The Other "U"

Sermon delivered February 17, 2013 at Unitarian Society of Germantown.

“Give them not Hell, but hope and courage.” Universalist John Murray’s famous words encapsulate the essential message of early Universalism, and Universalists have continued to this day to proclaim a belief in a God of limitless love. How does the “good news” of Universalism inform the living of our Unitarian Universalist faith in our times?

Listen to a podcast of this sermon.

Readings

from Clarence R. Skinner

“The old ideas of a God who created a spiritual aristocracy, who maintained partiality, whose sympathies were not as wide as the whole of humanity, are patently inadequate to meet the new needs…The Universalist idea of God is that of a universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love.”

from feminist theologian Carter Heyward

“We touch this strength, our power, who we are in the world, when we are most fully in touch with one another and with the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, in so doing, we are participants in ongoing incarnation, bringing god to life in the world.

For god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love—provided we mean by ‘love’ not just simply a sentiment or unfocused feeling but rather that which is just, mutually empowering, and co-creative.”

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This month our spiritual theme is God. Not a small topic to be taking on. I wonder whether it’s strategic or merely coincidental that this theme falls on the shortest month of the year.

No, the theme of God is not a small one. Volumes have been written about God and the debate over the existence of God will probably never die out.

Our religious tradition provides us with many sources to draw from in reflecting on this topic: direct experience, words and deeds of prophetic people, wisdom from the world’s religions.

And, two obvious sources are found in our name – Unitarian Universalism.

Thomas Starr King was famous for his bridging of these two wings of our merged faith. And he is claimed to have contributed to an often-quoted aphorism: Universalists believed God was too good to damn them forever, and Unitarians believed they were too good to be damned.

Other such statements exist:

Unitarians use their heads, Universalists use their hearts.

Unitarianism was for the elites, and Universalism for the populists and the downtrodden.

And, as with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Universalism, or the other “U,” is a part of our religious history and legacy not often looked into or probed for the religious truths it might hold that are relevant to us in our time.

So today I want to explore with you how this part of our tradition and its beliefs about God can make a difference in how we live now.

At the time of its emergence in the United States over two hundred years ago, the main theological claim of Universalism was this: all will be saved through God’s everlasting love.

This may sound obvious, or simply irrelevant, to our ears today, but at the time, and still to some conservative religious communities, this claim was quite revolutionary.

Many early Universalists were kicked out of or left their Christian churches because of their adoption of universalist beliefs.

George de Benneville began preaching a universalist message in the 18^th century in Europe and was nearly beheaded for preaching to an underground group of Protestants in what was then Normandy. He eventually made his way right here to Germantown, Pennsylvania attracted by word of the colony’s religious tolerance.

Elhanan Winchester was the pastor of a Baptist church in Philadelphia in 1781 and was kicked out for his newfound universalist beliefs.

John Murray may be a bit more familiar to you. The conference and retreat center that our men’s group regularly goes to is named for him. Murray converted to universalism in England while serving as a Methodist minister and left that religious tradition and set sail for America in 1770, became shipwrecked on the New Jersey shore, launched his preaching career, and eventually made his way to Massachusetts.

These men and the Universalist men and women who came after them early in the movement were religious rebels willing to speak out for the sake of their revolutionary truth that all will be saved.

This conclusion was not the only radical truth universalists held fast to. Universalists could make the case for universal salvation because of their unwavering confidence in a sovereign but loving God. They held an absolute faith that God’s love was an indestructible and everlasting force present for all humankind.

Universalism grew and developed over time becoming influenced by new philosophies and theologies along the way.

But over the years it has held onto one basic truth: God is love.

By reimagining who God is, the Universalists placed love front and center in our religious language as Unitarian Universalists. And, love remains a term that we UUs continually come back to when discussing our religious values. That is our Universalist legacy.

And, I don’t think you need to believe in the same god those early universalists did to embrace this legacy today.

I personally do not believe that god is a sovereign deity who exists way above or beyond this world with the power to control our fate. The early universalist confidence and optimism in a loving but supreme deity does not resonate with me.

God, for me, is the name I use to describe the vast mystery and spirit of life that connects all beings. It is, to use Paul Tillich’s words, the ground of my being. The ground of all being.

Clarence Skinner’s more modernized description of the Universalist idea of God finds more resonance with me. He describes the Universalist idea of God as “a universal, impartial and immanent spirit whose nature is love.”

It is universal meaning present to all people and all creation.

It is impartial, regarding all equally, and it is immanent – right here with us.

And the nature of this God is love.

The feminist theologian Carter Heyward speaks in a similar way about god. For her this is god with a small “g.” She says that, “god is nothing other than the eternally creative source of our relational power, our common strength, a god whose movement is to empower, bringing us into our own together, a god whose name in history is love.”

This notion of god takes god out of the heavens, out of hell, and into our human lives. We are the creators of that godlike force present between us.

“a god whose name in history is love”

The Universalists began our journey down a truly radical path of belief regarding salvation and god. Theirs is a radical legacy. But a legacy can simply become forgotten history if we don’t live it out in the present. The founding universalists took those first radical steps and we must determine what ours will be today.

And, I believe that we will only discover this if we attempt with all our hearts to take that Universalist truth that the nature of God is love and make that truth real and visible to the world.

We must put that truth into action.

Many in our faith community have already been doing this.

A recent example is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Standing on the Side of Love campaign. For nearly a decade, the phrase “standing on the side of love” has been the slogan for our denomination’s support of marriage equality. And, the big yellow banner that stretches across our front entrance on Lincoln Drive proclaims that this congregation is standing on the side of love.

The denomination formalized “Standing on the Side of Love” as a public advocacy campaign in 2009 in response to a shooting in a Unitarian Universalist congregation the previous year.

Some of you may recall this tragic event. One Sunday morning, the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee was gathered for worship. The children were in the middle of performing a play when a man by the name of Jim Adkisson walked into the sanctuary with a semiautomatic shotgun and began shooting. Police arrived within minutes but not before he had killed two people and injured six others. The congregation was an active and well known force in that part of the state for equal rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community as well as for women and people of color. Just two years before the shooting, the congregation’s youth group had joined a group of LGBTQ youth in organizing a demonstration in a local park after two same-sex teens were harassed for holding hands. The shooter that morning had left a letter in his car describing his hatred of the liberal movement in general and same-gender loving people in particular.

The Tennessee Valley UU Congregation was stepping out boldly to make real and visible the truth that the nature of God is love.

Here is another standing on the side of love story:

When Arizona SB1070, the now infamous anti-immigrant legislation,

became state law two years ago, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix organized a march and rally in protest of the law. Hundreds of local congregants participated streaming through downtown Phoenix wearing those famous bright yellow t-shirts pronouncing that they were Standing on the Side of Love. Well, there wasn’t much else to identify who this crowd of yellow, shirted folks was. And so, other participants in the march and rally started calling out, “You’re the ‘love people.’

Make real and visible the truth that the nature of god is love.

Love is present and available to us always. But we must choose over and over again to make it real for ourselves and others.

Carter Heyward says, “We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called 'love'.”

We must choose to make love real and visible.

Making it real means making it concrete. Not allowing love to remain sentimental but making it active and effective.

We are not in Knoxville, Tennessee or Phoenix, Arizona. The forces working against love may not be as obvious to us. Acts of hatred may not be as blatant. We may have to think a bit more critically and reflect a bit more deeply on how in our personal lives, in our religious community and in the broader world we make it real and visible that the nature of god, or life’s ultimate meaning, is love.

I invite you to take a moment to reflect on this now.

What is one way that you can make real and visible the truth that life’s ultimate meaning, or the nature of god, is love?

And, I invite you to take a brief moment to share this with one other person near you.

This may mean being a loving presence for someone in your life facing a difficult situation.

It may mean going out of your way to meet someone you typically avoid because of what you perceive to be true about them.

It may mean showing up at an upcoming rally or demonstration for immigrant rights or in support of public education.

The radical journey those early Universalists began for us continues today as we choose again and again to make real, visible and concrete, a god whose name in history is love.

Closing Words

from Universalist minister, Reverend Elizabeth Strong:

Where the heart stirs, there moves Universalism.

The center holds us within its transformative power of love. We know with a wholeness of spirit
that God is love,
that life is good,
that people are created for goodness out of love,
that in the final reckoning
all shall be one.
When we hurt, when we are broken, when we become separated:
Let us seek the center which holds,
Let us remember the goodness for which we were created.
Let us be open to the transformative power of love,
that moves with the heart of life
and be whole once again.