Give Them Hope, Not Hell

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 21, 2014

John Murray’s rowing ashore in New Jersey in September of 1770 was the beginning of Universalism on this continent. What is the Universalist element in our faith? Our good news is that no one goes to hell.

Sermon: A UU faith story: John Murray

This morning I’m going to tell you about John Murray, who came to the New World in 1770, a defeated man, trying to start over again in a land where he could disappear. He was 29 years old, a widower. His wife Eliza and their one-year-old baby died in England, and medical bills had crushed him, landing him in debtor’s prison.

John Murray lost everything because he was converted to Universalism in England. He had been a lay preacher and Bible scholar with the Irish Methodists, and he loved good preaching. He visited every church in London, which is how he heard James Relly, a Universalist preacher. The idea that God was loving and that everyone would be saved in the end appealed to him and to his wife Eliza. Their friends begged them to come back to normal church. Their families cried. His business dried up. When he ended up bereaved, in prison, bailed out by Eliza’s brother, he just wanted to disappear, never preach again, never talk theology again, start all over with no history where no one knew him and he didn’t have to face either looks or words of loving concern or a self-righteous “I told you so.” He booked passage on the Hand In Hand, which was sailing for New York. The captain landed in Philadelphia instead, due to a miscalculation. Lots of the passengers got off. They sailed again for New York, but ran aground on a sand spit off the coast of New Jersey, at Good Luck Point.

Asked by the Captain to row ashore to look for food and water, came to a clearing in the pines and saw a large house and a trim looking church made of rough sawed lumber. A tall farmer stood in front of the house cleaning fish.

The following dialogue is imagined in the collected stories for UU children called “UU and Me.”

“Welcome” called out the farmer. “My name is Thomas Potter.”

“And I am John Murray, from the ship Hand in Hand.”

“Yes,” said Thomas, “I saw your ship in the bay, stuck on the sand bar, she is.”

“May I buy your fish to take back to the ship’s crew?” asked John.

“You can have them for the taking, and gladly:” answered Thomas, “and please come back to spend the night with my wife and me. I will tell you all about this little church and why it is here.”

John gratefully carried the fish to the sailors, and then returned to Thomas’ home for the night.

“Come, my friend, sit in front of our fire, this chilly fall evening,” said Thomas. “I’m so glad you have come. You may be the very person I’ve been waiting for.”

Potter told Murray that he had often heard the Bible read, and had thought a lot about God, coming up with ideas that made sense to him. He built the little church hoping for a preacher who would teach about things that made sense to him.

“Today, when I saw your ship in the bay,” he said to Murray, “a voice inside me seemed to say, “There, Potter, in that ship may be the preacher you have been so long expecting.”

John said quickly,” I am not a preacher.”

“But,” said Thomas Potter, leaning forward, “can you say that you have never preached?”

“I have preached,” answered John slowly,” and I believe, as you do, in a loving God.”

“I knew it! I knew it!” shouted Thomas.” You are the preacher for whom I have waited for so long! You’ve got to preach in my church on Sunday!”

“No,” replied John firmly. “I never want to preach again. Tomorrow, as soon as the wind changes, I will be on my way!”

After John went to bed, he couldn’t sleep. He wrote later that he thought to himself as he tossed and turned,” I just want to get away from everything…if I preach I know there will be trouble. Why start all of that over again? “By Saturday night the wind had still not changed, and John finally agreed to preach the next morning. Thomas Potter was happy. And so, on Sunday morning September 30, 1770, the first Universalist sermon was delivered in America. Thomas Potter, a Universalist before he even heard John Murray, heard a preacher talking about love instead of an angry God and a fiery hell.

I would say that John Murray is the patron saint of people who are stuck. Our life runs aground, and the way we get it going again is by doing what we were born to do. Circumstances may conspire like border collies nipping at your heels, driving you to the place where you realize what you need to do. May we all find a guide like Thomas Potter, who will give us the push we need in the right direction.

The Revolutionary War came, and John Murray worked as a chaplain to the troops, under the orders of General George Washington. When the war was over, and the new US was founded, in 1779, John Murray organized the first Universalist church in America in Gloucester, Mass.

(Owen-Towle, The Gospel of Universalism, Introduction, p.v). (Scott, These Live Tomorrow, pp.25-26)

Unfortunately, you still can hear a good many sermons preached by people who believe in hell. We are surrounded by people steeped in that belief, preachers who will use a funeral service to warn the grieving family and friends that they won’t see their loved one again if they don’t repent and believe in just the right way, so they will end up in heaven. Our UU children, along with the Presbyterian, Methodist and other more progressive denominations’ kids, hear from classmates at school about how they are doomed to eternal torment for not being the right kind of Christian. We call our movement Unitarian Universalism because we believe in Universal salvation. That means we believe a loving God would not send anyone to hell.

I think a belief in hell makes people dissociated – holding two deeply rooted opposite thoughts in their minds at the same time, not really able to look at either of them, not able to be a whole and integrated person because of that. I heard a songwriter from Lubbock on NPR years ago. He said “We learned two things in Sunday School. One, God loves you and he’ll send you straight to hell. Two, sex is dirty and dangerous and you should save it for the one you love.”

We prosecute parents who burn their children even once for disobeying. Do we believe we are more moral than God? Would anyone you know send one of their children to hell for eternity for any kind of misbehavior, much less for having the wrong thoughts or beliefs? No! Are we better parents than God is? To hold in your mind that God is love and that he will send you to hell requires a twisting of good sense and a good heart. To believe that we should be one way as humans, but worship a God who behaves in a less moral way doesn’t make sense. It would build your understanding on a deep fear and mistrust, and it would make you abandon trust in your own sense.

What about now? We are surrounded by people whose belief in Hell has death-dealing consequences.

Of the estimated 1.6 million homeless American youth, up to 42 percent identify as lesbian or gay, and a disproportionate number identify as bisexual or transgender. Why do LGBT youth become homeless? In one study, 26 percent of gay teens who came out to their parents/guardians were told they must leave home. LGBT youth also leave home due to physical, sexual and emotional abuse LGBT youth report they are threatened, belittled and abused at shelters by staff as well as other residents.Http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/HomelessYouth.pdf

LGBT youth are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers. Even teens who are questioning their sexuality are 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers.

One prominent minister in California says if a member of his listening group finds their kid is gay and won’t repent of their “sin,” they need to shun them completely and “turn them over to Satan.”

Parents are desperate to show their kids that they have to change, and throwing them out of the house is seen as tough love. These kids are on our streets. They are suffering in our town. One of the reasons we participate in the pride parade is so that the kids can see that there is a church, an actual church that does not teach that they are sinners because of their sexual orientation.

“Hell” is a mistranslation of the Bible. Current views draw on Dante’s Inferno and Miltons “Paradise Lost.” There are levels of eternal torment supervised by the demonic lackeys. In Milton, Satan and his rebel angels are chained in a lake of fire. Dante has you descend through all the levels of hell, until you reach Satan, who is stuck waist-deep in ice.

Three words in the Jewish and Christian scriptures are translated “hell.”

Sheol: from the Hebrew, meaning the place for the dead.

Tartasus: a Greek word for a place where the dead were, now separated by a river, the good on one side and the bad on the other. Able to see one another. Rabbi Jesus cited this view in his re-telling of the Babylonian parable about Lazarus and the rich man.

Gehenna: The valley where the trash was burned. Outside, destruction. Sometimes in the Christian scripture, the writer wrote “sheol,” and translators wrote “hell.”

In the Jewish scriptures, the dead go to Sheol. It’s not a place of torment at all. You are there, watching your descendants live their lives. Then, the Greek idea of Hades began to be known in the area because it was all part of the Roman empire. Rabbi Jesus was referencing this idea now and then. In other passages, the reference is to the smoldering trash heap outside the city walls.

My friends, this knowledge is there for anyone to find if they study. No one has to believe in hell. Our forbear William Ellery Channing preached that.

We have good news. This is a hell-haunted society. It’s not just theoretical. People make hell for one another, sometimes because they believe in a literal hell. We are called to speak to the root cause of some of this wickedness.

Theodore Parker said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Where does the Universalist part of our faith lead us to stand? One, we believe that all will be well, in the end.

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