THE EPIC OF UNIVERSALISM

A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford
25 August 2002

A few weeks ago when I spoke of Unitarianism, I suggested that the great religions tend to fall into two broad categories. Those who were here at the time may remember I also hesitated a bit in making such distinctions. These divisions I chose to posit are merely suggestive of style, as all religions seem to contain elements of both perspectives. Still, I really believe so long as one doesn’t hold them too tightly reflecting on these types can be useful.

The one type of religion is revelatory. This is the faith delivered to our ancestors. Here we have the powerful and compelling stories of God intervening in history, delivering people from slavery, directly giving moral instruction, creating covenants and sending divine children to reconcile suffering humanity. Here the cosmos is of two parts, the one heavenly, the other earthly. The purpose of faith, of religious enterprise within this kind of religion is simply acknowledging the gift and humbly accepting it.

The other great stream of faith is about awakening. It suggests that our minds have been clouded, we’re confused, perhaps sleeping away our lives. But, within the ways of awakening, there is the belief that at some core place, we have it within our bodies to know. Here the world is seen as of a piece, like some precious cloth extending the breadth and depth of the cosmos.

Within this understanding we all are woven together within that cloth, strands or perhaps more properly for the usefulness of this metaphor, the meeting of various strands, genes, history, environment. Within this cosmic unity, you and I are woven out of each other. And that speaks directly to the fundamental understanding of this perspective, where the cosmos is a unity. And the purpose of faith of religious enterprise within this kind of religion is waking up, coming to knowing for our selves.

I said before that Unitarianism was a quintessential faith of awakening. More than anything the Unitarian perspective is about the mind. So it’s shadow is the mere accumulation of facts one piled upon the other, or even worse, scientism, where the methods of research themselves become a substitute for understanding. But at its best it is about wisdom, the direct and divine knowing. The Unitarian way is one of never turning from what presents, always looking, always opening to what is.

And Universalism is another way of knowing, another path to wisdom, to awakening. To paint the picture broadly, Universalism is about opening the heart and knowing through love. If the founders of North American Unitarianism were devoted to a critical analysis of the scriptures, and out of that, to the cultivation of a moral life as its fundamental expression, the Universalist perspective was ecstatic and mystical.

There are no miraculous stories about the founders of the Unitarian way. They tended to be stalwarts of the establishment, people like Charles Chauncy, that stern and formidable intellect who occupied the pulpit of the First Parish in Boston for most of the eighteenth century. Instead our founding Universalists were itinerant preachers often perceived as disrupters of public order. These Universalists offended the sensibilities of our Unitarian forebearers ever as much as they did the orthodox.

These early Universalists were mostly people of no social consequence. They were also mystics, for whom the central experience was one of conversion, a direct communion with the overwhelming love of God. Caleb Rich, Elhanan Winchester, George de Benneville and the one exception to being socially marginal, Benjamin Rush, were each independent founders and leaders of this movement of the heart.

Rush was an example of the intellectual aspects of the Universalist impulse, which while secondary did exist. As a physician he is remembered as both an early advocate for hygiene and scientific method and for holding onto bleeding as a medical practice far beyond when it should have been defended. He was also an early abolitionist and political agitator. He gave his friend Thomas Paine the title for the pamphlet, "Common Sense." And as most of us in this room probably know, Benjamin Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

For a little more conventional example of our earliest Universalist leadership however, please look at the cover of today’s order of service. The caption says, "the founder of Universalism." Now, that’s not actually true. John Murray was one of the many people who wandered and preached, cajoled and called people to another way of awakening. But, his story is write large, and is illustrative of how this path manifested in the eighteenth century, so at least "a founder..."

Born and raised in England imbued to his very bones with the terrible but powerful Calvinist Anglicanism of that day, his first radical move was to become a Methodist. Our contemporary United Methodism, with which most of us are probably at least superficially familiar, is one of the "main line denominations." Today Methodism is considered, for the most part, a liberal denomination. But, that’s not the faith we’re speaking of here.

Rather consider an especially rigorous faith, demanding much, in fact, the whole of one’s life. But also picture a faith that gave much comfort, calling for a movement of the spirit within the lives of individuals. This was a lively religion with an ecstatic aspect, offering some sense of a direct connection to the divine. Murray became an elder within this kind of faith.

In his autobiography, Records of the Life of John Murray, he describes how he and some other elders of the chapel he belonged to went to see a young woman who had fallen under the influence of the English Universalist James Relly. In an absolutely delightful account he describes how he and the other elders were unable to answer her questions and assertions regarding any reconciliation of God’s love with any concept of eternal punishment.

At some point in this losing argument Murray says he drew out his watch, discovered the time, announced his need to go on to a pressing appointment, and left as quickly as he could. "From this period," he wrote. "I myself carefully avoided every Universalist, and most cordially did I hate them." But, obviously, he didn’t stop thinking about them, and in fact he began studying Relly’s great theological reflection published in 1749, Union.

Eventually Murray’s heart pulled him away from any idea of eternal punishment, and toward that complete reconciliation of the world and God that is the core insight of the Universalist way. He began to preach, and it seems with some success. But his life was also marked by terrible tragedies. He was imprisoned for debt, his wife and his son both died. And eventually he decided to leave for the chance at a new life in America.

A storm forced his ship down the coast from its intended destination in New York. They ended up anchoring at Good-Luck Point in New Jersey, stopping to take on water and provisions. And he met the farmer Thomas Potter at that place. Potter was deeply religious, constantly seeking, and a few years before began holding religious meetings in his living room.

I should say "their living room." Potter’s wife, Mary, eventually tired of strangers stomping into their living room, had instructed her husband to build a chapel at the farm. Now Potter had had a dream, and after learning Murray was a preacher, told the Englishman that he needed to preach the new good news first at the chapel, which, in fact, had been built for him.

Murray resisted, saying he had left preaching behind him in England, and besides he needed to be back aboard ship as soon as the wind would allow them to sail out of the bay. Potter said, "The wind will never change, sir, until you have delivered to us, in that meeting-house, a message from God." And Potter was right.

So the good news of universal salvation was indeed preached at Good Luck Point on September 30th, 1770. No sooner than the sermon was preached, than the wind did indeed turn, and the passengers reboarded and sailed for New York. In fact this is just one story that might claim to be the beginnings of North American Universalism. But it seems to me so right that this way of the universal heart and its beginnings should be marked by miracles, even small ones. After all this way is about the greatest miracle of all: our astonishing ability to change, to turn from what was and seemed inevitable, to a new perspective.

So, what does this all mean for us in this room today? Originally Universalism turned on the question of Christian salvation, of whether God could bless a small part of creation with eternal joy and curse the greater multitude with eternal suffering. Universalism was a visceral rejection of a dreadful incomprehensible assertion, found within a deeply personal experience. And that experience for Universalists was a sense of an overwhelming divine love.

Over the years that sense of some overwhelming love that can only be called divine has shifted, mutated, and taken on new forms. For one salvation soon was seen as worked out here in this world. Universalists, called out of this experience of transformative love, were usually in the forefront of social change. So, perhaps of course, Universalists were the first to ordain women. And they were always more involved in abolition than were their theological cousins the Unitarians. Wherever there was hurt, they sought to heal.

And I suggest that love which they found to be their core principle is our guiding principle even today. So perhaps appropriately I find one of our contemporary poets; Mary Oliver in many ways expresses this Universalist perspective, best. Most of us here are familiar with her poem "Wild Geese."

"You do not have to be good./You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves./Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine./Meanwhile the world goes on./Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain/are moving across the landscapes,/over the prairies and the deep trees,/the mountains and the rivers./Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,/are heading home again./Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things."

So, in my last talk, I discussed how the Unitarian perspective moved from a vision of the universe as a machine, a clock to be taken apart and understood, to something visceral and animal. I suggested a grizzly bear. Alive, oh so alive. But, also something to be wary of. Here with the Universalist perspective we continue to see that living, that animal quality in our understanding of what is.

But, now, perhaps a wild goose, sailing in the sky, honking to us, calling to us. But, about what? I suggest that calling is to what we truly are, to an awakening to our true nature, our true heritage. And the mystery turns on love, on knowing the connections with our bodies as well as with our minds.

Thomas Starr King, who in the nineteenth century would be a Universalist minister called the Unitarian pulpit in San Francisco, would be asked, perhaps naturally, what was the difference between Unitarians and Universalists. He replied, "The Universalists believe God is too good to damn humanity. The Unitarians believe they are too good to be damned."

In that small joke we find something of the twin currents of awakening. Of course there are shadows. For the Unitarians perhaps it is arrogance. For the Universalists perhaps it is not being critical enough. But, each also offers a way into our own direct knowing of who and what we are. Each is about awakening from the dream of separation. Each is about how we can know for ourselves our true nature, our true heritage, our true possibility.

Wisdom and Compassion are the two strands of the way of awakening. The one is associated with that metaphorical reference point, the mind. The other is associated with that metaphorical reference point, the heart. So, another metaphor. Each, I suggest, is one side of the same coin. Reason and love. So, another metaphor. Like two eyes, allowing us to see clearly and with perspective.

This path we are on when we become Unitarian Universalists is a way that acknowledges the mystery of life and death. Reason and love, each an aspect of awakening as dynamic, as intimate, as terrible, as beautiful. It is a way that at one moment might see the cosmos as a grizzly bear and another as a wild goose.

Reason and love, at one moment cool and weighing, at the next ecstatic and a dance. This is the life of awakening itself; to whatever the mystery is presenting at that, at this very moment. This is the path of justice and peace; it is the way of seeing and acting.

And when we become Unitarian Universalists it is our path.

Amen.