This sermon was given by Reverend Judith Campbell on April 11, 2004, at Templom Unitarius, Kolozs, Jud: Cluj, (Translyvania) Romania.

Good morning!

If someone had told me, when I began my religious training, that in my grandmother years, I would be standing in a Transylvanian Unitarian pulpit half a world away from the city of my birth, wearing with pride and honor a traditional and very beautiful Transylvanian Robe, I would have smiled and said you were dreaming!  But this is not a dream. It is a dream come true.

I do come to you from the other side of the world.  From Martha’s Vineyard, a little Island off the Northeast Coast of the United States.  It is named for the wild grapevines that grow everywhere.  Our little Unitarian church has almost 100 members.  Many of them are grandparents, but we have a number of young families joining us now and that is a very good thing.

There are two important ways of making a living on the island, fishing and tourism. (There are also some small farms.) In the winter we have 10,000 living here, but in the summer, sometimes there are as many as 100,000 people.  And many of those people are very rich.  But when they go, they take their money with them, and the people who live there all year (me and my husband) have to work very hard to pay our bills. There are many very poor people there, and we at our church work to help these people with food and a place to live. Many people think everyone in America is rich.  But I can tell you from my work as a minister, it is not true.

Today is Easter. I stand proudly with you today and I offer the hand of friendship and the heart of our Unitarian faith from our little Island Unitarian church to you all here in our Partner Unitarian Church and to Farkas Denes, your minister and My Brother in Unitarian Faith and in Friendship.  It has been a long journey to this day.

I first learned of the Partner program twelve years ago. The minister of my church was going to Transylvania to visit his partner Church in the village of Kadacs.  He asked me and my husband, Chris, to come along and said, ”It will change your life”   He was right.  It has changed my life in ways I could never know.  This is our third visit. And, today, 12 years later, I have my own church and my husband and I are standing here with you on Easter Sunday celebrating our shared faith.  We come as pilgrims to the place of our Unitarian roots, and as brother and sister travelers with you on the life long journey of  liberal religious faith and renewal.

Your minister, Farkas Denes, was our tour guide on our first journey to this beautiful land.  He took us to see big city churches and little small village churches filled with the handwork of the people in the villages.  He found vegetarian food for me.  I learned to take very very little sips of Palinka, and I learned to speak with my eyes and my hands when I did not have enough Hungarian words to say what was in my heart.  On that visit, I christened a little girl and heard the village children recite poems for us.  My heart was very full, because I found so much kindness and love, and I promised I would return.

And I did return two years later, and again, Denes was our guide. I had a few more words of Hungarian this time, and with the help of a translator, gave a short sermon in the Kadacs Church, and spoke to the students at the Protestant Theological Seminary in Kolosvar.  And again, I promised to come back. 

We tried two more times to come back, but the terrorist attack in 2001 forever changed our lives in America. And the demands of a small but growing church kept us home.

But I said I would come again, and over the years I wrote letters to Denes and he wrote letters to me telling one another of the work we were doing and of the religious call we have followed.  I promised I would come again, this time to your church as your partner minister.  I visited this village on our last visit, but we only saw the church from the outside. Now we are here, inside, and standing with you.  My promise and my dream have come true. 

Our Unitarian faith tells us that Easter is the celebration of the renewal of faith in the power and goodness of God’s enduring love and the universal message of hope in the teachings of Jesus.  Our faith in the power of love has been tested again and again and it will continue to be tested as long as people turn away from the path of goodness and are called by the false idols of greed and power and of prejudice and intolerance. 

There are people on our little island who will not attend a church service where I am preaching because I am a Unitarian.  They think we are not religious because we don’t believe in the curse of original sin, or that Jesus died to save us from eternal darkness.  I am saddened by their intolerance.  I pity them.

The light that we Unitarians find on Easter is the light of faith and hope for a better tomorrow, and faith in the teachings of Jesus, who teaches that through God’s love we humans have within us the power to make a better tomorrow.  We do this, not by casting aside all those who do not think like we do, or pray like we do, but by opening our doors and our hearts to the wisdom of the ages wherever we find it. 

Some people find the answers to life’s questions in the Holy Scriptures.  Other people find it in music or in art or in gardening or in caring for others.  Because we are Unitarians, we can decide for ourselves where our journey of faith might take us.  My journey has brought me here today. And I will return to our little island church with a deeper and richer understanding of my own Unitarianism, because of your faith and our being together on this day and on this journey.

From my husband and myself, and the men and women and children in our little island church on Martha’s Vineyard, I bring you love, I bring you friendship and I bring you faith in a better tomorrow, as we celebrate together the renewal of the spirit on this wonderful and blessed Easter day.

Thank you so much, my dear brothers and sisters, my partners, my companions on the journey

Thank you and God Bless You

Kosonem szepen en Izsten Aldjo