Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Greatest Strengths

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is from a modernized version of the Cambridge Platform. The Cambridge Platform was drawn up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1649, and is the fundamental founding document of all those New England congregations that, like ours, trace their origins back to the Puritans. I will read from a modernized version published by the First Congregational Society of Millers Fall, Massachusetts, in 1998 for the Cambridge Platform’s 350th birthday.

    “It is a covenant that makes church out of the various gatherings of Gentile believers in these days.

    “The more detailed and clear this covenant (or consent, or voluntary agreement) is, the more fully it puts us in mind of our mutual duty, and encourages us in it. Such a covenant also helps establish the legitimacy of a local church and makes clear who are its true members. Yet we conceived the essence of a covenant is the agreement and consent of a group of faithful people to meet regularly together as a congregation for worship and mutual edification, and the primary evidence of this agreement is the actual practice of doing so…. In the Scriptures, people make covenants in a variety of ways, such as by word of mouth, sacrifice, written agreement and seal, and even at times by silent consent without any writing of words at all.”

    The second reading this morning if from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Friendship.”

    “We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knoweth.

    “The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good-will, they make the sweetness of life.”

    Sermon

    I am not going to preach on the topic that was publicized for this morning. Instead, I am going to tell you about the greatness and the goodness of this congregation; and about the voluntary principle of our congregation.

    As a newcomer to New Bedford and to this south coastal region of Massachusetts — I have lived here less than two years — I have found a remarkable cultural characteristic that seems peculiar to this region; at least, it is a cultural characteristic which I never encountered in four decades of living elsewhere in Massachusetts. That remarkable cultural characteristic is the strong tendency to talk about everything that is inadequate about New Bedford and the South Coast area, while only apologetically saying what is good and beautiful and wonderful about this part of the world.

    Over and over again, I hear residents of this city emphasizing the problems we face: underperforming schools, drugs and unemployment, pollution in the harbor, corruption in town governments and inefficiencies in city government, a decaying infrastructure, lack of commuter rail service to Boston. All those problems are very real; but it seems to me that our problems are more than outweighed by the very real advantages we can claim. The great strengths of this region include its illustrious past, its cultural treasures, its artistic community, the great and wonderful diversity of its inhabitants, its proximity to the ocean, its spectacular natural beauty, and its kind and polite people. Yet all too often, these are not the first things we mention.

    As you would imagine, this cultural tendency has infiltrated this congregation. I see it at work among members and friends of this church, and indeed I find myself easily slipping into this habit myself:– we can all tell each other about everything that is wrong with our church, and we do so readily. So members of the Board can readily tell you that our basement leaks and we recently had a foot of water down there; I find myself apologizing when people walk into this room because there is some peeling paint and water damage evident; when you come to this church accompanied by children, someone is liable to warn you that we don’t have many children here. We are quite adept at telling the world, and telling each other, that we aren’t as good as we could be.

    This morning I would like to tell you how good this church is, and how much it has to offer. Emerson tells us, “We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.” All humanity, he tells us, is bathed in love as in a fine ether — that is, as if in an insubstantial element that we cannot see and which it is all too easy to ignore. This congregation has a great deal more kindness and love and strength than we ordinarily talk about; it is time, I think, to start talking about it.

    I am going to tell you what the five greatest strengths of this congregation are, in my view. If you wish to argue with me, and tell me that I should have named this or that strength — that is the response I hope to provoke. I want you to start telling the rest of our church, and start telling the wider community, what it is that we do well.

    In my opinion, our greatest strength is something that we so take for granted, that it is all but invisible to us; and that is our covenant. Every historically Unitarian congregation traces its religious roots back to the Puritans. And every congregation that traces its roots back to the Puritans traces its roots back to the Cambridge Platform, the foundational document that outlines an ideal for congregational organization.

    In our first reading this morning, we heard a short passage from the Cambridge Platform that talked about covenant. All congregations in the Puritan tradition are founded on the idea of covenant; also known as consent, or voluntary agreement. That is to say, no bishop or pope nor any ecclesiastical authority can force you to enter into membership in one of our congregations. Nor do you automatically become a member of this congregation simply by virtue of being born into it. You must willfully consent to become a member of this congregation; you must enter into the agreement of membership voluntarily; and that is what is meant by covenant.

    This principle of covenant is our greatest strength. We do not force anyone to join us. We do not proselytize, for we understand that proselytizing is a form of coercion. We say: here we are, here is what we stand for; and should someone express interest (by, for example, walking into church on Sunday morning), we extend an open invitation to spend time with us, learn who we are, and then decide if that person willingly consents to join us.

    For the first century and a half of its existence, our congregation had written covenants. Over the past fifty years, we have covenanted together “by silent consent without any writing of words at all,” as the Cambridge Platform puts it. In an effort to articulate our unwritten covenant, I have attempted to put it into spoken word, and I say those words at the beginning of each worship service. Every few months, one of you approaches me, and suggest changes in the way I articulate our unwritten covenant. So, for example, recently Bob Boynton gently reminded me that love should be a part of any covenant, and now I say: “We come together in love to seek after truth and goodness, to find spiritual transformation in our lives; and in the spirit of love we care for one another and promote practical goodness in the world.” In other words, I’m not making this up on my own — I’m trying to articulate our voluntary agreement, the covenant that already exists in this congregation.

    However it is articulated, our covenant remains our greatest strength. It is through our covenant that we refuse coercion, and affirm voluntary agreement in matters of religion. This is our greatest strength.

    Our second greatest strength seems to me to be related to the first. Our second greatest strength is that we offer a liberal religious witness in a world that desperately needs it. The dominant religious attitudes in the United States today often take one of two basic forms. On the one hand, there are those religious groups which assert that they have sole access to truth and righteousness, and that they shall bring their religion to the rest of the world by guile, by force, or even by the sword if need be. On the other hand, there are those religious groups which assert that if you do not follow their teachings, you shall be condemned — condemned either to hell, or to guilt, or to sin, or to some other form of utter misery. Both of these dominant forms of religion have proven to be extremely intolerant of differences and diversity. They not only want to make over the rest of us in their religious image, they typically want to demonize gays and lesbians, denigrate women (although many of them deny this), and so on. In short, these religious groups are coercive.

    As religious liberals, we offer a public witness that religion need not be coercive, that religion need not rely on force or guile. We promote a religious attitude that does not require hell, guilt, sin, or misery. Instead, we represent a religious attitude of acceptance, love, and kindness. This is our second great strength.

    And this brings me to our third great strength, which is our focus on the community. When I say that one of our strengths is our focus on the community, I have some very specific criteria in mind. My criteria come from the book “Beyond the Ordinary: Ten Strengths of United States Congregations,” which is based on the largest research study on U. S. congregations ever done. These researchers give seven criteria for congregations which focus on the community; the percentage of worshippers who:– voted in the last presidential election; contribute to charitable organizations other than their congregation; are involved in social service or advocacy groups in their community; are involved in social service or advocacy groups in their congregation; have worked with others in the last year to solve a community problem; say that social justice is one of the three most valued aspects of their congregation; and report openness to social diversity as one of the three most valued aspects of their congregation. Based on these criteria, I believe we would easily score in the top twenty percent of all U. S. congregations.

    I believe we have yet another strength in community focus that is probably impossible to measure, and that is our building. We have an absolute treasure of a building. You already know that our building has excellent acoustics, that it is remarkably well cared-for, that it has dignity and beauty. What you may not know is that our building is perceived by many in the wider community as a kind of sanctuary, even for those who are not religious or who belong to other congregations. Not long ago, I was contacted by one community group, a group composed of people from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, who wanted to meet here because this was the only building in the city in which they would all feel reasonably comfortable. Another example: gay and lesbian citizens have told me that they know they can come into this building and feel relatively safe and accepted. So it is that our religious liberal witness of tolerance and acceptance takes on physical form in our building; and the wider community knows this building as a relatively safe and accepting place.

    On to our fourth great strength. And when I tell you what our fourth strength is, I know that some of you will tell me I’m wrong. I believe that our ability to care for our children and youth is one of the great strengths of this congregation. But, some of you will say, we have been unable to hire a Director of Religious Education this year. But, others of you will say, we don’t have all that many children.

    It is true that we have not been able to hire a Director of Religious Education. But we have dedicated and caring Sunday school teachers who have cared for our Sunday school children this year; and we have dedicated and caring youth advisors who minister with our teenagers. Yes, it would be easier for us if we had a Director of Religious Education; but even without one, I see our children and youth growing as human beings, and growing into a deep sense of liberal religion. This is especially true with our teenagers, where I can say without exaggerating that we have saved lives.

    It is true that we don’t have that many children and youth. At the moment, we are averaging about four children a week, and three teenagers a week, with other children and youth who don’t come as regularly. Yes, that’s a small number, but remember that we are a small congregation, and we only average forty adults on any given Sunday. We may not have many children and teenagers, but we are extremely good at caring for those children and teenagers who are a part of our congregation. So I believe caring for children and youth is our fourth strength.

    Now let me tell you the fifth and final great strength of our congregation, which goes hand in hand with the fourth one. Our fifth great strength is that we look to the future. Our congregation has existed since 1708; we are almost three hundred years old; and we know we are going to be here for centuries to come. We are going to be here and we are going to be a liberal and leavening influence in this community, beyond our own personal lives.

    I have a short list of criteria that help define what I mean when I say we look to the future. We are now ready to try new things; we have a strong sense of who we are, and we are strongly committed to maintaining our liberal religious presence in this region; we have a growing sense of excitement about our immediate future; and we have begun to see that this congregation is moving in a new direction although we may not sure quite yet what direction that might be. [Criteria taken from “Beyond the Ordinary”]

    This fifth and final strength of ours encompasses and amplifies all the other strengths. By looking to the future, we ensure that our covenant, our voluntary agreement together, the very principle of voluntary religion, will continue into the future. By looking to the future, we ensure that we will adapt our liberal religious witness to the changing religious and social landscape around us; and that we will not be cowed or discouraged by religious extremists and conservatives. By looking to the future, we ensure that we will continue to focus on the community, changing and adapting to the changes in the community around us. By looking to the future, we ensure that this congregation will be here for those who are now children.

    You may argue with me about which of our strengths are greater than others. I’m sure some of you will buttonhole me after the worship service, or call me up in the week to come, and say reproachfully, “How could you have forgotten such-and-such a strength?” At least, I hope you will tell me about the strengths I have forgotten to mention; and I admit that my list of our church’s strengths is probably a little idiosyncratic.

    But my real point is this:– I believe in what this church does. I believe that we do at least five things extremely well. I believe the surrounding community needs our liberal religious witness now and for all the years to come. I believe that we are a redemptive force in the surrounding community. I believe that what we do is so important that it must continue; and I cannot see that anyone else is doing quite what we do.

    Personally, I try to show what I believe by participating in this congregation as best I can. Yes, I am paid to be the minister here, but I also volunteer my time by, for example, coming in on my Sundays off to teach Sunday school; I give five percent of my annual income to this church; and in the past year I gave a thousand dollars in honoraria I received to the minister’s discretionary fund.

    I do not ask you to do the same. You may choose to give less than you are able, either financially or in terms of volunteer hours — everyone has to find their own level of commitment. On the other hand, I know that some of you give more of your time than I do; and I know that some of you make greater financial sacrifices in your financial giving than I do — and to you I say, you serve as an inspiration to me, and I’m working on getting to where you are now. Emerson says, “The emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt towards others are likened to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering, are these fine inward irradiations.” And that’s really the whole point of participating in a church like this one — to warm your soul by participating in a voluntary community of benevolence and warmth.

    I know this is a great congregation;– I know that the community needs us, and even values us;– I know that our children need liberal religion’s saving influence in their lives;– I know that I need liberal religion’s saving influence in my own life. So it is that many of us are honored to participate in making this congregation stronger, by giving of our money and time, and so extending its influence even farther into a community that desperately needs our redeeming influence.

  • A Unitarian Easter

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Opening Words

    The opening words were read responsively.

    “The Middle Path”

    Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha, said: “There are two extremes which a religious seeker should not follow:

    “On the one hand, there are those things whose attraction depends upon the passions, unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly-minded;

    “On the other hand, there is the practice of self-mortification and asceticism, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

    “There is a middle path, avoiding these two extremes—a path which opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind, to higher wisdom, to full enlightenment.

    “What is that middle path? It is the noble eightfold path: Right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct;

    “Right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.

    “This is the middle path. This is the noble truth that leads to the destruction of sorrow.”

    This noble truth was not among the religious doctrines handed down from the past.

    But within the Buddha there arose the eye to perceive this truth, the knowledge of its nature, the understanding of it, the wisdom to guide others.

    Once this knowledge and this insight had arisen within Buddha;
    He went to speak it to others, that others might realize the same enlightenment.

    [From the Dharma-Chakra-Pravartana Sutra, trans. T. W. Rhys Davids. Adapted by Dan Harper.]

    Story — “A Unitarian Easter”

    This morning, I’m going to tell the Unitarian version of the Easter story. This is the Easter story I heard as a child, and I thought I’d share it with you this Easter. Why is our version of the story different? When we retell that story, we don’t assume that Jesus was God. And that leads to all kinds of little changes in the usual story so that in the end — well, just listen and you’ll find out how it ends.

    After a year of preaching and teaching in the countryside, Jesus and his followers went into the great city of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. On that first day in Jerusalem, Jesus did little more than look around in the great Temple of Jerusalem — the Temple that was the holiest place for Jesus and for all other Jews. Jesus noticed that there were a number of people selling things in the Temple (for example, there were people selling pigeons), and besides that there were all kinds of comings and goings through the Temple, people carrying all kinds of gear, taking shortcuts by going through the Temple.

    The next day, Jesus returned to the Temple. He walked in, chased out the people selling things, and upset the tables of the moneychangers. Needless to say, he created quite a commotion! The way I picture it, a crowd gathered around to see what this stranger, this traveling rabbi, was up to. Then Jesus turned to the gathered crowd, and quoted from the Hebrew scriptures, the book of Isaiah where God says, “My Temple shall be known as a place of prayer for all nations.” Jesus said it was time that the Temple went back to being a place of prayer — how could you pray when there were people buying and selling things right next to you? How could you pray with all those pigeons cooing?

    Imagine what it would be like if people were selling pigeons here in this church while we were trying to have a worship service. Very distracting… Jesus did the right thing in chasing the pigeon-dealers, the moneylenders, and the other salespeople out of the Temple. But the way he did managed to annoy the powerful people who ran the Temple. It made them look bad. They didn’t like that.

    Over the next three days, Jesus taught and preached all through Jerusalem. We know he quoted the book of Leviticus, where it says, “You are to love your neighbor as yourself.” He encouraged people to be genuinely religious, to help the weak and the poor. Jesus also got into fairly heated discussions with some of Jerusalem’s religious leaders, and he was so good at arguing that he made those powerful people look bad. They didn’t like that.

    Meanwhile, other things were brewing in Jerusalem. The Romans governed Jerusalem at that time. The Romans were also concerned about Jesus. When Jesus rode into the city, he was welcomed by a crowd of people who treated him as if he were one of the long-lost kings of Israel. The Romans did not want the people of Jerusalem to get any rebellious ideas.

    Jesus continued his teaching and preaching from Sunday until Thursday evening, when Passover began. Since Jesus and his disciples were all good observant Jews, after sundown on Thursday they celebrated a Passover Seder together. They had the wine, the matzoh, the bitter herbs, all the standard things you have at a Seder.

    After the Seder, Jesus was restless and depressed. He was pretty sure that the Romans were going to try to arrest him for stirring up trouble, for agitating the people of Jerusalem. As it happened, Jesus was arrested just a few hours after the Seder. He was given a trial the same night he was arrested, and he was executed the next day. The Romans put him to death using a common but very unpleasant type of execution known as crucifixion.

    Because the Jewish sabbath started right at sundown, and Jewish law of the time did not allow you to bury anyone on the Sabbath day, Jesus’ friends couldn’t bury him right away. There were no funeral homes back in those days, so his friend Joseph of Arimathea put Jesus’s body in a tomb, which was a sort of cave cut into the side of a hill. There the body would be safe until they could bury it, after the Sabbath was over.

    First thing Sunday morning, Jesus’s friends Mary, Mary, and Salome went to the tomb to get the body ready for burial. But to their great surprise, the body was gone, and there was a young man whom they didn’t recognize, but who seemed to know what was going on.

    When I was a child, my Unitarian mother told me that what must have happened is that some of Jesus’s friend Joseph of Arimathea had already come and buried the body. There must have been a fair amount of confusion that first Easter morning. Jesus’s friends were not only upset that he was dead, they were worried that one or more of them might be arrested, too, or even executed. Because of the confusion, probably not everybody got the word about when and where the burial was. Thus, by the time Mary, Mary, and Salome had gotten to the tomb, others had already buried his body — and they left quickly, worried that they might get in trouble if they stayed around.

    Some of Jesus’ followers began saying that Jesus had risen from the dead, and following that several people even claimed to have spoken with him. But my Unitarian mother told me that Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead. It’s just that his friends were so sad, and missed him so much, that they wanted to believe that he was alive again. And that’s the Unitarian version of the Easter story that I learned as a child.

    Now, the children are invited to stay for the whole worship service. It’s good for children to attend an entire worship service once in a while, so they know what it’s like. There are Easter coloring books and pipe cleaners at the back of the church, to help children sit. If your child gets a little too squirmy, you can take them into the vestibule by the front door, and there are speakers where you can listen to the service. Or you can take your child into the Parish House to child care in the Green Room — there’s a map of the building on your order of service, so you know where the Green Room is.

    Readings

    The first reading was read responsively:

    “The Good Is Positive”

    Certain facts have always suggested the sublime creed, that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind;

    and that one mind is everywhere active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool;

    and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise.

    Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity.

    Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed out of this same spirit,

    which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes.

    All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends,

    he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death.

    [From Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address,” arranged DH.]

    The second reading this morning comes from the Christian scriptures, the gospel of Mark.

    “When evening came, since it was the preparation day (that is to say, the day before the Sabbath), Jospeh of Arimathea, a distinguished councillor, arrived who was also himself awaiting the Kingdom of God. He ventured to go to Pilate and ask for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised that he had died so quickly, and having sent for the centurion asked if he was already dead. When the centurion confirmed it, Pilate granted Joseph the corpse. After purchasing a linen winding sheet Joseph took Jesus down, swathed him in the linen, and laid him in a tomb quarried out of the rock: he then rolled a boulder against the entrance of the tomb. Mary of Magdala and Mary mother of Jesus observed where he was laid.

    When the sabbath day was ended, Mary of Magdala, Mary mother of James, and Salome brought spices in order to go and anoint him. And very early in the morning of the day after the sabbath they came to the tomb as soon as the sun was up. “Who is going to roll away the boulder for us from the entrance of the tomb?” (it was very massive) they asked themselves. But when they came to look they saw that the boulder had been rolled aside.

    On entering the tomb they were startled to see a young man sitting on the right side clad in a flowing white robe. “Do not be alarmed,” he said to them. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. Look, here is the place where he was laid. Go now and tell his disciples, and Peter particularly, he is preceding you to Galilee. You will se him there just as I told you.”

    They fled from the tomb, for they were trembling and unnerved. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

    Sermon

    In the opening words this morning, we heard how Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha, achieved enlightenment, and then went on to preach that enlightenment to others. And this is what all the great religious prophets have done. The prophet Mohammed received his great inspiration from Allah, and then spent the rest of his life preaching that inspiration to others. The great sage Lao-tze had his deep insights into the universe, and the place of humanity in that universe, and he not only taught his insights to others, he is said to have written the Tao te Ching to share his insights even farther.

    Most of these religious prophets had years to preach and to answer questions from their disciples. But what happens when a great religious prophet dies at too young an age? This was the problem that the followers of Jesus of Nazareth faced. Jesus was only about thirty years old when he was tortured and then executed by order of a minor functionary of the Roman Empire on trumped-up charges of political agitation. At that point, he had only been preaching for a relatively short while — two or three years according to one story; but only one year according to most accounts of Jesus’s life.

    Compare the trajectory of Jesus’s life with the trajectory of the Buddha’s life. Siddhartha Gotama became a monk at the age of 29; at the age of 35 he achieved enlightenment; and then he is said to have had another 45 years of life to preach the middle way, to travel far and wide through the countryside; until finally, at the age of 80, he departed this world to enter the state of parinirvana. Compare that to the life of Jesus. Jesus began his ministry when he was approximately 29 years old, after being baptized by John the Baptist; immediately thereafter he spent forty days in the wilderness wrestling with his inner demons and deepening his already deep spiritual insights; and then he is said to have had one short year to preach his message of love, to travel in the countryside around Jerusalem; until finally, at the age of perhaps thirty, came his untimely execution in Jerusalem.

    Jesus lived too short a life. And perhaps that is why his followers felt his loss so keenly; and perhaps that is why they came to feel that Jesus was God. As Unitarians, we do not feel the need to think of Jesus as God; and yet, we still find immense inspiration in his religious and spiritual teachings.

    Jesus said his core teaching was simple: first, to live out the Jewish shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” and to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind; and second to love your neighbor as yourself. [Mk. 12.28-30] It is a simple and profound teaching, and it has shaped my life for the better, and the life of many people in the Western world.

    That core teaching sounds so simple, but the more you think about it, the less simple it appears. After he died, his followers wondered if non-Jews could also follow Jesus’s teachings, and they concluded that Jesus taught the Jewish shema because his audience was Jewish. His followers said that if Jesus had lived, he would have included non-Jews as well. Today, that leads people like me to wonder what, exactly, Jesus meant by the word “God” — did he mean to limit “God” to the old Jewish conception of God which is so eloquently stated in the Hebrew scriptures? — or would Jesus have felt comfortable with my understanding, that the word “God” refers to the totality of all the universe and all relationships, human and non-human, therein?

    That simple statement seems to beg other questions as well. What does it mean to love our neighbors as ourselves? While this seems so straightforward at first glance, it is not a straightforward statement at all. My friend, and fellow Unitarian Universalist minister, Helen Cohen has pointed out that there are quite a few people who, quite frankly, don’t much like themselves — does that mean that they’re supposed to dislike other people as they dislike themselves? Maybe Jesus should have said: Love our neighbors as we ought to love ourselves. There’s also the reality that in the two millennia since Jesus was executed, his Christian followers have not done a very good job at actually living out this teaching; we can only wonder if Jesus had lived longer whether he would have been able to give us better instruction in how to actually live out his teachings.

    Buddha had 45 years to explain his teaching of the middle way, to answer questions from his followers, to teach by the example of his own life. Jesus had a year or so to teach his idea of radical love to his followers, before he was executed. A year is too short a time.

    I’m a Unitarian. I cannot believe that Jesus was somehow God. Yes, he was a great religious prophet; personally, I’d say he was the greatest religious prophet who has yet lived. And there are some Unitarians who would go farther than that, and say that Jesus was so great a religious prophet that he was more than human. But we Unitarians know that Jesus was not God.

    Having said that, we can fully understand the impulse that led some of his followers to proclaim that Jesus was, in fact, God; we can understand why, nearly three hundred years after he died, the Council of Nicea proclaimed that Jesus was somehow God. Jesus died before he should have. Gotama Buddha had 45 years to explain his teachings; Jesus should have had long years to explain his teachings. When Jesus’s life was cut short, naturally his followers would want answers to their growing questions: if we are to love our neighbors, who is our neighbor? if we are to love God, how are we to understand God? His followers could not ask questions of the man Jesus; Jesus was dead; but if they understood Jesus as God, then they felt that Jesus would be with them forever, and so they felt they could converse with him through prayer.

    To those of us schooled in the ways of scientific thinking, it sounds odd to say that Jesus became God. But this is not a scientific story, it is a poetic story. This old story makes poetic, but not literal, truth. It is poetically true to say that Jesus rose from death; from a poetic point of view, his idea of radical love is too important to die when his physical body died; and so it is that his teaching of radical love rose from the dead and lives on in us.

    And this is perhaps the greatest contribution of us Unitarians: we know that Jesus’s teaching of radical love lives on in us. Radical love doesn’t live on us as individuals; it lives on in us as a gathered community. Our great genius has been to live out our covenant. Our covenant is the promise we make to one another to live up to the impossible ideal that we shall love each other, love our neighbors, as we ought to love ourselves. We come together in love each week, to seek together for the good; and in the spirit of love we care for one another, and we care for all our neighbors, human and non-human.

    The great Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “All things proceed out of this same spirit, and all things conspire with it”; everything comes out of the oneness of the universe; and Emerson taught us that “Whilst we seek good ends, we are strong by the whole strength of nature.”

    So it is with us here in this room this morning. Jesus’s teaching of radical love lives on in us, it is love that is lived out into reality through our mutual covenant with one another. This is the miracle of Easter: that what Jesus taught us about radical love lives on through us. As we seek the good, those teachings gain strength within us, and we spread them into the wider community beyond these walls. That which is good can never die die, but rises again, and again, and again, the product of the one will, the one manifold power of all existence, the power of love and goodness.

    So on this Easter morning may radical love for all humanity rise up in us once again. Amen.

  • Which Black Church?

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Story — “The Lowells and Oatmeal” — as told by Helen Cohen

    This is a little story about change and learning new ways of doing things.

    It was 7:30 in the morning, by the grandfather clock at the Lowell household. Judge John Lowell had come to the table for breakfast.

    Judge Lowell sat with a newspaper up in front of his face, as he had done at breakfast every morning for the past thirty years. All of a sudden, from the pantry, the maid came rushing inn to whisper something in Mrs. Lowell’s ear. It was clearly bad news!

    The maid had burned the oatmeal! And there was no more oatmeal in the house! Mrs. Lowell thought for a moment. She said to herself, Well, I must tell him right away.

    So she turned to Judge Lowell and said, “John, my dear. There isn’t going to be any oatmeal this morning.”

    Now this was no minor domestic tragedy. Because, to Mrs. Lowell’s knowledge, Judge Lowell had eaten oatmeal for breakfast every morning of his life.

    The silence was deafening.

    Slowly the judge lowered his newspaper.

    He looked at his wife, and he replied, “Frankly, my dear, I never did care for it.”

    If you are someone who hates oatmeal, your first thought about this story was how awful it must have been to eat oatmeal every day of your life if you didn’t like it. And if you’re like me, you thought to yourself, Oh, why didn’t Mrs. Lowell ask him what he liked? And then maybe you thought to yourself, Yes, but why didn’t Judge Lowell just tell her that he didn’t like it?

    I don’t know why! But this story does raise questions about how we live our lives, and why we don’t change things we don’t like.

    [Adapted from a story told by Helen Cohen, who adapted her story from an anecdote by John Ciardi.]

    Readings

    The first reading this morning comes from a chapter titled “What If God Were One of Us?: Humanism and African Americans for Humanism” in the book “Varieties of African American Experience,” by the humanist theologian Anthony Pinn. Pinn writes:

    “I am not convinced that religion is dying wholesale, because religion provides a language or grammar for making sense of the world in life affirming ways. Rather than dying, religion emerges in new forms of expression. Some who acknowledge this still avoid humanism because they believe that it robs adherents of valuable hopes and comforts. [The humanist Unitarian minister] John Dietrich states, however, ‘Humanism robs man of nothing that actually exists. It takes from him only his comforting illusions and substitutes from them consolations that are real and hopes that are realizable.’ Humanism challenges activities and thought that do not appear liberating in nature. Organized traditional religions, therefore, have come under increasing attach because of their perceived failure to combat continued socioeconomic and political turmoil. Although the churches’ role in promoting such transformative events as the Civil Rights movement must be acknowledged, humanists will point to more examples of the churches’ failure to engage relevant questions and issues.

    “Theistic forms of religious expression resolve the problem of moral evil in the world through some interaction between god(s) and humanity. This resolution, however, stimulates additional questions for the humanist. In the words of Raymond Knox: ‘Here they lynching Negroes — if God’s all that good, how come he don’t stop the police from killing Negroes, lynching Negroes, if God is all that just?’ Or, as James Baldwin articulates the question: ‘And if one despairs — as who has not? — of human love, God’s love alone is left. But God — and I felt this even then, so long ago, on that tremendous floor, unwillingly — God is white. And if His love was so great, and if He loved all His children, why were we, the blacks, cast down so far?…’

    “Humanism resolves the problem of accountability through an appeal to human accountability. Humans have created the conditions presently encountered and humans are responsible for changing these conditions.

    “For African Americans humanist history demonstrates that this goal is noble but its achievement is far from guaranteed. African American humanists’ sense of optimism based open human potential for transformation is more guarded that that present in white humanist thought because of black people’s disproportionate suffering. Nonetheless, African American humanists hold that humanity has no choice but to continue seeking progress. The alternative is stagnation….”

    [pp. 184-5]

    The second reading is from the book “Black Pioneers in a White Denomination” by Mark Morrison-Reed. Morrison-Reed calls himself “black-born, Unitarian bred,” and in this passage he talks about the church he was raised in:

    “The efforts of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago to become integrated are especially interesting…. The Reverend Leslie Pennington [of First Unitarian] had long been involved in race relations and had frequently exchanged pulpits with black ministers in Chicago…. For Pennington, it was understood that blacks were welcome, but other wanted a distinct proclamation. The Evening [Women’s] Alliance, which included Muriel Hayward, Gladys Hilton, Margret Adams, and Dorothy Schaad, pushed for a church resolution that would clearly state that the First Unitarian Church welcomed people of all races. The knew that ‘ “whites only” was never carved over the door of any Protestant church in America; it was understood.’ To dispel this assumption, they needed to make a public statement to the contrary, but this was not an easy matter, since there were people in the congregation who opposed integration altogether. James Luther Adams remembers a meeting of the board of trustees that went late into the night as they argued over whether or not to become an integrated church. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, one trustee, still recalcitrant on the issue of integration, was challenged with this questions: ‘What is the purpose of the church?’ He blurted out, ‘To change people like me!’ He and another trustee later left the church. In January, 1948, a resolution was passed at the annual meetings, and in that year the church received its first black member. Since then it had turned into one of the most thoroughly integrated church within the liberal faith….” [pp. 130-1]

    Sermon

    This is the third in a series of three sermons for Black History Month. Black History Month is, in part, a time to celebrate African American culture. This morning, I’d like to celebrate one aspects of Black religious culture that is mostly ignored, and that is the fact that Black religious culture in the United States is not limited to the traditional Black Christian churches.

    In the second reading this morning, we heard a little bit about First Unitarian in Chicago, one of the few fully integrated, truly multi-racial Unitarian Universalist congregations. At present, perhaps thirty percent of the membership is African American, and another ten or twenty percent is Hispanic or other non-white persons. First Unitarian is located right near the University of Chicago, in a racially mixed part of Chicago. The congregation meets in a large stone building they built in 1929, which is meant to imitate an English medieval church. Since it was built as a Unitarian church, there is an empty niche above the chancel to remind worshippers that each individual brings his or her own individual conception of the spirit to a worship service — an empty niche, instead of a cross or some other limiting symbol.

    I went to First Unitarian for some months when I studying for the ministry at Meadville/Lombard Theological School — attended worship there, rented a room from the president of their board of trustees, and taught Sunday school now and then. I have to admit that the worship services tended to be a little too formal for my tastes; it was what I call a “high-church humanist” kind of worship service. I also have to admit that I found their big, echo-y stone building to be a little cold. And I also have to admit that since I was attending school on a very part-time basis, I only went to worship there a total of perhaps twenty times over four years. Yet I felt more comfortable in that congregation than in any other congregation of which I have been a part. Why? Because I liked being in a truly multi-racial, multi-generational congregation; and sociologists tell me that I am typical for college-educated people my age (I’m 46) and younger — we have gotten used to multi-racial settings. This in fact was one of my great attractions to our own congregation, First Unitarian in New Bedford: this congregation is already somewhat multi-racial, and given the demographics of the city has the potential to become far more so.

    There are in fact many Unitarian Universalists my age and younger who really want to see truly multiracial congregations. Yet there are only about a dozen truly multi-racial Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America. I think there are two main reasons that we have remained so white. First, I think we have remained predominantly white out of habit — not out of malice, just because old habits die hard. Second, I think lots of white Unitarian Universalists have this idea that African Americans and other non-white persons just aren’t interested in liberal religion.

    The first reason is easily disposed of: we can change habits, even old habits, if we are willing to try. We could do some anti-racism training, just to make sure we weren’t being held back by some residual racism; and take a few other pretty obvious steps towards becoming fully multi-racial. Indeed I’m talking with the Board of Trustees about having an anti-racism training here in our congregation this spring, so this is a real possibility. But what about that second reason? What if we decide to become truly multi-racial? Are there African Americans and Hispanics and Cape Verdeans and Azoreans and other non-Anglo persons who would want to come join us here? We are told that African Americans are all Protestant Christians, while Hispanics and Cape Verdeans and Portuguese and Azoreans are all Catholic. If that’s true, aren’t we doomed to remaining an all-white congregation?

    Fortunately, that isn’t true. A few years ago, I got to do a day-long seminar with a theologian by the name of Anthony Pinn. Anthony Pinn happens to be an African American, and he happens to be a humanist, that is, he doesn’t believe in God. As an African American humanist, he got a little tired of other black scholars assuming that all African Americans are Christians. Pinn contends “that African American religious experience extends beyond… black Christianity,” and so he wrote a book titled “Varieties of African American Religious Experience” detailing his research into four non-Christian religious traditions within the African American community: Vodou, Santeria, Islam, and religious humanism.

    It is that last religious tradition that concerns us most. Anthony Pinn documents that there are now, and have been for years, lots of African American humanists — atheists, agnostics, unbelievers, and others for whom traditional Christian answers appear insufficient. In our first reading this morning, taken from Pinn’s book, he quotes two such African American humanists. He quotes Raymond Knox, who said, “Here they lynching Negroes — if God’s all that good, how come he don’t stop the police from killing Negroes, lynching Negroes, if God is all that just?” And then Anthony Pinn quotes James Baldwin, who said: “But God… God is white. And if His love was so great, and if He loved all His children, why were we, the blacks, cast down so far?” What Raymond Knox and James Baldwin have to say sound to me very much like what most Unitarian Universalists have to say, which is that if God is supposed to be so good and all-powerful to boot, how come we have to suffer so much? Those of us Unitarian Universalists who do believe in God or some higher power go on to say that ultimately it’s we human beings who are responsible for our own destiny, while those of us who are humanists — and about forty or fifty percent of all Unitarian Universalists are humanists — set aside the idea of a higher power.

    What Anthony Pinn shows us is that there are plenty of African Americans who think very much like Unitarian Universalists. Pinn points out this very fact in his book, and he documents the fact that a fair number of African American humanists have managed to find an institutional home within Unitarian Universalism since at least the 1930’s. The only problem is that there are only about a dozen Unitarian Universalist congregations, all of them located in cities, that are truly multi-racial — this in spite of the fact that the current president of the Unitarian Universalist Association is African American. The end result is that there aren’t that many African American Unitarian Universalists. But Pinn makes it clear that there is no theological barrier to keep us from becoming truly multi-racial; I would say the only barrier is that we have simply gotten into the habit of being a predominantly white, Anglo religion.

    But there is also evidence that we could get over the habit of being white and Anglo. To show you what I mean, let me tell you a little story.

    Duncan Howlett was minister of this congregation in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, probably the greatest minister this congregation has had in this century. Howlett went from here to First Church in Boston, and then in the 1960’s he went to All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. At that time, All Souls was a very, very prestigious congregation. The minister who preceded Howlett was A. Powell Davies, who was renowned as a great preacher — he was so good, the Washington newspapers would hold their Monday editions until they could get a copy of his sermon — Davies was so good, he counted several congressmen and senators as members of his congregation. So Howlett wound up in the most prestigious Unitarian Universalist pulpit in the United States, a place most ministers would stay until they died or were incapacitated.

    But instead of staying in the pulpit of All Souls forever, Howlett did something far more honorable and far more daring. In 1968, he looked around and realized that his congregation was mostly white, yet the city of Washington was mostly black. So he retired, saying that he felt the congregation needed to call an African American minister and the only way that would happen would be if he quit. He left, and they did call an African American minister. Today, All Souls in Washington remains a truly multi-racial congregation with one white minister, and one black minister.

    A similar thing happened recently at Davies Memorial Church in Camp Springs, Maryland. The congregation is ten miles outside Washington, in an area where the population is more than 60% black — yet five years ago, the congregation remained almost entirely white, with a white minister. Five years ago, a young African American minister named John Crestwell began coming to Davies Memorial, and he and the white minister and the lay leaders of the congregation came up with an idea of bringing Crestwell on as an associate minister. Their shared plan and vision was that they would all work together to grow the congregation while increasing racial diversity, and at the end of a three-year period the other minister would resign, leaving Crestwell as the sole minister. Their plan worked — they grew by 50%, more than a third of the members are now black, and their old minister resigned, leaving John Crestwell as the sole minister. And Davies Memorial Church will be honored this June at the annual gathering of the Unitarian Universalist Association as a “Breakthrough Congregation.”

    The story we Unitarian Universalists have told about ourselves is that we are a white religion, and that people of color don’t want to belong to our religion. It should be obvious by now that we have been telling ourselves a false story. First of all, we are not a completely white religion, and we do have multi-racial congregations, and there are plenty of non-white, non-Anglo Unitarian Universalists.

    Second, given the experience of Davies Memorial Church, and given what Anthony Pinn tells us, it looks to me as if there are quite a few African Americans out there, and probably lots of other non-white non-Anglos, who would love to become a part of our religious tradition. According to the 2000 U.S. census, there are more than 4,000 African Americans in New Bedford — if 40 of those African Americans, less than one percent of the total, started coming to First Unitarian, we would be as integrated as Davies Memorial Church. There are nearly ten thousand Hispanics in New Bedford — if less than half of one percent of them found us, we’d be far more integrated than Davies Memorial Church. And I’d like to think that we’re already headed in that direction. On one recent Sunday morning, I looked around and happened to notice that ten percent of the people in this room were non-white, an additional ten percent were bilingual in Portuguese and English, and an additional five percent identified as non-white. On that particular Sunday, a total of twenty-five percent of the congregation was non-white and non-Anglo. I say we should begin to really embrace that as a central part of our identity — as a central to our core of openness.

    The story we could tell about ourselves is that we are a religion that is open to whomever needs it, black, white, Hispanic, Cape Verdean, Azorean, Portuguese, gay, straight, young, old. The story we could tell about ourselves is that an openness lies at our core — that at our core, we are open to more than one theological position, that we are open to different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and ages we could say that, at our core, we are open to openness. Maybe we’d have to be open to giving up some of our traditional ways of running our congregations, by so what.

    Rev. John Crestwell says, “The institutional church is still very tribal. Less than 10 percent of all churches in the United States are racially diverse. Unitarian Universalists break down tribalism — with our come-as-you are beliefs.” So says John Crestwell.

    Come as you are. Come as you are, no matter what your skin color. Come as you are, with whatever liberal theology you bring. Come as you are, to a congregation of openness.