Sermon preached by Rev. Henley 8 July 2007
In Matthew 22, Luke 14, and the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus told a parable of a great wedding feast. He was at the time, a guest at a great banquet, and he turned to another guest and said, the Kingdom of God is like a great banquet. He goes on to say a rich man was preparing a banquet and he sent his servants to the invited guests to tell them everything is ready, you can come now. His guests, though, declined; All of them, it seemed had excuses. One had to go look at a newly purchased field, another had to tend to some recently bought oxen, and another had recently been married and could not attend.
The host, angry at his invited guests, told his servants to
'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' "'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' "Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.'
There are several ways to understand the meaning of this parable; however, since the contemporary search for the historical Jesus has become a dominant theological approach many scholars call this Jesus’ “radical call for inclusion.”
In first century Palestine, no one of any prominence would have sat down at a banquet with the marginalized, the sick, the lame, the blind, or the poor. It was not part of any societal norms of any culture in antiquity. For Jesus to suggest that anyone and everyone were invited to the wedding was a new way of seeing individuals. It was a new way of seeing these individuals as worthy participants in the story.
It is an invitation for everyone to come to the table. And believe it or not, it is the closest allusion we find to a democratic understanding of religion in early Christianity. Democratic, in this sense, meaning “all are welcome.”
Contemporary Jesus scholarship, places significant prominence and promise in Jesus' radical inclusion.
We’ll come back here, but now we look at our Fifth Principle.
Prior to the 1961 merger of the Unitarians and the Universalists, there were in both faith traditions declarations and affirmations of several religious principles. These included religious standings for “individual conscience,” “religious freedom” and “the use of reason” in religion. But there was no mention of democracy.
So why do the 1961 framers of the UU Principles add this Principle “right of conscience” and “use of the democratic principle in our congregations and in society as large” right in the middle, or practically right in the middle of the Seven Principles? Did they mix politics and religion in shaping the merger of the two faith traditions?
Is the mixing of politics and religion new?
I liked Niebuhr’s 1920 reflection on politics and religion: every religious problem has ethical implications and every ethical problem has some political … aspect.
However, we will have to go much farther back than 1920 to discover how intertwined religion and politics are in the United States.
In fact, we have to go back to the founding of our country.
Not to 1787 when the Constitution was written, not 1777 to the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation, but we have to go back to the beginning and look at the character of the people who came to this country in the 1600s. We have to look at the story before those pieces of paper.
It is the Puritans, Pilgrims, and independent explorers who created this nation. It was their moral and religious fiber that provided the ingredients that led to the creation of this great republic.
Liah Greenfeld, in her excellent history Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, tells us, for a country or a group of people to “see” themselves as a nation there are underlying characteristics which must exist. She says a nation emerges as people begin to see themselves as a sovereign people.
A nation emerges as a people begin to see themselves as a homogenous group.
A nation emerges as a people begin to believe that the group or the “nation” is more significant than class and status.
A nation emerges as a people see themselves as participating in a political ideology that defines their existence as a people.
Greenfeld tells us, a nation is not created by outsiders, but comes from a complex development of social and cultural changes informed by the character of the people who form the nation.
James Monroe in Hellfire Nation said the same thing about the emerging nation of the United States, “Citizens draw on their private desires or values and then charge into the public, the political realm ...”
We know that John Locke’s Treatise on Civil Government was a momentous influence on the Seventeenth Century European mind, and he wrote that a political community is formed by an agreement or “compact between rational beings.” (Monroe, Hellfire Nation)
That is exactly what the Puritans acknowledged when they dropped anchor from the Isabella in Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Their Governor Winthrop, in his first sermon after they dropped anchor he said they were rational, reasonable men creating a compact with God to establish a new colony. Theirs would be a colony that would become a “light to the world,” a beacon of hope for everyone. And to this day, we will still find Beacon Hill at the highest point in Boston.
The United States emerged as a nation, Greenfeld tells us, because of the primary shared belief that all citizens were “English” and deserved to be treated and ruled as “Englishmen.” The English man, as you know, at that time had rights that could be found in no other European country. And the Colonists saw themselves as having those same rights.
What a paradox, the patriots rebelled against Britain because they believed they were denied the rights of ordinary citizens of England.
The U.S. emerged as a nation ideologically long before the papers were signed, long before the “shot heard round the world.”
What made up this nation were a people mightily concerned with God and with politics. Monroe put it this way; there is a “roaring moral fervor at the soul of American politics.”
A democratic, representative republic “under” God was created, no matter what the atheists would have us believe.
Who in the entire world had this kind of government at that time? No one; not one country had what this country created. And while other countries have become nations, each has become a nation with its own unique character, ideology, and political governance.
Now, to our Fifth Principle…
Inserted in the middle or almost the middle of our Seven Principles is a concern for the “individual conscience” and the democratic principle.
Let us be candid. At the time of the merger, there were many more atheists as members of Unitarian churches than there were Christians in Universalist churches. The merger had to accommodate the range of theologies represented. After all, there were theists, deists, Christians, religious humanists, mystics, earth-centered theists, agnostics, and secular humanists, and atheists who were coming together as the UUA. There had to be a way of bringing them together.
We are a free religious people. That means we encourage, promote, and affirm personal responsibility in our individual spiritual and religious search. That is one of the many reasons we have such divergent theologies in the UUA.
There is here in these United States Christian churches that preach an oppressive, elitist, and judging God. This wounds many people. Many of these wounded find our Unitarian Universalist churches; they find an accepting and affirming place where they bring their pain. AND, they don’t have to hear about the God they left behind.
Many years ago, that was me. In my early twenties I left Fellowship Baptist Church because of these reasons and found Spindletop Unitarian Church in Beaumont, Texas. It was a beacon of hope for me. It was my salvation.
While I was mad at God for awhile, I did not become embroiled in my woundedness, and remained open to the mystery of life.
Many of these former Christians or, as they like to call themselves, free thinkers, become secular humanists or atheists. They, too, are welcome in our UU churches.
I want an “aside” here... there is a minority of these wounded that become “fundamental atheists.” Now fundamental atheists are like “fundamental Christians.” Their theology is—there is no way but my way. There is only one salvation for humankind and it is the way I believe.
It is these extreme minorities, not only in Unitarian Universalism, but in all religions, that present the most harm to humankind. It is their narrow, militant views that threaten the very institutions that accept.
It is important for us to remember that we are Universalists, and no matter how wounded we may be, we are still open to other views and theologies!
Now… getting back to the Fifth Principle … those who wrote the Principles, out of respect for all the theologies represented in the UUA had to create an inclusive document…which they did.
But you cannot leave God out of a religious endeavor. Even if you say, we are leaving God out; simply by “leaving God out” you are acknowledging that something is being left out!
That will be our secret though.
Anyway, including the Fifth Principle in the UUA Principles, grounds the Principle, not only in our unique United States religious and political heritage, but it grounds the principle in Jesus’ radical inclusion of all.
When you invite everyone to the table, when you see each individual as worthy participants in the story, you take heed to Jesus’ radical call to inclusion.
It took the United States having a Civil War and over two hundred years to get to that place in our story where supposedly everyone was included at the table. Yet, we are still working on it.
If anyone here truly believes we have no more racism in our society, then we don’t have enough diversity in our friends.
If we are not aware of the prejudice and bias of the privileged in our culture, then we don’t have enough economic diversity in our friends and in our lives.
The Fifth Principle is not only about our inclusion at the table, it is about including everyone. We live in a country where there is a “roaring moral fervor at the soul of American politics.”
What did Paul say in Galatians? You reap what you sow? We need to be sowing God’s kingdom. We need to be living out our moral fervor, affirming and promoting and ensuring for all Jesus’ parable of radical inclusion.
Amen and blessed be.