Sermons
Bound To Promise
©Dr. Gary Blaine
First Unitarian Church of Toledo
September 8, 2002
We have returned to this stately sanctuary to initiate a new program
year at First Unitarian Church. New themes for worship have been outlined.
Gladys Rudolph has selected anthems for the next four months, and the
choir has begun rehearsals. We are expanding our music program with
Jamie and Dana Martin-Hayden. We are both hopeful and not quite certain
how we will bend our musical predispositions to a broader harmony. New
carpeting and tile have been laid in the sanctuary and work will soon
begin on the accessibility plan the congregation adopted in June. I
was informed yesterday that work on the parking lot would begin in a
few weeks. Curricula have been selected and teachers have been recruited
for our religious education program. The Youth Adult Council has been
chosen and we look forward to a year of rebuilding our youth program.
The board spent yesterday planning their work for the new year and making
the determination to create a board process that identifies strategies
that will make our plans and goals a reality. We are offering a larger
variety of adult religious education programs that should meet the needs
of many interests. Next weekend Dr. Brandon Scott will bring a series
of lectures on the life and teachings of Jesus that one Baptist preacher
in Toledo has already branded "satanic." What a great kick-off
for our new program year! What a promising year!
Many people have worked very hard in the planning and preparation of
our new church year. It is exciting work, and I think we will enjoy
many successes in the months ahead. And yet our minds are deeply conscious
of the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin
towers of the World Trade Center, a portion of the Pentagon, and took
lives aboard a jet airliner. On radio, television, and in the print
media we have begun replaying the images of sheer horror that pierced
the soul of the nation. Unrequited grief has surfaced to chafe the wounds
of brutal cowardice. Anxiously we watch and listen for any suggestion
of another attack. We are not too sure how much to hope for as war drums
beat ever more loudly. The promise of a new church year seems muted.
It pales to insignificance.
Add to the tremors of violence the decline of the stock market and
promise fades away. Corporate theft of investor's trust and retiree's
pensions emaciates the proverbial American optimism. Caution, conservative
spending, and wary watchfulness seem more likely comrades of the future
than promise can lend. The temptation is to cave into despair. Anger
and fear slink around the shadows of our minds posing as agents of realism
and pragmatism. And the religious fundamentalists of every religion
are fomenting the dread hearts of militant intolerance. In the name
of Jesus Christ some are crowing the dawn of Armageddon.
I submit to you that those are the cocks of betrayal! They have no
gospel to lead a wounded and bleeding world. They do not offer a light
of salvation but are heralds of shame and judgment and punishment. Fundamentalism
is always the harbinger of death.
I propose this morning that Unitarian Universalists are the true promise
keepers. We are the heirs of promise that keeps the world open to the
possibility of life, even in the face of the most deadly circumstances.
I propose this morning that First Unitarian Church of Toledo is a house
of promise and it is time for us to put the light back in the steeple
and be a true beacon of hope.
What, you may ask, is the root of this Unitarian promise? Our promise
is the ancient Jewish hope found in Yahweh's covenant with Abram. "Now
the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your
father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you
a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that
you will be a blessing.'" (Genesis 12:1-2) The symbol of this promise
is the land. There are some of who use this passage as a proof text
for Zionism. I reject the idea that Yahweh had in mind a twentieth century
nation state. I think, however, that the land is a rich metaphor of
the sacred relationship of God and her people. The land of promise that
Yahweh offers to Abram is a sworn - unconditional - gift with full legal
rights and a guarantee that is meant to bestow life and promote generativity.
How does this translate into 21st century American Unitarian Universalism?
Israel understood that life requires a land. Human beings require a
place to live that is safe and secure. Human beings need a place where
they can have shelter. We need space and soil to grow food and work.
It is God's will that God's people have land where their lives can be
sustained and nurtured. That seems like a simple and even unquestionable
idea.
But in today's world the promise of land is a radical and controversial
idea that the nations of the world cannot agree on. There are some who
believe that the land does not really belong to the people. They believe
and act in such ways as to strip the land of its natural resources leaving
people with land that is not able to produce crops. Through greed and
thoughtless waste potable water is not available to one billion of the
earth's people. That is a question that is not simply haunting third
world countries. It is one that is being experienced in the Colorado
River basin watershed. Two and a half billion people do not have adequate
waste treatment and will suffer diseases such as cholera. Desertification
is marching south from northern Africa as rain forests are shrinking
in the Amazon basin. The President of the United States has sided with
the right wing President of Columbia on the pretext that the drug war
in Columbia is a war against terrorism. What most Americans do not realize
is that the real issue is about oil and the need to run pipelines through
the land. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein is an irresponsible terrorist.
But do not tell me that the only issue is about weapons of mass destruction.
It is also about oil.
Not everybody believes that God's people are meant to have the land.
African Americans still suffer discrimination in their efforts to secure
mortgages and redlining continues to plague real estate practices.
The God of promise is preoccupied with the healthy material existence
of human beings. The God of promise is not some distant sanitized deity
who requires sanctimonious piety. No, this is a God who is in the ditch
on the Sabbath getting out the ox; the God who commands honest weights
and measures; the God who insists that usury is a sin; and the God who
declares that boundaries must be respected. You cannot read the Psalms
and the Prophets of the Jewish scripture without coming to the conclusion
that God has a passion for the poor. Yahweh's purpose is that every
person has physical well being, health, and safety. It is no coincidence
that the first sacrament of the Christian church is about breaking and
sharing bread. And the first fight in the church is about the distribution
of alms to the widowed and orphaned.
There is nothing sacred that does not touch on the question of land.
Unitarian Universalists cannot speak of the inherent worth and dignity
of every person if we do not understand that the material well being
of people is always their first objective. Our relationship with food,
housing, clothing, health care, and education are the real themes of
righteousness. And when that relationship becomes distorted and unjust
we cannot know peace - within ourselves or throughout the world.
As we contemplate the meaning of September 11th we can argue whether
our military response has been justified or adequate. We will debate
an invasion of Iraq. The size of the military budget and the growth
of missile programs will concern some of us. But the resort to military
action is always an admission that our foreign policy has failed. Our
real hope is in the promise of the land. Throughout history different
ethnic groups, religious communities, and political factions have managed
to find a way to live together when the people are fed, the children
are healthy, and there is a reasonable distribution of resources. "Poverty,"
said Gandhi, "is the worst form of tyranny." Fanaticism and
terrorism emerge from a people who are impoverished; from a people who
are enraged by the confiscation of their property and livelihood. Economic
security will prove over and over again the fulcrum of peaceful relationships.
This is the wisdom of that old mountain God, Yahweh. This is the promise
of the land.
This is the promise of Unitarian Universalism. There is much in the
religious world that we find repugnant. And because we grew up in a
culture dominated by Christianity there is much about Christianity that
we find especially repugnant. Christian ministers in Toledo and throughout
the nation who keep lists of the saved and damned offend and anger me.
So called Christian counselors who tell mentally ill people that they
can give up their medications and find mental health through prayer
and scripture is irresponsible and immoral. Such counseling verges on
the criminal. But I am not willing to throw away the divine promise
of human well being because of a few self-righteous fools. I am not
willing to abdicate to the radical right religious language and the
Old and New Testaments of justice, grace, hope, and peace.
Unitarians have been arguing the authority and authorship of the Bible
for two hundred years. We have never doubted the authority of righteousness.
We have debated and struggled over issues such as slavery and the civil
rights of women, people of color, gays and lesbians. But we have never
debated the centrality of justice. Indeed, it was the promise of justice
that enflamed the anti-slavery passion of Unitarian minister Theodore
Parker. It was the promise of justice that led Unitarian Universalists
to be the first to ordain women into the ministry. It was the promise
of justice that propelled us to ordain homosexuals into our ministry.
We are a people of promise.
And I believe that such a promise offers great hope to people. It is
the foundation of all that we will do this year at First Unitarian Church
of Toledo. Our youth ministry, religious education programs, social
justice work, pastoral care, and accessibility to the sanctuary and
lower levels of the church are premised on promise. Everyone is invited
to the banquet of life. Every person has a place at the table and everyone
should be fed. Everyone may drink from the cup. No one should be hungry
or thirsty. That is the kind of promise that also puts September 11th
into perspective.
FINIS
