This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Church, Unitarian, of Athol, 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.

Honestly, it’s not an especially good sermon. Don’t waste your time reading it.

Readings

The first reading this morning is by Cornell West, philosopher and African-American studies scholar, from his essay “Black Nihilism in America” from the book Race Matters:

“The initial black struggle against degradation and devaluation in the enslaved circumstances of the New World was, in part, a struggle against nihilism. In fact, the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is… the nihilistic threat — that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alove. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that wihtout meaning there can be no struggle.

“The genius of our black foremothers and forefathers was to create powerful buffers to ward off the nihilistic threat, to equip black folk with cultural armor to beat back the demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness. … In other words, traditions for black surviving and and thriving under usually adverse New World conditions were major barriers against the nihilistic threat. These traditions consist primarily of black religious and civic institutions that sustained familial and communal networks of support. If cultures are, in part, what human beings create… in order to convince themselves not to commit suicide, then black foremothers and forefathers are to be applauded. In fact, until the early seventies black Americans had the lowest suicide rate in the United States. But now young black people lead the nations in suicides.

“What has changed? What went wrong? The bitter irony of integration? The cumulative effects of a genocidal conspiracy? The virtual collapse of rising expectations after the optimistic sixties? None of us fully understands why the cultural structures that once sustained black life in America are no longer able to fend off the nihilistic threat.

The second short reading is from the Christian scriptures, Revelation chapter 21 verse 3:

See, the home of God is
among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
They will be his peoples,
And God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more:
mourning and crying and pain will be no more;
for the first things have passed away.

Sermon

Moving away from emptiness. In some sense, isn’t this the goal of all religions, all cultures? Our own religious tradition seeks to create meaning in a world of chance and chaos. In seeking meaning, we move away from that blank emptiness that leads to dismay, despair, even suicide.

But the real question is, how do we manage to do that? If we are moving away from emptiness, what are we moving towards?

In our broader culture, for many people the answer is clear-cut: when we move away from emptiness, when we move towards meaning, we are moving towards God. We are moving towards that final Judgement Day when “death will be no more: mourning and crying and pain will be no more,” and God is going to wipe the tears from our eyes. Or in the words of that lovely old gospel song, “Some bright morning when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away/ To a home on God’s celelestial shore, I’ll fly away// Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away/ To a land where joys will never end, I’ll fly away.”

I love these powerful images: mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and one day, I’ll fly away to a land where joys will never end. I can’t accept these images literally — I don’t believe them — but I accept that they have a kind of beauty. Whether or not I believe in God, I can not believe in a God that is going to literally call me home one day — “hey Dan, c’mon home” — and wipe tears from my eyes.

Since you, too, are sitting here in a Unitarian Universalist church on a Sunday morning, my guess is that you are like me. You cannot accept the old notions of meaning. My guess is that you don’t believe that God is literally going to call you home to heaven, and that if you believe in heaven it is in a manner more like the story this morning about the Zen master. We cannot get the meaning for our lives from the image of a big white man in the sky who, when you finally get to heaven, is going to whip out a pocket handkerchief and dry your tears.

So what does give our lives meaning? Not that we can answer that question in the next 18 minutes! — but I want to explore some alternative images and ideas that I find as beautiful, and more compelling, than that old tear-wiping image. But to begin, I think we have to remind ourselves what the loss of meaning is like, and from there move on to what might keep us from emptiness, keep us from nihilism, keep us from the “loss of hope and absence of meaning.”

In the first reading, we heard about black nihilism in America today. We heard Cornell West’s thoughts about “the nihilistic threat — that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning.” I have a story to share with you that illustrates how deep that loss of hope is.

A few months ago, I read an article in one of the newspapers I read — I can’t remember which one. The article was about the breakdown of a black urban neighborhood. The reporter talked with an older African American woman who had lived in this neighborhood for a number of years, and recently had taken to keeping a loaded shotgun in her apartment.

One day, she heard the sound of breaking glass, and she went to investigate. She found a young black man had broken into her ground floor apartment, and she confronted him in a passageway, carrying the loaded shotgun. Instead of turning and running, he just looked at her and said something to the effect of, go ahead and shoot, what have i got to lose?

For this African American woman, this young man epitomized what is happening in her neighborhood right now. That young man felt he had nothing to lose — he truly did not care if she shot him dead, for he had lost hope.

Talk about a loss of a sense of meaning!

I have my own brand of nihilism, not nearly as desparate as that young black man’s, but powerful in its own way. My nihilism, my sense of emptiness, started in my late teens when I became convinced that the world was going to end in nuclear holocaust. People who are a few years older than me remember atomic bomb drills at school, where you learned how to hide under your desk in case of atomic attack. By the time I had gotten into school, they didn’t bother any more. When I first started working in churches eight years ago, this was still a major concern of children. I remember talking with ten year olds who were convinced that there was a pretty good chance they wouldn’t make it to age twenty — although it seems to be far less of a concern with children now.

Well, as long as we are wallowing in despair, I’m sure you can find your own personal hopelessness and loss of meaning. the loss of hope that has arisen in the past couple of decades due to the growing gap between the very rich and the rest of us, and the fact that that real wages have been in decline since about 1973. Oh, and more recently, instead of preventing terrorism, the leadership of this country appears bent on starting a war to support oil that many of us feel is going to increase the danger of terrorism. As I say, I’m sure you have your own candidates for things that cause a debilitating loss of hope. So now, I think we have a pretty good feeling for the loss of meaning.

Are you all depressed now? I know I’ve gotten myself all depressed. So let’s all remember that our goal is not to feel any more hopeless than we already may feel. No, our task this morning is to find a way out of hopelessness and nihilism. But if we can’t turn to the old comfortable pop notions of God, can we let other images have the same power for us?

If you were here two weeks ago to hear me preach, you’ll know that lately I’ve been reading a fair amount of Confucius, and works in the eastern tradition. The children’s story this morning is one pretty good example of an alternative image. The Zen master — the person of wisdom — confronts the samaurai with the image of heaven and hell as inside ourselves.

That’s from the Buddhist tradition. But I find the images of hope and meaning in the Confucian tradition to be more compelling. So let’s looki at two books from that tradition, the Analects, written by Confucius himself, and the I Ching, which Confucius allegedly edited, and from which he drew inspiration.

The “Analects” first. And the “Analects” present an inresting image for meaning — the bureaucracy. Yes, the bureaucracy. In his surviving works, Confucius comes across as a very pragmatic person. He is focussed on people, and their relationships with one another, and how we can make those relationships work smoothly and with justice. Ideally, this is what bureaucracies do.

To lead towards that ideal bureaucracy, Confucius asks us to be concerned with both leadership and with management. What’s the difference, you ask? In the workplace, a leader is someone who sees the big vision for the company and inspires people. A manager makes sure you get paid regularly. In order to make the relationships between people run smoothly and well, you need both inspiration and a paycheck.

So in the “Analects,” Confucius writes about management: “In preparing the governmental notifications, P’i Shan first made the rough draft; Shi Shu examined and discussed its contents; Tsze-yü, the manager of Foreigh intercourse, then polished the style….” (14.9). This is management. We have to get something done, and the best way to get it done is to work on it together, each doing a part of the task.

Then Confucius also writes about the most abstract, inspirational, big vison stuff: “The Master standing by a stream, said, ‘It passes on just like this, not ceasing day or night!’” (9.16) This relates more to leadership, to the big vision stuff. Things are always changing, and someone has to make the bureaucracy change, too.

Confucius tells us in quite specific terms how to work cooperatively together on a project, and at the same time he introduces a big philosophical picture: life is like a constantly changing stream, and the only way we can effectively deal with the web of human relationships is to accept that change is the only constant. Both these passages lead to the same ultimate goal: making the web of human relationships work, and work well. This is the image of the bureaucracy.

This last concept is in fact essential to what Confucius is trying to teach us: Nothing stays the same, ever; everything’s changing. And if you think back to the stereotyped traditional image of God, this is radically different. The traditional God never changes; and I feel this is the biggest problem we Unitarian Universalists should have with the traditional God. We can learn a lot about change from Confucius and his image of the bureaucracy.

Traditionally, Confucius is supposed to have had a hand in editing or putting together one of the ancient classic books of Chinese culture, the “I Ching” or Book of Changes. This classic Chinese book underlies everything Confucius says and thinks. Just from its title, you can guess what the book is about: change is the only constant, and to understand the world you have to understand change.

I particularly like the “I Ching” because it presents vivid images to describe change, and how change operates. Let me give you one such image: an open mouth, with an obstruction of some kind between the teeth. Because of this obstruction, “the lips cannot meet” — unless you bite through. This image of biting through, says the “I Ching,” “indicates how obstacles are forcibly removed in nature”; and this concept can be applied to creating harmonious social relationships. Take, for example, the image of biting through tough, dried meat and biting into something poisonous. This, says the I Ching, is a metaphor for administering justice to someone who is resistant to justice, and the poison is a metaphor for their hatred and anger.

Biting through is a vivid image of acting when action is required. But here’s another image from the I Ching:

Mountains linked one to another: this constitutes the image of Restraint. In the same way, the noble man is mindful of how he should not go out of his position.

Things cannot be kept in a state of movement forever but eventually are brought to a stop….

Restraint means ‘stop.’ When it is time to stop, one should stop, when it is a time to act, one should act.

Changed circumstances require a new approach. Rather than vigorously biting through an obstruction, sometimes you have to be still, like one mountain in a chain of mountains. One commentary on the I Ching says “Whether to act or to remain passive, whether to draw in or extend oneself, there is only change to indicate what is appropriate.”

It would be nice if there were one simple easy answer for what to do in all situations, but there isn’t. The genius of the I Ching is in its recognition that there is no ideal, no utopian final answer.

And so the I Ching presents us with a bigger image: the image of change as constant. We’re not always going to be able to correctly judge the situation, and even when we can judge the situation correctly we’re not always going to be able to do anything about it — and in these cases, there’s no blame. But ultimately, we have to take responsibility for staying engaged with change. We have to keep trying.

Turning back to the problem of hopelessness and nihilism: the hopelessness felt by many black Americans today; the hopelessness you or I might feel when confronted with the still very real possibility of nuclear holocaust.

Confucius writes about how to lead and manage human insitutions. For Confucius, the human institutions of family and government are what keep us going, what keep us from hopelessness. Of course, as Confucius knew all too well, families and governments are not always just. In our first reading, Cornell West told us about how black Americans found hope in the face of an actively hostile white government. He writes about how his black foremothers and forefathers worked to “equip black folk with cultural armor to beat back the demons of hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness,” and that cultural armor consisted of “black religious and civic institutions that sustained familial and communal networks of support.” So it’s also our cultural institutions, including churches, that keep us going, that keep us from despair — maybe even more than any other institution, we create meaning for ourselves within these voluntary cultural institutions.

Whether or not you believe in God, it’s clear from Cornell West that we have to find new ways for creating meaning within human institutions. We have to rely on each other, we have to rely on the web of human relationships. I believe we have to be responsible for each other. As Cornell West implies, the breakdown of the old black American culutral institutions has led to an great increase in suicide rates within the black community. Without the human cultural institutions, hopelessness sets in.

It is right here, in places like this very church, where we come together and create meaning together. Meaning has to be recreated in each generation, it has to be recreated constantly, that is the work we are engaged in together, right here and right now. Not that I can give you a firm and final answer as to what that meaning is — it changes, grows, evolves — that’s why we have to come back every week

Ultimately, because we come together to recreate meaning for ourselves, there is hope. I can’t literally believe that God is going to wipe the tears away from my eyes, but I believe in the metaphorical truth of that image. We come together in a changing world, and just by that coming together, there is hope.

This sermon, preached at First Church, Unitarian, in Athol, Mass., exists as a printed copy only, which I seem to have lost. It was an extensively rewritten version of a sermon titled “The Uncomfortable Question” (which also exists in manuscript form only) from August, 2001.

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.