Sources of our Faith: God is Love
Rev. Jennifer Owen-O’Quill

Introduction
Last week I talked about our Unitarian heritage, which leads us to believe today that the voice of the Holy speaks in every language. The Life Force that is at work in Creation is shared by all people, and revealed in part by every faith across the globe.

Unitarian thought, dating from the 1500’s grounds us in the idea that God is one, and that our rational mind is to be applied to our faith. Our religious beliefs should not require us to defy our sense of reason.

From this early point of view, we have continued to grow as religious people over the centuries.

The next major shift in our religious thinking came with the advent of Universalism in the early 1700’s. Throughout Europe the idea of Universal Grace and Universal Salvation began to take root. On September 30th, 1770, a lay preacher named John Murray arrived from England and preached on American soil. He was not the first person to preach Universalism in our country, but he was the first person to organize a Universalist Church. Murray would support the founding of many Universalist churches throughout New England during the late 1700’s and led the loosely organized Convention of churches in the early days of the denomination.

I turn to the words of Unitarian Universalist minister Charles Howe and his book “The Larger Faith” to put the beginnings of American Universalism into perspective for us this morning:

“More than 200 years later, it is difficult to fully grasp the strong appeal of John Murray’s message, but the appeal was certainly there. People migrating from Europe to the New World brought with them religious traditions that included, for the most part, beliefs in hellfire and eternal damnation. Anxiety about one’s own fate and that of one’s family and friends weighed heavily on many minds, and it was generally conceded that many people were hell-bound, whether by God’s judgment of exclusion from election [into heaven]. Thus, to hear Murray make a strong case that all were destined to be saved, based on convincing Scriptural arguments, was a welcome and liberating experience. Moreover, at a time when Americans were in the process of attaining political freedom, the prospect of finding religious freedom from dread doctrines was especially attractive.”

In 1803, Universalism had spread across the eastern states and deeper into the South. Those churches sent delegates to represent them as the faithful gathered to adopt a profession of belief and a plan for church government. What follows is the Winchester Profession, adopted at the 1803 Convention. This document would continue to be included in Universalist confessions of faith all the way through the time the Unitarian and Universalist denominations merged in 1961.The Winchester Profession of 1803:Article the First: We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty, interest and final destination of mankind. Article the Second: We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness. Article the Third: We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order, and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable to men. Yet while we … adopt a general Profession of Belief … we leave it to the several small churches and societies, or to smaller associations of churches … to continue or adopt within themselves, such more particular articles of faith … as may appear to them best under their particular circumstances, provided they do not disagree with our general Profession. (Liberty Clause)Universalism bloomed as a faith that freed people of a God of fear and judgment, and ushered in a faith that said: God’s Love is so vast, that it covers all people, all living creatures, the whole of creation. No one can be beyond the reach of this holy Love, and this Love is revealed in all kinds of ways, through different peoples and faith.
For the Universalists, Jesus Christ was so filled with this spirit of Love, that his life became filled with words and deeds that revealed his depth of faith and the great and amazing love of God. His life reveals to us how we too might incarnate that Divine Love in our own lives and reveal that Love with our own words and deeds.

… What is it like to reveal that kind of Love in the world? How can we seek to incarnate it in our own lives, right now, today?

This excerpt from “Centering” by Mary Caroline Richards spoke to me as I was thinking about this:

“But how are we to love when we are stiff and numb and disinterested? How are we to transform ourselves into limber and soft organisms lying open to the world at the quick? By what process and what agency do we perform the Great Work, transforming lowly materials into gold? Love, like its counterpart Death, is a yielding at the center. Not in the sentiment. Nor in the genitals. Look deep into my eyes and see the love-light. Figured forth in intelligent cooperation, sensitive congeniality, physical warmth. At the center the love must live. One gives up all that one has for this. This is the love that resides in the self, the self-love, out of which all love pours. The fountain, the source. At the center. One gives up all the treasured sorrow and self-mistrust, all the precious loathing and suspicion, all the secret triumphs of withdrawal. One bends in the wind. There are many disciplines that strengthen one’s athleticism for love. It takes all one’s strength. And yet it takes all one’s weakness too. Sometimes it is only by having all one’s so called strength pulverized that one is weak enough, strong enough, to yield. It takes that power of nature in one which is neither strength nor weakness but closer perhaps to virtu, person, personalized energy. Do not speak about strength and weakness, manliness and womanliness, aggressiveness and submissiveness. Look at this flower. Look at this child. Look at this rock with lichen growing on it. Listen to this gull scream as he drops through the air to gobble the bread I throw and clumsily rights himself in the wind. Bear ye one another’s burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law.Love is not a doctrine, Peace is not an international agreement. Love and peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.”

Message

It sounds so simple doesn’t it?
There is a Love that is so big, so vast, that all of creation is held in that Love. And we, as people of faith, are called to have that Love shine through our own lives, shine through our words and deeds.Love one another. It is our call to incarnate the Divine.
A simple idea.

But have you tried this out in real life? Not with your neighbor, but with the people who are a little more up-close and personal.

Who here has a family?
Are some of those folks hard to love? Do some of them test you? Imagine — you’ve got the same stories, you were raised on the same kind of Thanksgiving dinner as these people and yet…there are misunderstandings. And we can even be estranged from them: People who knew us when we were 5, it can come to pass, become people we do not speak to later in life.

Love one another.

Have you seen siblings melt down because one of them wants to play with the toy the other one has RIGHT NOW?

If God is Love and we can bring the divine to light in our own actions, then marriage and families must be our test.

People are cruelest to those they are closest to. We often feel we have free license to do whatever we want to our family members. We speak unkind words. Our tempers flare. Violence erupts. We ignore each other. Offer up the silent treatment. We can be pretty terrible to those we love.

It is sometimes easier to love strangers … but when we don’t really know each other, the love doesn’t take much discipline does it?

Incarnating the Divine in our own lives is not an easy task, yet coming to live in such a way opens us up to fathomless depths of joy and unseen possibilities.

The discovery of a Divine Love lies in our development of our heart. It is when we dig down deep in our own soul that we find the resources for that kind of love.

This is why falling in love is so easy, it is all on the surface — your skin feels alive, your heart races, your mind turns with thoughts of them. The communion of the two of you captivates your imagination.

But sustaining a marriage, well, that is where we learn what can be mined from that falling in love. In sustaining a relationship we go deeper in ourselves, deeper into each other to discover to unfold the communion of love we share. The experience moves from the surface, gets under our skin, in all the good and bad ways people can, and we are changed.

It is hard work to be a family. To live with a partner. But the gold we mine in the life of a family is precious indeed.

Love changes us. Works on us. Shapes us. Love fashions us into vessels of possibility and relationship.

And being loved changes the shape of our soul.

Think of a time you were loved like that. Has it ever happened to you? Has there been a time in your life when someone loved you so much, that love changed you — recast your heart forever?

How amazing that we can receive Love from other people that is that profound. When the love you received from someone is so deep, so connected to who you are that you can tell they see you and they love you.

That is the kind of loving I am talking about. Holy Love recasts the soul, reshapes the spirit. Fashions us into new vessels.

This is what we are asked to do. We are asked to become instruments of this kind of transformation. We are being called to forge this kind of change with our love in the lives of people around us.

In the beginning Universalism meant God’s love saved us all. And it has come to mean we can share a Divine Love with one another. We can be seized by a Love for the whole of creation. And in turn, we can be touched and held by that kind of Love ourselves.

And all this makes me think twice about the way I live every day.

Copyright © 2006 Second Unitarian Church