“A living tradition is not bequeathed through some law of inheritance; it must be earned, not without dust and heat, and not without humbling grace.”
Those words of UU theologian James Luther Adams are worth remembering as we celebrate the life of this community over the past year and look toward the challenges…and opportunities…ahead for us.
A Living Tradition…a tradition, a faith without a creed…no insistence that you or you or you believe specific things about the way the world works…a faith which always has to be interpreted in the context of current experience…
A Living Tradition…Adams says… is not bequeathed through some law of inheritance…it must be earned.
The truth I know about this tradition is that it is not so much received from the past…as created in the present…by each of us and by all of us together…
It is created. We create our faith out of our wrestling with the questions of how to live a good life in a difficult world, of how to survive loss, how to sustain hope, how to resist those things that press down on us…and how to help that arc of the universe bend at least a little more toward justice.
We create our faith drawing on the wisdom of the past, honoring the religious ancestors that “brought us thus far on our way”…
We look to the heroes and sheroes of our faith not for answers but for inspiration…that is what we will do in retelling the story of the Flower Communion that we will celebrate in a few minutes.
Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
We sing “Spirit of Life” every time we worship.
The most common story I hear from new members of this community is their experience of visiting for the first time, and during the singing of Spirit of Life…weeping.
Weeping because they sense that this might be a community whose tradition and practice might, just might answer their yearning for a religious home.
They weep. Some of us who have been members of this community for a long time still do.
Spirit of Life is our doxology. Doxology…that’s a fancy term that means a song of praise.
The most famous doxology in Christian churches…many of you know it…”praise God from whom all blessings flow.”
“From whom all blessing flow,” it’s a song of praise but it expresses a particular theology. Doxology can also mean “opinion”… that is what theology is…a religious point of view.
Spirit of Life…come unto me.
Ours is a theology of immanence…the indwelling of the spirit…within us. We speak of the divine spark within each of us. Whether you name that spirit as God or Love or the power of human possibility…the language matters very little…
It is the indwelling presence of that love or that hope within each us that we call for, that we praise, that we trust.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion… we always have the choice to bless or to curse the world…Spirit of Life…help me always chose compassion.
Spirit of Life gives voice to our aspiration to welcome the holy into our lives and to shape our living toward compassion…to shape our living based on love.
It is a theology of possibility, a theology of empowerment, a theology of compassion.
I often feel that, once we’ve sung Spirit of Life on Sunday morning, there really is not much more need for theological reflection. We just need to take what we have sung…seriously. That is mostly what we do in sermons here. Try to understand what taking Spirit of Life seriously might look like.
How we put that faith into practice…that’s is where there is “dust and heat” to use Adams’ language.
I love Spirit of Life. But I wonder sometimes how the giants of our tradition would react to it.
Would William Ellery Channing, whom we call the father of American Unitarianism, nod his head in approval.
Channing was much more about the head than the heart…”I call that mind free” was one of his most famous writings…
He considered himself a devout Christian…would he have missed the Christian language? Probably.
Channing believed in personal development…self-culture he called it…and that fit his privileged life very well.
The indwelling spirit…I think Channing might have balked.
Our Universalist religious ancestors would hear Spirit of Life and say…Oh, yes…it is the God of Love we know you are singing about.
“The stirrings of compassion” would have resonated with them.
But they saw God in ways that most of us, even those of us who use the language of God…do not. For them, God was creator…an independent actor in the world…separate…he was he…
Today, we treasure the empowerment of our Unitarian religious ancestors who gave us a faith where we do not have to check our intellects at the door.
And we treasure the love at the heart of Universalism and the personal transformation toward compassion that they sought.
But we create our own faith here, our own hymn of praise…we not simply look to the answers that satisfied our spiritual ancestors…on either side.
We value tradition…but we wrestle with it as much as we simply follow it. That is who we are as a religious people.
We do search and discern individually…we pray and meditate…many of us…
But our central practice is the practice of living in community.
We come together to call the spirit of life into our lives and to find support for living a life of integrity and joy…in our various communities and in community right here.
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We sing Spirit of Life together. And hear in it a call to embody our aspirations and our hopes. To embody. To bring those hopes into the world through our lives.
It is often hard, sometimes painful work. But the benefits can be enormous.
There are real questions to ask about who is welcomed into this community and who is not. On those questions we disagree with the giants of our tradition considerably. Channing would not have recognized most of us as his spiritual descendants.
The questions of welcome are very live for us. Those are the questions that will shape our future.
But we do find our blessing in being together…in community…as hard as it often can be…because there is joy and satisfaction and wholeness here as well.
Mark Morrison Reed: ”the central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all.”
Our faith is about connection and the possibility of wholeness.
That is what you have told me as I have asked about the importance of this community in your lives. Our hope is for wholeness here. And the Good News is that…so many of us…often enough…we find it.
Flower Communion
We will conclude this service with the Unitarian
Universalist Flower Communion. This service was
created in 1923 by Dr. Norbert Capek, founder
of the modern Unitarian movement in what was
then Czechoslovakia in central Europe. It gives
concrete expression to the humanity affirming principles of
Our liberal faith.
When the Nazis took control of Prague in 1940, they
Found Dr. Capek’s gospel of the inherent worth and beauty
Of every human person to be—as Nazi court records
Show—“too dangerous to the Reich [for him] to be
Allowed to live.” Chapek was sent to the Dachau
Concentration camp where he was killed the following
Year in a medical experiment. This gentle man
suffered a cruel death, but his
Message of human hope and decency lives on through
His Flower Communion. This ritual includes the
Original words of Dr. Capek to help us remember
The principles and dreams for which he lived and died…
And which we share.
The Consecration: From Capek (Bill-from pulpit)
Infinite Spirit of Life, we ask your blessings on these
flowers, your messengers of fellowship and love. May
they remind us, amid diversities of knowledge and
of gifts, to be one in desire and affection, and devotion
to your holy will. May they also remind us of the
value of comradship, of doing and sharing alike. May
we cherish friendship as one of your most precious
gifts. May we not let awareness of another’s talents
discourage us, or sully our relationship, but may we
realize that, whatever we can do, great or small, the
efforts of all of us are needed to do your will in this
world.
I ask that as you take your flower from the basket,
You do so quietly—reverently—with a sense of
How important it is for each of us to hold our world
And one another with gentleness, justice and love.
I ask that you select a flower—different from the
One you brought—that particularly appeals to you.
As you take your chosen flower—noting its particular
Shape and beauty—please remember to handle it
Carefully. It is a gift that someone has brought for
You. It represents that person’s unique humanity,
And therefore deserves your kindest touch. Let us
Share quietly in this Unitarian Universalist ritual of
Oneness and love.
Let us begin the UU Flower Communion.
Prayer
Will you pray with me now?
Spirit of Life and of Love. Dear God.
In the presence of these flowers,
That remind us of Creation’s profound beauty:
Diverse and Unique, but connected and interdependent,
These flowers which come to us as gifts
From we know not where
And which we, in turn, choose to bring to our
Shared and common altar
As gifts for one another
In their presence we turn our thoughts
to the mystery of life—
which we never understand fully
But which we glimpse in each of these flowers,
and in each of our faces,
and through relationships with neighbors
Near and far
May they remind us of grace we have known
In days past:
Forgiveness we have granted, and forgiveness
We have been given.
Love, unearned and shared.
Generosity, unforeseen and most sacred.
And may they inspire us now,
and in the days to come:
To seek,
To notice,
To embrace and
To create love and justice
To share with the world as exuberantly
As these flowers.
Amen
Topics: Community