May 05, 2013 Sermon: “The Fire Within Us” Delivered by Rev. D

May 05, 2013 Sermon: “The Fire within Us” delivered by Rev. D. Michael Smith Meditation and Prayer: Creative Spirit of Life, we give thanks for all the blessings that are ours. We seek strength to bear the pain that may be ours. We have opened our hearts and minds to the sorrows and joys of others. Sermon: As you saw in the story this morning, on almost any Sunday, in almost every Unitarian Universalist congregation, the worship invitation…the move toward actual worship…begins by lighting a fire under us, so to speak; and it should be present in all the things we do when we gather together whether it be committee meetings or whatever. For us Unitarian Universalists, the act of lighting our symbol of faith, the flaming chalice, brightens and brings warmth at least to our hearts, and it reignites the spark of our own inner divine light. Like so many symbols religious or otherwise, the origin or history may be lost by some or lost on others, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that its meaning will be lost. Certainly, the impact of what we do when we light this chalice is there. Now some, perhaps many here now know the history, but I am going to go a little deeper into some of that. There are two primary stories that bring us this chalice and this flame and bring them together. The first, of course, comes from that experience of the Holocaust and those who would help many out of that awfulness into safety, then the Unitarian Service Committee, arguably, our mission extension. This arm of our faith was at work with many others to help thousands to come out from under the thumb of Nazism. According to Dan [Hotchkiss] the chalice and the flame were brought together as a Unitarian symbol by the Austrian artist Hans Deutsch in 1941. He was living in Paris in the 30’s and Deutsch drew critical cartoons of Adolf Hitler. When the Nazis invaded Paris, he abandoned all he had and fled to the south of France, then to Spain and finally, with an altered passport, as we see, into Portugal. And it was there that he met the Reverend Charles Joy, then executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee, the “USC.” The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans among the Unitarians, as well as Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution. And from his Lisbon headquarters, Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents—a cloak and dagger operation throughout Europe, but the Service Committee was an unknown player in all the machinations of secret groups at work to foil the Nazis. As we saw, they needed a symbol and thus the flaming chalice became that mark on the various documents and badges. According to Hotchkiss, it was Joy who wrote his board in Boston— We have only Joy's report to Boston, January 31, 1941: It represents, as you see, a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice that the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice. In ancient and medieval art this chalice is frequently found, and the design itself, modernized and stylized, though it is, reminds one of the signs seen on the old monastic manuscripts. This was in the mind of the artist. The fact, however, that it remotely suggests a cross was not in his mind, but to me this also has its merit. We do not limit our work to Christians. Indeed, at the present moment, our work is nine-tenths for the Jews, yet we do stem from the Christian tradition, and the cross does symbolize Christianity and its central theme of sacrificial love. [Source: uuworld.org article “Wartime Origins of the flaming chalice” http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2442.shtml] Now that theme of sacrificial love brings us to the second story, the earlier influence of the symbol, if you will. In the early fifteenth century, almost a hundred years prior to the Protestant Reformation, a priest named Jan Hus, in Prague Czechoslovakia, began to see the beauty and importance of bringing the Eucharist, the host, made up of chalice and bread, to the people, not to be something just shared among the priests during the mass. This and so many other issues—the Hussites became a very strong influence in the direction of the Catholic Church at the time, and it was being done during an already papal schism. For all this, found Hus being put on trial, but because he would not recant his teachings, he was brought to the stake, hands behind his back, neck held by a chain to the post, and buried basically under wood and straw up to his neck. Because of this, the idea of the chalice—referring to that ideal of blood of Christ that is the message of love, he taught belonged to all, I suppose, and the flames of his execution come together in our flaming chalice. It is then a symbol of religious freedom and religious thought. The flames of his martyrdom burn today; these images remain with us, a struggle to overcome inhumanity and celebrate our freedom to worship. Now, I was all excited to bring in an even earlier idea, especially of the chalice, but I noted that Hotchkiss already made some reference to it in his pamphlet, but it is a passing reference so let me elucidate (aside—isn’t that a nice word!). So here is the fuller vision and I get very excited when I get into this part. In later Arthurian literature, what would be called the Arthurian Cycle, the ideas of courtly love and Christian values came into play especially under the French and German influences; far too complicated to explain here and without sounding like a lecture, this part of the cycle saw the elements of the cup, plate— whatever, that Jesus used during the Last Supper—the Holy Grail (Monty Python and Dan Brown set aside), along with the spear that the Roman soldier thrust into the side of Jesus were supposedly brought out of Jerusalem and carried into Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph had been a member of the Sanhedrin, that council of Pharisees and Sadducees that condemned Jesus to death, but Joseph, himself, disagreed with them and with that condemnation and he would offer his tomb for Jesus to be buried in. Now knights, at this point of the cycle, were probably the knights you know of—the jousting, going on quests to save someone, some maiden in distress, or a besieged castle. They were always traveling knights-errant, if you will, in full regalia that made absolutely no sense to reality. With the alleged appearance of these elements, the primary quest then became for the Holy Grail. It was preeminent in the quests. It was the Christian layer on top of the Arthurian Cycle. So the importance of the Grail itself was that it was to have supernatural powers, especially powers to heal and to nourish. Think, if you will, of a cornucopia, which is perhaps based on the image of the Irish Horn of Plenty according Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz in their book, The Grail Legend. If one had such power, well, imagine the wealth and power and such that person would have—never be poor—never to be hungry. This can be seen in our chalice—I think. The wealth of many things, mostly the ideals we wish to bring into the world, into ourselves, the ideas that reveal our own quest for equanimity, for equality, for all those things, for love. One last thing, again slightly preempted by Hotchkiss, is the concept of the feminine in the idea of a container such as a grail, a cup, a plate, or a basket. It is, if you will, in some representations, the very image of fecundity (aside-another word I like…fecundity…look it up). As Rianne Eisser notes in her book, The Chalice and the Blade, “…it is symbolized by the feminine chalice or source of life, the generative nurturing and creative powers of nature, not the power to destroy.” The chalice was given the highest powers, this feminine source of life, and throughout early literature and traditions throughout the Celtic World the idea of such a chalice, a cauldron sometimes, a large device, that if you put a dead warrior in they would come out alive. It was a life-giving, life-resurrecting image. In one story, in the Arthurian Cycle by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrétien de Troyes and others, there is a verse by Eschenbach in Parzival that says, [238] “Wonder of wonders, whatever anyone desired, when they stretched out their hand it was there in front of the Grail: warm food or cold, game meat or tame meat, new dishes or old.” And think of the loaves and fishes story, the basket of few fish and a few loaves of bread to feed the five thousand. And Jesus said just to believe and have faith and sure enough, the baskets produced never- ending food. It’s an ancient idea, the vast wealth of ideas and ideals, the hope of spiritual nourishment and renewal. Within it is a certain sense of purity, if you will, for only the purest of knights could behold the grail and Parzival was the primary one to see the grail, but all of us…all of us can feel it, we can see it, that purity that all are welcome—, of love for all living things, that balance of light against darkness, that light— 2 that flame, that spark of divine within all of us stems from the deepest most ancient needs…fire.

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