"ETERNITIES IN TIME"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Easter Sunday, April 20, 2003

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

This church is justifiably proud of its gardens. It is true that it takes a lot of care from committed volunteers to keep the garden beautiful during the flowering seasons, and we are lucky to have such volunteers. Many of our flowers are perennial; they reappear every year without any coaxing from us. Others are newly planted. Human care brings out the best in all of them, but nature gives them life each season.

Over the winter months, there was no evidence of life in those gardens. It was barren ground, and those who pass by could only invoke memory to imagine the flowers. Now, however, life is emerging, almost as if with conviction. There is one word that may adequately capture what is happening -- we witness, at this time of year, the resurrection of life, and experience life as on-going, continuing, eternal.

Easter is here, and we again encounter the great Easter story. It sometimes happens at this time of year that someone may ask me whether or not I believe in resurrection. In answer, I suppose, it is reasonable to point to our church gardens, to the evidence they supply about eternal life, and ask, "Is it possible to believe in anything else?" Especially this time of year, when we witness life returning all around us, can there be no doubt that life in this world is eternally renewed?

Granted, those asking the question may be meaning something quite different. They may be asking not about the eternal renewal of life, or even about the prospect of human immortality. They may, instead, be asking my opinion about one very limited story that was reported to have happened in Israel in ancient times. I would have to respond that I think the broader question of eternity in life tells us more about the existence of eternities in time than just one ancient story ever could.

This Easter Sunday, I am drawn to speak of what is eternal in life. This question seems appropriate for a couple of reasons this year. First of all, this year being the 100^th anniversary of the founding of All Souls, we are more focused on the sense of lasting, long-term existence. The continuing renewal of life points to the continuing renewal of values.

Last night we held a spectacular celebration we had an absolutely spectacular "Birthday Bash" for our church. We celebrated our spiritual kinship to the generations before us who founded and sustained this church over the last one hundred years.

What we celebrate is the immortality of the values that this church has promoted over the century, and will continue to promote as long as there is a congregation to embody those values. After all, this church is about the values it brings to the world and encourages in its membership. What we celebrate is the eternal strength of those values as they have been articulated over time and as we understand them today.

Before examining the eternal that has been carried through our church's history, let me look a bit at what might be meant by the eternal or the immortal in human life itself. Much could be meant by talking about eternal life in human terms, and very little of what might be meant can be established as fact. Almost anything I could say about the subject would be mere speculation, but that is appropriate perhaps because nobody knows anything for certain on the subject.

Perhaps nothing, therefore, could provide better fare for sermonizing - than to talk about something no one really knows about! The question of what actually happens when we die is purely speculative, but a deeper question about the continuation and immortality of life itself does not quite stretch the boundaries of speculation. I wish to look for a few minutes at what might be meant by the sense of eternity in life.

Can any statement be more simple or more obvious than the observation that life is fundamentally mysterious? What do we mean to say that we are "alive"? Is this a statement about protoplasm or molecules or brain cells or nerve endings? There are medical definitions of life and legal definitions of life and theological definitions of life -- and not only do none of them agree, but each of them is continuously changing. The mystery inherent in this simple notion of "life" is the source of angry debate over real issues such as abortion and euthanasia.

I will not settle those debates here today. (I'm sure you must be disappointed in hearing that). I'll simply observe the agonizing fact that at its center the very idea of life is an enigma, if not a well kept secret.

Let's turn next to an equally perplexing mystery -- that of personal identity. When I refer to myself in the first person - as "I" -- to what am I referring? Is it this unique combination of molecules? Or is it my specific DNA code? Maybe "I" refers to the psyche which has participated in my peculiar set of life experiences. The idea of who I am or who you are is mysterious indeed.

These series of questions are old indeed, and seemingly unresolvable. I refer back some 150 years ago to a sermon by William Ellery Channing, the founder of American Unitarianism, on the subject of what he called "The Future Life." In his remarks he made the following claim, which seems on the surface to be quite incredible. He said this:

"We have more evidence that we have souls or spirits than that we have bodies."

This is a rather startling suggestion, it seems to me. What possible evidence do we have of the human soul or spirit, that surpasses the evidence we might have for the human body? If this were true, it might lead us to some conclusions about personal identity and what it means for a person to continue beyond death. The next sentence of Channing's shows us where this is all leading:

"We are surer that we think, and feel, and will, than that we have solid and extended limbs and organs."

Channing was well versed in the most important insight of Western philosophy since the time of Plato. That insight came from Rene Descartes who pointed out that all our knowledge of the physical world is filtered through our senses, and therefore subject to error. What we know about the physical world is dependent on our fallible senses of sight and touch and taste and smell and hearing. And we are certain that our senses are fallible.

Put it a different way. Our eyes and our ears can be fooled. It happens all the time. We thought we heard someone say something, but it turns out they said something different from what we remember having heard. We thought for sure that we saw an UFO, but it turned out to be a weather balloon. Our eyes and ears deceive us. Every magician knows this is true, and proves it.

So Descartes suggested that our knowledge of the physical world, such as of our physical bodies, is imperfect. Because our knowledge is filtered through the senses and interpreted by the mind, we can know nothing for certain about the world. The only thing that we can know for certain is that we have a mind to think with. From this insight came the famous Cartesian "cogito ergo sum": "I think, therefore I am."

What we can't deny, then, is that we have a mind that thinks. How accurately it thinks is not as important as the fact that we know it exists - and we know this better than we can know anything.

This was the background behind Channing's innocent but shocking statement: "We have more evidence that we have souls or spirits than that we have bodies. We are surer that we think, and feel, and will, than that we have solid and extended limbs and organs." He further said that, "Philosophers have said much to disprove the existence of matter and motion, but they have not [even] tried to disprove the existence of thought. . . ."

Indeed, maybe Channing was on to something there!

The question of personal identity -- the question "Who am I?" -- refers to something far less tangible than a mixture of chemical DNA or a combination of molecules. If we are to talk about a person existing eternally in time, what we mean by "person" has something to do, it seems to me, with what Channing calls "soul" or "spirit."

Let me take a specific example just to illustrate these mysteries more concretely. I wish to consider the first long-term minister of All Souls: Frank Scott Corey Wicks, who was minister of All Souls from 1905 to 1938, and Minister Emeritus until 1952. Dr. Wicks was in a leadership role of this church for almost 50 years, half of our 100 year life. I reflected on his life from this pulpit a couple of months ago. But for now I wish to ask, "What does it mean to say that Frank Wicks lived and that Frank Wicks died?"

Does it mean simply that certain chemicals combined to give something called "life," and his name was attached to that particular combination of chemicals or molecules? Or when we refer to him, or to anyone, are we identifying something beyond mere physical matter?

The question takes on added depth of meaning when we ask not what it means that Dr. Wicks had lived, but rather what it means that he had died. If Frank Wicks were simply a physical identity, his death means the removal of his physical body. But if he were also a person, who thought and felt, who affected and shaped the world he lived in, who, in Channing's words, was a "soul" or a "spirit," then what can the death of Frank Wicks mean? Can the thoughts he thought then be unthought? Can his deeds be undone? Of course not - their existence is irreversible. Can his "soul" be removed from history or from the world, as one might rip a page out of a book? Of course not. His soul stays eternal in time.

We can say that Wicks is dead only to the extent we equate his life with his physical body and suppose that his thoughts and deeds had nothing to do with his life -- for his thoughts and deeds have clearly continued on.

Almost three hundred people gathered last night to celebrate, in many ways, the work that became so much of his legacy. Very few people at that celebration had ever known or met him, and most only vaguely know of his life, but everyone there had in some way been affected by the continuing influence of Frank Wicks' life - whether or they had ever heard his name.

In 1905, All Souls published a public relations pamphlet that it used to explain to the city what this new Unitarian Church was all about. Listen to these words from that pamphlet, written by Dr. Wicks, and I think you can see that the eternal connection in time of the values expressed then and the values we promote today.

'All Souls calls itself a Unitarian Church, because that name is inclusive enough to embrace all the truth it now knows, and all the truth it may yet discover. The name carries with it no limitations that may prevent future growth in the light of new truth.

Three words sum up the Unitarian position: freedom, reason, and character. We believe, first, that absolute mental freedom is essential for the development of the human soul; we believe that only an atmosphere of freedom is possible for a man to make truth his own possession. We refuse to be bound by a creed, for a creed expresses limitations; we do not believe that any human formula can embrace the infinitude of truth. We insist upon freedom, not as an end in itself, but as a means to the development of the finest character.

We believe that truth makes itself known to men by the use of the inner light that is kindled by reason and conscience. We do not regard reason and conscience as infallible, but they are the best guides we now possess; they become more efficient the more we make use of them.

We believe that the supreme test of religion is its effect on character; we believe that a man who is right in his relations with his fellow men will be right in his relations with the Source of all life. . . .

We believe in the integrity of the universe; we believe that the forces of the universe are moving toward truth, and right, and justice, and that the man who orders his life by those principles is in harmony with the universe, and has nothing to fear.

Leaving Wicks aside for the moment, there are hundreds and hundreds of other names from the All Souls past, whom we have never heard, whose lives continue to contribute to our present. Those who served as Trustees over the years, who volunteered to teach in Sunday School, who gathered for a Saturday work party to spruce up the building - every single soul who contributed in some way to the ongoing health of this congregation remains in some way part of who we are today, whether we know their names or not. They helped promote the eternal life of those principles we enjoy today.

What I am suggesting now is that it is not irrational, indeed it is thoroughly reasonable, to think of life as continuing, as eternal, and that death is the end only of the physical part of life, which is important, but not the most important part of life. To think that a life ends with death is to misconstrue life as nothing more than matter.

Immortality, it seems to me, presents itself in this sense as not only credible, but inescapable. Life is a continuous thread which weaves its way without beginning or end. My life, my soul, did not begin when I was born. The person I am was shaped by life that came before -- in people like Channing and or Wicks, in my own parents, of course, and in the nameless ones who built this country, this state, this church. It is a continuous thread.

The Easter story teaches us that same lesson -- or at least it should, I think: that life itself, which is shrouded in mystery, represents a continuous chain that knows of death perhaps only in a physical sense, but is a stranger to death in far deeper ways.

If you have ever been, as I have been, in a group of people where the question being discussed concerns who has been the influence and inspiration in your life, it is more common than not that people will cite as their inspiration someone who has died. Also, more often than not, the influential person is not famous, is not known to many outside the circle of family and friends. People most often cite a relative, such as a parent or grandparent, or a personal acquaintance, such as an old teacher or a working colleague, or a family friend.

This form of eternal life, of continuing influence on other lives, cannot be disputed. However we may think of other forms of eternity, this form is the most common and certain.

To say that Jesus died, or that you or I or anyone will die, should not and cannot deny that immortal quality that surrounds our life, for our lives are all something more than a mere collection of molecules.

The All Souls' gardens, which unlike us have no consciousness, are coming back to life because life cannot be fully smothered out. So if I am asked this Easter if I believe in eternal life, I can point to the gardens, or to Jesus, or to the many souls who have shaped this church over the last 100 years, or to any whom I have watched live and die with integrity, and reply this way: "Is it possible to believe in anything else?"