Transform Our World
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
September 12, 2010


Story: Swimmy by Leo Lionni

Readings

From the Qu’ran (4:85—86)

From Theodore Parker

If the church be true, many things which seem gainful in the street and expedient in the senate-house will here be set down as wrong, and all gain which comes there from seen to be but a loss. If there be a public sin in the land, if a lie invade the state, it is for the church to give the alarm; it is here that it may war on lies and sins; the more widely they are believed in and practiced the more are they deadly, the more to be opposed

Here are the needy . . . It is justice more than charity they ask. Every beggar, every pauper, born and bred amongst us, is a reproach to us, and condemns our civilization. For how has it come to pass that in a land of abundance here are men, for no fault of their own, born into want, living in want, and dying of want? and that, while we pretend of a religion which says all men are brothers! There is a horrible wrong somewhere. Here too are the drunkard, the criminal, the abandoned person, sometimes the foe of society, but far oftener the victim of society. Whence come the tenants of our almhouses, jails, the victims of vice in all our towns? Why from the lowest rank of people; from the poorest and most ignorant! Say rather from the most neglected, and the public sin is confessed and the remedy hinted at.

In the midst of all these wrongs and sins, the crimes of men, society, and state, amid popular ignorance, pauperism, crime, and war, and slavery too--is the church to say nothing, do nothing, nothing for the good of such as feel the wrong, nothing to save them who do the wrong?

Let us have a church for the whole [person]; truth for the mind; good works for the hands; love for the heart; and for the soul that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith … which, like lightening in the clouds shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark.

Message: Transform Our World

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

In late July, I, along with a few dozen other Unitarian Universalist ministers
and a few dozen lay folks, made the trip to Phoenix, Arizona.
We went to protest and stand in witness against
the anti-immigrant Arizona law, SB 1070,
which was to go in effect on that Thursday.

I went because my good friend and colleague,
the Rev. Susan Fredrick-Grey,
who serves our church in Phoenix,
asked us to come.

When the plane landed, Wednesday afternoon,
and they let us turn on our phones,
I checked my email and looked at the latest headlines –
and saw that a Federal Judge had stayed some of the law –
I breathed something of a sign of relief,
and wondered, now what?

We gathered at the church,
and heard about the parts of the law that hadn’t been stayed,
including the part about how it is illegal to transport someone who is unauthorized to be in this country –
even, say, a citizen child driving his unauthorized mother to the doctor,
would be a crime.

We planned out the activities of the next day.
We prayed and got ready.
People who were prepared to be arrested filled out forms,
emergency contacts and the rest.

Thursday morning, early, we gathered for an interfaith service,
then we marched downtown.

A group of mostly Unitarian Universalists sat down in the intersection
outside the Wells Fargo building,
which was also the home of the Maricopa County Sheriff,
Joe Arpio.

Sheriff Joe is under federal investigation for routinely
having his deputies arrest, follow, and harass opponents,
he’s also under investigation for massive civil right violations.

He’s known for making inmates wear pink underwear –
though, frankly, I could care less about that –
but also for housing arrestees –
many of whom are never charged, let alone convicted –
in tents outside.
With no air conditioning.
In Phoenix.
In the summer.

Sheriff Joe and his deputies, about once a month,
mount up and go into a Latino neighborhood,
and arrest everyone they can –
changing lanes without signaling,
broken taillight,
loitering,
whatever they can think of.
They check for warrants,
take as many as they can to jail.
They like to take folks to jail
because the feds no longer allow them to do what they used to do:
check immigration status at the site of the traffic stop.


These raids terrorize communities –
and, of course, raise crime since folks in these neighborhoods
don’t call the cops, don’t cooperate with investigations.

Anyway, the protestors sat down on the street outside the Wells Fargo Building,
and blocked a couple of streets.
The city of phoenix police moved in,
gave a little time,
then arrested the protestors.
The city police were, I have to say,
professional, dignified, respectful.
A model of public service.

But the jail is run by the sheriff,
so the protestors got placed there –
where they saw, with their own eyes,
Sheriff’s deputies beat a Latino inmate with no provocation,
where they sat all night in holding cells with all the florescent lights on,
and so on and so on.

Another protest was held outside the jail later that Thursday,
and a few more folks were arrested,
including Susan Fredrick-Grey and Peter Morales,
the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
I chose not to get arrested, myself
I had a two-month old at home,
and I’ve done it before and we had enough volunteers.

After the demonstrations and the arrests, we re-gathered,
worshiped, debriefed,
I got a plane home on Friday night.

Did it matter? That we went?

Sure.
I lost track of the number of times I was stopped –
I was wearing my black clerical shirt with white collar –
and told, thank you for coming –
by Latinos and Anglos and others, too –
thanks for coming, thanks for caring about us,
thanks for standing with us so we are not alone.
Thanks for taking one more step with us.
That mattered.

About a month after the protest, Wells Fargo told Sheriff Joe that he had to relocate his offices –
they didn’t want the controversy.
Marginalizing would-be dictators is a victory.

The Justice Department sued the Sheriff to release documents
as part of their civil rights probe.
It’s frankly only a matter of time before he is charged by the feds,
although why it’s taken this long remains a mystery to me.

And it changed us – it gave us skin in the game,
credibility with our allies –
Unitarian Universalists were the largest faith group present –
not per capita, not as a percentage of our small numbers,
but the largest, by far.

I could say a lot more about my trip, what I saw and what’s happening,
but that’s enough for now.

The reason I choose today to tell part of this story
is because this is one of the many ways we,
this church,
transform our world.

My trip there, to stand in solidarity with others,
to witness and support,
was paid for by you,
as was my time.

When I spoke to the media,
when I stood between heated antagonists,
when I thanked the city of phoenix cops for their professionalism,
I was able to do those things because of you,
because, in the act of installation as your minister,
you called me to speak the truth in love
and to “set forth, by my example not less than by my precept,
the religious way of life.”

But that’s just one moment, one motion,
of the transformation of the world.

Transformation can be about big national and international issues,
it can be public and visible and risky,
or it can be smaller and intimate,
it can be when a young man, raised in our faith,
appreciative and honoring of religious diversity,
sits down at a lunch room table with the pagans,
or speaks up in class when someone else says the Muslims are evil.
Says, no they’re not.

We transform our world, little by little,
when we do the work of democracy –
vote, write letters, attend candidate forums and ask tough questions,
learn, keep our mind open but our hands firmly on our core values.

We transform our world, in ways deeper than we can imagine,
when we raise children to love and trust and be curious about that world.

We transform our world when we say yes,
when we serve with others the common good,
when we build institutions,
when we are creative and bring beauty into presence.
when we refuse to surrender our humanity

And we transform our world when we share our ideas,
when we are visionary about the cause of justice,
about the worth and ideal of democracy,
and about the possibility of humanity to rise to the challenges of our time.

This is what I want to emphasize for you this morning:
ideas matter.
Vision matters.
Theology and values matter.

There are a lot of ways to make the world a better place,
to make it more full of love and kindness,
to make it more beautiful and less cruel.

But without vision, without a sense of purpose,
we are a beautiful flower with no water, no light to reach for.
We need vision, and we need reassurance that the journey is worthy.

Maybe you’ve heard about the new rug in the Oval Office –
it has five quotations around the edge –
quotations which inspire the President –
the quotations are attributed to each of the Roosevelts,
Kennedy, Lincoln, and King -
but I think you should know that three of these quotations
have their origin in Unitarianism and Unitarians.

The first two of these three Unitarian quotes
are things first said by the Unitarian minister Theodore Parker –
we’ve sort of made this Parker day here –
with his picture on the cover of your order of service,
his words for the introit and for one of our readings.

It was Parker who said that
we should have a government of all the people,
for all the people, and by all the people.
Lincoln read that sermon, left off the alls,
and said it in the Gettysburg Address.

Parker’s statement, and Lincoln’s, is, of course,
aspirational.

We do not have a government of all the people,
for all the people, and by all the people.
The choral anthem says we keep the promise to turn our hand toward good,
to refrain from evil,
and we do so because we’ve made a promise,
a promise for all of the dreams of the children,
daughters of sons of daughters,
but children don’t get to vote,
let alone do we typically take into account
the world we are making for the daughters of sons of our daughters.
Politicians are bought and sold by the most powerful,
and the poor, what Parker rightly called the most neglected,
struggle to be heard.

We don’t have it yet, but we have that aspiration –
that vision, that principle worth fighting for –
that in decisions which impact the common good,
we are inclusive and just.

And we’ve come a long way.
Parker fought for suffrage – in the 1830’s and 40’s -
he argued for the rights of women to vote.
He was also a fervent abolitionist,
gave money and support to the cause, preached and published abolition,
changed minds, fought hard.
This wasn’t easy –
the suffragists didn’t want to be associated
with those rabble-rousing abolitionists,
and some of them didn’t want black men to get the vote before white women,
and the abolitionists didn’t want to be associated
with those subversive suffragists,
and some of them didn’t want women to get the vote before black men did.
But Parker had a larger vision –
all the people –
you could work for justice for everyone,
and indeed, as King would say a hundred years later,
we are caught in an inescapable network of destiny,
bound up together as brothers and sisters.

And we do aspire – a government of all the people and for all the people –
no matter the color of their skin, the language of their childhood,
who they love or what name, if any, they use for God.
We aspire to a country where people are free to marry,
with equality under the law,
and we aspire to a country where families are not torn apart
so politicians can look tough,
and we aspire to a country where all people are welcome to worship
however, and wherever, they choose.

We are not there,
but we’ve made a lot of progress since Parker’s day,
and that gives me hope.

It validates that second quotation on the rug,
attributed to King, but borrowed, lovingly, from Parker –
the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
King studied Parker in seminary,
and he admired the man for his courage and his vision,
and used a version of Parker’s statement many times.

The arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.

And it’s true, isn’t it.

True, first, that it is long.
So very very long.
Longer than we want, longer than it should be,
achingly long.

You know, I love that story of swimmy.
But the line about how he was sad and lonely –
just one line. Then he starts seeing the sights.
That’s not always how it is.
The wilderness time is long.

The story that Morgan told for our chalice lighting –
there was a long time in the wilderness,
before finding a new community.

The work of transformation can be like this –
long times when nothing seems to happen.
Setbacks. Frustrations.
How long? Long.
Let’s be honest.

Parker fought for the right for women to vote in the 1830’s,
but it didn’t happen until 1920,
and women are still not treated equally in our society,
or in the levers of power.
Parker fought for the abolition of slavery,
which came to pass,
but was replaced by Jim Crow,
and we still live in a time when opportunity is unequally distributed
by account of race,
and when freedom does not yet roll down like waters.

The arc is long.
But it bends towards justice.
This part is true too –
we aren’t there, we have to keep taking one more step,
saying one more word,
but when you look back, we have come far,
and more than this –

more than this –

there is something in the human heart which longs for peace,
which knows, under our fears and our doubts,
that justice is beautiful.

The ancient prophets called this something God,
we could call it that, or call it conscience, or the spirit of love –
but whatever you call it,
it’s there,
the desire for wholeness for us and others,
the rejoicing in participation,
the instinct of generosity.

The better angels of our nature don’t always win the moment,
but they carry on,
and it is this that makes the arc bend toward justice,
too slowly but surely nonetheless.

But here is our conviction about the transformation of our world –
we participate in it.
We don’t do it by ourselves,
we need others and we need what is beyond us and beyond understanding,
but we participate.
We are among the agents of the bending.
We take one more step, we make and keep the promises,
it is for us to make the world better.

This is the fundamental conviction of religious humanism:
that we are not passive,
but active,
that we are co-creators of justice,
that our lives and our deeds matter.
That we don’t transform the world, but we transform our world.

And it is the third Unitarian quote on the rug that gets at this –
President Kennedy’s argument that
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
But Kennedy, you say, was Catholic, not a Unitarian –
yes, but Kennedy’s speechwriter, his mind-meld,
was Ted Sorenson, a Unitarian –
and the speech from which this quotation comes,
the commencement address at American University in 1963,
when Kennedy argued that world peace was possible,
because war was human, it’s end was in human reach,
that speech was written with Sorenson.

It’s a quite radical claim, really –
that no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings –
and a quite theological claim.

In our time, when so many seem to look for apocalyptic solutions,
when folks throw up their hands,
sigh softly with resignation,
we need to say, need to shout it out:
no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

We can do this.
Don’t cower in the dark,
swim together,
be strong together.
We need some creativity,
we need courage,
we need leadership –
but we can do this.

We can rise above our fears,
and embrace the power of our loves.

These three quotations come from the last two centuries,
but the liberal religious tradition
goes way back on these questions.

For thousands of years,
we have committed ourselves to the ethical vision of the religious life –
that what matters most is not purity or piety,
not creeds or confessions,
but how you live, how you treat others, especially the most vulnerable.

This thread in the religious life exists in every tradition,
pagan and Buddhist, Hindu and Christian.
It is strong in Islam, as you heard in the reading from the Qu’ran today –
Muhammad, peace be upon him,
was particularly concerned with the status of widows and orphans,
the poor and the precarious.
And this thread is strong in the Jewish tradition, too –
religions that come out of the desert are usually really good about
community and compassion.

this is a holy time –
the end of Ramadan, for Muslims,
the high holy days for Jews,
between Rosh Hashana, the new year,
and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement –

In the Hebrew Bible the prophets Isaiah and Amos
say that God calls us to bind up the broken,
long for the world where justice shall roll down like waters
and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Our tradition is the prophetic tradition –
turn your hand toward the good,
serve justice, show mercy, stand up to evil,
cast a wider vision of inclusion,
draw the circle wider, and wider, and wider,
until there is peace for everyone,
bend the arc of the universe,
this is who we are –
and who we seek to keep becoming.

It isn’t easy.
You’ll have times in the wilderness.
It might get really hot.
But the life of transforming our world –
this is the life that is worthy of us,
the life that transforms despair to hope,
the life we are called to,
the life that turns cruelty into kindness
and makes the world beautiful.