This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Parish in Lexington, Massachusetts. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2002 Daniel Harper.
Readings
The first reading is from The Great Learning by Confucius, translated by James Legge.
“Things have their roots and branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning….
“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout their kingdoms, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their own states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, the first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts….
“Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed. Their States being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.
“From the Son of Heaven down to the masses of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.
Responsive reading: “I Call that Church Free” by James Luther Adams (#591 in Singing the Living Tradition)
Sermon
Recently, I’ve been reading a book of theology with great pleasure. You have to understand that this is a big thing for me: I was trained originally as a philosopher, and we philosophers used to make jokes about theologians; theology is not usually something that gives me pleasure. But I’ve come across this theologian whom I find absolutely delightful and refreshing. He’s Rev. Dr. William R. Jones, an African American humanist theologian who is also an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister.
Among other writings, he wrote a book some years ago, still in print, called Is God a White Racist? I found his book refreshing, because Jones makes no bones about it: we as religious persons cannot avoid the issue of racism. Yes, there are other evils out there. But racism remains one of the most intractable human evils, one of the most destructive human evils, in the United States today. In this time and place, racism is one evil that our religion cannot ignore.
Dr. Jones has inspired me to take on the topic of race and religion this morning. But I’m not going to preach what I think of as the typical Unitarian Universalist racism sermon: I’m not going to try and make you feel guilty. O.K., maybe a little guilty, but no more than usual for a sermon (I mean, what’s religion without a little guilt?).
No, we’re not going to do guilt: we are instead going to do theology. And doing theology is a little like swimming in cold water: the best thing to do is just dive right in. Let’s start with what William Jones calls “the functional ultimacy of humankind.” And no, you can’t change your mind now and have guilt instead of theology.
“The functional ultimacy of humankind.” It’s a precise but confusing phrase. What William Jones means by functional ultimacy is that for all intents and purposes, we human beings are in charge of our own actions. This is not a rehash of the old debate about free will — and a good thing, too, because that old debate about free will never gets anywhere. When Jones talks about the functional ultimacy of human beings, he’s describing the belief that we human beings have to act “as if” we are responsible for our own actions. Doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not — you always have to act “as if” you are responsible for what you do.
While this may sound like common sense to you, there are many people who do not believe in the functional ultimacy of human beings. Here’s a perfect example: if somebody does something bad to you — let’s say someone discriminates against you because of your skin color; let’s say someone beats you up because of your skin color —, and if you respond with resignation, saying “It’s God’s will,” then you do not hold with the functional ultimacy of human beings. Conversely, if you discriminate against someone because of their skin color, and you justify it by saying, “Oh, well, that’s just the way things are,” then, too, you do not hold with the functional ultimacy of human beings. In both cases you are saying, in effect, that people ultimately are not responsible for their actions.
Let’s follow this through another step. What happens if racism — discrimination based on race, violence based on race — is God’s will? I’m assuming, for the moment, that we do believe in God. If racism is God’s will, what does that say about human beings, and what does that say about God? Well, if racism is God’s will, then guess what — God is a white racist! And if racism is God’s will, something humans can do nothing about, that leads to an understanding of human action that is known as quietism. If racism is God’s will, and therefore human beings can do nothing to fight racism, then we all might just as well quietly crawl off into a quiet corner and stare quietly off into space, and do nothing.
At this point, those of you who are humanists or atheists might feel rather smug. Of course racism isn’t God’s will, because there is no God! –you know, “don’t blame me for God, I’m an atheist.” Ah, but just because you are a humanist or an atheist, that does not mean that you believe in the functional ultimacy of humankind. I have heard humanists say something like this: “Well, there’s nothing we can do about racism, because there is obviously a genetic basis to human discrimination based on physical characteristics, it’s something we’re always going to have with us.” In short, these atheists are saying that we are not responsible for our own actions.
Alternatively, I have heard certain humanists say, “Well, you can’t do anything about racism because it’s behavior learned at a very young age and you can’t unlearn it later and it’s this self-perpetuating cycle that we can never get out of. We can’t do anything about it, really….”
As you can see, quietism is not limited to those who believe in God. Atheists and humanists have their own versions of quietism. They have a different explanation, but in the end they say the same thing: It can’t be helped. These people do not believe in the functional ultimacy of humankind. They do not believe that we humans are responsible for our own actions.
I prefer to believe that none of us here is a quietist — none of us holds the belief that our actions are not going to do any good. Each of us believes in the functional ultimacy of humankind. That leads to two very interesting conclusions we can make about First Parish in Lexington:–
First conclusion: In one very important way, it doesn’t matter what you claim you theological position is:– no matter whether you believe in God or whether you’re a humanist or an atheist, no matter whether you’re a pagan or a liberal Christian or a Jewish or a Buddhist Unitarian Universalist; when it comes to taking responsibility as human beings for human actions, all our theological positions overlap. We may say we have somewhat different understandings of the source of evil, but each of us is willing to fight evil in whatever form it may take.
Second conclusion: We believe that we human beings have it within our power to do something about human evil; we have it within our power, and we need not wait for God, or for the forces of history, or chance, or some other non-human power, to come along and take care of the problem for us. If human beings started the problem, if we started racism, we can end it; we human beings can solve the problem.
This starts to sound like a huge responsibility; and you know what, it is a huge responsibility:– you mean I personally am responsible for the actions of humanity? Umm, I personally am responsible for ending racism?! That seems like an awfully big job! So, do you want me to do away with racism today and start working on hunger tomorrow, or can hunger wait until next week?
Meg Barnhouse, a community minister down in North Carolina, wrote a little essay a couple of years ago called “Waitressing in the Sacred Kitchen.” She tells how she used to work as a waitress, how she still likes a waitress that calls her “Hon,” and she writes,
The most helpful thing I grasped while waitressing was that some tables are my responsibility and some are not. A waitress gets overwhelmed if she has too many tables, and no one gets good service. In my life, I have certain things to take care of: my children, my relationships, my work, myself, and one or two causes. That’s it. Other things are not my table…. If I went through my life without ever learning to say, “Sorry, that’s not my table, Hon,” I would burn out and be no good to anybody.
I agree with what Meg Barnhouse says, and I am here to tell you that if you are working hard on other causes right now, if you’re already combatting evil and it’s are taking all your energy, you do not have to take on racism, too. I promised: no guilt. If you have other tables to wait on, then racism is not your table, Hon.
But — to stretch Meg Barnhouse’s metaphor a little too far: We are all waitressing in the same sacred kitchen. The work of all of us, all us waitresses, is connected. There’s a lot of tables and just about enough waitresses to cover them adequately, so if too many waitresses don’t cover their tables, we’re all going to feel the effects. Maybe you don’t have to take on racism, but if your life allows, you do have to take on something. We’re all in the same sacred kitchen, so whatever tables you wind up waiting on, as a good waitress you’re still fighting evil, still working in some way to end oppression and bring about human liberation.
Over the past few years, there has been a lot of loose talk claiming that Unitarian Universalism has no center. There has been a lot of talk saying that Unitarian Universalism isn’t a religion, that we neither believe for anything nor stand for anything. Along with that, there has been a lot of talk to the effect that Unitarian Universalism can’t possibly contain humanists, theists, liberal Christians, neo-pagans, etc. etc.
It’s time we did away with this ill-considered talk once and for all. We do have a center, and we do believe in something: the functional ultimacy of human beings. As Unitarian Universalists, we don’t care whether someone believes in God or not — what we care about is whether your religious beliefs, your theology, requires you to take responsibility for humanity and at some level to fight evil in this world. It’s time we did away with the theological infighting that we sometimes get sucked in to — Christians against humanists, pagans against Buddhists — and it’s time to understand that we all agree on the most important thing: the necessity of the fight against evil. Racism offers a perfect case in proof of this: I don’t care if you believe in God, but if you support the evil of racism, whether you support it directly or indirectly, you don’t belong in this religion.
The fight against racism doesn’t care whether you believe in God or not; the fight against racism simply requires that you, as a religious person, work towards human liberation. This is the basic message of Dr. Jones: humanist, theist, it doesn’t matter because we are all required to fight against oppression and for human liberation.
We still haven’t addressed the question of what form our fight against racism might take. Earlier, we read together responsively a passage by James Luther Adams, one of the greatest Unitarian Universalist theologians we have yet seen. Adams speaks out against the “idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth.” None of our religious beliefs can claim to be absolutely true. He calls for a “prophethood of all believers,” and I might say the same thing in a slightly different way: Each of us has some important and essential insight into truth, into the ultimate reality, but none of us has all the answer.
The way we get closer to the whole answer is to come together in equality and in community, and talk openly with each other. No one of us has the “right” answer to anything. So, for example, no one of us knows the “right” way to end racism. Because none of us has the whole and final answer, we have to listen to carefully to each other, to everyone. We have to listen to theists and atheists, we have to listen to Christians and neo-pagans.
But if we need to listen carefully to everyone, there’s an obvious question that comes up. Don’t we have to listen to white folks and black folks? As far as I know, white folks like me haven’t yet found the answer to racism. I also know that when I look around this congregation this morning, I see mostly white folks. If the whole point of Unitarian Universalist theology, if the whole reason for us existing as a religious group, is to fight evil, particularly the evil of racism — if our religious identity requires us to fight racism, I have this feeling that we need to start opening up our conversations and our congregations to black folks as well as white folks.
We as religious persons cannot avoid the issue of racism; we cannot avoid this omnipresent evil. In our society, there is little that is not tainted by the evil of racism. Saying that things have their roots and branches, Confucius says the cultivation of the person to be at the root of everything — you cannot have a well-ordered kingdom without first ordering your own self. We must begin within ourselves, and as religious persons that means we must begin at theology, at who we are as religious beings; our religious roots. We must require of ourselves that we are responsible for our own actions. We must require of ourselves that we fight evil in this world. And as religious persons we cannot avoid confronting the evil of racism. Anything we do that is less leads to falseness, or to quietism, or to evil.
So it is that I ask of you that you work on theology. It seems like such a little thing, but it is not. I am asking us to be sincere in our thoughts. Our thoughts being sincere, our hearts will be rectified. Our hearts being rectified, our persons will be cultivated. Our persons being cultivated, our families will be regulated. Our families being regulated, we will begin to spread illustrious virtue throughout the world; and the evil of racism will be swept away.
For ultimately we have a message of hope. To say we are responsible for our own actions is to say that yes, we can fight human evil; it is a message of hope. It will not be easy to end racism, or to fight any human evil; we will need courage, and we will have to move onwards in love. But goodness is in our power — goodness is in our power.
Benediction
We have come together as persons of good will,
to support one another in times of trouble,
and to challenge one another to greater good.
We know that we as human beings can overcome human evil,
we can respond to the call that sounds down through the ages,
the call for justice and human liberation.
Let us go forth in love,
let us go forth in courage,
let us go forth carrying this our message of hope.