Worship

“The One and the Many”

A Sermon for New Member Sunday
by Reverend Charles Blustein Ortman
March 2, 2008

SERMON:

I had a wonderful opportunity this past Thursday evening to address a gathering of about 300 people at the Jewish Community Center in West Orange. It was an interfaith event where we viewed the film, “Darfur: Too Dark, Too Late,” a film about oppression and the religious implications of the genocide in Darfur. It was also about the many hateful, violent divisions in our world today that are the result of any group of people feeling that they are superior to another, it included religious arrogance and intolerance. I was invited, along with a rabbi, to provide an invocational introduction to the evening, that came from each of our respective faith traditions. Because it relates very much to our topic this morning of, “The One and the Many,” I wanted you to know what I said:

“…Given life to find its meaning.” These are words from the 19th Century Unitarian minister and religious pioneer of her gender, the Rev. Eleanor Gordon.

I speak from the Unitarian Universalist tradition. We are a covenanted religion. Untethered by creed or dogma, we seek to make real the vision of a world sustained in its unity, while cherishing and celebrating its diversity. In our covenant we commit ourselves to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, as well as, affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Our living tradition draws from many sources, including

Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;

Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;

Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;

And so from our Moslem brothers and sisters we learn Mohamed’s message of peace, “Requite evil with good and [one] who is your enemy will become your dearest friend.”

From the Jewish prophets we learn, in the Book of Micah, to seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God."

From our Christian brothers and sisters we learn that our neighbor is every man, woman and child, and that our earnest quest in this life is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And from the earth centered traditions of Native Americans and the indigenous peoples’ religions everywhere, we learn that we are one with this planet and its cycles, one with all our brothers and sisters, which consist of all living things.

As Mohandas Gandhi once said, our human experience begins with the pain and suffering of separation. It is experienced first at birth, and it provides us with our human character of self-consciousness. And more, our pain and suffering is transcended as we strengthen our connections, our relationships with the great mystery that is all things; as we strengthen our connections with the many expressions of Life’s manifestations, here on earth. All that we do in our lives, to some degree, either promotes harmony and goodness, or disharmony/separation and evil. Let our common cause, then, be for harmony.

We have been given life to find its meaning. May our search be never ending until we have found it not only in our own lives, but in the life of our planet, and all those who dwell here with us.

This morning we have welcomed a great group of newcomers into our congregation. By the way, that bucks the trend of most Mainline Protestant denominations as well as Jewish denominations within the country. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal this past Tuesday, they are all in the process of shrinking.

One of the things we talked about in the history portion of the New UU class is the age old religious quest to reconcile or balance the relationship between the one and the many. On one hand, there are the needs, the faith, the hope and the desire to give and receive love of each individual. On the other hand there are the needs, the faith, the hope, the love and the commitment of the community. The individual journey is the spiritual quest, and the community effort is the religious quest.

We talked about how this dynamic played out early on in our Unitarian tradition, back in the earliest days of its existence in Transylvania. That’s when Francis Dávid, the leading Unitarian theologian there, was imprisoned, having been reported to the authorities by another Unitarian leader, Georges Biandrata. Dávid was trying to explore the expanse of individual conscience while Biandrata was attempting to secure and preserve the fledgling religious movement against a royal mandate to stop the progress of freedom of conscience.

And while this story plays out early in our own history, it is also a part of the history of all religious institutions from the beginning of time. Even the word “Hebrew” is made up of older Sanskrit words Hab and Paru, which literally mean, “the one and the many.”

Some religions deal with this issue of the one and the many by coming down heavily on one side or the other. Some – on the more fascist side of things – buy the dogmatic denial of freedom of conscience and the requirement of total fidelity to the doctrines of the institution. Others – on the more hedonistic side – by encouraging unbridled individualism with institutional anarchy.

It might be interesting to note how these religious polarities play out in our world today. We have the post-millennial Christians, an extreme right wing religious organization, which not only has access to the White House but has taken up residence there. To the post-millennialists, anything that lessens fidelity to doctrine is a step down the slippery slope, leading to anarchy and the death of the Republic. To anyone near the middle of this dynamic spectrum, the idea that doctrine always trumps individual freedom of conscience is seen as a blatant assault on democracy. We live in very religious times. All around the world there is this struggle of fundamentalism/orthodoxy against liberalization. It plays out religiously and politically, both.

But back to the larger picture though, of our own dynamic dance of balance between the one and the many. It seems appropriate that such a metaphor as this would be a religious metaphor – liberal religious or otherwise. If we were to stand out under the stars, on this miniscule planet and look out into the limitless cosmos, it does bring some very religious questions to mind. What is all of this? Where did it come from? Who am I? Where did I come from? What am I here to do? And what is the meaning of all of this? Who am I, one, in the midst of this enormous many?

Eleanor Gordon said, “We are given life to find its meaning.” Some folks seem to be capable of finding that meaning on their own. I know that I am not. We might sometimes think hedonism sounds pretty good, but in reality it isn’t. Just like the other extreme, it causes separation, disharmony and what we might think of as evil. I suspect most of us are here because we need to be in good company with others as we ask ourselves life’s tough, expansive questions. And we need to be in good company with others as we step out into the world to act on the answers we have discovered.

Let me remind you again of the words from our New Member welcoming:

Joining the congregation is a covenant really. We covenant with one another to be our best selves and to hold each other in high expectation, to engage in life fully and lovingly – loving ourselves, one another and the world. When we sign the membership book of a covenanted free religious congregation such as this, you are not signing any list of propositions, such as make up a creed. It is, instead, a promise that may sound simple—it should sound simple—but which, if we “keep covenant,” brings us into intimate companionship with others who have also promised to live with all the integrity you and they can together muster, in all the years of our lives.” UU minister and scholar, Alice Blair Wesley wrote, “The free church is an organization we establish and join so that we may help each other to find, over and over again… what are our own worthiest loves, and therefore, what these loves now require of us, if we would be loyal in the most meaningful sense, in what we do… in the way we live.”

We are each the one. We are all together the many. We are not here to pass the time away. We are here to do the dance together. We are here to explore the depths, to climb the heights, to talk the talk and to walk the walk.

I received an email last week from one of our new folks, Alison Weir Yablonsky, who puts this all into perspective for me. She wrote:

“I wanted to share with you one more thought that I didn't say that first evening when we met and we each talked about our individual paths into the congregation. One thing that is so important to me about coming to service each week is that it allows me to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. I am now, each week, contributing dollars and good karma toward many causes that I've long emotionally supported but have not ACTED ON in a meaningful way. It is so EASY to be involved in doing the Right Thing by just coming to service and contributing. I am so grateful that I've found a home that will encourage my personal growth and a place that helps me feel positively about myself as a part of the greater community of humans.

Thank you again. Yours sincerely,
Alison”

I don’t know that we could hope for more than that as a congregation – to be able to offer one another such an experience as what Alison describes. Wait a minute – yes I can think of something more! We can be sure to invite others, from among the many, many others who need to be able to do the dynamic dance, balancing the one and the many the way we try to do it here. We can do that, too. WE can invite others to join us. I know that we can.

What do we ask of ourselves in this dance of the one and the many? This is what we ask of ourselves and each other. This is what we would ask of those who might come to join with us:

to covenant to submit to the most rigorous authority in religious and spiritual matters — the authority of our own minds, hearts, and consciences;
to sacrifice the security of unchallenged points of view, and to be open to change and growth;
to be restless in the pursuit of human rights, social justice, and world peace;
to remember that this is a community of aspiration, not a congregation that has it all figured out;
to pick one another up when we have stumbled;
to commit ourselves to the service of this congregation by our participation in it - with our love, and our resources: our talents, time and energies, our opinions, criticisms, and our hopes.
And more, to financially support this bold religious venture. (Later this morning you will be hearing more about the financial aspects of supporting the congregation. Given all that is at stake here, we are going to have to have some serious transformation in this area of support.)

I was told by the mother of one of our college students the other night that whenever her son comes home to visit from school, the family comes here on Sunday morning to be with the congregation, like they always did when the boy was growing up. And nowadays, when he comes home and comes here with his folks, he walks through the door, takes a deep breath and says, “Ah, now I’m home.”

We are at home, indeed. And it will be what we make of it. So, may our dance of balance between the one and the many here in our congregation, the one and the many here in our world, the one and the many here in this incredible universe – be one that feeds our lives and our collective life – richly!

We are given life to find its meaning. So, may our search be never ending until we have found it not only in our own lives, but in the life of our planet, and all those who dwell here with us.