Salvation for My Community

When I speak of salvation today I use the word in the same way I did last month. I mean that I wish to save my community from the hells of this existence and from our own failures.

As I said last month, I find no personal deity out there who will save us as individuals or as a community. There is no personal deity that brings us together here as a community. We are the components and the causes of our coming together. We are also the salvation of our community. Each of us is responsible for our part in the salvation of our religious community, and all of the other communities to which we belong. And, our religious community is responsible for playing its part in our individual salvation.

I see my salvation and that of my community as being inseparable. Just last week from this pulpit, Rev. Cynthia Snavely said it very straight when she said: "It's impossible to be a Unitarian Universalist by yourself."

There is no way out of it; we are social animals. We need a community in which to practice our faith. And, to practice our faith means to test ourselves by speaking and listening, by loving and forgiving.

We test ourselves with a group of like-minded people who are willing to listen to us. We participate in a religious community when we are willing to speak out regarding our own search for truth, and to listen to what other members say of their own search. Signing a membership book is not as important as participating in the community; and participating means speaking, listening, loving and forgiving.

Each of us, as members of a religious community whose goal it is to foster the individual's search for truth, need to be willing to speak the truth as we see it. If there is some big problem from which the rest of us are hiding, we need to be willing to say, out loud to everyone, "There's an elephant in the living room." Whoever sees the problem needs to bring it to the attention of everyone in the community. This requires considerable fortitude, on the part of the elephant spotter, for it is virtually certain that not everyone will agree that there is a problem, or that it is the size of an elephant. Our obligation to speak the truth arises out of our love for, and participation in, the life of this religious community.

However, speaking the truth as we see it is only half of the pair of obligations that form the core of our community; listening is the other half. Speaking and listening are the links to Confession and Forgiveness.

Just as Confession and Forgiveness are relevant to my personal salvation so too are they relevant to the salvation of my community. And, both of these arise out of love of self and love of others.

In the reading that I chose for this morning, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote "Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love."

In this curious combination of words Niebuhr is pointing out the reality that love is the essential ingredient in community. Without mutual love, a community cannot exist. A community is a network of relationships and all relationships are imbued with life through the presence of mutual love. Stepping back for a moment, we can see that we spend all our lives embedded in relationships.

We are conceived as the result of a relationship. As a fetus, we grow as the result of the relationship we have with our mother. We are born into a world of relationships. We are nurtured, or we are deprived, as a result of relationships. We mature, or we are stunted, as a result of our relationships. We thrive or shrivel depending on the presence or absence of love. We live our lives in many relationships with many people. We die by saying goodbye to all our relationships.

By way of contrast, all the material stuff that fills my life is meaningless by itself. Material goods, in the absence of love and without loving relationships, are spiritually deadening.

Love of self is the staring point of life. Research indicates that an infant that does not receive any nurturing will die. It never understands that it is loved, and is lovable. The youth that cannot love himself will kill, for he cannot love anyone else.

The poet W.H. Auden wrote, "We must love one another or die."

But how is it that I am spending so much time on love when I am supposed to be talking about saving my community? I am doing this because I am convinced that a community that does not love itself will disintegrate, for love is the glue of community.

In the latest UU World Magazine there is an article written by Rev. Fred Small of the Winchester Unitarian Society, Winchester, Massachusetts, entitled, "How Well Do We Love?" Here is how he concludes his article.

"As our congregations create or review our covenants and mission statements, we can explicitly affirm love and kindness as core principles alongside freedom and justice. We can emphasize our responsibility to speak the truth in love. We can gently confront members of our community who verbally abuse others. We can incorporate the Buddhist practice of metta, loving-kindness meditation, into our worship and church life. We can model loving-kindness for our children and our neighbors. As we do so, our attention will turn naturally to serving others and working for justice." (Page 11; WORLD, March/April 1999, Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston.)

As an example of a community that is being tested, I give you Jasper, Texas. Here is a city in transition. After the horrible murder of a black man, the city discovered that they could cope with the pain without resort to anger, resentment, and conflict.

The father of the man accused of the murder and the sister of the victim were instrumental in this experience. He confessed his sorrow; she forgave. Both exemplified loving-kindness. But beyond this, the members of the community were willing to look at themselves honestly.

What they discovered was that they had serious problems with racial bias and bigotry. Based on their experience of successfully dealing with the aftermath of this murder, they found new courage and determination to renew their efforts to breakdown racial barriers and dissolve racial biases. Along the path to this goal, a signal event occurred the day before the jury was selected in the trial of the first man accused of the murder.

Religious and lay leaders of the community looked at where they had buried the victim of this terrible crime and they did not like what they saw. So they gathered like-minded people, black and white, and together they tore down the wrought iron fence that had divided the cemetery between black and white; a fence that had been there since the reconstruction era. This was a practical, tangible, example of loving-kindness of the members toward each other.

The irony in this is that when the murderer dies he will be buried in this

cemetery. He and his victim, the products of a crime of racial hatred, will be

buried together, without a fence between them.

The leaders of this community had the clarity of vision to see the elephant in their midst and the courage to do something about it. This rural community is held together by the love and respect the members have for each other and their willingness to forgive. Let this be a lesson to us as we find fault with each other. Let us also not limit our religious faith to the confines of this religious community. Let us also be ready to speak and listen, to love and to be loved, and to forgive; let us be ready to act in loving-kindness to all. 44Note that the leaders of Jasper, Texas were willing to confront the elephant in their midst and that they did so in love just as Rev. Small would have us do in our own religious communities. The power of acting from a position of love cannot be overstated. It is revolutionary. It overthrows tyrants. It uplifts and empowers the oppressed. When one is capable of such love, anything is possible.

By way of example I give you this story which I heard from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, when he addressed a crowd in the Washington National Cathedral last year.

He was speaking of the power of the Reconciliation Program that he heads. He told of a woman who had witnessed the murder of her husband and suffered a brutal rape and beating, which left her permanently injured, all at the hands of a black man. She came to Archbishop Tutu to ask his help in finding the guilty person. She wanted help in finding him, not for the purpose of seeing him punished; she wanted to find him so that she could forgive him. And it was clear from the way Archbishop Tutu was speaking about her that this forgiveness was an act of pure love, an act of loving-kindness.

We too can be this powerful. We too are capable of love without end. What love calls for from us is the shedding of our ego, the giving up of defenses. It calls upon us to love others, and to have faith in ourselves. Love calls upon us to draw on the deepest wells of our humanity, to touch and be nourished by the cooling waters that arise from the divine spark at the center our true nature. Love calls upon us to minister to each other and to all whom we touch. Simply put, our salvation, as a community, lies in our ability and willingness to love unconditionally.

Closing Words

"We Need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.

We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.

We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again.

We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.

We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs.

We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again.

We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.

All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.

-- George E. Odell

Extinguishing the Chalice

#456

We extinguish this flame but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitments. These we carry in our hearts until we are together.

Postlude