Sermon for Sunday
My final sermon for Barnard. This sermon has its roots in a sermon I heard from Rev. Max Coots in my childhood.
Those Crazy Universalists
Growing up in Northern New York, the Universalists touched my family tree. My grandmother was a Universalist in Henderson Harbor Before converting for marriage to my grandfather. My guess is her family was also Universalist, but that I do not know. I am also guessing many of you never heard of Henderson Harbor. It is a small town on the shore of Lake Ontario, not that much bigger than here in Barnard. One of those sleepy villages where you don’t have to lock the doors at night but you know your neighbors’ names and their families, and the comings and goings about the town. Everyone seems to know everyone, and has opinions on everyone. These small towns and villages were the heart of the Universalist movement. Oh, the Universalists were considered those crazy heretics, much like the Unitarians, but the Universalists were not the big city folk.
The message of Universalism in America fit the countryside. The life of the yeoman farmer, the small town tradesmen, these were hard lives. Long hours of work with the cattle, back breaking days clearing and plowing the rocky New England soil, these people sure could have used a message of hope and of eternal salvation for all instead of a limited atonement for the elect. From horse back and from preaching stand the early American Universalists took literally the charge by John Murray to go out on the highways and byways of this land and give them not hell, but hope.
Who was this man, John Murray, who had the nerve, the temerity, the gumption to charge preachers with give them not hell, but hope? What kind of life enabled this man to have such love for fellow humanity? If you imagine a life of privilege, you would be wrong. This founder of American Unitarianism grew up in England. With the death of his wife, his eyesight beginning to fail, and jail waiting for his debts, John left England in misery and took a ship for America. The ship exited a sign when it reached America. Inclement weather brought this ship to the Jersey shore instead of the Port of New York, and Murray’s sloop happened upon Potter’s Field. The Potter family had created a chapel, waiting for the day the Lord would give them a preacher who would tell of universal salvation. How coincidental that Murray’s ship would arrive? His eyesight failing, his wife dead across the ocean, Murray accepted the charge to preach the message of universal salvation.
This is quite a story, but it does not end there. Even if it had, Murray’s optimism and hope would be something to speak of in our history annals. However, he went on to evangelize this message only to be egged, stoned, jeered, and slandered as a papist, an agent of the Anglican Church, or a agent of the crown. Despite such inhumanity, he continued to press on, spreading the message of universal salvation. He established the first Universalist congregation of America in Gloucester despite persecution by the local established church that did not acknowledge his ordination. This was some form of perseverance, or perhaps stubbornness. Whichever, he gave much of himself in the creation of a counter to the prevailing Calvinism of his day.
While the two were at odds about the nature of Universalism, his successor as the torchbearer of Universalism, Hosea Ballou, preached at this very church. I’m sure over the years you have heard sermon after sermon about Ballou, but time after time I hear of him I am blown away. He was self educated and came to the same conclusions about the nature of the trinity that the Harvard educated Unitarians espoused. However, they still disdained him as a country hick and refused to see their spiritual brethren in the Universalists for another hundred and fifty years.
The Universalism Ballou preached was different than the Universalism that Murray preached. Ballou believed and taught that there was no damnation in the afterlife, and that we pay for our sins here on earth, not some here after. Murray’s theological view included Hell, but only for a time until sins had been atoned through punishment. Something about Ballou’s optimism strikes me. He grew up on a New England farm, where one bad season could spell disaster for the family. Yet, his view of any afterlife was one where all received salvation. Again, someone coming up from a life far harder than any of ours proclaiming hope for all, hope for everyone.
Often times, I feel like the Universalists are the lost children since our merger. While I accept that humanism plays a deep role in our tradition, those misfit children Universalist Christians like myself seem like orphans in our midst. Oh, the past forty years our denomination has churned out activist minister after activist minister, but when I’ve asked who our next great theologian is, I’ve been challenged by those in our denomination, even those preparing for our ministry who say we can’t use the term theology because it requires this and that supposition which offends their humanist principles. To this challenge, I wonder what happened since Ballou and Murray. The answer is somewhat simple.
Well, we succeeded in evangelizing the message of Universalism to the masses. Amongst my classmates of the mainline denominations, I would wager the vast majority believes in a form of universal salvation. Even the Catholic doctrine under Rahner gives the possibility for salvation for all righteous people, even if they are not Catholic or even Christian. Since we were the churches in the rural lands, in the fringes, when World War I happened and the move to the cities happened, our rural churches dried up and our members went to those Methodist and Baptist and Anglican churches with Pastors who followed the message of Murray and Ballou as much as Wesley and Williams.
Meeting houses such as this one struggled to survive. Meeting houses such as these, in the rural crossroads where ministers would ride their circuits sold their buildings and the congregations were put to rest. This troubles me, because while our population is more urban than it was two centuries ago, the need for hope stays on.
A friend of mine grew up in Spanish Harlem. I can tell you stories of how he was beaten and abused by the NYPD. He was the oldest in a family whose dad was largely absent. Still, he managed to escape and I met him in college. He made it, he escaped from the gang land which eventually put his brother into jail. However, college wasn’t so easy for him. To help pay for it, he entered the National Guard. His basic ended in 2000. In 2001 he was activated for cleanup of the Pennsylvania crash site of the 9/11 flight, and once he’d cleaned up the remains of those women and men who died for ideology he continued active duty guarding the subways of Manhatten. So much for getting his education. When we went into Iraq, he was called again to active duty. In a tour which incrementally went from nine to fifteen months, he served as a machine gunner for his base. In the heat, in the sand, in the squalor of a nation torn apart by war and bloodshed he found God. When he came back, he couldn’t sleep through the night. He was jumpy around loud noises. He couldn’t accept he was safe. However, he didn’t lose his faith.
When I asked him why he believes, despite the horror he has experienced in his life the answer he gave me echoed the charge Murray gave the circuit riders two centuries ago. He told me he believes because he has hope. Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for a better world for what kids he may have. Hope was the key to his faith. Hope because there has to be a better way. Hope because there must be something more than this. Hope because greed cannot win over human lives for all time.
For people like my friend, I say we have a theological message. For people like my friend I say we still have something to spread through evangelizing the highways and byways of this nation. For people like my friend I say we need to proclaim the message of universal hope. From the rural poor of two centuries ago, to the urban poor of today can we do anything but put forth the message that there is hope? A better way can be found. We can escape the same old cycles of retributive violence.
This is difficult work. To my understanding, the UUA only has a single urban mission which serves the urban poor of Boston. Why can’t we expand this beyond Boston? Yeah, sure, Roxbury has a need for us, but why aren’t we in Brooklyn, the Bronx, North of 110th in Manhattan? Why aren’t we in Compton, why aren’t we in South Central LA? Why aren’t we doing mission work in Flint?
If we have evangelized the hope of universal salvation, why can’t we evangelism hope itself? Why can’t we offer ourselves as shining examples of life lived in a way that lets others hope? Why can’t we grow deeper in our faith, put past our former hurts with religion and offer to people deep theological answers for hope instead of answers to bring meaning to our suffering? The more I know, and the more I grow in my faith, the more I question more than the more I answer. I guess that is the way of knowledge. The more we know, the more we know we do not know. However, I refute and refuse those who say we can’t have theology. I refute and refuse those who want to turn our tradition to sterile and sedate knowledge instead of real, deep, messy love. Why, because love happens even when our spouses die, love happens when our bodies fail, love happens when we have no means, love happens when our education is poor. That is something which can give us hope.
Will the people say Amen.