I want to begin my sermon by telling you a little bit about what it was like for me to grow up Unitarian Universalist. For much of my childhood, I didn’t feel that different from my peers. In the South, where I’m from, families go to church, and mine didn’t seem special or weird. It was all just church.

But, eventually, as the pains of growing up began to settle in for myself and those around me, I began to notice that my church gave me something that other kids didn’t have. I started to feel like I had this secret superpower, a tool I could use to protect myself and maybe even my friends.

It was simple really, this tool: it was the steady, unflinching knowledge that I and everyone I knew contained a divine spark. There is this essential part of each of us that has the potential for goodness, for love. The knowledge that we are all worthy of sharing our spark with the world, of loving and being loved in return.

It sounds cliché, and overly simple right? But it’s a radical, life-saving Good News that can hold us in storms and remind us of our inherent wholeness, even when we feel so broken. A truth that so many people are never told.

You see, this was a Good News that so many people I’ve loved have needed. My queer friends who love differently than their families or communities believe is good and right. My friends whose brains work differently than others. My friends who were raised in cold and unsafe homes. They had been told in different ways and different places that there was something inherent about them that was wrong, broken. And who knew how, or if, they could ever be made right again?

This superpower that my church gave me did not make it so that I could magically fix my friends. I couldn’t just offer them a single revelation that they had inherent worth and dignity and then poof, they would never know brokenness again. No, it did not even mean that I could love them into feeling ok.

It just meant that I could love them, fiercely, and from an honest place that honored them. It meant that I could be one person in the world to celebrate their divine spark, to know the goodness and love they were capable of.

And this is what we do when we come together in church, right?

I have heard so many stories in my life of Unitarian Universalists who were saved by this kind of Love. They came to church and were given a chance to get intimate with their inherent wholeness. A chance to practice honoring the divine spark in everyone around them. A chance to love and be loved in return.

What I am talking about is the first of our Unitarian Universalist principles, which states:

We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

During our Sunday worship services this summer, we are taking time to slow down to explore and reflect on each of these principles, all eight of them, since our adoption of number eight last year. In my time with you all this past year, I have heard it said on more than one occasion that some of you wish we talked explicitly about the principles more, so here we are.

It is my hope that these services will inspire you to do your own reflection, to be in conversation about our UU values and how they come alive in our lives: as individuals, and as a church community.

I need to give a caveat though. Last week, many of us attended the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly, both at the Convention Center, just across the river, and online. At this annual business meeting, one central agenda item was what we’re calling the Article 2 Study Commission, which is a group of people who have been tasked with examining and recommending revisions to Article 2 of our Association’s Bylaws.

I know, it sounds tedious and bureaucratic. But, Article 2 is the portion of our bylaws that houses our Principles, as well as our Statement of Purpose, our Sources, and a couple of other pieces. This revision process is a big deal, one that will help us to align our written statements about who we are with the faith community we are evolving into.

In just a couple of weeks, we’ll actually have a whole worship service dedicated to reflections on this General Assembly. You’ll get a chance to hear from delegates of this congregation about what they learned, and what they are taking away with them. I hope you’ll be there. But I wanted to share this piece about the Article 2 Study Commission now, because it is relevant to our conversation about the Principles.

If you’re like me, this process might make you nervous to hear about. I’ve spent my whole life anchored by these principles as they stand. Will they change so much in this revision process that it feels like something has been lost? Will we lose beloved community members who might no longer see themselves and their values reflected in new principles? At this point, these ok questions to be asking.

But I want to offer a note of encouragement. I have a lot of trust in the process. You see, this work began years ago. It is slow, and the members of this commission are involving as many people as they can, at all levels of our denomination. This is not happening behind closed doors, it is a participatory, democratic process we are undertaking as Unitarian Universalists, and no changes will be solidified until an official vote in a couple of years.

And we’ve done this type of process before, too. I often forget, but our current set of principles wasn’t actually adopted until 1985, which wasn’t that long ago. The original Purpose and Principles from 1961 looked so different than what we know today, with a lot of language like “dignity of man” and “ideals of brotherhood.

There was even one principle which enshrined Judeo-Christian heritage as the supreme expression of God’s love above other religious traditions. Knowing where we are now as a faith community, doesn’t that feel so outdated?

So it is time again to examine our statements of belief. And there is a real beauty here, because our faith is non-credal. This means that we do not believe that any single combination of words to hold an ultimate and complete truth. Rather, we know that the process of evolution is what puts the life in this living tradition.

I apologize. It’s a bit of a long caveat. But I want to be clear about what we’re doing this summer when we explore our eight principles. We are not here to study the Word to become better Unitarian Universalists. We certainly don’t need to memorize the list.

Rather, this worship series is about reflecting on our values as a practice, and we can use the principles in their current form to do this. To explore what a life lived Unitarian Universalist looks like. What are the essential truths here that we know we will carry forward into the new day? How can we deepen our understanding and commitment on this journey?

It is in this roundabout way that we arrive, at principle one. I’ll read it out again.

We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

This principle, and its superpower genius, really, has two parts to it:

First, it says that I, the unique individual that I am, have inherent worth and dignity. I am worthy of respect. I can exercise power in the world. Just by being born into this world, I have done all I need to earn my place, and nothing can take that away. Not even all the worst things I’ve done or all the worst things that have happened to me. I am not a saint, but I can choose to lean into this spark within, and be a blessing upon the earth.

Second, if this is true for me, this is true for everyone else upon this earth too. You and I are the same in this way.

You, the unique individual that you are, have inherent worth and dignity. You are worthy of respect. You can exercise power in this world. Just by being born into this world, you have done all you need to earn your place, and nothing can take that away. Not even all the worst things you’ve done or all the worst things that have happened to you. You are not a saint, but you can choose to lean into that spark within, and be a blessing upon the earth.

And that includes everyone. Even people who make decisions that I don’t like, even people who make big, hurtful mistakes. This principle helps me to love others, to recognize their inherent wholeness despite apparent brokenness. 

And this is part of what leads us to be so justice-oriented, right? We have faith in this wholeness and want to live in a world that affirms it as fully as our God does. We want a world that makes it possible for people to lean into their goodness, to be treated with respect, in honor of their full dignity.

Let’s be honest, this, to me, is what hurts so much about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe versus Wade. Legal abortion should certainly be a healthcare option that is available to people who are seeking it, for whatever reason. This human act to bring a new life into the world is a sacred one that MUST be done by choice, without coercion, or criminalization. The new policies of this Post-Roe world that we are now living in make a mockery of our first principle.

In a world that affirms the worth and dignity of every person, we would grant every person full bodily autonomy, and trust them to make the reproductive decisions that are right for them.

Let me repeat: affirming the worth and dignity of every person means trusting them to make decisions about what they do with their own bodies. Trusting that those decisions are sometimes difficult, sometimes twinged with loss, but always sacred. It’s infuriating, heart wrenching to think of how many people will be denied their bodily autonomy in the coming months and years. To think of how many will suffer trauma, prosecution, and death as a result of trying to assert their bodily autonomy.

In our aching world, we need the vision of this first principle. We need its fierce love, like a secret weapon that we know can’t be taken away. Even when the situation feels so dire, we at the very least, know that judges, politicians, police, cannot take away anyone’s inherent worth and dignity, especially not the black and brown and LGBTQ people they most despise.

This principle, at its best, can save us from denying ourselves and one another. It helps us to see each other as whole, despite it all. Rooted in that place of wholeness, we can better love one another, too.

…

When Reverend Tom introduced our reading this morning, he promised that I would return to it in the sermon. So here goes:

In the reading, Jensen writes,

Don’t argue with salvation when it arrives on your shores. Don’t try to dismiss or deny it. Give it your undivided attention. Do not be ashamed of how or why or when you’ve found it.

Your journey here has been sacred.

Salvation. It’s a big word, and a hard one for those of us who don’t believe in a celestial kingdom waiting for our souls when we die. For those of us who don’t believe there’s anything we need to do to be more worthy of divine love than we already are.

But, salvation is an important word for us as Unitarian Universalists. Because the Universal part of our name refers to Universal Salvation, the original doctrine of our forbears that proclaimed God is Love. And no God named Love would send their precious creation to an eternity of suffering.

Early Universalists meant it when they said we were all saved. Of course, there was some diversity in terms of the specifics of how and under what conditions, but that’s to be expected. Do people need a time to purge and atone for their errors on earth before entering heaven? There are many questions to ask. But the point was that no one, no one, was so far from God that they could not be reconciled through love.

For me, salvation is less about what happens when we die, but the miracle that we get to live into the Beloved Community here on earth, and in these bodies. And the knowledge that each of us has inherent worth and dignity helps me reach out for that Beloved Community.

This principle helps me love my friends and neighbors more fiercely, no matter how much we ache, no matter how much the world tries to deny people their dignity. We are not worthy because of our accomplishments. Not because of the things we have, the work we’ve produced, the way that we look, or anything that our lives of striving have achieved for us.

We are worthy because we are here: we messy humans with a divine spark in each of us. Worthy, always, no matter what, of loving and being loved. We are saved each time we remember this.

So how do we live this principle? We take it seriously. We let it challenge us, surprise us. From our reading this morning:

Don’t argue with salvation when it finds you where you least expect it. In an empty parking lot. On a kitchen floor. In the eyes and arms of a beloved. Don’t try too hard to count its many ways–they’re immeasurable…

Don’t argue with salvation when it stirs in your heart. When it brings you to act for others. When it calls you to street corners and picket lines. Don’t question it too harshly, to the point of missing it as it passes through. Savor it with every taste of hope and good news. Don’t be afraid to bring that blessed, good news to others–to let your beautiful body carry its light, though heavy burden…

Surrender in those moments when you find yourself in its presence. Yield to it with an open, clay heart.

As we go from this place, out into this new week, I invite you to pay more attention to the ways that our first principle is working in your life and molding your clay heart. Are there ways you are shutting its holy, saving truth out? Denying it or forgetting it?

Are there opportunities to come alive for others? To fiercely love your friends and neighbors? To show up more fully so that this world might better honor the worth and dignity of all?

Our hearts can always open wider, know truth more deeply, love more fiercely. Let’s practice this, together.

Topics: Our UU Principles