Immortal Love: Why Universalism Still Matters

I preached this sermon on our new-member Sunday today at church. Thanks for reading & be well, all!

Peace,

Rev. Laura

***

Immortal Love: Why Universalism Still Matters

The Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
October 24, 2010

The other day I opened up our local newspaper
and read a letter to the editor that really shook me.
The person was writing in about a convicted murderer
who had been on death row for years.
This person was very angry
that this man had been allowed to live for so long.
She said she wanted him to be executed immediately.
And I really disagree with her about the death penalty,
but that wasn’t what upset me the most.
What really got me, the words that just about broke my heart:
were when she called this man, and I quote,
a “soulless inhuman monstrosity.”
Ouch.
(Valerie G. Nolan, Letter to the Editor, Stockton Record, October 9, 2010.)

I know this lady is not a bad person.
But her words are so counter to the religious values I hold dear,
I find I cannot in good conscience just let them go by.
So today I want to tell you how I respond to that letter.
And if I ever meet this lady,
I would love to tell her what I’m about to tell you.

You know, my reaction to that letter started in my gut.
It triggered a really strong visceral, emotional reaction.
But gut reactions have a history,
they come out of our life experience and the beliefs we’ve inherited,
and if we’re going to be able to communicate
what we feel so strongly,
especially to someone who doesn’t agree with us,
it’s very important that we can step back and reflect
and try to explain why we feel the way we do.

So I think it would help to start with some history
about how our Unitarian Universalist beliefs
about the inherent worth of every person
have evolved over the years.
And in fact I think we need to start several hundred years ago,
back when the first colonists from England
were coming over to North America.
These were people who took religion extremely seriously.
A lot of the congregations they founded back in the 17th century
eventually, years later,
morphed into the first Unitarian congregations in the United States.
So in many ways those early Puritans are our spiritual ancestors.
But they also had some beliefs
that were very different from what we believe today.
And what’s relevant for today
is that they believed in predestination. What that means is,
they believed God had already decided from the beginning of time
what would happen to people when they died.
A few lucky people would be saved,
but the vast majority would be condemned to Hell forever,
and there was nothing you could do to change your fate.
Talk about depressing!

Now, I don’t want you to think these folks were dumb;
I don’t want you to think they were horrible people;
they were people just like us
trying to figure out how the world works,
and why there is suffering,
and why it’s so hard for us to do what we know is right,
and why some people seem to have it easy
and others have it so very hard.
They came up with an explanation that made sense to them,
even though it’s hard for us to understand today.
They looked at themselves and each other, and they said,
we are so far from perfect,
we screw up so much and so often,
there’s no way we deserve to go to Heaven.

When I think of that,
when I try to imagine how it feels to judge yourself
with that kind of merciless scrutiny, what I feel most is just sad.
I think of Barbara Pescan’s poem
which we heard in our reading today:
Can we see ourselves with the eyes of compassion?
Can we allow ourselves to believe we are worthy of love,
faults and screwups and all?

Can we
Know ourselves seen
And know each other this same way
Until our restless hearts
Learn to abide
In this knowing and this love?
Can we live in this gaze of blessing? 
(Barbara Pescan, “Blessing,” from Morning Watch (Skinner House, 1999).)

And this is where we come from.
This is what happened to some of those people,
those ancestors of ours
who judged themselves and their neighbors so harshly.
They began to experience life in a different way.
They began to feel a presence of compassion and love
moving in their lives,
a presence they felt as boundless compassion and immortal love.
These were the people who came to call themselves Universalists.

The early Universalists—
and now we’re in the middle of the 18th century—
weren’t so very different from their neighbors
who held on to the old beliefs.
They knew people mess up and screw up, over and over.
They had no illusions that people were ever going to be perfect
on this earth.
But something shifted in their hearts.
They began to believe their God wasn’t an angry God.
They said, no, we don’t believe that.
We think God loves us so much, everyone is going to be saved,
no matter what—
every single person on this earth,
no matter what they believe or what they’ve done—
there is nothing we can do that can alienate us from the love of God,
nothing.
They said to the parents in their midst,
when you get mad at your children, do you throw them in the fire?
Of course not?
Then how could God,
whose love is so much bigger and more perfect than our own,
condemn anyone to the flames of Hell?
No, they, said; we just do not believe God would do that.
Everyone is loved, so everyone is saved.
Salvation is universal—no one left out, no one forgotten,
every single person held and cherished
in the infinite love of the divine.

We tell this story again and again because it’s part of our sacred story.
This is who we are as a people.
Today, we use different language,
but our core belief and the certainty we feel is just the same:
every person is precious.
Nobody is going to Hell when they die.
We don’t know for sure what will happen when we die,
but we believe whatever it is,
it will happen to all of us, everyone,
and it is not going to be a bad thing.
We will be safe.
We will be well.
And when we say “we” we mean everybody.

This is our Universalism for the 21st century,
and our world needs it so much.
It makes a huge difference in the way we treat other people,
or it should,
and I’m not just talking about how we relate to people one-on-one,
though that is so important.
I’m talking about public policy too.

I think of the justice system we have in this country today.
We are building more and more prisons;
we incarcerate vastly more people than any other democracy
on the face of the earth;
we have a relentless, voracious appetite for locking up people
and throwing away the key;
we thirst for the blood of murderers to be spilled
because we think it will make things right;
and I ask you: where does it come from?
What kind of belief system allows us to believe
it is morally right to consign human beings to lifelong punishment
without the hope of redemption?

I suggest to you that our prison system
based on a system of lifelong imprisonment and even execution
would be impossible without the foundation of a religious belief
in a God who is angry,
a God who desires vengeance,
a God who is willing to condemn people to horrific punishment
for all eternity.
For if God thinks this is how people should be treated,
who are we to question it?
If God is willing to condemn people to Hell,
why shouldn’t we lock them up in a hell on earth
for the rest of their lives?

And that’s not even to raise the question of racism.
Because we know, too, that our justice system
is deeply, deeply biased against people of color.
We know the statistics.
We know we are living with a system
that claims to be just but in fact is deeply racist.
And I have to wonder,
could that system of racism have arisen
without the foundation of religious beliefs
that separate people into the saved and the damned,
beliefs which divide us
and invite us to get comfortable and cozy with our prejudices,
our beliefs that “those people over there”
are somehow less than fully human, unworthy of divine love?

Years ago I was very deeply moved when I read a statement
from a Unitarian Universalist group
that works against the death penalty,
and I’d like to share it with you now. They say:

In a world that cries out for peace and understanding,
if you support capital punishment,
you have made a judgement
that thousands of incarcerated Americans
(about whom you know only what the media has told you),
are no longer human,
are no longer children of God,
and are incapable of change, reconciliation or redemption....

But we know it doesn’t have to be that way.
Beliefs can change when our hearts are touched.
And when beliefs begin to change,
our society will surely begin to change as well.
It’s inevitable.
If you ever wonder whether our faith matters to the world today,
I urge you to ask yourself:
what would our society look like
if everyone truly believed
that every person is precious in the sight of the divine?

Beloved people, I am convinced that we have a mission
in this time and this place.
We are here to witness to our faith
that every person on this earth
possesses an inherent worth and dignity
which cannot be taken away
either by their own actions or the judgments of others.
That faith does not mean we let everyone do whatever they want.
Some people are a danger to others.
It is not wrong to find ways to protect ourselves
from those among us who can’t stop themselves from hurting others.
There have to be boundaries.
We need our communities to be safe.
But let those boundaries be guarded
in a spirit of respect and compassion and hope.

***

Let me say a final word about this faith we have inherited
and which we are carrying forward today.
I fervently believe the Universalists were right
and whatever happens after we die,
it happens to all of us and it’s going to be OK.
I don’t have it in my heart to believe in Hell
or any kind of eternal punishment for anyone.
I believe those who do believe that are wrong.
But it’s not about who’s right or wrong,
because nobody really knows what’s coming.
Maybe we’ll find out when we die, or not—we just don’t know.

So it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong.
But, as Sophia Lyon Fahs reminds us, “It matters what we believe.”
Our most basic beliefs about the nature of the divine
do so much to shape the society we live in.
If we believe in a vengeful God of punishment,
you better believe we are going to create a vengeful society
bent on punishment.
But if we live out of our faith in that love which
“has laid hold upon us, and will not let us go,”
if we live out of our faith that every person is held in that love,
what a world it would be.
Not perfect, mind you,
because we are never going to be perfect ourselves.
Not perfect. But I choose that world all the same.
And here is where we try to make it a little more real every day.

As we go forth, let us drink deep
from the love we seek to embody in this place,
this holy and imperfect human community of faith.
There are times when we will disappoint one another.
There are times when we will not be able
to bring our best selves here.
But let us never give up—
never stop trying to be a channel
for that love and compassion
which is at the very heart of our faith
and has been from the very beginning.
This is how the world changes.
We have our part to play
in a story that began many years ago,
a story that goes on and on.
Here is where we begin, again and again,
here and now,
all of us.

So may it be.
Amen.