Our U/U Ancestors. A sermon preached by the Rev. Lee Bluemel at the North Parish of North Andover, MA, Unitarian Universalist November 15, 2015

Transcription

1 Our U/U Ancestors A sermon preached by the Rev. Lee Bluemel at the North Parish of North Andover, MA, Unitarian Universalist November 15, 2015 It s high time to establish sainthood in the Unitarian Universalist Association. It s time we had a calendar for all of our Unitarian and Universalist saints and holy people, featuring one on each day of the year. We could establish a process to nominate folks for sainthood in local congregations. We could create a database that would match people with their own Patron UU saint. Patron Saint of Healers and the Sick? How about Clara Barton? Patron Saint of Scientists? Joseph Priestly. Patron Saint of Naturalists and Those Who Love the Earth? Henry David Thoreau. Patron Saints of All Those Who Keep Congregations Going? An unlimited selection! We could make a daily download available online, via or cell phone. How else might we keep track of all our incredible UU ancestors? There are so many. You heard just some of their names in the litany this morning. Were any of you surprised by some of the people in our UU past, and their contributions to the world we live in? In our current day and age, the world we live in can feel brutal, unkind, shaped by special interests and sometimes headed in the wrong direction. The news brings us a constant report of assaults on humanity and decencysuch as the terrible terror attacks in Paris on Friday night.

2 So the challenges can feel overwhelming for those who are morally, ethically, religiously concerned about things like religious fundamentalism, the impact of war, gun violence in America, mass incarceration and prison reform, voting rights, equal access to education and medical care, addressing addiction and mental illness, the rights of women worldwide, the plight of refugees and the impact of climate change. But we are not the first to face most of these challenges. There are so many Unitarians and Universalist exemplars, pioneers, thinkers, theologians, scientists, writers, contemplatives and reformers who tackled similar problems in their day and dedicated decades to their struggle. The good news is that, although relatively few in number, they often did manage to shift society s values and institutions. We just suffer from ancestral amnesia. All we have to do for inspiration is remember some of their names. The writer Margaret Bendroth, in her book, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering, argues that remembering should be a regular spiritual practice, part of the rhythm of our days, as we recognize our world is- in many ways- a gift from those who ve come before. Perhaps if we remember our UU ancestors, as individuals and as communities, we will find ourselves blessed by a new source of inspiration, courage and resilience. Perhaps we will feel less isolated, and instead part of a grand and ongoing project to co-create a better world.

3 Perhaps we ll feel more glad and grateful for all the ways they shaped our current world. Perhaps we ll understand that we are the ones to pay it forward. Words from the Bible, from Letter to the Hebrews chapter 12, come to mind: since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. The fact is, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnessesand, now gone, they do rely on us to carry forward their commitments and ideals. This cloud of witnesses includes not only our biological ancestors, our North Parish ancestors, and those members of this congregation who have gone before us whom we remember well, but also Unitarians and Universalists who rose to prominence on a national scale, as they tried to change society and create new human possibilities. So, in the limited time we have here this morning, I thought I d share the very beginnings of a list of nominations for UU sainthood. I ll begin with the Patron Saint of the Tongue-Tied, for those who find it challenging to answer the question, How can people with different beliefs make up a single UU congregation? For this role, I nominate Saint Francis David, the 16 th century Unitarian theologian, advisor to the only Unitarian King, architect of the world s first Edict of Religious Freedom, and Unitarian martyr. He is the one who said We need not think alike to love alike. When explaining our faith, that s a really good starting point. We need not think alike to love alike.

4 I nominate him first, because next in line for sainthood are several people who did think differently, and introduced new theological ideas. We might call them the UU Saints of New Theology. Some of them are well-known- hopefully by some of you. The Universalist Saints like Hosea Ballou or George DeBenneville, who countered fire and brimstone theology with the idea of universal salvation, and longed for all people to shed the burden of life spent in pervasive religious fear in exchange for lives of holiness and happiness. Or the Unitarian Saints like William Ellery Channing, who preached the unity of God, the potential dignity of human nature, and use of reason in interpreting scriptures. He said May your life preach more loudly than your lips. Or the Transcendentalist Saints- Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and others-- those who honored intuition and argued that every person can experience the divine personally and directly. These names, many of us know. Perhaps less well known are the more recent UU Saints of New Theology, people like the Religious Humanists of the 1920 s and 30 s folks like John Deitrich, Curtis Reese and Clinton Lee Scott. They rejected traditional theism and the idea of supernatural authority, and in its place sought religious expression of ethical values and human aspirations. Scott said, The freedom of the mind is the beginning of all other freedoms. Or later still, the Unitarian Saints of Process Theology

5 Henry Nelson Weiman and Charles Hartshorne. Henry Nelson Weiman, a process theologian and a Religious Naturalist, suggested that God is not supernatural but a natural process or entity, or capital C Creativity leading to a promise of the growing good. His students called him the most comprehensive and most distinctly American theologian of our century. Charles Hartshorne, another process theologian and Pan-en-theist, suggested that God is a supreme becoming rather than a supreme being, and that God and the world exist in a dynamic, changing relationship, and that God- capable of change and organically inclusiveis the mind or soul for the whole body of the natural world. He is considered by many philosophers to be one of the most important philosophers of religion of the twentieth century. Then there is the Unitarian Saint who I met very briefly at the end of his life and whose funeral I attended: James Luther Adams, Christian Humanist, social ethicist, and promoter of voluntary associations. He was a champion of the free church, as long as it was socially diverse, intellectually accountable, and engaged in both worship and social justice. He said Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human. After the Saints of New Theology, up next for nomination might be the UU Saints of Social Reform. But in this group there are so many, it s hard to know where to begin, and limiting the list seems impossible.

6 There were many involved in the anti-slavery, suffrage, peace and temperance movements. There were many who tackled reforms in prisons, education, sanitation, healthcare, social welfare, workers rights and economic development. There were many Universalists and Unitarians who fought for voting rights access to education and better responses to addiction. You can read about them in books like these: Standing Before Us: UU Women and Social Reform, by Dorothy Emerson, or Prophetic Encounters by Dan McKanan, or The Prophetic Sisterhood by Cynthia Grant Tucker, or the Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism by Mark Harris. Since our time is short, I offer just one example. Let s take prison reform. Our Prison Reform Patron saints could be Charles Spear and Dorthea Dix. Charles Spear was a Universalist minister who spent most of his career on prison reform and fighting capital punishment. He made great progress in abolishing debt as a reason to be sent to prison- an issue that has returned today. He was also an abolitionist in the early 1800 s and outspoken advocate for the right of women to hold property. His goal was to apply the spirit of charity to all outcasts. Dorthea Dix was a Unitarian laywomen who discovered that among those imprisoned in terrible conditions were the mentally ill. She made a vocation of inspecting jails, exposing their conditions, And lobbying legislatures for improved conditions and the creation of mental hospitals.

7 She also trained thousands of nurses for the Civil War. In one speech she said, I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. For both Spear and Dix, their faith led them to stand with those on the margins of society. It has been said that the purpose of the church is- at least in partto change society s values. Some of our Universalist and Unitarian ancestors were inspired by their faith to do just that. They wrote letters, essays, stories, poems, newsletters, magazines and books. They organized meetings and conventions, they raised money, they lobbied and ran for political office. They started and participated in mass movements, created new institutions, invented new things, healed people, and worked with the marginalized. They faced huge odds. They were often outnumbered, defeated, tired and out of money. But they remained faithful. How? One could say they were driven by lofty values such as freedom, reason, tolerance, justice, liberty, equality and solidarity. One could also say they were simply moved by compassion for those who were suffering. Their religion led them to focus not on individual, personal, other-worldly salvation, but on hope for a communal, this-worldly salvation-

8 for abundant life, health, equality, joy and peace for all people. And they had a deep faith in human capacity to transform the world. So when some among us ask today for our attention to reform movements around gun violence, mass incarceration, workers rights, BlackLivesMatter, immigration reform or climate change, they are standing in a long tradition of Unitarians and Universalists who- despite the odds and the risks- stood with the marginalized and disenfranchised and asked their fellow citizens to pay attention. The American writer Ralph Ellison has written, Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values. With their values and their compassion, our UU ancestors moved mountains. This may we remember. Amen. Readings: Meditation by the Rev. Mark Belletini: Let my body remember. Let my hands and feet remember. Let my breath remember those who have come before me, those who have come before us. Didn t Muhammad wait quietly in his cave? And didn t Jesus sigh silently by the blue lake? And Guan Yin, didn t she sit in silence thinking about what to do before doing it? And what was Siddartha the Buddha doing anyway under that tree If not just sitting quietly? And Susan B. Anthony, didn t she push back from her desk, and take a breath now and then? And Florence Nightingale, didn t she put down her nurse s hat

9 And think silently about what to write in her essay on mysticism before she actually wrote it? And Sophia Fahs, didn t she stop telling stories sometimes and just sit there? And didn t Black Elk just notice the sunlight glancing off his chair sometimes? And Starhawk, does she only talk and write, or does she too keep silence? Let us remember them all with our bodies. Let us remember them with the silence they too knew.