Unbound
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
September 14, 2008

Message: Unbound

The Rev. Kendyl Gibbons,
who was my internship supervisor in Minneapolis,
she preached the sermon for my ordination and installation
five years ago in Colorado Springs.
She began with a reading –
the end of Larkin’s poem, churchgoing.

“It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
Someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.”

The sermon was then an invitation,
for me and for the congregation,
to attend to that hunger in ourselves to be more serious.
To see the church as a place to grow wise,
to take these religious feelings seriously.

At these kinds of events –
and if you’ve not been to one before,
we’ll have an installation here for me in April,
so you’ll see it then –
at these kinds of events,
history is evoked.

We wear our robes.
The minister is usually presented a stole –
the one I wore last week was given to me back then –
and that is a very old tradition.


Usually, there is some explicit passing on of tradition through touch.
A “right hand of fellowship” or laying on of hands.

The idea is this –
someone received this hand, this touch,
at their ordination,
and the person who gave it them got it from someone,
and back you go.

In Christian traditions, especially Catholic and Anglican,
you go all the way back:
all the way back to the gospel of Matthew, 16:18:
“And I tell you, you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church” –
We Unitarian Universalists usually stop sooner than that,
with William Ellery Channing or John Murray
in the late 18th century.
But why? For they were ordained, too,
by Congregationalists and Methodists, respectively.

We are part of a long tradition.
A very long one.

At ordinations and installations,
we usually sing Rank by Rank again we stand.

“join we now their ageless song
one with them in aspiration
one in name, in honor one,
guard we well the crown they won,
what they dreamed be ours to do,
hope their hopes and seal them true.”

Not everyone loves this song,
but I do.
I love the honoring of the past,
of the prophets and pilgrims,
the activists and church builders,
those who dreamed and made possible this faith which is my home.


Memory is powerful.
It is a sacred task and wondrous gift.
It is, in many ways, what makes our lives have meaning.

We remember lives and deeds.
We honor them.

The ancient Jews (and many modern Jews, too)
understood that we lived on in our children and in our deeds.
We lived on in memory.
This was also the understanding of the ancient Greeks,
who considered it the main responsibility
of the city-state to remember those who died,
especially heroes and leaders.
And this sense, that we live on in memory,
this is also the primary sense among us Unitarian Universalists.

And so memory counts.
History matters.
A serious house on serious earth,
that is what the church is.
A place where our destinies are honored.
Where, when we find an urge in ourselves to be more serious,
we can come.

It was a marvelous sermon that Kendyl delivered that evening,
in the elementary school gymnasium,
with the climbing rope and basketball hoop,
and hundred people sitting on folding chairs.

And that is the tension we live in.
“We wish to keep whatever in the past is valid,
while letting go of whatever is not.”

This is not just about church.
This is about our own lives.

There is a time to hope their hopes and seal them true,
but there is also a time
when we’ve got to live our own lives.

You ever find yourself doing what someone else wanted you to do?
You ever find yourself
just repeating the same old habits?

You ever find yourself
stuck in history,
your horizon up close?
I bet you have.
I have.

Sometimes this is more stark,
more debilitating to our development as whole persons.

I know a woman,
her father was an alcoholic.
A mean one.
He died when she was young.
And in moments of honesty,
she tells me the truth.
But mostly, she remembers the good parts,
and creates an alternative history –
a history which keeps away the truth,
and keeps her tied to the past.

I know a man who is still trying to win the last war,
the one that ended a long time ago.

I know a parent who lives every day in fear
of repeating the errors his parents made.

I know a daughter
who doubts she will ever live up
to her legacy.

History doesn’t have to be like this,
and often it isn’t.

Sometimes, we can take comfort in the past.
We can be grateful for the gifts which are
passed on to us.


We can take courage from the example
of those who
crossed the sea
fought in the war
worked for peace
survived the passage
kept on living and loving.
If they can be strong, so can I.

We can learn from what has come before,
and grow.
We can be the first in our family
to go to college,
to stop drinking,
to have friends outside our ethnic group,
to stay married, and happily so.

These things are possible.

Every moment, we have a choice.
Shall we use the past to expand our future?
Or shall we let history hold destiny hostage?

Every moment we have a choice.
It is my hope and my prayer and my intention
that we shall be unbound.
Unbound from the “way we’ve always done it”,
if that no longer services.
Unbound from histories divisions.
Unbound from the grudges and hurts
we carry ‘round,
hurting none but ourselves.

Unbound –
to love the past,
to honor with true reverence the dead,
to respect those who have made a way in the world,
to learn and be thankful –
to do all that,
and be yet unbound,

free for new futures –
such is the calling of our faith.

“We are concerned whether the tradition
to which we hold is good . . .
we are prepared to break with every orthodoxy
including our own.”

This is what it means to be liberally religious –
to believe that wisdom and truth
are always about,
active and alive.
James Luther Adams,
the great Unitarian theologian of the 20th century,
said that we believe that
“God speaks, not spoke.”
This idea that revelation is continuous is central to who we are,
individually, theologically and institutionally.

But how often do we practice it?
How often do we get stuck in our lives?

How often, though we are grateful for the ability to embrace
new spiritual ideas,
how often do we remain exactly where we were
the first day we rejected whatever we grew up with?
How often do our institutions keep doing what they used to do?

Here then,
are some tips,
some advice I have gathered and try to put into practice –
not always succeeding, but try –
about how to be unbound.

Paradoxically, it seems to me that
attention to the past is critical.
Like the woman I know
who invents an alternative history of her father,
we so often have false or incomplete pictures of what has gone before.
We tell ourselves a story,
and sometimes that story isn’t true.
The winners write the history books,
and they write with an agenda.
Santayna’s famous dictum that
Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it
is true.
Without true knowledge,
we make false choices.

I read recently about a politician
who said that we should keep the pledge of allegiance in the schools
because if it was good enough for the founding fathers
it was good enough for her.
The pledge, of course,
was created a century and half after the nation’s birth,
and the phrase “under god” added in the 1950’s.

I bet you can guess who that politician is,
but ask me later if you want to know.

More seriously –
much more seriously –
we have to come into account of our true histories
in order to let them go.

We cannot let them,
like ghosts rattling in the attic,
continue their hold on our souls.

Let me share with you a very specific example.
It isn’t an easy one to hear,
but life isn’t always sweetness and light.
This is a serious place on serious earth,
so let’s be serious for a moment.
This won’t be easy, but it needs to be said.
There are churches, of all denominations and types,
where they have in their history
misconduct by the minister.
Sometimes financial,
but usually about sex.

Ministers behaved badly.
We hold trust,
we are part of that long line of tradition,
and some ministers used their power,
the confidence inherent in the office,
to seduce congregants and to abuse them.

The Unitarian Universalist Association was not immune from this.
Two other churches in Colorado
had these cases in their past.
One with one popular minister,
one with more than one minister.
And each church, a few decades later
was still dealing with the consequences.
Often, church leaders would find weird conflicts,
and not know what was going on –
you have that sinking sense
that this isn’t about what people say it’s about –
like a fight you can’t remember who started or why –
and then they would be told,
oh, so-and-so, our minister back then,
slept with members of the church.
You’ve got to deal with this kind of stuff,
or it keeps coming up.

The Unitarian Universalist Association
finally started to crack down on this behavior
when one minister went so far over the line
that silence was no longer an option.
Twenty-three women came forward,
members and friends of the Unitarian Universalist Church
in Santa Barbara, California,
victims and survivors of the abuse of power
by their minister.

Before he was the minister in Santa Barbara,
Tony Perrino served for eight years as the minister here.
He spoke in this pulpit.

His picture doesn’t hang in the narthex,
but it was Tony who preached after Alan Deale
and before Dave Weissbard.


That was a while ago,
and I was two when Tony left this church,
but it isn’t ancient history.

I don’t know if Tony behaved himself here.
But if not, then, like those churches in Colorado
and Santa Barbara, we should talk about it.

It is not necessary to make a detailed public account.
But some honesty is necessary to move on.
To loosen the grip of the silent and invisible chains
which bind our hearts and our futures.
It is necessary to speak the truth.
To acknowledge wounds.
To see how they affect us today.

If I’ve offended in asking these questions,
and raising this subject,
I apologize to you.
But this is a serious house on serious earth,
and if we are to build here
a vital religious community,
one that makes a difference,
then silence is not an option.

That’s a heavy topic.
Put it aside.
The sermon continues.
Keep listening.
Stay with me.

We are honest about the past so we can be free of its bondage,
not to place us back in its control.

So we can be free from it,
we see it for what it was,
and then say,
very well.
That’s what it was.


To be unbound,
that is my first tip:
be honest about the past.
Be truthful.
Be not afraid,
and then we can try new things.

And this is my second tip:
try.

Think about the one part of your life
you’d really, really like to change.
What would you like to be different?

And, let me guess,
if you think about changing it forever,
that’s hard, huh?
Well, what if you said,
I’m going to try it differently today.
Just today.
And, then, tomorrow, try it differently than that.

Our liberal faith encourages us to explore,
to try it out.
Do something you’ve not done before.
You make no commitment,
you are just going to try it out.
See how it feels.

Not yet, but soon,
I’ll ask this of you.
I’ll ask you to just try it out.
Make no commitments forever;
but go ahead,
explore a new idea.
I don’t know what that new idea is yet.
Maybe last time you tried it,
you didn’t like it.
But things change.


When I was young,
I was a very picky eater.
I didn’t eat most things.
My wife has spent a lot of time getting me to try things again.
One thing I convinced myself
that I didn’t like
was soup.
And she said – this was years ago –
how can you not like soup!
There are ten thousand kinds of soup –
you haven’t tried them all, have you!

And it turns out,
there are lots of kinds of soup I do like.

Just because it worked before,
doesn’t mean it is still working.
Just because it didn’t work before,
doesn’t mean it won’t work this time.
Things change.
Circumstances are different.
We grow up.

Honesty about the past.
Experimentation with possible futures.
These things help us become unbound.
Of course, these things are also hard.
Very difficult.
Painful, disrupting.
And so the most important tip
I can offer,
the essential ingredient to be unbound,
is a vision of the good life.
A vision of a life worth living.

To do the hard work of letting go,
to do the hard work of change,
to embrace the future,
you have to know what such things are for the sake of.


What is it for the sake of,
that we address with honesty,
the difficult parts of our individual and collective history?
What is it for the sake of,
that we try new things and take the road less traveled?

For me, it is for the sake of wholeness, relationship, and beauty.
I’ve allowed by life to be turned upside down,
more than once,
because of a commitment to ministry.
I told you the truth today
because I think it is necessary for the health of the church,
which I have come already to love.
In my own life I’ve ended old habits
and begun a journey to new ones
so that I can avoid the failures of prior generations,
and do well by those I love.

People don’t change very often.
Hardly ever, really.
This is a truth.
But there are exceptions to every rule,
and I’ve seen people,
and institutions, put their histories aside
and embrace their futures,
and every time,
they did it so they could be joyful.

They don’t do it because of guilt.
They don’t do it because someone wants them to.
They don’t do it because they think they are supposed to.

They do it for more joy.
They do it so they can restore bonds between friends and lovers.
They do it so they can welcome new friends with open hearts.
They do it because of a promise,
a promise that that surprises us,
a promise which takes form in our hunger to be more serious,
a promise that life is good,
that it is worthy and important.

We don’t pretend to have all the answers,
but we can have faith, trust, confidence
that life can be – can be – joyful.
It can be beautiful and full of integrity and justice.
It can be.

And it is that promise which calls upon us.
It is that promise which is “the crown they won” –
we do not carry on the past for the sake of the past,
we honor it, speak truthfully about it, and create the new,
for the sake of the life of joy and meaning.
That is what they dreamed, and is ours to do.
That is what they hoped,
and what,
should we have the courage
and the love
to stay at the table,
to take the unfrequented road,
that is the hope that we seal true
in the future we build together.

We are the free church.
We celebrate freedom in our theology,
and so let us strive for freedom in our lives.
Be unbound!
Celebrate that freedom which reveres the past,
but trusts the dawning future more;
and bids the soul,
in search of truth,
to adventure boldly and explore.
Amen.
Let us sing.