"It's bigger on the inside!"
In the series "Doctor Who," the doctor travels in a vehicle called the Tardis, which can travel anywhere in time and space.
The Tardis disguises itself as a British police call box. This is a (now) old-fashioned item that was still in use when the Doctor Who series began.
One notable property of the Tardis is that it is bigger on the inside. Much bigger.
This is because the
Tardis is "dimensionally transcendental."
Religion, as well, is dimensionally transcendental. To "outsiders" (non-members) any religion appears smaller than it really is. But those within the religion can see depths and dimensions that outsiders are blind to.
Religion speaks to the transcendent in the universe; it speaks (in some instances) to the transcendent beyond the universe. It speaks to that which cannot be contained in words or rituals, which cannot be contained within perception or understanding. Those within any given religion can be helped by it to see the Holy, the Sacred, the ineffable. Or they can be helped to see some part of that. (The Holy is itself much larger than any one religion.)
So before I judge any other religion, no matter how silly or irrational it might appear to me on the outside, I want to be sure that I remember that I may be missing the "dimensionally transcendent" aspects of it.
It is also true that people are bigger on the inside. The inner universe of any person is vast; it is wide and deep. The intellectual self of each individual can investigate the outer regions of the universe and the smallest bits of atoms; it can conceptualize and thinks about religious truths and myths.
I also know that emotionally people have great depth. They are so much more than one can see from the outside.
May we remember that wondrous and miraculous things lie within every religion on earth, and within every person on Earth. And that means that they are also within our religion, within our congregation, and within every person here. And that means they also are within us; within you and I.
In the words of our vision statement, let us see the holiness within each other that is so much bigger than we can fully know.