Reflection #106 (8th June 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
So today we’re exploring this concept of faith. This is a bit of a generalisation but over the years I’ve picked up the impression that a lot of us who end up in Unitarian congregations are a bit uncertain, or ambivalent – or even squeamish – about the very notion of faith (perhaps in large part because we’re not entirely sure what it means). Do we really want to call ourselves ‘people of faith’ collectively, or consider ourselves as ‘having faith’ personally, when the way the word is often used in common parlance gives it a number of connotations that we might not feel entirely at ease with?
In the main, I think, people tend to associate faith with belief in something particular. Probably belief in God – with ‘God’ being understood in a very particular way, a way that’s probably derived from the dominant religious tradition of our local culture which we reference by default – and also with ‘belief’ being understood in a very particular way, in the sense of an intellectual agreement that God exists, and that a certain collection theological doctrines that go with it are true, probably literally true.
As Unitarians we probably already know, intellectually at least, that religion doesn’t really work like this, or at least it doesn’t have to. Of course, there are plenty of religious traditions that seem to emphasise belief – that put a lot of weight on subscribing to creeds or making declarations – that’s a practice I would tend to associate mostly with the evangelical churches. But we are part of a free, creedless religious tradition, and I think we know that there’s more than one way to be faithful (though perhaps our ambivalence and hesitancy around speaking of ‘faith’ comes from a sense that the more conservative traditions ‘own’ the word somehow? But, of course, that’s not the case). That’s why I shared those words from the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg at the start of the service, to encourage us to reclaim the word, and to consider what faith means to us, how we might understand ourselves as progressive ‘people of faith’. She said: ‘I want to invite a new use of the word faith, one that is not associated with a dogmatic religious interpretation or divisiveness. I want to encourage delight in the word, to help reclaim faith as fresh, vibrant, intelligent, and liberating…’
So where do we start? It would be remiss of me to speak about faith here without crediting Richard Boeke, a Unitarian minister who sadly died just a few weeks ago at the age of 95 (and I want to pause to note that Richard’s wife Jopie was also a Unitarian minister, and indeed served as interim minister here at Essex Church for a couple of years in the 1990s, which a few of us will recall). Richard, who was deeply engaged with questions of religious freedom and interfaith dialogue, spent many years wrestling with the meaning of ‘faith’ in that context, drawing on strands of wisdom from differing religious traditions, and he came to an understanding of faith as primarily being about trust. Richard made this observation: ‘In the Quran, the word amana means to have faith. On the other hand, zanna means to hold an opinion. In Christianity, Aquinas, Augustine, Bach, all bear witness that credo means what it says, “I place my heart.” [JB: that’s the etymology of the words ‘creed’ and ‘believe’] When Luther affirms “the just shall live by faith alone,” he does not mean, “the just shall live by the right mental decision.” Hebrews chapter 11 opens, “now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” This is not a discussion of intellectual assent, but of living trust.’
What I take from this is that faith means trusting in something beyond the rational. It’s about accepting that we can’t work everything out by ourselves – as wonderful as our human faculties might be – the universe we find ourselves in is too vast and complex for us to understand or control. We’re part of an immense dynamical system, thrown in with all the other people, and creatures, and planets, and atoms, all doing their own thing and bumping up against each other in challenging ways that we often can’t do a thing about. In life we will frequently find ourselves at the limits of our power – and that’s where faith comes in – this acknowledgement of something that’s beyond us. Speaking about faith in this way makes me think about the spiritual language of 12-step groups. They know: When life is unmanageable, when we are up against it, there is something to be said for surrender. Faith can liberate us from the mistaken thought that we can control everything, fix every problem, and put things right through the force our own individual efforts alone. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do to let go of our struggles and ‘hand them over to God’ or a higher power as we understand it. In tough times there can be a huge sense of relief, comfort, even liberation in letting go like this, in faith. But to quote Richard Boeke again: ‘Faith is not a matter of leaving it all to God, nor believing that we can do it all. Rather in the words of Paul Tillich, it is “finite freedom.” The affirmation that we cannot do everything, but we can do something. This beginning of faith was beautifully stated by Reinhold Niebuhr when he wrote [the serenity prayer]: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Of course this is still pretty mysterious. It depends on how you understand ‘God’ or ‘higher power’ (and whether you are prepared to engage with those concepts at all). I reckon it’s OK to adopt such an attitude before we fully understand it. Dive in. That’s what we mean by a ‘leap of faith’. I appreciate these words by William Sloane Coffin: ‘There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation. Faith is no substitute for thinking. On the contrary, it is what makes good thinking possible. It has what we might call a limbering effect on the mind; by taking us beyond familiar ground, faith ends up giving us much more to think about.’
There’s a parallel I have heard – and possibly shared before – one which I like very much – a parallel between coming to faith and falling in love (or maybe committing to someone in marriage). The ‘leap of faith’ involved in both cases opens up more possibility, more depth, than you can reach while you are holding back and sitting on the sidelines. In both cases it is about giving your heart, making a commitment, and seeing where it leads, rather than constructing some sort of rational argument. If we are half-hearted or tentative about it we might just be missing out on something beautiful. And although there’s some moment in time when you make the leap, that’s not the end of the story, as with any ongoing relationship you have to make it work. You have to ‘do’ faith in the same way you have to ‘do’ love. As we heard in the last reading – faith is a verb – it has to shape how we actually live.
So maybe we can think of faith as a way of being in the world – a way of seeing – an attitude we take to the life and the universe, to everyone and everything we meet. A way of receiving and responding to the ups and downs that life brings our way – not passively or fatalistically – but deeply engaged – whilst also recognising the limits of our power and control. To quote Richard Boeke again: ‘Faith is… a responsibility in the face of ever-changing reality. The immature forms of faith or beliefs close us off from the world, until reality shatters our walls. Mature faith knows the terror and the void, knows the fear of rejection, and still reaches out in hope. In my search to define faith, I come to these words: “Faith is our perception of reality conditioned by relationship and ritual.”’
Or how about this take from the Zen teacher Alan Watts: ‘Faith… is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. You can only know God through an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear window.’ Or there’s this from the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich: ‘Faith is not an acceptance of doctrines… but the acceptance of the power itself, out of which we come and to which we go, whatever the doctrines may be through which we accept it… a faith which can lose every concrete content and still exist as an absolute affirmation of life as life and of being as being.’ That phrase might take a moment to grasp but I like that sense of faith as something universal that remains constant regardless of the precise details of the tradition through which we come to find it. And, for those who like God-language, just one last quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: ‘Faith does not mean certainty. It means the courage to live with uncertainty. It does not mean having the answers, it means having the courage to ask the questions and not let go of God, as [God] does not let go of us.’
This is all so tricky to articulate! But for me, faith is about trusting that there is an underlying Goodness to the universe – that’s something I’m happy to call ‘God’ – and God is trying to lure us all to join in with this Goodness, to recognise it, appreciate it, amplify it, actively participate in the creation of more of it, during this all-too-brief span when we’re alive here on Earth. Goodness might take many forms – we might experience it as love, truth, beauty, justice – but while we are alive, we are called to simultaneously surrender to the flow of life, and get stuck in, doing whatever we can to serve the common good and help nudge reality in a slightly better direction. In this view we can see ourselves as part of a larger story, even as we endure disappointments and setbacks, as the moral arc bends towards justice and we trust that Good will prevail in the end. Or you might even frame it in more traditional language (I quite like it!) – faith commits us to the path of righteousness – striving to do God’s will – ultimately helping to build the Kingdom of God.
That’s my personal take on faith – or at least, it’s where I’m at with it today – and my inevitably slightly clumsy attempt to put the ineffable into words. But as this reflection draws to a close, let’s return to that question we meditated on earlier, and I encourage you to ponder it in the week ahead: What does faith mean to you? That’s a question to wrestle with for the whole of our lives, I reckon. And I look forward to hearing your responses over tea and cake, and in the weeks to come. Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall