Sermons Archive

Speak Up

20 September 2009, TPUUF

© 2009, Bryant Bossler Brown

—

Being the best-kept secret in religion does not serve us well. Does not serve well at all.

I know, proselytizing is not something we want to be accused of practicing. We’re in good company. The Dalai Lama says, “whoever tries to convert, it’s wrong, not good. I always believe it’s safer and better and reasonable to keep one’s own tradition or belief.”

No, we don’t want to be in the business of trying to convert someone. We don’t knock on doors or stand on street corners selling copies of the UU World. It’s not our way.

But then, there’s the fact that most Unitarian Universalists have come into this faith, have not been born into it – though that is, thankfully, changing, if what I heard from young folks at our General Assembly is true.

Some of us find our way here on our own. Most of us, I’d guess, have had to be told. Maybe brought.

You have heard my story of friends inviting my wife, Maggie, and me to their “really neat” church which turned out to be UU. That was almost forty years ago.

And perhaps I also told that we had heard the minister of that church “talking sense” on the radio. I am thankful, very thankful, that those people’s Unitarian Universalist faith was not a well-kept secret.

My very first contact with UUism was Ric Masten. He is a UU minister, a poet, a songwriter – “Let it Be a Dance” in our hymnal is his.

When Ric was active as a UU troubadour-minister, he performed on college campuses. I, college kid, heard him perform – sing his songs, read his poetry – in a corner of the Student Center at the University of Delaware.

He has a poem in which his mother asks, “Ricky, are you going to let them put reverend next to your name in the phone book?” That’s how Ric reads it. It’s funny now, but Ric, who became one of my favorite poets, never told the 18-year-old, college-kid me that he was a Unitarian Universalist minister. Or what that might mean.

Now, I can regret that – now, that I know what finally finding Unitarian Universalism has meant to my life.

I know that what we heard from Michael Durall, that “We [Unitarian Universalists] seem to be comfortable telling friends about good movies, books, and restaurants, but not about a good church.” – I know that doesn’t apply to anyone here. My experience, like his, is that most UUs are reluctant to talk about this good church; about this good faith. And, as Michael Durall says, that really needs to change.

So, there you are, driving along, and the National Public Radio station you listen to and support fades out. You push the scan button to find another N-P-R outlet. Have you noticed how many religious radio stations your scanner stops on?

Have you noticed that the political candidates feel obligated to address the Christian Broadcasters’ Association conventions?

Have you seen the huge billboards on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, just north of here, visible from both directions, which tell of sin and redemption?

At one time I was involved with a group trying to get a local-access channel on our cable service up in New Hampshire. This was an old cable company, so did not have local-access as part of their charter – we had to beg and try to convince them.

We were in the process of trying to get a channel. At this early point we were contacted by religious outlets asking for our rate card – they wanted to buy some of our air time for their programs, even before we had any air time.

While I worked in small-market commercial radio, one of my daily responsibilities was to get the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries radio program on the air, and the “Old Time Gospel Hour.” And another whose title I can’t remember.

The tapes and the payment checks came regularly every month – checks important to a small-market station.

And there was the Baptist church in the next town which broadcast its service, live, every Sunday morning. And “Laymen’s Gospel Hour,” – actually a half hour purchased, from their own meager resources, by two men, living and sharing their faith. And there were the ads by the Sunshine Church and Lovell’s Christian Book Store.

And this is on one 250-watt daytimer commercial A M radio station serving the booming metropolis of Newport, New Hampshire.

Many religious organizations feel called by their faith to share their good news. They have money to spend to get their message on the air. And they are willing to spend it. And, they collect money from their programs’ listeners. Lots of money.

As a chaplain I often found patients staring at the television late at night. The televangelists would tell them a version of good news involving their sin and an offer of salvation. And that has great value to many people. I would not deny anyone that.

But what of other versions of the good news? The good news we share here as we tell each other of the joy of finding this faith and this faith community? The good news of the inherent worth and dignity of every person?

The good news about reason and responsibility? The good news of a life-affirming faith? Where does someone clicking through the channels, scanning the radio frequencies, looking for comfort and answers, where do they hear about that good news?

A neighbor of ours in Germany asked questions about the church my family went off to on Sunday mornings. And he kept asking questions. I showed him the little wallet card with our Principles and Sources. He asked, with amazement, “Is there really a church like this?” I say “amazement,” because it was not clear whether he was seeing this as something wonderful or weird, but it was certainly not something he knew of, or even imagined could possibly be.

And there are the people whom I met as a chaplain who would begin by saying they didn’t go to church who, then, after long conversations about their spirit or about atheism or agnosticism or humanism, would ask, “Now, what is this church of yours?”

Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut just this week released a study called The American Religious Identification Survey. It shows that folks who claim no faith affiliation are almost 19% of men in this country and 12% of women. Their numbers are growing. There are lots of atheists and agnostics among them, but most just don’t belong to an organized religion – they have often left the religion of their youth. Maybe, just maybe, if they knew of Unitarian Universalism, it might turn out to be their faith.

In a U-S-A Today article about the survey, one of the authors, Barry Kosmin, likens the faith-free folks’ beliefs to those of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

Really, folks, we UUs lighting our chalice each week, then hiding the light under a bushel, does not make sense. We need to let our little light shine. We really need to speak up.

And I am so thankful to Nikki Giovanni for linking this speaking up to atonement – the Jewish Day of Atonement begins at sunset tonight, and next month is the anniversary of the Million Man March on Washington. Yom Kippur, if I understand the tradition, is about saying “I’m sorry,” not only as individuals to individuals, but as a people, as a nation, as the human race, for all we need to be sorry for and atone for. To accept responsibility for. Which was what the march was about. I am sorry. Here is what I can do to change the way it is.

Then, once I say I need to speak up, I need to consider what I am going to say.

We are stuck with the imprecision of the words we have to express what has the deepest meaning to us.

We Unitarian Universalists like to get the definitions straight – what exactly are we talking about? I’ve said that I sometimes have the feeling we should distribute dictionaries along with the hymn books.

Sometimes this defining feels like we waste time. We are reading ahead in the hymn, looking for the not-out-of-my-mouth words, instead of listening to and being part of our voices singing together.

If I say “food,” you could picture enchiladas or blintzes or sushi or burgers or moo goo gai pan. I’m probably thinking about spaghetti. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter. We can keep talking about eating or world hunger without defining our mental pictures and cultural references.

We use the word “love” without agreeing on its definition. I know it when I feel it. I know it when it is being shared. I know it when it is given to me. I know it when it is missing.

The same goes for “grief.” And “joy.” And “gratitude.” There are words like “god” and “spirit” and “soul” that have entries in the dictionary, but really have to be part of a life and its experience to have any meaning.

And, it seems to me, the words – whether they be “food” or “love”– the words have different meanings for each of us, but we can still use them to talk to each other – and talk with others – about what is really meaningful.

The same with “prayer” and “worship” and “church.”

That realization has served me well in conversations with seminary professors and students, when I’m leading a Bible study group in Nigeria, when I’m being a chaplain for hospital patients, and when I’m talking with Unitarian Universalists. We don’t always have to spend time defining things of the spirit. In fact, it may be better if we don’t try too hard; if we get on with what really needs to be said.

I am not saying that words are not important. Words like “I love you” and “I am sorry” and “I forgive you” are important to say and hear. Days of Atonement and Making Amends are part of deep spiritual practices that go to the very core of our humanity and enrich it.

And, paradoxically, it feels as if we can talk about what is important to our spirits without trying to define the indescribable, without trying to describe the ineffable. We can talk about what is important to our spirits even without talking about spirit.

It feels as if the deists and theists and humanists and mystics and poets and prophets and messiahs and gurus and all the rest who want to talk about what is really important – transcendent or immanent or both or neither – it feels as if they are all – as if we are all – circling around the same ideas with our different words.

What seems most crucial is to come together and to talk and to sing, and to listen, using the best words we have. Or, maybe, using no words. As we do. Here. Each week. As we can in the world that needs to hear the good news we have found; the good news that we grow and nurture and share.

Mission – now, there’s a word we are reluctant to use – that I am reluctant to use. I have had experiences with missionaries in Africa and Europe and on my front porch – experiences that reinforce the image in books like Poisonwood Bible and Things Fall Apart – images of overbearing, insensitive spreaders of religion; agents of conversion. The folks the Dalai Lama warns about.

All the medical help and education, and the brave and selfless acts that the word “missionary” means to many, gets lost in the convincing and converting.

We do write mission statements, where we set out our purpose. Why do we come together? How is this church different from the Lions Club or a community action agency or a political party? Or how is it different from any of the other religious institutions around here?

We do have a sense of some distinctive reason and intention for our gathering – some importance for there being a liberal religious voice, a Unitarian Universalist voice, in this area.

Mowing the grass and lighting the lights – that’s important, but that’s maintenance. What we do for peace, for justice and for each others’ spirits – that’s mission, in the best sense. How we represent a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each person – that’s mission.

And to use another word we shy away from, that’s witness.

And that’s just words. Artists of all kinds try to touch on this idea that we can’t precisely picture, even in our own minds – ideas we do so want to share and explore with our fellow human beings. So we create our images and do our dances and write and perform our music. And sometimes, amazingly, wonderfully, we get so very close.

Sharing this UUism is a gift we can give the people looking for this faith, and to a world that needs people who live by our Seven Principles; who come together to build their own theologies – plural. Who work for justice for all.

This congregation does reach out with its programs and activities and presence here, and on the Web; in the groups we welcome to this building; in the concerts and speakers we present to the community; and with these open doors year ‘round. We sense and respond to a mission.

We’re not just dancing alone or with each other, or just to be seen. There is vital work to be done. By whatever word we use to describe it, we all have an important mission – a mission it is exciting and wonderful and enriching for me to see and share with you.

Every once in a while, our denomination, as a movement, speaks up: through our Unitarian Universalist Association and the UU Service Committee and UU Legislative Ministries.

We UUs have taken principled and courageous stands for civil rights and gender equality and marriage rights and gay rights and on many critical issues of our society and our world. We, as individuals and congregations and a denomination, have faced anger and backlash – have been on the receiving end of angry speech and of violent action. We have said “I will stand because today it doesn’t matter if I am alone I need to stand and testify.” Speaking up is for the brave.

We, as a congregation and as a denomination, are raising our voice, a voice that needs to be heard now. Now, when important issues of justice and fairness are being shouted down by deceit and distortion and demagoguery.

Think of the joy in your life when you found Unitarian Universalism, when you found Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship – joy that others might share if they just knew about this faith and this place. Think of the injustice you have seen and experienced. Think of all the opportunities and all the need for us to gather the best words we have and speak up.

So be it. Amen.