Szabó Árpád (szerk.): Isten és ember szolgálatában. Erdő János emlékezete (Kolozsvár, 2007)
John A. Buehrens: A House for Hope. Liberal Theology and the Challenges of the 21st Century
180 J B o u h e n h r A c I mentioned that the Needham meetinghouse once sat next to the burying ground. Now it has, like many UU congregations in America, a memorial garden, where the ashes of deceased members can be scattered. The commonwealth of God that we seek is not merely in the future. It is not reached by dying and going to heaven. It is already here among us. Jesus clearly preached that it is present in life wherever we learn to love the Ground of our Being with all our heart, mind, and soul and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I once heard a lay woman say that when she prayed the words „thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” she realized that that prayer is answered whenever and wherever we understand the deeper meaning of those words. There is no more urgent task for religious communities of all traditions than to speak out prophetically for the preservation of the creation we were placed in. But we cannot do that simply by crying,„Doom!”To maintain prophetic hope, we must also point to the garden and the beauty all around us. Much more could be said on this subject, but there are two other aspects of our theological house yet to explore. The Windows and Doors: Our Missiology How do we look out at our neighbors? What do we understand our mission to be? When worship is over, and the service begins, what do we go forth into the world to do? The old meetinghouse in Needham has clear-glass windows. For many years it was the only house of worship in the town. From those windows we can see not only the Town Hall across the street but also the steeples of some of the other houses of worship that have developed in the community. There are two stories in particular that I love to tell because they illustrate how we look at our neighbors. Roughly 50% of the 30,000 citizens of Needham are nominally Roman Catholic. Roughly 25% are Jewish. When Irish Catholics tried to form a parish in Needham, shortly after the Meetinghouse had been moved, no one would sell „the Papists” any land. But the women of First Parish had joined together to buy a piece of land themselves. Unable in the early 19th century to own land in their own individual names, only through a husband or trustee, they had formed a Ladies’ Society to purchase a lot and garden it together, in protest. By the time that the Catholics were seeking a place to build a church, the law had been changed. So the Unitarian Ladies’ Society, now protesting bigotry, sold „the Ladies’ lot” to the diocese, and what is now St. Joseph's parish, with 10 000 nominal parishioners, was built there. We can see it from our windows.
