Sermons 2003-04

Fleeing for Tarshish
November 16, 2003
Rev. Douglas Taylor

For years I had no idea what people were talking about when they mentioned GPS. About a year ago I had an opportunity to play with my father-in-law’s GPS, or Global Positioning System. These are fun little gadgets that tell you exactly where you are within 20 or 30 feet using latitude and longitude and then some of the more sophisticated ones will translate that to street names. These things are turning up in cars and in the belt pouches of high-tech hikers. What now fascinates me most is how these things work. I guessing there are several of you out there who could offer a course on how these work, but for those of you who don’t know, let me describe it briefly. There is a system of about two dozen satellites that were put into orbit spanning the whole planet for the purpose of airplane navigation. A Global Positioning System has a receiver in it which calculates your distance from three or four of these satellites. From that information, this little device can tell you where you are geographically.

Well, I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we had metaphysical versions of this device. What if we could create a little electronic toy that could tell you where you are spiritually. A Spiritual GPS: it would have great marketing value, especially around the holiday season, especially among family members! It seems to me a significant number of people find themselves in tight spots because they’ve made poor choices along the way. I think a spiritual GPS, or an SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, could help a lot of people with the art of making choices.

This, in a nutshell is what my sermon is all about: The art of making choices. We are occasionally caught between two or more equally attractive choices, and we are torn as to which course to pursue. Should I stay in my current job or jump for the more exciting though riskier job? Should I work to rebuild a broken relationship or pick up the pieces and move on? Which path shall I follow as my road diverges in this yellow wood? I read somewhere that “good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment.”

And this is what made me think of Jonah. Because often our choices are not made in a vacuum. We have clues as to which way to turn. In the yellow wood, Robert Frost looked down each road and noticed one “was grassy and wanted wear.” and so based his decision on that information. But how do we judge the information that we may then come to our decision? Jonah had a very clear indication as to which way to travel, and he picked the opposite direction. According to countless study guides, Tarshish was the farthest seaport to the west, all the way on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea in Spain. Nineveh was over to the east. The story of Jonah the way many people read it, is really a satire because he sets out to refuse God by failing to prophesy. He tries to run away and, if you read on or if you recall the story, he turns out instead to be wildly successful. The town of Nineveh repents because of his preaching, something that almost never happens in Hebrew Scripture. Prophets are always being scorned and ridiculed and ignored. But for Jonah the whole city, all its inhabitants right down to the cattle, repent from wickedness by putting on sack-cloths and sitting in ashes. That’s right: even the cattle – in sack-cloths, sitting in ashes. Here is a prophet who really did not want to even show up, and at his mere word, the whole town repents and is saved. It’s quite a clever story really.

But what caught me, was how Jonah is given a very clear signal as to what to do with his life and he takes off in the opposite direction. Now we don’t get much God speaking to individuals these days and the conservative Christians have varying answers to that point. The way I see it, the voice of God can come through the mouth of any number of people who at one time or another offer a word of good counsel or a thoughtful nudge of encouragement. How often do we have a problem, though, to which the solution is so clear and yet we somehow end up doing decidedly unhelpful things instead! I remember a quote: “Advice is what you seek when you already know the answer but wish you didn’t.” (Erica Jong) I suspect the reason why the story of Jonah is so powerful is because it is a story so many of us can relate to when you really think about it. Have you ever felt like you are stuck in the gut of a big fish?

Sometimes you’re there because you made a poor choice and the consequences are hard to bear. Sometimes you find yourself stuck there even though you knew what to do (or not do), but you did the opposite and now you have that sinking feeling in your stomach that could have done that better. Until you go about and set things right, you’re stuck down in the belly of the whale. Wouldn’t it be easier if we knew how to avoid getting stuck in this position?
What gets in the way of making good choices? It could be that it is just easier to follow a knee-jerk pattern that we learned when we were young. It could be we are hopelessly (or seemingly thus) drawn to unhealthy situations. It could be we are in the habit of suppressing our deepest longings in favor of what we think we are supposed to want out of life. It could be we just aren’t thinking things through. It could be a values conflict. Whatever the reasons, we sometimes find ourselves longing for better decision-making skills; or at least a better understanding of how we do it when we find we have done it well.

Sometimes that is the only clue we can be certain of as to whether or not we have chosen well. When we can look back and say, things have worked out for the best and that was a good choice on my part. The phrase from Christian scripture “By their fruits ye shall know them,” was originally intended to be about good people and the good deeds they do. In our case this morning it can also be applied to our good choices and the good outcomes resulting. Which is great, but again, what do you do before you see the fruits of your decision to get some assurance that you are choosing well.

Well, a book I was reading recently picks up that very questions. In Pierre Wolff”s book, Discernment: The Art of Choosing Well he writes.

Can we avoid waiting until harvest, because by then it may be too late? Is it possible to have a systematic method of choosing what will guarantee good fruit? It is impossible beforehand to assure with absolute accuracy that what we are going to plant today will result in our own well-being and the well-being of others. If we retain the image of fruit, we cannot forecast perfectly what tomorrow’s weather will bring or the effect it will have on our seedlings. Will there be tornadoes or a gentle rain, drought or perfect sunshine? Who can predict? However, if a farmer methodically takes good care of the soil, prunes the fruit at the right time, uses the proper fertilizers and insecticides, and takes precautions against frost, good fruit may usually be anticipated. So also, a method of decision making reduces the hazards of being mistaken and puts the odds in our favor. … [And then a little further down the same page it says this,] All ripe fruit, when it is finally harvested and delivered, has undergone a maturation often accomplished by methodical labor. (Pp 13-4)

Wolff’s contention is that, when done well, the decision making method he outlines in his book will lead to a sense of harmony within oneself in relation to whatever the decision is about. Of course, as he indicates in the above passage, you can make the right choice and still be hit by drought or tornadoes over which cannot control. But there again, how you respond to the outside events in your life is still your choice, as Robbie Walsh said in our meditation. I think one of the key pieces to this is owning your part in the process. You need to know what you can control and be responsible for that.

This amazing decision making method articulated in this book by Wolff is called “Discernment.” Discernment is like a spiritual GPS. Discernment is the word used when there is a spiritual element to the decision making process. And it does not take too big a stretch to see a spiritual element to every major decision, especially when you define spiritual the way we do around here. What are the necessary elements to discernment? What are the key components for our Spiritual Positioning System? Really there are just a few critical components.

Time is a basic component, perhaps the basic component because when we don’t take our time with our choices, we usually end up reacting rather than responding. Responding means you choose to behave in a particular way to the events around you; where as reacting is more like a learned reflex that may or may not be helpful or even what you really want to do. You need to allow time for the discernment to work. Now, like anything you practice at, you can develop your discernment skills to the point that choosing well is like a reflex or a positive reaction in those situations when you don’t have much time to respond. But what you really want, if at all possible is to take time to fully consider the two roads that diverge before you.

But time is not all you need. What you do with that time is critical. The next component will seem obvious, I think for two reasons. Your head needs to be a part of the discernment process. The two reasons I think this sounds obvious to all of you is first, because we are Unitarian Universalists and the idea that the brain should be engaged in nearly every activity is just a given. And second, because when most of us take time to consider a decision, we do just that: we consider it, we think it through. This is the point in discernment where you would write out a list of pros and cons. This is the point at which you would uncover the possible outcomes. The word “discern” has a Latin origin; Dis: apart, and Cernere, to sift. And so: to separate by sifting. We consider the various options and sift through them. Now, a perfectly objective analysis of any given situation or dilemma is not humanly possible, so don’t try. We are not machines able to be completely objective and emotionless. Just because a person can reach a sensible decision based solely on intellectual analysis does not mean that said sensible decision is the best decision for all people in all situation; or even if it were, that any person would actually want to follow that choice!

It may sound odd to talk about not wanting to pick the choice that seems to be the obvious answer after we’ve thought it through, but consider this example: Think about the process of selecting a mate. If you find a person who is roughly your age and is in good health; who shares similar interests, values, and even cultural heritage with you; yet you do not love this person! Your brain weighs things and turns up yes, yes, yes to this choice of life partner. Yet the heart says no, and that is the end of that. Pascal said, “The heart has reasons that reason knows not.”

Discernment is not simply a process of figuring out what is sensible. It also includes the element of what you want. I mentioned early that when Robert Frost looked down each road in his yellow wood and noticed that one road was worn by many travelers and the other was not so; and thus based his decision on this information. But how did he weigh the information he got by looking down each road? Was he stirred by a sense of longing or adventure? Maybe he doesn’t really like being around other people and the thought of all those other travelers on the more common road just ‘turned him off,’ you might say. Does one solution seem to resonate while another seems to stifle? Emotions come a various levels. Listening to your heart is certainly done at a level of depth.

So far I have told you that what you need for Discernment, what pieces go into our SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, are a balance of mind and heart, and of course time. Is that enough? Is it enough that your decision makes sense and feels good? Maybe if your trying to decide which shirt to buy or which movie you should rent. Certainly the little decisions in your life don’t need so much attention. But is what I have outlined so far enough for the big stuff? There is still one element missing. I now speak of values, for it is the inclusion of values that sets this decision making process apart as distinctly spiritual. It is our values that lead us to make hard choices that may not seem the most sensible or feel good.

Values are the key element to a sound decision making process. I have a bookmark with a pithy quote I like: “Set your course by the light of the stars,” it says, “not by the lights of every passing ship.” This image of navigating a ship is a fine analogy for choosing well. Our values are like the stars which guide our course. We often feel like we are in uncharted waters and those old maps that have places marked “here there be dragons” seem to fit with what it’s like to try to work through significant dilemmas. Shall I invest more of my free time helping out at the nearby soup kitchen or at my church, or shall I spend it with my family? Shall I carry this child to term and give it up for adoption or shall I terminate this pregnancy now? If I get into the university I really want, which course of study shall I pursue? I’m worried that my teenage son might be skipping school and doing drugs, how shall I respond? When is it time for me to stop driving because of my age? Indeed here there be dragons for here we touch on deep things. What we think is best and what we want or desire may hit up against our strongest values. Our values can serve as the stars by which we navigate. “Set your course by the light of the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

When Jonah is down in the belly of that great fish he does some serious discerning and lets out this long prayer about how awful life can be but he gives thanks all the same to God who is about to command the fish to release him. And he pulls out his Spiritual Positioning System, and discovers that the whale must have traveled a bit in those three days and three nights, because he is no longer anywhere near self-righteousness and presumptuousness and he is now moving pretty close to humility and compassion. One of the lines in the prayer is: “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” (Jonah 2:8) Those things which you value, Those things which you cling to, those things that deep down define you because those are the things you hold as your guiding stars; those things should be worthy of such honor. One of the lessons Jonah’s story can offer us is to be careful what values we use to guide our choices. But also that it is never too late to change course.

You could find yourself in unfamiliar territory and pull out you SPS, Spiritual Positioning System, and based on your distance from the values of honesty, personal integrity, and financial security you should probably steer clear of that job offer from the corporate auditing firm and stick with your job as bookkeeper for a non-profit organization. What are the nearest satellites to you, what are the values you use when plotting your course? Perhaps three of them are enough to triangulate yourself in a faithful discernment process. Hold fast to the clearest thoughts of your mind, the deepest longings of your heart and the guiding twinkle of your highest values. And take your time.

In a world without end, may it be so.

Peace vs. Justice
November 9, 2003
Rev. Douglas Taylor

Eight years ago I co-lead a course on ethics at a little UU fellowship in Ohio. Ethics: An Exploration in Personal Morality, was the title of the course, and of the workbook we used. The workbook is a part of the Building Your Own Theology series by the Rev. Richard Gilbert, who was here participating in the installation service we had last week. As with the other Building Your Own Theology courses, we don’t “build” a personal ethic from scratch, rather the course is designed to help participants explore and articulate the ethics that guide their lives. The course covered various elements which would go into the refining of a personal moral compass such as: motivation, intention, values and character. I was in charge of the session on values. “Values Ranking” was our first exercise. We were given a list of 30 values such as Freedom, Honesty, Justice, Peace, Equality, Love, Prosperity, Happiness, Quality of Life, Law, Honor, Individuality and Community. We had to select our top ten from these 30 and them rank them in order of personal importance. Choosing only ten was hard enough for most of us, ranking them was excruciating. Some rebelled and had two or more values “tied” for first. I remember I was the only person who put Law on my list of ten. This caused some earnest discussion in the group. Not only did I have Law in my top ten, I had ranked it just above Freedom! Everyone had Freedom on their list, a few had ranked it number one, or tied for first. I had ranked Law as more important than Freedom and argued that without laws there could be no freedoms. And had therefore decided that Law was more important than Freedom.

This was a wonderful exercise worth repeating occasionally. I think today I would choose to rank Law below Freedom rather than as I had ranked them before. I have come to the conclusion that Law is in the service of Freedom, not the other way around. I agree with Martin Luther King that a law that does not serve freedom holds the danger of becoming an unjust law. Generally, there should be no conflict between Law and Freedom, but when there is, my gut reaction is to side with freedom. I still believe that without Law there can be no Freedom, yet Freedom is the higher good, and Law is established to provide Freedom.

Values Conflict was the second exercise in that evening’s class. After we had ranked our values, discussed them and had an opportunity to adjust them, we addressed the possibility of a conflict of values. Hypothetical situations were presented from the workbook in which we wrestled with choosing between honesty and freedom or honesty and prosperity. The situations in the workbook were intentionally hypothetical. They were realistic, but not real.
In the second reading this morning, Chief Joseph was forced into just such a real life values conflict. What is in the best interest of the tribe? What they and likely every native tribe wanted was to live in peace and maintain the prosperous lives they had had before the Europeans came among them in great number and in great force. Seeing that the Europeans were not leaving, and seeing as they still wanted to live in peace, some tribes chose to fight, and others, such as the Nez Perces, tried to leave. Seeing that the Europeans were not going to let them leave without a fight, they decided to fight as they left to Canada that they might find peace. And seeing the toll it was taking on the tribe to fight, Chief Joseph found himself faced with this choice: To fight because it is was a just fight and the right thing to do, or to give up all hope of freedom and peace, because the fight for that freedom is one they might not survive. That is a severe conflict of values.

Few if any of us will find ourselves faced with this extreme and severe a situation. We need not look only at extremes for examples that are just as painful. In an essay from the Ethics workbook, Richard Gilbert writes this:
An example that effects everyone is the issue of allocating scarce health-care resources. On the one hand we value the inherent worth and dignity of every human life, without regard to age. On the other hand, we value the concept of fairness and defend the proposition that all people ought to be given a more or less equal chance in life. The freedom of a person to get affordable health care bumps up against one’s concept of common good.

Most people would say, (Gilbert continues,) that someone with a damaged kidney should be helped by an artificial kidney machine or a kidney transplant, but either procedure is terribly expensive. With the same investment of health dollars, we could provide a simple sugar solution to the world’s children that would save tens of thousands of them from death by dehydration. Both are worthy goals, expressive of the value of reverence for human life. How do we choose between them? Must we choose between them?

All right, that sugar solution example is a bit extreme because it is computed in health dollars only rather than accounting for infrastructure and administrative costs. All the same, our health care system does seem to attract a disproportionate amount of the value conflicts bounding around in our culture. Recently in Florida Governor Jeb Bush used legislation with questionable constitutionality to restore a feeding tube in a young woman who has been in a vegetative state for over 13 years. It would be quite simple for us to all to look at the situation and for us to each decide to write up or review what we already have written up for an advanced directive before the end of this year. What is really needed is not legislation but for each individual to articulate their choice. Perhaps Governor Bush’s politicizing of the situation will help to further the public dialogue, which would be good.

What all this brings out: Chief Joseph’s surrender, Reverend Gilbert’s kidney question, and Jeb Bush’s high-handed fussing over feeding tubes, is that our values conflict regularly. As members of a liberal religious community we are in a particularly good position to recognize how this happens and how to respond. We find ourselves conflicting over important stuff like beliefs and the priorities of values a lot because we encourage it here. We don’t hand people a top ten list of values when they come through our doors. We are well practiced in the art of navigating shared values even when we all don’t agree.

Peace and Justice are two values that usually make it in the personal top ten list of most Unitarian Universalists, indeed, most Americans I would wager. Peace and Justice are two values that religion has often coalesced around. Peace and Justice are two values that are imminently pertinent in today’s global political milieu. In some ways, our political climate is demanding of us to choose between Peace and Justice.

With the same “either you’re for us or you’re against us” attitude cast out to our friends and allies around the globe, here at home we have been asked time and again to side with Justice and support the war or side with Peace and stay out of the way. As one who tried to reconcile our nation’s chosen course and hold both Peace and Justice dear, I have found it troubling to say the least. Peace and Justice usually go hand in hand.

In the history of this congregation there lies the echo of this conflict. Reverend Harry Thor spoke a powerful message of anti-war during the Vietnam Conflict. It was a hard and divisive time in many Unitarian Universalist congregations, and Binghamton did not prove the exception. That division has since healed and we as a congregation are well equipped now to hold a diversity of opinion as a group. But, neither is it any accident or random chance that members of this congregation are predominantly pacifists. I expect we will not again experience a similar division as we explore issues of war, power, peace and justice again. We do well, all the same, to remember that Peace and Justice issues have been and can become again “live-wire” issues among us.

Peace and Justice usually go hand in hand. I see the same relationship between Peace and Justice as I described earlier between Law and Freedom. In the same way that there can be no Freedom without Law, I believe there can be no Peace without Justice. In the same way that Freedom is a higher good than Law and Law is established to provide Freedom, I believe Peace is a higher good than Justice and Justice is established to provide Peace. There should not be a conflict between Peace and Justice.

Of course, my opinion is not the only sensible one out there. While I contend that Justice is an important step on the path to Peace, I have heard others say, “there is no path to peace, peace is the path.” And I have also heard others put forward the alternative perspective that Justice is an end unto itself rather than a means to Peace as have described it. It is these perspectives that polarize Peace and Justice.

Talk of Justice often carries the implication and imagery of violence. Back around 1970, Jane Fonda said, “Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood.” She had a strong point there. The United States was born of a revolution. We have glorified the violent element of our path to independence in our national anthem that speaks of “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air.” We are children of revolution. This perspective of liberation from oppression takes a religious tone from within Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology does not shy away from the use of violence as a means toward justice. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” While the author of this quote, Martin Luther King, did not mean that this demand would be accompanied by violence on the part of the oppressed, many other people do.

In the 1980s, Vusi Mahlasela was a voice of the revolution in South Africa. His music gave expression to the political ideals of the anti-apartheid movement. Now he’s beginning to tell South Africa’s story on a global stage. The song playing the background as I learned about this man on NPR was a song he wrote which says, “Need I remind anyone that armed struggle is an act of love.”

This is a perspective that rejects the idea that Peace and Justice go hand in hand. This perspective ranks Justice as more important than Peace. I do not subscribe to this perspective. But neither do I subscribe to its popular alternative, because the popular alternative also rejects the idea that Peace and Justice belong to each other. This alternative is exemplified when someone cries out “Can’t we all just get along?” My complaint here is not against that statement in its original use. That quote came originally a little over ten years ago when Rodney King went on TV right after the L.A. race riots and said, “Can’t we all just get along?” Do you remember it? There was a videotape of four white police officers beating a young black motorist they had pulled over. The case was all over the news and when the fur cops were acquitted it touched off a nasty race riot. That young motorist, Rodney King, in an appeal against the mob violence, was calling for peace. Then it made sense. The situation and Mr. King’s appeal are not the basis of my complaint. My complaint is when today people pick up the quote and use it to say, “Can’t we all forget the bad stuff that happened yesterday and play nice?” My complaint is when people want to brush away injustices and just talk of peace.

In our first reading, King makes a distinction between a positive peace and a negative peace. A peace without tension he calls a negative peace. A peace without justice is still peace, but it is a negative peace. If peace simply means no tension, no struggle, than I’ll have none of it. If peace means no disagreements, no turmoil, than that is not a peace I wish to have.

Justice need not be seen as a simple excuse for violence. Likewise, Peace need not be a coating of silence over a troubling situation. Peace and Justice need not be at odds. When I sit down with all my values before me and begin to select my ten; I find room for both Justice and Peace on my list, as I am confident most of you would as well. I believe Peace is a higher good than Justice and Justice is established to provide Peace. However, I am not sure that I would put Peace above Justice when it comes time to rank them. Perhaps I will say Justice is more important, not sufficient, just more important. Perhaps I will rebel and place them as “tied” thereby avoiding the choice, but I doubt it.

How about yourself? Where are they on you list?
In a world without end,
May it be so.

Emerson’s Reformation
10-26-03
Douglas Taylor

All around the world, Lutheran and other Protestant ministers are celebrating “Reformation Sunday” this morning. History has decided that the Protestant Reformation officially began when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Catholic church in Wittenberg on the Eve of All Saints Day in the year 1517. And so, now, in the protestant liturgical calendar, the last Sunday in October is set aside as an anniversary. The 95 Theses where a scathing rebuke against some of the practices of the Catholic Church at that time, most prominent among which was the practice of selling indulgences. The time was ripe for change and a series of reformers gained footholds in the public religious landscape. Interpretation of the sacraments was questioned. The language of liturgy, the process of justification and sanctification, the role of the priest; all this and more were up for debate when these weighty reformers got rolling.

We were even a part of all that with Michael Servetus writing his treatise on “The Errors of the Trinity” in 1533. Unitarianism grew out of the most liberal wing of that reformation. It has been nearly five hundred years since the initial Protestant split and we have seen a great number of subsequent splits and divisions. Protestants were not the first or only group of religious people to come up with the idea of reform, but they sure made an art of it. It used to be enough to ask a person “Are you religious?” “Yes.” “Oh, good. Are you Christian or Jewish?” But then it became, “Oh, you’re Christian, are you Protestant or Catholic?” And then, “What kind of Protestant: Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian?” And then, “Oh, Baptist, are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?” And then, “Uh, are you Original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God?” “Oh, great, Reformed Baptist Church of God. Now is that Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?” And it seems to go on like this, people trying to figure out, “Are you on my team?”

We Unitarians Universalists have had our reformations too, but we’ve managed to have them and the reforms they bring without a lot of splitting and dividing. We still have that questioning about ‘which team are you on.’ You know, “Are you Humanist, Neo-Pagan, or Theist?” “Oh, Theist, are you a Christian Theist or a Natural Theist?” “So is that a Process Natural Theism or a Transcendental Natural Theism?” “Uh-huh, now how does that work for you, are you an Emersonian Transcendental Natural Theist or Neo-Transcendental Natural Theist?” But the best part is that we’re all still under the same roof. We’re still all on the same team! We’re not kicking each other out for heresy. Most of the time when we move in the direction of reform, rather than break away from traditional understandings, we broaden our tent to include new ideas and new people. Now, we’re not always perfect in that respect, but who is? Historically, the embracing of innovation is our pattern.
I spent the better half of the past few weeks trying to find out who wrote this great quote I remember from my early seminary reading. “The heresies of yesterday are the accepted beliefs of today, and become the orthodoxies of tomorrow.” For a long time I would think of William Ellery Channing whenever I thought of that quote, but I’ve not been able to find out whether he said it or not. William Ellery Channing is considered the founder of American Unitarianism for his landmark sermon, “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819. He broke new ground. He brought forth a new identity. He was a reformer. The reason I think of him when I recall that quote about yesterday’s heresy and tomorrow’s orthodoxies, is that he did not want the beliefs as he articulated them to become Unitarian orthodoxy. I imagine many (but by no means all) of you have a sense of this story from our history. Channing’s Baltimore Sermon, as it is sometimes called because that is where he was when he delivered it, outlined the radical beliefs that were coalescing within a number of religious communities developing out of what was New England Congregationalism. He delineated the theological rejections and affirmations that characterized the group of people who soon after became known as Unitarians.

This sermon, which started American Unitarianism, was a two-part sermon of which most people recall only the second part. Primarily, the first part of the sermon emphasizes reason as the best tool for the study of scripture. Channing then lists out several doctrines found in scripture when reason is so applied. The first two sound like this: “In the first place, we believe in the doctrine of God’s UNITY, or that there is one God, and only one. … We object to the doctrine of the trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. … We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly we are, and equally distinct form the one God. We complain of the doctrine of the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our conceptions of his character.”

This was reformation work that Channing was doing. “What everyone else is doing is wrong. We see the true and original Christianity that all the rest of the Christians have missed. We’re going to go now and start our own team.” This was reformation in the standard sense in that it followed the model of Luther and Calvin and the Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915. Channing’s reformation caused a break from the traditional understandings and began a new group. That was the last major break-away style reform in our history. All our subsequent reforms moved forward while still holding earlier understandings. We grew beyond liberal Protestant Christianity as it was articulated by Channing, but we have kept some of the liberal Protestant Christians. We grew beyond Theism, but have kept many Theists. We grew beyond Atheistic Humanism, but we have kept a bunch of Atheistic Humanists.

One facet of this I want to lift up, if only because it is often neglected when we talk about Channing and his sermon, is that this was sound Biblical preaching. Channing reached the conclusions he reached not because they made sense to him in some abstract way, but because these are the conclusions he found upon careful study of scripture. And further, scriptures authority, for Channing, was supported by the miracles.

Perhaps you are wondering why this sermon is called “Emerson’s Reformation” when I spend all my time discussing Channing’s reformation. I’m getting to that. To fully appreciate the amazing reform that Emerson inaugurated, we must grasp the environment in which that reform arose. Channing preached his Baltimore Sermon in 1819. Six years later, in 1825, the Unitarians organized themselves into the American Unitarian Association. A mere 13 years after that, in1838, not even a full twenty years after Channing started the new team, Emerson offers a radical reform.

Conrad Wright, editor of the book, Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism: Channing Emerson, Parker characterized it this way: “Channing took the liberal wing of New England congregationalism, fastened a name to it, and forced it to overcome its reluctance to recognize that it had become, willy-nilly, a separate and distinct Christian body. Emerson cut deeply at the traditional philosophical presuppositions of the Unitarianism of his day, so that it was never thereafter possible for Unitarians to return to the position that Christianity is based on the authority of Christ as the unique channel of God’s revelation to humanity.” (p3-4) Emerson, and to a great extent Parker right after him, universalized us. He took Unitarianism beyond liberal Christianity by emphasizing the primacy and universality of the religious impulse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born two hundred years ago in the spring of 1803. He studied to become a Unitarian minister and saw Channing as all the young ministers of the time saw him: a grand and wise model to follow. Emerson, however, did not remain in the ministry, and though he did remain a Unitarian, his greatest contributions to our movement came after he had severed significant ties to Unitarianism. Technically he left the church over Communion. At the time, communion was a regular part of the worship life of Unitarians. Biographer Robert D. Richardson, Jr. in his book, Emerson, The Mind on Fire, puts it this way; “He found the Communion ceremony meaningless because it reduces Communion to eating and drinking.” (p125)
Emerson left the ministry, traveled and began his career as an essayist and lecturer. During that time his personal philosophy underwent a radical expansion. This was partly shaped by the reading he was doing, partly from key intellectually supportive relationships, and partly from key losses he experienced. It all lead him to see that a religious life is not one filled with correct and reasoned interpretations of scripture or occupied by any number of external authorities and evidences. Richardson wrote that Emerson “had a powerful craving for direct, personal, unmediated experience. That is what he meant when he insisted that one should strive for an original relation to the universe. Not a novel relation, just one’s own.” (p3) Emerson’s first book, Nature, was about the relationship between humanity and nature with this deeply religious thread running through it which takes shape in that question: “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?” “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?”

This very simple idea undercut so very much of the traditional religious philosophy of the time, indeed of our time as well. Why should we read in scripture about the experiences of others, should not we also have experiences worthy of being written down in holy books? Why should we go through sacramental rituals commemorating the experiences of others, should not we also experience the sacrament of communion in the regular course of our lives?

Now, his ideas would not have a big an impact on us until another major event brought it to us. Emerson was invited by the graduating students of the Harvard Divinity School to deliver the graduation address in 1838. One must wonder why the Harvard Divinity School invited him to speak when he was known to have taken such radical steps away from commonly held beliefs and understandings. I can only guess that it was because the choice was made by the students, not by the teachers. It was on this occasion, with a sentiment similar to that of his first book, that he initiated a transcendentalist reformation within not only the stayed rationalism of Boston Unitarianism but also the broader culture. He advised them to let their lives show through in their preaching. Many a preacher now loves this line: “The true preacher can be known by this; that [you] deal out to the people [your] life – life passed through the fire of thought.” And near the end of his address he offered this: “Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse all good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of [humanity], and dare to love God without mediator or veil.” This was a remarkably scandalous suggestion!

Emerson was a remarkably well read and intelligent man. The biography by Richardson that I’ve been reading is filled with accounts of what Emerson was reading when this or that event was going on in his life. Richardson says, “Over the years, Emerson’s openness to science kept his thoughts ballasted with fact and observation and his writing anchored solidly in the real world.” (p142) Emerson’s call to refuse all good models is not a call to ignore the thoughts and writings of other people’s experiences. Instead it is a call to also have your own experiences and to value your own above all others.

The impact of this call to reform was profound and the impact was momentous. The response within Unitarianism was strong, both to the positive and to the negative. Yet we managed at that time to stay one group despite the tremendous gap between the two opposing predominant views. But here is the best part: because this reform did not cause a permanent split or a break for the old when the new ideas arose, we ended up holding both stories positively. At our beginning there were rational liberal Christian Unitarians and experiential transcendental Unitarians on the same team.

And perhaps that sounds a little familiar? Today many people are joining our churches with a great desire to experience spirituality in their worship and daily life. Today we also have rational skeptics with a strong desire for intelligent conversation about principles and values and what we are going to do. There is some healthy tension around this. I feel that tension within myself regularly. We owe a debt of gratitude, not only to Channing and Emerson, the first reformers from the Unitarian branch of our family, but more so to the people at that time and their ability to some how navigate that tension, that we now have the gift to experience our version of it as well.

Emerson’s reform did not exclude reason, it simply claimed reason alone without experience insufficient. I encourage you to use reason in the interpretation of scripture of all kinds. And yet, when you read of the ideas and experiences of others, don’t forget to have your own as well! “Refuse all good models, dare to love God without mediator or veil.”

In a world without end,
May it be so.