Pilgrim's Prejudice

November 26, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we come here after our individual and some our communal thanksgiving day celebrations. Lots of food, lots of football. We may, in fact, be suffering from a Thanksgiving hangover. Those of us who braved shopping malls, and department stores the day after Thanksgiving may literally be suffering from shopping wounds.

Calm us now as we contemplate life without all this abundance, restore us to a state in which we drink only when thirsty and eat only when hungry.

May our hearts be havens for the fullness of life that includes those who suffer, not simply from lack of our obvious abundance, but suffer unto death, suffer through torture, suffer through the separations of families and the untimely death of children in war-ravaged lands.

Raise in us righteous indignation at the prospect that a good deal of the terror occurring in this world is probably directly and indirectly sponsored by the United States of America.

Let us remember the words of Lao Tzu’s;

When the great Tao is abandoned,

charity and righteousness appear.

When intellectualism arises,

hypocrisy is close behind.

When there is strife in the family unit,

people talk about ‘brotherly love’.

When the country falls into chaos,

politicians talk about ‘patriotism’.

As this holiday season continues help us to not be distracted by the bread and circuses. Let us return to simplicity finding there a part of ourselves that we thought we had abandoned. Happy in the moment, confident in the journey, let us be the peace that the world is searching for, let us give the love that would save a life, let us participate in what life offers, not what we imagine we might desire.

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen

The War Prayer,

by Mark Twain

(Mark Twain apparently dictated this prayer around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine’s anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.)

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

SERMON

Introduction: When the forefathers and foremothers of this country began looking at models to use, paradigms to facilitate the wording of the constitution, they had two negative examples of paradigms that they did not want to use when it came to the practice of religion.

In New England they had the example of the Massachusetts colony in which one could not be a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without also being a member of the Puritan faith.

It didn’t make sense, but the Pilgrims who had fled religious persecution in England and Holland came to this country and immediately made laws that guaranteed that the very prejudices that they had suffered under would be perpetrated in the names of the Pilgrims in their new land – New England.

In the southern colonies they had the negative example of the Church of England, the church of Great Britain, the church of their overlords.

In an effort not to commit either of these crimes of prejudice the forefathers and foremothers looked to the middle colonies. And what did they find?

They found sandwiched between the southern most colonies and those of New England three distinct, yet similar colonies – colonies organized by men who sought nothing more than to worship in the manner in which they saw fit, compelling no other men or women to worship as they worshipped.

Roger Williams founded one of the colonies so designated. He had been educated at Cambridge and become a Chaplain to a rich family, but shortly before 1630 decided he could no longer labor under the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he arrived in Boston he was asked to replace the Pastor that was going back to England. He declined the offer because he saw no separation of church and state in the Massachusetts colony. That was the first of Roger Williams emancipating ideas. The second was what he called soul-liberty, he believed people should have the freedom to choose and practice their own religion. Roger Williams was quite a linguist and learned the native tongues around the colonies. He was called on often to mediate troubles between the colonies and the Native Americans. He thought that the Indians should be treated equally as men, and this feeling alone won him great respect among the native populations. He also felt that any lands settled by Europeans should be bought from the Indians at a fair price.

These views got him in trouble with the rulers of the colonies so he secured lands from the natives, which occupied what is now Providence, Rhode Island. At this colony Williams established, with the help of the others who moved there, a government unique to its day – a government that provided religious liberty and a true separation of church and state.

And as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” Roger Williams was a Baptist.

Rhode Island became a haven for those who were persecuted for their beliefs – Jews, Quakers and Baptists worshipped their own way in harmony with one another.

The second colony, which served as an example for our forefathers and mothers, was the colony of Maryland founded by Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was an Anglican but came under the influence of the Catholic Church and converted. In an effort to find a place where he and his family could worship in the Catholic manner, he obtained from King James a colony. King James died before the colony could be named, and when Lord Baltimore asked King Charles what he wished to call the colony King Charles suggested Terra Maria – Mary Land in honor of Queen Henrietta Mary. Lord Baltimore agreed not unhappy, I’m sure; that another queen named Mary played an important part in the Catholic worship of God. Maryland was conceived as a land where there was religious freedom and a separation of church and state.

The third colony that influenced the writers of the Constitution was Pennsylvania – founded by William Penn. William Penn had been born an Anglican but joined the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, when he was 22 years old. Penn was a personal friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers and accompanied Fox throughout Europe and England convincing many that they should obey their inner light which came directly from God, and that they should neither take their hats off, nor differ, to any man nor take up arms against any men.

At one point William Penn was jailed for publishing his beliefs, which attacked the idea of the Trinity – Unitarians are you listening?

The persecution of the Quakers became so volatile that finally Penn decided it would be better if the Quakers established a new, freer Quaker settlement in the New World. Some Quakers had already moved to New England, but they received the same prejudicial treatment from the Puritans as they did from the people back in England.

Penn and the Quakers chance came for a freer settlement in the New World when a group of prominent Quakers were granted what is now the western half of New Jersey.

Penn immediately went to work on the charter for that colony guaranteeing free and fair trials by jury, freedom of religion and freedom from unjust imprisonments and free elections.

Penn’s father had been owed a large sum of money from the monarchy of England and that debt was settled by giving William Penn an even larger area west and south of New Jersey. Penn called the area Sylvania – Latin for woods – but King Charles, wanting to honor William Penn’s father, named it Pennsylvania.

Conclusion: So – when the constitution was drawn up the shining examples of religious freedom offered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island, Lord Baltimore of Mary Land, and William Penn of Pennsylvania outweighed the noxious and fettered examples of the commingling of church and state and the suppression of religious freedom offered by our Puritan forbearers and similar examples offered by the Church of England loyalists to the south.

Modern examples of the confluence of church and state abound. Think back to Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship and Hitler’s Chancellorship and the silence of the Catholic Church. In the contrary, modern day examples are evident when liberation theology literally invaded Central and South America. The Catholic Church was deploring the lack of priests in the small towns and villages of Central and South America and they made the quite obvious mistake of teaching the poor to read the Gospels. Hello? Jesus? message is, if anything, a contraindication to Fascism and Despotism and when those peasants and the disenfranchised read what Jesus had said and how he stood up to the Roman Empire, well, enter Archbishop Oscar Romero and thousands of other priests who sided with the people over the state.

What we have witnessed in this country in the past two elections and perhaps beyond is also a confluence of church and state. It hasn’t gotten to the point where one must be a Christian and a Republican in order to be a citizen of this country, but voter fraud and intimidation by a strong central government have left some like Nom Chomsky saying that any centralized state is a violent proposition which necessarily sides with special interest groups as opposed to representing those who elected the officials of that same state.

Unitarians Universalists are in a unique position to be watchdogs for the rest of society. I would plead with you not to let your guard down, and to question authority before it questions you!

And finally, to those who have fled religious traditions that were constricting and/or despotic, I would warn all Unitarian Universalists not to follow the example of the Puritans. Just because a religious group persecuted you personally does not give you permission to turn the persecution around. Religious tolerance is precisely that – the tolerance of all religions.

Let us never forget that the paradigm for religious freedom granted in our Constitution comes from the Quakers, the Catholics and the Baptists.

Remember what it says in, The Book of Tea, “The secret to the mundane drama of life is to hold your position while allowing others to hold theirs.”