by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together in this time and place

To rediscover the gift of free religious community—

To renew our faith in the goodness and beauty of life—

And to reaffirm the way of the open mind and full heart.

Come, let us worship together!

This past July Cecilia Kingman Miller led 18 of us on a trip to Budapest, where we established a partner church.  We traveled on, then, to Transylvania, part of what you now call Romania, to visit other partner churches in our movement—there, during the Reformation period, Unitarianism began in Europe, and there is its heart, still. 

Today some of us who went on that journey are going to share with you some of our experiences, and some of the ways those experiences have changed us.  Until the “Velvet Revolution” in 1986 in Czechoslovakia and then the subsequent revolutions throughout Eastern Europe, these countries had been under Communist rule for 30 long years, and their religious life suffered greatly.  Church congregations shrank in size, believers were harassed and denied privileges and sometimes worse.  Seminaries were shut down.  But these people bravely persisted, and now they are re-establishing their religious life once again. 

Cecilia is an enthusiastic member of the partner church program and has been to Transylvania several times, and badly wanted our church to be partnered.  When we had the opportunity, then, to partner with Budapest, she asked me to go, and I’m so glad that I did, because I was truly changed by this journey—truly connected for the first time with our Unitarian heritage, as were all of us who went.  And now two of our pilgrims—Bill Bateman and Camille Wright—will speak to you about what their experiences meant to them.

From Camille Wright

Kedves Baratok (Dear Friends), my name is Camille Wright.  Unlike Marilyn and Bill, I have not been Unitarian for very long—just the past 3 years after a 30-year hiatus from church—although I feel very much at home here.

It was with a great deal of anticipation and trepidation both that I joined the pilgrimage to Hungary and Transylvania this past summer.  Anticipation for the opportunity to meet our new partner church members and learn much more about this “new to me” Unitarian faith; and trepidation, knowing that I am very much a novice and not very comfortable when it comes to discussions and experiences of a spiritual nature (which is, after all, much of what a pilgrimage is about).

I had many extraordinary experiences over the course of two weeks as we all did.  In fact, my expectations for this journey were far, far exceeded by the end of it and I am grateful to Cecilia and all of my fellow pilgrims for making it so.

I was delighted first by the warmth and genuine excitement of those welcoming members of the First Unitarian Church of Budapest.  I can hardly describe for you how lucky I feel and how humbled to have these new acquaintances, fast becoming friends, in my life.  I am grateful for the things they have already taught me about their history, beliefs and struggles, the sharing of their food and personal stories and dreams for the future, their curiosity and desire to know us and our beliefs, and to nurture an active, ongoing relationship. 

Arpad Gazdag, my host in Budapest, is a passionate young man, self-taught in English who reads Erich Fromme and is quite the radical within the ranks of Transylvanian-bred Unitarians.  He loves to engage in philosophical enquiry and actively pursued conversations with us about what Unitarians in the U.S. believe:  are we Christians or humanists or atheists or what?  He is intrigued that we can be of such a huge spectrum of underlying religious beliefs and still belong to one church.  When he asked me what I believe, I really had to pull myself together and face my anticipated anxiety in this regard.  I spent the rest of my pilgrimage pondering that very question and being more aware of the spiritual and emotional impact of what I heard and saw through the remainder of our journey.

As we made our way from Hungary through Transylvania, we stopped in the small city of Torda.  There we paused for a short time to visit a small, very old, now Catholic but once Unitarian church of great historical significance to Unitarians.  I felt a presence of spirit there that I have felt very few other places during my life.  I stepped into the narthex and saw a marble plaque posted at one end, and this is what it said:  IN THIS CHURCH, AT THE DIET OF TORDA HELD IN 1568, WAS PROCLAIMED FOR THE FIRST TIME THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIOUS AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION.

It literally shook me and I started to cry.  As the rest of the pilgrims gathered and we prepared for a short worship, I could not stop crying for thinking about the intellectual leap and spiritual dedication and outright courage it took for Frances David and his convert King John Sigismund to make such a radical declaration at a time of extraordinary religious conflict, when many were being martyred for espousing changes in the practice of Christianity. 

In subsequent years Catholicism again reigned and reined in the Unitarians, restricting and ultimately arresting the continued evolution of the faith, leading to the martyrdom of Francis David in 1579 for refusing to be so restricted.

My appreciation for and dedication to Unitarian Universalism was cemented in that moment at Torda.  I know I have much more to learn and to do, but I certainly know more fully now why I am at home as a Unitarian.

From Bill Bateman

My name is Bill Bateman and I had the pleasure of going to Eastern Europe with a group of First Church pilgrims.  I’ve been asked to share a few of my thoughts and memories with regards to the pilgrimage.  Before I do I want to say thank you to Cecilia Kingman Miller for preparing us so well for pilgrimage and for shepherding us so lovingly.  Kersernem Sepen Cecilia, Chocolom.

There are so many things that I would like to tell you about but can’t take the time this morning:  the family I stayed with; activities with First Unitarian Church of Budapest; Marilyn preaching from their high pulpit; our group singing in front of the church; poppy seed strudel; dancing with Camille—Koloshvar and Udvarhay; guests of honor of Bishop Szabo; two nights in Unitarian Hungarian High School dormitory; Unitarian archives—mid-16^th Century; the difficulties Hungarian Unitarians have experienced during the past 80-odd years and counter-reformation.

But I’m going to tell you about something that came as a complete surprise to me as a result of my participation in this journey.

The moment of surprise came for me the final night we were in Budapest before going on to Transylvania.  That first week we spent worshipping, eating, talking, sightseeing and learning about the members of First Unitarian Church of Budapest and they in turn were learning about us.

I had spent those few days observing the differences in the practices of the church in Budapest, the different experiences the congregants had had living in a Communist country, the pride they had of their history, and what the idea of partnership meant for them.  And then it hit me.  As we were participating in a guided group, Hungarians and Americans, sharing our hopes and ideas for partnership, sitting around the pulpit of that historic church—it hit me.  All of a sudden I started to question what my involvement here at First Unitarian was all about.  Why did I do what I do?  What does it mean to me?  And what appreciation . . . what appreciation do I have for it?  I had not come to Budapest for any self-examination, and yet there it was.

I feel happy and satisfied with my participation here at First Church.  Yet, they gave me a gift of a mirror—not in the literal sense.  It was as I looked into their faces, and learned their stories, I was seeing myself and my participation here at First Church.  I felt challenged and humbled to embrace a faith that I had chosen freely, and for so many years, lightly, and to gain a greater appreciation for it in light of the fact that these wonderful people, my new friends, most of whom had not chosen this faith, they were born into it, they had suffered to keep it alive.  They intimately knew its history of persecution, and in some cases had suffered their own mistreatment at the hands of others.

In the end, it was at the castle ruins in Deva, where our group of pilgrims made sure each one of us reached the top of that challenging hike, some of our group had conditions that made that hike particularly difficult.  I felt blessed to be a part of such a group.

It was there, high on that hill in Deva, that I felt so strongly the need for reflection.  We had a worship service of us pilgrims, at the site where David Ferenc, or as we know him Francis David, the founder of Unitarianism, was imprisoned and had died for his beliefs as a Unitarian.  We were there, in the open air, with a few tourists who were exploring the ruins, unaware of the significance this site held for us.  Standing in front of the entrance to the dungeon where David Ferenc died for his beliefs, I had to ask—how could I take something lightly that others had been willing to die for?

Homily

It is hard to put into words the feelings I have about my experiences in Budapest and Transylvania—let’s just say that my heart got stretched, and I became a more thankful person.  Camille spoke with her tears—well, I found myself in tears more than once during our journey.  For example, when I was given this lovely stole, just before I left, commissioned by Jozsef’s mother, and completed by the seamstress only by staying up until the wee hours of the night to finish it in time. 

And then I fell into tears again in the Catholic Church Camille spoke of, the formerly Unitarian Church, where the first pronouncement of religious freedom in the world was spoken, and was spoken by our people.  If you study the history of the Radical Reformation, you will learn that many of our people were martyred for their belief in religious freedom.  Their companions in the faith would sing as these brave ones were taken to their deaths.  Standing there in that church, I could hardly speak as I realized that people long ago, our people, cared enough about freedom of belief to actually sacrifice their lives.  What distinguishes Unitarianism today?  What makes us different from any other liberal denomination?  It’s the freedom.  We have no dogma that you have to sign on to, to be a member here.  In fact, we insist that you find your own way, that you obey the dictates of your own conscience.  There is no authority—no scripture, no priest or minister, no decree from above—there is nothing that takes precedence over what your heart tells you is right.  How could it be other?

And then I was in tears again after I struggled up the steep hill to the castle (and I say struggled because I was one of those who had to be helped, having split my foot open in a wild Romanian dance the night before trip), when we then finally arrived where Francis David died in the dungeon—really, a hole that he was dropped down into, when he was already ill, and where he died three months later.  And the crime he was charged with?  The crime of “innovation.”  He was told he was not to continue to learn and change his theological beliefs, but he was to adhere to the status quo.  His crime was learning, growth.  And again, who are we as a people?  We are people who know that revelation is never static—that it is always and ever unfolding.  What we believe today we may or may not believe tomorrow, for we are ever open to new truth as it may be revealed to us.

Once again I was in tears when I went into the archives at Kolsovar and saw the manuscripts going back to the 16^th century, some momentous and some ordinary, like records of church board meetings—these are the things, the endless meetings, that keep institutions alive.  These manuscripts were being put on microfiche by a dedicated graduate student, hour after unselfish hour.  What hit me there was the power of the word, and how the word lasts, and how we are people of the word, and how as a writer, how much words mean to me.

After the pilgrimage ended for the group, I went on the Prague and continued my learning.  While I was there I stayed in property that belongs to the Prague church, and I went to that church on Sunday, and sat under a portrait of Chapek, the minister who many of you know about who presided over a church of 3,000-4,000 people before the Nazis came.  He continued to speak his truth from the pulpit, and he was arrested, and died in a concentration camp.  The church has been reduced now to a shadow of its former self.  When I went, there were only around 20 worshipers or so, and they were mostly elderly.  If you were a churchgoer during the Communist era, you would very probably not find work, or not be admitted to college.  It was a strange feeling, being there, still almost feeling the fear among the people to speak openly. 

I returned from my travels understanding how precious religious freedom is, and how easily we take it for granted—we who have never really had to fight for it, or sacrifice anything for it.  I came away so proud of being a Unitarian, with a heritage of radical freedom, and to know that the desire I have so strongly to be free to say what I wish to say, be who I can be, could have found fruition only in this Unitarian Universalist movement.

These are times in which many freedoms are threatened.  The threats are no longer subtle—they are right in our face.  And institutions such as ours, which insist on freedom of expression and on democratic governance—both in the church and in the state—are crucial just now. 

Our partner church minister Jozsef and his wife Maria and possibly other members from the Budapest congregation will be visiting here in the spring, and Jozsef will preach.  Then Cecilia will lead another group later in the spring back to Budapest.  I hope many of you will consider taking this opportunity to do what we did—to connect with our Unitarian heritage and to stretch your heart in ways you can hardly imagine.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we humbly ask forgiveness for taking for granted the freedoms we have in this country and in this church.  May we be thankful for what others have given, even their very lives, that we might be free.  And may we in turn do our part to make our church strong and to make our lives be witnesses for justice and witness for truth, as we are called to do in our own day, in our own time.  So be it.  Amen.  

BENEDICTION

Go now, with thankfulness in your heart for our great heritage of free faith, and vow to uphold it, as we are called to do, in our own day.  Go in love and go in peace.

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Copyright 2004, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.