The Saving Power of We ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 20, 2022
This past week an unusual news story caught my eye. It told of a priest in the Roman Catholic diocese of Phoenix who was discovered to be conducting the sacrament of baptism incorrectly. Rather than saying “I baptize you…”as he poured the water, the priest, Fr. Arango, was saying, “We baptize you.” That wording, using ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ is incorrect. And it is feared that all the baptisms performed by Fr. Arango over the past 20 years are invalid.
For devout Catholics this possibility is something of a nightmare, and we should hold all these people in our hearts. A correctly conducted baptism is a sacrament, essential for purification and admission to the church, and therefore, it is required for salvation. And I feel compassion for anyone who suddenly fears that God’s grace has been withdrawn from them, and that they have lost their assurance of eternal life.
The importance of the word ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ stems from Roman Catholic belief in the power of their priests. It is believed that upon ordination, priests become mediators for God – they stand between God and the people. And so a priest must say “I baptize you,” because the power, the grace of God, flows through the priest in that moment. A sacrament cannot be a communal act. It is a hierarchical act: grace flowing directly from God, through the priest, to the baptized person.
Now, there are a lot of questions being raised within the Catholic community, and I’m sure that you are asking yourselves some as well. In many regards this decision flies in the face of established Catholic practice and has left a lot of people asking what’s right. But that is a theological debate that I will leave to them this morning; it is not a table at which I have a seat.
But I decided to tell this story this morning to initiate a conversation about Unitarian Universalist theology. I always worry that I don’t teach you enough about our beliefs, our theology. This always reminds me of when I was in seminary, and got talking to the board chair of my home church one Sunday. He asked me what courses I was taking that semester, and I told him I was studying UU theology. He looked puzzled. “We have a theology?” he asked.
I really want to do better for you.
Of course, we often focus on our historical beliefs: that Unitarians believed in God as a Unity, one entity, not as a Trinity, and that’s where that name came from. It was intended originally to be an insult from the orthodox Christians. And of course, the Universalists were called that because they believed that salvation was universal; that eternal life was intended for all, and that a loving God would never punish humans or reject them from God’s love.
But here in the 21st century, we think about who is saved in a different way. For starters, we emphasize salvation in this life, here on earth. And as I spoke about last Sunday, our belief that no one is left behind, no one is left outside the circle of Love, calls us to be as welcoming and as inclusive as we know how to be. We believe in the saving power of communities that are created in Love.
To go deeper for a moment, we can see here the difference between a vertical theology and a horizontal one. In a church that ascribes to a vertical theology, such as Roman Catholicism, there is a clear hierarchy, where power flows downward from the top, in this case, from God. But a church that adheres to a more horizontal theology believes that the members have equal standing, and that the primary relationships are with other people. We discover our connection to the holy through those relationships, rather than focusing on a direct relationship to God.
To return to the issue of whether a priest should use the word “I” or “We”, we have a definitive answer for ourselves. We believe that the power of Love, a name we often use for God, resides in us and our relationships – in the We.
This is why I wanted to share the story of the invalid baptisms this morning, to explain how our faith tradition, Unitarian Universalism, believes that religious power is held within the community, not within an individual. If we were to have a child dedication here during a Sunday service, I would lead it, but it would be all of you who would covenant – promise – to hold the child in love and care for them here within this community. And the authority granted to me through my ordination was granted by a congregation – a congregation that voted to ordain me. Religious authority for UU’s is communal; it is something that we share. You hear me talk about shared ministry, and that is because we all minister to one another within a UU congregation in many different ways. The authority I have comes from your decisions, and I serve you with your consent.
For Unitarian Universalists, then, the correct word in a ritual would be ‘we’, not ‘I’. That is a theological position that we hold very dear.
So at this point we’re probably feeling pretty good about ourselves! Let’s think about the words I’m using to describe our theology: communal, relationships, love, equality…
And we should feel good. We do have a saving message: that we are all loved, and that grace, however we understand it, is available to everyone regardless of our status. The Love that we sometime name God is not conditional. Human error will not remove it.
So we can feel good. However, this theological gift we have inherited; this message of a Love that knows no bounds, a grace that we don’t have to earn, comes with some pitfalls, and some responsibilities.
We arrive here, or tune in, and hear that we are already forgiven, that we are loved just as we are. It’s beautiful. But of course, the pitfall is that we can develop an expectation that we don’t have to strive, we don’t have to change. We also might think that we can maintain our individuality, and that the community will serve us and meet our needs. We might forget about the paradox at the heart of communal life; the essential balance between individuality and community; that yes, a community will embrace and support us as individuals, but in turn, we must uphold and support the needs of the community. And very often the needs of the community must come first.
In our reading earlier we heard one of our ministers, the Reverend Mr. Barb Greve, who is transgender, express that idea: that we must be willing to make sacrifices for our faith communities. He said that we have to be willing to let go of what keeps us separate. That can mean a number of things: our own beliefs, for example, or the type of language we want to hear in a service, or our preferences for music, and all of the things that weave together to create a whole religious community. But our participation in a religious community must look like the cluster of Emperor penguins I talked about earlier: joining freely together with a shared purpose – surviving the winter – and constantly adjusting for the good of the whole. Sometimes that means you’re on the outside of the circle, buffeted by the winds, and sometimes you’re in the warm center. But to make the system function, you have to be willing to move.
Shuffle on, everyone.
I mentioned that our community life has pitfalls, and also responsibilities. Our Universalist theological heritage calls us to a great responsibility: the liberation and the salvation of all. It’s one thing to believe in general that all people are worthy of love and inclusion. It’s another to work to bring that collective liberation about. We are responsible for the work to create the Beloved Community: not just outside in the wider world, but for ourselves here in this small community as well.
What do I mean by the Beloved Community? It’s a phrase often used, often attributed to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is a description of the realm of God here on earth: a society that is inclusive, and based on love, compassion, and shared power, shaped by the demands of justice. (see Fredric Muir, Turning Point, p. 13.) The foundation for the Beloved Community, according to Dr. King, “is the divine indwelling that equally graces all people…” (Ibid.)
There’s that description of horizontal theology again: that the divine graces everyone equally. It’s We, not I.
For Unitarian Universalists here in the 21st century, creating Beloved Community must mean fighting white supremacy, both within our denomination and outside. Much of our 19th century inheritance is from a small white cultural elite: from the Harvard-educated clergy to their wealthy followers. The Universalists were not regarded as elite, and yet, we see right here in our own church the history of families who profited from the slave trade, owning and piloting ships that transported enslaved people from Africa. This church benefitted from the profits earned through the slavery economy. This work belongs to us: it is ours to do.
Our theme this month is Widening the Circle. For us as a denomination and as a congregation, to truly widen the circle means to ensure that the message of a love that includes everyone is not just an aspiration, but something that we are willing to work to achieve. Our message has to be that until all are saved, none of us is saved; that our salvation is tied to one another.
In our reading earlier Sofia Betancourt put it this way: “Believing that we are all saved together, that one life cannot reach its greater meaning unless we center the liberation of all, means not only a willingness to invest in one another and in the greater good, but also responding faithfully to the call to live into the work together.”
As Unitarian Universalists, we believe in the power of We. How might that look?
There is an effort underway to approve an 8th principle to join the seven that we adopted back in the 1980’s to guide our lives and our actions. The 8th principle sets forth a commitment to dismantling racism and creating a truly diverse Beloved Community, both in ourselves, and in our institutions. This is a challenging call. It speaks to a commitment to live into our theological heritage of salvation for all: the salvation that is our community life together.
I welcome conversation around this proposed 8th principle. I hope that you will find out more about it, reach out to me and to each other, and begin to consider ways that this congregation can join the effort to adopt it. It’s an expression of our belief in the power of we; of our belief that Universalism urges us forward to draw our circles as wide as possible.
In a moment we will be singing our closing hymn: Wake, Now, My Senses – a favorite of many of us. I hope, as you sing the final verse, you’ll take into your heart the last words: God’s love embraces the whole human race. Sing it loud, sing it proud.
May it be so,
Amen.
