A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
September 26, 2010

As one can guess by our name, we have two sides to our family, the Unitarian and the Universalist. In 1961, they got married, so to speak (in the United States, anyway) and formed the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, or UUA for short. As is sometimes observed about longtime spouses, they’ve come to look alike over these nearly fifty years. 

Oddly for a faith tradition that requires no certain creed of its members, ours is named after two doctrines.

From the Universalist side of the family we inherited the theological idea of universal salvation, that no one will be condemned to hell for their sins by an all-loving God, as John Murray preached in 1770 on the Jersey Shore (as we heard in the Together Time this morning). The beloved twentieth century Universalist minister, Gordon McKeeman says it means, “We are all going to end up together in heaven, so we might as well start learning to get along right now.” We speak of this today as the transforming power of love and it is reflected in our first UU principle, that we affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

The Unitarian side of the family gave us the theological belief in one God, rather than three; that Jesus was a great man, not one of three Gods – Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. For centuries, going back to the Reformation in Europe, the Unitarians have affirmed a trinity of historic principles, if not a divine trinity:  freedom of belief, use of reason, and tolerance of differences. These led Unitarians to say “there is that of truth in all religions” and to read the Bible in the light of reason, not blind faith. 

In this country, especially in New England, the early Universalists tended to be from the working class and the Unitarians from the educated classes. For example, in the Bostonarea town where I served as minister for ten years, there was, still is, the Draper Mill. Until the mid-twentieth century, the Drapers called the shots at the Unitarian Church while most of the employees went to the Universalist Church. 

So now you can make sense of an old joke you may have already heard, one that is, actually, quite old – Civil War Era. Its originator was Rev. Thomas Starr King, who straddled both traditions, having been born-and-raised Universalist in Massachusetts and first served a Universalist church, but then was called to serve Unitarian churches, finally the Unitarian Church in San Francisco in 1860. His lecture campaign helped secure California for the Union cause and raised substantial funds for the Sanitary Commission, precursor to the Red Cross.

“The Universalists,” he quipped, “believe that God is too good to damn them, and the Unitarians believe they are too good to be damned!” 

Some say Unitarian Universalism got its heart from the Universalists and its mind from the Unitarians. I say, “If Unitarian Universalism got its heart from the Universalists and its mind from the Unitarians, now that we’ve been together so long, let’s get some soul!”  Yes, we’ve been together now for nearly fifty years. Long enough for the distinctions to have worn off, long enough to affirm the gifts bequeathed by each, long enough we ought to be “turning the world around,” as the choir sang not long ago [“Turn the World Around,” words and music by Harry Belafonte]. 

We will be celebrating our golden anniversary at the annual General Assembly of the UUA this June, not too far away, in Charlotte, NC – a seven hour drive from here, close enough to have a good delegation from Paint Branch, even maybe share a bus with other Maryland congregations. 

You can get a foretaste of one of the pleasures of General Assembly this coming Friday night at Goodloe Memorial UU Church in nearby Bowie MD. The current UUA moderator is speaking that night. From watching Gini Courter lead the plenary sessions at GA, I know her to be wise and very witty and I know she’ll give a great speech– our member Carol Carter Walker has tickets for this scholarship fundraiser but she’s at the Fairfax UU church this weekend, so contact her via email or phone. 

Ever since I attended my first General Assembly, I have thought of Unitarian Universalism as a movement, not a denomination, as a “living tradition” not a dead one. I first attended GA in 1991, in Calgary, Canada, which happened to be the GA that we launched a ground-breaking new commitment to anti-racism and becoming a multi-cultural faith. Although I was a relative newcomer, I could see by the way the organization was looking back with painful honesty on its past failures around race, making specific commitments to change, and looking forward with a vision for the future…that it was on the move, and I just knew I wanted to be part of that movement! 

As you may know, there is a West African word for that kind of looking back in order to move forward:  “sankofa.” It means learning from the past in order to do better in the future.  Visually and symbolically, “Sankofa” is expressed as a mythic bird that flies forward or whose feet face forward while it looks backward with an egg (symbolizing the future) in its mouth. 

So, if, as we say, ours is a “living tradition,” that doesn’t stand still, it moves! then how do our inheritances from the Universalist and Unitarian sides of the family move us forward now? 

Well, I’m not exactly sure. I can see where they’ve already moved us, of course. Twenty years or so after the merger, now a little more than twenty years ago, the 1980’s was the decade when we seemed to take off as a movement. We began to experience membership growth while Protestant denominations were declining. We were attracting seekers who had not previously been religious but were looking for more spirituality in their lives, as well as come-outers from other religions. Around that time, at the urging of women in the movement who were critical of the sexist language in the previous principles, we began a congregational writing project, drafting words to express our values and foundations. Whether our membership grew at that time in part because our new self-definition was appealing, I do not know. But, we were on the move.

So, at the 1984 and 1985 General Assemblies the delegates adopted seven principles (which we reviewed last week) and five sources from which we draw, which we will review today. I’ve asked Shantida, one of our Worship Associates today, to join me in reading them aloud. You can follow along if you open your Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, the gray one, to the front and then to the two pages that precede Hymn #1. 

We will begin reading aloud from half-way down on the left hand page, where it starts off with a line in capital letters.  

THE LIVING TRADITION WE SHARE DRAWS FROM MANY SOURCES:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit. (pause)

Depending on the year your hymnal was printed, a sixth source may be listed:

• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

Given who was joining our movement in the 1980’s and 90’s, it’s not surprising that in 1995 the General Assembly delegates voted to add that sixth source. I remember discussing it, before the vote, with a mentor, someone older than I who was raised in our tradition and had been a minister since his twenties. He asked me if I thought we should vote it in. I sensed he was unsure. As I was a relative newcomer who was both a seeker and a come-outer, influenced both by feminism and the environmental movement, I simply said to him, “we’re already drawing on that source in our congregations, so, yes!”  It passed by a large majority, I recall. We were on the move!

So we had defined our selves by a set of principles stating our intentions as to how we want to live in the world and a set of sources from which we draw our inspiration. But lately there’s been some introspection that, after 25 years, perhaps these principles and these sources are not quite meeting our needs any longer. In fact, at the2009 General Assembly a revision was up for a vote and was narrowly defeated, by 13 votes, 573 to 586. Back to the writing boards, I guess, though I’ve heard nothing more about revising them since.

But, if there is a malaise among us, maybe we do need to move on. If there is a sense that we’ve been trying for 25 years to live according to those principles, drawing from those sources, but the problems of humanity seem more intractable than ever, then maybe we need something new, something more. 

The earth is burning up, nearly literally, and poison ivy and stink bugs are taking over; the gap between rich and poor, not just in our country but earth-wide has widened; marketing is more intense; our purchasing power, not frugality, is urged as a national defense; religious fundamentalism of several stripes is wreaking havoc and violence; our kids are obese; urban schools are still inadequate and some neighborhoods are still unsafe; drugs are still a problem; immigrants are not treated as neighbors; our country is at war but most of us live as though we aren’t; and most of our UU congregations are still mostly white … 

Maybe our seven prophetic principles are lacking. Maybe ideals like “peace, liberty and justice for all” don’t inspire like they used to. 

The president, Rev. Dr. Rebecca Parker, of one of our two UU seminaries, Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, CA (named after the one who told that joke) has been thinking, writing and lecturing about this. She is saying that ideals aren’t enough. They don’t comfort you when there’s a cross burning on your lawn in the middle of the night. Ideals don’t provide solace when your school board votes creationism into the curriculum. Ideals don’t reassure when the town council votes down your group’s proposed zoning change to keep a CAFO, confined animal feeding operation, like a huge pig farm, out of your area. Ideals don’t provide spiritual sustenance. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King prayed. But many religious liberals don’t pray.

So Rebecca Parker is saying [in A House for Hope, pages 3-17] that when we “locate paradise in the ideal of what could be, of what God dreams, as voiced by the prophets:  liberation of the oppressed, food for the hungry, peace for all people and reverence for the earth…as hope for a future toward which we are impelled to strive, [then] all of life is lived in the tension between what is and what could be.  The hoped-for future perpetually condemns the present. Now is never enough…We have not yet worked smart enough, been well-enough organized, convinced enough people…The mountains of injustice are too high for us to climb.” Some give up. Others don’t try.

For religious liberals who do not experience the comforting presence of God, “something tangible and alive is needed,” Parker suggests. She says we need to see that paradise is actually here, now, accessible to us, even though evil and pain is all around and within us, too. She writes, “here is where the hand of comfort can be extended, the deep breath be taken, and we can live at home in the world, knowing this is enough…Generosity and mutual care are the pathways into knowing that paradise is here and now. This way of living is not utopian. It does not spring from the imagination of a better world, but from a profound embrace of this world. It brings hope home to today, to this moment and its possibilities for faithful love.” 

I heard a talk Rebecca Parker gave at General Assembly this past June. (If you attend the 2011 GA, be sure to hear one of her lectures, and a more insightful, beautifully crafted, uplifting talk you won’t hear). Coincidentally in light of our Together Time hero [John Murray, founded first American Universalist church] today, she gave the annual John Murray

Distinguished Lecture. Her title was “Connecting Beauty with Justice.” 

In it, she further developed the idea of “paradise in the here and now.” She suggested, in my own words, that it is in experiencing beauty that we can get the energy and hope we need for our every-day struggles, whether they are struggles to put food on the table or to make right our relationships or for the larger “peace, liberty and justice for all.” It can be the beauty of the creation experienced through our senses; beauty in human creativity in music, visual art, dance, poetry, cuisine, fragrance, and more; beauty in human relationships; beautiful people, everybody is beautiful somehow.

Could beauty be a source for this living tradition we share? Does our Unitarian Universalist movement need beauty? Do we need beauty to be on the move again?

If you recall the six currently listed sources we just read, they don’t mention beauty.

How could it have been forgotten? Maybe beauty is all we need to add! 

That’s what I meant when earlier I said, “If Unitarian Universalism got its heart from the Universalists and its mind from the Unitarians, now that we’ve been together so long, let’s get some soul!”  Amen.