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And the Greatest of These3

It has been my design in this series of three sermons to suggest that the qualities of freedom, reason, and tolerance which Earl Morse Wilbur identifies in his History of Unitarianism (Wilbur 1952) are representative emphases of different periods of Unitarianism and Universalism. We begin by asserting that freedom was indispensable to the rise of Unitarian thought on the continent and Universalist faith in the colonies. Last week we posited the dominance of reason in our denomination from the nineteenth century to the present day. This morning it remains for us to see something akin to tolerance is indicated as the central emphasis of Unitarian Universalism in the years ahead. Tolerance of different opinions always has been and remains a need of our denomination. Yet that which assures us of the truest freedom and that to which reason points is something greater than tolerance.

We begin with tolerance. Our denomination has never really been conspicuous for its tolerance of diverging opinion, much as we would like to think to the contrary. At the time Wilbur’s book was published, one of the chief criticisms that appeared in reviews was that he neglected to establish tolerance as historically characteristic of our church. In European Unitarianism, freedom referred more to that of dissent than to that of upholding the church‘s position. A side of Servetus that is seldom displayed, for example, is the side that could spurn John Calvin as “impudent, ignorant, know-nothing, ridiculous, sophist, crazy, sycophant, rascal, beast, monster, criminal, murderer” (Wilbur 1952, 174). At least Servetus was correct on the last count! Nor once into the context of American liberalism did our faith become completely tolerant. One of the most remarkable demonstrations of intolerance in any denomination was the way in which Theodore Parker was ostracized, and the way in which he denounced his opponents. A contemporary example in our Church is the growing suspicion with which humanists regard theists or Unitarian Christians, and the way in which conservatives view agnostics and atheists.

If ever an emphasis upon tolerance was indicated, it is today. Yet I believe that the emphasis needed should be broader than Wilbur’s concept of tolerance. I have long felt that the concept of tolerance is limited and unsatisfactory. Strictly speaking, it means the lack of negativism. What I feel is indicated is more than passive acquiescence to existing opinion, of letting the other hold his view. What is needed is the affirmation that not only is it alright for him to hold a different view, but on the basis of understanding him, it may be the best position for him to take. Moreover, it could be an even better position for me than the one I now hold. This kind of attitude is predicated upon a security in what one is that transcends the position held and enables one to support another’s difference without being threatened.

It is clear that in carrying the idea of tolerance to its ultimate expression, we have come up with something categorically different from freedom and reason. What we have considered in the first two sermons is for the most part not ends but ways at arriving at truth. This third quality that we are concerned with this morning is one such truth itself. It is kind of faith; it is the ground of hope. It is the greatest of these. It is a profound sense of charity, of love. Two theologians on the contemporary scene that I feel make a signal contribution to our understanding of love are Martin Buber and Paul Tillich.

Buber’s small volume, I and Thou, is a classic and I recommend it to you without reservation (Buber 1958). Buber’s point is that our only significant relationships are those wherein we can think of the other as a person with needs and potentials of his own, rather than as an object to be manipulated to our own ends. True relationship, however, is not self-sacrificing, but in a paradoxical way, fulfilling. The real problem, then, becomes the ability to transcend oneself in order to fulfill oneself.

Paul Tillich gives a more or less traditional solution, although his existentialist analysis of the conditions of life I commend to your deepest consideration. Tillich’s answer is that this ability to love another comes from beyond ourselves and includes self-acceptance so that we can forget ourselves in loving others. This love is “agape,” a Greek term, in contrast to self-seeking or lustful love.

There are many other sources we could draw upon for the nature of love, such as Eric Fromm, but one other I would mention is contemporary thinking on creativity, notably Brewster Ghiselin’s volume on The Creative Process (Ghiselin 1954). The creative act, the reaching beyond oneself in something more than what previously existed, is possible only when our inner needs are met, and we lose all sense of self-consciousness. As long as there is preoccupation with self the creative act is imperiled. When such distractions are overcome and the artist can concentrate solely upon the note to be sung, for example, there is a moment when he reaches for it and all else fades into nothing, and the next moment it is there, filling the room with splendor. So, too, is love. The absorption and empathy necessary, require an integrated, secure self.

So it is that when in the presence of acceptance and affection from another we can reflect similar compassion. To return love for love is not difficult. But what of the many times when we are not in the immediate presence of love? Often, we are not equal to the situation, but sometimes we are able to initiate good-will. This is an extraordinary thing. Unlike other creatures, our response does not depend solely upon immediate and direct provocations. Somehow, we are conscious of our broader experience; the love we had known before forms the basis of security that tides us through; we have reserves of support that we can draw upon; we are compensated in ways that transcend the particular moment and are the accumulative result of past positive associations.

This is nothing more than the result of human experience, yet it transcends particular instances of human affection. We are able to respond in a given case as fully as if it were present, yet it isn’t. This miracle of a presence that isn’t yet is, that is far away and yet immediate enough to produce every bit of the response it originally inspired, is worthy of being called divine.

In each of the previous two sermons we said something about the concept of God, each one going a little further until now I am in a position to say what for me is primary in being, what may be called God.

In my first sermon I emphasized that although we may reject the traditional God of Christianity, we cannot be agnostic about life. It is on this point of human concern and care that I cannot be agnostic. In last week’s sermon I suggested that the idea of the absolute often has more significance when considered as an entity apart from man. And here, apart from men’s immediate influence, we have a force operating that is so remarkable that it merits the name of the highest we know. For me, then, God is the power of remembered love.

Search for a conception of God confronts us with reassurance and demand. There is reassurance in the memory that we are loved; there is a demand remembering love is the course we too must follow. This is the only authority that I have found acceptable to religious liberals, the authority of love. As we outgrow the authority of our parents, we are able to accept the authority inherent in being married and establishing families of our own. We are able to accept it in all of life. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Cor 13:11 KJV).

Just as man has relations other than with his fellows so I would say that this principle has other implications. The other major area in which men are related is to the natural world. This is an aspect found in Eastern religions and in transcendentalism, but not so much in Unitarian Universalism today. We are part of all that is. One member of the congregation put it to me recently as the “oneness of being and the joy of life.” I think I’d go still further and say it is a sense of belonging in the world, of at-homeness in the universe.

Just as there are times when love is remembered, so there are occasions of suffering, illness, natural violence, and death when we must be sustained as living creatures by remembering the basic fact of our acceptance into the universe. God, then, is the power of remembered love.

Yet we have still to know what is” the greatest of these.” Just as earlier we distinguished freedom and reason by saying they were both ways of arriving at truth and not a truth themselves, all we have done so far this morning is to present our conception or formulation of this reality of acceptance and peace. But the “greatest of these” is not our formulation of the truth—it is the truth itself.

This is one of the most important distinctions that I can make as a minister. There are formulations of truth, and there is the truth itself. The formulation is not the truth, it is but an expression and representation of it. In Plato’s terms, we have been dealing with but shadows of truth. Or, to return to Joachim of Flora, the promised era is not that of such forms as Father and Son, but that of Spirit.

It is the truth itself that is basic to religion. The formulation of it is secondary and is justified only to the extent to which it enhances and promotes the truth. The task of religion is to get people to live and to be the truth, rather than to utter it. In this respect our preoccupation with intellectualizing truth is potentially little better than the orthodox repetitions of dogma and prayer.

It is the primacy of truth rather than its formulation that is characteristic of the great religions and prophets of all times. Jesus, for example, never wrote anything and spoke almost entirely in parables that conveyed the spirit rather than the literal truth he lived. Lao-Tse, the Chinese sage, never found it necessary to write anything until he was about to leave his country and the gatekeeper required that he write a book before departing. Indeed, this anti-intellectualism is prominent in Eastern religions. If you interrupt a Zen Buddhist who is deep in contemplation by asking, “What is the truth?” he will allegedly throw you through the window, not in contempt, but so you will have some experience of what is real. Then, too, we have the silent worship of Quakers, and we have a man like Albert Schweitzer leaving a life of study and writing for a life of devotion to what he believes is true.

So, too, what is the greatest of these lies beyond anything we could say here today. It will always be so, that here in this hour we can try only to formulate what is true; it remains for us the rest of the week to find the real truth in our lives. As Gibran has said, “If you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children” (Gibran 1942, 89). We will often speak as if we what we say here is the truth, but at least once at the beginning of this ministry we have acknowledged that we know better.

So, I commend each of you to the silence of this other realm. I commend each of you to the experience of what is the greatest of these. The truth awaits. Nay, it is about us already. And as you venture forth, one last word: Do not be troubled if there is that which you cannot explain. There will be that which is so inscrutable that it must remain as you find it, a mystery.

. . . whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. . . . For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. (1 Cor 13: KJV)

3. Sermon delivered by the author at the Church of the Reconciliation Unitarian Universalist, Utica, New York on November 12, 1961.