This morning I'm going to talk about the Y2K problem. Not the dreaded computer glitch that everyone is obsessing over. Apart from a bit of inevitable panic, that year two thousand problem is almost certainly going to be solved. Computerized Armageddon will have to wait for some less expected trigger, one in fact that we should be far more worried about, such as an accidental nuclear launch like the one that was narrowly averted and almost completely unreported just a year ago, when the Russians systems reported an impending American strike. Lacking a fail save system linking their command with ours came, in a moment of panic their leaders came within a hair's breadth of real retaliation against our imaginary attack.
On this subject, I am happy to announce that the All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force has taken the lead denominationally in helping to coordinate the efforts of some twenty other congregations in a letter writing campaign to leading members of congress. Our goal -- at a minimum -- is to prompt the establishment of an early alert communications link between Washington and Moscow to avert the possibility of such a potentially fatal mistake ever being made again.
This morning, however, I wish to talk about the all-too-human Y2K problem. It is a religious problem, and no less deadly for having spiritual roots. I am speaking of those people in this country and around the world who expect the world to end in 12 months, and are preparing to do their part in making sure that they are not proved wrong.
My family and I spent the ten days following Christmas in Israel. What an extraordinary experience this was. Talk about a people living on the existential edge, with every political decision potentially a matter of life an death for the six million inhabitants of this vibrant and tortured land. It is almost impossible to spend any time in Israel without tapping deep into the ongoing drama of religious history unfolding there. In the archeology of the soul, Israel invites rich and revealing excavations, layer upon layer, tapping the collective unconscious, uncovering the most charged and compelling artifacts of our age old human drama.
Every time I visit Israel I am struck anew by how tiny the country is. When one hears talk of exchanging land for peace, what may seem an obvious compromise an ocean away is clearly far more complex a proposition when one considers both the size and geography of Israel itself. Think about it this way. Israel is a little smaller than New Jersey. The Arab countries surrounding it -- many of them hostile -- fill an area much larger than the rest of the United States.
So you are living in Israel, that is to say, New Jersey. New York and New England are Syria. Pennsylvania is Lebanon. The mid-Atlantic states are Jordan. The South is Egypt. The Midwest Iran. The Far West Iraq. Actually, until 1967, Israel was half the size of New Jersey. Many of those who support, as I do, the establishment of a Palestinian State, call for a return to pre-1967 boarders, with the Golan Heights going back to Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip given to the Palestinians. Among other things, this cedes almost all of the high ground to potential enemies. No wonder political passions in Israel run high. Not only security but survival itself hang in the balance.
When you add in the many historic and profound religious tensions, you really have a tinderbox. Even as religion is the most ennobling creation of humankind it is also by far the most destructive. And in one city, the city of Jerusalem, there are more competing religious claims, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, than in any other city on the globe. For four thousand years competing empires, each with a distinct religious authority powering the people's passions, have, in alternating waves of violence, destroyed the temples of their enemies and erected temples to their Gods. Only over the last 30 years, with Israel maintaining hegemony over Jerusalem, has this pattern been broken, with Christians and Muslims granted suzerainty over their own religious landmarks. That is to say, there is no third temple. The most religiously charged three acres on the planet, the temple mount, remains an Islamic precinct, with the Jews relegated to worshiping at the West Wall. When you consider that for centuries the Muslims only permitted Jews to enter the city and worship there one day a year, the magnanimity of the Israeli religious authority is manifest.
This said, the orthodox Jews, though a decided minority of Israeli citizens have a near strangle-hold on religious law in Israel. If you ever doubted the wisdom of our founders insistence on a clear wall of separation between church and state, just go to Israel and observe the tyranny the religious right there exercises over the laws of the land. In American Terms, it would be like having Jerry Falwell as minister of culture and Pat Robertson as Secretary of Education. The religious tension, not just between Palestinians and Jews, but among the Jews themselves is distinctly palpable and manifest daily in the news, in the halls of government, in the streets themselves.
This said, the Y2K problem in Israel has almost nothing to do with the Arabs and the Jews, or even, for some reason, with the Palestinian Christians. It's sponsors in fact are Americans, Fundamentalist American Christians. During our stay in Israel the police revealed the existence of and then deported a small American Christian Cult originating in Denver that in anticipation of Christ's return less than twelve months from now was evidently planning either the destruction of the temple mount or to commit group suicide there as the opening salvo of the new millennium.
Here we have the first hint of what I am afraid will emerge over the next few months as the real Y2K problem. One thousand years ago, Europe was beset by violent millenarian movements, some ascetic, some libertine, almost all wanton in their destructive passions, declaring war against their neighbors in the name of the prince of peace. Terrorists for truth and God have bedeviled our world since the beginning of history, but rarely with more concentrated force and tumultuous consequence than in the last year of the last millennium in Europe. I fear that the uncovering of this little Christian conventional last week in Israel is only the first evidence of what promises to be a scourge of Christian mania, a Y2K possession that will manifest itself throughout our country and especially in Jerusalem, adding yet more fire to the kinder.
On returning from Israel, I was interested to learn that a fundamentalist Christian publishing house has come out with what they call "The library of Cults," a set of books outlining the teachings of various heresies. You may or may not be happy to learn that one of the first volumes in this series is devoted to Unitarianism, and that I am cited as the leading contemporary Unitarian heretic.
First of all, I am frankly pleased that someone considered us a significant enough threat to devote an entire book to educating their public to the dangers we pose. But the plain truth is, far for the better than for the worse, is that Unitarian Universalism happens in fact to be the precise opposite of a cult. We practice freedom of religious belief, have no secret teachings, completely lack the hierarchical authority structure in which what the leader says goes. And on the danger spectrum, we are probably about the least dangerous religion ever invented. After ten days in the middle east, I can tell you, that is a very reassuring thing.
On the other hand, another of the things that distinguishes our faith both from millennial Christian cults and orthodox or fundamentalist Christians, Muslims and Jews, is our rather low threshold of religious conviction. Though a superabundance of conviction leads to bigotry and violence, a relative lack of conviction may easily result in tepidity. As we approach the millennium this will simply not do. For never before has our faith in the principles of Universalism -- one light, many windows -- one hidden and mysterious truth, many differing paths -- offered a more redemptive counterpoint to the destructive and antithetical passions of religious zealots around the globe.
In Israel this past week my own Universalism helped me appreciate, more deeply perhaps than ever before, the rich, deep, traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. How alike they are, and yet how distinctive. We witnessed the ecstatic, wonderfully joyous end to Ramadan, a smile on every Muslim face and the people poured down from the temple mount into the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. At the Western Wall, we witnessed the end of Shabat, with circles of Jews, hand in hand, dancing and singing, exultant, inspiring. I have rarely, if ever, been so moved by a religious spectacle. Through the lens of Universalism, both these groups and the Christians on Pilgrimage in Nazareth and Bethlehem, are mortal kin who have somehow become mortal enemies. This I know is in the nature of human nature, and powerful historic events have sealed many negative religious passions. This will change slowly, if at all. But our own faith -- humble as it is, and based not on the conversion of others but on the conversion of our own hearts that we may embrace and respect as many of our brothers and sisters as possible, their human worth and dignity, the interdependent web that unites us, the mortar of mortality that binds us fast to one another -- these things are worth all the conviction, all the passion we can muster. Rather than succumbing to the temptations of cynical chic or sophisticated resignation, by our acts and the way we value others in our interactions with them, we can play a small, but not completely unimportant role in addressing the real Y2K problem. Just witness the All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force. And the creation of our New Life Lines Center next fall. Each is based on our religious convictions. Given the nature of those convictions, when we rise up and act on them our world becomes a better place.
One more thing. The foundation for all religion, its roots if you will, lie in two universal human experiences, humility and awe. The humility principle leads to compassion; our sense of awe inspires wonder. So, in the spirit of our faith, let me close with my most humbling and awe inspiring experience in Israel. On our next to last day, an exhaustive and somewhat exhausting tour winding to its close, we visited a cave half way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. An amazing cavern filled with Stalagmites and Stalactites, columns, living, growing, glowing walls of stone.
One stalactite form, preliminary to all others, is called macaroni. Narrow tubes of stone, about the width of a piece of macaroni, descend from the ceiling, growing as the mineral waters drip down within them and slowly calcify. Some of these strings of macaroni were five feet long. Our guide pointed out that the entire history of Israel, going back to the time of Moses, took place during the last six inches of growth. As for the columns, many have been in gestation for tens of millions of years. All this taking place below the ground of holy wars and shifting human fortunes. Humbling, yes indeed. Awe inspiring, absolutely. And as beautiful as anything I have ever seen. These caverns are not irrelevant to my faith. On the contrary, it is things like this, like a billion billion stars in and looming deep behind a summer sky, sunsets over the teeming oceans offering a glimpse into eternity, these are the some of the things that ground and inspire my faith, that and my convictions. My conviction that we all differ less in our knowledge than we are alike in our ignorance. My conviction that every human being share far more in common than divides us. In fact, though many, in differing colors and beliefs and nations, we are truly one, brothers and sisters of one great, humbling, awe-inspiring mystery. This is not only worth pondering, it is worth celebrating and acting on during the brief precious span of our lives together. In that spirit, happy millennium. It's great to be back home.
Amen. I love you. May God bless. Copyright AllSouls 1999.