In 1984 and 1985 our UU General Assembly adopted a new credo statement -- Principles and Purposes. They do not constitute a creed because none of us have to ascribe to them in order to join. If you don't pretty much feel in accord with most of it, you'll probably be uncomfortable here, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Those of us who might think the Principles and Purposes as written are perfect, might learn something from your discomfort!
UUs tend to know the principles: the inherent worth and dignity... and the interdependent web of all existence... pretty well. Many of us don't even know there are sources included. They follow the principles and speak of the range of those sources that we draw from in our ongoing individual and communal religious search.
(We added a sixth source that affirms earth-centered traditions recently) -- and that is an example of people uncomfortable here whose discomfort netted positive change for UUism.
Today's sermon is the first in a series of two that focuses on our sources. Next week we will look at the third source listed, affirming the religions of the world. For those of you who are visiting, the theme of this summer's series of sermons has been around the knowledge candidates for ministry must have access to, in order to be fellowshipped into UU ministry. Something I look to earn in late September.
Today I want to look more closely at the sources we affirm in our Principles and Purposes that will take us directly to the Reformation and Transylvania's Queen Isabella and her son King John Sigismund. Our heritage has deep roots in the Reformation, particularly in that part of it called the Radical Reformation, and what happened in Transylvania in the sixteenth century. The work of these two monarchs, Isabella and John Sigismund are models for us, even 450 years later.
The fourth of the sources in our Principles and Purposes reads, "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves." This source recognizes and affirms the historic Jewish and Christian roots of our tradition but emphasizes a particular portion of those traditions: basically the golden rule. This affirmation, shows up in the Christian scripture, in Matthew and Luke. And Paul writes of the power of love. 1 Cor. 13, our morning's reading.
For Judaism, the Golden Rule is not written in the Torah (Hebrew Bible, called the Old Testament by Christians). But love --which the Golden Rule is deeply about -- is present in the Torah through God's ongoing love of the people, despite their constant inability to see this love. But the Golden Rule, loving your neighbor as yourself, doing unto others what you would have others do unto you - while not in the Torah -- is in the Talmud, written later. It reads, "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire Law: all the rest is commentary." The Rabbi's story of the difference between heaven and hell as the willingness or ability even to know to feed one another, is a wonderful story version of our fourth principle and the Golden Rule.
Of all of the aspects of Judaism and Christianity that exist, the writers of the fourth source in our Principles and Purposes focused on the love that both these tradition share. That love is most deeply grounded in the Universalist side of own heritage.
We UUs tend to think of our movement first and foremost as believing in one god - at most. Not trinitarians, we are unitarians. American Unitarians received that name as a movement, from our detractors early in the nineteenth century. But they didn't think of themselves so much unitarian as rationalists. Enlightenment influenced people who, in thinking rationally, employing the use of reason, questioned the trinity. But there is nothing in our principles and purposes that says we affirm unitarianism - at most. They speak of love.
So, while our unitarianism is an element of who we are, and our congregational reading this morning, that God is one, from Da'vid is important for its expression of unitarianism -- love is also at the heart, the center, of our tradition. And the Da'vid reading also speaks of love. You need not think alike to love alike.
You may remember reading Richard Cohen's column this week (8/8/00) about Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman's commitment to Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism which columnist Richard Cohen describes as "sometimes synonymous with a dogged refusal to think". Cohen column tells a story of Lieberman's religious commitment that fits my own interpretation of Judaism at its best, not as "dogged refusal to think". Cohen writes, "Not so long ago, Senator Joseph Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, held a Friday night dinner party. But by the time the Senate adjourned, the winter's sun had set and the Jewish Sabbath had begun. Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, will not drive on the Sabbath. So, with his guests waiting, he set out for home by foot, about five miles in the bitter cold....I tell you this story because I see it as being...[about] fidelity to values....this is a politician with a very demanding constituency: his conscience."
It is about love. Love of God and Lieberman's understanding of the greater good. As our fourth source, emphasizes love.
So, on to the Reformation. It was about love in Luther's emphasis on God's 'grace' over 'works'. Whether it be by following laws or by the intervention of priestly acts, Luther said, "no" it is about love. While Catholicism had lost sight of its own sense God's love for human beings as it went overboard with through the buying and selling of indulgences, for instance, Catholicism can not be said to have been wrong about the importance of "works". We UUs affirm "works" a great deal. The Reformation is about love.
But the Reformation largely lost that impulse toward love. Lost in its own impulse toward laws, just read Calvin and his interpreters. Love is in Calvin's writings but nearly buried in the laws of God. And further buried by those who read Calvin and went from there.
The Reformation lost its impulse toward love in its internal violence over what was right and not, actual physical violence with thousands of people dead. And in external Catholic reaction to reformation insurgencies throughout Europe. The Golden Rule, inherent in our fourth source, and part of the Jewish and Christian traditions, is not necessarily readily apparent in the Reformation. In the violence that occurred during the Reformation one might see the concept of love in Christianity having been lost. Lost, as Christians felt love was lost in Judaism. But they hadn't read the Torah closely. They hadn't read the Talmud at all. "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire law: all the rest is commentary."
But love often gets lost in the clutter of dogma.
There is a place where "love" briefly reigned in the years of the Reformation - in Transylvania. While Luther thought that he had done what needed doing, his doing it and not getting killed for it, stirred many more to put in their two, five, ten and twenty-five cents worth into change. John Calvin is the most famous of those Reformation thinkers beyond Luther, a man who had a remarkable impact on Christianity in Europe. But he is not the Radical Reformation where our Unitarian roots are most closely tied.
Much of the Radical Reformation was radically spiritual. The traditions of the Anabaptists such as the Mennonites and the Amish come out of the Radical Reformation. And several individuals laid the groundwork for the Unitarianism that grew after the Reformation, in England and then in America. Three important names are Michael Servetus, Francis Da'vid and Faustus Socinus. Servetus was executed by Calvin, Da'vid died in a dungeon, sentenced there by a Calvinist court for his unitarian views. Socinus died in old age in Poland, having built up the unitarian Polish Brotherhood. And then there is Transylvania's Queen Isabella and her son King John Sigismund.
When our continental convention, General Assembly, was held here in 1998, the minister of First Unitarian of Minneapolis, Kendyl Gibbons, preached a sermon called "Crowns and Dreams". The sermon was about Transylvania's Queen Isabella and her son King John Sigismund. It was a remarkable sermon and I know no better source for your also knowing about this queen and her son. Kendyl wrote, in the voice of Queen Isabella,
"'Princess,' they call me still; 'Princess Isabella of Poland,' as if I had never left the court of my father, as if I had never gone to Transylvania, as if I had never been a queen. But a queen I was; queen of a land surpassingly beautiful, queen of a people intelligent, loyal, and fierce in defense of their liberty. A queen hounded and driven from her palace, ...[my] crown wrested from me by enemies without and false friends near by, but a queen still. The mother of a King such as this world has seldom seen, and yet more rarely deserved, I was; but above all a queen of a dream, the queen of an idea of the heart and soul...."
Her story and life are remarkable but it is in her dream that Kendyl's words as Queen Isabella matter this morning. For her dream was the dream of abiding love, a love made of the constituency of conscience and bound to the greater good, a love that loved neighbor as self.
"Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another, This is our covenant." reads James Blade's version of one among many credo statements which UU congregations post and read in service. What lies most deeply at the heart of what happened in Transylvania, and we largely leave buried there, is this powerful sentiment of love. This and another are included in our hymnal. Love is the spirit, the doctrine, of this church, as our fourth source indicates, - "to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves."
Before and after the Reformation church and civil authorities believed, in Kendyl Gibbons' words in her sermon, "that a nation's ruler had the right, and indeed the obligation, to impose upon the people his or her own understanding of correct religious doctrine."Those who disagreed, paid. --often with their lives. But Queen Isabella and her son King John Sigismund saw their royal duty much differently. They were Unitarians; they could have made the whole country Unitarian as other countries were Lutheran or Catholic. But Isabella through Kendyl's voice in that sermon thought this:
Why should we have to choose for everyone? .... Why should not each human soul respond to God, and worship God, in the way that seemed best to them? And then, with growing conviction and excitement, the vision of a new way, something never tried before. Suppose a nation had many churches, different from one another, and the people could choose freely among them such worship as would satisfy their souls? Suppose there were books to read, freely and openly; public debates, even, where the ablest of each tradition could argue their true convictions as forcefully as possible, and convince whomever they might? ....I issued the decree that 'every one might hold the faith of his choice... without offence to any....' It was the first time since the political hegemony of Christendom had spread across the western world centuries before, that a national leader gave back to ordinary people the authority of their own consciences in matters of God and the soul....
Isabella's son King John Sigismund, though he died young and much before his time, was able, in his reign, to pass the "Act of Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience" - an even stronger statement -- at the Diet of Torda in 1563. This act proclaimed that "people have the authority of their own consciences in matters of God and the soul." Francis Da'vid, the man who would later die in a dungeon for his unitarianism, played a central role at this diet.
The resulting decree, in part, "reaffirms that in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well, if not, no one shall compel them...no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone...and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else...for faith is the gift of God..." Three years later Transylvania recognized Unitarianism officially among Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and Lutheranism. The day after the securing of Unitarianism's official recognition, King John Sigismund fell off his horse while hunting and died. The dream he and his mother had put into place quickly deteriorated.
We Unitarian Universalists remember this story as the first official recognition and affirmation of Unitarianism, and it is that. But it is also a remarkable demonstration of "love". Affirmations of authority within the individual and the community, to choose, is to love. We may not take the path of freely following Jesus as UU Christians do, or follow the Jewish tradition, but these are our heritage, particularly through Isabella, John Sigismund and Da'vid . Each informs us still, if we will listen -- to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Queen Isabella and King John Sigismund knew, as did Paul in his letter to the people of Corinth: Love "does not insist on its own way." Francis Da'vid wrote: You need not think alike to love alike. And from the Talmud: "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. All the rest is commentary."
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