Each month, since January, I have been offering a service and sermon that explores one of the foundational sources of Unitarian Universalism. Our UU movement is so open and broad theologically and finds so many varying expressions. We are not encircled by any formal creed that would tell us, explicitly, what all UU's believe, because freedom of belief itself is one of our values. Many of us who find our way into UU communities can feel adrift in all that openness.
And yet, broad as it is, Unitarian Universalism is not "nothing in particular," and it is not everything all at once without any boundaries or definition. Nor is it "all the religions" thrown in a pot and stirred into a stew.
It is a particular tradition in itself, primarily an American tradition, a particular river of progressive ideas and vision. It's a living family tree rooted in our own ancestral ground, with a wide but defined trunk, and spreading branches.
In fact, it isn't really an "it" but "a way," a progressive, exploring, relational way of approaching community, society, ethics and religious life. So I have tried to help us get grounded in "the way" of this tradition, by using the statement about the six "sources of our faith" as touch stones, or as an organizing framework.
Our Seven Principles and Five Sources were adopted by a vote of the General Assembly of UU's in 1984, after many drafts over many years of gradual work. In 1995, an additional source was added to the five sources to make six. If you are new to TPC or to Unitarian Universalism, or just want to refresh your memory, you can find the sources (missing that sixth one), on the opening pages of our gray hymnal.
These statements of our Sources and Principles have served to unify us, and have remained almost unchanged, for more than 20 years now. But they should still be thought of as living words, not engraved in stone. They can be changed as we ourselves evolve in awareness, in self-understanding, and in response to life in the world.
And so, in January we explored Direct experience of transcendent mystery, and the confidence that our tradition shows in the human individual to be able to directly fathom for herself or himself what is true (through reason, observation, and spiritual intuition), rather than depending upon the written revelation of scripture, or upon religious authorities.
In February, we saw how Jewish and Christian teachings had found their way into our practice and ethics, looking at all the excerpts from both the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures that have been retained in our own hymnal. Particularly, those many prophetic voices calling us to respond to Divine Love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Today, I'll be talking about the Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront the powers and structures of evil with justice, compassions, and the transforming power of love."
On April 20, Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions
On May 11, Wisdom from the world's religions
And on June 1, Humanist teachings.
The "Words and Deeds of prophetic women and men" have been a crucial foundational source in how Unitarian Universalism faces life in the world.
Let's take a moment to consider what we mean by "prophetic." What is a prophet? We may think of a prophet as someone who foretells the future. They have a sight beyond other people that allows them to predict what has not yet occurred. For example, my thesaurus states that some of the synonyms of prophet are clairvoyant, psychic, diviner, telepathist, parapsychologist, seer, or soothsayer.
I actually like the synonym "forecaster," since it's more down to earth-it suggests that anyone who's paying attention to the data can probably make a guess about coming trends. One doesn't need extrasensory perception to notice that if we keep going on a particular trajectory, things are likely turn out in a particular way. That's one aspect of the prophetic voice.
But in the myth and lore of our Judeo-Christian roots, the idea of the "prophet" has specific meaning, which I think remains relevant to UU history and to us today.
The Hebrew word for a prophet is navi. It comes from the term niv sefa tayim, meaning "fruit of the lips." This suggests the prophet's role as a speaker, as one who calls to the community, one who declares to the community the need to change in response to higher law. The speech and witness of the prophet, if it is heeded, will bear fruit.
For an example of the prophetic voice from Hebrew Scripture, remember the opening words this morning, from the prophet Isaiah. The background is that Isaiah is saying to the people, don't kid yourself into thinking you are changing for the better because you wear sackcloth and ashes and you fast to display your repentance before God. These gestures don't mean anything if you do them and then go on exploiting your workers or denying shelter to the vulnerable among you.
What God desires in you, says Isaiah, is a different kind of fasting, a fast from self-absorption and meanness of spirit and stinginess: The Divine wants you to love your neighbor as yourself - to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house, to cover those who are naked and without anything, to practice peace among yourselves - this is the only fast that matters. Then, if you do these things, the suffering of the whole community will lift, and you will become like an abundant garden, like a spring whose waters never run dry.
It could be said that the prophet's career begins with "the call," a sense of being called by God or by a higher law, to speak and witness to the people. But really the prophet's work begins with listening, with being receptive to that call.
The gift and burden of being a prophetic messenger isn't arbitrarily placed upon anyone; rather, it comes from an individual's spiritual and moral readiness to bear than gift and the burden of being a navi, a messenger, and to carry out its demands.
On the cover of the leaflet, you see a quote from Susan B. Anthony, who is pictured on the front with her partner in the work of women's rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The quote talks about being willing to be everything or nothing in others' estimation, and to be continuously faithful to the message no matter the consequences, even though both the message and one's self may be despised.
It should be acknowledged that many prophets do not want the gift or the burden. Some of the great prophets of the mythic past, such as Moses, and Samuel, and Jonah, they all went to great lengths to avoid taking up the call, knowing what it would require of them, what it would cost them.
A few years ago, as I prepared for Martin Luther King Sunday, I discovered almost identical stories from King's private writings and from Theodore Parker's private writings. They both described moments when they felt crushed and terrified beneath the weight of what they were called to do. They each recognized the consequences to themselves and their loved ones of carrying out the prophetic call, and they wept and prayed to God that they would not have to drink that bitter cup.
But both found through their deep prayer life a renewed strength to stand up. King literally heard God say to him, "Stand up, Martin! Stand up!" They found the courage to accept the prophetic mission, and face the people with the message they bore. In King's case, it was the moral demand of full equality for African Americans-and we know what that cost him. In Parker's case, his first prophetic call was to preach radical theological ideas, which almost destroyed his reputation and his career. Later in his life, his primary message was the evilness of slavery and the demand that it be abolished in the United States. He spent himself out for this cause. His relentless work left him exhausted and surely hastened his early death to tuberculosis.
The ability to be a prophetic voice rests upon the strength and persistence to withstand others' apathy, callousness, judgment, and sometimes the hatred of the surrounding community, and to keep calling out and calling out the truth that is burning in one's heart.
So, first comes listening for and hearing the call-what could also be called being sensitive. For many of the prophetic reformers of our past and present, their call comes from feeling acutely the injustice in the world as outrageous and unbearable. The call and commission that they experience may come from a holy fire, or it may simply come from the obvious fact that something is very wrong, there is too much suffering, something must be done, and they cannot live with themselves if they don't respond.
The prophetic messenger may speak especially about the vulnerable, but he or she knows that the well-being of a whole people is at stake. They feel that a whole nation-or today perhaps, a whole world-will rise or fall on whether it can heed the message.
They may meet with success or failure, depending upon whether their witness is heard, but it is unwavering commitment to the message through thick and thin that makes someone a true prophet. Sometimes the reform that the prophet is calling for does not occur, at least not in full, during the prophet's lifetime, and it is only by the course of history that she or he is vindicated.
I found a quote from Susan B. Anthony when, upon being greeted with cheers at a gathering, she said:
This reception is quite different from the one I received 50 years ago! They were throwing things at me then, too, but they weren't roses.
For 50 years she had declared the message, often being spat upon and forcibly removed from lecture halls. She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were among the very first to express with ferocious conviction the view that women should be fully equal to men in opportunity, in self-determination, and in their capacity to vote and influence the policies that affected their lives. And so for decades, she had to withstand the hatred of those who were threatened by that message and all the change that it implied.
Another important thing to say about the prophetic person is that he or she is a custodian of the covenant of the people. What do we mean by covenant? A covenant can take the form of explicit promises, like the vows stated between two people marrying. A covenant can be a behavioral or moral agreement, like a church's community covenant saying, "We will dwell together in peace, and seek the truth in freedom, and serve humanity in a spirit of fellowship."
Or, a covenant may be an overarching vision of right relationship expressed in a religious or moral philosophy. We could say that, because of our seventh UU principle-affirming the interconnected web of all existence-we know ourselves as bound in a covenant with the whole of life, and so we are troubled when we know that we are violating that covenant.
The covenant is the vision of right relationship that guides a people, and the prophet is the covenant's custodian, when the people have become forgetful and neglectful.
In my explorations of this subject, I came upon a story of Unitarians Maria Weston Chapman and the Weston Sisters. In 1834, Maria and her sisters Caroline, Anne, and Deborah, along with eight other women, formed the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Their manifesto stated that:
[We believe] slavery to be the direct violation of the laws of God, and productive of a vast amount of misery and crime, and [are] convinced that its abolition can only be effected by an acknowledgment of the justice and necessity of immediate emancipation.
These sisters not only held unpopular views, but being outspoken and independent, were hissed at and spoken of in scornful terms by their social acquaintances. After one particularly ugly incident, Maria reported that the nasty mob that had threatened them had been members of William Ellery Channing's congregation-other Unitarians! Not only that, but Unitarians whose minister is now considered one of our founding saints of free thought, one of our progressive luminaries!
The Weston sisters actually thought very little of Channing because he was so anemic in his attitude toward the anti-slavery movement. He may have had "benevolent intentions," they said, but he showed "neither insight, courage, nor firmness." He opposed immediate emancipation of slaves and resisted the formation of anti-slavery groups. Worst of all to the Westons, Channing rejected the admission of people of African descent into the ranks of Unitarians.
The sisters attended various Boston churches in order to scout out whether the ministers preached against slavery. On the whole, they became increasingly disgusted with the people of their own denomination. On a Sunday in July, 1835, Deborah wrote: "I was completely exhausted listening to his [Rev. Mr. Francis Parkman's] villainy. Went in the afternoon to the free church, heard Mr. Theodore Parker. He preached very well, speaking extempore."
I think what's important for us about this story is to understand that Unitarians were not, de facto, a prophetic voice in the larger society. Universalists were not necessarily a prophetic voice. And today, Unitarian Universalism is not necessarily a prophetic voice in our society and world.
Amazing, prophetic people have emerged from among us. Many of the most renowned social progressives and innovators of the 19th and 20th centuries were our forebears: the abolition of slavery, the Red Cross, public education, the existence of kindergarten, women's rights, child protection, compassionate care for the mentally ill, early prison reform, education for the blind, prevention of cruelty to animals, the foundations of social work, and international peace work-these are among the many, many exceptional contributions made by Unitarian and Universalist individuals and associations who moved mountains of social inertia to create compassionate and just change.
They have been inspired by the ethical vision of the prophets, including the example of Jesus. They have been compelled to address suffering by their own reason and by their senses and by the cry of compassion within their own hearts. They have been exhorted by their spiritual leaders to strive for the realm of God here on earth, to build the beloved community. They have found their passion and their sense of liberty strengthened by the principles of our faith.
Yet these prophetic voices, these movers and shakers are not necessarily representative of Unitarian Universalists. They were often reviled by their own religious communities, who were as entrenched in the status quo as any other religious group-sometimes more so, since Unitarians were often the wealthy and well-connected members of society.
Clinton Lee Scott spoke pointedly to our dilemma when he wrote:
Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision. It is easier blindly to venerate the saints than to learn the human quality of their sainthood. It is easier to glorify the heroes of the race than to give weight to their examples. To worship the wise is much easier than to profit by their wisdom. Great leaders are honored, not by adulation, but by sharing their insights and values. Grandchildren of those who stoned the prophet sometimes gather up the stones to build the prophet's monument. Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.
So, the message is a challenging one for us. Are we, as Unitarian Universalists, prophetic? Or are we the sleeping and stuck people whom the prophets had to wake up, like Isaiah calling to his own people.
We should feel proud of all the good that has been inspired by this faith. We should know why and how it has given so many people the power and conviction to accomplish great things. We should certainly feel inspired to action by the example of others. And when someone from within our own ranks raises a prophetic voice, we should take heed.
But best of all, we can each in our own way become those who make prophetic witness to one other and to the world. Let us be moved by our own reason, our own senses, and by the spiritual fire of love, to be the new navi, today's prophets.