“Salvation by Character – Continued” Sunday, October 4, 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth, Senior Minister The Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist Notwithstanding the messes we create, let’s start by getting back to basics… some notes about a garbage collector, a cabdriver, and Camus… the Algerian-born French writer, Albert Camus, a Nobel Laureate for Literature: To begin: For 20 years, Jose Gutierrez, a garbage truck driver in Bogota, Columbia, has been rescuing books from upper class neighborhoods. He turned his own modest house in a poor neighborhood into a community library, which by now has some 20,000 volumes stacked from floor to ceiling. [He likes to share them!] Known in Colombia as “Lord of the Books,” he attributes his own love of reading to his mother, who read stories to him every night when he was a child. Gutierrez’s favorite books include One Hundred Years of Solitude by his Nobel Prize-winning fellow countryman Gabriel Garcia Marquez (AP). (“The Christian Century,” 9/30/15, p., 8) A community library! Character and generosity carved in books…. Next a brief news story: Some years ago, a taxicab driver in Mexico City by the name of Manuel Lubian spent two days hunting for a passenger who had left $53,000 in his cab. He explained why he didn’t just keep the money this way: “I felt that I would lose the beauty inside of me.” The beauty inside… an original blessing…. As Albert Camus observed, there is within us “our weakness for beauty.” One of the defining qualities of being human, he says, is this weakness for beauty, which I take to include inward beauty as well – the moral sense of the good, the true, and the radiant potential within each of us.

1 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

To these, some words of Gabriela Mistral… her poem titled, “Song.” Gabriela Mistral, who was born and lived in Chile, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, the first and only Latin American woman to date to receive that honor: A woman is singing in the valley. The shadows falling blot her out, but her song spreads over the fields. Her heart is broken, like the jar she dropped this afternoon among the pebbles in the brook. As she sings, the hidden wound sharpens on the thread of her song, and becomes thin and hard. Her voice in modulation dampens with her blood. In the fields, the other voices die with the dying day, and a moment ago the song of the last slowpoke [straggling] bird stopped. But her deathless heart, alive with grief, gathers all the silent voices into her voice, sharp now, yet very sweet. Does she sing for a husband who looks at her silently in the dusk, or for a child whom her song caresses? Or does she sing for her own heart, more helpless than a babe at nightfall? Night grows maternal before this song that goes to meet it; the stars, with a sweetness that is human, are beginning to come out; the sky full of stars becomes human and understands the sorrows of this world. Her song, as pure as water filled with light, cleanses the plain and rinses the mean air of day in which men hate. From the throat of the woman who keeps on singing, day rises nobly evaporating toward the stars. In sorrow, she sings: “...the stars, with a sweetness that is human, are beginning to come out; the sky full of stars becomes human and understands the sorrows of this world.” We live in the grace of creation, and sometimes even give thanks for that…. All this is by way of prelude in affirming our human wholeness, health, and salvation by character (not by so-called “grace” or even the graciousness of the world.) Many of the major world religions, like our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, affirm original blessing. They – we – embrace the wonder, beauty and potential of humankind. We live in the graciousness of the creation, and fulfilled – saved in this our only world – by our deeds, not creeds, co-creators. 2 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

One of the idiosyncratic, peculiar, destructive, unfortunate, sad, harmful, misguided, debilitating, hateful, yea even cruel, and evil teachings of Christianity has to do with so-called original sin and the so-called sacrifice of Jesus for our shortcomings. Upon that is built an incestuous system of salvation, built upon an archaic mythology of substitutionary atonement…. The odd theological dogma that Jesus died for our sins, which also demeans God. Judaism rejects both such denigration of humanity and a need for salvation. How we live is what is important. Similarly, for Islam and Hinduism. Last week, in speaking about Pope Francis, I like so many offered appreciation for his critiques of the excesses of capitalism and the summons to do good works toward the poor, along with objection to the sexism and homophobia so deeply engrained in Catholic teaching and institutions. This week we were told that the Pope, when he was here, hugged a gay friend, as well as met with an anti-gay rights County Clerk from Kentucky. So, is he gay-friendly or not? What we know is that he does not think his boss, his God & Church, are gay-friendly. The Pope still accepts Catholic anti-gay teachings…. No plans to change any of that… which remains a sad statement that his God does not honor Love and Commitment for all persons. That said, it is the larger dynamic, ritual, and theology of Catholic Salvation (and most Christian doctrines of salvation) that also got my attention once again during the Pope’s visit. How so? At the center of the Mass for Catholics is the Eucharist… that invokes the belief that God sacrificed Jesus, his only Begotten Son, to redeem us from original sin and all the various sins we commit, so that we might have eternal life. Christian theologies have many explanations, and one avows that Jesus’ death, his blood, cleanses of sin, akin to pagan and primitive sacrificial scapegoating. Another explanation of the atonement – one of the very earliest Church teachings – likened it to God tricking the Devil into taking Jesus to Hell after dying on the cross, for which the Devil then had to pay a ransom … Why? Because Jesus as God was not to be treated that way. The ransom to be paid was human souls, which now the Devil can no longer claim. One could describe it as a Cosmic Fish Hook with Jesus as the bait. Nor, do other explanations make sense. 3 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

Rev. William Ellery Channing, the liberal Boston Congregationalist in the early 1800s who helped found Unitarianism as a distinctive faith, inspired the formation of our church in 1825 and spoke at the dedication of our first building in 1826. In his hour-long sermon, Channing took issue with the confusing, irrational doctrine of the Trinity… God as father, Son and Holy Spirit. He then aimed at atonement. For Channing, Jesus did not die on the cross to save us from original sin, a truly distressing concept of how God works. As Channing says, it practically “annuls” the concept of God’s love and mercy. Channing offers an illustration: Suppose then that a teacher should come among you, and should tell you, that the Creator in order to pardon his own children, had erected a gallows in the centre of the universe, and had publicly executed on it, ….an Infinite Being, the partaker of his own Supreme Divinity; suppose him to declare that this execution was appointed, as a most conspicuous and terrible manifestation of God’s justice and wrath, and … suppose him to add, that all beings in Heaven and earth are required to fix their eyes on this fearful sight, as the most powerful enforcement of obedience and virtue. Would you not tell him that he … (insulted) the Maker? Would you not say to him that this central gallows threw gloom over the universe… that … (this) spirit was terror, not paternal love?” (“Unitarian Christianity Most Favorable to Piety”) God is a terrorist!?! And such is "the primary and essential idea”: “the pubic execution of a God for the purpose of satisfying justice and awakening a shouldering dread of sin.” Beyond such denunciation, Channing praised God’s love, Jesus as teacher, and our human ability to commune directly with that God and to move toward a likeness to God. He also praised Unitarianism for its honoring the gift of reason, for being a “rational religion.” That does not mean all mysteries are explained, but what we believe should be reasonable rather than offensive to the intellect. “Reason, conscience and our whole spiritual being” unite, and the heart that finds no conflict with reason gives itself more fully to the love of God. The Universalists, about the same time, or a bit earlier, led by Hosea Ballou, kept things quite simple: If God is a God of Love, and God is, then such a God would not 4 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

condemn any one to hell eternally. Jesus is not a supernatural intervening agent, saving us from a vengeful God. There is universal salvation in that ancient dualism of the time. In a conversation I had with Pete Seeger around the time he joined our church, and who had some Unitarian heritage, he offered the story told by Ballou: Ballou was riding his horse toward a town where he had been engaged to preach, and alongside him was another preacher on horseback likewise traveling to town to preach. They of course fell into conversation and, of course, the conversation fell into religious discussion. The other preacher said, “Brother Ballou, if I believed in your doctrine of universal salvation, there would be nothing to stop me from knocking you off your horse right now and stealing off with it.” To which Ballou replied, “My dear fellow, if you believed in the doctrine of universal salvation, such an idea would not even occur to you.” Channing gave emphasis to humanity’s “likeness to God,” to which Emerson added cultivation of personal character as our calling. It was another radiant Unitarian minister, James Freeman Clarke who gave prominence to our affirmation of “salvation by character.” In 1886, in opposition to Calvinism’s affirmations of human depravity and substitutionary atonement, he offered basics of what he called a “New Theology.” No longer a vengeful, whimsical God… no longer a focus on dualistic Heaven/Hell… he affirmed our dignity and worth and responsibilities in this world; and Jesus as moral exemplar, a prophet, human, inspiring and challenging us to emulate his bold Love for one another. Deeds not creeds…. Human with a weakness for beauty with inherent worth and dignity…. God in our creativity and in Nature and in the cosmos… a modern faith emerging….. Thinking of living with character, I mention in neurologist, and author who died recently, and who in life. His medical stories of strange conditions and important things. And as he described it, “I love to aren’t thought to have any.” (NY Times, 8/31/15)

our newsletter Oliver Sacks, the so many ways lived an honorable illnesses illuminated the normal, discover potential in people who

He elevated narrative medicine to art, and about himself wrote, “I would like it to be thought that I had listened carefully to what patients and others have told me, that I’ve tried to imagine what it was like for them, and that I tried to convey this” to which he added, “And to use a biblical term, bore witness.” (Ibid.) 5 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

He was not only a doctor and author, but also a swimmer, biker, scuba diver; world class weight lifter; for a time, a member of the Hell’s Angels, and later, for a while, addicted to amphetamines. In his own life, he identified that he had primary issues life-long with “belonging, bonding, and believing.” When he realized he had terminal metastatic cancer a year ago, he wrote about his life over the course of his dying. He indicated, “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and have given something in return…. I have read and traveled and thought and written.” A deep naturalism was his faith, and his character? “Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” I also for a moment want to lift up Ta-Nehisi Coates, who this week was honored with a MacArthur Foundation Award…. Fifteen or so, of us, gathered the last two weeks to read and discuss his best-seller Between The World And Me. His portrait of our society, so fundamentally racist, cruel, plundering of blacks’ bodies and souls, is searing, as he recounts growing up in West Baltimore, subject to violence of the streets, of school, of home, a friend’s death by police in a case of mistaken identity; the pervasive abuse by those people who think of themselves of white. He is writing to his 15-year-old son, as well as to his readers, in part because it is therapeutic, and entering the struggle is the way, as he says, “to live a sane and honorable life.” He celebrates moments, time at Howard University, his son, his wife, that he had family always ready to help, Paris; he celebrates the ability to study; learn, grow, see more widely. The struggle against the false dreams of suburbs, white fences, exclusion… the struggle is a way to a sane and honorable life, without high expectations for whites to change, to let go of systemic privilege, to give up plunder, “to understand that… the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all.” (151) Such are the brutal conclusions about our culture and national character, that to which he bears witness, as he seeks to live his life with integrity and kindness. Another of character is the poet-activist Marge Piercy who equally offers provocation, and soul sustenance. In a poem titled, “A gift of light,” she writes, 6 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

I try hard to be simple, to remember always to ask for whom what is done is done. Who gets and who loses? Who pays And who rakes off the profit? Whose life is shortened? Whose heat is shut off? Whose children end shooting up or shot in the streets? I try to remember to ask simple questions, I try to remember to love my friends… Salvation by character, and what is that? I remember long ago looking up the word, and it comes from the Greeks for whom character had to do with virtue and excellence. Character also refers in its original definition to a letter or symbol, the characters of the alphabet. And in Greek, originally, it referred to those characters that were inscribed in stone. It refers to the mark that is left behind or engraved. So character comes down to us as that mark that we leave behind. Our character is what we – each of us engraves upon the impressions of others by our behavior. And what shall we leave as our mark? Anger, pettiness, narcissism… or something honorable? We live with our compromises, the gap between our ideals and deeds, yet blessed we are: we need one another; and give thanks for one another…. Mindful of deeds rather than creeds…. Sometimes we forget the big thing: We are the stars awakening – this graciousness that abounds – the universe coming to consciousness and practicing the art of compassion and collaboration. That we are not isolated individuals, but inevitably shaped by social interactions and helping others. And, we know something that comforts and frees: our freedom of spirit and mind, and our deeds anchor us. “Strange and foolish walls” separate us…. But they need not…. How to live? Where there is beauty apparent, we are to enjoy it; where there is beauty hidden, we are to unveil it; where there is beauty defaced, we are to restore it; where there is no beauty at all, we are to create it. 7 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth

All of which places us, too in the arena where oppression occurs, where the oppressed congregate, and where we too are called to be. [Robert McAfee Brown, CREATIVE DISLOCATION - THE MOVEMENT OF GRACE, p. 142]

8 © 2015 Rev. Bruce Southworth