Rev. Linda Simmons
January 3
Ancestors, New Years and Promises
December 18th was the 200th anniversary of the ringing of the Portuguese Bell
housed in The Meeting House tower. Libby Oldham compiled and annotated a
scrapbook, The Tale of the Bell in the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House. Paul
Stewart digitally produced it. It is a work of great love and devotion and a rhapsodic
read. I marveled turning page after page at the lore, the collision of fiction and fact,
the mystery and the muse that our bell has been.
One of my favorite parts of the book is a chapter of Nantucket Scraps by Jane G.
Austen written in 1883 about the bell. Austen writes that the bell:
was rung for the first time on Dec. 18, 1815, in honor of
the birth of the infant son of some island magnate…and
remained silent on December 25th when all of
Christendom was rejoicing over the birth of the Babe of
Bethlehem…
[O]ne of the great men of Nantucket replied,
Well, I don’t see that what happened in Judea a couple
of thousand years ago has much to do with Nantucket.
I understand what this man of Nantucket meant. No matter what is happening in the
world, what is happening right here and now, in our homes, our lives, our
relationships, rings the most true. And so, how do we live into these personal places
well enough so that we might have room enough to love, create, give, explore,
question, consider, offer each other and the world more of who we are?
We as Unitarian Universalists have a history to draw upon that is rich with answers
to these questions. Today I will focus on the Universalist part of that history.
One of the greatest fathers of that history was Hosea Ballou, a Universalist preacher
who lived from 1772-1852. Universalism was unique in its day as it was built on the
notion that there was no hell or purgatory, that all people are equally worthy of
God’s love, that all of us when we die, go to the same place, and it is a place of eternal
love.
Many felt that this philosophy would wreck moral havoc, as why be good except for
the fear of punishment they argued, but the Universalists held their ground. They
argued that we are good because the act of being good has its own internal reward.
When we are good, we feel good.
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And Universalism did not stop there. Universalism taught that the Christian
theology of atonement, the theology that Jesus died so that God might be reconciled
to us, so that God might forgive us our sins and therefore love us again, was upside
down.
They taught that Jesus’ life and death was meant to teach us how to love God again,
to allow us to be reconciled to god, so that we might learn to forgive, to love, to open
ourselves to being loved unconditionally.
I am going to repeat that once more because it is not only an extraordinary notion
for the 1800s, it seems to me an extraordinary notion for our times too.
Universalism taught that Jesus’ life and death was meant to teach us how to love God
again, to allow us to be reconciled to god, so that we might learn to forgive, to love,
to open ourselves to being loved unconditionally.
There is a story that Hosea Ballou came into town on horseback of course and a man
asked him to come to dinner at his house. Hosea gladly accepted. The father
explained that his son had taken to carousing and he was afraid that god would
condemn him to burn in the fires of hell.
Hosea asked the father if he knew the route his son would be taking home that night.
The father answered, Of course. Okay, Hosea said. Let’s go to the crossroads he will
be passing through and build a huge bonfire and when he passes by, take him from
his horse and throw him into it. What exclaimed the father? How could you think of
this? I could never hurt my son?
To which Hosea replied, If you in your mortality could love your son so much even
that you could never throw him into a fire, no matter what he has done wrong, how
much more do you imagine God loves him and so could never condemn him to an
eternal fire of hell?
I have heard a lot about sin and heaven and redemption recently with the Christian
holidays just passed and the memorial service for my brother that was done in an
Episcopal Church. And I have been reflecting on what a non-Christian Universalism
and atonement might be?
Atonement literally means: at-one-ment or unity. What is needed for us to live at
one with ourselves and each other, to not create hell on earth for each other, to not
punish each other, exact our pound of flesh when we feel we have been wronged or
done wrong?
The only word I can think of is: forgiveness. It works in every situation I apply it to.
It does not fail. Try it. Think of any situation in your personal life or the world and
apply forgiveness to it and consider if the situation becomes better, more gracefilled, more capable of further conversation, consideration, mediation, strategy, and
negotiation.
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Forgiveness is not a blank slate. It is a beginning. It is a way forward. It is a
possibility. It is the clarity to go on, to regain a part of ourselves that we need in
order to create lives that are worthy of us.
I consider the shooting of the 9 people in the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015. I consider the people at the bond hearing
who lost mothers, sisters, aunts, fathers, brothers, husbands, wives, friends. I hear
the words of Nadine Collier daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance who said to Dylan
Roof the man who shoot her mother, “You took something very precious away from
me. I will never talk to her ever again.
I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And may God have mercy on
your soul.”1 I imagine Ms. Collier forgave Dylan Roof because she knew that she
could not be free without forgiving him, that she could not go on without letting him
and his hatred go. I imagine she forgave him because she knew that was the only
way to clear the space to be the person she wished to be in the world, the person she
knew her mother wished her to be.
If we are to go on, if we are to clear the space to live into the people we are, to
receive the grace that our own lives offer us because we are human, because we are
human- then to forgive others and ourselves is an essential part of our paths.
This is how atonement happens, this is how one-ment occurs. We imagine ourselves
so deeply worthy of love, so completely worthy of love, that we give ourselves the
freedom to let go of what keeps us small, what keeps us from our grace, what keeps
us from each other, what keeps us from the beauty of this day.
We, because we can, offer the heaven on earth that we are capable of offering to
ourselves and each other. Can we love ourselves and each other enough to spare us
all from the fires of resentment that burn in our own souls, the very fires I would
suggest from which the images of hell are built?
It is not that without punishment there is no incentive to do good, it is without
forgiveness that there is no incentive to do good.
And so this year, we have the doorway. And as usual, before we walk through it, I
invite you to write a letter to yourself and address the envelope to your home
address. This time, write down what you would like to forgive in yourself or another
this year. What it is time to let go of so that you might live with more joy and
freedom?
(Here people walk through a doorway. The beginning of the doorway is the present,
the place in which what needs to be forgiven is still with us. As we pass beneath the
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/06/charleston-church-shooting.html
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doorway, we enter now, the time in which we surrender this thing we need to
forgive in ourselves or in others, and then when we are through the doorway, we
are in the new year, the place where we have surrendered.)
Welcome to sweet 16, to the New Year, to this opportunity for open heartedness,
love and beloved community. How blessed we are to be here together at the opening
of this New Year.
Amen.
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