Given at First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Last August Music Director Betsy McGovern brought a new UU controversy to the attention of the Worship Team, all over a blog written by a young adult woman UU calling herself Wondertwisted, who posted a provocative piece entitled “A Dear John Letter to UUism.” Apparently the post generated comments all over the Internet and Facebook by UU ministers and lay UUs. I read the original essay and all the comments, and felt inspired to do this sermon. (Wondertwisted's blog can be found at http://wondertwisted.wordpress.com/2011/08/06/a-dear-john-letter-to-unitarian-universalism/ )
I was inspired to write this sermon, not just because there’s a recent uproar in our denomination, although that’s a good and legitimate reason to do a timely sermon, and not because I had read a book, but because I personally know something wonderful that I feel called upon to share. I want to talk about salvation in our church because I know that ours is a saving faith, because Unitarian Universalism saved my life.
I don’t mean that I was in physical danger, like the child trapped in the well in today's children’s story, or that I was in fear of losing my immortal soul after death, in the language of my Roman Catholic childhood. What Unitarian Universalism saved me from my own personal hell. As our former minister Suzanne Meyer preached in St. Louis in 2003:
…there are many kinds of private hells in which living men and women dwell every day. These are small personal hells of meaninglessness, banality, and loneliness. Hells of shame, hells of guilt, hells of loss, hells of failure. There are as many kinds of these small hells as there are people who live in them.
It didn’t feel like hell at first, as many of these small private hells do not. I thought I was finally, after years of struggle, on my way to financial security and material prosperity. I had a job I had worked hard to get and that for the most part I enjoyed. It was in high-level fashion retailing, a career I had aspired to since my teenage years. I had a beautiful little son and a marriage I thought was strong. If there were stirrings of feelings of loss, of something missing, of things not being quite or completely right, I diligently kept those emotions in check.
Even after our family first found Unitarian Universalism, here at First Church in 1983 (although in our former building at 1800 Jefferson), I still didn’t think that the church was mainly for me – I thought I was there for Sunday School for my son. Sure, I enjoyed the services, and I was glad to be making new friends, but it didn’t feel personal.
One thing I know for sure is that you can’t keep a deep and serious unhappiness a secret from your own body. I began experiencing stress-related physical symptoms – a mysterious rash that cleared up on my day off from the Laura Ashley store, lack of sleep, nightmares. I finally was diagnosed with cancer in 1985. I quit my job and underwent surgery, and spiraled into a depression. If I had to sum up how I felt, I would have to use words like shame, guilt, futility, uselessness, meaninglessness. In the words of the old hymn, I felt lost, I felt wretched.
I know Unitarian Universalism is a faith that deals with salvation because our faith saved my life. Within our faith and within this very congregation, I found purpose and meaning and community. I was, without elaborate or formal ritual, released from the burden of guilt and shame I was carrying. I was freed to believe, to have faith in, first of all, myself, and then in the power of life and love moving through community to make my life, and the world, better. I can hardly talk about this without great emotion, without choking up, because it means so much to me. “I was once was lost and now am found, ‘twas blind, but now I see.” That’s salvation, and I found it here.
I feel terrible about Wondertwisted’s heart-felt words and her less-than-good experiences with Unitarian Universalism. But I’ll tell you one thing that makes me feel even worse – the number of comments on her blog and on Facebook from UUs who discount what she shared, who basically tell her, “Move on if you don’t like it, we UUs don’t deal with salvation.”
Unitarian Universalism is, again in Suzanne Meyer’s words, in the business of saving souls. We are indeed a salvation faith. And we do this, not by promising people a better life after they die – in fact, we take no denominational position on any afterlife – and not by scaring folks about some terrible eternal place they end up after death. Most UUs believe that life on earth, this one right here, can be scary enough and terrible enough, without recourse to some after-life Hell. Our small private hells are sufficiently painful; I know that mine was.
Do you know what one of the most common reactions new people have to Unitarian Universalism? In essence, it’s “Where have y’all been all my life?” Nearly every new UU I speak to practically complains that they needed our saving faith at some challenging or sad point in their lives, but they didn’t know we were there. I resonate with that reaction, because it is similar to how I felt. And I feel now with all my heart that it’s almost a religious crime for us not to be shouting about Unitarian Universalism from the rooftops, especially from the rooftops of New Orleans, still reeling and wounded from Katrina, still filled with people chained up inside their own small private hells of alienation, loneliness, grief, and despair.
Unitarian Universalism is a saving faith, a salvation faith. More than anything else, our job as a church is to save souls. We can get so caught up in the details of rebuilding our building, and raising money to do that and still run the church, doing our community service projects, trying desperately to balance the budget, teaching children, recruiting volunteers, forming committees, endlessly meeting and debating and discussing, that we can easily start to imagine that any one of these things is the main thing we are about as a church. We can get distracted by these things for a while and forget that we are in the business of saving souls.
So many people come through our doors every Sunday who are not looking for Unitarian Universalism, who are not looking for another place to give their time and money, who are not here because they are rejecting any or all religion. They are here because they feel lost, lonely and hurting, because they feel something is missing, even though they may appear to all the world to be just fine and dandy. They have no particular interest in religion — our brand or any other brand. They just know that they’ve already tried everything else: alcoholism, workaholism, drugs, shopping, gambling, partying, travel, therapy, self-help books and groups and programs. There’s nothing left for them to try and besides, we don’t charge admission — even the coffee is free.
A few of the commenters to Wondertwisted’s blog understand because they too have experienced the saving power of Unitarian Universalism. Julian wrote: “I believe UUism saves souls. I do believe there is salvation in UUism.” Tim Bartik posted: “People NEED a positive message on how they can be ‘saved’ towards a better relationship with themselves and people and this world, and many have a need to address their relationship with the broader universe.”
One commenter wrestled with the word. Susan Dorbeck wrote: “Now I’m struggling with what salvation means in this world, how to define it. What in me do I want saved? What do I want to save? Salvation is a big word. Does it mean comfort and solace? Does it mean an end to poverty and oppression? Does it mean hope and faith? Or the means by which we achieve those ends?”
Those are all good questions, and they are among the deepest religious questions there are. Why are we Unitarian Universalists not publicly wrestling and struggling with these important questions? Why is a devout and dedicated Unitarian Universalist young adult like Wondertwisted having to go elsewhere to have that conversation? Why aren’t all of us religious liberals using that language when we talk about our faith and our church to others? Do we really think our friends and neighbors are dying spiritually for a lack of joining a committee, having a stimulating conversation, hearing an interesting speaker, giving donations to a church, or drinking all that free coffee? Whether folks can articulate it or not, they want their lives to have purpose, they want to feel like they are living for something, they want their souls saved.
We are not misusing the word “salvation” to say that we are a salvation faith. We are instead going back to the original meaning of the word. In Hebrew, the word translated as salvation meant “to make sufficient.” In ancient Greek, the word meant “to make whole” or “to make healthy.” In both languages, the word used for salvation was almost exclusively secular. In almost every use in scripture, the word we know as “salvation” was focused on the here and now. When we use salvation on our terms, we are using it the way it was originally meant. We ought to feel just as free to use “salvation” our way as we do to use “church” our way.
I’m going to give the last words in this sermon to the spirited and passionate young woman who kicked this topic off. Here’s an excerpt from Wondertwisted’s September blog post, following up on the controversy stirred by her post in August. If you need me to say it, then I will – I agree with her completely.
If UUs don’t think the faith has anything to say about salvation — or redemption or transformation — then the Internal Revenue Service should revoke the tax-exempt status of every congregation with “Unitarian Universalist” on its shingle. And the good people in the meetinghouse should ask themselves what the heck they’re doing there. If they aren’t there for a chance at reforming their lives, their hearts or their communities, then why are they there at all?…
May we Unitarian Universalists claim our rightful place as a faith that saves souls, as a church that deals in salvation, so that we can reach out to all the folks in greater New Orleans in their own small private hells. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!
