can begin a new kind of accounting by first admitting that all religious traditions have something significant to offer, that all religious traditions have introduced important insights. But we also realize that learning about all these different aspects of religion is not an effective substitute for being religious. Being religious instead requires that we understand what elements we have at our disposal that will form, not just a cobbled together mixture, but a true life giving compound.