Sermons

“Justice is what love looks like in public.” ~ Cornell West

READING ~ “Useful Anger” by Sephen Shick in Be the Change. Boston: Skinner House Press, 2009.

A good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime
- Marge Piercy

But what is to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Should it be diluted with denial, cooled with indifference?
Should it be sweetened with good intentions,
softened with lies?
Should it be spewed out red hot over searing tongues,
scotching the guilty and innocent alike?

What’s to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Don’t dilute it, deny it, or cool it.
Don’t sweeten it or soften it.
But, pause for a moment.

Could you hold it before your eyes
examine it with your heart and mind?
Could you hold it
then touch it to your belly
that place where your soul rests?
Could you let it enter there knowing it is the part of you
that needs to be treated kindly
that needs to be listened to
that needs to be honored?

For it has the power to save you,
to save us all.

READING ~”Time for the Work” by Theresa I. Soto in Spilling the Light, Meditations of Hope and Resilience. Boston: Skinner House Press, 2019.

I’m not prepared to hear you say one thing, and watch you do another, without even mentioning it.
I’m not talking about mistakes. You know we all make those. Sometimes we speak too soon and think too little. We worry more about procedures than promises. We let fear and guilt keep our choices and actions small.
Those
things, common and human, keep calling us forward to different, better choices. I’m thinking of a different
thing,
in which you know the right thing to do and spend entire notebooks of calculations on figuring out how not to do it; or, conversely, you give it no thought at all. It’s understandable that to learn the student must be ready. And if you choose not to be ready while the world cries out for your help, choose to linger in indecision and shrug off the human cost, you are wasting the gentle flexibility of grace and as Frederick Douglass said, “using your liberty for unholy license.”
You must account for this day. Choose justice. You must account for your gifts. Geerate love. Your effort in community is a precious resource. Take courage. Move with urgency toward every possibility.
Please hurry. Don’t stop.

SERMON

I imagine that everyone here today is old enough to have taken a civics class in high school. You know, the one where we learned about our nation’s founding documents and what it means to be a citizen of this great nation.
We learned that citizens have certain rights and that along with these rights come responsibilities or duties of citizenship.

Recall, if you will, the language of these founding documents that are so precious to us.

Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are en-
dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—

U. S. Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

There are seven articles that describe government followed by the amendments – the first 10 of which are known as the Bill of Rights.

I titled today’s sermon “The Limits of Rights and the Embrace of Responsibility.” You probably already know everything you need to know and do make this republic more perfect. Let this talk be a reminder of what you already know.

Rights concern the individual and responsibilities concern the common good. There is no right in our Declaration of Independence or the Constitution that is absolute. Every right is balanced by its responsibilities. Only in this way can we enjoy the rights endowed by our creator or granted as a benefit of citizenship and still maintain the safety and security of our common good.

This simply makes sense. It is reasonable. It is rational. It treats people fairly by providing for individual liberty while making sure no one is burdened unevenly or more than is necessary.

I have the right of free speech, but that right is not absolute. There are limits to my right to free speech and those limits derive from the responsibility to preserve and enhance the common good. So – as is the usual example – I cannot yell “FIRE” in a crowded auditorium if there is no fire. I may hold my own personal beliefs and opinions, but my freedom of speech is limited such that I may not engage in hate speech or treasonous proclamations or in any way that denies the free speech and liberty of another. We get this. We understand it even we when we don’t necessarily like it. The same is true of the right to practice or be free from the practice of religion.

Americans have debated both the limits of the rights and the necessity of the responsibilities of citizenship since the ink dried on the parchment. Such debate has been mostly healthy and productive.

With few exceptions, as our nation has matured and society has changed, we have sought to expand individual rights, especially civil rights, to apply to those whose inclusion in the phrase “all men” has not been legally and universally affirmed. At the same time, we understand that in order to expand and preserve our individual liberties and rights, we must define and embrace responsibility for our actions – individually and collectively – so that all are protected and the common good is preserved.

This balance is not rocket science. It is mostly common sense.

It seems to me, however, that there is a growing number of Americans who seek to reverse the position of limits and embraces. In other words, they want to embrace fully their rights and put tight limits on their responsibilities. It cannot work in the long run.
Favoring individual rights without regard for the rights of others or the common good will most assuredly result in the collapse of our democratic way of life.
Of course, I am talking primarily about both the first and the second amendment in our Bill of Rights, but the principle applies to all.

Both of these amendments are under assault by those who seek to bend their meaning, their freedoms, and their limits to their own desires with little or no regard for the common good. This is wrong.
Let me say it again. This is wrong.

They seek to embrace a personal definition of rights which favor their own beliefs and desires and to limit any responsibility for the devastating effect that has on others. The devastating effect can be so far-reaching that others may literally be denied the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There is a vast difference between accepting the limits on our rights so that others may also enjoy these rights and proclaiming that my individual rights take priority over the rights of anyone else and are more valuable than the common good.

Extremists on all sides fail to prioritize the common good.
Our way of life depends on preserving, if not prioritizing, the common good.

Democracy is not assured.
Freedom of and freedom from religion is no longer a given.
Freedom of speech and freedom from censorship is not guaranteed.
The right to life and to be free from the threat of weapons of mass murder is gone.
The right to privacy and bodily autonomy is at risk.
The right to privacy and the right to be the person you are and understand yourself to be is not available to millions of Americans and is being denied to more and more of us in state after state.

Our Unitarian Universalist history is one of living on the margins of acceptability. We understand the need to pursue and protect freedom, reason and tolerance. Without these values, we could not have come this far. These values are embedded in our principles, especially the first and fifth which promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process in society. Our faith relies upon the honest and ongoing work of establishing limits on individual rights and freedoms and embracing the responsibilities that come with those rights and freedoms so that all may enjoy them.

When we say that we affirm and promote a world with peace, liberty, and justice for all we cannot take for granted a common understanding of what that means. When children are murdered and we refuse to limit the rights of gun ownership, we sacrifice peace and justice; we are complicit in turning away from the most basic rights of humanity – life, liberty and happiness.

President Biden said it for all of us when he addressed our nation this week.
“It’s time to act for the children we’ve lost, the children we can save, the nation we love.” Biden exhorted, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says gun violence is the leading killer of American children, surpassing traffic accidents. “Let us finally do something.”

It's not just gun violence that threatens our democracy and our lives. There are forces that threaten almost all aspects of the common good. It’s just that we could actually do something about the hideous prevalence of gun violence in our country. We have allowed a few powerful and selfish people and organizations to flip our sense of rights and responsibilities. There is no way the right to own and operate any type of firearm without limitation ought to be more valuable than the responsibility to preserve the very lives of the innocent. We can do something to uphold the basic right and also prioritize the common good. But will we?

We need to have elected officials do their duty - - to all of us – not a few of us and the well funded gun industry. We can do something and that something is the mobilization of the voting population to understand the limits of our individual rights and embrace a common-sense responsibility for our actions.
We will only have those elected officials if we make that priority.
We advocate. We pressure. We cajole and we admonish. We organize. We choose candidates who are not under the control of the forces that would destroy our well-being by allowing for the continuing mass murder that now characterizes this nation.
We vote.
We will not rest until we all can rest and our teachers and our children and our grocery shoppers and our doctors and our librarians and our worshippers and our neighbors can rest.

My dear spiritual companions, we can do this hard thing. A society where we continue to revere our individual rights and we revere our common good more is not impossible. Let us not lose our goal by inattention to our own responsibility to make sure our representatives understand their duty. Let us do our duty. Let us practice a fierce love that will not rest as long as there is more to be done.

Let me finish this talk with the poetry of Amanda Gorman. You’ve heard or read this poem in the last two weeks, but we need to hear it again … and again …. And again.

Hymn for the Hurting
May 27, 2022 NYT

By Amanda Gorman
Everything hurts,
Our hearts shadowed and strange,
Minds made muddied and mute.
We carry tragedy, terrifying and true.
And yet none of it is new;
We knew it as home,
As horror,
As heritage.
Even our children
Cannot be children,
Cannot be.
Everything hurts.
It’s a hard time to be alive,
And even harder to stay that way.
We’re burdened to live out these days,
While at the same time, blessed to outlive them.
This alarm is how we know
We must be altered —
That we must differ or die,
That we must triumph or try.
Thus while hate cannot be terminated,
It can be transformed
Into a love that lets us live.
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.