In
Search of Salvation
Rev.
Mark Stringer
First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
1/16/05
“‘I’ cannot
reach fulfillment without ‘thou.’ The
self cannot be self without other selves.
Self-concern without other-concern is like a
tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
Meditation
“Salvation”
by Lynn Ungar
By
what are you saved? And how?
Saved
like a bit of string, tucked away in a drawer?
Saved
like a child rushed from a burning building,
already
singed
and coughing smoke?
Or
are you salvaged like a car part—
the one good door when the rest is wrecked?
Do
you believe me when I say
you
are neither salvaged nor saved,
but
salved, anointed by gentle hands
where
you are most tender?
Haven’t
you seen
the
way snow curls down
like
a fresh sheet, how it
covers
everything, makes everything
beautiful,
without exception?
Reading
From
the Gospel book of Mark
Later, a certain
scholar, who had been listening to Jesus and had
observed how well he answered people’s
questions, asked him, “Which commandment is
the greatest of all?”
Jesus
answered, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is
one, and you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind and with all your strength.
This is the first and greatest
commandment. And there is a second one
that is like it: You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. On these two
commandments all the Torah and the prophets
depend.”
The
scholar said to him “Excellent, Rabbi!
You have said the truth, that God is one and
there is no other beside him, and to love him
with all your heart and all your understanding
and all your strength, and to love your neighbor
as yourself, is worth far more than all burnt
offerings and sacrifices.”
Jesus,
seeing that he had spoken wisely, said to him,
“You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Reading
From Martin Luther King, Jr.
Granted
that the easygoing optimism of yesterday is
impossible…Granted that we face a world crisis
which leaves us standing so often amid the
surging murmur of life’s restless sea.
But every crisis has both its dangers and its
opportunities. It can spell salvation or
doom. In a dark confused world the kingdom
of God may yet reign in the hearts of men.
Sermon
I
wish I hadn’t thrown away the Christmas card
my grandfather sent me this year. In light
of my sermon topic, this morning, it would have
been a useful resource. Well, not the card,
actually. The card was rather commonplace,
with a simple Christian-themed holiday
message. What I thought might be helpful
for us this morning was the little pamphlet he
included with the card…a pamphlet not all that
unlike the pamphlets my grandparents have
included in their Christmas correspondence for
years…a pamphlet with step-by-step
instructions on how any lost soul—which, as I
was an intentional recipient of the pamphlet,
apparently includes me—can achieve salvation.
If I had not hastily tossed this valuable
information into the garbage, I could have held
the answer to the salvation question in
black-and-white (well, actually in shiny color…with
pictures!) and I could have just read its
contents to you this morning, thus ending my “search
for salvation” and eliminating the need for me
to write this sermon at all.
But
then again, I can’t feel too bad about
discarding the pamphlet and blowing my chance at
an easy sermon. After all, the information
in the pamphlet was nothing new to most of you…at
least those of you who have admitted to your
more evangelical Christian family members and
friends that you attend a Unitarian Universalist
church, thus identifying yourself as another one
of those hopeless souls in need of saving.
Even if you haven’t seen one of these
pamphlets, no doubt, you have been pressed to
answer the burning question on the minds of true
believers everywhere: “Are you saved?”
And if you have dared answer with anything but
an unequivocal “yes,” you have undoubtedly
experienced the persistent pursuit of the
converted looking to convert.
I
know this is a common circumstance because many
of you have told me the stories of your
struggles to offer the well-meaning faith
inquisitors of your lives words that will ease
their concerns and—if at all possible, please—get
them to leave you alone. The players in these
stories shift, but the plot is mostly the
same. One or more family members or
friends have found a solution to the ambiguities
of life through an uncompromising faith in a God
who will one day reward them with eternal
blessings, and they want you to see things their
way. There is urgency to their system of belief,
because it assumes that all those who have not
yet made the same faith decisions, will be
assigned to some form of eternal punishment.
As
a long-standing and unapologetic non-believer—at
least in the evangelical Christian view of faith—I’ve
been a player in this storyline myself, each
year wondering why my grandparents have sent
another religious tract to their grandson…the
minister. But, in the end, it’s not
all that difficult to determine why they have
sent them. They are just trying to help me
out. Consider, if you were convinced that
there would come a day when all those who did
not believe as you do would be left behind to
suffer while you frolicked in happiness, then
wouldn’t you want to convince your family and
friends to join you, too?
So
while I have come to understand that the primary
motivation for my grandparents has been
altruistic, I have not always felt this way.
After all, it wasn’t that many years ago when
my grandmother responded to the news that her
grandson was planning to enter the Unitarian
Universalist ministry with a violent shaking of
her head and the almost-shouted words, “That’s
wrong.”
I
didn’t want to hear why she thought my
entering the ministry was wrong. I knew
enough about her beliefs at that point to
understand why she reacted so strongly. “I’m
sorry you feel that way,” I told her.
And I was sorry, for I knew that her
determination to teach me the errors of my ways
would make future interaction between us
difficult.
A
couple of years later, she called me from her
home in Florida, wondering why I hadn’t been
keeping in better contact with her. My
grandfather was on the phone with us, too…listening
but not saying much himself. “Grandma,”
I said, “you told me that what I was devoting
my life to was wrong. What would we really
have to talk about?”
“Oh,
Mark,” she said, “You know you shouldn’t
listen to me.”
“Yes,”
I said, verbally throwing my hands in the
air. “That’s my point.”
Before
long, the conversation ended, and, though we
exchanged occasional cards and pictures, so did
the relationship. At the time, I was proud of
the way I held my ground…the way that I firmly
defended myself. But as the years
passed, particularly after her death in 2003, I
wondered if my unwillingness to cut her some
slack had been a little too harsh. Yes, it’s
true that I didn’t want to take the time to
explain my faith to her because, even if I had,
I was certain that it wouldn’t have made any
difference…at least to her. And just as
I didn’t appreciate her trying to enlighten me
with her faith, I didn’t want to try to
teach someone who didn’t want to be
taught. These days, however, I’m
beginning to realize that my insistence on
virtually cutting off our relationship was
really just a passive attempt to teach her
something after all, whether I knew it or
not. I was teaching her through my
avoidance of her that my faith, in the end, was
just as stubborn as hers.
There
is more to this story, but I will return to it a
little later.
First,
I want to consider with you where the concept of
salvation might fit in Unitarian Universalist
belief, if anywhere. Are UUs saved?
Historically,
neither Unitarianism nor Universalism, two
separate faiths that emerged in earnest around
the time of the American Revolution and which
eventually merged in the 1960s, have had much
use for the notion of original sin.
However, in the early 19th century at
least, adherents to the two faith perspectives
were not in agreement over the concept of
salvation. The Unitarians of the time were
aligned with Arminian doctrine, the idea that
humans have choices, as they are born with the
capacity for both sin and righteousness. This
doctrine was an important contrast to the
commonly-held Calvinist notion of
predestination, which contended that humans
ultimately have no choice whether they are saved
or not. Early Unitarians like William
Ellery Channing preached that while God is
infinitely good and loving and there is no
certainty as to what happens following one’s
earthly existence, the individual improves his
chances of salvation through the development of
his character.
Around
the same time, Universalist minister Hosea
Ballou laid the foundation for our current-day
liberal faith’s stance by declaring that
achieving salvation in the afterlife would be
unnecessary because salvation was a given.
If God were truly a kind and benevolent God, as
Channing and the Unitarians claimed to believe,
then He would not be capable of withholding
salvation from His creation. In a
quote from an address from 1851, Ballou posed
the question by asking his audience to imagine
themselves as God. He said, “Your child has
fallen into the mire, and its body and its
garments are defiled. You cleanse it, and
array it in clean robes. The query is, ‘Do
you love your child because you have washed it?’
or ‘Did you wash it because you loved it?’”
To Ballou and his fellow Universalists, there
could be no question: God saves all
because God loves all.
Eventually
the varied ministers of the two faiths began
preaching similar messages when it came to the
notion of salvation. Even by the 1840’s we can
see the writing of noted Unitarian Ralph Waldo
Emerson echoing Ballou’s position, claiming
that “every secret is told, every crime is
punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong
redressed, in silence and certainty” in this
life…not in some afterlife.
These
days, I think it would be difficult to find UUs
opposed to the view of universal
salvation. The idea of some God-ordained
hell following our earthly lives just doesn’t
seem to hold much weight with most of us.
Still,
our felt assurance of salvation…or our belief
that the question of salvation beyond this life
is moot altogether…does not make our run-ins
with the more orthodox in our lives any easier.
To be sure, I have been considerably challenged
in my attempts as a minister to help people
handle these run-ins. On more than one occasion
in the recent past when a member has asked me
what to do in the face of salvation
interrogation I have offered advice that I
suppose probably rings hollow for them, because
it rings hollow for me. I have suggested
they do something that—as my story of my
grandmother proves—I have not been able to do
very well in my own life. I have suggested
that when a well-meaning family member or friend
asks them whether or not they are saved—which
most typically means whether or not they have
accepted Jesus Christ as their savior and
redeemer—they could do something that might
feel radical: they could choose to
lie.
Now,
I do stand behind lying as a valid
response. After all, I believe the salvation
claims of anyone are merely speculative at best
and definitely personal; therefore, to lie does
not seem like a breech of ethical
behavior. Furthermore, to lie might be the
easiest way to get the “faithful” person off
one’s back. All the same, advising
people to lie about their beliefs does not seem
like a very holistic approach to the
situation.
Then
again, to tell the truth in many cases would be
to invite aggression. Perhaps you have
experienced something like this:
An
acquaintance asks, “Are you saved?”
Seeing
what’s coming, you carefully respond, “Yes,
I believe I am.”
“What
do you mean, ‘You believe you are?’ Have you
accepted Christ in your life or not?”
“Well,
I think Jesus was a good guy and all, but…”
Before
you can continue, the inquisitor has
interrupted, quoting scripture and warning that
you had better get with the program or face
eternal consequences.
While
most of us can handle this give and take, it can
get a little grating. It’s enough to
make you want to have some more definitive
answers.
It’s
like the story a member shared with me this
week. He told me that he has been playing on our
church volleyball team, a group that on Sunday
evenings competes with other teams…many of
them from other churches in the area. “That
sounds like a lot of fun,” I said. “How’s
it going?”
“It
is fun,” he replied, “But…well…sometimes
I wish we would be better prepared.”
I
could tell he felt a little ashamed to be
admitting that the team was not all he hoped it
would be. “What do you mean by prepared?”
I asked.
“Well,
every week, we put ourselves out there and we
just get pummeled. These teams from
churches are serious, you know. They know
why they are there and they don’t mess around.”
I
asked him if I could share his story this
morning because it struck me as a fitting
metaphor for what we may feel in the face of
salvation interrogation…those power serves of
accusation and condemnation that come from
people like my grandmother…or maybe your
brother, or co-worker, or even your children.
At
first I chuckled as I imagined volleyballs
whizzing past the heads of our UU team, bodies
flying, and jubilant players on the other side
of the net high-fiving over our inability to
return their confident power serves. Who cares
about winning anyway? It’s just a stupid
volleyball game. And maybe we shouldn’t
care.
But
then I was reminded of something that I
witnessed when I was in high school. I was
in the dorm at a summer camp for an all-state
youth choir, minding my own business, when I saw
a wiry tenor being interrogated by a couple of
16-year-old basses posing as Christians.
Apparently the little guy had dared to proclaim
that he wasn’t saved. This incensed the
two thugs and they were letting him have it,
pushing him against the wall and getting in his
face. “You mean to tell me you don’t
believe in God?” one of them yelled. “What’s
the matter with you?” I didn’t
know what else to do, so I left the room.
I had my doubts about God too, but now did not
seem a good time to admit it.
Perhaps
you have experienced this kind of encounter in
your own life. Certainly we don’t have
to look too far to witness it in the lives of
others. And to be sure, I don’t want to
pick too much on evangelical Christians.
An idea bully can, after all, hold any
perspective. Atheist or theist, capitalist
or communist, Iraqi or American…anyone who
dares to put himself out there with those who
are threatened by his presence, particularly
when the views he espouses are contrary to the
norm, can expect to be pummeled.
That’s
why the salvation that really matters to me has
little to do with whether or not any of us will
end up in some hell after our lives on earth are
over. Jesus was a great moral teacher and I am
definitely inspired by his wisdom, but I
believe, as Hosea Ballou did and countless other
UUs that have followed him, that, as
individuals, we all are ultimately
saved, whether we accept Jesus as a savior or
not. If by nothing else, we are saved from our
earthly existence by death. To me, heaven
and hell are abstractions that have effectively
distracted us from our responsibilities and
possibilities in the here and now. That’s why
the salvation that matters to me is whatever we
can do to improve access to justice, equality
and freedom for ourselves and for our earthly
companions in this life. That’s
why the salvation that matters to me is whatever
leads us to do as Jesus taught: to love our God
(whatever we perceive him, her or it to be) and,
perhaps even more importantly, to love our
neighbors as ourselves. For when we do, we
will be more apt to discover the salvation that
is not merely speculative. We will
discover the salvation that is based in
other-concern, rather than only self-concern, in
“thou” and not just in “I”. We
will discover the salvation equivalent to the
kingdom of God preached by Jesus and
Martin Luther King…the kingdom of God where
everyone is on the same team, where everyone has
worth and dignity…and where faith is not
simply what one believes…but how one lives.
Before
I conclude this morning, I have to finish the
story of my grandparents. After I got word
that my grandmother had died, I called my
grandfather to express my condolences. I
didn’t look forward to the conversation.
In the drama I had created in my imagination, I
figured that my grandparents had often discussed
their heathen grandchild and his satanic UU
ministry. So you can imagine my surprise
when my grandfather asked me, “So Mark, what
are you doing these days?”
“I’m
a Unitarian Universalist minister,” I told
him.
“Oh,
really?” he said. “I’m not sure I
knew that. Well, good for you.”
Whether
he was being honest, absent-minded or clever
didn’t really matter to me. His simple
affirmation felt like a kind of salvation…the
kind of salvation in which I can believe…salvation
in which I too can participate simply by
learning to give others a break, to forgive, to
not take everything that everyone says to me so
seriously…salvation that arrives “the way
snow curls down like a fresh sheet…and covers
everything, makes everything beautiful, without
exception.”
Additional
Sources
Andrews,
Barry M., Emerson as Spiritual Guide,
(Boston: Skinner House, 2003)
Cassara,
Ernest, Hosea Ballou: The Challenge to
Orthodoxy (Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge
Cornerstone Press, 2003)
Robinson,
David, The Unitarians and the Universalists,
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985)