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 his
sermon is a stand-alone sermon. But this year, I preached it as part of
what I called the “Toxic Trifecta,” a sermon series on ‘Salvation,’
‘Sin,’ and ‘Prayer.’ Unitarian Universalists have a history of not only
challenging these words, but discarding them altogether. This is a
profound error. In these and other religious words is contained much of
our history, our present and our future. The need is to explore them,
understand them and re-claim them.
I’ll begin with a story. A Christian woman dies and goes to heaven. St.
Peter meets her at the gate and after welcoming her, offers her a tour
of heaven. As they walk around, St. Peter is quick to point out the
wonderful places of worship that fill the Eternal City. “Here,” he says,
“is the great Cathedral for the Roman Catholics. And over there is the
beautiful church of the Presbyterians. And that is the magnificent
Temple of the Jews, across from the mosque of the Muslims.”
“Oh,” said the woman, “Are there Jews and the Muslims in heaven?” “Of
course,” said St. Peter. “All of God’s creation is here. Hindus,
Buddhists, Jews, Witches, Christians, animists, atheists, everyone. All
people, of all places, times and faiths. No exceptions. And every faith,
sect and group has its own meeting place or house of worship.”
After they had been touring a while, they walked past a small wood with
a clearing in it where a group of people was sitting on logs in a
circle, drinking something out of mugs and talking excitedly all at
once. “My goodness, who are THEY?” asked the woman. “Oh, those are the
Unitarian Universalists,” said St. Peter. “They haven’t built a building
yet because they’re too busy arguing over whether or not they’re really
here.”
The question I pose today regarding “salvation” is: “Is there anything
in the concept of ‘salvation’ that is of worth for Unitarian
Universalists?” By ‘worth,’ I mean helpful to our spiritual formation,
in our moral and ethical development and/or in providing guidance and
support for life decisions.
To address this question’, I’m going to come at it in several ways. I’m
going to share my own journey towards an understanding of the concept of
salvation. I’m also going to discuss how the notion of salvation has
been understood historically by Unitarians and Universalists. And, I’m
going to unpack the meaning of the word itself.
And this will all be in service of my suggestion to you that salvation
is a concept that has worth for modern Unitarian
Universalists. Indeed, I say that developing a concept of salvation is
necessary for us as individual human beings and for us
as UU communities.
As a child I was sent, by my outspokenly agnostic father and my
non-religious mother, to the church across the street, to be, as they
said, ‘exposed’ to religion. I think it’s interesting that we can speak
of exposing children to religion as we do of exposing them to chickenpox
or measles! Perhaps some of us, including my parents, desired the same
inoculation effect! In my case, I know that my parents’ intentions were
sincere and of the best; they thought this was necessary for me.
That church across the street happened to be Presbyterian and I had many
wonderful spiritual experiences there, mostly as a member of their
excellent choirs. But I always knew, even as a child, that I did not
believe what the others there believed about much of anything
theological, including and especially, salvation.
Now, the education on salvation that I received at that church was
education for children received by a
child, and I’m sure that contributed to my lack of understanding. And,
of course, I was hearing about salvation from only one of many Christian
perspectives. My memory is that I was told Jesus Christ suffered and
died for our sins so that we could be saved from them and have eternal
life. And without belief in Jesus as our savior from sin, we would be
condemned to a life after death of eternal pain and suffering, in Hell.
It was clear to me that with salvation I was being saved from
something and for something else, but I was not clear
on exactly what and how, let alone why.
I did not see how I could believe something so specific and so limiting
when it was obvious that there were many other ways to believe. Even at
the age of 8 or 9, I had met other people who did not believe what I was
being taught – people whom I loved and respected.
I want to be very clear in speaking of my religious journey that I am
assuming no position of personal superiority in relationship to
Christianity. Christianity is a great and true religion and I think that
we UUs can learn a lot from contemporary progressive Christianity. About
effective social justice work, for example.
One of the reasons I chose deliberately to attend a Christian seminary
is because I knew I needed to gain a greater understanding of Christian
history, theology and doctrine. That was in part to know better our
heritage as Unitarian Universalists - as for most of our history we have
been Christians. And many of us remain so today.
So, in my rejection of what I heard at that Presbyterian church, I
believed from a young age that membership in a Christian church was not
a religious path for me. I have been committed to our faith and our
denomination for 35 years. But, I did still wonder sometimes about the
concept of salvation and its worth.
I also thought that the Christian view of salvation, as I understood it,
was the only one out there – owned, as it were, by Christians.
Ultimately, I decided I didn’t need salvation – whatever it was! – that
it was an irrelevant and meaningless concept for me and probably for
most Unitarian Universalists.
Now, I want to move forward some thirty years from the Presbyterian
church of my childhood, to 1996. I was then a member of the First
Unitarian Universalist Church of Lubbock, Texas. We were a small church,
never exceeding 100 members and struggling to maintain at that level,
let alone grow.
Lubbock is a city of over 200,000 people. To me, it should have been
able to support and develop at least one good-sized UU church. I thought
this to be especially true as west Texas is one of the most socially,
politically and religiously conservative areas in the United States.
When people in Denver complain about its conservatism, I would say that
Denver is San Francisco on the Platte compared to Lubbock, Texas! So I
believed that in Lubbock, we should have had those folks who were very
turned off to the local brand of religion flocking to us in droves.
After all, it is no coincidence that two of our denomination’s biggest
churches are in Salt Lake City, Utah and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I decided in the summer of 1996 to attend our Mountain Desert District
Leadership School here in Colorado. One day before I went, I was at my
church and in conversation with another member about our struggles to
grow. “You know what our problem is,” I said with some degree of
bitterness, “we don’t offer salvation”.
I have never forgotten this, because it was at Leadership School that I
had to swallow those words. At Leadership School, my view of the concept
of salvation and its purpose in our lives was to change forever.
But I will leave my personal story of salvation for a bit to look at the
concept from some other perspectives. First I want to consider the
meaning of salvation for our Unitarian and Universalist forebears and
then the various meanings of the word “salvation” itself.
Where the Unitarians of early 19th century New England differed most
strongly from their Calvinist peers was not only in the notion of the
unity of God, as opposed to a trinity, but in their rejection of the
related concepts of original sin and election to salvation. Original sin
is the idea that humans are born sinful because Adam and Eve’s sins and
those of all their descendants have been transmitted to us at the time
of our birth.
Election to salvation is the idea that because God is eternal and
all-knowing, God knew (and therefore chose) who will be saved for Heaven
and who will be condemned to Hell before the beginning of time.
Therefore, regardless of how we behave in this, the only life we know,
our ultimate fate is already sealed before we were even born.
For Unitarians, the concept of original sin seemed to deny the
possibility and the purpose of choosing a moral or righteous life.
The concept of election to salvation also seemed to undercut the
motivation for choosing an ethical way of being.
That is, if I am guaranteed heaven – then I might as well behave as
badly as I like and be what Immanuel Kant termed “a happy rogue.” And if
I am condemned to Hell – I might as well behave even more badly, so that
at least I can get what I’m going to pay for! With original sin and
election to salvation, my behavior makes no difference in my fate!
In contrast to these notions of original sin and election to salvation,
early Unitarians believed that all humans are born good and have the
possibility of choosing a good and moral life. Therefore, they believed
in the possibility of salvation through consciously-chosen righteous
behavior, not through a belief alone in Jesus as savior. Or, as we UUs
express it in our shorthand, we are for deeds, not
creeds, as a path to eternal life.
Universalists, on the other hand, were all about
salvation – salvation for all. Also over against
Calvinism, Universalists rejected the notion of the saving of a chosen
few. Their belief was radical, and I cannot emphasize
enough how radical it was in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Their belief was that ALL humans would be saved and go
to Heaven. Universalists believed there was no Hell for anyone,
anywhere, at any time. These views were expressed in a document of
astonishing brevity – the American Universalists’ Winchester Profession
of 1803 – which I will read in its entirety:
Article I. We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty,
interest and final destination of mankind. So, they
said, it is in the Bible that we learn all we need to know about God’s
nature, what we’re supposed to do as humans and where we’re all going.
Their ideas are Biblical, they claimed, with a whole lot of analysis to
back that up.
Article II. We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love,
revealed in one Lord, Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who
will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and
happiness. That’s the “everybody goes to Heaven” part.
Article III. We believe that holiness and true happiness are
inseparably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to
maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and
profitable unto men.
The Universalists therefore did not believe that a rogue could
be happy in sin. To them, true happiness lies in doing good for
ourselves and each other. Whatever Hell there is, is created only by our
own unloving actions in this lifetime. No matter what mistakes we make,
the Universalists believed there can be no mistakes
committed in a finite human life that are worthy of an
infinity of torment.
A just and loving God would not do that to God’s
children. God would not withhold the possibility of redemption for all.
Oh, this was radical stuff! Ultimately, Universalism had a great impact
on other Protestant denominations in the 19th century.
These early Unitarian and Universalist concepts represent a powerful and
valuable heritage for us regarding salvation. These groups of brave
people applied their highly-valued sense of reason to the Bible and to
Christian belief and practice. They remained within the Christian
tradition. Two hundred years ago, our ancestors rejected
completely the ideas that we still
hear shouted at us from televisions today! They are our heroes
and our models for religious inquiry.
However, many of us are not at all concerned with Christian notions of
original sin or election to Heaven. Either we have never been part of
the Christian tradition or we have left it. Or, as do some UU
Christians, we interpret Christian doctrine even more radically than our
UU forebears. Where else, then, might we look for some understanding of
the meaning of salvation in our modern Unitarian Universalist lives? I
think that another place to look is in the origin of the word itself.
I had always assumed salvation was about “saving” or being “saved”,
because of the similarity of the words and how the word “salvation” is
used. But the idea of the connection between “salvation” and “saved” is
not entirely correct.
“Salvation” traces its lineage to the Sanskrit word sarvah.
The root of this word, sar, came into Latin as sal. The
Sanskrit sarvah means “all” – it is a reference to
wholeness, completeness and totality. The root sal came
into Latin words related to health or wholeness, such as “salutary”,
“salubrious” and “salute” (as in to wish someone good health).
Sal also came to the Latin word salvare,
meaning “to save” – but only as in save or preserve from illness or
death. So, here we have some ancient meanings of salvation that are
related to wholeness and health. The
word also has some ancient religious connotations, and I will return to
them shortly.
Now I want to take you back to Leadership School with me. Our week-long
school, as some of you might know from your own experience, was held at
an altitude of over 10,000 feet. I’m sure this had some effect on my
thoughts, as did our sixteen-hour days!
Part of the Leadership School curriculum is education and exploration in
the area of Unitarian Universalist religious heritage and values. In
1996, that section was led by the Reverend Robert Latham, who was then
the minister at the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden. I attribute to
Robert the initial development of my personal concept of salvation.
For Robert, all religions primarily seek to answer what he calls Life’s
Five Big Questions:
Question 1 is about who or what is in charge.
Question 2 is about who
are we as human beings.
Question 3 is about how do we know what we
know.
Question 4 is about the purpose or worth of our lives.
Question 5 is about the meaning of our deaths.
Your answers to these questions are the foundation of your personal
religion, and we all have answers to these questions, however unclear or
unexpressed they might be. You will have answers to these questions
regardless of whether or not you consider yourself to be “religious.” I
believe further that we must, as humans, seek answers
to these questions. Answering is a human imperative, because as humans,
we must give meaning to our lives.
Each of these Five Big Questions contains fodder for many sermons. But
the one of interest in a sermon on salvation is Question number four,
about the purpose and worth of our lives. This is the salvation
question. The theological name for this concern is soteriology.
To elaborate on the soteriology or salvation issues, they are about why
humans exist; about what gives meaning to life; about what is the
trade-off and the pay-off for giving life energy to our life purposes;
and about how we are fulfilled.
Earlier in my brief description of the general meaning of the word
“salvation”, I said that I would return to the more specifically
religious meanings. In the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew word most often
translated as “salvation” is yesha, meaning to be free,
in a wide or roomy space, carrying the sense of being freed from
confinement, constriction and limitation.
In the New Testament, the Greek word most often translated as
“salvation” is soterion, from which comes the word
soteriology. In the Phoenician system of writing, which was pictorial
and from which the Greek and Roman alphabets derived, there is an image
that came into Greek as the word soterion. This image
was a picture of a broken pot or vessel. A broken pot or vessel.
Soterion is the process of being made whole, of re-integration,
of being restored and made sound.
There are two ideas implicit for us in this picture of the broken pot,
as opposed to a whole one. The first idea is that all humans experience
brokenness in their relations to self, others and the Universe.
Brokenness or imperfection is a human universal. The second idea is that
the journey to wholeness is an ongoing process –
everyone, no matter at what age or ability, has the capacity and the
opportunity for greater wholeness and healing. The broken pot reminds us
that we live in the possibility and the reality
of becoming more whole.
For me, these ideas of salvation were a revelation that gave the lie to
my notion that Unitarian Universalism does not offer salvation. As a
path and a place where we are encouraged to use our freedom, to
transcend our limitations and to seek wholeness and healing, I think we
offer it as well, or better, than many faiths.
My friends, salvation is not about being saved from or saved for
anything. It is about how we find the purpose of our lives. It is about
the ways in which we seek to become whole and complete in our relations
with ourselves, all others and the rest of creation.
And it is something, therefore, that we must consider,
as human beings, no matter what our life situations. We are
hard-wired to find the meaning, purpose and wholeness of our
lives, no matter what our specific theological beliefs!
And the best place to search and reach for what it is that makes us
whole and sound in our relations to ourselves, each other and the larger
Universe is in our own Unitarian Universalist churches. This is the main
purpose we covenant together as communities of faith.
From this search for wholeness and right relations come our striving for
social justice, our commitment to treat each other well and lovingly,
our aspiration for self-growth in maturity, love and spirituality.
We are here to effect our own and each others’ salvation – and we should
never lose sight of that for a moment!
So, with this in mind, I have some final questions for you today.
What is it that brings you to yesha,
that wide and open place beyond all confinement and limitation?
What is it that allows you soterion, to become
more whole? And how will you, in this beloved
community, support yourselves and each another to freedom and to
wholeness of being? It is in your answers to these questions and in the
living of your answers to these questions, that your
salvation lies.
So may it be. Blessed be.
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