Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church Likeness to God Rev. Dr. Jim Nelson, Senior Minister April 13, 2014 301 N. Orange Grove Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91103 (626) 449-3470 information@uuneighborhood.org Some 2000 years ago, probably on a day somewhat like today the forecast for Jerusalem today is for a high of 70 and low of 50, mostly sunny Jesus got on a donkey and rode into Jerusalem. The city was then, as now, the heart of Judaism. Solomon s temple was there; it was the capital city for David. When Jesus was living, it was ruled by the Romans. The primary institution of Jewish learning the Sanhedrin was based in Jerusalem. The New Testament tells us that on Saturday night, Jesus went up to a hill overlooking the city and wept over it. When we lived in the Washington DC area before our first sojourn to California, we lived in Arlington, near the Pentagon, and there is a hill there; I can imagine our President sitting there now and weeping over that city for how far astray we have come from our ideals. But that is another sermon. Then, Sunday morning or at least this is how the story goes as I learned it Jesus got on a donkey and rode into the city. People lined the streets to see him; they laid down their coats and palm branches in the road in front of him. They shouted praise. And all of this even though he was not really well known. He had been a wandering teacher for three years, and growing in popularity and fame, but most scholars think he was little known generally, and certainly not to the throngs of Jerusalem. In a few days he was called before the authorities, and was tried and condemned. He had a last supper with his disciples, and well, that is next week s story. But Palm Sunday is a story of triumph even as we know that it will not end well. But then, the people welcoming Jesus did not know what was coming; the disciples were wary; the New Testament says Jesus knew. When he is called before the authorities to be tried, they ask him where his authority comes from. Was it from the baptism done by John (John was apparently highly thought of.)? Was authority from God, or was it from the people? A good question, isn t it? Where does religious authority come from? This afternoon we will ordain Christina Shu to the Unitarian Universalist ministry; that is, we will confer on her authority. In our tradition, authority does not come from a ritual like baptism, nor does it come from God, but instead it comes from the people. You are where authority resides. This has been true for Unitarians since the 1500s in Transylvania and since the 1700s in New England. Congregations ordain and confer authority. And ordinations have been occasions for theological reflection. Just what are ministers supposed to do, or just what authority do they actually have? Let me tell you, we ministers often wonder just exactly that. What
authority do we in fact have? Someone once accused me of becoming a minister for the power right! But then, authority is not exactly the same as power. So in 1819, in Baltimore, The Rev. William Ellery Channing of Federal Street Church in Boston preached at the ordination of Rev. Jared Sparks. The title was Unitarian Christianity and it is probably the most important sermon in our history, because it laid the groundwork for who we were and who we have become. It stands with Emerson s Divinity School Address, Theodore Parker s The Transient and Permanent in Christianity and Channing s sermon A Likeness to God, another ordination sermon, as the foundational documents of our faith. Everyone should read them at some point. They are all available on-line. While it is true that we UUs may not all share a theology we believe different things we do share a history. Unitarianism and Universalism mean something. I don t make it up; you don t make it up. Its history is what we share and this is at the heart of ministry and the authority given to ministers to articulate our history and be faithful to it. So here are some things about Channing. He was minister in Boston at the same church for 40 years. He grew up in Newport RI and went to Harvard. His birthday was last Monday, April 7. His sermons were published widely. His Unitarian Christianity sermon was published more widely than any sermon in US history. His prose was used as the standard for rhetoric at Harvard. His congregation gave birth to the transcendentalist movement. Julia Ward Howe was a member; Dorothea Lyn Dix was a member. So were Horace Mann and Horace Greeley, as was Margaret Fuller. On this May 9, Megan Marshall, who grew up here at Neighborhood and is perhaps the best chronicler of the role of women in the early 1800s will do a reading of her book on Margaret Fuller at Vromans. It s a good read. In 1820, Channing gathered liberal ministers in Boston to his home and he delivered an essay pertaining to liberal ministry. It became the Berry Street Conference and has met every year since 1820, save one year during WWII, and is the longest running lecture series in North America. It always was, for me, the highlight of General Assembly. In 1825 the American Unitarian Association, the forerunner of the UUA, was formed at the Federal Street Church. It is now the Arlington Street Church in Boston. Channing encouraged and arranged for a German immigrant, Charles Follen to become a Unitarian minister. Follen introduced physical education in schools to the US as well as the custom of the Christmas tree. He and Channing were dear friends. Channing became an ardent abolitionist, and when Follen died Follen was a leader in the anti-slavery movement Channing wanted to have the memorial service in his church, the Federal Street Church where he had been minister for 40 years and from which he articulated Unitarianism in the US. But the Standing Committee [what we call a Board] refused permission, and Channing ended his ministry with a broken heart. An Easter week experience, like Jesus being betrayed by the disciples at the end.
This is quite a week. The stories of this week are filled with pathos and meaning. Yet it begins with a question: from where, or what does your authority derive? This is not just a question for ministers, but a question for all of us. Where does our spiritual authority come from? When Channing graduated from Harvard, he went to Virginia and was a tutor to the Randolph clan. He became isolated and his health declined, and he wrote this: There I toiled as I have never done since. I passed through intellectual and moral conflicts, through excitements of heart and mind. I was worn well-nigh to a skeleton. Yet I look back on those days and nights of frequent gloom with thankfulness. If ever I struggled with my whole soul for purity, truth and goodness, it was there. There, amidst sore trial, the great question, I trust, was settled within me, whether I would obey the higher or the lower principles of my nature whether I would be the victim of passion, the world, or the free child and servant of God. The true purpose of religion, Channing said, is to grow a soul; it is to grow in the likeness to God. It is to cultivate our soul so that we are more like the divine. Channing affirmed that within every one of us is everything that is holy and good; he denied vehemently the doctrine of original sin; he was appalled by the notion of the depravity of humankind. He believed that our qualities the ability to think and to reason, the ability to see beauty and experience wonder, the ability to love and care for one another, the joy we find in being generous these qualities were the qualities of the holy. Channing s God was not the God of the Puritans. It was not the God who intervened in history, or who smote the undeserving; Channing s God was not vindictive; God did not flood the earth or condemn people to Hell. Channing s God was the source and expression of love and compassion, of justice and equity. Likeness to God, for Channing, was being the best we can be kind and generous, fair and tolerant, good. It was striving to be free free of bias and prejudice, free of narrowness and stinginess, free of fear and hate. It was being liberal in all ways. And Channing would say that our authority comes from the degree to which we live closest to our highest ideals. Isn t this true? I don t happen to believe in God, but I know that if there were a God it would not be a God of vengeance but rather a God of compassion and love. If I were to believe in a God, it would be a God who cared for the creation, who was concerned with human dignity, who cared for the earth itself. Kurt Vonnegut was a Unitarian, and a relative of Mary Fauvre Holmes by the way. He gave one sermon in his life, on Palm Sunday at St Clements Episcopal Church in NYC in 1980. He also gave a speech about William Ellery Channing, praising Channing for insisting on the importance of dignity in our lives. In his Palm Sunday sermon, Vonnegut said this:
It is the evening before Palm Sunday. Jesus is frustrated and exhausted. He knows that one of His close associates will soon betray Him for money and that He is going to be mocked and tortured and killed. He is going to feel all that a mortal feels when He dies in convulsions on the cross. His visit among us is almost over, but life must still go on for just a little while. It is again suppertime. His male companions for supper are themselves a mockery. One is Judas, who will betray Him. The other is Lazarus, who has recently been dead for four days. Lazarus was so dead that he stunk, the Bible says. Lazarus is surely dead, and not much of a conversationalist, and not necessarily grateful, either, to be alive again. It is a very mixed blessing, to be brought back from the dead. If I had read a little further, we would have learned that there is a crowd outside, crazy to see Lazarus, not Jesus. Lazarus is the man of the hour as far as the crowd is concerned. Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time. There are two sisters of Lazarus there-martha and Mary. They, at least, are sympathetic and imaginatively helpful. Mary begins to massage and perfume the feet of Jesus Christ with an ointment made from the spikenard plant. Jesus has the bones of a man and is clothed in the flesh of a man-so it must feel awfully nice, what Mary is doing to His feet. Would it be heretical of us to suppose that Jesus closes His eyes? This is too much for that envious hypocrite Judas, who says, trying to be more Catholic than the Pope: "Hey-this is very un-christian. Instead of wasting that stuff on Your feet, we should have sold it and given the money to the poor people." To which Jesus replies in Aramaic: "Judas, don't worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone." This is about what Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln would have said under similar circumstances. If Jesus did in fact say that, it is a divine black joke, well suited to the occasion. It says everything about hypocrisy and nothing about the poor. It is a Christian joke, which allows Jesus to remain civil to Judas, but to chide him for his hypocrisy all the same. "Judas, don't worry about it. There will still be plenty of poor people left long after I'm gone." Shall I regarble it for you? "The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have Me."
My own translation does no violence to the words in the Bible. I have changed their order some, not merely to make them into the joke the situation calls for but to harmonize them, too, with the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade. This has no doubt been a silly sermon. I am sure you do not mind. People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. I thank you for your sweetly faked attention. Ministry is often described as a calling. Christina and I talked about this a good bit when she was here. Her calling is to chaplaincy right now, to palliative care. But deeper, I believe, she shares a calling not just with other ministers, whose tribe she will join this afternoon, but with all of us. And that is the calling to, in Channing s term, live in likeness to God. The purpose of religion, Channing said, is to grow in likeness to God, and God is an expression of our own highest self. This is the calling we share, and in this way we share this liberal ministry. Vonnegut said in another part of this sermon that he was a Christ loving atheist, and that the Sermon on the Mount was the most important speech ever given. His books, I believe, deal with the struggle for dignity he deeply admired Channing for Channing s insistence on dignity as essential in growing in likeness to God. So this week, beginning with this morning, and then with this afternoon, think about this. Remember the story of Jesus, and learn about William Ellery Channing, and look deep within yourself and see if you can grow more in likeness to God.