What Are We Waiting For? Part II

What are we waiting for?  Part II

Sermon delivered December 11, 2016

Rev. Laura Bogle

Our monthly worship theme for December is “waiting”—appropriate for this season of the year when the darkness is longer each day as we approach the winter solstice.  We wait for the sun to return.

Appropriate for this time of year when we remember the story of a pregnant woman, poor and unwed, on the road, waiting for her child to be born. 

Appropriate for this time of year when we remember the story of the Maccabees who re-dedicated their temple, even though they just had one small bottle of oil and they knew rationally that it wouldn’t last for the eight days until they could get more.  But they lit their lamps anyway, and waited, and miraculously the light burned for eight days.  (Christmas Eve is also the first night of Hannukah this year.)

All we can do sometimes is wait.  You can’t hurry along the workings of our solar system; the sunlight returns when it returns.  You can’t hurry along the gestation of a child in the womb; they will be born only in the fullness of time. You can’t force a miracle to happen, but you must simply let it unfold.  

There is deep and old wisdom in this kind of waiting.  There are some things we simply do not have power or control over.  A great philosopher once said, “Rivers know this:  there is no hurry; we shall get there some day.”  Winnie the Pooh.

And so last week I talked about two kinds of fruitful waiting for these times, these times between the election of Nov and the inauguration of January:

Waiting like a firefighter. You practice your skills and you work out your body and you keep all your tools ready and in working order. You are someone who is ready and prepared to answer a call to save, a call to serve, a call to spring into action.  

Waiting by the door for a loved one who you haven’t seen in a long time who you know is already on their way, and you want to be ready to receive them.  Remembering that what we wait on, the hope of our faith—that we might live in freedom and with justice and love guiding our human systems and communities-- is already on its way.  It is already growing from the ground on which we stand.  We have to be at the ready to recognize it is coming, to open the door when it arrives, to embrace it, even if it looks a little different than we might last remember. 

Two kinds of active, wise waiting.

And yet, I worried that I’d be misunderstood a bit.

Because there are some right now who are taking a “wait and see” attitude about the incoming administration of our country.  “We’ll just have to wait, and see what they do.  We don’t know what it will look like.  We can’t do anything about it now.”

Well, none of us can foretell the future, but I think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what is coming down the pike.  And here’s why I don’t like this kind of waiting to see:  it is disempowering and covers up the fact that each and every one of us, as citizens of this country and as people alive right now in history, have some power and agency we can use. My power and my ability to act may not be exactly the same as yours.  But we don’t have to wait.  In fact we can’t wait.

In the Circles of Trust that met this week, I heard some stories about times when people realized they could no longer wait, but had to take action.  Waiting on someone else to take the initiative.  Waiting on someone else to fix your life.  Waiting on someone else to change.  Waiting on the world to change.  Waiting for the right time or the right place or the right job or the right person….. that never seemed to appear.  At some point we realize maybe there is something that we can do, that we must take some responsibility to make a change, to stop waiting.

It is a sign of privilege and power and control when you can make someone else wait. 

Parents make their children wait all the time. 

Health insurance companies can make you wait for treatment if you aren’t approved and don’t have the funds to pay for it yourself. 

Under Jim Crow segregation whites could make African Americans wait for just about any reason. 

It is claiming power and agency to say, “I’m not going to wait any more.”

During the Civil Rights movement there were plenty of well-intentioned liberal white folks who saw the resistance movement as too radical, as asking for too much, too fast.  Just wait, they said.  Be patient.  We will work within the system to change things slowly, give it time. 

Actually, I’d say that has probably been a response to any kind of people’s movement for change throughout history.

Well, you know what Dr. Martin Luther King thought about that, right?  

In his book “Why We Can’t Wait,” he wrote:

“Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

In this quote Dr. King is articulating a core theological idea that is also central to our Unitarian Universalist faith:

The idea that we humans are co-workers with the Spirit of Life, that some call God.  We have never taken the attitude that somehow human problems will be solved by simply leaving it all up to God.  Or that we might just wait for the end times when all will be put right.  Both our Unitarian and our Universalist heritage has affirmed throughout our history that we have a role to play in bringing about the Beloved Community where all people are made whole and free. 

But we have sometimes nevertheless bought into the idea that our hope is only in the future.  As Rev. Rebecca Parker puts it in her book Blessing the World: What Can Save us Now :  “The traditional response of religious liberalism is to place our hope in the future.  Our apocalyptic myth imagines that the present world will come to an end and a new age will dawn.  The liberal apocalyptic imagination skips the violent parts.  It sees change coming through an evolutionary process—the gradual dismantling of evil empires and the eventual unfolding of life into greater forms of beauty and justice.”

But she says, we’ve got to come to terms with the fact that we are already living after the apocalypse, actually many different apocalypses. Apocalypse is usually associated with the end-times—and for many peoples and animals of this world, they have already experienced a kind of end-time of violence and hopelessness, genocide and extinction.

Given this, she asks, how shall we live?  Not waiting on some distant future but living fully now;  Clearly seeing reality now; finding love and hope in the now; creating the conditions for life to flourish, now.

The root of the word apocalypse means an unveiling, a revelation of knowledge. 

Some of us who have lived lives of relatively more privilege are only now waking up to the knowledge that when your own life is in danger, or the lives of people you love, then waiting is not an option.

What our own Unitarian Universalist principles call us to do is to widen the circle of people we love.  Knowing that we are all interconnected, we know that no one is free when some are not free.

So even if we ourselves have health insurance, we won’t wait for Medicare and Medicaid to be gutted—we will speak up alongside those whose lives depend on it.

Even if we ourselves can walk down the street without fear of harassment, we won’t be silent when we hear or see it happening to others.

Even if we have the security of citizenship now, we won’t be silent when our government threatens those who don’t, or threatens to punish resistance by taking away citizenship.

I am very intentionally saying “we won’t be silent” not “I won’t be silent” because this has to be a collective enterprise. 

It is the practice and sustenance and challenge of communities of memory and hope and faith like ours that make it possible to act in the face of oppression, to no longer wait.

Let me give you an example from history to illustrate what I mean; an example that inspires me, and reminds me of the purpose of our gathering, of any gathering in the name of Love.

During the resistance to fascism and the Nazi regime in  Europe during WWII, there was one small mountain village in the south of France that stood out for the number of people it kept in safety.  Le Chambon was only a tiny community of about 5,000 people, but throughout the war they and some neighboring villages protected and saved about that same number of people.  About 3500 jewish people, most of whom were children, and 1500 other dissidents in danger.

It was a Protestant village in a majority Roman Catholic area.  Perhaps this gave them a heightened sense of being in the minority, of what it is like to not have your views your culture reflected in the day-to-day of the world around them.  I don’t know. 

But here are two things I do know: The minister there, Andre Trocme, was a central leader in the resistance, and he ended every worship service this simple and direct way:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Go practice it.”

And that is what they did.

Magda Trocmé, the minister’s wife was interviewed later, and explained how it began.

“Those of us who received the first Jews did what we thought had to be done—nothing more complicated. It was not decided from one day to the next what we would have to do. There were many people in the village who needed help. How could we refuse them? A person doesn’t sit down and say I’m going to do this and this and that. We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, “How did you make a decision?” There was no decision to make. The issue was: Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!”

There is something in these times, too, that demand that we not think too much.  These times demand that we not wait in our rational brains to see exactly what policy proposals come down the pike.  These times demand that we not wait until Maryville or Alcoa or Knoxville is added to the growing list of hate crimes across this country since the election.  These times demand that we not get bogged down with one another arguing about the best strategy or the right analysis.  These times demand that we not wait for answers from our leaders.

We have 40 days until inauguration day.

In our story this morning (The Three Questions), Leo Tolstoy tells us that there is only one important time, there is only one important person, there is only one important action.

The important time is Now, right now, not some other time, not some other day.

The important person, the important people are those here, right here in our community, and those beyond our walls that we have relationship and influence with.

And the important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. 

As we say every week when we light our chalice, we heal, we help, we bless, we serve the spirit of Freedom.

May we, like the tiny baby whose birth we remember this month, embody in ourselves the Love and the Hope we yearn for. 

We can’t wait.

Amen.

Closing Words

As our chalice is extinguished, may the Love within us and the Love between us, join with the Love that holds us all,

Shine forth and serve Life today and in the days ahead.

Go in peace and greet your neighbor with Love.