The New Massachusetts Universalist Convention

Subscriptions

Our newsletter is sent free to any address in North America. To subscribe, add your name to our mailing list.

Summer2005

"Who Are These 'Universalists', and What Do They Want?"

We're Unitarian Universalists, members of congregations that are members of the UUA. We love the UU movement. It is our spiritual home. What we want is to make the UU movement stronger. In particular, we would like it to be more welcoming than it is to people like Carlos and Ruth.

Carlos. Carlos was a visitor at a UU church in a prosperous suburb of Boston. The woman greeting that day asked him what he did and he said, "I work on cars." She laughed, thinking that Carlos was making a joke about an expensive hobby. But he wasn't joking--he and two brothers and their sister owned a gas station a couple of towns away, and Carlos was the head mechanic. He had been stating the simple truth: "I work on cars."

The greeter reddened when she realized her mistake. Carlos was very gracious and rescued her by asking what she and her husband did. She knew the name of her husband's firm and seemed certain that he had a lot of responsibility, but wasn't able to say what he actually did.

Most of the men at that congregation have high-status jobs. A lot of them have gone to Harvard, as have their fathers before them. Many work in boardrooms or laboratories. One owns a TV station. Several are attorneys. Carlos was some-one who was not like the other men, someone whose knowledge and experience were different, someone whose acquaintance could have deepened that woman's life. We wonder if she realized how impoverished her seemingly-wealthy congregation really was.

Ruth. Ruth, an elderly member of another UU congregation, called herself a "Christian" and wasn't happy with the way her church had gone over the last 30 years, but she wasn't going to let the Humanists and the pagans drive her out. A new minister spoke to her a few weeks after his arrival.

"Ruth, I hear you're a Christian."

"That's right," she said, with a set to her jaw and an edge in her voice.

"So--do you believe Jesus was the son of God? That he died for the sins of humanity? That he was raised on the third day?"

"Oh no," she replied, looking at him as if he were crazy. "I don't believe any of that."

What Ruth wanted was for the "Our Father" to be said once in a while. She wanted an occasional Bible reading. She wanted to hear about the prophets or Jesus--not every week, but sometimes.

We want the UU movement to be more welcoming than it is to people (like Carlos) who haven't gone beyond high school and drive trucks with their name on the door, and to people (like Ruth) who want to hear the Bible discussed in an intelligent way. We've noticed Universalism and think it might help. Universalism was shaped by the experience of less privileged people. And Universalism adds to mainstream UUism one extra factor--a desire to stay in touch with UUism's Judeo-Christian roots.

Summer 2005

What Language Do UUs Speak?

--Gretchen Meyer, The new UU Voice, Spring 2005
One day about 20 years ago, before I was a UU, I was talking with a neighbor about Jesus. Suddenly, she asked if I wanted to get down on my knees and ask Jesus to come into my life. Reminded of my teenage youth group visit to a Billy Graham extravaganza, my stomach clutched, I broke into a cold sweat, and blurted out, "No." Our friendship died.

Later in life, several years after becoming a UU, some evangelists with their religious magazines came to my door, inviting me into the circle of their salvation.

As it happened, that very morning my teenage son and I had been talking about a story in the Bible. This time I smiled and assured them my Universalist faith offered us salvation. And I could truthfully say we had just been discussing the Bible.

No doubt we had a different interpretation of salvation and the meaning of the Bible story, but using a common language allowed my son and me to draw a circle that included them rather than shutting them out. Since we were already saved, there was no need for them to return. And they never did.

When I was unable to speak religious language, I felt revulsion and fear when others did. I believe that my UU journey is to explore what concepts such as God, sacred, holy, worship and other religious words mean. This allows me to be in conversation with people of other faith traditions that are unlike mine.

Conservative religious people may have very strict interpretations of these words. However, when I am comfortable with my own interpre-tations, I feel less defensive. And I am regularly surprised when liberal religious people understand these words in an even broader way than I. They all teach me something. They help me expand my context.

Unless UUs can utilize religious language with confidence and comfort, we may never be able to understand or be understood by people of other faiths. When we outright reject religious language, we lose the power of effective communication with 90 percent of humanity. What benefit then is our UU good news?

Winter 2005

Jesus Is Dead

"If we bring Jesus back into Sunday services won't we wind up with the Virgin Birth and all that?" asked a member of the audience at one of our presentations at the UUA General Assembly.

The questioner's concern is shared by many Unitarian Universalists who have never heard Jesus discussed except in the context of mainstream Christianity. How can one talk about Jesus in a consistently rational way?

Our presenter, unprepared for the question, blurted his own fervent belief. "Jesus is dead," he said. "We're heretics. There's no danger."

The Jesus Seminar (www.jesusseminar.org) and other groups of scholars are showing how one can disentangle the historical Jesus from dogmatic Christianity. And yes, the historical Jesus is dead. But he's also a tremendous resource, as the two following articles attempt to show.

Winter 2005

Do What You Can, Then Let Go

"A sower went out to sow. As he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil ... and when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold." (Mark 4:3-8)

When this story is read in Christian churches an interpretation which comes right after it in the Bible is usually read also, so people don't get to hear just the story. The interpretation was created by early Christians who were trying to figure out what Jesus meant. They got it wrong. They thought he was trying to start a new religion, but he was trying to offer encouragement to poor farmers. I think his meaning was simply, Do what you can, then let go. Here, within our own Judeo-Christian tradition, is the principal message of the Bhagavad Gita, the core text of Hinduism. To hear it, all we have to is liberate Jesus from the prison in which Christianity has placed him.

A farmer sowing seed can't see underground rocks, or know where birds will land or thorns will sprout. For reasons beyond the farmer's control some seeds will not sprout, no matter how carefully the farmer has distributed them. All the farmer can do is the best job he or she can and then hope that, as in the story, the yield from the seeds that do sprout will be enough to feed the family for another year.

Today people in recovery groups (like AA) have rediscovered this old advice. They remind one another, "You can choose your actions but not the consequences of your actions." In other words, you can control what you do and how well you do it but there your control ends. You can't control how other people will respond to what you do, or what unforeseeable events might interfere with your plans. Once you've acted as best you know how, you might as well stop fretting. Do what you can, then let go.

Winter 2005

The Gospel Code

The stories about Jesus in the gospels contain coded political messages that the original audience of Jewish peasants received loud and clear, but that went right over the heads of the Roman authorities (and go right over our heads today). One example is the famous "Render Unto Caesar" episode (Mark 12:13-17).

Representatives of the rulers ask Jesus in public, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?" Jesus asks for a coin, points out that it bears the likeness of the emperor, and says, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

For centuries preachers have been interpreting this story as an endorsement by Jesus of the separation of religion and politics. But ancient religion was always political.

Taxation was a hot-button issue for the peasants because overtaxation by the Romans was forcing them to mortgage and in many cases lose their ancestral land. This was not only a personal tragedy--their land was all they had--but a religious one. The Israelite tradition forbade the peasants from selling their land. "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine," said God in a passage they were sure to know (Leviticus 25:23). "With me you are but aliens and tenants."

To the authorities it must have seemed that Jesus was avoiding a political stand. But to the peasants his answer contained an unmistakably political message. God owned the land, the source of all wealth. God owned everything! So when Jesus said, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's," Jesus was in effect saying that the emperor was entitled to nothing.

Mainstream Christians often find fault with UUs for our tendency to spend a lot of time on Sunday mornings discussing politics. But in this, as in so many disagreements we have with the Christian establishment, the historical Jesus is on our side.

Winter 2005

Top 10 Benefits of Hell

10. None of that annoying check-in procedure like with St. Peter.

9. Your joke "Do you smell something burning?" kills 'em, year after year.

8. Plenty of legal help available for filing your "wrongful death" lawsuit.

7. Well, sure, it's hot, but it's a dry heat.

6. Free prostate checks and PAP smears administered daily!

5. Karaoke every evening, hosted by Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.

4. Every area has a smoking section!

3. All the books in the library are collections of math problems.

2. Tripe and brussels sprouts for dinner every day!

1. The preachers are no longer saying, "Things could be worse."