Come Sunday…ah, Come Sunday, that’s the day…
Lord Almighty, God of love, please look down and see my people through. Come Sunday.
The lyrics of that Duke Ellington masterpiece really resonate as we start this New Year.
“see my people through”
The news of the world is not that good.
Covid infection rates are at new highs…
More folks close to us are testing positive…even if most are not getting terribly sick…
Rapid test kits have become a normal part of life…
It is clear that the pandemic is not through with us…even though we are so ready to be through with the pandemic.
This does not feel like a New Years for bold resolutions or grand promises.
It feels like a time to hope that we, and those we love most, will just make it through…
It is hard to start out a sermon on such a down note, but I’m not sure there is another place to start that has much authenticity.
Not a time for bold New Year’s Resolutions. More a time for…what…recalibration? A re-set?
A shift in the way we view things? Perhaps that. Perhaps that.
I read a piece by a yoga practitioner who suggested that setting INTENTIONS, rather than RESOLUTIONS might be more helpful.
Intentions rather than resolutions.
Resolutions are all about fixing something about you or your lifestyle. Fixing something that is wrong with you.
I resolve to…change my diet, get more exercise, take off those 10 lbs…
Points to so many negative feelings…doesn’t it?
An intention, on the other hand…at least as this group sees it…An intention is more focused on creating abundance in your life., not pointing to things that are wrong with it.,,
An intention might be: I will live the way I want to live, to the maximum extent possible.
An intention might allow us to approach our goals with more compassion for ourselves…and more creativity as well.
An intention might be: I will forgive myself for making time for what I need.
Using intentions might allow us to live into a different kind of accountability to ourselves…not needing to punish ourselves as much…because we haven’t reached some specific target…
My intention is to live the way I want to live.
A different kind of accountability that could be more open to possibility…less grim…more joyful…
That …would be worth exploring. Wouldn’t it?
Accountability is our spiritual theme for January. It is a term that is used so freely that you might think we were all clear on what it means.
The truth is that we are, most of us, just beginning to understand accountability, at least in ways that can be helpful.
I think the meaning of the term is also shifting…
Perhaps…the meaning needs to shift.
Merriam Webster offers this as the first definition of the term accountable: “subject to giving an account.” The example they provide is: “He held her accountable for the damage.”
“accountable for the damage.”
To be accountable, in that definition, leads to punishment. That doesn’t really invite a joyful embrace of accountability, does it?
Accountability “holds someone’s feet to the fire,” right? And because our standards are changing…for the good I think…but they are changing…it can feel like there is some score-keeper, someplace, in a game where we are not clear about the rules.,
And there is a lot of reinforcement for understanding accountability as punishment. Punishment rather than repair is seen as the solution to so many problems in our culture.
But is that the kind of accountability we …as religious people…are being asked to practice?
There does need to be some responsibility taken for harm done…that feels self-evident…
We are all in relationships that involve responsibility…parents feel responsibility to our children…we feel responsibility to our friends…and to our communities…
But punishment is not the motivation to fulfill those responsibilities…to live out that accountability. We fulfil those responsibilities because we love and care.
The Oxford Dictionary offers a different definition of accountability: “giving an account of performance to someone entitled to demand that account.”
In that definition, accountability is about responsibility…in relationship. Who is entitled to demand an account? The people you are in relationship with…
That feels like it is moving in the right direction…at least to me.
In 2017 I was called to serve as one of three Interim Co-Presidents at the UUA. Significant allegations of institutional racism had been raised…it was a difficult time.
One of the first communications I received as Interim Co-President asked what had been done to fulfill a Resolution passed by the GA the year before entitled: Thanksgiving Day Reconsidered.
Accountability to GA Resolutions? That is clearly one of the UUA President’s responsibilities.
That Resolution pointed to the approaching 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower, the need to revise the story of happy neighbors sharing that first Thanksgiving meal, and the role of UU congregations in creating that mythology.
It then called on the UUA President to convene national religious leaders, tribal and congregational leaders to plan a national anniversary that would tell the truth about that first Thanksgiving. Religious education materials were to be developed….highlighting the Radical Reformation and the role of religious Dissenters and Separatists in 16th century England…yes, it got that specific…and there was more…
Congregations were to inspect their roots in the Puritan and Pilgrim past, and enter dialogue with local native communities to tell the truth about Thanksgiving and its history.
I was supposed to report on all that to the General Assembly, just weeks away.
I spoke with UUA social justice staff and learned that nothing had been done. Nothing.
My next step was to ask Native American UU leaders what they knew about all this. That was when I got an earful.
First, none of them, no Native American UUs had been consulted before that resolution was presented to the General Assembly. The resolution was put forward by a group of well-meaning white advocates.
Second, the Massachusetts tribal leaders were well organized and focused on pressing economic and health care issues, and the re-opening of legal cases arising from the many broken treaties.
A retelling of the Thanksgiving story was not at the top of the tribal priority list…for most native leaders, not on their list at all.
The letter I wrote to the authors of that resolution was lengthy.
I acknowledged that nothing they asked for had been done. I also said that given the urgent need to hold the Association together, I was not going to focus the attention of our faith on revising the story of Thanksgiving. We had issues much closer to home to deal with.
Then I offered my own comments about accountability. I spoke about the need to have those most harmed be at the table to determine what repair needed to take place. I wrote about the dangers of a primarily white, privileged religious community directing all of its energies not toward the goals named by indigenous leadership but toward our own need for forgiveness. The goal should be to support indigenous leadership…and that requires sustaining relationship with indigenous leadership.
I tried hard to avoid finger wagging in what I wrote. I do not believe that cancel culture is helpful. I know that shaming is not.
But accountability does require that the truth be told…I do not think there is a way around that….nor should there be…
It takes strong relationships to survive and sustain truth telling.
My letter urged the authors of that Resolution to begin to build relationships of accountability with Native Communities, especially those that were already advocating for themselves. I gave specific suggestions of who to contact to begin that process. I tried to open possibilities. And I made that letter my report to the General Assembly.
Truth telling is where accountability begins. But there is also a need for forgiveness and an invitation to move forward.
Absent the truth we solve the wrong problems.
Absent forgiveness we close off the possibility of transformation.
Accountability as punishment may be necessary in certain circumstances. Murderers should be punished. I do believe that.
But I am not naïve enough to believe that punishment moves us toward a world in which I want to live. It may be necessary…but it is far from sufficient.
Accountability as punishment? Should that have any role in the life of the church?
The heart of the problem, and it is a fundamental theological problem… is that we don’t require people to be perfect in order to join this church.
In fact, it is our theology that we will all fall short of our highest expectations…and that we are loved nonetheless…still all with inherent worth and dignity…still all children of God.
That is the heart of our theology.
Our goal is to create a Beloved Community not of perfect people, but of people …like all of us…who make mistakes and can find forgiveness and be transformed…
The role of the church is not to punish us…it is to help transform us.
I do not want to be a part of a church that requires me to get everything right…that demands no mistakes…
Well, I wouldn’t be welcome in that church anyway…and neither would any of you.
bell hooks, who died just two weeks ago,…so many losses to grieve this year…
bell hooks wrote:
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked. … How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
For us, as religious people, accountability cannot move us away from our spiritual center…
We need a re-set…a re-set that begins with the goal we are trying to achieve…
If our objective is not punishment but repair of harm and healing from violence…
Then our focus shifts toward a new understanding of accountability:
A new understanding based on “Restorative Justice” …
Restorative Justice…in which the goal is to move toward repair, toward restoration…and to do that by involving those most harmed in that process…
The first question… becomes…who needs to be at the table
The accountability that is integral to restorative justice…is community accountability…
Accountability as on-going relationship, accountability that is an essential part of the process of living in Beloved Community…accountability as the way we do things around here…
Can we come to see accountability as part of our covenant…as a value and even a virtue?
Could accountability possibly become a source of joy?
This is new work…for all of us.
What will this look like? Here at First Unitarian?
We are only beginning to know. Parts of our congregation, especially our justice action groups, already have robust accountability relationships in the larger community. The Alliance continues to reach out. I am active in interfaith and justice-seeking coalitions in the community. So is Dana Buhl. Other staff have their networks. That is all good and there is no doubt that we could do more of that.
But there is also internal work to do.
Every week, the staff Program Leaders meet to plan ahead and review the prior week’s worship and programming. And every week we intentionally use the lens of the 8th Principle, which calls us to “accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and in our institutions.” Every week we ask ourselves how the worship we created… modelled what we hope to see in Beloved Community. What voices were present? Which absent? What music was sung? What language was used? Who was welcomed? Who was not?
These are often tender conversations…because each of us is doing the very best they can…there are no bad actors around that table…but we have agreed to hear critique from our colleagues…to question our own assumptions and to search for more inclusive ways to do our ministry.
Did we use readings by people of color? Our goal is to have at least one every Sunday. Were you aware of that?
Should we name the identities of the authors and musicians we bring into worship? Do we just say Amanda Gorman or the Black Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman? Bell hooks or the Queer, Black prophet bell hooks?
We tend to give just the name, by the way. But we worry about these things. And about how to use wisdom from traditions that are not our own.
It takes time and energy and a great deal of relational capital to make it work…but it is working.
There is hope here.
This is such new territory…
We are imagining something that has never been before……
And, in this community…we promise to move down that path with love…mindful that we all fall short…but mindful also that our failures can deepen the harm already done…mindful that transformation is the goal and that repair is the gold standard…
I am not describing a simple New Year’s Resolution…that we can give up on in a few weeks.
I am describing an intention to do the work of building the Beloved Community…
I am describing an intention and a promise not to accept what we have known as the best that can be…
I am describing an intention and a promise…to join the communion of struggle toward a future we want to inhabit…
An intention and a promise…in this New Year…to choose hope.
Topics: Accountability