© Jeremy D. Nickel 2014. All Rights Reserved.
Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist Congregation
January 26, 2014
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One day, as the Buddha was out for a walk, a monk asked him for his advice on the best way to pursue truth. The Buddha, now a revered and wise old man, slowed his steps and sat down upon a rock and warmed himself in the sun. After a few minutes of silence he replied:
"A young man who had lost his wife in childbirth, and had raised and loved their surviving son with every fiber of his being, was away on business when bandits came and burned down his whole village and took his son away. When the man returned, he saw the ruins and panicked. As he frantically ran around looking for any sign of his beloved son, he came upon a badly burned child that he assumed was indeed the body of his son, and began to weep uncontrollably. The next day he organized a cremation ceremony, collected the ashes and put them in a beautiful little bag, which he vowed to always keep with him, next to his heart.A few months later, his real son escaped from the bandits and found his way home. He arrived at his father's new cottage at midnight and knocked at the door. The father, still grieving asked, "Who is it?" The child answered, "It is me papa, open the door!" But in his agitated state of mind, convinced his son was dead, the father thought that some young boy was making fun of him. He shouted, "Go away" and once again lost himself in his lonesome misery and tears. After some time, the child left. The Father and son never saw each other again."
After this story, the Buddha said, "Sometime, somewhere, you take something to be the truth. If you cling to it so much, even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it."
This story is a powerful reminder to us all, because in some way we all do this: we find a truth and cling so tightly to it that we are blind to the next piece of wisdom that comes our way. It probably would not surprise you to know that the pursuit of truth is a big part of what led me into the Ministry. But I think this is also some piece of why each and every one of us are in this room this morning, and a part of this community.
At some point each and every one of us realizes that no one really knows what is going on in terms of the big questions: why are we here, where did we come from, what should we do with the time we have? I know when I found myself in this moment for the first time, I was overcome with anxiety. And ultimately each of us has to choose a spot on which to stand. It may be a specific worldview, or it may be embracing the ultimate unknowability of any of it. But whatever it is, we all find somewhere to set our feet. For many this is a spiritual journey that seeks ineffable truths beyond the reality we naturally experience. For others this is a scientific pursuit involving the incredible breakthroughs of modern thought and technology that value the concrete and knowable. Many of us have been told that those two worlds, spirit and science, are opposing vehicles, leading in different directions and pointing at separate ultimate realities. But some reject that compartmentalization as false dualism, and for those, these two categories, science and spirituality, come together to form one intertwining dialogue, theological insights leading to scientific breakthroughs resulting in deep spiritual learnings.
While much of the world is hostile to this third way, our faith tradition simply recognizes each of our unique rights to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, making no declarations or claims of superiority of one path over another. Because of this, our tradition has long been one of the very few safe spaces for this dialogue between religion and science. The person I want to talk about today is one of those incredibly brave people who chose the third way, of believing that both science and spirituality have important lessons to teach us about truth and how to find it.
Appropriately enough for a denomination for whom it has been said that our symbol should not be a chalice, but rather a coffee pot, the story of Joseph Priestley, a man who would eventually shape much of our early faith tradition, begins in a coffee shop.
In terms of a little context, it is important to know that for much of human history, the only commercially available liquid that could truly be trusted to be clean and safe was alcohol. It is hard to imagine, but it was normal for most humans just a few hundred years ago to imbibe some form of alcohol several times throughout the day, including with their morning meal, making pubs the center of much of life.
But when coffee beans began to be imported to Europe from the colonies, coffeehouses started springing up and creating a whole new kind of public space where instead of lethargic, partially drunk people, you found a group of charged-up, engaged, and talkative folks. Coffee houses quickly became a place where people met to discuss the newest ideas. There was no other free and public space like it, as the Church and most Universities were extremely orthodox at the time. So, like many other young men in England at this time, Joseph Priestley frequented coffee houses for just this reason.
Priestley himself knew from a young age that he was going to be a Minister, but the problem was he was unwilling to enter his faith unquestioningly (already sounds like a UU, right?). And in young Joseph Priestley's case, this was no ordinary questioning mind. To begin with, Priestley had been born into a Dissenting Church family, which was the name for a group of congregations that broke away from the Church of England due to their questioning of orthodoxy, a very tenuous and dangerous position to be in, but also a group that represented the leading edge of religious thought at this time in Europe.
Young Priestley was not only raised amongst committed church reformers, but because of his time in coffee shops his already theologically curious mind got engaged along a whole new framework. In those Coffee Shops his mind made wonderful leaps from what he was learning about Theology in his ministerial studies, to the newest discoveries of Science that he would hear about there. In this bouillabaisse of thoughts, ideas and invention, Priestley's interests were drawn increasingly to truth in a new realm, and he realized how important this freedom of exploration was to his development. He would end up spending his young adult life moving between jobs in the ministry, and work in scientific laboratories, with both worlds informing the other in important ways.
The two theological works he completed during this time are great examples of this. In both, he used the newest forms of social-scientific literary criticism being done to ancient secular works, on a text that no one else had dared to approach scientifically: the Bible. These new tools allowed one to examine a text for multiple voices, editing, corruption of original text, misinterpretation, mistranslation, and generally led to an understanding of how the text had been shaped and re-shaped through history by human hands. You can imagine why it would be controversial to attempt this kind of work for this first time on the Bible.
But Priestley did not hide from the controversy. In fact the first book he wrote using these methods was entitled the History of the Corruptions of Christianity, and it was a point-by-point refutation of the central tenets of orthodox Christianity as they relate to what is actually in the Bible, with a particular focus on the doctrine of the Trinity, the virgin birth of Jesus and, most stunningly, the later historical appendage of the resurrection story to the original text.
The second book he wrote was called a History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ in which he illustrated that the very way we understand Jesus Christ had been severely altered through history by special interest groups within the Church.
It is truly impossible in our current context to imagine how dangerous it was to even talk about these ideas outside of coffee shops, let alone to go on the record with them and publish your thoughts to the world. Edward Snowden may be the closest current example. Priestley was, in one way of thinking about it, Christianity's first major whistleblower, and it was even more dangerous then than it is now. If it wasn't for his other line of work, it might not have even been possible. Science enabled this work in more ways than just providing new tools.
At the same time Priestley was preaching and publishing these groundbreaking theological works, he was committed to his scientific pursuits in the laboratory with equal fervor. Here is a list of a few of his most significant scientific achievements of this time: The discovery of a little thing called oxygen, and the fact that plants give it off when they breathe, as well as the discovery of several other gases like nitrous oxide, ammonia and sulfur dioxide, and perhaps most importantly for future soda drinkers everywhere: carbon dioxide. Not only did he discover carbon dioxide, but Priestley was literally the first person to figure out how to make fizzy drinks out of water, juice flavorings and carbon dioxide and how to get them into cans. If you drink soda, soda water or anything carbonated today, and enjoy a canned and fizzy drink of any kind, you can thank Joseph Priestley. And, he was so committed to the ideals of science that unlike most of his contemporaries he never submitted for one patent, but rather just gave his discoveries to the world.
This explains a little of why he was for so long able to get away with being so public with his highly unorthodox theological views. He was making a lot of money for important and powerful people with his inventions. His discovery of carbon dioxide was the most immediately obvious commercial application, but many more followed.
And so, buoyed by his relative protection from his scientific success, Preistly decided to lend his weight to his friends' project to start a whole new kind of faith tradition, unlike any Europe or the world for that matter, had seen before. Founded on theological principles in line with the new ideas of science, this congregation would not restrict the beliefs of their members with a creed. He called this congregation the London Unitarian Meetinghouse, the first time the word Unitarian was used in the English language to describe a congregation of people.
But this ended up being a bridge too far. Although the community flourished for a few years and spawned more groups in England, during massive rioting that erupted against the Dissenting Churches, not only was the congregation attacked and burned to the ground, so was Preistley's home and laboratory. After a short time hiding out and laying low in England, Priestley and his family fled to the relative freedom of the young nation of colonies across the Atlantic.
In America, word of his theological and scientific pursuits had preceeded him due to his friendships with people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and so upon their arrival Priestley and his family were welcomed with open arms and given respect unlike they had ever know. Finally removed from the grasp of the Crown and the stifling attitudes of the English Church, Priestley was able to help American Unitarianism flourish, which he spent most of the rest of his life doing.
While Priestley's Unitarianism was always Christian, it was also always intended to be as invitational and open as it could be. The idea of athiests, Jews, Muslims, or especially "nones" simply never would have occurred to him in the reality he lived in. But it is clear that his embrace of science as a companion to his theological training enabeled him to be really ahead of his time in wanting to create a spiritual community that held a diversitry of opinions. He understood that having more than one path to pursue truth meant less rigidity of belief overall. And I think he is absolutely right. I think that people who can be open to multiple pathways, of dancing between the supposedly oppositional truths of spirituality and science, or any other false dualisms, are less likely to do as the Buddha spoke about, that is, cling tightly to one particular idea as the one and final truth.
I will never speak towards the superiority of one avenue over another, but I will always caution against setting your feet too firmly in one place, so as to preclude the inevitability of a new truth that comes your way.
My hunch is that many of us in this room have no trouble believing in the truths of science, but many more get uncomfortable taking seriously the truths of spirituality or, said another way, with the parts of our faith experience that can go beyond rational explanation and transcend the measurable.
One of the reasons I was excited to hold a joint service with our neighbors at First United Methodist last Sunday was so that we could get a little taste of some of that from and with them. And I must say that in the week since I have heard many comments to that exact effect. Our people were surprisingly moved to worship with this group of people who intelligently and without embarrassment talked about God and prayer and things that just can't be quantified. I saw it moving people. It moved me. I think that there is much for us to learn from this experience: That there is more to being a spiritual person than just what is quantifiable. That the truths of science and observation do a wonderful job answering a lot of important questions, but that there are still truths beyond their power to unravel.
For all of us, no matter what path we walk, this message holds true. There are more ways of thinking, of seeing, of understanding the world than we have allowed the possibility for. I believe it is essential that we continue to be, like those coffee houses in the 18th century, a free space for the exchange of ideas and truths that go across lines of orthodoxy. This cross-fertilization that happens when no one clings too tightly to one truth leads to places we can't even imagine. It already gave us soda pop and Unitarianism. What could possibly be next?
This Message was inspired by the following sources: