We sit in a place of history. On this land, in these halls walked legends of our faith. Those superstars of yester year who shined so bright that they are like the Bono, Madonna, or Cher of today. Ralph Waldo, Henry David, William Ellery, I do not have to say their last name for you to know who they are. Superstars like E. E. Cummings graced these same halls, as did Theodore Parker, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Samuel Joseph May, and Henry Ware. This is the who’s who of men in the Unitarian tradition. Some famous names, these superstars from our past. Sadly this historical list lacks anyone who was not a white man. Still, something tells me that Abigail Adams, Mary White Ovington, and Susan B. Anthony might have had a home here if our current cultural values were present through the nineteenth century. Those values arrived at by the work of some of our predecessors I just named.
Imagine with me, if you will the work of our predecessors. On whose back are we standing? Tell me what the values of these people were? I do not foresee a future where I will keep a sword and loaded pistol in my desk as I write my sermons in case the powers of this world try to remove those in the church who are made free in sanctuary. What would it be like to speak for complete equality in a society were only the rich receive education while the poor children are sold into the working force at a young age if they have any hope of feeding themselves. The predecessors, what were they thinking when they spoke for freedom in a society which held humans in life long bondage. The predecessors, what did they have going through their mind when they spoke of equality when women were property to their fathers or husbands without even property rights. These giants, these superstars who flew in the face of culture, of propriety, the social pariahs of their worlds where they lacked the privilege of General Assemblies, of UUMA chapter meetings, of clergy fellowships since orthodox protestant clergy labeled them heretics fought on and on for what was moral and what was just with crumbs of sustenance in the days before email and ubiquitous cell phones when friends are an instant message away. Yet still, our culture shines because of their presence. Those before you let their light shine.
Whose chalice fire really burned bright and enlightened our world? I would like to focus on the story of a few of our superstars. Many of you know what September 11th, 2006 marked, the five-year anniversary of a great tragedy. How many of you also know it was the hundredth anniversary of Gandhi launching his first campaign of nonviolence. A century of nonviolence prompted by his reading of Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience. For some of us living in Walden Pond, maybe we should remember that spending some of that time out in the woods of Emerson’s back yard prompted our boy Henry David to sit in jail instead of paying war taxes. For some of us still living in our quiet contemplation and our righteous indignation against the current administration maybe we should get out of Walden Pond and take that liberal enlightenment to the real world where people are still dying in wars while we hide in our suburban churches. If a society jails a just person unjustly, the only place for the just is in prison. Something tells me this star of our history whose work inspired Gandhi and through Gandhi empowered Martin Luther King would challenge us to burn just as bright.
Another shining star of our past from this very region, the couple whose work inspired the flaming chalice as our denominational symbol does not receive a whole lot of credit. Reverend Waitstill and Martha Sharp, two thirds of America’s presence amongst the Yad Vashem, the righteous of nations are superstars of our past. Their story is often unsung, since Waitstill was the seventeenth minister asked to go to Prague by the Unitarian Service Committee. They shepherded Unitarian and Jewish people, primarily children out of Nazi occupied Eastern Europe, and escaped from Prague the day before their arrest would have happened at the hands of the Gestapo. Their rest was short lived since they soon went to Portugal to continue the work of rescuing those under Nazi rule. This couple worked the black market of Vichy France to provide milk to the children in occupation and forged documents to ferry people to safety. The seventeenth minister asked did this. The work of the Unitarian Service Committee inspired Hans Deutsch to design the first chalice artwork as a logo for the USC. This logo, adopted by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the great majority of our congregations shines with the light of our predecessors.
Still in the early half of the twentieth century, we had another predecessor who shined brightly. I know many of you have seen our churches perform the flower communion. Have we told the story where this ritual comes from? Like many, I love our New England history, but this comes from the original home of Unitarianism in Eastern Europe. Norbert Capek was born in 1870, and spent his first forty years in southern Bohemia. A Baptist originally, but after fleeing to America due to oppression he experienced from voicing his concern about the impending World War he learned of Unitarianism and by 1920 converted to be part of the Unitarian ministry. As a native of the Czech Republic, he returned to Prague after World War I to form a liberal ministry. While in Prague, he saw the problem of a closed communion, or even a communion of bread and wine which would exclude some attendees, but recognized the need we have for ritual and community so he asked congregants to bring a flower each week to fill the church, and return home with a different flower as a sign of the transformative beauty of faith. When the Nazi regime entered and occupied Prague, he preached on the importance of freedom and justice. Despite being offered the opportunity to return to America, he pastored and preached on freedom and justice. This brought the ire of the Gestapo who deported him to Dachau in 1941, and his death at Nazi hands a year and a half later. In the face of brutal oppression, his light shined ever on.
Here we stand, in the halls of academia which were graced by some of our past superstars which demand a legacy. So how do we stand up to that legacy. The world has a need for our light, since last I checked our nation still occupies countries unjustly, but we have a chalice. While the poor of this country eat diets of under nourishing food, we have a light. While the inner city school districts have money stripped from them, condemning another generation to ignorance, illiteracy, and further separating the power of the haves from the have nots we have some oil left to burn to kindle our own chalice light. It is not just the work of our predecessors which makes this tradition so vibrant, so powerful and meaningful. James Reeb and Violla Liuzzo didn’t think Thoreau had cornered the market on social justice when they were killed shining their Unitarian Universalist flame. From 2005’s General Assembly in Fort Worth where we were challenged to burn down Walden Pond and get out of our liberal complacency to live into the legacy of Civil Disobedience we let our chalice burn bright. At 2006’s General Assembly in St. Louis we were encouraged with the words of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Ella’s Song that those of us who believe in freedom cannot rest until the killing of every black mother’s son means just as much as the killing of a white mother’s son. “Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny.” Our tradition chose to shine the light of the recently departed in the 2007 General Assembly where the late Reverend Marjorie Bowens Wheatley, whose prophetic work on race relations being a matter of faith was lifted up as a brilliant flame coming from the chalice of Unitarian Universalism. These inspired stories are only a few of the examples where our light can change the world if only we live into our message. We can enact a new world, one where through our diligence people see the light of compassion instead of only our icy glare of intellectual elitism. We can transform people’s lives if we offer them the sacred message f Unitarian Universalism instead of hiding in our timidity and woundedness. Our light can rise up like a star on the horizon, leading the way to change.
How can we live into this legacy and current challenge to shine? My hope, my prayer is that it lives in all of you. We, the future of Unitarian Universalist ministry are the ones who will be casting the sparks that will light new chalices for the generations to come. We are called on to be the light. Our actions, our charge is to be as bright as we can, to shine wherever we go. Our light can no longer be hid; our message can no longer be whispered apologetically. As a denomination we have anemic growth from bickering in our pews about how we don’t want to change, we don’t want to grow, we don’t like this or that theological term all because we as religious professionals have not inspired our congregants to live the Unitarian Universalist message. Ours is a faith of transformation, of heresy, of protestation where we choose instead of blindly accepting the way things have always been done. Here in New England that is even more necessary since we are the church on the green, we are the church that people see in every city, town, and village center where we can both be the beacon to the community or drown in the weight of our history. Our light might go out if we fail to shine it so brightly that even those with their eyes held shut by the strength of rigidity and dogmatic humanism will have no choice but to be awed by the possibility it offers and warmed by the heat our chalices can produce if we but stoke the flame. What does our faith offer when it loses that heat, that light, that transformative quality? Will it be just another footnote of well-intentioned people who did well but now are trampled underfoot, or will we be the beacons that shine the way for liberal religion into the twenty first century. I choose to let my light shine.