Progressive Christian Sermons, Christ Community Church, Ian Lawton

C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for July 29, 2007
”Reclaiming Religion”
By Ian Lawton

Sherlock Holmes and his bumbling sidekick Watson went on a camping trip. They had retired for the night when this conversation occurred:

Watson: Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. It seems reasonable that intelligent life may even fill the universe. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is a great and intelligent designer. Meteorologically, the black sky and low humidity tells me that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you, Mr. Holmes?

I want to take a bit of liberty here and continue the analogy. What I want to do is plop Christopher Hitchens into the conversation. Hitchens is the author of the book God is Not Great- How Religion Poisons Everything, and is the latest of the “new atheists”.

Now, I'm going to allow Hitchens to initiate the conversation. After all, we know that he is not shy.

Hitchens: You say the plethora of stars suggests that God is great, but do you think the dinosaurs thought that as a meteorite crashed into earth, making them extinct?

Do you think the fact that the planets are either too hot or too cold to be inhabitable, makes God great?

Do you think the fact that we are living on a climatic knife’s edge, waiting for all hell to break loose, shows that God is great?

Watson: Just because we do not know the mind of God, doesn’t mean that God does not have a plan. All that is created is wondrous. Consider the miracle that is the human eye- more complex than the telescope with which we see the stars. The human eye possesses 130 million light-sensitive rods that convert light into chemical impulses. These signals travel at a rate of a billion per second to the brain. Darwin even suggested that the human eye transcends natural selection.

Hitchens: If the human eye is a sign of God’s greatness, why is it upside down and backwards? That doesn’t seem very intelligent!

Watson: Are you suggesting that just because creation doesn’t follow your particular brand of logic, that there is no supernatural creator or designer?

Hitchens: Let me answer that question with a story about the 18th century French scientist, Laplace, a genius who theorized what we now call the Black Hole. He was called to a meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte, who asked him where was God in his theories. Laplace answered very coolly and simply, “Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothese”, which translates as "I have no need of that hypothesis." “And neither do we”, said Hitchens.

I can no more prove that there is no supernatural creator God than someone else could prove that there is. My point is that we don’t need a supernatural God to explain anything in the universe, nor to derive our ethics or wonder in creation. As a human race, we have grown up, and past the need for an interventionist God.

Watson: Let me get this straight. If there is no need for a supernatural God, then is there a need for religion? If there is no supernatural God and no religion, then where will society get its moral compass?

Hitchens: Religion, rather than being a moral compass, seems to have been the cause of great immorality throughout history. Consider the racist violence and bigotry everywhere from Belfast to Beirut that seems to have a religious basis.

Holmes, who had been patiently listening to the conversation, observing both men and their mannerisms and listening intently to their logic, chimed in now for the first time.

Holmes: Watson, you speak of all religion as if it is good and healthy. Hitchens, you speak of all religious as if it is immoral and poisonous. Neither position is fair. Certainly religion has been the justification for some awful inhumanity. However, the answer to bad religion is not no religion, but rather, better religion.

Watson: Hitchens, you speak of bad religion. What of bad science? Consider Louis Agassiz, one of America’s greatest 19th century biologists and president of Harvard University. Agassiz’s science led him to the theory of polygenesis, which said that the races had arisen separately, thus multiple geneses.

From this theory, Agassiz concluded that slavery was justified and that racial mixing would be harmful. This became the basis for eugenics, a widely accepted policy in Europe and the US, to encourage the breeding of “fit” genes and to discourage the breeding of “unfit” genes. Tens of thousand of women were sterilized in the early part of the 20th century as part of this scientific ideology. The Nazi devastation, that grew out of the eugenics ideology was endorsed by many in the US and Europe, until the movement became so extreme that people began to question it, and subsequently question the science that justified it.

Holmes: Please stop this conversational grandstanding. What I see is that you are both too attached to your own assumptions and presuppositions. You look at the world your own way, and leave little room to move. The problem is not religion or science. Bad religion may have justified violence and racism, but it is no more the cause of the world’s problems than bad science. The problem is totalitarianism; the belief that any ideology has the “total” answer to the world’s problems. The antidote to bad religion is better religion, and the antidote to bad science is better science. Religion and Science will both be better if they step back from their presuppositions and pay attention to the way they “see” the world.

I see no reason why people can’t reclaim religion, a religion that has scientific integrity and human decency, a religion that urges people to self-responsibility rather than claiming to have a total answer to all people’s problems.

Let me come out of character, away from the campfire, because I think Sherlock Holmes has pointed to a wonderful opportunity for progressive religion. We have a wonderful opportunity to rebuild the tent that Enlightenment rationalism has torn down.

When we rebuild the tent, neither the old theists nor the new atheists will prescribe what it must look like. We will build this tent according to what makes sense in our own hearts and as a community. We will rebuild the tent and reclaim religion. Progressive Christianity is all about empowering people to reclaim a sense of self in a Cosmic context.

I’d like to offer seven clues as to how we might reclaim religion and “see” the world through attentive eyes. These seven clues could come straight from Sherlock Holmes.

In Romans St. Paul uses the phrase that “God, even though invisible, has been knowable for all time to the eye of reason.” It’s a fascinating phrase. The essence of my seven clues is that nothing is invisible, just unnoticed.

Before outlining the seven clues, its helpful to explore Paul’s use of the phrase a little further.

We need to remember that St. Paul draws together the best of Hebrew and the best of Greek culture. Remember that the Hebrew culture was a culture of hearing. It was an aural tradition. It was a tradition centered on hearing the voice of God. It was an inner hearing. It was the sort of hearing where the law is written on your hearts. It was a hearing reminiscent of the transfiguration story as Jesus stood on the mountain and the divine voice was heard to say, “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.”

I'm not suggesting for a second that this literally happened. That's not the point in Hebrew culture. Even though the culture was pre-scientific and superstitious, it also demanded that invisible qualities never be turned into “total” images, thus leaving people and tribes the space to create inner poetry. No one has an ultimate and absolute image of God, and each person has an inner hearing, which is the way they make sense of the world.

The opening hymn from this morning was selected very intentionally. It has some imagery from Hebrew culture and some from Greek culture. It’s a little clumsy as a hymn, but powerful. The second stanza has a strong Hebrew feel, while the first two lines of the first stanza are very Greek.

Immortal, invisible" by Walter Chalmers Smith
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.
Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above
thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

In Greek culture sight is everything. Unlike Hebrew culture, the Greek world is full of art and architecture and images. According to the Greek eye of reason, the invisible God became visible in the form of Jesus. The word became flesh, Greek philosophy tells us. It's all about sight in Greek culture and incarnation.

So Paul brings together the best of the aural tradition of the Hebrews and the visual tradition of the Greeks with this phrase about coming to experience an invisible God with the eye of reason. Its an inner seeing, an inner hearing, that pays attention to life unencumbered by presupposition.

Here are the seven clues we can use to experience the invisible God, to know Life more fully, through the eye of reason:

All of these clues are very straightforward, but let me expand upon them a little:

When Watson was at a crime scene, he would be amazed that Holmes was able to draw a line between two seemingly invisible points and it would open up the answer to solving the riddle. But Holmes would say that nothing is invisible, just unnoticed.

Holmes would say, “I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see.”

Pay attention. God is in the details. Nothing is invisible, it just remains unnoticed.

There is a wonderful story from the novelist Dan Wakefield, who went to a Roman Catholic nun for spiritual direction, hoping she would have special prayer formulas that would provide him a direct link to God. Instead she told him to go look at a tree. Wakefield went out to the Boston Common and was overwhelmed by the tree he gazed at.

“The tree was too big and complicated and intricate to begin to comprehend,” he said. “Instead, I picked out something to look at that seemed more suited to my own powers of understanding: a blade of grass.”

Twenty minutes a day for two weeks, he looked, and was amazed at the freshness of what he saw, “the aliveness of it.” And his spiritual journey opened up from there.

Holmes said to Watson, “To a great mind, nothing is little.” In fact, eternity is piled high with little things. If you focus on the little things, you will attain a broader perspective.

Jesus understood what Holmes understood, that like a mustard seed our understanding begins small. When it is focused it becomes large, larger than we could ever have imagined.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake understood what Jesus understood and what Sherlock Holmes understood. When you pay attention to the small things that so often lie in the palm of your hand, and if you realize small things are connected to all other things, the world opens up to you. Paying attention takes time and that's the third clue.

Georgia O'Keefe says, “no one ever sees a flower, really. It's so small it takes time. We don't have time. To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”

We come to church not so much to experience sacred wonder on a Sunday morning, but rather to be prepared to be opened up to the possibility of sacred wonder that is in every hour of our life throughout the week. We come to church to be together to inspire each other to pay attention to life that takes place outside these doors all week long.

We come to church to be prepared to experience the invisible wonder of sacredness, the divine quality that fills the universe. Paying attention takes time, and we give ourselves this time to be prepared.

Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trumpa said, “When you see ordinary situations with extraordinary insight, it is like discovering a jewel in rubbish.”

I need say no more about that because you know what that means. You know what it means to have ordinary experiences that take you to a place of greater perception and understanding, where you see reality as it is, not as you have been conditioned to see it.

This is the clue to breaking the spell of religion. Religion has conditioned us by fear and guilt to see reality a certain way. Scientific materialism has also conditioned us to see reality a certain way. If we follow the advice of Sherlock Holmes, we break the spell of old religion, and of scientific materialism. We break the spell and see reality as it is. It takes time to learn but that's the clue to experiencing the invisible God. The invisible God is Life unnoticed.

There's a wonderful Zen story about a very learned person who comes to visit a Zen teacher, and they sit together drinking tea.

The learned man is full of opinions and theories. It gets to the point where the Zen teacher doesn't even get a word in the conversation. So finally the teacher stands up and begins to pour tea into the man's cup. He pours and pours until it comes spilling out all over.

The teacher responds, “If your mind is full, there is no room for anything new. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything- it is open to everything.”

Sherlock Holmes understood the power of an empty mind to follow clues as they emerged, as they appeared in front of him. Connect one clue to the next clue and experience reality as it arises.

The great art genre at the time was impressionism, an art that drew with impressions. Impressionism was swirling energy, free from the conditioned representations of reality as they were supposed to see it.

Sherlock Holmes solved crimes like a Van Gogh painting, following the energy which is the way that we should seek an experience of the invisible God.

Presume nothing and allow reality to emerge as it emerges, free from presupposition and conditioning.

This afternoon I will spend some time with Gary Beyer. Those who know Gary know that he has spent several years in a battle with ALS. When I look at Gary, I don’t see ALS. It's part of what he has experienced in life, but it's only a part of the man. It's only a part of a man of such strength and humility.

All those of us who have had the privilege of getting to know Gary know how many people he has inspired in his life, and his great humor to the end. He has the ability to be present in the moment, and that is one of the gifts that he has given me that I will never forget.

When I look at Gary I don’t see the disease, I’m looking spirit to spirit, and I see a human being with great strength and courage.

During the week I had lunch with someone who has spent several years battling cancer. I don’t see the cancer. That's part of what this person has had to endure in life, but it's only circumstantial. I see this person spirit to spirit and some new space opens up between us as we pay attention to reality as it arises. This requires facing honestly the pain and heartache, but not “seeing” life through the eyes of pain only. There is so much more to people, if we pay attention and see beyond circumstances.

We should approach every situation as being pregnant with possibility, and allow it to emerge as if from nothing. This is the space of imagination.

Annie Dillard tells a wonderful story of imagination. A young child is playing with her mother’s fingers.

I refashioned the ridge on her index-finger knuckle; I made the ridge as long as I could, using both my hands. Moving quickly, I made parallel ridges on her other fingers — a real mountain chain, the Alleghenies; Indians crept along just below the ridgetops, eyeing the frozen lakes below them through the trees. - Annie Dillard in The Annie Dillard Reader

If supernatural religion lacks self empowerment, scientific materialism lacks imagination. It lacks the power of metaphor. Religion, that is not a “total” ideology can empower us with poetry and imagination.

I remain a strong proponent of religion, a new form of religion that is constantly reforming, religion with scientific integrity, but religion as the place where we are inspired to see with inner eyes and to hear with inner ears, and pay attention to reality as it is, not as we have been conditioned to see or hear it.

Imagination is a place where our ethics grow, as we envision a world without hostility and bigotry. Religion can inspire imagination, which can inspire vision. =

Helen Keller was once asked if there were anything worse than being blind, and she said, “Yes, having no vision.”

Religion is the empowerment to imagine the possibilities and to begin to live them; to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Religion doesn't have to be the only place that happens, but it can be a valuable resource. There's great value in being together, and drawing from the imagination of the tradition, and taking it and building it anew, and sending it forward with love.

I'd like to leave you with the words of Joseph Campbell, who captures all I have spoken of this morning.

Joseph Campbell said, “This is the ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be the philosophy for the planet, not for this group, that group, or the other group. When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.”

We gather here as a group of fragile human beings. We bring our humanity with us and celebrate alongside each other. We commiserate in the difficult times. We offer strength and inspiration to those around as. We bring collective minds together, where by the fact that we are thinking along the same lines is a wondrous miracle that needs no external explanation. It is the collective unconscious, that draws us together and fills us with a vision for a self empowered religion and a peaceful world.

My call to you this week is to begin to build a tent for yourself. Pay attention to the details. Honor the small things. Take time. See the miraculous in the ordinary. Learn to experience reality as it is, not as you have been conditioned to see it. See beyond circumstances and see possibility.