Unitarian Universalism And The Sense Of The Sacred

Undated (Filed under 1982)
Location Unknown (Probably Lakeland)

The Sense of the Sacred is this month’s emphasis as we deal with the heritage and principles of Unitarian Universalist religion. Sacraments and the sacred have been an ineradicable part of most religions of the human family. Both sacred and sacrament derive from the Latin “sacere” - to make holy.

Obviously Unitarian Universalism is hardly a ritualistic religion in any usual sense. Our plain services do not commemorate the Lord’s Supper although there are some – but not many – who continue the tradition. Baptism of infants is seldom a ritual, and then with no doctrinal meaning. We do not believe children are born carrying original sin – therefore there is no sin to wash away. When we have a service dedicating a child, it is for the purpose of welcoming the child to our religious community, to express our love and support to the parents who are responsible for rearing that child in decency and dignity and cultivating those values and customs which will tend to make that child a growing person, happy in himself or herself, as well as a productive addition to the human family.

In looking at the sacred and the sacraments, particularly as found in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we must be aware of a reality: one person’s sacrament is another’s superstition. Looked at from historical or psychological perspectives, a sacrament, or a sense of the sacred, is quite different from that of a believer, who whole-heartedly [and] with a sense of awe, participates in the sacrament. [CJW note: Roszak: “To study is not to be, to appreciate is not to belong.”]

In his PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, Erwin Goodenough (p. 144) illustrates this when he wrote, “Many years ago, a physician, member or sect which puts extreme emphasis on immersion in baptism, said to me of the rite, ‘It was a business proposition. I knew when I stood on one side of the baptismal pool that I was damned to hell, but that, if I went down in to the water and was baptized, I would be saved in heaven. It was a business proposition; I went in.’” Dr. Goodenough went on, “Theologians rarely use such unvarnished language to describe a sacrament as having efficacy, but the doctor’s words express exactly the function and appeal of sacraments and symbols. I once repeated the story of the doctor’s baptism to a Catholic priest with whom I happened to ride on a train. He chuckled at it, waved his hand deprecatingly, and said, ‘Superstition, superstition,’ and then added, ‘But I know exactly how he felt.’”

When checking the definitions of the word sacrament, I immediately decided not to dwell on definition #6, “the oath of allegiance taken by a Roman soldier.” But others:

1)religious acts or ceremonies which are visible means by which divine grace is sought.
2)memory, sign, seal, or symbol of religious experience or profession.
3)mystery – a thing secret or of secret meaning.

Ambrose Bierce (an iconoclastic skeptic with a slashing and irreverent wit) defines sacrament in THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY:

sacrament: n. A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller sects have no sacraments at all – for which mean economy they will indubitably be damned.

sacred: adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine character; inspiring solemn thoughts and emotions; as, the Dalai Lama of Tibet; the Moogum of M’bwango; the temple of apes in Ceylon; the Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat, and the Onion of ancient Egypt; the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.

It is not necessary to tell how large a place the sacred has occupied in religions pre-historic and historic. Frazer’s classic GOLDEN BOUGH is replete with examples of the sacred, the practice of sacraments, the force of taboos. The Druid priest who with a golden sickle cut the mistletoe from the oak at mid-winter solstice was dealing with the sacred. [CJW note: the grove of oak trees was sacred.]

“Sacred cow” has become vernacular in our language – but the cow is sacred to believing Hindus. For many tribal cultures, the time of puberty for boys and girls was a sacred time requiring trying, secret rituals, and disciplines.

The sense of the sacred penetrates our Judeo-Christian heritage. Today is among the closing days of the Jewish observation of Hanukkah, which commemorates the Jewish nation’s successful struggle against Antiochus IV, who tried to impose Greek ways and customs on the Jews. Led by Mattathias, an elderly priest, and later by his son Judah the Maccabee, bands of Jewish guerrilla fighters fought valiantly and successfully. In the early winter of 165 B.C.E., Judah Maccabeus led his warriors into Jerusalem. First, he sought to cleanse the Temple which had been profaned by Antiochus and his Greek/Syrian soldiers. A single undefiled cruse of oil was found. It alone was used. Jewish tradition has it that this single flask provided enough oil to burn not for one, but for eight days.

Ever since, the Jews have celebrated that victory and the miraculous oil. For eight days there is celebration and gift-giving. Candles are lit, one the first night, two the second – until finally eight are kindled on the last night.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover are the holy days in the Jewish tradition.

When considering the Christian part of our tradition there is a wide difference between the two main dimensions in Christianity:

The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches observe seven sacraments (or mysteries, as they are sometimes called): baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist (or Holy Communion), penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and marriage.

The Protestant churches observe the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper (Communion). On the whole, Protestants believe that only two sacraments were instituted by Jesus in the New Testament. With their view of the Bible as the Word of God, they see no authority for more than these two sacraments.

The belief about the Lord’s Supper differs between Roman Catholics and Protestants. In the Eucharist of the Roman Catholic, the bread and wine are the real body and blood of Christ offered daily in every Roman Catholic church to God for the sins of mankind.

In the Protestant view, the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance of the sacrifice of Jesus, a re-reading of the story of the Last Supper. The bread and wine or bread and water are symbolic – tokens of their Savior.

Unitarians and Universalists are offshoots of this tradition. Although observing Communion as a remembrance of Jesus has largely faded away, I still remember as a boy growing up in Unitarian Universalist churches how communion was observed on Maundy Thursday – but the occasion became less and less a re-enactment of the Last Supper and increasingly was a remembering of service not only for the life and teachings of Jesus but also other human saviors, ancient and modern; and a time to remember specifically those persons of the church who had died during the year. It was a service of memory and hope. But from the time I was able to think about it, I never perceived it as a sacrament in the way that I sensed that Protestants and Catholics experienced the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist as sacred.

Have we Unitarian Universalists no sense of the sacred? In terms of historic rituals that evoke awe? No. Do we have worship formulas to put us in a direct connection with God? Not that I know of.

In the mid 19th century, Brook Farm in Massachusetts was a rather short-lived communal experiment largely composed of Unitarian transcendentalists. They scorned rituals. One Sunday some of them arrived at the [West Roxbury Unitarian Church] with their lunch baskets. After the service (and to the shock of the staid church members), they marched to [the] platform (or altar) and proceeded to have their picnic there. I believe they were making the point that no place or time is any holier or more sacred than any other.

In varying degrees and usually under less traumatic circumstances, this represents a prevailing attitude among Unitarian Universalists. Are we missing something vital? Perhaps. In an article in VOGUE (I read an extended review), novelist Francine DuPlessix Gray said, “I belonged to that last generation which could blindly believe that salvation lies in an accelerated rationalization and secularization of society, in the hastened improvement of scientific method ... our expressions of joy, sorrow, hope, and particularly our need to honor some form of transcendence will always seek ritual channels if our psychic balance is to survive.”

There is a civilizing force in ritual. Take heed of the great Jewish proverb which says “Today’s news wraps tomorrow’s fish. By your fidelity to the historic female need to safeguard the past, you will ... preserve the quality of quality.”

Does she speak to us, who, perhaps have relied too much on rational discourse and attempts at logical thinking? Yes, and this has been recognized as we seek to touch our emotions as well as our minds. We have no set of historic sacraments either of Judaism or Christianity. When our minds cannot accept what another’s sacrament proclaims as eternal truth, we can observe respectfully or attempt to appreciate, but we cannot feel the profundity of those who have unquestioning faith. [CJW note: “to appreciate is not to belong.”]

However, as many of you know, we do seek the enduring – our celebrating Thanksgiving as gratitude for the harvest of the fields through sharing fruit, bread, nuts, cider, in common worship.

We celebrate the Winter Solstice, not as primary Christian worship, but seek its deeper roots in the lengthening of the light, the rebirth of hope, the holding high of the idea that every night a child is born is a holy night. [CJW note: We celebrate the best yearnings of the human family.] We try to develop a ritual for Earth Day – recognizing our utter dependence on, and our persisting obligation to, the Holy Earth.

We do not always do these rituals excellently, but the continuing effort will be there.

However, beyond all that, I would suggest to you that confining sacraments, the sacred, [and] the sense of the Holy only to rituals within any religious institution is to miss the mark. Paul Tillich, alluding to the endless symbolism in religions, wrote, “Nothing is prevented from becoming a sacred thing.” One’s sense of the sacred may dawn like the morning sun unexpectedly, in various times, places, and human relationship[s]: an introspective moment in solitude, or the experience of both finitude and eternity as the crashing surf of the eternal sea registers on our consciousness and plumbs the unconscious; or most of all, the full acknowledgment that primacy of persons in one’s scale of values and actions gives a sense of the sacred that is unsurpassed.

The greatest religious prophets have always known this. The person of Jesus is the foundation of Christian sacraments. But unless I sadly misread the New Testament literature, the celebrating of formal rituals meant little or nothing to him. Consider what he said in Matthew (5/23 ff; Phillips) “so that if you are offering your gift at the altar, you should remember that your brother has something against you, you must leave your gift before the altar and go away. Make your peace with your brother first, then come and offer your gift.”

Was he not saying “what makes the sacred sacred is one’s relationship to fellow men and women” ?

After the Gotama Buddha’s religious experience under the Bo-tree, he left all that he had to teach by example and precept the primary task of alleviating human suffering. That was his sense of the sacred.

Or consider Amos, the earliest of the prophets of social justice. Rituals as rituals were an abomination to him (5/21): “I hate, I despise your feasts and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though ye offer me your burnt-offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

Thus, the sense of the sacred cannot be confined to a ritual or a place, even though celebrations of joyous and poignant human experiences can be observed in a church, fellowship, temple, or shrine. But ... as Tillich wrote, when there is confusion between the symbols and that to which they point – that is idolatry. To worship the symbol alone, no matter how holy it is proclaimed, is to be profane.

We will differ in our experiences of the holy, the sacred, but there is no need to be fearful or angry at our differences as long as we have some sense of the holiness of all existence and the sacredness of persons.

I like what Theodore Roszak wrote (PERSON/PLANET, p. 167):

“We meet as strangers, each carrying a mystery within us. I cannot say who you are; I may never know you completely. But I trust that you are a person in your own right, possessed of a beauty and value that are the world’s richest resources. So I make this promise to you: I will impose no identities on you, but will invite you to become yourself, without shame or fear. I will defend your right to find an authentic vocation. For as long as your search takes, you have my loyalty.”