Say it loud-I'm UU and I'm proud

Eric Hepburn
July 6, 2014

Let’s talk about some of the many things about which we are justifiably proud. Let’s talk about the quality of our A-game and when (and how) we bring it. How can we bring our A-game more often, more consistently, more reliably? What’s the shame in our game? We’re gonna talk about that, too.

Call to worship:

“It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.”
_ Buddha, Dhammapada 252

Reading

We’ll build a land where we bind up the broken. We’ll build a land where the captives go free, where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning. Oh, we’ll build a promised land that can be.

We’ll build a land where we bring the good tidings to all the afflicted and all those who mourn.

And we’ll give them garlands instead of ashes. Oh, we’ll build a land where peace is born.

Come build a land where sisters and brothers, anointed by God, may then create peace: where justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an ever-flowing stream.

Sermon: Say It Loud: I’m Austin UU and I’m Proud

When Meg asked me to speak today, she said that she needed someone to give a rousing “This is who we are! This is what we are about” sermon. The title of the sermon is, of course, a riff on the famous 1968 hit from James Brown, Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud, which was the most rousing “This is who we are” song I could think of at the time. So when it came time to sit down and write the content of the sermon, I did a little background research. I found that James Brown did a free televised concert the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to assist in quelling the threat of riots and that the song was part of an activist push by The Godfather of Soul in the wake of those events. But what really caught my attention was that, sixteen years later, during a 1984 interview, Brown expressed regret saying, “…if I had my choice, I wouldn’t have done it, because I don’t like defining anyone by race. To teach race is to teach separatism.” James Brown has put his finger directly on the fulcrum of today’s sermon, how can we celebrate pride in who we are, pride in what we are about, without that pride becoming separatist. Without that pride spilling over into self-righteousness, into feeling that ‘we’ are better than ‘them’.

So I’m going to tell you my three favorite things about our church and Unitarian Universalism as I’ve experienced it here, it’s my top 3 – My favorite thing about this church is probably best expressed by something I wrote for a panel discussion on religion and the environment at St. Edwards University in 2008:

“I belong to a Unitarian Universalist Church not because I identify as a Unitarian Universalist, but because I believe that the Unitarianism Universalism is the contemporary religion most closely poised to become what I would call post-denominational. It is denominational thinking that separates Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sihks, Buddhists, etc. Even when Christians use the term non-denominational, what they mean is precisely denominational in its implication: we are not allied with them. Post-denominational thinking recognizes that, within the context of a human meta-history, many mythologies, philosophies, and prophecies have developed. As Gandhi famously said, “I am a Christian and a Muslim and a Hindu, and so are all of you!” If we survey this variety of human wisdom traditions we can begin to ascertain patterns. Some patterns reveal falseness: they reveal the self-serving, the greedy, the insecure, and the power hungry, these are ultimately revealed by their fruits. Other parts of the pattern seem to reveal insight, insight into the true nature of life and the universe, insight into the nature of humanity, insight into the value of justice, honesty, integrity, and compassion. Post-denominational religion, is concerned with harvesting, developing, expanding, and teaching human wisdom, regardless of culture, language, race, ethnicity, national or regional origin, or any other contrivance which has classically separated (people) from one another.”

So this, for me, is the A-Game of Unitarian Universalism and of this church – we have the SPACE and the ENCOURAGEMENT to draw from ALL the sources of human wisdom in order to find our own path of spiritual progress … in order to nourish souls and transform lives. We have sermons which draw from every religious tradition, cutting edge science, literature, genre fiction, you name it… if it explores the human condition – and to be honest, what doesn’t – it is in-bounds.

Recently, I have been reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and he says the following, which I think helps to sharpen why the SPACE provided by UU’ism is important. Tolle says,

“The Catholic and other churches are actually correct when they identify relativism, the belief that there is no absolute truth to guide human behavior, as one of the evils of our times; but you won’t find absolute truth if you look for it where it cannot be found: in doctrines, ideologies, sets of rules, or stories. What do all of these have in common? They are made up of thought. Thought can at best point to the truth, but it never is the truth. That’s why Buddhists say “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.” All religions are equally false and equally true, depending on how you use them. You can use them in the service of the ego, or you can use them in the service of the Truth. If you believe that only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego. Used in such a way, religion becomes ideology and creates an illusory sense of superiority as well as division and conflict between people. In the service of Truth, religious teachings represent signposts or maps left behind by awakened humans to assist you in spiritual awakening … “

I agree with Tolle that the Truth, the one with a capital T, can’t be found in words or thoughts, that those forms can, at best, point to the Truth, but they never ARE the Truth. So, if the words and stories aren’t the truth – what is needed beyond words and stories is the SPACE for pointing, the SPACE for the unpronounceable name of God to be revealed … these glimpses of the Truth behind the words, called Satori in Zen Buddhism, are an important part of what nourishes souls and transforms lives.

Now, before we fall into the trap of patting ourselves on the back for having no creed and the space it provides, I have to warn you that I think the ego trap for contemporary UU’s is a little more subtle …

UU’s tend to be in the service of the ego, instead of the service of the Truth when we use our lack of creed or any other aspect of our identity to feel superior to other religions and other churches or when we assume that our way is the right way.

UU’s tend to be in the service of the ego, instead of the service of the Truth when we try to enhance our collective identity by claiming that historical figures whose ideas we respect were UU’s, even if they weren’t or by claiming that they would have, could have, or should have been UU’s.

UU’s tend to be in the service of the ego, instead of the service of the truth when we believe that the Truth is IN words and not beneath them. When we do this, we mistake cleverness for wisdom and we invite self-righteousness and ego to dom\nate our actions. Because, Meg is on to something when she warns us, repeatedly, that the moment when you feel self-righteous is the moment when you are about to do something… unwise.

I have tried my best to take her advice to heart while I was writing this sermon, but it is hard advice … after all, self-righteousness feels… SO… right!

My second favorite thing about this church in particular and UUism in general, is that we are moving consistently in a direction where we value being at PEACE over being RIGHT. Choosing peace, in today’s world, is serious A-Game. Obviously, dropping the creed was a big step forward in this area, but at a more local level, both in time and space, we are continuing to push toward an ideal for ourselves where we find tremendous value in being at peace and very little value in being right.

Let’s start with our Covenant of Healthy Relations – essentially the only substantive promise required for membership in this community – and a document that I think is quite remarkable in its emphasis – and in what it leaves out:

As a religious community, we promise: To Welcome and Serve

By being intentionally hospitable to all people of good will
By being present with one another through life’s transitions
& By encouraging the spiritual growth of people of all ages

As a religious community, we promise: To Nurture and Protect

By communicating with one another directly in a spirit of compassion and good will
By speaking when silence would inhibit progress
By disagreeing from a place of curiosity and respect
By interrupting hurtful interactions when we witness them
& By expressing our appreciation to each other

As a religious community, we promise: To Sustain and Build

By affirming our gratitude with generous gifts of time, talent and money for our beloved community
By honoring our commitments to ourselves and one another for the sake of our own integrity and that of our congregation
& By forgiving ourselves and others when we fall short of expectations, showing good humor and the optimism required for moving forward

Thus do we covenant with one another.

That’s it. We basically have to promise to participate and be nice to each other. We have to promise to value being at peace with one another and to maintain that peace over and above all other agendas.

Why? Well, I hope it is because we realize that the product is not independent of the process. You can only create peace by being peaceful, you can only create generosity by being generous, you can only create cooperation by being cooperative. All other attempts to manipulate the means-ends relationship are intrinsically doomed to failure. As Gandhi says, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Peace is another kind of space that we create, it is a space of safety and a space for being that is necessary for the nourishment of souls and the transformation of lives.

My third favorite thing about our church is our commitment to DO JUSTICE. Doing justice is an ongoing thing, it requires justice in our interactions with each other, it requires justice in how we choose to be in the world, it provides opportunities for us to engage in collective action against issues of injustice in our communities and in the larger world.

When I think of the social justice work that we do, and when I think about what to be proud of about our church, when I think about our A-Game, I think of our freeze night program. It is a program that has been in operation for a long time and it takes in single homeless men, the most underserved and arguably the most difficult segment of the homeless population. When we walk the walk, when we put our money where our mouth is, we rock. We pick hard challenges and we step up to the plate to take them on. And, in many ways, every single member of this church can feel proud of our successes in these areas. Because each of us contributes in our own way: as it says in our covenant – we affirm “our gratitude with generous gifts of time, talent and money.”

And, when I meet with individual members of our congregation and I find out about the individual justice work that they are doing in their lives and in the community, that makes me justifiably proud that this community that we support nurtures and supports the kinds of people who go out into the world and do justice.

I remember when we went through the mission development process, I was a trustee at the time, we really struggled with HOW to use the word justice in the mission. It was really clear from all the work we did with the congregation that justice work was critically important to this congregation, but we had to put the word justice into the mission and we struggled to find the right word to go with it. We talked about valuing justice and about practicing justice, we talked about a lot of different words that tried to capture the right relationship with justice for our congregation, but where we ended was DO. Because the only important thing about justice, in the end, is that it gets DONE. And the only way to get justice done is to DO IT NOW, in the present tense, in this moment – the present – the only moment there ever is. You can’t put off doing justice until later, that’s just an excuse for allowing injustice to continue. Now DO JUSTICE are just words, but they point to a deep truth about HOW WE want to BE in the world.

What I hope my ‘top 3’ list has done is paint a certain perspective of how I see our mission to ‘nourish souls, transform lives and do justice’ and I want to leave you with a brief reading from Eckhart Tolle that I think captures how doing justice from a spiritually nourished and transformative space is different than how western culture typically approaches such issues:

“These days I frequently hear the expression “the war against” this or that, and whenever I hear this, I know that it is condemned to failure. There is the war against drugs, the war against crime, the war against terrorism, the war against cancer, the war against poverty, and so on… War is a mind-set, and all action that comes out of such a mind-set will either strengthen the enemy, the perceived evil, or, if the war is won, will create a new enemy, a new evil equal to and often worse than the one that was defeated … Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists … Compassion arises when you recognize that all are suffering from the same sickness of the mind … (ego).”

Because ego, collectively and individually, is the shame in our game – it is that feeling of self-rightrousness that corrupts our best intentions and shifts our attention and our energy from the service of the Truth, to the service of theidentity. When we bring our A-Game,it is strong, it stands on the shoulders of every giant we can find, it holds hands with all, excludes none who are able and willing, and it is in the service of life, in the service of the Truth… and that makes all the difference.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

Most sermons delivered at the First UU Church of Austin during the past 14 years are available online through this website. You will find links to them in the right sidebar menu labeled Sermons. The Indexes link leads to tables of all sermons for each year listed by date (newest to oldest) with topic and speaker. Click on the topic to go to a sermon.