Our Creed, All Truth

a sermon preached [extemporeaneously] by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at The First Religious Society in Carlisle [and reconstructed from notes]
Sunday February 12th, 2006

I have a favorite story (which I suspect some of you have already heard, since it seems like I tell it every year about this time) about a circuit rider out in Wyoming or Montana somewhere, who struggled through a blizzard one Sunday and arrived at church only to discover that the entire congregation consisted of one old cowboy. Not sure what he should do, the preacher asked the cowboy whether he should go ahead and conduct the service.

“Well Reverend,” the cowboy replied, “if I’d made my way through a blizzard like this with a wagon full of hay, only to discover that there was only one steer, I don’t think I’d let that steer go hungry.”

Inspired, the minister climbed into the pulpit and conducted the entire service just the way he’d planned to, from Introit to Benediction. And afterwards, he asked the cowboy what he thought.

“Well Reverend,” said the cowboy, “if I’d made my way through a blizzard like this with a wagon full of hay, only to discover that there was only one steer, I don’t think I’d have fed him the whole wagonload....”


I wasn’t really certain how much of a sermon to prepare for this morning. Call me superstitious, but I just knew that if I went ahead and prepared a 2000 word manuscript like I do every other week, we would almost certainly be inundated in snow, nobody would show up, and we would end up canceling church anyway; but I also knew that if I didn’t prepare something, the storm would probably miss us entirely, (which was a very tempting hypothesis to test, except that I knew that Paula and David and Ewan were planning to be here all the way from England, and I couldn’t stand the thought of showing up entirely empty handed and trusting the Holy Spirit to inspire me on the spot). So instead I decided to compromise, and just make a few notes, and maybe afterwards if there is time we can have another “Talk-Back” like we did last Sunday.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit his past week about last Sunday’s service, and especially the conversation that took place afterwards during the “Talk-Back” about Islam and the controversial Danish cartoons that have created such a ruckus around the world. As a lot of you know, six years ago I had an opportunity to spend the spring semester in Denmark as a visiting scholar at Aalborg University, as part of a colloquium on “Interculturality and Transnationalism.” And during my time there I saw and learned a lot of things which have certainly influenced my own perspective and understanding of this current situation, and which also just so happen to be very relevant to today’s topic.

In Denmark I lived in a neighborhood which actually had a lot of Muslims living it it also . They were mostly Turks (many of whom had lived there for decades, and by that point even had adolescent children who had been born and raised in Denmark), but also a smattering of other nationalities from Africa and the Middle East, who had arrived more recently and were not especially well “assimilated.” The local Amnesty International office was just around the corner from my cozy little apartment, and I never really did figure out whether this immigrant community had grown up around that office, or rather that the Amnesty office was located there BECAUSE it was already an immigrant neighborhood....

But my barber, for example, was Turkish (and I’ll never forget how he used to trim my sideburns using a piece of string rather than a razor); as were the owners of my favorite restaurant, where I ate about once a week. It billed itself as an American restaurant, where the menu was pizza, sub sandwiches, and fried chicken...and I liked eating there because it amused me as an American to eat “American” food prepared by Turks that tasted nothing like anything I’d ever eaten in America, even though everything on the menu was familiar.

I also saw some things in Denmark that were very discouraging, and also things which gave me hope. Probably the most discouraging thing was the Bus Driver on my regular route, who I once saw speed up to avoid picking up a Muslim woman running for the bus, at the exact same stop where just the week before I had seen him wait for a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dane. But on the encouraging side was a Train Conductor, who I saw confront two teenaged Muslim boys who had obviously been shoplifting, and had jumped on the train at the last second (with their jacket pockets just crammed full of stolen junk food) in order to make their getaway; and yet were treated with such courtesy, such firm, polite, official respect, even though it was obvious to everyone: myself, the conductor, and certainly the two kids, what was going on, and that they were “busted” and fooling no one. Yet I’ve never seen an American authority figure treat misbehaving kids like that with such courteous dignity.

But this is part of Denmark’s self image. Danes see themselves as living in a small, harmless, yet sophisticated country. They think of themselves as progressive, cosmopolitan, liberal and tolerant; and yet a great deal of this self-image is also based on a sense of cultural homogeneity, which makes it difficult even for second-generation Muslims to really “fit in.” One key thing that is essential to understanding this attitude is the concept of hygge -- this “cozy intimacy” that Danes make so much of: sitting around a candle with good friends, sharing laughter and homemade food and maybe a little Aquavit.... And yet, as one (Muslim?) social commentator noted when I was there, hugge always “has its back to the world” -- the circle looks inward, to the cozy and familiar, rather than opening itself to outsiders, and extending hospitality to strangers.

This same attitude is somewhat true when it comes to Danish religion. Only about 2% of Danes actually attend the national church on a regular basis, yet the church itself is actually supported by state tax funds, and in some ways functions as an arm of the government. The church is the place where Danes go to register births, deaths, and marriages -- much like we could go to the town clerk -- but if you are Muslim, and worship at a Mosque -- where do you go when you want to record YOUR marriage or the birth of a child? This was one of the issues that was being actively discussed in Denmark when I was there six years ago, and one of the problems was that many secular, non-churchgoing Danes simply couldn’t understand why their Muslim neighbors didn’t just register at the Folkekirke like everyone else.

I think this attitude has something to do with understanding the controversy over the cartoons in Jyllands Posten, which is a conservative newspaper (by Danish standards) though still far to the left of Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh. The Western Media naturally wants to frame this as a simple story full of dramatic conflict: our cherished values of Liberty and Freedom of Expression (as practiced by an enlightened, secular society) verses the Fanatical Religious Fundamentalism and parochial attitudes of a less tolerant, less enlightened culture. And then there is the Progressive Liberal alternative view, which contends that this issue is not really about Freedom of Speech at all, but rather an expression of our own Western insensitivity, intolerance, and parochialism. And of course there is also the story of how this issue has been positioned in the Islamic world, where it has become a catalyst for the expression of an even deeper cultural rage and frustration, and perhaps even been manipulated by those who would like to fan the flames of that anger higher.

But even in its simplest form, there are several conflicting progressive values at play here: both freedom of expression AND respect for the beliefs of others, along with the recognition that something can be funny to one person and also offensive to others (or even merely in poor taste), and yet still defensible in principle even though you wouldn’t want to have to defend it on its merits because you also find it objectionable. We can see hints of these same conflicts even in the First Amendment (which is where we Americans generally tend to locate our “right” to express ourselves freely). Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press, but also the Free Exercise of Religion and the Right of Assembly; not to mention the separation between Church and State, and the right to peaceably “petition the government for the redress of grievances.” We are always free to protest the speech of others. Or as one Muslim put it on the radio the other day: “we all have the right to sneeze, but not in someone else’s face.”

So it seems to me that the underlying issue is really one of cultural sensitivity and a global sensibility of our interconnectedness, which brings me back to the point I was trying to make about the Danes last week. Imagine how shocking it must be when your smug, enlightened, tolerant, inoffensive world view literally blows up in your face, and people stop buying your products, and start burning down your embassies, because they don’t see the humor in something you thought was both clever and innocuous.... It must truly feel as though the world has been turned upside-down....


I guess this brings us at last to the topic of “Our Creed, All Truth.” Of course, the one persistent element of faith (in Unitarianism at least) almost from day one is that we are actually “a church without a creed.” A creed, of course, is a normative and authoritative “Statement of Belief,” which “believers” are expected to “confess” in order to become a member of the community. But Unitarian Universalists believe in a “Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning,” and therefore we organize our community around a covenant rather than a creed -- not an authoritative statement of “the Truth,” but rather a Promise to one another to be “truthful” with each other -- to be honest, to be authentic, and to walk together in the ways of faith “insofar as God has given us light to understand” them.

[Theodore Parker’s “trial”]

...But this doesn’t mean that there is no Truth, or that we each have our own “truth,” and your truth may be true for you and mine for me, and it’s all just “relative.” Rather, a creed of “All Truth” simply recognizes that none of us will ever have “The Truth” -- that there is always a different perspective, always more to learn...and that in many ways, like Socrates -- we are wise because “we know what we do not know.” Basically, it means giving up the Expectation of Certainty in exchange for developing an ability to Trust despite Ambiguity -- to believe what we believe knowing that we will never know it all, but still trusting what we know enough to act, even though we can never be certain . This is a very tricky skill, which in my experience requires us to cultivate at least three different qualities in our lives.

The first of these qualities is A Genuine Humility. I know I’ve been preaching a lot about humility recently -- it’s really become an important concept for me, so I’m sure you already know that when I say “humility” I’m NOT talking about “humiliation” -- about letting others put us “in our place” so that they can feel better about themselves, or even putting ourselves down because we may have issues about our own inherent worth. Rather, humility is simply the recognition and acceptance of our own human limitations, as well as the recognition of our more basic connection to all humanity. Humility is about Empathy -- the realization that while we not be anything special, in some ways we are ALL special, and that uniqueness needs to be honored in both ourselves and others for what it is, rather than denied or made into something it is not.

This brings us to the second important quality, which is An Authentic Curiosity. Curiosity comes in at least two flavors. The first is our natural curiosity about how things work: the desire to develop an accurate perception which leads to an understanding of how something works and how it appears from different perspectives. But then there is also an additional level of understanding concerned with the meaning of things, and our best judgment of their worth and value based on our own values of what is good, and what is worthy. Trusting ambiguity means learning how to suspend our judgment regarding something’s “worth” until we have had a chance to thoroughly explore what it is and how it works, and have seen it from a variety of different perspectives.

This brings me to the final quality, which is Listening Heart. One of the things that I have had to learn over the years is that it doesn’t really matter how smart you are or how much you may know, everyone you meet -- EVERYONE -- knows something that you don’t, and if you can just find it in your heart to keep you own mouth shut long enough to listen to what they have to say, they just might teach it to you. This is the greatest gift we can give to one another -- the gift of our own honest and authentic experience and insight, freely shared and freely accepted, without an agenda, without defensiveness, and with judgment suspended until our mutual understanding is secure.

One of the things I really love about this church, and about Unitarian Universalism in general, is how many smart, thoughtful, and genuinely insightful people you run into, each of whom has a little bit different experience and perspective of the world, and how thought provoking it can be just to sit quietly and listen to folks as they talk about where they’ve been and what they’ve done.

[Introduce Talk-Back]