Independence and Interdependence

Rev. Chris Jimmerson
July 5, 2015

The beginning of our Declaration of Independence lays out a set of values to which we aspire but have not always fulfilled. As our “Standing on the Side of Love” campaign and the recent Supreme Court decision establishing marriage equality demonstrate, our Unitarian and Universalist religious traditions have always been and continue to be intertwined with our social mores and our political system. Celebrate equality and contemplate our nation’s progress with Rev. Chris Jimmerson in “Independence and Interdependence.”

So, all three of your ministers here at First UU Austin were in Portland, Oregon week before last, including last Sunday, to attend the annual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.

As the first of us to be back in the pulpit, I thought I should start by asking, “Anything very significant happen while we were out?”

Oh yeah, the whole Supreme Court legalizing same sex marriage across the country thing happened.

And let me tell you, there was some celebrating going on in Portland (and that was in addition to their annual nude bicycling festival).

When the news came out, it electrified the atmosphere where thousands of Unitarian Universalists from across the country had gathered for our assembly, and I think rightly so. I think we can rightly claim that, though small in number, we have long been strong advocates for LGBT persons, culminating in our Standing on the Side of Love advocacy campaign, which has publicly and vocally supported marriage equality.

Love won, we were a part of making it happen, and that is certainly worth celebrating.

Once again this year, a theme that emerged repeatedly at general Assembly was how storytelling can both help us work for social change and nourish our own spirits. Telling our own stories and hearing those of others, sharing our stories, can be such a powerful way of reaching across borders and lines of otherness, raising social consciousness and creating religious experence.

So, in the light of all this, 1’d like to shift a little from what had planned for this Sunday and share with you a part of my own marriage equality story. I call it, “The New X-Files: Chris and Wayne Got Married.”

Wayne and I have been together 24 years now, and several years back, we decided to get legally married. Back then, only a small handful of states in the U.S. recognized same sex marriage. We decided to go to Vancouver, Canada instead because, well, it’s a fun place.

I was fairly new to lay leadership here at First UU Church of Austin, and my call to ministry was then a very faint voice only beginning to emerge (or actually reemerge, but more on that later). Having left the Southern Baptist religion of my childhood far behind and embraced a very rationalistic, science-based worldview, I was, at the time, struggling with how or even whether I could find a way to redefine and re-embrace terms like God, even metaphorically.

On the Friday we were supposed to start our trip to Canada, Wayne got a call that his sister, who we have since lost, was in the hospital with heart failure. We decided to go ahead and go to the airport not knowing whether we would get on the plane or have to cancel our flights. Wayne was on and off his cell phone the whole time we were making our way their. As we got to the airport, he got a call. She had stabilized.

We boarded our plane and started on our journey to get married. Surely, nothing could stop us now.

We made a connecting flight in Denver, but shortly after taking off for Vancouver, the smell of something electrical burning filled the plane and it started getting very hot in the cabin.

The pilot came over the P.A. system and told us that the plane was going to return to the Denver airport due to an electrical malfunction in the air-conditioning and heating system.

In other words, it was on fire or at least about to be.

A young woman named Tiffany, who was sitting in the seat between us, gave me a very worried look, and downed the vodka-seven she had just ordered.

And then, the pilot came back on and announced that we were going to make an emergency landing in Cheyenne, Wyoming instead. By now, it had gotten so hot in the cabin that a woman near the front of the plane had passed out and fallen into the aisle way.

I thought, “So, I was right along. There is no God, and we’re never going to get married. Instead, we’re about to die in a fiery crash in some cornfield in Wyoming.”

I’m not even sure there are cornfields in Wyoming but that was the vivid image that sprang into my mind.

We started a very bumpy and very scary descent. Tiffany asked if I would hold her hand. I did. She gripped my hand so hard that the pain at least temporarily knocked me out of my existential crisis.

As we neared the ground, Tiffany noticed that her cell phone had a signal, so she let go of my hand and dialed her fiance.

“We’re making an emergency landing. I think the plane is on fire and I’m not sure if we are going to make it. I’m living a nightmare! This is Tiffany, call me later.”

We landed. The plane was bigger than the hangar at the airport. They pulled up some metal stairs to the exit door and hurried us off of it, asking us to please pick up any rolling bags as we went past the woman still sprawled across the aisle way. She was OK – they got her out safely too.

There was a bar in the little tiny airport hangar. It was still open.

“There is a great and merciful God, and she provides comfort in our times of great difficulty.” I thought.

Eventually, they gave us our luggage, loaded us in buses and took us back to Denver, where we would board a new flight to Vancouver very early the next morning.

Now, we were faced with a new challenge. The marriage-licensing agents in Canada closed at noon on Saturdays, so we were going to have to rush to make it to one on time to get our license, so that the person who would marry us on Sunday could sign it and make it legal.

Our flight to Vancouver was uneventful, and we rushed through the airport, trying to make it through customs, get our luggage and pick up a rental car in time to get to the closest licensing agent.

We hit customs, only to find that there was a large group of rather heavy-set men with grey hair and full grey beards wearing a variety of red and white outfits or tee shirts with Christmas themes. Apparently, we had arrived in Vancouver just in time for the people who play Santa Clause each Christmas annual convention. Most of them were accompanied by plump, rosy cheeked, Mrs. Clauses, one of whom was wearing a tee-shirt with red lettering that said, “biker chick,” while her Santa’s shirt asked, “Naughty or Nice?”

Wayne gave me a look that said, “If there is a God or some kind of divine presence in the universe, it has a sick sense of humor.”

We made it through customs, grabbed our luggage and a rental car and made it to a licensing location with just barely enough time left. I parked the car, threw a coin in the meter, and we practically sprinted to the place.

We both signed where required on the paperwork, and then all that was left was to fill out the rest of the required information and pay the fee. We agreed that Wayne would do that part; while I would make sure there was enough time on the meter for us to have lunch nearby. I went back outside and walked over to the car.

And then unexpectedly, as I was glancing at my watch to see how much time I would need to add to the meter, my eyes suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t stop it. I was so overwhelmed with joy.

As we were having lunch later, Wayne started telling me about how he had looked up at the clock as they were finishing the paperwork. “We’re really going to get married,” he had said out loud, his eyes filling with tears.

I asked him what time that had been.

It was the exact same moment as when I had experienced the exact same thing.

Perhaps the divine exists in an interconnectedness that is so much more complex and vast and powerful than we can fully understand. Maybe the divine is what happens when we love each other beyond our ability to express it in words.

The next day, in a beautiful historic home on the Vancouver bay, a wonderful woman conducted our wedding service for us. An adorable dog named Marley broke into the room and sat right beside us, our little best man with a squeaky toy in his mouth, which he occasionally chomped down on, causing it to punctuate key elements of the ceremony with a loud squeak followed by lots of laughter.

It was perfect, and beautiful and it still fills my soul with an indescribable joy to remember it.

I think that like our struggle to go get married, in the larger struggle for marriage equality, and indeed, any social justice movement, we have to keep at the journey. We have to know that the struggle for justice itself has inherit value. It is worth it, even though sometimes we will lose people who were on the journey with us. We have to keep going, even when it seems like this world upon which we travel in life is burning, and we are not sure we will ever get to the destination.

And sometimes the absurdities in life will throw Santa Clause conventions in our path that will slow us down. So too though, will we find comfort in our connections with each other. We will cry together, and we will laugh together when angels like Marley bring joy into our lives.

Yesterday was Independence Day, and it feels like the words in that Declaration of Independence, the values expressed all those years ago have come one step closer to actually being realized – that all of us are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Wayne and I, as well as married, same sex couples across the country, are now legally protected in the same way that any other married couple would be. We can’t be thrown out of the hospital room if one of us gets sick. We now have the same inheritance rights as other married couples. We have the same benefits, such as access to one another’s social security after the loss of one of the spouses.

Perhaps more importantly, for me, it feels like we have made a giant step forward toward being recognized as full citizens, as full human beings.

And yet, my friends, there is still much to be done. In 28 states, it is still legal to fire someone simply for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Trans-lives and their rights and dignity are still under assault, both figuratively and literally.

If Wayne and I were to drive less than hour in most any direction from here, stop at a restaurant and, while there, publicly display the same affection toward one another any married, heterosexual couple might, we would likely be placing ourselves in danger.

While we have been celebrating the Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, eight African American churches in the South have been burned down, police have assaulted and killed more unarmed African Americans, including two children run over during a high speed chase through a residential African American neighborhood.

So our work is not done. We have to find ways to sustain it, and I think our successes with marriage equality contain the seeds of how we may do so.

When I was only five years old, I told my mother I was going to be a minister when I grew up. I used to record sermons on the little cassette tape recorder my parents had given me. Later though, after rejecting the religion of my childhood, I no longer had a context within which to imagine a call to the ministry. I have since realized that the non-profit and theatre work I did most of my adult life was a way of trying to construct a secular ministry of sorts.

It wasn’t until I found this church, and this religion, that I was able to rediscover that call. A church and a religion that, unlike the one I had left those many years ago, recognizes the inherent worth and dignity of all people. A church and a religion where a gay man can offer what gifts he may have to its ministry, and those gifts will be accepted in a spirit of love.

This church and this religion gave me back my calling in life. Reimagined, this church and this religion gave me God back.

And in doing so, it transformed my life.

And I want ours to be a faith that is transformative for so many other people, especially those who still suffer oppressions and need a church that will welcome them with open arms and a great love for all of humanity. Folks like a young African American woman that I met at General Assembly.

Our wonderful youth group had put together an Action of Immediate Witness – a call for Unitarian Universalist support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Such actions require debate and a vote by the delegates attending the assembly.

We had a long and at times painful debate with a group of us standing in solidarity with the youth and representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement to pass the action of immediate witness worded as they had presented it. A number of amendments to the wording had been offered that in our view would have watered it down to make it more comfortable for white people.

In the end, it passed overwhelming with only minor amendments.

As we stood together, chanting, “black lives matter,” I noticed that the young woman was crying.

I hadn’t really met her, though we had been standing together in a group of folks throughout the debate, but I put my hand on her shoulder to try to provide some comfort. She threw both of her arms around me, pulled me into a hug, and holding onto me started really weeping. I placed an arm around her.

She said, “I was so scared they weren’t going to pass it.” And suddenly, I found myself placing my other arm around her and crying now myself, saying, “I was scared too.”

And though I had not known it until that moment, I had been afraid – afraid because had it had not passed, my religion would have so greatly disappointed, so greatly hurt our youth, our allies from Black Lives Matter. It would have so greatly fallen short of the religion I believe we can be.

It would have hurt and disappointed me.

I had reached out to minster to her, and instead, by being so authentic with a total stranger, by opening a space where I could get in touch with my own vulnerability, she had ministered to me.

And I think maybe it starts there – two strangers, standing in that great big assembly hall, holding each other and telling each other our truths, our fears, being fully human with each other.

I think this is the love that we can cultivate in this church and this religion by sharing our fears, our stories, our fragilities that make us human and let us see each other as human. I think this is the love that we then carry outward into our world and that transforms itself into justice – just as it did with marriage equality and the standing on the side of love campaign.

So, may our well-deserved and much-needed celebration also renew our commitment to standing on the side of love for all people. May it rekindle and refuel a burning fire for doing justice.

Amen

Benediction

Transcendence – To connect with wonder and awe at the unity of life

Community – To connect with joy, sorrow, and service with those whose lives we touch

Compassion – To treat ourselves and others with love

Courage – To live lives of honesty, vulnerability, and beauty

Transformation – To pursue the growth that changes our lives and heals our world

These are the religious values this church has expressed and that underlie our mission that we say together every Sunday.

May you carry these values with you into your daily lives and live them out in a world that so badly needs you right now.

Many, many blessings upon you.

May the congregation say, “Amen” and “Blessed Be.”

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