How far away feels the goal of our UU sixth principle, “world community.” How distant feel the troubles elsewhere and how near our country’s own problems. On this weekend when we honor the dead who gave their lives in war, we ask what we, who are not world leaders or influential much beyond our own family or neighborhood, can do, to help create a world of “peace, liberty, and justice for all.
Today, as we mark the Memorial Day holiday, we are also nearing the end of a series of sermons looking at the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism.
The Seven Principles are officially included in the Bylaws of our Unitarian Universalist Association.
Here they are:
The inherent worth and dignity of every person
Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The Seven Principles haven’t been around that long. They have a sense of being something permanent about our faith, but they’re actually less than 40 years old. Many folks in this congregation have been Unitarian Universalists longer than the Seven Principles have been part of Unitarian Universalism.
If you’re curious about the previous statement of our faith, there’s a framed poster of it hanging in the hallway by the church office.
On the other hand, many of the folks who became Unitarian Universalist in the last 40 years joined this faith because of the Seven Principles.
In a short, poetic statement, the Seven Principles say something true and unique about who we are. We care about individuals. We see the value in every person. No one is disposable. In their own persons, without doing anything, or earning anything, or having to prove themselves in any way, people are inherently beings of worth.
When we form relationships with others, we treat them as equals. We seek to understand their struggles and pains, and open our own struggles to them. We are careful to give others their fair share. And the other side of justice is that we hold people responsible for their actions.
We welcome all others into our circle, as they are. And, we invite them to journey with us into becoming the more mature, more moral, more healthy versions of humanity our faith calls us to be.
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning defines the core method of our liberal religion. We freely explore where we will, finding truth and meaning from whatever source appeals to us. And then, responsibly, and again respecting core liberal principles, we bring our discoveries to the community. We tell our stories. We present our evidence. We debate and discuss. We learn from each other. We defend our truth but keep our minds open. We come the closest we are able to the truth we find amid all our perspectives and then as a group we make the necessary decisions that guide our lives and our shared community.
Our goal, though, is to reach beyond ourselves, beyond this community, to reach the entire world, encouraging in all human lives the spiritual gifts we seek also for ourselves: peace, liberty, justice.
And reaching further, beyond the human community, beyond this world, we recognize our place in a vast interconnected universe of all existence, where each part is a necessary support to all the others, and is supported in turn by everything else: a conception of our place in the cosmos deserving of respect.
Taken together, the Seven Principles are a comprehensive set of guidelines for how to act in the world: for ourselves, in our relationships, in our families and communities, in our nation, and our world. The Seven Principles don’t tell us what to do, that’s an essential freedom we value in our liberal faith, but they tell us how to do whatever we choose to do.
I discovered Unitarian Universalism in January 1991 when I first walked into the Santa Monica UU church. The Seven Principles were only a few years old at the time. I was attracted by many things about the UU faith. The banners hanging down the left side of the sanctuary with the symbols of all the world’s religions spoke to me, rather than the big central cross that I was used to. I loved the highly intellectual quality of the minister’s sermons. I wasn’t just soothed by the sermons, I was challenged, and not just challenged in my actions, but challenged in my thinking. The minister’s arguments were supported by evidence, from the great philosophers, and poetry, and science, not merely from a single sacred text. My intelligence was respected. The preaching encouraged me to argue back, (silently) and ended often with questions, not answers.
I loved the socially progressive culture of the congregation, very welcome but surprising in my experience from church-going folks. As I learned the history of Unitarian Universalism, I grew proud in belonging to a faith tradition that included so many great thinkers, scientists, politicians, artists, and activists, and proud that Unitarians and Universalists seemed to be involved at the forefront of every advance in human society in the last several hundred years.
And I discovered the Seven Principles and found in them a way to organize my place in life, and hold myself accountable. I quickly memorized them; it’s not that hard. And I used them to defend my faith to friends who couldn’t understand why a smart, liberal, gay man was going to church and soon enrolled in seminary. And I used the Seven Principles to share my faith with others. “This is what my faith asks of me,” I could say. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all lived by these principles?
A month from now, at this year’s General Assembly of Unitarian Universalist congregations, delegates from our churches around the country will very likely vote to remove the Seven Principles from the UUA Bylaws, and replace them with a new statement that I find deficient in every way.
I won’t take this time to describe the new statement to you. You can easily find it on the UUA website. I can give you the link if you need it. Nor will I go into the arguments that some people have made for why they feel the Seven Principles must be exchanged for something new.
But while the Seven Principles are still part of the official language of Unitarian Universalism, I wanted to take what may be one last look at them.
We’ve already looked in the last few weeks at Principles two, three, four, five and seven. You can read those sermons on my website if you’re interested: rhmcd.com, or watch videos of the worship services on our church website: uustudiocity.org. Next week we’ll look at the first Principle. Today, I want to look at the sixth:
“The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
I’ve taken them out of order so that I could also tie each of the Principles to a reference outside our faith. This is in fulfillment of the year-long work we’ve been doing in worship of addressing the five tasks of interim ministry: looking together at the issues of history, leadership, mission, and vision, and lastly, connections. The interim task of connections asks us to think about the ways a congregation fits into a larger world of Unitarian Universalism, an interfaith world, a world of connections to other non-profit organizations in our community, and connections to other folks working on causes we care about.
In this case I thought a Principle of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all was an appropriate fit for Memorial Day.
Memorial Day is a holiday of memory, specifically memory of our war dead: those men and women who throughout our nation’s history have given their lives in fighting our nation’s wars.
You might think that a holiday associated with war is rather the opposite of a Principle of world community.
Wars divide the world. Wars destroy community. Wars leave destruction, pain, and enmity in their wake.
But wars are sometimes fought specifically toward the goal of world community. Not all wars, but some. I am not a pacifist. I believe that the choice of war, while always tragic, and sometimes evil, may on occasion be necessary and morally defensible.
Some wars ought not to be engaged in, but the pacifist has to answer the question, once an indefensible war has begun, how is it to be stopped? If a rogue nation is not held accountable for its transgressions against peace, liberty, and justice, then how firm is our own commitment to those values? And concerning our faith goal of world community, what is our responsibility to oppressed people in other nations, victims of repression and violence in other parts of the world, the abused and suffering and endangered persons in Africa, the mid-East, Europe, Asia, South America?
If we would not tolerate harmful actions done to ourselves, or our family, or our local community, can we stand by as others further from us suffer under those same actions?
Leaving aside the question of whether war is the correct response, the question provoked by our sixth principle is, “what do we really mean by a single community that encompasses all persons, everywhere, throughout the world?”
Our Opening Hymn asserts, “Our World is one world: what touches one affects us all.” And, of course, that is true. One planet, as the hymn points out: “the seas that wash us round about the clouds that cover us, the rains that fall.”
But one planet is not the same as one world community. So the hymn goes on to stress not just our physical connection to the other side of the world, but our ethical connections: “the thoughts we think.” “The way we build our attitudes with love or hate.” Are we building bridges or walls? “The way we spend.” “The way we share.”
When I think about people on the other side of the world, or even most of my fellow citizens in the U.S. I feel quite distant. I don’t know them. I don’t know their stories. They don’t know me. If I do hear a story of suffering: Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, immigrants moving across South America or Africa, legal repression of women and sexual minorities, starvation, disease, my heart breaks from our shared humanity. But my heart breaks in a different way than it does when suffering comes to my own friends and family. Frankly, I feel less, about the suffering of distant others than I do to those suffering close to me. I care. But I care less.
Perhaps I’ve confessed to a moral failing. But in striving to follow a reality-based faith, I must acknowledge the truth. And if it is a moral failing to care more about those I know personally and know intimately, than distant people who are entirely strangers to me, then I must seek a way to compensate for my failing.
Last week, in worship, Jackie Davis led us in a loving-kindness meditation. I’ve done this sort of mediation many times before. It is always welcome, and always soothing to an anxious soul.
The meditation asks us to begin by bringing to our mind’s attention the face of a particular person we care deeply about. Out of the eight billion and more people in the world, there are a handful that we care about more deeply than others. It isn’t difficult to pick one very important person in your life.
And then, after considering that person, and bathing them with the deep love and compassion that comes naturally for those people close to us, the meditation leads us to consider the other people that person cares about. That circle one degree further out includes some of the same people that we also care about, but also some people who are close to that person but more distant from us.
Imaginatively now, because we don’t actually know these next people, we’re asked to acknowledge the people that those people care about and depend on. And then to imagine the circle of people who those people are connected to in relationships of care and concern.
Some say with only six degrees of separation we are connected to every person on earth.
The point is, though I care little about some stranger in Gambia, or Bahrain, I care very much about the people I know well. And my caring circle, overlaps with the people other people care about, until eventually, our overlapping circles of great love and compassion cover the entire world.
It isn’t necessary to start our caring with that far-flung person whose name we don’t know, and whose language we don’t speak, and who lives under circumstances we can barely comprehend. It’s enough to begin with yourself, where you are, to care deeply about those people you naturally care deeply about. And then to consider how your life affects others, eventually others far from you. Our ethical responsibility is to really care about the people we really care about and trust that the ripples of that care, and the consequences of our local actions, will reach as far as the seas and clouds do.
Notice the way our Opening Hymn centers the world community on each of us. “The thoughts we think.” “The way we build our attitudes, with love or hate.” “The way we spend.” “The way we share.”
A world community of peace, liberty, and justice for all, begins with peace, liberty, and justice for our local communities, our families, ourselves.
This thought is healing for me, when I think with pain at how little power I have to make life better for those suffering in distant places. I turn away from distant pain, because, “what can I do?” But as I turn back to my own life and those close to me, I find my answer. What I can do is tend to the suffering and oppression of those persons in front of me. These also, are part of the world community that is my goal. This, here, is the place and time where I actually have power to improve human life. And as the circle of where I’m effective touches the circles where other folks are effective, eventually even the most distant corner of our world is touched.
If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.
As we remember, this Memorial Day, those men and women who gave their lives doing what they could do, by the means and in the difficult circumstances of their day, to advance the cause of peace, liberty, and justice for all, let us challenge ourselves to do what we can do, to cultivate peace in our heart and let peace swell around the earth, to nurture liberty in our own lives, and let liberty come to all people, to act with justice, equity, and compassion in all our personal relationships, and trust that the overlapping relationships that connect all persons everywhere, will bring justice at last, to the most remote extent of our world community.