Sermon

INTRODUCTION: The late minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., A. Powell Davies, writes, “There has always been a premium in America on loyalty. If one’s family were Baptists, who lived in Texas, and voted Republican, then life would be easier if one remains in Texas, Baptist and Republican. Loyalty is supposed to be best evidenced by remaining with whatever you started out with.

“But this is neither sound American principle nor good religion. The founding Fathers started out as British subjects and ended up as American citizens; many of them belonged originally to the Church of England and yet became Unitarians. They not only declared themselves free, they used their freedom to follow their convictions.

“What kind of loyalty was this? It was the one loyalty that is alive and authentic. For the truth is, that in the end, loyalty is never an attachment to something external, so much as it is an allegiance to something internal. That which commands us outwardly has first possessed us inwardly.”

So why go to church…to mosque…to synagogue…or to a UU congregation like ours?

That means accepting of all religions, politically liberal, socially active, and spiritually sensitive. Further, religious groups at their best should be the most nongovernmental institutions in the land. We are not a Kiwanis or Rotarian Club. We are not the Republican or Democratic Party at prayer.

Rather, we are the place where if loyalty to truth exists, then to be true to ourselves, we address truth to power. We insist that to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Christian, or a good atheist or agnostic, is not the same as being a go-along-to-get along Democrat or Republican.

In the ten plus years that I’ve been the settled minister at All Faiths, I’ve learned that I can say almost anything bad about Republicans and the mess that they are making in running this state and nation, and I can almost feel the waves of support wafting forward. But if I say anything slightly negative about the Democrats or Obama, it gets strangely and uncomfortably quiet.

It reminds me of the preacher’s story (a preacher’s story is like the parables of Jesus: they didn’t necessarily happen). The Preacher said, “Folks, I’m needing a little help up here. So every time I pause after making a statement, can you respond with ‘Amen.’ Okay?”

They all shook there heads and agreed. So he started preaching away and they began responding. He said:

“Sisters and brothers, there’s work to be done. There’s great good to be achieved. But we’ve got to take that first little step.”

He continued, “We’ve got to take the second step…to walk together, and not to grow weary.”

“Then we’ve got to take the third step and run together, and not grow faint.”

He continues, “Finally, we’ve got to spread our wings like eagles and fly!”

There were a few muffled sounds of some kind, followed by great silence. And then a voice piped up from the back, “Let’s just walk, preacher!”

When we agree with what’s being said, great; but, when we disagree…umm, why is he saying that?

For example, we need to hear the truth about America’s war machine, euphemistically called the “military-industrial-complex.” It’s one of the most important drivers of our economy. In other words, our economy needs war, or the threat of war, so as to avoid a fiasco economically. We need tax dollars to build bigger and better weapons of war, because it provides jobs.

But tell me: Do we really believe that the best way to spread democracy or persuade any people of the righteousness of our cause is with bombs and bullets? Greg Mortensen has built scores of schools for girls in Afghanistan, and despite the hatchet job that “60 Minutes” did on him a couple of weeks ago, he has done work that will inure to the benefit of Afghani women in ways that far surpass what our armies kicking down doors, killing civilians, and arresting families are doing.

That’s why that in polls around the world, other nationalities viewed America as the most feared of all the nations. The rest of the world doesn’t fear China…they don’t fear Islam…they don’t fear the United Nations. They fear America, because we think we can invade and attack any nation we choose. We used the pretext of weapons of mass destruction to invade Iraq, and when we found out they didn’t, we didn’t say we’re sorry. We didn’t pay reparations. We came up with another excuse and said, “Oh! We’ve spent these billions and billions to kill a vicious dictator.” But tell me one thing that changed after we captured Saddam Hussein and he was put to death. Nada!

Would to God we could retrieve the trillions of dollars wasted in Iraq and the 5,000+ American soldiers and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost. And instead of invading other countries, we could up our ante to the United Nations, and let them decide who goes to war and which dictator needs worldwide focus. How much better the world would be if in America we spent our taxes making this a better planet, a better place for women, a more promising place for children.

So why do we go to religious services? One reason is to unify our voice against the idiocy of our nation’s war machine wreaking havoc throughout the world.

But not only do we go to liberal religious services so as to counter the brutal militaristic policies of this nation:

II. We go to church so as to unify our voices against the self-destructive power of the GREEDY rich and the SELFISH wealthy.

Right now, legislation has passed Congress in Washington that cuts $500 million from WIC – a nutrition program for poor women, infants, and children in America. Both in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., we’ve also reduced the payments to Medicaid for treatment of the poorest of the poor. We’ve cut education, health care, and virtually every program that helps people on the lowest end of the totem poll. And supposedly to reduce abortions we’ve cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which has to be one of the dumbest bits of logic ever.

Why is this happening? And why is it appropriate for a liberal religious sermon? Because we’ve got a fundamental philosophical and policy problem in this land. We’ve bought in to the poppycock that lowering taxes is the solution to every issue our nation faces. And who is supposedly paying the most taxes now, and who benefits the most from paying less taxes? the richest of the rich. By paying less, and reducing social programs for the most needy, they are destroying the social safety net that enables a civilized nation such as ours to speak of “We the people,” when increasingly it’s mostly “they, the people,” the 1% obscenely rich people.

If you didn’t vote last election, shame on you. If you voted for the billionaire governor of Florida and any of his Republican cronies, then shame on you even more. And not because they are Republican, but because of what they are doing to contribute to the eradication of the middle class and the increase in the number of poor.

We’ve turned the asylum over to the patients…watching the chicken house to the wolves...and running the prison to the inmates. And worst of all, we have to listen to the bull hockey they tell about how great a job they are doing.

n Only a few people are worth caring about; so get everything for yourself that you can;

n Everyone is worth caring for, even if we have to struggle sometimes to realize it. That includes undocumented workers, drug addicts, prison inmates, the homeless, the jobless, the sick, those with no clothes or food. EVERYONE, Governor Scott. Everyone, Speaker Boehner.

n Progressive taxation is not only fair, but it’s the American way: the rich pay most; the middle class pay fairly; and the poor pay least. And the poorest of the poor, pay nothing. There is an obscenity to greed gone to seed, whether it’s richer than ever oil companies or parasitic Wall Street Hedge Funds betting on failure.

Since the days of Ronal Reagan, we’ve reduced taxes time and again for the richest of the rich – the trickle down theory – making them pay lower and lower and lower. And in the process we are eliminating the middle class and increasing the numbers of the poor.

That’s part of the message which religious congregations are supposed to preach about…not to walk in lockstep with the current culture…or tiptoeing through the tulips…but to be a witness to the truth, to preach truth to power.

But there’s another reason for coming to congregation. Let me reference the work of the summer services task force to do so: It consists of John Fontaine, Joyce Ramay, Dave Smith, Regina Kilmarten, David Hauenstein, Pat Nuding and Bob Hertz. One of the major motifs for the summer will be our Unitarian Universalist Social Justice History: abolition, war and peace, women’s rights, civil liberties, et al. But built into every service will also be a significant segment that focuses on this one very important dimension of human existence: Each other’s spiritual needs. We will address it with some very substantive methods and ways to meditate and engage in spiritually connecting. And when that happens, we are transformed from an audience in to a congregation. Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places.

In the solar system of which we are a part, our Earth completes a revolution around the Sun every 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and six seconds. But one of our most basic segmentations of the calendar, the division into weeks, has nothing to do with the cosmos. Rather, we human beings created weeks.

Think if you will, how much of our schedules and the living of our lives, is dependent upon the divisions of the months into weeks and the weeks into days. While we all agree that such divisions are important, there is a special division therein which I want to call to your attention. It is the setting aside of the one day of the week for religious practice and reflection.

The Jewish religion recognized the importance of doing so with its call for a six day work week, and a seventh day for rest. That occurs in the first creation account in the biblical book of Genesis.

Next, it’s found in the proscriptions and prescriptions of what we call the “Ten Commandments,” – namely, a day of rest for human beings, their employees and animals. And it is proposed as divine law in the third commandment, to wit:

“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord they God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy servants, nor thy cattle, nor the strangers within thy gates” (Exodus 20:09f).

The important point I wish to make though, is that in the Western world, there is a pattern of recognizing the importance of a day set aside for rest and religious practice. There are contemporary medical studies, with longitudinal significance, which have concluded that people who go to church are healthier and live longer. Let me explain it further with this story.

After many years in a congregation, she’d had enough. So she began walking in the woods on Sunday mornings. Alone with her thoughts and the rustling leaves, she felt a freedom she had not known in a long time. She got more from the sunshine than from a year of sermons, and the birds surpassed any music she’d heard. This was good. This was right. The woods were her sanctuary. The wind was all the preaching she needed.

This continued for some time, until one day she realized that the birds sang together, and the trees swayed as one, but she was by herself. No squirrel cared that she had a new grandchild; no rhododendron could help her wrestle with her mother’s Alzheimer’s. The flora and fauna did not face what she faced as a human, and so could not offer their understanding. Nor could she really offer herself to any of them.

So she returned to her congregation. And she saw herself in the people who were trying to live what they believed. And she heard her life in the hymns and the readings and the sermons. And she never gave up her walks in the woods, but she realized she needed both. And so do we.

[1] A sermon presented May 15, 2011, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation (Unitarian Universalist), located at 2756 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne A. Robinson, Minister.