The Newness of Faith

January 1, 1961
Rochester

What’s new about faith? Perhaps some of you wore funny hats and blended your voices in “Auld Lang Syne” a few hours ago to mark the end of 1960 and the beginning of 1961. People paused to extend a a Happy New Year greeting, but the wheels of time maintained their ceaseless circling. The old became the new without rest and without haste.

Sometimes faith seems to be a dramatic and climactic event. John Wesley, founder of the great Methodist Church felt his heart grow warm as he read Luther’s Commentary on Romans – and from that moment on John Wesley was, seemingly, a new person. Other well-known and unknown persons experienced a conversion which begat a new faith as suddenly and shockingly as Paul’s vivid experience on the Damascus Road. In the old Greek myth, Athena springs full born from the head of Zeus. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, but notwithstanding the old myth, wisdom does not spring forth in sudden fullness, but requires seasoning and aging, even as 1961 could not be registered until 1960 had run out its time.

Or consider the newness of faith proclaimed in the strange old New Testament book of Revelation. The author lived in the late years of a period when the Romans were persecuting the Christians. The unknown author was captured by an overpowering feeling that the had a message for times of great trouble. His striking images and puzzling sayings were written for the understanding [of listeners in] his own time and have little relevance for ours. But in the 21st chapter, he indicates that the triumph of a faith was to come suddenly and all the old ways and ancient evils would be overturned in the twinkling of an age. “The I saw a new heaven, and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more....”

But the heavens are older than our capacity to understand and the earth is ancient. The new heaven and earth predicted by the apocalyptisist in Revelation has not arrived. In spite of the continuing prophecies and warnings of modern-day fundamentalists, we believe that this is not the way of our universe. Our universe is not one of whim, even the whim of a deity, but a cosmos of law.

What then is the “newness of faith”? I have begun a new ministry to you. You have commenced a new relationship of people to pastor. Mutually we have high hopes and great expectations. Most certainly we can wish each other a happy and productive new year. But, you know and I know that not all is new. If we were inclined to be naïve in our optimism, we should be tempered by remembrance of things past and know that no pastor and no people are perfect and our need for constantly connected networks of communication and understanding is as great as it always has been. When we are downcast by reversals or obstacles we should be cheered by achievement under difficulty in other times – in Charles Dickens’ words the worst of times can be the best of times.

One more clue to the newness of faith: when we take notice of someone who successfully resists being taken in, one way or another, we say, “he wasn’t born yesterday.” In the vernacular, “born yesterday” indicates gullibility and lack of wisdom in the ways of the world.

We face a great adventure in churchmanship and in the molding of a Universalist faith to serve our time and influence in some degree the ideas and customs of man. But we cannot say with John of Revelation, “Behold, I make all things new,” for the disclosure of our power, the restoration of our faith and the assurance that the enterprise and our efforts are worthwhile all grow from what has been achieved in times past and is our goodly heritage. Isaiah had words to fit a time for beginning again, (51-1 ff)

“Hearken to me, you know pursue deliverance,
you who seek the Lord;
look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were digged”

The goodly heritage of Universalism has power and is sorely needed in our world. He who has eyes to see or ears to hear knows how the world is divided and tense from the Congo to the Caribbean The world has become a neighborhood geographically and it has not yet become a brotherhood morally. The power of Universalism will be disclosed when we weary not in our affirmation that all mankind is one family, generated by a universal Creator.

When we look to the rock from which we were hewn and to the quarry from which we were digged, we become aware that the power of the Universalist faith has always been this confidence in the worth of all human beings and faith in the essential goodness of all life.

We are going to stop apologizing for our small congregation by making it larger in number and wider in influence. People will respond to the magnetic power of confidence, reason and hope if we will but persist in making it known that we have a faith broad and deep that we will share.

You may be a bit skeptical that liberal religion has any power, outnumbered as we are in mammoth proportion or that we can exert reconciling influence in the world. To be sure, evidence is hard to come by to demonstrate that a faith both broad and deep, has had a good effect. But I am reminded of the argument between the sales manager and the advertising director. “I defy you,” said the sales manager, “to show me one order that advertising ever put on our books.” “I will,” answered the advertising man, “if you show me a single load of hay that the sun ever put in a barn.”

The newness of faith can disclose power two ways, achievement on our books and hay in the barn – no matter whose hay or whose barn. If we neglect either of these legitimate aspects of the work of the Church, we will fail to have the faith for our time, which was the pride and [responsibility] of those who preceded us.

If we neglect to put sales on the books – that is neglecting to increase the stated membership, failing to maintain a modern program of religious education, overlook the need to lift the level of giving, falling short of support for the continental program of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and in manifold other ways not carrying out the responsibilities of Churchmanship, then our power is short-circuited.

But also, if we fail to be seen, without which there would be no hay to be cut and dried, we will also be cutting off the power which should be ours. That is to say, as Universalists we need to support causes in community and world which support a growing understanding among the peoples of the world, which add to the consciousness that the epople of the world have the choice of life and death in their hands, which create a stronger consciousness of human need and a wiser appraisal of the nature and scope of cooperation.

Therefore if our ancient faith is to put on the newness which makes it valid for the sixth decade of the twentieth century, it must be relevant, not repetitious of outmoded answers to outdated problems.

When I consider this matter of relevance I am reminded of a story, both absurd and tragic, told by Bruce Cotton in his moving history of the Civil War, THIS HALLOWED GROUND (p. 301). General Burnside was hemmed in at Knoxville and could not be relieved until the Confederate army besieging the city was defeated. General Burnside had to reduce the daily food allowance to a small issue of salt pork and bread. Then, as Cotton tells the story, the Union forces won the [illegible]. “Before long full railroad connections with Chattanooga were restored, which meant that plenty of food and clothing could come in. Half of the army came gaily down to the station to greet the first train – a ten car freight train which when the doors were opened [it] turned out by some triumph of military miscalculation to be loaded with nothing but horseshoes.” To hungry men, such a train-load just wasn’t relevant.

Jesus was speaking of the need for relevance in religion in that part of the Sermon on the Mount where he asks, “What man of you if his son asks him for a loaf will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?”

The restoration of newness and strength of our faith depends on relevance, too. The stories of the heroes of our faith are stirring. Their deeds feed our pride in the past. John Murray, Hosea, Ballou, Clara Barton, Horace Greeley and many others represent lines of great religious significance. We will not forget them. But as we are particularly sensitive on January 1, time neither halts nor turns back and the repetition of time past would be but antiquarian incongruity.

We will call people to our cause by the kind of people we are and the contemporary issues to which we give our attention.

Henry Nelson Wieman [?] in his book THE SOURCE OF HUMAN GOOD discusses progress in history and suggests ways of measuring it. First, “widening the upper levels of society to include more people.” Second, “increasing diversity of intercommunicating individuals and groups.” Third, “each apprehending more of the meaning which others communicate.” Fourth, “each integrating more of this communicated meaning into his own life and personality.”

If I correctly understand the learned philosopher he is saying that progress is measured in including more people in the fortunate areas of social life and understanding more about the motives and hopes of others and being understood by them. As more meaning becomes cooperatively shared, then mankind progresses.

To such understanding of people, the problems that beset them and the rights they claim is where religion must base its modern relevance. The past is guide and the figure an ideal. The present can share ancient wisdom and dream the great dreams, but religion must be workable in the here and now. Any restoration of our faith must not neglect this for the past is gone and the future is not yet.

On this New Year’s Day, let me say this too. Any man or woman who has persisted in his work for the Church has known times of disillusion. Perhaps a great idea received no support or the necessary everyday chores of maintaining a church institution was left by default to a faithful few. People many times are too easily offended or callous to the crucial needs that arise again and again over the years. You could add to the list of difficulties and frustrations. In spite of all this, the cause of the Universalist Church is worthwhile and merits your continuing loyalty and patience. Jimmy Durante, the famous entertainer, wrote about some of the deeply moving experiences of his career in show business and in his words how you “can’t help meeting the cream of the crop – the nice folks.” He told of visiting a veteran’s hospital on Staten Island. As he went on with his inimitable act he saw two boys in the fifth row who had only one arm each. Durante wrote “when I come out with a joke, they applaud by beating their one hand against the other fella’s palm. This makes up nice folks and this I never forget.”

Church business is something like that and the things you never forget make it worthwhile. It always has been even when things went wrong. It is of the newness of faith to sense this sense of worth and vitality behind every passing scene and underlying every service of worship. We share service, fellowship and worship and find it good.

In his story of the great mountains of the world, Edward Lane (STORY OF MOUNTAINS, p. 39) told the story of Michael Croz, the great climber who died in a fall from the Matterhorn. Of him it was said, “it was only when he got above the range of ordinary mortals and was required to employ his magnificent strength and to draw upon his unsurpassed knowledge of ice and snow that he could be said to be really and truly happy.”

So it is with high religion – it makes demands on our strength and knowledge when we encounter it in its high ranges, but in its service we strengthen our character, our usefulness and yes, an an unsought consequence add to the sum of our happiness.

The old faith can take on an newness in the disclosure of the power of a religion of good-will, restored by its relevance to and by its enduring principle lending us assurance that action performed in its service are worthwhile.

Appended (apparently a benediction or prayer):

Once again the toll of bells, the lilt of gaiety and the somber still of holiday excesses remind us of the march of time.

When we look backward, may it be with acceptance of the events which cannot be reconstructed or changed; may it be with gladness as we review the joys and privilege which have been ours, even though the passing hours marked difficulty and sorrow as well as happiness; may we appraise ourselves without arrogance or excess guilt, acquiring wisdom from the good and bad events which have struck upon our lives; may we remember life’s glowing hours and not reject the spiritual experience of somberness and difficulty.

When we look forward may it be with hope and gladness. All that is past gathers in as we confront the mystery of hours not yet ticked off. Give strength to meet courageously whatever blows and suffering may await us in the unknown future. Give us zest to confront the joys and happiness which will come to us if we live with inner honesty and seek the fellowship of others and the ordinary routines of living in which the strength for the extraordinary is molded and [illegible]

May the year ahead be happy, useful and creative.