The People of Our Church

September 28, 1958
Akron

Once there was a preacher named Moses. It is said that he complained to God about his congregation alleging that they were stiff-necked and contentious. According to the old rabbinic story, God chastised Moses gently, saying "I have not created them angels, but flesh and blood, fallible human beings. Since they are mortal, it is natural that they should have some of the imperfections and the limitations of flesh and blood, mortal human beings." You are not the children of Israel; I am not Moses. But like them, we too are human with the imperfections of human beings. It is in this vein that I would like to speak.

The nature of the decisions we have been facing and continue to confront are one of a kind which provoke emotional feelings among some of us. If it were possible to be calmly subjective about the decisions which will locate our future church-home, a highly-educated correct guess would be the probable consequence of the best wisdom among us all. But, because we are fallible and emotional. each of us has a reckon with the high tides of feeling that stormy weather brings.

In Enic Bangold's play, THE CHALK GARDEN, Maitland, the Butler says to his employer, "You know I can't stand criticism. Every time a word's said against me a month's work is undone."

Mrs. St. Maugham replies, "We all make mistakes, Maitland. But nothing should be said about them. Praise is the only thing that brings life to a man that's been destroyed."

It is difficult to follow Mrs. St. Maugham's advice as it is easy to develop Maitland's terror of criticism. Nevertheless, the people in our church who seek to maintain the historic reputation of this church as a leader in liberal thought and action must exercise the courage necessary to act in accordance with the best wisdom the majority approve. -- And be able to withstand criticism. It is one thing to decide; it is even more difficult to march to the frontier charted by new decisions.

This is the price of progress. As Victor Hugo commented in LES MISERABLES (pg. 606): "all sublime conquests are, more or less, the rewards of daring. That the revolution should come, it was not enough that Montesquieu should forsee it, that Diderot should preach it, that Deaumarchais should announce it, that Concordet should calculate it, that Aroutet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; Danton must dare it." So with us, some must dare it.

The people in our Church who consider, decide, and act are no permanent line of portraits in an unchanging gallery. Thornton Wilder's dramatic masterpiece, OUR TOWN, portrays superbly the temporary nature of individual lives, and the permanence of the human family. He captures for us the glory and pathos in the lives of average people like you and I. We sense also the transience of the trivial and the persistence of the worthwhile.

The people in our Church are like the people in OUR TOWN. A child is born and with gladness he is welcomed and the group counts one more. Man and woman choose to walk together henceforth and the ceremony of marriage adds one more to the families in whose hands is such a major part of our work and worship. A man dies, in his bed or far from home, we count one less and we know the tug of sorrow. Our minds worry with the unanswerable questions and our roster bows before an aching omission. A family moves, -- we live in an age of mobility, -- we are glad for their more important and rewarding task, but regretful that an interested, democratic, liberal family has gone beyond the immediate circle of our church life. A new family arrives. We are glad because we need talent, interest,support. We need the bracing, yeasty ferment of new ideas and we need the happiness of new friends. But because we are human and hurried, we are sometimes tardy in our greeting and reserved in our welcome.

The people in our Church are a moving, changing pageant, never the same today as yesterday, and no tomorrow will be like today, but we walk together on a highway to an unknown future. Sooner or later wee all drop out along the way. But if wee have walked with good-will and understanding, we will know a stronger, happier company of fellow-pilgrims.

To change the metaphor, the people of our church find it difficult, of course, to uproot their organized religious life and journey to a new location. The re-location will be a frontier experience, with all that is implied in hardship and nostalgia for old familiar sights. The tornup roots will twinge us with pain. This, too, is human, and part of our fallibility.

There is anticipation in the consciousness of some of us of such homesickness. This has the power to weaken our resolution and dilute support. Consequently our reason for existence needs constant re-assertion. In our expansion program, full use of our assets may be demanded. In our provision for program, we have agreed on the necessity for larger, better, more modern facilities, particularly for children. Admitting this materialistic necessity of the people of our Church, it is nevertheless true that our undergirding is a matter of faith and ideas. The big idea of Universalism finds expression in program and facilities, but without the big idea, there are better uses for stone, mortar, and wood.

When Alexander the Great (RABBINIC STORIES, William Silverman, pg. 102-3) marched with his army to an African province, the people came out to meet him with golden apples, golden pomegranates, and golden bread. "What is the meaning of this?" cried Alexander, "Do they eat gold in your country?" "Is it not so in your country?" they answered him. Said Alexander, "It is not your possessions I have come to see, but your laws."

The people of our Church will have lost touch with the legacy of the liberal spirit if they stake their convictions on outmoded bricks or a particular street address.

The big idea of Universalism concerns persons: How persons can arrive at religious convictions in both freedom and group solidarity; concerns persons in their ability to learn to revere truth as it has been discovered and as it is being resifted constantly in new experience; concerns the necessity of so living and acting that life on this earth is improved constantly.

You may recall that in Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN, the last act is in the town cemetery. The dead are sitting in chairs watching the living humans. Emily, the young wife of George Gibbs has died in childbirth and is the newest arrival in the cemetery. She has not yet acquired the detachment of those whose passing has not been recent. Emily sobs, "I can't. I can't go on. Oh! Oh! It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. All that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back up to the hill to my grave. But first, one more look. Goodbye world. Goodbye Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking ...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...And sleeping and waking up. Oh earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you." (She looks toward the Stage Manager and asks abruptly, through her tears, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it, every minute?" Stage Manager, "No."

Life is too great to be petty in living it. The people of our Church have the opportunity to realize more abundant fellowship when they remain faithful, even in times of disagreement and stress, to the workable ideals of freedom, fellowship, and human dignity. These are goals that are repressed in Hungary and Little Rock. We would be impossibly vain if we believed religious liberals were the only ones to pursue honestly a better, more meaningful life for human beings. But also we would be incredibly meaner than our heritage if we failed to ask ourselves, "if not us, whom?" "If not now, when?" Van Wyck Brooks said of William Ellery Channing that Channing "was responsible for half the great dreams which stirred nineteenth century Boston." May we not assume responsibility for some of the great dreams of twentieth century Akron?

There is no stigma in differences of opinion about our re-location. It is quite correct to analyze our potential and our possibilities in the light of reasonable choices and expectations. Such decisions require bravery, however, on the part of many of the people of our church. Many centuries ago, Plato defined bravery as the knowledge of what one ought and ought not fear. We need not fear difference; we do need to fear heedless, emotional dissention. We need not fear our future if we defend, protect and diffuse the great ideas of Universalism, wherever we happen to be and no matter how we get there.

The pupils of a rabbi came to him with complaints and fears because evil prevailed in the world. "What shall we do?" The rabbi directed them to a dark cellar and suggested they sweep the darkness out with brooms. This they attempted. The vigorous sweeping disturbed the dust, but not the blackness. When the pupils reported this to the rabbi, he then instructed them to return to the cellar and get angry at the darkness and shout bad names furiously. This too failed. Next, the eager ones were told to go back to the cellar and beat the darkness with sticks, but this violent exertion changed the blackness not at all. When the discouraged pupils returned to the rabbi, he then said, "My children, let all of you meet the challenge of darkness by lighting a candle." When the disciples went to the black cellar with their lighted candles, the darkness disappeared.

So with the people of our Church. We can sweep at darkness, beat it with sticks or curse, but the blackness will remain until we bring the glow of good-will and the light of knowledge to cast out the darkness of conflict and ignorance.

"'A sower went out to sow, and as he was sowing, some of the seed chanced to fall by the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some of it fell on rocky ground, and where there was not much soil, and it sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, but when the sun came up it was scorched and withered up, because it had no root. Some of the seeds fell among the thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it out, and it yielded no grain. And some of it fell on good soil, and came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, even a hundredfold.' And he said, 'Let him who has ears, be sure to listen.'"