Unitarian Universalism – Page 33 – Dan Harper

A Universalist Easter

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon and story copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading comes from the Christian scriptures, the book known as the Gospel of Mark. In this snippet, the rabbi Jesus quotes from the Torah, first from Deuteronomy, and then from Leviticus:

“One of the teachers of the law [asked Jesus]… ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’

“‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one; love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second is this: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no greater commandment than these.'” [Mk. 12.28-30]

The second reading this morning, which I take in part as a commentary of the first reading, comes from the Treatise on Atonement, written by the great Universalist preacher Hosea Ballou in 1805. I should add that the First Universalist Church in New Bedford, which merged with this church in 1930, traces its history back to the moment when Hosea Ballou once preached in New Bedford. Ballou wrote:

“The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree, that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries. The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world; all those principles which are to be dreaded by men, have been believed to exist in God; and professors [of Christianity] have been molded into the image of their Deity, and become more cruel than the uncultivated savage! A persecuting inquisition is a lively representation of the God which professed Christians have believed in ever since the apostacy. It is every day’s practice to represent the Almighty so offended with man, that he employs his infinite mind in devising unspeakable tortures, as retaliations on those with whom he is offended.” [p. 147]

So end this morning’s readings, with these scornful words of Hosea Ballou.

Story for all ages

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 that add up in the end…. Tell you what, let’s just listen to the Unitarian story of Easter and find out.

If you were here to hear last week’s story, we left Jesus as he was entering the city of Jerusalem, being welcomed by people carrying flowers and waving palm fronds.

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! and I imagine that a crowd gathered around to see what this stranger, this traveling rabbi, was up to. Once the dust had settled, 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?

I don’t know about you, but I think 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.

In the next few 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 once again, he made those powerful people look bad. Once again, 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. That made the Romans worry. Was Jesus planning some kind of secret religious rebellion? How many followers did he have? What was he really up to, anyway?

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. (By the way, if you’ve ever heard of “Maundy Thursday,” which is always the Thursday before Easter Sunday, that’s the commemoration of that last meal; and while not all Bible scholars agree that least meal was in fact a Seder, many scholars do think it was a Seder.)

After the Seder, Jesus was restless and depressed. He had a strong sense that the Romans or the powerful religious leaders were going to try to arrest him for stirring up trouble, for agitating the people of Jerusalem. He didn’t know how or when it would happen, but he was pretty sure he would be arrested sometime.

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. (And the day of Jesus’ execution, the Friday before Easter, is called “Good Friday,” a day when many Christians commemorate Jesus’ death.)

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 Jesus’ friends put his 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, some of Jesus’ friends went to the tomb to get the body ready for burial. But to their great surprise, the body was gone, and there was a man there in white robes who talked to them about Jesus!

When I was a child, my Unitarian Universalist Sunday school teachers would tell me that what had probably happened is that some of Jesus’ other friends had come along, and had already buried the body. You see, there must have been a fair amount of confusion that first Easter morning. Jesus’ friends were upset that he was dead, and they were worried that one or more of them might be arrested, too, or even executed. The burial must have taken place in secret, and probably not everybody got told when and where the burial was. Thus, by the time some of Jesus’ followers had gotten to the tomb, others had already buried his body.

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 in our Sunday school, we say that we Unitarian Universalists don’t actually have to believe that Jesus actually arose 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.

SERMON — “A Universalist Easter”

I’ll start this morning by telling you a fairly stupid Unitarian Universalist joke. It seems that two Unitarian Universalists died and went to heaven. Somewhat to their surprise, they found themselves standing in line in front of a pair of large pearly gates, waiting to talk with someone who was unmistakably St. Peter. When they finally got to St. Peter, he asked them what religion they were, and they said, “Unitarian Universalists.”

“Unitarian Universalists?” said St. Pete. “Well, even though you’re heretics, you did so much social justice work on earth I’m going to let you in to heaven, instead of sending you to hell.”

The two Unitarian Universalists look at each other, and finally one of them says, “You mean you actually send people to hell?!” — using the exact tone of voice that vegetarians use when they say to you, “You mean you actually still eat meat?”

“Oh yes,” says St. Peter.

So the two Unitarian Universalists start chanting, “One two three four, we won’t go in heaven’s door/ Five six seven eight, we are going to close hell’s gates,” and next thing you know they’re picketing the Pearly Gates carrying signs saying, “God Unfair to the Damned,” and “Ban Eternal Torment.”

Needless to say, we Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in hell. To a Unitarian Universalist, the concept of eternal torment is most likely to be a fable used by certain religious leaders to try to frighten people into good behavior; and the more cynical among us would add that “good behavior” is defined as that sort of behavior that helps keep those certain religious leaders in power. We don’t believe in hell, and indeed the concept of hell is likely to fill us with a certain amount of righteous indignation, just as we heard in the stupid joke with which I began this sermon.

While we usually take this for granted, I would like us to take the time to explore a little of why we Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in those hoary old stories of hell and eternal torment. Easter seems like one of the best days on which to do this exploration; because some of our more traditional Christian brothers and sisters know Easter as the holiday where Jesus (they would say “Christ”) rose up from the dead; and they would echo the words of Paul of Tarsus, who wrote: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…”; the third day being, of course, Easter. This is what our more traditional Christian brothers and sisters say and believe with all their hearts and minds; but we know this to be wrong, we know in our hearts and in our heads and in the depths of our soul that this is simply wrong. Let us, therefore, articulate why it is wrong.

At the most basic level, whether or not you yourself believe in God, it is quite clearly stated in the Christian scriptures that God is love. God is love; and God loves all persons, even the poor and oppressed. That God loves the poor and oppressed is one of the more remarkable innovations of Christianity; most earlier religious traditions were quite willing to neglect the poor and oppressed. Yet if God is love, and if God loves all persons no matter how despicable they might seem on the surface — how could that kind of god dispose of any person by throwing them into hell for eternal torment? To say that God would throw people into hell is illogical on an intellectual level; and it violates emotional logic as well, because a God of love would obviously be incapable of such vicious hatred.

That’s the argument at the most basic level; and really we shouldn’t have to go beyond that argument. God is love; therefore God will not damn anyone. Once we make that argument, it is up to people with other beliefs to explain to us why a God of love would dispose of persons; it is up to people with other beliefs to explain to how “love” can include torture, humiliation, and eternal torment. Nor do you have to believe in God yourself to make this most basic argument, because really what we are doing is pointing out the impossible contradictions bound up in the idea of the traditional Christian hell.

Let me give you an example of how this basic argument works. Each year on the second Sunday in September, a mile-long stretch of Solano Street in Berkeley is taken over by a street fair called the Solano Stroll. 250,000 people come to watch the clown parade (think Rasta clowns instead of Bozo the clown), to eat fantastic food, to listen to music from rock and roll to the Royal Hawaiian ukulele band; there are art cars, jugglers, and more. Naturally, the Unitarian Universalist church sets up a booth — these are obviously our kind of people. Well, the year I served at the Berkeley church, the organizers of the Solano Stroll put the Unitarian Universalists right next to a booth full of fundamentalist Christians. Some of these good people came over to find out what we believed in; needless to say, they were a little shocked by us. They wanted to argue with me, and we went back and forth, until I finally told them that everyone gets to heaven because God is love. That took some of the wind out of their sails. You could see the wheels turning in their heads, and almost hear them thinking: “If I tell him that he’s going to go to hell, he’s going to say, ‘You mean you don’t believe in a God of absolute love?’, and then he could say that I don’t believe that God is all-powerful….” And pretty soon, they all drifted away. All except for one young man whom I think I may have convinced; he kept talking to me, wanting to know more; but eventually he, too, went back to his friends.

So it is that the old Universalist ideas retain their power even today, 200 years after Hosea Ballou. Universalism has a saving message for many people, if they can but hear it.

Using traditional Christian language, we could say that message like this: “God is love; everyone gets to go to heaven: doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor; doesn’t matter what religion you follow; doesn’t matter whether you’re gay or straight; doesn’t matter what color your skin is; doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman: all that matters is that because you are a human being you are deserving of love.”

Or we could use less traditional religious language, and actually leave out the word “God” altogether. We could say, “Love is the most powerful force in the universe; not television love, but the deep love we must have for all human beings; we know that all persons are worthy of dignity and respect no matter how much money they may have, no matter what religion they belong to, no matter what their sexual orientation, no matter what their racial or ethnic identity, no matter what their gender:– for your worth and dignity are an inherent part of you as a human being.”

Recently, I’ve been going even further beyond traditional religious language. I’m now willing to say that love is the most powerful force in the universe and I’m willing to extend that love to other living beings along with human beings. This isn’t romantic love; nor is this sentimental love limited to those animals and plants that I find cute and cuddly. It’s a love that extends to all living beings, to the entire biosphere, as ultimately sacred; and even though we have to eat other living beings in order to survive, we can do so with a sense of reverence; even though we have to fight against things like the influenza virus, we can do so in reverence for the awful beauty which is truly a part of all living things. But this is a pretty radical notion; and there are still quite a number of philosophical and theological points I’m trying to figure out. And I have to say I don’t recommend trotting out universal love for the biosphere when you get into a discussion with some of the more traditional Christians.

Yet no matter what kind of religious language we use, we can affirm the central principle of Universalism. Traditionally, Universalism referred to the universal salvation of all persons; in other words, everyone gets to go to heaven. Go beyond the old traditional language, and universalism calls us to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of all persons here and now. Go even further beyond traditional religious language, and we might say that all living beings should be valued, and saved from extinction, as we try to create an ecojustice heaven here on earth. But always, love is the central principle.

And I firmly believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a Universalist, although he wouldn’t have called himself that. But clearly he knew the power of love. He said that all the teaching of the old religious sages and prophets came down to two simple points: Love your God with all your heart and mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. By the way he said this, you know that Jesus’s God loved all persons without distinction; and so we are told did Jesus live out his life, consorting with the poor and the downtrodden, hanging out not with the elite but with ordinary fishermen, and with tax collectors and prostitutes. When he spoke of love two thousand years ago, it was in a time and place that was quite different from our time and place; and today some of us might say that we shall love the universe with all our heart and mind and soul, and love our neighbors as ourselves. No matter how we say it, we remain in the tradition of the great teachings of Jesus: ours is a religion with love at the center; ours is not a religion that threatens eternal torment to anyone.

And why then do we celebrate Easter, if we don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead in order to save us from eternal torment? I think Hosea Ballou, that old Universalist preacher, would say that Easter is a chance, not for us to recall that Jesus died to atone for our sins; but rather, that Jesus lived to help us reconcile ourselves to God, and to God’s love.

Today, we are likely to tell Jesus’s story in a different way, like this: Jesus was arrested on trumped-up political charges, and then he was executed to serve the interests of the powerful elite of Roman-ruled Judea. Jesus’s message of love threatened to change the way the political establishment worked; Jesus’s teachings threatened to replace a corrupt political establishment with a heaven here on earth based on love and resulting in true justice and true peace. That is why Jesus was executed; and we remember his story in order to remember that love is the ultimate subversive act, one which has the potential to bring about true peace and true justice in our world.

Nor do we necessarily believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead. But we do know that his ideas, his teachings, his message of love, did indeed rise up to take on a new life after he was executed. Those ideas are still alive; they are with us even today. Even though Jesus was executed, love remains powerful. Love is constantly renewed; even when we think it is dead, love rises up and astonishes us with its power.

May your life be renewed by love; and may you find new life in the firm knowledge that you, too, are worthy of love.

Saint Barnum?

Reading

The first reading this morning is from the autobiography of Phineas Taylor Barnum, better known as P. T. Barnum, the great showman and circus promoter. In this passage Barnum talks about how he became a showman; and as is typical of him, he is not bashful.

“By this time, it was clear to my mind that my proper position in this busy world was not yet reached. I had displayed the faculty of getting money, as well as getting rid of it; but the business for which I was destined, and, I believe, made, had not yet come to me; or rather, I had not found that I was to cater for that insatiate want of human nature — the love of amusement; that I was to make a sensation on two continents; and that fame and fortune awaited me so soon as I should appear before the public in the character of a showman. These thins I had not foreseen. I did not seek the position or the character. The business finally came in my way; I fell into the occupation, and far beyond any of my predecessors on this continent, I have succeeded.

“The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama, which entrances empires and secures for the gifted artist a world-wide fame which princes well might envy. Such art is merchantable, and so with the whole range of amusements, from the highest to the lowest. The old word ‘trade’ as it applies to buying cheap and selling at a profit, is as manifest here as it is in the dealings at a street-corner stand or in Stewart’s store covering a whole square. This is a trading world, and men, women and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission, and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.”

The second reading this morning is from a letter written by P. T. Barnum on November 18, 1882. This letter reveals a lesser-known side of the great showman and circus promoter. The letter was written to Dixon Spain, a leader in the English temperance movement.

“I have been both sides of the fence in this liquor-drinking custom, and I know whereof I speak. From 1840 to 1848 I was a pretty free drinker and prouder of my ‘wine cellar’ than any of my other possessions. Thirty-two years ago I became a total abstainer. Had I not done so, I should doubtless have been in my grave long since, for I had gone so far in the miserable and ruinous habit or ‘treating,’ being treated, and ‘liquoring up’ that this unnatural appetite would have soon become stronger than resolution, and I should have succumbed as thousands do every year…. Indeed, this pernicious habit is the cause of by far the greatest portion of poverty, crime, and suffering found in any country where it exists.”

SERMON “Saint Barnum?”

We Unitarian Universalists don’t have saints. Yet sometimes I think we should have some kind of Unitarian Universalist saints. We need role models who aren’t quite as great as the great sages and prophets like Jesus and Buddha and Lao Tzu. I know I should be as caring as Jesus was, and as calm as Buddha was, and as insightful as Lao Tzu was, but I’m not. I’d like to have some more realistic role models to follow, people who set a good example for me and whom I can realistically hope to emulate in this life.

I have a candidate for a Unitarian Unviersalist saint: P. T. Barnum. Phineas Taylor Barnum is probably the most famous person to have ever been a Universalist. Everyone knows the name P. T. Barnum — certainly as one of the orginators of a circus that still bears his name, and as the man who was alleged to have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute” (for although there’s no evidence that he ever said that, he certainly made his living at least in part from preying on the inherent credulity of human nature).

Already, you may be having some doubts about Barnum serving as a Unitarian Universalist saint. He doesn’t quite sound like the kind of person we should try to emulate. He was always trying to put one over on the public, as we heard in the children’s story this morning. He perpetrated many frauds, such as the famous Feejee Mermaid which was actually a strange example of the taxidermist’s art where a fish tail was sewn to the body of a woman. He was famous for recognizing that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and welcomed even the most scurrilous news reports about his various enterprises, and about himself. He boasted and bragged about himself, and in many ways represented all the worst of popular culture. If he lived today, he would probably be a rock star. Just imagine if a rock star like Madonna or Mick Jagger were a Unitarian Universalist — are those the kind of people we would want to make into a Unitarian Universalist saint? In short, it’s hard not to feel a little ambivalence about P. T. Barnum.

Yet when I read his famous autobiography, which he titled “Struggles and Triumphs,” I can’t help but fall under his spell. Yes, he was a boaster and a bit of a humbug, but he had his share of sadness and disaster too: the time his house burned just as he was getting married; the time he was swindled out of almost his entire fortune by some sharp operators; the death of his first wife. In his autobiography, he speaks openly and honestly about these things; and that makes him more human.

He also speaks openly and honestly about fooling the public, and he speaks about it so openly you are charmed rather than outraged. Like the time when his first museum got too crowded because people would spend the entire day there, so as to get their money’s worth. Barnum was losing money because he couldn’t fit any more people into the building. So he put a huge sign reading, “This Way to the Egress.” After seeing the rest of the museum, people wondered what on earth an “egress” could be (could it be a giant bird? or some other amazing animal? or what?), and they followed the sign down the steps and through the door — only to find themselves out on the street again, with no way back in. You are charmed by such a story, even as you realize how Barnum took advantage of the ignorance of the crowds, assuming they would not quite know what an “egress” was. We are charmed because Barnum knows human nature so well, and while he takes advantage of human nature you can also tell that he has a deep affection for humanity. And Barnum recognizes that he, too, is only human, and he’s just as open and honest about telling stories about how others fooled him, or uncovered one of his little deceptions.

My fascination with Barnum has grown because of the peculiarities of his moral world. Barnum’s moral world is not shaded in black or white; everything is shades of gray. Most of his actions are not entirely honest; but he’s never entirely dishonest. He justifies his many small dishonesties by pointing out that people want and need to be amused, and his dishonesties are always in the service of amusement. Or, as he so quaintly says it: “Men, women and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature.” By “Author of our nature” Barnum means “God.” Barnum believes he is engaged in a vocation God has called him to. Even a dishonesty like the Feejee Mermaid is acceptable to God, insofar as it provided some amusement, some light entertainment for those lighter moods and hours, for men, women, and children. Barnum entertained people by using light-hearted deceit, while giving his audience a metaphorical wink out of the corners of his eye as if to say, We both know this is a bit of a humbug, but it sure is fun, isn’t it?

Yet for all the shades of gray in Barnum’s moral world, I can find at least two subjects where he claimed moral certainty. He was an advocate of temperance and was convinced that the drinking of alcohol was unreservedly bad; and he was a Universalist, convinced that all human beings would one day wind up in heaven.

I find Barnum’s advocacy of temperance particularly interesting. It does not seem to fit in with the rest of his character. How could the man who had no scruples about exhibiting the Feejee mermaid worry about a little social drinking? One biographer of Barnum believes that his dislike of alcohol came out of his fear of losing his self-control. In his book Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum, Neil Harris writes that around 1847, Barnum [quote] “observed a great deal of intoxication ‘among men of wealth and intellect’ and began to brood about what might happen if he became a drunkard himself. Barnum had never been in any danger of that [continues Harris]; his drinking had been moderate… but fear of losing self-control had always plagued him.” [p. 192]

The temperance movement was a big part of 19th C. Unitarian and Universalist history, and those 19th C. temperance advocates could sound quite patronizing: drinking should be abolished because it inflames the passions of the working classes; — or the reasons sound Puritanical: drinking alcohol is an indecent pleasure and therefore oughtn’t be allowed.

But as a temperance advocate, Barnum was neither Puritanical nor patronizing. He was not patronizing because, as his biographer Neil Harris points out, “his concern lay with efficiency, and he happily displayed statistics proving the financial rewards of temperance to the family and to the taxpayers of the community.” Nor could Barnum be accused of Puritanism; there was nothing of the Puritan about him; even his talks on temperance were known to be entertaining and amusing.

We could learn a lot from Barnum today. Today, we not only face the ongoing problem of alcohol abuse, we also face an epidemic of illegal drug use. And so many of the arguments against the abuse of alcohol and drugs still sound patronizing and Puritanical. We can learn from Barnum to make arguments based on efficiency and functionality.

Let me give one specific example so you can see how it could possibly work. Barnum would make sure that any church he belonged to would allow no alcohol to be served at church functions. His arguments would be functional: The church is open to serious legal liability if alcohol is served at any church function, especially considering that church endowments are tempting targets for lawsuits. His arguments would emphasize efficiency: The church’s insurance carrier is liable to raise insurance rates if alcohol is served at any church function. His arguments would be practical: Since the congregation includes people under the legal drinking age, a church that serves alcohol is in danger of allowing illegal drinking. It’s a matter of not wanting to see the church’s endowment decimated by a lawsuit.

Personally, I am not a teetotaller like Barnum. Yet I find myself nodding in agreement to his arguments for temperance. He doesn’t try to tell me I’m a bad person because I have a glass of beer once a week. Remarkably, he is not judgmental. I suppose it would be hard for someone who perpetrated a fraud like the Feejee mermaid to be judgmental. But I also believe that Barnum’s refusal to be judgmental stems from his deeply-felt Universalism. Because the fundamental fact in Barnum’s moral universe is that all persons are essentially good and worthy.

In his pamphlet, “Why I Am a Universalist,” Barnum says the ultimate result of existence will be that all persons get to enjoy eternal life. Yet as we heard in the opening words this morning, eternal life doesn’t carry the conventional meaning, eternal life doesn’t mean “a heaven filled with saints and sinners shut up all together within four jeweled walls and playing on harps.” (Can you imagine someone like P. T. Barnum wanting to go to a heaven where he had to play on a harp all day?) Instead, Barnum says that heaven means a “moral and spiritual status.” Salvation lies in finding eternal life here and now. And the example of Barnum’s life implies that we don’t have to be perfect to get to that point. We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to be worthy of love.

Barnum tells us that “this present life is the great pressing concern.” He tells us that some kind of salvation is available to us all; and that is the real moral certainty in his moral universe. Today, we might use different words to say the same thing; we might talk about inherent worth and dignity of all persons and justice, equity and compassion in human relations. We might talk about acceptance of each other just as we are. Yet we still agree with Barnum in the essentials: conduct is three-quarters of life; and this present life is the pressing concern.

So it is that I propose P. T. Barnum for Unitarian Universalist sainthood because of his acceptance of humanity as it really is. No one is perfect, and Barnum is a perfect example of one who’s not perfect. He knows that he has had his moral lapses, his failures and successes, his struggles and triumphs, just as we all have had. As a Universalist, Barnum also knows that no one is better than anybody else, that in spite of his successes he’s no better than you or me, that even in his worst failures he was still as good as you or me, that underneath our various successes and failures we’re all the same. We’re all simply human.

P. T. Barnum is not exactly a moral exemplar. But I still think he deserves to be one of our Unitarian Universalist saints. He deserves to be a saint because he sets a pretty good example for us; he sets an example we feel is possible to live up to. He deserves to be one of our saints because he tells us that we ordinary people are just as good as the best of humanity. He is deeply human and therefore deeply flawed — but he knows that every person is ultimately worthy of the eternal life that has no reference to time or place but only to the simple fact that each person is worthy of love.

For all his bluster and bragging, he’s really saying something quite simple: we’ll all worthy of love.

All Souls

Readings

Readings for this sermon are not included here due to copyright restrictions.

Sermon — “All Souls”

Every year on the last weekend in June, I head off to General Assembly. General Assembly is the annual gathering and business meeting of our Unitarian Universalist Association. Unitarian Universalist congregations send their delegates and their ministers to participate in this annual business meeting. In addition to the business meeting, there are lots of lectures and workshops and presentations, many of which are fairly dull but some of which I have found to be very informative and even transformative. And of course, there is a big worship service on Sunday morning, where you usually get to hear one of Unitarian Universalism’s best preachers.

This year, the preacher at the Sunday worship service was a fellow named Robert Hardies. Rob is the senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist church in Washington, D.C. All Souls is an urban congregation, racially diverse, with something like 600 members. My uncle grew up in All Souls, and he remembers when A. Powell Davies was the minister there — another great preacher, probably the last Unitarian minister who really had a national audience; congressmen and senators and judges were in the congregation then, and the Washington papers would hold their Monday editions until they got the text of Davies’s latest sermon. Rob Hardies is good enough that he may well follow A. Powell Davies as a great preacher who develops a national audience.

Something Rob Hardies said in that sermon got me thinking, and has kept me thinking. I looked back at my notes of the worship service, and find that I wrote this:

“Hardies pointed out that his church is named ‘All Souls.’ But, Hardies said, ‘can you imagine a church named ‘Some Souls’?” The congregation laughed, but then Hardies continued, ‘Isn’t that the de facto name of the dominant religions in America today? The good news that Unitarian Universalism must deliver to the world… the good news that has literally saved my life, is that a god who picks and chooses is not god at all, it is an idol,’ said Hardies. ‘We must preach the old Universalist gospel that all souls are invited to the welcome table.’ ” That’s what Rob Hardies said in his sermon.

If you have been coming to this church regularly this fall, you will probably have noticed by now that I do preach the old Universalist gospel that all souls are welcome here; that we know all souls are worthy of dignity and respect. I preach that, and I mean what I say, and so far none of you has criticized me for preaching that good old Universalist heresy.

In fact, when I see how you folks in the pews live out your daily lives, I see pervasive and compelling evidence that you, too, believe that all souls deserve our respect, deserve our love. For example: I was in this building on Wednesday night when The Women’s Center of greater New Bedford and Fall River held their annual vigil in memory of those who have died of domestic violence; and among the hundred or so people I saw four members and friends of this congregation here as a public witness of their commitment to break the cycle of domestic violence. They were here because they know that all persons are worthy of dignity and respect and love, and no one deserves to be hurt or abused. Another example: our congregation sends four or five people each month to spend a morning preparing and serving food at a local soup kitchen — because they know that all persons are worthy of dignity and respect and a hot meal, even if they don’t have a home or money to buy food. Still more examples: I hear story after story about how individuals in this congregation do quiet good deeds, because they know that all persons are worthy of dignity and respect and love. People in this congregation work quietly and steadily to transform this world into a place where all persons may receive the love and compassion and dignity they deserve.

You could even make the case that our congregation should change its name from “First Unitarian” — a name which doesn’t really describe who we are or what we do — to “All Souls,” because we are working to transform the world. You could make that case; but I am not going to make that case. You see, I think we here at First Unitarian have a slightly different mission to carry out this year. If we call ourselves “All Souls,” it will be because we welcome all souls right here in our congregation. Over the next twelve months, I believe that we are called upon to work on this congregation, we are called to spend a year making sure all souls are truly welcome here, among us.

We are a small congregation at the moment. We are averaging less than fifty people each week in our Sunday morning worship services. The number of active workers and lay leaders we currently have is about half that number. In terms of our numbers, we are a small church. Now in today’s United States culture, we usually think it is bad to be small; we’re supposed to like super-sized meals, big SUVs, and large congregations. So when I say that we’re a small church, you might feel a little depressed, you might have a sense of inferiority; but I want you to know there’s no reason to feel bad about being a small church. Just because a congregation is small doesn’t mean it is necessarily bad; no more than just because a congregation is big should you assume that it is good. My little Toyota Corolla is just as good as those big Hummer SUVs you see driving around, and a small congregation is just as good as a big congregation — just as good, but quite different. Just as good, but it’s also pretty clear that a congregation our size can not lay claim to the name “All Souls.”

This congregation used to be a fair-sized congregation. Back in the 1950s, the average attendance at worship hit 170 for a while. It’s important to remember that our numbers have been dropping ever since — average attendance at worship dropped below a hundred in the 1960’s, and it dropped below fifty sometime in the 1980’s. And that’s where it has stayed ever since, hovering around fifty people. Of course, there are also the “C and E” people — that’s the “Christmas and Easter” people, who show up at Christmas and Easter, and while there’s quite a few of them, they don’t really count. They rarely give much time to the congregation, and they typically give very little money in support of the congregation. We’re glad to have them as a part of the congregation, but we can’t count on them.

The people who show up for Sunday morning worship service are the ones whom we can really count on; and they’re the ones with the real power, too. Woody Allen said, “90% of life is showing up,” and by virtue of showing up, you people here today have far more influence than you may dream of; if you mention something to me, believe me, I pay attention. If you are here each week, you are part of the ongoing conversation about what’s important in this congregation, and what’s not. If you show up for worship, you are far, far more likely to be tapped for a leadership position — and you are far more likely to succeed as a leader in this congregation, because you will have the connections, the mentors, and the friends that will allow you to lead effectively.

It is neither good nor bad that we are a small congregation; but it different from being a large congregation. In some ways, it’s good that are a small congregation. Small congregations tend to be good places for teenagers, because they have lots of contact with good adult role models, which means among other things that they learn a great deal about leadership. Small congregations tend to be friendly, cozy, and intimate, too. But although small congregations have many strengths, they are things they cannot do well.

One thing a small congregation cannot do well — it cannot take care of “all souls.” First of all, there are too few of us to do much more than take care of ourselves. Small congregations are great for feeding your own soul. But there’s so few of us to run the congregation that we don’t have the energy left over to take care of each other. I’m seeing that happen right now. I see members of this congregation who serve on the Board, and serve on a committee, and do innumerable little chores around the church, and take on a social action project or two; they put lots of time and energy into church business; so much time and energy that they just don’t have any energy left over to take care of someone else. As your minister, I’m a little too busy, too; I spend a lot of time in the office taking care of church administration because we aren’t big enough to have the volunteers available who would ordinarily take care of such matters; and as a result, I have very little time to call on shut-ins, or do pastoral counseling, or take care of you in other ways.

Of the two Unitarian Universalist congregations in the area, we are known as the “social action church.” And with that reputation, we do have influence in this community disproportionate to our small size. We do lots of good in the world, and we should be more open about that fact, and we should proud of that fact. At the same time, we should also be honest with ourselves: while we are out there saving the world, we are not doing such a good job of saving each other, and we don’t do such a good job of taking care of newcomers to this congregation who come to us looking for a transforming and saving community. We can’t; we don’t have the time, or the money, or the energy. So while we might call ourselves “First Unitarian of Social Action,” we really can’t call ourselves “All Souls” because we’re stretched just taking care of the souls that are already here, let alone adding a whole bunch more souls.

Let me make a pretty far-fetched analogy. Our congregation is a lot like my 1993 Toyota Corolla. I really, really like my 1993 Toyota Corolla. My 1993 Toyota Corolla is a social action car. I get 35 miles per gallon on the highway, and 30 miles per gallon around town. When they check my exhaust during inspection, they find that my car puts out almost none of the pollutants they test for. Oh, and of course there’s the bumper stickers which tell you to “Go Organic” and to “Ask Me About Composting” and to “Question Authority.” Yes, my 1993 is a social action car; and it’s also a cozy, familiar car that I love and that I don’t want to lose. I like it enough that I can usually ignore the rust spots and the unpleasant noises.

It’s a low-maintenance car, but it’s also showing wear and tear: the door handle doesn’t work on the passenger’s side, the steering’s getting a little too loose, and I’ve gotten to the point where I really don’t dare take it on long trips any more. I can give it a couple more years, but then, as much as I love it, I’ll have to think seriously about trading it in for something else. Well, I don’t want to push this analogy too far. Suffice it to say that my Toyota Corolla is a lot like our congregation: cozy, familiar, reeking with social action, but at best we’ve only got another couple of years on our current congregation, and then I think we’ll have to find a new model.

What would that new model look like? I’d like to hold up a vision for you of what I think we could become within five years. This fall, we have been averaging at least two newcomers each week. As it stands, we have not been following up on these newcomers: we don’t ask them for their address so we can put them on the mialing list, we don’t send a follow-up card; nor do any of the things common courtesy demands of us, we don’t invite them to join any spiritually fulfilling activities. Our lack of follow-up, our lack of common courtesy, means that most of these newcomers don’t return; they come for three or four weeks, and then when it seems as if no one cares for them, they just stop coming. Well, we do care about them, we’re just bad at showing that we care for them. If we just started following up, I bet half those newcomers would begin attending worship regularly. If we just had some regular activities that were spiritually fulfilling, like small group ministries or adult religious education, they would stick around for a long time. To be blunt: if we kept half the newcomers who walk through our doors over the next year, we could double the number of people in our weekly worship service.

I’ll go further than that. The total population of New Bedford is 93,768 people as of the 2000 federal census; and of Dartmouth, 30,666. The total population within a few miles of this church is over 125,000. 250 people would comprise a mere two tenths of one percent of that total population. Even given that we’re an English-only congregation, even given that we tend to appeal to people who are more intellectually curious than most, even though we tend to appeal to the so-called cultural creatives — I believe there’s a huge reservoir of people to draw upon, people who are looking for a religious home, looking for a religious home that believes as we do that love (not hatred) is the most powerful force in the universe, people who are looking for us. If we decide to, in four years we could easily have 250 men, women, and children sitting here in the worship service each and every week.

If we decide to, we could be more than just the social action church. We could be the congregation that does social action because we know that all souls are worthy of love. We could spread our saving message widely in the community: that love is more powerful than hatred. We could be big enough to care for each other, care for our children and youth and our elders, as a living testimony that we believe all souls are meant to be loved; and by caring for each other we’d actually have more energy left to do social action. And we could do more than engage in social action projects: with 250 people here each week, 250 people who were committed to living their lives as if love is the most powerful force in the universe, I know each of those 250 souls will live their daily lives so that they touch the souls of many more people. We could have 250 people living lives that prove love is more powerful than hate; we could have 250 people spreading our saving message that there is a religion that preaches, and practices, love for all souls.

Now, I love small congregations. I love the sense of intimacy, the coziness. (I love my old Toyota, too, even if it is falling apart.) And if you all want this congregation to remain small, I will respect your decision; because I will understand why you made that decision.

But my friends, I have to speak the truth to you: in a world filled with hatred, it is no longer be enough to remain a small congregation. In a country where the national dialogue is in large measure controlled by the religious right, in a country where the dominant religious right preaches a doctrine of “some souls,” we need to become a loud powerful voice that proclaims, “Not some souls, but all souls.” I do believe that as much as our Unitarian Universalist congregations would like to remain cozy and intimate, it is morally unacceptable for us to do so. I will go further: if we really want to be the “social action church,” and we want that to be true, we cannot remain small; for to remain small means making the moral choice that we want our influence to remain small.

So if you decide to stay small, I will respect that decision. But remember: –It is a moral choice. –And it is your choice, not mine. You know where I stand: I am here to preach the saving word that love is more powerful than hatred. But you get to choose how many people hear that saving word, because you get to choose how big we are. I hope you will choose to grow this congregation, so that we can make a difference, so that people can hear our saving message. If you’re a newcomer, I hope you will stay with us, and keep coming back even if we forget to extend the common courtesy of recognizing and celebrating your presence among us — and maybe after you’ve been coming here for a couple of months, maybe you will remind us that we need to extend some common courtesy to newcomers so that they are welcomed in the way you would have liked to have been welcomed.

If you’re a long-time member, I hope you will commit yourself to show up as often as you can. That’s the most important thing you can do: show up as often as you can, and welcome the newcomers, and keep reaching out to them until they, too, are as much a part of this congregation as you are. If you’re a long-time member, I hope you will recognize that it’s going to be so hard to lose your cozy intimate little church, but I hope you’ll keep your eyes on the prize: should you decide to get bigger, it will get easier to take care of the business of church, and you will have more time. More time to care for our children and our elders and others, and to be cared for yourself, and to do social action, and to spread the word that all souls are worthy of our love.

My friends, you get to choose what will be our purpose here. We can have the small purpose of being cozy. Or we can embrace a larger purpose: to care for and love each other; to set an example for the world of how a religion based on love would operate; to stand up against the religious right and say with our loud, strong, combined voices that we believe in life and love for all souls, not just some souls; to spread the saving word that love is more powerful than hatred; that all souls are worthy of being saved.

All Souls Day is this Wednesday, November 2. And so it is that I ask you to reflect this week on what you will do: –Will you decide to remain small and cozy? –Or will you decide that this congregation can transform ourselves and the rest of the world with our message of love?