NATIONS UNITED

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

22 October 2000

Way back when, during the first so-called Great Awakening in the middle of the Eighteenth century, the ancestors of our Unitarian movement found themselves rejecting what they saw as excessive emotionalism overtaking their neighbors. They declared all those unseemly behaviors associated with the revival movement to be ungodly. Of course our proto-Unitarians were challenged, "What then, is godly?" Their response was the beginning of our spiritual way. They said "The human mind is godly, reason is godly." At the very beginning of our spiritual movement, we identified reason as a sacred path.

Out of that signal event, I would say our Unitarian Universalist faith has always had a clear anthropology. Ours is essentially an investigation into the nature of the human person. The concerns of our theologians, indeed of our common spiritual lives, have all been about a clear and unblinking examination of how we as human beings perceive the world. And then from there of all that might mean. Our work has been to extrapolate a reasonable explanation of our existence within a natural universe. Now this is important: what we’ve found is at once spiritually satisfying and intellectually coherent.

There really is something wonderful here. As I read our history, into the teachings of our forebearers, it really seems to me we’ve stumbled upon some genuine secrets to the universe. Or, at the very least, we’ve discerned some of the authentic workings of our human condition. This is a worthy enterprise, have no doubt. Our liberal religious way is concerned with the real world and how we can engage it meaningfully. And we’ve come a long way in that work.

Within our relentless examination of the human condition, this is some considerable part of what we’ve found. At bottom our most profound human need is dual. We know the individual is precious, is unique, is never to be repeated. We understand this reality of our unique identity as persons from the bottom of our hearts, from the depths of our intellectual integrity.

But also, we’ve found we cannot stop there. Our teachers and spiritual ancestors have pushed us to continue the examination. In this relentless consideration of what is, we’ve noticed how this precious individuality of ours exists only within the context of others. We are shaped. We are formed. We birth out of a grand mix of events. And we continue to exist only within the nesting of those events.

Perhaps it would be better said to suggest we are woven beings. You and I are woven out of our genes and our many experiences. We are woven out of our nations and the many rhythms of this beautiful and dangerous planet. We are made up of the stuff of this world. And so, ultimately, we all belong to a single family, common and wonderful as dirt.

Now something follows our seeing this aspect of our reality. In our noticing this, in our noticing how intimately we are connected, each of us to the other, and all of this to this planet, we can extrapolate some sense of meaning. The great quest of spiritual longing, I suggest, has to do with a deeply held human desire to belong.

Before words we know in our bones and marrow that we do belong to something. The question really is simply to what? I feel much of the dislocation; the sadness of our human condition comes when we don’t understand what it is that we truly belong to. Here as we find our belonging is to the world, and to each other, we discover a certain joy. And, at the same time we discover some obligations.

I suggest in our quest for meaning and purpose, we unearth some consequences to this twin truth: that we are absolutely unique and that we belong deeply profoundly truly to one another. To deny one aspect of this reality is to miss everything. To deny our individuality or to deny our commonality is to set up all the tyrannies of spirit that have swept through history, crushing people, ravaging the environment and enslaving so many in the name of a partial good, the one or the many. This is a deeply important point. To set up a false dichotomy of individual or community alone is to set in play all the evils of our lives.

And there are evils. We don’t need to hypothesize some personification of evil to see the terrible things that are going on in the world. Just turn on the evening news. Greed, hatred and ignorance are horrific things that live within human consciousness, and which play out in our human lives. To deny their reality, to pretend that all is always well, is to give the forces of disorder, of greed, of hatred, of ignorance, undue power. But there is an alternative. To engage the world and our human hearts clearly, to engage the full range of reality, to remember reason and heart, is the way to liberation, to peace, and to joy.

Now I believe we Unitarian Universalists may have a little better handle on the examination of this full reality than might many others. For the most part, I think this is true. Particularly, our embrace of reason has opened a new way into the heart. Our spiritual path is one of enormous possibility, of hope for our common humanity, and for this planet.

But, really the intuition we hold, is fundamentally human. If our insight into the preciousness of the individual and the wonder of community be true, then folk should be able to find it naturally, and across cultures. And, I suggest we do. For instance, we find it in the example of today’s children’s story, William Steig’s wonderful parable Amos & Boris.

And among the institutions of human society we find it as the inspiration of the United Nations. Here the intimations of the precious individual and the many possibilities held within our acknowledgement of deeply understood relationships is given concrete expression. Of course, the UN is a human institution and in that gathering our best mixes up with our worst. And choices are always open. As with our own liberal spirituality that acknowledges we can foul up, we can fail as well as succeed; we see in the UN the great mix of nobility and failure.

This I believe is very important. We need to see the whole picture, if we really hope to be successful, if we really hope to understand that sense of meaning, and to experience our desire for justice. So the UN becomes a case history of our hopes running up into our needs and our fears. Also, as we engage the real world, where our choices can lead to evil as well as to good, we need, we desperately need institutions like the UN. Here the rubber meets the road; our ideals find their actualization.

I suggest as we hope to further unravel the threads of relationship, to understand the reality of our lives, we can do little better than to look at the workings of this profound and complex organization that our nations have attempted to weave into our international conscience. This really is a spiritual enterprise. I hope as we do this reflecting, we will see a little more into the nature of our own hearts. And, a little more than that: I hope in doing this we can see beyond despair at the seeming endless folly of the human heart, into a reality which is much grander, much more complex, and ultimately much more hopeful than otherwise could ever be so. Here we see how we can choose the good, to love the individual and to cherish our communities of support.

The United Nations was established on the 24th of October 1945. So, in two days it will be fifty-five years old, possibly just coming into its full maturity. The first roster of the UN included 51 nations, who committed together to their primary objective of preserving peace through international cooperation and collective security. Today UN membership totals 189 countries, nearly all the nations of the globe. The commitments of these gathered nations, now goes to the very heart of suffering, and the possibilities of human greatness. This is a massive undertaking, noble in its conception, and practical in its manifestation.

Small wonder, that we Unitarian Universalists have been attracted to the UN from its inception. We, most of us, see here the manifestation of our most profound intuitions. So, of course, we have long had our own Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office. At first it was simply one more of the many official NGO’s, non-governmental agencies, allowed to monitor events, but beyond informal lobbying, little more. However, since 1997 the UU UNO has had a special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, and now has a formal voice in many important issues.

They are important issues. As the UU-UNO states. "World problems transcend national borders. The UN and its agencies can count among their successes worldwide improvements in literacy, health, housing and nutrition as well as unique communication facilitation." The broadside continues. "But much remains to be done.

"Critical issues remaining on the UN agenda include environmental degradation; AIDS; the rights of women, children, and minorities; the production and transfer of arms; and, as always, peace-making, peace-keeping and peace-building. Since the end of the Cold War, hundreds of thousands have suffered torture, displacement and death in local border disputes; yet without the constant efforts of the UN’s mediators, those terrible tolls would have been much higher."

The UN has unwaveringly spoken for the great intuitions of the precious individual and the web of relationships. Here, I really believe, we find the manifestation of our greatest hope and our deepest analysis. The individual is precious. And everyone is joined together in a vast web of relationships. And the UN, the UN is perhaps the premiere organization speaking these truths to the powers of the world.

There is no doubt the UN needs reform. All organizations are flawed from their inception. But, on balance, this particular organization has shown how good can prevail, how justice can find its expression among human society, and how we can unite to preserve and sustain this precious planet spinning through the great night.

Personally, I’m deeply pulled by the calls of human rights and the needs of children, women and the displaced. As they say at their homepage, the UN’s "Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the (UN) General Assembly in 1948, sets out basic rights and freedoms to which all women and men are entitled—among them the right to life, liberty and nationality, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to work, to be educated, to take part in government."

Here I think we find the same intimations that formed our nation and our free religion. Here the Enlightenment ideals of human reason and justice for all are discovered to be common longings among human society. Here the great intimations of the preciousness of the individual and the web of relationship are given clear and unambiguous expression. And here we find action being taken.

The United Nations has been awarded the Nobel Peace five times. An additional six Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded to UN mediators, commissioners, and one Secretary-General, Dag Hammaraskjold. The current Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been a tireless worker, both for world justice and peace, and also for the necessary constant internal reforms of such a large organization. Right now a great organization has the great leader it needs. We are all blessed in these perilous times that this is true.

UNICEF, and its ongoing work for the rights of children, the Division for the Advancement of Women and particularly its Commission on the Status of Women, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, represent three UN organizations that have done possibly more for the advancement of human need than any other trans-national activities in history. This is astonishing work.

The list of United Nations activities for the advancement of the human condition among the nations is a litany of justice and love in human affairs. When I was researching this sermon I went to our Unitarian Universalist webpage and did a search on UN references. There were 116 relevant documents on site. The deep and profound work of the UN is an expression of our liberal religious perspective. No less. Of this I have no doubt.

Today, as we sit in this wonderful sanctuary, I hope we can see how the ideals that have formed our religious society are deeply human ideals, common as the precious dirt that births life. The goals of love and justice that imbue our UU insight into the preciousness of the individual and the wonder of community have a real and visible manifestation in this gathering of nations, the United Nations.

I hope we will support its good work, its constant reformation, and its reaching out to the needs of suffering humanity and our beautiful planet. As we do this, I think we honor the reason our spiritual ancestors discerned at the heart of the godly. As we embrace this work as ours, we find the means for good to prevail in a world of choices. And surely, surely that is the godly action to which our ancestors called us.

Amen.