Sermon “The Origins of Our Faith” The Rev. Rali Weaver

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

I think the questions in our introit this morning are perfect rhetorical devices when applied to our liberal faith.

Just looking at our Communion Silver this morning we are aware that our religion has changed dramatically since its inception.

And I don’t just mean the obvious changes such as the one that turned our Meeting House to face the green and turned us into Unitarian Universalists.

These were only small steps in our faith tradition that has striven for hundreds of years to be a unifying faith instead of a dividing one.

On this Sunday After the Inauguration of a new US president it would be difficult not to point out the unifying place our new president is striving to stand in.

To be a unifying presence you must strive to understand all sides of an argument and work for collaboration and take an active stand against injustice.

This is what our forefathers did when they refused to deny anyone a place at the communion table due to an arbitrary sense of unworthiness.

This is was what this Parish did when they called Alvan Lamson in 1818 to be the first Unitarian Minister of this parish taking an active stand against the idea that only a few “special” people deserved to call themselves Christians, taking a stand for all people to receive Holy Communion and baptism.

We are a Unifying Faith tradition founded in action.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee which we recognize today as we return our Guest at your Table Boxes is a perfect example of one of the origins of our faith.

If you aren’t already familiar with it the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s (USC) Mission is to “advance human rights and social justice in the United States and around the world through a combination of advocacy, education, and partnerships with grassroots organizations, promoting economic rights, advances environmental justice, defending civil liberties, and preserving the rights of people in times of humanitarian crisis.”

A perfect example of our active faith is the example of Martha and Waitstill Sharp, the Wellesley Hills, Mass Minister and his Social Worker wife who traveled to Europe as representatives of the AUA "to see what could be done" in response to the rise of Hitler and fascism in post-World War I Europe. They arrived in Prague on February 23, 1933 hoping to help some of the 250,000 refugees who had poured into that city from the Sudetenland and elsewhere. Within three weeks, they stood in the streets of Prague with thousands of others watching the Nazi troops march in to take over the whole country.

For five more months, the Sharps worked to match endangered people with job opportunities outside of their country so that they would be eligible for exit visas. The Sharp’s left Europe on August 30. Before they reached New York, Germany had invaded Poland and World War II had begun.

Out of a need to have a more unified support for the Sharp’s work the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) was established as a standing committee of the AUA in May 1940.

By mid-June, the Sharps were on their way back to Europe to conduct another rescue and relief mission. Basing their operations in Lisbon and Marseilles, they brought a shipment of milk to children in the Pau region of southern France and facilitated the emigration of refugees.

The director of the USC, Charles Joy, understood the challenges of language, culture, and religion and asked a European artist named Hans Deutsch to develop a symbol for the Service Committee, a sort of quick shorthand that could expedite communication and instill trust at a glance. Deutsch, who had been forced underground after publishing editorial cartoons critical of Hitler, suggested a flaming chalice to represent the struggle of Jan Hus the priest of Prague who in 1415 was at the center of a controversy with the Catholic Church because he believed in "the priesthood of all believers" (The same concept that is the cornerstone of our congregational polity which states that all people regardless of wealth or position have equal access to the divine, equal access to religious experience and to the possibility of spiritual growth and transformation.)

Hus railed against the common practice of allowing only priests to partake of the communion wine, while the bread was shared openly with all believers and put his beliefs into action by serving both the bread and the wine to his congregation during Communion, Hus was brought before the Council of Constance, and tried for heresy and burned at the stake for his heretical beliefs.

Hus’ story was familiar to the centuries of Czech resistance. And so it was in April of 1941 the USC adopted the flaming chalice symbol designed by Hans Deutsch.

The same Flaming Chalice which we light each week is a burning reminder of our activist faith tradition.

Our faith is a living faith a burning faith without a creed or a doctrine to tell us what to believe or where to stand. We are a moving faith without a set destination any more defined than the ideals of freedom and liberty and justice. We are a unified faith but unified only in the commitment to the common good.

As we light our chalice each week we light it with memories and with hopes because those are the only frameworks of our liberal faith, a faith which moves and changes with the world striving ever onward to the light.

So I say to you we may not know where we are going or what we are or where we come from but we do know how to make space for all of life to enter in to the conversation.

May it be so.