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Reading:  

            The Testament of Michael Servetus

            I, Michael Servetus, do compose this testament on the eve of my death, which was decreed by Monsieur John Calvin, spiritual leader of the Geneva Protestants. This man’s fervor for God is so great I will burn in it. The Catholics of Lyon once burned me in effigy after I escaped their prison in April of this year, but the Protestants will see that there will be no straw man in my stead come the dawn. There is no escape from Geneva, or any other city in Europe. There is no place to run to.

            I think this no defeat. I defy their ability to still my voice. Do they think wood and flame can erase my words? What optimists they are! I am forty-two years old, and twenty-two years ago I sealed my fate when, callow youth I was, I wrote On the Errors of the Trinity. My crime was simple enough: I read the Holy Book for myself, and to my shock found no Trinity, this three-beinged God. I recorded this; how can I recant what anyone can read? All I have done is glorify God with the truth I am permitted to perceive.

            There is no separation between God and humanity—Monsieur Calvin thinks this doctrine a heresy, a belief worthy of death at the stake. I will admit: I fear dawn and the price these judges will force me to pay for my beliefs. The flames are terrible to think of. . . I requested a quick end: one sword thrust. I fear I might beg forgiveness, recant. But there is no turning back. I will not cry out; my preparations are made. Excuse my ramblings—one’s mind darts and weaves at times like this. The light will blossom soon at my window. Am I talking too quickly for your pen?

            This night seems forever. That satisfies me, there is much to reflect on, to remember. Born of noble blood, I was raised in the Spanish town of Villaneuva. My brother Juan became a priest and I, in my own way, also followed God. The inquisitor Archbishop of Saragossa used my own brother to try to entrap me in Basel, where I published my infamous book. I escaped then, too, to France. My own brother! Religion, I swear, brings out the best and worst in us. Fleeing to Paris, I became Michael Villanovanus, editor and student of medicine.

            And there I lived peacefully, and silently, for twenty years. All about me, many were dying for heresy—hundreds in Spain with the Inquisition, also souls in Germany, Switzerland. . . To the mind intent on uniformity, nothing is as cheap as human life.

            One fellow I knew in Basel told his tormentors prayer did not work. They replied, “Did not our Lord pray out loud at Gethsemane?” “How do we know,” he answered, “for the disciples were all asleep.” For this remark he was burned. Well, I appear to be off the subject again. Hoping John Calvin would understand my ideas, I sent my revised materials to him. I resealed my fate then, for he betrayed me to the local authorities in Lyon. My years of peace were over.

            I was able, after arrest, to dupe my kindly jailor and escape over the garden wall in a night robe. After several months of freedom, I passed near Geneva in August, making my way to Italy. Though dangerous, I went to church on the thirteenth, for to miss a service was, I thought, more dangerous than to go. My fortune ran out as I was seen, arrested again and brought to trial as a heretic. In the months since, I have accepted that there will be no more escapes. A wily and adroit evader I have been, but I am too tired, weary, to make new plans. Our Lord said, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Only now do I understand.

            Do the heavens shake, Monsieur Ferel? Did my words harm, or curl the paper you are writing on? You look healthy enough; perhaps ideas are not as harmful as Monsieur Calvin thinks. It is too late, however, for my rhetoric. Send for the priest. I will confess my manifold sins and wickedness, but resist all attempts to sway me from the truth of my life. It is worth the dying, I think; soon I will accept the flames about my weary frame. They will dance and purify—you smile, Monsieur Ferel. Walk with me and see. The petals of fire will give me peace. There is no one to leave an inheritance to; I have even lost my brother. These Christians recall only too well their story of Judas! Who, then, will receive my legacy? Who will take my burden?

            You are right. The light is growing.

 

Sermon:

Truth is such a varied thing. Old Turtle knows that, and I’m sure most of you do, too. Truth is such a versatile and fragile thing, and the stories we hear are often true, but also not often the only truth, or the whole truth, or the right truth. Truth is much more complex, and especially so for religious truth.

Take, for example, the life of Michael Servetus. It’s a simple story, really, at least the way I first heard it. There was this young man who cared about the world, and cared about being good at what he did—physician, theologian, scientist, linguist. And so he spent time studying, learning, pouring over the texts, trying to grasp whatever he could. But as he did so, he kept looking around and asking questions. In many ways, he is our most important religious ancestor—much of our thoughts and theological approach comes from this same questioning: who are we, why are we here, what is holy, and what does it mean to be alive. This young man was in some regards the ‘founder’, if there is just one, of modern Unitarian Universalism.

Let me tell you about him. Michael Servetus was born in 1511 in Spain, just nineteen years after Columbus sailed for the New World. Born with the name of Miguel Servete, he came of age during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. This was a tumultuous time in Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella had only recently reunited their country, and they wanted it to stay that way. Something about job security, I’m sure. So for them, the easiest way to do that was through the Church—the one and only true church, Roman Catholicism. No separation of church and state back then. Everyone who was not Catholic was forced to leave the country, or convert. Moors and Jews left Spain by the thousands, leaving what had formerly been a haven, but was no longer. Yet some chose to remain, and in order to remain, they chose to convert to the one true faith.            

Some, however, were born to question. Servetus was a bright lad, easily learning Latin, Hebrew and Greek. He was familiar with the Qur’an as well as the Bible, and he studied law in Toulouse. Brought up Catholic, he also heard the words of reformers like Luther and Calvin, which only served to pose more questions to his already questioning mind. His biggest question was this: “If Christianity is the one true faith, then why are people willing to burn at the stake rather than convert?” I doubt he knew how prophetic this question was.           

Servetus’ studies took him to the question of the Trinity. He knew the Catholic interpretation, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were not three, but actually one God. And yet, his reading of the Bible didn’t show that to him. There was no word in the Bible of the Trinity, of the true and real essence of God as Trinity. Being young and naïve (only about nineteen or twenty), he believed he had discovered something truly wonderful. So he published the results of his work in a slim volume, On The Errors of the Trinity. Servetus thought that everyone in the small and closely-knit religious world would read this, and see his logic. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were not the way the Church had portrayed them. The Bible showed that God was different that purported by the Church. It was simple and easy to see, he believed.

But that was not to be the case. Servetus’ work came to the attention of reformer John Calvin. Though he too grew up in the Church, by this time Calvin had broken away from Catholicism and had founded his own version of the Church. He also had the job of making order out of the chaos that then reigned the city of Geneva. He, like Ferdinand and Isabella, felt that the best way to do this was through theological unity, so he imposed his own religious understanding on the people. He was beginning to make some headway, and then he received this book from the upstart Servetus. That was the last straw. Calvin knew heresy when he saw it, and he decreed that Servetus should be burned at the stake. He wasn’t alone in this—the Catholics had also condemned Servetus for his irreverent work.

What was Servetus’ heresy? Too often, in a desire to simplify the truth, we’re told that that Servetus’ complaint was about the very existence of the Trinity. But it was not that straightforward. It was not about the existence of the Trinity, but rather the structure of the Trinity.

Back in the days before MTV and the World Wrestling Federation, theological discussions were the main entertainment, and often the stakes were high. Theological works circulated quickly and far, despite the lack of Internet. So not only the theologians in the ivory towers, but many of the common people were intrigued by the discussions. In this case, it centered around two similar terms that were very different in meaning: homoousia and homoiousia. What, you say? It’s all Greek to you? Or would that be Latin? Never mind, let me put it into English for us all. The question was, is the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, of the same nature, made of the same stuff, homoousia, or are they merely “like in essential being,” made of similar stuff, homoiousia? Same stuff or similar stuff?

That might not sound like a big deal, but when you get to the implications of it, it is. Because what it gets down to is the question of salvation: how and who can save us from hell eternal. Hang in here with me for a bit, because it get’s technical, but I think it’s easy to understand. If Jesus is homoousia, the same stuff, then Jesus is of the same nature as God, and is co-eternal. This means that Jesus is definitely God, and his divinity cannot be questioned. Therefore, Jesus has the power of God and salvation is guaranteed. But if Jesus is homoiousia, created by God and of similar but not the same stuff, then what is his relationship to God? He may not be co-eternal. And if he is not co-eternal, then he may not be really God, and would not have the power of God to save anyone.

Calvin’s world revolved around the desire for salvation, and so to dethrone Jesus, make him homoiousia, as Servetus wanted, this would put salvation in jeopardy. If Calvin could not be certain that Jesus was the same stuff as God, then he could not be certain of the promise of a heavenly eternal life. For Calvin it was both a theological idea and a matter of life and death—and of life after death more particularly.             Fearing this heresy, Calvin condemned Servetus to death, a common penalty during the Inquisition. As you heard in the reading, for a while, though, Servetus was able to avoid the carrying out of the sentence. But that one Sunday, going to church to “hide,” that was his undoing. I promise that the same will not happen to you by coming here!

It’s a common thought—that if you get rid of the troublemaker, the problem will simply go away. It’s tried all the time. Calvin believed that if he got rid of Servetus, then his theological world would be safe, and that Servetus’ heretical ideas would die with him. But our sitting here today shows how wrong Calvin was. There is a chance that we might be here anyway, without Servetus, that someone else would have come up with the same heretical ideas somewhere else throughout history. But Servetus was there, and we are here, heirs to his questioning, his courage, his very life.

This is one of our first tangled threads—the desire to question authority, and to use reason in determining matters of faith and existence and truth. This is Servetus’ legacy to us. Yet what is surprising is that others of our tangled threads come directly from Servetus’ nemesis and the supposed bad guy of the story, Calvin.

Rats, I said, when I first learned this. It is so easy to paint Calvin as the bad guy. But we are also his heirs. For example, we get our style of worship from Calvin. The singing of hymns, the speaking of sermons, the absence of elaborate ritual, and the structure of each service. It is Calvin, not Servetus, who would be comfortable worshipping here.

But that’s not all. Calvin also gave us our long history of social activism. Although in many ways he was, in effect, the dictator of Geneva, he worked hard to make the social conditions of the time better. For Calvin, salvation did not depend upon good works. God had already decided whether you would go to heaven or hell. But he also knew that good works were what people of God did. Your job was to look at the world around and fix the things that were not right. People and individuals were the hands of God, and it is our responsibility to make the world over in God’s image.

So right alongside of Servetus’ use of reason and logic, we find the threads of Calvin’s worship and social justice work. The man who burned our hero turns out to have also shaped who we are. And, of course, it turns out that our hero Servetus was also a mixed bag. He was a royal pain. He was pompous, arrogant, and not very fun to be around. He knew he was right, that he had “the” truth. We’ve all known well-meaning, good hearted people who were impossible to be around. Heck, many of us probably were those when we were younger! We all know how popular that makes someone.

So the truth is that it isn’t a simple story after all. We live in a messy world of tangled threads. Servetus and Calvin are inextricable intertwined, and we are the heirs of them both. But wait, there’s more! From Servetus we get the use of reason in religion, from Calvin we get acting to make the world better, and then from Martin Luther, the man who began the Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the cathedral door, we get our understanding of goodness.

Luther believed that we did not have to prove ourselves worthy of salvation. Rather, by simply believing in God, we will be saved. Life itself was enough—a not too big step away from our current Unitarian Universalist principle of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Luther is in part responsible for our sense that we do not have to prove our value and worth, that we don’t have to do anything to be loveable. That comes from the entangling of the Servetus, Calvin and Luther threads.

These three were big threads in the creation of Unitarianism and  Universalism. Yet there are countless other threads that come together to form our particular fabric of church. One modern strand is the “God is dead” movement that so understandably came together after the horrors of the World Wars. Who could reasonably refuse to doubt God when faced with the horrors of the trenches of the Great War or the Holocaust in World War II? This thread brings us our agnostics and atheists, who come to church because they still ask the important questions of life: why are we here, what is the meaning of life, what happens when we die. They aren’t looking for the same salvation as Calvin and Luther, but still share the questions that led to those answers.

Another thread comes to us from the 18th century and the Renaissance. That thread is the belief that humans are amazing, marvelous, and somewhat miraculous happenings. Who needs god, when you look at the wonder of what the human mind can do? Human beings care about each other, help each other, because humanity is the salvation of the world. It is not some unseen force out there, but we, here, who make the world the way it is. This strand of humanism, straight from the Renaissance, also feeds into our warp and weft.

There is the powerful thread of love from our Universalist ancestors of the early 19th century. It was they who believed we need not think alike, to love alike. It was our Universalists who knew that God was present, and that it was the love of God, not the fear of God, that prompted the good works of the day. It wasn’t fear of damnation that got you working for the good. Rather, it was your deep and abiding love of God that made you want to make the world better, for that was what God wants from you. And so this thread, of belief in god, finds itself woven into the tapestry of our religious tradition, right along side of the disbelief of god, and the knowledge that humanity is enough, and Calvin’s good works, and Luther’s goodness of humans, and Servetus’ use of reason.

Yet we’re still not through. We draw threads from those who believe that it is the glory of nature that we are restored. The Transcendentalists of the mid 1800s, like Emerson and Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, weave themselves right up alongside of today’s neo-pagans who know that respect for Mother Earth and all she gives us is the closest thing to knowing the truth of the world. We draw threads from those who bring with them a deep understanding of the Buddhist view of pain and suffering of the world, how we are so easily caught up and trapped in it, easily swayed into thinking that suffering is the truth of existence when in reality, it does not matter the whys and the hows. We draw threads from those who come here from Judaism, bringing the heritage of arguing with God, and the responsibility of tikkun o’lam, the healing of the world.

All these threads, and many more, are part of the diverse and tangled threads that make up the reality of our Unitarian Universalism. From the very earliest questioners and doubters, we draw our strength. From the very earliest who used reason, from the very earliest to understand the gifts from and need of tolerance, from the very earliest who knew that all minds needed the freedom to seek their own truth—that is where we draw our threads. Not just from martyrs, naysayers and whistleblowers, but from the insider and the outsider too. Our story is not a simple, one-sided, straightforward one. It is instead a tangle, a woven cord, a fabric that draws from countless strands.

But so what? What makes this jumble, this mess, this tangle of threads, this bunch of sometimes paradoxical and contradictory threads worth anything at all? Why do we need to know this at all?

The answer, I believe, is that the very variety of these threads that is important. Take a moment, and look around you. Really. Do you see the faces that are near you? The ones across the room? Each of these faces brings their own thread. Their own story, of simplicity and complexity. They bring their own sense of what is important, what is central, what is real, what is true. From each of them we can learn, be challenged, supported, and grow. It is marvelous to be in religious community.

Yet with our history and embracing of all the different threads in our past, we don’t always land here gently and fully. We don’t always value the theological diversity among us, and we don’t always blend well together. Yet the miracle is still there. Behind the faces with similar eyes and noses and ears and mouths, behind the hair and the lack of hair, behind the images that you see beside you, behind them all, there is a magical something that takes all those tangled threads, those jumbled threads, and weaves them into something so precious, something almost holy. And that is the power of love and acceptance.  Those tangled threads—everyone’s individual story and all the stories from the past—have the power to come together to form a web of support and nurture and incredible strength. Through the weaving together of so many different stories, so many different threads, and through the reclaiming of the hard parts of our lives and history, through the weaving together of all of this, we get a theological web woven of love and care and support that is ever so much stronger.

When I stop and think about it, it is clear that all our stories belong here. Blended together, we are much stronger than we can ever be alone. Blended together, our frayed edges gather strength. Blended together, woven together out of a commitment to search for truth and for answers, we create a weaving that is incredible to behold. A place for seeking, for finding, for caring, for commitment, for resting in and upon each other’s hearts. A place for living our wild and precious lives. For here, we need not think alike to love alike. When we choose to weave together our various stories, to seek again the hidden truths, when we reach out for one another past the seemingly endless variety of diversity that could send us screaming for a place of conformity, that when we reach past it all, we are, once and again, truly blessed.

When we weave these tangled threads together, we create a peace where human dignity is respected, where people are seen as real, and where we can gain the strength to work so that one day, one day, peace and justice will rule the world. May it be one day be so.