Sermons

Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;   ~ Unitarian Universalist Sources

READING ~ Rebecca Parker, UU theologian and minister

Our times ask us to exercise our capacity for prophetic witness, by Prophetic witness I mean our capacity to see what is happening, to say what is happening and to act in accordance with what we know….
Prophetic witness …is the ability to name those places where we resist knowing what needs to be known.

READING ~ Letter from Our Better Angels by Sean Parker Dennison

Dear One,

We have received your letter
and we hate to tell you—
not hate so much, but are a bit afraid to say—
we cannot grant your requests as stated,
but can only remind you of familiar things:

First, faith.
Faith in yourself and trust in others.
We know it can be terrifying to be
vulnerable, but only when you
share your softest side will we be able
to break through.

Next, hope.
Hope is not an empty fairy tale.
It is the true story of all the times
human beings like you have
found a way to create the future,
though you didn’t know how.

And of course, Love.
Love that demands you cherish
all people, not just your self and safety.
Love that is not satisfied until every
argument ends abruptly when one
child says, “That hurts.”

There is so much to learn and relearn.
The world teaches you to be hard,
to negotiate and defend,
to avoid giving too much and to the wrong people.
There are no wrong people.

You also are not wrong, and when you encounter
the poor, the broken, the unhoused and unwelcome,
you are looking, if you pay attention,
at us, calling to you, calling you to
answer your own prayers.

If you want to change the world,
first, be sure you are changing yourself.
Be tender. Be kind. Be at peace.
Be all the things you wish for.
Be your own better self.
It isn’t without cost
But it will be free.

Source: “Breaking and Blessing” Meditations by Sean Parker Dennison. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2020.

The Rev. Sean Parker Dennison is a graduate of Starr King School for the Ministry and was ordained in 2000. He has served congregations in Stockton, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Luis Obispo, California; McHenry, Illinois. He also considers his active social media presence a part of his ministry, including posting daily prayers on Twitter and Facebook since 2011.
Sean has served the Unitarian Universalist Association in a number of ways over the years: serving on the Accountability Group for the Justice General Assembly 2012 held in Phoenix, Arizona; chairing the Journey Toward Wholeness Transformation Committee; serving on the UU Minister’s Association nominating committee; serving on the Starr King School for the Ministry Board of Trustees and chairing its Admissions Committee; and helping found TrUUsT—an organization for transgender ministers and religious professionals in the UUA.
Sean is also a father, grandfather, photographer, painter, and poet.

 

SERMON

For the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring some of the sources of our Unitarian Universalist faith tradition and hearing contemporary voices of those sources.  Today, we look at the second of our six named sources …

Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.

Prophetic people whose words and deeds challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.

That is a mouthful.

Who are these prophetic people?

As is often the case, I begin with what prophets are NOT.

They are not fortune tellers; they have no crystal ball nor do they read palms or tea leaves.

In a classic Biblical sense, a prophet is one who arises from the ordinary population to share with their people a different understanding of their world – different from the common understanding.  And to share their vision for how the world can – and must be changed  – – – transformed through the power of Love.

For those who grew up with the images and stories of prophets from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, we might think that prophets are people who stand in the town common yelling and screaming – railing against the people for any number of slights and transgressions against God and each other.  Imagine Jonah after his serious encounter with God’s assignment from inside the belly of the whale shouting at the top of his voice to the residents of the city of Nineveh, “Repent, repent. The city of Nineveh will be destroyed in forty days!”

The words of Israel’s prophets are fierce and frightening and foreboding.

The prophet sees the brokenness of the community and cries out against the structures and systems that perpetuate brokenness and suffering.

But, that is not the end of the story.

Because the prophets really do see and understand that the current status quo cannot survive, they also see a renewed vision of the possible.

If only …….

If only we, the people, will understand the that the time of injustice is ending and something new will take its place – something more just and more compassionate and more inclusive …. Something transformed by love.

Walter Brueggemann is a scholar of the Hebrew Scripture, and he is perhaps one of our best authorities on the Prophets of the Bible.

Brueggemann describes the prophet as a poet.  Indeed, if we were to look closely at the Biblical passages of prophecy, we would soon see that it is poetry more often than prose.  What cannot be said in ordinary discourse can often be conveyed through poetry.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  The prophet arises from among the ordinary people when the powerful are too powerful and the oppressed are too oppressed and the rest of us are either numb or complacent.

The prophet sees through the haze of misinformation, alternative facts and fake news and calls out the evil forces at work the community.  Poetry can reach us in the tender places of our hearts and souls. Poetry can surprise us with unfamiliar imagery describing a familiar discontent.

Why is this important?  It is important because our prophetic ministry, our prophetic witness, our prophetic deeds are required to restore our own hurting and broken world to wholeness and well-being. ….. for all.

Rebecca Parker, UU theologian, minister and former president of Starr King School for the Ministry says …

“Our times ask us to exercise our capacity for prophetic witness,

by Prophetic witness I mean our capacity to see what is happening, to say what is happening and to act in accordance with what we know….
Prophetic witness …is the ability to name those places where we resist knowing what needs to be known.”

Our prophetic voices are needed now.

Just look at our current culture here in our very own beloved country.

We see what is happening …………………..

Black and brown people are still routinely oppressed by structures and systems designed to favor and privilege white people

Market capitalism has become greed capitalism and the 1% continue to amass wealth and power at the expense of the 99% and especially at the expense of those who live in the bottom half of our economy

Our justice system has been allowed to devolve into the cradle to prison pathway for way too many children born and raised in difficult and impoverished circumstances

Our political division is so wide and deep that we cannot see a way toward reconciliation and democracy by for and of the people – all the people

Healthcare is battleground of economic greed and ideological mandates that result in the denial of available healthcare and safe successful medical treatment because it either costs too much to allow the not very rich to obtain it or because a few rigid and privileged people have placed their personal ideology and doctrine above the welfare of their neighbors

Climate collapse is all around us

Please do not let me go on ……………. And on.

You too know and you too see what is happening and what is happening threatens to destroy us.

Yet, there are many who will do nothing because the pain of change is too great, or they are not personally troubled by the trouble of their neighbor, or they benefit from maintaining the status quo.

Why do we need the prophetic voices of the few when the impending collapse will harm the whole?

It is human nature that we deny, deflect, re-direct and re-define the evil that surrounds us rather than risk the effect on ourselves the changes toward justice and equity will demand. So, we wait. We do nothing.  And the injustice continues and grows.

The prophetic voice can be heard – – often through the poet, the singer, the artist.

The prophetic voice can be one of judgement and doom. Yes, for sure.

The prophetic voice is also one of hope. The prophet not only sees the evil; the prophet also sees the possibility. The prophet says what needs to be said – no matter the personal cost. The poet prophet speaks of the broken places and the places that hurt. The poet prophet also speaks of the cracks where the light gets in and the woundedness that leads to healing.

Where are our contemporary prophetic voices?

Who are the contemporary prophets, poets, & artists who can challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love?

Of course, we might look right here.  There are voices among us who may be prophetic – perhaps with a little encouragement.

Perhaps you are seeing what is happening and are ready to speak your truth – even if that means judgment and doom because you also see and so must speak aloud what is possible in a new and changed world.

In our Unitarian Universalism, I look to those who have been historically marginalized and now are being seen and heard – at least they are beginning to be seen and heard.  In order to confront powers and structures of evil, one must be able to get an outside view and that is really pretty difficult for those who live within those structures and are not much harmed by being there.

Human nature says that we are terrified when we feel our world is threatened and ending. Things we take for granted are proving to be false interpretations foisted on all of us by the already powerful.

But, here is the truth …. our world, our culture, will come to an end – with or without our recognition of that fact. And now, prophetic voices are crying in the wilderness – hear me, hear me … there is still time – not to save a dying culture of oppression and falsehood, but to build a new culture of radical love and inclusion.  If we will.  If we will.

I want to lift up two very contemporary poet prophet voices while each of you is still wondering how to find your own prophetic voice.

One is Sean Parker Dennison who wrote the poem you heard earlier –

“Letter From Our Better Angels.”

He is a poet and prophet and a strong voice of Unitarian Universalism.

He is an ordained UU minister.

He is a father, photographer, and painter.

He is also a cofounder of TRUUsT, an organization for transgender UU leaders.

The first poem – not read this morning – is the Letter to our better angels.

Sean Parker Dennison says that the better angels are our better selves, the people we hope we will be when necessary. In this letter, the poet  asks to become those better people without needing to change or needing to consider any needs but our own. The poem goes on from there.

The Letter from our angels is the poet’s imagined response from our better angels.

Dear one, we cannot grant your requests as stated, but can only remind you of familiar things:

Faith.   Hope.  and  Love.

If you want to change the world,
first, be sure you are changing yourself.
Be tender. Be kind. Be at peace.
Be all the things you wish for.
Be your own better self.
It isn’t without cost
But it will be free.

The other prophetic voice is that of Amanda Gorman.  Though not a Unitarian Universalist, at least not yet, her voice resonates with us.

You remember her poem, The Hill We Climb, for the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

The end of that poem is profoundly prophetic.

So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west.
We will rise from the windswept northeast,
where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

And these words from her poem “Hymn For The Hurting” written after the school shooting and murders in Uvalde, Texas.

May we not just grieve, but give:
May we not just ache, but act;
May our signed right to bear arms
Never blind our sight from shared harm;
May we choose our children over chaos.
May another innocent never be lost.

Maybe everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed & strange.
But only when everything hurts
May everything change.

Can we find our prophetic voices?  Our own – yes.   Or that of the artist, poet, musician – maybe even a politician – yes.

May we recognize the prophetic voice when we hear it.

May we not deny, deflect, re-direct or re-define the truth because it is so disquieting, so terrifying in its promise to change what makes us comfortable.

May we not assassinate the messenger.

May we heed the message.

May we come together to be the change we want to see in the world.

May we know that our Unitarian Universalism calls us to revere the past – where we have been and what has brought is this far …. AND to trust the dawning future more.

May we be the prophetic church bringing to life our liberating ministry, going forward in the power of radical love.

May it be so.

Blessed Be.  I Love You.  Ashay.