“Is This Heaven?”
A Sermon delivered at the First Universalist Society in Franklin, MA
The Reverend Carol Rosine
February 19, 2006
I think I can safely say that as a child my religious life was ruined by the notion of the afterlife. I was obsessed with the fear of Hell. The nuns at my convent school instructed me in the Catholic doctrine of mortal sin, which seemed perilously easy to commit. If you die with one unshriven and unrequited mortal sin on your soul, you would languish in Hell for all eternity. Religion, as far as I could see, was chiefly concerned with “getting into Heaven.” A stockpile of prayers and good deeds could ensure my entry ticket into paradise, but I also resorted to the gaining of indulgences, the wearing of scapulas, and the practice of attending Mass on the first Friday of every month. If you managed five consecutive first Fridays, you were promised that you would not die without receiving the last rites and having the chance to confess all to a priest.
This type of piety seems no more religious than paying into a retirement annuity to secure a comfortable retirement in the hereafter…. (This type of piety) can also feed an attitude of exclusivity. I sometimes think that if some Christians arrived in Heaven and found everybody there, they would be furious: Heaven wouldn’t be Heaven if the elect are deprived of the Schadenfreude of peering over the celestial parapets to watch the excluded unfortunates roasting below.
Eschatology has produced some fearful visions in recent years. The suicide bomber who blasts his way into paradise, expecting to be eternally entertained by 70 virgins, is possessed by murderous hatred and rage. The fundamentalist Christian who eagerly expects to be raptured into Heaven before the Tribulation of the End is assured of a ringside seat whence he or she can watch the suffering of unbelievers during the Last Days. Not all religion is good; there is bad religion in the same way as there is bad art, bad cooking, and bad sex. In fact, religion is difficult to do well and we are seeing a lot of bad religion at the moment….
Sing: “Where Do We Come From?”
Sermon:
It’s been said that religion arose out of the dual reality of being alive and knowing we have to die. These seem to be a couple of the biggest questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? Some of us are OK with the notion that Life is a riddle and a mystery. That there are some aspects of life that are beyond our comprehension. That cannot be fully known. That will remain mysterious until, perhaps, we cross over to whatever it is that awaits. Provided, of course, that there is something that awaits.
But others are not able to rest easy with riddles and mysteries. At a recent Roman Catholic funeral mass, the priest said, “If we don’t believe in Heaven, then what’s the point?” And so in order for life to have meaning and purpose, belief systems have evolved to tell us what the point is of it all.
Some of you may recall that after the Mormon Temple in Belmont was completed a few years ago and before it was sealed, it was open for public tours. The Temple is not where
Mormons go to worship but where Mormons in good standing can go for instruction and special rituals. The tour guide told us that the Temple is a reminder of what heaven is like. The whole interior is white and gold. Those allowed to enter after the Temple is sealed remove their street clothes and dress in white robes. You enter and everyone is dressed in flowing white robes, surrounded by white marble and gold. This is what heaven is like for them.
It seems that it’s the Christians and the Muslims who are most preoccupied with Heaven, Hell, and this whole concept of Judgement. It’s not that big a deal for Jews. They are more concerned with being in right relationship with God and with Tikkun, the repair of this world, then they are in what happens after we die. Even the Buddha when he was asked whether those who had achieved enlightenment, those who had reached nirvana, would continue to exist after death said that this was not a proper question. There are not words to describe what this is, the Buddha said, so it’s pointless to talk about it. It’s better to focus on this world, he said. “Until you have learned to serve others, how can you serve spirits?”
When I was in theological school, a Christian seminary, I was puzzled by those who saw death as something to be feared, that death was a punishment for Adam & Eve’s disobedience in the Garden. This was a strange concept to me and as I reflected on it, I realized that this was not the message taught in the Methodist church of my childhood or by my mother. Out there in rural Iowa, the cycle of life and death was always present. People grieved, of course, but death wasn’t something to be feared. Death was just part of life. And there was an assurance that if you had lived a pretty good life, it wasn’t punishment that awaited, but some kind of union with God. It was a going home to a place where you’d be reunited with loved ones who’d gone before. Those left behind were comforted by the belief that they would eventually be with their loved ones once more. That those who died were in a better place. A place that was waiting for everyone. Everyone, that is, who’d been baptized. Who were Christian. That was the key that would open the door to heaven. Being a Christian.
So how about those of us who are Unitarian Universalists? Do we get a key? Our roots, of course, are in Liberal Christianity so those Unitarians and Universalists in the 18th & 19th Centuries would have assumed that they had keys to Heaven. They believed in salvation and that a better place awaited beyond the veil separating the living from the dead.
However, we have not remained as closely tied to our Biblical heritage as have most Protestant churches. Instead, Unitarian Universalism has been strongly influenced by Eastern thought going all the way back to the 18th Century when Joseph Priestly began a two-way dialogue with liberal Hindus in India. This influence is especially evident in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson who was a Unitarian minister before he left to devote his life to writing and lecturing. Emerson did not experience God as being totally other—as being out there someplace, separate from us. Instead he believed that God, the Divine, dwells within us and that “there is no bar or wall where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins.” He talked of the Oversoul, a concept that encompasses and is part of the individual and all of nature and, at the same time, transcends the individual and the rest of nature. Everything is part of an Eternal One, according to Emerson.
But in addition to be grounded in the Biblical tradition and influenced by Eastern thought, we UU’s are also grounded in the Enlightenment, in the Age of Reason, by the reliance on the scientific method. And as a result there is a strong strain of humanism running throughout our religion. We are skeptical of claims that have no scientific basis, on scenarios based wholly on speculation, on faith. And as a result, there are a lot of UU’s who believe that when the physical body dies, that’s it. There is no eternal life. No heaven. Nothing on the other side of that veil. The only way in which the individual survives in the memories of those left behind or in those things that the individual accomplished while alive.
So here we are. Just as we Unitarian Universalists carry with us a variety of understandings of God or no-God, so we also have different understandings of what happens when we die. Some of us have faith that the soul does live on in some way, perhaps even in some place where there is a re-uniting with loved ones. Some of us may believe that at death our spirits become part of a Universal Oneness and that we as unique individuals cease to exist. Some of us believe that when we die, that’s it. And some of us are content with mystery. With not knowing.
The belief that seems to work for me is the understanding that our souls are immortal and that what we experience here is an embodiment of that immortal soul. That we are here to learn and to grow in deeper understandings of how we are to be in relationship with each other and with the divine. I don’t know, of course, if this is really so, but this belief of mine is what provides guidance for me as I’m deciding each day how I am to live.
The bottom line is that none of us know for sure what awaits us on the other side, if indeed there is another side. It really is a mystery. And yet I can’t believe that it’s something to be feared. Whether it’s total oblivion or a continuation of the soul or the spirit in some way, it doesn’t seem that it should be something to fear.
Mary Oliver has a lovely poem about death entitled “White Owl flies into and out of the field”:
Coming down/out of the freezing sky/with its depths of light,
Like an angel, / or a buddha with wings,
It was beautiful / and accurate.
Striking the snow and whatever was there
With a force that left the imprint / of the tips of its wings—
Five feet apart—and the grabbing/ thrust of its feet,
And the indentation of what had been running
Through the white valleys / of the snow—
And then it rose, gracefully,
And flew back to the frozen marshes,/ to lurk there,
Like a little lighthouse,/ in the blue shadows—
So I thought:/ maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,
As soft as feathers—
That we are instantly weary of looking,
and looking and shut our eyes,
Not without amazement, / and let ourselves be carried,
As through the translucence of mica / to the river
That is without the least dapple of shadow—
that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—
in which we are washed and washed / out of our bones.
What lovely images Mary Oliver creates for us. A white owl swooping down and wrapping her soft feathers around us and we, weary of looking, let ourselves be carried into the light. What a gentle image she creates as she ponders what happens at death.
It is said that when we are no longer afraid to die, then we will no longer be afraid to live. It seems to me that this is true. Karen Armstrong talks about her obsession with sin when she was young and how fearful she was that she would die with an unshriven or unrequited sin on her soul and end up in Hell. This became her main focus. And then there are those on the other end of the spectrum, those who act as if they’re going to get out of this alive, or at least delay it as long as possible. Those who run miles each day on the treadmill, who faithfully swim their laps, who dye their hair and smooth away the wrinkles. We’re told that the old 60 is new 40. In other words those of us in our 60’s are supposed to look and feel like folks used to look and feel in their 40’s. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you who are in your 60’s and 70’s, but I sure don’t look or feel like I did 20 years ago. I’m experiencing the passage of time.
The priest said that if we don’t believe in Heaven, then what’s the point? Well, it seems to me that this is the point. This, right now, right here, this moment is the point. What we are doing with our lives. What we are choosing to do. How we are deciding to live each moment. We human beings have been blessed with an enormous amount of freedom which includes the freedom to choose. Now this doesn’t mean that we have control over everything that comes into our lives. God only knows that there is so much that happens as we move through life that we’d never wish for or plan for. However, most of the time we are able to choose how we will respond to what life brings, difficult as that choosing might be sometimes.
We Unitarian Universalists tend to focus on this life instead of obsessing over what might happen in the next. Are we in right relationship with the people in our lives? Does the work we do bring fulfillment, a certain amount of contentment? Are we careful about the way in which we spend our time? Do we think about the impact our decisions and actions will have on others? Are we attempting to live in concert with our deepest beliefs and values? Are we doing something, anything, to bring more justice, more equity, more love into this aching world of ours? Are we walking as gently as possible upon the earth? Are our eyes open? Our ears? Our hearts? Do we experience a deep abiding joy at times? Are we grateful for the abundance of blessings that surround us, that embrace us every moment that we are awake?
The Buddha said that it’s pointless to talk about whether the soul will continue to exist after it reaches nirvana. There are no words to describe it so why discuss it. Besides, he says, until you know about living, how can you learn about the dead?
There is so much in life that remains a riddle and a mystery. But the here and the now, this moment, if lived fully with our eyes & hearts wide open, can bring us a taste of the immortal, of what is eternally right and good and beautiful.
I close with another Mary Oliver poem that I know is familiar to many of you:
Who made the world? / Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper? /This grasshopper, I mean—
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,
How to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
That’s the big question, my friends. Not about heaven, but what we plan to with this one wild and precious life we’ve been given.