Sermon- January 18,2026

“Keeping the Faith”

A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with some friends – all of us UU’s. I made a comment about the word “faith” and one of my dinner companions said, “I really don’t like that word – faith.” When I questioned why, he said “because faith is asking you to believe in something that isn’t real, something that doesn’t exist.”

Which made me stop and think…it was a very valid point. So often, when speaking of faith, we are being asked to wrap our minds around something that is not tangible, something that is outside our own realm of understanding, outside our own realm of what is real in our lives. Most of us are rational people, and we want to make sense of our world. 1 + 1 = 2. Gravity exists and keeps us on the ground. The earth is round. When confronted with something that doesn’t make sense, or we are unable to grasp, it challenges our reality.

St Augustine writes “faith is believing what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.”

Growing up Catholic, faith was a non-issue. You believed – period. I had no idea that believing or not believing was an option, a choice. You believed, so you had faith. It has only been as an adult, especially as a Unitarian Universalist that I have felt the freedom to choose what I believe in, to choose what I have faith in.

Theodore Parker, that great 19th century transcendentalist and Unitarian minister, defined faith not by creeds or miracles, but as a deep trust in God's infinite goodness and an active, loving commitment to justice and truth, manifesting in moral duty and service to humanity, believing that sincere, honest lives, whether of a street-sweeper or president, embody true religion and help bend the moral universe toward justice. He distinguished between the "transient" (doctrines, rituals) and the "permanent" (pure morality, love of God and man) in Christianity, emphasizing that faith is a lived experience of divine love and connection, not just belief in dogma. Parker believed in an innate moral sense within humans that points toward justice, and that this divine intuition guides us, even when the world seems unjust; this is the foundation for his famous quote about the "moral arc of the universe" bending toward justice. Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr took great comfort in Parkers view on faith.

Which brings me, brings us to 2026, as Unitarian Universalists, what is faith? What do we believe in?

In a 2016 interview by The Work of the People, Brene Brown reported: 

“I went back to church thinking that it would be like an epidural, like it would take the pain away… that church would make the pain go away. Faith and church was not an epidural for me at all; it was like a midwife who just stood next to me saying, ‘Push. It’s supposed to hurt a little bit.’”

I no longer see faith as blindly believing…believing in something or someone that is unknown or intangible. I see faith as completely real, believing in what I know to be true, that I can see with my own eyes. I believe in love. I believe that the power of love CAN move mountains. I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every living thing. I believe in our interconnectedness. 

When we are out there with our Black Lives Matter signs, when we are standing on a bridge with our bridge brigade, or when we are in front of an ICE detention facility, we are living the truest, most pure example of faith. We believe in justice, we believe in equality, we believe in dignity.

When we gather as a community, whether in worship, a potluck or a Buddhist meditation group, we are telling the world, and showing the world, what we believe in, what we have faith in. Our actions, when done out of love, are the greatest testament to faith we can live into.

Last week I was in the office with Olivia and April, and I asked them about the word faith, and what it meant to them. I was trying to get a sense how different people view faith, how they might define faith. It was a good conversation, and later on, April sent me this:

Once all villagers decided to pray for rain.

On the day of prayer all the people gathered,but only one boy came with an umbrella.

That’s FAITH

When you throw babies in the air,

they laugh because they know you will catch them.

That’s FAITH

Every night we go to bed

without any assurance of being alive the next morning,but still we set the alarms to wake up.

That’s FAITH

We plan big things for tomorrow

in spite of zero knowledge of the future.

That’s FAITH

We see the world suffering,

but still we get married and have children.

That’s FAITH

So many of us have had faith journeys that did not turn out very well or did not turn out how we had hoped. Even the word “faith” can make some of us uncomfortable. But I see our Unitarian Universalist faith as having the ability to open so many paths, so many avenues for any of us to explore. We ae not bound by creed or dogma, we have our free will to choose which path we go down and we encourage each other’s growth. That is what faith is – believing in each other, even when it might be different then where and who we are, and even when it’s tough.

Duane “Dog” Chapman, the American reality TV Star, writes:

“Faith is the substance of hope - of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So, if you can hope for it and imagine it, and keep imagining and hoping and seeing yourself there - that is faith.”

Chapman was a bounty hunter, so I’m not sure how to interpret this, but I do connect with faith being the substance of hope. I do hope – have faith – that we will find our way out of the mess in this country. I do hope – have faith – in the goodness of many, many people who want justice and equality in this world. And I do hope – have faith – that THIS community will continue the hard fight to the other side. That is where I draw my faith from.

And yes, there is a touch of the unknown when talking about faith. But as Aprils quotes about faith show, our lives are filled with unknowns every minute of every day. Yet we still hope, we still have faith.

Reinhold Neibuhr writes:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.”

May we continue to love the heck out of this world, even when it’s hard. May we continue to hope for a better future, one fill with peace and joy and fairness, even when it seems like it’s falling apart. And may we continue to have faith that humankind is good and loving and just.

As Theodore Parker writes:

Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;

its temple, all space;

its shrine, the good heart;

its creed, all truth;

its ritual, works of love;

its profession of faith, divine living.

May we make it so.