2017.11.5 "A House for Hope"

2017.11.5        “Blessing the World with a House for Hope”                      Rev. Laura Bogle

Reading

From “A House for Hope: the Promise of Progressive Religion for the 21^st Century”

by Rebecca Parker and John Beuhrens, published 2010

“We write in a time of hope – hope that the tragedies of torture and war might be eased, that threats to the earth’s environment might be turned around, that economic systems might be converted to better support all earth’s peoples and cultures. We also write with the awareness that hope began before we were born. It began with generations of people who lived before us and devoted their lives to what they hoped for their children and grandchildren. We have benefited from their labors, and we take up the tasks of our own time indebted to them for what has been accomplished and mindful of new challenges, as well as perennial ones that remain.

Hope will go on after us, through those who will continue the struggles for justice, equity, and compassion, and will form and reform communities that embody love for life.

Rebecca [Parker] developed the metaphor [of] theology as a habitation. …[The] image conveys that “theology” – whatever else it may connote – is about the structures of meaning that shelter and shape our way of living. The image counters the common notion among liberals that every person must build his or her own theology from scratch – as if religion were only a private matter of personal belief, without history or community. In fact, liberal and progressive people of faith inherit a communal theological house, built by those who lived, labored, and loved before us.”

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Rebecca Parker and John Beuhrens published these words in 2010, during a time when the state of our country and the direction we felt we were going did feel more hopeful for some.

Perhaps we feel less hopeful this morning, this Sunday before election day 2017.

Nonetheless, they wrote this book knowing that the tides of history ebb and flow.

And knowing that what we believe as religious people, and how we articulate what we believe, shapes how we live our lives, and shapes our common life together.

They wrote this book with the hope that we religious liberals would no longer separate our dearly held faith commitments from our commitments in the public square.  That we might start bringing the language of faith to our engagement with the important social and political issues of our land. 

Can you imagine more and more of us saying, “A Muslim Ban is against my religion.” 

“Discrimination against transgender people is against my religion.”

“Paying people poverty wages is against my religion.”

And they wrote the book with the hope that we might remember that we don’t have to start from the ground up—that we already have important frameworks in place.

Today, one year after the Presidential election, I thought it a good time to review.  We need all the resources our faith tradition has to offer us for these times.

When you enter a place of worship you are not just entering into a physical building, a physical house of worship.

You are entering into a metaphorical house too.  A whole framework of meaning is present, whether you are aware of it or not, whether it is explicitly spelled out or not.

This is true for us as Unitarian Universalists, too.  It is as true for us as it is for the Baptists or the Muslims or the Presbyterians.

We Unitarian Universalists inherit a rich legacy of liberal theology which we often take for granted, or sometimes ignore, or sometimes aren’t even aware of.

Today I want to take us on a tour of our Unitarian Universalist house and share a bit about what it contains. All of this reflection is based especially on the work of Rebecca Parker, who served as President of our UU seminary Starr King School for the Ministry. Each part of the house corresponds to a classic category of systematic theology.  This will be a very quick and necessarily basic tour. 

Foundation: (theology)
What do we say about God or the ultimate source of Life?

Who/what do we most deeply trust?  Who/what upholds us?

When I was a kid I questioned why I needed to bow my head in church--

One thing we understand is that our conceptions of who or what God is reflects more about humanity than about some external knowable Truth.  What we believe and say about God has real-world implications.  If we believe in an angry, judging, violent, distant, male God, chances are we will live that out in our earthly lives.

Much of our theological heritage comes from people and communities who rejected and built a different way.  Joke/nutshell:  Unitarians believed humans too good to be damned by God and Universalists believed God too good to damn people.

In Unitarian Universalism we have inherited a rich theological tradition that includes these ideas:

--humanity and the divine/the ultimate source of Life are co-creators; God is relational, is relationship.

--If there is a God, it is all goodness, Love, creativity -- Universalism

--there is little separation between the divine and the human – we are part of a continuum—God is both within us and beyond us.

--our ideas of God, and perhaps even Godself, changes; continuing revelation;  God and the Universe is always in process and so are we.  Our ancestor’s ideas about God changed with, for instance, the way biblical criticism was done in the 17 and 1800s.  They changed again with scientific advancement, with dialogue with other religious traditions, and with the increase of theological voices from the margins—women and people of color.

“In liberal theology, at the core of the struggle with God is a restless awareness that human conclusions about God are always provisional, and any way of speaking about God may become an idol….The nineteenth century Unitarian Theodore Parker put it well: the goodness of God is manifest in that God has given humanity the power to judge God.” (94, 95)

“The fundamental question then is an existential question, not merely an intellectual exercise.  Do you believe in God? Is a relatively meaningless question, compared to the inquiry of the heart: is there reason to trust that there is any help available?”

Now I will bow my head to the unknowable mystery, to remember that I can’t know it all or do it all by myself.


Walls: (ecclesiology)  ekklesia=assembly, gathering, congregation
nature and purpose of religion from religare=to bind together

The root of the word religion is religare – to bind together.  What binds us together?  What holds us in?  What is the purpose of church and how do we gather?

The walls of our UU house are the covenants we make with one another.  To be religious for us means to be in covenanted community, not to subscribe to a creedal statement of believe.

We choose to be in covenant with one another—to make promises to one another. 

We affirm that the purpose of our Fellowship is to help one another, to live not as isolated individuals but in an interdependence with one another.

When we break those promises, which we all always do at some point, we choose a path to try to stay in relationship and renew those promises.

We are a freely chosen and democratic community – where we pay attention to whether everyone has a voice.  Where the biggest decisions about our community are not made somewhere else, but made right here, by you.

We are place of the priesthood and prophethood of all believers, where I as professional clergy work in shared partnership with you to live out our mission and our ministries.


Roof: (soteriology) soteria=salvation, preservation
What saves us?  What protects us?  What “delivers us from evil?”

Next March our monthly worship theme is Evil – and we’ll be able to get deeper into these questions.  Today I’ll just say:

Unitarian Universalism has been one expression of an alternative theology of salvation that “emphasizes that human beings need to be saved from the consequences of human sin – not from God’s punishing wrath; and that salvation comes through the powers of life and goodness, present within and around us.” (63)

Both Sin and Salvation are in human hands.

In our Christian Unitarian and Universalist heritage, Jesus saves through the example of his life which we are able to follow, not through his death.

Our Universalist forebears said that all would be saved by a loving God.  Period.

Salvation is not an individual, personal experience, but a collective one. 

We will all be saved together. It is our ability to live in Love and Connection which will save us.

The Welcoming Rooms: (theological anthropology, pneumatology)

What does it mean to be human and how to we relate to one another? How do we understand the fact that every human civilization across time and geography has created and expressed some kind of religious framework?

Theological anthropology

At the core of our UU theology is an affirmation of the goodness of the diversity of human life – all of it.  We carry the legacy that each one of us is made in the image of God.  That our human powers of “reason, feeling, imagination, language, memory, creativity, conscience” are fundamentally good, not depraved or sinful.  And that our very bodies, and our capacity for pleasure in and through our bodies, including sexual intimacy, is a good gift.

Now, all of these good gifts can be and are deformed into something unethical, sinful. (see: soteriology) But that is not our starting point.

Our conclusion from the starting point of the goodness of humanity is that no matter your race, your sexual orientation, your gender identity or expression, where you were born or how old you are – you are sacred and worthy, and deserve access to the gifts of life, to flourish and live in safety and well-being.

Rebecca Parker says these rooms are where Love lives.  Love that is “the gift of gracious, transforming, unexpected invitation into greater life through increased connection and engagement with others, especially those that the dominating society deems Other.” (125)

We experience this Love in relationship.  And we can experience it when we encounter a Spirit which feels greater than our human existence, which beckons us to more beauty and more mystery, which calls forth a response of awe and praise.

Pneumatology  Pneuma = breath or wind 

In classical theology it is the doctrine of the Spirit.
Many people today will say “I am Spiritual but not Religious.”  There is a hunger for a deeply felt connection, an experienced sense of Spirit within our human existence.

How do we create a room within this House for spirit to live?  Is our congregation a place where Spirit comes and settles down among us, or sometimes knocks us out of our expectations?  As we are silent, as we sing, as we create – are we acknowledging the mysterious spirit of life that is present in all and that connects us?

Unitarian Universalists can be Spiritual and Religious.  The Spirit shows up in the religious community that worships and sings and creates and engages spiritual practice together.

Door/Threshold: (missiology)  mission=missive, message
How do we relate to others who are not in our theological house?
When and how do we leave our own house to connect with others?  How we are neighbors to those people?
How do we invite others into our house?

Our UU theological framework tells us a few things about this:

--There is truth to be found in all religions, and we accept many ways of seeing, understanding, and believing.  We don’t have a corner on the market.

--It is possible to work respectfully with those of other religious belief towards the flourishing of all life.

--Our respect for a diversity of belief can sometimes make us timid in proclaiming what our good news is.  I never want to be coercive or seen as proselytizing, do you?  At the same time, I know stories of people whose lives have been literally saved because they found our community of faith—a place for head and heart; service and spirit.  A place where people at the margins may be brought into the center.  A place where how we live out our values says so much more about who we are than any statement of belief.

If there’s one challenge I want to leave you with today:  think about when and how you share your UU faith with others. 

Garden/Paradise/Earth: (eschatology)  eschaton=last, final
the end times – or the ultimate point of our existence – where do we hope to be going?

The main thing to know about progressive eschatologies is that they point not heavenward, but bring us back down to earth.  There are some variations on this theme.

One variation was expressed through Universalist Christianity and also through the Social Gospel Movement in the 1800’s. It focuses on the human ability and responsibility to build the Kingdom of God or Beloved Community right here on earth.  We are the ones who create heaven or hell.  Our purpose is not to do good so that we can reach a faraway Paradise after we die, but to use the life we have to work for a communal expression of that Paradise here and now.

In this perspective we are always, always working towards something better in the future, a progressive path.

Another variation encourages us to understand that where we stand right now, right here is already holy.  Jesus said “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  To focus only on some future better time or better place means that we will constantly critique and might neglect what is already here right now.  The better is already here, right here on this incredible planet earth, and we can awaken to it, choose to participate in it, and do all we can to protect and love it.

In this view, in every single moment we have the ability to experience heaven, what we ultimately, fervently hope for.

For me, this (the framework house) and this (our congregation) is the House where Hope lives.  What about for you?  Where does Hope live?

May we be ones who continue looking to both our past and our current life together, taking care of and renewing this House.  May it be so.  Amen.

2017.10.22 "Taking a Knee" sermon

2017.10.22      “Taking a Knee”                     Rev. Laura Bogle

A couple of things I want to tell you first today --

With this worship service today we are taking part, with many other UU congregations across the country, in Part 2 of a White Supremacy Teach-in – conversations that leaders of color in our movement, especially black Unitarian Universalists, have asked us to engage.  You may remember, we participated in Part 1 last spring.

Today when I use the term white supremacy I am not usually referring to the outright racist ideology that explicitly states white people are superior to others—the neo-nazi kind of white supremacy.  Instead, I am referring to the historical reality in our country that our systems and structures – from education to health care to business to media to our own UU congregations—are built in such a way that gives advantages and privilege to white people over people of color.

So, this sermon today is really speaking to my fellow white folks—which is most but not all of us in the room.

Also, a caveat:  I never watch NFL games, except the occasional SuperBowl.  So please forgive me if I mess up a name or a team or some terminology. 

I’ve taken a bit of a deep dive the last few days reading back about how it was that Colin Kaepernik formerly of the San Francisco 49’ers, began to kneel last year during the national anthem before games. 

Let’s take a few moments to remember the timeline of events…

August 2016 – Kaepernick first sat during the anthem during the pre-season games;  wasn’t even noticed for a couple of games.

Sept. 1 – Kaepernick and Eric Reid kneel at pre-season game

The very next day Kaepernick announces that he will donate $1million plus all the profits from his merchandise to grassroots organizations fighting for racial justice and equality.

Only three days later -- Sept. 4, 2016—first white pro athlete to kneel during the anthem after Kaepernick -- Megan Rapinoe of the Seattle Reign – National Women’s Soccer League--  

She expressed solidarity with Kaepernick, saying that, as a gay American, she knows "what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties," and that "it’s important to have white people stand in support of people of color on this."   

At her next game the opposing team rescheduled the playing of the anthem so it would occur when teams in the locker room.

Sept. 9 – Denver Broncos Brandon Marshall kneels during regular season game.  The first to do so.

Subsequently and swiftly he lost two sponsorship agreements.

Sept. 16 – in Seattle, entire Garfield HS football team and coaches kneel

Subsequently more NFL players, more high school teams, WNBA teams, etc.

            Some high school students kicked off teams

A high school in Louisiana sent a letter to all student-athletes saying they would be punished if they don’t stand for the anthem.

(Timeline from :  https://www.sbnation.com/2016/9/11/12869726/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-seahawks-brandon-marshall-nfl )

March 2017—Kaepernick becomes free agent – he still hasn’t been signed by any NFL team. 

Trump tweets: “NFL owners don’t want to pick (Kaepernick) up because they don’t want to get nasty tweet from Donald Trump.”

REMEMBER: it was July 5 and July 6, 2016 when Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed at the hands of police – and videos of their deaths were seen across the country.  The next month is when Kaepernick began his protest. 

If we look at the protests without remembering the reason why, saying the names of those who have died and will never come back, then we miss the point:

Trayvon Martin

Eric Garner

Michael Brown

Laquan McDonald

Tamir Rice

Eric Harris

Walter Scott

Freddie Gray

Sandra Bland

Alton Sterling

Philando Castile

And so many others… It is a feature of white supremacy that I do not have to recall these names every day, that I move around my neighborhood and my communities without constant vigilance and remembrance of what has happened to them.

According to Mother Jones magazine using data from the Census Bureau and the Washington Post database of police shooting: ( http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/03/police-shootings-black-lives-matter-history-timeline-1/ )

[In 2015]-black men between the ages of 18 and 44 were 3.2 times as likely as white men the same age to be killed by a police officer. And while black men make up only about 6 percent of the US population, [in 2016] they accounted for one-third of the unarmed people killed by police.

Why did they have to rely on a Washington Post database?  Because it wasn’t until October of 2016 that the Department of Justice decided to begin keeping national track of police use of force.

Eric Reid, Colin Kaepernick’s teammate, wrote in his recent Op-Ed in the NYTimes:

“In early 2016, I began paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people being killed by the police. The posts on social media deeply disturbed me, but one in particular brought me to tears: the killing of Alton Sterling in my hometown Baton Rouge, La. This could have happened to any of my family members who still live in the area. I felt furious, hurt and hopeless. I wanted to do something, but didn’t know what or how to do it. All I knew for sure is that I wanted it to be as respectful as possible. …

…my faith moved me to take action. I looked to James 2:17, which states, ‘Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’ I knew I needed to stand up for what is right.”

One question I searched for – have any white NFL players been kneeling?  Not until almost a full year after Kaepernick’s initial action – August 2017-- does the first white NFL player, Seth Devalve of the Cleveland Browns kneel during the national anthem.  He happens to be married to an African American woman, and motivated in part by the fact that his children don’t look like him.  He also says he was motivated to take action after the violence in Charlottesville that killed white anti-racist activist Heather Heyer.

Of course, in the last couple of months, we’ve seen entire NFL teams link arms or stay in the locker room during the anthem. All of a sudden the conversation is about unity.  And players – while making what I consider huge sums of money – are not the ones holding the power in the conversation.  I will no longer engage in conversation about how much NFL players make unless we are also talking about the wealth of NFL owners.  According to Forbes, the top 10 wealthiest NFL owners are worth over $60 BILLION.  Players hold power to the extent to which they are willing to play the game. 

So, yes, Colin Kaepernick is privileged in some ways, yet still vulnerable as a black man in America.  And yet he found one place where he could risk his privilege and power for greater freedom.  He may never get to play football in the NFL again.

How can we white folks learn from that example?

Two ways white folks can pay attention to and use our own vulnerabilities to join in the struggle for racial justice.

1—Cultivate our own strength in the face of our own vulnerable feelings.

Pay attention to when and where we feel fragile or vulnerable when people are talking about racism,

or perhaps noting something you have done or not done and you are feeling complicit,

or perhaps when you see protestors on the TV screen or in your community, and you think “I’m with them!  But I’m not sure about the words they are using or the tactics they are using.”

You know that moment when you feel like you want to critique or to run away?  I invite you to breathe and stay in the room.

Take a moment and think about the physical vulnerability of black men and women in many, many communities in this nation.

Cultivate the vulnerable strength of a learner. 

Know that you are strong enough to be in a learner posture—like Nate Boyer, the Green Beret and former Seattle Seahawks player that Kaepernick consulted.  He said to Kaepernick, “Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it. …So I’m just going to keep listening, with an open mind.  I look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national anthem.”

I like to think that when Kaepernick and Boyer met they created something called “brave space.”  A space for the honest exchange of experiences, even across disagreement.  A space where we don’t necessarily have to stay locked in our own ideas of the way things are.

Rather than seeking safe space – where what you think and how you think is simply re-affirmed, seek out brave space. 

We don’t know what we don’t know. 

For white folks, taking a knee could mean a posture of humility, a posture of listening, a posture of “deliberately restraining the impulse to answer, or presuming to know the answer” as Aana Marie Vigen writes.

In our Opening Words today, Karen Maezen Miller’s poem:  “Abandon your authority and entitlements/Release your self-image/Status, power, whatever you think gives you clout/It doesn’t, not really…/See where you are. Observe what is needed./Do good. Quietly.”

2) The second way white people can work to dismantle white supremacy: Choosing vulnerability when we don’t have to– to risk the places where we have privilege and power and choose to be vulnerable in order to be in solidarity with those who have no choice about their vulnerability and often aren’t able to exercise their voice.

Examples:

--Heather Heyer chose vulnerability when she as a white woman showed up physically to protest the white supremacists in Charlottesville.

--Country music star Megan Linsey chose vulnerability when she as a white woman chose to kneel *while she sang the national anthem* before the Titans game in Nashville last month.  She says, “The easiest thing to do would be to walk out, smile real pretty and sing an anthem and get off the field. I think that’s what everybody expected me to do. But, in that moment, I don’t think that was what was right for me. I knew that I wanted to make a stand.”

And she has since received numerous death threats.

--Just this weekend, Laura Ellis, white music professor at University of Florida, chose vulnerability when she climbed up the bell tower on campus and chose to ring the carrillion bells in the tune of the African American national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – all while white supremacist Richard Spencer held his rally on campus.

--UU Congregations around the country right now are voting to become sanctuary congregations—to place their physical places of worship in the service of protecting immigrants – overwhelmingly people of color—who are facing deportation.  This is choosing a kind of vulnerability in order to be in solidarity whose very freedom is under attack.

--Last October the UUA Board pledged $300,000 immediately to support the Black Lives of UU organizing collective and also made a $5 million long-term commitment to the organization which seeks to provide support, information & resources for Black Unitarian Universalists, and to expand the role & visibility of Black UUs within our faith.

One of the ways we as white people can risk our power is to give away our wealth and resources, without having to control it.  In the coming weeks and months, we all will have an opportunity to give towards a fund to fulfill the $5million pledge to BLUU.  One UU donor has already pledged a $1million match.

{By the way—this was the guiding approach that our very own Community Outreach Project team used when we decided to give $1,000 of our budget to support a conference next month at Maryville College for youth of color.  Moving resources to those most affected by oppression for them to use as they see fit.}

Our late UUA moderator Jim Key, who was at that Board meeting said, “To me, doing nothing—or doing something more timid—was a greater risk to our movement and the values we say we have and the way we live in the world. It would put our overall mission at risk not to deal with society’s most pressing issues now.”  https://www.uuworld.org/articles/board-commits-5-million-bluu

For white folks it is a delicate balance – figuring out when to simply listen and “do good, quietly.”  And when to do something bold that is risky, that might draw attention to ourselves.

I believe we collectively figure it out, as we stayed rooted in a spiritual practice of Love for self and Love for others, listening to and being in relationship with those who have less racial privilege than we do.

Do you remember that at the 1968 Olympics, track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith famously raised their fists in the black power salute during their medal ceremony.  Who was the third person on the podium that night?  Peter Norman, a white Australian.  Norman has gotten less recognition but he too made his stand that night – he wore a button for the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

In 2006 when Carlos and Smith were pallbearers at Norman’s funeral, Carlos was reflecting on how Normal stood with them.  He said he “expected to see fear in Peter Norman’s eyes before the medal ceremony, when there was no turning back from what they were about to do.  But he didn’t see fear.

‘I saw love,’ he said.”

May we remember always that Love is stronger than our fear. 

May that love guide us to build new ways of being until all people are free.

May it be so.  Amen.

2017.10.22 "Taking a Knee" Readings

From Angela Denker’s Washington Post article “Colin Kaepernick and the Powerful, Religious Act of Kneeling”:  

“You watch it on TV and you have to wonder what the fuss is all about. The stadium is standing and Kaepernick is kneeling. Silently. Arms folded. Elbow on his knee staring straight ahead.

You’re thinking: Dammit.

I can’t even watch football on Sunday anymore and drink a beer without being reminded that something is wrong in America.

You want Kaepernick to go away, to stand up and salute the flag and shut up because we can tolerate abuse of other human beings but we cannot tolerate being disrupted when we want to pretend that everything is okay.”

From UU ministerial intern Aisha Ansano:

“No matter what tactics and methods racial justice activists use, the general response of society will be a collective head-shaking and tsk-tsk-ing — because what people are actually complaining about are not the specific tactics that are being used in the struggle for racial justice, but that the struggle for racial justice exists at all.

I imagine that for most people, the immediate reaction to that statement is defensiveness. “I really don’t think that the struggle for racial justice shouldn’t exist,” some might respond. “I just think there are better ways to go about it than blocking traffic and making me late for work. I get annoyed and frustrated and it really doesn’t convince me to join your fight.”

What, exactly, is going to convince that person to join the fight? Picket signs on the side of the road? Then they’ll just think, “Look at those troublemakers disturbing the peace over there,” as they drive on their way to work. Then they'll promptly forget about it.

It’s not the specific methods that are making people uncomfortable. It’s the fact that the struggle for racial justice is seeping into their awareness in ways that they can’t ignore.”

From “To Hear and Be Accountable: An Ethic of White Listening”  by Aana Marie Vigen. In Disrupting White Supremacy from Within: White People on What We Need to Do, edited by Jennifer Harvey, et. al. Boston: Pilgrim Press, 2004: 216-248

“What does it mean for white folks…to listen fully to the truths articulated by members of those communities who have suffered so long, and so pervasively, at the hands of white supremacy?  How might white people resist the tendency to co-opt that which peoples of colors tell us?  Finally, how might our ultimate understanding as white people come at less of a cost to these communities than it often does? I encourage you to linger with these questions.  Do not let your mind, especially if you are a white person, rush with an answer or retort.  Allow them to stir around a bit.  For those of us who are white, deliberately restraining the impulse to answer, or presuming to know the answer, is a fundamental part of responsible listening. …Engaging [these questions] is part of the ongoing lifework of all white people.”