by Cecilia Kingman Miller, Summer Minister

A sermon given August 24, 2003

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

One of my heroes, A. Powell Davies, once preached a sermon titled “The Temptation to Be Good.”  Davies was a much-revered Unitarian minister, who served at All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. through the McCarthy era.  He was ordained prior to World War II, and perhaps due to these experiences, he was fascinated by the problem of evil in this world. 

Davies used to tell a story from his early ministry.  There was a young couple who were to be wed in his parish, and they were clearly well-suited and very much in love.  But there was a hitch in the plans, for the parents of the bride felt that the groom did not have sufficient social standing to wed their daughter.  He came from “the wrong side of the tracks,” in their words, and they were dead set against the marriage. 

Davies tried everything to convince the parents to attend the wedding, but they were adamant in their refusal.  He pleaded with the mother, reminding her of her daughter’s infancy. He told her that one day her daughter too would have a baby, which she would long to hold in her arms.  “What will you do,” Davies asked, “when you have to remember that you would not attend your daughter’s wedding?”

Here’s the story as Davies told it:

“My pleas were all in vain.  The wedding took place, rather pathetically, with just two witnesses.  There were hardly any flowers.  But I thought it might be a kindness to write to the girl’s mother, describing the brighter side of it, and I did.  The next day, the mother came to see me.  I never saw a more pitiful person.  She could scarcely speak for sobbing.  ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ she said.  ‘I wanted to come.  Inside of me, I wanted to come.  I knew it was right.  I nearly did come.  But, oh God! Oh God!  I didn’t.’”

“Nearly!”  Davies writes: 

“Nearly!  The things we nearly do!  The lives we almost live!  I have no doubt that Judas nearly decided not to betray Jesus.  He loved Jesus.  Everything that was decent in him pled with him to stand by and carry loyalty to the uttermost proof.  He knew it at the time and suppressed knowledge of it.  But when he knew it again, he could suppress it no longer; for he was counting the thirty pieces of silver.  So he went out and hanged himself.”

The anguish of our choices!  Our impulse to be good is always within us.  And so often we nearly do the right thing.  Davies said in his sermon that people are not tempted towards evil, but that goodness and evil exist side by side within us, both as temptations.  Our longing to be good stands next to our more selfish desires: desires to be comfortable, to be right, to be liked.  The question is always before us: which shall we choose? 

And so frequently, the choice is not even between good and evil, but as Davies wrote, between good and almost good.  You know those times when we sit in a room with a group of people, facing some choice or issue.  There is a moment where it seems that truth might be told, that the highest good might win.  And everyone waits for someone to say that truth or point in the right direction.  Goodness hovers at hand, waiting to be chosen. 

And then the moment passes, and another choice is made.  Then everyone is relieved, for the highest yet hardest thing is not chosen.  Controversy is avoided, embarrassment averted.  But everyone is also secretly disappointed.  We knew what was right, we almost did it, but oh god, we did not.  How often does this happen, each day, in workplaces, in families, in halls of government?  Most people want to do what is good and right, but instead we succumb to the almost good, to the easier path.[i]

What then is the key in the struggle to be good?  How might we gird ourselves, strengthen our wills, practice goodness?  Is there some way that we might grow in character? 

I once knew a man, now gone, who seemed to be the epitome of goodness.  He was gentle and kind, yet firm in his commitment to justice-making.  He worked tirelessly for various causes, many times putting his career on the line, yet I never heard him say anything petty, or cross, or mean-spirited.  I often wondered how he had acquired such strength of character. One day he and I were sitting and talking, and I felt my question burning up inside of me.  And so I asked him, very awkwardly.  I said, “Ralph, you are such a good person, in every way.  How did you come to be so good?”  He looked a little uncomfortable, and then replied softly: “Well, it isn’t very easy.  I fail regularly.  I just try as best I can to live my faith.” 

His reply only impressed me more.  Of course someone that good would also be modest!  I felt more keenly the gap between our characters. 

But in the years since that conversation, and the years since Ralph died, I have come to see a deeper meaning in his reply.  I believe Ralph was a modest man—that is true.  But I think his modesty, and his discomfort in answering my question, came from the fact that he knew all too well the difficulties of living with integrity, of acting faithfully.  Only someone who has had their character tested by their own human limitations could make such a measured response.

So often, we see other people whom we admire, and we believe that their goodness comes easily to them.  We have some people here in this church who are like Ralph, for whom integrity and kindness seem birthright traits.  Yet as I have moved into ministry I have come to know that each of us struggles with our own characters.  Each of us stumbles from time to time.  Each of us is hiding our own shames and fears. 

I know my own struggles: I am often short-tempered with the people closest to me.  My children can tell you that I tend to work long hours and get crotchety with them, particularly on sermon writing Saturdays.  I am frequently impatient when things don’t go my way.  I’m self-righteous on occasion.

And—I grapple with my fears when I am faced with injustice: I don’t want to make people angry, or be ridiculed when I make a difficult stand. 

These are just a few of my flaws—I have more, rest assured.  And I struggle with them daily.   I cannot tell you the number of times in a week that I catch myself saying something snappish.  Or the times that I am silent in the face of injustice, afraid to say something unpopular. 

You have your own difficulties, I know.  There is no one here this morning who does not fail, in some way, to live up to our own desire to be good.  We know the people we want to be, and yet we so often fall short.  Why?

One reason is that the world does not encourage kindness and mercy.  The world gives us the message that we must look out for our own interests; that life is a race won by the most competitive.  The world says that there are limited resources, a finite amount of wealth, goods, and love, and that each of us is on our own as we try to grab what we can.  The world reinforces Mark Twain’s message: “Be good and you will be lonesome.”

And yet still we have this impulse towards kindness, and justice.  Still we long to be good.  So how can we be the people we long to be?

I have one answer to offer you today—it’s the answer Ralph gave me years ago.  It is to practice our faith. Church is one place to grow in goodness.  Here is where we can learn to be people of integrity and kindness.  There is no other place I know, no other organization, whose sole purpose is to cultivate goodness—to cultivate goodness! 

But the purpose of religion is not simply to create nice people.  No, the purpose of church is to shape society, by championing the cause of justice and spreading the message of love.

Some people might say that the purpose of church is to improve ourselves, to teach us spiritual practices, but not to be involved in social matters.  I do not agree with those people, and here’s why:  Religion holds a unique role in society.  Communities of faith perform a unique function.  They have what sociologists call an “alternative imagination,” an ability to posit a future different from, and better than, the present we know today. 

Religion describes a future in which every child is fed, and warm, and sleeps in a dry bed.  In which all people are free from want and oppression and despair.  To do so, churches must name the realities of our day that are not in accord with that vision: homelessness, hunger, inequity.  And churches must name the evils that cause those realities and prevent the longed for future—evils like greed, corruption, and violence.

Far from being the opiate of the masses, the church at its best is the conscience of the people.  As Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, once said, “[The church] has no intention of being the people’s opium. […] The church wants to rouse men and women to the true meaning of being a people.  What is a people?  A people is a community of persons where all cooperate for the common good.”[ii] 

We come together in this body not just to heal our own souls, but also to offer healing outward in the world.  The time we spend here is meant to rouse us to goodness.  Here we learn what it means to be a people, working together for the common good.

Now, lest you think churches lack any real power, let me share with you a simple fact.  There was not one successful social movement in the United States that did not use congregations as its organizing agents.  Every successful movement involved churches and synagogues. 

Think of the role of churches in the civil rights movement, or in the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, when religious people organized in opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America.  There have been other movements, too: temperance, women’s suffrage, abolition. There are examples from other countries, too. Remember the involvement of the church in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere, when priests, nuns and lay people risked everything in the struggle against military dictatorship.  Or the role of the church in overcoming apartheid in South Africa. 

Think also of those times when churches have been silent in the face of evil.  Most noteworthy were the churches in Germany during the Third Reich, who through a combination of fear, complicity and their own anti-Semitism did not speak out against the Nazi atrocities. 

The religious right understands the power to be harnessed in congregations.  They are brilliant in their organizing methods.  We would do well to take note.  We might ask, where is the voice of our faith needed, to counter injustice and prejudice?  How will we respond?  What does it mean to be a faithful Unitarian Universalist in our times?

The great Unitarian theologian and ethicist James Luther Adams said often that in order for goodness to triumph, it must be institutionalized.  If we are to make changes in the world, to create a just society, we must organize ourselves.  This church does just that: in our social justice program.  This congregation is a beacon, a model for other churches to follow.  We are speaking out, lending our voice to the cause of mercy and peace. 

This is the role of the church.  We must gather within our houses of worship and fortify our temptation to be good, and then we must act, together, to bring in change.  The good we almost do must become the good we do—and we must challenge and encourage one another in our strivings.

When one of us falters, we shall clasp hands to lend strength.  When one of us trips, we shall link arms for stability.  When one of us tires, we shall rest together and then call each other onward with voices clear and strong. 

For you see, my friends, the world needs us, shaky and scared as we may be.  The world needs people who will face evil and choose goodness, who will point the way towards that new day which will come, that day when love will triumph and justice will reign. 

May it be so, my friends.  Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Copyrights 2003, Cecilia Kingman Miller, Summer Minister.  All rights reserved.