What is the point of religion? Why do we do this? What are we getting out of this, all our work for the church, our pledges, our getting up early on a weekend?

You know it's hard work being religious. If you don't think so wait until the nominating committee gives you a call. If you don't think being religious is a sacrifice wait until pledge week. It's hard work. You know it's hard work. Most of you have been working at this a lot longer than I have.

It takes work to keep a church going. And you all work so hard.

I hope you're getting something back for all the work you're doing. You must be getting something back, because I don't believe you're that self-sacrificing to keep putting yourself and your heart and your muscles and your brain into something that isn't making some kind of difference.

But what is the difference religion makes? What is the end result of all this religion supposed to be?

The final answer to that question is supposed to be salvation. Achieving salvation is supposed to be the end result of religion. Explaining what salvation look likes and helping us get there is the purpose of religion.

And I don't just mean religion in terms of churches and Sunday mornings; I mean religion in general. I mean religion in terms of all those people who don't have a church life but still have a spiritual life. There are a lot of people who without being religious, or attending a church, are very aware of their spiritual life. And they do an awful lot about it. And again the question is why? Why is it worth the effort? The sacrifice is more evident when you've got a church to support, when someone's asking you to give some of your time and money to a congregation, when you've got commitments the way you all do to be here and do the jobs you've agreed to do.

But I think the question is still valid even for those who are just taking time out of their morning to meditate, or spending a Saturday working for a battered women's shelter, who have a book of daily affirmations by their bedside and a framed copy of "Footprints in the Sand" beside their refrigerator.

Our culture no longer encourages us to be churchgoers. Especially in Southern California amid the educated liberal middle class culture that most of us are part of. There's no expectation from our culture that you are going to be religious. When I get up on Sunday morning and put on my nice clothes and walk out to my car, I don't see many other people in my neighborhood doing likewise.

My neighbors, and even most of my friends and family seem to think that there isn't anything I'm getting out of my being religious, that they aren't getting just as well in their secular life. I would to think that I am getting something out of this that they're not. I'm not stupid. If I could sleep in an extra hour and read the Sunday paper in bed with a nice cup of coffee beside me, don't you think I would? Well this is my job, so maybe I'm not the best example, but nobody's paying you to be here! Why are you here?

We're working toward salvation. That's what religion does. But what is our salvation? What is our goal? How will we know when we get there?

There's a general three-step framework to religious systems. Salvation is the third step. Salvation is the goal of every religion. Salvation is a somewhat old-fashioned term, and it has clear Christian connotations, so you don't hear it that often in a liberal, non-Christian church like Unitarian Universalism. But you've probably learned in the last eight months that I have a sort of personal mission to re-claim traditional religious language from the conservative churches.

So I think we can say that our goal like that of every religion is salvation, and salvation simply means permanently putting right whatever has gone wrong. Salvation is the hoped for resolution of the problem of life. Salvation is the promised land, it's heaven, it's the kingdom of God, it's immortality, it's release from the cycle of death and rebirth, its enlightenment, its nirvana, it moksha. Salvation is the third and final stage in the framework of every religion.

The first stage is noticing that people are unhappy and figuring out why. Religion looks out at the world and asks what is the cause of all this suffering? Successful religion figures out exactly and specifically what the problem is and then tells us about it. Religion pinpoints the cause of human suffering in a particular place.

What's wrong, for every religion is that we suffer. What's wrong is that we're unhappy and unfulfilled. What's wrong is that we feel isolated and cut-off, that we have ill health and not enough to eat, that our dreams are thwarted and our communities are filled with hate and violence. The religions agree that what is wrong is that we're not happy. They differ on what particular thing is to blame.

For Buddhism suffering is a natural consequence of being alive in the world. Conservative Christians tell us that human sin causes suffering. Taoism tells us that we suffer when we struggle against the flow of the universe. Judaism and Islam say that our suffering is the just punishment of failing to live by God's commandments. Hindu's tell us that humanity suffers because we've fallen asleep to our true divine nature.

The first step is isolating the cause of suffering. Step three is salvation, the cessation of suffering. And the very big step two is the method by which we move from the problem to its resolution. Step two explains how we move from suffering to happiness, from anxiety to peace. Step two is making things right.

If the problem is Buddhist suffering, the solution is living the eight-fold path, by which we lose our attachment to the world of desires. If the problem is Christian sin, the solution is joining our souls by faith to Jesus, and letting his death pay the price of our sin. If the problem is Hindu unconsciousness of our true divine natures, the solution is to wake up, through meditation, or worship, or some other spiritual practice.

Once you know the problem, and have applied the solution, you arrive at the perfect world. You are saved. One, two, three.

Because all religions follow this three step process: something's wrong, here's how you fix it, welcome to salvation, using that framework as a model allows you and I, who don't follow a readymade religion to create our own.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have to construct our own spiritual path and that means asking ourselves some questions other religious folks never ask, and challenging ourselves to think deeply and creatively to find answers, where other folks never need to. If you're Jewish you know that the problem is we don't live according to the commandments of God, and you know the solution is to study the Torah and follow its teachings. Following a particular religion means accepting their definition of the problem, and trying to follow their system of overcoming the problem.

As always, Unitarian Universalism isn't like other religions. And once again Unitarian Universalism puts all the work back on its you. We don't tell you what the problem is. And we don't tell you how to overcome the problem, whatever it is. Once again, it's up to you. Instead of telling you what the problem is, Unitarian Universalism asks, "What's your problem?" Instead of teaching you a one size fits all religious method, we ask, "What are you going to do about it?" And although we do talk passionately about creating a world of peace and justice and love and beauty, because we all have different problems, and different ways of getting over them, we can't even promise that salvation will be the same for all of us once we get there.

So, as the first step in creating your own Unitarian Universalist religion, I encourage you to ask yourself, "What's my problem?" I think we can even help each other by asking our friends in the congregation, "What's your problem?"

By that I mean, what do you see as the cause of suffering in the world? That there is suffering is obvious, look at Kosovo, or look at the three women vacationers recently found dead in Yosemite. Where does this suffering come from?

To find your answer you might work at the process backward. Start by noticing what it is that makes you happy. Taking the next step backward you can ask yourself what would I have to do to make more of that good thing in my own life or in the world, and answering that question should help point you to what the cause of suffering is in the first place.

Another suggestion to help you uncover your personal spiritual path is to look at what you're already doing. Faith is always revealed by actions. If it's social justice work that excites your spirituality, then the problem for you may be the social injustices of the world. If your spiritual life is turned inward through meditation, or prayer, or ritual, then the problem for you may be a separation from the divine in normal life.

A third suggestion that may help you discover your personal religion is to take some hints from established religions. The causes of suffering identified by Buddhism or Christianity may make partial sense to you. Or you may find that in disagreeing with them you find what the answer really is for you.

Let's look briefly at Buddhism and Christianity by way of example and see what they say about the cause of suffering, the solution, and salvation.

Buddhism first.

Buddhism says that suffering arises due to our attachment to things that have no existence of themselves. Our attachment involves us in a system of impermanence that cannot fail to disappoint us eventually. The Buddhist solution is to learn a way of being in the world that keeps us from becoming attached to the world. Salvation for the Buddhists comes when we have become completely detached from the world, and we enter a place of nirvana which is empty of attachments of any kind, and therefore blissful.

Nirvana is not seen as being attainable while we are alive. Living Buddhists can attain enlightenment, which is true understanding of the impermanence of the world. But being in the physical world within our bodies provides a barrier to the state of complete blissful nothingness that is the salvation goal.

Salvation, therefore, for Buddhists, happens outside of this world, and outside of this life. Although many Buddhists are passionately involved in this world and work extraordinarily hard to ease suffering in this world, suffering for the Buddhists is a natural consequence of this world, and therefore final salvation requires leaving this world.

Christians, say that we suffer because of sin. Christians say that suffering is not naturally built into the world but that the world was created good. Human beings through our own actions introduced sin into the world. Our current suffering is the consequence of that sin.

The ultimate consequence of that sin is death. You've heard that the wages of sin is death. The price of our sin is that we will die.

As in Buddhism, salvation is not seen as strictly possible in this life. It is the soul that is immortal, and although St. Paul says we will have bodies in the afterlife, they are not the same bodies as the ones we have now. The current body entices us into sin, through it's various lusts and desires. Final salvation will only come when the soul is free of these bodies, and living again in the next world.

Again, many Christians, as many Buddhists, spend an admirable amount of time doing good works of charity. Mother Teresa, for instance, and Martin Luther King, were extraordinarily inspired by their Christian faith to work for the poor and oppressed. Gandhi was inspired by his Hindu faith. But here as in Buddhism, although the sufferings of this world can be eased, final salvation is reserved for the afterlife.

To many of us the idea of an afterlife seems highly improbable. Yet some kind of existence beyond this world is a major doctrine and the defining goal of almost every religion and the vast majority of people alive. Salvation, with the exception of Judaism and the most liberal Christian theologies, is always seen as something that happens in the next life.

The reason that people imagine salvation in an afterlife, is because based on our lived experience, salvation in this life seems impossible. The amount of suffering in this world is so great, and the forces which prevent our happiness seem so insurmountable, even so built into the way that the world is constructed, that an existence of true peace and justice if possible at all, must only be possible somewhere else.

The reason religions depend on an after life, is because of the problem of the lack of justice in this world.

Religions, and I count my own among them, want there to be some kind of link between good, moral behavior, and happiness. We want people who are kind and gentle and loving and generous, and fair, and peaceful to be successful and happy, and long lived, and healthy, and satisfied. But instead, there seems to be no connection between the two. Good people and bad go hungry, and get sick, and die tragically, and become the victims of war. Good people and bad, have long lives, and short lives. Good people and bad are born disabled, or suffer abuse. Some good people are given opportunities to grow and succeed, other good people are held down and held back and held off. It doesn't seem to affect your happiness much one way or the other in this world whether you behave well or ill. Although our society does try to notice and reward the good and kind and generous, being good and kind and generous is no guarantee that you won't fall of a cliff or get hit by a truck, or that some other natural or human caused tragedy won't befall you.

So if all these good people, or really even if one good person leads a miserable life and then dies, our sense of justice is sorely offended. Therefore, because religions want justice in our system, we conclude there must be a life beyond this one, where justice gets sorted out, where good is rewarded, and evil punished. That's what most people mean by salvation.

And that's exactly the kind of salvation closed to any one who doesn't believe in an afterlife.

If this life is all there is, we will never see a world of complete justice. No matter how good we are at treating each other with respect and fairness, no matter how successful in raising our children to be loving and peaceful, even if we actually figure out a way to share all the world's resources, some people are still going to get sick, or be born with genetic disorders, or be trapped under landslides, or be drowned at sea. Even if every bit of human injustice could be accounted for and controlled, which I frankly think is impossible given our fundamental freedom, the fact that we live in an unpredictable and dangerous natural world would still mean that good people will continue to suffer, unjustly.

So what then could this-worldly salvation mean? If this life is all we've got, and if this life doesn't allow complete justice, and a complete end to suffering, what can we have?

Perhaps the Buddhists are right. This is a world of suffering, and there is no way while living in this world to ever completely free us from suffering.

And yet like the Dalai Lama and the Boddhisatvas, I'm not willing to give up on this world. If suffering can not be ended, I know it can be eased. As Mother Teresa and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and Jesus, proclaimed, the hope of an eventual salvation some where else does not lessen our call to make this life better for our neighbors and ourselves.

If final justice in this life is impossible there is yet so much we can do to make more justice here than there is. If a complete end to suffering is impossible for living human beings, there is yet so much suffering that we can do something to ease.

That is the task of religion. If a salvation that is true and complete, must also be supernatural and otherworldly then I, who believe in the laws of nature and know only this world, won't concern myself with complete salvation, and instead concern myself with the incomplete salvation that I can contribute to. Because I can not ease every instance of suffering does not mean I will refuse to try to ease some instances of suffering.

Final salvation remains forever out of reach, and therefore becomes irrelevant, almost imaginary. While alive, we'll never get there, and so eventually I think we need to turn away from the elusive and eventually frustrating illusory salvation of every hurt healed, and every goodness rewarded, and instead focus on the situation we find our selves actually living.

We live in a world where there is much good, good that need to be recognized and encouraged and rewarded. And we live in a world of much suffering and injustice, suffering and injustice that needs to be rectified and changed and stopped.

That is the work of religion. That's why we get up on a Sunday morning and pledge our money and our lives to this great cause. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "That is the religion we choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke; to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house." It is the religion that preaches that great task, and inspires us to go out and do it, that is the religion we owe allegiance to. That is the religion that I'm willing to give up my Sunday, and my muscles and brain and wallet to contribute to.

Let us be that religion. Let us strive to go from here today, and to go from everywhere, whereever we are every day, out into a world of suffering and injustice, and where we find suffering and injustice work to ease it. Let us go with humility that recognizes our human limitations and the reality of a world organized around natural forces we have little knowledge of or power over. We will not do it all, but we will not fail to do something. We will not end every suffering, but some suffering will end. We will not erase every instance of injustice, but we will erase some instances.

As we move through our lives we will always find more suffering and more injustice spread out before us, but we will not despair because behind us, we will leave a trail of mostly peace and the best justice we're capable of creating. Let that be what we mean by salvation. We will do our best. And then we will do our best again.