"A Sermon for United Nations Sunday"

If you are beginning to wonder, as we move closer to Election Day, whether the differences that divide our country can ever be healed . . . If you are asking yourself whether your preoccupation with current events and politics is verging on despair . . . If you are doing what good citizens do, throwing yourself into political campaigns, getting out the vote, and reading every op-ed piece that you can get your hands on . . . You are not alone.

Yet it still feels lonely and overwhelming to contemplate the enormity of the problems we face. There is only so much we can do, one person at a time. And politics divides people. We may feel comfortable enough when we're among people who share our views, but we don't know how to reconcile ourselves with those who oppose us. We don't want to. There seems to be so little common ground. As critical as the outcome of this election may be, our country will remain fraught with disagreement whoever wins, whatever the course our leaders choose.

You may wonder what contribution our church can make, beyond providing a few quiet moments on Sunday morning to take us out of ourselves and reflect in peace. We have had a presentation on the ballot issues and a contingent of people working on getting out the vote. I have asked myself repeatedly this fall, how I can make our worship services relevant but not political, and personal but not partisan. For there really isn't any other topic right now. There is this great big preoccupation that hangs over us like a cloud - a preoccupation so pervasive that only the Red Sox could break through it - this weight, this anxiety, this election is all we are really able to think about these days.

What can a church like ours do for this preoccupation? We could avoid the subject, simply talk about other things. It might be safer that way. But then we would miss the opportunity to learn what our tradition can teach us about our faith in times like these.

What a church like ours can do is help us accept that our values inevitably draw us into the civic arena and the immediacy of current events. We are activists and concerned citizens, who participate in the democratic process and feel our share of responsibility for what happens in our world. We get caught up in the public debates of the day. We take positions and don't play it safe. The feeling of vulnerability that many of us have right now is a direct consequence of our involvement. Sometimes that can make us feel quite alone.

Our values also ask us to look beyond what is immediate and current, however, toward a larger reality, a meaning that endures and sustains us over the long haul. A church like ours can help us see that larger reality, which can give us perspective and show us we are not alone. That connection is vital and central to who we are. Everything about our tradition and our history has taught us that there is power in the affiliation of the individual with the community - whether that is each of us coming together in this one congregation, or each of us acting on what it means to be a citizen of the world.

Our Unitarian Universalist statement of the values that we covenant to affirm and to promote is a list of seven principles. The principles begin with our respect for the individual, "the inherent worth and dignity of every person," and go from there to our "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." We always move from the individual to the universal, from local concerns to global consciousness. This movement is inherent in our faith, despite our independent spirit and stress on individual freedom. There is always something larger than ourselves - a reality that needs us as much as we need it.

The path from individual to global involves many values we cherish, including an emphasis on justice, equity and compassion, an acceptance of each other, and a commitment to the democratic process. These are values we try to practice together as members of this church. But our faith has never been confined to the individual, not even to the individual congregation, or to Unitarian Universalism itself. We have always looked beyond ourselves for the strength and the imagination to bridge unsettling differences, because we can't always handle them on our own.

Not every disagreement can be settled one on one. Sometimes the power of reconciliation can be invoked only by entrusting ourselves to a larger reality. That larger reality can be a spiritual perspective. Or it can be an institution people create. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission brought resolution after the dismantling of its brutal apartheid system, accomplishing what no one could have done alone.

We seek an ever-widening vision to move us out of ourselves, to become part of something powerful, universal, and healing. Our sixth principle states that we affirm and promote "the goal of world community, with peace, liberty and justice for all." We understand that our individual ability to act as citizens - of Santa Monica, the world, or creation itself - is only as good as our relationship to a reality larger than ourselves. Without it, we are on our own, finding it increasingly difficult to sustain energy and hope. We need the connection to institutions designed to handle difference even when we cannot. Through the power of community, in our church or in our world, we individuals learn how to live together.

And that is why today, United Nations Sunday, is a day Unitarian Universalists observe each year. It is a time to confirm the global consciousness our tradition cherishes, and to remember our historic connection to our world community. A lot may be at stake in this and every election, but the enduring commitments we have made as Unitarian Universalists will remain and will sustain us whatever the future brings.

Our history with the United Nations goes all the way back to the years before its formation. Both Unitarians and Universalists, two separate groups before 1961, and already active in the League of Nations, closely monitored the founding of the UN in 1945. By 1946, the Unitarians had appointed a delegate. In the 1950's, Unitarians and Universalists voted resolutions in support of the United Nations and convened the first annual United Nations seminar, a gathering that continues to this day.

Unitarian Universalists have an office at the United Nations. It was created in 1962, when US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, a Unitarian, wrote to the newly merged Unitarian Universalist Association and suggested that each congregation appoint an envoy to the United Nations. Adlai Stevenson was eager for our churches to promote "knowledge and understanding" of the UN.

"In this disastrous and shrinking world," he wrote with insight and prescience, "it is no longer possible - if it ever was - for local communities to be more secure than the surrounding world. Our ultimate security therefore lies in making the world more and more into a community . . ." And he added, "All of you have the opportunity to share in the answer, and thus help build a peaceful world."

The Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office set up shop the same year. Today it resides at UN Plaza in New York, and has official status as a member of the UN Economic and Social Council. We participate in the Faith and Ethics Caucus for the International Criminal Court, a Working Group on Iraq, and a Working Group on Israel and Palestine. One of the most successful programs at the United Nations Office has been the annual workshop for youth, which has developed into a new program to prepare young people of high school and college age for global leadership.

The UU-United Nations Office is a small operation, but its work - encouraging and educating a global consciousness - is visionary. In these fragmenting times, it is reassuring to know that we are part of an international movement to bring disparate nations together in search of a sustainable world. Elections come and go, but the search will continue. We Unitarian Universalists will always be part of it.

We are civic creatures, always expending ourselves one way or another as an expression of our faith that a small group of "thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world," as Margaret Mead once said. We may be small, but our influence can be as wide as our vision. And that vision is one of mutual respect and the hope for reconciliation.

As we hurtle forward into the remaining days before the election, we have many hopes. The stakes seem high, and everyone has a lot to lose. So keep before you the vision of the larger world to which we all belong, of people who are not just of this nation or that party, but of all people everywhere. That larger world calls to us, saying whatever our differences and however bitter the opposition may be, we belong to a larger reality, which heals us and teaches us how to live together. We are not alone. Soon it will be time to find each other again.

The history of the Unitarian Universalist-United Nations Office can be found on the web at http://www.uu-uno.org.