Sermon #68 (5th February 2023 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
I’ve given today’s service the title ‘Inquiring Minds’, largely as a nod to The Inquirer, our Unitarian magazine which comes out once a fortnight. We always leave a little pile of copies out in the foyer – enough for everyone – and you’re welcome to take one home for free. Or, as I’m sure the editor and the Inquirer board would like me to remind you, you can subscribe to receive it direct to your doormat or indeed view electronic copies online at inquirer.org.uk.
The Inquirer’s first ever issue was published on 9th July 1842 which apparently makes it the longest-lived non-conformist paper in the world. The title underlines something about the very nature of our Unitarian movement, I reckon, and our self-understanding as Unitarians. We think of ourselves as people who ask questions, who dig deeper, people with Inquiring Minds. This curiosity – or, alternatively, this refusal to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of the world and how it works, this refusal to be fobbed off with pat answers or to follow the herd – this attitude is right there in the origin story of Unitarianism and baked into our (metaphorical) DNA. Think about old Theophilus Lindsey, who founded this congregation nearly 250 years ago, and who first left the Anglicans because he could not in good conscience just go along with the list of beliefs – the ‘thirty-nine articles’ of the church – that he was supposed to sign up to unquestioningly. For Unitarians, it seems to me, such commitment to questioning – and, like Lindsey, following through on the sometimes-disruptive implications of what we discover as a result of our inquiry (he gave up a secure life with the Anglicans to found the first Unitarian church) – such a commitment to asking questions, seeking deeper truth, and following wherever it may lead, is a central aspect of our faith.
The publication that actually sparked this morning’s choice of theme though was this one: ‘The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific Curiosity’ by Robin Ince. I read it a few weeks ago and immediately found myself wanting to press it into people’s hands evangelically. But, in truth, I first approached it with a little bit of caution. For years Robin Ince – who started out as a comedian himself, though he intermittently claims to have retired from stand-up, and he’s created his own hard-to-define niche in science communication as the voice of the non-scientist alongside his scientific mates (most notably Brian Cox) – for years he put on a run of Christmas stage shows at the Bloomsbury Theatre, featuring comedians and scientists, called ‘Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People’. These shows were widely lauded and featured loads of comedians and thinkers I would have loved to go and see. But at that time – as the title ‘Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People’ indicated – many in this first wave of science-loving comics seemed to position themselves as being actively anti-religious, vocally scornful of religious people, caricaturing us as being (necessarily) anti-scientific and (implicitly) a bit dim. So although the line-up of these shows looked great, and many chums raved about them, I never went – I’m not a ‘Godless Person’ – and I didn’t want to go to a party where I wasn’t welcome.
However, in recent years, it seems that something has shifted. I noticed that in 2018 the long-running show changed its name to ‘Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People’. That’s more like it! It seems to reflect a more nuanced view – an understanding and acknowledgement that there is no reason at all why science and religion have to be in opposition to one another – and indeed I might add that scientists haven’t got a monopoly on curiosity. I used to be a scientist of sorts, by the way; I studied physics and medical engineering in my twenties and I was still working as a researcher in radiological sciences at the time I first wandered into this church about twenty four years ago. So this notion that the scientific and religious worldviews are incompatible has always seemed silly to me.
Asking questions and being curious – being interested, as the book title goes – about the world around us (and the world within us, and within others) is a vital part of a faithful and flourishing life. Not just questions about science and nature of course – questions of philosophy and theology, politics and economics, sociology and psychology – asking ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ and ‘what if?’ Let’s not take things at face value (or at least let’s not do that by default) but instead be ready to dig a little deeper – not as a kneejerk naysayer making flippant or bad-faith objections for sport – but in service of the truth and a more holistic understanding of the world and our place in it. There’s a place for healthy scepticism, for sure, but sometimes Scepticism can become a defensive – even hostile – position which, paradoxically, closes us off to whole realms of human wisdom.
And as Robin Ince said in the reading I just gave, it is important to be open to answers that might surprise us, insights that might shake our worldview, that might require everything else to shift round a bit to integrate each new understanding. If we genuinely seek the truth then we must be willing to question ourselves at least as much as we question others, asking ‘Why do I believe what I believe? What foundations am I standing on? And why do I favour them?’ The path of curiosity and inquiry is very often a path of transformation; as we change our minds we change our very selves.
In our first reading by Victoria Safford, which Hannah read for us earlier, the small child asks ‘Why was I stung by bees?’ I wonder how you would have responded to her question. Safford makes a valiant effort to answer but in the end all of her responses are unsatisfactory. It’s unanswerable.
And it seems to me that many of life’s biggest questions are similarly resistant to a satisfying answer – life itself is complex and mysterious (and a bit random) – often there isn’t a clear-cut chain of cause and effect. Which is not to say we shouldn’t keep asking the questions! Let’s not give up too lightly. But let’s bear in mind that we’re not always going to come to a satisfying answer. We will probably need to come up with a working hypothesis, a provisional answer, and keep refining it over time. Which of course is what scientists do! Many people have a false sense of scientific certainty; good sciences is rooted in inquisitive humility and depends on a willingness to think again and adjust. It can be psychologically unsettling to stay in this space of uncertainty – we might feel a yearning for conclusive resolution and definite answers to these questions of life, the universe, and everything – but let’s resist the temptation to claim greater certainty about our answers than is strictly justifiable!
Perhaps the most crucial religious question is this: How are we going to live in the not knowing? And of course I’m not going to offer a simple answer. It’s the question that lurks in the background, inevitably, each time we gather, and (to misquote Rilke) it’s the work of a lifetime to live into the answer. So let’s come back here next Sunday, and the next, to this gathering of inquiring minds, and keep on wrestling with these questions together. And to close I want to repeat the quote from M. Basil Pennington which I shared for our time of meditation. He said: ‘There are questions, lots of questions. And it is good to live in the question. A pat answer is closed, it is finished; that’s it. It goes nowhere and leaves little room for hope. A question, the mystery, opens the space for us. It is full of possibility. It gives hope of life and ever more abundant life. Our faith… is full of questions. And therefore full of life and hope.’ May it be so for the greater good of all. Amen.
Sermon by Jane Blackall
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