Homecoming Sunday 2002 

Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

September 8, 2002 

A Jewish man moves into a Catholic neighborhood. Every Friday the Catholics go crazy because, while they’re morosely eating fish, the Jew is outside barbecuing steaks. So the Catholics work on the Jew to convert him. Finally, by threats and pleading, the Catholics succeed. They take the Jew to a priest who sprinkles holy water on the Jew and intones:  

"Born a Jew .......Raised a Jew .......Now a Catholic." 

The Catholics are ecstatic. No more delicious, but maddening smells every Friday evening. But the next Friday evening, the scent of barbecue wafts through the neighborhood. The Catholics all rush to the Jew’s house to remind him of his new diet. They see him standing over the cooking steak.  

He is sprinkling water on the meat and saying:  

"Born a cow .......Raised a cow .......Now a fish."

Conversion. Many of us are converted: Jewish to UU, Catholic to UU, Protestant to UU, Nothing to UU. And, like it or not, we always carry traces of the faith or the worldview that shaped us….

Unitarian Universalism is unusual among faiths for encouraging continual conversion in our congregations. Last week’s service focused on the Seven Principles of UUism. The Third Principle is “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.” In other words, we are called to grow as people, and therefore change. As Unitarian Universalists, we reserve the right to convert again and again—to reconvert our hearts and minds as we experience life and learn from others

Much of this congregation has experienced some of those multiple conversions. In a survey from two years ago, we identified ourselves as Humanists, Ethical Religionists, Christians, Eclecticists, Earth Centered Spiritualists, Mystics, Naturalistic Theists, Agnostics, Atheists, Skeptics, and Jews. People were allowed to choose more than one category. When all the percentages are added up, it comes to over 200%! That means a lot of people choose more than one theological category to define them. That’s continual conversion. That’s “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.”

One of the Sources of our Unitarian Universalist faith is the Jewish religion. This is the beginning of the High Holy days of that faith. To orthodox Jews, this is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, which means “The Head of the Year,” i.e. New Year.

Rosh Hashanah is sometimes referred to as the “birthday of the world,” or, more specifically, as the birthday of Adam. We need not take the stories of Adam and Eve as literally true to glean spiritual meanings from this tradition.

Several months ago, many of you were here for my installation service, in which the Rev. Bruce Southworth spoke of the creation of the world. He pointed out that, after each day of creation in the Genesis account, God sees that what God has created is “good.” It’s only after the sixth day of creation, in which Man and Woman are created, that “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was exceedingly good.” (Genesis 1:31a, emphasis mine). “Indeed, it was exceedingly good!” Rev. Southworth rightly points out the way that this ancient passage points to an Original Blessing we have as human beings. We are important and valuable merely for being who we are—created “in the image and likeness of God” in Jewish and Christian language—or possessing “inherent worth and dignity” in the phrase of our own First Principle. But I also see another meaning in this story of God seeing all that God has made as exceedingly good. It could mean that the parts of creation made on each day were good, but only became exceedingly good when they were all together as one complete piece, one whole, living system. We human beings are a part of that exceedingly good living system.

Another meaning I take from the story of this Original Blessing is that while only some of us are descended from Abraham, all of us are (at least symbolically) descended from Adam and Eve. We are all family, the story says. Interestingly, some scientists have recently been discussing an “Eve hypothesis”—the theory, supported by genetic evidence, that all human beings are descended from a single ancient mother or small group of mothers. Perhaps not everything they taught us in religious school was wrong….

Rosh Hashanah is also, in a sense, the Sabbath of the year, falling as it does in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar.¹ During the writing of the Talmud, from the second to the fifth centuries, ordinary Jews began taking the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah rethinking their lives through study groups.²

In like manner, Unitarian Universalists typically return to regular activities in the later summer or early fall, an event called Homecoming, in which we renew our attention to learning, fellowship, and values.

We should not be too surprised by a comparison between the synagogue and the Unitarian Universalist congregation when we remember that our societies were born from Christian churches, which, in turn, were born from Jewish synagogues. And all three fulfill similar needs: companionship, mutual support, ethical and theological learning, etc.

Many scholars believe that the synagogue was invented during the period when all but the poorest of the Jewish people had been conquered and dragged in exile to Babylon. Their beloved Temple destroyed, Jews came together in a new type of holy place that preserved them as a people in a foreign land.

The opening words Tony read for us this morning are from the prophet Jeremiah prophesying the return of the exiles to their own land. To imagine the suffering of these exiles, we need only look to the current state of the Palestinian people denied the right of return to their homes as well as the Israeli people deprived of peace without which one is always an exile. This is not even to mention the world’s billions of displaced and impoverished people. This is not even to mention the other horrors of our age: the AIDS epidemic, global warming, business corruption depriving people of their livelihoods and savings, domestic violence, hate crime, abuse of power in church and state, worldwide terrorism.

Judaism not only teaches that God created humanity and the world “exceedingly good,” but that they need help to be that way again. In Hebrew, this is called Tikkun Olam—the repairing of the world. We worship in a beautiful building, but it took a lot of work to restore it to the condition it’s in now, and yet more to maintain it. In like wise, each of our selves, our communities, and our world need constant fixing.

This can take so many forms: Feeding the hungry, accepting our own sexuality and that of others, recovery from addictions, overcoming prejudice and fear, speaking the truth, caring for the sick in body, mind, or soul, and many other ways.

The once exceedingly good creation we inherited is highly interconnected. What happens to us affects our brothers and sisters and the planet. What happens to our brothers and sisters and planet affects us. This is expressed in our Seventh Principle, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

Dr. Daniel O. Snyder of the Pendle Hill Quaker study center expresses this interconnectedness so eloquently when he writes about the world’s people living under various forms of oppression:

It is often a painful and slow process of excavating that creative, authentic being whose joy and empowerment is crushed under the burdens of so much psychological weight. And when that authentic self does finally emerge, it is very often accompanied by a flood of rage and a passion for justice, energies that, once released, can fuel a life of creativity on many fronts, including advocacy for those who still suffer under oppression, whether they be racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, or the earth itself.

[Snyder continues]: 

Left under repression, however, this energy becomes destructive. Both politically and psychologically, it is the structures of domination that create the context for terrorism. If we want to understand the psychology of the terrorist, we must understand the psychology of oppression. For it is oppression that takes anger and boils it down into rage. It is oppression that takes rage and boils it down into hate. And it is oppression that takes hate, and under the right conditions, turns it into evil. Out of the many whose cries have been ignored too long, there will always rise up those few who would rather die in a single glorious moment of taking the oppressors’ boot off their neck than endure another minute of humiliation and defeat.³ [unquote]

A member of the congregation asked me recently if I got depressed when I looked at the news. Of course, I do, sometimes. Perhaps you do, too. But many of us are learning to replace our depression, which is often really self-directed anger, and are beginning to find, as Dr. Snyder puts it, “a flood of rage and a passion for justice.” Each of us is oppressed in some ways—some of us, obviously, more than others. We live in social systems that distort who we are and long to be. When we feel the anger that is our right and responsibility to feel as precious human beings in a broken world, we have a choice: to be part of the problem and participate in systems of oppression and violence or be part of the solution and act towards ourselves, others, and the earth with compassion.

We are aided in finding our own compassion by following any of the countless “spiritual technologies” humanity has developed over the millennia. All life-affirming religious and spiritual paths have ways in which we can become more aware of the Original Blessing we share with each other and all things. Great teachers of East and West have shown us ways of quieting the restless chatter of our conscious minds and unlocking the deep subconscious and unconscious parts of our individual and collective selves.

For instance, speaking of the Jewish mystical tradition, Aryeh Kaplan writes, “Meditation is primarily a means of attaining spiritual liberation. Its various methods are designed to loosen the bond of the physical, allowing the individual to ascend to the transcendental, spiritual realm. One who accomplishes this successfully is said to have attained Ruach HaKodesh, the “Holy Spirit,” which is the general Hebraic term for the enlightenment.⁴

The Transcendentalists of our Unitarian heritage also explored paths of enlightenment through communion with nature, deep conversation, and spiritual journaling.

But the important thing is the journey, not the vehicle. We know our particular path of personal and spiritual growth is working when we become more present to ourselves, others, and our surroundings—when we are inspired to act from our best selves.

Katharine Cheney of Temple Shalom, Louisville, Kentucky writes, “The Torah says that our choice of action is to be found near us, not far away, found within our hearts and in our minds…. Just pick something! If it works, celebrate and continue! If it fizzles, do something else.”⁵

Many of the lay leaders and staff of the Society had a planning retreat this weekend and came up with a number of ideas that I’m confident will “work” and not “fizzle.”

We will add more variety to Sunday services throughout the year.

We will find ways we can all become more generous and more closely match our values to our individual and collective financial priorities.

We will build bridges with local UU congregations to share “best practices.”

We will explore broadcasting our services to the community via television.

We will engage in strategic planning this year for the next three to five years.

I urge the participation of each and every one of you in one or more of these projects.

We too often have an exceedingly narrow view of salvation. Many churches put the emphasis on salvation as something that mostly has to do with what happens when you’re dead. To both Jews and Unitarian Universalists, salvation is very much a part of this life. Salvation is Tikkun Olam—the repairing of the world, and each of us can know the joy of it.

James Carse, in his book, Finite and Infinite Games, says that it’s one thing to be an American, and quite another to be America. The one is to go with the flow and allow others to define us. The other is to embody our highest ideals and define ourselves. I would challenge each of us to truly be what we are: Be America! Be Judaism! Be Christianity! Be Humanism! Be Spirituality! Be Unitarian Universalism! Be a Mensch!

Amen.

¹ Arthur Waskow, Seasons of Our Joy. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982), 2.

² Ibid., 5.

³ Daniel O. Snyder, Ph.D. “IN RESPONSE TO SEPTEMBER 11^TH: Nonviolence in Personal and Political Life” (Oct. 8, 2001) (http://www.pendlehill.org/new_page_4.htm) [9/7/02].

⁴ Meditation and Kabbalah,. (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser), 11.

⁵ .”-- Katharine Cheney, Tikkun Olam Chairperson, Temple Shalom, Louisville, Kentucky (http://uahcweb.org/ky/shalom/tikkun.htm ) [9/7/02]