"Less Well-Known Saints"

You are doubtless aware that Halloween comes tomorrow. You are also doubtless aware that the word "Halloween" comes from two ancient words, "hallow," meaning holy or sanctified, and "eve." Halloween is the eve before "all hallows" day, better known as All Saints Day.

When the Spanish conquistadors invaded Mexico they found the indigenous people celebrating a ritual of death called "El Dia de los Muertos." Vilma Ortiz has provided the altar and some background information about this ancient ritual. Of course the Roman Catholic conquerors of Mexico failed in their attempts to prohibit "El Dia de los Muertos" as sacrilegious, and so co-opted the ritual to coincide with All Saints Day.

The big difference is that the ancient "El Dia de los Muertos" ritual honors all people who have died, while All Saints honors special people who have been declared "saints" by the Roman Catholic Church. This morning as part of our celebration of El Dia de los Muertos, I call to our attention the less well-known saints. I'm talking about the difference between "celebrity saints" and people whose contributions to human history may not be so well known, but are significant.

Charles Schultz, creator of the "Peanuts" cartoon wrote somewhere, "The people who make a difference in our lives are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones who care."

Ordinary people can make a difference. In the back of our Hymnbook there is a brief quotation from Margaret Mead which epitomizes this theme: 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has." Rosa Parks is a perfect example of an ordinary person who changed the world!

Ordinary people make a difference. That is the story of Le Chambon, a poor Huguenot village in the mountains of France. The village of Le Chambon was settled centuries ago by Protestants fleeing Roman Catholic persecution. During the Second World War, the Pastor of the small Huguenot Church, Andre Trocme and his Assistant, Edward Theis, led the people of Le Chambon in an active, non-violent and heroic resistance to the Nazi occupation forces and the Vichy regime.

You may be familiar with the documentary film, "Weapons of the Spirit," which tells the story of how this small mountain village saved about 5,000 Jews from the Nazis. On the day following the surrender of France to the Germans, Pastor Trocme encouraged his congregation to resist the Nazis with "weapons of the spirit." The people of Le Chambon responded by hiding in their homes and farms thousands of Jewish children and adults from deportation to the Nazi death camps. Pastor Trocme was subsequently awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Righteousness by the nation Israel.

I am reminding us of less well-known saints. Very few people have ever heard of Le Chambon, much less Pastor Trocme, much less the quiet but effective heroism of those Protestant Christians who when asked why they helped the Jewish people responded merely, "We helped them because they needed help." We do well to remember.

Professor Philip Hallie, who wrote the story of Le Chambon, writes about his own movement from solitude to community - to a sense of becoming part of what Universalists would call all people without regard to time or space. He made several important points in the quotation used as today's Reading.

First he talked about the importance of community which is boundless and placeless; without the normal place either in time or history. Then he adds, that community is gathered around or focused on "the preciousness of human life." For Hallie, the "north star" by which we can set our compass is awareness of the preciousness of human life, which he equates to awareness of God. I realize that some people have problems with "god talk." I am also aware that there are times when language fails, when we search for words that communicate. Hallie says awareness of the preciousness of human life is awareness of God. I repeat part of today's Reading:

"I live with the same sentence in my mind that many of the victims of the concentration camps uttered as they walked to their deaths: "Shema Israel, Adonoi Elohenu, Adonoi Echod" (Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.) For me the words "Israel" refers to all of us anarchic-hearted human beings, and the word God means the object of our undivided attention to the lucid mystery of being alive for others and for ourselves."

Hallie then concludes with what the "Shema Israel" means by quoting Rabbi Hillel:

"If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I care only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?" [Philip Hallie, "Lest Innocent Blood be Shed," pp.292-293]

El Dia de lo Muertos is a reminder that ordinary people can make a difference, sometimes a life-saving difference in human affairs. But there's more. Celebration of El Dia de los Muertos and for that matter, All Saints' and All Souls' days are reminders that you and I can be links in, this long chain of human compassion.

Some of you may have seen the musical, "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat." You probably know the story: Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and because Joseph was a spoiled brat, he was sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers. Through both hard work and good fortune Joseph rose to become Prime Minister of Egypt where he was in a position to save his family when famine struck.

Thanks to Joseph's intervention the Israelites moved into Egypt and were received as friends. However, Joseph died, and as the story says, "a Pharoah arose who knew not Joseph." The result was that the Israelites who had been protected by Joseph, now became slaves. Before his death, Joseph asked his family to swear that when they left Egypt they would take his bones back for burial in his homeland.

My sense is this story is not so much about a sentimental old man who wanted to be buried with his ancestors. It is a story about continuity. It is a story to remind the ancient Israelites and us that we are not "rootless." We participate in this Congregation as links in the chain of caring and sacrifice which is our Unitarian Universalist heritage.

Betty and I met in college, specifically Mars Hill College, a small junior college in the hills of Western North Carolina. We left Mars Hill over 50 years ago, to go to the University of Richmond from which we received our degrees. However in all those 50 years we have never forgotten Dr. Pierce of the English Department. Dr. Pierce was one of the campus "characters." She had a distinctive speech pattern which the less respectful of us loved to imitate. She was absolutely dedicated to teaching English.

She was also the person in charge of various celebrations on the campus, including the installation of officers of student government and other student groups. Year after year those installation programs never varied. All the participants wore choir robes. The outgoing officers stood on one side of the stage holding lighted candles. At a certain moment in the service those candles where passed to the incoming officers standing across the stage. By some "decree" of Dr. Pierce, at the precise moment the candles were passed, the narrator read a few lines from John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields:"

"To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
in Flanders Fields"

The point is that we are part of the stream of history. We are not what biologists call "sports." "Sport" means a mutation or deviation from parental stock. We are not mutants with questionable ancestry. We are here today, in this place, surrounded by symbols such as Chalice and Hymnbook for a reason. We are here today doing what we are doing - singing, reading, meditating, hearing a sermon - because we are part of a tradition. In the words of Philip Hallie, "We are part of a community with(out) palpable laws and a seat in space."

That is important. The Community of which we are a part is not only this particular Congregation, but a much wider Community stretching back 500 plus years to Unitarians in Transylvania. This wider community goes back three hundred and more years to Universalists in England who later came to the American Colonies. This wider community embraces not only Unitarians and Universalists but people of good will across many different religions.

What kind of community is it? How can this ageless community be described? Again I turn to Philip Hallie for the answer. This is a community which values persons. The first Principle of Unitarian Universalism is "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." We are part of a community which attempts to be aware of the preciousness of human life. We are part of a community which takes our own humanity and that of others with intentional seriousness. That is precisely why we announce and support yet another peace vigil at the death of 2,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of the citizens of Iraq.

This community is not homogenous; not made up of people who are all the same, or who think alike. Our community is eclectic with varieties of religious belief and non-belief. We are a mixture of struggling people, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. We are a community with varieties of political and social opinions.

What, then, holds this diverse community together? If we are not simply a community of time and place; of similarity of philosophy or faith, what holds us together? I believe the cohesion has to do with ethics; in Hallie's words, "the awareness of the preciousness of human life." That sounds so philosophical, let me try a more practical approach.

I have told the story of Pastor Trocme and the people of Le Chambon because that story of those persons in that time illustrate how normal, unassuming people can make a difference. The most amazing thing about Le Chambon is that when the war ended, when the story began to leak out, a few people attempted to learn why the people of Le Chambon acted as they did. Interviewers were amazed when the people of the village responded, "We cannot understand all the fuss. We helped people who needed help." When confronted by a petty official of the Vichy government demanding to know where the Jews were hiding, Pastor Trocme responded, "We do not know what a Jew is. We know only (humans)."

I have told this story because each of us has the possibility of contributing to this community of awareness: awareness of the preciousness of human life. I daresay that each one of us could tell the story of someone who made a significant difference in your life. We have all known people who touched our life for good; people who recognized and respected our humanity. In some inexplicable way we "carry their bones with us." We may never be able to repay their kindness but we can pass it on.

Here's what I mean, and it comes from the story of Pastor Trocme of Le Chambon. During the First World War, Trocme, a young Protestant youth, found refuge in the home of a Belgium Roman Catholic Priest. The name of the Priest is not known. Because young Trocme was Protestant, the Priest refused to talk about religion to the impressionably young boy, and would not allow anyone to try to convert Trocme to become Roman Catholic.

Years later in Le Chambon, Trocme remembered this kindly Priest and encouraged the Jewish children in his care to keep High Holy Days. More than that, he refused to allow any of the Jewish children who found refuge in the village to be subjected to Christian evangelism.

This is a perfect illustration of both the community and continuity of the preciousness of human life. An unknown Belgium priest was humane to Trocme, who, in turn, was humane to the Jewish refugee children in his care.

We may never have an opportunity to save persecuted refugees. However, through the continuing efforts of this Congregation and our Unitarian Universalist denomination we can care. We may never be asked to carry someone's bones back to their homeland. However we can live out the kindness which we have received and pass it along to others, thereby carrying them with us.

We are links in the chain of all people whose lives are oriented toward the "north star" of the preciousness of human life. May it be so. Amen.

Reading for the Service, October 30, 2005

"I started the research on Le Chambon in solitude. Now the dead and the surviving . . . are part of a community in which my family and I live. It is not a community with palpable laws and a seat in space. And it is not a homogenous community. It has atheists in it, devout Christians in it, and Jews. It is a community of ethical belief.
"Solitude, estrangement from our fellow human beings, is part of our lives, as it is part of the lives of all aware people in our time, but it is not the most important part of our lives. Our awareness of the preciousness of human life makes our own lives joyously precious to ourselves. In the privacy of my home, and elsewhere in this ethical community, we have chosen that awareness as true north, from which we can take the bearings of our actions and our passions.
"For me that awareness is my awareness of God. I live with the same sentence in my mind that many of the victims of concentration camps uttered as they walked to their deaths: ‘Shema Israel, Adonoi Elohenu, Adonoi Echod' (Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.) For me the word Israel refers to all of us anarchic-hearted human beings, and the word God means the object of our undivided attention to the lucid mystery of being alive for others and for ourselves. When I need commentary on the Shema in order to understand its meaning in practical terms, I recall Rabbi Hillel's summary of this belief in the preciousness of human life:

‘If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I care only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?' "
[Philip Hallie, "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed," pp. 292-293]