THE POWER OF AN IDEA

by the Rev. Charles A. Gaines D.D.

A sermon delivered by Charles A. Gaines on January 14, 2007 in the West Valley Unitarian Universalist Church of Glendale, AZ

Did you know that coming here enhances your health? Recent studies show that people who regularly attend a synagogue, mosque or church are likely to live seven years longer than those who stay home. I think it has to do with the heart rate. I suppose that everything is connected. So when the soul - however you define it - is nourished, the heart rate, along with our ability to love and be loved - another aspect of good health, and is nurtured, as well. It has to do with the process for deepening our spiritual connections: call it worship or call it coming together in a focused community.

Coming to West Valley UU church might also be a good idea because studies show that a sense of humor has an accumulative healing effect on the body and mind. It probably has to do with a kind of syncretic heartbeat, which can be especially powerful in a communal setting where people laugh together.

Actually, this sermon is the one I have delivered in more places than any other sermon I've written. Before today, I have given it in thirteen other congregations. I've given it in Golden, CO, Fort Worth, TX, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Omaha, NE. It was also broadcast over Emerson radio in Boston.

Sometimes, in the past, it has been a sermon for when - oh, once or twice a year, we had an "Invite a Friend to Church" Sunday. Experience has told me that few members actually do invite their friends to services of this kind. But if they do, I wanted to offer something special. Who knows what might result if I delivered a brand new, never before delivered sermon; never preached before or tested? A Sunday service is like an ice burg. We only see 10% of what goes into it. Accomplished ministers will tell you that it takes nine hours of preparation - the research, the composition, one, two or three drafts, the selection of appropriate hymns, just the right prayer, hopefully. All for one hour of presentation. So there's always some risk in offering a brand new sermon. The iceberg might just break up or down. That's why I am somewhat lucky here, being with you such a short time. Just about all the sermons I offer may have been revised slightly before I appear at your lectern, but the research has been done, and much of the flow of language, if there is any, has already been composed. Even the humor, if it is funny, has been laughed at elsewhere. So this sermon, more than any other, has been tried and tested. It's like a political campaign speech, where the candidate knows which sound bites work. Or a Broadway show, which has gotten the kinks worked out. Having said all that, I know there will be more than one of you who, afterwards, will wish I had given a new sermon. Remember the shaggy dog story? After the long build-up, five minutes or so, and the shaggy dog are finally found, some says, "I don't think the dog is that shaggy." So at the coffee hour, I know one, two or twenty of you might say - you do speak out - or think, "I don't think that was such a great sermon." And it's all my fault. I've set the stage for disappoint my telling you all this. Here it goes, anyway.

Have you ever had the experience of reading something and being so overtaken by an idea or the words used to express it that you called out to someone, "Listen to this!" Or if no one is around, you feel like running out into the street and sharing it with the first person you meet. This is a rather simple illustration of the power of an idea.

Perhaps it is because are lives are so short, relatively speaking, that many of us - especially when we are young, believe that the ideas we promote, the ideals we affirm - will someday disappear and never be heard of again after we die. Unless we get an idea organized, wrapped up in an institution that goes on after we do - why, there's no telling what might happen.

This morning I want to play around with one idea in the next few minutes. It is a powerful idea, and I would like to show how it evolved through the centuries, how it affected certain people in different times, and how these very people have, in turn, influenced our society.

The idea I want to play with comes from Jesus - in his Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," but I say to you, "Do not resist one who is evil."

So far as we know, Jesus originated this idea. All the legal systems known at that time: Mosaic Law, the Code of Hammurabi, Roman Law - these all permitted retaliation and vengeance for evil. Oh, some systems had elements, which were similar - such as the Jewish commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which spoke about not bringing misery on one's neighbor. But none of these laws said exactly what Jesus implied when he categorically opposed resistance to evil persons. The other laws had to do with one's own tribe, one's own kind - not with foreigners and people from different races or nations.

Here, then, is the idea I want to play with. Now, let me skip to the nineteenth Century - in 1842 - when in Hopedale, Massachusetts, the Rev. Adin Ballou, a Universalist minister, founded an experimental community for Christian living. His experiment - the Hopedale community - eventually failed, as did so many experimental communities in those days. But it did survive longer than most of them, including the Brook Farm community founded by some Unitarian transcendentalists.

Adin Ballou became known for his radical ideas. He espoused prison reform, women's rights, and especially Christian non-resistance to evil. In a tract on this subject, he wrote:

Whence originated the term "Christian non-resistance?"

Ye have heard that it hath been said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil, i.e., personal outrage, insult, affront, injury."

This is a principle from the inmost bosom of God.... It is a divine spring of action, which intuitively and spontaneously dictates the doing of good to others, whether they do good or evil....

This idea, taken from Jesus, influenced Adin Ballou to be the person he was, and he defended it with his voice and pen through his life.

We now move ahead fifty years to April 1834 when Count Leo Tolstoy completed an influential book, "The Kingdom of God Is Within You." The Tsar's censor prohibited the book from distribution, but typed copies sped across Russia and were soon translated and available in Europe and America.

In his essay, Tolstoy claimed that the Kingdom of God was within reach of every person. We need only to overcome out animal nature to enter into it. Henri Troyat, in his biography of Tolstoy, wrote:

Inspired by the American Adin Ballou's books on non-resistance, Tolstoy now produced his famous theory of non-resistance to evil...

Now you begin to see what I'm playing around with: the idea that influenced one of the world's greatest authors came from an obscure Universalist minister in Hopedale, Massachusetts who discovered it when reading his Bible. But our story continues.

We now proceed to the twentieth century, to India where the prophet Mahatma Gandhi led his nation to political independence by using non-violence. In Romain Rolands biography of Gandhi, there are two references to how Gandhi develops his unique philosophy: The first refers to an interview he held with news reporters, and Rolands writes:

A great joy welled up in him, he says, when the revelation came to him... Gandhi also says that Tolstoy's ideal, that the Kingdom of God is within us, helped him mold his own faith into a real doctrine.

The idea that influenced one of the greatest political activists in this century came from a great author who, in turn, received it from an obscure Universalist minister, who, in turn, was inspired by a sentence in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Our story again proceeds half way around the world, back to the United States, again to Massachusetts, where a young student is studying for his doctorate at Boston University. There Martin Luther King, Jr encountered the philosophy of non-violence. In an essay, "Pilgrimage to Non-violence," King wrote:

Then I was introduced to the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. As I read his works I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. The whole Gandhian concept of satyagraha (satya is truth which equals love and graha is force: satyagraha - love-force or truth-force) was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time that the Christian doctrine of love, operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence, is one of the most potent weapons available to an oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

Who can possibly estimate the influence that Martin Luther king, Jr. has had on our nation.

So there you have it. An idea started by one man nearly two thousand years ago, an idea that slowly, steadily influenced others in different times, an idea that didn't disappear in time, but passed through generations and giants on the earth.

But I'm not finished. Many years ago, during the Vietnam War, while I was minister in Framingham, MA, a young man from our youth group came to my office and told me he was dropping out of school in order to file for a conscious objector classification with the Selective Service Board. It was a time when there was a limited draft in our nation - one determined by a lottery system, but one, which still offered some exemptions. Isn't it amazing that it is being talked about again because the military is not getting enough recruits to fill it quotas?

Well, the young parishioner told me that he could no longer accept his student deferment, but wanted to test his beliefs by having to stand in front of the selective service board as a conscientious objector. And if necessary, he was prepared to flee to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam or in prison.

The young man became involved in that Unitarian Universalist congregation when he was a child. He served as president of the youth group, and he had spoken from the pulpit during one youth Sunday. He came to me as minister of the congregation to ask if I would write a recommendation to the Selective Service Board. With his new classification, he would be able to serve his country by working in a hospital, teaching, or performing some social service.

I relate this incident - it is from quite long ago, - because I have often wondered where this young man got the idea to pursue that course of action. Had he read some book, which persuaded him with the non-violent philosophy? Perhaps, like others before him, he became caught up in the words of Jesus. Or perhaps he read something by Adin Ballou, Tolstoy, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Of perhaps a professor or teacher in one of his classes, someone who knew of these people, had inspired him.

But we really can't stop there. Maybe he became caught up in the idea early in life, when something happened to make him receptive to the idea later. Maybe there was a teacher in elementary school, a church schoolteacher, or some person who said or did something to set the wheels in motion. Perhaps there was a particular program or discussion that became implanted in his mind, only later to "catch fire." Or still maybe his parents, grandparents, an uncle or an aunt so affected him with the idea that he later adopted it for himself.

This concept of the power of an idea was dramatically illustrated in my own life a few years ago after I preached at a summer service at one of our congregations in Boston. The sermon was broadcast over Emerson College radio. The very next day a man from the area telephoned me. He said he had been driving to Cape Cod and heard my sermon. He told me that he telephoned our headquarters in Boston and asked that the sermon be published in the Church of the Larger Fellowship newsletter. A short time later, I was invited to send in a copy of the sermon, and it was published. After it was published - I received other letters from several people from across the continent Three people wrote to say that the sermon was used as a resource for an adult discussion group in their congregations.

Perhaps I should have delivered that sermon instead of this one. It wasn't that great. But an idea was presented, something cliqued - others felt moved enough to respond.

I suggest that there are ideas all around us. They are in the very atmosphere of this place. They are where children gather in the church school - around the tables, on the walls, in the very air they breathe. They are at our places of work, around our dinner tables at home, on television, internet - in our dreams at night. Some are only tentatively expressed; others are forcefully promoted. But none is without the power to strike us at any moment, and change us in powerfully and important ways, even when we least expect it.

This is what happened to St. Francis of Assisi. He attended church one day and he heard his priest read the story about Jesus telling the rich man to sell all his possessions. St. Francis was struck by that idea. He left church, went home, and began selling everything in sight. There was only one problem: he was living with his father, so nothing belonged to him. Everything he sold was his father's. It is said that he father became quite angry, I might add. But that one sermon changed the whole course of St. Francis' life.

I'm suggesting that we should never be afraid of ideas. They are our source of inspiration. They survive to save the human heart. This is why I believe ideas should never be structured or creedal, censored or ritualized. Who can say when or how an idea will affect someone? Sometimes just by saying something in a new way, we are able to communicate with someone who perhaps has never understood us before. At other times, an idea has to be taken into us, and we have to struggle with it. We add ourselves to it. Perhaps years later, it comes out of us uniquely dynamic and different.

In the same manner, we can never know when or how we may influence others. The power of an idea can influence the world, as evidenced by what happened to Martin Luther King's idea or before him, Tolstoy, Ballou, and Jesus. There is always in anyone this possibility, even you. And if not the world, who knows when you will do that? It may not be your own child, but a child down the street to whom you took the time to talk. It may not be your best friend, but a significant word said to someone you hardly know. It may be an older person who sees in you a youthful spirit she never had. It may be younger person who sees wisdom reflected in your eyes. It may be a worthy opponent who recognized your respect and love. It may even be a passing stranger who will never forget you for what you did or be the same person because of what you said.

You see, each of us is really the personification of an idea - or rather, the sum of many ideas. And it is in the power of each of us to influence others.

This, I believe, may be the message of religion more than any other. Men and women who represent spiritual values that we hold dear become the prophets and saints in history. The world becomes "caught up" by the power of their ideas.

Our faith teaches that everyone has similar ideas in us. No one is so evil that good ideas from such a person are impossible. No one is so alone that reaching out and touching someone else with an idea is impossible. We all have so much that we can give to each other - in understanding, honesty, and compassion. This is what Phillis Theroux writes about in her poem, 'California and Other States of Grace."

I wonder now, whether accomplishments
Have any real significance as the world defines them.
I suppose they do, or at least we're inwardly urged
To create things to prove that we
Were around for a few years.
But beneath the books, music, scores
And brilliant conceptions we foist upon the world,
Perhaps our real accomplishments lie elsewhere...
In a conversation we can't remember having,
A small relationship that gets someone else believing
In something more powerful than self-doubt.

This is the kind of message that our world needs more than our philosophizing, preaching, and promises. It is so very personal, in the one-to-one relationship that involves you and the people you meet, those who care about and those affected by what you do with your ideas, whether they are in the same room with you or are in some other part of the world we live in.

I suggest this is simply an uncomplicated way of becoming empowered by ideas relating to truth, justice, and love is what religion is all about. It embraces our spiritual journey in that it begins with you and me in the way we talk and feel about life and in how we act and respond to others.