sermon

INTRODUCTION: Before I started writing a draft of my sermon last week on peace, liberty, justice and world community, I made the mistake of listening and reading the news. I heard what’s happening in Tallahassee; moved on to Washington, and checked on the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives; then I jumped to Oslo, and what’s taking place on the Nobel Peace Prize; to Portugal and our beleaguered president’s meeting with NATO allies; to Berlin and the reception the European Union gave to America’s Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Benanke. There was an update on Afghanistan and Iraq; and for a real upper, I read about Israel and the Palestinians. And while I was at it, there was a cholera outbreak 90 miles off the Eastern shore in Haiti, and it’s slipping into the Dominican Republic. Rape, hunger, and disease are rife in parts of Africa and Asia, with AIDS and HIV set to double in S. Africa. Just across the border from Texas, there are areas where rival narcotics gangs have destroyed the rule of law. Some have done so with guns purchased freely in America with the help of the NRA. And other gangs have bribed all the police with the millions that flow in from our narcotics market. And just in case you hadn’t heard, the Artic is melting and the sea level is rising. That was the news one night last week.

In contrast, the topic of my sermon today is the 6^th principle and practice of Unitarian Universalism: “We covenant to affirm and promote: The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” Really. Peace? Justice? Liberty? World Community? What world are we talking of? Not the one in the news, for sure.

It reminded me of a professional trip I took several years ago, flying from New York to London for one of a series of monthly meetings with the Rank Organization in London. Before our actual meeting began, one of the persons present asked me how my trip had gone. And in the process of the conversation that followed, I told him about just having been in Los Angeles the week before and seeing the stage production of Man of La Mancha. I also told them how great I thought the theme song, The Impossible Dream, was.

In response, with that perfect upper class British accent, one of my hosts said, “Oh, yes! It’s so typically American, don’t you think?” I gathered he was saying, it was so upbeat, so positive and hopeful. Not real world. Not the reality we really face.

These many years later, on this Thanksgiving Week, most of us would agree that in at least the last ten years, America has taken a blow to the solar plexus around the world: clout, prestige, money, you name it and we have lost it big time.

That’s why two years ago, when the Bush administration finally ended, I remember being so filled with hope that there really was a chance to change the disastrous direction of our nation, both here at home and around the world. There was such optimism…such expectation…such hope. America had even elected an African-American president with incredible promise, and his election had such wide-spread support.

Little did we know that Republicans were meeting and planning how to reverse all of that. They concluded that the only way to get back in power was to oppose every single legislative effort the president put forth. Mom and apple pie wouldn’t have had a chance. And for those pieces of legislation that somehow managed to pass, they determined as a matter of policy to use the process to emasculate them as much as possible, and then still vote against them.

It was a version of barbarian invasion: rape, pillage and burn, or say No! say No! say No! And after two years of “No,” they were not held accountable at the polls, but the president and any one who supported him was blamed.

Nov. 2^nd hit like a tsunami. Not only did it seem like all the cards were swept off the table, but also it seems as if a whole new set of players is taking over. And two of the senior, most liberal and respected African American lawmakers are going down in flames because of misuse of money.

And as the Minority Leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, has clearly stated, his singular task as the Majority Leader in the next two years is to insure that the African-American we elected to the presidency with such expectation and hope is not, repeat: is not going to be reelected.

To add insult to injury, this past week the George W. Bush Library broke ground at my alma mater, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. I sent a letter to the University’s President, along with a $50 check which meant he would have to answer my letter, suggesting that they construct a Torture Center across the street for fund-raising purposes.

Now as I mentioned, this week as I was trying to focus on “world community, peace, liberty, and justice for all,” I made the mistake of turning on the news – the PBS News Hour. As I watched and listened, I thought for a moment, surely this is a new Broadway play entitled, “Going to hell in a handbasket.” But it wasn’t. It was that day’s news, which wasn’t any worse than the day before, and no better than the day after.

So what do we do? What do we say about faith and hope and love? Does world community really have a chance? Are those really viable values in today’s real world – the one where money buys the governorship of Florida…where lobbyists and money-access determine far too many legislative votes in Congress? What does faith have to say at this time and place? Is there anything that can give us some guidelines…some reason to hope?

As I’ve mentioned before, the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth, once said that every minister should prepare her or his sermon with the Bible in one hand, and the daily newspaper in the other. So from yesterday’s “Opinion Page” of the Wall Street Journal, I want to share a piece written by Bernard Baruch, and read by him on CBS radio in 1953. (To give you a little context, 1953 would have been eight years after the end of World War II, and nearing the end of the three years we were involved in the Korean War; plus, the Democrat <and Unitarian> Adlai Stevenson had just been defeated by a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower.) Mr. Baruch, a liberal, enlightened Democrat, had been an adviser to Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and Truman, and died at age 95 in 1965, twelve years after he wrote the following. Here’s in part what he said. I invite you to think of it as contemporary scripture:

When I was a younger man, I believed that progress was inevitable—that the world would be better tomorrow and better still the day after. But the thunder of war, the stench of concentration camps, the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb are not conducive to optimism….

Yet my faith in the future, though somewhat shaken, is not destroyed. I still believe in it. If I sometimes doubt that humankind will achieve our potentialities, I never doubt that we can….

The reality is that paradise is not for this world. All people cannot be masters, but none need to be a slave. We cannot cast out pain from the world, but needless suffering we can. Tragedy will be with us in some degree as long as there is life, but misery can be banished. Injustice will raise its head in the best of all possible worlds, but tyranny we can conquer. Evil will invade some people’s hearts, intolerance will twist some people’s minds, but decency is a far more common human attribute, and it can be made to prevail in our daily lives….

I have known, as who has not, personal disappointments and despair. But always the thought of tomorrow has buoyed me up. I have looked to the future all my life. I still do. I still believe that with courage and intelligence we can make the future bright with fulfillment.

That’s a Democrat talking, just after they lost the election, not only to a Republican, but an Army General. Plus we were finishing a meaningless war that left more than 58,000 American soldiers dead, and untold numbers damaged psychically. But note that he wrote: “I still believe that with courage and intelligence we can make the future bright with fulfillment.”

That’s the scripture from the newspaper. Remember though, Karl Barth didn’t say for a preacher to read just the newspaper when preparing his sermon; he also said, read the Bible. So here is a secret copy of Christian scripture that I sneaked in, from which I want to read a favorite verse of mine.

This comes from the Gospel of John, the one written some 80 or so years after the death of Jesus. That means it is after Christian Jews have been barred from the synagogues by the rabbis, because of their insisting that Jesus was the Messiah. It was also after the Romans had torn down King Solomon’s temple and forced all the Jews to flee their homeland. That explains in part why a Greek whose identity we will never know, and who hates Jews, is writing under the pseudonym of a disciple of Jesus known as John; and in so doing, he’s writing a much more learned, theologically informed gospel about Jesus, than either of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark or Luke, all of which were written 40 or 50 years earlier.

For those of you not familiar with the story of Jesus as John tells it, let me say briefly that Jesus has had great success early on in his brief ministry. According to all of the texts, large crowds thronged his appearances. But there was also a problem: The nation of Israel was occupied by the Roman Empire; those Jewish leaders selected to administer the local government were walking a very tight rope, serving two masters: their Roman masters, and their own Jewish people. Militias and armed uprisings against the Romans were common. And periodically, some religious zealot would come along and embolden the people, and get their hopes up about what they could and could not do.

Which is what Jesus had done…and the people loved him for it…which meant they were potentially out of the control of either the Jewish leaders or the Roman. For sure, they were not paying attention to their leaders. And something happened…a collusion occurs between those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, namely Jewish accommodators working with Roman Occupiers.

According to John, Jesus realizes that he is in deep jell-o. One of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, has betrayed him to the Roman authorities, and at this very moment, Judas is bringing soldiers to where Jesus has gathered his disciples together for a last minute, “Here’s-what-you-need-to-do-when-I’m-gone” song. With the troops nearing, and everything Jesus had worked for, down the tube, in the near shadow of the coming cross, he makes this incredible statement (John 16:33), “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

Or as Bernard Baruch put it, “…always the thought of tomorrow has buoyed me up. I have looked to the future all my life. I still do. I still believe that with courage and intelligence we can make the future bright with fulfillment.”

The disciples of Jesus might reasonably have asked, “Are we talking about this world?” Or, my British host might have said, “How quaint. How typically American, don’t you think?”

So what do we say and do about freedom, justice and liberty in response to the real world…the disappointing world…the unequal world?

First, we have always to remember that freedom is an inner experience before it’s an outward expression. It’s an inside job.

I read once of a priest who was sentenced when only a young man, by the psychopathic Russian dictator Josef Stalin, to the brutally cold regions of Siberia. He worked as did the others, but he also provided the Mass when possible, heard confessions, and went about the work of a priest, even though in prison. Twenty-five years later, word came down that he was being freed. His comrades in prison were overjoyed for him, but he didn’t seem to make a big deal out of it. Finally, one of them asked him, “Father, you’re going to be released from prison. After all these years, you’re going to be free.” The priest looked at him, calmly and said, “Even though I was imprisoned, I’ve always been free.”

Saturday, a week ago, on November 13, when she was released again from house arrest and permitted by the military to move about and to engage with others, there was no doubt who was the freest person in Burma, and it wasn’t the generals. It was: Aung San Suu Kyi. She was still free: Inside!

Secondly, let me add to that first point: We always underestimate our ability to exercise our freedom.

Freedom is never about the majority: It’s about individuals. Changes aren’t brought about in our society by majorities. The majority of Americans didn’t even care enough to vote Nov. 2^nd. Changes in our society are brought about by informed citizens who actively seek to insure freedom for all Americans.

So many unfree people want to identify free people as born sinners…that by nature we are sinful people. That’s wrong. By nature we are good. As I’ve said before:

If we were bad by nature, we would feel good when we did bad, and we would feel bad when we did good. The reality is that every human being feels good when we do good and bad when we do bad because by nature we are good.

At Thanksgiving, I love to tell this story about the 18^th century English clergyman, Matthew Henry, who was robbed on the way to church. In his diary, he wrote a prayer of thanksgiving, which read:

Let me be thankful first, because I had never been robbed before; second, because although they took my billfold, they did not take my life; third, because although they took all the money I had, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.

[1] The Principles and Practices of Unitarian Universalism: (VI): The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” Given November 21, 2010 at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, located at 2756 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.