by Cecilia Kingman Miller, Summer Minister

A sermon given July 13, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

OPENING WORDS

I honor your gods

I drink at your well

I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place

You just heard Kate read Kányádi Sándor’s love poem Két nyárfá, Two Poplars.  I want to give you just a taste of his words in the original Hungarian:

[read from last stanza in Hungarian]

Those last lines:

You would not be if I would not be,

I would not be if you would not be.

We are two beautiful poplars together,

and we rest in each other’s shade. 

Why love poetry and music this morning?  This congregation is beginning a process of considering partnership with a Unitarian church in Hungary, a journey that is filled with love’s possibility.

Some of you may be thinking, “Unitarians in Hungary?  What?”  Unitarianism began in Eastern Europe. You may remember the visit in February from the Bishop of the Unitarian Church of Romania.  Unitarianism began as an ethnic Hungarian religion in a region now belonging to Romania—Transylvania.  The oldest Unitarian congregations in the world, over 400 years old and born in the Reformation, are there.  And while I know your curiosity is piqued, I am not going to tell you this morning about early Unitarian history.  If you want to learn more about this part of our faith, come to the presentation this afternoon or give me a call and I’ll give you some good sources. 

All I’ll say today is that Unitarianism began in Transylvania, which was until recent history a part of Hungary.  Yes, Transylvania, and no Dracula jokes now. 

Unitarians were persecuted throughout the Reformation and long after.  Yet, in spite of imprisonments and burnings, in spite of over 400 years of repression, Unitarianism flourished in pockets of Eastern Europe. Imagine a place where the traditional greeting on the street is a Unitarian greeting—Isten aldjó meg—which means God bless you.  Imagine standing on a ridge over a valley and seeing nine Unitarian church spires in the surrounding villages.  Imagine sitting in the cool, quiet sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Budapest and knowing that the congregation which worships there is older than our own nation.  Our own choir sang in that sanctuary twelve years ago. 

The Unitarians of Eastern Europe have struggled in modern times as well.  Hungary lost four-fifths of her land at the end of World War I, including the region of Transylvania, which was given to Romania as a war prize.  Tension remains between Hungary and her neighbors, a tension not eased by the fact that there are people with flags that show the old border of Hungary with the statement “As it was, as it will be again.”  It is not unlike the situation in the Balkans.  It is, in fact, a tinderbox of ethnic strife.

After this bitter division of the Hungarian people, the terrors of Communism arose.  Hungary suffered under totalitarian rule, but Romania’s lot was far worse under the dictator Ceausescu.  Many, many Hungarians fled across the border into Hungary, including Unitarians, who were doubly oppressed for both their ethnicity and their religion.  The church in Budapest is now some 80% emigrants from Romania.

The Unitarian Universalist Partner Church movement came into being after the fall of Communism.  Initially a relief effort, it has grown into a broad interchange of people and of love, and includes India and the Philippines, and soon Africa and Pakistan.

To whet your appetite for partner church work, let me tell you the story of a very successful partnership, between the Unitarian churches of Oakland, California, and Oklánd, Transylvania.  

These congregations were partnered early in the Partner Church movement and have come to love each other fiercely over the years.  The Californians simply went to see Unitarianism’s birthplace, but fell in love with their partners.  The process of partnership is like that of falling in love.  First we share our stories, and then our hopes and dreams.  In partnership, this is the time when we send letters back and forth, and even begin to visit one another. 

As their relationship grew in strength and affection, the Americans, with that characteristic desire to be helpful, wanted to give something of themselves. They wanted to send money to their partners, to raise their standards of living.  But something felt not quite right about that.

So often, as we fall in love, we are able to see the needs of the beloved, and naturally want to ease their burdens.  At first glance we see that our partners have far less materially than we do, and it seems we have an obligation to share of our wealth. 

It is right and good for us to be generous with what we have in abundance.  But we must be thoughtful in our giving. We have a saying in the partner church movement: It’s difficult to embrace when your arms are full of gifts.  Our generosity, in all arenas of justice-making, should not lead us into the dangers of paternalism.  Those of you who have worked across racial or class lines know that in order to make justice in the world we must recognize that we exist in a web of mutuality with other people. When we give of our material abundance, we must do so within an understanding of this mutuality. 

And, when we believe that we are the people who have enough, and that others are the needy ones, we separate ourselves from the person we are trying to help.  We create categories of people—I am the giver, you are the recipient.  I am the charitable one, you are the one in need.  We forget that all of us need, that all of us have gifts to offer. 

So, what gifts might our international partners offer us?

First, the Unitarians of Eastern Europe have had to protect their faith through centuries of oppression.  They can teach us about resilience and fidelity.

Second, they teach us how to welcome the stranger.  The culture of hospitality is so great that in a house where no one has their own bedroom, and family members sleep in the kitchen, there is still a special room set aside for company, a bed always ready for a weary wanderer.

Even the preparation of meals is different—food is still sacred there, for our partners know that it is a blessing to have food on the table each day.

And they have more to teach us—about family loyalty, about respect for our elderly, about the preciousness of freedom.  All these lessons, if we are willing to learn.  But we cannot learn these lessons unless we remember that we are entwined in a web of interdependence with these brothers and sisters.  We must engage in real dialogue, share our selves deeply. 

The people of Oakland struggled through the issues of paternalism, by efforts of mutuality.  They were willing to just be—to sit with their partners around a dinner table and not have to help, or act, in order to define the relationship. 

Then, there finally came a point where the definitions between American and Transylvanian dropped away.  The Americans saw that the young people of their partner village had limited futures.  These students were making the painful choice to move away to the cities, or even emigrate, in order to earn a living.  The Americans saw the old people, left behind in dying villages.  And, because these young men and women, and these elderly widows and widowers, now belonged to the Americans just as surely as their own young people, their own elderly, the folks in California knew that they could not ignore this sorrow.  These were their youth without a future, their villages that were dying.

The Americans wanted to help, but they recognized that they knew very little about how to save these villages.  They had the good sense to know that the Transylvanians would have given these matters much thought, and that perhaps they already knew what might be done.  And so a few of them gathered with the village leaders in a kitchen in Oklánd and asked, “What can we do?”  The villagers’ faces were lined with years of worry, and countless disappointments.  Yet, trusting their partners, the elders responded: “We want to build a mill to grind our own grain.  And a bakery, that we might provide bread to the people.”

This kitchen table meeting grew and grew, and eventually the endeavor became an independent foundation called Project Harvest Hope, of which I now have the privilege to serve as Vice-President.  Much has happened since that day.   We now provide assistance to villages throughout the region.  We have built a mill and a bakery, and a cooperative dairy farm.  These projects employ young people and provide bread and milk to eleven villages.  This locally-run endeavor has created a glimpse of hope in the region.

And this project continues to blossom.  We are working with the villagers to create a sustainable development network throughout Transylvania, across religious and ethnic lines.

Now, it may seem at first glance that the giving went one way in this relationship.  How did the Transylvanian villagers give back to us Americans?

First, they offer us the gift of reflection.  The villagers have become close enough to their American friends that they can speak frankly now, and suggest questions about our own culture.  They share their worries about our materialist society, and how far-flung our extended families are.  They offer their concerns about our commitment to our free faith, feeling that we do not take our children’s religious upbringing seriously enough.  Whether or not we agree with them, we must acknowledge that this kind of conversation could not occur in a climate of dependency and paternalism.  If the Transylvanians considered themselves to be our charity project, they would not say such things to us. 

The second gift is the tender comfort of friendship.  I was living in Transylvania when the September 11 bombings occurred, and throughout that week various ministers shared with me their concern for partners here in the United States.  Bishop Szabó, who visited here, wrote a deeply moving pastoral letter to all of our churches. 

But I heard the most tender story upon my return later that fall, from my friends Frank and Barbara Weber, who live near the Pennsylvania crash site.  The year before, they had stayed with a family in their partner village.  This family spoke not a word of English, and had no telephone, yet Frank and Barbara awoke late that night after the attack, to a phone call from their village hosts, who had walked to the only phone in their area to make this call.  The husband could only say, “Okay?  Okay?” 

And the Webers could only reply in the one word they knew in Hungarian:  “Igen.  Igen.”  Yes, yes.

These people, who had survived brutal totalitarianism, were urgently concerned with the welfare of their brothers and sisters in faith, here in the U.S.

It goes back to the understanding of mutuality.  It comes from knowing our futures are inextricably bound with other people around the world.  It comes from knowing that we have things to learn, we are vulnerable too, that we need our partners’ gifts as much, if not more, than they need our financial help.  A relationship between equals springs up—where gifts are freely exchanged, arising out of love.

When the people of Oakland return to their partner village, it is a powerful thing to witness.  The embraces shared are like that of family members.  Faces shine with tears.  These partners have become like the two poplars, sheltering and supporting each other. A love like this burns brightly, and it creates a light for others to follow. 

This level of partnership, like any good relationship, requires intentionality and care.  This endeavor is not for the faint of heart, nor is there room for dilettantism.  The stakes are too high, not only for our partners, but for us as well. 

For you see, the final and perhaps greatest gift of partnership is the fortification of our own hope. No longer can we remain trapped in feelings of frustration, of sorrow, of uselessness in the world.  The world needs us—to build barns so that others might hope.  To build bakeries so that others might eat.  To sit at a table, telling our stories, that we might love. 

As Thomas Merton wrote, “In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”  In the end, partnership heals our own broken hearts.

To love like this is to create goodness in the world.  And my friends, God knows, goodness is needed in the world today.

Without mutuality, we would never have known the gifts of this love.  None of us in this partnership can say, or would ever say, “You owe me.”  For who would owe whom?  Who is in whose debt? 

Look what happens with a love like that.  It lights the whole sky.

May it be so for all people.  Amen.

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Copyright 2003, Cecilia Kingman Miller.  All rights reserved.