The list goes on and that's the good news. Our social justice investment reflects a deep confidence in human dignity and the human prospect for a better life.

From Me to We, from Individuality to Mutuality

We began with this muse by asking what it means to be a "self." Many think of being a self as a thing, an entity, or at least a way of being you. However, there is no such thing as a self per se. Feminist theologian Carter Heyward puts it this way: "We are born in relation, we live in relation, we die in relation. There is, literally, no such human place as simply 'inside myself'. Nor is any person, creed, ideology, or movement entirely 'outside myself'."

Who you are, who I am, depends, then, on with whom we are connected, in whom we are embedded. This is no small statement, for it means that there are no monads. The self-apart is an illusion. And, contrary to popular teachings that emphasize each believer saving her own soul, quite literally, you cannot do it. We need one another. We are all in this together. We must save one another if any is to be saved. However attenuated our sense of belonging to the beloved community may be at times, it is the ultimate reality. However poorly articulated, this idea is central to contemporary Unitarian Universalism.

Now this is radical. It goes against the narcissism or self-centeredness of our society. To be fully human requires something in addition to looking out only for number one. To be fully human means paying attention to how me and we are one. It means the common good, not just my good, has to have a place in the public square - something sorely lacking in recent years.

As usual, this weekend we will see and hear perfunctory tributes to Dr. King, calling him, no doubt, the "slain civil rights leader." It is true Martin was concerned about civil rights. But he was about justice even more. We forget the context in which he was slain, arguably in reaction to his speaking against the war in Vietnam. Recently, I reread King's address, Beyond Vietnam, delivered just about a year before his death. I tell you, friends, you could substitute Iraq and hear essentially the same speech. Thirty-eight years later American ideology still worships at the altar of the gods of war, violence, and revenge.

Calling then for a "genuine revolution of values, King declared, "If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and even our nation . . . It really boils down to this. All of life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly . . . I cannot be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be." Embracing a gospel of mutuality as well as a gospel of individual liberty is the correction yet needed among Unitarian Universalists. On this, we have yet much to do.

Our Heritage and Our Living Tradition

Last Sunday, I concluded my remarks last Sunday saying, that Jesus gave us our core teaching, to love one another, and in that loving we find God or the divine. This is the ultimate we of mutuality. The very simplicity of that teaching is what makes it so strange and so wimpy. Yet, as King observed, "Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality." It is our fear of love, its joys and its obligations and a preoccupation with me that perpetuates a culture of war and violence. If we would honor Dr. King on his birthday, let us now also demand "a revolution of values."

Prophetic then, just as apt now, King thundered, "We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate . . . History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued (the) self-defeating path of hate."

Oh, don't you wish our political leaders would hear. As of this weekend, 2215 Americans have died in Iraq - 35 in just the first two weeks of this new year - and an estimated 30,000 Iraqis. The American people seem finally able to hear what a mistake we have made. King taught war-making is never the way to justice. Perhaps we will yet hear him and begin that revolution of values and let love rule instead of hate. Perhaps Unitarian Universalists will continue the radical reformation our society still needs. Perhaps.

This is the living tradition of our Unitarian Universalist faith. Let us hope that this spirit of we will become the order of the day. May it be so. Blessings, my friends. Amen.

Stare now at this second image, and ask yourself what is happening inside you as the images flips so that at times a column of blocks appears to be coming out toward you and in another you see a step-like structure leading to your left.

Both perceptions and conceptions are true simultaneously, although we cannot seem to attend to them in an "at once" mind. The gestaltists argue that many of our life experiences are of this nature, leading to false dichotomies in our understanding of what's truth or false.

2. Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self (Cambridge: Harvard, 1982).

3. Source unknown, although I think it might be in Tillich's The Courage to Be (Yale University Press, 1952).

4. The Protestant Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church has its roots in the Christian Renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries. It appears formally in Martin Luther's protest against the political structure and practices of the Church when he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517. The Reformation continued through the 16th century and provoked a so-called counter-Reformation at Council of Trent (1548-1563) as the Church defended itself by attacking Luther.

5. The Reverend Kenneth Gordon Hurto, January 8, 2006. "The Radical Reformation I: Redefining Christianity - From 'Savior' to Exemplar." Copies are available in the church Narthex or on line at http://www.uucfm.org.

6. Plato's "ideal-ism" says only the Ideal or the Form of a thing is ultimately real. Any given existing thing is a lesser representation of the truly real. Thus, there is "Table" as an idea, easily recognized among any series of flat-topped, legged pieces of furniture. Each is a table, but Table is the really real.

From this comes the notion that earthly existence is lesser, even an undesirable state from which death is a liberation or escape. If you add to this the Hebrew notion that humans have been banished by God from paradise and the goal of life is to return, then our experience lives are but an interlude, often miserable from which death is a deliverance.

However, moral conduct becomes important as to determining whether or how one arrives in the blissful estate. The Church has long maintained that, with the Jews, that God inscribes our lives in his book. At death, we face either restoration to grace, an indefinite period of purgation the Church calls 'limbo,' or a descent into the nether regions to suffer God's punishment at the hands of the rebellious angel, Satan.

Early Puritan orthodoxy put him frailty as the center-piece of its teaching, in contradiction to the Catholic teachings of forgiveness and redemption.

7. Dutchman Jacobus Arminius (1559-1609) was another influential thinker who argued for human freedom either to accept or to reject God's salvation. This idea was challenged by the orthodox as undermining God's sovereignty. The Arminians countered that it made no sense not to have choice; otherwise, the salvation was of no consequence.

8. It is an interesting side story that as the Universalists formed their theology in early 19th century America, they believe salvation was an absolute given and that God was indeed all powerful. This led to the interesting assertion that God is the author of sin - that it, sin serves God's purpose. The early Universalists also proclaim that the purpose of the church was simply to announce the good news that everyone was saved, not damned. Over-joyed with this teaching, the Universalists did not worry much about human autonomy.

9. Freedom and responsibility are necessarily co-dependent notions. You cannot be responsible if you are not free; you cannot be free if you are not responsible.

The listener will rightly observe that there are a great many people who subscribe to the notion that everything happens for a reason - often beyond our understanding. One hears this most often after some tragic occasion. Some blame victims, as was the case after the tsunami in 2005, suggesting they are receiving divine retribution for some moral failing. Many, lying in a hospital bed, body in pain wonder, "What did I do to deserve this?"

In like fashion, still others guide their lives by the soothsaying of astrology or suggestions of the "I Ching." And some refuse to take responsibility for their lives by invoking the genetic or social legacy of their families of origin, the prejudices of society, or the influence of drugs.

10. Plato: "Man is the plaything of the gods, and that is the best of him; and so we should play the noblest games." William Shakespeare echoes this same sense of helpless futility in King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." (4.1.36)

11. Traditional Western religious thinking struggles with how to account for an all-powerful God while maintaining human freedom. This leads directly to the problem of God "allowing" moral evil or simply tragedy to occur. Why would God let bad things happen to otherwise good people? And why do some people seem to get away with the nasty things they do?

Some theologians argue that God voluntarily chooses not to intervene in human affairs, in a way similar to a parent not resolving children's squabbles. God "lets" humans work out their own problems. This is the price we pay for our free, goes the argument. This is small comfort to those who are innocent bystanders caught up in the mayhem perpetrated by the sins of others, or those simply at the wrong place and the wrong time.

Among Unitarian Universalists, Emerson argued especially a theory of compensation, saying that what goes 'round eventually comes round. That is, you cannot participate in evil without it coming back to haunt you in time. Likewise, practicing the good will be its own reward. This, he thought, was a moral law in the nature of things - thereby avoiding problem. According to Emerson, the balancing of good and evil all comes out in the wash in the end.

In some modern theology, the theodicy question is answered by positing a God of limitations. Process theologians, particularly, challenge the idea of God's omnipotence in favor of a God who grieves with humanity as we suffer evil or tragedy.

Among humanistically inclined Unitarian Universalists, there is no need to call upon a God of power or limitation. Such thinkers say simply that bad stuff happens, often without rhyme let alone reason. "Rain falls on the just and unjust alike." To the extent moral evil occurs, it is an outgrowth of human frailty not God's indifference or master plan. Thus, rather than calling for divine intervention or invoking a divine excuse, many Unitarian Universalists will say we made the mess, it is up to us to clean it up.

12. Unitarian Universalist churches, along with Baptist and the United Church of Christ, take their polity or form of governance directly from the notion that only the people can decide the proper ways to worship and conduct their affairs.

Congregational polity arose directly from the challenge and opportunity of an unstructured "new world." When the Puritans sought to organize themselves, not only where they rebelling against the political aristocracy of kings, they were rejecting as well the dominance of the Episcopal and catholic clergy. Taking a text from the Bible, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I," New England settlers defined the church, not by creed or apostolic authority, but as, simply, "the gathered faithful," who pledge simply "to walk together" in pursuit of God's truth and will.

Congregational churches, including ours, premise their work on "covenants" or "affirmations" which speak to intent and purpose rather than to church doctrine. Here is an example of the Salem, Massachusetts congregation that beautifully captures the sentiment, adopted in 1629 and still used by that congregation:

13. In addition to its challenge to the liberal's theology, Emerson's Divinity School Address (1838) also dismissed any reliance on the wisdom of others as at all important. His earnest desire for the American spirit to break free of its dependence on European thought seemed to convey a rejection of any and all authority. See Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson (U of California Press, 1996) for a wonderful literary biography that traces the influences on Emerson's thought.

While many of our Unitarian Universalist congregations are named in his honor, it should be noted that Emerson failed in his ministry and he did not relate well to the larger movement of liberals of his day. It is also true that the other leading lights of Transcendentalism (especially Theodore Parker [1810 - 1860] and Octavius Brooks Frothingham [1822 - 1895]) were more successful in creating fan clubs than lasting churches. The humanistic component of our faith tradition similarly has been more concerned with doctrine than with building lasting structures for its articulation.

The institution builders without whom we would long since have disappeared are mostly forgotten. Just one example: The great Henry Whitney Bellows (1814 - 1882), nearly single-handedly responsible for the creation of the National Conference of Unitarian Churches in 1865, is mostly unknown outside of the All Souls Unitarian Church of New York City, where he served as pastor for 44 years. Without his leadership and that of others like him, there would be no Unitarian Universalist living tradition.

For a comprehensive treatment of this sermon's general thesis that we have over-valued individualism at the expense of creating strong support for the common good, see Robert Bellah's challenging Ware lecture, Unitarian Universalism in Societal Perspective, delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association's annual General Assembly in New York in 1998, http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures.html.

14. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (Bantam Books, 1974).

15. Joseph Tuckerman (1778 - 1840). See the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography for a brief story of his life: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/index.html.

16. To have a full appreciation of how Unitarian Universalists have implemented our faith in human worth and dignity, our commitment to a just and equitable society, see the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography for a much larger list of people - and the institutions we Unitarian Universalists have created in spite of our anti-institutionalist bias.

17. In our most recent attempt to consolidate our convictions, the Unitarian Universalist Association's statement of principles gives high priority to a sense of mutuality. It says, in part, "We Unitarian Universalists affirm and promote - Justice, equity and compassion in human relations and the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." Adopted, 1985; revised, 1992.

18. Carter Heyward, The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation (University Press of America, 1982). Feminist theology emphasizes relationship and the ethical obligations of community in contrast with patriarchal theology that focuses on individual rights. Whether such clear gender differences is inherent or a social outcome remains in debate.

19. The notion of "the common good" dates back to the early Greeks in Plato and the Romans in Cicero. In this A Theory of Justice (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), contemporary ethicist John Rawls defined the common good as "certain general conditions that are...equally to everyone's advantage." The idea of the self-apart fosters an ethics of individual rights that, absent the leavening force of an ethic for the common good, rapidly descends into a Hobbesean non-ethic of each against all.

It takes a large soul to be able to make this shift, for often the good of the all will require some modest sacrifice on the part of individuals. Yet, without such sacrifice (trivially illustrated by our willingness to stop and wait our turn at traffic intersections), chaos ensues. The very notion of society or social order requires balancing these two kinds of rights, in such a way as the gestalt image contains both a vase and two faces.

20. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam, an address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, 4 April 1967 New York City.