“The Worst Thing About Liberals” A sermon by Dave Weissbard The Unitarian Universalist Church Rockford, Illinois

[the curse of liberal parents]

         Parents do the best they can, and most wish they could have done better. We all try to learn from the mistakes our parents made in raising us, so we can do better, but then we see ourselves replicating many of their flaws. The problem in judging them is that all we have to go on are our perceptions of what they did or did not do, and our perceptions are hardly unbiased. Perhaps the very ability we have to critique our parents is a sign of their success in making us freer. 

         My parents were good liberals. They brought me up to believe in the worth and dignity of all people, and they taught me about responsibility. The consistent message I received from them was that it was important to do the right thing, to stand up for the right things, because when you do, good things will happen. They went so far as to join a Unitarian Universalist Church before my birth so I, and then my sister, would be raised in an atmosphere which supported their liberal values. We were taught to value reason and fairness. When there were people in the world who did not treat others fairly and did not behave rationally, we were taught that reason provided the tools to defeat them, so that the long dreamt of “Kingdom of Righteousness” might come about. The vision implanted in us was one of human progress toward perfection through education.

[the worst thing]

         We, and our friends, were provided with a vision. What I believe our upbringing was short on was a healthy dose of reality. Our parents wanted to shield us, to protect us, much as the Buddha was protected from encountering suffering during his childhood. We did not get much help in measuring our adversaries, and we have limited understanding of what makes them tick. We are strong on indignation, but weak on real world skills for putting our vision into practice.

         I don’t want to keep you in suspense. In the context of my title, “The Worst Thing about Liberals,”I believe that the worst thing about liberals is that we are high in vision but short in stamina – we tend to see things from a limited time perspective. We can get all fired up for the short term project, but if it doesn’t turn out the way it was supposed to, we tend to back away. There are many times when I am tempted by the injustice of the world to go to bed and pull the covers up over my head. In a word, I want to suggest that we liberals tend to be sprinters rather than long distance runners in situations in which the demand is for the long haul. Conservatives, by contrast, tend to have a less lofty vision, but that makes them less subject to being thrown off by defeat – they almost expect it.

         A lot of the common stories of our culture ought to prepare us for the challenges of the real world, but we don’t tune in as we might.

[Moses]

         Certainly there is the familiar legend of Moses leading the Israelites through the desert – not for 40 days or 40 weeks or 40 months, but for 40 years! [While there is no reason to accept this as an historical record of a real event, it is part of our mythology – it is one of the stories that has shaped our culture.] By the legend, the Hebrews, who were oppressed by cruel Egyptian taskmasters, were persuaded by Moses to leave the security of their bondage behind and to follow him and the cloud of smoke that was leading him, into the desert and across the Dead Sea, for 40 years in search of a better life. And what happened to the leader when they neared the end of the journey after 40 years? He got to see the “Promised Land,” but he didn’t get to go in. [No explanation is given for his death – in fact, the scriptures attest to his “vigor” at the time, in spite of being 120 years old.]

         Once the people got to the Promised Land, it wasn’t everything they expected either – there were other people living there who did not welcome them with open arms. And, in truth, there was only a very brief period during which they lived there in peace, and the very same struggle continues 3,000 years later. This fundamental cultural story is not one of easy gains in the short haul for the “good guys.” And we complain when things don’t fall into place for us.

[Jesus]

         Certainly we are familiar with the story of Jesus of Nazareth who articulated many of the ideals toward which we aspire. Even without the brutality depicted in the most recent cinematic version of his life story, we know that for no crime greater than speaking as a prophet of a better way for people to live together, he was executed after a three year ministry because he challenged the status quo: he was seen as a threat to the peace. While parts of his message survived him, and he is still remembered, one would be hard-pressed to call the ministry of Jesus a “success” in the short haul.

[Michael Servetus]

         And there is the story of our religious ancestor, Miguel de Servet, Michael Servetus we call him, who applied reason to the scriptural accounts of the life of Jesus, and who came away from that testing compelled to declare the errors of the teaching that Jesus and the deity he called father were one. Servetus was a scholar, writing for other scholars — he was hardly a popularizer or a fomenter of rebellion – but for his efforts, he was burned at the stake by John Calvin in his Geneva, because Calvin believed that Servetus’ use of reason, if it caught on, would challenge the common understanding that was the basis of Christendom: Servetus was seen as a threat to stability and the peace.

[Susan B & Elizabeth C]

         Think about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both campaigned hard to end slavery and to achieve the right for women to vote. They felt betrayed when slavery for African Americans was formally ended, but women were not granted the same recognition of their equality. They worked for another 40 years for that cause and both died before the passage of the 19^th amendment to the constitution in 1920. During their lives they were ridiculed and attacked for trying to change the status quo– we can celebrate the fact that they both lived long lives – they were not killed – but it is clear from the record that they persevered through a long struggle to see their dreams realized, and neither set foot in that promised land. And some would hasten to point out, the struggle for sexual equality was not completed by attaining the right to vote.

[Martin]

         And then there is that issue of slavery and the underlying racial discrimination which was supposed to be resolved by the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil War and the 14^th amendment. We know that 100 years later, the actual civil rights of African Americans were tenuous at best. Throughout the years, there were people, black and white, male and female, in the north and the south, who continued to articulate the dream of racial equality in the face of great opposition. Many gave their lives for speaking of and working for the realization of their dream because they were seen as the cause of civil unrest – threats to the peace. The struggle for civil rights had many martyrs, known and unknown to us.

         The powerful symbol of these many martyrs is Martin Luther King, Jr. As the son of a successful minister, King could easily have chosen longevity. He could have gone to work with his father; he could have stayed in his pulpit in Birmingham; he did not have to go to jail; he did not have to go to Selma; he did not have to come to Chicago; he did not have to go to Memphis.

         Time and again, there were those who urged him to take the safer path, and each time Martin insisted that his integrity, his vision, his mission prohibited the easy choice. He kept working in the face of opposition to try to move America closer to the dream which he had for it, which was, after all, the dream articulated by its founders, but deferred for too long.

         It was not that King was blind to the risks. Eight weeks before he died, he spoke at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and told the people:

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator – that something we call death. We all think about it. And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral. And I don’t think about it in a morbid sense. Every now and then I ask myself, “What is it that I would want said?” And I leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. [First he told them what not to say, and then went on to speak his eulogy.]

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to love somebody. I’d want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say on that day that I tried to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other shallow things will not matter . . . I just want to leave a committed life behind. . .

And the night before his life was taken, the very night before, after speaking of earlier attempts on his life, he ended his sermon at the Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ, saying:

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

[filtered out?]

         Moses, Jesus, Servetus, Anthony and Stanton, Martin Luther King – these are just some of the prophets whose dreams of a better world have spoken to us. These are just some of the people who have devoted their lives to working to try to advance those dreams – not from places of comfort and safety, not as do-gooders who retreated when the going got tough, who turned away fro adversity, but as crusaders who put their lives on the line for what they believed to be important. They had vision, and they believed in their vision. They were not defeated by adversity. What have we failed to learn from them? Have we missed the point of those stories?

         Thursday morning, as I was driving back from Pere Marquette Park, I was listening to Fresh Air on National Public Radio. Terry Gross’ guests were two British reporters, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge who have written a book called “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America.” They point out that following the debacle of the Goldwater defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the conservatives did not decide that what they needed to do was become more liberal. They hunkered down and decided to do the work of articulating their conservative philosophy more clearly and doing the political work necessary to attain victory. Liberals, on the other hand, following the ignominious defeat of George McGovern, decided that the solution lay in shifting their philosophy to be appeal to more conservatives. That difference is significant. For liberals, victory was more important than fidelity. The vision had not succeeded, thus many felt it needed to be changed.

[a lack of backbone]

         Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal Jewish magazine,”Tikkun,” has pointed out that in the recent election, the Democrats chose a candidate who repeatedly insisted that he believed in a war that many Americans oppose – his position was that it was just being fought in the wrong way, not that it was the wrong war. And the candidate insisted publicly that he was ready to fight other wars for the same reasons. Rabbi Lerner suggests that liberals supported the candidate because they believed he didn’t mean what he was saying – that once he was elected, he would change his tune, but he couldn’t be honest or he wouldn’t get elected. Remember how being “electable” was the great virtue during the primaries? Rabbi Lerner says:

Liberals have never had the backbone to [do what the conservatives have done] to articulate and stick with their own visionary perspective – and that lack of backbone is precisely why so many Americans don’t respect liberals. And then, when they hear liberals and progressives saying that articulating the most visionary perspective is “unrealistic” because after all the vast majority of Americans will never be able to respond to that vision, they hear the following: you Americans are too stupid or evil to ever respond to our vision of The Good, so in order to win you over we have to hide from you (and even from ourselves) our own highest vision of what a good society would be like, and instead offer you only those ideas we think will appeal to you even though those ideas do not appeal to us.

         It is Rabbi Lerner’s contention that the worst thing about liberals is our arrogance and contempt for those who disagree with us. While I agree that is a factor, I believe it is secondary, not primary. I believe our denigration of the majority is caused by our impatience, by our lack of commitment to stick with the struggle for our vision over decades rather than just weeks or months. I cannot explain the way things are by attributing it to the stupidity or gullibility or manipulability of 51% of the people. I know where a government led by the “best and the brightest” took us in the past, and it was not a pretty picture. I am compelled to trust democracy as being, as Churchill said, “the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”

[Into the Woods]

         Back in 1988, Steven Sondheim and James Lapine created an unusual musical for Broadway that addressed the concern on which I am focusing. The characters are the familiar fairy tale heroes and heroines - Cinderella, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, Rapunzel, the princes, the Baker and the baker’s wife, among others. In the first act, there is a successful struggle to achieve “happy ever after” by facing the challenge of going “Into the Woods” where tasks are undertaken in the midst of the unknown and the frightening: Cinderella has her prince, Rapunzel has hers, Jack and his mother are living in comfort, the giant is dead, the baker and his wife have a baby, Red Riding Hood is saved from the wolf.

         In the second act, we discover that “happy ever after” is, in fact, not stable, and there are new challenges to face. Jack’s giant was slain in the first act, but in the second there is chaos when the giant’s wife comes to get revenge for what was done to him. It all falls apart, and then order is reestablished, but with the awareness that it may fall apart yet again. Happy is not for “ever after.”

         At the finale, the company sings:

                   Though it’s fearful

                   Though it’s deep, though it’s dark

                   And though you may lose the path,

                   Though you may encounter wolves,

                   You can ‘t just act,

                   You have to listen.

                   You can’t just act,

                   You have to think.

                   Though it’s dark,

                   There are always wolves,

                   There are always spells,

                   There are always beans,

                   Or a giant dwells there.

                   So

                   Into the woods you go again,

                   You have to every now and then,

                   Into the woods, no telling when,

                   Be ready for the journey.

                   Into the woods, but not too fast

                   Or what you wish you lose at last.

                   Into the woods, but mind the past

                   Into the woods, but mind the future.

                   Into the woods, but not to stray,

                   Or tempt the wolf or steal from the giant–

                   The way is dark

                   The light is dim,

                   But now there’s you,

                   Me, her, and him.

                   The chances look small,

                   The choices look grim,

                   But everything you learn there

                   Will help when you return there.

                   Into the woods – you have to grope,

                   But that’s the way you learn to cope.

                   Into the woods to find there’s hope

                   Of getting through the journey.

                   Into the woods, each time you go

There’s more to learn of what you know.

                   Into the woods, but not too slow –

                   Into the woods, it’s nearing midnight.

The musical ends with the line with which it began, Cinderella saying, “I wish.”

[not one time; not alone]

         What the characters in “Into The Woods” learn is that the struggle against adversity is not a one time thing, and it cannot be won from the sidelines. And it cannot be won alone. The struggle for life is not a solitary struggle. Moses was not alone, Jesus was not alone, Michael Servetus would have died at the hands of the Inquisition were it not for those who supported him; Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were not alone; Martin Luther King was not alone. Important things are not accomplished by solitary individuals.

         While I began this sermon by faulting my parents for possibly failing to prepare me for the difficulty of achieving the liberal vision, they did realize how essential it was to be a part of a community with vision, and they provided me with such a community. While I was generally the only Unitarian in my schools, I always knew that there were others who saw the world similarly and that I was not crazy for believing in a world that could be better than it was.

[the long road]

         The path we travel is not a level one nor a smooth one. It does not lead inexorably onward and upward forever.

         Nelson Mandela tells us:

When I walked out of prison, . . . my mission [was] to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on ths distance I have come. But I can rest only a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger for my long walk is not yet ended.

         Friends, we are not living in the promised land. We don’t know how long the journey will be, the road is not clearly marked, but we know we’re not there yet. There are no guarantees that we will ever arrive – the greatest likelihood is that we will not, but perhaps our children, or their children. . . . But we do have a vision, a shared vision of a world in which all people are valued, where all are entitled to peace, liberty and justice in an environment which respects the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part. May we find the insight to keep the vision before us, and the strength to do what is in our power to advance it.