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.

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) 2001 Daniel Harper.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out to visit my older sister in Indiana. While I was out there, I think Jean and I drove her husband a little crazy; we have too many of the same annoying habits. Like this one: we criticize everything, injustices large and small, denouncing them with great sarcasm. We’d be sitting eating dinner and something (often the educational system) would set the two of us off: “Can you believe that?” “How can we allow things like that to happen?” “That’s appalling!” Jean’s husband an easygoing guy and would just roll his eyes; although once he did say, “You can’t solve all the world’s problems over dinner.”

Jean is also a teacher; she’s a professor of writing at Ball State University in Indiana. I went and sat in on a couple of her classes, and I have to tell you, I wish I were half as good a teacher as she is. It was obvious that her students like her, trust her, respect her; and that she demands, and gets, from them the best work they are capable of doing. We had lunch together after I visited her class, comparing how we teach, and Jean said, “You know, sometimes I think of what I do as a kind of ministry.”

Which got me thinking about my teaching and my ministry. Most of you already know that I am halfway through a two-year ministerial internship here at First Parish, part of my preparation to become a minister of religious education. But what does it mean to engage in ministry of religious education? What is this ministry of religious education, and how is it different from what parish ministers like Helen and Ellen do?

Well, to begin with, I do the things you would expect a minister to do in a congregation, things like preaching and leading worship, officiating at weddings, providing pastoral care and counseling, supporting congregational committees, and so on. I get out into the community as a minister, serving as a volunteer chaplain at Mass General Hospital a couple of times a month. Yes, I teach Sunday school and serve as one of the youth advisors — of course, both Helen and Ellen get downstairs to the Sunday school when they can, and Helen served as a youth advisor for two years not so long ago. So what’s the difference between what I do and what Helen and Ellen do?

I find part of the answer to that question in that venerable document known as the Cambridge Platform. The Cambridge Platform is a document composed in 1646 by representatives from nearly all the congregations then in existence in New England. These representatives came together to set forth the principles of how the New England congregations would govern themselves, not under creeds but with covenants, not under a church hierarchy but with congregational self-governance.

We might not agree with all the wording, nor some underlying principles, but as a whole the Cambridge Platform continues to inform the structure of Unitarian Universalist congregations. Which brings us to an interesting point. The Cambridge Platform calls for an office of “Teacher” to be co-equal with the office of “Pastor”; as we heard in the first reading. This was a recommendation that seems to have been much modified early on. For example, First Parish of Watertown had to remove their Teacher, one Richard Brown, from his office in about 1640 because he was “a man of very violent spirit”; thereupon the congregation ordained one Mr. Knolles, “a godly man and a prime scholar, [as] pastor, and so they had now two pastors and no teacher, differing from the practice of the other churches….”

By the time our own First Parish in Lexington was founded, in 1691, it appears that most churches called only a single pastor. Yet I think we retain an impulse to have both a pastor charged with exhortation and the administration of wisdom as well as a teacher who is to attend to doctrine and the administration of knowledge. Except that we Unitarian Universalists today have no doctrine, right? Aren’t we are a non-creedal religious community? You can become a member of this congregation and no one can tell you what to believe; so how can we have doctrine?

Yet we do have a doctrine. Indeed each week we say the words together here in common worship: “Love is the doctrine of this church.” A peculiar sort of doctrine, it might seem at first, since it is a doctrine that really has nothing to do with words. But let’s make a distinction between a creed and a doctrine, a distinction that perhaps is not made strongly enough in contemporary popular religious discourse. Doctrine is nothing more nor less than teaching or instruction; it comes from the Latin word doctrina meaning teaching or learning. Doctrine can also mean a body or system of principles.

Creeds, on the other hand, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are “A form of words setting forth authoritatively and concisely the general belief of the Christian church” or “an accepted and professed system of religious belief…as expressed…in a definite formula.” We are a post-Christian, non-creedal congregation; we no longer have use for creeds; but we do have a creed.

Our doctrine of love grows (in part) out of the words and deeds of an itinerant rabbi who lived some two thousand years ago in the Near East, a fellow named Jesus of Nazareth. There are many stories about Jesus I could draw upon, but this morning I want to focus on one story in particular. Here’s the story:

To start off with, picture the scene: it’s dusty, maybe it’s hot, there are crowds of people trying to get a glimpse of this rabbi and miracle-worker named Jesus. The Pharisees are there, and they have just tried to trip Jesus up in debate, so the disciples are feeling tense and protective. Somewhere in the crowd, someone has brought children along to see this man Jesus. We aren’t told exactly why they brought their children, but we can guess: around sixty percent of all children died before they reached the age of sixteen, and we can guess that these were parents hoping for a blessing on their children from a healer and miracle-worker. Not that they can get their children anywhere close to Jesus — everyone else is pushing and shoving trying to get close. Besides, the disciples are keeping them away, because the disciples, like many adults of those days, didn’t recognize the full personhood of children.

It is at this point that Jesus turns around, turns away from the Pharisees, turns away from the powerful adults, and turns towards the powerless children, asking them to come to him. Notice that he doesn’t ask the adults to bring the children to him, but he asks the children to come themselves — which I read as a statement of empowering those who are most vulnerable. Then he does indeed gather them up in his arms, an affectionate gesture, and lays his hand on each of them, perhaps in a gesture of healing.

And Jesus says something that yet again points up his teaching of radical egalitarianism: he says that the Kingdom of God is composed of such as the children; that is, the Kingdom of God is all of us, including those who are powerless like children, including those who may not have been seen as full persons. Jesus adds that if you cannot be as a child, you cannot be a part of the Kingdom of God.

In my reading of this passage, the Kingdom of God is not some abstract afterlife for a time to come. The Kingdom of God is here and now. It is here and now, and it is accessible to all, and it changes our way of being in the world. It is a teaching, a doctrine, of radical equality of, and radical love for, all persons.

This story represents one of the roots out of which grows the doctrine of love as we teach it here today. Our teachings of love are based in love and a radical religious egalitarianism that are meant for the here and now. We’re not going to wait for some mythical afterlife to make things better (I, for one, remain unconvinced in the existence of any afterlife). We call upon each other to teach our doctrine of love right now, and right here.

But how are we to teach? Shall we set up weekly classes in the doctrine of love, calling in great lecturers, academics, and scholars to speak to us on this topic? — Mmmm — probably not the best way to teach love, I think.

Instead, recall how Jesus taught his doctrine of love and radical equality of all persons. He used words to teach, yes, but most important are his actions. He doesn’t just say, “Treat children well”; he invites children to come to him. He brings them right up close, so he can be fully present with them. He teaches by example, through his actions, and through his presence.

We see this kind of teaching in the great sages and prophets all down through the ages. Buddha, for example, does not simply offer lectures on how to meditate; he sits and meditates with his followers. Socrates does not just engage in dialogue with other Athenians; he participates fully in the government of Athens, serving as a soldier and a teacher and citizen, and eventually dying to further his belief in right government. Gandhi did more than merely suggest the concept of non-violence; he lived his life in a non-violent manner. The sages and the prophets have always taught through the examples of their lives even more than they teach with their words.

Similarly, one of the best ways we teach and learn the doctrine of love here at First Parish is the way we practice it with children. When we do intergenerational activities here at First Parish, we are all teaching the doctrine of love; as many of us will do in a few minutes when we go down to the intergenerational potluck luncheon after this worship service. When adults go to Social Hour with children, we learn and teach (with love) how not to run, and how to talk with someone who is not your age, and how to share cookies, and how to enjoy the company of someone younger and smaller than ourselves; again we are trying out our skills relating to our doctrine of love.

As for me, as a minister of religious education, I am charged with doctrine and with administering knowledge. As a minister of religious education, I think of the whole congregation as a curriculum that can nurture the doctrine of love across all ages. Thus, while administering the Sunday school and the youth groups is an important part of my ministry, for me what’s most important are the ways I have tried to nurture a sense of intergenerational community; not through creating programs but — at least this is what I try to do — more simply through my presence, through the way I interact with children, youth, and adults. In the ministry of religious education, what I say matters less than who I am, who I am in relationship with children, youth, families, the congregation.

Hmmm. But does this sound all that different from what Helen and Ellen do as parish ministers? Perhaps not; perhaps you could argue that there isn’t any real qualitative difference between parish ministry and the ministry of religious education. And if you argued that, you would fit right in with recent changes within Unitarian Universalism. A separate ministry of religious education was officially recognized in 1980, at a time when our congregations were losing our children at an alarming rate: Sunday school enrollments were dropping, youth groups were dwindling, and when UU kids grew up the vast majority of them left Unitarian Universalism and never come back. Now, 20 years later, Sunday school enrollments are rising, and youth groups are growing at an amazing rate, and young adults are sticking with Unitarian Universalism; and perhaps the need for a ministry of religious education doesn’t seem so pressing.

In fact, there is no longer much denominational support for the ministry of religious education. When I began theological school in 1997, pursuing my ministry of religious education that was focused on children and youth, what I was doing was a firm part of the institutional landscape. This is no longer true. As of six months ago, a separate ministry of religious education is no longer officially recognized, except by individual congregations. For me that has led to a certain amount of personal confusion: is the ministry I want to do still valued? — is it still a viable way to earn a living and contribute my skills and talents?

I believe so. I believe that a crisis facing Unitarian Universalism today as a faith movement, as an institution, is the difficulty we have in claiming our authority to teach young people our great doctrine of love. I feel that the ministry I am devoted to, a ministry to children and youth and young adults, a ministry of doctrine and knowledge, a ministry both of program administration and of personal presence, is still needed as a separate and distinct ministry. I believe that though there are only about 80 Unitarian Universalist ministers of religious education, we have a great influence, just by our simple presence, as ministers devoted recognizing the special needs of passing on doctrine and knowledge, as ministers who devote much of our energy in a ministry with children and youth and young adults.

This I believe. But I’m still learning what it means to be a minister of religious education. I’m not entirely sure of the shape of my ministry — it’s evolving as I do my internship with you, as I learn from you, and share my ministry with you. It’s an open conversation — and I hope to hear from each of you over the remainder of my internship here. How do you envision a ministry of religious education? How can we best pass on our doctrine of radical egalitarianism and love? How do we best minister to children and youth?

This sermon, preached at First Parish in Lexington, Mass., exists in manuscript form only. I hope to convert it to electronic format at some point, though I’ve been promising this for more than twenty years and it hasn’t happened.