Heresy and Other Burning Issues

A Sermon by Rev. John Gibbons

delivered Sunday, October 5, 2003

at First Parish in Bedford

 

 

If you are like me, at the conclusion of the major league baseball season—that is to say at the conclusion of the Red Sox season—I feel a mixture of actual disappointment and considerable relief that my attention and emotions will not be further distracted and abused. However, this morning I want to talk about some essential matters concerning what sort of a church we are, and I ask you to bear with me as I begin with an example from baseball.

 

Henry Nelson Wieman, one of the most distinguished process philosophers of our time, said this:

 

The professionals who play in the big leagues render a great service to baseball. Baseball would certainly not pervade our national life as it does if it were not for these big leagues. But if you want to find out the true spirit of baseball in all the glory of a passion, you must not go to the big leagues. You must go to the backyard, the sandlot, the side street, and the school ground. There it is not a profession, it is a passion. When a passion becomes a profession, it often ceases to be a passion. That is as true of religion as it is of baseball. Among the professionals you find a superb mastery and a great technique, but not too frequently the pure devotion. Perhaps in baseball the passion is not too important, but in religion it is all important. A religion that is not passionate simply is not worth considering. Therefore, I say, we need more sandlot religion. The professional, whether (Red Sox, Yankees, Athletics) or Methodist, controls inordinately our baseball and our religion.

 

Soon our attentions and emotions will not be further distracted or abused by major league baseball, but today I am here to enlist your attention and your emotions—and I hope to stir your passion—for religion, sandlot religion, religion as it is practiced not in the Vatican or Mecca or Salt Lake or even Boston, but religion as we practice it here, religion as you practice it every day wherever you may be.

 

(I note in passing that, in quoting Wieman, I wonder if there are any more sandlots. In an era dominated by the major leagues as well as by mega-churches, this bodes ill, I think, for both sport and religion.)

 

This morning I want to lay before you some basic things that you will need if you are to understand what’s going on here the rest of the year and, believe me, before too long you’ll be wondering what’s going on here and how you got mixed up with it. That is part of our distinctive religious experience.

 

This morning I want to talk about what it means to be religious; I want to pick up on Roger’s fine sermon of two weeks ago and say a little more about the importance of choosing; I want you to know that we are all heretics and why we may be proud of that; I also want you to know just a little bit about Michael Servetus, a Spanish Unitarian who was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland 450 years ago this very month; and it would be gravy if you went away from here knowing two sentences that were said by another guy you’ve probably never heard of named Sebastian Castellio; and, finally, I want you to know why it still passionately matters that we are part of—beyond these walls we are all representatives of—what is called the free church tradition.

 

OK. A lot of people tell me that they’re not religious. They may consider themselves good Unitarian Universalists, come here sometimes, regularly or not at all, but then they say, “Just don’t get the wrong idea…I’m really not religious.” Bullfeathers! They may not be religious in a major league/mega-church way, but all human beings are inherently religious. Everybody in one way or another…in a comprehensive or fragmentary, happy or miserable, traditional or altogether eccentric way…is indeed religious.

 

You may have heard this part of my spiel before but if you take out a dime…go ahead and fish into your pockets… and if you look at the side of the dime that does not show Roosevelt…on the other side of it there’s a Roman symbol of authority, a torch held by a bundle of sticks, and—you can hardly see this it’s so tiny—and wrapped around those sticks at the top and the bottom there are hoops, bands that hold the sticks together and keep the whole torch thing from falling apart, like hoops on a barrel. And, in Latin, those hoops, those bands that keep it all from falling apart, they’re called “religio.” Really.

 

Religion is what holds it all together. And I’m not talking so much about big league Judaism or Islam or Christianity or even triple-A Unitarian Universalism; I’m talking about how you make sense of the world in your own sandlot or sandbox or whatever.

 

I know it’s not all one or the other but are you more influenced by your love or by your fear? Do you approach the world with more trust or more cynicism? Is the world a welcoming place or are people out to get you? I know, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Is it OK to make mistakes sometimes or can one mistake ruin everything? I know someone who says that people tend to have either a fortress or a banquet mentality. They see things more in terms of either defense and protection or sharing and celebration. Understand that there is not a right and wrong answer to these questions; most of our answers are mixed and may vary day to day, even. My point here is that everyone has some orientation, some lens through which they see the world, some default setting, some way of holding—the beautiful, the grotesque, the life, the death, the mystery—some way of holding it all together. Whatever that is—that cynicism, that trust, that love, that fear, that sense of abundance, that need for a fortress—that is their (that is your) religion.

 

So the first thing that we try to do around this little religious laboratory we operate here in Bedford is to encourage one another to look in the mirror and to reflect on the question, “What is my religion?” First we ask of ourselves, “What is my religion really? (Not what do we say we believe, not what big league franchise do we root for, not what should we believe but what in fact do we believe, and how do we act, and what do we think or feel about our own lives and life? Whether we’re proud of what we see in the mirror or ashamed of it or if it’s a total blur, the first question we ask of ourselves is just about the reality of things: How do we make sense and hold it all together?

 

Now I fully understand that this is not how religion is commonly defined, in the big leagues especially. In the big leagues, somebody says, “Here, just follow this path, this set of rules (three strikes and you’re out…a Trinitarian thing)…. Other churches say “Here, take this dogma, just say these creeds.”

 

The difference between big league and sandlot religion was brought home to me last Thursday when—you may have seen this on TV news or in the papers—there was this so-called Saving Marriage Summit at which about 100 people, fearful that the Massachusetts Supreme Court may rule in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry, gathered in Wayland to strategize. Believing that religious bigotry ought not represent the entire religious community, another group of clergy and others gathered on the sidewalk outside their meeting. Wearing our stoles, Roger, Sylvia, Rosie and I joined the silent gathering of those who believe not only that gay couples should have the right to be married but that such marriages are actually good for couples, good for children, good for our communities and society. Sylvia and Roger, by the way, were both interviewed by the media, by CNN and the newspapers. I waved at the archbishop as he left the meeting and got in his limousine; he waved back. And then in Friday’s papers, it was reported that a group of religious leaders met inside while a group of protesters met outside. Get it? The archbishop and the others were religious leaders and the rest of us were chopped liver. That’s the conflict between big league and sandlot religion; that’s small-c catholicism that presumes to speak for all people; that’s small-p protestantism (protesters) that speaks only for oneself. Interestingly, despite the archbishop’s presence, even the Wayland Catholic clergy chose not to attend: even in the big leagues, not everybody agrees with the general manager.

 

So the path of religious growth here goes like this: Once you’ve looked in the mirror and figured out what your religion is in fact not in theory, then decide if you like what you see. In our tradition, the path of religious growth thus calls for you to choose your religion; respectful of many paths, coercing none, Unitarian Universalism is what we call our chosen faith.

 

Choosing is what Roger preached about. In the discussion after Roger’s service, an interesting distinction was made between choosing and picking. We may say we’re making a rational, deliberative choice but more often in fact we pick according to other criteria—friendship networks, socio-economic factors, advertising, color, sexiness, sizzle. In Unitarian Universalism, using the tools which Roger described—reason, intuition, prayer—we aspire to make our choices on as deep a basis as we’re able. And if choosing your religion means things like choosing to be more trusting or kind or forgiving or responsible or if it means things like working to make the world a better place, well, choosing is just the beginning of a lifetime of religious transformation.

 

In Greek, the word “hairesis” means “choice;” and thus choosing is an act of heresy and we who reserve our right to choose are, therefore, heretics.

 

Michael Servetus was born in Spain in 1511. As a very young man, he knew the Bible in Greek and Hebrew; he knew Latin; he understood Scholastic philosophy and the early church fathers, and he was even familiar with the Koran. At 15 he studied law in Toulouse. Having grown up in Spain, Servetus was very aware of the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution and expulsion of all non-Christians, the Jews and Muslims—initiated by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. If Christianity were the one true religion, as was typically assumed, Servetus wondered why would people risk prison, torture and execution rather than embrace Christianity whole-heartedly?

 

Servetus believed that the stumbling block for many was the doctrine of the Trinity, a teaching which to Jews and Muslims was a huge violation of monotheism. By his study of scriptures and history, where he discovered that there is no mention of the trinity in the Bible and that the early church fathers knew nothing of it, and that ideas about the Trinity did not even arise until the 4^th century, Servetus came to the conclusion that the church was in serious need of reform, that the trinity was not a central Christian teaching and indeed that the trinity is “a sterile doctrine which confuses the head and fails to warm the heart.” In 1531 Servetus published On the Errors of the Trinity.

 

In short order, in 1532, the Inquisition ordered the arrest of Servetus and for the next 20 years, he lived under an assumed name and, by the way, became a physician and years before William Harvey (he’s the guy that usually gets the credit), Servetus discovered the body’s circulatory system.

 

But his interest in theology persisted and he published another book in which he insisted that the trinity was a false doctrine, that Luther’s Reformation had not gone far enough, that the trinity was invented by Satan to confuse Christians, that God is everywhere—the complete essence of all things, and that baptism ought be understood as a sign of repentance and regeneration which, therefore, must be a conscious choice, and was not to be accepted before a person was 20 or even 30 years old. He had a lot of wonderful clear-headed convictions that threatened the foundations of the church. And so when John Calvin got hold of that book, he again ordered Servetus’s arrest and when Servetus happened to pass through Geneva, trying to get to Italy, Calvin had him captured, imprisoned and tried for heresy. On October 27, 1553, Servetus was led from his cell, bound to a stake, and with his offending books strapped to his thigh, and the fire fueled by green wood (the better to cause his suffering to be prolonged), Servetus was burned to death and his ashes scattered.

 

Servetus’s arguments about the Trinity seem somewhat quaint today, when it is difficult to get even orthodox Christians to defend their own doctrine. But Servetus is a part of our liberal mythic past—he was in some ways the first Unitarian—and he still speaks across the centuries because of his stubborn refusal to be deflected from the truth as he saw it, even though all the world disagreed.

 

Enter Sebastian Castillo, a Frenchman living in Basel, Switzerland who due to his liberal views came afoul of John Calvin. Castellio spoke out against religious persecution and asserted the right of conscience in religion. He too was hauled in for heresy and died in prison; but it was Castellio who said, “…however we differ in opinion, why cannot we love one another?… Let no one think they are doing wrong in using their mental faculties. It is our proper way of arriving at truth…Why cannot I live and say my honest word and have your love?” And here are the two sentences of Sebastian Castillo that I would have you memorize: “To burn a man is not to defend a doctrine. It is to burn a man.”

 

Now let’s see:

 

To persecute gay and lesbian couples—to deny them the 1,400 legal rights that others enjoy—this is not to defend a doctrine of marriage. It is, on the basis of religious bigotry, to persecute people.

 

To abrogate the Bill of Rights by jailing American citizens without charges or to try them in secret courts as authorized by the Patriot Act, this is not to defend a doctrine of security. It is to jail American citizens in abrogation of the Bill of Rights.

 

To do damage to a woman’s professional career because her husband told an unpleasant truth as to whether Iraqis had received weapons-grade uranium from the country of Niger is not to defend our way of life. It is to do damage to a woman’s professional career.

 

To poison the earth with greenhouse gases or to denude the landscape of trees is not to defend the doctrine of free enterprise. It is to poison and denude our mother.

 

Even closer to home, to insist in whatsoever way that another person conform to ours or someone else’s expectations or designs or demands or even our well-intentioned hopes or wishes, this is not to defend any noble doctrine. It is rather to insist that that other person bend to our will.

 

Castellio’s words may apply to the politics of our world, our nation, our workplaces, and schools and families…which is why they remain passionately and liberally religious.

 

 

Servetus may be recalled as a martyr but his death provided the occasion on which Castellio proclaimed the great commitment to reason and tolerance in matters of deepest conviction—a statement which makes him, perhaps even more than Servetus, the forerunner of modern Unitarian Universalism.

 

We are a part of, and as we go out into the world (which, by the way is the point…we don’t want you hanging around the First Parish in Bedford all week), we are all representatives of the Free Church tradition. We are not libertines; freedom comes with responsibility, even duty. We are convinced, nonetheless, that freedom of conscience is what best suits human aspirations to truth and beauty and good. It didn’t and doesn’t come cheap. Here in this sandlot may we be passionate in our heresies.

 

To end, some of my favorite doggerel, from Edmund Vance Cooke:

 

A thousand cults, a thousand creeds,

Is one a rose and the rest all weeds,

Or is each one suited to meet some needs?

Is your own so great that the rest seem small?

Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

 

Pagan, or Christian, Gentile or Jew,

How may you know that your own is true?

Not for him or for me or for others, but you,

To live by, to die by, to stand or to fall,

Why, keep it and live it, that’s all.

 

When the wolves of the world are on your back,

Does it help you to beat the mad pack back,

To laugh at the snap of the snarling pack,

Does it leap in your heart like a huntsman’s call?

Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

 

When the strong are cruel and the weak oppressed,

Does it help you to help? Does it sting in your breast?

Does it sob in your soul with a wild unrest,

To fight against might and let nothing appall?

Then keep it and live it, that’s all.

 

When the last fight comes and you take your stand,

And the sword of your strength breaks out of your hand

And the ground ‘neath your feet turns to shifting sand,

Does your religion sing when your back’s at the wall?

Then keep it, it’s yours and that’s all.