Sermon
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
May 28, 2017
So folks, here’s my challenge for this sermon. Last week, I was at the Festival of Homiletics (homiletics, being a fancy word for preaching.) One of the many messages that stuck with me came from the Christian preacher Nadia Bolz Weber. She said that she tries to make sure her sermons don’t just give people one more thing for their “to do” lists. Instead, she tries to find a way to bring them “Good News.” It’s a phrase from within the Christian tradition, and a phrase I think all UUs can translate and embrace in some way.
Especially given the topic of my sermon today: “For the Long Haul” – I really don’t want to give anyone who is already worn out by the work of justice
just
one
more
thing
to do.
So here goes, let’s see how I can bring “Good News”!
…But I’m not starting from a very easy place.
Today I’m talking about “the work” – the work to which we are called by our principles.
And every day we seem to hear on the news about some fresh assault against our principles. And every day, especially if you venture onto social media, you are probably urged to sign this petition, call this legislator, go to this march, attend this event, resist, and struggle, and work and fight…
Unitarian Universalists have put out a series of statements and resolutions that name so many evils in the world that we are called to resist, so much change we need to help bring about.
Here are the titles of some of the last two years’ resolutions:((these statements are created and voted upon democratically – the process starts in the congregations and then continues into the process of General Assembly, the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists))
- Build Solidarity with our Muslim Neighbors
- Protect and Support our Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Family
- Legislate Appropriate Gun Restrictions
- Reaffirm Commitment to Racial Justice
- Support the Black Lives Matter Movement
- Act for a Livable Climate
- End Immigrant Child and Family Detention Now
- Support Reproductive Justice
PHEW…! That’s a LOT!
Talk about a “to do” list!
Add to that everything we do in our daily lives to hold down jobs, to care for our children or our aging or ill family members, to care for our own health, to eat well and exercise…and no wonder many just want to check out.
But our framing of “the work” really makes a difference in how we experience the work.
REFRAMING “THE WORK”
I’m going to talk about three ways we might need to change our frames.
I thought I was referring at first to this kind of frame:
but I think it’s actually this kind of frame:
Because this frame holds a lens through which we see the world, and thus experience the world.
(But then again, any artist knows the first kind of frame also affects how you experience and view a work of art. Imagine the Mona Lisa – or a Monet framed with this…)
So here’s the first reframing:
LET GO
Not too long after the Presidential Election, I participated in an online web call with about 40 other Unitarian Universalist ministers – all of our faces up on the computer screen in live time.
We gathered to discuss this post-election time in which we now live. Maybe like us you were then or still are now, feeling a fresh urgency, a deepened commitment, a profound need…to work harder and perhaps differently for justice, reason, and peace.
We asked one another: How do we keep ourselves resilient and courageous for the long haul? How do we keep from dropping back into business-as-usual? …How do we resist the pendulum swing from anxious hysteria to shut down NUMB?
So Rev. Sean Denison provided a framing that I found helpful. He said that this work we must do is not new, but it does require us.
So his question was: If it is feeling like a lot, what are you going to let go of? What do you need to give up? Here are two of his suggestions of things to let go of:
1) Excellence. Sometimes in this work, we are muddling through, figuring it out as we go. That means we might make mistakes. It won’t go as we expected. It won’t be…perfect! Our culture has mostly defined excellence in ways that stay in the lines of the status quo…That don’t take risks. What if we let go of that kind of excellence if it means we can take more faithful risks?
2) A second thing to let go of: Comfort. It’s related to that first one. Because messing up makes us uncomfortable. Talking about things, doing things… that push us into new places often makes us uncomfortable. Listening to voices from outside of our typical circles – might make us uncomfortable. ((Not coincidentally, Excellence (or Perfectionism) and Right to Comfort have been named as two characteristics of white supremacy culture.))
Okay, let’s check in. Have I given you Good News or just more on your to do list?
Well, I just told you that you’re going to mess up a lot and be uncomfortable. Does that feel like good news? (Probably not.)
Let’s see if I can get closer…
Here’s my second reframing.
EFFECTIVENESS TO FAITHFULNESS
This frame comes from the Quaker Parker Palmer.
Too often we judge ourselves, our work, by whether it is effective. A major strand in our culture praises effectiveness. The temptation is to measure our work against a certain definition of success. Then, because so much of this work is unmeasurable, we tend to take on smaller and smaller tasks because it is easier to gauge our effects in the short-term. …Because that tricky demon “perfection” seems more reachable. Because we will stay more comfortable.
But we cannot stay in it FOR THE LONG HAUL if we are only attuned to effectiveness.
So what does it mean to reframe our work to “faithfulness”?
I think about something our treasurer Tom Hull said once when we as a congregation were talking about our reliance on our endowment – which will not hold out if we keep drawing from it at the speed from which we are drawing from it. The temptation in these circumstances – which face so many churches of almost every denomination – is to draw our circles tighter, frame every question from a belief in scarcity, start to count every member as a number, praise every dollar as a resource, center ourselves solely on growth and money – for the sake of growth and money. Of course, we need to have the money to pay our staff fair wages, from the cleaning company to our child care providers. Of course, it’s good to grow, if it means more people who need this community are finding it. But if, in our attention to effectiveness, we lose sight of our mission, where are we?((I’m not saying that this is what we are doing right now, but it is something we should look out for.))
So, I remember what Tom said. He said something to the effect of: Even if our story as a church, inevitably, is to only last another, say, ten years…
…For those ten years, let’s be the TRUEST, deepest, biggest version of ourselves.
And he wasn’t talking about effectiveness. He was talking about faithfulness:
A church that goes out of its way to care for one another.
A church that does the work in this community that only it can do.
A church that celebrates and models a community of diverse beliefs, and radical love.
Not a boring, superficially effective church. But a deeply faithful church.
As Parker Palmer says:
When faithfulness is our standard, we are more likely to sustain our engagement with tasks that will never end: doing justice, loving mercy, and calling the beloved community into being.
So am I getting closer to Good News, or does it still feel like work? Still a little like work, right?
So here’s my third reframing:
PERHAPS IT’S **NOT** ABOUT RESISTANCE
The other day my ears perked up when I was listening to an interview with Michelle Alexander.
She said that she’s had some trouble for a while with this language from fellow progressive types urging us to resist, calling what we are doing “The Resistance.”
My ears perked up because she was naming something I’ve been feeling in my bones…
We are not the Resistance. These forces in our culture that are trying to take America ‘back” to a time when it was supposedly great – They are the Resistance.
When you look not at the news, but at all the increasing beauty of humanity, don’t you also feel it..?
Don’t you also feel that the momentum of our culture is actually ushering us toward greater celebration of diversity, toward greater collaboration, toward deeper community?
Especially with our 24-hour news cycles, we tend to focus a lot on the negative: the hate, violence, and bigotry.
But there is so much GOOD going on in the world, and what if these negative surges simply represent the death throes of a divided, superficial way of living?
Don’t get me wrong; we are not “there” yet – perhaps we never will be. For as long as humanity exists, we will need to evolve. And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of people who will get out those paddles to jolt that dead body back into life.
We cannot be complacent – we must still answer the call of love – but our framing of the call really makes it a difference. And framing it as Resistance may be not only unhelpful but also inaccurate!
As the Unitarian Theodore Parker first said: the arc of history bends toward justice.
Along that arc there have been so many people, both the singular celebrated heroes, and the billions of ordinary heroes throughout the centuries. They have worked to bring us closer and closer to that bold and beautiful world of love, justice, and peace.
We are not the Resistance – we are allowing ourselves to be PULLED INTO THAT MOMENTUM, that powerful arc of history. And in doing so, we are contributing our own weight, our own little nudge, as we continue to bend the arc.
Are we getting closer to Good News…?
“WORK”
You see, when we talk about this bending of the arc toward justice, we do tend to use the language of “work.”
Think of it! We say: the “work,” the “tasks,” the “struggle,” the “fight.”
But then I think about my daughter’s Montessori classroom. In Montessori classrooms ((like our own classrooms here at church, which use a “Spirit Play” curriculum inspired by Montessori!)) we use the language of work. But it is a reframing of work. The children are encouraged from the moment they step in the door, not to be “effective” or “excellent” – but to pursue their own creativity, their own sense of purpose. Independence and curiosity are privileged.
So, when I ask my 3-yr-old daughter before school what “work” she wants to do that day, she lights up! She wants to do bread baking work (and, boy, can she! That bread is GOOD!) She wants to do Sticker work. Sewing work. Table scrubbing work. She LOVES that work! It gives her purpose and joy.
So, here’s THE GOOD NEWS:
Our work does not have to be perfect.
Our work is not about instant results.
Our work is not about resistance: NOT about holding back some DAM with the black, fiery rivers of MORDOR behind it.
(Yeah – I said I’d never show slides during worship, and now I’m posting a slide of a river of fire… how things change!
I was looking for a picture of Mordor, you know from the Lord of the Rings, and at first I thought that’s what this was, but the description told me it’s a real picture of a river on fire in Russia!)
So, NO – we are not the Resistance.
The GOOD NEWS is that OUR WORK is a light breeze gently pushing forward the current of a long, deep, beautiful, life-giving river…
a river that has been fed by many springs before we were even born.
a river that will nourish life not yet imagined.
a river with a great and deep momentum.
a river that will lift all boats.
We need only stay faithful to the cool, clear water…the water we know as the calling of radical love, that steady urging in our hearts to peace.
May that be Good News for you. For us.
-Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon