The Joy of UCM—Bring-A-Friend Sunday
Who are we?
One thing that is always true of every Unitarian Universalist community, including this one, is that the congregation is fluid, with folk who are members for decades and folk members for moments. Folk trying out the community. Folk creating the community in various ways, with various intentions. A lot of variety. Each of us enters with varying understandings of our own spiritual and religious beliefs. And each of us settled here brings varying awareness of the history, theology, and values of Unitarian Universalism.
Contrary to what some people believe, Unitarian Universalism is a religion. Religion concerns itself with the worthy but elusive realities of our human existence—where do we come from, what are we, where are we going? Religion is a place and a way to set our minds to what is beyond any one of us and all of us. In some ways, ours is a religion full of contrarians, folk who found other religions too constraining or traumatizing or senseless and illogical. We can be contrarian, but hopefully not just for the sake of being cantankerous. Through time, Unitarians and Universalists and Unitarian Universalists have, like the very cells of our own bodies, evolved in response to the realities of the world around us. Ours is an adaptive faith. And for individual Unitarian Universalists, religion is a journey, both a place and a way to explore meaning and purpose, in companionship with other seekers. So let me give you some highlights of where Unitarian Universalism came from and what it offers us. These are just some teasers, and perhaps they will intrigue you, inviting you to learn more.
Unitarian Universalism was not always one religion, but both strands were once fully Christian. Unitarianism and Universalism were both once Christian heresies, breaks with the orthodoxies defined by the authority of the Catholic Church.
The controversies can be summed up simply: God is One and All are Saved. In other words, these Unitarian heretics believed was that the trinity God as father, son, and holy spirit—was not scriptural and so not necessary. Universalists believe that God would never damn any of his creation. Now these notions—the Unity of God and the Universality of God’s Love—they existed from the very beginning of the Christian faith, but they were not beliefs that prevailed, and so those who held them were always perceived as outsiders.
Over time, these heretical beliefs solidified into practices with philosophical underpinnings. We trace our modern history to 16 th Century Transylvania, where for three short years a Unitarian King ruled with deliberate tolerance for all Christian practices. But the power of orthodox Christianity resided a bit west of that kingdom, and those authorities made martyrs of some of those heretics, martyrs who eventually became our sources of inspiration for change and resistence. Notably in the 16th Century, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake by John Calvin. And the founder of the Transylvanian Church, Francis David, died imprisoned after the death of tolerant King John Sigismund. And in the 20 th Century, the Rev. James Reeb was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan while marching in Selma with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You might say that ours is a faith worth dying for.
But it is a faith that changes with the times and with the needs of its faithful. It is a religion which confronts fixed ideas and which remains inclusive of all beliefs about the holy.
It is a religion which takes words and concepts about which some of us feel itchy words like “God” or “holy” or “prayer” or “worship”—and re-inscribes them in ways more meaningful and suitable. And so “God” becomes god of many names and no name or simply mystery. “Holy” becomes that which is worthy of reverence and awe. “Prayer” becomes attention and awareness. “Worship” reverts to its oldest meaning, worth-shaping, giving form to that which is most worth paying attention to.
When we enter a Unitarian Universalist congregation, we can expect some need for translation of these old words, words that bind us to each other regardless of what we believe about the holy, words that bind us to our histories and our pasts and those of others in this vast world. It’s a faith that puts a priority not on right answers and definitions but on communication about what we know, feel, and mean when we use or don’t use certain concepts. Through our definition of these words, we each give who we are, we receive the same from others, and by this we live.
Who do we hope to be?
Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal religion—we do not have one set belief about the holy, what the nature of god is, if there is a god. That is a matter of individual conscience and exploration. But we do share values and aspirations, a set of calls or lures that inspire and motivate and fulfill us. We affirm and promote, individually and communally, our Eight Principles. We draw for inspiration and guidance Six Sources, if not more, and especially rely on science and reason. We privilege our own direct experience of the world and of what we read. And we agree, we covenant, to ways of being together that respect the sanctity of each of us as we navigate our differences and build a diverse community. A couple of bookmarks in your hymnal map all this out, and you are invited to take them with you as you like.
A diversity that mirrors the reality of the natural and the built world. A unity of respect for individual belief. A universal understanding that we are all worthy. This is what Unitarian Universalism is all about. You heard the words of members of this congregation about what UCM means to them. In their own words, how they grow in compassion and social awareness in companionship with each other. You heard in your own words how this community expresses and encourages love, how gathering for spiritual centering enables a passion and a fortitude for the work of good in its many forms out in the wider world.
Diversity, unity, worth: this is what Unitarian Universalism is all about.
And Love is at the Center: not love as in romance, but Love as an action that brings hope into a hopeless world. In the words of the Rev. David Schwartz: “There is a love holding you. There is a love holding all that we love. There is a love holding all. We rest in this love. We are healed by that love. It is in us, and between us, and beyond us. And we are called to make that love real in fact in our lives and in our world. All this is what I would preach with a megaphone on a streetcorner. Our most important heresy: you are beloved by whatever name you call the holy. You are worthy, by whatever path you take to arrive here. And we are wasting our lives when we argue about what name to call the wordless instead of spending our days living that love into being. This is why a Christian and a Buddhist and a humanist and a pagan and a religious naturalist all share our pews without argument. Among all our different theologies, we share the same heresy: love at the center.”
We come together for community and companionship. We come together for ritual and ceremony. We come together to learn and to deepen spiritually. We stay together because we have learned that none of us can accomplish much on our own—within our lives, our families, our communities, in the wide, harsh, hurting world. This religious tradition offers us freedom to explore and learn. It’s built upon diversity. And all of us, any of us can change and transform as we are called, within a community of safety and friendship. We are called to share the good news of love. “Hold us, O Grout. Gather us in, through time and space, and make all our broken pieces whole in community. In our multiplicity, make us one. From each of our jagged edges, give us the shape of a communal beauty.” May it ever be so. And, Amen!
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