Life Issues – Page 5 – Dan Harper

Mothering

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning is half of a very short story by Grace Paley, titled “Mother”:

One day I was listening to the AM radio. I heard a song: “Oh, I Long To See My Mother in the Doorway.” By God! I said, I understand that song. I have often longed to see my mother in the doorway. As a matter of fact, she did stand frequently in various doorways looking at me. She stood one day, just so, at the front door, the darkness of the hallway behind her. It was New Year’s Day. She said sadly, If you come home at 4 a.m. when you’re seventeen, what time will you come home when you’re twenty? She asked this question without humor or meanness. She had begun her worried preparations for death. She would not be present, she thought, when I was twenty. So she wondered.

Another time she stood in the doorway of my room. I had just issued a political manifesto attacking the family’s position on the Soviet Union. She said, Go to sleep for godsakes, you damn fool, you and your Communist ideas. We saw them already, Papa and me, in 1905. We guessed it all.

At the door of the kitchen she said, You never finish your lunch. You run around senselessly. What will become of you?

Then she died.

Naturally for the rest of my life I longed to see her, not only in doorways, in a great number of places — in the dining room with my aunts, at the window looking up and down the block,… in the living room with my father….

The second reading this morning is from a poem by Lucille Clifton titled “the mother’s story”:

a line of women i don’t know,
she said,
came in and whispered over you
each one fierce word
she said, each word
more powerful than the one before.
and i thought what is this to bring
to one black girl from buffalo
until the last one came and smiled,
she said,
and filled your ear with light
and that, she said, has been the one,
the last one, that last one.

Sermon — “Mothering”

Mother’s Day is a perfect day for us religious liberals to reflect on mothering from our theological viewpoint. We know that motherhood and feminism are perfectly compatible. We know that same-sex couples can serve as both mothers and fathers to their children. We know that gender roles are far more fluid than the religious right admits. We know that love is a central value of our religion. Given all that, I’d like to reflect with you on what mothering means to us religious liberals.

1. Now I don’t know about you, but I find that I have a pretty clear idea of the stereotypical perfect mother. The perfect mother, according to the stereotype that I know best, is warm and welcoming; she is always dressed in an understated but attractive manner; she dispenses freshly-baked cookies at the drop of the proverbial hat; and she also dispenses kind and heartfelt wisdom whenever you need it. I suspect that my stereotype of the perfect mother comes pretty much directly from the television programs I used to watch as a child.

That is the stereotype of the perfect mother that I find lodged in my consciousness, but I know perfectly well that real mothers do not correspond to this stereotype. Take my mother, for example. My mother was a New England Yankee, and by the standards of Yankee culture she was within the norm of warm and welcoming, by any other standards she appeared cool and even a little standoffish; she was more on the prickly end of the mothering spectrum than the cuddly end of the spectrum. My mother was always sensibly dressed, but she did not dress like those mothers on the television, she dressed like the sensible New England Yankee that she was. She did bake cookies; but she was far more likely to dispense high ambitions for her children than to dispense cookies. As for dispensing kind and heartfelt wisdom, this was not something my mother did; her wisdom was thoughtful, stark, true, occasionally painful, and nearly always right.

My mother was not the stereotypical television mother that we are all supposed to dream of. But then, whose mother is? Maybe some of us here this morning had stereotypical television mothers, and if you did I would love to hear about your perfect mom during social hour. Or maybe some of you here were in fact the perfect wise and warm cookie-baking mom, in which case I would also love to hear from you, and maybe even borrow some of your warmth and wisdom — Lord knows, I could use some. But every mother is first and foremost a unique human being. Some mothers might be able to be a stereotypical warm, welcoming, cookie-baking mom. But all mothers are first and foremost their own selves, unique individuals with unique personal and cultural characteristics that may or may not allow them to fit into the stereotype of the perfect mom.

It seems to me that real-life mothers rarely fit the idealized stereotype. I sometimes find real people who seem to fit most of the characteristics of the idealized stereotypical mom, but not quite all those characteristics. I know someone who has five kids, all adopted from difficult settings, and all the kids are dearly loved and go off to school and come home, and he’s there to fix them a snack and help them with homework. Yes, I said “he’s there to fix them a snack,” because this is a family with two dads. He’s far closer to the ideal of the stereotypical mom than my own mother was. Or let me give you another example: I used to work with a guy named Larry, and his mother died when he was quite small (this was back in the Great Depression). Larry’s father realized that he was “a one-woman man” (those were his terms, according to Larry), and so he raised Larry and Larry’s brothers and sisters all by himself, serving as both mother and father to the children. Mothering and fathering blended together in that family; for Larry, his father was really the only mother he remembered.

Maybe we can begin to come up with a better definition of “mothering.” Maybe we want to say something like this: “Mothering” is a human activity where a caring adult makes sure you’re going to survive until adulthood, and while most mothers are women, there are plenty of men who serve as mothers too. Of course we know that under a strict technical definition, motherhood is a biological fact related to human beings who can bear children, but remember that some biological women are not able to bear children, yet they too can be mothers. Mothering is a human activity that transcends the biological equipment that an individual may happen to have.

So we can say this about mothering as a human activity: Mothering is when a caring adult makes sure a child survives until adulthood. Mothering is most often done by women, but it can be done by men. Mothering and fathering may blend together at times. And there are very few people who are perfect at mothering; even those moms we see on television make mistakes sometimes.

2. In recent years, I have begun to realize that mothering is not limited to adults who have children in their immediate family. I began to realize that every once in a while I got mothered by people to whom I was not related. For example, I was at some political meeting, and I got mothered by someone who is no relation to me. This woman, who is both a mother and a grandmother, greeted me with a big hug, welcomed me, made sure I was comfortable, and then went on to mother someone else.

Human beings are essentially social, tribal animals. Under the leadership of the religious conservatives, contemporary American society tries to tell us that the nuclear family, with a mom and dad and 2.5 children, is the only place where “real” mothering can take place, but of course that’s complete nonsense. There are many other family structures where good mothering takes place: extended families where several generations live together; blended families; families with two dads or two moms; and so on. And indeed, because we are social, tribal animals, mothering can go on in other human institutions, not just in families. I already told you how I got mothered at a political meeting. But what I’d particularly like to talk about is how good mothering can go on in churches.

When I was the Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Universalist church in Lexington, the assistant minister there, a woman named Ellen Spero, decided to hold a Sunday evening vespers service, and she got me to help out, and we held these vespers service for the next year and a half, until we both left that church to go on to other churches.

If you attended one of Ellen’s vespers services, the first thing you would notice when you walked in was that all the chairs were in a circle. Once the vespers service started, you would find that it seemed very much like the worship services we have here on Sunday mornings: listening to readings, and singing hymns, and lighting a chalice, and sharing candles of joy and sorrow, and so on. The main difference would be that the sermon might be a sermon, or it might be a short play; or there might be an activity to go along with the sermon, such as drawing with crayons or listening to jazz.

If you were very observant, you might notice some other important things. There was always food at these vespers services. Ellen was a great believer in what she called her “ministry of food,” so she always brought lots of delightful and comforting food. The food was right next to the circle of chairs, and if you arrived early you could have something to eat and drink during the worship service. As a mom and as a feminist, Ellen knew that you have to take care of people’s bodies at the same time you take care of their spirits.

There was always a place for children at these worship services. As the religious educator, I would make sure there was a big rug included in the circle of chairs, with quiet toys and games and crayons and paper. That way, if you wanted to bring your children to the vespers service, they could play quietly on the carpet while you sat next to them. This, too, was an idea that came out of Ellen’s experience as a mom and as a feminist. As a feminist, she knew that many Unitarian Universalist churches have been influenced by the dominant patriarchal culture to think that children are bad, so she fought that by making sure that children were welcomed and seen as good. And as a mom, she wanted to have a worship service that her five-year-old son could attend.

With all the mothering that went on in these vespers services, Ellen was tapping into an old line of Unitarian thought. Back in the 1870s, a group of women Unitarian ministers, mostly based in the Midwest, built vibrant congregations around the idea of the church being like a home. These women, who are often called the Prophetic Sisterhood, felt that when you come into a Unitarian church, it should feel like you’re coming into someone’s house, where you are greeted, and welcomed, where your physical needs are acknowledged, where you can have some cookies. Here in our own church, where we have absolutely no historical connection to the Prophetic Sisterhood, we still live out these ideals. Even here in this room, which is a far more formal architectural space than that used by the Prophetic Sisterhood, we live out these feminist ideals. We acknowledge that people have physical needs: you may notice that lots of people come in late to the worship service, and we don’t mind because we know the reality is that life is complex for many of us, and we get here when we can get here (although I have to say I would prefer to be here early because I would not want to miss Randy’s preludes).

But you can really get a sense of this in our Parish House. When our congregation built the Parish House back in the 1890s, they made it feel like someone’s home. I walk into the Parish House to attend social hour after the worship service, and you see all that warm wood panelling, and the fireplaces, and the kitchen and dining room, and I feel like I’m at home. And because we have been influenced by feminist ideals, we’ve taken that feeling still further. We like to have the children with us during social hour, partly as a feminist manifesto, and partly because it feels more humane, more human, to have children around. And during social hour, we have pretty good food — homemade soup, and sometimes pizza, so if you need to eat, you often can get a pretty good meal here. And the conversations that take place during social hour are sometimes like those conversations you wish you could have had with your mother: touching on the big issues of life, like who we are, and where love comes from, and what we want to do when we grow up.

3. What I think is most important about churches and mothering, though, is that churches can be places that support mothers (and support fathers for that matter). Being a parent is the hardest thing a human being can do. Parents need support. The nuclear family, so beloved of the religious right, does not provide adequate support, and I am not surprised when I hear that the divorce rate among the religious right is higher than among us: they have placed all their eggs in the nuclear family basket, and it’s a pretty fragile basket. Perhaps if you have absolutely the perfect nuclear family with superhumanly talented parents, perhaps then the nuclear family works. But speaking as a pastor, I don’t know of any nuclear families like that; all the nuclear families that I know need far more support than that. We all need lots of other people in our lives.

To me, this is the most important function of our liberal churches today. We exist as religious communities in order to support families — both families with children, and all other families as well. As liberal churches, we do not place restrictions on who is allowed in our religious community — you are welcome no matter what your theology, gender, sexual orientation, family status, gender identity, race or ethnicity, physical or mental ability. We try to live out our highest ideal, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and we do this without shoving dogma and creeds down your throat. You can some into a liberal church, bringing your whole self, and feel at home. yes, you may be challenged at times; yes, we have internal fights; yes we make many mistakes. But our ideal is that you can be a part of this community and not have to check part of yourself at the door.

So we welcome all mothers, all those who are engaged in the difficult human activity of mothering. We welcome mothers and their children here. We provide support beyond the over-stressed nuclear family. If you’re a relatively new mother, this is a community where you can be supported by , and learn from, more experienced mothers and grandmothers (some of whom, by the way, might be men). We welcome children, and we provide a safe place for children, hopefully while giving mothers (and fathers) time to take care of their spiritual needs. With ongoing vigilance, we make this congregation an emotionally and physically safe place for children, with many safe and appropriate adult role models.

These represent our bedrock moral values. We value all those involved in mothering. We value all those who mother children; and yes, we also value those people who manage to mother adults too.

In closing, my highest priority for a church is that it should be a place that supports mothering. Freedom of conscience and all that is all very well, but mothering is where it’s at. When I say mothering, I do not mean what the fundamentalists mean. For me, mothering is not restricted by assigned gender, not restricted by sexual orientation, not restricted by traditional gender identity: there are gay men who are good at mothering, and there are men who do not fit into standard gender identity who are good at mothering; similarly, there are women who are better at fathering than at mothering. Nor do I have a stereotyped understanding of mothering: mothering does not need to be cuddly. And given who I am, my sense of mothering is very ambitious for the people being mothered.

But you know, mothering is one of the main reasons I stick with liberal churches.

The Global Financial Crisis

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Readings

I was going to preach a nice historical sermon this morning, part of a serires on the 300th anniversary of this church. But with the crisis in the global financial markets over the past week, this morning I will instead be preaching on the economy.

The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets, the Book of Isaiah, verses 16-18 and 21-26 of the first chapter:

Cease to do evil;
Learn to do good.
Devote yoruselves to justice;
Aid the wronged.
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.
“Come, let us reach an understanding,”
— says the Lord…
The faithful city
That was filled with justice,
Where righteousness dwelt —
But now murderers [dwell].
Your silver has turned to dross;
Your wine is cut with water.
Your rulers are rogues
And cronies of thieves,
Every one avid for presents
And greedy for gifts;
They do not judge the case of the orphan,
And the widow’s cause never reaches them.

Assuredly, this is the declaration
Of the Sovereign, the Lord of Hosts,
The Mighty One of Israel:
“Ah, I will get satisfaction from My foes;
I will wreak vengeance on My enemies!
I will turn My hand against you,
And smelt out your dross in a crucible,
And remove all your slag:
I will restore your magistrates as of old,
And your counselors as of yore,
After that you shall be called
City of Righteousness, Faithful City.”

[New Jewish Publication Society translation]

The second reading is from “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” the 1975 book by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He writes:

“Thirty years ago, when I was still a novice at Tu Hieu Pagoda, washing the dishes was hardly a pleasant task. During the Season of Retreat when all the monks returned to the monastery, two novices had to do all the cooking and wash the dishes for sometimes well over one hundred monks. There was no soap. We had only ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks, and that was all. Cleaning such a high stack of bowls was a chore, especially during the winter when the water was freezing cold. Then you had to heat up a big pot of water before you could do any scrubbing. Nowadays one stands in a kitchen equipped with liquid soap, special scrubpads, and even running hot water which makes it all the more agreeable. It is easier to enjoy washing the dishes now. Anyone can wash them in a hurry, and sit down and enjoy a cup of tea afterwards. I can see a machine for washing clothes, although I wash my own things out by hand, but a dishwashing machine is going a little too far!

“While washing the dishes one should only be washing dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way I can be tossed about mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.” [pp. 3-4]

Sermon

Well, as I said earlier, this morning I had planned to preach on a nice safe historical topic. I was going to preach on the history of our covenant here in our church. We would have taken a nice historical trip back in time, and I would have told you wonderful things about the three hundred year history of our church.

But then current events intruded. The stock market dropped 678.91 points on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 39.4% since October 10, 2007. The pundits in the news media are freely making comparisons with the great crash of 1929, when the Dow Jones dropped 89% from September, 1929, to July, 1932.

The financial situation in this country has gotten worrisome. The financial situation in the whole world has gotten worrisome! I’m worried, and I’ll bet most of you are worried too.

The financial situation in our church is worrisome, too. We have become overly dependent on our endowment, which provides more than half our operating budget. Our endowment is now dropping in value. That means the income from our endowment is dropping as well.

Forget the church, many of us are finding that our personal financial situations are worrisome! If you’re like me and much of your retirement money is invested in stocks, you have been watching your retirement savings dwindle. Hey, I still have an account in Washington Mutual — you know, that bank that almost went belly up a couple of weeks ago? — and I’m in the process of getting my money out. On top of what’s going wrong with stocks and the banks, the price of everything is going up. And for those of you who own your own home — well, we’re all expecting property values to drop.

OK. We all know what’s going on, and I don’t need to recap the news for you. What I’d like to do this morning is to talk with you about how we might respond to this crisis religiously, as Unitarian Universalists. Religion is supposed to help us make sense out of this crazy world we live in; as Unitarian Universalists, can we make sense out of the global financial crisis? Religion is also supposed to help us answer the question, “What ought I do?” — can we figure out what Unitarian Universalism is calling us to do in these times?

…

I’d like to begin with our prophetic response to this crisis. Now, by “prophetic,” I don’t mean that we can see the future. I mean “prophetic” in the sense of those old Biblical prophets who went around telling everyone what’s wrong with society — the kind of prophet we heard in the first reading this morning. As Unitarian Universalists, what is our prophetic response to this financial mess?

We know that greed is one of the primary causes of this financial crisis. Let me give you an example of how we know this is true. Earlier this week, Richard Fuld had to testify before Congress. Fuld was the president of Lehman Brothers, fourth largest investment bank in the United States until they filed for bankruptcy on September 15. Fuld testified to Congress that he took home three hundred million dollars in pay and bonuses over the past eight years — that’s an average of 37.5 million dollars a year. He was quoted as testifying to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, quote “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.”

No, we don’t feel sorry for you, Mr. Fuld. You were greedy. Now you are sitting pretty in your designer suits while the rest of us schlumps have to deal with the mess you have left behind. It is hard to feel sorry for any of the investment bankers who made their millions before the stock market started to fall. We don’t feel sorry for them, we just call them greedy and selfish.

Greed has driven the stock market for quite some time now. But actually, greed has driven our whole society for some time now. We have been convinced that we can get something for nothing. We have all dreamed of buying a house that goes up and up in value so that when we sell it, we make out like bandits — houses have become an investment that will make us rich (we hope) rather than a place to live. Everything has become an investment. I’ve dreamed those dreams, and I’ll bet lots of you have, too. Alas, those dreams come down to greed: wanting something we don’t have, that we can obtain for no real effort.

Selfishness plays a part, too. How can someone like Richard Fuld take home three hundred million dollars and think he really deserves all that money? There’s an element of selfishness in such an attitude. Yet selfishness extends beyond the Richard Fulds of this country down to our economic level. I discovered recently that according to a recent study, less than half of all Americans give any money to charity. It gets worse — when you look at those of us who do give money to charity, most of us give very, very little money away. Indeed, most of the charitable giving in this country comes from a small minority of people who are very generous. Yet most Americans have substantial discretionary spending. Michael Durrall, a financial consultant to churches, tells us that most church members could double their charitable giving and not notice a change in their lifestyle. (Obviously, he is referring to the fifty percent of Americans who give any money at all to charity, because for the other half who give nothing, doubling zero is still zero and so obviously they would not see any change to their lifestyle if they doubled their charitable giving.)

But let’s go back to the leaders of this country — and I mean the financial leaders of this country, who may or may not be our elected leaders. Our financial leaders have set a general example of greed and selfishness that is appalling; it is time that we stop letting them lead us into greed and selfishness. One way we make sense out of this financial crisis is through prophetic response to this appalling greed that has taken over our country:– we condemn the current culture of greed and selfishness, and call for new standards of ethical financial leadership.

…

We need to do that, but we also need to acknowledge our personal responses to this financial crisis. The financial situation is bad right now, and we have to make personal sense from this mess we’re in. Many of us — me included — are fearful, worried, even angry. I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m dealing with right now is keeping my fear and worry under control. In order to keep fear and worry under control, I have been engaging in

First, I’ve been thinking in terms of living simply. “Simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau. The point of living simply is to focus on what’s of greatest importance. The latest electronic gadget is not of greatest importance. In the second reading this morning, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds me how much we take for granted. We have access to laundry machines! We have things like dish detergent, and running water! We have more than we usually remember that we have. When I can remember how much I already have, I face away from the greed that tells me that I need all the latest appliances. I don’t need those things — I suppose I could even learn to be like Thich Nhat Hanh, and wash out my clothing by hand. It might be a good way to be mindful of all I do have.

Of course, those of you who have children may have a hard time with this approach. Children have become very vulnerable to marketers, and when all their friends at school have a cell phone, or a certain video game, then they absolutely have to have one too. It is harder for people with children to practice simple living. At the same time, the real point for all of us is not to practice simple living the way Henry Thoreau did — we don’t have to go out and live by Walden Pond — rather, it will be enough to practice simpler living. We can simplify, but not to the point of giving everything up.

My second spiritual practice for these times that I am working on is the spiritual practice of giving money away. I am doing this because I know that those of us who do not risk getting put out on the street have a special responsibility to increase our charitable giving in order to support those who are more financially vulnerable than we are.

Now for some years, I have had a spiritual goal of giving away ten percent of my income (that’s pre-tax income) each year. I’ve been working on this for a while now, and in 2005 I was up to giving away eight percent of my income. That felt like a spiritual accomplishment, and it felt good. It was one of the best things I’ve done in my spiritual life — I felt more centered, and more focused on what’s truly important in life. Well, then my partner found herself with less and less work, and as our household income declined, and we kept cutting back, and one of the things I had to cut back temporarily was my charitable giving. Now I’m down to giving away five percent of my income.

But this financial crisis have strengthened my resolve to increase my charitable giving back up to eight percent, and then on to ten percent of my income. This will not be an easy goal to attain, and I’m not going to let myself feel guilty if I don’t make it to my goal as quickly as I’d like. This is not about guilt; rather, I’m suggesting that this kind of thing can be a spiritual goal for all of us. By giving away part of our income, we turn ourselves away from the predominant greed and selfishness of our society — and I will tell you from my own experience that this has the effect of reducing my own personal fear and worry.

So it is that part of my personal response to the financial crisis has been to calm my fears and worries by engaging in two personal spiritual practices that relate to the financial crisis: living more simply, and giving part of my income away. I don’t mean to imply that you need to take on either of these spiritual practices yourself. But I do want to say that each of us can find personal spiritual practices which can help to calm our fears and worries, and to strengthen the best part of our selves.

…

Now I’d like to talk just a little bit about what we can do here together as a church. What might this church’s spiritual response be to this financial crisis?

I’ve already hinted at one answer, when I said that those of us who can do so should think about those who are more vulnerable than we are. So it is that here in the church we can focus our energies on what we can do to help out the surrounding community. Indeed, we are already doing this. For example, Bill Bennett, Maryellen Kenney, and Ted Schade have taken over the operation of Universal Thrift because Lorial Laughery-Weincek, who was running the thrift store, is recovering from illness and will be unable to return to volunteering for quite a while. Fill, Maryellen, and Ted knew that in times like these, our community needs that thrift store, so they stepped in. Universal Thrift provides decent clothing and housewares at very affordable prices to people who can’t afford anything else. (In fact, the thrift store accepts vouchers from social service agencies for people who really have not money whatsoever.)

Perhaps it’s time for us expand this service to the community. Maybe we can mobilize more volunteers to go out and find good cheap clothing and housewares, get them ready for sale, and then sell them for very cheap prices to people who need them. Since we already have a thrift shop in place, right now, I would judge that this is the most spiritually important work that we can do. By doing something tangible for the community, we are also engaging in a communal spiritual practice — because when we do good in the world, we are helping to strengthen the best part of our selves.

(By the way, the thrift store also happens to make money for us, because many of the people who shop in the store are not destitute, but simply want good value. Thus our thrift store represents the new concept of social innovation, where charitable organizations can make money while doing good. The money we make through the thrift store goes directly into our operating budget, which means it helps pay for heat and building maintenance. It is now our biggest fundraiser.)

The thrift shop is just one example of what we can do to set up our church so that we transform the world around us into a better place, while at the same time transforming ourselves for the better. We also send a crew once a month to help serve at the soup kitchen. In another, more personal, example, we can each be sure to bring one canned good every week for the food pantry box, so that we can continue to support the Shepherd’s Staff food pantry.

These are very tangible thing we can do, but it is equally important for us to do something far less tangible, and that is to offer our liberal religious witness to the world. We know that some of the conservative religious folks will say that the way out of the financial crisis is to trust in some Daddy God who will fix everything for us. We know that the prosperity gospel folks will be out in full force telling people that you just have to believe in their God, and you will get rich. We know that some of the most conservative religious folks will even try to tell us that the financial crisis has been brought upon us as a judgment form God because we legalized same sex marriage and abortion and women’s rights and so on. We want this church to keep its doors open, and to grow ever bigger, so that we can counteract some of the problematic religious messages that are out there.

We need to be a big strong church so we can counteract these other religious messages. We need to be a big strong voice for liberal religion so that we can tell the world:– This happened because we were stupid and no Daddy God is going to clean up after us, so we’re responsible for cleaning up our own mess. We need to tell the world:– No one is going to get rich just because they believe in the right God, and in fact let’s get away from the greed that says we should be rich. We need to be sure to tell the world:– This financial crisis did not come about because we legalized same sex marriage or gave women the vote. That means that all of us who showed up here this morning are doing exactly the right thing:– by simply showing up here on Sunday morning, we are affirming our religious values. The more of us who show up here on Sunday morning, the better we can counteract all those negative religious messages that are out there.

Finally, let us remember that church is supposed to be fun. If this financial crisis continues, we’re all going to need to have some fun. If you volunteer down at the thrift shop, it’s supposed to be fun because you get to volunteer with like-minded people. If you volunteer in the Sunday school, passing on our religious values to our children in order to help the next generation move away from greed and selfishness,– well, teaching Sunday school is supposed to be fun, because you get to play with kids, and you get to meet the other Sunday school teachers. The same is true for volunteering with any program in this church. Or you can show up for the Independent Film Series tomorrow night, and watch a great movie, and then talk about it with other thoughtful intelligent people — and having thoughtful intelligent conversations is exactly what we need to be doing right now, so we can start to figure out a new moral and ethical direction for our society. All these things are fun, and all these things are free, and all these things have a positive influence on us and one the world.

We need some positive influences in our lives right now. We need to be able to make sense out of the financial mess that’s happening around us, and we need to feel that we can do something to deal with that mess. It would be easy to let fear and worry take over our lives right now. What I have suggested is that we don’t let fear and worry take over our lives. We can offer a prophetic response, and say that greed and selfishness have contributed to the financial mess that we’re in. We can take personal spiritual action, transforming our lives, strengthening our selves so that we can better face the financial crisis. We can band together in this church, so that together our liberal religious witness can transform the world around us. By doing these things, we strengthen that which is best in ourselves.

People Are Basically Good

Reading

From Hosea Ballou’s “Treatise on Atonement,” 3rd. ed.

The origin of sin has, among Christians in general, been very easily accounted for; but in a way, I must confess, that never gave me any satisfaction, since I came to think for myself on subjects of this nature. A short chimerical story of the bard, Milton, has given perfect satisfaction to millions, representing the introduction of moral evil into the moral system which we occupy. The substance of the account is: Some time before the creation of man, the Almighty created multitudes of spiritual beings, called angels. Some of these creatures of God were much higher in dignity and authority than others, but all perfectly destitute of sin, or moral turpitude. One dignified above all the rest, stood Prime Minister of the Almighty, clothed with the highest missive power, and clad with garments of primeval light; obsequious to nothing but the high behest of his Creator, he discharged the functions of his office with promptitude and dignity, suited to the eminence of his station, and to the admiration of celestial millions. But when it pleased Jehovah to reveal the brightness of his glory and the image f the Godhead in humanity, he gave forth the command (see Psalm xcvii. 7), “Worship him, all ye gods.” And (Heb. i. 6) “and again, when he bringeth the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him.” Lucifer, Son of the Morning (as Christians have called him), surprised at the idea of worshipping any being but God himself, looked on the Son with ineffable disdain, and in a moment grew indignant, brushed his strongest pinions, and waved his wings for the throne of God, challenged supremacy with the Almighty, and cast his eye to the sides of the north as a suitable place to establish his empire. Legions of spirits followed this chief in rebellion, and formed a dangerous party in the kingdom of the Almighty. The Son of God was invested with full power as Generalissimo of Heaven, to command the remaining forces, against the common enemy. And in short, after many grievous battles between armies of contending spirits, where life could not, in the least, be exposed, Lucifer and his party were driven out of Heaven, leaving it in peace, through in a great measure, depopulated!

God, having created the earth, and placed the first man and woman in a most happy situation of innocence and moral purity, without the smallest appetite for sin, or propensity to evil, the arch Apostate enviously looked from his fiery prison, to which he was consigned by a command of the Almighty, and beholding man placed in so happy a situation, and in a capacity to increase to infinite multitudes, by which the kingdom of Heaven would be enlarged, was determined to crop this tree in the bud. He, therefore, turns into a serpent, goes to the woman and beguiles her, gets her to eat of a fruit which god had forbidden, by which means he introduced sin into our system.

I have not been particular in this sketch, but it contains the essence of the common idea. I shall now put it under examination, looking diligently for the propriety of accounting for the origin of moral evil in this way….

Sermon

One of the most basic propositions of Unitarian Universalism is the simple statement that people are basically good. We Unitarian Universalists know perfectly well that all of us human beings have our problems, and we know perfectly well that some human beings are worse than others. But we are firmly convinced that on the whole, and taken as an average, human beings are basically good.

This is a simple conviction to state: people are basically good. This simple conviction of ours comes out of a long history of theological reflection from both our Unitarian heritage and our Universalist heritage. Let me just briefly outline something of the history of our conviction that people are basically good.

From our Unitarian heritage, we inherit the concept that people have a certain freedom of choice; that we have some measure of free will that allows us to make moral choices. And with this concept of the freedom to make moral choices, we have also inherited the concept that, if we are given the option, we human beings tend to choose what is good over what is evil. As Unitarians, we feel that if given the option, human beings will make morally good choices.

From our Universalist heritage, we inherit the concept that all human beings will be redeemed in the end. Originally, this concept came from the Universalist understanding that God is essentially good, that God is so good that God will redeem each and every human being and allow each and every human being into heaven. Those old Universalists felt that ultimately it is God who is so good that God will redeem us human beings, but at the same time they were quite sure that every human being had enough goodness so as to be capable of being redeemed. As Universalists, we feel that all human beings have goodness as a part of our constitution.

Well, these old concepts have evolved and changed over the centuries. Today, as Unitarian Universalists, we might articulate these concepts somewhat differently. Today we would be more likely to speak of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” we would affirm and promote “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations,” and because we trust that people are basically good we would assert that everyone should participate in governance and would therefore affirm the “use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.”

That is the briefest outline of the history of our conviction that people are basically good. But of course this conviction leads to certain complications in practice. I suspect most of you would in general go along with this notion that people are basically good, yet I also suspect that each one of us here might wish to qualify this statement in various ways. We might wish to expand upon what we mean when we say that we are convinced that people are basically good. Let us therefore take some time to expand upon this simple statement.

(1) Let us begin with the notion that we can all be redeemed. This is a fine proposition to state in the abstract, but it is a challenging moral standard to live out. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

On Sunday, July 29, just four weeks ago today, James Adkisson of Powell, Tennessee, went into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, during their weekly worship service and he opened fire with a shotgun. The children of the church were about to begin a musical production in the worship service. Adkisson killed two people and wounded six others. He left a letter at his home that morning saying he hated the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church for its liberal views, and for its support for gays and lesbians. In addition, his ex-wife, who had a restraining order out against him because of his violence, was a former member of that church, so he apparently hated the church for that, too.

Now in this example, a self-professed hater of religious liberals enters a Unitarian Universalist church during a children’s play and kills and wounds eight people with a shotgun. If the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church believed in original sin or if they believed in hell, they’d give up on that guy. They would have said: that Adkisson is going to straight to hell. They would have siad: See how hard it is to escape from the bonds of original sin? Adkisson is damned for all eternity. But that’s not what the poeple of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church have said.

John Bohstedt, a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, took issue with some of the media coverage of the recent shootings at his church. Bohstedt, a retired history professor from the University of Tennessee, sent an email message to Michael Paulson, religion correspondent at the Boston Globe, giving his viewpoint about what really happened:

“An eyewitness who was protecting her children a few feet from the gunman said it was remarkable how everyone was doing exactly what they needed to do — subduing the gunman, calling 911, tending to the victims, and evacuating the sanctuary….

“The reason I am saying all this is — Media have done much to make us a fearful people — to emphasize the danger in the world. Real life is often NOT like that, and in this case — evil was overcome efficiently by LOVE.

“I have been studying the behavior of crowds for decades, in old documents and in our University of Tennessee football stadium, and more often than not there is METHOD in the ‘madness’ of crowds — the METHOD of our Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is organized Love.”

So said a member of the church where this shooting took place.

We Unitarian Universalists do believe in the power of love. We may not all believe in God any more, but we are pretty sure that anyone can be redeemed — or more properly, we believe people can redeem themselves if they wish to. This is like the old Universalist belief that, while we surely don’t understand how it happens, God somehow manages to redeem even hate-filled destructive persons like the killer at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We would say: James Adkisson is capable of redemption — with a lot of help, and acknowledging the very real possibility that we probably won’t want trust him in one of our Unitarian Universalist churches ever again.

Redemption remains mysterious to us. People whom we think are beyond redemption manage to redeem themselves; others who seem capable of redemption never manage to find redemption. But I’m pretty certain that redemption has to be something that we strive after actively. You can’t just wait passively for someone else to be redeemed, you can’t just wait passively for yourself to be redeemed. We have to encourage redemption in others, and when it is necessary we have to actively seek redemption for ourselves. The basic goodness of human beings is not a passive characteristic; it is an active process.

So you see, being convinced that people are basically good is not mere abstract belief:– this conviction forces us to seek after redemption for ourselves, and to encourage redemption in others.

(2) How else might we expand on the simple statement that people are basically good? One obvious way we do this is that we organize our church communities around our simple conviction that people are basically good. Thus our church communities are organized on the basis of trust: if people are basically good, we should be able to trust them, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

Back on a Sunday morning in February of 2001, the New Bedford Standard-Times ran a front-page article that included allegations that a recently retired minister of this church had engaged in [quote] “inappropriate sexual behavior towards ten women in his former congregation.” Now mind you, these were allegations, and the Standard-Times also published a statement by the recently retired minister that the allegations were not true. And so in such a situation, it may become difficult to know whom to trust — are the allegations true or false? Whom do you believe? In such a situation, it would be easy to give up on trust altogether, give up trusting the church community at all.

Let me give you a less serious violation of trust, from my own experience. A couple of decades ago, someone from the Unitarian Universalist church I was then attending called me up and asked me to volunteer for something. I asked her about it, and then said that I did not wish to volunteer. Why not? she asked. I said because I felt the program concerned involved cultural misappropriation; at which point, she raised her voice and told me in no uncertain terms that I should reconsider. She came pretty close to yelling at me. Let me tell you, it is not pleasant to have a church leader raise their voice at you, and question your integrity. It took me a year before I wanted to volunteer for anything at that church again. I mean, why stick around a church when someone treats you like that?

It is much easier to just run away from the church and stop trusting that church community. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be much easier to just accept that people are basically evil. If I could just accept that people are basically evil, then I could stop trusting anyone except a small circle of people I have decided are trustworthy. Of course, if one of those people I have decided to trust then violates that trust, then I’d really be in the soup, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be sure if I could trust anyone at all.

We build our church communities on trust in part because the alternative is so grim: if we’re not willing to trust our church community, then we’re left with a pretty small circle of people whom we can trust. At the same time, we are realistic about trust. We have to be realistic. Yes, people may be basically good, but people are never perfect. Anyone can do bad things to someone else. We are also quite clear that some of us are less likely to do evil things than others. Jim Adkisson, the man who shot people at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, has proven that he is more likely to do evil things than me. When we base our communities on trust, realistically we have to understand that there are some people we just cannot accept into our church communities. Thus we would say that when it comes to James Adkisson — no, he cannot come into this church!

This means we also expect certain behavioral standards of each other. If someone violates those standards, we may have to call them on it. When that woman raised her voice at me, I wish I had had the courage to say: “Hey, stop yelling at me, that’s not acceptable!” And of course, calling someone else on their behavior is not always possible: if you’re being physically or emotionally abused by someone, I’m here to tell you that you need to get away from that person; don’t waste time calling them on their behavior, just get out. Yet generally speaking, we should expect the people around us to live up to certain behavioral standards; and it is up to each one of us, and up to us as a community, to gently maintain a high level of trust in our church community.

It’s up to us to maintain a high level of trust in our church. Trust requires forgiveness. I guarantee you, nearly everyone whom you trust will violate your trust in some way, large or small. We may trust our parents, but most of us can give some example of how our parents violated our trust in some way, whether large or small. The same is true of spouses, relatives, friends,– and all of us here at church. Now again, if you’re in an abusive situation, you need to know that forgiveness need not be face-to-face;– sometimes trust has been so violated that forgiveness has to take place at a distance. But the general point here is that in order to trust anyone again, we have to forgive those who trespass on our trust. In order to continue trusting, we must reach forgiveness in the honesty of our own hearts.

So you see, being convinced that people are basically good is not mere abstract belief:– this conviction requires us to trust one another, and it requires forgiveness; and boy is it difficult to trust and to forgive!

(3) How else might we expand on the simple statement that people are basically good? Let me give you one example of how we live out this conviction of ours here in our church.

Because we are convinced that people are basically good, we are convinced that when we’re born, we are not somehow stained with evil. That’s why we do child dedications, not baptisms. (Explain how this works.)

I don’t mean to imply that children are like little angels — they’re not. They need firm guidance from us adults, and they need firm boundaries re: acceptable behavior. The opposite of goodness in human beings is often not evil, but chaos and lack of social structure. We are social animals who live within social constructs that we must maintain.

Thus, living out our belief that people are basically good requires that we train up the next generation in how to act so that we can teach them how to be good instead of chaotic. This is why I want to be in a church that has children in it: because while I am convinced that people are basically good, I know too that I have a moral responsibility to help move humanity towards increased goodness through raising children; and that responsibility is yours whether or not you have children of your own, whether or not.

Again we see that being convinced that people are basically good requires more than abstract belief: it requires the hard work of raising up the children and moving them away from chaos. This is hard work!

…

Well, when I started out, you may have thought that this was going to be one of those feel-good sermons. You may have expected me to talk about people’s essential goodness — and instead, here I mentioned mentioned murder, and clergy misconduct, and other difficult topics. On top of that, I have said that we have responsibilities:– we’re supposed to keep children from being so chaotic, and practice forgiveness, and base our church communities on trust, and encourage redemption.

After all that, original sin may start to sound very attractive! It almost seems easier to just accept that people are basically evil, tainted with something called original sin, that will prevent them from being good, dooming most people to an eternity of torment after death.

So, if you want to believe that people are basically evil, I for one will fully understand — it is the easier path — even though it involves a certain amount of self-loathing. But I’m going to remain convinced that people are basically good — even though it requires me to help move children away from being so chaotic, and practice forgiveness, and base our church in trust, and encourage redemption. Even though it requires work on my part, I’m going to stick with the proposition that people are basically good.