"Glory, Glory: A Memorial Day Sermon"

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on.” Julia Ward Howe, 1862.

“Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, and each bearing after her own time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.” Julia Ward Howe, 1870.         

In a religious body based on the principle of radical hospitality, in a faith community build on the covenantal affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person – a group of people can come together with the intention of creating an atmosphere – a way of being together – that allows for, even encourages, vigorous and civil discourse. In such an atmosphere ideas can be respectfully expressed, respectfully heard, and respectfully challenged. New and different ideas can and should be welcomed, examined, incorporated into the ongoing life of said community. In such a place, a place made up of people who have come together in voluntary association so that they can live and grow in faith – in such a place ideas, the fruit of reason, can deepen and become more nuanced. In such a place concepts can be tested against deeply held ethical principles and spiritual convictions. In such a place visions can be cast, small and narrow hopes can be broadened, fears can be challenged, a broader and more generous way can be found.          

In a religion based on the principle that all adherents are called to spiritual growth, and to the encouragement of spiritual growth in others, people of vastly different life experiences can come together seeking truth. Not THE TRUTH, but the truths of their lives. When the truths of those individual lives meet and merge, larger truths emerge. Not THE TRUTHS, but truths that serve as guideposts on the shared pilgrimage through life.

In such a place, people can come together eager for challenge and change. In just such a place as this – for this is the place I have been speaking of, the place where you the members have gathered in voluntary association in order to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person and to practice acceptance of one another and an encouragement to spiritual growth, where you have come seeking a safe place in which to carry out the free and responsible search for truth and meaning – in this very place together you become the embodiment of liberal religion.

You incarnate the deeply held conviction that the purpose of the church is transformation. It is the purpose of this church to - paraphrasing James Luther Adams – take hold of people stuck in old and limited and unhelpful ways of thinking and change them. The purpose of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando is the transformation of individuals and through them the transformation of society itself. Given all of that, we must take seriously the imprecation of our nation’s president to truly celebrate Memorial Day.

President Obama asks that we look beyond the picnics and the fireworks and remember that Memorial Day was established as a national holiday to honor the sacrifice of those who have served in our armed forces; particularly those who lost their lives in that service.

As people of liberal faith our particular challenge is to honor that sacrifice without resorting to a senseless glorification of war. This is no easy task. Too often religious institutions have erred on one side or the other of that delicate balance. Too often churches, even those who claim to have been founded by the very Prince of Peace, have enthusiastically beaten the drums of war without consideration of the costs. On the other side, churches that take seriously the ethical claim of pacifism have failed to recognize and honor the very real lives and deaths of  their own sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.

So let us, in the grand tradition of liberal religion, take on the challenge of holding in creative tension two things:  the need to look war honestly in the face and call it what it is and the need to celebrate Memorial Day.

Let us begin by standing in body or spirit in memory of the women and men who have lost their lives in the service of their country. (Pause)

“The young dead soldiers do not speak. Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them? They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.

They say: we were young. We have died. Remember us.

They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.

They say: whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say. It is you who must say this.

They say: We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.” (Pause)

Please be seated.

Not an easy task. Fortunately we have sources of help in our tradition. We have, as one of the sources of our faith “the words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.”

This morning I want to introduce you to one of those women, the 19th century Unitarian Christian, abolitionist, suffragist, poet and orator, Julia Ward Howe. I chose to preach about her this morning for one simple reason: the evolution of her faith transformed her thinking, over and over again. In other words, she changed her mind. And one of the things she changed her mind about was the meaning of war and peace.

Julia Ward was born in 1819 to a well-to-do family who followed a traditional Calvinist Episcopal religious tradition. Her mother died when she was young, and she went to live with an aunt. When her father also died she was taken in by another relative who followed a more liberal religious tradition. Julia became a Unitarian.

At the time, Unitarianism was still very much a Christian religion. They believed in a loving, personal God; they believed in the teachings of Jesus as sufficient guideposts for living an ethical life. They were radical Christians in that they did not believe that theirs was the only true path to salvation, and they were dedicated to a life of deeds, not creeds.

Julia attended a Unitarian church served by a fairly well-known preacher: Theodore Parker. Samuel Gridley Howe, who would become Julia’s husband, also attended this church.

Samuel was a dedicated abolitionist and social reformer. He was the Director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and he was active in reforming the care of the mentally ill. He was inspired by his religious conviction that there is value in every individual, even those who are differently abled. Both Samuel and Julia were involved, at least peripherally, with the Transcendentalists.

What completed the radicalization of Parker, and the Howe’s, was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. This act forced citizens in non-slave states to return fugitive slaves who made it out of slave territory. It essentially made people who lived in northern states legally complicit in the slave trade, which was morally reprehensible to many of them.

Ironically the Fugitive Slave Act was signed into law my President Millard Fillmore, one of the American Unitarian presidents we are least proud of.  

Anyway, that act was responsible for the famous image of Theodore Parker supposedly sitting in his study writing his sermons with a loaded pistol on his desk to protect the fugitive slaves hidden in his basement – a stop on the Underground Railroad. Many of his parishioners were equally adamant in their opposition.

It is believed by historians that two of the ‘Secret Six’ men who financed John Brown’s rebellion were Theodore Parker and Samuel Gridley Howe.

So Julia came from genteel orthodoxy and moved into radical Unitarianism. She married Samuel Howe, who ironically seemed unable to translate his radical beliefs into a liberated marriage. He wanted Julia to stay at home, to be a wife and mother and help-mate and not a partner. According to Julia’s journals he was violent, he was unfaithful to her, and he mis-managed her inheritance.

Even so, while living in isolation on the grounds of the Perkins School she taught herself philosophy, several languages, and the art of writing. Thus her public life began.

Samuel and Julia were both involved in the formation of the United States Sanitary Commission, whose mission was to alleviate the dreadful conditions under which Union soldiers were living and fighting. The Commission coordinated the efforts of mostly women volunteers who ran kitchens, provided nursing care, and tried to prevent disease from adding to the casualty count. These women cut the disease rate in the Union Army in half in just a few years.

In 1862, in recognition of their work for the Union cause, President Lincoln invited the Howe’s to Washington DC where the toured the camps. They heard soldiers singing “John Brown’s body lies a smoldering in his grave . . . “ to a tune written a decade or so before for use in southern revival services. Another well known Unitarian minister on the tour, James Freeman Clarke, remarked to Julia that she should write new words to that song.

Not long afterwards the poem that would become The Battle Hymn of the Republic came to Julie in her sleep. She wrote down what she could capture in the middle of the night, and realized that it was, indeed, a fully formed hymn – new words to a familiar melody. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly, for which she received $5.

Julia Ward Howe said later that she was trying to write words that would focus on the struggle for human equality rather than the martyrdom of John Brown. She used biblical images liberally, but her words were a call to the religious principles that she had embraced in her Unitarian Church. “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigured you and me. As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free...“

In other words, as long as human beings are enslaved, the work of salvation is incomplete, and it is our job as human beings to complete it.

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" made Julia into a very famous woman. She was in great demand as a speaker, and as she toured the country she saw first hand the real costs of war. She saw death and disease, she saw the veterans maimed in body and mind and spirit, she saw the widows and orphans abandoned by society. And she saw the economic devastation that war leaves in its wake.

In 1870, when she heard the drums of war begin to beat over the Franco-Prussian war, she decided that her famous poem, which could be read as a glorification of all war, would not be her only legacy.  She wanted to organize an international women’s movement and declare a day on which all women would speak out against war.

She was influenced in this vision by another woman named Anna Jarvis, who also worked very hard for the US Sanitary Commission, recruiting and organizing women to do what she called ‘Mothers Day Works.’ Her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, would succeed in getting the first official Mother’s Day Holiday proclamation passed in 1907.

But back in 1870 Julia issued the declaration that we read together this morning, calling women to eschew violence and advocate for the peaceful settlement of disputes. The real ‘mother’s day work’ was the work of saving children from the dreadful devastation of war. In the space of a decade, the woman who had become unbelievably famous for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic was publicly advocating a movement for international peace making.

In that evolution in her thinking Julia did not resort to the condemnation of those who had been called to fight in the Civil War. She did not dishonor the memory of the many who died ‘to make men free’.  Julia said, in effect, now we see more clearly.

In light of what we now know about war, let us organize ourselves to conduct our civic affairs in such a way that we give meaning to the deaths of all those young men. Let us organize ourselves in such a way that all human beings do truly live in freedom, do truly know justice, do truly know peace.

“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat, he is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat. O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet.”

In every age, we who practice this faith are called to action. Yesterday several hundred Unitarian Universalists, no doubt jubilant of feet, marched in Phoenix, alongside hundreds of thousands of others, in protest against an inhumane immigration law. Tomorrow, millions of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters will place flowers and flags on graves in national cemeteries.

“From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says ‘Disarm, disarm!’”

We can do this. We can redeem the lives of all those young dead soldiers. It isn’t easy, but it is what our faith demands of us. Glory, glory, hallelujah, the truth is marching on.