For a culture with record low rates of church attendance and religious affiliation, we sure do love spiritual language. Every time I open instagram, I am fed a new idea for a daily ritual—ads for expensive herbal drinks that promise to replace a glass of wine as my new nightly calming “ritual,” extremely elaborate skin care routines, beautiful pour-over coffee carafes, and even cleaning products. I have good news this morning friends, it turns out scrubbing our shower isn’t a chore anymore, it is a purification ritual for our homes and minds. It’s not bad marketing. It seems to imbue an action with a certain amount of meaning and gravitas. It also ensures that the product is being consumed on a regular enough basis that you need to keep buying more!

But a ritual is about more than just buying the right product. And it isn’t even just about doing something over and over. We don’t want to come to a ritual thoughtlessly. Rituals, while repetitive, are meant to be done with intention. And the idea is, when we do them enough, they begin to transform us from the inside out. Put simply, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said in our reading, “Rituals create new habits of the heart.”

Rituals create new habits of the heart. So it makes sense that rituals become especially important in times of moral crisis and uncertainty, when we need to ground ourselves in our values and grow in compassion and courage. And indeed, two of our most beloved and uniquely UU rituals come to us from those resisting Nazi occupation in Europe.

One is our Chalice Lighting. Although chalices and flames are ancient religious symbols, the flaming chalice we recognize today as a symbol of Unitarian Universalism originated in 1941 with the Unitarian Service Committee and their work helping refugees flee the Nazis. A depiction of a flaming chalice was used as an official identifying symbol on USC letterhead and refugee documents. The origins of the Unitarian Service Committee begin with Martha and Waitstill Sharp, who deserve their own sermon. But, the short version of the story is that following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, the American Unitarian Association was looking for volunteers to travel to Eastern Europe to assist refugees and coordinate relief efforts. They asked 17 ministers before one, Rev. Sharp finally said yes. The Sharps left their children and comfortable life in Massachusetts behind and ultimately helped thousands of people escape Nazi persecution. It is, in part, their memory we invoke each week when we light our chalice.

Now, the request to the American Unitarian Association for urgent aid in Czechoslovakia, the request the Sharps ultimately helped fulfill, came from Norbert Capek. Which brings me to the second UU ritual we trace back to this time period. That is, of course flower communion. While it has become a lovely and joyful celebration of spring for many UU churches today, it has a powerful history. Theo provided us with some of Capek’s story during our Time for All Ages. Raised Catholic and originally ordained Baptist, Capek began exploring more liberal religious ideas in the 1910s. When his writings and politics began to attract unfavorable attention from the Germans, he fled to the US where he met his wife Maja and discovered Unitarianism.

Following WWI, Capek returned to a newly independent Czechoslovakia and began a new, liberal church in Prague. This was no easy feat. Starting a church rarely is, but Capek was navigating the painful aftermath of war, the grief and moral questions that come with that, the challenges of independence, and the aversion to faith practices (including traditional communion) that many associated with the previous ruling empire. The church was growing quickly under these complicated circumstances and Capek knew his people needed to create new habits of the heart in order to successfully navigate them. So he turned to ritual and liturgy, to practices that would help to bind his hurting, seeking, hoping people together.

He introduced the flower ceremony. And it looked much like what we participated in today. He kept this ritual up year after year. His wife, Maja brought the practice to American Unitarians when she returned to the states in 1939 to raise funds for relief efforts. Norbert stayed behind and continued to minister to his people, continued to proclaim his liberal faith, continued to preside over flower communion even in the midst of fear and death and suffering. He even continued flower communion following his eventual arrest and imprisonment in Dachau, inviting the other prisoners to bring whatever dandelions or weeds or small blades of grass they could find. He continued to do this up until his death in the Nazi concentration camp in 1942.

Flower communion helped Capek’s people find unity amongst diversity. It helped them find strength in the collective without losing their individual identity. It served as a reminder that we all belong to one another, that we all have gifts to share and a responsibility to treasure and care for those gifts that are shared with us. It was a reminder that even amidst suffering and doubt, there is always beauty to be found. I particularly love how flower communion demonstrates both a seriousness of purpose and lightness of spirit. And I admire Capek’s ingenuity, creativity and willingness to help his people grow and adapt in finding a ritual that felt authentic to them.

This simple exchanging of flowers, this community ritual, helped give people the courage and grounding and faith needed to resist the Nazis. Talk about creating new habits of the heart.

The chalice and flower communion. The Sharps and the Capeks. Two stories of courageous faith that birthed two lasting and meaningful rituals. Rituals that now bind us together with Unitarian Universalists around the world. Historian Curie Virag writes that, “Rituals create community by translating our love into action.” Our community does not share a single sacred text, or theology or creed. But we share these rituals, reminders of love in action. And I think that’s more powerful than we even realize.

In divinity school, I had a liturgy professor who studied sacramental theology, including theologies of the eucharist or Christian communion. His expertise in this area held little relevance for a Unitarian Universalist, but he was a good and engaging teacher. I remember one day someone asked him why Christian communion was always bread and wine. Why not elements that were more culturally appropriate? Why not replace bread with rice in Japanese Christian communities for example? That seemed reasonable to me. His answer was that the ritual of communion wasn’t a vague metaphor about nourishment. It was a remembrance of a specific event, in a specific time and place. It reminded participants that they worshiped a God who acted in history, in real people’s lives in material ways. I filed that away somewhere as an interesting piece of religious philosophy but not something important for the communities I would serve.

But I remembered it as I prepared for flower communion this year. I realized that even though the theology and history is different, something of the principle still holds. These flowers aren’t just vague metaphors for our beautiful diversity. The chalice is not a symbol of a merely theoretical and untested hope. No, They represent very real examples of hope and courage, of beauty and community in the face of great suffering and challenge. They are reminders that this Unitarian Universalist faith we have chosen, has been tested and found worthy of the task to which we've been called. This faith, our faith, has been lived out in history by real people, in real places, in profound, tangible ways. The Sharps risked their lives to save the lives of thousands of others. Norbert Capek modeled a faith that was loving, imaginative, and nimble enough to create new rituals and traditions that welcomed all. And a faith that was serious, committed, and apparently dangerous enough to the Nazis that he was imprisoned for it, and died for it. That’s not theory or metaphor or idealism. That is the living and active, life-changing and life-saving faith we inherit.

We remember it each time we light our chalice and each year, when we exchange these flowers. And in doing so, we too create new habits of the heart. Habits of love, courage, justice and care. Through ritual, we can begin to transform into people who are willing to take risks to protect human dignity and equality, people who notice the beauty present all around us, people who cherish one another and move through life with the understanding that we are all bound together.

So when you leave this sanctuary today, carry your flower with you as a reminder of spring’s beauty, as a reminder of the holy, unique beloved person who brought the flower here today, but let it also be a tangible reminder of this faith we share. A faith with a remarkable past and shared values and rituals that can carry us with hope into the future. When you head out for a walk around town or to Mother's day brunch, if someone asks why you’re carrying a single flower, share this story, this ritual, this piece of our faith with them proudly. And when you take it home tonight and place it in a vase or leave it to dry, take a moment to sit with it in contemplation. Remember the Capeks, the Sharps, and all the ancestors who have lived our faith into being. Think about all the people in this room with you right now who you are connected to through this ritual. Think about what’s possible with all of these individual gifts and collective strength. Ask yourself what work you are called to do? Ask yourself How will you let participating in this ritual transform you?

I leave you with this quote from UU ministers Teresa and David Schwartz. They write, Flower Communion, “is not a historical reenactment of something over and done, but an affirmation of our continuity with the generations of struggle for ever-widening liberty. This flower ceremony, lovely though it is, isn’t a diversion from ugly reality, but a gentle fierceness which proclaims that in the midst of sinister days there is always the light of beauty. We are here not to recall something that happened, but to remember something that is happening: to re-member—to put it back together again—and in that remembering, may we put ourselves back together again, each as a part of the body of this community: out of many, one.”

May it be so. Amen.