Universalism: Our Heritage and Hope
Teresa Schwartz – Guest Speaker/Student Minister
UU Church of Wakefield
April 10, 2005

It is a cold New England morning.  You know the kind—the sun seems so new and bright, but the puddles are frozen at dawn.  Birds chirp—they’re still a novelty this early in the season.  Spring could have come sooner for Nathan.  He awakes, groggy, and hungry. Nathan is a frail man—and he seems very small today. He’s a bit sickly and pale—looks like maybe he’s seen better days.  He hasn’t eaten in a while, and hasn’t had money enough for a mess of oats for his horse since the day before last.  He had to pawn his pocketknife at the last turnpike toll.  With no bread in his belly, he packs his things to leave camp.  He saddles up his horse and heads West.  

Clip-clop, clip-clop the horse runs along.  There’s a glint, a fire in Nathan’s eyes, and as the sun rises in the sky, he heads on faster to Utica.  The crowd might just give him supper tonight.  “This will be a good run,” he thinks.  Clip-clop, clip-clop, Nathan rides.  The horse trots along—surely oats must be in the distance!  Warming in the sun, the puddles melt.  He rehearses his sermon in his head.  Clip-clop, clip-clop.  Last night went pretty well—the folks in the tavern liked the idea of Universal salvation.  They toasted him, “No hell beyond hangovers!”  Tonight’s gig, though, will be a bit more refined, at the town meetinghouse.  Hopefully, there’ll be some good stew.

Nathaniel Stacy was one of the Universalist circuit preachers in the early eighteen hundreds.  His physical appearance didn’t betray his fine way with words, or his zeal for his faith.  Itinerant preaching was a hard way to make a living, but as Nathaniel wrote, “…someone had to do it, or else there would be no Universalist societies or congregations…  Throughout his Universalist missionary work, Stacy had preached in 10 states, delivered 4749 discourses, officiated at 368 funerals, and solemnized 228 marriages.  And Nathan wasn’t the only one.

I am baffled by those early circuit preachers.  What must it be like to believe, to feel something so strongly that you’d wake up hungry on a cold New England morning, and ride to a distant town to preach to strangers, where you might not make enough money to eat?  To leave your family, your job behind?  To work without pay, not counting the time?  To travel miles upon miles, punctuated by tolls you can’t pay?  What call is this?  What type of person is this?  What faith is this?

This is our faith.  This is Universalism.  More than any gift, or any divine call, Nathaniel is a lot like you and me.  What got Nathan on his horse in the morning is that he had news.  Good news.  And he believed the world needed to hear this good news.  He knew he lived in a world in deep, deep need of hope.  And hope was all he had.   He knew that as small and frail and pale as he was, he was the man to do it.  So he gave what he had.  This is our inheritance.  

This is our faith.  This is Universalism, a grass-roots tradition founded by common folks who believed God was too good to damn the even the bad.  30 men, and 31 women got up and left their church in Gloucester one day because they believed in hope.  They believed that faith based in fear was not worth having.  They believed the world needed a sanctuary for this hope.  Immigrants arriving in America needed religious hope along with political hope.  The folks in Gloucester needed it, too.  They knew they were the people to do it.  They stood up, packed it in, and moved on out.    This is our inheritance.

Today, this inheritance appears antiquated.  In these times, ideas of Hell seem quaint, sometimes even charmingly ignorant.  Perhaps Hell only exists for fundamentalists, believers, the orthodox.  Without the reality of Hell, Universal salvation, too is a way of the past, something we’ve outgrown.  We give it a respectful nod with our modern principles.  Well, I have news.  Hell exists.   

Natural disaster can destroy countries, corporate scandal can destroy lives.  The leader of a revolution in Ukraine is poisoned with Dioxin, little children are taken hostage in a Russian school.  Our library records are suspect, and our courtrooms shooting galleries.  

Our country spends billions of dollars in a nebulous war against terror, while we terrorize countries that just might, maybe, have elusive weapons of mass destruction.  All the while, we’re sending our loved ones, loyally serving in our armed forces, into harm’s way—a harm we’ve largely created by our own foreign policy.  The people on the front lines are the people with the least—the least money, the least options, the least hope.  

The people on the front lines are women seeking reproductive rights, the working poor, people of color, queer folks, and the blue-collar worker hoping for another day on the job before the pink slip.  

But I’m not here to convince you of Hell, because I think you know too much about it already.  You hear about it everyday, and if you’re like me, you’re afraid.  No, I’m not here to convince you of Hell, I’m here to convince you of hope.  I’m here because I believe in salvation.  I believe that God can save us all, but it’s going to be through our own hands.  

Universalism is not just our past, but it’s our present and our future.  We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for to bring hope to a hurting world.  Our calling is not a lonely journey—through this community, we can draw upon our rich heritage—here and now—to inspire us, to give us courage to act.
	
We have good news that the world desperately needs.   But this news needs go beyond these walls and halls.  The principles need to come off of the bulletin boards and into our hearts and on the road.  The will to believe, the right to believe—that changes reality.  And I think you know that.  I think that’s why you’re here today.  Like one of our founding fathers, John Murray, we say:

	--to the victims of the tsunami:  
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--to the victims of HIV-AIDS:  
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--to the victims of clergy abuse:  
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--To the Iraqis: 
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--To the troops:  
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--To those fighting addiction:  
		We give them not hell, but hope.
	--to all those oppressed within and  	beyond our midst:  
		We give them not hell but hope.
	
This is a tall order.  And our lives are so very busy.  It is hard to pay the rent on time, and remember which day of the week is garbage day.  So I remember Nathaniel.  I remember those folks in Gloucester.  They were busy, too.  They had rent to pay and children to raise.  When we’re surrounded by Hell, it’s easy to succumb to the illusion that a solution can only come with golden wings, bright images against a red sky, a Messiah, a politician, a corporation who might fix everything while we remember to add toilet paper to the grocery list.  

But that’s the worst part of Hell because it’s a lie.  There’s no one else but us, and there never was.  But here’s some good news.  You don’t have to be brave today.  If you have come today broken and weak, you belong here.  If you have come hopeless and overwhelmed, you belong here.  If today you feel strong and joyful, you belong here.  If today you are sick, you belong here.  The burden is not yours to carry alone.  It is ours.  

We are a church.  We are the inheritors of a church that fought for freedom from slavery and for women’s rights, one day at a time, while they paid the rent, raised the kids, and cooked dinner.   

It’s not just the world that needs hope, we need hope, and this is the place where hope grows.  On rough days, I think of Nathaniel Stacy, and think he’s simply an overblown legend, or merely another crazy heretic.  

But then I come here—I come to church.  And I see the Nathans before me.  I see people who come to church early and stay late.  Some hand out programs in the morning, others watch the children.   Some dust the light fixtures on weeknights after committee meetings, when no one is watching.  Some folks wash the coffee cups after coffee hour.  I see people here with the courage to share the reality of their Hells.  We come to church and we give what we have today because we believe in the good news.  

So when you feel hope slipping away—and you will—think of Nathan.  When the morning is cold, you’re hungry, and the puddles are frozen, think of small Nathan, pale in the bright spring sun, riding to the West.  Remember the fire in his soul.  Remember his words, “…someone had to do it, or else there would be no Universalist societies or congregations….”  Someone has to do it.  We are that someone.  This is our faith.  As Unitarian Universalists, this is our inheritance and this is our hope.  And it’s this hope that just might save us all.