Questions, Yes:  Answers, No

A Sermon Delivered at
The
Unitarian-Universalist Church of Roanoke, Virginia
October 28, 2007

Andrew J. (Jack) Good

Questions and Answers

I feel pressure. A season that has been very pleasant for me, knowing I would worship with you once each month, is coming to a close. So I approach today feeling that I should say something memorable, something that will settle at least one of your major questions about life.

Two realities prevent me from following this plan. The first is that I do not know any final answers to the major questions of life. Second, I would do you a disservice if, by some strange circumstance, I knew the answer to some important mystery and shared it with you.

The reason why you have become a part of the Unitarian-Universalist tradition (and why I feel at home here) is because here we find companions to travel a continuing road of discovery. Religious institutions that promise their people absolute answers—answers that will allow them to stop asking, stop seeking, retire from the journey—are, I am convinced, ultimately boring and (I use the word advisedly) deadly places.

Questions unite us. Absolute answers divide us. Suppose we identify some important issue that excites many of us. We can cooperate as we explore that issue. Some of you can explore one aspect of the question, others explore another aspect, and so on. Then we can come together and share our insights. If we should ever make the error of determining that we had arrived at the right answer to our question, divisions would immediately set in. What looks like the absolute, proper answer to one person looks not quite right to someone else. The spirit of cooperation vanishes. Questions unite us. Rigid answers divide us.

Do Absolute Answers Exist?

Here is a question worth pursuing: are there absolute answers to life’s most important questions? The meaning and goal of human living is definitely a crucial question. Perhaps there is no final answer to that issue; perhaps in embracing the question we are pursuing a holy grail that will always elude us. Perhaps the best we can do is to embrace mysteries.

In regard to this, I want to introduce you to a person who was a close friend and parishioner. Jack Easley taught in the School of Education at the University of Illinois. His field was science and methods of teaching science. He was both a skilled scientist and a committed (though somewhat unorthodox) member of his religious community.

Science is supposed to be that area of life where we discover clear, precise answers to carefully crafted questions. Not so for Jack Easley. Jack laughingly described himself as having been the kind of public school student who drives teachers to early retirement. He loved science but had concluded that the world was more complex and nuanced than the information given him in his science classrooms.

As a young student, he rebelled when test papers were handed out. He and his classmates would be given a sentence to be completed with a single word. The teacher was looking for one word only. Every other word was marked “wrong.” True false tests were especially noxious. He suspected that any statement was partially right and partially wrong. When he complained to his instructors they consistently responded, with a sigh: “But Jack, two plus two is always four.”

You can imagine Jack’s delight when, in more advanced mathematics courses, he discovered that two plus two equals four only because we use a system based on ten. If we begin with a system based on three, for example, two plus two equals eleven! So much for that absolute truth!

Jack was a happy man. During his lifetime science had evolved from the study of precise, eternal facts to an encounter with ever more challenging questions. The strangeness of quantum physics has turned physicists into philosophers and occasionally into theologians. At about the time of Jack’s birth astronomers began to notice that many of their calculations were producing unacceptable results. Something seemed to be out there that had not been identified or measured. Dark matter it came to be called. Now it is estimated that more than ninety percent of the stuff that makes up our universe is unknown to us. It is dark not in the sense that it absorbs light; it is dark in the sense of being beyond our sensory experience. No one knows what it is! Dark matter!

If science—the realm that gives precise measurements to what can be seen and manipulated—is a jumble of unanswered questions, how much more can this be said of philosophy and religion—realms that deal with ideas and beliefs?

I would like to think that all fields, religion and philosophy as well as physics and astronomy, proceed in a similar manner. Breakthroughs are made. (What a marvelous word: breakthrough. It implies the piercing of a barrier so we can come through on the other side. Breakthroughs do not lead to comfortable beds upon which we can take our ease. They lead to new open spaces, new sections of the path, new issues to be explored. In astronomy, for example, the lifetime of each adult here has witnessed countless breathtaking breakthroughs. More than four hundred years ago many astronomers were certain they understood the heavens. Their answers were firm and final. The earth was the center of the universe, the sun revolved around the earth, and above us were tiny points of light called stars. Today we know so much more. Yet the mysteries are deeper than ever. The more we know, the more we are aware of what we do not know.

On the Dangers of Seeing God

Let us assume, for a moment, that someone here had, through some remarkable circumstances, stumbled upon a final answer to some crucial issue. That person would do us a disservice if she shared that with us.

I want to tell one more Jack Easley story. After his retirement, Jack was invited to speak to an elementary school class near his home. He arrived at the school just after a heavy rainfall, and determined to take the class out on the school lawn to smell the fresh air and to feel the wet grass. The students had their own agenda, and began to notice how many earthworms had come out of the wet ground. “Dr. Easley, why do the worms come out of the ground after a rain?” one of the youngsters asked. “Why do you think they do that?” Jack countered. The student thought a moment, then gave an answer that had more to do with imagination than fact. “That is an interesting idea,” Jack responded. Soon another student volunteered an explanation and then another. To each Jack responded, “That is an interesting idea.” When the students were back at their desks and the two adults were alone, the teacher, livid, demanded of Jack: “Why didn’t you tell them why earthworms come out of the ground following a storm?” To which Jack responded, “Because I want them to enjoy the mystery.”

I am not recommending this event as an overall strategy for teaching science. At some point some information must be conveyed. But Jack’s basic concern should engage us. Too many times he had seen bright, eager, curious children enter a rigid school system, a system that attempted to pry open their minds and pour in dry facts. Soon the enthusiasm for learning diminishes, a light in their eyes goes out, and learning becomes a burden rather than a thrill. Both in churches and in public education, we must learn to teach in ways that help a child enjoy the mystery.

Which brings me to that strange story from the Book of Exodus I read a few minutes ago.

At the outset, please know that I do not take this story literally. Nor do I believe it was ever intended to be taken literally. But I do take it seriously. The word “myth,” which once was one of the richest words in our language, has been misused until it is often useless. When we say something is “only” a myth, we imply that it refers to trivia, material that is easily dismissed. Too bad. A myth, in its proper usage, refers to the most profound truths that human can handle. If you are not comfortable with myth, I recommend the phrase “truth-story.” A truth-story is a tale that is not true in itself, but is a vessel containng truth. The vessel allows truth to be transported from one generation to the next.

Let us look at this myth/truth-story. It concerns Moses—that towering figure of Jewish religious thought. Moses had led his people out of slavery and was attempting to guide them through the wilderness. The people, however, were not happy being nomads. They were in rebellion. So Moses determined that he could lead more effectively if he could be given additional status. “Let me look into your face,” Moses demanded of God.

Is this sounding like some ancient superstition? Listen again. Some of you may have been surfing through the television channels recently and happened upon some TV evangelist saying to his congregation: “As I was saying when I was talking to God last week.” This is the ultimate grab for prestige. If an individual can claim to have looked into the face of God, then that person can pretend to know the nature of God, to know the purpose and goal of human living, and to have answers to all the perplexing moral problems we face. Of course we would let that person be our leader.

As the myth/truth-story develops, God refuses to allow Moses this easy path to power. God said “no.” The myth-makers had a sense of humor and asserted that God would allow Moses to see the divine back-side, but not God’s face. We, fortunately, do not have time to explore the mythological implications of that.

Not only does God say “No.” God rejects the idea with finality. “If you look at my face, you will die.” In other words, if you could come away from this encounter with all the answers to all the basic questions, you will have experienced not life, but death.

I repeat: If this sounds like ancient superstition, listen again. I refer you back to the children we were discussing earlier. They go off to their classrooms with eyes shining with enthusiasm, eager to encounter the world. Then dry facts begin to be poured into their heads. They are told propositions that are supposedly absolutely true and others that are absolutely false. Soon they have many answers, but no more curiosity. A death has taken place. “Look on my face,” said God, “and you will die.”

In its earliest decades the movement around the life of Jesus was referred as “the Way.” The Way implied movement, exploration, growth. Then something began to happen.

A close friend of mine, a few years ago, mailed me a copy of the catechism of his branch of the faith. (For those of you blessed enough to have avoided catechisms, they are a summary of the firm beliefs of some branch of faith. Some catechisms attempt to be concise. Not so, in this case. This one was approximately two inches thick, and weighs enough to have enriched the post office when he mailed it to me.) Inside the covers of this book are answers to the nature of God, the purpose of human life, the process of sin and redemption, and the proper stance to take on every moral question conceivable.

Somewhere between The Way and the catechism a death took place. People who join most branches of the Christian faith no longer are explorers eager to discover. If they have a question, they do not have to ponder it. They must simply open their book and read.

God said to Moses: “If you look on my face, you will die.”

Emily Dickenson, that remarkable, reclusive poet, understood this truth-story. One of her poems deals with our encounter with the deeper issues of living:

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant,
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As lightning to the Children eased
With explanations kind
“The truth must dazzle gradually,
Or every man be blind.”

Death. Blindness. Dickinson and the writer of Exodus were dealing with the same reality. Something vital in us shrinks when we stop exploring the depths, or when we attempt to grasp all the truth at once.

So I have no great insights to share. I do, however, have a word of encouragement. One of the exciting things for me about being in this pulpit is an awareness of the variety of points of view held in this congregation. You have theists and non-theists, You have people strongly influenced by Jesus and others influenced by the Buddha and others who feel attached to other traditions.

Such variety no doubt creates moments of tension. I hope, however, that you never allow potential conflict to undermine the interchange of ideas. As long as you have such interchange, no one person can march in and claim to have gotten the final answers—to have looked at the face of God.

So keep the dialogue going. Embrace the questions. Grasp a partial answer now and then, but only as a breakthrough that will allow you to continue the path on the other side.

And thank you for the opportunity to share in your journey.