Religion In The Absence Of Service

June 3, 1984
Lakeland

If religion is mainly a matter of the Sunday service – the Roman Catholic Mass, the Protestant service with Lord's Prayer and Bible text, or Unitarian Universalist meeting with our Green Book songs, discourse on this and that, rounded out not with a benediction but a sharing of minds and the communion of the coffee pot, then for our kind of calendar, religion takes a vacation.

On the last day of school when I was a lad, there was a ritual chant:

No more pencils
No more books
No more teachers' dirty looks

Perhaps for the last Sunday of our regular worship season, we too might respond to a jingle:

No more pulpit
No more plate
No more worry
coming early or late.

I kid you not – for me there is a big sigh of relief in finishing the last sermon of the season. It is not so much mental or physical fatigue but rather the need for the mind to be fallow for a time so there will be a better compost for new growth. But that is a preacher's reason, or, alibi, if you like. If suddenly it were thrust upon me to prepare a discourse for next Sunday, I'd have some miserable hours, let me assure you. One CAN become stale.

But that is just one kind of response. More and more of our fellowships and churches continue Sunday meetings through the summer. Usually, the minister is not in the pulpit but in the audience, if he/she is in town. There is value in the regular continuity of the fellowship gathering. I would welcome our planning for such regularity in spite of the probability of low attendance. There could be coffee and conversation (planned or spontaneous) on the patio early enough to escape noon. heat. This is a suggestion for future planning. But I, for one, would he unhappy if there was spoken or unspoken obligation for anyone to be present.

Even in the absence of service, the regular worship service that is, religion always has, and can now guide us to the centers of what is vital – the Universe and human relations.

The Universe is our home – our only home. Our man-made polluted air, jangling telephones, crowded traffic, irritated shoppers and sassy salespeople, macho speeders are causes enough to open our feelings to the natural world. There are those who, less than others, respond to the wonder, beauty, and strangeness of the world we did not create or manufacture. Some persons may be oblivious:

"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And nothing more."

But most of us, I believe, are somewhat more kin to Wordsworth's feeling (THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US):

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -- Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

We can regain our hearts by opening our thoughts and feelings to Nature. I have been on the shores of great oceans and contemplated the far horizons where sea and sky become one; I have become excited as crashing surf pounds against craggy rocks, ceaselessly. Have you, too, experienced the wonder of snow-capped giant mountains, monuments of mysterious grandeur, whether seen from above in an airplane or from a valley below?

One need not travel to the Pacific or Atlantic or Rocky Mountains to know the worship experience that Nature generously offers. Walk around Lake Morton in the quiet dusk when swans are nesting and the ducks are gliding silently through the still waters, their propulsion unseen. One of the paths of my walking takes me now and then to Camphor Drive. Do you know it? The massive, old, twisted trunks and abundant foliage provide a calm, almost other-worldly benison in a fevered world. One senses that those so-called "Pagan" peoples who worshiped the tree as a symbol of life were not far wrong.

It is difficult to remain angry at the world when there is so much in Nature "that is ours" if only we will pause and sense the majesty of growth, change/renewal, beauty, persistence. The feelings engendered are religious, even though the formalities of worship are absent.

Human relations, too, are at the vital center of religion even in the absence of the religious service. The reading from L. P. Jacks is a pertinent guide. Do you recall the reading? Religion is taught in the academic studies by accuracy, truthful speaking, humanity, breadth of mind, thoroughness, reverence, fair play. This is not just a superb model for teachers and students, but a guide to religion, whether or not there is ever a formal worship service.

What one's real religion is has to do with conduct – not only in school out also in the many interlocking circles of our lives. Are my relationships with other persons honest and kind? Do I become mightily angry for trivial causes? Do I see other persons as objects or stereotypes? If I am indignant about an issue, do I attack the person rather than the problem? Am I ever contemptuous of another person? Most of us, if we are candid with ourselves, would acknowledge, even if only to ourselves, that at times we have failed the tests of an I-Thou basis for meeting another person. When we do miss the mark, we have been backsliders to the values we profess about the dignity and worth of every person. That is a test of religion. When there are times when we fail, with an "E" or an "F", we have the power to reach with determination to achieve higher marks.

Simone Weil (quoted in "Context") in her essay, "Human Personality" wrote (her words not degenderized), "You do not interest me! No man can say these words to another without committing a cruelty and offending against justice."

One thing more, I have been talking about "Religion in the absence of service," referring to the regular Sunday service. But there is another and important way this phrase can be perceived. Religion without service in the cause of the humane values religion professes is a paltry religion, irrespective of whatever satisfactions one may get from measured chants, ritual glitter, or intellectual stimulation.

Because the letter named James in the Christian scriptures is not a testament of faith as Christian dogma developed, some Christian theologians have dismissed it. Martin Luther called the Letter of James an "epistle of straw" and wished that it were not in the New Testament. Not faith, but conduct, was the true loyalty of a follower of Jesus, testified the unknown author of "James":

Ch 1 22/27:
"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Service is the center of religion with a boundless circumference. When one reviews the admirable persons one has known, is not "doing" an ineradicable part of the picture we hold or remember? Some may have been social prophets speaking out against injustice or cruelty, organizing or supporting social movements designed to make a change for the better. Others may devote their lives as helping professionals, loving homemakers, loyal workers, parents who are both wise and kind. Others may (such as our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee or the American Friends Service Committee) work steadily to help people help themselves. Fortunately for the survival of the human venture until now, the list of doers is long and the efforts endless.

Today, the Tommy Award expresses the gratitude we feel for those who "do" religion not just testify to it. [CJW note: Freda is our example today.] If you review the recipients of the awards given on the plaque, you will perceive at least some of the expressions of religion in action. You will also note that the awards have no bias toward or against any particular religious beliefs. [CJW note: Particular “faith” loyalties are irrelevant to the Tommy Award. Has the community been served? That is the test.]

Thomas Jefferson once said "the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture." (Quoted Vol 2, p.126, JEFFERSON, Dumas Malone)

Now, one can argue that adding a useful plant may not be the greatest service to a culture. Jefferson himself gave many services, and most would judge [them] more important to our country. However, his statement illustrates that there are hardly any limits to service, individual or social. Priorities differ in different times and conditions. But all human endeavor for the human venture is religion in action.

There are American Indian cultures, the Nootka Indians, for one, whose language contains no nouns, only verbs. In that language, there are no things, only processes.

What a test of religion it would be if there were no nouns: Truth not as an intellectual formula, but something one does.

Justice not as an abstraction, but something one performs.

The only way to argue for the existence of God would be the way one behaves.

Well, we can't polevault out of our culture or abolish our language forms or structures of thought. Yet, it would enrich many lives if we were unable to conceive of religion apart from service. If we had to "do" religion, not just believe it.

In the interim between our regular Sunday services, I will try to appreciate, to feel, to grasp the world.. In the absence of Sunday services, we may embrace the wonderful world ever-waiting for our discovery and re-discovery, and that, whether or not there are regular meetings for worship. Furthermore, may consciousness be honed to become more aware that there are no important religious beliefs apart from service – service to others.