Sermon: "When Life Isn't Linear"

Sermon
“When Life Isn’t Linear”
by Alex McGee
August 24, 2014 for Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist
This sermon was written fourteen days after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
 
We wish it weren’t so, don’t we? 
We wish it weren’t so that an 18 year old black man was shot by a white police officer. 
It must just be an isolated incident, right?
 
So, it is very inconvenient when people list other young black men who have been killed in the last few years: 
Eric Garner, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Jordan Davis, Kendrick Johnson,
Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Abner Louimas, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallos.
There are so many more.
And, depending on how far back you want to trace history, we could mention Emmet Till.  Is it the same? 
 
It would be easier not to hear these names.  Couldn’t we just hear numbers?  But, apparently the numbers aren’t actually available, because statistics are not kept by police departments.
 
I have heard so many opinions and feelings in the last week.  Strong talk.  Strong emotions.  And questions. 
So   many    questions.
 
I have heard anger. 
Expletives. 
Demanding why? 
Why again? 
Why?!
 
I have heard judgement. 
If the corporations just wouldn’t….  
If the president just wouldn’t… 
If the white people just wouldn’t… 
If , if, if…
 
I have heard a lot of reasons to be cynical. 
People with power will always be greedy and oblivious. 
Hope is Pollyanna-ish.
 
I have heard:
Have I done enough? 
Do I contribute to this mess? 
Should I be volunteering more? 
Should I be reading more? 
Should I get to know my neighbors more? 
How come all my neighbors are white?
 
In the last week I have heard exhaustion.
People who have worked for years.  In the NAACP, Vinegar Hill, UCARE, African American Teaching Fellows, Students for a Democratic Society…
What else do we need to do?
 
What else do we need to do so that systemic racism can be dismantled,
so that local police power does not become military power. 
 
This past week we were reminded yet again that justice does not happen on our time clock.  The Supreme Court put a stay on the decision that would have allowed for committed gay and lesbian couples to share the rights currently available to opposite sex couples.  Now, we will wait many months, maybe longer, for the United States Supreme Court to consider the appeal. 
 
LOVE AS FUEL
 
People in our Unitarian Universalist history have worked for abolition of slavery, for womens suffrage, for immigrant rights, labor justice, and LGBTQ rights.  Most of these were people of privilege who helped lift up voices that were not being heard by the power structure.  These were people who knew the divine in their hearts and saw the sacred in the world.  People who worked for the right laws because they were working for love.  People who sought policy change because it was peace making.  People who toiled yesterday for civil rights today.
 
What in your heart tells you to keep working for what is right when the way is not easy?
 
Please do not make the mistake of thinking that your intellect and your will power are enough.
The power of love is the mysterious force that tells us when to rest our willpower and when to keep going; 
The power of love is the mysterious force that tells us when to quit using our head and when to use our heart. 
 
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that although he worked with many different groups, he was, always in his heart, guided as a Baptist preacher.  And the son of a Baptist preacher.  And the grandson, and the great-grandson of a Baptist preacher.  He knew who he was at his core, and where his strength and hope lay.  Do you know where yours is?  Please, stay true to your deep springs of truth.  From that wellspring, allow yourself to join in walking with others.
 
ALLIES HAVE TO SEE THE COMPLEX TRUTH
 
After the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis of Germany, some of the Protestant pastors got together and published a statement. It is called the Stuttgart Confession. It was written in 1945 and part of it says:  “Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not loving more ardently.”
 
I lift up this example because these pastors sought to be allies for human rights; but they didn’t rise to the occasion as well as they wanted.  So, how can we make sure now that we are being the kind of allies that we really need to be?
 
I think we need to see how very much is still at stake and how much suffering still occurs everyday in people’s hearts.  Some us of us know first hand already, some know from friends, some of you know from reading. 
 
We must constantly be alert to false promise.  W.E.B DuBois, after slaves were emancipated, warned against thinking that progress had been made.  He continued to insist on looking at the real living conditions, the real economic situation, the real cost of the new structures of racism.  Toward the end of his  life, he pointed out the hypocrisy of the treatment shown to black WWII soldiers who returned home and had their rights denied.
 
To be effective allies, we need look at the heartache of black uncles, fathers, grandpas, who wish they didn’t feel the need to teach their young nephews, their sons, their grandsons to be careful about when they reach in their pocket --- will someone accidentally think they are pulling a gun?  To be careful when a police officer is nearby---is he reaching for his holster?  They wish they could teach the next generation to trust.  Maybe you already know this from experience, maybe you can only guess how it feels.
 
As poet Javon Johnson says,
we need to know the ache in the hearts of parents
when they see their black boys are taught
they are a problem before they are taught they are people. 
 
Some people have thought that having a black president would make things easier,
but in many ways the backlash has made things worse. 
Let us not be naïve that the progression of beloved community is a linear progression.
 
To be allies in the civil rights movement, we need to see the bittersweetness. 
Some gay and lesbian couples already had the sweetness of filing federal income tax returns jointly,
but the bitterness of separate state tax returns. 
As children started school this week,
some children couldn’t list both of their parents as their legal parents. 
Today, there are household budgets that are strained, which could be eased
if one of the beloveds could be on the insurance plan of their beloved’s employer. 
Will every state have to work through this issue, one by one, and how many people’s time will be eaten up?
 
But that is just the tip of the iceberg.  In the struggle for GBLT rights, marriage equality is a good step,
but people still get bullied,
still are told they are sinful in other churches,
and still are left out of society in other ways, especially Transgender people.
 
What we know from human history that evil persists. 
Let us not be naïve in thinking that the acquisition of rights is linear. 
We must constantly work to keep things bending toward justice.  And that takes strength and voice,
and humility. 
 
AMAZING GRACE
 
There is a line in the song Amazing Grace that says:
"Twas grace that taught my heart to fear."
 
Now, I am not into a theology of fear.
 
But, the truth is, we humans have a capacity to mess up, and there is evil in this world. 
So, while I don’t think we should be in fear that is paralyzing, I do think we should be on alert.
 
But to also receive the good news that comes in the next line of the song:
 
"Twas grace my fears relieved."
 
Allow love to touch your heart.  To give you hope. To be the sweet part of the bitter sweet.  To lead you to action. 
One concrete thing we can do is to spread the word about the reparations movement.  If you have not read the May 2014 article in the Atlantic, I commend it to you.  More information will be in the September church bulletin.
 
WRAP UP
 
Back in June, the herb gardener at Twin Oaks Ecovillage, where I used to live, gave me a lotus plant.  Into a bucket she slopped a bunch of mud and some gangly stems with wide round leaves.  She went to the farm scrap pile and found an old, discarded horse feed trough.  I brought it home, filled it up with water, added more clay soil, and put in the spindly plants.  And there they have sat all summer.  Yes, more leaves have come…a geometric circus of disc-shaped leaves.  And then about three weeks ago, I noticed that one of the stems had a reddish tint on top.  Could it be, a bud?  I waited, skeptical.  Not wanting to hope. 
 
A few days went by and I looked closer---sure enough, a tiny firm oval that might be petals packed tight. 
 
But weeks went by and nothing happened, except that maybe it got  a little bigger.  I became more sure that this lotus really wasn’t going to happen, ---- wasn’t meant to happen, in a tiny yard in Virginia.  Probably the soil wasn’t right, or we’d had too little rain, or too much, or the sun was wrong.  Or the DNA of the plant had other ideas.  Or, maybe, I mused, this is why the lotus shows up in Buddhist and Hindu symbolism---all that patient meditating. 
 
And then this Wednesday morning, it blossomed.  Boom.  Just like that, opening up full and beautiful and trusting and vulnerable and strong.  I took a photograph, because it touched me as a spiritual metaphor.   It is on the cover of our order of service today.
 
We must toil today for civil rights tomorrow. 
The timeline is not ours to know. 
We do not have control of the breakthrough moments. 
 
Whether we feel it or not, love is around us all the time, moving through us, offering itself to us. 
And so here is what it means to be wholly spiritually human:  to live into the loving moments:

To put your child to bed, on time or not, with love;
To really see the clerk in the store, and to smile at them;
To allow yourself to receive a hug when you need that tenderness.
 
Blessed be.  Amen.  Let us now sing together, Amazing Grace.

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