Pride In Our Faith

a canvass sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, February 26, 2006

I tell you this day…I am proud to be a Unitarian Universalist! Every time I read the Washington Post, I am proud to be a Unitarian Universalist.

Every time I am reminded of all the good works we do at UUCR, I am proud to be a Unitarian Universalist.

I know that pride can be a vice rather than a virtue. In the book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible the prophet says…”pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

And yet I call upon you today to take pride in our liberal faith.

For too long Unitarian Universalists have been of divided heart. We have been unsure of our message, we have held up our differences as problems, we have suffered the slings and arrows of denominations larger than our own…we have resisted evangelizing…we have hidden our churches in the woods and our light under a bushel, we have done our good works in the world safe within our secular identities…rarely proclaiming our religious and spiritual motivations and connections.

So today, I call us to take pride in our faith.

I think it will be awhile before we garner enough pride to be at risk of a fall. I think it is possible to be both full of pride at home and humble in our face to the world.

My sermon text from Psalms 42, orients my thoughts this morning. “ As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for the Divine, My soul thirsts for the living faith. Deep calls to deep.”

To find the balance between pride and humility I begin at the soul level. Whatever we might believe or not believe as UUs…we come with hunger and thirst….we come with the deepest part of ourselves longing for the deepest connections possible. We come longing to be touched, moved, energized!

Unitarian Universalism feeds me at the soul level. Because here we share a hunger for meaning. Here we share a quest of the human spirit. We come with a shared desire for a better world and a better self.

I could have been a Methodist minister, but my Jewish husband would not have sat comfortably in those pews. (And that’s a big deal) I could have been a Methodist minister, but my lesbian and gay clergy friends would not have the same privileges as I enjoyed. I could have been a Methodist minister, but, as a woman, I would be lucky indeed to receive a call to a large congregation.

And my children would not have been transformed and held safe within the Our Whole Lives experience of sex education.

And ordained to the theology of Christian certainty, I would not be so alive to new scholarship and popular culture and the wisdom of science, and diversity of thought and belief. And most importantly, I would not have the privilege of the free pulpit. Where all thoughts can be expressed without censure, without fear.

I am proud of Unitarian Universalism because ours is a living faith.

Always evolving, always open, always asking questions, never presuming that we have THE answer. And ours is a free faith.-no code or creed crafted to silence any voice. People who ask about UUism are amazed when I tell them we are Christian, Buddhist, pagan, agnostic, Humanist, atheist…even atheist…they can’t believe it. We come longing for meaning,

And for acceptance.

The other significant longing we share is for justice and for peace.

Every week, it seems that the national and international scene can’t get any worse…and then it does. How can people kill others in the name of religion over a cartoon….no matter how disrespectful?

How can one religious group destroy the sacred, holy site of another religious group?

The loss, the mourning, the despair…I heard the NPR coverage of the sounds of the mourning of the Muslim people who had lost their holy shrine…human voices, human loss, human hunger for justice and for peace.

We need pride in our faith. For pride in our faith, will lead us to more good works.

I want us to be proud Unitarian Universalists so that we can be active Unitarian Universalists….so that we can come to see our lives as models for our faith tradition. So that we can count ourselves among the saints of our liberal religious heritage. What are you doing or how are you being in your life because you are a UU? How does your liberal faith make a difference in your life? How does it work in you?

If we only think of ourselves as attending the UU Church…or even as simply being members…if our religious identity is conditional, then we hold something back….but if we know ourselves to be faithful and committed UU’s, if we fully embrace this congregation as our church home, then we will be generous of spirit…then we will give all that we can to this faith….we will give all that we can in love and service.

If you want to find reasons to be proud of our faith…then read the UU World or look at the UUA Website. Here are just a few of the things I learned:

• Unitarian Universalist giving for the Gulf Coast Hurricane Relief fund stands at nearly $3.5 million dollars…this surpasses any previous record for UU donations. Another $2 million was raised to aid survivors of the South Asian tsunami, and $325 thousand was donated to help those affected by flooding in Transylvania and an additional $240,000 was raised for survivors of the earthquake in Pakistan and India. The total donations in 2005 for disaster relief was nearly $6 million dollars.
• UUA is a leading voice in Marriage Equality Week and work for legislative advocacy on this issue
• In November, UUA President Bill Sinkford and UUSC director Charlie Clements went to Darfur and joined the call for a US response to the Genocide there
• UU congregations including UUCR are engaging in a consultation on Ministry to Youth : a two year process to re-vision, strengthen and deepen our commitment to youth
• UUA president Bill Sinkford called for a phased and scheduled withdrawal from Iraq, this followed an action for immediate witness endorsed by the congregational delegates at the 2004 General Assembly which called for the US to respect the end date for a multinational force in Iraq of no later than Dec 31, 2005.

Along with pride in our UU Association, we can also be proud of our own congregation.

• UUCR has raised over one and a quarter million dollars for the construction of our nearly completed new building and an additional 230 thousand dollars for the purchase of furnishings, sound system, and other necessities for the new building
• We are sending a team of six church leaders to the UU Mid-size church conference next week…to learn about how to transition to a larger congregation
• We have excellent Sunday worship, a wonderful choir, a stellar Religious Education program and a friendly and welcoming environment
• We have a Welcoming Congregation task force planning. A regular support activity for gay and lesbian youth and allies
• We have a strong social justice council leading us in activist expressions of our values and principles
• We have many social, caring and ministry groups within which we care for one another.

Always, a church begins with caring for one another.

Aren’t we all proud to be members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville.

This congregation that has come through the fire of conflict, has learned so much about forgiveness and community, and trust, and is now at the Threshold of incredible possibilities? What a blessing! What a gift! What a legacy!

Soul work, religious journeys, moral commitments are all about what we learn, how we grow to be better human beings.

One of the things we’re proud of are our famous Unitarians and Universalists. Can you call out the name of a famous UU?

Reverend Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister in the Transcendentalist period of 1840s and 50s writing in the liberal Christian language of his time wrote; “God send us a real religious life, which shall pluck blindness out of the heart, make us betters fathers, mothers, and children; send us a religious life that shall go with us where we go and make every home the house of God, every act acceptable as prayer.”

Our faith should make us better human beings….should return us to our best selves, and remind us always of our inner divinity. The good news of Unitarian Universalism is that our faith is needed in the world today…disparately needed. Our particular, liberal world view – which rests on; 1. a search for truth rather than certainty…and 2. an embrace of many paths…rather than one and 3. the affirmation of all people regardless of differences….these are the attributes of our faith that distinquish us from most other faiths. Our commitment to freedom, reason and tolerance of different beliefs, and different identities… is still unique…and still needed.

Like so many Unitarian clergy of former times, Theodore Parker, spoke his truth and suffered ostricism by his colleagues. Because he questioned miracles and applied critical scholarship to the Bible, some, wanted to take his pulpit from him….they did exclude him from their professional groups. Unitarian Universalists must always be fighters, for we are dissenters, we are a minority religion, we challenge those in power, we challenge even within our own association.

Theodore Parker was born in Lexington, MA is 1810, he died in 1860 in Florence Italy, where he had gone for health reasons and where he is buried. He was a free thinker, and an abolitionist. He spoke out for women’s suffrage, he helped fugitive slaves on the underground railroad and he, along with other Unitarians raised money for John Brown’s failed insurrection in Virginia. He wrote a public letter defending Brown.

His sermon “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity” delivered in a Boston pulpit in May 1841, is considered one of the foundational statements of religious liberalism.

What is transient and what permanent in our faith today
Our style of worship may change over time. Our hymns will be re-written.
Our principles and purposes may be revised or ignored in the decades ahead.
Our buildings will crumble, our curricula be discarded, our ordained clergy replaced with lay ministers. One hundred and fifty years from now…what will last of our faith?

Theodore Parker posited that the lasting, the permanent aspect of Unitarian Christianity of his day…was the Biblical truth and admonition…to Love God and Love your neighbor.

I hope what will be lasting of our Unitarian Universalism in the 21st century will be freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom of identity…and longing for meaning, longing for religious community and longing for justice and peace. Perhaps in this, I fundamentally agree with Theodore Parker…and with the Bible….Love is what lasts.

So please join me in taking pride in our faith.

Explain to your families and friends why you are proud of this church. Invite your friends and families and neighbors to join us for worship or other activities here.

Share this legacy, this gift, this blessing.

Continue to come with soul deep hunger…thirsting for the love which is the spirit of this church, and participating in service , which is its law. There is so much to be proud of in our faith. There is so much to be proud of in our church.

Amen/Blessed BE