Stretching for Beauty
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
October 4, 2009

Readings

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the LORD said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Mattering, anon
adapted by Mark Hicks

My father asked if I am gay
I asked Does it matter?
He said, No not really
I said, Yes.
He said get out of my life.
I guess it mattered.

My friend asked why I talk about race so much?
I asked, Does it matter?
He said, No not really
I told him, Yes.
He said, You need to get that chip off your shoulder.
I guess it mattered.

My neighbor asked why I put that ramp up to my front door.
I said, Does it matter?
He said, No not really
I told him because it made my life easier.
He said, Is there a way to make it less obvious‖?
I guess it mattered.

A member of my church asked why I like gospel music.
I asked, Does it matter?
She said, No, not really.
I told her that it connects me to my southern, Christian childhood.
She said, I think you‘re in denial about your oppression.
I guess it mattered.

My God asked me, Do you love yourself?
I said, Does it matter?
She said, YES!
I said, How can I love myself? I am gay, Latino, disabled, and a Christian in a hostile climate.
She said that is the way I made you.
Nothing will ever matter again.
~ from Building the World We Dream About by Mark Hicks [Note: originally written anonymously by a gay, high school student and adopted for the curriculum.]

Message: Stretching for Beauty

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2009.

She said, “that is the way I made you.”
How can I love myself?
She said, “that is the way I made you.”

I’ve told, from this pulpit, stories –
mostly true stories,
which is to say, stories adapted and combined,
but with a true spirit –
I’ve told, from this pulpit, stories
of people who ventured into Unitarian Universalism.

My second Sunday with you,
I told a story about Rebecca,
who worked in an office.
Rebecca kept getting messages about
how this or that would make her happy:
the washing machine, the new cereal, etc, etc:
and kept thinking,
this isn’t what I am looking for.
She was looking to be found.

I told the story of Rob,
who wanted to know,
if Unitarian Universalism was Christian,
and that whole conversation.
And Jenny, who had overheard,
and shared the story of her sister,
who had visited a Unitarian Universalist church,
but not been as well welcomed as she should have:
and I told you that we would do better.

I told you the story of Emma,
who is keeping bar when
a Sufi, a scientist, a pastor, a rabbi, a bodhisattva, a sage, and a witch walk in.

There’s been some others:
folks who have been asking questions
about what their life means,
where they might find a religious home in the world,
a place that honors their full selves,
and who have tried out Unitarian Universalism.

In none of these stories have I identified the race or ethnic heritage
of the protagonist.
You might have imagined them in your mind’s eye,
and you might have imagined them to be Caucasian,
or maybe you imagined them to be other than Caucasian,
but I didn’t say one way or the other.

I want to tell you some stories today:
these are true stories.
Not mostly true, all the way true.

Joseph is a community organizer and a minister in Portland, Oregon.
It’s still strange for me to call him Joseph,
because I’ve known him since I was three and he was seven,
back when he was Joey.
Joseph was raised in a Unitarian Universalist family,
and loves this faith.
Joseph was transracially adopted –
which is to say, his parents are white,
and he isn’t --
Joseph is Asian/Pacific Islander by ethnicity.

It is different now –
but back then,
when we gathered at the Pacific Northwest District family camp
or, later, when we were teenagers at CON’s,
Joey was often the only non-white face in a crowd of 200 or more people.

Joseph is cool, friendly, loving.
He puts people at ease.
But I know, cause we’ve talked about, that it wasn’t always easy.

I remember once,
we were at a youth conference,
and we all sang a song –
it’s actually a song in our teal hymnals now,
siyahamba.
And the words – siyahamba, ekukhanyemkwenkos –
they are Zulu words:
we are marching in the light of god.
But the person introducing the song,
who is a good person, with good intentions,
and no evil will, she said
they were “African” words.

I was disappointed and dismayed.
Joseph was furious.
This kind of thing happens all the time.
It makes it hard to feel safe in a faith home.

Does it matter?
It mattered to Joseph.

My friend Kristen is also a Unitarian Universalist minister,
– she’s black.
She was also raised as a Unitarian Universalist,
and loves this faith deeply.

She got the call to ministry pretty early in her life.
She went to seminary –
and the stories she told me of how she was treated,
well, it would turn your skin cold.

She was ignored by professors and other students,
who acted as if she wasn’t in the room.
People assumed she didn’t really understand Unitarian Universalism,
that she was some kind of interloper.

What I love about Kristin is that she doesn’t back down,
but that just made things harder for her.
She stuck it out, and graduated, and has served two churches,
and is a great minister.
But it’s hard.
Who she is matters to her,
and she doesn’t like to be a world where people can’t see her.


My friend Rosemary is one of the most beloved ministers
in our association.
A former editor of the New York Times Review of Books.
She loves this faith.
We have a number of more or less middle-age African American women.
including Rosemary,
who are ministers in our association,
and I’ve heard them laugh –
for what can do but laugh, they’ll tell you –
about how often they are mistaken,
by other ministers and lay folks,
for each other.
Rosemary, walking down a hallway at a conference center,
hears “Marjory!” and knows the person is trying to speak to her.
Marjory hears “Thandeka”
Thandeka hears “Rosemary.”
And so on.

Rosemary is not sure that her two
sons will find a home in Unitarian Universalism.
They don’t feel welcomed.
They don’t feel, often enough, free to be who they are.

I could tell you more stories, but you get the picture.

These are folks who love Unitarian Universalism
enough to stick it out.
Love this faith enough to deal with the exclusion,
the occasional rudeness,
the second looks,
the implied question: do you really belong here?

It is not that everyone treats them this way, of course.
Most of our folks really do live out their values,
they are kind, and hospitable, and loving.

The fact that this historically-white denomination
was the first to elect an African-American,
Bill Sinkford,
as its president,
and that we have now elected, as Bill’s successor,
a Latino, Peter Morales,
these facts do NOT mean that racism has vanished among us,
but neither are these facts meaningless.

We are trying to live into the dream.
We are trying to walk our values.
But we’re not there yet.

Every Unitarian Universalist congregation
which I have been a member of
or served as a minister:
in suburban Seattle,
in Minneapolis,
in Colorado Springs,
here in Rockford,
even the 40 member fellowship in Green Bay –
every one of these churches had some folks
who identified as people of color.
Like the white folks among us,
some were raised as Unitarian Universalists
and some came into it as adults.
Like the white folks among us,
some like their religious experience to be calm, highly rational,
with very little, if any, traditional religious language, like God and prayer.
Others, like other white folks among us,
like their religious experience to be energized, touch their heart,
and engage the powerful metaphors and language of Christian faith.

My congregants and my colleagues, my friends,
who identify as people of color are a diverse lot –
they are of many generations,
many geographic origins,
many native languages and accents,
many varieties of Unitarian Universalist faith,
many different life experiences and families.

They are diverse.
Which is another way of saying,
they are beautiful.
they are beautiful.
We, as a whole, are more beautiful when they are in the room,
than when they are not.

This is my fundamental conviction:
diversity is beautiful.
All the people in all their colors,
all the flowers in the sunlight,
this is beautiful.

And this is the world we now live in:
When I gather with my extended family,
there are people with at least four different ethnic and racial identities.
When we get together with our friends,
there are many colors, especially among the children.
I know many of your families are like this too.

It’s not the future.
It’s now.
Unitarian Universalism is trying to catch up,
and trying to get in the game.
We have a ways to go,
although we’ve come farther than some.

It is, unfortunately, still true:
indeed, it is more true than ever before:
Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.

The rest of society grows more integrated,
but churches stay segregated.

People who live in the same neighborhoods,
who play and work and eat together,
go to different churches.
If they go to church at all.

Why?

The account of the tower of Babel gives us one answer:
that the gods were threatened by the unity of humanity,
and so scattered them.

Another answer is found in the history of religions.
I remember, once, that a member of my wife’s family
said something like,
“We were always Presbyterians. I don’t know why,
we just were.”
And I answered: “You were Presbyterians because you were Scotch-Irish.”
Religion, tribe, language – these are all tied up together.
One needs only to drive around Rockford
to see the way in which immigrant communities banded together
by religious affiliation,
as a way of surviving in the world.

Swedish Lutheran.
German Lutheran.
Italian Catholic.
Black Baptist.
And so on.

We human beings search for identity – we want to know who we are,
and who we belong to.
We are, in other words,
tribal creatures.

It seems to me that the story of Babel is an attempt to explain
why we are tribal people.
why, when humanity has a single origin,
are their different nations and tribes?

I don’t know about the gods getting jealous
of a brick tower that reaches the heavens.
I think is just part of who we are:
we are tribal.
We need a sense of identity to navigate the world.
We need to say,
these are my people.
I belong to them.

The danger is not in having a sense of identity.
The danger is when that sense of identity
becomes idolatry:
when we think that our tribe is god,
when we think that our tribe
is the “natural way of doing things.”
The tower of Babel was a problem,
not because it united humanity,
but because it was a sign of hubris,
idolatry.

As Unitarian Universalists,
I long for us to do something new under the sun:
to build a new tribe,
which has nothing to do with the color of skin
or accent or heritage.

to build a new tribe,
based on covenant, love, and the bonds of affection.
A tribe open to all people who seek to join it.
A tribe which holds diversity within the tribe
to be just as beautiful
as the diversity of the world.

She said, I love you. I made you this way.
How can I love myself?
I made you this way.
You belong.

We are our grandmother’s prayers
we are our grandfather’s dreamings
We are lovers of life and the builders of nations . . .

That beautiful song is by Ysaye Barnwell,
a member of Sweet Honey in the Rock,
an African-America,
an Unitarian Universalist.

We are our grandmother’s prayers,
our grandfather’s dreamings.

And here is the rub:
one of my grandmothers was a difficult, prejudicial woman.
She didn’t like people who were different from her very much.

My other grandmother is a flaming liberal,
and, in the abstract, is a full supporter of civil rights –
but she’s said some pretty rude things about Latinos and Latinas.

Yet each of these women knew and know
that the world of justice and righteousness,
which their respective Lutheran and Unitarian faiths proclaim,
is a world in which all people,
regardless of race or ethnicity,
are treated with decency, care, and justice.
Our task, as always, is to bridge the gap
between our ideals and our actualities.

We are the prayers of our ancestors.

And we are lovers of life and builders of nations.
We are building a new tribe.
We are stretching for beauty,
doing the work to be more inclusive, more diverse, more just.

We are stretching for beauty.

Will you stretch with me?

This is work, folks.
It doesn’t happen just cause we want it.

I want to see this church
be on the leading edge
of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s effort
to grow in diversity.

I think we can do it.

We have some good history to build on.

Part of that history is your individual work for racial justice.
Norah was on the board of the Booker T. Washington Center.
I know others of you work for or with organizations committed to racial justice:
the YWCA, Rockford Urban Ministries, Girl Scouts, and many more.
This is critical, and I hope that more of you will engage this question
in your personal and professional lives.
And don’t be afraid to tell folks that you are moved to do this work
because of your faith in one humanity.

This congregation has been a pioneer in similar areas, as well –
in the late 1970’s you had as intern student ministers
two openly gay men, both of who have gone on to very distinguished ministries,
when few other churches would do that.
You were proud to endorse and ordain the afore-mentioned Thandeka
as a minister,
when not all our churches, frankly,
were so willing and encouraging to her ministry.
And whether it is next year, or three years from now, or later,
one of these years we’ll have an intern who identifies as a person of color,
and we can demonstrate our hospitality and inclusion,
and help our movement on this path.

But we also have some work to do.

We’ve made a ton of progress in the last 14 months,
but we need to be more comfortable with traditional Christian language.
I need to include more diverse examples and referents in my preaching –
and you need to be OK with that.

The vampire sermon two weeks ago was partly for my own sense of fun,
but it was partly to stretch you – generationally, rather than racially –
but to stretch,
to use images, metaphors, and myths
which appeal to the folks on the margins of this church
more than they might appeal to folks who are used to being in the center.

It was a kind of test, and you handled it pretty well,
so there will be more of that.

And we will need to set firm limits,
and enforce them at a peer-to-peer, member-to-member level,
for acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
It can’t fall to me to call you out when you say something inappropriate.
You’ve got to encourage and strengthen each other for this journey.

These are just some hints for what we must do together.

But let me also tell you this:
my friend, Peter Morales, now the president of our association of congregations,
told me this:
he says, the problem is not that we are not attracting enough people of color.
the problem is that we are not attracting enough people.

the problem, he says, is not that we are insufficiently hospitable
to those who have often been marginalized, ignored, and oppressed:
the problem is that we are insufficiently hospitable
as a movement,
to everyone who walks through our doors.

And, when there is a cultural difference,
and a history of difficulty,
then that lack of welcome is experienced even more bitterly.

In our society, especially in our religious lives,
there is a lot of foul water under the bridge,
and you have to make the extra effort to repair, renew, and reach out.

You have to stretch for beauty.

Will you stretch with me?

One of my favorite songs in our hymnal is the one we’ll sing in a moment:

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table.
I love it –
it has that univeralist message of welcome and joyfulness
that resonates in my heart.

But a friend of mine – a person of color –
said to us once,
why is that white UU’s sing that song,
and think they are the hosts?

We think we are the ones setting the welcome table
for others.
But that is not the theology of this song.
The theology of this song
is that the god of many names,
the spirit of life and love,
the bountiful universe,
sets the table,
and all people are invited.
We are all guests here.
She said, I love you. I made you this way.
No one is normal.
No one is abnormal.
We are all guests here,
we are all invited to sit and feast,
we are all invited to the table.
Let us stretch for that good news.
Let us reach for that vision.
Let us build that new tribe.
Let us begin today.