2019.10.20 Saying No to Sacrificial Suffering

Saying No to Sacrificial Suffering

October 20, 2019        Rev. Laura Bogle                     Foothills UU Fellowship

Wisdom Story:  The Giving Tree retold (adapted from Victoria Weinstein, with apologies to Shel Silverstein)

Reading

“I recognized that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. …I could see that when theology presents Jesus' death as God's sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive.

But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations?”
― Rebecca Ann Parker

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Those words we just heard from Rebecca Parker come from her book Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Rebecca co-wrote that book with Rita Nakashima Brock; both ordained clergy women.  Rebecca was ordained in the United Methodist Church and she served as President of our UU seminary in California, Starr King School for the Ministry, for 25 years.

I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I’m drawing much of my thinking from her and Rita’s work, which over the years has opened up really important theological questions for all of us who claim Unitarian Universalism as a spiritual home. 

Today I’m going to talk about a couple of different understandings of sacrifice present in the Christian tradition and basically what’s problematic about them!  Next week, I’m going to flip and ask us to consider the power of life-giving sacrifice--  Is that even possible?

Two assumptions:

1) Regardless of how Christianity may have had a presence or not in our own personal spiritual journeys – we all must deal with some level of its spiritual baggage because dominant Christian thinking is interwoven with so much of mainstream culture in the United States.

2)Theology – the way we think and talk about God—functions in this world; it impacts people’s real lives; it can be life-giving and it can be abusive.  As people of faith we have a responsibility to examine the explicit and the implicit theological messages in our words and actions.

Rebecca begins her part of the book with stories of women – women who suffered in situations of domestic abuse, and whose abuse was, if not outright condoned, was implicitly sanctioned and tolerated by religious messages about self-sacrifice.

She writes about one woman: “In the church she went to, the intact family was celebrated as God’s will; father, mother, and children were meant to be together…. [She] believed that because this configuration of family was the will of God, God would somehow make it all right.  For her to break up the family would make her a bad person.  Doing the will of God was more important than her personal safety.  The possibility that faithfulness to God’s will might mean pain and violence could even have been in its favor.  A good woman would be willing to accept personal pain, and think only of the good of the family.  You know, ‘Your life is only valuable if you give it away’ and ‘This is your cross to bear.’ 

She heard… that Jesus didn’t turn away from the cup of suffering when God asked him to drink it.  She was trying to be a good Christian, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.”

Rebecca herself had grown up in a liberal Christian household with a father and grandfather who were ministers who centered on following Jesus’ life and message of Love as the way to salvation, not his death.  But, even for her, she says, ‘The gesture of sacrifice was familiar.  I knew the rubrics of the ritual by heart: you cut away some part of yourself, then peace and security are restored, relationship is preserved, and shame is avoided….Why did I know so well how to do it?  Why did the women I knew as friends, counseled as parishioners, preached to in my congregation, know so well how to do it?”

I recently had a conversation that I get to have a version of pretty regularly as a Unitarian Universalist minister, though each time feels like a privilege, and each conversation is its own unique story. The conversation concerned leaving the religious tradition in which the person had grown up – because it just required too much sacrifice.  Sacrifice of the person’s truth, their true self, even their well-being.  In order to stay in relationship, and avoid shame, the person had to cut off a part of themselves. Eventually they decided to say No.

Many people come through our doors because they just can’t get with the theology of substitutionary atonement—they say ‘no’ to the theology that says God sacrificed his son to redeem the sins of a disobedient humanity in an act of horrific violence.  This theology functions in the world, says that redemption comes through violent sacrifice, suffering and abuse, cutting something off in order to restore right relationship and balance.

The consequences of this kind of theology has especially functioned in the world to increase the suffering of those without social power – women, children, indigenous people, black people, LGBTQ folks, and others.   Theologies and cultural messages that celebrate particular kinds of sacrifice often ignore power dynamics—who is sacrificing for whom?  Who has choice or agency in that sacrifice?  Who has the privilege to opt out? 

When women are told it’s their cross to bear to put up with an abusive husband, who is served?  What kind of God is served?

When LGBTQ folks are told they must excise a core part of their very being in order to stay in relationship with family or church, who is served?  What kind of God is served?

It is perhaps easy for many of us to sit here and say “Well, I rejected that kind of God a long time ago.” Or, “That’s why I don’t believe in God, period.”   Or, “That’s why I’m a Unitarian Universalist!”

It is clear to me, and to most of you too, that this sacrificial atonement theology leads to spiritual abuse if not outright physical abuse.  It is one of the reasons why just the word “Sacrifice” makes many of us uncomfortable.

But I think very often we still carry its messages embedded within us, often unconsciously.  That our worth some how comes from our ability to bear a cross gracefully without asking for help; that it is virtuous to make it through times of suffering without saying “Hey!  This suffering needs to stop!” 

This morning I ask you in the coming week to examine yourself and your own religious history.  Especially if you grew up in a religious tradition that centered sacrificial atonement theology, are you still carrying around some of its messages?  How might we work together to heal those?

As Rebecca Parker says: “Theology that defines virtue as obedience to God suppresses the virtue of revolt.”

I want to be clear here – substitionary sacrificial atonement is not the only way to understand the Christian message – it just happens to be the primary theological viewpoint of Christians in this part of the world.

We Unitarian Universalists are testament to the fact that sacrificial suffering isn't the only way to understand the Christian message; sacrificial suffering is not the only way to salvation.   

Way back in 1805,  Universalist minister and theologian Hosea Ballou wrote A Treatise on Atonement.  Here’s one of my favorite passages:  “The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree, that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries.  The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world; all those principles which are to be dreaded by men have been believed to exist in God;  and professors have been moulded into the image of their Deity, and become more cruel….”

Ballou is basically saying that believing in a God that actually caused the death of Jesus gives creedence to violence.  As Rebecca Parker says, “If God is imagined as a fatherly torturer, earthly parents are also justified, perhaps even required, to teach through violence.  Children are instructed to understand their submission to pain as a form of love.”

In her book Rebecca Parker takes us through 6 different ways of understanding Jesus’ death as redemptive – and she questions all of them!  I’m not going through all 6 today, but there is one more that I want to delve into this morning.

We, along with other liberal Protestants, in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, expressed through the Social Gospel movement a focus on self-sacrificing love as an alternative path to salvation.  We are not saved by God sacrificing his obedient son, but by following the example of Jesus’ life and willingness to give up his life.  In this theological perspective the central sin isn’t disobedience, it’s selfishness.

Rebecca Parker writes, “The importance of Jesus for liberal Christians is not that he paid the price for sin.  Jesus is important because he embodied loving concern for others and called people to love their neighbors.  Jesus confronted the oppressive ruler of his day and was not afraid to risk his life doing so.  No greater love has any human being than the love that sacrifices self to help and defend others.”

Whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, how many of us would say that’s the message embedded within us?  That selfishness is a kind of sin, and that it is virtuous to sacrifice self to help and defend others?

This is definitely the kind of theology I grew up with.  Heck, this is the theology that I sometimes preach.

Well, I am more and more uncomfortable with it on its own because of how I see it functioning in the world when we don’t take into account power dynamics.  Too often it is again the people with less social power who are the ones doing the self-sacrificing.  Rebecca Parker asks us to consider that for some people perhaps the central sin isn’t selfishness.  “It may be just the opposite: a lack of a sense of self.”

For instance, she says “Women are culturally conditioned to care for others, but not ourselves.  We believe that having needs, feelings, ambitions, or thoughts of our own is not good.  In this self-abnegation, we enact a culturally prescribed role that perpetuates sexist social structures.”

This kind of self-giving is too often a one-way street in our social and political relations.  Like the story of The Giving Tree, some people are expected to just give and give and give until nothing is left – and others, like the boy in the story, get what they want and need.

This is frankly the bedrock of our capitalist system – that some give all they have, their labor and their lives, to enrich others.

This, I believe, is also at the root of our climate catastrophe.  That we have expected the generosity of the earth to be never-ending.  The earth, by the way, very often called Mother Earth.

This kind of self-giving still exists within a context of domination and submission.  Those without power give and those with power get.

If we return to the Christian story for a moment, while some Social Gospel thinkers would say that Jesus voluntary giving himself up even unto death overcomes the sin of selfishness, it does not end the problem of domination and submission.  Parker writes, “An oppressive system killed him to silence him and to threaten others who might follow him.”

So, where does this leave us?  How do we know when to say ‘no’ to self-sacrifice? 

We may be able to clearly identify situations of outright abuse, and our religious heritage calls us to speak out and resist, to revolt.  But what about the ways these theological messages embed themselves in us and in our systems in more subtle and insidious ways?  Who are we expecting to overcome the sin of selfishness?  Who gets held to account for that?

Here’s a question to consider, if every woman in our community stopped giving away ourselves and our labor for the good of our community, where would we be?  You might ask the same question about immigrant laborers.  Or imagine if the earth one day was able to just stop giving to us.  To say ‘No.’  I have given too much and I am suffering because of it.

Our interdependence with all of life means we can’t escape that our lives are actually upheld by the labor of others as well as the lives of plants and animals and the energy of the sun and earth.  Our Unitarian Universalist values ask us to be mindful of what we are sacrificing and what we are assuming others will sacrifice. 

This requires really deep and sustained ethical and spiritual discernment.  It requires us to really examine what internal and external messages we live with about sacrifice – who should sacrifice, and for what reason, and for whose benefit?  It requires us to reflect on our own social locations, and the places we hold power and privilege, as well as the places we don’t.  I hope you’ll keep thinking on this in the week ahead. 

And next week join me as we ask together How do we build truly reciprocal ways of being that upend the social structures of domination and that give room for people to give to one another freely and with joy?

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I know that part of the answer is to simply be asking the questions, together.

I am grateful to be on that quest with you.  I believe that together we can find the path of love, courage, trust and faith.  May it be so.

2019.9.22 The Shelter of Each Other

2019.9.22 The Shelter of Each Other

Rev. Laura Bogle                    Foothills UU Fellowship

Wisdom Story: The Grumpy Gecko  https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/children/wonder/session1/grumpy-gecko

We are a community that is not afraid to name our idealism.   

We say:  Love is the Spirit of this Fellowship.

We say: We re-commit ourselves to being a place of life-saving welcome for all people, no exceptions.

We say our covenant is  To dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.

It rolls off the tongue and sounds really nice. 

We’d like to build the world a home, and furnish it with love. 

But what if someone just really annoys the hell out of you?

Or what if someone says or does something that really hurts you—whether they are aware of it or not?

And what if that hurt has something to do with your identity – what if someone says or does something sexist, or homophobic, or transphobic, or racist, or ageist, or ableist – most likely not aware of it, not intending harm, but the harm is still done.

Or what happens when we have genuine disagreement about the way things should be done or what is most important or any other Big Question?

When we come into this congregation, we come with all our own expectations for a sanctuary, high expectations to find a safe place of belonging and acceptance and peace.

But what we actually find, I hope, are authentic human beings.  Beautiful and also flawed, and also fundamentally all very, very different from one other.  All of us bringing the experiences of how ever many years we have lived on this earth.  All of us with at least a slightly different take on what would actually feel like sanctuary, for me.

How do we shelter each other’s humanity, even when we are in a place of disconnection – feeling annoyed, frustrated, hurt, or simply disagreeing with one another?  How do  we build a home, a sanctuary of love, that doesn’t gloss over conflict?

As Unitarian minister James Luther Adams said, church is a place we get to practice being human.  We get to practice what it means to be imperfect people who don’t always live up to our ideals.  We actually get to be on a journey of growth.  In fact, this congregation expects each one of us to be on a journey of growth – it’s right there in our mission statement : to encourage one another in spiritual growth.  That doesn’t just mean going off and meditating or reading spiritual stuff.  That doesn’t mean an always peaceful path As I’ve said before – as Unitarian Universalists, our most central spiritual practice is the practice of being in covenantal relationship with one another.  Being flawed, imperfect human beings who nonetheless have made a commitment to journey to together.

I want this congregation to be a place of radical welcome and hospitality, for all of who we are. Come, come whoever you are—and the line that we usually don’t sing – though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times, come yet again come.  

And that means working at it, it means engaging with one another even when—especially when—things are hard.  It means a kind of courage and commitment to stick it out with one another, knowing that in the end we need one another more than we usually know.

So, what can we learn about good community and communication practices from our Wisdom Story this morning?  I want to pull out a few lessons about Grumpy Gecko – using our congregational covenant and some other tools.

In our story about Grumpy Gecko this morning, gecko was just really annoyed with the fireflies.  He had reason to be -- They were keeping him from his sleep.  So what does he do?  He goes to talk to someone else to solve his problem for him.  “Tiger, you have more power and authority than me, can you just take care of the fire flies so I can sleep?”

In family systems theory, this is called triangulation.  It’s not always a bad thing.  Sometimes it can really help to bring in a third person when the stress or friction or anxiety between two parties has become too intense.  And sometimes, it can just serve to spread the anxiety around.  Gecko complains about the fire flies, and gets to pass his anxiety off to Tiger.  It’s now Tiger’s problem to solve.  And he goes from animal to animal all night just trying to get to the bottom of the conflict.

The problem with this is that Gecko never has to actually engage with the fire flies. 

Gecko just gets labeled “grumpy” and taught a lesson about the interdependence of life.  Which I think, honestly, is very unfair.  I mean, if I couldn’t sleep at all at night, that would be a real problem and I’d have some real feelings about that.

Our congregational covenant asks us to communicate with one another directly.  So what could happen if, instead of Tiger going to talk with the fireflies, Gecko went to talk with the fireflies.  Maybe Tiger goes with Gecko to talk to the fireflies for some moral support. 

Let’s imagine how that conversation could go, and I want to use a tool to guide us in imagining that conversation—the tool of nonviolent communication.

There are 4 steps to Nonviolent Communication, sometimes called Compassionate Communication, a process of dialogue developed by Marshall Rosenberg.  First I want to say that what I find most helpful about this process is the reflection it asks me to do before I ever begin a conversation.

1.     The first step is to simply observe behavior without judgment.  This is very, very hard!  We are constantly making up stories in our head about other people’s behavior.  NVC asks us to stop that, and simply stay with the observation.

For gecko, that would mean trying to stay with the facts: the fire flies are lighting up at night.  That’s it. No story about why.  No story about how they just don’t want me to sleep.  No story about how the fireflies want to annoy me. Simply: the fire flies are lighting up at night.

2.     The second step is to identify and own your own feelings. So, friends, let’s think of some feeling words for gecko. 

a.     Angry

b.     Frustrated

c.      Resentful

d.     Irritated

3.     The third step is to share your own needs or values.  Underneath every feeling there is a need. I feel happy because my need for love is being met.  I feel lonely because my need for companionship is not being met.  Gecko’s needs might go something like: 

a.     I need sleep because I have a big day tomorrow

4.     The fourth and final step is to make an honest request, and be willing to hear ‘no.’

a.     Would you be willing to move away from my bed?

Gecko: I feel frustrated when you are lighting up at night near me because I need to sleep and rest for a big day tomorrow.  Would you be willing to move away from my bed?

You get the idea?  The point is not to use this process to magically get what you want.  Ideally, fireflies are also able to identify their feelings and needs and requests. They might say, “We feel proud when we light up because we value passing on the warning from woodpecker.  We value being good neighbors in that way.”

Our congregational covenant asks us to speak our truths, and at the same time listen to and honor other people’s truths.

We are always in an ecosystem of sometimes competing needs and values—if we are able to get at those underlying needs and values, rather than making up stories about each other, we open a space of compassion and deeper understanding for self and the other.   We can shift from “she’s just doing that because she’s mean or incompetent or because she doesn’t like me…” to a place of empathy and compassion. 

Think about a relationship you are in right now where you may be experiencing some challenges—is there a way using this process might help you in communicating with that person? 

The final connection I want to make with this story has to do with good intentions.  Our congregational covenant says we will assume the best intentions of others.

This guideline is part of not making up stories about other people.  When I observe someone’s behavior that is annoying or hurtful to me, if I’m able to remember to assume their best intentions it helps me to get curious and ask questions, to wonder about their own needs and motivations.  To not assume that they have it out for me or intended to annoy or hurt me. 

AND.  I want to invite us to add a second part today which is to take into account impact alongside intent. 

The fireflies did not intend to keep gecko awake all night.  In fact, they had really good intentions – to amplify the warning of the woodpeckers.  But their good intentions do not cancel out the actual impact they had on gecko.  Gecko had a real experience of his sleep being disrupted, and just saying that the fireflies didn’t intend harm doesn’t make it right or better.  Buffalo was leaving his manure all over the path – now, he had really good intentions, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was you know what  all over the place.

What one person might think of as being helpful, another person might experience as harmful. 

Example:  principle at the school

We are not a homogenous community, thank God!  We say we want to celebrate all the kinds of diversity among us.  Some of us carry more power or privilege than others, because of an identity we hold.  When a woman or a young person or a trans person or a person of color says – hey, I know you didn’t mean any harm, but what you said or did was harmful to me—can we hear it and accept their experience?

Can we, in community, both hold the good intentions of one another and take responsibility and acknowledge the unintended but real impacts we have on one another?

So, I’ve shared several practices for us. 

1.     Communicating directly with one another

2.     Not making up stories about other people, but identifying our own feelings and needs, so that we can ask for what we need and understand more deeply another’s perspective.  Honoring our own truths as well as the truths of others.

3.     Assuming the best intentions of others AND taking responsibility for the impact we have on others, even if our intentions were good.

I am calling them practices because they take life-long attention.  All of these practices require a certain kind of courage—the willingness to be vulnerable, the willingness to let down some defenses, the willing to be changed-- even transformed-- in relationship with other people.  This is not always comfortable, nor does it always feel safe. 

Some communities have begun talking about creating brave space instead of or in addition to safe space.  In the words of Rev. Ellen Quaadras:  Brave space is “where we call each other to more truth and love, where we are willing to examine what we think we know, and become open to changing our minds, literally changing them, and in so doing, changing ourselves.”

Finally, we are all called to be Tiger sometimes.  To get up on top of the mountain for a bigger view and perspective, to see the beautiful if messy connections among us, and to remember that we gather together in the service of a greater whole, a greater vision, a Love that is greater than any one of us.  We need one another in ways we often don’t know.  In sharing both our love and our struggles, we will create a stronger shelter with and for one another.  A true sanctuary, a sanctuary of courage, a sanctuary for transformation, a sanctuary for our humanity.  Only then will we be that place of life-saving welcome for all people.

I end with this Invitation to Brave Space

By Micky ScottBey Jones     

Together we will create brave space

Because there is no such thing as a “safe space”

We exist in the real world

We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.

In this space

We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,

We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,

We call each other to more truth and love

We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.

We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.

We will not be perfect.

This space will not be perfect.

It will not always be what we wish it to be

But

It will be our brave space together,

and

We will work on it side by side

May it be so. Amen.

2019.9.8 To Be a Refuge

2019.9.8          To Be a Refuge                       Rev. Laura Bogle

Opening Words

 Temple by Steve Garnaas-Holmes (excerpt)

Tourists come to admire the temple,
to take pictures and buy mementos,
but it's not on their maps.

Pilgrims come seeking
their separate peace in it,
but they they can't find it.

Eventually the army arrives,
ordered to destroy the temple,
but it has vanished.

It isn't here, or there,
it isn't in a place,
it isn't a thing.
It is empty space.

It is the love between us.
It is not something that “is,”
but something that happens.
…

In the cool of the sanctuary
we listen to the music
and we breathe.

Reading  Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Arabs used to say,

When a stranger appears at your door,

feed him for three days

before asking who he is,

where he’s come from,

where he’s headed.

That way, he’ll have strength

enough to answer.

Or, by then you’ll be

such good friends

you don’t care.

Let’s go back to that.

Rice? Pine nuts?

Here, take the red brocade pillow.

My child will serve water

to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!

I was not preparing to be busy.

That’s the armor everyone put on

to pretend they had a purpose

in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.

Your plate is waiting.

We will snip fresh mint

into your tea.

2^nd Reading:  -- Declaration of Conscience, joint statement of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, January 2017

At this extraordinary time in our nation’s history, we are called to affirm our profound commitment to the fundamental principles of justice, equity and compassion, to truth and the core values of American society. In the face of looming threats to immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and the LGBTQ community and the rise of hate speech, harassment and hate crimes, we affirm our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We will oppose any and all unjust government actions to deport, register, discriminate, or despoil. As people of conscience, we declare our commitment to translate our values into action as we stand on the side of love with the most vulnerable among us.

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When I asked you earlier to think about what the word “sanctuary” means to you – what came up for you?

I want to invite you today to think about Sanctuary not as a place, but as a practice of solidarity.  A practice of solidarity that we as a Unitarian Universalist congregation without our own physical sanctuary are uniquely called to.

Every week when we light our chalice we say “We remember its origin as a symbol of real sanctuary and we re-commit ourselves to being a place of life-saving welcome for all people, no exceptions.”

For those of you who are newer or might need a reminder I want to tell again where the symbol of the flaming chalice came from in our Unitarian Universalist history—

During WWII the Unitarian Service Committee was formed to give aid and shelter to those trying to escape the Nazis, including Jews, Unitarians, and other targeted groups.  They needed a symbol, a code to mark their communications and to indicate safe haven.  An Austrian artist named Hans Deutsch was on the run for drawing political cartoons that criticized Adolph Hitler.  He was chosen to draw a symbol for the Service Committee and chose a chalice and flame – a chalice symbolizing a healing cup, and the flame to symbolize a spirit of helpfulness and sacrifice.  Later in the 20^th century, congregations in the US began actually lighting a chalice at the start of services and the practice spread.  It is a ritual remembering our willingness to risk ourselves for others.

So, what does it mean to be a real sanctuary. Is this a sanctuary, here that we are in? 

Our congregation, no matter where we have met over the last 12 years – at least 4 different places-- certainly is a refuge for many of us.  And, yes, it has been literally life-saving for some of us to find this community.  I know, because I have heard many many times, from folks that to be able to be in a place where you don’t have to censor what you say, where you can be your true self, where you can question the status quo, where you are among kindred spirits—that can be deep and real sanctuary.  I think it is important, and it is life-giving. 

AND.  If we are only creating sanctuary for ourselves, for those who decide to come to church on a Sunday morning at 10 (newsflash, it is fewer and fewer people), then we aren’t a true sanctuary.  Even if tomorrow a million dollars fell from the sky and we went out and built a beautiful church sanctuary,  if we aren’t continually challenging ourselves to risk what we have on behalf of others, then we aren’t a true sanctuary, we are a social club.

Rev. Charles Grady was a UU minister who died in 2017 at the age of 91.  In his writing just before his death he said that “Our churches are clearings in the wilderness of this time.  Our churches, he said, are places of refuge and sanctuary for the bruised and tired, and also places of healing and renewal. They are ‘workshops for common endeavor,’ breaking barriers and building bridges. Churches… have a clear, strong, holy purpose, and it is more than intellectual stimulation; it is more than the relief of finding a tribe of others of like mind and resting easy in the relative comfort of homogeneity; it is more than friendship and socializing; it’s more than self-expression, or self- actualization, more than anything with “self” in the hyphenated title…”

Please hear me:  Our own needs for care, for nurture, for healing, for shelter and sanctuary might be what brings us to this Fellowship. That is a very good and important thing.  But once we experience that gift, if we are not passing it on to others, like the little girl with the umbrella, then we are not creating a true sanctuary, we are not living up to our own vision to be a model of radical love in this community.

As Jewish and Christian teachings say over and over and over again, we are called to welcome the stranger,

Exodus 22: 21  ²¹ “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”

Matthew 25 :

³⁵ for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ …. ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,^[g] you did it to me.’ 

Or consider the words of contemporary Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye

“The Arabs used to say

When a stranger appears at your door,

feed him for three days

before asking who he is,

where he’s come from,

where he’s headed.

That way, he’ll have strength

enough to answer.

Or, by then you’ll be

such good friends

you don’t care.”

One of the ways congregations, including many UU congregations, are taking these ethical commandments seriously is to provide literal protective sanctuary to undocumented immigrants who are facing deportation.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement usually will not raid a place of worship to take someone into custody, it’s bad PR.

Over 100 UU congregations across the country have proclaimed themselves a sanctuary church, meaning that they are able and willing to physically house and support undocumented immigrants to delay or prevent their deportation.  Including Holston Valley UU Church in Johnson City, and Oak Ridge UU Church.

Late last year, 40 year old Rosa Gutierrez Lopez was facing a situation unimaginable to many of us, but all too common in these days of mass deportation from our country. 

She was under deportation orders but couldn’t imagine leaving her three US citizen children behind:  an 11-year-old daughter and her sons, ages 9 and 6, the younger of whom has Down syndrome.   She was concerned about the lack of resources in central America for her special needs child, let alone the gang violence she fled in the first place.

So, she sought sanctuary at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church in Bethesda, right outside DC.  She has been living at the church since then, supported by a cadre of volunteers from the congregation which is working in partnership with immigrant rights groups and a whole network of area congregations committed to the cause.  As her legal case winds its slow way through appeals, she lives in safety at the church.

Several other UU congregation have also taken people into sanctuary in a similar way.

Does providing sanctuary mean we must have our own building, our own home in which to host people?  Depends on what kind of sanctuary we want to provide, but I don’t think so.  

As many of you know, we had a fabulous Facilities Team working over this last year to research options for our congregation to make a move in the future – they considered all kinds of properties – old churches that are now empty, storefront rentals, purchasing land, there’s been conversation about sharing space with another church or organization.   Nothing is crystal clear, except that it will take lots more money to own a space or even a 24-7 rental.  No surprise there. 

But here’s the question I think we as a congregation need to answer, even more than the money question: Why should we move?  How does moving serve a mission to provide sanctuary to more people in this community, whether they are UU’s or ever become UUs, whether they are “like us” or not. 

I can tell you friends thousands of churches dwindle and close every year now because they can’t sustain their building costs with the kind of church involvement we see in 2019.

So, I want you to tell you some recent stories of sanctuary without a church building—including some stories about us--

When Rosa took sanctuary at Cedar Lane, her three children couldn’t stay at the church with her – they were enrolled in school in Fredericksburg, VA, and they needed to keep going to school.  So the UU Fellowship of Fredericksburg, VA, formed a team to support the three kids, and to provide transportation for them to go back and forth to see their Mom as often as possible.  They didn’t have anyone living in their building, but that was providing a kind of sanctuary and protection.

Right here in East TN when our Witnessing Wednesday crews show up at the ICE office, we set up a table, we provide some hospitality for immigrants who have to wait outside, no matter the weather, to have their paperwork processed.  And yes, we do provide umbrellas when it’s raining.  Actually, ponchos seem best, and I know Witnessing Wednesday crew would welcome donations.

We are providing a kind of sanctuary when we work with Welcoming Immigrant Neighbors of Blount County to give tangible and moral support to asylum seekers here who need help with money, transportation, legal resources as they navigate their case.  We accompany them, turning them from stranger to friend.

There’s the very specific kind of sanctuary involved with being in solidarity with our immigrant neighbors.  But sanctuary doesn’t have to be limited to that.

A Church in Los Angeles decided to turn their downtown property into a parking lot which they rent out through the week—and it brings in a lot of money!  Every week they set up for church in the parking lot under pop-up tents.  You can do that in LA weather.  You think setting up for our services is a lot of work! 

They have said they are dedicated to being a “houseless” church until they can do something meaningful as a church about the affordable housing crisis there.  And they will have meaningful funds to do so because they aren’t spending a huge amount of their budget on a church sanctuary that gets used once, maybe twice a week. They will be spending it on providing housing sanctuary for the houseless.

I talked with Rev. Chris Battle this week – he’s been a pastor for over 30 years, and he served Tabernacle Baptist Church, a historic black church in East Knoxville for 10 years.  Earlier this year he left church ministry to pursue a different kind of ministry—running an urban farm and working on the problem of food disparity in East Knoxville where most folks don’t have easy access to a grocery store or fresh food.  Next to an abandoned old knitting mill near downtown, there are flowers and vegetables growing.  He also connects with other farms in the region who might have a surplus.  Just on Friday he gave away hundreds of pounds of green beans donated by a big farm—green beans that were going to go unsold and rot.  He says he has met more people in the last few months of working on the farm than he did in 10 years of ministry in a church, with people just stopping by and wanting help or wanting to help, or both.  By the way, Chris is going to be our guest preacher the first Sunday in October.

And what about what happened here in Blount County a couple weeks ago when over 700 people came out for our first-ever Blount Pride celebration?  I can testify that for those seven hours, from 3-10pm, we created holy sanctuary for LGBTQ+ folks and their allies, in a restaurant bar.  Being involved in that effort, our congregation touched over 700 people!  And our total budget congregational budget is about $100,000.  Our average Sunday morning attendance is about 50.  I want you to think about that for a minute.

Our opening words this morning say the temple, the sanctuary

“… isn't here, or there,
it isn't in a place,
it isn't a thing.
It is empty space.

It is the love between us.
It is not something that “is,”
but something that happens.”

Some of you might take me to be saying that I don’t think we should work on having our own building. 

That’s not what I’m saying.

The question I want to keep before our Board and the whole congregation as we consider next steps around “facilities” is not what kind of place do we want, but What kind of love do we want to make happen?  What kind of real sanctuary do we want to make manifest in this community?  Let’s get more specific and clear about that, and then consider What resources or facility will make that happen?

As we continue to gather for worship and service, no matter where it is,

May we offer

rest and repair,

connection and comfort.

Here may we find a refuge

May we find our center

our breath,

joining our voices, sharing what we have found here,

Calling up the strength to go out into the world and be sanctuary for others.

May it be so, amen.

2019.8.11 Faithful Wondering

2019.8.11 Faithful Wondering

Intro:

Whoever you are, however you are this morning, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome here to this community, this time and place we make sacred by simply bringing ourselves as gifts to one another.

Our monthly worship theme continues to be “Wonder” this month. 

Wonder is a core spiritual practice for us as Unitarian Universalists. 

We “wonder” a lot, as in questioning, as in being curious, as in not taking someone else’s word for it, but needing to seek ourselves for the truth.

And we also believe the experience of “wonder” --as in standing in awe before the mysteries of life-- is a source of deep spiritual meaning.

Today we’re considering what it means to be faithful in the midst of our wondering and questions.  Do you consider yourself a person of faith?

Wisdom Story: “Answer Mountain”

Reading:

From “Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience” by Sharon Salzburg – Buddhist teacher, also rooted in her Jewish upbringing

“…the tendency to equate faith with doctrine, and then argue about terminology and concepts, distracts us from what faith is actually about.  In my understanding, whether faith is connected to a deity or not, its essence lies in trusting ourselves to discover the deepest truths on which we can rely.” (xiii)

“No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again.  Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair.  Faith links our present-day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life.” (xiv)

When I was in high school I got labelled an atheist.  By which folks meant I wasn’t a person of faith, by which they meant I didn’t believe, by which they meant I didn’t believe in their definition of God, that is I did not subscribe to their theology, their God-talk.

Now, I did not call myself an atheist but I didn’t do a whole lot to argue about it and decided to let people think what they wanted to think. 

The truth is, even then, I did not believe in a supreme supernatural being.  But I also wondered.  I wondered a lot.  How is it that we are here?  Why am I here?  What is life supposed to be about?  Why is there such incredible beauty and goodness and also such pain and suffering and inequality?  How do we make things better?

I still wonder a lot, which is why I am a Unitarian Universalist, and these days consider myself essentially an agnostic!

Now, some of you might be wondering, “but Laura, you talk about God sometimes.  What’s that about?”

I have heard a magic teacher once said that “moments of jaw-dropping wonder (whatever their source) force us to suspend soul-numbing disbelief and open to Possibility!” (from Stephanie Etzbach-Dale)

I have lived long enough to have experienced enough moments of jaw-dropping wonder, that I need some powerful language to contain that mystery, I need language that opens me to possibility.   

The moments of jaw-dropping wonder I am talking about are not just beautiful and nice experiences, like looking at the stars or seeing a beautiful landscape, though I include those.

But also things like – being present when my father died, accompanying a friend over years of varying degrees of mental illness, watching children struggle and grow, the mysterious and ever-changing kind of challenging love that happens in a long term relationship, witnessing people rise up in the midst of terrible catastrophe to save each other.

I think you all know this, but when I say the word “God” I am not pointing to man in the sky who judges or saves.  I am not pointing to any being in any particular place.  I, personally, am pointing more to an action, a movement of love, the energy of life that is in all and that we are always in.  I am pointing to the tiniest seed of possibility for new life that is within even moments of great devastation. 

I can’t prove God, but I want to be awake to the something bigger than any one of us.  And so, I simply choose to use that language, that old powerful metaphorical language that all the great wisdom teachers have said never can really contain the meaning.  You might use different language.

The mystery of life on this earth, in this galaxy, in this universe is too great to be held by any one word, or any final human answers.  As mystical priest Richard Rohr says, a mystery isn’t something that can never be understood, it’s something you can endlessly understand. There’s always more to be known.  As a whole, Unitarian Universalism is an agnostic faith in this way. 

We understand that as soon as human beings make a final pronouncement – whether it is a theological one or a scientific one – very often something else happens that shifts that understanding.  There is no one answer that fits every question, every circumstance.  We are essentially “un-fundamentalist.”

And yet, we are most definitely a people of faith. 

And our language of faith has changed over time.

We are rooted and grew from the radical reformation and liberal Christian protestant tradition.  In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, for a long time Unitarians and Universalists in this country used Protestant language of faith, a basis in Biblical scripture, and plenty of God talk—though we were still considered heretical.  The Unitarians for believing Jesus was an important moral teacher but not God.  The Universalists for daring to believe that God will save everyone, no exceptions.

The transcendentalists in the 19^th century moved us away from traditional faith language and a reliance on Biblical authority– folks like:

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, who read the Hindu scriptures and was partial to the word OverSoul instead of God. 

--and Theodore Parker who preached a famous sermon called “The transient and the permanent in Christianity”—separating the historical forms of the church and its doctrine from the core ethical teachings of Jesus.

Humanists in our movement in the 20^th century steadily broadened us further with their focus on scientific discovery and ethical human action.  They helped us open even further to a way of being religious that wasn’t dependent on a traditional belief in God at all.

And in the latter part of the 20^th century and on in to the 21^st we’ve been influenced by those among us who find faith and meaning in neo-pagan and Buddhist practices.

So here we are today, with this diversity of theological perspective coexisting in one place.  Sometimes well, sometimes uncomfortably. 

Debating language and belief very often disconnects us.   Ask, “Do you believe in God or not?” and the room pretty quickly divides.

Asking each other to describe our faith, what it is we rely on, what comforts us in times of trouble and what lifts us out of despair—that can send the conversation in a very different direction.  Our opening words today were statements of faith members of this congregation wrote several years ago.  How did those statements sound to you this morning?  Does yours need updating, or is it still serving the flourishing of your life and the life of others around you?

We don’t simply claim that the answer is yes or no.  Instead, we build communities of practice, where we covenant with one another, walking together to discover the “deepest truths on which we can rely.”  This is a place where the answers are always under construction. 

From Faith Without Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21st Century By Paul Rasor

“Liberal theology is not for the faint of heart. It points us in a general direction without telling us the specific destination. It refuses to make our commitments for us, but holds us accountable for the commitments we make. The liberal religious tradition is an invitation, not a mandate.

It invites us: -to live with ambiguity without giving in to facile compromise;

 -to engage in dialogue without trying to control the conversation;

-to be open to change without accepting change too casually;

-to take commitment seriously, but not blindly;

-and to be engaged in the culture without succumbing to the culture’s values.

Liberal religion calls us to: - strength without rigidity; -conviction without ideology, -openness without laziness. It asks us to pay attention. It is an eyes-wide-open faith, a faith without certainty.”

Ours is a faith that does not offer any easy answers, but challenges us to grow, to change, to respond to the movements of our spirits--

It challenges us to do some work and to be in conversation with one another—three specific opportunities right now:

Sign-up now for Circles of Trust where you can reflect on your own life experiences and values in supportive community.

Class offering this fall – Faith for the Unbeliever by UU minister Daniel Kanter—small book.  He writes in the introduction: “More than an adherence to a belief system, faith is an orientation to life.  It is loolking out at the world from a particular perspective, and using that perspective to consider the meaning of our existence.”  We’ll have four sessions, each one focused on one chapter of the book – considering Belief, Trust, Loyalty, and Worldview.

Worship service in two weeks – a response to your questions, your wonderings.  What are the questions you are asking right now?  What are you wondering about?  Could be big meaning of life questions, or could be questions related to understanding Unitarian Universalism, or could questions about me or questions about this congregation.  It’s not that I have the answers to all the questions – but this is a chance to be conversation about our wonderings.

We can have a faith without certainty, one that embraces the questions, and yet still be deeply convicted.  This kind of faith without dead certainties is alive, able to breathe and change!  Our faith is called a living tradition because it can be transformed by our own experiences, and by the experiences of those around us, opening us to new possibilities.

This congregation testifies every day to the power of a deeply convicted faith without certainty, a kind of faithfulness that shows up ready for the unknown, a kind of faithful wondering that is eyes-wide-open and present to the truth of our lives. 

It’s less about belief and more about acting faithfully.  As UU Rev. Marilyn Sewell puts it: For Unitarian Universalists, the question is never "What do you believe?" but rather "What kind of person have you become? What are the fruits of your living?" (in The Theology of Unitarian Universalists)

I know many of us in this room have come from other religious traditions where we might have rejected the doctrine and the creeds.  But I also know that showing up here, with one another, is an act of faith.  Showing up beyond Sunday morning to put our values into action is also an act of faith.

We are trusting that there is something more to life, something bigger than ourselves, that we can discover together.  May our lives be an answer to the questions we ask, may our lives be a worthy response to the wonders of this life.

Blessed be and Amen.