I Need You
READING ~ Article II proposed revision – Shared Values
Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings diverse in culture,
experience, and theology.
We covenant to learn from one another in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, and respect.
READING by Steven Charleston
We need one another. It doesn’t matter our race or religion. It doesn’t depend on whether we agree. It is not something we can predict or control. The truth is we all face moments when we need others to help us and we encounter intimate opportunities to help others. Without compassion we would never have survived. With it, we discover our humanity.
SERMON
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – three great faiths – all trace their beginnings to Abraham. Together, they are known as the Abrahamic faiths. Sibling traditions. Yet, in the course of human history, these three faiths have struggled to co-exist. Crusades, Anti-Semitism, Islamic hate – need I go on? Thousands have been killed in the name of God by those who claim to follow that God. This is not simply ancient history; it is our history still in the making. Each of these faiths teaches followers to love our neighbor. Yet, it is hard to do.
I want to offer a different possibility than the one that leads from one hate-filled fatal moment to the next. We are Unitarian Universalists – not uniformly Jews, or Christians, or Muslims – though some of us claim one of these traditions alongside our Unitarian Universalism. We claim a variety of spiritual and religious inspirations and sources – including, but in no way limited to, these three. Our proposed Article II lays out for us a set of shared values with Love at the center of all. One of these values is Pluralism. I read it to you earlier- let me read it again.
Pluralism. We celebrate that we are all sacred beings diverse in culture, experience, and theology. We covenant to learn from one another in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We embrace our differences and commonalities with Love, curiosity, and respect.
We claim that we respect all ways of finding truth and meaning – spiritual growth and authentic living. Again, it is not easy. Necessary, but not easy. This month – we have a perfect opportunity to practice what we affirm. We can embrace that with which we are already familiar and comfortable AND we can embrace our differences and the places still a bit uncomfortable with love, curiosity and respect.
This month, each of these three great faiths celebrates a holy and sacred time.
In the Christian world – today is Palm Sunday. This is the day when Jesus came into Jerusalem with palms waving and hosannas shouted. Today is the beginning of Holy Week which takes the faithful through the final week of Jesus’ life, his death and ultimately on easter, his triumph over death.
For Muslims, we are in the middle of Ramadan…. Their most holy month. Ramadan is a period of fasting and spiritual growth and is one of the five “pillars of Islam.” Able-bodied Muslims are expected to abstain from eating, drinking and sexual relations from dawn to sunset each day of the month. Many practicing Muslims also perform additional prayers, especially at night, and attempt to recite the entire Quran. The prevailing belief among Muslims is that it was in the final 10 nights of Ramadan that the Quran was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.
The Ramadan start date for 2023 was Wednesday 22 March, following the sighting of the moon over Mecca. Lasting for 30 days, Ramadan will end on Friday 21 April, with the celebratory days of Eid al-Fitr starting on Saturday 22 April or Sunday 23 April.
Jewish Passover begins at sundown on April 5th.
Passover is the Jewish holiday commemorating the Hebrews' liberation from slavery in Egypt and the “passing over” of the forces of destruction, or the sparing of the firstborn of the Israelites, when the Lord “smote the land of Egypt” on the eve of the Exodus. Passover is one the three most important holidays or festivals of the Jewish year.
So, this year, we have the invitation to practice our commitment to pluralism and to respecting the religious traditions – at least these three traditions – of so many people around the world. We do not need to share their beliefs or practices to honor and respect them. We do need to put an end to religious bigotry. There is no hierarchy of faiths. There is no one faith that is the first and best. This we know. We can be champions of respect and the absolute need to live together. We all lose when religion divides us. We all gain when we realize that we must live together and support each other. We need each other.
And that is my message for this morning. We need each other. None of us will be left if angry and fear-filled people continue to erase whole groups of people in an effort to retain their own misguided sense of superiority. The sad fact is that when one group is either erased or proven to be un-erasable, the angry and fear-filled people simply move to another group to vilify and erase. We see it. We feel it. We don’t like it. We must work hard to stop it. We must speak out and act out – in love– on behalf of all of us. We are in this one life together. Let’s follow our own truth – we need each other to survive. If we reject that notion, we may become the next easy target of those who still hold on to the failed and false belief that they are, deserve to be, and were ordained by their god to be superior.
There is a song that I want to share with you. It’s called “I Need You to Survive.” Written by David Frazier and made popular by Hezekiah Walker, it comes out of the Black Christian faith community. Music like this may be unfamiliar to us. It may be kind of tough for us to sing. We may be tempted to alter just a few little things to make this music, or these lyrics, more comfortable for us. But, let’s not do that. Let’s practice pluralism and share this music as it comes to us without judgement or objection. I first heard this song at the UU Ministry Days a few years ago. It moved me deeply from the very first moment.
I Need You. You Need Me. I Need You to Survive.
I’m going to play a video for you. This is Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout leading music at General assembly in 2016. He will introduce the song and simply invite all of us into receiving the song as a gift – a gift to you and a gift for you to give.
VIDEO I Need You to Survive https://youtu.be/GURBo8jk_n8
Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout leading a gathered community (at the Unitarian Universalist General Asssembly in 2016) in the song, “I Need you to Survive” by David Frazier.
Alright. Now, Glen Thomas Rideout can sing.
So can we - - maybe just not quite so well, but well enough.
Let me say a couple of things about this song – because we’re going to sing it in just a few minutes. First – this song comes from the Black church and the theology expressed here may not be entirely comfortable for some of us. Don’t let that stop you from feeling the music and the sentiment.
We're all a part of God's body
Stand with me
Agree with me
We're all a part of God's body
It is his will that every need be supplied
These words might not be what you would choose, but let them be an invitation for us to enter the heart of someone who needs us to survive.
Black lives matter – you are important to me.
I won’t harm you with words from my mouth – you are important to me, I love you, I need you to survive.
Jewish lives, Muslim lives, Christian lives - - all lives following their path - - matter.
Conservative lives, Liberal lives, - - all lives matter. I need you to survive.
Transgender lives, straight lives, cisgender lives, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and gender fluid lives matter. I need you all to survive.
Here’s what I want to invite you to embody as we sing together.
Like the Loving Kindness Meditation – expand your heart and your sense of who is included when we sing “I need you to survive.”
First, think of those closest to you –spouse, children, parents, siblings
Then extended family and friends
How about our congregation
How about all congregations
Can you imagine expanding your heart to include those with whom you disagree on a wide range of topics and concerns - - because, remember, we really are all in this together
There are a few who just simply make your blood boil – no naming names here. Stop, imagine that person or those people in this room with us – all singing for our lives.
If we don’t need each other, if we can’t or won’t pray for each other, if we don’t think everyone is important, if we can’t or won’t refrain from causing harm with words from our mouths, if we don’t finally and always love each other, even while seriously and deeply disagreeing, we very well may perish in spirit and maybe in body too.
April is a holy month. Let us make it more holy and more loving by adding our voices to the choir of angels already inviting us into song.
I need you – each and every one of you – to survive.
You are important to me.
I Love you.
I need you to survive.
Blessed Be. Amen.
