Welcome to the Living Interfaith Church

            When a person walks through the door and visits any spiritual community, it is never long before the question is asked: “What do you believe?”  It is frequently an innocent question.  Sometimes not.  But always, always we are challenged by those four simple words.  “What do you believe?”  As we open our doors, here is an answer that Interfaith can offer. 

First, to list core beliefs, to state out loud the common essence that binds a spiritual community together is a daunting and humbling task.  For any criteria for inclusion becomes at one and the same moment criteria for exclusion as well.  In a very real sense, a statement of belief is a statement of exclusion. 

Perhaps, then, we may best begin with a stark and unusual question.  If a statement of belief is a statement of exclusion, who is it that we wish to exclude?  A particular gender?  I think not.  People who look “different” than we do?  I think not.  People whose social status appears different?  I think not.  People whose spiritual paths may include belief in God or disbelief in God?  I think not.   

Who, then, would we exclude?  People who are not respectful of others?  Yes.  People who would not be respectful of differing spiritual paths, as long as those paths lead to a respect for others?  Again, yes.

Are we sure?  That’s a broad brush.  People who would not respect others means other races, other cultures, and other life views as well as other faiths.  To be committed to respecting others, in this “them and us” world, is to be committed to understanding that there is no them.  There is no them.  There is only us.  Differing, yes: but all us.  Are we sure?  Very much, yes.

We may not as yet be able to love one another, though all our spiritual paths tell us that this should be our goal.  But surely the time has come to respect one another.  And a first step, a good first step, is to respect one another’s spiritual paths.  This is the foundation of Interfaith.  It does not mean that we will always agree.  It does not mean that I may not, and with some passion, express my position or you yours.  But yes, fundamental to who we are must be a respect for the beliefs of others – even those we disagree with, even of those whom we have never met.

With that in mind, what lies at our center, what do we  believe?

          We believe that there is a spiritual core to the universe that calls us to our better selves if we will listen.  We recognize that there are many ways of interpreting the nature of this spiritual core.  Some of us believe in God, and there will be differing definitions of God.  Some of us believe in a moral imperative that involves no deity whatsoever.  And some of us aren’t sure. 

We embrace as self-evident what Jesus, Confucius, Hillel, the Buddha, Muhammad, Bahaullah and so many others have taught us: that we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper and that we must strive daily to treat each other with honor, with respect and with love.  We call this social justice.  We are connected.  A hungry child of any race, on any continent, from whatever background, diminishes us.  A homeless person of any race, on any continent, from whatever background, diminishes us.

          And while each of us enters this community from our own individual spiritual background, with beliefs that deserve respect, we recognize that we are not defined by those beliefs.  Neither are we defined by what we own.  Rather, we are defined by how we act and who we help.

          We recognize as well and indeed rejoice that here, among us, there are a multitude of spiritual paths that have led us to where we are: a spiritual community committed to social justice.  More than two thousand years ago, the Roman poet and playwright Terrence wrote these lines in one of his plays, “I am a man.  Nothing human is foreign to me.”  We say that we are a spiritual community that believes in social justice and no spiritual path that leads to social justice is foreign to us.  We are Christian.  We are Jewish.  We are Buddhist.  We are Muslim.  We are Baha’i.  We are Atheist.  We do not tolerate these paths.  We are these paths. 

And when we join together to celebrate Ramadan, or Passover, or Easter or some other holy day, we do so neither with benign patience nor because we have left behind our individual and personal spiritual heritage.  We join together because we truly respect and honor spiritual paths that are not necessarily our own, and we recognize that the important thing is that our various spiritual natures, diverse as they are, have all brought us here.  Together.  And that is indeed cause for great rejoicing.

          And so I as a Jew ask of you as a Muslim, tell me more about Islam, not that I may convert, but that I may learn; that I might celebrate with you that which is important to you, for you are important to me.  And I as a Christian ask of you as a Humanist, tell me more about Humanism, not that I may convert, but that I may learn; that I might celebrate with you that which is important to you, for you are important to me. 

We have come here on differing roads, from differing backgrounds and differing histories – not to be blurred.  Not to be forgotten.  Yet here we are, striving together for a better world for all and that is indeed cause for great celebration! 

          Together we shall make the world a better place for all, “ALL creatures, great and small.”  That is our hope, that is our dream, that is our goal, that is our belief.  And to all who would join us: welcome.

          It can be hard to make sense of life.  Anyone who tells you differently has never thought much about it. 

Why are we here?  Is it just to live and eat and breed and die?  Is that it?  A good meals satisfies our hunger.  But then what?  A good night’s sleep refreshes us.  But then what?  In the musical play “Man of La Mancha,” the writer has Cervantes note that he has held in his arms men who were dying.  Men who looked up at him “their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question: ‘Why?’”  Cervantes observes:

I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived.

If we want to get to the heart of the meaning of our lives, we must answer a simple question.  The answer isn’t simple, but the question is.  Is my life about me, or about others?  If it’s just about me, then my comfort, my wealth and my success are all that matter.  But if not – then what?  It is that question, more than any other, and our answer to that question more than any other, that leads us to discover our spiritual selves – who we truly are.

          But still the question, this eternal question, calls to us, puzzles us, plagues us.  Are we born alone, friendly perhaps with others as circumstances allow, but always, as they say, “looking out for number one?”  Or are we connected?  The poet John Donne believed in the connection.  He wrote:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were.  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.  And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for thee.

Black Elk, the Lakota Holy Man, also believed in the connection.  He wrote:

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round beneath me was the whole hoop of the world.  And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw.  For I was seeing in the sacred manner the shape of things of the spirit and the shapes as they must live together like one being.  And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle, wide as daylight and starlight.  And in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.  And I saw that it was holy.”

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”  “And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that make one circle.”  In our quest to make sense of the miracle of our lives we at some point, consciously or otherwise, make a choice.  We who form this church have made that choice. 

To say that we believe in compassionate action is to say that we define our meaning in terms not of what we can accomplish for ourselves, but of what we can accomplish with and for others.  And we welcome all, all whose spiritual paths have brought them here, to strive for a life built on compassionate action.

Strive, because none of us is perfect.  All of us will make mistakes.  Some of them will be whoppers.  But all of us here now are united in our resolution and in our belief that this is our highest calling.  This is the spiritual goal that brings us together in joy and celebration and with unbounded determination.

To you who would join us: we do not insist, we do not expect, and we do not encourage you to put aside the truths that have brought you to our spiritual community.  For without them, you would not be here.  Indeed, we eagerly look forward to you sharing your spiritual path, not only with us but, once our Interfaith schools can open, with our children so that their lives may be enriched and their eyes, as well as ours, may truly be opened to the wondrous diversities of the human spirit.

To conclude, we are a community that celebrates our diversity.  We covenant to nurture and support as well as respect one another.  We come together understanding that I will not demand that you be me, and you will not demand that I be you.  But more than that, I am truly interested in who you are.  I grow, and my life is enriched by knowing better who you are, and the path that you walk, different perhaps from mine, that nonetheless brings you here, to this same clearing, where we now stand together in this rich spiritual community that can indeed embrace the both of us.  And if we disagree … as we will, from time to time … my life is made larger and more whole by understanding how we disagree and why, and by acknowledging that little is learned by shouting, and much by listening. 

In Scripture, in First Kings, we read:

And a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

We would do well to listen to that still small voice, for whatever its source, whatever its cause, that still small voice dwells within each of us.  But to hear it, to hear it we must listen.  We will never hear it if we shout.

Whether the Lord God has called us here, or Allah, or the Buddha or our own conscience, or some combination: we are here, supportive of each other, caring of each other, respectful of each other.  This is who we are.  This is what we believe.  From this foundation, we will build a more loving world.  And what could possibly give our lives more meaning than that?

Amen.