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.

When the Student is Ready

Charles Dickens—famous author, Unitarian also—once said a curious thing: that “The absence of the soul is far more terrible in a living person than in a dead one.” In other words, you can be alive but zombie-like; you can be breathing but your willpower is nil, your heart and mind are numb. This is the opposite of soulfulness. Soulfulness is richness. Soulfulness is courage, and fullness, and abundance.

But to get there, it takes … one horn to make you strong, another to make you pleasing, a third to make you wise, and a fourth to draw you out of the world. Each horn in Mitchell Chefitz’ story represents a key developmental challenge coming before us, as we learn across the lifespan and grow our souls. Let’s take a look.

Starting with the shiny horn of strength. It reminds me of a time in my own life, in the eighth grade, when the man selling horns came knocking on my door in the form of the public school teacher who led the Gifted and Talented Program I happened to be in. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name, but I will never forget what she offered: an opportunity to do some creative photography. She handed me not a horn but a camera. She said, learn how, investigate, explore. One afternoon, when everyone else at my school was in a classroom, we were outside on a field trip, just the two of us, a beautiful sunny day, visiting fascinating old buildings in the neighborhood so that I could take pictures capturing interesting angles of vision, varieties of light and shadow, stories held within silent spaces and walls. Ultimately, the pictures went into a portfolio which was to be my project for that eighth grade year, but the larger lesson was not nearly as time-bound; it has stayed with me ever since. An experience of being challenged to do something that, for me, was hard. A discovery that I was up to the task—that my “seven dollars and seven cents” was enough. And then this: a memory of a teacher who believed in me, so that I could believe in myself.

That’s the horn of strength. Developmentally speaking, it’s about establishing ego-identity and self-esteem—a sense of being a unique individual capable of willpower, mastering difficulties and making a mark upon the world. The sound this horn makes says it all. It’s a blast that rattles windows blocks away. It’s the sound of “Here I am, I am me, deal with it!”

Yet this is only the beginning of our long journey through life. “Impressive,” says the man selling horns when he hears Gabriel blast away, but he is clearly not impressed at all, and he says, “Let’s see how you do with this.” Out comes the silver trumpet, mirror bright. And Gabriel soon discovers that finesse, not force, is the way to playing this instrument. Just the slightest breath, so soft, so sweet. As for the result—completely different from that of the horn of strength: people come to hear. Friendships form. He marries and has a family. Does he play the trumpet, or does the trumpet play him?

The developmental theme here is relationship, in other words. “I am” becomes “we are.” It is no accident that Gabriel receives this horn in his adolescence, which is a time when one’s sense of individuality (won much earlier) opens up to other people. Paving the way to this is surging hormones: one moment you feel the joy of belonging, another moment you feel the pain of being an outcast. Highs and lows. And then passion, romance: does she love me, does he love me? At this time in life, the elemental power of our emotions is revealed, so no wonder that the key learning here is balance and moderation. Gabriel comes to realize, as must we, that all that’s needed to play the silver horn is the slightest breath. Too much—overkill—disrupts the delicate dance of friendship and love—and even democracy, I would add. You end up with something like the recent town hall meetings on the issue of health care reform: namecalling, ugliness. Not attractiveness. Not the dance.

With public issues that are of such momentous importance, but also private issues, relationship issues, it’s imperative that we learn how to play the silver horn. That we learn to live according to the covenants that we establish with each other. That we learn civility. That we learn how to get the work done and live with it even if we disagree.

For 30 years, Gabriel plays this horn—and then his journey through life moves into yet another developmental phase. Interestingly, it echoes something that the great psychologist Carl Jung once said: that the focus of the first half of life is establishing ourselves in the outer world: forming an ego, finding our proper vocation, creating a family, and the like. But then at mid-life comes the crisis. Perhaps we have been living someone else’s life and values and we are only now realizing it. Perhaps we have been feeling content and satisfied and yet, for unknown reasons, confusion comes upon us, disorientation, boredom, depression, disappointment in ourselves and others, or just general restlessness—and now the focus must shift to that of the inner world of meaning and spirituality. Reconnecting with ourselves and the universe at a deeper level than ever before.

Quite unexpectedly, the seller of horns returns. And this time, he offers Gabriel the golden horn of wisdom, which is strange enough to be a thing out of Alice in Wonderland. Gold on the outside, clear like glass on the inside. Light to the touch, but also heavy. Definitely a horn meant to be used, but closed at one end. Seemingly finite on the outside, but infinite on the inside. “Your task,” says the seller of horns to Gabriel and to us all, “is to paint the inside of the horn.” But the horn turns out to be endlessly capable of drinking up conventional paint. So what kind of “painting” is the seller of horns actually talking about? What kind of horn is this, anyhow?

Clearly, for Gabriel it represents a scientific puzzle. Yet it could also be an existential one, a philosophical one. In particular I’m thinking about Henry David Thoreau, a key Transcendentalist spiritual ancestor of ours, who’s been on my mind a lot lately since I’ve been preparing for this year’s First Sunday sermon series, starting in October, and he’s the focus. Did you know that for much of his life, he suffered from chronic illness, specifically, tuberculosis? This, for more than twenty years…. He was coughing up blood and having a hard time breathing when he wrote, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” He struggled with immense fatigue, and he had pain in all his joints, his muscles, everywhere, when he wrote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” All this constitutes its own kind of puzzle. Thoreau’s hopefulness and joy and energy and incredible productivity as a writer—in the midst of his chronic illness. Why do bad things happen to good people? How to live in a world that can be so hurtful and so cruel?

We exist within mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery. And so, the golden horn of wisdom, above all, is a challenge to our minds. If the horn of strength is about willpower, and the silver horn of attractiveness is about feeling, the golden horn of wisdom is about thinking. How to think about something that is a perfect paradox? How to relate to the mystery with all the intimacy of our thoughts?

Gabriel begins to feed his mind, to free his mind. He learns chemistry, mathematics, physics, cosmology, relativity, string theory. You and I can do that, as Unitarian Universalists, as well as draw from the wisdom of all the world’s religious traditions, in our search for truth and meaning. One thought at a time, we make our way. Yet, as the story suggests, this is not an end in itself. What this phase of our developmental journey does is open us up, ultimately, to nothing less than inspiration. Through careful, one-step-at-a-time study, we develop our minds and make them clear enough and open enough to receive all-at-once flashes of genius. Without careful preparation, though, inspiration has nothing to contain it, nothing to land on.

“With a flash and a rush he knew,” says the story about Gabriel; he sighs into the golden horn of wisdom, paints it with his soul, and the horn “proclaims much more than a sound: understanding and redemption, love and acceptance, grace and beauty.” The implication here is profound. It says that the sign of the truly educated person is not cynicism, but wonder. If you are stuck in cynicism, you are not there yet. “The most beautiful thing we can experience,” Einstein once said, “is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” Einstein, a prince of mathematical physics, used to have a sign hanging in his office at Princeton, which said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Perhaps this is why, at the end of his days, facing the circle of life and death, Gabriel was able to say with eyes wide open, “I’m ready.” “I would like to trade up.” He was full of not fear, but wonder and awe.

The old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Life offers us one horn after another, and our learnings are cumulative. “I am” leads to “we are” which leads to “we exist within mystery” which culminates in “life is a circle.” And all are to be trusted. All these great teachers of soul. These, and the many human teachers and mentors that have walked with us and supported us along the way, here in this congregation and beyond. We have cause for great gratitude and thanks. Let the congregation say amen.

Reading the Bible Again for the First Time

There’s a story I go to in the Hebrew Bible when I’m in the midst of adversity, and I’m fighting for the meaning and way of my life. It’s in the book of Genesis, Chapter 32. It’s night, and Jacob is about to meet his brother, Esau, whom he hasn’t seen in many years. Last time he saw him, Esau said he’d kill him, for Jacob stole Esau’s birthright. “That same night,” says the Bible, “Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and an angel of God wrestled with him until daybreak. When the angel saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the angel said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.’”

That’s the story. Life is full of initiatory experiences, and they are difficult like wrestling matches against adversaries as daunting as angels of God. But if we persist, we will prevail—even though in the process our hip might be put out of joint, and the rest of our days we bear a scar from the struggle that transformed us forever and blessed us and gave us a new name, a name that says who we really are. If we persist, we will prevail, and we will become more fully ourselves.

Today I want to talk about Unitarian Universalism’s wrestling match with the Bible: the struggle of our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors to engage the Bible rationally, for the sake of freedom—and how this has determined to a great extent who we have been, who we are today, and who we may yet become in the future.

Start with Michael Servetus in the 16th century, facing a church doctrine like the Trinity (the idea that God is a unity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). Servetus opposed it. Didn’t matter that it had been declared official doctrine way back in 325CE during the Council of Nicaea. Didn’t matter that, by openly opposing it, even mocking it, he could be burned at the stake. Servetus stood his ground, because he believed that the soul of Christianity was at stake. People hungered for bread, but they were being given stones by a church that had lost its way. People hungered for spiritual liberty, but the church was binding them to falsehood and error. The way out—the way to freedom—was to cut through all the add-ons and accretions of institutional history and go back to the Bible. Use the Bible as the sole standard for everything, and use reason (not church tradition) to discern exactly what this standard was.

This was Servetus, wrestling with the angel. For him, the Bible, interpreted by the light of reason, was the way to liberty. The doctrine of the Trinity represented corruption; but reason would expose it for what it was. And though, for all this, Servetus was burned as a heretic, his larger vision and hope carried on. For hundreds of years, into the 18th and 19th centuries, religious freethinkers and liberals followed his pattern of being exclusively Bible-centered and relying on reason to discern spiritual truth. So, for example, in one of the great classics of Universalism, A Treatise on Atonement, published in 1805, Hosea Ballou went through the Bible with a fine-tooth comb to argue against a prevailing idea of his day (one that still prevails for many): that Jesus died on the Cross to atone for our sins—that God requires this for people’s salvation, otherwise, we are doomed to eternal hellfire. This, argued Ballou, was patently unscriptural and against reason. For how can finite creatures like ourselves offend the infinite God? Why might our finite sins, to be wiped away, require the infinite sacrifice of the Son of God? The real issue, said Ballou, is just not about God, or God’s accepting us. The real issue is that we don’t make ourselves available to God. We don’t believe that we could ever be loved as deeply and as truly as God loves us. The problem with the atonement doctrine is similar to that of the doctrine of the Trinity: both represented ways by which the church was binding people with falsehood.

But if we wrestle with the Bible and don’t let go, it will set our spirits free. That’s what Hosea Ballou, one of the fathers of Universalism in America, believed. And so did the father of Unitarianism in America, William Ellery Channing. “We regard the Scriptures,” he said in 1819, “as the records of God’s successive revelations to mankind, and particularly of the last and most perfect revelation of his will by Jesus Christ.” Yet one of the things that distinguished Channing’s approach from Ballou’s and definitely from Servetus’ was his acknowledgement of the rootedness of the Bible in history, and the need for reason to take this into consideration. “We find,” says Channing, “that the different portions of this book, instead of being confined to general truths, refer perpetually to the times when they were written, to states of society, to modes of thinking, to controversies in the church, to feelings and usages which have passed away, and without the knowledge of which we are constantly in danger of extending to all times, and places, what was of temporary and local application.” The Holy Spirit might have breathed inspiration into the writers of scripture, but Channing insists that “a knowledge of their feelings, and of the influences under which they were placed, is one of the preparations for understanding their writings.” Without this, you just can’t be faithful to the Bible. The result is disaster. We apply Bible insights to our day recklessly, ignoring the fact that what the Bible writers are talking about may be very different or even absolutely different from the present concern on our minds. Or we overlay present meanings onto the past. We read into the Bible our own agendas and interests and standards and make it kill when its proper function is to give life. Here’s a joke about this that Channing would have enjoyed:

A teacher asked her Sunday School class to draw pictures of their favorite Bible stories. She was puzzled by Kyle’s picture, which showed four people on an airplane, so she asked him which story it was meant to represent.

“The flight to Egypt.”

“I see,” said the teacher. “And that must be Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. But who’s the fourth person?”

“Oh, that’s Pontius–the pilot.”

The joke is not so ridiculous, however, when you consider all the ways in which people (Unitarian Universalists included) ignore Channing’s advice and do something that’s equivalent to hearing about a “flight” to Egypt and then drawing a picture of an airplane. One of these mistakes is seeing the Bible as a single book. Do this, and it’s easy to assume that everything in it belongs to a single category of writings that can be interpreted using the same rules. A classic instance of this is viewing the Bible as a science text—everything in it to be interpreted as saying something factual about the world. Genesis says the world was created in seven days, so that’s literally what happened. Genesis says that Jacob wrestled with an angel, so angels must really exist. Fundamentalists define the Bible in just these terms and swallow it whole; reverse-fundamentalists define the Bible in these same terms, but they spit it out. Tastes gross. Yet neither stop to wonder about their basic assumption. Is the Bible just one book? Or is it more like a compendium of many books that has evolved in Wikipedia-like fashion over time, involving many authors and editors, incorporating as well many different kinds of literary genres to get its various points across? This last insight is especially important to absorb. We just can’t listen correctly to what the Bible is trying to say unless we realize the genre of the piece we are encountering. Take the recent Star Trek movie—we completely misunderstand what it is all about if we classify it as a documentary and expect it to communicate literal truths about what our future holds for us. Similarly, when we see the book of Genesis as science, rather than the mythology that it is, we completely miss the point. We’ve heard the word “flight” and we’ve drawn an airplane.

Channing once said, “We profess not to know a book, which demands a more frequent exercise of reason than the Bible.” It’s true. Consider yet another way in which we can hear “flight” and draw an airplane. Has to do with how people today read into the Bible an ethic of reporting history that is actually quite foreign to the mindset of the ancient Bible writers. Today, when someone makes a speech, every word can be captured on tape and transcribed accurately, so when we read about it in the newspapers—when we read “President Obama said…..”—we are expecting word-for-word accuracy. Nothing less is acceptable. But this is not the standard that ancient Bible writers followed. When reading “Jesus said…” or “Paul said…”, we have to press pause on our assumption that the words ascribed to them are the ones that literally came out of their mouths. Historians back then just had different standards than ours. Listen to what one of the best of them—the Greek writer Thucydides—had to say about this: “I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself, and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation.” That’s what Thucydides says—and did you hear that? “To make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation” (!!!). But this was the standard in the ancient world. “The past is a foreign country,” says writer Leslie P. Hartley. “They do things differently there.” And we’ve got to honor this.

Back in 1819, when Channing made his key points about Bible interpretation, he was building a way that was new for America (and, almost 200 years later, is still new for too many people). The occasion was an ordination sermon entitled “Unitarian Christianity,” and it’s a defining moment in our history. Before it, if you were a Unitarian in America, you belonged to a movement that was amorphous and in the closet. It had no clear leader. It had no clear definition. The name “Unitarian” was a badge of shame. But along came Channing. He outed the movement, gave it clarity, took up the name “Unitarian” with pride. He did all of this in his 1819 sermon. And a big part of it had to do with his wrestling with the angel of the Bible. The Bible, central to Channing’s sense of what Unitarianism was all about.

But Channing’s achievement would not prove final. Within his lifetime, in the very next generation, a different sort of struggle with the Bible ensued. Not so much about how best to interpret it, but whether it is the sole source of revelation available to spiritual seekers.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is most definitely not. “Live after the infinite Law that is in you,” he says, “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 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. Ultimately the spiritual vision here is one of abundance, not scarcity. God is just too big to be contained by any single book. And it’s not only Jews or Christians who have ever wrestled with the sacred and written about it….

Despite this abundance, however, scarcity abounds. In Nature, Emerson says, “A man is a god in ruin. […] Man is the dwarf of himself. […] At present, man applies to nature but half his force.” This is Emerson’s constant complaint and argument. God bursts every seam, and God is within each of us, full to bursting. Yet we feel empty; we feel dry. Why? Emerson blames historical Christianity. It has “fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion.” It has done this by committing the sin of idolatry. Whereas Emerson believes that Jesus continually pointed people toward their own God-like potentials of compassion and wisdom, traditional Christianity says that only Jesus gets to be God. And then it gathers up the revelations of Jesus and of select teachers, seals them up in the one and only one Bible, and says that revelation is over, it is through. No wonder people are Gods in ruin. “That which shows God out of me,” Emerson says, “makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being.” “You shall not,” Emerson characterizes traditional Christianity as saying, “own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but you must subordinate your nature to Christ’s nature; you must accept our interpretations….”

Emerson’s message here is bruising. It’s not that he finds nothing liberating in the Bible, for he absolutely does. But he will not stand for the bullying that people can do in its name. And he will no longer abide by the exclusive Bible-centeredness of his forebearers: Servetus, Ballou, Channing. There are so many other Bibles to draw from. And above all, people must rediscover the Bible that lies within them. This is the way to freedom.

And this brings us to today. Transcendentalism expanded our spiritual universe, making the Bible just one source of the vibrant spiritual life and not THE source. Through Transcendentalism, we also learned that the Bible is not so much a record of what God says as a record of what humans have said about their long struggle for purpose and meaning in life. And perhaps because Unitarians and Universalists had engaged with the Bible so intensely and for so long, they were ready for different horizons. They felt that they had gone as far as they could with the Bible, and it was time for something new. Alternative forms of spirituality. Not Christianity, but theism. Humanism. Hinduism. Buddhism. Paganism. Blends of all these and more. Anything and everything but the Bible. In any other church or congregation, you better believe you are always going to have Bible study courses. But not in Unitarian Universalist congregations.

Meaning that the current state of our wrestling match with the Bible is different than it has ever been before. A first, in our long history. The current state is disengagement. It is apathy. We no longer know the Bible. It’s become strange to us over the years. Strange, and therefore threatening, because during our sleep, the Religious Right stole it and transformed it into a set of conservative talking points. And because we didn’t know any better—because we no longer read the thing ourselves with any degree of sophistication—we took their interpretations to represent what the Bible actually says. No wonder we don’t want to read it. It’s a vicious cycle.

Which is so sad, since there is a sweet wisdom in Scripture that can make the wounded whole. There is a sweet song that can lift our hearts and make them glad. Unitarian Universalist spirituality is there within its pages. We are missing out on one of the most fascinating and rich books in existence.

We are missing out personally, and we are missing out politically. Where are our Hosea Ballous today? Where are our William Ellery Channings, who might go toe to toe with the ridiculous James Dobsons and Jerry Falwells? Bible-based arguments continue to be extremely powerful and persuasive in America for shaping the common good, but we are no longer conversant. There is still more freedom to be won, but we have a lot of work to do to step up to the challenge. Angry voices argue, for example, that the Bible condemns homosexuality. They cite proof texts, one after the other: rat-a-tat-tat. But it’s not good enough any more to just shrug them off, shrug the conversation off. They need to be troubled by a better wisdom. They need to know and we all need to know that there is no word in the original languages of the Bible that corresponds precisely to committed and mutually respectful love relationships between same-sex partners. What does the Bible truly say about homosexuality in the 21st century? Nothing. And saying this is not evading the authority or demand of scripture. It’s being faithful to it.

Besides being spiritually vibrant, I know that this congregation is and wants to be even more a social justice congregation. I think it’s great. Of course. But I would add that, as essential preparation for this, we need to know the Bible. Whatever our individual theologies and passions happen to be, we need to know the Bible so as to enable effective social witness in our time, here and now. Our wrestling with the Bible is not over, not by a long shot. It’s showing no signs of easing up. We can’t let go. We’re not done. There’s a new name out there for us, a blessing to win, but we haven’t won it yet.

Feel-Good Evangelism: Faith-Sharing for Liberal Religionists

About the good news of our shared faith, the Rev. Clinton Lee Scott once wrote a “Parish Parable” which echoes the old “thee and thou” language of the King James Bible. It goes like this: “Now there was a certain man that for many years did frequent the Temple on the Sabbath day. Then did he cease to be found in the Great Congregation. And a neighbor inquireth of him, saying, “How is it that thou art no more seen in the Temple on the Sabbath day?” And the man did give answer, “I like not the words that the Master speaketh: for he putteth not an end to the questions that vex my mind, neither provideth me with a sure salvation for my soul: verily he leadeth us into deep waters, and leaveth us there without means of rescue.” Now when this conversation was told to the Master of the Temple, he answered, saying, “Go tell him that remaineth away from the Great Congregation that the Temple standeth not to provide life preservers, but is a place wherein one learneth how to swim.”

This is but a classic statement of the Unitarian side of our faith, which is fundamentally a faith in people. It says, to each and every one of us, You have abundant potential. You are not inherently perverse and fatally wrong-headed, doomed unless some higher authority gives you life preservers in the form of detailed answers to which you must submit and never question (at pain of hellfire). You are not fundamentally weak, incapable of rising up to meet that challenges of the day, best kept in the shallow waters of life, best kept self-centered and indifferent to what’s really going on. No! You have inherent worth and dignity. It is a priceless inner wealth, actualized by all the heroes and sheroes that have gone before you, and you can realize this for yourself in your own turn. It naturally attunes you to truth and to justice, if you would but learn to hear; and to this end do Great Congregations and Masters of the Temple exist: to help you learn. To help you nurture and develop the potential that life has given you. Not to give you the answers up front, but to give you space and room in which to follow the nose of your curiosity and conscience, help you come into the integrity of your own answers. Not to protect you from the realities of suffering and evil, but to move you to engage the deep waters of social problems and do your best to make a difference. That’s what classic Unitarianism says. It is faith in the abundance of human potentials to fashion lives of positive wisdom and leadership and citizenship. Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. Don’t say I can’t ask questions. Don’t tell me that there’s nothing I can do to make a difference in the larger world.

Unitarianism says, “Jump in! Swim! Yes you can!” But as for the Universalist side of our faith—the classic message is different. Thomas Starr King, who was a minister in both Unitarianism and Universalism, back in the 19^th century and long before the two movements officially came together, once had this to say about the difference: he said that Unitarians think people are too good for hell, whereas for the Universalists, what keeps people out of hell is not people, but God. God is too compassionate, too good. That’s the classic Universalist vision. We are held and supported by an eternal, all-conquering Love that’s far greater than who we are as individuals. And so, if at some point you find yourself thrown out into deep waters and you have been trying the best you can to solve the burning, difficult questions of life but, in the end, you feel that the complete answers will always evade you; or, you have been trying the best you can to make a difference but, in the end, you know economic injustice will still exist and war will still exist and hatred will still exist and, on top of all this, your marriage is in trouble and the recession is hitting you hard—when you find yourself out in deep waters, like this, Universalism will come to you. It will gently take your hand and, with consolation and encouragement, say to you words like those the poet Philip Booth once said to his daughter: 

Lie back daughter, let your head

be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Remember, whispers Universalism.  No matter what—when you and I are in deep waters, and our strength is seemingly gone—the sea will hold us. Failure is impossible. So lie back. That’s the Universalist message precisely. Let the abundant strength of the sea be our strength. There is nothing we need to do to earn it. We don’t need a Ph. D, we don’t need lots of money or class or beauty or personality. Just open up and let this abundance flow in us; let us dwell in it; and it will surprise us. Suddenly we will find ourselves healed and whole—and more courageous than ever. Bubbling up in our hearts and lives, this abundance will move us spontaneously into works of beauty and service and justice, and we will also find ourselves moved into faith-sharing. For how can we not share this good news? Only in giving to another the hope of abundant love, does our own joy become complete. It spoils if kept. “The joy that isn’t shared,” says one poet, “dies young.”

By now I feel like a shaken-up can of soda. I just can’t talk about this stuff without getting all excited. It’s the good news of our Unitarian Universalist faith, fizzing and frothing and bubbling up, ready to be shared. So today our focus is liberal evangelism—what that can look like for us. Getting us all shaken up like I am, so the pressure of our Unitarian Universalist message becomes so great within us that we have to do something about it. And then to talk a little about what this “something” might be—to offer up some hints that come to us from one of the preeminent evangelists in our history: the Rev. Quillen Shinn, credited with starting at least 40 congregations all across North America, one of which was the First Universalist Church of Atlanta, Georgia, organized February 24, 1895. Because of people like Quillen Shin, we are. Literally. Others may give him fancy names like “the Saint Paul of the Universalist Church,” but here in Atlanta, we can call him grandfather.

There’s something you might want to know up front, however, about Grandfather Shinn, and this actually takes us farther along the road of exploring our Unitarian Universalist good news as it has evolved from classic to contemporary form. Quillen Shin proclaimed an abundance message that, in at least one respect, is significantly different from our own today. He preached a Universalism of dogmas: the centrality of the Bible, the love of God, the parenthood of God, the immortality of the soul, the divinity (though not the deity) of Christ, the certainty of punishment for sin, and the universality of salvation. He preached these dogmas as central to what it meant to be a Universalist, against what he saw as a rising infidelity in many of his fellow ministers and especially against what he called those “go-as-you-please Unitarians.” “Occasionally,” he once thundered, “a church falls into decay under the leadership of an upright pastor because that pastor is too indefinite, too vague and uncertain. He talks too much about ‘Truth for Authority,’ and too little about ‘The spiritual authority of Jesus Christ.’ Of course,” says Quillen Shinn, “’truth is authority,’ when we know what the truth is, and take our affirmation of ‘The universal Fatherhood of God.’ The world received that not by evolution but by revelation. Christ is our authority for this sublimest truth, believed and cherished by man. When a minister ceases to regard Jesus as authority, he steps away from the bed-rock of faith, and drifts into those vague ‘Universals’ fascinating to many who call themselves liberals and who seem to be well equipped with circumference, but without any center.” That’s what Grandfather Shinn said, around the turn of the nineteenth century, and clearly he was feeling the growing trend in liberal religion, which had been building for decades, ever since the advent of such things as modern Biblical scholarship, the comparative study of world religions, and Darwinianism. The trend was away from an exclusive Bible-centered faith, towards one that opened up to the riches of the world’s religions, as well as to the findings of science. The trend was away from Jesus Christ being at the center, towards the Mystery at the center. And all who wanted to live into this Mystery were welcome in our congregations, together with whatever path they chose, whether or not Jesus was meaningful for them, or God a meaningful concept.

Even though Quillen Shinn did not like it, Universalism went the way of all liberal religion, towards a deepening appreciation of the abundance of Mystery. He saw it as decay and as drifting away, and he feared that it would be our doom. But on the side of history we’re on, we know that what happened was what happens to the snake when it sheds its skin. We were simply reborn into something more honest and therefore more vital. This side of history, we affirm that whatever the Sacred is, it is an elephant too complex and too big for any individual blind man to fully comprehend. No single book or system of belief can possibly hold all the truth. What’s at the center is fundamentally a Mystery—and therefore it is endlessly fascinating and provocative, provoking interpretation after interpretation, inviting a personal creative response from each of us. While we can no longer speak about Universalism like Quillen Shinn did, in a one-size-fits-all way, the central abundance insight nevertheless remains: that there is in reality some process or power that is larger than the individual person, and when we connect with it, we are transformed in ways that we cannot transform ourselves. Use whatever language you want to describe it. Some will talk about God. Others will talk instead about the reality of the unconscious, or synchronicity, or the interdependent web, or Buddhamind, or the Goddess, or simply the embracing arms of healthy human relationships. Still others will speak a rich vocabulary of all of these and more, seeing each metaphor as a uniquely valid pathway into an experience of the Sacred. The point, though, is that at our center is Mystery—this is where the past century has brought us—and it means that our faith is abundant with creativity, abundant with diversity, abundant with possibility. The good news message of our faith is all about abundance.

But now, how to share this with the world? Now here’s something that would make Quillen Shinn smile. “In truth,” he once said, “no [person] knows the full joy of Universalism until he sends it to another; and, in fact, he cannot keep it for himself in its fullness, unless he is sending it abroad.” So, how to send it?

First of all, send it and say it with purpose. A humorous story about Quillen Shinn comes to mind. His biographer says that once, when he was at seminary, he delivered a somewhat rambling sermon, and he was asked by his professor to describe the subject he was trying to preach on. He replied, “I didn’t have any subject but I had an object and that was to show that Universalists have the best principles and that they ought to be the best people.” You better believe that his preaching improved over time, but the basic principle never changed: have an object; have a purpose.

Definitely our purpose in sharing Unitarian Universalism can’t be about declaring what is best in general; we are too modest for that. It definitely can’t be about declaring what’s best for you, or else; we don’t even believe that. But what the purpose can be is this: to share how it has been best for us. How the message about abundant human potentials has enabled us to think thoughts and do deeds that other contexts and communities would have stifled or denied. How the message about abundant love that is larger than us as separate individuals has lifted us up and supported us when we were in the deep end and could not swim anymore—abundant support of this caring community, abundant arms of Life. How the message about abundant Mystery has encouraged active exploration of our spiritual depths, opened us up to the riches of the world’s religions and of science, invited us to be creative in our religious lives. Our purpose in sharing Unitarian Universalism is helping another person know how powerful this abundance faith has been for us—and perhaps they are in a place in life that makes them ready to receive. Perhaps. We can share it with the same graciousness as we would news about a fantastic restaurant, or a brilliant movie. Without any heavy-handedness, and only to say: it has brought wonderful things into my family and my life, and maybe it can do the same for you.

Say it with purpose. Also say it with structure. Don’t ramble on like Quillen Shinn did in his seminary attempts at preaching. One of the ways of preventing this—of ensuring that you have a focus to your conversation—is by developing for yourself an “elevator speech,” or a short statement about Unitarian Universalism’s value to you that, theoretically, you could give in the three or so minutes it takes you to go from the bottom floor to the top. While real conversations often aren’t as tightly compartmentalized as this, and tend to go on or spill over, still, the discipline of the elevator speech is a good one. It challenges you to think about what’s especially important and meaningful to you about our faith. Clearly, It won’t say everything, but it can at least get you started, get your foot in the door—either plant a seed that will ripen sometimes later, or move a person to open up right then and there for a richer conversation.

I’d actually recommend having several elevator speeches on hand, each one doing a different thing, to be called on depending on circumstances. Practice developing these with each other. Sometimes just a general historical orientation seems to be called for, so you might say, “Unitarian Universalism comes out of the Protestant tradition in Christianity, and some of the oldest churches in America are UU churches. Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson were UUs.” In other words: not many people may be familiar with us, but we are as American as apple pie. Other times you will want talk theology, and you could say this: “Unitarian Universalism says that God is bigger than any single book or single religion. That’s why we draw from many sources of wisdom and truth.” Another good one is this: “Unitarian Universalism doesn’t tell me what to believe about such things as God or an afterlife because it knows that all such specific beliefs are way too important to be answered for us by someone else. It tells me that people have to come to their own answers, first-hand, for them to be truly meaningful.” Yet a third category of elevator speech addresses current events—you draw on recent things you did at UUCA that were meaningful for you. As in, “A couple Sundays ago, there was a guest speaker who talked about slavery after the Civil War, and I had no idea. I love the fact that my congregation gives me new insights into justice issues and expands my sense of things!” And it IS cool—it is evidence of the core abundance of our faith.

Say it with purpose. Say it with structure. And then also say it with confidence. Some years, Quillen Shinn traveled 25 to 30,000 miles, and you better believe that, to be received as he was, he needed to be nonanxious. Surely we can model this same calmness in the relatively few conversational miles we will travel!

How we say something communicates far more than what is actually said. When evangelism comes out of a place of anxiety, you might stutter and stumble over your carefully prepared elevator speech. You might actually look offended, get defensive, even get angry. Or you might come across as cool as an ice cube—giving off the impression that, for you, Unitarian Universalism is of no more than clinical interest. All would raise red flags in the questioner, make them wonder if the emperor has no clothes, if there’s something to be ashamed of, if there’s some terrible secret to hide, or if it’s somehow not OK to ask. But our goal is to make the abundance of our faith contagious. Not to force it on anyone. Just to share something that has meant so much to us. What moved Quillen Shinn to plant his first church was the memory of his mother, and all that she had given him. Same thing goes for us. We give because we have received. So let this thought relax us. We can take a deep breath. We can ungrit our teeth, relax our bodies, and take a curiosity stance towards the journey that each conversation will take us on. See where things go.

Yes, sometimes the other person will use it as an opportunity to tell us we’re wrong, but we’re allowed to agree to disagree. We don’t have to allow ourselves to be abused. We can rest confidently in our experience, knowing what our faith has done for us. Uncomfortable conversations will happen. But then there will be the conversations that make it all worth while. Because you say yes to evangelism and make yourself available, in your own person you will transmit some of the abundance of our faith to another, and they will catch a glimpse, and what they see is something they have been looking for but never even knew existed, never even knew it had a name. Someone wanting to get out into deeper waters, just waiting for permission. Someone in deep waters over their head, looking for encouragement. And you give them what they need. That’s what you do.

There are times when deeds don’t go far enough. The hungers of others require words that only we can give, and evangelism becomes the means. Walking the talk must be matched with talking the talk. Our faith tradition is all about abundance, and it fizzes and froths and bubbles up, ready to be shared. So let’s do that. Let’s make our Grandfather Shinn proud. He helped start us up, so let’s start something up too. Make him proud.  

 

 

The Uses of Adversity

This morning I want to talk about the uses of adversity, and in doing so, I am mindful of a piece of wisdom that comes from the brilliant rabbi and scholar Adin Steinsaltz. Adversity is good, he says, though “the good is hidden” and “often several levels of excavation are needed to get to it.” Yet he also reminds us of an important teaching that absolutely needs to accompany this insight: “the injunction that we can say this only about our own suffering, and that we are forbidden to say it to someone else who is suffering.” “If you fall and bang your knee,” he says, “my response to you must not be, ‘Well, it’s for the best.’ On the contrary, if I see someone suffering, my one obligation is to try to help relieve that suffering. Telling a suffering person that everything is for the best is called, in the Talmud, ‘the sins of the friends of Job.’ Job suffered greatly, and his friends said to him, ‘Don’t you have faith in God?’ This is not what the friends should have said. … It is not appropriate to speak this theology while a person is struggling with pain and grief.” 

I wish more people knew this. Though I agree with Rabbi Steinsaltz that good can come out of adversity—that what is ultimate is neither tragedy nor failure—still, when I am in the midst of a particular loss or sorrow, and I am with someone else in a personal conversation, the last thing I want is for that person to try to clean things up for me, tell me it’s all for the best. Don’t do that. Don’t theologize. Just acknowledge my feelings about how it hurts, how it feels unfair, how it sucks. Do that for me and do it for everyone. Just give a hug, or hold a hand. Be present. If you don’t know what to say, say THAT. Help them know that they are not alone.

At some point today, I hope you’ll take a moment to look at the purple insert in your order of service. It lists just some of the ways in which this congregation helps people stay encouraged and connected in good times and in bad. We’re a community of care, here at UUCA. Know that this is what you are helping to sustain and grow through your continued gifts of energy and money. It’s so important in times like these. 

But Rabbi Steinsaltz is not done with us. What if the person in the midst of adversity is not someone else, but oneself? Here’s what he says: “If I fall and bang my own knee, I have a choice. I can wallow in my own pain, or I can use the experience to stimulate my faith and prompt me to examine my life more carefully and to grow, in empathy and understanding, from my experience.” That’s what Rabbi Steinsaltz says. Each of us is responsible for making some positive sense out of the reality of our suffering. Perhaps we need to wallow for a bit—we’re only human. But then comes the time to move beyond that and go deeper. Can adversity have positive uses? Is it really true, as psychologist Jonathan Haidt says in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, that “people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development”? And, what does that look like? Rabbi Steinsaltz is saying to each of us today: choose to go deeper. Choose to find the good that is hidden beneath the pain. Seek it out courageously.  

To this end, we’re going to explore the adversity story of a person named George Bailey. We know him better in December than in other months, perhaps, because he’s the main character in the Christmas movie classic It’s A Wonderful Life. Yet George Bailey is nothing less than a modern-day Job-figure, having something to say to us in every month. So much to learn from his story. Starting with an up-close look at his particular struggle. See if any of it resonates with you. I know it does with me.

When George Bailey was a teenager, a fantasy formed in his mind of being a world traveler, going to Tahiti, sailing the Emerald Sea—exploring all these exotic locations and more, far away from Bedford Falls, the boring town of his birth. As he grew older, the hopes only grew more ambitious. In the movie, when he’s 21, we see him buying luggage for his trip to Europe. He’s got his life all figured out. First he’ll go to Europe, and then he’ll go to college, and then he’s going to build things: skyscrapers hundreds of feet high, bridges a mile long. He’s going to be a millionaire.

t’s around this time that his father asks him if he’d be interested in returning home after college to run the family business, the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan Company. Hearing this, George goes quiet. Right before, he was laughing and joking raucously with everyone in the house, but when his father asked him this question point blank, George got real quiet. Said, “I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a stuffy little office. I want to do something big, something important with my life!”

Just imagine how George’s father hears this—what this says about how his son misunderstands him. Parents and children miss each other like this all the time. George isn’t seeing his father’s life with eyes of compassion. He’s too caught up in his own success fantasy of skyscrapers and bridges and lots of money.

But you know what happens next. Even if you’ve never seen It’s A Wonderful Life, I’ll bet you know. George begins living into one of the mysteries of the human condition, which is the reality of limits. As a member of the middle class, naturally he’s been brought up believing that people are free to control their own destinies. No limits. Just do it. The only person stopping you from climbing the success ladder … is you. This is where George is coming from. This forms the core of his youth. But now one event after another is going to expose the lie.

His father dies, and George must give up his trip to Europe so he can settle his father’s business affairs. The long road of missed opportunities and regret begins. Then, just as he’s handing off important papers to the Building and Loan’s Board of Trustees, moments before he’s out the door on the way to college, his father’s arch-enemy, Scrooge-like Henry F. Potter, makes a motion that the Building and Loan dissolve. Potter, who is wealthy beyond measure and could easily afford to give, asks, “Are we running a business or a charity ward?” Hearing this, something snaps in George and he finds himself saying to Potter: “You’re right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. […] But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what’s wrong with that? […] Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? […] Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about … they do most of the living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be.”

What a wonderful but ironic speech! This is the same person for whom success in life is equivalent to world travel and skyscrapers and bridges and lots of money. This is the same person who basically told his father that he and his stuffy office were small and unimportant. Yet already we are seeing some of the uses of adversity. One of the benefits is that it challenges us to get clearer about what it is we genuinely value, and we discover that true success and happiness in life can mean something very different from what we think they mean. Only in the moment of facing down Henry F. Potter does George realize in himself a genuine and deep appreciation for what it is his Dad did. Only in the heat of that challenging moment. It was a gift of adversity—although it is not necessarily a gift that makes things simpler. George now has two competing success visions warring away in his heart. One is focused on service to his community and being rooted in that community; the other is focused on an almost Peter Pan-like desire to travel and build things and make lots of money. More on this internal conflict in a bit. For now, it’s enough to acknowledge that George’s speech was a moment of great personal discovery, and inspiring for others as well. The next thing that happens is that Building and Loan Board rejects the motion to dissolve but only if George takes over his father’s job as leader. And he does, but with great ambivalence. Life keeps on throwing him curveballs. Once, he thought he had it all figured out. But now he’s more like the poet Dante, who once said about midlife, “I found myself within a dark woods / where the straight way was lost.” What else can he do, but keep moving? He gives his college funds to his younger brother, Harry, and goes to work.

Circumstances crowd out the fantasies of youth and supersede them. In the end, George finds himself where he thought he’d never be: working in his Dad’s stuffy little office, stuck in Bedford Falls. He gets to continue his father’s work of economic justice in the community, and while this is important to him, still, his heart is at war with itself. Regret upon regret pile up. He’s just a mess of contradictions. He marries a beautiful caring wife, he has wonderful children, he is loved and respected throughout Bedford Falls, but all the wild wonderful energy and humor of his youth gradually go away. He’s cranky. He’s cynical. “I want to do what I want to do,” he complains, but no one’s listening.

The bounce in his soul is gone. And it’s like this with so many people today. The adversity of conflicted selves, heavy with regret. Thinking and feeling they are failures even as they are doing great work in the world. Afraid because of the economy, even as they are surrounded by something far more reliable than money ever could be, which is family and friendship, the beloved community of a place light this, and within: the sustaining and transforming power of the Spirit of Life. As close-up to our individual lives as we are, who are we to judge them wrong, or a failure? Who are we to offer up a global judgment like this, as if we were able to transcend our myopia and see ourselves from a God’s-eye point-of-view?

The bounce is gone. And if it’s gone, how is a person going to bounce back in the face of sudden crisis and change? The problem just escalates.

Here’s what this looks like for George. What happens is that absent-minded Uncle Billy misplaces the $8000 which was supposed to have been deposited in the Building and Loan funds. George faces bankruptcy, scandal, prison…. In complete desperation, he sees no alternative but to turn to his enemy Henry F. Potter for help. Asks for a loan. And Potter, who sits in the cat bird’s seat now, says to George, “Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going out to conquer the world! You once called me a warped, frustrated, old man. What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk, crawling in here on your hands and knees, begging for help.” 

It’s horrible. I mean, the movie may be called It’s a Wonderful Life, but when it gets down to this part, I’m watching it through my fingers, like I do with the The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Especially the scene where George wanders onto the bridge near Bedford Falls. It’s night and snow falls in large sticky flakes. George’s face is screwed up in pain. Potter’s words ring in his mind—“you’re worth more dead than alive.” Below him—the raging torrent of a river. He’s thinking suicide. He’s thinking The End.

But is it? Despite all that has happened, can George bounce back? And we as well? For I know that George is not alone with his outrageous reversals of fortune. Some of us may be on that bridge with George right now, and the rest of us can relate. The past few years have brought reversals of fortune to us all, in some way or another. Bad things happening to good people. It can feel so unfair.  

But what happens next in the story illustrates yet another use of adversity: we learn that we are stronger than we know…..

Picture the scene. There he is, George Bailey, a man who’s lost the bounce in his soul nd it’s so flat, it can’t cope with the loss of $8000. He just can’t take it any more. He finds himself alone, beaten, standing on a snowy bridge in the night, raging river below. Suicide seems the only way. And then—splash! Someone else has taken a dive! And suddenly, instinct takes over. Takes him two seconds to grasp the situation, and he jumps right in to save that person who’s drowning. He risks his life to save another.

Now this is incredible. Adversity has broken him down completely, and yet, in the midst of direst weakness, he discovers that strength still remains. And so can we. You know, often we can find ourselves saying, as we contemplate horrible possibilities, “If such-and-such happened, I could never survive it.” Or, “If such-and-so happened, I wouldn’t know what to do.” And yet when the worst happens, and we go numb with shock, we discover a persistence within us simply to take things one step at a time, one moment at a time. Events rush and swirl past us. The broken pieces of life overwhelm, but for a time we let things be. It is enough just to keep moving, and somehow we do. Somehow we just keep going. “More and more I have come to admire resilience,” writes poet Jane Hirschfield.  “Not the simple resistance of a pillow, / whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, / but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: / finding the light newly blocked on one side, / it turns to another. / A blind intelligence, true. / But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs / all this resinous, unretractable earth.” Adversity helps us discover this same persistence in ourselves, when the worst happens, and we come to realize we are stronger than we ever thought possible. A confidence in ourselves starts to grow, and we learn that, whatever else the future may bring, we have stood in the fire before, and we can stand in the fire again. We can. We are stronger than we know.   

This is what adversity teaches. In fact, there are times when it lifts us out of ourselves completely, and we find ourselves blessed with a better dream and a healing vision of life that we realize directly, first-hand—one we never could have known otherwise. Adversity can have this use as well.

Here’s how it happens for George. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the person he saved from drowning is none other than Clarence Oddbody, Angel Second Class. He’s an angel, and he comes to earth to give George a great supernatural gift: direct experience of what Bedford Falls would have become had he never been born.

And it’s terrible. Horrible. Without George Bailey, Bedford Falls turned out to be a hellish place. And it blows his mind. It opens it up. He was living a wonderful life without knowing it. Everything he honestly and truly needed for happiness, he already had. Even with all the bad luck circumstances that seemed, time and again, to prevent him from pursuing his youthful hopes—even though he never became a world traveler, or went to college; even though he never built a skyscraper hundreds of feet high or a bridge a mile long—even so: the worth of his life was diminished not one whit. Worthy dreams can happen, even in a stuffy small office, in boring Bedford Falls. A hero journey, right there in the everyday. Being there for people in need, again and again, even when it put him at risk. Standing up for the little guy against bullies like Henry F. Potter.

Even in Bedford Falls, greatness can happen. And George finally gets it. The big picture pulls all the pieces of his life together, grasps him in his soul, heals his conflicted and regret-filled heart. The greatness he has always longed for—he realizes that he’s already been doing it. His father as well. And now he doesn’t want to give it up. The hero adventure is right here and right now! Who needs to travel to exotic locations like Tahiti, when you can have everything you want in Bedford Falls? Clarence!” he cries, “Clarence! Help me, Clarence. Get me back. Get me back. I don’t care what happens to me. Get me back to my wife and kids. Help me, Clarence, please. Please! I want to live again! I want to live again. I want to live again.”

Change your mind, and life changes. George Bailey wants to live again, and I would have you see clearly how badly he wants it. He wants it despite the fact that, as far as he knows, he’s still out $8000. Despite the fact that coming back to life will mean facing bankruptcy, scandal, prison…. But it no longer matters. How can he give up the life that he’s always wanted, which is the life he’s always been living but only now realizes it? 

Wherever you are this morning—whatever adversity you might be facing—I invite you to consider its uses. It clarifies our values, it teaches us that we are stronger than we know, and it also makes us relentlessly hungry for a transformed vision of who we are. We do not need to be visited by an actual angel to learn how to see our lives through angel eyes. Eyes that see clearly the truth of the preciousness of friendship and community and life even if some version of bankruptcy or scandal awaits us. The preciousness of friendship and community and life… And also this: how the world needs us and doesn’t care that we might never have traveled to that exotic location, or gone to that school, or built that mile long bridge.

Tap into angel vision, and the bounce in our souls comes back.

Letter to Mary

December 21, 2008. Dear Mary: It was two thousand years ago in a stable, surrounded by oxen and donkeys and your husband Joseph, when the main event was supposed to have happened: your giving birth to Jesus. The image of it is one I have known all my life, from Christmas cards, paintings and works of art, outdoor manger scenes, and even from some Canadian and American stamps I used to collect as a boy. The image of you holding the baby Jesus; the strength and protection of your arms. To this my eyes would always go, even if there were other amazements to look at, like wise men, or shepherds, or the Star of Bethlehem. There’s something special about you. 

 

And I’m not alone in my feelings about this. Through the ages, and around the world, feeling for you has always run deep. Catholic, Orthodox, and some Anglican Christians out-and-out venerate you. In your honor, Mary, they compose poems and songs; they paint icons and carve statues; they kneel before your image; they even pray to you for intercession with your son. I know this personally, for my own grandmother was Ukrainian Catholic, and I can still remember her fervent prayers, the depths of her reverence.

 

But it’s not that Catholics like my grandmother, or Anglicans, or Orthodox are setting you up as some idol. They don’t see you as God. It’s just that honor is being given where they feel honor is due—you, after all, are supposed to be the bearer of a God. Even Muslims, who deny that Jesus is God, honor you. You are the only women in the Koran who is directly named; and along with Jesus, you are said to be Ayat Allah, or the “Sign of God,” to humankind.

 

That’s what I call special. You are important for so many people around the world. Hunger for you is great. And that’s what this letter is about, Mary. The comfort and protection of your mothering arms. Your strength. People can’t seem to get enough of it. It all begs for a closer look.

 

Though right at the start, I need to acknowledge that opinions differ about the exact nature of the strength I’m talking about. Perhaps it boils down to a question that Christians have had from almost the very beginning: what you needed to be like to give birth to one who was supposed to be without sin. To raise a person like this. Did you have to be without sin, too? Or was your ordinary, imperfect humanity good enough? Exactly what kind of strength are we talking about?

 

The question is one of perfection vs. imperfection, and Catholics in particular have opted for perfection. That’s the official position, anyway. They see you as having a miraculous kind of independence from sex and death. This is what gives you your perfection and your strength. All sorts of doctrines laying this out. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, according to which God directly impregnated you. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which says that you yourself were the product of a miraculous virgin birth. The doctrine of Perpetual Virginity, meaning that all of Jesus’ brothers and sisters had to have been cousins, or they had to have been children from a previous marriage of Joseph’s. And then the doctrine of the Assumption, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950, which says that you never physically died, and that you ascended bodily into heaven at the end of your days. All of these are doctrines Catholics have discerned over the years, as ways of articulating your strength and explaining how you were able to be the kind of mother you needed to be, to nurture and support the perfection of your son. Your miraculous qualities made you strong. 

 

Mary, my own mother’s family believed this, being the good Catholics they were. But I myself grew up Protestant and eventually became Unitarian Universalist, and both influences lead me to balk at all these doctrines. I never grew up thinking that life in a body and all that it implies is tinged with sinfulness. As a Unitarian Universalist, I absolutely do not. In being born, in sensuality and sexuality (whether gay or straight), and also in dying, all people possess inherent worth and dignity. I believe it.   

 

I also believe that you did not need to be perfect to meet the challenges of raising your son. Your ordinary, imperfect humanity was good enough, and gave you the strength you needed. In fact, there’s a sense in which it’s to everyone’s advantage that you were imperfect, since the idea that God could be born through someone living just an ordinary life is scandalous in a wondrous sort of way. The thought that people could be used by God for great things despite any and all limitations is wondrous. A source of great hope.

 

Mary, I really resonate with this idea. That you could be strong despite your flaws and imperfections. That you could be strong exactly because of your flaws. The Unitarian Universalist in me loves this, and every day, I walk in trust that the universe will receive whatever I offer up to it, however flawed, and turn it to some good, somehow. This is the core of my religious faith, and above all, it’s the core of my faith as a parent. As a father, the responsibility of parenting would be unbearable if I didn’t believe that being good enough was good enough. Know what I mean? This belief is sometimes all I have to go on, to get me through the times when I feel I’m totally screwing things up, and there won’t ever be enough money in the proverbial therapy jar my daughter will draw on to set things right. I just have to trust that being good enough is good enough.

 

I don’t know. Did you have to be perfect to do true justice to your child Jesus? To be strong enough for him? What’s clear is this. I’ve read stories in the Christian scriptures that hint at your parenting style, and I’m impressed. You really knew what you were doing. Here’s one story that springs to mind. It’s the story of Jesus turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. There you are, at the wedding with Jesus, who by now must be around 30 years old. He’s never performed a miracle before, and let’s assume that he’s wanting to be very careful about choosing the right first miracle, since the first of anything can be a predictor of everything else to follow. The first miracle has got to be special. It’s got to be right. And Mary, you know this. You also know that people can get so anxious about getting things right the first time that they might never even allow for a first time—to them, no time will ever seem special enough, nothing will ever seem good enough. So when you learn that the wine has all run out at the wedding party, you see that this is your opportunity to do a little mentoring. Light a little fire under your son, the brilliant rabbi. So you go to Jesus … and nudge him. “There’s no more wine,” you say. Jesus catches your drift, senses the pressure you’re putting on him, and he replies, rather testily, “Woman, what concern is that to you? My hour has not yet come.” In other words, Mom, stop trying to rush me! Stop pushing, already! Jesus is not very nice as he says this—calling you “woman” is just not nice—but you know that the bark is worse than the bite. I’ll bet you even rolled your eyes. You are the Mom, after all. And the rest is history. Jesus turns the water to wine, and this really was the perfect first miracle. It really was. It couldn’t have happened at a better, more joyous time (during a wedding party)—and the central message it telegraphs, essentially, is that the power of God (or whatever Mystery that that word “God” stands for) is everlasting abundance. Everlasting abundance that people can tap into even in the midst of moments of scarcity and loss. Even after the worst has happened. Even after all that, the best wine can still come. Don’t give up hope. Don’t give in to despair. Mary, this is a great message, and you are the one who nudged Jesus into making it. You helped get him unstuck. You were part of a great mentoring moment.

 

That’s got to be one of the reasons for why people can’t get enough of you. It’s about your awesome responsibility as a parent, and the great job you did, perfect or not. There’s also this: the way other people have experienced your parenting and protection, long after your physical death (or, as the Catholics would have it, long after your bodily ascension into Heaven). Here’s what I mean. I was reading the other day about the history of a country named Portugal and its political struggles, particularly in the early 1900s. The country’s monarchy had been ousted and replaced by an almost totalitarian regime, and this regime was determined to eradicate the country’s Catholicism. Religion, it thought, was pure superstition, and destructive, and wrong. Tolerance towards religion is just part of the problem, and only makes things worse. So this regime closed the churches down, and it confiscated their property. It banned religious holidays, as well as the teaching of religion in schools and colleges. Its actions were so aggressive that even people in rural areas—people who are usually unaffected by the quicksilver fads of urban sophisticates—took notice and went underground with their spirituality. Things got very, very bad. This is when you came in. The story goes that, in 1917, you appeared in a vision to three children from the rural village of Fatima. You encouraged them to stay hopeful in their religious faith, to pray for sinners, to keep on saying the Rosary. You appeared any number of times, and it is said that in your final appearance, on October 13, 1917, the crowd was far more than three children—something like 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters and photographers. Eyewitnesses said that it rained heavily that day, but at one point, the clouds broke and the sun took center stage, at which point it spun like a disk, radiated flames of scarlet, yellow, and purple, and then plunged towards the earth in a zigzag pattern, finally returning to its normal place, and leaving the people’s once wet clothing completely dry.

 

That’s the story. And whatever the reality happens to be, at least one thing is clear: religion in the hearts of the people is irrepressible, and it’s going to break through the walls put around it, every time. Whatever political or intellectual regimes do or plan to do, you, Mary, are not going to allow them to carry the day. You are a defender. People hunger for your presence, and you show up. And not just in Fatima, but all over the world, over the course of centuries. That’s what the record shows. I’ll grant that all we might be talking about here is some kind of communal hallucination—many explanations presuming nothing supernatural have been put forward—but what’s definitely real as real can be is that you are in people’s hearts and minds. You are there. And when the threat to religion or to life is great, they draw on you for strength, they take comfort from you, their imaginations soar with and through you.

 

Dear Mary, again and again, people go to you for strength. Some people might say that you were docile, and compliant, and weak, but I don’t believe it. You were strong enough to parent Jesus and give him good guidance and mentoring, and you’ve been strong enough in the hearts and minds of Christians through the ages to appear to them as a protector in times of tribulation. That’s what I call strong.

 

Yet there is one more thing that comes to mind when I consider people’s fascination for you, and it has to do with a different kind of strength. The strength it takes to step into the unknown. The strength it takes to be vulnerable and let go. The strength it takes to step back from broken dreams, and let them die, and still know that you are OK. Mary, you understand all about this. Blessed among women, you were condemned to witness your son’s execution on the cross. That’s what I call a broken dream. You know all about broken dreams. You know all about what it takes to step back from a dream, and let go.

 

This is the real reason for why I am writing this letter to you today. Perhaps the influence of my Catholic grandmother is stronger than I knew, and really, this letter is a prayer. For, you see, I’m praying for the strength to move into the second half of my life, and to let go of all my sadness and regrets. I know it’s not as dramatic as the death of your son on the cross, and yet there it is. I’m firmly into mid-life now, and with this has come a strange pressure building and building in my life, one that is pushing me to perform what I guess is itself a kind of miracle. Forgiving the fact that my body is changing and is not like it used to be; forgiving the fact that I was not able to accomplish everything I wanted to; forgiving the fact that all the brilliant, beautiful Christmases of my childhood will never come back again; forgiving the fact that precious people have died out of my life, and I will never be able to share with them who I am as an adult. This miracle of forgiveness. Water into wine. I need to perform it. I need to. It’s so I can make peace with my regrets. It’s so I can draw from my past in a healthy way. It’s so I can truly appreciate all the wonderful things I have right now: my family, my friends, my job, my health, my future. It’s so I can move forward, and keep on moving forward. It’s so I can believe that the best wine of my life will indeed come last, never fear.

 

Mary, I need a nudge from you, just like you once gave your son. I need you to light a fire under me, I need you to help me know that there’s no perfect moment for forgiveness, that there is no better time than now. Mary, in this Christmas season, I am praying to you for strength, for myself and also for so many others who are where I am right now, in one way or another. Whatever the age. Whatever the situation. Experiencing life changes. Facing the unknown. Feeling vulnerable. Strengthen all of us. Nudge all of us. Light that fire. And if we should snap back at you like your son did, and say, “Woman, what concern is that to you?” I know you’ll understand that the bark is worse than the bite. Just roll your eyes. You are the Mom. You’ve been there, done that. You know. Just show us the way to the most amazing kind of strength there is: to be hurt and yet come back; to be broken and yet to be whole; to endure ruined dreams and yet still dream; to give up so much, and yet, in the end, find more than you ever used to have. Water into wine. The best wine saved till last.

 

Mary, I thank you for your life, and I bless your name. Be with all of us this Christmas time.  

 

I am yours, sincerely,

 

Anthony

CONGREGATION seeks leaders. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.

As I reflect on our world today, and the challenge of leadership in difficult times, a story comes to mind from spiritual teacher Anthony de Mello. It’s about a mouse, in constant distress because of its fear of the cat. A young magician appeared one day, said, “How terrible to be so caught up in fear that you cannot enjoy yourself at all,” and he turned that mouse into a cat. But then it became afraid of the dog. So the young magician turned it into a dog, thinking that would fix things. But to his surprise, it then began to fear the panther. So the young magician turned it into a panther. Whereupon it was full of fear for the hunter. At this point the young magician gave up. He turned it back into a mouse, which surprised the mouse, who squeaked, “Why?” The young magician, a little older now, said, “Nothing I do is going to be of any help, because the one thing I cannot change—which makes all the difference—is your heart.” And that’s the story. If our hearts aren’t already big in some sense, then it does not matter what the outward circumstances happen to be, or the changes that magic might bring: we will never be able to dwell richly within our lives. Even when our circumstances are small as a mouse, I believe there is some kind of abundance to tap into and receive and be filled by. But not for a mousy heart; all a mousy heart can ever know is scarcity. Even it if beats within the body of a panther. 

 

The question before us this morning is thus: How to grow trust in our hearts so that, for the most important things, we can confidently know there will always be enough—no matter the state of the world, or the state of the stock market? Should things shrink down even to the size of a mouse, what can give us a sense of internal security that can endure every plummet of the Dow Jones Index and will not be shaken? 

 

These are fundamentally spiritual questions. Fundamentally spiritual, but also intensely practical. “Fear,” says a newspaper headline from several days ago, “may thwart financial cures.” “We aren’t dealing with a fundamental economic issue any longer,” says the article, quoting James Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital management. “We are dealing with fear. And that doesn’t respond to economic medicine.” People need words of reassurance; people need to hear an upside image; and until they do, investors are likely to be on edge. “We’ve so been traumatized over the past few weeks that every little thing that happens, we overreact.” “The opposite side of irrational exuberance is irrational pessimism, and neither one is a good path to your financial goals.” That’s what the newspaper article said. Despite a 700 billion dollar bailout of the banks, and other kinds of proactive solutions, what may nevertheless thwart these financial cures is … the mousy heart. The heart that won’t believe, the heart that can’t stop trying to control things long enough to take the leap of faith, the heart that doesn’t keep its eyes on the prize.

 

The question, again: how to dwell richly in our lives, how to tap into abundance, no matter what the external circumstances might be?

 

I believe that this is a question people have always asked, as a central part of their faith journey. How can my heart be, not mousy, but magnificent? And for a teacher like Rabbi Jesus, the best answer can’t be transmitted through words. It’s an answer you have to live into through trust, and commitment, and action. Often, during difficult times. Exactly during difficult times. You can talk about it later; but first, you have to act. 

 

Go back 2000 years ago. The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a time when Rabbi Jesus tried to take a little time off from his ministry and retreated, with his disciples, to a site near the Sea of Galilee. But people saw where they were going and ran there on foot ahead of them. 5000 people waiting, when they finally got there. And Rabbi Jesus, despite his fatigue, could not ignore them. Compassion welled up in his magnificent heart. He began teaching them, healing them; and it was hours later when his disciples came up to him, saying, “Rabbi, look, it’s getting late, it’s time for dinner. You need to send the people away into the surrounding villages so they can buy themselves something to eat.” But Jesus said to his disciples, “YOU give them something to eat.” In reply, they sputtered, “You want US to go and buy bread for 5000 people? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? That would cost us a fortune, and last we checked, we’re poor.” But Jesus said, “No, no, no—you’re misunderstanding me. How many loaves of bread do you already have, in hand?” They checked, and all together, the disciples had five small loaves of bread and two fish. When Jesus heard this, he immediately turned to the crowd of 5000 people and said something which simply stunned his disciples. He said, in a loud voice, “Everyone, it’s time to eat. We have more than enough to go around. There’s enough for everyone. Please sit down!” And the people did, in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed the meal and broke the loaves and divided the fish and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. Which they proceeded to do. Five loaves and two fish. Though the disciples could not help feeling in their mousy hearts that their fearless leader had gone nuts. No sane person could possibly believe that five loaves and two fish would be enough to feed 5000 people. 

 

But such is the difference between the mousy heart … and the heart that is magnificent. The magnificent heart knows that for what is truly important in life, there’s always more than enough to go around, and we need not fear adversity. The magnificent heart looks at a situation of apparent scarcity square in the eye and says, ‘I don’t believe it.” The magnificent heart challenges the people around him not to believe it either, and to step up, step out in faith. The magnificent heart—the heart of Rabbi Jesus—is satisfied with nothing less than a miracle.

 

But to this I hasten to add: not the WRONG kind of miracle. Not the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind. The magnificent heart expects a miracle, but not the wrong kind. When I read the gospel story, what I wonder about is how long it actually took that first person in the crowd, there at the side of the Sea of Galilee, to get what Jesus was trying to teach. I wonder how long it took for him to catch the abundance vision so fully and truly that his heart became magnificent too—and over his dead body was he gonna let the abundance vision die. And so he took personal responsibility for seeing that the vision came true. He gave what he had. He reached into his pocket and he pulled out a piece of his own precious bread and he put it right there in the basket. He chipped in.

 

How long did it take that first person, then the second, then the third—until the abundance vision caught like wildfire? Until mousy hearts found themselves behaving in ways that were not mousy at all? Suddenly, it’s a scene out of Stone Soup, it’s food flying out of people’s pockets and bags and satchels, faster than you can blink, all added to the communal feast. Everyone chipping in generously until it’s a done deal. Things starting with only five small loaves and two fish—but ending, despite the adversity of the situation, with enough for all, more than enough.

 

The miracle can happen here for us today. We can live into it, here and now. This morning, I am delighted to announce that, just a few weeks into this year’s stewardship campaign, we are more than half way to our pledge goal of 1 million dollars. People are stepping up. People are chipping in. We have, in hand, 144 pledges, totaling $520,000. So many people committed to giving 5% of their total household income, if not more, and I’m one of them. But we’re not there yet. There are about 420 more pledges we have yet to receive, so I am asking you, members and friends alike, that if you’ve still not pledged—let your hearts be magnificent. Experience abundance. Step up. Chip in. Let’s reach the pledge goal. Know that your dollars are going to something that sustains lives, changes people for the better. Pledges are the main source of income for our congregation—one of the largest Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America—so your generosity is key to ensuring that UUCA remains vital and strong and that it’s able to grow into all that it can be, able to reach towards that Sustainable Living vision I talked about earlier. 

 

I want the abundance miracle here at UUCA. I want it, and I hope you want it. Everyone taking the work of this place personally, making a generous financial commitment. Stepping up, chipping in, because if we don’t—if we’re counting on the WRONG kind of miracle, the supernatural kind, the out-of-thin-air kind, the someone-else-is-gonna-do-it kind—then you know what? We begin with five loaves and two fish, and we end with five loaves and two fish. That’s all. The 5000 go hungry. 5000 lives, unchanged. 5000, who will never know the miracle. And who wants to be a part of that? We are called to so much more, as a leader congregation in the world. We are called to magnificence. So let our hearts be magnificent. Let the miracle happen today. Let it happen. Amen.

 

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

Turnings: The Amazing Story of John Murray

From Buddhism we have the following story, about a time when a bandit called Angulimal once threatened the Buddha with death. “Then be good enough to fulfill my dying wish,” said the Buddha. “Cut off the branch of that tree.” And that’s what the bandit did. One slash of the sword, and it was done. “What now?” asked the bandit. Said the Buddha, “Put the branch back.” At this, the bandit laughed. “You must be crazy to think that anyone can do that.” “On the contrary,” said the Buddha, “it is you who are crazy to think that you are mighty because you can wound and destroy. That is the task of children. But to create and to heal—that is the task of the mighty.”

 

And it is our task as well. From all our various source traditions—from Buddhism and Taoism and Confucianism, from Judaism and Christianity and Islam, from humanist traditions and earth-based traditions, from all these and more—we Unitarian Universalists hear the call to be mighty. We hear it clearly, and there is a reason why. It‘s because of our own spiritual ancestors, who paved the way. They opened up our ears—especially our ancestors from our Universalist side. These Universalists were intimately familiar with what the bandit Angulimal in the Buddha’s story represents: evils coming into our lives to steal and destroy. Specific incidents, but also ideas, visions of reality.  Especially this vision: that there’s just not enough love to go around, not enough grace, not enough forgiveness—the vision in that only some are elected to enjoy eternal salvation, while others are doomed to suffer eternal torment. Faced with a vision of reality like this, our ancestor Universalists could not stay silent. They proclaimed, against this vision of not enough, a vision of abundance, in which there is ALWAYS enough love to go around. Even when the economy of life seems to be in a slump, and people are feeling the pinch, there’s ALWAYS enough of what is essential. Love is eternal and abiding, and God does not take sides; God does not divide sheep from goats. God is good. This is the original Universalist vision, which our spiritual mothers and fathers proclaimed in the face of scarcity-based and fear-based visions of reality. They said to America, in the 1700s and 1800s and 1900s, “Abundance is real. Love is real. This is how the universe is. So our privilege is to live into this. Don’t allow fear to rule our lives; fear is not realistic. Connect with joy instead. Connect with compassion. Feel it. Trust it. Live the life abundant. Experience it for yourself to the degree that you give generously. Give back, even as you have been given to. Be mighty like this. Create, and heal.” This is what they said. Be seized by the vision. Be transformed by it. Know it not just in your head, but in your heart, your actions.  

 

And clearly, this is easier said than done, then and now. The vision of abundance is just not unshakeable. Hurricanes of one sort or another just come roaring in. Events like 9/11. Just a little over a month ago, a gunman entered into our sister congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee during the Sunday morning worship, when around 25 children and youth were presenting a musical called “Annie, Jr.” Before people were able to tackle him and take away his gun, several people had been shot, and in the end, two died, including the hero who tackled him. The shooter, Jim Adkisson, said he did it because he hates liberals; he hates their gay-positive stance; he blames them for ruining our country. The vision of abundance is just not unshakeable. In ways small and large, the circumstances of life can turn us away from it, and we get lost in our angers and resentments, we get lost in our sadness and hopelessness, we get lost in our self-absorption and greed. Fear wins. Scarcity wins. And so the continual challenge: to turn back towards the abundance of life which Universalism says is really there, despite the shake-ups and stress, despite the cruelties and pains. Coming to know abundance even more deeply than before, in fact, because the more our hearts are cracked, the more light can come in. Experiencing restoration and healing, so that when the bandit comes, we can be even mightier than before.   

 

All of this—the call to respond to life from a place of abundance and be mighty, the continual challenge of doing this in the face of life’s troubles, and yet the ever-present possibility of restoration and healing, of turning back to the hope-filled vision—all of this we see in the amazing story of the founder of Universalism in America, John Murray. Let’s take a look. His life speaks to our lives today.

 

John Murray. Born in England in 1741, died in America in 1815. I want to start in 1769, when he was still in the land of his birth. That year, he became a Universalist. It happened like this. He and his wife Eliza had heard strange rumors about a church across town. People were whispering that in this church, wicked and immoral things were happening, and a strange doctrine was being preached. John and Eliza absolutely had to check it out! But what they ended up finding was nothing wicked and nothing immoral, but a sober group of people instead who believed that no one was going to be damned in hell for all eternity. At first, the teaching repulsed John Murray, because like so many other people then and now, he believed that without threat of eternal hellfire, what’s going to ensure moral order on earth? What’s going to motivate people to refrain from doing bad, or to do good? But he got over that. Universalism, he realized, was true, and it changes lives.

 

In his case, though, one of the changes was quite painful. One year later, in 1770, he was excommunicated from his home church in London, a Methodist church, where he served as a lay minister. Fellow members had found out about his conversion to Universalism, and they wanted nothing to do with it. John and Eliza had to go.

 

This was just the start of wave after wave of misfortune. It’s but another example of the truth in the idea that when we follow a call in our lives—even a call to abundance—we find things disrupted and shaken up. Wave after wave of trouble: John Murray, arrested and imprisoned for debt, though soon released. His infant child succumbing to illness, and then death. Then Eliza became ill, and while struggling to support her and provide medical care, his debts began to pile up again. Then Eliza died. Then his eyesight began to fail. One thing after another. In the end, John Murray found himself contemplating suicide as the only way out. 

 

Ever had a year like that? Is THIS year a year like that? Wave after wave of bad news, illness, disruption, disaster? But now, consider the wisdom in the following saying: “Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.” Rather than commit suicide, my sense is that John Murray started to look for the gifts in the problems. He started to ask of the circumstances of his life, “What are you here to teach me?” For this reason, when he happened to encounter, purely by chance, a traveler from America, he was curious. Didn’t instantly discount the meeting because it was tied up with chance. Wondered instead, “What is the universe trying to say to me now?“ “What are you here to teach me, traveler from America?”

 

It was this: that he could have a new start in his life. A new start in a New World. Which he was desperate for. A totally new start. One that, as far as he was concerned, would no longer have anything to do with preaching. That’s right: this future founder of Universalism in America went to America with hopes that he was leaving religion behind him. The bandit had roared into his life one too many times, and he had run out of answers. John Murray never wanted to preach again.

 

Oh, life can hurt. There are times when, truly, it feels like there isn’t enough love to go around….   

 

And so, in the fall of 1770, he set sail from the land of his birth, on a ship called the Hand In Hand, for the Port of New York. He had turned away from hellfire and damnation to Universalism; he had turned away from suicide to a new start; and now, without knowing it, he was setting the stage for the next and greatest turning in his life.

 

Ever since, people have called it the Unitarian Universalist miracle. I prefer to see it as evidence of subtle order in the universe, the abundant web of life into which each of our lives is woven. I’m talking about synchronicity, coincidences that are so fine-tuned to the meaning of our lives that they seem anything but random. Have you ever experienced synchronicity? Here’s how it happened to John Murray. 

 

Three days out from the Port of New York, his journey suddenly goes haywire. The Hand in Hand encounters another ship carrying word that the Port of New York is closed, and with this, the Hand in Hand’s Captain decides to sail to Philadelphia. There, he discovers that the news concerning the New York Port had been wrong, and so, scratching his head, he once again sets sail for New York. But midway, off the New Jersey coast, the Hand in Hand runs aground on a sandbar, and it is held there by a strong wind. John Murray and everyone else aboard are stuck. 

 

Stuck at a place called Good Luck. I’m not kidding. The Universe has a weird sense of humor, even as it continually conspires to help us live out our calls. So: John Murray comes ashore, in search of provisions for the crew, and there he has another chance encounter, with a local well-to-do farmer named Thomas Potter. Potter meets him, learns that he has done some preaching before, and enthusiastically invites him to deliver a sermon at his private chapel on Sunday.

 

Now you should know that Thomas Potter was an uneducated but deeply religious man who had heard about Universalism years earlier and was looking for a preacher to preach it fully and truly. Following the “if you build it he will come” principle, he had built a chapel on his property and invited every preacher he met to come speak. But none of them was able to articulate the abundance vision that was so precious to his heart. Ten years later—lots of sermons later—he was still waiting for the right preacher to come.  

 

Enter, John Murray, the man who never wanted to preach again!

 

Of course, Murray refuses the offer. But Potter is insistent, doesn’t give up, and Murray finds himself open to relenting—not just because of Potter’s enthusiasm, but also because he’s getting the uncanny feeling that the universe is trying to teach him something. Too many meaningful coincidences, all coming together around Universalism. But Murray tells Potter that he needs one more kind of confirmation before he is willing to break his promise to himself, never to preach again. One more so-called “coincidence”: If, before Sunday, the wind changes and the ship is freed up to sail, he’ll leave. If the wind doesn’t change, he’ll stay, and he’ll preach. Let God decide.

 

That’s how John Murray put it, and what happened was that the wind, in fact, did not change. The ship remained stuck on the sandbar. Come Saturday evening, John Murray had to face up to the message the universe was sending him. He was gonna have to preach.

 

Here’s what happened next, in his own words: “I had no rest through the night. What should I say, or how address the people? Yet I recollected the admonition of [Jesus]: ‘Take no thought, what you shall say; it shall be given you, in that same hour, what you shall say.’ Ay, but this promise was made to his disciples. Well, by this, I shall know if I am a disciple….”

 

Murray continues: “Sunday morning [came]; my host was in transports. I was—I cannot describe how I was. I entered the [chapel]; it was neat and convenient…. There was one large square pew, just before the pulpit; in this sat the venerable [farmer, Potter,] and his family, also particular friends, and visiting strangers. Surely no man, upon this side of heaven, was ever more completely happy. He looked up to the pulpit with eyes sparkling with pleasure … and he reflected on the strong faith, which he had cherished, while his associates would tauntingly question, ‘Well, Potter, where is this minister, who is to be sent to you?’ ‘He is coming, in God’s own good time.’ ‘And do you still believe any such preacher will visit you?’ ‘Oh yes, assuredly.’ He reflected upon all this, and tears of transport filled his eyes; he looked round upon the people, and every feature seemed to say, ‘There, what think you now?’”

 

Can’t you just see it? Thomas Potter’s overflowing joy, at his hopes fulfilled? And John Murray: his anxiety as he feels the push of an amazing synchronicity of events towards taking up, once again, the Good News of Universalism. And then this, above all: in the very act of doing what he resolved he would never do again—in the very act of preaching—John Murray recovering and rediscovering his life purpose. His feeling for the abundance vision going to the next level, stronger and fuller than before. His life and his heart cracked wide open, and all the light and all the joy streaming inside….

 

And there’s more! The very moment his sermon was done, a sailor came from the ship with news that the wind had just changed direction, and they were free to go. I mean, after all these meaningful coincidences, astonishingly attuned to his psychological and spiritual state,

how could he not be confirmed in a career of preaching Universalism far and wide? How could he not go out and find the other Thomas Potters scattered across America who were waiting to hear the hopeful message? Build this faith? You better believe it. The very universe was saying to him, Yes!

 

Build this faith. And that’s what he did. John Murray. A Johnny Appleseed of the spirit, spreading seeds of hope throughout the country, during the years of the American Revolutionary war, and afterwards. Building spiritual communities that change lives, like you and I are doing here and now. It wasn’t easy. Preaching abundance in a world of fear and scarcity is never easy. People hated it, so they did all they could to stop it. Tried to lynch Murray several times, but he escaped. Interrupted him while he was preaching, but he kept on. Once, in Boston in 1774, he was preaching, and he happened to be standing right in front of a window. Someone outside threw a sharp stone through that window. The stone narrowly missed his head—it could have killed him, the stone was so sharp and big—and this is what happened next. Murray reached down and picked up that stone, showed it to his audience, and said, “This argument is solid, and weighty,

but it is neither rational, nor convincing.” And then got right back to his preaching. 

 

Build this faith. That’s our task too. Build it for all the Thomas Potters in the world who are waiting to hear a good word. Build it for the Thomas Potter that is within our children, and within us. Be mighty in the face of people who hate us because of what we stand for. Whenever it feels like there’s not enough—whenever the fear strikes—to turn back to the abundance vision, to help eachother find that vision again, to remember that for what is truly essential in life, always always, there is enough.

 

Which takes us to what happened at our sister church in Knoxville after the shooting. Afterwards, during the healing service led by Unitarian Universalist Association President Bill Sinkford, those 25 or so children and youth whose performance was so brutally interrupted sang these words from Annie, Jr. (sing along with me if you like):

 

The sun’ll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sun!
Just thinkin’ about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
‘Til there’s none! 

 

Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya Tomorrow!
You’re always
A day
A way!

 

“The congregation,” said one observer, “spontaneously joined in singing with them, and after a few seconds, when the impact of this moment had sunk in, the crowd erupted into applause, tears, shouts, cheers, and many more tears. As the cast finished their grande finale, they took their long-awaited bows to an adoring, grief-stricken, and healing audience.”  

 

John Murray’s story is our story. Tragedy, like the bandit in the Buddha’s parable, will enter into our lives. But our precious faith teaches us that there is a better way than to respond out of fear. The task of the mighty is to dwell within a place of triumphant love and, out of this, to create and heal. The Life Abundant is real. We can help create it for each other. Whatever our personal beliefs today may be about God, we know that, as we build up this community which sustains us, we can still lay hold of that essential Universalist vision. What is real is love. What is real is service. What is real is compassion. What is real is generosity. Abundance is yesterday, abundance is today, abundance is forever.

 

 

 

 

Rev. Anthony David

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta