“Love Made Concrete: Property Celebration”
The Reverend Cecilia Kingman Miller, Interim Minister
Victor Place, Board President, Lay Leader
Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Church
January 13, 2008
Sermon
Today is a very exciting day! Your decision to purchase the property is historic and thrilling. This purchase demonstrates your commitment to the future.
There has been some conversation here about whether or not to grow…and today I want to tell you that this is a false question. To frame the question like that implies a choice—when, actually, you are growing. People are coming in, hungry for our message of liberal religion.
And they will keep coming, particularly because you sit on a fantastic demographic: one-third of the households in the greater Edmonds area have children under the age of 18. One-third of the population is aged 25 to 44, prime child-rearing years. This is when most people go looking for a church home—when they begin to raise children.
Those people are searching for a community in which they can impart values to their kids and find a spiritual home for themselves. They are seeking a place where they can cherish their values of reason and love, a place where they can serve the wider world in fellowship with others. The only way you won’t grow is if you find ways to subtly reject these seekers. They need you, and I am glad to say that you are responding. You are carrying on a great tradition of building our faith in the Pacific Northwest.
This sermon was to be on fairy tales, but in light of this historic day, I thought it better to tell you a tale from real life. Most of us have heard of the great names of Unitarian Universalist history: Channing, Emerson, Parker. They made their mark back east. But how many of us know the stories of heroes closer to home? How many of you have heard of Thomas Lamb Eliot, first Unitarian minister in the Oregon Territory?
In the mid-1860s, there was an acute need for a liberal Christian presence on the West Coast. A group of early Unitarians in Portland had grown weary of the conservative message from local pulpits and were determined to call a minister. The name of Thomas Lamb Eliot was put forth. From a distinguished family of liberal ministers, Eliot had already impressed many in his youthful career. His unflagging commitment and his willingness to serve to the greatest of his abilities made him the right man for a frontier church. Many hopes were pinned on Eliot and his young wife, Henrietta.
In 1867, Thomas, Henrietta and their infant son left home in St. Louis and traveled by ship via the Isthmus of Panama to California, then up the long coast to arrive here in Portland.
Their trip was eagerly noted by many. Indeed, when the family made their stopover in San Francisco to change ships, both of the Eliots made a pronounced impression upon Horatio Stebbins, the minister of the Unitarian Church there. Years later, Stebbins said:
“I felt that never did ship carry more precious freight. The future of the church was assured. Such firmness of purpose, such quiet silent fortitude, such clear vision of truth and duty, were a pledge of the truest success.”
It was early morning on Christmas Eve when the Eliots landed in the frontier port, and it was—no surprise—raining hard. Imagine the town they saw as they drove to their new home on Fourth Street. First settled only twenty years before, Portland was still a rough, small timber town. The only means of communication with the outside world was by stage or steamer to San Francisco.
This was a raw frontier town with all the troubles attached: gambling, drunkenness, violence. There were only 7000 inhabitants but a hundred saloons. There was much corruption and few voices of restraint or mercy.
The small Unitarian church was one of seven in the town and by far the most progressive. The congregation of thirty-one members and fifty children had built a chapel on the corner of what is now Yamhill and Broadway. The Governor’s residence was the only other building on the block, and to attend “any evening meeting, it was necessary to pick one’s way with a lantern through the mud and over logs in order to reach the chapel.”
With the arrival of Eliot, the church grew quickly. The story of his ministry makes one wonder when the man ever slept. In the year of 1869 alone, he made nearly 1000 pastoral visits, preached two sermons every Sunday as well as the children’s worship, and led services at the prisons and the hospital.
He did all this in spite of illness in his own family, nervous strain upon his eyes, a “pinching economy” from his inadequate salary, and no relief preaching from a colleague, as the closest Unitarian minister was Stebbins, in San Francisco.
A slight and somewhat frail man, Eliot’s health suffered greatly under these demands, and yet, even with all these duties, the minister and his congregation turned their attention to the needs of the community.
Eliot’s faith called him to an abiding concern for social problems, and he considered himself to be the minister to all who had none. He started numerous institutions through which social conditions might be alleviated. Eliot raised nearly single-handedly the $3000 necessary to build the first orphanage. He then served on the board for forty-five years, including eleven as President.
Eliot helped found the Kindergarten Association, as well as libraries for the asylums and prisons. He not only raised funds for these causes, he also gave generously of his own small salary.
He was aided in this by Henrietta’s legendary ability to run the household economy on a tight budget. We might say she was an early model of the voluntary simplicity movement. They lived well below their already modest income, forgoing not only luxuries but some necessities, in order to assist others.
The Eliots knew that through their own frugality, by setting aside some of their own material desires, they found a far greater satisfaction in living as generous people. They found a deep joy in using their own resources to ease the suffering of others.
Eliot, with help from his church members, founded the Boys and Girls Aid Society and the Oregon Humane Society, with Eliot serving as the first President. They raised the funds for the first public drinking fountains,
an attempt to stem the use of saloons as thirst-quenching agents. They formed the Library Association and were key figures in the formation of Portland’s unparalleled park system. They were generous with their money, and Eliot had no qualms about asking the people to be ever more generous.
The minister and church were also frequent critics of the corruption and graft that plagued the city and state governments, calling for watchdog agencies. Eliot also spoke out against abuses in jails, and after diligent pressure, convinced the prison board to put an end to the practice of flogging prisoners.
These frontier forbears of ours gave their talents and their money because they knew that religion is not something you use once a week. It must be lived in the world. They believed, as James Luther Adams said a century later, that love for our fellow creatures must be made concrete if it is to have any worth.
Do not think, however, that these many good works were done easily. These pioneers had their own desperate struggles with finances, including economic depressions and failures. Added to these was the opposition, at times quite fierce, from the conservative Christian ministers in Portland who called Unitarians “partial Christians.”
Eliot was often snubbed by his ministerial colleagues, and this wounded him deeply, though he rarely showed it. He was not allowed to be a voting member of the newly formed YMCA, the Young Men’s Christian Association. A special vote was called to approve his membership, but even though he was their lead fundraiser, it failed.
After the vote, Eliot’s chief opponent approached him, reluctantly extended his hand and said, “Well, I’ll shake hands with the Christian half of you at least.” Eliot, in a moment of rare wit, held out his own hand and said, “Allow me to reciprocate.” (Oh, to be so quick on one’s feet!)
Yet, in spite of the disrespect and even defamation of colleagues, Eliot and his parishioners were held in deep regard for the service they showed the community. One Unitarian colleague, after visiting Eliot, sent word back east reporting upon the church here. He wrote that this church was almost the ideal of a Unitarian Christian church with a “common stock of love and working force…”
He goes on: “And in the community at large, down even in the drinking saloons, and the hotel sitting-rooms, and among the deck-hands of the steamboats—for it is well sometimes to get into such places, and find out how things are looked at—people will rail at all other forms of religion as humbug, and at all other ministers and church-members as hypocrites and fools, [and then] say, “Oh, that little Eliot and his [congregation] they are different; if all were like him, religion would mean something.”
My friends, this is the legacy of our faith out here on the West Coast. Our religion must mean something in the world! The gift of our faith meets the world’s deep need and there is where we find our vocation as a people. We are called to be faithful to our history, and live up to the tasks of our own time.
We may no longer be on the frontier, and yet we have our own ills to address. The causes of government corruption and prison reform remain, as does the plight of hungry and neglected children. Right here in Snohomish County, 7.6 pecent of the children live below the poverty line. In Edmonds alone, 4 percent of children are below the poverty line. 4 percent! And where the good Rev. Eliot had the evils of public drunkenness, we have methamphetamine labs.
What does it mean to be faithful Unitarian Universalists in our time? Where is God calling us to serve? We need look no further than our own history and our own streets to see the answer.
Our values cannot live unless we give them form that will outlast us. James Luther Adams, our own Unitarian Universalist theologian, was right when he said: goodness must be institutionalized if it is to have any affect upon the world. And the only way to build those institutions is to give our resources—time, energy and money.
Money is our time—our work hours—made into a tool. We can use that tool to entertain ourselves, to give ourselves nicer kitchens, fancier gadgets, and snappier wardrobes, or we can use it to create a better community around us. You have chosen community—what a generous people you are!
Our Unitarian Universalist faith has a message for our times. We tell people that they are worthy, they are loved, they are needed. We tell them as well that they are free, that their minds are free to think and explore, and that their hearts are free to love whomever they will. We stand for freedom of conscience and the protection of the vulnerable. These are the qualities that our forbears embodied.
My friends, now more than ever, the world needs these qualities. But this time, it is our turn. The world needs our fortitude, our vision, and our firmness of purpose. And today, you have made such a choice…you are embracing your purpose with courage and clarity.
You are building a strong and vital church. You are shining the light of our faith. Your presence here matters so very, very much. It is your time, our time, to live this faith brightly.
May it be so for all of us, this day and all the days to come.
AMEN.
