"A Community of Reverence"

The Rev. Suzanne Meyer

Affirmation During the Service

Though our knowledge is incomplete, our truth partial, and our love imperfect, we believe that new light is ever waiting to break through individual hearts and minds to enlighten the ways of all; that there is mutual strength In willing cooperation, and the bonds of love keep open the gates of freedom.

—Napoleon W. Lovely

On March 11, 2001, six months to the day before followers of Osama Bin Laden hijacked planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a curious story out of Afghanistan filtered through the various news media. It didn't seem all that important to most of us. But had we recognized it then, it might well have foreshadowed what was to come.

The news reported that members of the Taliban, the right wing Islamic militia that had that gradually seized control of Afghanistan during the 1990s, were using cannons and explosives to demolish two standing statues of the Buddha, statues that dated from the third century. The giant, 175- and 120-foot Buddhas, said to be the largest in the world, were carved into the side of a cliff at Bamiyan, 75 miles North of Kabul. These magnificent statues had existed long before and long after Afghanistan became a Muslim nation. Prior to the take over by the Taliban, the Buddhas were long cherished as part of Afghanistan's rich, diverse cultural history. But the Taliban, described as a radical right-wing sect within Islam, in order to justify the destruction of the Buddhas, cited the Islamic prohibition against the worship of religious idols.

To be sure, there was a cry of outrage against the destruction of these ancient statues, with much of it coming from the international Muslim community. What was being said was this: Islam prohibits the worship of idols, icons or statues. That statement is true, but mainstream Islam also teaches respect for the symbols and artifacts of other religions. To destroy intentionally or to denigrate the sacred objects of another religion is not in keeping with traditional Muslim practice. The fact that the giant statues of the Buddha had been left undisturbed for so long was proof, they claimed, that authentic Islam does not advocate attacks on the religious symbols or practices of non-Muslims.

Nevertheless, members of the right-wing militia attacked the 1,500-year-old stone carvings with cannon fire, reducing them to rubble. Whether one views these carvings as sacred icons, or simply as works of art, or in the very least as valuable cultural artifacts, part of the historical record of the Afghani people, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was an immeasurable loss.

To be sure, history is replete with examples of the destruction of culturally significant sites in the name of religion. In the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors in the New World attempted to wipe out the indigenous Mayas' religion by tearing down their temples and using the stones to build churches. The Chinese Communist government demolished more than 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries before and during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. And Hindu extremists demolished a 16th-century mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya in 1992.

With all the other reports of Taliban-initiated violence against the Afghani people, especially against their women, not to mention their acts of terrorism against innocent citizens of other nations, why do I find this story about the destruction of these ancient statues of the Buddha so tragic? Of course, crimes against human beings are always more morally reprehensible than crimes against religious objects or shrines; but history teaches us that acts of irreverence such as this one inevitably lead to the senseless taking of human lives. The destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan was a warning to those of us in the free world of what was to come.

We call ourselves a community of memory, hope and reverence. We consider those three to be so integral to our understanding of community that we include them in an affirmation that our Sunday school children recite in their chapel services virtually every Sunday. The phrase, "We are a community of memory, hope and reverence," is inscribed upon the wall of the entrance to that chapel. Memory, hope reverence: of these three, I suspect some Unitarians might want to question the inclusion of the word reverence. Reverence for what? Reverence for whom? For some ancient tribal deity? For some arcane scripture? For some outmoded ritual, the meaning of which has long been forgotten? What is the object of this so called reverence? Before whom or before what are we supposed to bow down?

Recognizing the utter folly inherent in any attempt to pigeon-hole or categorize Unitarians, or to make any kind of blanket statement about what we are or are not, I will venture to say that we Unitarians by and large, have a tendency, a predisposition, a leaning, if you will, in the direction of iconoclasm. Now the literal meaning of that term, "iconoclasm," comes from the Medieval Greek word "eikonoklasts"; from the elements eikn, "image, likeness," and -klasts, "breaker." The images referred to by the word are religious images. Historically, the word iconoclasm refers to those times when religious zealots have violated the holy temple of another group by literally smashing and trampling the sacred objects. When the Taliban blasted the Bamiyan Buddhas with cannon balls, they were acting out in the most literal way possible the term "iconoclast." But today, when we use the term "iconoclastic," especially when we apply it to ourselves, we generally mean those of us who would take a pot shot or two at the conventional wisdom, or the received opinion, or some form of intellectual orthodoxy.

In other words, the iconoclasts of our place and time are typically the ones we describe as the avant-garde, the ones at the cutting edge, the social and political heretics, those who think outside the box. More often, this kind of attack on the accepted teachings of the status quo is done in the form of humor, sarcasm, parody, irreverence. We tear down the social, cultural, and religious icons with words, jokes, or cartoons rather than with cannon fire or explosives. We like to poke holes in all things pompous and self-important, reducing them to absurdity. Our irreverence is our skepticism, writ large.

Unitarian humor, the ways in which we laugh at ourselves and at others, is typically self-deprecating and iconoclastic. What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah's Witness? Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason. We are the masters of irreverent, of self-mocking humor. Likewise, no topic is considered too sacred to be out of bounds. We are not, by nature, it seems, ones to automatically bow down before religious or secular icons. So in what sense are we a community of reverence? Reverence? A community of irreverence, perhaps.

To what or to whom do we owe reverence? That question may be hard for us to answer when phrased that way. If to reverence something, then, means literally or figuratively to bow down before it, or to surrender or to suspend one's critical judgments before an individual, a doctrine, or an opinion—no doubt that's what many of us think when we hear that word reverence—we instinctively resist it. We prefer to think for ourselves, to make our own critical judgments.

But let's take another look at the word reverence, and what it really means. You may be surprised to discover that reverence is indeed a virtue that speaks directly to your heart and soul. And you might also agree with me that the opposite of reverence is not, as we might assume, irreverence, or even skepticism, but rather tyranny, religious or political totalitarianism. And paradoxically, our famous Unitarian irreverence may be the most positive proof of how much we value reverence.

University of Texas philosophy professor Paul Woodruff argues:

"Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control—God, truth, justice, nature—even death. The capacity for awe, as it grows, brings with it the capacity for respecting fellow human beings, flaws and all. The Greeks before Plato saw reverence as one of the bulwarks of society, and the immediate followers of Confucius in China thought much the same. Both groups wanted to see reverence in their leaders, because reverence is the virtue that keeps [human beings] from trying . . . to act like gods." (Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 1-2)

Now that's interesting: reverence is a virtue much desired in leaders, the "higher-ups," rather than the common folks. According to Woodruff, instead of moving from the bottom up with the little people paying homage to the big shots, reverence begins at the top with the leadership, those in power, acknowledging their own limitations. This is precisely what the Taliban was refusing to do when it ordered the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Woodruff writes:

"Power without reverence . . . is a catastrophe for all concerned. Power without reverence is aflame with arrogance, while service without reverence is smoldering toward rebellion. Politics without reverence is blind to the general good and deaf to advice from people who are powerless. And life without reverence? Entirely without reverence? That would be brutish and selfish, and it had best be lived alone.

"To forget you are only human, to think you can act like a god—this is the opposite of reverence. Ancient Greeks thought that tyranny was the height of irreverence, and they gave the famous name hubris to the crimes of tyrants. As a result an irreverent soul is unable to feel respect for people it sees as lower than itself—ordinary people, prisoners, children. The two failures go together in both the Greek and Chinese traditions. If an emperor has a sense of awe, this will remind him that Heaven is his superior—that he is, as they say in ancient China, the Son of Heaven. And any of us is better for remembering that there is someone . . . to whom we are children; in this frame of mind we are more likely to treat all children with respect. And vice versa: If you cannot bring yourself to respect children, you are probably deficient in the ability to feel that anyone or anything is higher than you." (Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, pp. 4-5)

The author of the affirmation we read this morning is Napoleon Lovely. If that name sounds familiar, it should, he is the father of Ruppert Lovely, who was your interim minister. In that affirmation, we acknowledge our limitations: that our knowledge is incomplete, our truth partial, and our love imperfect. In other words, as a people of faith, we don't claim to know it all. We don't claim to have a purchase on the whole truth. We don't claim to know the mind of God or to speak on God's behalf. We say that there is more to come—new light, new insight, new understanding out there, and that we possess only fragments of that light at present. We are willing to allow that we might be wrong, even as we seek to live as honestly, justly, and rightly as we know how.

That affirmation is a statement of the deepest kind of reverence. Not the reverence of those who bow down before power and might, but the reverence of those who recognize and respect the limits of their own wisdom, while at the same time always seeking to widen those limits.

Reverence, according to theologian and educator Thomas H. Groome, is one of the three Rs that characterize the spiritual life: respect, responsibility and reverence.

"Respect means having esteem and due regard for oneself and for others, for one's own and other's rights. . . . Responsibility includes taking care of self and others, fulfilling our obligations, contributing to our communities, alleviating suffering, and building a better world. Reverence pushes beyond respect and responsibility although it presumes and undergirds both. The etymological root of reverence means to recognize the deepest truth (as in verily) about something and then to take a second look—re—to see the plenitude beyond the obvious and immediate. Surely to reverence oneself and others means first to recognize the dignity of human beings and then to "look again" and recognize their Creator." (Education for Life: A Spiritual Vision for Every Teacher and Parent, Thomas More, 1998, p 356)

When the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist carvings in the name of Islam, they claimed to be acting out of reverence for the Islamic law that prohibits the making of statues or idols for worship. But while fulfilling the letter of the law, they destroyed the spirit of the Islamic law, which is intended to encourage reverence for Allah. You do not demonstrate reverence for your own God by showing contempt for that which is sacred to others. One does not ever demonstrate reverence through the use of raw power. Unable to recognize their own limits before heaven, there was nothing the Taliban were not prepared to do, no act of violence too abhorrent.

As Paul Woodruff writes: "If a religious group thinks it speaks and acts as God commands in all things, this is a failure of reverence. A group like that may turn violent and feel that they are doing so in good faith. Nothing is more dangerous than that feeling. . . . It is reverence that moderates war in all times and cultures, irreverence that urges it on to brutality." (Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, pp. 13-14).

We call ourselves a community of reverence. Even as we fully acknowledge our theological diversity, we don't even pretend to share the same religious beliefs. And what about our Unitarian penchant for what others might call irreverence. As I have quipped before, "We don't have a single frame of reference; how then can we have a single frame of reverence?" How do we resolve this seeming paradox?

Reverence is not about shared beliefs; it is not about bowing down before an idol or an idea: it is about common human feelings of awe and wonder at something greater than the self. That something greater you might call God; for you, it might be art; or it might be history, or music, or the scientific method, or nature. It might be the power of love, or the mystery of life or of death. We do not have to reverence the same thing in order to know what it is like to feel awe, wonder, amazement, deep appreciation. We can all know what it is like to feel simultaneously pitifully small in the face of something so much greater than one's self, while at the same time feeling larger by virtue of being connected in some way to that greatness. We share the capacity for that kind of feeling, even when we might not choose to describe the object of that feeling in identical ways. We have all know these deep moments of awe, wonder, and gratitude. It is the feeling of being in the presence of something greater than one's self and the desire to honor that feeling in some manner.

But what about our famous Unitarian iconoclasm? Our irreverence? What some might call our impiety? According to Paul Woodruff:

"Reverence lies behind civility and all of the graces that make life in society bearable and pleasant. But in our time we here more praise of irreverence than we do of reverence, especially in the media. That is because we naturally delight in mockery and we love making fun of solemn things. It is not because, in our heart of hearts, we despise reverence. In my view, the media are using the word "irreverent" for qualities that are not irreverent at all. A better way to say what they have in mind would be "bold, boisterous, unrefined, unimpressed by pretension"—all good things. Reverence is compatible with these and with almost every form of mockery. The one great western philosopher who praises reverence is Nietzsche, who is also the most given to mockery. Reverence and keen eye for the ridiculous are allies: both keep people from being pompous of stuck up. . . . The most reverent response to a tyrant is to mock him." (Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, p. 5)

To make fun of that which is trivial, or petty, tyrannical or mean-spirited is to acknowledge that there is something deeper, larger, and more generous to which we should give our allegiance. We might be iconoclasts, that is, those who tear down the idols, but it is only because we know that the idols are false.

We call ourselves a community of memory, hope and reverence. Those words tell a great deal about who we are as a people of faithfulness as well as who we aspire to become. Memory, connecting us to our past; hope, connecting us to our future; and reverence, placing us solidly in the here and now, hallowing the present moment. Woodruff writes a fitting thought with which to close: "Reverence runs across religions and even outside them through the fabric of any community, however secular. We may be divided from one another by our beliefs, but never by reverence. If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs. Pray instead that all may be reverent." (Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, p. 13). Amen.