Hanukah, sometimes known as the Festival of Lights, began Wednesday at sundown. Later in the service when the children join us, we will light the menorah together. Although light is a central metaphor for winter holidays, Hanukah’s first metaphor is a hammer. Hence this morning’s rousing rendition of the Pete Seeger classic, “If I Had a Hammer.”
As our last hymn will tell us, the main characters of the Hanukah story are a band of brothers known as the Maccabees. This isn’t their surname; it is an honorific designation. Maccabee means hammer and according to Michael Lerner, of Tikkun magazine that’s just what the brothers and their father did.
When Alexander the Great introduced Jews to Hellenistic culture some city-dwelling Jews assimilated, but many rural Jews who were farmers, held fast to their ways; they resented foreign rule and the Jewish elite who courted favor with their Greek conquerors. Burdened by taxation and repulsed by the Hellenists’ love of power, a small band of rebels under the leadership of a country priest and his five sons, who came to be known as “the Maccabees,” decided to fight back against imperialism. There were unwilling to accept the desecration of the Temple. For them it was an unbearable assault that they were forbidden to study the Torah or observe the Sabbath. They refused to worship the Greek Gods set on the altar. They believed the human spirit was more powerful than technology and in 165 B.C.E. they retook Jerusalem, purified and rededicated the Temple, (Hanukah means “dedication”) and rekindled the eternal light. Thus, the miracle of Hanukah has less to do with mysteriously long-burning oil, and more to do with the tenacity, bravery, and faith evident in a small group of people who refused to give up the communal practice of their faith or give in to oppression.
And since some of you have asked about the origins of Unitarian Universalism and what exactly is a Unitarian as distinctive from a Trinitarian, this morning I will take you on a brief tour of the hammers of Unitarian Universalism. I realize taken out of context that could sound like Builder Bob on a rampage, but think of it in the Pete Singer and Lonnie Hayes way of hammering out justice, freedom and love.
First stop on the tour, Egypt in third century of the Common Era. A Christian theologian and scholar named Origen, whose name is reputed to mean “unbreakable” took issue with the way the early church leaders sculpted theology. Though he believed in a trinity, he saw it hierarchically with God the Father as more powerful than Jesus, his Son. He subscribed to a doctrine of universal reconciliation, which refuted the idea that only certain souls would be reconciled with God in the afterlife. This is the doctrine that lends its name to Universalism.
As one scholar, Edward Moore, put it:
Origen was an innovator in an era when innovation, for Christians, was a luxury ill-afforded. He drew upon pagan philosophy in an effort to elucidate the Christian faith in a manner acceptable to intellectuals, and he succeeded in converting many gifted pagan students of philosophy to his faith. He was also a great humanist, who believed that all creatures will eventually achieve salvation, including the devil himself.
So in 1770, when the father of American Universalism, a Brit named John Murray arrived on the New Jersey coast spreading his message of Universalism, he drew on the theology of Origen and many others through the centuries who refused to accept the position so fiercely articulated by John Calvin that only certain souls, predetermined before birth, would reunite with God after death.
Though it may seem passé to us in 2010, the covenant we recite every week contains this very theology: “To help one another in fellowship, to the end that all souls shall grow in harmony with each other and with the Holy.”
Origen is not only known for his understanding of universal salvation; he also laid the theological groundwork for our Unitarian forebears. Though Origen acknowledged the Trinity, he did not recognize Jesus or the Holy Spirit as equivalent to God. He applied a hierarchy wherein God the Father had the most power, with Jesus the Son took a secondary position and the Holy Spirit, third.
For almost as long as Christianity has existed in a systematically organized form, theologians have debated the nature of the Trinity, he concept of a triune or three-part deity. Early in the 4th century of the Common Era, Arius provoked controversy when he declared not unlike Origen, that Jesus, though the Son of God was not made of the same substance as the Father. In 325, at the Council of Nicea, Arius’s proposition was defeated. Hence, the Nicene Creed recited in most Christian churches, affirms “the belief in one God, one Lord Jesus Christ, the essence of the Father and being of the same substance.” And that is a Trinitarian.
When Michael Servetus, a sixteenth century Spaniard, penned his tome, On the Errors of the Trinity, he was burned at the stake.
Peter Hughes, editor of the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, writes,[Servetus] inspired unitarians and other groups on the radical left-wing of the Reformation to develop and institutionalize their own heretical views.… [he] rejected the doctrine of original sin and the entire theory of salvation based upon it,… [and] held that God was present in and constitutive of all creation. This feature of Servetus' theology was especially obnoxious to Calvin.
Let me repeat that: “God was present in and constitutive of all creation” That is what we would call a panentheist: one for whom God is present in and comprised of all being. That Michael Servetus would so pithily describe the theology of so many contemporary Unitarian Universalists, including mine, is remarkable. That he died for doing it, hammers a new meaning of religious conviction.
Prior to Unitarianism, theologians destructed and reconstructed Trinitarianism, the doctrine of a triune God. The Transylvanian Unitarianism that crystallized in 1568 was suffused with the universalism that had been percolating through the centuries. On March 8, 1568 the only Unitarian king in history, John Sigismund, convened ministers of both Hungary and Transylvania to listen to eleven debaters, five Unitarians and six Calvinists. They began with solemn prayers then proceeded to debate in Latin. The bishop of the Reformed Church in Hungary appealed to the authority of the Bible, the creeds, the Fathers, and the orthodox theologians. Ferenc Dávid, the preacher of the King’s court appealed to the Bible alone. Note the absence of any reference to creeds or the Church Fathers from Dávid. By the ninth day the Calvinists asked to be excused from listening further. The king suggested that might signal defeat so the Calvinists stayed, and mercifully, the king ended the debate on day ten, “recommending that the ministers give themselves to prayer, seek harmony, and refrain from mutual abuse as [it is] unbecoming in them” (Earl Morse Wilbur).
The debate, generally regarded as a complete victory for the Unitarians, made a hero of Ferenc Dávid, met by crowds “who insisted he mount a large boulder at a street corner (still preserved as a sacred relic) and speak to them of his victorious new doctrine.” (Perhaps that is why there is a boulder right outside our church.) And while the hometown exploded with excitement, others were not so pleased. According to Earl Wilbur’s historical account, “the Calvinists began to rally their forces in Transylvania; while in Hungary, all through the year 1568, they kept holding synods in different districts, confirming the orthodox doctrine and condemning [Unitarians]. Disregarding the king’s decree of tolerance, they persecuted and drove out ministers holding Unitarian views, if they would not deny their faith, and forbade them to speak in their own defense, lest they thus make more converts to their views.”
The debates continued with great fervor, for in the sixteenth century, these weren’t good-natured jousts of intellect designed to affirm the superiority of reason. The king and his court attended along with generals. When the bishop of the Reformed Church spoke viciously to Dávid, the king himself interjected, “We wish that in our dominions there be freedom of conscience; for we know that faith is the gift of God, and that one’s conscience can not be forced.” A mere six days later, “the king saw that nothing further could be gained, and having charged the orthodox with evading the real issue he closed the debate.”
By 1571, Unitarianism, or “the religion of Ferenc Dávid” as it was known then, reached the height of its prominence, recognized as one of the four “received” religions protected by law, with almost five hundred congregations. Dávid published no less than eight of his own texts on Unitarianism in both Latin and Hungarian so that scholars and commonfolk alike could have access to his thoughts. King Sigismund required all rulers in Transylvania to respect and preserve the religious rights and freedoms of the four received religions: Unitarian, Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed, but once the king died prematurely, Unitarians were no longer assured protection or respect.
The ensuing decades brought great challenges to the early Unitarians whose theological innovations continued to cause controversy and place spokesmen such as Dávid at risk. Though he was not alone in putting forth the idea that there was no biblical support for the belief that Jesus equaled God, or that Christ should be worshiped, Dávid suffered the blows of orthodox Christians who considered him blasphemous.
And not unlike the Maccabees, he refused to be silenced. Despite warnings he spoke his truth to power and paid the price. Ill and sentenced to prison, Dávid died there November 15, 1579.
In his last sermon, he preached. "Whatever the world may say, it must some time become clear that God is but one." That is the theological root of Unitarianism. What we think of as our core values: religious freedom, the responsibility to bring reason and conscience to bear, and to interpret sacred texts ourselves come from Servetus, David, the Polish theologian Faustus Socinus and King Sigismund.
Their legacy flourishes today in Transylvania, now known as Romania, and parts of Hungary where about seventy thousand Unitarians dwell. They are members of the only religion indigenous to that region. Ninety-five percent of their congregations are rural. While certainly the most liberal religion there, it is quite different than our version of Unitarian Universalism. A bishop still presides though he can only be elected to two six-year terms and cannot be over seventy-five. A catechism remains in use that declares belief in one God comprehended as spirit and love; belief in the spiritual leadership of Jesus through the example he set; and a belief in the mission of the Unitarian church. Communion, known as The Lord’s Supper, is offered four times a year, not as a sacrament but as part of the liturgy. Ministers preach from the Bible and junior-high aged children are confirmed.
What binds us to this expression of Unitarianism is not ritual, liturgy or even congregational polity. A cursory glance reveals few similarities and our respective ways of speaking about our beliefs would hold few if any words in common. What binds us is a shared heritage and living history that instructs us in courage and the meaning of conviction.
And that’s what the candles we light at Hanukah represent. Not the miracle of long-lasting oil, but the miracle of human beings, who against all odds, hammer out justice, refusing to forsake irrefutable values, rescuing religious freedom from the flames of intolerance and restoring what is holy to the altar of everyday life. Amen.
Closing words:
Each of here has the opportunity to seek our inner Maccabee, to find and refine a faith worth defending, a spiritual community worth preserving. Let us hammer out justice and freedom as carry our light into the world.
