Dan Harper | Sermons

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) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Story

If you were here in church last week, you heard the story of how Moses led the ancient Israelites out of slavery, away from the mean old Pharaoh, and into freedom. This week, we’ll hear another story about Moses.

So Moses and all the Israelites escaped from mean old Pharaoh, and Moses led them into the desert. They had to cross the desert, hot and dry, in order to get to the Promised Land, the place where they could live in peace and freedom.

They walked and they walked, day after day, for three whole months, until at last they reached Mount Sinai. They decided to camp there for a while, and they set up their tents.

Moses left his brother Aaron in charge of the campsite. Moses climbed Mount Sinai, and there he talked to his God, who gave him rules and laws for the Israelites. There were laws against stealing, against murdering people, against lying. There was a law against worshipping any other god or goddess. The first ten laws God gave to Moses are sometimes called the “Ten Commandments.” And most of these laws still make sense today.

Moses went back down the mountain bringing those first ten laws to the Israelites. Next day, Moses climbed back up the mountain for more laws. God gave him lots of laws. Some of these other laws sound strange to us today, like the law that said if one ox hurts another ox, the owner of the first ox has to sell it and divide the money with the owner of the second ox, and the owner of the second ox has to butcher it and divide the meat with the owner of the first ox. God had many laws and rules for Moses to bring to the Israelites. Moses had to climb up and down that mountain quite a few times.

Then came a time when Moses stayed on top of the mountain for a really long time.

Back at the campsite, the Israelites began to wonder where Moses had disappeared to. Some people decided that maybe Moses and the God of the Israelites had abandoned them. They went to Aaron and said, “Make us a new god.”

Aaron told them to bring all their gold jewelry. He melted it all down, and made a calf from it — a golden calf.

When the people saw the pretty golden calf, they said, “This is our god now, the god who led us out of Egypt.”

Aaron made an altar for the golden calf, and said, “We’ll have a big celebration tomorrow for our new god.” The next day, they worshipped their new god, and they cooked lots of food, and drank lots of wine.

Up on top of Mount Sinai, the God of the Israelites became aware of what was going on down in the camp of the Israelites. God said, “Those Israelites have made a new god for themselves! They made a calf out of gold, and then they offered it sacrifices, and worshipped it; just as they used to offer sacrifices to me, and worship me! They are no good — no good at all. I will strike them down and destroy them. And then I will lead you to the Promised Land by yourself.”

But Moses convinced God to give the Israelites another chance. Then he hustled down to the base of Mount Sinai.

What a sight met his eyes when he got there! People were dancing, and laughing, and eating, and drinking, and generally having a wild time. Moses stood at the gate of the camp, and he roared out, “Who is still loyal to the God of the Israelites? Come to me if you are!”

Quite a few people ran to Moses and said they were still loyal to the God of the Israelites.

“Go and get your swords,” Moses said to them. “Our God has told me that we have to kill off all the people who aren’t loyal to him.” And that’s what they all did: they killed all the ones who worshipped the golden calf.

But that’s not quite the end of the story. Moses had to go back up to the top of Mount Sinai and apologize to the God of the Israelites. God said that Moses had done the right thing; God said the people who worshipped the golden calf would get punished; and God sent an angel to help the Israelites on their long journey. But God also sent a plague to the Israelites, and many of them got sick.

Here’s what I get from this story: The Israelites were wrong to have made themselves a golden calf, after they had promised to be follow Moses’s leadership, and follow the God of the Israelites. I don’t like the tact that Moses killed off those who disagreed with him, but then I remind myself that it’s just a story. It’s just a story, but it’s a good story about remaining true to your ideals, and true to your community.

[Story based on the book of Exodus, mostly ch. 32]

Readings

The first reading comes from the book of Exodus in the Torah, and tells about the time when the Israelites had only just escaped from Egypt.

“The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim; and Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ ”

[Exodus 16.1-3, New Revised Standard Version]

The second reading is from the book Leadership for the Twenty-First Century by Joseph C. Rost:

“Followers are part of the leadership relationship in a new paradigm of leadership. What is different about the emerging view of followers is the substantive meaning attached to the word and the clarity given to that understanding. The following five points give the concept of followers substance and clarity.

“First, only people who are active in the leadership process are followers. Passive people are not in a relationship. They have chosen not to be involved. They cannot have influence. Passive people are not followers.

“Second, active people can fall anywhere on a continuum of activity from highly active to minimally active, and their influence in the leadership process is, in large part, based on their activity, their willingness to get involved, their use of the power resources they have at their command to influence other people….

“Third, followers can become leaders and leaders can become followers in any one leadership relationship. People are not stuck in one or the other for the whole time the relationship exists…. This ability to change places without changing organizational positions gives followers considerable influence and mobility.

“Fourth, in one group or organization people can be leaders. In other groups and organizations they can be followers. Followers are not always followers in all leadership relationships.

“Fifth, and most important, followers do not do followership, they do leadership. Both leaders and followers form one relationship that is leadership. There is no such thing as followership in the new school of leadership. Followership makes sense only in the industrial leadership paradigm, where leadership is good management. Since followers who are subordinates could not do management (since they were not managers), they had to do followership. No wonder followership connoted subordination, submissiveness, and passivity. In the new paradigm, followers and leaders do leadership. They are in the leadership relationship together. They are the ones who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes….. Followers and leaders develop a relationship wherein they influence one another as well as the organization and society, and that is leadership.” [pp. 108-109]

Sermon

If you were here last week, you heard a sermon about Moses. And this week, here’s another one: the second sermon in a series about that great Jewish leader, Moses.

The words to the old African American hymn, the one we just sang, go something like this:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land
Oppressed so hard they could not stand
The Lord told Moses what to do:
to lead the tribe of Israel through.
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go.

The story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt is a story of escape from slavery, a story of how to reach freedom. No wonder this story had special meaning for the African Americans who were enslaved in this country. No wonder they created hymns to tell the story of Moses. No wonder the white slave-owners sometimes tried to prevent African Americans from having access to the complete Bible; the story of Moses is potentially explosive, it is revolutionary.

It is a story that continues to have revolutionary potential, even today. Some religious liberals dismiss the Bible as being outdated. But we religious liberals would do well to remember that one reason the old stories of Moses have survived for thousands of years is because these stories contain great power. We religious liberals who are struggling to make this world a better place would do well to remember that we could tap into the power that is in the old story of Moses; a power that could change us for the better. And this morning, I would like to look at two parts of that story that might have some small power to change us.

The first part of the Moses story that we heard was the story of the golden calf. Moses goes up Mount Sinai to talk with the God of the Israelites. He’s gone a long time. The Israelites get impatient waiting for Moses to return, so they make themselves a new god: they make a calf out of gold, and they build it an altar, and they worship it.

Nor are we surprised to hear this. We have all witnessed this kind of thing happening in our own lives: Someone emerges as a leader in a community, and things start to change. But then the leader gets caught up in the big picture, forgetting the details, and so his or her followers go astray, they lose their sense of mission and direction, they start pursuing false ideas (or to use some current buzzwords in the non-profit sector, “they dilute their mission”). When the leader returns to earth, he or she finds the community in disarray; chaos reigns; nothing is getting done.

When I hear the story about Moses and the golden calf, I have two observations. First, I observe that Moses probably should have trained Aaron better so that take his place when he went up Mount Sinai. This is a classic problem in churches and non-profits: leaders often forget to train their replacements. Clearly, this problem goes back thousands of years. Second, I observe that the Israelites couldn’t stay focussed on their mission for that relatively short time when Moses was on the mountain. This is another classic problem in churches and non-profits: people forget to stay focussed on their mission, and get distracted by useless things like making golden calves. Clearly, this is another problem that has been going on for thousands of years.

In the first reading this morning, we heard a second part of the Moses story. The Israelites have escaped from Egypt, they have escaped from bondage and slavery. But to their dismay they discover that escaping from bondage is not easy. They find themselves in the wilderness. They do not know where their next meal is coming from. Egypt may have been bad, but at least they got fed. In the sonorous poetry of the King James version of the Bible, the Israelites say: “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Nor are we surprised to hear this. We have all witnessed this kind of thing happening in our own lives: A new leader takes a community of people in a bold new direction, and pretty soon the complaints begin. People say, Maybe the old ways didn’t work so well, but at least we were comfortable. People say, let’s go back to the old ways, let’s go back to the flesh pots. People start digging in their heels; they find little ways of demonstrating their discontent. Everything grinds to a halt.

When I hear this part of the story, I have two observations. First, I observe that Moses seems to have forgotten one key task of a leader. Moses should have read this month’s issue of the Harvard Business Review, in which there is an article titled, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” The article points out a great and ancient truth of leadership: leaders have to “use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies”; often they have to communicate their vision far more often than they expect. [Harvard Business Review, January, 2007, pp. 99 ff.] Clearly, this was a problem thousands of years ago, and Moses did not adequately communicate his vision for the Israelites. Second, I observe that the Israelites indulged themselves inn being passive. OK, Moses didn’t adequately communicate his vision, and OK, you didn’t have enough to eat; but come on, Israelites, can’t you go out and look for food on your own? Clearly, this was a problem thousands of years ago: the Israelites sank into passivity.

Half a century ago, another great leader took inspiration from the story of Moses and the Israelites. Half a century ago, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., found himself in an explosive situation. He was the minister of a church here in the United States. Let me be more specific: he was the Black minister of a Black church in a time and a country where to be Black meant to suffer from oppressive laws and an oppressive social system, where to be Black meant to be treated as less than fully human.

When he was still in his twenties, Martin Luther King found himself thrust into a situation where he was in a position to provide critical leadership to Black people in the United States. And it is clear that he studied carefully how he might provide effective leadership. He knew the story of Moses in his bones; he knew the great courage of Moses, but he also knew all about the problems Moses faced. He studied other great leaders, like Mahatma Gandhi; he studied theorists like Henry David Thoreau. He knew how to lead.

From all this, Martin Luther King was able to communicate a powerful vision, a vision which he preached and proclaimed over and over again. He thrilled people with his vision. I still get chills when I read or hear his “I Have a Dream” speech: “Let freedom ring, let it ring from every village and hamlet” — powerful words, words with the power to move us to action. And to back up this powerful vision, Martin Luther King had specific strategies to mobilize his followers to action, strategies like non-violent resistance and civil disobedience.

But there is more to the story of Martin Luther King than just a powerful vision, and specific strategies. Martin Luther King had great followers. He had truly great followers. A great leader is nothing without great followers. And this brings us to the second reading this morning, the reading by Joseph Rost. This second reading is written in such dry academic prose that even though Rost is one of the best leadership theorists alive, you may have missed what he was talking about — as your head nodded and you drifted slowly off to sleep. So let me bring out three key points in what Rost had to say.

First, true leadership brings about real change. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt — that’s real change. Martin Luther King changed the laws of the land — that’s real change. Real leadership lead to real change.

Second, people who are passive aren’t engaged in change; by definition. There are three categories of people: leaders and followers, both of whom effect change; and passive people, who do nothing except perhaps try to maintain the status quo.

Third, sometimes followers have to become leaders. Followers can’t just go off and do their own thing when they feel like it. In order to effect real change, followers have to stay in relationship with their community, and at times they may have to step forward and become leaders.

And while Joseph Rost doesn’t say this explicitly, let me add a fourth point: Many times, people don’t want to change. They show they don’t want change by remaining passive. This was true of Israelites. This was true of many people, black and white, during King’s time. This seems to be true of religious liberals today.

Let me say a little more about religious liberals today. I should remind you that the phrase “religious liberal” does not refer to politics; it does not refer to Democrats who happen to go to church. To be a religious liberal is to take a liberal approach to religion, to not be a fundamentalist.

Many religious liberals today do not wish to effect change — even though they may say they want to effect change. From what I’ve observed in half a dozen Unitarian Universalist churches over the past twenty years, on the whole we religious liberals have been resisting real change in a very specific way. We say we want to change the world, to fix all the things that are wrong with the world — as long as we don’t have to change anything in our nice, comfortable churches. Even though we are too small to effect real change in this broken world, we keep our churches small through passivity. We stay small even though demographic evidence shows that there are millions of people trying to get into our churches because they believe in what we are doing; yet we keep them out through passivity, and through hyper-individuality.

For these are our two primary ways of resisting change: passivity, and hyper-individuality.

By passivity, I mean sitting still and doing nothing. It’s just like the Israelites when they sat in the wilderness, doing nothing about it except to wish they were back in slavery in Egypt. We can see this happening in all the liberal churches right now; we can find people who, when asked to follow a larger vision, simply do nothing. I know I have been guilty of passivity; many of our Unitarian Universalist congregations have been guilty of passivity; Unitarian Universalism as a whole has been guilty of passivity.

By hyper-individuality, I mean wanting everything to be done your way. When a leader comes along and proposes real change, the hyper-individualist will say, Well that’s not the way I would do things, so count me out; I don’t want to follow you, nor will I step forward as a leader. Do you see how this is just another form of passivity?– because the hyper-individualist winds up doing nothing. They say that preachers often preach the sermon they need to hear, and I know that hyper-individuality is my besetting sin, the way I usually choose to resist change. HPyper-individuality runs rampant in Unitarian Universalist churches; hyper-individuality runs rampant in liberal religion.

But passivity gets us nowhere. We need good leaders, and we need good followers.

Good leaders need good followers. Martin Luther King could not have done what he did without good followers. He needed people who chose to get involved. He needed people who would become deeply involved, for he was calling on people to put their lives on the line. He needed people who could step forward and become leaders when he was in jail. He needed other leaders to come and be followers, just as Dana Greeley, the then-president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, left his presidential duties and traveled to Alabama to follow Dr. King. And Martin Luther King needed followers who did not see themselves as subordinates, but who saw themselves as full participants in the great endeavor of leading this country towards an acceptance of full equality for African Americans.

Martin Luther King succeeded in large part because he could mobilize huge numbers of people in the Black churches. Since then, the health of the Black church has declined, but in those days people in the Black churches knew how to be followers, and they knew how to be leaders. Martin Luther King also succeeded in part because he was able to call on large numbers of people in the liberal churches. Since then, the health of the liberal churches — churches like this one — has declined, but in those days we knew how to be leaders, and we knew how to be followers.

I tell you this because we need to rebuild the liberal churches — we need to rebuild this church. If a new Martin Luther King came along today, we would not be ready. We need to remember how to be good leaders — and we need to remember how to be good followers.

Personally, I believe the biggest issue facing us today as a religious people is global climate change and environmental destruction. I am waiting for new Martin Luther Kings to emerge, leaders who will galvanize us to end environmental destruction. And these new leaders will show us how poor people, and communities of color, and other people on the margins, are disproportionately affected by environmental destruction. They will show us that when Hurricane Katrina hit, poor people and African American communities bore the brunt of the destruction; when hazardous waste is dumped, rarely does it get dumped in the white suburbs; when the sea level rises due to climate change, it will be the poor people in places like New Orleans who will suffer the most.

These new leaders will have a vision for us, a vision of a new kind of freedom: freedom to enjoy and participate in an economically and ecologically sustainable future, no matter what color your skin might be — a sustainable future for us, for our children, for their children, for all the generations to follow.

I am already aware of new leadership emerging all around us, new religious leaders who are ready to galvanize the liberal churches. We need to make sure we are ready when the call comes. When someone comes along and says, Let’s create the Promised Land right here and right now! Let us create a society of ecological and economic balance, a heaven of ecojustice! — when that call comes, may each of us, and may this church, be ready to answer that call.

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) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Story

Today I thought I’d tell you part of the old, old story of how the Jewish people lived in slavery under the wicked Pharaoh, and how Moses led the Jewish people to freedom….

The God of Israel came down to speak to Moses, and told Moses to go to the Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, let them go free.” Moses didn’t want to do this, but God said he had to, and he did.

Moses said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” But Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man, and wouldn’t let the Israelites, the Jews, go free. So with God’s help, Moses took his staff while Pharaoh was watching, lifted it up, and struck the water of the Nile River. Immediately all the water in the river turned to blood, and that made all the fish in the river die. It did not smell good. And because the Egyptians got their water from the Nile, they had a hard time getting enough water to drink, or to wash with.

Well, you think that would have been enough to convince Pharaoh not to fool around with Moses — and to not fool around with the God of the Israelites. But the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses came to Pharaoh, and said, “Now will you let my people go?” But Pharaoh said no.

This time Moses stretched out his staff over the river, the ponds and lakes and all the water, and with God’s help he let loose a plague of frogs. There were frogs everywhere! There were frogs in Pharaoh’s palace, frogs in everyone’s houses, frogs in people’s beds, so many frogs that the bakers put them into bread by mistake. Yuck! Bread with frogs in it. It tasted horrible.

Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.

This time Moses stretched out his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and with God’s help released a horde of gnats. Do you know what gnats are? They are little insects that bite you just like mosquitoes and when they bite you it’s just like a mosquito bite which swells up and itches, but gnats are so small you can’t see them. There were gnats everywhere, a plague of gnats, biting everyone all the time. It was most unpleasant.

Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but that Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.

So with God’s help, Moses sent a swarm of flies to plague the land (if you’re keeping count, that’s the fourth plague Moses lets loose on Egypt). Flies everywhere! — on your food, in your eyes, everywhere.

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made all the cows and chickens and other livestock get sick — no milk to drink! — no eggs to eat! (That’s number five.) Everyone got very hungry.

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made everyone in Egypt get pimples and boils that hurt like the dickens and looked nasty (that’s number six).

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses let loose thunder and hail — big hailstones that damaged all the crops (that’s number seven).

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought locusts into the country of Egypt. The locusts covered every inch of the land, and if there was anything left in the fields that the hail had not damaged, the locusts ate it up. (That’s number eight.) Now there was basically no food left to eat in all of Egypt.

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought a dense darkness over the entire land of Egypt, except for little bits of light that were in the houses of the Israelites (that’s number nine).

But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. This time, God said, “Moses, go tell Pharaoh that I, God, will make every first-born child die throughout the land of Egypt.” But God also told Moses that all the Jews should make a mark over their doors with the blood of a lamb, and that way God would know that God should pass over those houses, and not make the firstborn child die. (And that was the tenth, and the very worst, of the ten plagues.)

This time, when Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh said, “Go! Go! You bring nothing but disaster to me and my kingdom.” And Moses and his people left as quickly as they could, before Pharoah could change his mind again.

That’s the first part of the story of how the Jews, who were kept in slavery by Pharaoh, at last gained their freedom. Some people don’t like this story because it is kind of disgusting in places. Even so, this story reminds me how important religious freedom is. It would have been very easy for Moses and the Jews to just try to fit in to life in Egypt — but they didn’t; they stayed true to who they were as a religious community.

Readings

The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew Bible.

Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Hold out your arm over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat up all the grasses in the land, whatever the hail has left.’ So Moses held out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD drove an east wind over the land of Egypt; and whn morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt.

Pharaoh hurriedly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I stand guilty before the LORD your God and before you. Forgive my offense just this once, and plead with the LORD your God that He but remove this death from me.’ So he left Pharaoh’s presence and pleaded with the LORD. The LORD caused a shift to a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and hurled them into the Sea of Reeds; not a single locust remained in all the territory of Egypt. But the LORD stiffened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

(Exodus 10.12-29; the new Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh)

The second reading this morning comes from the book More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow, by Loren Mead:

“The civic congregation… is tempted to rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day. Each has its own realm of power, but there is such an interpenetration of values and concerns that a basic consensus among power brokers emerges. In this coalition statesmen [sic] consult with bishops and moderators at prayer breakfasts before undertaking great enterprises of war or peace. Civic religion reigns.

“The enticement of this view is that most of us can thank back to a time when such an establishment seemed to work. There’s the rub. ‘Most’ of us. In fact, such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering. Yet ‘most’ did see and today remember that more orderly, simpler life. Even those victimized and excluded by the establishment sometimes are tempted to return to a simple — but at least predictable — victimization!

“Denominational executives get tempted in this direction by flattering invitations to lunch and a conference at the mayor’s office or the governor’s mansion.

“Much of what is called ‘outreach’ in local congregations tries to make a difference to those who suffer and it is profoundly right in this motivation. The temptation I am describing creeps in to turn it into a religious public welfare program. The temptation leads congregations to make outreach to the oppressed the primary task rather than an expression of a community whose primary task has to do with relationship to God. Yes, the two are related. But congregations must be grounded in relationship to God and yet have very limited capacity or expertise to accomplish the other. Most such efforts carve out a small arena in which a congregation is tempted to assume is it about the task of rebuilding Christendom. Congregations are not very good at that, and they run into problems of burning out staff and volunteers.” [pp. 97-98]

Sermon

When I began here at First Unitarian, members of the Search Committee and other lay leaders told me that this congregation has a serious commitment to the principles of freedom of the pulpit. If you haven’t heard that term before, the phrase “freedom of the pulpit” sums up the theory that a minister in our tradition should be able to speak the truth from the pulpit, without fear of reprisals or other repercussions from within the congregation. That is the theory of “freedom of the pulpit,” and it is a good theory.

In practice, freedom of the pulpit was abused by many Unitarian Universalist ministers in the 1960’s. There is the famous story of the Unitarian Universalist minister who preached a couple of sermons against the Vietnam War. Members of the congregation told him that they would appreciate it if he would hold off on preaching another sermon on the Vietnam War. But, as he later proudly recounted the story, he invoked the principle of freedom of the pulpit and gave the congregation another sermon of Vietnam, and another one after that. Whereupon many in the congregation invoked the principle of “freedom of the pew,” and stopped coming to church on Sunday morning — or at least, that’s how I heard the story told.

When I say that many Unitarian Universalist ministers abused the freedom of the pulpit, what I really mean is that these ministers succumbed to the temptation of believing that they could construct a just society. Of course we all want to construct a just society. But there’s a difference between constructing a just society on the one hand, and on the other hand trying to force your interpretation of justice on everyone else. Episcopal priest Loren Mead puts it this way: “I am not saying that religious people should not be seeking to work for justice in society. I am simply saying that 2,000 years [of Western Christian tradition] have left us with a legacy of wanting to legislate the whole thing in our own image. We leave no room for pluriformity.”

Considered thus, I believe that “freedom of the pulpit” has limits. It is not my job to tell you what to believe or do in the realm of politics. But it is my job to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; it is my job to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and it is my job to hold us all accountable when we are failing to grow in faith together, when we are failing in our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.

And so I come to the story of Moses and the plagues. What a strange story!– Moses goes to Pharaoh and requests that the Israelites be freed from bondage so that they might follow Moses into the desert in order to better worship their God. When Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, Moses calls down plagues upon the Egyptian people: a river filled with blood, a plague of lice and vermin, a plague of frogs for Pete’s sake. What on earth was Moses thinking?

If Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would not have wasted his time calling down plagues on Pharaoh’s people. No indeed, if Moses were a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would have done things quite differently. He might have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing in the halls of power, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of Egypt so that the Israelites would gain their freedom without having to actually pack up and leave. Or he might have organized protests in front of the Pyramids to bring down the corrupt regime of Pharaoh and usher in a democratically-elected government sympathetic to the Israelite presence in Egypt. In either case, if Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, there wouldn’t have been any of this nonsense of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, everyone trekking through the desert for forty years eating mana and grasshoppers, and finally arriving at the Promised Land — which is what Moses did, according to the book of Exodus.

If Moses had been minister here in First Unitarian in New Bedford, we can be pretty sure that he would have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing with City Hal– I mean with Pharaoh, organizing the Inter-Church Council so as to have more political clout, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of New Bedford so that the Israelites would have the maximum freedom with the minimum amount of displacement. Of course, at the same time Moses and the middle-class people from First Unitarian would also be working at relieving the suffering of the many people who did not flourish under Pharaoh’s rule.

There are at least two problems with this hypothetical course of action for this mythical First Unitarian as lead by Moses. First, by concentrating much of their energy on politics and relief work, it would be very easy for Moses and the people of First Unitarian to neglect their religious purpose. Second, by building a coalition with the New Bedford Pharaoh and the New Bedford political system, Moses and the people of First Unitarian undergo a risk that we heard described in the second reading this morning: “such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering.”

Instead of making up stories about some mythical First Unitarian as it might have been led by Moses, the Unitarian Universalist minister — what, in fact, has happened here at our non-mythical First Unitarian in New Bedford?

Here’s my take on what has happened here in the real First Unitarian:

We pride ourselves as being a serious player in the political arena. We pride ourselves in having had ministers who have been active participants in the civic and political life of the city of New Bedford. (Some of us may even worry a little about the current minister, who is not particularly active in the political and civic life of New Bedford, who doesn’t even subscribe the local daily newspaper; why, even the minister isn’t quite sure what to make of himself in this context.) We pride ourselves as having political influence in the city and the region, and we take real and justified pride every time a member of this congregation has a letter to the editor published in the local daily newspaper.

We take pride in past accomplishments. We are justifiably proud of having founded Unity Home, a settlement house that we founded in the North End of New Bedford a hundred years ago. We are justifiably proud of having been a co-founder of the Inter-Church Council, which has done so much good work and has had so much political influence — even though we now feel forced out of the Council because we aren’t Christian enough any more. And we take pride in our reputation as “the social action congregation.”

We are indeed the “social action congregation.” While it is true that our political influence has declined, primarily because our numbers declined precipitously during the urban violence of the 1960’s and have remained low ever since. But mayors and politicians still pay some attention to us, and we do have influence beyond our tiny numbers.

As a social action congregation, however, we face two big temptations. The first temptation we face is the temptation to “rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day” — to quote our second reading this morning. Indeed, if your minister — me! — if I weren’t so doggone pig-headed, I could be out in the community more, and we could in fact rebuild that establishment of the right people and the right institutions taking care of the critical issues right now.

The second temptation is perhaps more tempting: we could build a version of a truly just society, right here in New Bedford. We could build a society that cares for the poor, helps the weak, honors those who are suffering. This temptation is the one that tempts me personally. This temptation is so tempting, it’s hard to believe that there could be anything wrong with it. But tempting as they are, something’s wrong with both these temptations. Let me quote Loren Mead again:

“An activist congregation is often tempted to build a… version of the Just Society. It assumes that a political order can be constructed that incarnates fully the principles of justice…. A clue to the empire-building nature of this temptation is the role of clergy in it. Generally clergy are the leading figures, the prophets and movement heads…. This is a temptation of Church to take authority over Empire. The laudable aims of the activists become the pressure for empire building in a new way.”

Well, so what? So what if we engage in a little empire-building? At least our empire would be based on sound principles of justice and equity, right?

Maybe so. But remember that some conservative Christians have succumbed to this temptation at the national level here in the United States. These conservative Christians, some of whom implemented Bible study in the White House, decided that they knew what true justice was. True justice means no abortions, not for any reason. True justice means no same-sex marriage. True justice means exporting democracy to Iraq. True justice means supporting economic growth at the expense of environmental safety. They are quite certain they know what justice is, and they are working hard to implement true justice, as they understand it. But in my opinion, they have released plagues upon the land.

If we tried to do the same thing, don’t you think that there would be many people who felt we were wrong, that our vision of a just society was wrong? Isn’t there a very real possibility that we would be wrong in at least one important area? And what would we do when we encountered resistance to our social justice programs? –would we squash that resistance, or listen to it seriously?

I don’t think we should succumb to either of these temptations. I don’t think we should try to rebuild the old establishment of the late 19th C., where First Unitarian was part of the inner circle of decision-making, where members and ministers of First Unitarian walked the halls of power. Nor do I think we should succumb to the temptation of believing that we are the ones who have the true answers, that we are the ones who know how to build the just society here in New Bedford. That kind of narrow, dogmatic thinking releases its own kind of plague upon the land.

No, I believe the purpose of a Unitarian Universalist church is different, and pretty straightforward. The way I think about it, there’s a vertical and a horizontal dimension to our purpose here. On the vertical dimension, we’re here to ask ultimate questions of truth and meaning, and although we don’t expect final answers to our questions we’re here to get in touch with some sense of the ultimate (which some of us happen to call God). On the horizontal dimension, we’re here to build a safe and supportive community, a community where we support each other in our spiritual journeys. You have to have both dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal; a sense of the ultimate, and a sense of community. That is our purpose.

From a very practical and pragmatic point of view, we have another purpose. We build up a strong religious community, so that we may send our members and friends out into the world to tackle the problems of the world. I stole this idea from Loren Mead, but notice that here again there are two dimensions: building the church from within, and sending church members outside the confines of our community.

You will notice that this is very different from saying that our church will go out and effect change in the world; I am saying that our church nurtures and supports each of us individually, so that we can then in turn go out and do the work that needs to be done in the world. You will notice that this conception of church has a very different role for the minister; rather than paying the minister to go out into the world to do the justice work that needs to be done, the minister’s primary work is within the congregation, building the congregational community, and supporting the individuals who go out to work in the world. I’m not saying that you will agree with me, but certainly you will notice these things.

Let’s get back to Moses for a moment. If I try to read the story of Moses as historical fact that is literally true, I don’t like the story:– all those plagues! all those innocent people who had to suffer and die! a river of blood is disgusting! But if I take the story about Moses and the plagues as poetry, rather than as literal fact, I find that the story holds truth for me. Moses was concerned with building up his religious community, and when his community was faced with such oppression that their very existence was threatened, he decided to lead them out of Egypt. Yet even though he could have, he did not walk the halls of power side-by-side with Pharaoh.

We are lucky enough to live in a society that is generally tolerant of religious differences, so it is unlikely that we will have to leave the country. Yet on a poetic level, we can understand this story is telling us that sometimes religious communities have to stand up to the prevailing norms of society in order to hold on to their own sense of truth and goodness; and sometimes religious communities have to work to maintain appropriate boundaries so they are not overwhelmed or subsumed. To these ends, Moses is concerned with the vertical and horizontal dimensions of his religious community: he wants his community to remain in contact with their God; and he wants his community to remain a healthy, thriving community.

Mind you, I am not Moses. I haven’t the vaguest idea of how to unleash plagues on Egypt. As a religious leader, my purpose has not been to release a plague upon anybody. My purpose has been to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; and my purpose has been to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and my purpose has been to hold us all accountable to realize our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.

And maybe I am actually using a little of that mythical freedom of the pulpit which I don’t really believe in. If that’s the case, I hope that you will use your freedom of the pew to continue the conversation, and that you will begin to talk with each other, and with me, about your visions for this community.