First Parish Unitarian UniversalistNot Some New-Fangled Religion
Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton
March 14, 2010
Reading
Our reading is a pair of affirmations shared every Sunday at First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego. The first one offers this greeting:
Welcome, one and all, to our Unitarian Universalist religious community. We welcome you, whoever you are, whatever tradition, gender, race, sexual orientation, or age you represent. In our presence, may you walk the ways of truthfulness, service, and holiness. And through all your days and nights in our presence, may you experience love.
The second affirmation shares a vision for the community’s journey together:
We envision members and friends of First Church as pilgrims traveling on life’s journey together – creating shared ministry through which we can grow our souls in ways truthful to ourselves, caring of others, and sustaining the planet.
Sermon
Our faith as Unitarian Universalists can be a little difficult for folks to get if they are used to a more mainline Protestant or Catholic Church.
I often here these questions:
“You have no creed or things people have to believe in?”
“You’re a religion but Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in the Trinity,
or necessarily even in God?”
“What do you believe about Jesus if you don’t see him as the Son of God?”
And then, there is the Episcopal priest I met recently at a cocktail party.
I introduced myself as a fellow colleague in ministry, a Unitarian Universalist colleague.
He then straightened up as tall as he could, looked down his rather beakish nose at me, and quipped,
“Oh, you’re what we call an Anglo-Saxon Jew since there’s no Jesus in your church.”
Not only was he rude, he was very wrong.
So with this priest’s grave misconception and with the questions of others in mind, I felt the need to spend some time with you looking back in history to consider our deepest roots and the rich heritage that has been passed down to us.
Sometimes, we can take for granted the spirit of openness and inquiry we experience in a Unitarian Universalist congregation such as First Parish.
Sometimes, it’s important to remember that we are indeed a religion with a rich heritage of people who courageously sought the truth and stood up for the truth as they believed it.
And now, it is now our task to continue living and seeking the truth.
Today I want to share some of our earliest heritage – the first groundbreakers who prepared the soil, so to speak, for what would become our unfolding Unitarian and Universalist tradition.
That is the tradition affirmed in our reading earlier.
It is a tradition I hope that you experience in all its fullness here at First Parish.
In looking at our ancestors and how the soil was first tilled for our faith, I have to start with Jesus.
Now, for some folks like that Episcopal priest, this comment would raise eyebrows.
Some folks come to Unitarian Universalism to leave the cross “and all that” behind.
But, remember, I said Jesus, not Jesus the Christ.
Jesus was a human being and a Jew who saw grave faults with the rules and behavior his religion was condoning.
He wanted to help his tradition return to what he thought of as its essence – not only to love your neighbor, but even to love your enemy, treating all people as you would want to be treated, and to love God, to love what is most true and lasting.
He criticized the way the Jewish religion of his time had come to divide people and maintain a certain power structure.
Think of all his efforts to reach out to those considered unclean or undeserving.
Jesus wanted to turn everyone’s attention toward creating a world based on love, compassion, and inclusiveness, not separation and judgment.
So, for all that and more, I include Jesus as one of our first ancestors in our liberal faith tradition.
His life and teachings are a deep source of strength and wisdom.
I see him as a spirit-filled, visionary human being who sought a higher truth, told truth to power, and lived his truth with courage even unto death.
And when he was crucified, his followers were both stunned and lost.
Remember, there was no Christianity per se yet, just a growing band of believers who were moved, healed, and changed by what Jesus had taught them.
In fact, there were many different beliefs circulating around amongst the Jews and later the Gentiles about what Jesus might have been and how folks were going to carry on his powerful message of love and hope.
So, over time Jesus’ followers and their followers and early church leaders put pen to paper and began to codify what was at first a loose collection of beliefs about Jesus and his teachings.
The Gospels and the Epistles are all about explaining in a more unified way what Jesus was and what he called us to do.
Slowly, this burgeoning movement developed into a religion separate from Judaism with a church structure and a theology all its own.
There were also a number of inquisitive and independent-minded souls who didn’t agree with the church’s theology as it was being developed.
A young scholar named Origen from Alexandria, Egypt, was one such dissenter in the early third century.
He disagreed with the growing belief in heaven and hell and with the subsequent belief that only a select group of followers would be saved.
Through his own diligent study of the Bible, he doubted the existence of heaven and hell and believed that all souls were saved.
That is universalism at its core.
And back in the third century, that was enough to have Origen condemned as a heretic.
Now, heretic or heresy in its Greek root means choice.
Today, we often use the word casually to describe someone wild and unorthodox, likely to have a few screws loose.
It usually is not a compliment.
But, as I look back at Origen and the others who followed in his footsteps, I use the word with respect for their persistence in telling the truth as they believed it after careful study and reflection, after considering their truth in the light of reason and experience.
A century later — at the beginning of the fourth century — another soon-to-be heretic by the name of Arius spoke out strongly against the growing orthodoxy which held that Jesus was divine.
This orthodox understanding would soon lead to the official doctrine of the Trinity or God in three persons:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
However, Arius, after a careful reading of scripture as Origen had done, held that Jesus was fully human – that he was not part of a three-part God.
To put it mildly, that did not go over well with the authorities.
It went over so badly in fact that the Roman Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea in the year 325 to counter Arius and other threats to the growing orthodoxy.
The result of this council was the Nicene Creed.
This creed is recited in many Christian churches today affirming the Trinity with:
Lord Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God…being of one substance with the Father…. (and) the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life… who with the Father and the Son together is (to be) worshipped and glorified.
Let’s leap ahead some 1200 years to the Reformation in Europe when there was a broad questioning of the Catholic Church doctrine.
It’s important to remember that by this time, there was only one church in most of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church.
The church was an empire of sorts, headed up by a pope, overseen by an immense hierarchy, and Catholic Church doctrine was, for the most part, the only doctrine in town.
It was a situation ripe for corruption in practice and in doctrine.
The Protestant Reformation was a huge push back against such corruption.
Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, using scripture as their guide, sought to end corrupt practices - indulgences anyone? - and reform church doctrine.
And so, what evolved was the birth of Protestant churches.
Some things did not change, however, one of those being adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity.
A young and irascible Spaniard named Michael Servetus who had done his own careful study of scripture was not happy about this.
Speaking out against the Trinity, Servetus said quite bluntly,
“Your Trinity is a product of subtlety and madness. The Gospel knows nothing of it.”
And frankly, he was right.
There are no teachings about the Trinity in the scriptures.
However, his approach was much too argumentative, and he was fighting over 1200 years of accrued dogma.
Sadly, Servetus was burned at the stake.
Now let’s move east a bit to Central Europe - Poland and Transylvania to be exact — while still staying in the 16 th century.
Here we get to what many consider to be the cradle of European Unitarianism.
Fortunately for our Unitarian forebears, the Roman Catholic Church did not have such a strangle hold on religion in Poland due to a rather large, educated, and independent nobility and gentry.
Led by the liberal theologian Faustus Socinus, a strong community of anti-Trinitarian congregations began to flourish in Poland.
These “Polish Brethren” or “Socinians” were devoted to religious liberty, reason, and tolerance.
They took very seriously something that I think is central to Unitarian Universalism today – “engaged dissent.” (Jay Atkinson, “Engaged Dissent Among the Polish Brethren,” a paper presented at The Fifth Earl Morse Wilbur History Colloquium on “The Role of the Dissenter in Western Christianity.”)
They believed firmly in our ability as humans to learn, reflect, and gain insight and that we did so best of all when engaged with one another to discern the greater truth.
And these Socinians did engage in rigorous study and discussion with passion.
As one historian writes, “For the Polish Brethren, the religious community was not only a worshipping community, but also a hermeneutical community (hermeneutical being a fancy word for interpretive).” (Atkinson)
Here were also the beginnings of humanism, a belief in human capability.
Under early church fathers like Augustine and later the Protestant reformer John Calvin, humankind was consider innately sinful, depraved, and helpless in our sinful state.
Only through God’s will and by God’s grace could we be saved.
So, to lift up human reasoning as worthy was a radical notion.
It is also at the core of our Unitarian Universalist tradition today.
Let me take you to one more stop on this whirlwind tour through 1500 years of religious history.
From Poland, let’s go south a bit to Transylvania, another area where the Roman Catholic Church lacked a stronghold.
Here one very open-minded King John Sigismund sought the counsel of his liberal-minded court preacher, Francis David.
You’ve heard me say, “We need not think alike to love alike.”
Well, that phrase comes from this visionary man David.
With David’s urging, King Sigismund declared an edict of religious toleration in 1568 which read,
“Preachers shall be allowed to preach the Gospel… each according to (their) own understanding of it….And no one shall be made to suffer on account of religion.”
This edict allowed open theological debate between Trinitarians and those espousing a Unitarian view, and in fact the king encouraged such debate.
Francis David espoused the Unitarian view and the king himself was soon won over and became Unitarian.
So, as part of this religious freedom, Unitarian churches found formal recognition among the Catholic and other Protestant churches in Transylvania.
Universal salvation, Jesus as fully human, a single God not a Trinity with Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, a belief in human reason and basic human capability as opposed to acceptance of humankind’s inherent depravity, tolerance of different beliefs along with open discussion about the merits of different beliefs.
From our 21st century perspective, all this may seem rather quaint.
It’s stuff many of us take for granted.
Yet, we must remember the courage it took for these early thinkers and reformers to challenge what was an overriding status quo.
People like Origen, Arius, Servetus, Socinus, David, and King Sigismund dared to question what they believed to be wrong despite the weight of history and church politics against them.
They advocated for something so radical at the time but central to our tradition today: freedom, reason, and tolerance, and belief in human capability to learn and grow.
And, I haven’t even gotten to the 17 th century and beyond – to the Unitarians in England and later in New England, the Universalists who began to share their hopeful message in this country in the 18 th century, and then the many great leaders and thinkers who have nudged our tradition forward since.
Those are for later sermons.
Those forebears broadened our tradition to be inclusive of a worthy set of principles and open to wisdom as it is found in many worthy sources.
The next time you have a minute grab a hymnal and look in the front at what we call our Principles and Purposes and our Sources.
It begins with “We…covenant to affirm and promote…” and it also states, “The Living Tradition we share draws from many sources…”
Ours is not some new-fangled religion.
As we take part in Stewardship Month here at First Parish and spend time reflecting on what we value here together, it is important to reflect upon the larger tradition that we have become inheritors of so that we care for it, contribute to it, and then pass it on.
We have been given choice and freedom and a tradition that values the truth as we understand it in our own lives, ever unfolding.
I celebrate all this with these words of affirmation from my colleague Rev. Stephen Kendrick, Senior Minister at First Church in Boston:
Our congregations freely gather to live out a democratic faith.
Every human being is holy and is called to the tasks and joys of love.
We do not limit the truth of God (even to the word “God”) but live in
openness and belief in human freedom and dignity.
Our creed is kindness.
We celebrate the gift of life, and join in taking on the sufferings of this
fragile world.
We are this generation’s bearers of an eternal message, drawn from
ancient springs, that truth must grow, enlarge, and glow in creative freedom.
May it be so. Amen.