This sermon began with a guided visualization, titled “Jars of Truth”:

What is Truth?

For some, Truth is solid and immovable, like a boulder: a sturdy, unchanging thing that we can rest upon.

For some, that Truth is like clay: a pliable substance that we can mold ourselves, to fit whatever form we need. However, once it is baked long enough it can become quite rigid and unchanging like a rock, but fragile, too.

For some, Truth is like a raging waterfall: awe-inspiring, powerful, cleansing. All you can do is hold on for the ride.

Some think of Truth as a misty, flowing substance: it’s in the air we breathe. We take it into ourselves. It’s always there, animating us. Always accessible, sometimes hard to see.

For James Luther Adams, a Unitarian Universalist theologian, Truth was like this last kind. He believed that revelation was not sealed, that Truth was in motion, showing itself to us in new ways alongside the flow of time.

Imagine this: That misty, flowing Truth, in every color and every shade. There’s a bit over here that has an iridescent sheen to it. Another that’s thick like a storm cloud. Oh, and that Truth! It’s almost completely translucent, but has a touch of texture, like tempered glass. This part, right here, is an irresistible, deep, royal purple.

And we, we are vessels for this Truth, like big, wide-mouthed jars, with lots of space to hold lots of beautiful Truth. Strong enough for hard Truth.

When we are young, our families of origin give us a bit of Truth. It’s usually a good mix of what they’ve collected in their years.

If we’re lucky, they try to leave out the parts that weren’t particularly helpful for them. If we’re unlucky, they give us lids, too. Ask us to seal our jars tight to not let anything out, or in.

Even if they didn’t intend it, there are many people who get to a point where they decide their jars are full. They don’t need new Truth. The truth they have is just fine, thank you very much.

But we can choose to keep collecting Truth. There’s always more room than we think.

We may stumble upon it when we’re out living our normal lives, not looking for anything in particular. And boom, there it is, bright and irresistible right in front of us. We can’t help but take some for the road.

Sometimes in our lives, we go on great big journeys to seek out new Truth. We may go very far, looking for places that we’ve heard are imbued with “special” Truth. We may hunt down wise people who we’ve heard have just the right Truth that they can give us some of.

Sometimes, we’re so hungry for new and shiny Truth that we forget about the ordinary old Truth at the bottom of our jars that has served us well time after time.

But here’s the important thing about Truth. It works best when we share it with others.

Maybe a friend is going through a hard time, one you have faced before. What Truth did you find then? Could you offer it to them now?

Or maybe you have a gift of being able to talk about your Truth in such a clear way that it helps others to appreciate the beauty of their Truths.

Certainly, there are people out there who have Truths that would serve you well. It is important to go out and engage with them, your open jar at the ready. You can trade a bit of your Truth for a bit of theirs.

Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we might discover Truth together with someone we love. There are people out there who help us see a bit clearer, aren’t there?

That’s what we do in communities, if we’re doing it right. We are here to share our precious Truth with one another, and learn how to hold on a little less tightly to the Truth we already have. There is always room for more.

Thank you, Jennifer, for leading us through that visualization practice. It was a ministerial intern who worked in my home congregation, Reverend Nato Hollister who first introduced me to the metaphor of the “Jars of Truth”, and James Luther Adam’s concept of Continuous Revelation.

It is this core principle that undergirds Unitarian Universalism, that brings life to our living tradition. There is always more to be learned, and so we change and evolve as a result. It is why we can celebrate our fourth principle, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

I find this jar metaphor to be really helpful for thinking about our search for truth and meaning, because we do really have the choice of how we are to go about it. If we want to go on some grand hero’s quest, we can. Or if we prefer to stay home, protecting our tightly sealed jars, that’s an option. However we go about it, we are reminded that Truth is always unfolding, and available to us in new ways if we stay open to it.

There’s a beautiful multiplicity to it. Truth is not just some singular golden treasure that we go out and hunt for. It is to be held and felt everywhere where we are breathing, experiencing, and asking questions.

But we Unitarians have had different philosophies about the quest for truth in the past. Our early theologians talked, at great length, about the power of human reason to deduce some ultimate Truth from the evidences of scripture and the world around us. As if there were some right answer that logical reasoning could point us straight to.

Though I believe this is a flawed and incomplete way of going about things, I want to give our religious forebears credit, because their ideas were pretty scandalous at the time. In the early 19th century, the ruling religious authorities of the day preferred a type of truth that was passed down hierarchically, and rooted in unchanging doctrine. Truth was not to be questioned or reconsidered by the force of the ordinary, human mind.

Within this context, it was real progress to assert that we humans had the power and capabilities to know Truth for ourselves, rather than receiving it from up high! Still, we can look back now and wonder how our Unitarian theologians thought they could make clear sense of the all the great mysteries of life and the universe solely through observation and logical reasoning. To say nothing of the data our hearts and our bodies offer us as they experience the world!

In recent years, it seems that Unitarian Universalists have been grappling earnestly with this legacy, with its emphasis on seeing ourselves as separate human agents, thinking and acting individually in the world. These days, we are asking ourselves: What does it mean to be a faith that strives toward Beloved Community, while facing the fact that we are a people who reflect with pride on pieces of our history like Henry David Thoreau’s essay on “Self Reliance”?

I believe we are, in the 21st century, a faith tradition that is working to balance our commitments between the individual and community. We want to celebrate individuals in all their worth and dignity, while understanding more deeply that we express that same individuality first and foremost in relationship with one another.

The Reverend Doctor Paul Rasor is a UU minister and author who has thought a lot about this tension. In his book “Faith Without Certainty,” he talks about the liberal religious tendency to uphold this myth of autonomy. The antidote he offers is a deepening understanding of us humans as embedded social agents.

We must grapple with this in our religious communities especially. While it is true that our congregations are, literally, a collection of unique individuals, we know that there is something bigger that we become when we gather together for a greater purpose. Rasor writes,

“When we belong to a tradition, whether we are life-long members or newcomers, we are not creating it anew. We are embedding ourselves within an ongoing movement that is already there. Just as the self is always situated within a continuously developing culture, a member of the religious tradition is always ‘brought into an ongoing conversation.”

And, deepening our own sense of embeddedness is important because it can also help us to appreciate the embeddedness of others. We can celebrate that someone’s context, their community, and their experiences, have made it so that their Jar of Truth might look much different from ours. And that’s okay.

I think we are getting better as Unitarian Universalists, but it does take practice! It makes sense that we struggle to integrate our valuing of individuality within the framework of community. It can be a bit of a paradox.

My answer to this paradox is the belief that each of us, as an individual, has unique gifts they bring with them in the world, and that our purpose here on earth is to share those gifts with the people around us. When we move through this life, we are constantly co-creating one another, in a process we know as community.

If each of us tried to list out all the people who have changed us, made us who we are, for better or for worse, I’m sure all of our lists would go on and on. Who would be in the Acknowledgements section of the book of your life?

In intellectual terms, some people call this principle dialectical humanism, or process theology. Those are big words, but they point to the simple, deep truth that we are here to shape and change ourselves and one another through our relationships. We, all together, are in a continual process of becoming, and it is one of the biggest miracles of life! And Love is the most pure, most powerful tool we have for this work of shaping and being shaped by one another.

You see, our fourth principle says nothing about the search for truth and meaning being a solo adventure. It simply says:

“We covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”

Please, let’s not make the assumption that this search is something we must undertake on our own. No, the only qualifiers we are given are that it should be both free and responsible.

We mean “Free” to say that we do not want our searches to be boundaried by doctrines, creedal tests, or limits imposed by outdated cultural norms. We are not here to contain or constrain one another.

And we mean “Responsible” to say that we are searching within a context of relationship, with the understanding that we must be responsive to one another. We have a duty to care for one another, even as we search for truth and meaning.

If my search for truth has led me to believe that you are less whole or worthy than me, then I have not been responsible. If my search doesn’t include listening to others, or letting my conscience be moved by their stories, then I am not being responsible.

As we practice living into our Unitarian Universalist values, I hope we will pay close attention to how we are searching for truth and meaning. As we go about our days and nights, filling our Jars of Truth, let us remember to keep our lids open, to share with our neighbors.

By being in a church community, we have already chosen one another for this journey. What are ways that we can be better companions for the road? Can we pay better attention to one another and the call out the gifts we each have to offer? Can we search in our own jars to find the Truths that might help someone in need?

To me, this free and responsible search for truth and meaning has always been a favorite principle, because it’s such a joyful one. Wow! We get to know freedom, ask questions, find truth, and make meaning! What a privilege it is to know this and be intentional about it.

And, oh, how much deeper that joy becomes when we realize it is a shared one.

Now let us take one final moment today of rest, of prayer and meditation.

Let us breathe into this moment. A moment shared,

Across time, and space.

Those of us gathered here in the physical sanctuary, and those of us gathered from near and by online.

There are even some of us, sharing in this moment after our service after today, when this service has been posted as an archive.

All of us, near and far, now and later,

Are gathered in community,

Are united in shared purpose:

To worship together, to nourish the spirit,

To work toward, to live into the Beloved Community.

What a blessing it is that we have found one another.

What a blessing it is that we have each other as companions on our journeys.

Let’s take a few more moments to just breathe together, to feel our inherent connectedness.

May we, in all our living, be a blessing to one another.

Amen.

Topics: Our UU Principles