Religious Authority might, at first glance, seem sort of an odd thing for a group of Unitarian Universalists to be discussing, because, really, what does authority have to do with our religious beliefs anyway?
Aren’t we the church were you can believe anything you want to?
We are in fact, not the church where you can believe anything you want to.
In fact, I would submit to you that we are the church were you believe that which you must. We are called to believe that which calls to us from deep within ourselves. And since we are many, so are the truthes that call to us.
And any one of us will be negotiating between two or more ideas about what truth is, at any given time.
So, no, this is not the church of you can believe anything.
The expression of our faith is NOT passed down from one person, whether she or he stands behind a pulpit or not.
Here each of us is called to reach deep within our sense of the religious and bring forth a guidance, which we must believe.
Not what we’d like to believe.
But what we must believe.
Even if those beliefs can sometimes be profoundly inconvenient.
Often when people first consider ministry, their ministers, or a minister who knows them, will tell them “If there is anything else you can do, you must do that thing. You can only go into the ministry if you can go into nothing else.”
This may sound like a funny thing. You can only go into the ministry if you can do nothing else…
In two weeks I’ll be preaching about ministerial authority, and we’ll talk some more about things people to say to seminarians, but for now I wanted to place that phrase “if you can do nothing else” in front of you.
We believe what we believe because we can believe no-thing other than that.
For some of us, embracing that we cannot not embrace, what we must embrace, comes at the end of a long, difficult journey and that often begins with a crisis of faith.
Along this journey, or really any religious journey worth embarking on, some words, terms and concepts must be encountered, wrestled with, knocked to the ground, dusted off, and sometimes even formerly rejected terms, for full, deep healing to take place, some ideas must be re-embraced, even if means having a different relationship with these deeply important things.
Since your worship associate for the month, Janice Goodloe, and I sat down and gave this sermon it’s title of “Defining Our Terms,” perhaps it’s time to talk a little bit about the definition of the two words “Religious,” and “Authority.”
This week I went down to the Main Branch of the Stanislaus County Library to find the Oxford English Dictionary. The big one. With all the etymology of words and examples of that particular definitions earliest written example.
As you might be able to tell, doing this kind of research is sort of a guilty pleasure.
The first word I looked up was “Religious.”
Religious
a. Adj. Imbued with religion; exhibiting the spiritual or practical effects of religion; pious, godly, god-fearing, devout.
b. Most religious; used as an epithet of royalty
c. C. Holy, sacred
d. Of persons bound by monastic vows; belonging to a religious order, esp. in the Church of Rome.
Okay, so there wasn’t anything really surprising in this definition. But there was an additional note, and this, my friends, is why I love the OED.
The note says: Religion etymology. By Cicero connected with relegere to read over again, but by later authors with relagare to be bind. The latter view has usually been favored by modern writers in explaining the force of the word by its supposed etymological meaning.
I am familiar with the, according to the OED, more modern idea of where the word religion comes from. To bind up, together.
It’s a very sweet meaning, isn’t it? It leads one to the idea that we are journeying together, attached to each other by our shared beliefs.
It’s very poetic, too, deep with imagery and the possibility of poetry.
But I am actually more interested in the lessor known concept of the origin of religion; relegere, to read over again.
Cicero’s meaning is more about the practice of religion, the constant practice of the art of belief.
I’d like to share a story with you. It’s from a book entitled A Monastery Within: Tales from the Buddhist Path, written by Gil Frondal
An engineer had been a regular and devoted visitor to the monastery for many years. The meditation practice taught at the monastery was the only thing that made sense to him. In fact, the pragmatic logic of the meditation teachings gave him hope that he could overcome his chronic unhappiness and deeply felt pain. He tried all the meditation practices that the Abbess taught him. He began each practice technique with enthusiasm only to have each end with the same frustration. He would encounter a wall he couldn’t pass. The closer he came to the wall the more he would recoil back into trying to think his way out of his pain.
Offering him much support, the Abbess encouraged him to relax, trust the practice, and simply feel his inner pain without reacting to it. After many years the Abbess decided a different approach was needed.
During his next visit to the monastery the Abbess told him that if he wanted to continue being her student and to be able to return to the monastery he would have to take on a special practice. Once he had completed the assignment he could then return for deeper teachings. Once more feeling hope, the engineer quickly agreed.
The Abbess said, “For two years I want to you volunteer ten hours a week at the maternity ward at the local hospital. The hospital needs people to hold babies who are born pre-maturely. If they don’t receive enough physical contact, the babies will not grow healthily. When you have finished these two years, please come back to see me.”
The man was quite perplexed by this instruction. But because of his trust in the Abbess and his failure to find any relief elsewhere, he plunged into volunteering in the maternity ward. He was surprised at how small and fragile the babies were that he held. He would hold them ever so carefully. He would watch their every breath because they all seemed in danger of stopping breathing. He spent a lot of time thinking about how he could more effectively care for the babies he held. But there was nothing more effective than simply holding them against his chest.
After about six months he started feeling something quite new. He started to feel a little spot of warmth and softness in the very center of his being. Since this was a foreign experience that didn’t fit any of the ways he thought about himself, he ignored it.
Ignoring it was the best thing he could have done because it prevented him from interfering with the warmth by thinking about it too much. Over the following months this tender spot grew until it pervaded his body. As it did, the cold, dark wall around his heart slowly relaxed, thawed and dissolved.
When he had completed his two years of volunteering in the maternity ward, the engineer returned to the monastery. The abbess saw immediately that he was a changed man. He was no longer desperate and he was no longer trying to fit everything he experienced into a conceptual framework. Now he wanted to learn what else the Abbess had to teach.
Giving him a new instruction, the Abbess said to him, “When you meditate, don’t think about what is happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth you feel in your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful”
The man found this to be true.
This is Cicero’s meaning. It is in the re-doing, the practice, the mastery, this is where the word religion has its greatest meaning.
It is true that we come together, that we, as the signer of the Declaration of Independence did, we affix our names to paper, to be bound together. By so doing, we are engaging in relegare, being bound together.
It is in the relegere that we manifest our beliefs.
As to the definition of Authority, the Abbess in our story is an example, albeit a very gentle example, of the most common view of authority.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines Authority thusly:
I. Power to enforce obedience
1a. Power or right to enforce obedience; more al or legal supremacy; the right to command, or give an ultimate decision
1b. In authority; in a position of power; in possession of power over others
II. Derived or delegated power;
2a. Derived or delegated power; conferred right or title; authorization.
2b. With inference. Conferred right to do something.
1569. Bp. Scott in Strype Ann Ref. I App. Vii 13 By commission from him, prestes hathe aucthoryte to forgyve sin.
III. Those in authority.
3b. Power to influence action, opinion or belief.
IV. Power to influence the conduct and actions of others; personal or practical influence.
V. Power over or title to influence, the opinions of others; authoritative opinion; weight of judgment or opinion, intellectual influence.
VI. Power to inspire belief, title to be believed; authoritative statement; weight of testimony, sometimes weakened to Authorship, testimony.
If you listen closely, one hears the word “power” a lot in that definition.
What I’d like to focus our attention on, though is the 2nd definition. Derived or delegated power, conferred right to do something.
Accompanying the second definition are the following examples: Derived or delegate power: from a sermon by John Wycliff from 1375 “[He] reproved him sharpli bi autorite of God.”
And, from 1569 the sentence “By commission from him, prestes hathe the aucthrotyte to forgyve sin,” is the example for the subdefinition “conferred right to do something.
These two definitions of authority, dating back to the 14th century, are for our purposes, the most interesting and relevant definitions.
Religious Authority, especially as practiced in our faith of Unitarian Universalism, is based not on divine or legal will, but rather any religious authority is granted by delegation, and conferred.
The engineer in the story could’ve easily walked away, any number of times from the Abbess and the monastery. He could’ve found her assignment too onerous to be bothered with. But instead, he delegated authority to the Abbess, trusting her.
I am the interim minster of this congregation. For a year now, I have been the minister of this gathering of people. Inherent in that is some authority.
But it is authority granted me by the people who I serve.
It is not absolute, it is not eternal.
I am entrusted with it.
And when you call your next minister, you will also be granting them this same source of authority.
We invest each other, here, with religious authority. We entrust each other with our deep wounds, and our brilliant joys. Here we gather, week after week, to hear about how the people we’ve come to love here are doing in their lives.
We are fellow travelers, each finding our own way from journey’s beginning to journey’s end. The more we can invest in each other, the richer our journey shall surely be.
Written for and delivered to
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County
January 6, 2013
© Rev. Joseph M Cherry
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