Reader: You can access a flyer depicting the windows referred to in this sermon here.
In The Cathedral of the World, the Rev. Forrest Church writes of a vast cathedral with many windows. The windows, writes Church, are not the light. They are where the light shines through.
It is a wonderful metaphor. We have all seen light refracted through windows in beautiful and curious ways. On a sunny day with light streaming in, you might see clouds of dust floating in the air, normally invisible, suddenly revealed, and you can’t believe you’ve been breathing all that in. Then the light changes or you draw the shade, you can’t see the dust, and you forget all about the dust all around you. But it is still there.
Or you are at a window with multiple panes of glass separated by crisscross wood trim, resembling a tic-tac-toe box, and the light coming through throws patterns on the floor. You can’t resist stepping on those squares, like the old sidewalk game of avoiding cracks lest you break your mother’s back, yet when you move your feet away, the patterns remain unchanged. They are a truth you can’t alter.
Or you are standing before stained glass windows displaying a Crayola crayon box worth of colors, big and small panes of glass of different shapes and sizes, some pieces perfectly flat and some faceted, and throughout the day, as soft morning light gives way to the bright afternoon sun right overhead, to the gradual dimming as the world turns and daylight gives way to dusk, in the room and on the floor and in the windows themselves you see the dance of refraction as light bends through prisms of glass and colors and light and shadow shift and play, blues and indigos, royal purples, Tiffany teals, imperial reds. Each window interprets the light differently.
And yet this rainbow of color, all of these interpretations, all emanate from the same one light cast by the sun.
That is the beauty of Forrest Church’s metaphor, that one light through many windows helps us understand how there can be many ways to tell the story of God, but that behind all those versions of God and for all the arguments over who’s right and who’s wrong, there is just one God, shining through. In his book Church was using this metaphor to help explain Universalism, the second U of Unitarian Universalism, which holds that God’s love is universal, and that everyone is equally worthy under one universal love—no matter their color, creed, language, sexuality, political persuasion, or any of the other many human refractions each of us possesses and through which that one godly light shines. The one divine light bends through each of us uniquely, and in Unitarian Universalism, we get to decide how we wear that light.
But there is another message in this image called the cathedral of the world, and it is a message we here at First Parish can appreciate because our sanctuary is cathedral-like in its look and proportions, with its mighty organ, high ceiling, and eight stained glass windows. The message is this: If the light shines through us, it must shine through our neighbor, too.
More than that, though: The light shines through our neighbor even if we disagree with them. Even if we are rock-solid sure they are wrong about something, be it their beliefs, their politics, or their moral code.
Let me explain. As you look around this sanctuary, you see we are surrounded by very tall stained-glass windows. They are beautiful, magnificent works of art. The first six, the ones closest to where I’m standing, date from 1869 to 1905, five of them installed in the 19th century. The two at the back of the sanctuary date to the 1950s. Seven out of eight windows feature personages from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The eighth, way back there by the little library, what is known as the history window, is, ironically, our newest window, installed in 1957.
Each of these windows tells a story. Rather than go through each one, let’s divide them into the seven Bible windows and the one history window. I know you probably can’t get a good look at that history window right now, but I invite you to check it out after the service if you’ve never taken a look. That window was a big hit yesterday during Liberty & Union for the many people who came in for a tour of our sanctuary.
So let’s speak of these windows generally. As we look at the Bible windows, we see Old Testament figures such as Abraham and his wife, Sarah, the progenitors of the Jewish people … Zacharias and Elizabeth, parents of John the Baptist … St. John and St. Paul, who laid the foundation for Christianity by starting Christian churches in the ancient world … Mary and Martha, friends of Jesus.
And many images of Jesus of Nazareth … here to your left he appears in a window memorializing Taunton citizens who fought in the Civil War, two windows down at the home of Mary and Martha, and the last window on this side, blessing the children. Our famed Tiffany window, to your right, is circa 1894 and depicts the morning of the Resurrection, with the angel at Christ’s tomb telling his followers that he has risen.
It is not unheard of, but it is unusual, to see such images in a Unitarian Universalist church – not because Unitarian Universalists disavow the Bible; some do, some don’t – but because we are open to so much more. We regard our faith as a “living tradition” of wisdom and spirituality, drawn from sources as diverse as science, poetry, and personal experience … and yes, scripture.
To be sure, our faith does have Christian roots, and some of us may consider ourselves Christian – it’s just that today, our faith encompasses many faith traditions in addition to Christianity, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other traditions, such as humanism or atheism, which doesn’t believe in a divine power, or agnosticism, which holds that a divine power is simply unknowable. This is why you’re more likely to hear poetry by the Sufi poet Rumi, or Buddhist teachings, than you are verses from the Book of Job—although the Book of Job is an incredible piece of biblical literature. All of these traditions, religions and philosophies, fall under the enormous theological tent of Unitarian Universalism – our cathedral of the world.
As for the images surrounding us here … they are here because they recall a time and a place. This building, the fourth meetinghouse for this congregation since 1637, was built from 1829 to 1831, and most of our windows were installed in the decades after the Civil War. We were then a Unitarian church; Unitarians and Universalists didn’t become one denomination until 1961. And back in the late 1800s, Unitarianism was very Christian. Unitarian originally meant believing there is only one God, unitary, as opposed to three, or a Trinity, as other Christians then believed and is an article of faith for Catholics and other Christian religions to this day.
Today, and for the reasons I mentioned as well as other reasons, modern-day Unitarian Universalists aren’t known for turning to the Bible. But here we are surrounded by depictions of some of the Bible’s most significant moments and figures.
What are we to make of this now? The stories these windows originally told were, quite literally, gospel truth for the generations past who sat here. Those stories were how they saw the light. But at least for some of us, maybe many of us, those stories have changed, no longer as true as they once were. Because the windows are still speaking. And what they are telling us now is not that our religious ancestors were mistaken or wrong. They are simply reminding us that this was how the light shined through for them.
Remember, too, that compared to other faith traditions in those times, our 19th-century Unitarian forebears were regarded as pretty liberal. Orthodox Christians regarded unitarianism and universalism as heresies, or unorthodoxy. What you don’t see in these windows is a Holy Trinity. You don’t see the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, sometimes symbolized by a dove. Pretty wild for the times. I think these windows would have raised some eyebrows.
So those are the Bible windows. Now let’s consider what is called the history window, way back where children, who represent the future, sometimes sit and play. (Again, if you’ve never stopped to look at this window, I encourage you to do so following the service.) This window, also known as the Williams Window, depicts the great events of church and Taunton history. These include the signing of the Church Covenant in 1637 by Elizabeth Pole, who founded this church. William Hook, the first minister of this church, Richard Williams, one of its first deacons, and William Pole, Elizabeth's brother, are shown in the lower left panel.
The lower right panel depicts the raising of the Liberty and Union flag in 1774, which we celebrated just yesterday, the 250th anniversary of this historic occasion not just for Taunton but for early America. The upper right panel shows Captain Gordon's company on Taunton Green preparing to fight in the Civil War.
But the story that has changed the most in this window is in the upper left, where King Philip, also known as Metacom, Sachem of the Wampanoags, is shown negotiating with Plymouth Colony representatives in First Parish’s first meetinghouse in 1671.
At least that is the official description that was written long ago to explain that panel. We now know, of course, that that story has changed as historians have determined what was really going on. King Philip did not come to this spot that day in 1671 by choice. The colonists were not living up to their end of agreements with the Wampanoag and believed the Wampanoag were plotting against them. So here they had forced Philip to show up and sign a so-called peace agreement which required the Wampanoag to turn over their guns to the white settlers. Historians call it a humiliation for Philip. Prior to entering the church, Philip had posted warriors outside to watch for his safety.
Far from a peaceful negotiation, this event caused great bitterness among the Wampanoag and led to the bloody conflict of 1675 and 1676 known as King Philip’s War. It marked the end of peaceful coexistence between the Native people and the European settlers. In terms of loss of life as a percentage of the population, King Philip’s War was the deadliest war our nation has ever fought—twice as deadly as the Civil War and seven times as deadly as World War II.
Again, what are we to make of this? Were the folks who installed that window in 1950 whitewashing the events of 1671? Or was this an innocently begotten depiction of what they understood the history to be?
I’m no scholar and I can’t really say what their motivations were. But when I stand in the cathedral of the world, I take a merciful view. I don’t judge. I say to myself that this is how the light shined through back in 1950 when that window was made. This is how the light appeared to our church membership in the days of Harry Truman.
And that is the message for today, what these windows are trying to tell us now: That just like every window, behind every person shines the same light that shines through each of us. The better we get to know another person and the more we know about them, the more we understand their story and why they say what they say and think what they think. Behind every window is the same light. Behind every person is the same love—God’s love … divine love … universal love.
So when we encounter someone who says something we find upsetting, instead of firing back, we might say, “Tell me more about that. Say more.” We might press them, albeit gently: “What would make things better?” We might bring out our inner light and ask, “Tell me, what would reassure you that we live in a kind, just, and loving world?”
If that seems difficult, try just listening. The practice of deep listening seems vital right about now, during an election season that, depending on where you live, pits neighbor against neighbor and threatens peaceful coexistence—or at the very least, can make for some very uncomfortable moments around the dining room table. When responding eludes us, when we are at a loss for words, we might try pressing our ear low to the holy ground … and listen.
In an address he gave to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School in 1838, just a few years after this sanctuary was built, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.”
The windows are still speaking. They are asking us, when someone speaketh, do we listen? Can we look past what we see and hear, what we find objectionable or frustrating, and see the light that is trying to make its way through? In the cathedral of the world, even then there is a chance to encounter the divine. Even then we might see that for all the world’s imperfections, for all the views and viewpoints out there, we are always surrounded by a kind of beauty. In the cathedral of the world, every window points to an open door.
May it be so, and blessed be.