To Love Alike

To Love Alike

August 17, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I went to my culture asking in search for the meaning of love, and this is what I found: The film, Love Story, told me that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” St. Paul told me that love is “patient” and “kind.” He said that “I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains – but if I have not love, I am nothing.” [1]

The other St. Paul, along with St. John, told me that “All you need is love.”

I found in one database 3,419 songs with “love” in the title, and only 124 with “work” in the title. [2]

I was told by others that love looked like diamonds or chocolate. Still, others told me that love looked like sex, or marriage, or friendship. Some say God is love. And yet, if I am to believe what I find in my newspaper’s comic strip section, Love Is apparently what happens between two strange looking naked people. I went to my culture asking in search for the meaning of love, and these are what I got: mixed messages!

It is not unusual for me to find in life that what causes religious reflection for me often comes from very unexpected sources. And this time, the main catalyst came from the television comedy, Scrubs. In one scene, the main character, J.D., is daydreaming about a visit to a friend’s church. I don’t remember too much about the scene, except that in ending the worship service, the very charismatic minister turns to the gathered congregation and says, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

In our modern expression of Unitarian Universalism, I often hear us talk about some things as if they were inevitable – unavoidable. We talk about the inevitability of truth or sometimes the fact of an ever growing complexity and diversity in life. We speak of inevitable knowledge and understanding that comes with experience. But what I don’t often hear described as unavoidable, what I don’t often hear is talk of this type of irresistible love, one that would say, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

However, running through the core of our tradition, deep within the DNA of our religious heritage, is the understanding that a profound, mature love has the power to break so many barriers. In 1568, the first (and only) Unitarian king in history, John Sigismund of Transylvania, enacted the first recorded law of religious toleration in a nation’s history. While this law included all varieties of the Christian religion only, it was a radical move at the time. He was counseled by his Unitarian court minister, Francis David, who is famously quoted as saying, “We need not think alike to love alike.” But what is it that we love?

Religious thinkers and practitioners, philosophers and scientists alike have been aware for many years that our identities are shaped to a great degree by what it is we hold dear, that we are transformed by what we love. The term “worship” derives its meaning from an older word meaning to give worth, to assign “worth-ship” to something. And at least this form of devotion, this love assigned to people, things, and ideas, seems inevitable in this life.

Our own Ralph Waldo Emerson famously noted, “A person will worship something – have no doubt about that. We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts – but it will out. That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.” [3]

The liberal Christian theologian Paul Tillich also noted for him how powerful and, sometimes how dangerous, this type of love can be. For Tillich, “idolatry” simply meant assigning our ultimate love, our “worth-ship,” to things that did not deserve it. In his assertion, everyone, even atheists, make gods out of things that do not deserve the title or the concern.

Our misplaced love can make gods out of money or power, can have us chasing after status or esteem; our highest loyalty and love can easily be paid to the shabby deities of a flag or tribe. Like Emerson and so many before him, he knew that as humans, we will worship something, but that our ultimate love should be directed toward the most ultimate things possible. What/whom is it that we love?

I know that in my own life, it is so easy to misdirect my love – to give ultimate attention to things that don’t ultimately deserve it. I know that I love my wife, my friends, and my family. I love my church, and I devote my love to the emergent, creative process in the universe that I call “God.”

But I am willing to bet that I am not the only person in this room today who has found that it is so tempting to fall in love with other things, too. Maybe it’s my ego – sometimes I fall in love with the idea of being right. I’ve found that it’s tempting to fall in love with possessions, a specific cause, to fall in love with one way of doing things, or even just being liked.

On the other side, it seems like it is also easy for us to fall into the trap of believing that we can tell WHO deserves love in this world and who doesn’t. I know that for me, personally, it is so simple for me to talk about a world in which all people deserve love, but it is a lot harder to live in that world.

I can get revved up on a Sunday morning, convinced that all creation is one big family, and then hours later turn on my television and thing some very unlovely thoughts about people who vote differently, think differently or spend their resources differently. It’s hard to live in that world where we don’t have to think alike “to love alike.”

Sometimes, things get tuned around such that we begin to wonder if we ourselves aren’t less deserving of love than others. I wonder if anyone else here has ever felt like they screwed up so bad that there was little chance of being liked, let alone deserving love? I know deep down that I’m never disconnected from the world, never cut off from what is sacred or an opportunity to grow in wholeness, but sometimes it’s very easy to feel as if I am disconnected.

This is certainly not a new issue in religion. We know that at least one branch of our Unitarian Universalist heritage was forged out of this question of who deserves real love, who deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the world, of the sacred, of God. Although there were certainly believers of Universalism before him, the minister John Murray is often credited as the “Father of American Universalism,” because he founded the first explicitly Universalist congregation in our country.

Murray and our other early Universalist Christian ancestors spread what they called the “doctrine of universal salvation,” the notion that no loving deity could possibly condemn one of its creations to eternal punishment. As you might imagine, in a time of much fire and brimstone preaching, this wasn’t always the easiest position to hold.

After one sermon in which Murray drew a lot of applause, one local orthodox minister, the Rev. Bacon, and some of his supporters left the worship space, “came back with some eggs, and started pelting Murray with them.”[4] For all of you who are fans of corny jokes and puns, you’ll be happy to know that the very witty Murray immediately responded that day, “These are moving arguments, but I must own that I have never been so fully treated to Bacon and eggs before in all my life.” [5]

In our historical heritage, there is a long-standing tradition of people who affirmed that while we are surely defined by what we love, we are equally defined and transformed by what loves us! It seems like a somewhat strange idea for us today. It was this notion of an irresistible love that brought into being one of the most influential figures in our movement that you’ve probably never heard of, or at least don’t hear much about lately.

In 1794, at the age of 22, Hosea Ballou was ordained at the Universalist General Convention without even knowing he was going to be ordained. This young Universalist minister, although he didn’t preach on this often, became Unitarian in his theology, and thus was one of the first true Unitarian-Universalists in our tradition. At the age of 33, Ballou wrote a text that is one of the most influential in his history of our movement. It is called A Treatise on Atonement.

I’m going to do this work a great disservice and boil it down to just a few sentences. Basically, Ballou’s asserted that if our failings are finite, as we are, it makes no sense religiously for an infinite God to bring the infinite power of the universe down to punish one individual, finite being for doing what finite beings do.

He then turned the entire thing around and said that in this divine relationship, it is humans who are the dissatisfied party, not God. For Hosea Ballou, it wasn’t God who needed to be reconciled with human beings, but the other way around. Has anybody else ever felt this way, that it’s not life that has a problem with us, but we who have the problem with life?

Like many before, he asserted that in matters of doctrine, etc, a generously placed love was the safest bet: “Be cautious in any system of divinity,” he warned. “The moment we fancy ourselves infallible, everyone must come to our peculiarities or we cast them away.If we agree in.love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.”[6]

Ballou said some things in 1805 that are radical in many settings today, including our own, I think. He said, let’s get over quibbling with each other about the literal meaning of religious or philosophical terms. Our religious lives aren’t only about having someone’s anger resolved; they are about growing together in love. Salvation isn’t about getting saved from some eternal punishment, but with falling in love with life, real life.

It makes sense that in the religious tradition of his past, when the teacher Jesus was asked to sum up the most important Jewish laws, he said here were only two things: to love your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. [7]

I wonder if that much has really changed for us. If we are going to commit our deepest love, our devotion and “worth-ship” to something, if we are going to make a god out of something, it had better be something worthy of our attention, and when we do, let us serve that life and all our human and non-human neighbors with every inch of our being.

What is it that you will choose to love? What would it look life for you to be reconciled to life, to your god, or to the world? With so many troubles coming in our direction from life, it’s pretty hard sometimes to imagine that we are the dissatisfied party in the relationship.

We can assert, like so many before us, that there is no group of people damned to hell because of their religious beliefs, yet, in a way, we are “saved” every day. As we read together this morning, we are warmed each day by a sun we did not create, we are fed by food we could plant, but not grow, and we are held in a community of friends and loved ones we did not earn and could never buy. [8]

Whether you are joining us for the first time or one time of many, know that you belong here. We can be a people stuck in our heads, curious for new knowledge, constantly working out the details of an argument or idea, ever in search of new truth. But just as deep within our religious family is the desire to live in a reality where our night language poetic minds could imagine God, or the universe, or reality saying, “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” We can affirm that all people take part in what is sacred – we need all people to make meaning, and all, without exception, are worthy of love.

How is it that you would respond to such a world? What will you spend your life loving? How is it that you will fall in love with life? This kind of love is not easy; it’s certainly not the kind that can be summed up on one song, or one item, one newspaper page or one verse. It is being reconciled with life.

Those who have loved a parent, a sibling, a child, partner, or friend know that love never means perfection – it has tremendous waves and can be very hard. I think the same will be true of our response to life. So many people in the world, and so many in our community here today, are having a hard time believing that life could be on their side. Let us show one another with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, that while so hard to understand, it can be a life worth loving.

My spiritual friends, hundreds of years ago, John Murray issued this call: “Go out into the highways and byways of America, your new country. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying and crumbling [religion], something of your new vision. You may posses only a small light but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men [and women]. Give them, not hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.” [9]

It was obviously a successful call and a compelling message, as at one time in the 1800s, Universalist churches alone had over 600,000 members – around 4 times what our UU churches have today. It was the 5th largest denomination in the country. In fact, they did such a good job that they almost put themselves out of business! As more and more religious groups affirmed that eternal punishment did not await outsiders, Universalism lost some of its bite.

It seems as is part of our own time is similar to that of Murray. So many people are blanketed in ideas of religion that no longer work, that are crumbling in the face of a new world, and many of them have no idea there is an alternative. Let us not hide it from them. Let us, too give our society something of our new vision, a world in which all beings participate in the sacred, a world in which we value a sincere love over correct doctrine, a world in which we know that when we agree in love, no disagreement can do us lasting harm. In fact, let’s do it so well that we put ourselves out of a job – where this vision of inclusion and tolerance seems commonplace.

So much of who we are is shaped by what we love, and how we respond to a world that gives us life. Who here is ready, in the face of so many imperfections and hardships, to get right again with life? What is it that you will choose to love? May we find together those things that are truly worthy of our devotion and love them with all we have.

What better time than now?

Amen.

——————-

[1] 1 Corinthians 13:2

[2] http://www.hopstudios.com/nep/unvarnished/five/1730/

[3] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Quoted in Singing the Living Tradition, reading #563.

[4] Charles A. Howe, The Larger Faith (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993), 5.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 28.

[7] Mark 12:29-31

[8] Singing the Living Tradition, reading #515

[9] The Larger Faith, 9.