The Larger Faith
Our Universalist heritage calls us to have compassion for the humanity in every person and to create conduits for compassion that will outlive us. This sermon was delivered on November 21, 2010
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There’s a legend about the American Universalist minister Hosea Ballou. I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true. Universalism is a faith that teaches that all of humanity is held by a love that will not let us go. Universalists do not believe in eternal punishment. Classic Christian Universalists believe that God can and will save everyone, no matter how sinful. Evil is finite, God’s love is infinite.
Anyway, the legend says that Ballou was engaged in a theological debate with a minister of another faith. The other minister said something to the effect of, “If I believed as you did, what is there to stop me hitting you over your head and stealing your money and your horse?” Ballou replied, “If you believed as I did, that thought would never enter your mind in the first place.”
I don’t know if that exchange actually took place. I heard the story by word of mouth and haven’t confirmed the source. It is true that Ballou frequently and enthusiastically engaged in theological debate with ministers from his own denomination and others. Ballou wrote an influential piece called A Treatise on Atonement in 1805 and published the weekly Universalist Magazine beginning in 1819. He didn’t have a formal seminary education and didn’t think a minister needed one to see the love of God that was plainly written in the Bible.
Once in a speech (in 1851 to the Universalist General Convention in Boston) Ballou said, “Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled. You cleanse it, and array it in clean robes. The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it? Or, Did you wash it because you loved it?”
Universalism may sound simple and sentimental, but it has big implications for how we live our lives. If morality is not based on punishment or vengeance, how do we deal with the presence of evil within ourselves and in our society? If there is no sharp difference between the saved and the unsaved, between “us” and “them,” how do we approach our relationship with those who are unfamiliar to us? Clearly, we don’t need to save people from perdition if we don’t believe in eternal punishment, so what is our mission? If we believe in the significance of this world, how do we prepare for the future that is here on earth?
Universalism asks us to have big hearts and open minds. Today, let’s think through the implications in terms of love, hope, and faith. The larger love is bigger than our own group, our own sense of right and wrong, and perhaps bigger than our imagination. The larger hope asks us to stretch our sense of mission, applying our beliefs to ministry with our neighbors. The larger faith invests in the future, creating a legacy that will comfort and challenge future generations with a this-worldly focus.
I want to acknowledge that the title of today’s sermon and many of the historical notes are drawn from the book, The Larger Faith: A Short History of American Universalism by Charles A. Howe. Charles Howe died this past August, after a long record of faithful service. I’m grateful for his work, including his book that helped me understand the love, hope, and faith illuminated by Universalism.
Larger Love
For part of the time I was in seminary, we lived in Oakland, California. Oakland is a large, racially and economically diverse city in the Bay Area. Our flat had some lovely details original to the building, such as decorative crown moldings and sweeping doorways between the common areas.
Our unit also came with a garage with a door that hung askew. The landlord promised when we moved in that he would fix it. He actually got around to it about a year later. There was no interior entrance to the garage, just the one from the street. Since it was kittywompus, there was no way to lock it, and getting it open required some creativity. We would jump up from the ground and attempt to bang on the sweet spot in the corner of the garage door, at which point it would pop open. It wasn’t ideal, but this ritual earned us the holy grail of off-street parking, and the landlord was always promising to take care of it soon, so we got used to it.
One day we looked down from the window at the front of the building and saw that the garage door was open. We went downstairs to find that our car was OK, but there were several things missing from the storage area. Most significantly, we were missing some thick, hand-made sweaters that had sentimental value, and we were missing the better part of a tent. A separate bag with the tent poles was still there. I probably harbored some irritated satisfaction at the oversight.
I called the police, not because I thought we would recover our belongings, it just seemed like the thing you do. The person who took down the information over the phone asked if the garage had been locked. “No,” I said, “there’s no way to lock it.” I imagined I could hear her rolling her eyes. She gave me a report number in case we needed for renter’s insurance. The criminal justice angle didn’t provide a satisfactory resolution.
While I was on the phone, Becky was reflecting on what was missing: warm clothing and shelter. We guessed that one of our homeless neighbors had taken them. Anyone who spent time on our block was likely to have seen us doing the garage dance. Becky suggested that we put the tent poles out on the sidewalk with a sign inviting anyone who needed them to take them. They were gone the next day.
Becky’s idea was an expression of Universalism, which requires us to expand our imagination beyond punishment and vengeance. In a world where every person has inherent worth and dignity, compassion is more important than retribution. We could also see this as an expression of the Golden Rule that the children discussed during Time for All Ages. In Universalism, the larger love of the Divine is unconditional. People do not cease to qualify for compassion because they have done something wrong, although there are occasions for limits, reform, and reconciliation.
Historically, Universalists have found real-world application for their theology in prison reform. Benjamin Rush, an early Universalist and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had this to say:
A belief in God’s universal love to all his creatures, and that he will finally restore all those of them that are miserable to happiness, is a polar truth. It leads to truths upon all subjects, more especially upon the subject of government. It establishes the equality of mankind—it abolishes the punishment of death for any crime—and converts jails into houses of repentance and reformation (Howe, p. 58).
For Rush, there was an obvious link between the theology of reconciliation and the practice of rehabilitation in the criminal justice system. This line of reasoning persisted into the next generation and beyond. When the newly organized Universalist Reform Association articulated its priorities in 1857, one of its four categories of concerns had to do with jails and prisons. This included items such as capital punishment, debtor’s prison, and the incarceration of people with mental illness (Howe, p. 52). On through the years, Universalists continued to apply their theology to this group of social issues.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship’s ministry to members in prison is one of today’s touchstones from that heritage. Members in prison receive newsletters, borrow from the lending library, take correspondence adult religious education classes, and can get matched with a non-incarcerated UU pen pal. Just like members in brick-and-mortar churches, prisoner members are seeking support and acceptance for their spiritual paths, which may not be in the mainstream where they live. We believe they should have that support. I wish that weren’t a radical idea.
What would it mean in our criminal justice system today if we assumed that every incarcerated person were a human being of inherent worth and dignity, one of God’s children, no matter whether they had committed a crime or what that crime might be? What would it mean for practices like solitary confinement, the shackling of female prisoners during childbirth, and the vanishing allowance of family visits?
I believe that Universalism calls us to imagine a moral order based on restoration rather than vengeance. I bring up the example of criminal justice for its own sake and also because it illustrates one of the challenges of Universalism: can we trust that a person’s humanity is unconditional? Or is it revoked in the wake of evil actions?
These questions matter, even if none of us had contact with either end of the criminal justice system, because these same questions apply to all of us. Am I ever in danger of losing my inherent worth? For theists, we might ask if there is anything we could do to lose God’s love. The Universalist answer is no. The power of love is larger than that. Evil is not some kind of infectious disease that we can avoid, or that we must avoid in order to be part of the human family. We will make mistakes. We all have learning and reconciling to do. Human worth abides.
When Becky suggested a Universalist response to our missing tent, it changed my whole outlook for that incident. Instead of viewing it as an instance of purely bad people victimizing purely good people, I could see that everyone who was touched by that situation was in need of compassion. That experience helps me to be gentle with myself when I think I’ve become unacceptable as a person. Rather than giving up on myself or others, the larger love asks me to make amends and to begin again.
Larger Hope
Once we’ve had some practice imagining a moral code governed by the power of love, it’s time to channel that spirit. Justice, equity, and compassion begin to take shape here. As you may recall from last week, justice, equity, and compassion comprise the second of the seven UU principles and our theme of the month. Last week I made an analogy of this principle to neighborliness. Another way to think about it is manifesting the larger hope.
The hope of Universalism is larger than individual spiritual salvation. Everyone is saved. Boom. Done. This hope is larger than wishing for more understanding of our faith. Grasping the meaning of unfailing Divine love is a lifelong journey. That’s OK, we have time to accomplish some other things on the way. So if the work of the church is not about winning souls, and it’s not limited to sharpening our minds or spreading news, what is the point? What is our mission? I would say that the larger hope, bigger than these goals, is creating visible, tangible, lasting forms of love for this world.
The mission of hope is what Gordon McKeeman describes in today’s opening reading. He writes of “a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities.”
It is, he says, “Anyone’s Ministry.”
It’s easy to lose sight of the larger hope by focusing on smaller desires like consistency. I think this is an obstacle faced by every movement, and Universalists are no exception. According to Charles Howe, Universalists after the Civil War had lost some steam. One possible reason was that the doctrine of universal salvation wasn’t controversial anymore; one could subscribe to a theology without Hell and be content in a number of mainline churches. Sharing the freedom that came with universal salvation wasn’t enough anymore.
As the Universalists gathered in 1896 for an interfaith meeting, their spokesperson presented his brethren and sistren with a choice. Howe describes how “J. M. Pullman … repeated an oft-quoted challenge, variously attributed: ‘You Universalists,’ he said, ‘have squatted on the biggest word in the English language. Now the world is beginning to want that big word, and you Universalists must either improve the property or move off the premises!’” (Howe, p. 80)
At the time of Pullman’s call, the “property” of Universalism was already being “improved” by projects on the local level. I’ll give two examples. Joseph Fletcher Jordan’s mission in Suffolk, Virginia, included a day school and night classes for hundreds of African Americans, as well as a chapel. By the mid-twentieth century, the school became a daycare center, nursery school, and community center known as the Jordan Neighborhood House (Howe, p. 86).
Similarly, Hannah Jewett Powell’s ministry in Pigeon River Valley, North Carolina, started with her call to the church in 1921. That ministry grew to include “a thriving Sunday school, a kindergarten, a summer school, adult evening courses, and an infirmary” (Howe, p. 87). In both cases, denominationally supported local missions provided hope for people on educational and social levels as well as spiritual.
These anecdotes are relevant because I believe Unitarian Universalism is facing an opportunity of mission once again. I treasure the creedless nature of our faith. Each one of us has the freedom and the responsibility to come to terms with what we must believe in order to live authentically. It’s a welcome surprise to many that a stable, historic religion promotes that freedom. I think our mission is that plus something more. We need to establish and sustain congregations in places where people long for acceptance and encouragement, AND we need to establish ministries that provide hope in more tangible ways. Our radical love for humanity and our stubborn loyalty to this world are too rich of a legacy to keep within the status quo. The only responsible thing to do with these gifts is to shape them into forms that can we can share beyond ourselves.
A congregation like ours can do some of that shaping with social service outreach and welcoming new members. If we want to dream big, we join together with other UU’s and other congregations. Chalice Lighters is one way to do that. Growth is not about co-opting people to help us maintain our congregations. It’s not about organizational survival. Growth is what happens when we take seriously the thrill, the responsibility, the blessing of doing more ministry more effectively with more people. As McKeeman says, we are all called to develop “a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities.”
Our family responded to a Chalice Lighter call about a year ago that spoke to this “quality of relationship.” The Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had purchased a 100-year-old building in an “ethnically diverse and economically depressed neighborhood” to use as a second location. Funds from Chalice Lighters would help them renovate the building for safety and building codes, making it a hospitable place for outreach to the local community as well as another place for the congregation to gather and worship. The church envisioned their additional location as a host for multicultural events and a home base for social justice and revitalization projects. (Source: The Spark: The newsletter of the JPD Growth Committee, Fall 2009.)
I traded e-mail with my colleague Howard Dana, who is the (Senior) Minister of the Unitarian Church in Harrisburg. I told him how inspired I was with their vision of relationship with their local community. (The accountability and quality of relationship reminded me of an urban version of our neighborly concern in Harford County.) I asked him to tell me more about their ministry on Market Street.
One of the points he made in his reply is that they bought the church in the city both to extend their mission work AND to have more space for themselves. He wrote that “the Market Street church is NOT a satellite” and that both buildings are used completely. Although they took a risk, he reported that “The addition of the Market Street Church has enthused the church’s leaders especially and we are thriving for the adventure.” I’m grateful that Chalice Lighters gave us a way to make a small donation that was part of a bigger effort from across the region.
If we deeply believe that every person matters, creating lasting ministries that feed bodies, minds, and souls is a spiritual practice. The larger hope connects feet and wheels and hands to the power of the larger love.
Larger Faith
In one of the congregations I served before this one, a colleague and I designed a Coming of Age program that included eighth, ninth, and tenth-graders from three congregations. Coming of Age is the UU equivalent of bar or bat mitzvah or confirmation. Late one evening, we were sitting together surrounded by posters depicting Transcendentalists and suffragists and civil rights heroes. The youth noticed that the famous UU’s we talk about tend to cluster in geography and time, forming cohorts of heroes. One of the youth asked me, “Who do you think will be the next group to change UUism?”
“You guys,” I said without hesitation.
I honestly believe this. Youth and young adults are the present and the future of our faith. We need their leadership now, and our world will continue to need their ministry after we are gone. If we successfully transmit the gift of our heritage, youth and young adults will be empowered to continue expanding the larger hope. For that to work, and for youth and young adults to have the sustenance they need for their own spirits, we have to set up places where they can minister and be ministered to.
As you may have noticed, young people are highly mobile. We have no idea where people in their teens and twenties are going to be living in five or ten years. It’s important to shore up our own congregation for the long term here, and we can also help build and sustain congregations wherever Unitarian Universalism is needed. To me, this is an issue of compassion for UUs who wander, who are weary and seeking rest. Whether the young people I know and love end up doing environmental restoration in the Blue Ridge mountains or marine science on the Delaware shore or mentoring youth in Trenton, I want there to be a UU congregation nearby where they can find comfort and fellowship. (Incidentally, there have been Chalice Lighter calls to support congregations near all three of those places.)
This is the challenge of the larger faith. We have to have faith that emerging Unitarian Universalists will take up the legacy of this movement. They will lead an evolving and changing movement, larger in scope than we can imagine. We have to have faith that, as Unitarian Universalism grows to sustain more ministry more effectively with more people, we will retain the values that are most important. Meanwhile, we might see ways of doing church differently.
Organizations like Chalice Lighters give us a chance to try different rental and real estate arrangements in order to plant churches where they are needed. Services might take place in unusual places and times. Worship might look very different from what we are used to. Encouraging the idea of church to stretch beyond our horizons is a discipline of the larger faith.
Conclusion
Universalism is a spiritual path of fierce love, compassionate commitments, and open minds. Universalists don’t need to worry about the afterlife. We need not store up heavenly treasures. This frees us to focus on our time, treasure, and loyalty on this world. We create sustainable ministries of justice and houses of worship as concrete forms of the larger love, the larger hope, and the larger faith.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
