First Parish Unitarian UniversalistNot Haven, but Beacon
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
September 15, 2002
You may remember that last March I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to attend a four-day so-called "convocation" of about 400 Unitarian Universalist ministers. These gatherings have been taking place every seven or so years; this was my first. I've been pondering the themes raised by this convocation ever since. That soul-searching will find its way into this sermon and the one to follow next week, and perhaps others.
The purpose of this convocation was to reflect on our ministry: deepening our call, nurturing our faith, and finding our prophetic voices in response to the world's great needs. It was intense. Every day, some folks got out at 6:00 for jogging or yoga (sad to say, not me!). Breakfast, followed by worship, two lectures, a small covenant group meeting; then lunch, two more lectures, workshops for the more extraverted (that's when I got my exercise and fresh air), evening worship, dinner on our own, and a variety of optional evening programs.
The intensity would have been impossible, except for being in a covenant group. It met each of the four days, for attentive listening, reflective speaking, and encountering the deep questions raised for us by the lectures, with only ten others. As one colleague put it, our group had a little "settling in" fight early on and we quickly figured out how to work together. I was sustained through the four days by the bonds created by that quality listening and speaking.
(If you yearn to be similarly sustained in your life, let me recommend that you join a Covenant Group here at First Parish! There's a description and registration form on the table in the Parish Hall and in the current newsletter, and you can learn more about what it would be like from current participants at the Potluck one week from tonight!).
The convocation last March was made even more significant by its historical context. We met on the 37th anniversary of the beating and death of a colleague, the Reverend James Reeb, a Unitarian Univeralist minister from Boston who had responded, along with many others, to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's appeal for white clergy to join a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. James Reeb's death, as you may remember, evoked a national outcry. An estimated 35-40,000 people of all faiths joined the march on its last day, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson shortly thereafter signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
Last March, we met in Birmingham, widely remembered for its attacks on peaceful demonstrators including children by police dogs and high-pressure water hoses, and for the church bombing in 1963 which killed four young girls.
Last March, we met in Birmingham, not as widely remembered for its UU congregation that rallied to provide hospitality to a hundred UU ministers from all over the country who converged there with their sleeping bags and hungry stomachs because there weren't any more rooms in Montgomery on the night before the last day of the March.
As one of our lecturers recalled, "The congregation of Rev. Larry McGinty (who, by the way, served here in Canton as interim minister some thirty years later) was preparing to feed supper to these traveling ministers. Someone said that they could use help carving turkey in the kitchen. So that's what I was doing in the kitchen when the telephone rang. One of the church women answered the phone, listened for a minute, then angrily said, "Well, you will just have to get in line then!", and hung up and turned back to her task. "What was that?", another asked her. "Oh, just another bomb threat!", she answered."
"Well," he continued, "the plan had been that we would `sack-out' on the floor of the Birmingham church, and be bussed to Montgomery, but UUA leadership had to take seriously the multiple threats to bomb the church, which if [one] did happen would decimate the UU ministry. So instead of sleeping on the floor of the church, we were picked up by Unitarian families and dispersed to Unitarian homes around the city."
The day after the Convocation, I was fortunate to be among 70 who were at the Birmingham UU Church, for breakfast at the start of a bus tour that's worth a sermon in itself, an awesome UU pilgrimage to Selma in the company of local leaders and the two ministers that were with James Reeb when the three were beaten and when he subsequently died.
During breakfast, we heard more about the hospitality provided by the Birmingham congregation, which was then not much more than ten years old. For example, it just so happened that they were welcoming new members that next Sunday morning, with a new members' tea after the service, during which the police arrived and asked that the building be cleared, due to another bomb threat! Imagine, what a welcome that was!
And, a few weeks later they held their first ever canvass dinner (a "canvass" being the annual pledge drive) and it was a huge success. Someone quoted Larry McGinty as saying that the congregation increased their contributions by 50% over the previous year. Seems like they'd discovered for real just exactly why they were Unitarian Universalists.
At the breakfast, a tour leader proclaimed, "you know, the Birmingham congregation didn't volunteer for this duty. It's what fell to them. There was no one else to do it."
It makes me proud that they did. It makes me proud that so many UU ministers and laypeople, 500 all tolled, heeded King's call and not just for the last day into Montgomery but some even for the weary days of standing their ground in Selma waiting while the march was on-and-off-again until the law enforcement authorities decided the tide of public opinion had turned against them and they'd have to allow the march to proceed. It makes me proud that the UU congregation in Birmingham hosted marchers, despite the real threat of danger, and that other congregations sent those 500 marchers.
A duty fell to those UU's and they rose to the challenge.
The times are different now. In these times, it seems, such a duty doesn't just "fall" to us. To my knowledge, there's been no recent march invitation from a widely respected national leader with a clearly just cause. No hundred nicely-mannered (one would hope they were!) UU ministers needing a bed for the night.
Instead, the president is issuing war cries. Instead, there are hundreds of families needing homes in our state, and they might or might not be nicely mannered, and it won't be just for one night!
The times are different now. The issues seem not to be so, shall we say?, black and white!
Last March in Birmingham, one of the lecturers was Ray Manker, a now-retired Unitarian Universalist minister who I've admired for having been able to see clearly and respond decisively on many important public issues throughout his long ministry, assuming leadership roles in whatever community he served, in addition to being a good parish minister.
Ray Manker, in fact, was one of those hundred ministers who showed up in Birmingham with their sleeping bags, who, as he said, "responded to their own `inner imperatives' that said to them, `Go!'"
He mused aloud. "The inner imperative: that's what we are here to talk about and explore. The inner imperative. The prophetic imperative. The voice of God. It is at the very core of a large part of religion. It is deeper than the various surface manifestations of so-called organized religions. It motivates us all: Buddhist, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, Atheist. And in a sense, it unites us all.
While the inner imperative motivates us all, it doesn't motivate us all in the same way. God doesn't speak to everyone the same."
Then he interrupted himself to say, "Before I go on with this thought, I must first tell you that I am an atheist; I don't believe in God. But I am a mystic. I am a poet. So I hope you will bear with me while I mix up my metaphors."
Manker went on, "God doesn't speak to everyone the same. A social consciousness is weak in some, strong in others, demanding in a few. But social progress makes headway only when the prophetic voice speaks loud and clear."
"What is social consciousness?" he asked us.
"It is an ethical awareness that something is wrong. The voice of God, the inner imperative, says, `Do something about it!'
Do something about it, yes. But what?.
While we all seem to be endowed with a social consciousness, it is relatively weak in some, strong in others, but demanding in a few. It takes all, working together, to effect social change. Martin Luther King could not have changed America by himself, no matter how strongly God spoke to him. It took thousands of others, each following the admonitions of their `inner imperatives' in all their varieties, to create the atmosphere which allowed King to change America," declared Ray Manker.
I think this inner imperative is central to who we are as Unitarian Universalists, more so than in many religions. Because for us, authority resides in our own individual and then collective sense of rightness-not in scriptures, not in church hierarchy, and certainly not in what the minister says on Sunday morning.
I think it's likely that an inner imperative of some kind brought you to Unitarian Universalism or held you here if this is where you grew up.
For some, I think, the inner imperative speaks first in religious consciousness. It's a still small voice that says, this or that doctrine or dietary law, this or that claim of scriptural authority, this or that scientifically impossible miracle taught as fact, this or that aspect of the traditional religious teachings of the past. just doesn't make sense to me.
It's a still small voice that says I find that of God, the Goddess, the Spirit of Life or the wonder of the universe in myself and in others, in the transforming power of love, in the natural world, in the struggle for justice, in the arts, in the seen and the unseen. Heeding that voice, that inner imperative, you looked for a liberal, rather than orthodox, religion. And found, or stayed with, Unitarian Universalism.
For others, the inner imperative speaks first in social consciousness, ethical awareness, the prophetic imperative. It's a still small voice that speaks for the common good and yearns for the high ideals proclaimed by the world's prophets-peace and harmony, justice and compassion, good stewardship of the earth's resources. Heeding that voice, that inner imperative, you looked for a religion more concerned about the here and now than the hereafter. And found, or stayed with, Unitarian Universalism.
You've heard these inner imperatives, both kinds... would you be here if you hadn't? .
As religious liberals, we are a minority in this culture. Much of the culture is materialist, secular, concerned with possessions. That part which is religious, is mostly orthodox- that is, believing that there is one right way, namely theirs. So, like other minorities, it is understandable that we religious liberals would gather together, like-minded people looking for moral support and for a sense of community.
But, gentle people! It's time to stop acting like we like being a minority! It's time to draw on the spiritual resources we've been cultivating in this last decade of seeking and begin to listen more carefully to that other inner imperative, the prophetic one, the one that says in a still small voice: It's not right. Something has to be done.
It's time to use the strength of having a haven.to be a beacon for what we believe in: The historic hallmarks of Unitarianism: tolerance, freedom, and reason. The historic hallmark of Universalism: the transforming power of love. It's time to let the community know what we are about.
This year at General Assembly, the annual meeting of delegates from UU congregations around the country (which by the way takes place in Boston next year, so I hope many of you will attend), there was a full day of programming on global economic issues. One issue that caught my attention was water, referred to as "blue gold" by the author of a book by that title. One billion people in the world lack clean drinking water. Another 2.4 billion lack proper sanitation. So, water is a hot commodity and large corporations, two French ones were cited, have already realized that there's a profit to be made in developing countries. From water!
As you can imagine, there was the danger of feeling overwhelmed by the day's information. What can we realistically do? But UUA President the Reverend Bill Sinkford he referred to a Wall Street Journal article and made a helpful suggestion. The article was about how top colleges are recruiting Jewish students because they have high test scores, but the accompanying chart ranking SAT scores by religion showed UU's at the top. That mus mean we UU's must place a high value on education. We might even be good at it. If education is one of our strengths, one thing we can do is educate our communities about these issues, he suggested. The beginning of change is knowledge.
I feel these are ominous, foreboding times. It's time to use the strength of having a haven.to be a beacon for what we believe in. It begins with listening for the stirrings of ethical awareness, that something is wrong-a small thing on the job or in the neighborhood, or a big thing in national politics or global economics. It begins with listening for and telling each other about the stirrings, the rumblings we hear. It begins with heeding that inner imperative to do something, something we can do, some small thing, the doing of which makes us feel we can then do something another small thing. Something alone, if need be. Better yet, something collective.
We stand in a proud tradition of those who heeded an inner, prophetic imperative in their time. Let us, too, use the strength of having a haven.to be a beacon for what we believe in, as our times demand.
Amen.