ACCEPTANCE AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO GROWTH: OWNING OUR THIRD PRINCIPLE

The Rev. Mark Ward
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

December 3, 2006

READINGS

Adapted from the Diet of Torda, proclaimed in 1568 in the name of King John Sigismund of Hungary

His Majesty, Our Lord, affirms that every one may freely embrace the religion and faith that he has preferred, and may support preachers of his own religion, and in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well; if not, no one shall compel them, for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the superintendents or others shall abuse the preachers, no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone . . . and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or removal from his post for his teaching.

From “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke

I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

SERMON

The story of the Protestant Reformation, the pivotal religious shift in Europe some 500 years ago that split the Christian church, is told today largely in terms of theological debates – conflicting ideas of how people might understand the nature of God or the church and its various doctrines. But what we don’t always remember or attend to is what a bloody and brutal time it was. Armed camps and even states were gathered around different strains of religious belief. Inquisitions, wars and state-sanctioned executions often hinged on the slightest disagreement or dissent over theological doctrine.

It is with that history in mind that I wanted to begin this sermon with some discussion around a brief moment from that period that doesn’t make it into most history books, yet bears strongly on my topic today: the third of our seven Unitarian Universalist principles, our covenant to affirm and promote acceptance of one another and encouragement to growth in our congregations.

This third of our principles doesn’t often receive much attention. In fact, at first glance it sounds rather bland. I mean, how controversial can it be to affirm and promote acceptance of one another? No big deal, right? And spiritual growth, who’s going to argue with that? And yet, if you think about it, each of these seemingly bland affirmations has an edge to it. We like to think of ourselves as good-hearted people, but I’m guessing that at one time or another we have all come across others who for one reason or another we found unacceptable. Perhaps it’s something they did or said or simply the way they presented themselves to the world. For whatever reason, the censor in our mind pronounced judgment: unacceptable. What do we do with that? Do we really want to accept everyone? And what does it mean if we do?

Encouraging spiritual growth sounds like a good idea, but encouraging growth also means encouraging change. It suggests that none of us has it all figured out, that each of us has work to do. This isn’t a church where we’ll leave you to stand pat, self-satisfied that you have all the answers. Expect to be challenged to broaden and deepen your understanding, to hear religious and spiritual perspectives quite different from yours and be encouraged to entertain and engage them, to live in the tension of an evolving understanding instead of the settled terrain of proclaimed certainty.

The historical moment I’d like to call your attention to is centered in the document that you heard Hal Hogstrom read from earlier. The words were issued in 1563 at a diet, or assembly, in Torda, a city in the kingdom of Hungary which is now in Romania. Amid the religious turmoil of the 16th century events in this mountainous region were especially chaotic. For, in addition to splits between Catholics and Protestants and among various Protestant factions, the kingdom also bordered the Muslim Turkish empire, whose sultan often sought to exert his influence. In the first half of the 16th century religious disputes there followed the usual pattern: as one faction prevailed it trashed the other’s churches, destroyed its sacred objects, banished its ministers and declared its own to be the true faith.

This ended in 1555, however, with the return of Isabella to the throne of Hungary. Isabella was the daughter of the Queen of Poland, a place where reform of the church was taking a liberal turn, and had reigned in Hungary with her husband, John Zapolya. After his death, though, she had to flee with her young son, John Sigismund. When she returned to the throne, she found that while the Protestants had prevailed the Lutherans and the Calvinists were at each other’s throats again, and so in 1559 she issued a declaration of toleration demanding that churches of each faith respect each other. It was, as far as we know, the first such proclamation by European leader aimed at protecting minority religions opinions.

Isabella, unfortunately, lived only a few more years. But shortly after her son, John Sigismund, was crowned he followed his mother’s lead, and in 1563, at the tender age of 22, expanded her decree with the proclamation that you heard part of earlier.

It is, as I said, an astonishing document for the time. Listen to its language: The king affirms that all may freely embrace the religion and faith that they prefer. Preachers may preach, and if the congregation likes it, that’s fine. If not, no one shall compel them, for, and I quote, “their souls would not be satisfied.”

What a concept! Imagine it being the duty of the preacher to preach such as to touch the souls of their listeners, not the duty of the listeners to conform their belief to the preacher’s doctrine. It is up to us as listeners to decide if the preacher has hit the mark or not, to weigh for ourselves what is true and align ourselves with those who would proclaim it.

Our movement proudly claims John Sigismund, for shortly after this proclamation he came under the influence of David Ferenc, also known as Francis David, the first and most prominent religious thinker in the reformation to adopt and organize churches around an explicitly Unitarian theology. John convened debates between Ferenc and Trinitarian clergy and consistently Ferenc bested them. So, John declared himself Unitarian, the first, and only, Unitarian king in history. Even so, he continued his commitment to religious pluralism and declared Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism also among the received religions of his realm and upheld toleration of all religious belief.

Sad to say, John was frail in health and died at the age of 30 after a carriage accident. Unitarianism’s sway in Hungary ended with his death. Still, the Unitarian churches organized under Ferenc managed to endure, despite sometimes vicious efforts over the years to wipe them out, and today thanks to the help of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a number of American churches they are beginning to make gains again.

Four hundred and fifty years after John Sigismund’s proclamation, though, the lesson of religious pluralism – in the words of our third principle, true acceptance of one another – is still hard for religious believers to learn. Religious belief, after all, is not given to making room for other points of view. When we have found the true way, the answer that gives our lives meaning, we are filled with enthusiasm. It seems so obvious. Why can’t everyone see it?

It takes a special discipline to hold to one’s conviction and at the same time accept others who hold different views with an equal passion. And by accept, I don’t mean merely acknowledge. I mean regard them and receive them with respect and care. Not to denigrate, belittle or dehumanize but to accept them with open minds and hearts, prepared to learn and share. What we are talking about is a frame of mind that welcomes diversity, that holds to a position first articulated by David Ferenc four centuries ago: “We need not think alive to love alike.”

Here is where our third principle connects with our first, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Whatever our faith perspectives it is in the end our humanity that unites us. That means that no one, no matter deeply they may differ from us, is anathema. We are, each of us, acceptable, even if negotiating our relationships can sometimes be tricky business.

The Rev. Gail Geisenhainer told our General Assembly last June how the experience of acceptance brought her into our movement. This was the mid 80s, she says, and she was 38 years old, living in Maine and driving a snow plow for a living. A friend had invited her to church, but she refused. “All blanking churches are the same,” she informed him. “They say they’re open, but they don’t want queer folk. To heck with church.”

Eventually, though, she decided to give it a try. “And I dressed so carefully for my first Sunday visit,” Gail said. “I spiked my short hair straight up into the air. I dug out my heaviest, oldest work boots, the ones with the chain saw cut that exposed the steel toe. I got my torn blue jeans and my leather jacket. There would be not a shred of ambiguity this Sunday morning. They would embrace me in my full Amazon glory, or they could fry ice.”

Showing up thus attired, she says, she expected the gray-haired ladies in the foyer to step back in fear. “That would have been familiar,” she said. “Instead, they stepped forward, offered me a bulletin and invited me to stay for coffee. And they called me ‘dear,’ but they pronounced it dee-ah. Stay for coffee, dee-ah.”

The transition to becoming a part of the congregation, though, wasn’t smooth or swift, she said. During worship two or three Sundays later a woman stood up during joys and concerns and announced that all homosexuals were deviants, had AIDS and could not be trusted with children. Listening, Gail started shrinking back into herself.

At the end of the sharing, the minister for the morning, a seminary student, said that the comments shared didn’t represent the whole congregation. But as the service ended Gail was ready to bolt. As she strode through the foyer, she was filled with shame. A man approached and, she said, she glanced up to his face, silently pleading for him to let her pass without more pain. Instead, he smiled, held the door open and said softly, “See you next week?” “My head snapped,” Gail reported. “Excuse me?” she muttered, thinking she hadn’t heard him correctly. Gently, he repeated, “See you next week?”

Was he mad? She thought. Hadn’t he heard what that woman had said? Of course he had, and in his gesture he hoped to draw Gail into the embrace of community at the very moment when she most needed it. She was accepted. She was not the figment of someone’s fearful imagination; she was a person of worth and dignity, and he wanted her to know it, and to know that he knew it.

In the end, this is the power of a church: to be a crucible where we learn how to live our best selves, where we reach past our fears and discomforts and act instead on behalf of our hopes and values. Spiritual growth is nothing more than the sometimes slow process of walking that path. There can be dead ends and wrong turns along the way, moments of both epiphany and confusion.

We each need support and encouragement, encouragement such as Rainer Maria Rilke provided to that anonymous young poet. Don’t bother searching for the answers. They would likely do you little good if you found them. Instead, love the questions that life poses for you. For more often than not the very questions that most befuddle us, that rasp and grate at our windows, are the ones that hold the nugget of meaning we most need to grasp. Live the questions. Let them float in and out of your consciousness. And perhaps in time you will live your way into an answer.

The great Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams famously tells the story of a late night meeting in the 1950s when he was serving on the board of trustees of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago. Some board members were up in arms over the controversial stands on racial justice that the minister was making at the time.

One board member complained that the minister was meddling in politics and alienating church members, including him and his wife. At one point he lapsed into racial slurs, and other trustees, including Adams, interrupted. “What is the purpose of the church?” they asked. “Should the church only make people comfortable and confirm them in their prejudices, not morally challenge them?” “Well, no,” the man responded. “So, what is the purpose of the church?” they continued. “How should I know?” the man said. “I’m no theologian.” “But you’re a member here and a trustee,” Adams pursued, and so the conversation continued well into the night. As Adams tells it, it was about one o’clock in the morning when the man blurted out, “Well, I guess the purpose of a church is, uh, to get hold of people like me, and to change ‘em.”

Spiritual growth is not always ease to come by. It often requires us to stretch and endure some discomfort. And yet what we learn only deepens our understanding and brings us closer to living authentically. And so let this be a place where we can bring our entire selves, in Gail Geisenhainer’s words in our “full Amazon glory,” and find acceptance, where we can be regarded and received with respect and care.

But having arrived, let us not assume that our work is done, that we are finished and complete. Let us gather with our minds and hearts open: rooted in our values and convictions yet available to the influence of others, of teachings, ideas, practices that can help us unfold and blossom. On a day when we welcome new members into our community, let me invite us all to approach our work, and our play, together with new freshness, open to the serendipitous wonder of community. It is good to be together.

So be it.