Unitarian Universalist Worship: Motives and Expression

February 6, 1966
Plainfield

Unitarian Universalist Worship: Motives and Expression

“Returning to Nicosia we soon found that East and West meet in Cyprus, sometimes violently. The first day there our taxi, weaving through narrow crowded streets, rounded a corner and sideswiped a bicycle. The cyclist careened into a farmer who fell against a plodding donkey loaded with melons. The frightened beast leaped onto a sidewalk and the basket on his back smashed a shop window, scattering the melons amid a display of plastic dishware. Driver, cyclist and pedestrian and donkey-herder waved their arms and shouted in furious argument.

“‘There,’ said Jean, ‘you have 2000 years of progress compressed into one accident.’” (Article on “Cyprus,” National Geographic, May 1952, p. 632).

There are those who believe our usual order of service to be but 2000 years of accident – a diluted version of a Methodist or Baptist service, which in turn was ritual modified from earlier Reformation churches, which in turn had found inspiration for worship by protestantizing the Catholic Mass, which in turn had its origins in even more ancient, diverse, and cultic practices.

On the other hand, there are those among us who are unresponsive to innovation and experiment, withholding approval of that which is new and untried. Such persons find meaning for worship in services that have acquired some tradition.

On the one hand the Unitarian Church must confront continuously the dynamic novelty of new ideas in order to decide tentatively what deserves honor, recognition and a place of dignity in the group worship and programs. On the other hand, although ongoing discoveries of truth call for “new occasions” and “new duties.” many Unitarians feel the tug of traditional ways. Thus, while religion for the so-called modern mind might be acceptable only with currently popular language and advanced ideas, modern man – that is, the total man with his alternating emotions as well as his modern mind – wonders wistfully at times if the words and music worshiping our father’s God, Secure and Ancient, are not sorely needed in these anxious, dangerous days.

Roger Hall started me on this sermon last Sunday, for he reminded me that religion is not alone a series of intellectual propositions with which we agree or disagree on premises, conclusions, or both. Religion is not alone such a reasoning process, although to ignore the validity of the rational processes of the mind is to dispense with a vital part of our reason for being. Roger also reminded me emphatically that the religious experience is not restricted to historical continuities or innovative experiment, although we could hardly deserve the name of rational or relevant if we ignored history or creativity. Let me quote something Roger said that lighted up my inner instrument panel, “We tend to push to the background the fact that in ever person there are strong emotional associations. We shun the shouter; we only flirt with Freud.”

I would speak to you of worship not only because of the way worship provokes discussion, bewilderment, mis-understanding, even tension, but also because the experience of group adult worship is still the strongest bond among us. I hope I shall neither soft-pedal the difficulties of worship in the liberal church nor under-rate the potential power I believe is waiting for us when we experience the mental stimulation and emotional thrill that can be ours when we encounter intelligent, stirring, artistic worship.

Consider the initial difficulty caused by the unavoidable, stubborn fact that we are different persons. We register no automatic group response like wound-up identical tin soldiers from an assembly line. Furthermore, each of us responds differently at different times. What may move us deeply on January 9 or 30 may be an utter bore [on] December 12 or February 6.

The following ancient verses from the sixth [chapter of] Isaiah are a verbal account of the prophet’s shattering religious experience. He became conscious of his own inadequacies; then that his sins were forgiven; then that he had received a profound commission to prophecy to the people. But how many of us can say truthfully we have experienced worship with such emotional deeps and peaks? Any “great aha” we have known seems pallid when compared to Isaiah’s overwhelming experience. Furthermore, this glimpse of Isaiah’s religious call should not overlook the solitary nature of his experience. Isaiah was alone. The words and music of liberal worship present difficulties because we are not alone. We are together seeking a group worship experience which could touch us all with some measure of truth, goodness and beauty.

In the prologue to Henry VIII, Shakespeare, warming the audience that the play was serious, not comic, has words that apply somewhat to the diversified Sunday congregation:

“Those that can pity here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of home they may believe
May here find truth too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree
The play may pass, if they be still and willing,
I’ll undertake what may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours.”

Not only are we different personalities, but also as individuals we have a wide range of expectations as we attend worship in this Unitarian Church.

Many Unitarians decided to leave orthodox religions because they no longer believed the doctrines of old-time religion. They have become Unitarians and Universalists because of the basic non-creedal position of the Church; because they listened to affirmations that the Unitarian faith was a religion of common-sense and because the Unitarian Church did not expect them to leave the discoveries of modern science, literary and historical scholarship outside the door to worship.

Thus, frequently the Unitarian who became so because of such religious convictions is sometimes puzzled or annoyed when our worship service seemingly venerates, through a hymn, anthem or reading an out-moded idea of God, Jesus, sin, or what have. The person who has thought his way to the Unitarian Church because he no longer holds with these ideas, asks himself, “Why should this be in Unitarian worship?”

Many Unitarians find new knowledge more helpful and more inspiring than old traditions and liturgical language. Many prefer Freud to Moses, Overstreet to Ecclesiastes, Walter Lippman to Amos, Sidney Harris to Jeremiah.

Unitarian Universalist societies, like all institutions, are changing constantly. Old ideas are always being refined in the filtering process of human experience. But because we are all different, with unlike expectations, we feel variously happy or irritated at regularities, or omissions or additions to our worship service.

For example, there is a perennial difficulty with hymns and anthems. Any Unitarian Universalist minister will testify that many of the best hymns in the “Hymns of the Spirit,” from the standpoint of the meaning of the words, are the very ones the choir and congregation will tell him are the most unsingable. Somewhere I clipped this little rhyme:

“In unison, we rise and stand
And wish that we were sitting.
We listen to the music start,
And wish that it were quitting.
We pass our hymnal to a guest,
Or fake a smoker’s cough;
We drop our pencils, lose our gloves,
Or take our glasses off.
We move our lips to keep in style,
Emitting awkward bleats,
And when the last Amen is sung,
Sink gladly in our seats.
Oh Lord, who hearest every prayer
And saves us from our foes,
Deliver now thy little flock
From hymns nobody knows.” (anonymous)

Such common attitudes tempt many of us now and then to chop up the old words of the gospel hymns (people say they love the tunes), render the words intellectually vague or theologically innocuous, and see if the congregation would then sing out boldly.

One of the reasons why long studies and efforts on the part of our UUA have produced the new hymnal, “Hymns for the Celebration of Life,” is because we are faced with a rather meager supply of hymns and anthems which are both musically good and theologically relevant to the beliefs of most of us.

Others will be on the side of using the grand traditions and superb music of the Christian Church, not from theological nostalgia alone, but more importantly, from a commendable appreciation of the cultural tradition of grand chorales, oratorios and masses, without which our aesthetic and emotional resources would be greatly impoverished. We would have much less difficulty if the words could be sung always in German or Latin, even though this device might be the object of biting criticism.

Still others would find worship a deeper experience if there were no music or instruments, but rather a Quaker silence, except for (perhaps) the sermon.

Those of you who have read the life of Theodore Barker know of the remarkable Sunday service of this prophetic Unitarian preacher (who was excluded from Unitarian circles in his own day, but now is one of our heroes). The religious society he served, 28th Congregational Society of Boston, which met in the Music Hall more than a century ago, was one of the largest congregations in the country, numbering three thousand or so. There was no music. The early arrivals who wanted good seats sometimes had to kick away the litter of the Saturday night show crowd. Many of the worshipers read the Sunday newspaper until the 11 o’clock service time.

Then Theodore Parker walked to the rostrum, the worshipers folded their newspapers and the sermon began forthwith. There were no hymns, anthems, chorales or responses. The sermon was the worship, and the large congregation was eminently satisfied because they were captivated and inspired by the sermons – which were radical and startling for the day.

In the foregoing observations reside some of the problems the minister encounters if he seriously tries to make worship an experience of impact and depth. In the shaking down of the realities of the divergent views of the people who weekly seek confrontation, knowledge, beauty, rhythm, reverence, inspiration, comfort, how can the service be all these to everyone?

Basically, although we gather as a group, worship is individual – and Isaiah’s experience is a powerful example. The minister can produce a service or sermon which are his creations or his adaptations of worship custom. Although he can guide, suggest, proclaim, he cannot be creative for you. In Thackeray’s great novel, VANITY FAIR (p. 20), there is an incident which may point to this. Rebecca Sharp is the guest of her classmate, Amelia Sedley. Amelia is showing her family some drawings which she had sent home from school, when Rebecca bursts into tears and runs from the room. Amelia says, “You know her father was our drawing master at Chiswick and used to do the best parts of our drawings,” Amelia’s mother answers, “My love, I’m sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not touch them – he only mounted them.” Amelia answers, “It was called mounting, Mama – Rebecca remembers the drawing and her father working on it.”

The drawings may have pleased the parent. But it was a deceit because the parent’s pride was primarily stirred because of the belief that the drawing was the child’s creation.

Remembering the wide differences in the Unitarian Universalist idea of what is proper and intelligent for group worship – and more than that, admitting that the force which ignites the spark of creativity in worship, painting or anything else is within you – let us look at what worship is and how we may participate with some reverence both in individual experience and group fellowship.

What is “the great aha?” What makes the Geiger counter click? Worship is not defined easily. In the long history of religion it has evolved from tribal rites, tabus and sacrifice, human as well as animal, prior to the emergence of less savage rituals. Worship includes crude mythology as well as abstract philosophy. Worship can be passionate for a cause or sternly analytical in the search for truth.

You have heard of snake worshipers, devil worshipers and worshipers of the Almighty Dollar. Worship is all of these expressions, and more. What is worship for one is an experience another may spurn. The history of worship is a record of differences as well as similarities. There was a newspaper dispatch (UPI) which illustrates the difference in attitude, although it doesn’t refer specifically to worship:

“Plymouth England ... two separate church notices here have left the reader in a quandary.

“Said one: ‘Strong drink is your worst enemy.’
“The other: ‘Make your worst enemy your best friend.’”

But the worship for which we may reach must be the holding high of the light of the highest we know – the celebration of our most precious values.

Many of us when we gather in worship feel much more comfortable when the words and music do not reprove our vices and vanities and insensitivities. We may make the error of mistaking worship with the feeling of being at ease. But when there is no judgment on the ways we have missed the mark of our obligation, then worship may be pallid and dilute. But when worship is penetrating, it should make us uncomfortable frequently so that we may become aware that we have done those things we ought not to have done and we have not done those things we ought to have done. This is not because the pulpit denounces the pew, but rather because our own insufficiently-recognized sense of what is vital is calling us to be our best.

The act of worship is to re-discover a confidence even though we entered with anxiety; to find new directions when our moral purposes seem to be heading toward dead end; to recognize and venerate the Divine that penetrates human experience – however that spirit may be named or defined. Through the words and music, the sight and sound of symbols we may be helped to experience effectively the highest of our goals – our God – and to renew our allegiance to it and to strengthen our determination to work at the tasks of our day in our time.

“Worship is the celebration of life,” to quote the famous capsule description of Unitarian Von Ogden Vogt. We gather in worship to celebrate the impact on our human experience of the great festival days of humankind, the profound experiences of human living – birth, growth, adolescence, marriage, death; and weekly, the renewing of our heritage of freedom and fellowship in variety as well as sameness of form.

We celebrate with words, music, light, shadow, group participation. [excised from copy: Irvin Cobb wrote a short story which has become a case study in] social psychology, “Words and Music.” The perceptive writer caught effectively the great power that words and music combine to stir man to a new awareness of that which he considers highest. In the story, the jury and judge were reminded of their battles, their dead – through reminisces and the sound of the marching song of the troopers, which “had in it the one sure call to the emotions and sentiments of the people.”

Such a blend of words and music, of intellect and emotion are the goals of a free person’s worship. To achieve this in a free, non-creedal church, such as ours, is both a formidable task and a stimulatory opportunity. For the celebration of life is always old and ever new. A new baby does not come spontaneously from under a rose bush but as the product of two people, old enough to reproduce their kind, and the new life is always individually distinct from both parents. The Winter festivals and the Spring festivals are always old and always new; and so with all the great days we celebrate.

Worship is something else, too. “Worship is a consideration of things of worth,” to quote famous liberal educator, Sophia Fahs. In order to consider things of worth, worship must be eternal contemporaneous. We all should be in a state of agonized conscience about the threats that brood over our world. Each day seems to add to crisis and complicate the baffling problems which threaten our existence. If worship is a consideration of things of wroth, surely worship should lead us to think and proclaim what our moral convictions are. G.K. Chesterton is alleged to have said something like this, “Such are the advances of science that the Church could pick up a single microphone and address the entire world. But now the Church has nothing to say...” Well, certain bodies have recently had something to say: The National Council of Churches, the Pope, a National Committee of Concerned Clergy, area committees and others, but the polls on which the President [relies] apparently indicates that the official voices of religious councils and clergy are but a minority and the majority supported the resumption of bombing and continued escalation of war.

A religious society such as ours meets enormous obstacles in the way of speaking with one voice. Yet consideration of things of worth should lead us to speak with many voices, when we cannot speak with one. If worship overlooks the world we are living in now, with its hopes, fears, ignorance, prejudice, of whatever use is it to concentrate on the bygone worlds of the Old and New Testaments, or even the heroic and charming ages of Channing, Emerson, and Parker?

Do you know the fable of the woodcutter and the lion who struck up friendship between them and who were always engaging in contests to test which was the stronger? Small animals in the underbrush watched the contests with glee. One day the lion came with the thigh bone of an ox in his mouth. “You’ll have to admit,” he said to the woodcutter, “that a lion’s mouth is more powerful than a man’s.” And he cracked the bone with one movement of his powerful jaw.

The woodcutter looked at the large ledge of rock and asked the lion, “can you smash that with your jaws?”

“No,” said the lion, “and neither can you.”

The woodcutter looked down the road to where a group of people were walking. [He shouted] to them, “I’ve made a discovery – the inside of that rock is gold.” Instantly the people swarmed up. In a few moments the ledge of rock lay at the lion’s feet, cracked not once, but in a dozen places.

The animals [of the] underbrush chattered, “The lion can crack the thick thigh bones of an ox, but a man’s mouth is so strong that he can crack rocks with it.” (99 Fables, William March, University of Alabama Press, p. 92).

So it is with consideration of things of worth. They are contemporaneous; and it is the power of words which shows more strength than we usually appreciate. There is a gulf between the way things are and the way they should be. There should be voices in church speaking. If worship brings peace of mind, it cannot avoid speaking of the peace needed among nations and speaking of the follies for which there no longer is room.

In the practice of worship where there will be celebration of life and consideration of things of worth, there will be variety in our ways of worship and changes in the symbols. We encourage frequent change and interrupt the usual with the experimental and unusual (as has happened several times). We seek change not merely to placate all manner of opinion in the Church, but rather in order to seek out honestly the creative ways that words, music, and other art-forms can become effective in the celebration of life and the considerations of things of worth.

Not all tradition is worth rehearsing and no tradition should become a fetish or an obsession. The justification for our usual type service (“diluted Methodist” as it has been called), is that there is a value in historical continuities and habitual ways. We need the novel, the new, but also we need that which is expected, for sometimes we need to be liberated from an attitude which is defensive toward possible surprise. Such defensiveness may prevent us from being open toward that word, or that musical note, or that feeling which may help us resolve some of our consciously-felt troubled feelings, help us acquire more self-honesty, help us gain new hope. Because we do have these troubled feelings; because we do need more self-honesty; because we must have hope, there is a place for continuity and the expected.

But also we need the innovative, the creative, the experimental. Here in this church we have relied, and not in vain, on the imagination and competence of some of our lay members to provide us with drama, art, song. Then, too, last week Roger Hall wrestled with the nature of the religious experience which grabs us suddenly, “the great aha!”

One thing more: one of the more obvious gaps in the worship of our societies, at least for the many years I have known them, is the absence of much authentic confrontation of the troubled feelings and secret wishes that lie below the level of consciousness. Our usual order of service with touches of continuity from our long Judeo-Christian heritage or our shorter Unitarian Universalist heritage, may speak to our religion of inquiring minds, but may do very little for that covered-up morass of feelings that disturb us with disconnected apprehensions and vague feelings of guilt. When we feel buried, but troublesome emotions, we can understand how the orthodox might pray to a Trinitarian God who has established a Way of Salvation that will reclaim the troubled soul and wash it clean. Sometimes we get a slight yen for that intensely personal cleansing, but always we come back to the stubborn reality that the power of such a faith is limited to believers only – and we are not such believers.

We have made strong efforts to achieve greater rationality and historical reality in the facts of religion. Therefore we cannot return to the orthodox way, just in order to achieve some purge of our delinquent feelings.

To relate ourselves to these feelings is one of the needed [and] incomplete tasks in Unitarian Universalist faith. To come to grips with these feelings, without a trip back to orthodox Christian symbols and creeds, is valid motivation to dramatize, to respond to the painter, poet, dramatist, musician, or sculptor who has the skill and power to transform some of this subterranean energy of feeling into a product that is visible, audible, or registers on senses of sight, touch, or smell.

For some of us, at least, “the great aha” - the feeling, “I have worshiped,” is not confined to the usual, but now and again is experienced through the impact of the unusual creation on canvas, of clay or metal, by the actor, by the musical performer. Many of us who see validity in frequent change from the rigidity of routine and the sameness of unchanging form, are seeking the experience of group worship in the creative expressions, exploring and exposing ourselves to many arts, seeking the experience that may be unexplainable in the end, but when the experience occurs to each of us, find it to be a trembling excitement which a sense of immediacy that makes mind, emotion and body an electrified unity that, temporarily or permanently, sets new and brighter goals for our lives.

However we may value the usual vis-a-vis the habitual, we should seek the highest we know, neither ignoring the past nor avoiding the present. When we apply ourselves to such goals, with a minimum of pretense, there will be moments when word, art, music, gesture will weld us together in high aspiration, human love, or intuitive comprehension. If we persist, perhaps we ill discover the continuing courage necessary to be a prophetic body and retain the compassion to be a ministering community.