The Cathedral of the World

“The world has need of your theology,” said prominent Harvard theologian Diana Eck last year to one of our sister congregations in New York City. “In a world divided by race, and by religion and ideology, the very presence of a church like yours—committed to the oneness of God, the love of God, the love of neighbor, and service to humanity—is a beacon. Be bold in proclaiming it!” That’s what Diana Eck said.

But before boldness of proclamation, there must be a boldness of inner vision, of imagination. So this morning, I invite you to imagine boldly, along with me, this faith tradition, this religious movement, that the world needs. Imagine with me an image or series of images that captures our story, expresses it, telegraphs who we are and what we stand for.

For me, the boldness begins with a feeling of spaciousness, of size. I see in my mind’s eye blue sky, a bright sun, and a BIG building. Not a superdome or megamall—the values those kinds of architecture imply don’t fit. What comes to mind are the great structures of our religious past—Angkor Wat, the vast ancient Hindu temple complex in Cambodia; or Islam’s Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; or Chartres Cathedral in Paris. Architecture that serves to embody spiritual aspiration in stone and wood and glass. Spaciousness and size…..

And at this point I find myself particularly taken with the image of cathedral, so I’m going to follow up with it, trust my imagination to take me where I need to go. Unitarian Universalism is like a great massive cathedral—a cathedral of the world.

But now my inner imaginative eye—like a movie camera—swoops down and gives me a close up of the foundation of it all. I see, at the base of the cathedral, in the ground, twin foundation stones, ancient, upon which all the rest is built. Twin foundation stones: one representing Unitarianism, and the other representing Universalism.

The Unitarian stone has a date carved into it: 325AD. It represents an idea that is a lot older, but 325 AD is when it gained a definite kind of historical notoriety. The idea says that Jesus is not equal to God—Jesus is not God—God is one. Classical Unitarianism. And in 325AD, it was formally declared heretical. One of the foundation stones of the entire cathedral of the world edifice embodies … heresy.

And so does the other. Carved into it is the date 544AD, when the Universalist idea was declared heretical: the idea that God will gather up all beings into himself; no one shall be lost in hell for all time. Believe that, said the orthodox of the time, and your soul is eternally condemned.

Now pause here for a moment. This is our Unitarian Universalist cathedral of the world we are talking about, and look at how it begins: in heresy. And already we know the risks, at least theologically: our souls condemned, so say the orthodox. But there are political risks as well, since theology and politics unarguably reflect and form each other (even where there is separation of church and state). 1500 years ago, for example, to stake your claim on Unitarianism was, in essence, to reject the absolute God-ordained lordship of the emperor. Not a convenient thing to do back then when the emperor claimed his rule WAS God-ordained. In order to solidify this, in fact, he gathered up all the most important religious leaders of his day by sheer military might and charged them with defining the articles of proper Christian belief—doing this once and for all. But the religious leaders ended up dickering and dithering and multiplying distinctions and tiny differences—clarity was not happening—so the emperor essentially had to threaten them by the sword to get their act together and vote like he wanted them to: against Unitarianism and for Trinitarianism. History calls this the Council of Nicea.

Being a heretic is neither convenient nor safe. But our cathedral of the world is not built on foundations of convenience. Heresy in its most positive sense means to choose. It means to think and act on the basis of one’s personal integrity, no matter what. It is courage. That’s what our twin foundation stones say about us, who we are as a people of faith. We must never forget this. Our faith was never meant to be easy.

But now it is time to enter into the cathedral. We pass the foundation stones as we walk through massive double-doors and into a vast space. We lift up our eyes to see amazing stained glass, through which light streams and illuminates. Can you see it, in your mind’s eye?

The first piece of stained glass our eyes rest on portrays Jesus. It reminds us that Unitarianism and Universalism are ultimately responses to experiences people had of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Once he said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance,” and this is the gospel that launched us as well as so many other communities of faith, though through the long years there has been a branching effect, differences and distinctions multiplied in ways that no emperor could prevent for long, until today, one group’s definition of Christianity might be the exact opposite of another’s. As Unitarian Universalists, sometimes we grow anxious at our seeming inability to define ourselves in a once-and-for-all sort of way. But it is good to be reminded by the example of Christianity that the task of definition is hard all-around. There is no other side of the fence where the grass is greener. Even the most dogmatic, hard-line faiths have to work hard to keep their people straight.

But that’s another sermon. For now, we are gazing on and appreciating the great teacher and prophet, Jesus. Yet this is the cathedral or the world, and the wisdom we have to offer does not stop with Christianity. Today we are a more-than-Christian, post-Christian faith. Look just to the left, and you will see light streaming through a stained glass window that portrays the Buddha—perhaps that part of his life when he experiences illumination sitting at the base of a bo tree. Light shining through this, and through so many other stained glass windows. Moses with his Ten Commandments; Lao Tzu walking in remote misty mountains; Gandhi at his spinning wheel; Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. preaching “I have a dream.” Light shining and streaming through. We look up, and what we see is breathtaking. One light, many windows. Windows of the world’s great religions. Windows of prophetic women and men. Windows of science. Windows of humanism. Windows of earth-based spirituality. Windows of mysticism. Many windows, but one shining, streaming light of truth and meaning….

We have come a long way since the earliest Jesus communities of first century Palestine, or our moments of heresy in the fourth and sixth centuries. We’ve come a long way even since the 19th century, when American Unitarianism and American Universalism were Bible-centered and exclusively Christian.

And while there are many causes I could cite for this—for our expansion into a pluralistic faith—I will ask you simply to gaze upon yet another stained glass window in our cathedral of the world. There it is: it portrays the great Unitarian preacher and prophet of Transcendentalism: Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Live after the infinite Law that is in you,” he once said, “and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms.” Revelation, in other words, can’t possibly be contained just within the Hebrew or Christian Bible. The wellspring is fundamentally within each of our souls; revelation bubbles up out of the spark of the Divine in our depths. Add to this the revelation of nature, as well as the revelation embodied by the Bibles of many times and lands, such as Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita. The one light of truth is abundant; no single stained-glass window may ever contain it or control it. One light but many, many windows.

So our job, says Emerson, is to live in the light. Let the light that comes to us through so many windows of truth and wisdom go deep and awaken the sleeping source of light within. Let sleeping heretics awaken, to choose with integrity and with courage what they shall believe about God and the afterlife and ethics and so many other things. Let sleeping heretics awaken and know their hidden powers for healing and action and compassion. Said Emerson in 1836, “Our age is retrospective. It builds on the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” In our cathedral of the world, there are already many stained glass windows, yet larger still is the space awaiting what is new. Your window, my window. Revelation is not ended. Revelation is not sealed. The journey never ends.

Yet at this point I need to acknowledge something. So far, we have seen that today’s Unitarian Universalism invites us on a great adventure of light. One light, many windows. Yet that is not all there is to our lives. And that’s not all there is in our cathedral of the world. For in our cathedral, there are plenty of shadows as well.

To understand what I mean, we need to learn a little more about Emerson’s life. Emerson’s father was a traditional minister who never blessed him. His first wife Ellen, who believed in him, who was his rock, died young … and death repeatedly struck his brothers and his own children. The man who wrote, “Hitch your wagon to a star” and “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” also wrote, “after thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning.” And then from his student days at Harvard: right in the middle of an essay he was writing about God, struggling with what those three little letters strung together refer to—his eyes failed him and he was able to see no light at all. Only after two surgeries and nine months of recuperation was he able to go back to wrestling with his theological studies.

If ever there was a man who loved light, it was Emerson. Yet the light never comes unmixed. Adversity is a part and parcel of the human condition. Shadow parts in ourselves and in our relationships lead to self-destructiveness and addictions and bad habits of every kind. Shadow parts in society and the larger world lead to structural poverty and prejudice and war. The light never comes unmixed.

Life is a great mystery. Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church puts it this way: “By the time we die, we will barely have gotten our minds wet. The wisest of us all will have but the faintest notion of what life was all about.” He goes on to say: “This counsels humility, but also oneness. … My favorite etymology speaks eloquently to this very point. Human, humane, humanitarian, humor, humility, humus.”

For me, what all of this leads to is my sense of the Unitarian Universalist religious journey as NOT a quest for certainty—NOT a quest for perfection in the here and now—but a quest for greater trust in the meaningfulness and worth of life, no matter where it leads. I need the abundance of light that streams and shines through the many windows of our cathedral of the world to encourage me, to strengthen me. I need it to waken the sleeping light within, as well, so that the abundance within me can be released. So that I can be a messenger of hope and humor to others, a messenger of compassion and peace. We live in a world that is so often unfair, and joy is weirdly and jarringly juxtaposed with every kind of woe. Randomness and senselessness and sorrow strike. Life can place so many limits on us. But there are no limits that can be placed on our human capacity to respond with courage and grace and forgiveness. There are no limits to this. Our greatest prophets and saints prove the point. Jesus. The Buddha. No limits to the abundance of the human heart to be generous in times of anxiety and fear. No limits to clarity or compassion. None.

Our cathedral of the world is all about abundance. Abundant choice, abundant light, abundant mystery, abundant capacity to respond to life with limitless love. “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.”

But there is one more thing to notice, before we are done with this bold imaginative vision of who we are as a religious people—the vision we can proclaim boldly in the world. We have been looking up at the stained glass windows for a long time now, so now let’s look down at the floor. What we see is a Latin phrase: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

To me, this suggests how we see ourselves as a community of gathered seekers. It’s wonderfully infused by core American values which have themselves been shaped and formed by key Unitarian and Universalist leaders. The author of these words, for example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Words from the Declaration of Independence—written by Thomas Jefferson, Unitarian. It’s why our community affirms the inherent worth and dignity of each person. Why our community affirms the spirituality of the work of social justice to defend human dignity and restore it when others threaten to take it away. It’s why our community affirms open conversation in the context of supportive community. It’s why we affirm each individual journey of faith because we know that the Creator has a creative connection with each and every person here and now. This is the floor upon which we stand—the covenant that unites us and makes us whole. We need not think alike to love alike.

Consider another distinctly American phrase that resonates with us: “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Here is the classic definition of democracy, which Abraham Lincoln famously used in his Gettysburg Address. But it’s not original with him. He got it from Theodore Parker, one of our best Unitarian preachers in the 19th century, whose services would gather literally thousands of people—he was a megachurch preacher and didn’t know it. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” It means that through our gathered generosity of presence and service and witness and giving, we can become great. We each get a vote in this community, in some form or fashion, and to the degree that we vote, we are vital and strong. It’s good old American enterprise: You get only as much as you put in. Vote with your time and energy, because without you, this community cannot be strong. Vote with your presence. Vote with your volunteerism. Vote with your financial generosity. Don’t be fooled by all the people you see, thinking that someone else will do it so you don’t have to. Don’t think that no one will miss your single vote, since there are so many others. American democracy can’t survive such apathy, since it inevitably builds and steamrolls; and we can’t survive it here, in our Unitarian Universalist spiritual democracy. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” means everyone involved in some way, everyone informed, because everyone has a vital stake in the outcome.

The building of our cathedral of the world never ends. It needs every one of us. But it is worth it. It is bold. It symbolizes a religion which essentially says: abundance. Abundance of choice, abundance of light, abundance of mystery, abundance of humanity, abundance of involvement and enterprise in building community. The challenge for us, ultimately, is this: how shall we live in this abundance? Will we allow it to change us? Will we let it sink it, transform us from within?

Though the foundation stones are ancient, still, Unitarian Universalism itself is only a baby faith, born with the formal consolidation of Unitarianism and Universalism in the 20th century, in 1961. A new thing came to life in that year, different from anything that had ever been before. And I believe that we live in a unique moment of time, where congregations like this one can make a huge impact on the shape of our movement and its future. We need to give ourselves to the abundance of this faith and let it inspire us, create out of it. Back in 1836, Emerson asked, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? […] There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” Why not? Why not, here at UUCA? Let us imagine our faith boldly, and then proclaim it boldly—this faith that the world needs.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m indebted to the Rev. Forrest Church, who is the original source of the “one light, many windows” concept, as well as the image of “the cathedral of the world.” Together with many other Unitarian Universalists around the world, I grieve his recent death and honor his leadership in our movement.

Rosh Hashanah Homily: Giving Birth To Isaac

Today is the birthday of the world!

Earlier I was scanning my facebook page, and I noticed one post which not only affirmed this but said it was also Talk Like A Pirate Day.

And so I read these responses to the original post:

Arrgghhh, maties, have a great new year!
L’shana tovaaaar!
shiver me shofars!

And now that I’ve brought it up, let’s get it out of our systems. L’shana tovaaaar—everyone, say it with me……

Today is the birthday of the world!

And while Rosh Hashanah, traditionally, recalls for us God’s creation of the universe at the beginning of time, it does so only to deepen our wonder and appreciation for the new beginning that is before us, personally and collectively. And so it was that a moment ago we said together:

In the twilight of the vanishing year,
we lift up our hearts in thanksgiving.
Our souls are stirred by the memory of joy
as the new year begins.

I’ve come to learn that another Rosh Hashanah tradition is reading the story of Sarah giving birth to Isaac. You would think that the traditional reading would be the one from Genesis, the creation story, majestic with lines like, “And God said, let there be light…” Brilliant with refrain after refrain of, “And God saw that it was good.” Yet Rosh Hashanah, even as it is the birthday of the world, puts particular and special emphasis on the birthday of the human world, the birthday of history. It affirms our Unitarian Universalist First Principle of the inherent worth and dignity of all people. Thus the traditional story that is read: the story of Sarah and her giving birth to Isaac.

The context is this: Long after the Flood and Noah, God spoke to a faithful man named Abram and said, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”

“I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

Abram was supposed to have been 75 years old when God said all this to him, and God kept on saying it, in one place and then in another, throughout his and Sarai’s long journey. But despite all the assurances, Sarai—equally aged—remained infertile. Being the practical person she was, at one point she told Abram to go sleep with her maidservant, saying “perhaps I can build a family through her.” A child was born, named Ishmael, but born with him was also conflict and strife. Besides being practical, Sarah was also very human, with her own hopes and dreams, and Ishmael’s birth only sharpened her desire for a child of her own flesh until it cut like a knife. Ishmael, with her maidservant mother, eventually found themselves banished, and they would have died unless God had stepped in to preserve them.

God is stepping into people’s lives a lot in these old stories. And he does so again, years later, in the lives of Sarai and Abram. Once again, like a broken record, God repeats his promise—and to make the deal even more solid he renames them Sarah and Abraham, names we know them better by today. “This is my covenant to you,“ God intones… But this time, Abraham counters with silent laughter. As the Bible puts it: “Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’” It’s just impossible. How can the birth—the birthday of a new human world—happen, when the father and mother are seemingly sterile?

Well, we know it does happen. Years of infertility—year after grinding, hopeless year—can’t stop the miracle. God makes the seemingly infertile fertile. From two aged people, Abraham and Sarah, he is able to raise up an entire nation, a great nation. And even if this particular part—the God part—is sheer symbol and metaphor, the greatness of Israel is real. The greatness of the Jewish spirit. Here and now, we celebrate it. The world’s birthday. The birth of a people and a history, against all odds. Isaac is born. He is.

One year before it happens, three visitors come near Abraham’s tent—and here’s the key part of the whole story. It is a hot day, and Abraham is moved by the sacred law of hospitality to refresh them with food and drink and rest. Somehow these three visitors turn out to be the Lord, or the Lord speaks through them—the Bible is a bit confusing on this—and this is how the conversation goes:

“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked Abraham.
“There, in the tent,” he said.
Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”
Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”
But the LORD said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

Yeah, I know that Abraham laughed as well—but if you will recall, he did so silently, just to himself. For Sarah, on the other hand, it’s out loud, uppity, no-holds barred, blunt. Loud enough to be heard outside the tent, even though she’s inside.

Sarah the skeptic. Sarah the wonderfully human. Sarah whose very own body gives birth to Isaac and to an entire nation even if to her it seemed absolutely and utterly impossible, even if she was tired of all the promises she’d heard, yada yada yada, over all the long years.

There’s lots we could tease out of this story, as rich as it is. But the one thing I want to focus on is what can be on our minds and hearts as we face a new year and the task of beginning again the world that is our personal life, or the world of our families, or the world of our collective life as a congregation or a city or a nation. Just as for Abraham and Sara, promises are set before us. Promises that justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Promises of happiness and wellbeing in our families. Promises that we can be happy and healthy in our own lives. We have heard all the promises. Rosh Hashanah itself is one of these promises, that hope can be reborn to us in the new year! We have heard all the promises before.

But at least for me, there are times when all the promises seem repetitive and empty, and I’m feeling as sterile as sterile can be, and I don’t believe. At the thought of new birth, at the thought of beginning yet another year, all I want to do is … laugh. Just like Sarah. Be loud, uppity, no-holds barred, blunt, just like her.

There were dreams that came to naught….
and times when we refused to dream.
Some of our days were dark with grief.
Many a tear furrowed our cheeks.
We look back with sorrow, as the new year begins.

We all have different stories of this and feel it with varying levels of intensity. Last year might have been just great for some of us. But for others of us, there were challenges. Adversity. Financial difficulty. Job loss. Sickness. Others hurt us, or we hurt them. We made mistakes, and we feel horrible. Then there’s the larger world. International crises of one type or another. National crises. Politics. People putting Hitler mustaches on photos of our President—and there is more ugliness to come.

Give me a great big Sarah laugh, right now!

All of this is why the great writer Elie Wiesel once said, “The true task of life is never merely beginning—it is beginning again.” This is why Rosh Hashanah is so important. It puts us honestly in touch with our inner Sarahs—and yet it shows us that, through this very same inner Sarah, we can and we will give birth to a new world.

Yet we look ahead with hope,
giving thanks for the daily miracle of renewal,
for the promise of good to come.

Our job here and now is nothing less than to connect with our inner Sarah. All that honesty, all that spunk. Keeps us grounded. Keeps us real. But don’t stop there. We must never forget how the story ends for Sarah, and how it can end for us. Against all odds, Sarah gives birth. Clearly, we don’t have the benefit or the challenge of Abraham’s God stepping directly into our stories, visiting our tents for food and drink and rest. But for those of us who are God-believers of some sort, we know that God is an ever-present source of renewal that is always available to tap into if only we stop long enough to focus and to listen. And for all of us, God-believer or not, we are healed and made whole by the power of friendship, the energy of compassion and kindness, the grace of the world’s beauty, the wisdom of teachers around us and those who have gone before us, the gifts of religious traditions like Judaism and, of course, Unitarian Universalism. Each and all help us to take life one step at a time, one day at a time, trusting that as we step forward, we will be met with whatever we most need in that moment. We can begin again. One step, one day at a time.

Sarah, 90 years old, in her mind too old ever to give birth, does. We can face a new year and begin again, full of hope. Each of us, in the way that is proper and appropriate to our unique life situations, can give birth to Isaac. That’s the job that Rosh Hashanah gives us. Give birth to Isaac.

You know what Isaac the name actually means? Laughter. He will laugh.

With laughter, we enter into the new year.

L’shana tovah!

Protesting Police Harassment of Atlanta’s GBLT Community

On September 10th, the Atlanta Police Department raided a well known gay bar, The Atlanta Eagle, and all 62 patrons were forced to lay down on the ground, be searched, and have their IDs run. Not a single patron was arrested for any charge, despite the 3 paddy wagons the APD brought with them. The Atlanta community responded with a rally to show support. I and about thirty members from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta took part.

Here’s a video of my comments at the rally:

Here are my essential comments:

My name is Rev. Anthony David. I am a pastor of a local congregation, and I want to tell you, I am proud to be here today. I am proud to serve the gay community, and I believe that the real sin here is not homosexuality, but homophobia. Homophobia is the sin, not homosexuality.

My congregation is the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, and I’d like to hear a shout out from fellow congregants who are here with me today. And if we have other Unitarian Universalists from other local congregations, I want to hear a shout out from you. And you know, we’re not the only faith community out there for which homophobia is a sin, and I want to hear a shout out from people of other faith communities who are here standing with us. I love it!

There are several points I’d like to make. One is that the police should protect the Constitutional rights of Atlanta’s residents, not violate them. When Atlanta treats people as second-class citizens, that is not right. Trust is violated, and that is tragic. We need our police, absolutely, but not in this way, not in the way that they treated people several days ago. We need our police, but not in this way. A lot of trust has been violated and a lot of reform is necessary to make sure this kind of thing never happens again.

Another point that comes to mind: Unitarian Universalists and many other people of faith believe (as I said earlier) that homophobia is the sin, not homosexuality. What is wrong is not lawful expressions of sexuality that come from mature, responsible adults. What is wrong is not the sexual identity that people are born into, who they are. What’s wrong is harassment, police or otherwise. What’s wrong is anti-gay and racist comments, profanity yelled at innocent people, people forced to lay down on the floor while handcuffed for more than an hour. This is America, this is 2009!

My last point. Unitarian Universalists and many other people of faith stand on the side of love with the BGLT community whose humanity and Constitutional rights are too often denied. We have got to stand up, we have got to unite. If it happens here, it can happen anywhere. We need to stand up and do something about this.