Just As I Am

December 2, 2001

Just as I am, without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee
O Lamb of god, I come, I come!

Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind,
Sight, riches, healing of the mind--
Yea, all I need, in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am! Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!

Just as I am! Thy love unknown
Hath broken every barrier down;
Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
--Charlotte Elliott

Perhaps some of you actually know the old gospel hymn from which my sermon title is taken this morning. We may assume that the author, Charlotte Elliott, an invalid throughout her life, knew personally of the yearning for acceptance of which she spoke. My favorite verse is the third:

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without. . . .

It certainly speaks to my condition, and, I hazard to guess, to many of yours.

A little historical research reveals that the hymn appeared in the 1864 Unitarian collection, Hymns of the Spirit, but in a Unitarianized version by Samuel Longfellow--brother of Henry Wadsworth, and a frequent 19th century visitor to this very pulpit. In his version, Longfellow, a Unitarian minister and hymn writer, substituted the words "O Loving God" for Elliott's original "O Lamb of God":

O Loving God, I come! I come!

Textual analysis also reveals that Longfellow left out verses 4 and 6. Verse 4 was possibly too negative about human nature, though the author was probably speaking personally:

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind--
Yea, all I need, in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God. . . .

Verse 6, which makes reference to "Thy love unknown" which "hath broken every barrier down," is also excluded.

Longfellow's version also appears in the Universalist's 1917 Hymns of the Church, though by the time of the 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist effort Hymns of the Spirit (the so-called "red hymnal") it has disappeared.

A hymn with the title "Just As I Am" does appear in the 1923 Songs of Work and Worship, a Universalist hymnbook for young people, but only the refrain remains of the original. Perhaps the original was felt to be too negative for the consumption of tender listeners, or perhaps even to raise the question that God might not accept one of his children was simply too much for the loving heart of Universalism

The hymn appears in a 1903 Universalist collection entitled Church Harmonies New and Old. Here the hymn has Elliott's original wording, but verse 2--which makes reference to our "dark, blotted soul" and to Jesus' "cleansing blood"--is left out. The version in Church Harmonies of 1905 also leaves out verse 4, that of the "poor, wretched, [and] blind."

Perhaps the most subtle but revealing change of all to the original text occurs in the Unitarian Hymn and Tune Book for the Church and Home of 1873. There verse 4 is once again left out, but what is less obvious but equally telling is the substitution in the final verse of God's "love now known" for Elliott's "love unknown." Leave it to Unitarians to have no doubt whatsoever about the reality of God's love!

I begin with this literary-historical digression as a way of pointing out that there are often history lessons in unexpected places. Also, I do so to remind us of the once-popularity of this old hymn, with its positive sentiments about God's relationship to us, among earlier generations of Unitarians and Universalists.

That "Just As I Am" disappeared from our hymnbook says more about it's evangelical Christian imagery than it does about its central message of our acceptance by God. The hope for acceptance "just as we are" is just as real today as it was when Charlotte Elliott wrote the hymn. Maybe, given the demise of old systems of belief, the deepening of skepticism and the rise of existentialism, it is even more to be desired now then it was then.

"Just as I am" says it all religiously, as far as I am concerned. Though Elliott's "blood of the lamb" Christianity may have become anachronistic for most Unitarian Universalists, and her language archaic, her message remains current: in 20th century liberal theologian Paul Tillich's words, "You are accepted!" Tillich's great sermon of that title is really just a contemporary and modern restatement of Elliott's hymn.

We human beings have a powerful need to know that we are accepted "just as we are." We need that knowledge of our acceptance, our "all-rightness" in the universe, in order that we might become who we really are. We need it in order to be honest to that which is in us alone, and in no one else, and to be genuine in our relationships with others. In other words, we need the sense of acceptance in order that we might be authentic human beings.

For I believe that the greatest success we can achieve is to be true to ourselves. The greatest success is personal authenticity. It is this which frees us to be true to others, and to be truly present to them. The great Rabbi Hillel wrote, "If I am not for myself, then who is for me? If I am for myself alone, than who am I?"

Who am I, really? This is the great religious question that each of us must try to answer in our lifetimes. More than anything else, we want to be who we truly are, we want to be ourselves. "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you into someone else is to fight the hardest battle you can fight and never stop fighting," wrote the poet e.e. cummings.

It's easy to be truthful about the person that others expect us to be; much harder to be true to oneself. We can be incredibly loyal to someone else's image of us. Sometimes, we even create that image ourselves. Sometimes, we are painfully truthful about living out our false images.

The problem, of course, is that to live out an image of who we are that is not really us kills the spirit. We may not consciously know that we are living out a false image until we experience a crisis--a death, perhaps, or a divorce, or simply reaching the mid-point in our lives and realizing that there is less time ahead than there is behind us--or until our lives begin to feel joyless and flat, even though by all the standards we have achieved what the world calls success. It is then that we begin to question what we are doing with our lives, what we have accomplished, and who we are. Something is missing from the picture, and we desire to find out what it is.

Perhaps it is putting it only a bit too strongly to say that what we sometimes discover is that we have been living a lie. It's a lie which has undoubtedly harmed us more than anyone else. Consciously or unconsciously, we have failed to be honest about who we are.

Dostoyevsky--a student of secret lives--once wrote,

Everyone has reminiscences which we would not tell to everyone but only to our friends. We have other matters which we would not reveal even to friends, but only to oneself, and that in secret. But there are other things which we are afraid to tell even ourselves, and every decent person has a number of such things stored away in our minds.

The secrets about ourselves which we try to keep can become a great burden. I think most of us crave the kind of confessional where we might get these secrets off our chests. Deep down, I believe that we all have a need to tell the truth about ourselves without fear of being judged.

Of course, it's risky to be yourself. Once you perceive that you have been living a lie--be it only the little white lie of not being true to yourself--it can be a scary proposition to reveal the truth. Some who have known you may not be too pleased with the new, more honest you. The truth can be painful, but as the Bible reminds us, it can also "set you free."

One of the positive advantages of growing older (and I trust that it is not the only one!) is that we may come to experience a new sense of self-acceptance. "I'm me, and that's OK. I don't need to go along with the crowd any longer. I'm free to be who I am, if I choose to be." It's a good feeling.

But if we have been living-out a certain kind of image--say, macho male or complacent housewife--those with whom we live may not like it when the old image begins to fall away. People come to have expectations of us based on what we appear to be. When those appearances begin disappear, it can be difficult for others to accept.

Nonetheless, I believe that "the truth will set you free." Being more honest with ourselves--who we are, our likes and dislikes, our struggles to be human--can be a liberating experience. The African American poet Langston Hughes wrote:

When you turn the corner
And you run into yourself
Then you know that you have turned
All the corners that are left.

The trouble, as St. Paul recognized long ago, is that most of the time we see things incompletely: "through a glass, darkly." The mirror that we gaze into is muddled, and doesn't always reflect the clear image that we desire. The hope is that, in Paul's words, we will come to see "face to face," and that it will be sooner rather than later.

As the reading for the morning by Linda Weltner suggests, our choice in life is ultimately "to grow or suffer."

If we do the things which are true to us, we will grow to be much happier people, and we will be far better equipped to change the world, even if it's only a tiny little corner of it. Indeed, I believe that we will change the world. For by being true to ourselves we are much more likely to be true to others and to be able to help them in their struggles with life.

As we enter upon this season of giving, I ask you to consider: what greater gift can you give or receive than the friendship of a real, live, breathing, thinking, inconsistent, sometimes frustrating, but completely honest human being?

Sometimes we need to let go of the big picture and concentrate on the simple little acts of honesty which help us all to live more peacefully and harmoniously, which help us to be more whole. To be whole, we are reminded, is to be in touch with the Holy. I don't know about you, but I hope to touch the Holy before I go.

The author of "Just As I Am" may have had faith in a god in whom I personally cannot believe, but her trust that we are accepted as we are, in spite of all the reasons why we shouldn't be, is one that I find to be essential to living a happy and well adjusted life. Indeed, such acceptance is at the heart of our Unitarian Universalist heritage.

There are things inside of us which we may never reveal. But let us live in the hope that someday we may come to share our deepest secrets and find acceptance there. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," wrote St. Paul. How true that is! We are laced through with divinity. The great Hindu Bhakti poet Kabir wrote,

. . .Who is it we spend our whole life loving?

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine

mountains, and the maker of canyons and pine

mountains!

All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions

of stars.

The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who

judges jewels.

And music from strings no one touches, and

the source of all water.

If you want truth, I will tell you the truth;

Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock