“Exceedingly
Good”
Installation of the
Reverend Ron Sala
Stamford, CT – April
14, 2002
Rev.
Bruce Southworth
The
Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist
It
is so good to be here on this day of joy and gladness! …This day of
hope, of promise, and of mutual courage!
I
remember meeting with Ron in my office, and hearing about his interest
in, his sense of call to ministry, beginning the first of many conversations.
I also remember being impressed.
He,
of course, has a keen intellect, a ready sparkle of a smile, and a seriousness
of purpose combined with a sense of humor that I imagine the members
here know full well.
Ron
is also a doer and an organizer, and he was an integral part of the
glue that helped sustain a welcoming young adult group at Community
Church. His presence, his gifts, made all the difference, as I know
he shall with you.
So,
it is an honor to be here, and I thank you for this opportunity to participate
in this celebration with this congregation committed to urban ministry,
as you are.
As
I think about this day and your history as a congregation arising out
of Universalist tradition, I want to revisit our foundations and lift
up one more time, our calling… our calling, yours and mine as courageous,
fragile, powerful creatures in this glorious, goofy, tragic and beautiful
world of ours.
A
starting point, for me one of the essential starting points, is the
gift of original blessing and how we can bless the world: the essential
matter of healthy religious life, right living, powerful faithfulness…
Sometime
ago, a colleague and friend, Dr. Ernest Campbell, who served the Riverside
Church in NYC as its Senior Minister during some of its most turbulent
times of the late 1960s and 1970s, wrote provocatively asking Christians
where their Bible started. His point was that too many Christians
focus on (and misunderstand) the story of Adam and Eve in the garden,
to the point that they forget the first chapter of the book of Genesis.
The mythic story of creation there speaks of each day’s work being good.
All of it was good.
Then,
with the creation of humankind, these words: “Now God saw all that
… [was] made, and here: it was exceedingly good! There was setting,
there was dawning: the sixth day.” (Gen. 1:31)
The
earth, the sun, the moon, the animals and fishes, all good; Humankind,
you and me, exceedingly good!
James
Weldon Johnson overcomes my dis-ease with anthropomorphic imagery of
God in his poem “The Creation” which begins,
After
the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the seas, the green living
things, the creatures of the air and land, “God looked on His world/
With all its living things, /And God said: I’m lonely still….
Who
lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who
flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Then
… blew the breath of life,
And
it was not just good; it was exceedingly good.
“The
glory of God is a human being fully alive,” declared one Christian teacher
nearly 1700 years ago.
We
are created with such great possibilities…. fragile, radiant beings
– and we can grow our souls and build the Beloved Community, amidst
a culture that scares and scars so many because they are infected by
the sin of original sin.
Some
traditional Christian theology is catching up with the genius of Unitarian
Universalism. Creation-centered theology, for example, celebrates humanity
as an original blessing, over against the perverse notions of original
sin.
At
the moment of creation, of the beginning of the universe, within the
stars, embedded in the evolution that has brought us forth and created
us as the universe coming to conscious, within all of this, here it
is, in this creation, we especially… are
exceedingly good!
Some
years ago, a taxicab driver in Mexico City by the name of Manuel Lubian
spent two days hunting for a passenger who had left $53,000 in his cab.
He explained why he didn’t just keep the money this way: “I felt that
I would lose the beauty inside of me.”
The
beauty inside… (You can exhibit that beauty inside you with your own
generosity to this congregation, right?)
The
Algerian born Nobel Laureate in Literature, Albert Camus speaks about
“our weakness for beauty.” One of the defining qualities of being
human, he says, is this weakness for beauty, which I take to include
inward beauty as well.
All this opposes the heresy of original sin.
Feminist
theologies, earth-centered traditions, humanist teaching, Buddhist wisdom
and others have changed the landscape and mindscape on the progressive
frontiers; they seek a wider recovery of spiritual wisdom that has been
part of our own Unitarian Universalist heritage from its inception.
We
celebrate the inherent worth and dignity of each person. We are precious;
we are the universe, thinking, reflecting, laughing, crying, loving,
such a miraculous thing. We are created out of the stars, star-stuff,
gifted. Amazing…
The
potential - exceedingly good…
As
one raised in Tennessee, I hope I have your indulgence regarding this
story of blessing.
Fred
Craddock, a teacher, minister, and preacher, was driving through the
state some years ago. He stopped at a restaurant for a meal, and he
was intrigued as one man went from table to table greeting everyone
sitting there.
When
he came to Craddock and learned he was a minister, the man insisted
on telling a story. He said that he had been born in the mountains
not far from where they sat and that his mother was not married when
he was born. In that time and in that culture, the mother was frowned
upon and indeed scorned. The boy himself would feel as he grew up the
love of his mother, but also the scorn of the townsfolk. At recess,
his classmates would ostracize him, and he learned to keep to himself,
then and also at lunch, in order to avoid the taunts that came his way.
Even walking downtown was a hardship because of comments of passersby.
The
boy at age 12 took up going to church on his own. A new minister had
come to the church near his house. He would slip into the building
just as the services began, into the back row and leave before it was
over so that no one would challenge him by asking, “What’s a boy like
you doing here.” [And if you think about it, what a church ought to
be, namely summoning our better selves, is not what a church always
is; we know how things so often are when prejudice reinforces prejudice.]
However,
one Sunday he forgot to slip out, so taken was he with the service,
the singing, whatever. Before he could quietly exit, he felt the big
hand of the minister on his shoulder, light and gentle. The preacher
looked at him and asked, “Who are you, son?” “Whose boy are you?”
Once
again, the boy’s heart sank, and perhaps his pain showed on his face.
But then the preacher answered, “Wait a minute. I know who you are.
The family resemblance is unmistakable. You are a child of God.”
With
those words, he patted him on the back and added, “That’s quite an inheritance.
Go, and claim it.”
Craddock
reports, “As the boy changed to manhood in that restaurant, the old
man said, …’That one statement literally changed my whole life.’ He
explained that his name was Ben Hooper and he had twice been elected
governor of Tennessee.”
A
word of encouragement… To encourage means to put heart into, to put
love into…
Encouragement,
putting heart into, putting love into others and blessing the world…
To be sure, we can sometimes bicker in our congregations, and when we
do that, we fail to live by heart, which is not to deny the reality
and appropriateness of respectful disagreements. Those we have in
abundance, but liveliness, growth, change, and creativity come from
the sorting through, sifting, visioning, and doing.
Islam
says that original sin is forgetfulness, and somehow Christianity, much
of it, forgot, with its self-denying, self-degrading image of humankind,
that we are made for joy and creativity.
I
shall skip the more demoralizing words of John Calvin on this subject
of original sin. [John Calvin in his efforts during the Reformation
in the 1500’s gave his own interpretation of the Bible and declared,
“Original sin seems to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our
nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable
to God’s wrath.”
Such
a view, to my mind, is one of the most pernicious and destructive declarations
of religious teaching to wound the world. It is hurtful and hateful
of our humanity and has inflicted cynicism and left too many scared
and scarred.]
It
infects our culture so that we humans are never quite good enough.
In
this view, something is wrong with us, with me, with you. Not just
occasionally when we do something of which we are not proud. It may
lead to deep self-doubt, self-questioning, with a teaching that there
is something deeply sinful and evil within each one of us, about which
we can do nothing, on our own. [As the Book of Common Prayer asserts,
“There is no health within us.”]
What
a perversion! We know that we do not always do what we want or should
to honor our best selves. Absolutely.
Do
we hurt others, live by our compromises, and forget some of the important
things? Absolutely.
In
giving Ron the charge to the Minister at his ordination, I echoed the
words of Joseph Barth at a UUA Ministers' convocation before a General
Assembly where Joe was the 50-year speaker. “Be careful with thy honor;
thy right hand and left hand, will teach thee many terrible and glorious
things.”
Danger,
yet, there is health within us, for we are children of a creative universe,
filled with possibilities of joy, strength, power, love, and justice.
73%
of those surveyed here in our nation believe in a literal hell, an archaic,
supernatural damnation, a cosmology of ancient belief systems that somehow
for many people coexists with or overthrows modern conceptions of nature,
time, and our interdependence with all things. Interestingly, only
6% believe that they are going there personally…
One
of the great stories of our tradition is that of John Murray’s arrival
on these shores, his accidental meeting with Thomas Potter down at Barnegat
Bay in New Jersey, and the reluctant Murray’s return to preaching Universalism,
such an exceedingly good thing for us and for this land.
On
that occasion in the summer of 1770, John Murray blessed the universe
that had treated him so harshly.
A
gracious, grace-filled thing happened that changed the world. The wind
did not change; John Murray preached and was encouraged to take up a
new ministry in a new world. Universalism as a religious movement began.
Murray
unleashed a mighty Spirit, a faith in the power of love and in the graciousness
of creation. Murray wrote, preached, and celebrated again and again
saying, “Go into the highways and byways of America, your new country.
Give the people, … something of your new vision. You may possess only
a small light, uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more
light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men (and women.)
Give them, not hell, but hope and courage.”
********
This
is the day that has been given to us, and it is exceedingly good!
You
have embarked upon a new chapter, and I trust that you know who you
are. The resemblance is unmistakable; you are the sons and daughters
of a glorious creation, filled with beauty and made for joy.
Claim
your inheritance… Build the Beloved Community… Bless the world with
your love and courage and change the world with your deeds.
And
Creation will be exceedingly glad!