I realize we’ve already collected the offering this morning so your wallet is probably empty. But if by chance you have a bill in your billfold, or a stray coin in your pocket, you could fish it out and confirm for yourself what I’m about to say.
Or you could simply trust me.
Every US coin and every bill of every denomination has printed on it, the words, “In God We Trust.” Not “Believe me”, as Donald Trump likes to say, but “In God We Trust.”
“In God We Trust” is wreathed around the top of Lincoln’s head on the penny and it’s floating in the sky above Independence Hall on the back of the $100 bill.
“In God We Trust” is printed on the head side of every US coin currently in circulation and on the back side of every paper bill.
“In God We Trust” has been the official motto of the United States since 1956 when that phrase was adopted by the US Congress, at the height of the red scare, and as a rebuke to the Godless Communists. “In America we believe in God, by God!” Congress declared, falsely, and unconstitutionally. But there you have it. It was at the same time that the phrase “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.
Prior to 1956 if you asked anyone to give you the motto of the United States, if they had a guess they would have told you our motto was, “E Pluribus Unum.” Technically they would have been wrong. Unlike, “In God We Trust” in 1956, “E Pluribus Unum” was never officially designated our national motto. Instead, the phrase appears on the Great Seal of the United States.
At the end of the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of OZ,” the wizard reveals himself to be a showman from Kansas, a “humbug” he says, who was blown to OZ years earlier in a hot air balloon. He still has the balloon, and now he proposes to Dorothy that they use the balloon together to get back home. He says, “And in that balloon, my dear Dorothy, you and I will return to the land of E Pluribus Unum!”
In Latin, “E pluribus unum” means “out of many, one.” It refers to the unique nature of our Federal government, out of many independent states we create one nation.
On July 4, 1776 Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, were appointed to a committee charged with designing an official seal for our new nation. They proposed the motto E Pluribus Unum. Although most of the rest of their ideas were rejected the motto remained through the work of a second committee and a third and finally another guy working alone. Finally, in 1782, Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States.
The front of the seal shows a bald eagle. In the eagle’s beak is a ribbon with the words, “E Pluribus Unum” written on it. By the way, if you have a one dollar bill with you, you can see the great seal printed on the back side of the bill. In the eagle’s left claw it clutches thirteen arrows, symbolizing the combined power of the thirteen original states. In its right claw the eagle holds an olive branch with thirteen leaves, symbolizing how the states live in harmony with each other. (Or at least we are supposed to). The eagle’s head is turned to the olive branch showing that we favor peace. The shield the Eagle stands behind has thirteen vertical stripes, alternating red and white, representing the first 13 states, and all of them together supporting a field of blue, representing the Federal Government that brings us together: out of many one. E Pluribus Unum.
One detail I’ll point out, just because it’s interesting. On the American flag there are thirteen red and white horizontal stripes. The top and bottom stripes are red, so our flag has 7 red stripes and six white. On the Great Seal the first and last vertical stripes are white, so on the seal we have 7 white stripes and six red.
E Pluribus Unum is still printed on all our US coins. It’s on the tails side, with “In God we Trust” on the heads side. But the one dollar bill is the only bill that has the phrase, and only because it reproduces a picture of the Great Seal. The Seal is also on your passport so you carry, “E pluribus unum” with you when you travel abroad.
The phrase, E Pluribus Unum has its own interesting history. Before Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson proposed that phrase for our national seal, the phrase was the motto of an English magazine called, The Gentleman’s Magazine. At the time, a magazine didn’t refer to printed periodicals like Time, or People or The New Yorker; a magazine was a storehouse, like a magazine in a fort where the weapons are stored. The Gentleman’s Magazine saw itself as a kind of storehouse, bringing together many different kinds of articles and stories and notices into one publication: out of many, one. So it gave itself the name “magazine” and the motto, “E Pluribus Unum.” The magazine also had a logo for itself: a hand holding a bunch of flowers, tied together by a ribbon, making from many separate flowers a single bouquet. Out of Many, One.
A church is like a magazine: many different stories, one congregation. Or we’re like a collection of many separate states, joined together in one government, or “polity” to use the religious term. We are stewards of a storehouse that includes history and memory, hopes and resources and people. We’re like a bouquet of flowers, each of us beautiful, sweet-smelling, valuable, and completely lovely entirely on our own, but something different, and something more, arranged into a bouquet, tied by a ribbon of our congregational covenant. We even have our own Unitarian Universalist ritual, the flower communion, that makes exactly that point. Out of many one.
We’re like a clutch of arrows, strong on our own, but stronger together. We’re like an olive branch, one branch holding together many separate leaves, all growing together, expressing our individual identities but dependent on a shared source. We’re like a single constellation though we are all separate stars, which is another symbol from our United States Seal: one unified image, beautiful to look at and telling one story, but composed of independent elements. We are several independent stripes, like pillars, holding up a single, overarching roof. Earlier symbols circulating around the colonies likened the US to a harp with 13 strings, tuned in harmony; or a candelabra with 13 candles, shining more brightly when we each add our light.
My spiritual life is inspired by my early experience playing clarinet in an orchestra or band, or singing in a choir. Individuals, each with their own voice, individual skills and talents, separate parts to play, coming together to make a music together that none can make on their own. Every player necessary or the whole experience is diminished. But the music is only made when we give up our individuality and take a seat or stand together and watch the conductor for the cue, and play what the composer put on the page.
For a church to be successful, there must be this similar, voluntary, subsuming of the individual into the collective. There must be, firstly, something that we all do together, as a congregation, ahead of the many different things we want to do for ourselves. That is the agreement of communities. We are here for a shared purpose. You can do that other thing on your own time, and have fun, because it sounds like fun. But here, with these people, in this faith tradition and using this congregation’s accumulated resources, we’re going to do this one specific thing. That is our covenant. We will walk our own paths even within our community, because that’s Unitarian Universalism, but we covenant to walk together.
For a community to be successful, to be an actual community, there must be a common goal, a place we are all going. There must be a common mission, some one big thing that we all agree is our common work. We must hold together a common vision of what we, and our neighbors, and perhaps the larger world will look like when we accomplish our mission. And from that commonly held mission and vision, we then create a common identity: a picture of who we are.
We are the people who come together to do this work. Mission. We are the people who come together to make the world look like this. Vision. This, specifically, is who we are. Identity.
Our identity then becomes useful as a way of bringing new members into the community. We can say, “If you want to do this specific mission with us, in order to achieve this specific vision with us, then you should come be this church with us. We need your help.”
And because communities must be defined to be successful, and definitions are boundaries that have two sides we should also be able to say, “But if you don’t want to do this specific work, or if you have a different picture of what you want to achieve, then this isn’t the church for you. Your mission may be a good one, it sounds like it is, in which case, good luck to you. But your work isn’t our work. Your vision may be a happy place, I hope you get there. But that’s not where we’re going. We’re walking this way. You can choose to walk with us, this way, or go your own way but without us.
It’s hard for Unitarian Universalists to name who we aren’t, what we aren’t doing, where we aren’t going.
Like every church community we want to be nice. So we tend to say yes to everything. Sure. Absolutely. Great idea!
As Unitarian Universalists we have an inflated opinion of our own power so we often think we can do more than we really can. Sure. We can do that, too. Why not?
As a liberal religious tradition we are primed to be open to new ideas. So if an idea seems crazy or risky we’re likely to say, “Let’s do it!” because we like to think of ourselves as slightly crazy, risk-taking people.
We’re proud of our long history of always being at the forefront of social change. And we’re desperate not to miss our generation’s opportunity to add to that legacy. So we’re early adopters of social movements. Sometimes uncritically. And we are willing, too easily, to abandon established identities still serving us well, and still needed by people who want to be with us.
Naming who we aren’t is especially hard for Unitarian Universalists because inclusivity is one of our most cherished values. We want to be a place of welcome for all people. That’s actually part of our faith’s mission and vision. “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” “The interdependent web of all existence.” How can a Unitarian Universalist ever leave anyone out?
So I understand the multiple impulses that pull us toward trying to do everything, achieve everything and be everything for everyone. Those are powerful impulses that speak to cherished aspects of our character.
But to be a successful community we must learn to see where those positive characteristics lead us astray, where they become damaging to our identity, where we let our love of the many prevent us from becoming the unified communities our congregations must be in order to do the work we are gathered to do.
Our motto ought to be E pluribus unum, out of many one. It can’t be, out of everything one. And once we are together we can’t still be many, we must be one.
A church must be one thing. That one thing may be composed of diverse elements. It can even be composed of contradictory elements as long as those elements are bound together in a creative tension that contributes toward a common goal. We must be one. As we sang this morning, “One in the freedom of the truth, one in the joy of paths untrod, one in the soul’s perennial youth, one in the larger thought of God.”
The one thing may be different for different churches, even within Unitarian Universalism. Our one thing might be fierce commitment to social justice activism. Or it might be contemplative worship. Or it might be high emotionalism or cool intellectualism. Or it might be creativity and fun. Or it might be ministry to all ages. Or it might be a diverse culture that artfully combines more than one of those things, or that is able to skillfully alternate between several things. But however multiply constituted it must be one thing. However hyphenated is our identity, eventually a community must be clear, and clear among all the members, that we share one mission, one vision, one identity.
A healthy community must know its one thing. We sang, “the seekers of the light are one.” Talking about the “prophet souls in line”, we sang, “They witness to one heritage, one Spirit’s quick’ning breath”… “Through every race, in every clime, one song shall yet be heard.”
Healthy communities gather many together, but from that many they create one thing. E pluribus unum. The “one” thing is the goal. Not an unfocused and purposeless inclusivity that welcomes all indiscriminately, that drains resources and invites conflict and blithely accepts elements that would tear us apart from inside. But a purposeful and planned collection that knows who we are, where we are going and gathers to work deliberately and graciously toward a common goal.
A magazine doesn’t contain every article written that month. Time magazine is different from Sports Illustrated and both are different from Guns and Ammo. Who would want to read the magazine of everything? A bouquet doesn’t contain every flower in the world, but a careful selection that work harmoniously together, tied by a single ribbon. The separate arrows aren’t just scattered randomly on the floor, but are held in a strong talon, pointed in the same direction. A trumpet player might spend Monday evenings at a club improvising his own tunes with his jazz combo, but on Friday evening at the concert hall, he sits down with the rest of the orchestra and plays what’s in the score.
That’s what a church must have. A score we all play from. An eagle’s talon that holds us tightly. A ribbon that ties us into a bouquet. A single branch we’re all attached to and growing from.
Some communities emphasize the branch and ignore the leaves. That’s dangerous. We’re not all the same. The individuality of our members gives us gifts and resources we wouldn’t have if we were all alike. Multiple leaves on a branch allow some leaves to catch the sun while others are in shade. Just so, we need all of us contributing our separate parts to make our churches flourish.
Our danger, though tends to be the opposite: our tendency to love the leaves but ignore the branch.
Instead, we must see that both leaves and branch are essential to the health of the whole. The health of the tree comes when the individual leaves and the communal branch both are cherished as a necessary part of the strategy to success. Leaves to catch the sun, to turn in the wind, to express the shimmering beauty of the tree in every moment and the transient beauty of life as seasons change one to the next. And strong branches and a sturdy trunk that defines who we are, that gives us particular shape, strong roots, a place to set ourselves, a secure connection among us, and lifts us all to the sun.