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If you were good enough to read your newsletter, which I know you all do the day it arrives, you know that this in the third in a series of sermons I'm delivering on the Sources of our Living Tradition of Unitarian Universalism. If you'd like to check out the Sources, you are welcome to do so. They are found right at the front of the hymnal as the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Sources from which they are derived. They are the best, current, and most relevant statement about who we are as Unitarian Universalists. They express a covenant that all congregations that name themselves UU, ascribe to. The Principles in particular, such as the inherent worth and dignity of every person, a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, respect for the interconnected web of all existence, are even in our bylaws as basically the Principles and Purposes of this organization. So, even though we are creedless folk, these are words that matter to us.
Next year I will preach on all of the principles, but this year I've been more concerned with talking about where the principles come from: historically and in the living present. Where they come from is expressed by the Sources of the Living Tradition. A few months back I spoke on the first one, which is the direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder that moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life. That sermon leaned heavily into Buddhism and mysticism and the plain, dirty reality of our own lives as the source of the Principles of liberal religion. Some time after that, we talked about the prophetic words and deeds of women and men that call us to confront powers and structures of evil with the transforming power of love, or something like that. (No law says you have to memorize these, thank goodness). In that sermon, I talked about Olympia Brown and we talked about some of our heroes, who, growing out of their own direct experience of power and connectedness and love, have carried it forward into the world, particularly in acts of justice and healing.
Now the focus narrows a little bit more, though I think these flow together very beautifully. There is a logic to the way that these were written. The folks who compiled our sources were quite inspired. We move now to the third source, which is, very simply, Jewish and Christian teachings that call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
I find much meaning in the Sources and as much as I try to gear my own life around the Principles and the Sources, it is just the latest statement of who we are. It was put together by a committee of fine, committed folks about 21 years ago. So, they are not golden tablets found under a hill, though I conjecture that given a thousand years, the tale might be told of the Golden Coffee Cup that was found under Beacon Hill upon which the Principles and Sources. So, while I won't quite claim that they have magical power, I do think there is a remarkable logic and inspiration to the. This Source in particular is very important tot me: Jewish and Christian teachings that call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. It was hard to get this sermon rolling because there are only about 1000 things I feel I could say out of that. Rita pointed out, "Duh, there have only been 2000 years of Christian history — that's a lot of sermons." And there were another 1500 years of Jewish history before that. This is a rich treasure trove of wisdom, if we dig in.
But rather than preach 1000 sermons, I'll preach one or maybe two. The first is to simply answer some nagging questions: Why is this a Source of our tradition? Why is it in Unitarian Universalism? In particular, why is it separate from the fourth source, which is wisdom from the world's religions that inspires us in our ethical and spiritual lives? Why have Jewish teachings and Christian teachings been deliberately separated?
There are good reasons for it. The primary reason is that this is a reference to our history. As many of you know, there is just no getting around the fact that the Unitarians and the Universalists who came together in 1961 to become the Unitarian Universalists were boldly and unambiguously Christian for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th century when things began to shift significantly and the horizon began to broaden. This broadening is a topic I will cover two weeks from now.
Sometimes the language of our forbearers almost seems foreign to us, and yet it is our history. Even more, it is the well from which our current way of life springs. I will just offer a couple of examples. In 1825 when the American Unitarian Association was founded, its stated purpose was "to diffuse the knowledge and promote the interests of pure Christianity throughout our country." Whatever that means....
I can tell you a little about what it meant. It meant something very different from much of the Christianity of its day, certainly. It meant being a lot more open to the power of reason and to the revelation from natural laws. It meant relying less on the Bible as inerrant and more on our own characters and the development of our own hearts. The statement was rooted deeply in liberal principles, but Unitarianism was seen by our forbearers as synonymous with "pure Christianity."
Not too long after, in 1825, people began to poke at the assertion that the point of Unitarianism was pure Christianity, and an ever more liberal and ever more humanist group began to flower within the denomination, particularly out west. So, by 1894, the statement had weakened a little bit, but you'll recognize something in it. The statement of purpose of the national body representing Unitarians said: "these churches accept the religion of Jesus, holding, in accordance with his teaching, that practical religion is summed up in love to God and love to [human kind]."
That's the Unitarians. The Universalists, on the other hand, were even more deeply Christian. They were Bible-based all the way until the 1920's or so. They were unambiguously Christian. Even by 1935 when the statement of their beliefs stated:
The bond of fellowship in this Convention shall be a common purpose to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it and to co-operate in establishing the kingdom for which he lived and died. To that end, we avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-conquering Love, in the spiritual leadership of Jesus, in the supreme worth of every human personality, in the authority of truth known or to be known, and in the power of people of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.
So, there's all that. That's why this Source is separated. But the Sources don't say, "the Source of our history," they say "the Source of our Living Tradition." This Source is pulled out from the world religions because it still matters to us as a people — to some more than others, no doubt about it. It is still a piece of he tapestry of Unitarian Universalism. Unfortunately in many UU congregations, it is not easy to be a friend or follower of Jesus and an avowed religious liberal. I've talked many times about my desire for us to reclaim many of the old religious words that have been taken by folks who, I feel, do not serve the best purposes of the world. Words like god and church and religions — these words have meanings that are often hateful and harmful. One those troublesome words is "Christian". So much so that I find that when people among us reveal that they have a deep connection to that tradition, they usually say it like this, [whispering], "Umm, I kind of consider myself a Christian." Like they don't want anybody to know because that word has so many negative connotations. So many of us have come out of Christian traditions in which many of the harmful or limiting aspects of these words were shoved down our throats or used to separate the world into Us and Them. And yet, for many of us there are things in the songs and stories and images of the Jewish and Christian traditions that resonate deeply — even as we acknowledge that there is so much that must be set down.
Let me confess that I love Jesus — I do. I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Unitarian Universalist, but I read the Bible all the time. But I can't use that word to describe myself. I can't say, "I'm a Christian," because of all the negative connotations; it's just too much for me. So, I really respect the struggle — this weird tension — that we have in us: knowing we come from a certain place and desiring to be as fully embracing of all religious perspectives as possible, but still really bonking our heads up against all of the negative aspects of this tradition. But I want us to work to get over that tension because this Source is as meaningful and relevant as any of the others. You can root yourself in it, just as you can root yourself in any of the others, and flower into a good and beautiful Unitarian Universalist. Jesus, the great Jewish prophet, is ours too, as much as anybody's. Jesus belongs to the whole world, not just to the people who wanted to make him into a god (an act which would have surely horrified him), or into a sacrificial lamb. The simple fact is Jesus was one of the coolest dudes ever. There is an old punk band called King Missile who sang a song, "Jesus Was Way Cool". It goes, "He used to tell these stories and people would listen. That is so cool." There's more to the song, but I can't repeat the lyrics from the pulpit. I'll leave it there for now. Check out King Missile.
I want to be really clear that when I say that I love Jesus, I don't think of Jesus in all of those negative ways I've hinted at. I don't think of him as a ransom payment for our sins. I don't think of him as a sacrificial lamb to set the world right. I don't think of him as a one-time special offer of salvation. I don’t think of him as a judge at the right hand of god. I don't think of him coming on white clouds. I don't imagine him in white clothes. Frankly, I do not imagine him as white.
For me, Jesus was a person who dreamed one of the loveliest, radical, dangerous, and improbable visions of community that has ever been dreamed. I think we are the heirs of his dream. He called it the "Kingdom of God", or as the scholars translation of the Bible would have it, "God's Imperial Reign". Not being a lover of empires, I prefer to call it "God's Perfect Radical Democracy".
The trick is to get at that vision and that dream on a real level that we can relate to and use today. We have to peel apart so much. There's a lot of work to be done. We have to peel away all of the accretions and distortions and misunderstandings of this guy that have been going on literally since day one. Reading the scriptures themselves makes it evident that even Jesus’ own closest followers weren't really sure what to do with him. Part of Jesus’ deal seems to be that he kept people guessing. He was a wisdom teacher who taught these stories and people would listen. He used parables that bend your mind and your spirit. And he used aphorisms — anyone of which you could build a whole lifetime of spiritual practice around. If we never said anything here again but, "love your enemy," and tried to make that real, we would have enough work for all of our lifetimes. Just that: love your enemies. I know myself, I can barely extend it to the guy who cut me off in traffic; I've got a lot of work to do, we all do.
What we find in Jesus, furthermore, as the Source indicates, is someone who stands in a prophetic tradition of great Jewish prophets, great writers and speakers whose words and deeds challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil. People like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah. In fact, my favorite Bible reading of all time comes from Micah: "God has told you, oh, mortal, what is good. And what does the Most High require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God." Jesus, I think, heard those teachings and lived them. He built upon them and universalized them, offering them to any and all. He seems to have combined a wonderful wisdom and insight with unflappable compassion and a thirst for social reform and he lived it out.
Perhaps you all know this one: "Treat people in ways you want them to treat you. This sums up the whole of the law and the prophets." (There's other good news: you don't have to read the rest of the Bible.) Just treat people in ways you want them to treat you — another lifetime's worth of practice in a single sentence.
What did Jesus' ministry look like on the ground? That's the real inspiration for me because I think it's something we can strive for. Underneath Jesus the Greek hero, underneath the resurrected god who will return with trumpets, we find a person who would sit at the table with anybody. He would offer free healing for all. He would abandon the boundaries that divide the rich and poor, the sick and the well, the powerful and the powerless, the pure and the impure, the pious and the sinner. He would have us not resist evil, but turn the cheek; give a shirt along with the coat; go the extra mile when asked for one. And not least of all, Jesus gives us that image of the table that was so dear to the Universalists. For Jesus there was room at the table for everybody and always another empty chair. The first seat, the head of the table was given to those who had or were nothing in the eyes of their society. Jesus gives a vision of a community where every unjust social convention would be rejected. And I must tell you, it is virtually impossible for us to understand just how radical this way of life was in Jesus’ time when purity laws and hierarchical orders of power were so rigid. He just went around saying, "Come in you prostitutes, you tax collectors, let's have some wine."
Is that view any less radical or dangerous or wonderful or inspiring today? Might that not be why the Source speaks to us? We are called to a daring view that presumes that freedom is our natural state, that the common good is our natural priority, that love is our natural calling, that inherent worth and dignity are our natural birthrights. It's a crazy, wonderful dream and it just might be at the heart of Unitarian Universalism. For me, it's an idea that will never lose its power or its promise because it rests, as our Source tells us, on nothing less than the Ultimate Nature of Things.
As I told you, I think the authors of our Sources were deeply inspired and they were being very wise when they said, "call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbor as ourselves." This is the doorway Source for the theists among us. What might those words mean, "Respond to God's love"? What might they mean for a people who often share a wise and deep skepticism of many of the teachings attributed to god; many of the teachings from this same Bible?
It probably won't mean the parent, not the white guy with the beard, maybe not a person at all. What does it mean to respond to God's love?
I can't speak for Unitarian Universalism; I can only speak for myself and tell you what it means to me. There are times when I look out on the world, when I look at you, when I look at the finches in my backyard and the berries that are growing on the tree there for them to come and share and the joy they bring to my heart; I look at solid objects and think of this incredible chowder of molecules that's bubbling along holding it all together; and I think of bumblebees and flowers and the food that we grow and the air that we breathe and how it all fits together so perfectly and so beautifully, right down to the smallest object and up to the canopy of stars. There are times, even just looking at the bathroom wall, when I see all that and I feel like It says to me, "You belong here. You're held. I've got you. You're one with this thing. This glory is no different from you."
And I feel also, in a way that no word could express, that It lives. I just feel it. That's why the reading from Q is so lovely to me. It expresses a beaming power of interconnectedness that gives everything we need all the time, no matter what. Always bending toward harmony, bending toward generosity and beauty, and allowing us the perfect freedom to celebrate it or screw it up royally. It bends eternally back again to harmony and beauty and complexity even at Its most destructive. That's how I see God — not just as the universal benevolence of nature but also that love in us, in me, that cannot be destroyed. Even after the fiercest grief, there's healing and renewal. Even in the darkest times, hope springs. There is always hope. Out of the vast web that says, "You’re alive, you belong," we find ourselves sitting in room together trying to live out of the feeling and make that dream of benevolence and generosity and harmony a reality. It's as if we just get one little bandwidth of the whole Holy Project to work and it's right here. As all of the teachings have said, this is our place to further the mission of the Universe.
How are we going to extend beauty and harmony and goodness? We've got only one way to do it really: it's to love our neighbors as we love ourselves; to extend the great favor that God gives us. The great challenge in the wisdom of this Source is that loving your neighbors as yourself, let alone loving your enemies, is a nearly impossible task, unless you can believe in your own heart that you are loved — loved, lovable, held, forgiven no matter what, a bearer of the holy power, no matter what. That's why we have to hear the voice of God first (however we name it: Krishna, Allah, the Universe). If we can feel that we are held and then open our eyes and see other people, the game changes. And when the game changes, we can turn this sad old world around.