preached at First Parish in Milton, Unitarian Universalist on July 21, 2013

This morning’s sermon is a reflection on the question: what does it mean to be present to justice? If you have been here for either of my last two sermons you might remember that for the month of July I am offering a sermon series on Unitarian Universalism as a religion of presence. Last week we reflected on the question: what does it mean to be present to each other? Next week we will conclude by asking: what does it mean to be present to the holy? This week though is justice…

The events of the recent weeks prompt me to reflect on our question as it relates to race in the United States. I could easily pick another area to focus on, struggles for reproductive, environmental or economic justice, but the last month’s news has been such a clear reminder that, as theologian James Cone would say, “racism is America’s original sin” that focusing on any those topics seems irresponsible.

The Supreme Court decision to overturn part of the Voting Rights Act and the verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder case have been powerful reminders that this original sin remains as present as ever. The election of a black President has not brought about a post-racial society. The news program Democracy Now reported this past week that in 2012 alone there were 313 documented extrajudicial killings of African Americans by police, security guards and self-appointed vigilantes like George Zimmerman. Trayvon Martin’s murder was horrifying, in part, not because it was exceptional but because it was ordinary. Almost once a day a similar scenario to Zimmerman’s murder of Martin plays out some place in the United States. And when it does the justice system often responds in a similar way, the murderer is not held accountable.

We could spend the rest of the morning talking about how the justice system, which should really be called the injustice system, oppresses and violates people of color. The system frequently grants impunity to their killers, as long as those killers have light skin. The injustice system also incarcerates people of color at much higher rates, and for longer periods of time, than white people. If you have not read it yet, you should read Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” which documents how the injustice system has in the past few decades been used to disenfranchise, oppress and violate African Americans. In Alexander’s telling, a telling which is backed by a plethora of data, the injustice system has replaced Jim Crow. The United States now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In some communities of color as many as 1 out of 3 adult males are either in jail or on probation. In most cases these people have had of their rights as citizens, including their right to vote, stripped away from them.

I could spend the rest of my sermon going into Alexander’s thesis in greater detail and dissipating the illusion of a post-racial society. I could explain how Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin is but the latest outrage in a society that values the lives of young men of color much less than it values the lives of young white, and light skinned, men. I could quote to you an op-ed by Mac D’Alessandro, a member of this congregation, at length and observe “that unless we act quickly, there are going to a lot more Trayvon Martins out there.” I could tell you that Mac’s parents taught him, no matter how humiliating the situation, to always respond to the police “Yes, sir” and not offer “the slightest bit of expressed indignation” if he, as a black man, did not want to end up “physically assaulted or worse.” But if I spent all morning doing that I would be delivering more of a lecture than a sermon and I expect that many of your eyes would glaze over, and your hearts would harden, in a haze of depressing statistics and horrifying narratives.

The purpose of this sermon is to aid us in thinking about how we can be present to justice. I want to advance the thesis that being present to justice isn’t so much about being aware of injustice but learning to act in a different way. President Obama made a similar point this week in his statement on the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case when he said, “…in families and churches and workplaces… ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can? Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character?”

The Martin case and the Supreme Court decision have both had me thinking about the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights movement. Many of the leaders and activists in that movement understood that while it is important to change racist and unjust laws it is more important to change racist attitudes. Martin Luther King, Jr. claimed that “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.” He believed that without that a revolution in values “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism” would continue to reign. No matter what the law, if people do not change their behavior towards each other racism will continue to be fact of life.

Among the civil rights leaders who advocated this view is Staughton Lynd. Lynd is not one of the most well known or important of the civil rights activists. But he was present at, and was involved with, many of the crucial events of the movement. He taught at Spellman College in Atlanta in the early 1960s. He was an advisor to the Student National Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, there and throughout the South. He was most notable for his involvement in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, during which he served as one of the two co-chairs of the Freedom Schools. He achieved his greatest notoriety a few years later when he was fired from Yale for his political activism and black listed from the academy. Since then Lynd has written a dozen books on the history of the civil rights, labor and anti-war movements and been a tireless activist for social justice. His books balance the scholarly and the personal. Like many a great teacher, they are illustrated with numerous parables. This one comes from Freedom Summer and is found in the memoir “Stepping Stones” which he co-wrote with his wife Alice: “One morning that summer I woke up early in the room I had rented near the Summer Project headquarters. I went over to the office. Someone was already there. It was Jim Forman, national chairperson of SNCC. He was sweeping the floor. He is the only person in a similar position of authority whom I have ever encountered performing such a task. Alice and I attempt to act likewise.”

This story encapsulates Lynd’s vision of justice. In it a black man, Forman, and a white man, Lynd, are working side-by-side to create a better society. Both are sufficiently dedicated to the vision to risk their lives. The Civil Rights activists were frequently threatened with violence. Freedom Summer went ahead even after, just as it was beginning, three of its volunteers were murdered. Despite this existential threat Forman and Lynd continued to work together. The society that they sought to create was more radical than one which simply contained racial equality. They wanted a society filled with such a sense of egalitarianism that the national chairman of important organization could be found sweeping the floor. In such a society all work would understood to be important. In the society where every kind of work is seen as important every worker has dignity. The slogan of the garbage workers strike that Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed supporting was “I am a Man.” The society that Lynd wants is one in which all people, be they garbage workers or important leaders, have value. Lynd’s parable suggests that the way in which to bring about that society is not to talk about it. It is to act as if it already exists. And that means that everyone, even the most important person, lends a hand in cleaning the office.

So, that is Lynd’s vision of justice. What is yours? My friend Chris Crass, from the anti-racist organizing collective the Catalyst Project, has developed a fantastic guided meditation to help people imagine just world. If your congregation is like most groups that I have worked with you have not had many opportunities to do such imagining.

This is unfortunate. We know that every movement for justice begins with imagining that the world can be different than it is. The abolitionists who fought to end slavery were bold enough to imagine a world where slavery did not exist. This despite the fact that until the Civil War slavery had existed in some form in every human civilization. This despite the fact that slavery was the bedrock of the United States’s economy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders like him had, in King’s words, “the audacity to believe” that the world could be free of racism and violence. They imagined that world and then set about building it. Today in this country slavery is outlawed and the overtly racist laws of the Jim Crow South have been overturned.

What do you have the audacity to believe? If tomorrow, the world you are working to create was brought into being, what would it look like? I invite you get comfortable. Close your eyes. Notice your body. Notice how it feels to sit in your chair. Take a deep breath. Feel the air as it enters your lungs, bringing with it the life force. As you exhale, feel your body releasing your stress and any negative emotions you have. Feel that negativity drain into the ground. Stay with your breath and focus on it as you inhale and exhale five times. Now, give yourself permission to think creatively and expansively about: The world you are working toward creating. What is your vision for social justice? We all see a lot of violence and harm institutionally and interpersonally. If we could re-imagine all of that shifting, all of that hate and fear disappearing, what would the world look like? What would it look like in your family or in your home? In your neighborhood? How would people relate to each other? How would people relate to resources and to the planet? In this new vision, what is valued, who is valued and how? What kind of institutions or resources would be in your neighborhood? What kind of services would there be? What would they look like? What would the values of the economy be based on? How would decisions get made about things affecting your neighborhood? How would conflict be dealt with? What kind of activities might be going on? Can you think about other countries or communities? Do the ways they are organized and the values they share inspire you? Are there things that you draw from your community or family that inspire parts of your vision? When you are ready, bring yourself back to what is happening in our sanctuary. Hold onto your vision. As you do, I invite you to consider these words from Arundhati Roy, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Your vision, however, tenuous is part of the better world’s quiet breath.

As we move to the close of the sermon, I want to share with you two of the most enduring images of the better world that is coming. The first of these is present in Allen Ginsberg poem “Psalm III” which we heard a little earlier this morning. Ginsberg commences his piece: “To God: to illuminate all men. Beginning with Skid Road.” He concludes: “I feed on your Name like a cockroach on a crumb — this cockroach is holy.” The beginning and the conclusion of the poem invert the normal order of things. The holy is found first in the cockroach and on skid row. It does not exist solely in the delicate flower.

This sense of inversion, the standing of the presumed order of things on its head is one of the most enduring tropes about justice. Throughout the Bible we find images of the world turned upside. In that world, as Jesus would have it, “the last will be first, and the first last.”

Maybe the most radical statement of inversion are found in another set of words by Jesus, often called the beatitudes. I imagine that you have heard them before. Whether you have or you have not, they bear repeating. The verses that people are most familiar with appear in the Gospel of Luke as: “Blessed are you who are in need; the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who now go hungry; you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now; you will laugh.” Most people, however, forget the next few verses, probably because they are more challenging to the standing social order. It is all good and well to say that those in need will be satisfied or those who weep will soon laugh. It is more difficult to hear: “But alas for you who are rich; you have had your time of happiness. Alas for you who are well fed now; you will go hungry. Alas for you who laugh now; you will mourn and weep. Alas for you when all speak well of you; that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.”

The theologian Harvey Cox observes that this second part of the beatitudes, what he calls the “woes” “do not appear in church school materials and they are rarely the text for sermons.” For people with even a modicum of privilege, the prospect of turning the world upside down is a scary one. Scary as it may be, the image remains a necessary. Cox argues elsewhere that “our most potent resource [for building a better world is]… the human imagination.” Imagining the world turned upside down simultaneously awakens a sense of the possible and highlights reigning injustices.

The filmmaker and author Michael Moore penned an editorial about racial injustice that turns the world upside down. It came out more than a decade ago and begins, “I don’t know what it is, but every time I see a white guy walking towards me, I tense up. My heart starts racing, and I immediately begin to look for an escape route and a means to defend myself. I kick myself for even being in this part of town after dark.” Moore goes onto observe “person who has ever harmed me in my lifetime… has been a white person.” It is, of course, worse than that as he reminds his readers that white people have “started every war America has been in,” were responsible for the Holocaust and the genocide of North America’s indigenous peoples. He states, “You name the problem, the disease, the human suffering, or the abject misery visited upon millions, and I’ll bet you 10 bucks I can put a white face on it faster than you can name the members of ‘NSync.”

Moore’s point, and mine, is not to trigger a sense of white guilt. It is instead to prompt the question, “why is it exactly that I should be afraid of black people?” Imagining the world turned upside down can help us ask the right questions rather than focusing on the wrong ones. President Obama engaged in a similar act of imagination this week when he said “I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?”

Part of the answer to our question: what does it mean to be present to justice? is clearly being present to the possibilities, and the truths, that the imagination sparks. A second possible answer can be seen in another passage from the Christian New Testament, one also from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus has just healed a group of lepers and he’s being questioned by a group of Pharisees. The Pharisees were amongst the social activists of their day and they wanted to know when the Kingdom of God was going to come. That is to know when and where they could find justice. Jesus answers, “You cannot tell by observation when the kingdom of God comes. You cannot say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is!’ For the kingdom of God is within you!”

Jesus’s statement can alternatively be translated, “the kingdom of God is among you!” If the verse is translated as “among you” then it suggests to me that the kingdom of God, which is another way of speaking of the presence of justice in our lives, can be lived right now in the way that we treat each other. If the verse is translated as “within you” it similarly suggests that the kingdom is to be found in the way that we live our lives. It suggests that the kingdom is encountered when we look inside ourselves and discover what Immanuel Kant called “the moral law within.” Whether the verse is translated as “among you” or “within you” it suggests that we need not wait for some distant eschatological event to live our vision of justice. We can start doing so right now. Waiting for justice will only delay it.

If we want to see racism disappear we need to begin by interrogating all of the places where racism exists in our lives and seek to eradicate it there. It is not a matter of simply speaking out. It is a matter of changing behavior. And we each have the power to do that. Do you have a friend or relative who places the blame for urban violence on people of color? Challenge them. Do people of other races and ethnic groups make you uncomfortable? Do you avoid them? Change that. Join the NAACP or another anti-racist organization like Boston’s Black and Pink, which is devoted to supporting BGLT prisoners, most of whom are people of color. Visit an African American or immigrant religious community.

Understanding that the Kingdom of God is within and among us means understanding that we have the power to change the world through our actions. Each of us can take action, whether the gestures we make are grand or small. Staughton Lynd, after all, found Jim Forman’s choice to sweep the office floor just as inspiring as all of his other work for justice.

As a religious community, we Unitarian Universalists have long known this. Our theology has always had a decisively this worldly focus. Instead of waiting for the kingdom of God to arrive we have sought to build it here. Our religious ancestors emphasized the religion of Jesus, his parables, his stories and his example, because they believed, as theologian Rebecca Parker puts it, we are called we called to be citizens “not of of somewhere else but of here.”

Let us continue that tradition. Let us answer the question: what does it mean to be present to justice by seeking to actualize the visions we each found this morning. Let us imagine the world upside down and be present to the Kingdom of God that is both within and among us. Doing so is the only way that we ensure that one day, be it distant or soon, we will be able to say that there are no more Trayvon Martins. Young black men will not believe that they must always say “yes, sir” to the police or fear walking home at night with a bag of candy and container of ice tea. Instead, they will stride through the streets confident that everyone they encounter will see them as children of the divine, just like everyone else. May it be so.

Amen and Blessed Be.

preached at First Parish in Milton, Unitarian Universalist, July 14, 2013

I wrote this morning’s sermon before the news came that George Zimmerman had been acquitted. The news came late enough in the evening that I didn’t have time to substantively change it. Yet I feel I must address it, however briefly, before we can proceed with the sermon that I originally prepared. If you are like me you are probably feeling a mixture of emotions: outrage, confusion, disgust, despair… I encourage you to sit with those emotions. I will. And next week my sermon will focus on this injustice more intensely.

Whatever your emotions, the facts of the Zimmerman case are clear. Zimmerman, a man armed with a gun, got out of his car and shot to death Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager. Only Zimmerman will ever know the exact sequence of events that led up to the shooting. Only the jury will know precisely why they found Zimmerman not guilty.

This morning, however, we know four things. We know that for the thousandth time or the ten thousandth time or maybe the millionth time since Europeans arrived on this continent a light skinned man has killed a dark skinned man and suffered little legal consequence. We know that if the situation had been reversed, if Trayvon Martin had killed George Zimmerman, the verdict would have almost certainly been different. We know that what happened to Trayon Martin happens to hundreds of black men in this country every year. This is true even if we remember but a handful of their names—Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant… And we know that know that for this to change everything must change: the judiciary; the police; the enduring structures of white supremacy; the way we relate, as individuals and as a society, to guns and violence; what we hold in our hearts. It all must change.

And so, before I proceed with my sermon, let us have a prayer for change.

Ella Baker said: “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest…”

With these words in mind, let us pray for a society in which everyone, no matter their skin color, will be able to walk safely through the streets;

Let us pray for an end to gun violence;

Let us pray for the dissolution of legal system that consistently has different outcomes for people with dark skin than it does for people with light skin;

Let us pray that we have the strength as individuals, and as a religious community, to help bring about these changes.

Amen.

My sermon this morning is a reflection on the question: What does it mean to be present to each other? If you were here last week you might remember that I am serving this month as your summer minister, leading worship and proving pastoral care coverage. The four services I am leading form a sermon series on Unitarian Universalism as a religion of presence. Last week I asked: What does it mean to be present? Next week I will ask: What does it mean to be present to justice? This morning, however, I am asking: What does it mean to be present to each other?

I begin with a story about the Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, also called the Baal-Shem, the master of God’s Name. He was one of the greatest Rabbis who ever lived. In 18th century Eastern Europe he founded the Jewish mystical movement called Hasidim. Legend has it that he was a great miracle worker. There are dozens of stories that describe his powers.

One such story has been preserved by the Jewish theologian Martin Buber in his collection of Hasidic tales. It is said that on the evening after Yom Kippor, the Jewish New Year, the moon remained hidden behind the clouds. The Baal-Shem could not go outside and say the Blessing of the New Moon. This weighed heavy on him. He concentrated all of his power on the moon hoping that its light would push away the grey cover. It was in vain. No matter how hard he prayed the clouds grew thicker and the moon’s shine more obscure. At last he gave up in despair.

While the Baal-Shem sat in his study praying his followers gathered in the front room of his house and began to dance. They knew nothing of his despair. They only knew that the evening after the New Year was an evening given over to joy and feasting. Their dancing grew more and more ecstatic. At last they could wait for the Baal-Shem no longer. They burst into his chamber dancing and singing. He sank into gloom; his prayers inadequate for the holiday. His followers, oblivious to his misery, whirled round him. As they did someone called from outside. The clouds had disappeared. The curve of the new moon shone more brilliantly than it ever had before.

Buber is one of the theologians who has dealt most directly with our question: What does it mean to be present to each other? In I and Thou, his most famous book, he claims that it is only through knowing the other that we can ever know ourselves. In Buber’s understanding, to be present to each other is to be present to, to discover, ourselves.

The story from the Baal-Shem seems to offer a different lesson. Instead of suggesting that we know ourselves through others, it suggests that the power of the religious community is, at least sometimes, greater than the power of even the most devout individual. The Baal-Shem could not part the clouds, but the whirling ecstatic prayers of his followers could. This story might seem an inadequate answer to our question. If so, I admit that I am being intentionally sloppy in my theology. I am not trying to completely answer my question. Instead I am hoping to provoke you into thinking about it and, in doing so, gently goad you in finding your own answer. My stories are meant as gestures towards answers, not answers themselves.

The story from the Baal-Sheem contains something of what it means to be present to each other but only something. The experience of being present with each other is often an experience that is beyond words. Such experiences frequently do not make good stories. I find them in the mundane moments of family life. A description of the act of playing with my six year old, building a lego castle together or throwing rocks into the river, does not offer a narrative thread. The same is true of intimate moments with my partner or important exchanges with my fourteen year old. It is precisely because such relationships are usually the most important in our lives that they are the most difficult to describe. The self-revelation, the sense of becoming, that is available through them has been for me, and is I suspect for most people, a slow sense of unfolding rather than jolt of self-recognition.

Visual art, particularly photography, can, sometimes, illustrate this unfolding when narrative fails. Consider the work of Czech artist Marketa Luskacova. Trained during the Soviet era as a sociologist, she has spent her career creating intimate images of ordinary, often marginalized, people. Some of her most compelling photographs capture routine moments of becoming, of gaining self-knowledge through the daily encounter with the other. In one, a woman cradles a sleeping child, probably her son. Her legs extended, back straight, and glance off center she appears present to both the child and herself. Behind her sit two more women and another child. The five appear unified, their individual identities related to, and informed by, the identities of each of the others. In a second photograph, three peasant women rest against half-doors, their austere grab of loose fitting dresses and head scarves framed by rough grained wood, aged stone and plaster. All three look out at the camera together, the moment suggesting a long intimacy and a sense of rootedness. One holds a book, maybe a Bible, and appears to have taken a break from reading, probably to the others. Both images suggest that these people know themselves through those who surround them.

Let me now stray from the routine and offer you another story, this time from my own life. I have been involved in the labor movement for close to fifteen years. During that time I have done some union organizing. My experiences organizing unions have been important, in part, because they have challenged me to develop relationships with people who initially I have little in common. Dan McKanan, the Emerson chair at Harvard, describes such relationships as prophetic encounters, interactions which change one or both of the participants understanding of the world and of themselves.

The organizer’s basic tool is what we call the one-on-one. The one-on-one is exactly what it sounds like, a conversation between two people. The objective of the one-on-one is for one person to get the other more involved in the union. The method is that of relationship building. The key to the one-on-one is simply to listen, to learn and to share. Listen to someone share their experiences, learn what troubles them and share something about your own troubles and, maybe, suggest a way forward together.

The most uncomfortable, and transformative, one-on-one I conducted was with someone I will call Frank. I was maybe twenty six. Frank was in his late fifties. We were organizing bike messengers and Frank was one of the oldest, and most respected, messengers in the city. We thought that he was essential to our organizing efforts.

Frank wanted to meet me at a biker bar after work. Bars are the worst place to talk about union business. They are noisy, there are often lots of other people about and there is alcohol. I tried to get Frank to meet at another location but he was insistent. If we were going to meet we were going to meet in the bar.

When I arrived Frank was already there with a couple of other messengers. I placed my order and we grabbed a booth together. Frank and I discussed the union, his reasons for being interested in it and his fears of what it might lead to for a while. His previous experiences with unions had been negative. I listened to his concerns and after about an hour I managed to convince Frank that we were trying to build a different sort of organization. I asked Frank if he would be willing to commit to working with the union. He said yes.

After our business was finished we returned to the other part of the bar and Frank introduced me to his friends. They made some polite chit-chat and then, as I was leaving, they then started to crack sexist and homophobic jokes.

I found Frank’s behavior offensive. His actions made me uncomfortable. It seemed to me at the time, and it seems to me now, that I was being tested. There was a vast cultural and class difference between us. Frank and his friends wanted to know if I would accept them as they were or if I would tell them how they were supposed to behave.

This was not an easy choice. I did not want to stand silent in the face of such commentary. But at the same time I thought that saying something might end all chances for future conversation. I might come off as just another person with more education and privilege telling Frank and his friends what to think and how to behave. So I choose to say nothing. I probably would have reacted differently if a woman or someone from the GLBT community had been present. But they were not.

Some of you may be angry with me for not saying anything. You most likely believe that sexism and homophobia are things that should be confronted whenever and wherever they appear, all else be damned. If so you might argue that I am, after all, a straight white male and the comments were not directed at me. I had the privilege not to speak out. This may be true. But to be present to Frank in that moment meant to accept him as he was rather than I would have him be.

My choice to accept Frank for who he was proved to be a transformative experience for both us. After our night at the bar he became more and more involved with the union. He helped to organize a strike and he was elected by his co-workers to negotiate with his boss. Perhaps most remarkable, he was crucial in getting the dispatcher at his company, a gay man, to support the union. With the dispatcher’s support the couriers at the company were able to win the first pay raise anyone in the industry had received in over ten years. The pay raise benefited close to one hundred people.

The question: what does it mean to be present to each other is not a question with easy answers. Sometimes moments of presence bring discomfort; sometimes the possibility of transformation.

Religious communities, like labor unions, contain within them the possibility of a prophetic encounter. James Luther Adams, perhaps the greatest Unitarian Universalist theologian of the later half of the twentieth century, has a story about such an encounter that has become a parable for some. Perhaps you have heard it before. Adams, it seems, was a member of the Board of the First Unitarian Church of Chicago during the late 1940s. At the time, the congregation was intentionally trying to racially integrate. One member of the Board was opposed and spoke out at meetings about the minister preaching too many sermons on integration.

Adams reports that, “One evening at a meeting he opened up again. So the question was put to him, ‘Do you want the minister to preach sermons that conform to what you have been saying about [Jews] and blacks?’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I just want the church to be more realistic.’”

Adams queried, “Will you tell us what is the purpose of the church?”

The Board trustee shot back, “I’m no theologian, I don’t know.”

Adams, or perhaps it was the minister, was unrelenting, “But you have ideas… you are a member of the Board of Trustees, and you are helping to make decisions here. Go ahead, tell us the purpose of the church. We can’t go on unless we have some understanding of what we are up to here.”

The argument went on until around one o’clock in the morning. Adams writes that at that point “our friend became so fatigued that the Holy Spirit took charge. He said, ‘The purpose of the church is… Well, the purpose is to get hold of people like me and change them.’”

Adams concludes his story, and his essay, with these words: “Someone, a former evangelical, suggested that we should adjourn the meeting, but not before we sang, ‘Amazing grace… how sweet the sound. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.’

There is the vocation of the minister and the church, to form a network of fellowship that alone is reliable because it is responsive to a sustaining, commanding, judging, and transformative power.”

Some years ago, Alice Blair Wesley, a student of Adams, gave a series of lectures in which, following her teacher’s lead, she placed the practice covenant at the heart of Unitarian Universalism. As she understands them, covenants are statements that attest that “the member’s loyalty in the church should be only to the spirit of love, working in their own hearts and minds.” This love is not to be directed to some abstract ideal. Instead it is to be given to the other members of the congregation. But it is not given to them only. It is also given to what Adams described as “a sustaining, commanding, judging, and transformative power.” That power is named by some as God. Others might find Buber’s description more compelling, “That before which we live, that in which we live, that out of which and into which we live, the mystery…”

I offered Joy Harjo’s poem “Remember” this morning because it suggests that mystery. The mystery includes “the sky that you were born under” and the whole of the universe. Like Adams’s parable or the story from the Baal-Shem, it suggests that when we are present with each other we are present to more than just each other.

Maybe this is because, on some level, the self we experience, the “I” that observes and acts, is more illusory than real. We humans are social creatures. We live in complicated societies. We are dependent on each other. This can be seen even in basic actions. I, for example, drove here this morning. My car was built and designed by someone else. The road is maintained by state and municipal workers. The gasoline that fueled the car was refined and extracted far from here. Most actions that seem independent, that appear to be individual actions, are actually social actions.

This might be a partial answer to our question: What does it mean to be present to each other? Perhaps being present to each other means being open to the reality of our interconnection rather than living in the illusion of our independence. Perhaps it means that each of us is not alone and that we are on the planet together. Or, as Harjo would put it:

“Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.”

Let us remember that for each other, for Trayvon Martin, for George Zimmerman and for all the people of the world.

Amen and Blessed Be.

First Parish in Milton, Unitarian Universalist, posts video of their worship services. For the rest of the month I will be posting the videos as they become available. Here is the video from Sunday’s service “The Present Now.”

preached at First Parish in Milton, Unitarian Universalist, July 7, 2013

This past week has been, more than anything, devoted to picking wild black raspberries. There are two large patches of them near my apartment. Each day I spend at least an hour filling a quart sized plastic yogurt container with the dark purple seedy fruit. It is a laborious process. It requires careful attention. I wear long pants and short sleeves. The pants protect my legs and allow me to step into the middle of a bramble. The short sleeves let me maneuver my arms without getting caught by thorns. Unfortunately, short sleeves offer little protection and this morning I am something of a mess of abrasions.
The effort is worthwhile. When else but during wild berry season can I eat, and feed my family, whole greedy fistfuls of delicate fruit? My mother has a delightful raspberry sauce recipe. I have made and frozen as much of it as possible. When winter comes there will be a sweet tart taste of wild summer waiting.

I am not telling you this to make you jealous. I imagine that there are brambles in abundance here in Milton. I realize that picking wild berries is not everyone’s idea of fun. You have to be seriously dedicated to gathering your own food to brave a maze of thorn induced hash marks on your skin. I am talking about picking wild black raspberries because gathering them is an activity that requires absolute presence of mind. There, through that shaded twist of primrose lie four dozen perfect fruits. How to get to them? How to navigate the rose and then the bramble? Where to put my feet? Where to move my arms? How many to pull from the stem? Is this one ripe? Does that one have mold?

Be present to the moment. It is a cliche. But like most cliches it contains more than a kernel of truth. As the neuroscientist, race car driver, particle physicist, rock star and Buddhist Buckaroo Banzai says in the cult movie of the same name, “Wherever you go, there you are.” This present moment is the only one that we have.

As you may know, I am serving as your summer minister for the next month, leading Sunday services and providing pastoral care coverage. During our time together I am going to explore the idea of Unitarian Universalism as a religion of presence. By that I mean, Unitarian Universalism is a religion that calls us to be present to the moment, to each other, to justice and to the holy. Each week the service will be organized around a question relating to one of these four kinds of presence. This week I ask: What does it mean to be present to the moment?
I do not intend to fully answer my questions. Instead, I hope to provoke you to think about them. Religious questions are not easy and in the end we must each find our own answers. What it means for me to be present to the moment will be different than what it means for you for the simply reason that we are different people. This is one of the great claims of Unitarian Universalism, that theological reflection begins with personal experience. Since each of our sets of personal experience are different the theologies that we construct out of them are different as well. How we wrestle with this relativist angel and understand that the truth we find is, at least somewhat, subjective without devolving into moral relativism is something I will attend to later in this sermon series. In the meantime I ask that you suspend whatever disbelief you may have and imagine that it is possible.

To aid in this suspension of disbelief, much of my preaching over the next month will take the form of parables. There are two reasons for this. First, people respond better to stories, and parables are a form of story, than they do to more abstract discourse. Second, I think that theology takes place at three levels. The first level is that of personal experience. We have an experience that we need to make sense of; I am confronted with an abundance of wild black raspberries. The second level is that of the parable, the stories we tell each other, and our selves, about our experiences; I describe to you my berry picking activity. The third level is that which theologians call systematics or dogmatics; I compare my narrative and experience of berry picking with the narratives of others and try to distill some religious truth from the resulting mess.

Parables are often more provocative than the systematic theology that they inspire. Parables can be interrupted variously, systematics have a tendency to appear more fixed. There is a Buddhist story that you may know that I find helpful when thinking through the relationship between experience, parable and systematic theology. Many years ago, in some distant land, a young woman came across a group of monks standing on top of a hill. They were all standing with their arms outstretched and their index fingers pointing at the sky. The moon was crystalline; the stars softly brilliant. The woman stared at the monks’ arms for a long time until one of them finally turned to her and said, “Never mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.”

The sight of the moon was the experience. Whatever words the monks might have shared amongst each other or used in their minds to describe it were parables. The finger is like the refined world of systematic theology. It can only point the way to the moon. It must never be mistaken for the moon itself. Words are symbols, they represent something, rather are something. The further we move toward pure language and away from experience itself the easier it becomes to stray from whatever religious truth we seek. This is undoubtedly why so many religious communities spend so much time arguing over the finer points of theological doctrine.

Parables, of course, are not immune to a diversity of interpretations. But because they are stories about experiences they can point us in a direction that more abstract theology cannot. The theologian Sallie McFague suggests that the “parabolic… possibility… is, not ‘do as I do,’ but ‘see what I am’ and then enter into your own soul and discover your prime direction, your master form, your center and focus.” This is undoubtedly why so much of the world’s great religious literature takes the form of parables. Great religious leaders too have long been fond of parables. Jesus was a master parable maker and the gospels—whether canonical or non-canonical—present his life as a form of parable.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is probably one of the most well known of Jesus’s parables. Here it is as found in the Gospel of Luke: “A man was on his way from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he was set upon by robbers, who stripped and beat him, and went off leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down by the same road, and when he saw him he went past on the other side. So, too a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him went past on the other side. But a Samaritan who was going that way came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved to pity. He went up and bandaged his wounds, bathing them with oil and wine. Then he lifted him on to his own beast, brought him to an inn, and looked after him. Next day he produced two silver pieces and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Look after him; and if you spend more, I will repay you on my way back.’”

All of Jesus’s parables, this one included, have been variously interpreted. The author of Luke suggests an interpretation of it by having Jesus tell it in response to the question, “But who is my neighbor?” Whoever wrote Luke closes the parable with another rhetorical question, “Which of these three do you think was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Jesus’s questioner answered “The one who showed him kindness.” To which Jesus replied, “Go and do as he did.”

While the parable is clearly about compassion for the stranger, I suggest that it also contains another layer. It challenges us to be present to the pain of the world that surrounds us. The Samaritan is present to the pain of the world. The priest and the Levite both try to avoid. When they see the man lying on the side of the road they cross over to the other side. The Samaritan chooses not to the ignore the pain. Rather than avoiding it he engages with it. To be present to the moment does not mean only be present to the moments of pleasure in our lives. It means to be present to all of it, the pain, the sorrow, the suffering and the joy and delight.

I would be a liar if I said that I always succeed in being present to pain. I follow the example of the priest and the Levite on an almost daily basis. Harvard Square is filled with people asking for money and other forms of assistance. I rarely engage them. It almost always seems inconvenient to do so. I am in a hurry. I have to get to class. I do not want to give someone money. The parable of the Good Samaritan stands as a rebuke to my own behavior. It reminds me that if I want to be present to the moment then I must be present to the suffering of others. And I must learn to be present even at those times when it is inconvenient.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Han is one of the best known contemporary teachers of the practice of being present to the moment. Buddhists in his tradition call the practice mindfulness. Nhat Han encourages us to be mindful not only when confronted with suffering or with joy but when moving through the banal routines of life. He offers this advice about washing dishes: “If while we are washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not ‘washing the dishes to wash to wash the dishes.’ What’s more we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes….If we can’t washes the dishes, chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either.”

Occupying a mid-point between Nhat Han’s dish washing advice and the parable of the Good Samaritan, Louis Gluck’s poem “Celestial Music” is about the challenge of recognizing the ordinary suffering of nature, the truth that death and pain are all around us, and then remaining present to beauty. In her poem neither Gluck nor anyone she cares about suffers. She and her friend “sit by the side of the road” and open themselves to the world that surrounds them. Gluck admits that when faced with “a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it” she is “quick to shut my eyes.” Opening her eyes she is rewarded with “watching the sun set; from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.” Being present brings with it the risk of suffering but it also contains the possibility of “clouds, snow, a white business in the trees like brides leaping to a great height.”

Unitarian Universalism as a religious tradition encourages us not to shut our eyes. For generations our focus has been on this world rather than on whatever may come next. Our Universalist ancestors, as you might recall, believed that everyone in the end would be reconciled with God. This led them to think, as Gordon McKeeman has put it, “We are all going to end up together in heaven, so we might as well start learning to get along now.” For our Unitarian ancestors the emphasis was slightly different. William Ellery Channing claimed that purpose of religion was to help people grow in what he called the “likeness to God.” He believed that each person is born with that likeness within and the goal of life is not to be found in the afterlife. It is to be found in this life when we come to know “the bright image of God” inside us. Channing thought that one way which we discover that bright image is by learning to be present to what surrounds us. As he put beautiful in his famous sermon “Likeness to God:” “How much of God may be seen in the structure of single leaf, which, though so frail as to tremble in every wind, yet holds connections and living communications with the earth, the air, the clouds, and the distant sun, and through these sympathies with the universe, is itself a revelation of an omnipotent mind.”

The this worldly focus of Unitarian Universalism means that one of the most important roles for Unitarian Universalist clergy like myself, and Unitarian Universalist congregations like this one, is to help people be present to this world. This means encouraging people to unplug from the distractions of the digital world, to revel in each other, to savor what the world offers and to be open to suffering. Many times I have been told by non-Unitarian Universalists that we do funerals and memorial services exceptional well. There is a reason for this. Rather than focusing on the deceased’s journey after life we direct our attention to the pain and the loss of the living.

The call to presence and the present moment is not exclusively, or even primarily, about pain. Nor is it about joy. It is rather to recognize that only moment we have is now and that we must make the most of it whatever it is. In that spirit, as we prepare to close, I invite you to think of a time when you were truly present. What was it like? What did it feel like in your body? Is that moment now? Are you recalling some other moment, some distant moment, brought forth into your consciousness through the fog of memory? How do you know when you are alive to the present? Are your senses more alive? Is your mind still? What do you need to do to be present? To pay attention to your breathing? To feel the air come in? To sense it flowing out?

I know that I am present when I concerned with only what is happening now. When I have been picking raspberries I have only been picking raspberries. I have not worried about what comes next, what I will be doing later in the day or even the topic of my sermon for Sunday. Black raspberry brambles have a delightful trick for helping me stay present. When I slip from the present to the haze of the past or illusion of the future I am rewarded with a small laceration that draws me back into the present. It is a helpful reminder that wherever my mind may wish to be there is only the now.

There is only the now. As Gluck writes, “It’s this moment we’re both trying to explain.” All we really have is this moment. May we each learn to be present to it, whatever it brings: black raspberry brambles, dishes, the suffering of strangers, our own pain, the universe’s reflection in a trembling leaf, ecstasy and joy… So may it be, Amen and Blessed Be.