An Accidental Faith

© Peter A. Friedrichs

May 7, 2006

I'm here by accident. That's not to say that mine was an accidental birth. I think my parents pretty much knew what they were doing just about fifty years ago. And this is not to say that I'm here by accident. Your Search Committee has been very deliberate and intentional in its process, and they've made a wise choice, if I do say so myself. Of course, I am just the least bit biased. But I stand before you today as someone who discovered Unitarian Universalism by accident. Like many of you, I was raised in another faith tradition. In my case, it was the Catholic church, where I was baptized, had my first communion and was confirmed. Now, I had an inkling that the Catholic church was not for me, right from the start. I still remember, as clearly as if it was yesterday, the wave of anxiety that washed over me as I entered my first CCD class. It was so bad, in fact, that I had to stand by an open window for the entire session just to be able to breathe. Not a good start to my religious career. I won't recite in detail here my struggles with faith over the years. Suffice it to say that I left the Catholic church when I was a teenager, and I had no use for organized religion for many, many years after.

It wasn't until after the birth of our second child, Julia, who was rapidly outgrowing her great-grandmother's christening gown, that Irene and I began to think that we would like to establish some connection with a faith community. It's a common story, I know, and one that I'm sure I share with many of you here. Truth be told, I think that Irene and I were looking as much for a community for ourselves as we were for our children, but in any event, at the age of thirty, a confirmed agnostic with atheistic leanings, I found myself "church shopping." I don't know what led us to choose the local Unitarian Universalist church as the first church we'd visit. We didn't know anyone who attended the church, nor did we know anything about its theology. Neither of us had even heard of Unitarian Universalism before. It might have been the classic New England meeting house architecture , or it may have been the simple fact that the Unitarian Universalist church happened to be at the extreme opposite end of town from the Catholic church, but for whatever reason, our search began and ended with First Universalist church of Yarmouth. I have heard others describe their first encounter with Unitarian Universalism as feeling like they were coming home, and I can appreciate that description. For me, it was as if a whole, new world had opened up. "You mean, religion can be like this?" I asked myself, week after week. "If I had only known!"

Let me pause here and take a little survey of the congregation. Raise your hand if you are what we call a "birth right UU," if your parents were Unitarian or Universalist and if you were raised in the church. OK, now let's have a show of hands of those who were raised in another faith, and who, like me, discovered Unitarian Universalism later in life. You are the so-called "come-outers," because you have come from another tradition. And let's see how many of you came to Unitarian Universalism without any formal religious background at all, the so-called "un-churched." In my experience, I'd say that's a pretty typical ratio of those three categories, and demographically we're shifting more heavily toward the "un-churched" than even the "come-outers." By the way, I dislike those labels, but that's another sermon…

.My accidental discovery of Unitarian Universalism actually has historical precedents. The establishment of the Universalist Church in America can be traced back to a single accident, the grounding of a ship in 1770 on a sandbar off the coast of New Jersey. This ship carried John Murray, the grandfather of American Universalism, and led him to the door of a humble farmer named Thomas Potter. Murray, a preacher from England who had suffered a series of terrible personal losses, had given up the ministry and set sail for America, intending to disappear into the wilderness. Through a series of mishaps his ship ran aground near Barnegat Bay, and Murray was sent ashore to look for food. Thomas Potter, a local farmer, gave Murray and the ship's men some provisions, and succeeded in convincing Murray to preach in a meeting house that Potter had built. The rest, as they say, is history, as Murray went on to lead the establishment of Universalism in New England and across the country. Had Murray's ship not hit that sandbar, he might have disappeared into the wilderness, never to be heard from again.

We could consider whether Murray's grounding in Barnegat Bay was accidental or Providential, and whether my discovery of First Universalist in Yarmouth or your walking through the doors of UUCDC was coincidental or part of a grand plan, but that, too, is another sermon for another day. But that thought of "If I had only known," a refrain which may still be playing in some of your heads, haunts me to this day. Why didn't I know about Unitarian Universalism? Why had I never even heard of it before? I consider myself pretty well read, the product of a New England liberal arts education with a firm grasp on American history and culture. Yet I had no idea, until I walked into that church in Yarmouth, Maine nearly twenty years ago, that our faith even existed.

The quotation at the top of your Order of Service is taken from Robert Fulghum's introduction to the book, A Chosen Faith, by Forrest Church and John Buehrens. Fulghum, a UU minister and the author of "Everything I Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten," is telling of what he calls an "awkward conversation" in a bookstore with someone unfamiliar with our faith. In response to the person's conflict between wanting to learn more and his fear of being put "on a missionary list," Fulghum tells him,

We don't evangelize. That's a factually accurate statement. To evangelize is to preach the gospel, and when we think of evangelizing we think of Billy Graham's crusades or a tent revival held out at the fairgrounds. Evangelicals are, by definition, those who promote the doctrine of salvation through a belief in Jesus Christ as their personal savior. When we think of evangelizing, we often equate it to its cousin, proselytizing. To proselytize is to try to convert someone's religious beliefs, to help them see the error in their ways and to put them on the right path. Unitarian Universalists certainly don't proselytize.

As Fulghum says, it has been our tradition and our history to "keep our doors open to those who are looking for the company of people like us." We are the Northwestern Mutual of the religion business. The Quiet Company. We aren't flashy or self-promoting. We expect our reputation to sustain us. We take care of our own. We're here when you need us… as long as you can find us. We Unitarian Universalists have not, as a rule, gone around tooting our own horns, for a variety of reasons. Part of it, I think, is fear that we won't get it right. Since our gospel isn't written down in a book, since we don't have a creed or statement that we keep on the tip of our tongue, we don't feel that we're equipped with the proper tools for evangelizing. I think this is what prompted UUA President Bill Sinkford to urge us each to come up with our own "elevator speech," a brief statement of what Unitarian Universalism is to us that we could recite in the time it takes for an elevator to travel up or down several floors in a building. For years I carried around a little card that's called "What Do Unitarian Universalists Believe?" so that I was prepared to hand it out when people asked me the question. I used to use the "it's hard to explain, so read this" approach. I think we're also afraid of stepping on toes, ours and others. If we say that Unitarian Universalists are "x" we know that there are some who are "not x" and we want to honor their beliefs. And somehow it feels like preaching our gospel is in contradiction to our commitment to promoting and affirming the inherent worth and dignity of all people. If we promote our faith to someone, it feels like we're saying "we're better than you. Our way is right and yours is wrong." We equate evangelizing with proselytizing.

Perhaps one of the biggest hurdles we face in spreading the gospel of our faith rests in what is our strongest asset: our diversity. How can we spread the word about who we are when it is so difficult to define the "us" that we are? If we all believe different things about the "big questions" like the existence of God and grace and life after death, how can we have a gospel to share with the world? The leaders of our association have acknowledged that it is impossible to make universal statements of faith that apply to all of us individually. That is surely as true for those of us gathered here today as it is for the thousands of Unitarian Universalists scattered across this country.

Sometimes it feels like we're working way too hard at this. Yes, it's easier to share the good news when all we have to do is recite a creed by rote, or to point to the Bible. Yes, our diversity of belief makes it harder to convey a clear and concise message about who we are as a faith community. And yes, our name, "Unitarian Universalist," can be a stumbling block to telling people who we are, even before we tack on "Church of Delaware County" at the end. It is easy to get bogged down in heady theological discussions about whether we can find a central, unifying core to our faith. We are easily deterred from getting our message out by the fear of offending someone who may not agree with us. There are plenty of reasons why it's hard to talk about who we are and what we believe.

But what would it be like to put down this burden? To give ourselves permission not to try to define, in a few pithy sentences, what is a richly textured, complex, and sometimes contradictory tradition of which we are a part? To set aside association-wide or even district-wide questions, and to narrow our focus to us, here, in this community, in this room? What if we were to ask ourselves instead these simple questions: What difference does this church, this conglomeration of people, this community of faith, make in my life and in the lives of others? What does being a part of this church do for me, for my family, for my neighbors? The answer to these questions is your good news, and it is the gospel of Unitarian Universalism. Our gospel is not contained in an ancient book gathering dust on a shelf. Our gospel is not expressed in a slogan or a creed. Our gospel is not imposed on us, handed down from forefathers long-since passed away. Our gospels are our lives. Our faith doesn't promise everlasting life. What it promises is the transformation of this life, of the life you lead and the lives you touch. My gospel is not the same as yours, but it is good news all the same. And the beauty of our faith is that that is the way it should be. We have the gospel according to Mark and to Mary, the gospel according to Luke and to Linda, the gospel according to Julie and Jody and Jerry and Joy. We are brimming, overflowing with the good news of Unitarian Universalism. It fills this room every Sunday and it fills your homes every day. It goes with you wherever you travel and it lies down with you when you sleep at night. What is the good news of our faith? You. Yours is a gospel like no other, and the world longs to hear it.

The challenge we are left with is this: How do we share this good news? How do we let others know about who we are and what we do here? If my life is the gospel of Unitarian Universalism, how do I speak of it? How do I respond when someone asks, "What do Unitarian Universalists believe?" I would suggest that your answer begin with this simple phrase: "Let me tell you a story." To tell others the good news of Unitarian Universalism we must tell our stories of transformation, of how our church and our faith has changed us. Only by telling our stories will, as the hymn goes, the fire of commitment set mind and soul ablaze. "Let me tell you a story…"

And with that in mind, let me tell you one of mine. It was the late 80's and I had a successful law practice in Portland, Maine. I had an incredible wife and two lovely daughters, a house in the country, and a Springer Spaniel named Burf. By any objective measure I was the picture of success. But, I was profoundly depressed. Each day I awoke with a crushing weight on my heart, wishing with all my might that someone, somehow might lift it from me. Every day I would go through the motions of living, but feeling worse than dead inside. I went to church each week, acting like nothing was wrong. Then, one Sunday, we sang "Spirit of Life" as our closing hymn, and I broke down and cried. For a long time after the sanctuary had emptied, I sat in the pew with my dark, dark thoughts. I don't remember much from the rest of that day, but the following morning I'll never forget. I walked out to my car to go into work, and there, sitting on the seat, was a plant and a note. "Thinking of you," was all it said, and it was signed by a member of the church. It was such a small gesture, a simple act of kindness. But the fact that someone in the church noticed my pain, cared enough to reach out to me, and let me know I was important, was my salvation that day. Never let anyone tell you we are not a saving faith. My friends, if that is not our good news, I don't know what is.

In last week's sermon Tricia named four groups within the church: the Guardians, the Nest Builders, the Seekers and the Trumpeteers. While I can and do identify with all of these groups, today I'm going to identify myself as a Trumpeteer. I want to be, and I want you to be, an evangelizing Unitarian Universalist. I want to spread the good news of our faith. I want to let others know, by the lives we live and the stories we tell, who we are and what we stand for. Perhaps this is a bold, or even foolhardy, thing to say at the start of my Candidating Week, but it's best if we all understand what we're getting into. I'm not like Robert Fulghum. I'm not content merely to "keep a door open to those who are looking for the company of people like us." I want to sound the trumpets and shout from the rooftops. I want to shine like a lighthouse in the fog, to be a beacon that guides people to this home of liberal faith. There are countless people out there who have never heard of us, who are unaware of the transformative power of our faith. They need us, and we need them. Neither we nor they can afford to take the chance that they'll find us, or not, merely by accident.

Did this sermon bring forth any special feelings, thoughts or concerns that you would like to share? Consider this link as providing you with an opportunity to talk back.