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..."A diverse, spirit-growing, justice-seeking community"


 

spacer PAST SERMONS

"The Chalice and the Table"
January 25, 2004
Rev. Robert Hardies, senior minister

READING

(#569 in the All Souls Hymnal)

SERMON

Most of you have heard the joke before. If you've been a Unitarian Universalist long enough you know the punch line and you've probably delivered it once or twice yourself. "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian Universalist? Someone who keeps knocking on your door for no apparent reason!" This is one of the self-deprecating jokes that we Unitarians like to tell about ourselves. Revealing our uneasiness with the fact that we don't have any quick, easy answers to give when people ask us about our faith. We struggle to articulate just what it is that our church believes.

So my agenda this morning is to help you with your stump speech. To help you articulate the Unitarian Universalist platform. So that should you ever decide to go door to door for the church, or even if you just decide to invite a friend -- which I know many of you do -- you'll at least have a place to start. So that's what we're going to do this morning. But first, why all the confusion in the first place? Why is it so hard for Unitarians to sum up what their faith stands for?

The answer to that question tells us a lot as well. And it's because we believe in freedom of conscience with respect to people's religious beliefs. We believe that the Spirit calls to EACH of us in DIFFERENT (and sometimes peculiar!) ways. And so every Unitarian has both the freedom AND the responsibility to discover religious truth and meaning.

Now, this freedom is often misunderstood. Sometimes I hear people say, "Well, I'm a Unitarian, I can believe whatever I want." Those of you who know me well, know that that phrase is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. It suggests that religion is a matter of preference and whim. Let me suggest, instead, saying, "I'm a Unitarian, I'm free to believe whatever I MUST." Because that's closer to the truth. We are free to believe what our conscience demands that we believe. Gandhi, who's a great example of someone who took no religious truths for granted, and yet was profoundly religious, said, "The only tyrant I will obey, is the still small voice within." The conscience.

You know, I WANT to believe in a paradise. In heaven. Where the sins of the world will be taken away and we will dwell as one. But I MUST believe -- because my conscience demands it of me -- that this is the world that counts. Right here. This is our shot at paradise. I WANT to believe that it is enough for me to go off and pray, to think high-minded thoughts, and to share some of those with you. I'd like to let myself off that easy. But I MUST believe that my faith must be expressed in acts of justice and compassion. That it is my deeds and not my creeds that make the difference.

So there IS a difference between believing whatever we want and believing what we must. And it's our job to know the difference. You'll find that much of our church is structured to help you in your search for truth and meaning. Worship on Sunday. Adult spiritual development classes. Covenant groups. All designed to give you the opportunity -- alone and in community -- to discover what it is that your conscience demands of your life.

Having said that, the truth is that Unitarian Universalists have been engaged in this search for truth for 500 years, since the Reformation. Which is to say that there is a tradition of spiritual inquiry. And that tradition shapes who we are as a religious movement today. The tradition has handed to us some time-tested truths. Touchstones of Unitarian Universalist faith. For me, this is the platform. I would argue that there are two of them. And that they are represented by two of the symbols that are prominent in our Sanctuary: the flaming chalice and the table on which it stands, into whose side is carved the phrase, "ALL Souls Are Mine." The chalice and the table. If you can remember those two symbols, you can remember two of the most important core values of Unitarian Universalism.

Let's start with the flaming chalice. Because the chalice speaks to the first principles of our faith. It speaks to our origins as human beings. In religion, fire is almost always a symbol of God's presence. The flame in our chalice represents what Emerson called the "divine spark" that resides within the soul of each and every one of us. We come from holy matter. Each of us. Another way of saying this, is that we are each created in the image of God. An agnostic might simply say, we are each born with a worth and dignity that is inherent to our being. This is the premise of Unitarian Universalism. That human beings are precious. That creation is holy. That we are all born of the same stuff, and that it's good stuff.

Just like that flame in the chalice, the worth and dignity of creation can exert a powerful force, or it can be snuffed out. It's light can lead the way to greater freedoms for those who have been considered less than worthy. Or the flickering light can be extinguished and people's dignity snuffed out. By the willful actions of others, by our own refusal to accept ourselves as worthy and precious, or by theologies that denigrate rather than lift up human dignity.

Let me tell you a story I heard recently that speaks to the importance of the chalice (from Mary Harrington's sermon, "This Faith that We Love"). I have a colleague -- a Unitarian Universalist -- who for a while worked as a chaplain at a hospital. One day she came into work only to find the doctors and nurses on the unit sitting in stunned silence. Pale. Heads in their hands. The night before, a nurse from their unit -- we'll call her Bridget -- had gone home from the hospital, murdered her husband and then turned the gun on herself.

Bridget's friends and colleagues on the unit included evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and more than a few atheists. And while they had many chaplains to choose from, they turned to my Unitarian colleague, because they believed that she alone could meet each of them where they were in their grief and their questioning. They counted on her to be able to care for them all. And she did.

But a few days after, the nurses called my friend again. It turns out that Bridget's parents had buried her without a funeral. Their shame over her crimes was so great, they couldn't bear to honor her with a service. In addition, the family's minister had refused -- for theological reasons -- to officiate at the memorial service of a person who had committed murder and suicide. Her heinous crime had put Bridget beyond the reach of not only her family's love, but, apparently, God's love, too.

Well, the family's decision not to have a memorial service left Bridget's friends and colleagues at the hospital bereft. They had no illusions about Bridget, they knew she had demons. Of despair. Of rage. They knew she had struggled mightily. But they also had known her to be capable of love. They had seen her care tenderly for her patients. They wanted to honor whatever remained in Bridget of that divine spark. Even though Bridget had ultimately said "no" to life and to love. They wanted to say "yes" to the live and love that had once dwelled in her. And once again they turned to the Unitarian chaplain to kindle the chalice where it had been extinguished. To affirm the preciousness of creation, even in the midst of its desecration.

The worth and dignity of ever individual. Including Bridget. This is the premise of Unitarian Universalism. In a world that often takes every opportunity to strip us of our worth and dignity, we must discover new and creative ways to bear witness to the chalice. To say to people (and sometimes we have to start with ourselves), "You are worthy. You are loved. You are a child of God."

If the chalice is the starting point, the premise of our faith, then the table is our goal. The table with the words carved in its side, "All Souls Are Mine," is the symbol of the Unitarian Universalist believe that our destiny is to be one with all of creation. This is a belief that comes from the Universalist side of our heritage. While the Calivinists believed that only SOME people were going to heaven, and that therefore the human family was divided among the elect and the damned, the Universalists believed in a God whose love was so great that ALL souls would, in the end, be reconciled with God and with one another. This unity of the human family, this interdependence of all creation is what William Ellery Channing meant when he said, "I am a living member of the great family of all souls." As Unitarian Universalists we are challenged to take those words and make them our own. To live into those words. To live into that future when we will be one great family of all souls. Even if that future is only a glimmer in our eye. Even if we will never see it in our lifetimes. Our calling is to live our lives in ever-expanding circles of love.

The table is the religious symbol for hospitality. And this vision of the great family of all souls is, indeed, a hospitable faith. A faith that says ultimately, when the world is finally reconciled, there will be room for us ALL at the Welcome Table. No one will be left behind. The Welcome Table reminds us that there is no such thing as salvation of the individual soul. The Welcome Table says, we'll either survive together, or we'll all go down together. "We are bound," said King, "in a single garment of destiny." The table is the symbol of our destiny.

Now, I've got to tell you, I think this is Good News. Because the way I see it, we live in a world where the human family is being torn apart by two equal and opposite forces. On one hand, religious fundamentalisms of all stripes are on the rise in our country and the world. Fundamentalism is a faith that uses God to divide the human family. Fundamentalism worships a God who picks and chooses. Who plays favorites, separating the wheat from the chaff, the saved from the damned, the chosen from the forgotten. September 11 reminded us of just how bloody a God who picks and chooses can be.

Across the aisle from the fundamentalists sit the proponents of a thoroughly secular, global capitalist world. I dare say that unfettered global capitalism has even less regard for human dignity than Fundamentalism. People's worth is determined solely by their use to the economy. Adam Smith called the free market the "invisible hand," silently organizing the economy for maximum efficiency and productivity. This invisible hand decides where jobs will go, where wealth with flow, and who will remain in poverty. In other words, the invisible hand is also a God that picks and chooses.

The Good News of the Welcome Table is that a God who picks and chooses is no God at all. It is an idol. And against this spurious faith, we must hold up the faith in a God who calls ALL souls to the welcome table. A God of the whole human race. We must say to the world that there are no enemies. There are no strangers. There are just brothers and sisters in the great family of All Souls.

That, to me, is good news. So good, in fact, it almost sounds too good to be true. But as Mae West once warned, "Too much of a good thing... is wonderful!" Friends, other folks worship a god of some souls, and they have the audacity to call that the "good news." We stand for the God of ALL souls, and I dare say that is the even better news.

So the next time you tell someone about your church, tell them about the chalice and the table. Tell them the good news that they -- and all of creation -- are precious. And that our destiny is that we be reconciled as one great family of all souls, seated around the welcome table. Tell them, that's the dream of our faith. And that the work of our faith is to make that dream come true.

So be it. Amen.