Rabbi Sarah Mack will talk about finding the Sabbath; taking the time to rekindle the holiness in our lives, in our homes, and in our relationships.

Rabbi Sarah Mack is the Senior Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Providence Rhode Island where she has served for 20 years.

 

“Love Beyond Belief” – Sermon preached by the Rev. Liz Lerner Maclay, October 22, 2023, at the First Unitarian Church of Providence.

There are a lot of off-the-cuff summations of Unitarian and Universalist belief and practice. One is that Unitarians are the people of the head, Universalists are the people of the heart. Another is an old joke: Universalists believe that god is too good to damn them. Unitarians believe they’re too good for god to damn.

But in the end, though there’s some recognizable seed underneath all the jokes and generalizations, these two religions merged in the 1960’s, rightly seeing that they were so alike and aligned, that they would be stronger together, bringing gifts each other needed and could grow. I was raised in an originally Unitarian church that kept that name: the First Unitarian Society of Newton until just a few years ago, even though it wholly claimed modern Unitarian Universalist identity. And I can see how much we were about ideas more than feelings, even a little suspicious of feelings – and that this began to change in ways that were enriching for us, not least because for a long time we had a very beloved minister, Gerry Krick, who wasn’t the greatest preacher but was a marvelous, pastoral and caring leader nonetheless.

I remember also when the catchphrase of Unitarian Universalism as I was growing up was “Reason, freedom and tolerance.” It made sense – we have always been and will, I hope, always be, a faith allied with science and thought, a faith that believes people must be free to explore their questions and answers of faith and meaning, a faith that seeks to respect all others and create environments for sharing and learning rather than exclusion and judgment.

But in the end, people seek more than just to be tolerated – so we learned to push for more: radical welcome and inclusion. And while reason and freedom are still important to us, there were other religious values and elements we realized were missing. One that had been much more spoken of in our religious past was love. In fact, there was an old, historic covenant that was so popular among Unitarian churches at one time that many of them used slightly varying versions of the same covenant, rather than creating their own. It was still in use at the small and lovely First Religious Society in Carlisle Mass, the UU church where I trained as a young ministry student many years ago and it went like this:

Love is the doctrine of this church.

The quest for truth is its sacrament.

And service is its prayer.

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace,

To seek knowledge in freedom

And to serve humanity in friendship

To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony

With each other and the divine.

Thus do we covenant with each other

And with God.

Now we are coming back to think about love and where it belongs in our faith and communities. In the last couple of decades, it has helped undergird our social justice work first as we declared we were Standing on the Side of Love and then simplified it to just Side With Love, which has informed everything from Marriage Equality advocacy to Immigration Justice. Currently, the Article II Study commission has found that Love is an essential, shared theological core value for our faith, so much so that they are putting forward new language and definitions for our self-understanding which put love conceptually and even visually at the center.

Our own First U has also done this work, and a little in advance of the larger national movement. About a year before COVID hit, we spent a week and a half working with Rev. Dr. Thandeka, a leading UU theologian and congregational consultant, on many levels with lay leadership, staff, committees, and laity generally to look at what our hopes and needs were for our church as an institution and a community. One of the many results that came out of that time was the Worship Committee’s unanimous and enthusiastic endorsement of changes to our worship service, including choosing to begin our services with a phrase that Thandeka had invited us to consider with her: the declaration that this is a place where we ‘love beyond belief.’

There’s at least a twofold nature to this. First, of course, the suggestion that there is a lot of love here – more than one might expect, more, even, than one might believe – and that this is what we can find when we are part of this beloved community. I think it’s true – the more time one spends here in this community, the more clear it is how many layers of family and friendship, longstanding ties and fresh, vital new connections, depths of compassion and service and sharing that are wonderful and inspiring, including to me, your minister. I learn about new ones all the time – people quietly doing amazing things as demonstrations of care and commitment that blow me away.

The second side of love beyond belief is the affirmation that love ties us together regardless of, and across, many different beliefs. Unitarian Universalism is a pluralistic faith. Some of us believe in god, some don’t.  Some follow the teaching of the Buddha; some grew up in Islam and are still informed by what we learned there. Some are humanists, some are pagans, some are mystics, some are rooted in our Jewish heritage, some are pan-entheists seeing god infused throughout the world. Some aren’t sure what we believe, some of us are finding our beliefs are changing and aren’t sure yet where they’re landing. But of all of us, this church with its character, commitments and community, traditions and talents, and vast array of beliefs, all welcome, all valid, all worth learning and sharing, is where we find meaning, where we belong, the church we believe in, the church we can love, and church where we can be loved, whatever our individual beliefs – love regardless of belief, love beyond belief.

It’s beginning to live into that love-beyond-belief identity that has shown me the more ways that this journey carries promise beyond imagining. Our relationship with Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church is such a beautiful example of that. I remember one day a few years ago, sitting at lunch at Gregg’s over on N. Main St with Pastor Howard Jenkins. This is a thing we do – we either meet at Gregg’s or more recently at Red Stripe over in Wayland Square. Either place, you can get one heck of a huge slice of cake for dessert. But that’s beside the point. We were at Gregg’s, and nowhere near ready for dessert and I was telling Pastor Jenkins about our work with Thandeka and what the fruit it was bearing within First U. And he said: “But that’s also us. I love that. That’s also what we’re doing, with our churches. We believe differently. But we are building relationships of trust and care, of love beyond belief. We are creating love beyond belief that is powerful and important, especially now when so many connections in society are breaking down. We are building up, relations grounded in respect and mutuality, we are learning from each other, we are growing each other in love beyond belief. This is love beyond belief.”

I can’t tell you the impact of having Howard say that. It’s so easy to be a well-meaning straight white person reading all kinds of meaning into situations without really being sure whether our perception is shared by those inhabiting very different identities and realities. And it hadn’t occurred to me until then that our First U love beyond belief could reach not just among us all but beyond us. But the greatest lesson I have learned from Howard Jenkins is his insight that ‘integration without relationship is still segregation.’ I can’t tell you how wholly I believe that is what’s wrong with every one of our society’s failed attempts at integration – they were always integration without relationship. And love beyond belief is all about building relationships.

But in the end, love beyond belief relationships aren’t only intended as mostly a means for justice work. When Thandeka began to amplify on this concept, her idea was that love beyond belief enhances spiritual vitality by building lovingkindness within our churches, openheartedness that comes from discovering connections between us that create awe, care and joy. We begin to feel and offer unconditional love to each other in small and then larger ways and then we engage the real power of love, the power to heal hearts, mend souls, calm our anxious minds because we are feeling – and woven into being a part of – love.

As Thandeka lays it out, ‘in the language of theism, the experience of love beyond belief can be described as an experience of God. In the language of Humanism, the experience of love beyond belief can be described as a flash of insight and understanding bringing humanity together. These experiences mark the beginning of wholeness in our broken lives.’

I remember when I first came to First U for my candidating week I talked about some of this in a different way – I talked about all the defensive layers we grow around ourselves to get through life and the loneliness of that – and that church invites us to shed those layers, to trust, to be open to each other in order to allow ourselves the incredible experience of deep community that is communion when all souls grow into harmony with each other and with the divine. Closeness rather than distance. Trust rather than protection. Respect and even cherishing rather than duty or political correctness.

And I know closeness isn’t comfortable for all of us. For some of us it’s almost never comfortable. But this is part of what we are doing now at First U. Getting closer. Shedding our layers. Trusting. Sharing. And in doing all that, growing our love.

I have Zak Mettger’s permission to tell you that I was talking about this sermon with her earlier this week and she said she has mixed feelings about us declaring we are a church that loves beyond belief – both because she had heard it was something imposed on us from above – maybe by Thandeka. She didn’t know it was a choice. But also, and I am honored that she confided this to me and then said she was fine with me sharing this with you – also love beyond belief is hard for her to believe because she hasn’t experienced a lot of love ever in her life. So love doesn’t feel like a reality she can really lean into. And Zak’s such a marvelous person – that she hasn’t known abundant love is heartbreaking to me – and I’m so glad we are here as a place that matters to her, where she does a lot and has friends and feels at home. I’ll take ‘at home’ for now. But one day, for her, for all of us, I want it to be loved. Because she is – and I want her to know it, I want us all to know it, to feel it, to help the joy and care that comprise love flow abundantly within and among us all.

I remember once when I was visiting a favorite congregation, Middle Collegiate in New York City. I was there for worship, and there were already people in every pew. Hesitantly I approached an African American woman sitting alone on the aisle in her pew and asked if I could sit in that pew also. She smiled and said “of course!” and made room for me to pass her. I sat next to her, not too close, not too far, feeling awkward because I didn’t know her or anyone there. And she turned to me and said “How are you?” Like she meant it. Not just a politeness, a distant “how are you.” Like she really cared about my answer. I was so shocked I just automatically said “Fine” without thinking – much less thoughtful than she had been. And then I asked her how she was and the terrible truth is that I don’t remember her answer because I was still so blown away by her question, simply by how she asked it. She cared. It’s part of the love that flows palpably in that church, which is part of why I always go there when I can, because in that church I feel love beyond belief, every time. It is sustaining and inspiring and gives me so much hope to be there.

Middle Collegiate taught me that perhaps second only to a happy family, church should be the last place people should feel skeptical about their ability to receive, or give, love and care to each other. I mean it. I came here because I fell for this church, for all of you, twice! I see and experience love among this beloved community all the time. And I see the ways we care for each other and our world growing all the time, to the end, I hope and believe that all of us will see and experience love among this beloved community, that eventually we could be so good at it that people will feel it from the moment we first arrive to end of our days here.

The kind of soul-sharing, soul-supporting, soul-learning and connections I’m talking about don’t require that we all know each other inside out. But it does require that we can be close sometimes, especially now when I think we’re moving through such challenging times. We are none of us alone in this. We can do this together, and all it takes is caring and staying connected with each other. When things are hard or intimidating, we need to look carefully and gently at each other, we need to open up rather than protect ourselves – from each other! – and feel the acceptance and support we offer each other, on this journey. That is what love beyond belief means. It’s powerful medicine. It’s what the doctor ordered for just these days of division and struggle. We can already see the power of its healing and deepening within and among us. I hope we can keep love here, grow it, channel and manifest it more and more. How are you? Amen.