Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
November 23, 2003
Reading:
From The Divinity School Address, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
And now let us do what we can
to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the
church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I
confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and
forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own
forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship
introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason, — today, pasteboard and
fillagree, and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of
new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once you
are alive, you shall find they shall become … new. The remedy to their deformity
is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms,
one pulsation of virtue can uplift and vivify. [An] inestimable advantage
Christianity has given us … [is] the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world;
whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the
garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the
vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple, which
new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to
mankind. …
I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of
those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke
oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek
Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions.
But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order
to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those
shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding
complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the
identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the
Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.
Sermon:
He was
a revolutionary in a top hat and day coat, called the sage of Concord, the
oracle of his time. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a change agent of American religion
and philosophy, and he was a Unitarian minister for a couple years at the Second
Church of Boston. Emerson who can be called the Zen-master of American
Unitarianism was someone who hated to go to church. Ironic given that he was
perhaps the greatest influence on American religion. We don’t learn that in
school as much as that Emerson was a central figure in an American Renaissance
in literature and philosophy. But his influence came forth from his religious
ideas and explorations. For us Unitarian Universalists, he is one of our most
profound theologians, luminary thinkers, and most influential forbears, for he
articulated a new way of relating with the source of our truth.
And yet he hated to go to church, well at least the one in
Concord.
Emerson preferred to take walks in nature. In the solitude
of reflection and paying attention to the natural world around him, he felt a
closeness to God that he felt lacking in church, for he felt his church looked
backwards into the past, upholding people of a bygone era, asserting the only
way to be in relationship with God is through affirming tradition. In his first
published writing, Nature, he began, “Our age is retrospective. It builds the
sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism.” He
noted that earlier generations “beheld God and nature face to face” while the
present sees all things through the eyes of the past. He asked, “Why should not
we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a
poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by
revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
This question is at the heart of Transcendentalism. No I am
not talking about Transcendental Meditation of the Maharishi. I am talking about
the American religious movement in the nineteenth century ignited Ralph Waldo
Emerson, a movement that believes that everyone has a unique calling to a higher
human existence and affirms the human religious impulse to perceive religious
truth through intuition. Transcendentalism calls people to a personal religious
consciousness, with faith that human beings are in Emerson’s words both part and
particle of God. Transcendentalism asserts that there is a religious impulse in
human beings, a religious sentiment awakened by the fundamental perception that
the world has an essential balance and wholeness. It views the basic building
blocks of all religion to come from the feeling of veneration or reverence that
arises from this perception. Now this perception is seen as an intuition,
emerging within each person, or to use Christian language, revealed to each
person. This perception cannot be had secondhand. In other words, genuine
religious truth can’t be spoon-fed, nor learned from a book, but instead
creatively emerges through human experience that is forged through the fire of
thought.
Emerson was born 200 years ago, in Boston, which then held
hardly more than 20,000 residents. He came from a long line of ministers, and in
his family, education was revered. Emerson didn’t take to the profession of
ministry. He left Second Church of Boston ostensibly for his reservations about
serving the Eucharist. But I suspect it was as much his disposition was far more
suited to a life of reflection and writing. But Emerson didn’t refrain from
speaking publicly. In fact, people flocked to hear him. Without microphones,
many couldn’t hear him. Those that did often didn’t understand. For example one
man reported that “Emerson’s address was uplifting but I didn’t understand
anything he said.” A woman captured the moment saying, “I couldn’t hear him but
I could see that he is a person who believes that every human being …
If there is any defining moment for Transcendentalism, it
is when Emerson addressed the graduates of the Unitarian seminary at Harvard. He
put forth the ideals of transcendentalism. He declared that by and large that
churches are dead, that for religion to survive a new generation of ministers
were needed who spoke from their own experience forged through the fire of
thought. He denounced what he called corpse-cold ministers whose preaching never
revealed whether they lived or loved or had any lives at all. He called upon
those six graduates to forge paths and truths that spoke not to the past but to
the present. It might have been a small class but his message transformed the
history of liberal religion.
Emerson’s elders were largely furious with this brash
whippersnapper. Never did an American religious text receive so many published
angry responses. But many of his peers were inspired by Emerson’s genius. Many
of the best minds of his generation came together to form the Transcendental
Club. There was Margaret Fuller who would not merely become the editor of the
Transcendentalist newspaper but would also lay the foundation for the feminist
movement with her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century. There was Elizabeth
Peabody and Louisa May Alcott who followed Fuller’s lead in literature. There
was Horace Mann and Orestes Brownson who were destined to be great educational
reformers. There was George Ripley, the founder of Utopian societies. There was
Dorothea Dix and Theodore Parker and Bronson Alcott, all of them social
reformers that took the Transcendentalist theology into the world. Together,
they redefined religion not simply for themselves but as a call for reforming
the broader society.
I mentioned that Emerson insisted that people look to their
own religious perceptions rather than look to the past. Emerson put so boldly
the same teachings of our Transylvanian forbears, that revelation is never
sealed. Religious truth is ever emerging among human beings. Because the divine
nature is present in all people, the potential for new revelation is ever
present. If only we human beings wake up to the miracle of life and pay
attention to the subtle currents that come from genuine human experience.
Unfortunately, religion gets distorted. The problems in religion emerge when the
divine nature is attributed to one or two persons and denied to all the rest.
According to the transcendentalists, there are two great
errors of historical Christianity. First, the misunderstanding and mythologizing
of Jesus. And second, regarding the Bible with blind adoration with the
assumption that revelation is over and miracles have ceased. The
transcendentalists operated from a different assumption: Each person must follow
the curve of one’s own faith to breathe life into our forms of worship. As
Emerson put it, “Faith makes us, not we it.”
Now I am speaking of Emerson today who was born two hundred
years ago. It is tempting to simply bring forward his words and ideas, but doing
only this, would run contrary to his teaching. We must not live in the past,
upholding people of a bygone era. We must not simply parrot the thoughts of our
forbears. Our faith calls us to wrestle with the struggles of today, to forge an
original relation to our world, to make way for fresh thoughts and new
approaches to the problems of today. And Emerson’s theology, as extraordinary
and groundbreaking as it was in the nineteenth century, it is lacking as we
confront the issues of the twenty-first century.
I wonder what Emerson would say about World War II and the
holocaust, about Viet Nam and Rwanda and Bosnia, about 9/11, about the
Israeli-Palestine standoff. I wonder what Emerson would say when confronted with
the horrors of the past sixty years and the evil in the human heart that made
them a reality. This year as Waldo, as his friends called him, turns 200, I want
to claim the best of his faith, opening up to an original relation with the
universe, knowing that we all are part and particle of God. I also want to
acknowledge the deep despair among us about how we human beings are treating our
planet, how wealth is getting ever more inequitably distributed, how violence
and rage consumes so many youth, how the forces of alcohol and drugs and
pornography overcome so many people, how materialism has gripped our culture,
how this culture caters to our basest desires, and how fear and hatred and
deception so often consume the public square.
The best answer I believe lies in how Emerson approached
with the struggles in his own life. For despair and agony was not foreign to
Emerson. At age __, Emerson was a young man dearly in love, having written
extraordinary love poetry about his wife he literally worshipped, when in the
second year of his marriage, his wife died of pneumonia. This wasn’t his only
loss. When he was a child, his father and two of his brothers died. And if these
losses weren’t enough, Emerson buried one of his own children, his son. Some
scholars argue that Emerson’s genius was forged through his anguish. That only
when facing up to painful realities amidst the beauty of ordinary life that
authentic religious truth arises. In every age, including our own this week,
this month, this year, there are genuine people everywhere who seek honest,
unadorned truth. And often it’s in the midst of great difficulty that the
deepest truths reveal themselves.
I suspect if Emerson were alive today, this is what he
would say: In the midst of hardship and toil, responding authentically to your
situation even if it means opening to the depths of your despair, it is
precisely in this raw place where you encounter life directly, where your faith
forms, providing leverage and stability. Times of tranquility and complacency,
as enjoyable or secure as they may seem, do not give nearly the same shape and
form to our faith as times of challenge do. For in times of challenge, we are
compelled to re-evaluate our priorities, re-assess our values, and even re-shape
our own identity. He often spoke of human beings being part and particle of God.
I suspect today he would embrace the image that we are pieces of the earth
conscious of itself, called to bring health and wholeness to the interdependent
web of life.
Emerson articulated how authentic religious life is not
patterned after traditions that are frozen in the past but flares forth fresh
responses to the present. I take hope from the implications of Emerson’s
teachings that in this time of global conflict, more and more people will reach
spiritual clarity. More and more people will be touched by genuine moments that
call them to question actions motivated by pride, arrogance, and greed. It is
the nature of true faith to emerge when life is difficult.
Right here in Oak Park, there is plenty of challenge. Ever
more people are being touched by giving of themselves to what they deem
important, whether a cause, a community, or this sanctuary for the free spirit.
It is inspiring to encounter many individuals who have connected over the years
with the heart of this congregation by giving of themselves to a degree that
they have been changed, even transformed, and how many of you have given
themselves to institutions, causes, and communities, such that a transformation
has been—or is being—wrought in you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson spent his life seeking to discern,
clarify, and live from the source of his truth. When he was the minister of the
prestigious Second Church of Boston, he stunned his family and friends by
leaving the ministry to have more time to write and reflect. He explored his
interior life and discovered a spiritual connection with others. Both in his day
and now, people misread Emerson as saying that we should focus primarily on our
inner life, the culture of our self. The transcendentalists knew that not only
should religious people cultivate their inner lives, but that it was impossible
to do without being in association with others. In other words, self-focus in
isolation is foolhardy. On the other hand, walking with others in community can
be redemptive. Providing the container to engage in fresh dialog, listening
ears, and creative expression is the gift we have to give one another. Sometimes
you will be the one who walks with another who is facing difficulty, and other
times you will question whether your life is anything more than fragments.
Here at Unity Temple, we have much to be grateful for. We
have a strong community and an honorable tradition of responsibly seeking truth
and meaning. As Americans, we enjoy the freedom of bringing forth our own
thoughts in religion. As members of the human race, we have consciousness, with
the guideposts of conscience and reason and enthusiasm. Ralph Waldo Emerson was
the American sage who called us to rejoice that we are a part of a universal
humanity, that God is unity that manifests in diversity, that each of us has a
unique calling if we but allow ourselves a direct relationship with reality, as
painful and joyful as that can be.
During this week of Thanksgiving, may you find the deep
gratitude that Emerson embodied in his life.
Amen.
© Copyright 2003 Alan C.
Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
Benediction:
From Ralph Waldo Emerson
Within us is the soul of the
whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty,
to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.
When it breaks through our intellect, it is genius;
when it breathes through our will, it is virtue;
when it flows through our affections, it is love.
