Sermon “Cleaning The Slate” The Rev. Rali Weaver

I secretly wish that we could rename our church with one of those names the evangelical’s use- something like “NEW LIFE CHURCH” or “NEW HORIZONS” or “NEW DAY”. I want our name and signage and website to offer the possibilities that come with starting fresh with a clean slate. Not just in the New Year -- but always. But here at First Church and Parish with our nearly 372-year history it is hard to ever imagine having a completely new beginning.

Evangelical churches offer such promises because they believe what they are offering is a chance to have our sins washed away and life to begin anew.

The evangelical promise is an intoxicating one. You’re spirits down, you’ve made mistakes, your errors pile up and in the simple act of giving our life over to Jesus, and accepting him as our savior our hearts will be liberated from shame and we will be born again, start fresh.

The Unitarian Universalists promise isn’t anything like that. We may feel affirmed and supported in our values here, we may build deep relationships with people and with our own beliefs, and we may even feel good after Sunday service in our church but I doubt any of us will at any time find ourselves walking out of worship feeling cleansed of past missteps or washed of our sins.

There is no confession here because we believe each life is a journey. Each step leading us to the lessons we need to live our lives to the fullest. There is no need of absolution from a higher power.

Of course each of us wake-up as the reading from Thich Nhat Hahn suggests, with 24 brand new hours each day. We can begin again each day and each moment of our lives, but it is by our own methods and our own road map that we will find our own way. I am simply here as a witnesses to each journey of life but I can’t tell any of you where to go or how to get right with God.

As I see it the promises of Unitarian Universalism are more akin to what we do with banana’s after they have gone bad. If our errors and mistakes are illustrated by the over ripening of a banana then our beliefs, our worship, our self-examination are what help to turn them into banana bread.

Not exactly a clean slate, but a new usefulness. In other words- instead of a new start when life gives us overripe banana’s we make banana bread.

There is no outside influence that can make us clean but it is that beauty, truth and the spark of love that is born in every child, that spark that lies within each of us -- that nothing can take that away that carries us along. We don’t speak of adopting a savior to our original sin but awakening to the gifts we were each born with -- again and again and again.

With that said I know from experience that there are times that our spirits are wounded and weak, when we need our spiritual community to help us to heal and start again.

I considered making one of our hymns this morning that old African American Spiritual “There is a balm in Gilead.”

The lyric is beautiful and speaks to the type of clean slate I think we all find a need for at different moments in our lives.

“There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead, To heal the sin-sick soul.

Some times I feel discouraged, and think my life’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”

I might have had us sing that as a Hymn only it isn’t in either of our hymnals. It’s not there because we as a group don’t assert a belief in the trinity that would hold to an understanding about the Holy Spirit. We also do not attest that Jesus died to redeem anyone from their sin. And the last verse of Gilead asserts that belief.

“If you can’t preach like Peter, If you can’t pray like Paul, Just tell the love of Jesus, And say He died for all.”

Our Unitarian Universalist sin is not some indelible mark that only Jesus can erase. Sin is simply, as the word in Hebrew suggests – the way we miss the mark. Our balm for our own errors comes from our own actions, and intentions, by reconnecting our own hearts to our soul’s purpose and grounding it in the present moment.

The Unitarian Universalist balm is grounded in the ambiguity of life not easily sung about or written about or even lived.

But I believe that somewhere lying between our truth that life is an ever-changing stream and our conviction that we are whole and perfect as were born comes the healing promise of our doubts.

Renee Descartes, who is considered the father of modern philosophy, and probably the most influential rationalist in the 17^th century, articulated a belief in using doubt to determine the truth that I believe is a method of cleaning the slate that meets with our core understanding of truth.

The basic strategy of Descarte’s method of doubt is to defeat skepticism on its own ground. He suggested cleaning the slate by doubting the truth of everything. Descartes would not only doubt the evidence of his senses or cultural assumptions, but he would even doubt the fundamental process of reasoning itself. If any particular truth about the world could survive this extreme skeptical challenge, then he supposed it must be true.

He established several mediations to help to test any belief or theory about life.

First he noted that our senses are generally mistaken when it comes their perception of the external world. In other words things are not always as they seem to be at first glance.

I can think of countless examples of this in my own life. The people who have become friends who I at first glance thought I did not like, the problem I thought was insurmountable that once I asked for help disappeared, the beliefs I held about myself that dissolved when confronted with another reality. There are foods and drinks that I thought I disliked at first taste and in another time prepared in another way by another hand I fell in love with.

I agree with Descartes that it isn’t prudent to put our trust completely in the way things seem at first glance, or touch or taste. And this is part of the balm offered by our belief in the ambiguity of life it is the assurance that things are not always as they seem.

In his second meditation Descartes raised a more rational method for cleaning the slate with his argument that since most vivid dreams are indistinguishable from our waking experience there is a possibility that

everything we now perceive to be part of the physical world outside of us is also a fanciful fabrication of our own imagination.

From this vantage point we can question if any physical thing really exists or if there is an external world at all.

If the world is our imagination, what in is true? Is red for you and red for me the same exact hue? If everything is of our imaging than what truths of life hold true in every situation?

Just for example lets go back to the metaphor of the bananas. I imagine most of us believe that the good and right way to peel a banana is from the top. From the stem- Right? Well a monkey wouldn’t do it that way. Monkey’s actually peel banana’s from the base. (Demonstration)

And you know what else? Banana’s peeled from the base don’t have the strings. You know you peel a banana from the top stem When you do you have all these stringy things coming down. You peel it from the bottom and you don’t.

Now perhaps you already knew all that. But billions of people in this world do not. They sometimes wrestle with the stem and peel their banana’s from the top and deal with all the stringy things and eat their bananas. By opening our minds to other possibilities new ways of doing things emerge.

This represents another balm that comes from our ambiguous worldview. In doubting apparent absolutes we find infinite new possibilities and ultimately discover the right way for us.

Descartes final meditation on doubt led him to doubt even his beliefs about religion. He questions the validity of an omnipotent God who could lead humankind to believe falsehoods. Descartes suggests that the world is an every changing place and even religious truths can change.

Our balm comes from the understanding that all religions are attempting to make sense of eternity through their worldview and we too can only see a glimmer of the truth. The gift of resting our spirits in this ambiguity keeps us from having to attest to any creed or doctrine that may not feed our own souls. It gives each of you the permission to drop the word God or Law from the unison affirmation that we read each week without feeling that you don’t belong.

Love is the spirit of this church. and service may be a law or a promise to you. We will dwell together in peace and seek the truth within the freedom of our doubts and serve humanity with our love – and this is our covenant our promise to each other and for some of us with god.

There is a gift to the ambiguity of our beliefs that mirrors the ambiguity of the truths of life that can heal us when our souls are sick. It comes from knowing that we have been given this great gift of life. And it is ours to do with as we choose. We can choose to dwell together and strive together to make sense of this journey and make it the best that we know how.

Let us cherish our doubts, as Robert T. Weston writes, for doubt is the attendant of truth.

In the end I don’t think I want to rename our Parish the Banana Bread parish or The Church of Doubt.

But I hope all that all that enter from this day forward know their doubts are welcome.

There is a balm at First Church and Parish in Dedham

To make the wounded whole

There is a balm at First Church and Parish in Dedham

To heal a sin sick soul.

If you don’t believe in prayer

If you can’t believe in god

Just trust your doubting heart

And it will lead you home.

*Hymn #370 (Gray) All People That On Earth Do Dwell