Holy Hope

By Rev. Terry Davis

Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on December 2, 2012.

We are now into December, the last month of the year. For some adults, the year may have flown by quickly; for some children, this month may not have arrived soon enough. There is much discussion currently afloat on how this particular December may impact our lives.

In the United States, for example, there is talk about our country falling off the “fiscal cliff” this month. On December 31 at the stroke of midnight, Federal tax cuts and tax breaks will expire . . . and automatic spending cuts will take effect. According to the Congressional Budget Office and others, if our legislators don’t do something to change these provisions, there will be intensely dire consequences for our already-fragile economy.[i]

Around the world, there is talk about another apocalyptic moment that is expected to occur in December. On December 21, some believe the ancient calendar of the Mayas has predicted that the world will come to an end.

Never mind that scientists have pointed out that this panic is the result of misinterpreting the Mayas’ understanding of time cycles and their practice of “resetting” their calendars on certain dates.[ii] There is still ongoing discussion and even a History Channel program on the impending doomsday that continues to stoke at least our imagination, if not our fear.

My guess is that there aren’t many of us who relish the idea of going over a cliff Thelma-and-Louise-style, fiscal or otherwise. I also suspect that there are few Unitarian Universalists who believe that the world as we know it will shut down completely in less than three weeks.

Yet, in a month that has a closing quality to it . . . in this twelfth month of the year . . . we might find ourselves reflecting on the previous eleven. We may be asking ourselves “Where did the time go?” as we find ourselves at the cusp of the holidays and all the joy, stress, and sorrow they can bring.

So it seems fitting to me that in December . . . this final month of the year . . . we find that so many of the world’s religions celebrate a holiday of hope.

Holidays of hope it seems are sorely needed in December when the year is ending  . . . and when we may feel worn from life’s harsh realities. I believe that so many holidays representing so many religious and cultural traditions are evidence that people everywhere need hope, look for hope, and seek to strengthen their hope as they practice their faith and live their lives.

And, so, in my sermon today, I want to explore the stories of hope as they are conveyed and celebrated by so many of our fellow seekers of the truth and the sacred.

To begin examining stories of hope, we started this morning with the story of a hopeful seeker . . . a 14 year-old boy named Piscine Patel.

In our reading, we learn that Piscine – or Pi, as he preferred to be called – is seeking to love the god of his understanding. He sees no reason why he can’t be a Christian, a Hindu, and a Muslim all at the same time. He finds something in all three faith traditions to help him on his spiritual journey, and he doesn’t see any reason why he must choose between them.

For Pi, it seems that a religious quest is less about finding the right doctrine and more about embracing those practices that bring him closer to God.

Like Pi, we may find ourselves looking to the stories and rituals of other faith traditions to build our own hope and enrich our spiritual lives. This is, in fact, what we did this morning by lighting the Advent candle.

Advent is a Christian holy season which starts today – the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day – and ends on Christmas Eve.

Advent means “coming” or “arrival” . . . and in the Christian tradition it marks the period of anticipation leading up to the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day and the message of hope his arrival brings.

While most Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, many do find that Jesus’s example of radical hospitality gives hope that it is possible to love unconditionally and, by doing so, help create heaven on earth.

Although it’s clear that the Christian holy days take center-stage this time of year in this country, Buddhist, Jewish, Pagan and African traditions celebrated in December also provide us with powerful stories of hope that can help inform and strengthen our own.

On December 8, adherents of Buddhism around the world will celebrate Bodhi Day, which is the day that commemorates the enlightenment of the Buddha after he sat meditating under the Bodhi fig tree for 49 days.

December 8 at sundown also begins the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which remembers the effort to restore the Temple in Jerusalem after a period of desecration.

December 21 will mark this year’s winter solstice, which is celebrated in a number of cultures and traditions with singing, dancing, food, bonfires, and other rituals.

And on December 26, the weeklong celebration of Kwanzaa will begin, honoring universal African-American heritage and culture.[iii]

All these holidays seek to preserve and celebrate central narratives and practices that reinforce messages of hope and strengthen the bonds of community. As Unitarian Universalists who, perhaps like Pi Patel celebrate truth and meaning wherever we can find it, we can use this time of year to learn from and enjoy the rich religious and cultural diversity that exists in our country.

And, while we celebrate these stories of hope, I also think it’s important that we consider bringing into this wonderful December melting pot a story of our own . . . a story that is uniquely Unitarian Universalist.  With December’s holiday lights and candles and Yule logs, there is a Unitarian Universalist story that has its own ritual of light and celebrates a key component of our faith. It’s a story, in fact, that many Unitarian Universalists engage with every week.

Well, what story is that, you might be asking? It is the story, of course, of our flaming chalice . . . the chalice that represents our own light of holy hope in the world . . . our own moment in which the conviction of our faith led us to take courageous action.

It’s the story of the chalice that we light each Sunday and oftentimes in-between . . . the story of the flame that gathers us and inspires us.

My guess is that many of you know this story. It’s not mythical or ancient, but it is moving and powerful.

As a denomination-wide symbol, the Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice (usually represented as a flame rising from the top of a wide-lipped stemmed cup) began as a symbol whose creation was intentionally commissioned in order to provide a graphic representation of the work of the Unitarian Service Committee.

The Unitarian Service Committee was a social justice organization founded during World War II that helped Jews and others escape Nazi persecution in Europe, using a secret network of couriers and agents. This organization was the precursor organization to today’s Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which organizes humanitarian projects and programs around the world.

Rev. Dr. Charles Joy at the time served as director of the Unitarian Service Committee’s Portugal office. Rev. Joy believed that some means of creating “official” travel documents for the thousands of refugees who were pouring into the Lisbon port to escape the Nazis would help him in his relocation efforts.

He introduced an innovation: travel documents issued by the Unitarian Service Committee itself.[iv] This novel idea led Joy to seek an artist to create an official “seal” for these documents, which resulted in the birth of the flaming chalice symbol.

The artist who created the flaming chalice was Austrian Hans Deutsch. Deutsch, while living in Paris in the 1930s, had drawn critical cartoons of Adolf Hitler. By 1941, Deutsch had fled from France to Lisbon, Portugal using an altered passport.

Deutsch met up with Rev. Joy and was so inspired by the Unitarian Service Committee, he soon began working for them. In a letter to Rev. Joy, he wrote:

 

“There is something that urges me to tell you… how much I admire your utter self-denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well-being, to help, help, help.

“I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith—as it is, I feel sure – then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and – what is more – to active, really useful social work.

 

And this religion – with or without a heading – is one to which even a ‘godless’ fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, ‘Yes!’”[v]

 

 

The story of Hans Deutsch reminds us that the symbol of a flaming chalice stood in the beginning for a life of service. When Deutsch designed the flaming chalice, he had never seen a Unitarian or Universalist church or heard a sermon. What he had seen was faith in action—people who were willing to risk all for others in a time of urgent need.[vi]

Unitarian Universalism’s continued emphasis on acting for social justice could certainly be considered a primary driver behind the consensus of adopting the Unitarian Service Committee’s logo as our denomination-wide symbol and the chalice-lighting as our common ritual.

However, as you might imagine, the Unitarian Universalist Association offers no single reason why our congregations have come together around the chalice.

Instead, the UUA offers this explanation for the flaming chalice’s institution: “Unitarian Universalists today have many different interpretations of the image. To many, the cup represents religious community, while the flame represents ideas including the sacrificial flame, the flame of the spirit, and more.”[vii]

Therefore, while the flaming chalice’s meaning was originally ascribed to the compassionate and heroic efforts of the Unitarian Service Committee to rescue persons from Nazi persecution, it has come to embrace larger concepts . . . concepts that include justice, courage, and the inherent worth and dignity of all human life.

It’s these deeply valued concepts of courage, justice, and the inherent worth and dignity of human life that attracted me to Unitarian Universalism more than 20 years ago as an ex-Catholic, lesbian woman in recovery. They represent attributes, actions, and affirmations that have at their core a belief in the goodness of humankind and the triumph of that goodness.

They are concepts that, without a foundation in hope, would find neither their genesis nor their perpetuity.

Hope, I believe, was what inspired Rev. Joy to travel the difficult road towards protecting the rights of others . . . even at the risk of losing his life. Hope is what many of us found when we walked into our first service and discovered a thriving faith community that accepted us exactly as we are.

When we light our chalice each Sunday, we are participating in a ritual with a rich history. It’s our story of faith, our symbol of light and hope. It is reminder of who we are – a saving people – and a reminder of what we must continue to do: that is, we must save our own lives by doing what we can to save the lives of others and the life of this planet.

So, as we move forward into this holy month of December with its seasons of remembrance and celebration, let us take it all in.

Let us celebrate all these holy stories – including our own – that remind us that the light we seek is the light we share with all people of many faiths. It is the warm and flickering light of hope.

May it be so. Amen.