Return to Sermon Index
 

Beyond Economics
Rev. Richard Venus
June 22, 2003

It took 37 seconds to blow apart Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati to make way for the new Paul Brown Stadium. Replacing the used with the new will cost Cincinnati taxpayers $1.3 million per game, not counting interest, for 340 football games over the possible lifetime of the new stadium.

This in contrast to the fact that the recent mileage campaign for the Cincinnati schools lost by 611 votes, in a city where 72 of the 74 school buildings are older than the stadium that was demolished. Mary McCarty describes this in her Dayton Daily News column. She writes, "It is not a record Cincinnatians should be proud of. But it's hardly out of whack with the rest of our society, where there is endless money for sports franchises—and never enough for education." I fear that this skewed vote reflects our collective values and wonder if these priorities suggest we seek to be entertained at the expense of the education of our children.

All this got me to thinking about my values, and from where I begin as I make decisions about life. This morning I ask you to bear with me as I try to explain what I believe and where I begin as I make ethical decisions.

If there is one thing about which I am certain, it is the uncertainty of knowing much of anything for sure. And so you might rightfully ask, why are you going to talk on about what you believe if there is no certainty, and each of us decides for ourselves what our beliefs will be? To which I can only reply, it is in the midst of uncertainty that we are asked to make choices, decide for right and wrong, without knowing everything, and in fact knowing that tomorrow we might have different information and decide differently. Life asks of us to decide, and decide we must, with incomplete knowledge, with mystery in the wings.

There is no news in saying to Unitarian Universalists that humanity is destined to have more questions than answers, and for me that is comforting, not distressing. We certainly ought to look to science and systems of knowledge that help us explain reality, but ultimately I believe in possibilities, that change is more likely than stability in our personal as well as our social and communal lives. That faith in the mystery of life is a far better bottom line for decision-making than economics, which I fear too often is the determiner of how we live.

I sense that there is a deep mystery about the universe we inhabit, from the particles or energy that is the basis of all things, to why some people give their very lives on behalf of others. Our ideas and thoughts need not be paralyzed because we cannot find certainty. There are some things we know, perhaps not for certain, but we can know what is true for us now and can live by what we understand is true, even though our ideas may, in fact most likely will, change.

I begin my belief system with what is. I look at the world and try to discover in my experience what I believe. If I were to summarize my credo in a complex sentence it would read: I believe that people are enough for me, that love does work, and evil confounds me and my belief about a personal god, but ultimately we, the gathered community , provide the guidance I need for my spiritual growth and the love and understanding the world needs.

I believe that people live courageous lives. I believe that life is a journey, but a very difficult and rigorous one. It is fraught with risk and pain and challenges to our very being. I am constantly reminded of the many trials and suffering people overcome to survive. It is the resilience and the beauty of people, that comes out of their experiences of pain and suffering, that reminds me of the goodness of life. It is not because everything comes up roses that life has a grandeur and a majesty about it, but because it is so filled with the unexpected, the unplanned, the dangers and heartache that are lived through with dignity that inspires me to believe in the extraordinary nature of humankind.

Most of the world has never heard of Deborah Linfield. She was, among other things, a lawyer and a mother. She died recently of cancer. She had never smoked, took good care of herself. Just before she died, near her 40th birthday, she wrote in the New York Times about her experience with her 8-year-old daughter. "How will I ever explain it to her? How will I ever utter the words that Mommy has to die...When she was little and afraid of the dark, I would sit with her while she struggled to get to sleep. If I tried to tiptoe from her room too soon, she would call out reproachfully: 'No, go, Mama. No leave.' And I would return to her bed, sooth her with the promise that I wasn't going anywhere. 'Don't worry, sweetheart, I won't leave' is a lot harder to say these days, even though she and I are talking about very different things." Love like that causes me to believe in the goodness of life, even in the midst of tragedy.

Because there are floods that destroy homes and farms that have been worked on for generations and ruin the lives of those who had given all to feed themselves and others; because children are hit by cars and die in fires, because Sarajevo, a once-beautiful city, now lies in rubble; because my very good friend who has given her life for others, now, at a very young age, has deadly cancer, I find it hard to believe in a compassionate, loving God, but I do find it possible to believe that life has meaning and that is what we are searching for. And we are the shapers and creators of what that meaning is for us.

Because there has been a man who walked the earth and asked us love our neighbor as ourself; and because Dorthea Dix, and Harriet Taubmann, and Martin Luther King Jr. lived out that request; and because of the likes of Dorothy Eber, I believe in love. Dorothy Eber is a grandmother who spent months in prison because she and some friends were arrested for planting flowers and trees where they weren't supposed to: on missile sites somewhere in Missouri. I believe in love because I have seen it work. I believe in love because when a fire ravaged an apartment building in a run-down neighborhood in D.C., the 34 families left homeless from that fire were rescued by the outpouring of generous donations from their neighbors. What had been a place for drugs and prostitutes became a community.

Human life is about heroism that lifts us all. It is about those whose examples jolt us upright out of our complacency and remind us that there is more to do. It is about the heroism I see in this place where you regularly face the pain of illness, loss of a job, or loss of someone you loved or cared about deeply and you carry on. I see it as you live with courage when the future is in doubt. I see it where you struggle daily to make ends meet, to clothe not only yourselves but also those you do not even know.

When the members of the UU Church in Tulsa were looking for a minister the search committee interviewed John Wolf. After a number of questions, they asked: "There is one thing we do not understand. Unitarian Universalist ministers are generally thought to come in two varieties: Humanist and theist. Which are you?"

"That depends," Wolf said.

The committee was obviously put off by such waffling, and one of the members asked: "What on earth do you mean?"

"That depends on you," Wolf replied. "If you folks are theists, then I'm a humanist. But if you're humanists, then I'm a theist."

He was called to the Tulsa church, and has had a very fine ministry there. What he was saying is that when a congregation sees itself as believers in on particular way, they need a reminder of a different view.

I do not completely disagree with that way of ministry, but I find those labels limit me, and I find that you are enough; you and people like you who care and give and live quiet, heroic, honest lives. That is enough to sustain me, to inspire me, to guide me. This community is the vision of hope for me.

Bill Keane, who is the creator of The Family Circus cartoon strip, tells of a time when he was penciling one of his cartoons and his son Jeffy said, "Daddy, how do you know what to draw?" Keane explained, "God tells me." At which point Jeffy asked, "Then why do you keep erasing parts of it?"

I wish I could draw, or clearly define, what God is like, but if there is anything I do know, it is that the nature of God is far too complex to ever clearly understand or define. For me, that is because evil exists. If evil exists, I say, then, what is God doing about it? And if someone says evil is not God's fault then I ask, what power does God have? And if someone says God's power is limited by our freedom to choose then I say fine, but then why any god at all? This is the theological circle in which I often find myself .

At a seminar with other UU ministers, I raised the question, why the need for god at all? and one of my colleagues said, "Richard, it's this vision thing." He meant, there is a God that points to what is more than we can be, is more than what we alone can create...this God is part of the vision of what ought to be...a God who is growing with us, who suffers with us. This God is ever changing, even as we change and reach and grow. We are, thereby, co-participants in the creation of things.

I know that any God I create is limited by what I can imagine and allow. I need a God that gives me a glimpse of something that is more than I am to move me to do those things I would not do on my own, to inspire me to dream another's dreams, to rise beyond my self-interest to the common interest. This God is not answered with a what or a how or a when or a why, but a yes. "Choose life and trust life. Grow in service and in love. Take nothing for granted. Be thankful for the gift. Suffer well. Dare to risk much. Consecrate your world with laughter and with tears. And know not what I am or who I am or how I am; know only that I am with you." It's this vision thing.

However I wrestle with the meaning of god and the goddess, I return always to my hope in the goodness of you and this community .I return to you because I believe that the world is morally neutral, without moral intention or design, but it is open to our ordering of it. In his recent book, UU minister Ken Phifer says it well for me when writes: "We are the ethical designers. We describe things as good or evil based on the measure in which they further human purpose or human happiness...[It was] the face of humanity in all its strange wonderfulness and endless agony [that] replaced the face of God for me. Mercy and justice, not piety and right belief, became the hallmarks of a good life."

It is you and I who show mercy and pity, bring peace, and extend love to each other. It is you and I who call forth the best we can give from ourselves and each other. It is you and I who also bring wickedness and hatred and oppression and tyranny to life. We human beings are the ones who choose, not just to do good or to do evil, but also to determine what is meant by good and evil.

To which I only add, it is the mystery of life that sustains me now, and I will leave god to be god and find that mystery more consoling than frightening. Our beliefs, ultimately, are revealed in what we do, how we live our lives. What we say can guide and direct how we live, but may not reflect our lifestyle at all. How we live is a test for our beliefs.

My beliefs shape my life. I do not live up to them, and so perhaps they really aren't beliefs, but more dreams of what I'd like to believe, but can't. I am human and I do know that we need each other if we are to transcend the limits to our individual visions of what is and ought to be. We need each other if there is to be beauty , and love and if we are to grow in wisdom and mercy and understanding.

Return to Sermon Index