Gratitude and Guilt
A Sermon by Rev. Robert M. Eddy, M.Div.
Unitarian Universalist Church
Pensacola, FL 32534

“From you I receive,
to you I give
together we share
and from this we live.”
Rabbi Nathan Segal

One of the first things I was told when I moved from the Methodist ministry to the UU ministry was, “Unitarian Universalists don’t do guilt.” My mentors felt it necessary to say this then, in much of the country’s Methodist churches, Guilt was in. In fact, in this part of the country, which I first visited as a Methodist youth worker in 1951, it seemed that to be considered a Christian at all one must feel a miserable wretch. Guilty not only of one’s own lapses from virtue but guilty of the sins of ones ancestors all the way back to Adam and Eve.
I’ve never felt that kind of guilt. The brand of Methodism in which I was raised didn’t attempt to make me feel that somehow I was a terrible person who needed to be saved from eternal torment. It wasn’t until I went to seminary that I learned that a Methodist minister should “convince people they were sinners and then offer them salvation.” Only then did I realize that what I thought was Methodism was really Unitarian and Universalist Christianity. Only then did I realize that I had been raised in the liberal “religion of Jesus” rather than the reactionary “religion about Jesus.” Methodist youth in my part of the country in the 1940’s looked to Jesus as an example, not a savior. And we viewed God not as some cosmic sadist we needed to fear, but as a loving father who wanted the best for us as we would for our own children. There are still some Methodists around Pensacola who believe that but they are generally very very quiet in the face of the Fundamentalists who have taken over their churches. That saddens me greatly. I am eternally grateful for my Methodist upbringing and seminary education. Grateful, but not guilty that I left it.
My unabridged dictionary defines Guilt as
“ a feeling of remorse or responsibility for some offense, crime or wrong whether real or imagined.”
The feeling is the same, whether real or imagined.
The Random House unabridged dictionary defines Gratitude as “the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.” Well, that’s not much help – go to Grateful.
Grateful: “warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received.”
Good but then the same dictionary gives as synonyms “obliged and Indebted” as synonymous. That creates a problem. If I owe someone for some “kindness or benefit received” and can’t repay does that make me a debtor. And If I don’t pay off that debt am I therefore guilty. Morally bankrupt? UU’s don’t do guilt. When we recognize that we have harmed another person we make amends. We ask forgiveness and we grant it when it is asked of us. And if we cannot undo some harm we have done in a past relationship, we set about learning how to do better with present relationships. We don’t look for excuses. We don’t blame others. We don’t wallow in guilt. And we don’t teach our children to feel guilty. We teach them to be grateful and to “pass it on.”
Some of the things we inherited from our Christian roots are good - like the idea – “from each according to his or her ability and to each according to his or her need.” (See Acts 4:35.) Other assumptions we've carried along from our Christian roots are not good. Guilt is one of those.
UU’s don't do guilt. And especially we don't do vicarious guilt. I am not guilty for the crucifixion of Jesus. Only those who did it then were guilty, whether Roman or Judean. Their Italian and Jewish descendents bear no guilt whatsoever.
Now don't misunderstand me. Guilt is a useful concept when properly understood. I am guilty when something I have done results in harm to another person. Guilt is the flip side of responsibility. And proactive gratitude in action is the best medicine for guilt. Let me repeat, “proactive gratitude is the best medicine for guilt.”
One of the most radical of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is found in Gospel of Matthew chapter 25 beginning verse 35. The words are put in the mouth “the judge of the quick and the dead” as he is separating the sheep from the goats. There is little probability that Jesus actually spoke those exact words but something like these words were probably spoken by the man Jesus to his rather dense disciples. I won’t read the whole passage only the “punch lines”
“inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
And
“inasmuch as ye have NOT done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me.”
This statement is similar to Jesus teaching in the so called "lord's prayer." Which, incidentally was supposed to be said alone – in the closet as it were – not in a Church or a courtroom or a classroom. The relevant phrase, from the King James version is,
"Forgive our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us"
It were better translated
“forgive us our trespasses INSOFAR as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
In fact the scholars of the Jesus Seminar translate the verse,
“Forgive our debts TO THE EXTENT that we have forgiven those in debt to us.”
Jesus was always talking about giving and forgiving, but his ecclesiastical disciples of future generations early and late twisted his words into a sort of legalistic financial transaction.
“God gave you this and this and this and therefore you owe God an equal amount plus interest.”
Of course if God gives you everything then you owe him everything. That puts human beings in an impossible situation. We can never “pay back all that has been given to us.” Much less with interest. Not even what has been given us by our parents can be paid back much less all that friends and teachers and physicians and others who have helped us over the years. Many of them are dead. Nor should we try to repay them. THE ONLY WAY TO REPAY IS TO PASS IT ON. Proactive Gratitude is the proper response to guilt.
But the standard answer you’ll hear from most pulpits in our city and county and region is “you can pay God back only by absolute obedience.” Thy will, not mine be done. Once that is accepted it’s a small step to convince people that obedience to God means obedience to his ordained representatives and to their interpretation of God’s Law as found in their sacred text. It’s a game that every institutionalized religion is tempted to play. The cultivation of Guilt can be very profitable to ecclesiastical gardeners.
As I said, it saddens me that there is no liberal Christian Church in Pensacola. But I suspect it’s just a matter of time. Would this congregation be willing to sponsor such a Christian group and provide free meeting space as we did for Metropolitan Community Churches in many cities twenty years ago? Perhaps it could be called the Roger Williams Memorial Baptist Church, after the Pilgrim Father that Northern Baptists claim as their American founder.
Despite my disappointment in local Christian Churches, I believe that segments of Christendom are moving toward a more nearly universalistic humanism. If you want to know more about that movement, check out “Sojourner’s Magazine on line” (sojo.net) You can see the same progressive, humanistic movement also in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism. And in Unitarian Universalism. Yes, we too are evolving - out of a rather conceited notion as ourselves as the precious few who have found the answers into a group of people who realize, as Shelly Jackson Denham put it, “ even to question truly is an answer.”
We should be grateful to all those who founded the Pensacola Unitarian Universalist Fellowship 46 years ago. Dolly Berthelot and friends have presented some of those ancestors to you in the last month. Remembering is good. Gratitude is good but we should also keep our eyes on the future, building on that heritage so that forty six years from now others can express their gratitude by passing it on by practicing pro-active gratitude.
Again quoting Shelly Jackson Denham, “We have our hearts to give, we have our thoughts to receive, and we believe that sharing is an answer.” Yes, that’s proactive gratitude. Not out of guild do we share, but out of gratitude.

“From you I receive,
to you I give
together we share
and from this we live.”