Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
May 20, 2018
SERMON
Audio:
Maybe you wouldn’t expect me to start my sermon off with these words:
Yesterday, at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle…
…the preacher was American Bishop Michael Curry — the first Black man to preside over the Episcopal Church, and a descendant of slaves & sharecroppers from North Carolina and Alabama. He began and ended his sermon with quotes from Martin Luther King, from whom we UUs got our concept of “beloved community” – of which we speak today. ((The concept of beloved community in fact originated from Josiah Royce.))
Bishop Curry said in his sermon: ((https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/20/612798691/bishop-michael-currys-royal-wedding-sermon-full-text-of-the-power-of-love))
Think and imagine a world when love is the way. Imagine our homes and families when love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities when love is the way. Imagine governments and nations when love is the way. Imagine business and commerce when love is the way. Imagine this tired, old world when love is the way. When love is the way—unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive—then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again. When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the Earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. … that’s a new heaven, a new Earth, a new world, a new human family.
For Rev. Dr. King, this kind of transformative love was foundational to building beloved community.
But, as I’ve said before, this love is not an easy, sentimental love. This love is a redemptive, sacrificial love which can transform even the hardest of hearts, even the staunchest of enemies.
And this love is a fight – not a fight which injures the other – but a struggle which must be taken on and upheld with a fierce commitment.
But:
Never alone. Never alone.
The struggle must always be undertaken in and through community.
The lack of community in our society is painful. Loneliness, isolation has become an epidemic. The walls between social groups grow stronger. The sociologist Robert Putnam diagnosed this collapse of community 18 years ago in his book: Bowling Alone. And even 200 years before that, Tocqueville warned that the decay of community would threaten our American democracy.
Individualism runs strong in the U.S. in particular. We often go from work to home to work to home – alone in our cars. If we have families, we rarely move beyond our family structures, and we often live far from extended family. We rarely have friends outside of our race and class.
As a minister, I see individualism in the privatization of spirituality – the idea that one can be spiritual or religious all by oneself. Our UU tradition teaches us that, while, yes, our individual conscience is important, in fact the individual is a fiction. We are all composed of one another, interwoven and interconnected whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not! And the more we forget this, the more our lives – both our “individual” lives and our common life deteriorate.
The American poet, Carl Sandburg, became a committed member of the Unitarian Church in Asheville, North Carolina. This is why. He said:
You can’t go tramping around from parish to parish and build anything up. Who would want to go on a picnic all the time and eat out of other people’s baskets? You’ve got to feel the importance of your own individual participation in its life.
This emphasis on community was a primary contribution of the great Unitarian minister and professor, James Luther Adams. “By their groups ye shall know them,” he said.
With what groups are you a part?
Adams stressed the importance of our “free church tradition” as being a group of diverse believers who of their own choice join together in the spirit of love, even amidst ongoing, inevitable – but respectful – dissent and discussion.
As the psychologist Scott Peck claimed “in and through community lies the salvation of the world.”
But, as he also emphasized, there is a difference between pseudo-community: where members feel comfortable and confirmed (among “like minds”) – and genuine community: a growing connection that requires commitment and risk, growth and reconciliation.
Genuine community is beloved community – where differences are not merely tolerated – and not overlooked or watered down – but explored and celebrated. …Where we are paradoxically welcomed as we are AND encouraged to grow and risk through engagement with others different from ourselves.
A Beloved Community is created when we risk bringing ourselves as we are, and encountering others as they are.
So, when we see someone who has navigated the world differently from us, we develop the habit of becoming curious rather than judgmental. When someone with a different background tells us this is what they need to be safe, we listen. And when someone with less power in our world asks us to work with them to redistribute that power, we join in that struggle. That’s what love is about. That’s what creates beloved community.
Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other. – Mark Nepo
So, what a joy that today we will celebrate a new member ceremony. In this ceremony we honor the risk of joining something beyond ourselves – of committing to something bigger than the fiction of our “individual” lives.
And what a joy that today after service we hold a potluck lunch and then a congregational meeting. To this lunch, we bring different dishes & we bring our different selves, even when we’re awkward and not sure who to sit with. Even when we’re not sure if we’re ready to reach out to that new person, but do it anyway. That creates beloved community. Even though there are always those who did not know today was a potluck, we always have enough food to go around. Especially because some anticipate that, and bring extra. That creates beloved community.
At the congregational meeting, we’ll discuss a budget – a budget formed from the contributions of our members and friends, who pledge some of their hard-earned livelihoods so this community can keep living into our vision to be a beloved community. We may disagree at times over the lines and the figures and the values in the budget – and that is good, because it is important to discuss these things. It is important to welcome alternative voices, to explore our values and how to live them out in the world. That creates beloved community.
Choosing to return again and again to community is not always easy. It involves a shift in our priorities and habits. It often means discomfort.
Community is that place where the person you least want to live with always lives. – Parker Palmer
But we keep coming back and we learn and we grow. And the rewards of community are astounding and often life-saving!
Indeed, the creation of beloved community is the only thing that will save the world.
I end with the poet Adrienne Rich:
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed.
I have to cast my lot with those
Who age after age, perversely,
With no extraordinary power
Reconstitute the world.
It is good to be together. May it be so.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon