Anthem: He Saw A Skull by Michael Gordon
So, the story goes like this…
There’s a man walking along the banks of a river when he sees a skull floating on the water nearby. And, with an unusual calmness and in a sudden bout of existentialism, the man speaks to the skull, saying, “You spent your life drowning people, so you were also drowned. And, those who drowned you will themselves be drowned, as well.”
It’s easy to see this as a grim statement that is devoid of any redemptive quality. This text points us in no direction and offers us no answers, but simply allows us to sit with its truth and make choices about whether we will break the cycle or continue to participate in it.
I love this setting by Michael Gordon. It is an example of text painting at its very finest. While it is musically unusual for a church setting, I think it is masterfully effective. We hope it further enhances your worship experience.
Sermon: Fulfilling the Promise
Thank you for that phrase you used in the introduction of the anthem. “…to make a choice about whether we will break the cycle or continue participating in it.”
In our personal lives and in this community of faith, we are called to expand our vision so that we can see how our habits and ways of being in the world have results that we did not intend, do not affirm and, as people of faith, cannot accept.
To see those results of our living and then to make a choice…to break the cycle.
Did anyone here set out to participate in…to support a world where injustice is so common? Was that your intention? Was that our intention?
No of course not.
And yet.
There are ways that we are like that man walking along the river, out for a pleasant stroll, ready to admire the beauty of the world we have created…only to find such serious flaws, violence and oppression in the community that we have built…only to see a skull staring back at us…
It is a stark image, I know. But in a world where the New Jim Crow is real, where we need a ‘Me, Too” movement, where glass ceilings persist and trans folks remain at risk, where the rich get richer and the rest of us struggle…
It is a stark image, but we know there is truth in it.
Every generation, strolling down that riverbank, has a similar experience, I think, of having to face its fallibility, having to see its shortcomings…
Dr. King has been much on my mind during this 50th anniversary of his assassination. I spoke in Memphis just last week.
His language of Beloved Community is important to me and important to this church.
In the 1950’s, when Dr. King began preaching about the Beloved Community, the world he confronted was even more violent, even more unjust than the world in which we live.
The first Jim Crow was in control not only in the American South but in the north and here in Oregon, as well. Feminism had not yet begun to force cultural change. American imperialism was alive and well in Korea and soon would flourish in Vietnam.
And yet, into the face of that violence and injustice, Dr. King began to preach about the Beloved Community.
Dr. King knew that we needed a better story.
He reached back to the founding stories of our nation, to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence…”all men”…all of us… “are created equal”…”that we are endowed by our creator”… a power that transcends the flawed institutions we have built…”endowed by our creator with inalienable rights.”
Dr. King did not discard the founding story of this nation…even though he was painfully aware of how far short we had fallen from fulfilling that promise.
He reached back, but Dr. King also reached for that language of Beloved Community. He added outcome to the intention that Jefferson had expressed.
All of us are created equal…yes, Dr. King said…but if that is true, then we need to be shaping the institutions in which we live to have an outcome that is worthy of that intention.
We need to be moving toward the Beloved Community.
The Beloved Community.
Without a doubt, what our larger culture most wants to forget about Dr. King’s vision is its radical nature.
Gary Younge, in his book “The Speech, the Story Behind Dr. King’s Dream” writes: …on the anniversary of his assassination, “the US will indulge in an orgy of self-congratulation, selectively misrepresenting King’s life and work, as if rebelling against the American establishment was, in fact, what that establishment has always encouraged.”
Dr. King railed against the Vietnam War and economic inequality. He refused to “know his place.” He was mobilizing a Poor Peoples’ Campaign and supporting sanitation workers in Memphis when he was assassinated.
Even Dr. King’s radical vision of Beloved Community was, however, an incomplete vision. We have learned a few things in 50 years…about the way racism has mutated…about the need to welcome and recognize women’s leadership…and about BGLT…and Q…rights. Ableism and immigration were not on his advocacy screen, nor mental health.
Dr. King, if he had lived, would have confronted his own limitations of vision, his own shortcomings of sight…the need to expand what the Beloved Community needed to embrace.
Revelation is not sealed. That phrase is one that, as liberal religious folks, we hold dear. It reflects our fundamental belief that the truth we can now see is not final, that the vision of hope that we hold is a work in process.
Unitarian Universalism has, from its inception, been a search for better stories.
Both the Unitarians and the Universalists emerged as reaction to the white Protestant America of the early 19th century, and the Calvinist belief that God was angry with our shortcomings, sinfulness… The most famous sermon of that day was titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Wow.
That angry God planned to condemn most of us to hell fire…save those few, elect who were destined for heaven.
That formulation seem so distant…so much from a world we no longer inhabit… Except, of course, that we still condemn so much of the human family to hell right here on earth.
Both Unitarians and Universalists said, “no” to that Calvinist story.
They told a better story of a loving God and of a human nature and human community with the possibility for redemption. They did not deny human fallibility…well, the Unitarians came perilously close…but the story they began to tell was of possibility and hope. The future is in our hands…we are not destined to be defined by the worst mistakes we have made.
It was a much better story. And most of the religious world…not all, but most of the religious world…has joined us in those beliefs.
I wonder though whether we have grown content with that theological victory…been sitting on those theological laurels for too long.
The report of the Commission on Institutional Change calls for “reimagining a new system of equity, inclusion and innovation.” Deep, fundamental changes…”acts of witness to a fuller and more authentic expression of this faith.”
A fuller and more authentic expression of this faith.
The report paints a stark picture. We, some of us, may have thought that we could rest on our laurels…on our successful witness for marriage equality…on our rationalism and reasonableness…on avoiding the sharp contraction experienced by most Protestant denominations…
We may have thought that we were just strolling by the river, some of us. But we are confronting the incompleteness of our vision and the shortcomings of our practice of religious community. And we, too, must chose either to break the cycle or to continue participating in it.
I am not going to review for you the whole story of how we got here. Not going to re-tell the story of the failed hire at the UUA last year that prompted calls of racism and led us into reflection on the culture of white supremacy as it lives in Boston and right here at First Unitarian. There is a link to the report(and a video) in your OOS. More than a few of you I know have already taken the time to read it.
And I am not going to do the work of the Commission here this morning.
But I do want to offer some thoughts on what story we need to begin telling. And what stories we need to put behind us.
Our first principle is affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of each person. That affirmation has grounded our work for justice out in the world. It is a powerful statement.
But it is a celebration of individualism until it is made real in the practices of community.
And our practice of free and theoretically equally empowered individuals, covenanting together, though its intention for equality is noble, has had the practical result that the voices of those already in the covenant…white, well-educated, mostly affluent, often male individuals…our work on gender is far from complete…those voices have been privileged and the voices of those on the margins have had a hard time being heard.
We may sing “Come, come, whoever you are” and say “bring your broken heart to the altar of life,” but the concerns of people of color, less well educated folks, trans folks, less able-bodied folks…those concerns somehow rarely rise to the top of priority list.
I am not talking theory. I have seen this here, too often, from Fuller Hall downstairs to the Board of Trustee’s table.
Affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person is not adequate to insure welcome of every person into our covenant. If we know nothing else from the larger world, it is that ”color-blind” approaches have led to the need for that Black Lives Matter Banner on our building.
The UUA does not know…has in fact no idea…how many people of color or queer folks or disabled folks are members of our congregations. No idea.
If we are not even willing to keep track, can our commitments to diversity of race and culture and human experience be all that serious?
Wells Fargo Bank does an infinitely better job of inspecting its diversity than the Unitarian Universalist Association. And, though we make some effort here, they do a better job than we do here at First Unitarian.
The Commission report notes that, this year, 15 religious professionals of color have been in conflict with their congregations…conflict serious enough to require outside intervention.
That is a stunning number…but no one can tell you what percentage that is of all religious professionals of color…because no one knows how many of us there are.
We need to begin inspecting what we expect. Inspecting what we hope for.
One thing we need is a more accurate story.
And if we want real change, resources will need to be shifted. Each religious professional of color should be offered every support we can offer. I’m talking about scholarships for seminary and for continuing education. I’m talking about specialized start-up workshops for staff’s and trainings for congregational leaders; professional expenses and time off so that those religious professionals of color can attend gatherings of their colleagues.
I am talking about denominational support. We do a fair job here at First Unitarian, but this effort should not rely on the will and wisdom of individual congregations. It is our denominational future that is at stake.
We do not know how to guarantee the success of religious professionals of color. In fact, our track record is…not good. But everything this faith community can imagine to offer…we should offer…and then ask those religious professionals of color what helped and what else might help.
And I would take the same approach for trans religious professionals and differently abled professionals.
So, denominational support will be needed. Yes. But should we also at least ask the question about congregational accountability. Shouldn’t we also call our congregations to account for reflection and learning and preparation to move into a vibrant multi-cultural present.
This faith needs to inspect what we expect and begin to support the change we hope to see.
I’m in territory that I am sure the Commission will cover. But there is no reason why our faith community should not begin doing these things today.
For years…in fact for decades, our faith has said of itself…that Unitarian Universalism is a predominantly white faith.
For a person of color…or for anyone else, entering our sanctuary on Sunday…who they see speaks volumes.
But how we describe ourselves shouts a message of who we hope to become.
Is it not time for this faith and this church to embrace a message that names our hopes and our aspirations…not just the reality that already exists?
Our vision, here at First Unitarian, points to a better story:
“First Unitarian Church is a beacon of hope for us and for our community, a spiritual center in the heart of this city that helps each of us find our moral compass, calling and challenging us to build the Beloved Community with an ever deepening sense of spirit, diversity and inclusion.”
That is a better story than just our affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of each of us as individuals.
It is a better story because it points us to how we hope to be together and the challenging moral choices that we must make.
It names a direction while leaving the final destination a work in process.
That vision statement is such a resource for us. Because we can use it to begin inspecting what stands in our way of moving toward it. We can begin dismantling those parts of our culture that hold us to a more limited and more flawed imagination of what can be.
Our Board of Trustees here is already engaging this work. The other day, one white board member challenged me on the hire of a white woman as our new social justice director. Challenged me…but tentatively…afraid that I might be offended at the question. I was thrilled! Those are the questions that need to become the ”way we do things around here.”
The Unitarian Universalist Association has the great challenge of finding language that 1000 congregations can affirm. The lowest common denominator is often an attractive option.
But there is energy now to add an 8th Principle to the 7 that we know so well. It was recommended at the last General Assembly and a study commission has been formed to consider it.
“We the member congregations of the UUA covenant to affirm and promote:
Journeying toward spiritual wholeness by building a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”
Not bad.
Here at First Unitarian we aspire, together, to build the Beloved Community. We say that each week in worship. Even though we too see our shortcomings, we hold that vision before us.
That vision can help us tell a better story…if we chose to inspect the way our habits hold us back from living into that vision…if we chose to look at ourselves with as much honesty as we can bear…if we chose to interrupt the cycle with our commitment and with our love.
We can choose to live into a fuller and more authentic expression of our loving faith.
So may it be and AMEN.
Topics: Redemption