Reflections

Who knows what Sunday it is in the Christian liturgical year?  Yes, Pentecostal Sunday, which marks when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles of Jesus, not long after Jesus had died. In celebration of that, I have a story to share from my childhood annals.

I was around 8 and remember our family attending a Pentecostal church where the sermon was always long and boring.  The interesting stuff would come later when people were invited forward to receive the Holy Spirit, which in Pentecostal settings sometimes meant speaking in tongues.

In those days, young women wore super short dresses.  One of the two clear memories I have from those experiences is having deep concern that,

while those women were laid out on the floor being filled with the Holy Spirit, things were going to show that should not be showing in a public setting, let alone a church.   Someone would finally get around to placing a garment over their legs, but never soon enough for my liking.

My other memory is how badly I wanted to speak in tongues.  When the preacher made the invitation to come up front to receive the Holy Spirit, I went every time.

Kneeling at the Holy Spirit-receiving bench, hands would be laid on me, prayers would be said, beseeching the Spirit to come into me.

When I wouldn’t end up speaking in tongues, I thought something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t open enough.

I wanted to experience this so much that on one occasion, I employed the fake-it-til-you-make-it strategy, fabricating speaking in tongues. That felt so disingenuous that I only did it once.

Alas, I never ended up speaking in tongues.  Not to date, anyway. If it does happen, I’m sure you’ll hear about it in a reflection somewhere down the road.

While I don’t usually use the term ‘Holy Spirit,’ the concept is central in my spiritual life.

I’m recalling another Unitarian minister who said something similar.  At a Q&A with Rev. David Pyle during our affiliation process, one of you asked, “As a Unitarian Universalist, how do you experience God?”

David’s answer mirrors my own.  Since we don’t deify Jesus or personify God, that leaves us with the spiritual essence of the Divine.

Using our limited vernacular, many progressives would say that experiencing God is holy and spiritual.  Holy and spiritual.  Holy Spirit.

I’m thinking of the beautiful words of our NCC Belief Statement: We experience God as a presence at the center of our being and of all creation.                         

The story of my Pentecostal church-going experience is a page out of my history. Today we’ll explore the pages of the Unitarian Universalism history book.

Our journey will include a clever invention, burning at the stake, assassination attempts, and Transylvania.

No, Dracula does not figure into the story, but our nation’s founding fathers do, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, two major wars, the Selma march, and the turbulent 60’s.

Intriguing, I know, so let’s get started!

As a prologue, we know that, in an effort to tether the Roman Empire to the new Christian movement, Emperor Constantine called church leaders together in the year 325 to establish a theological structure for the fledgling faith.

From this gathering doctrine of the Trinity and Jesus’ divinity, the virgin birth, and existence of hell were approved.  (Some would say the Holy Spirit inspired these decisions).

That’s what was taught and believed for a long time.  But the development of the printing press in 1439 altered that, because it allowed people the opportunity to read books such as the Bible.

From exposure to what the Bible actually said, questions emerged about traditionally accepted tenets.

A significant event came out of that, known as the Protestant Reformation, lead by Martin Luther in the early 1500’s.

Thus ends the prologue.  Now we move into Chapter 1 of our UU history..

A contemporary of Luther’s was a Spaniard by the name of Michael Servetes.

He was a prodigy, able to read Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, which allowed him to not only read the Bible, but original texts of the Bible.

From his studies, he concluded that Jesus did not present himself as or come as God, but instead was a profound teacher.

Servetes believed that Jesus supported diversity of thought and the use of our God-given intellect to form spiritual understanding.

He also had the radical idea that perhaps God was a spirit of life that existed in all of us.  He wrote a couple of books about such ideas.

You can guess how this went over with the 16th century religious establishment…

…just like for Jesus when church authorities did not tolerate a new message. His life became endangered, and for years he lived in hiding.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and who are persecuted because of righteousness.

Then he goes on to say, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Perhaps Severtes had his own Pentecost experience, calling him to let his light shine.  Coming out of hiding, he went to Geneva, where John Calvin was, with hopes of a discourse about their differing religious views.

This, despite Calvin’s previous threats that if Servetes ever went there, Calvin would ensure that he wouldn’t leave alive.

Keeping that promise, Servetes was immediately arrested, tried, convicted, and burned at the stake, along with all of his books that Calvin could collect.

By then, Servetes had a following, and they decided to move to from inhospitable western Europe to Transylvania (now Romania), which was known to be religiously tolerant.   At that time, anyway.

Transylvania’s young King John Sigismund was the first monarch ever to support open and free religious discussion.

Once again, religious openness wasn’t embraced by the existing religious bodies, not by the Muslims or the feuding Protestant and Catholic Christians.

During the 10 years that he ruled, John was the target of 9 assassination attempts.

He died at the age of 30 in a carriage accident.

When this place was deemed no longer friendly, the group migrated to England.

A couple of hundred years pass, and things stay quiet for this group that came to be known as the Unitarians (Uni = one, versus Trinitarians = 3).

It was in England that an American dignitary named Benjamin Franklin heard a Unitarian minister, Joseph Priestley, preach, and he was so moved that he convinced Priestley to bring his message to America.

In addition to establishing many churches in the northeast, Priestley preached to numerous founding fathers, including Jefferson and John Adams.

One sees the Unitarian influence of openness and tolerance in the Declaration of Independence, and half of our first 6 presidents were Unitarians.

A Unitarian service back then was very similar to a typical Protestant service, except for Jesus being God.

That was to change due to Ralph Waldo Emerson and friends such as Thoreau.

Emerson, a Unitarian minister, introduced Transcendentalism, which promoted religion as a deeply personal experience.

For transcendentalists, church structure, traditional doctrines and strict adherence to scripture – the ‘machines’ of religion – didn’t define one’s relationship with God as much as looking within yourself and Creation for spiritual truth.

This had a significant influence on the development of Unitarianism.

That was on the internal side.  A big development was also about to occur on the external front. Enter a handful of feisty women during the Civil War.

Many of us know the names Julia Ward Howe, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton.  Howe is known as a suffrage leader, Dix for mental health reform, and Barton for founding the Red Cross.

All Unitarians, they all pushed for women’s ordination (mostly non-existent then), resulting in the first woman – Antoinette Brown – being ordained in this country.

These trailblazers were deeply justice-minded, and through their influences, justice work became foundational in the faith.

So, in the 1800’s, you’ve got a blending of emphasis on an individual relationship with God (not molded by external institutions), and an emphasis on caring for each other, especially the marginalized.

Then something else arrived when the 1900’s rolled around.

Because of the atrocities of WWI, the likes of which had never been seen, some people started to think more collectively to ensure that another such conflict among humans would never occur again.

Humanism held that all people have value and are worthy of love, and therefore, we need to help each other.

Based on this, another progressive religious group known as Universalists (the 2nd U in UU) helped establish the NAACP and ACLU.

(Universalists got their name based on the belief that all people are divinely created and loved by God, and as such, the eternity of hell made no sense).

It was an interesting dichotomy… Unitarian transcendentalism was more about the importance of one’s internal journey, while Universalists’ humanism was about externally caring for our fellow humans.

Yin and yang, producing balance.   God, me, and thee.

For 30 years these two progressive traditions considered a merger, and in 1961 it happened…the Unitarians (God is one) and the Universalists (God is love) formed the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Fast forward to 1965.  Martin Luther King puts out a call to clergy around the country to join him for a march in Selma.  Everyone knew the dangers.

Nonetheless, 200 UU ministers and thousands of UU lay people go.

Of the 4 killed at Selma, 2 were UUs, one being Rev. James Reeb,

The 60’s and 70’s were rife with social justice…women’s rights, racial empowerment, anti-war, and LGBTQ rights.

The UUs were part of it all, being the first denomination in U.S. history to call an openly gay minister and perform the first same-sex marriage.

These things seem commonplace now.

Women’s suffrage and ordination, compassion for mental health patients, finding divinity in natural settings….these things are givens these days..

But it wasn’t always that way.  It was the mindset and heart-set of these people living their faith that paved the way for churches like ours.

People who, like Jesus – in courage and content – blazed new trails.

When Betty and our other founders endeavored to write the NCC Belief and Values statement, they might as well have had a UU handbook as a reference, so similar is the content.

And yet, for all that this faith tradition is and has been, there still exists some misunderstanding about it.  Here’s an example…

A number of years ago, a neighbor, upon learning that I was in a UU seminary, said she’d never be UU because she’s not into worshipping grass.

Do you see the unfortunate translation…having a personal relationship with God that is deepened by connection to all of creation, getting boiled down to being grass worshippers.

Throughout these hundreds of years, the religious establishment and its followers can still disavow and consider suspect something that doesn’t mirror itself.

We all know this societal dynamic – misunderstanding leading to marginalization.

As newly minted UUs, we will know it not only as justice-seeking warriors, but now also as recipients.

Some of us have wondered if being misunderstood by some people will deter us and our aspirations to reach the community and grow.

And yet, we here at NCC are strong of spirit.  We take to heart the words of our teacher when he said:

Blessed are the pure in heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
 And blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.

And so, we proceed, undeterred and empowered by our faith and our love.

When I lived in Louisville, with my home being five minutes from Churchill Downs, I became more aware of horse racing.  With the Kentucky Derby run just two Saturdays ago, talk begins of the likelihood of a racing trifecta.

Let’s play a little trifecta sports trivia game. Who can tell me what the horse racing trifecta is called? (Triple Crown)

Does any one know what the trifecta skill set is in baseball?  (pitching, hitting, stealing bases).   And what about basketball (rebounds, assists, points scored).

In our culture we like this idea of trifectas.  In show business it’s a person who can sing, dance and act. 

This idea of three isn’t limited to the world of entertainment.   In the religious domain of traditional Christianity, the trifecta commonly known as the Holy Trinity is central to the faith.

Traditionally the Father, Son, Holy Spirit comprises the godhead, and one’s relationship to that conceptualization of divinity is mostly linear in nature.  God is three, and it’s God and me.

While the tradition trinity concept isn’t always as literally embraced in progressive circles, there is another 3-way that is operative. It just doesn’t get as much press.   

This holy trifecta includes God (however and whoever you experience that creative, sustaining, loving presence), and me, and also thee, to arrive at three.

Divinity becomes less linear and more circular.  In a very real – not theoretical – sense, divinity experienced everywhere in the created world.

And that means certainly and especially in you and me.

This idea that God – the same essence and holiness – (however and whoever we understand God to be) resides in us, is seen by some as blasphemous. 

And that makes sense from the linear “I’m me and God is God” perspective.

Water and flour are not the same thing.  It’s the blending of them that creates communion – tangibly and spiritually.

Friends, if we recognized, or focused more on our own divinity, being God-carriers, God-bearers, I believe this world would be vastly different.

Let’s think on this for a moment.  Being God-bearers.  It can be a continuation of last week’s Mother’s Day vibe.

We heard about this in our reading when Mary was informed that she’d conceive and give birth to Jesus.

As a historical sidebar, in the 7th century theologians identified the date of March 25 as when this happened because it’s nine months before December 25.                                             

While some of us make take pause at the literalness of this story, beauty can be gleaned here if we’re open.

An Episcopal priest, Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca, wrote a beautiful essay in celebration of this event in Christian history known as the Annunciation.   

Listen for its highlighting of us being God-bearers.

She aptly entitled it Becoming God-Bearers in Our Own Time.

You know the feeling.

It’s 3am and you’re scrolling again, watching the world break apart in real time.
Another crisis. Another betrayal. Another reason to despair.

Or it’s midday and you’re surrounded by people, messages pinging, notifications lighting up—and yet  you feel so alone.

Or it’s the moment when someone asks “How are you?” and you say “Fine” because the truth is too heavy, too complicated, too much for that shared space.

We are living in a time when hope feels naive.
When the distance between how things are and how they should be has become a chasm you can’t stop staring into.

You’re tired of the polarized conversations that go nowhere.
Tired of watching systems fail people over and over.

And underneath it all, there’s this quiet, persistent question:
Does any of this matter?

There is a temptation, when we hear the story of Jesus’ mother Mary, to place her far away from us.

To wrap her in stained glass.
To soften her edges.
To make her holiness feel unreachable, unreal.

But the truth is both far more unsettling, and far more beautiful.

Mary was not chosen because she was distant from her humanity.
She was chosen because she was so deeply in it.

She knew what it meant to live under occupation.
She knew how to navigate systems designed to marginalize people like her.
To carry hope when she had every reason to abandon it.

Sound familiar?

Her story is not safely contained in the past.  It is still unfolding and it whispers something into our exhaustion:

That God is still entering the world, not through power, but through people.

Through us.

Many think of Mary as flawless.  To be a God-bearer is not about perfection.

It is about willingness…allowing something holy to take root within you, even when you don’t feel ready, even while your heart is heavy, full of questions and doubt.

Mary did not say yes because she felt ready.
She said yes because she felt called.

And there is a difference.

Readiness waits for certainty.
Calling doesn’t require certainty.  It requires courage.

What, you might ask, does it look like, to carry God into this world these days?

I’d like to share two close-to-home examples of carrying God this past week. 

Our leaders unanimously agreeing to help our host church with their bazaar, because, although we have plenty on our plate these days with launching ourselves in our new home, they need our help, and we have help to offer.

Or a small group that leans into a new ailing group member, agreeing to meet at her home, knowing that the well-established group norms will be altered with making such accommodations.   

You might remember that last week you were invited to speak about what compels you, what inspires and draws you to our church.   At first glance it might have seemed self-congratulatory… ‘This is why we’re so great.’

But in essence it was us speaking to, rejoicing in, how our community is, in concrete real-life ways, God-bearing to us.  How we, through our church, experience divinity through each other…God, me, and thee.   

I want to go back momentarily to the essay.  There’s more good stuff here.  Our author says:

This God-bearing work…it’s not easy work.

Because, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s going to cost us something.

It will cost the comfort of remaining detached.
The safety of not caring too much…
You know…the protection from keeping your heart at a manageable distance.

But carrying God into this world asks you to hold hope when cynicism is way more logical.

To not numb out but keep loving when even love and faith has been weaponized.

To keep showing up when you’re not at all sure what difference it makes.

And this is how God comes.

Waiting for an opening, a yes, a flicker of willingness.

“Let it be done with me…” is not reserved only for Mary.

Being a God-bearer is as applicable now as it was then.

Sometimes our attempts to be don’t pan out, though.   The receptivity from the ‘thee’ corner of the triangle can at times be low. 

Such as, say, a couple of Sundays when I was driving to church on a Sunday morning.  I was running a little late, so I was hustling down the street.

There’s a part of this street that merges from two lanes to one, and I was in the merge lane, and a lady in a pickup truck was in the ongoing lane.

We came up to the moment of merger, and I admittedly was not as conscientious about roadway etiquette as I could’ve been.

Instead of politely slowing down and falling in behind the pickup lady, I gunned it and went in front of her.

Not long after that inconsequential motorist transgression, we both came side to side at a red light.

I looked over at her, my hurriedness replaced with sincere God-bearing contrition.

Friendly and engaging, I smiled and waved to express my apology, and was met with the most definitive flipping-off that I literally have ever seen.   

While that put a damper on what I had hoped would be a moment of forgiveness and connection, I decided to employ the Golden Rule.

In this situation of doing unto her as I would want done unto me if the roles were reversed, I stayed with the contrition approach, because when I find people momentarily off-putting, their expression of sorry-ness goes a long way.

So I continued looking at her as we sat that that long red light, quietly imploring her to return my gaze so I could say, “I was a jerk, and I’m sorry.”

The opportunity was not granted.  The time went by, with me looking directly at her, and her looking intently ahead while undoubtedly aware of my countenance.

Alas, the light turned green, she roared on ahead, while I turned and made my way here.

Being a willing divinity presence/ambassador doesn’t guarantee outcomes. 

But the Golden Rule, as part of the God-bearing playbook, isn’t about guaranteed responses.

When Jesus delivered his Sermon on the Mount, he didn’t include any exclusionary clauses.

No “Yeah, but’s…” or “Disregard whenever XYZ…” 

And this part of his message is so central, all the great sages, prophets and religions speak to it. Check out the creative variations on the theme…

An African proverb says: “One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a bird should first try it on himself to feel how it feels.”

When Confucius was asked if there is one word that serves as a principle of conduct for life, he replied, “The word ‘shu’ – reciprocity… do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.”

The Muslim prophet Muhammad said, ‘Don’t be people who mindlessly copy others, saying that if others treat you well you will treat them well, and if they do you wrong you’ll do them wrong. Instead, decide for yourself to do no wrong.”

The Jewish sage Hillel was once approached by a heathen who said, “I will become a convert, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Hillel replied, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.”

Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ““Every person takes care that his neighbor does not cheat him. But when the day comes that he begins to care more that he doesn’t cheat his neighbor…then all goes well.”

Native American: “Avoid hurting the hearts of others. The poison of your pain will return to you.  All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.”  

This brings us full circle to the circular nature of divinity.

And it encompasses all types of relationships, not just personal.

Remember the department store J.C. Penney?

Mr. Penney first store, opened in Wyoming in 1902, was called the Golden Rule Store.  He believed in low prices and that, “by good service to our customers we will create in them that spring of sparkling goodwill which will prompt them to want to help us to serve them.” (I wonder if Mr. Penney studied Confucianism).

He, seeing no division between the secular and sacred, said, “The golden rule was meant for business as much as for other human relationships.”

Ever heard of such a company nowadays?   I haven’t, but I hope it’s out there.

Here’s another story about the Golden Rule, an imagined one.

Imagine that you want to arrive more deeply into the Land of God-bearing-ness, and picture yourself planning the trip.

You go to a used car lot, and you tell the salesman that you’re planning a trip deep into the wilds of new territory, and you need a vehicle to get you there.

It needs to be reliable, you say, and has to have GPS. 

The salesman (we’ll call him Gabriel) lights up and says, “Oh…GPS –  God’s Plan Straightaway, yes ma’am!   If you need reliability and GPS, then I have just the thing for you. It’s a lovely golden color, and on the road it rules.”

Then you say, “Mmm, OK.  I took a look in the new lot, but nothing felt right.”

Then Gabriel’s eyes soften, and he looks at you and says, “For where you’re going, you don’t need new.  You need tried and true.”

The price of this car fits your spiritual bank account perfectly, but you’re nervous nonetheless.  Upon further thought, you summon your courage, say yes, and you are on your way!

These stories, real and otherwise, along with the sage statements of seers, are golden alright, illuminating the way for us.

May we bypass any assessment of readiness and instead cultivate courage to be on a higher road because we were willing to say Yes.