Sermons

Preacher: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman

Reading: “Summer Meditation” by Robert T. Weston No.547

Summer Meditation
Now blows the wind with soft, relaxing warmth.
The sun beats down
The schools are out.
Children swarm in the playgrounds and the streets, and eager city folk, vacation
bound, crowd the broad highways
The lakes and shores lose their solitude
And all the world seems turned to carnival
What of ourselves? There could be, now, deep peace, a time for soul-searching
We might turn to examine our own lives, to sort and probe our tendencies of thought.
To sort the true from the false in the things of doubt,
The beautiful from ugliness unmarked.
The sun beats down, it is a time for pause.
Even the trees seem resting for a time as if to meditate and gather strength for the
more strenuous times that lie ahead.
And shall not we? Here’s the unfinished clay, half-moulded, that still waits on us
To think what we have been, and as we are
Still yet to become.

—Robert T. Weston, from Singing the Living Tradition #547

SERMON
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
……

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
By William Shakespeare – (from Richard III, spoken by Gloucester)

We may not be locked in mortal combat for the throne of England as were King Edward and King Richard those centuries long ago. But, surely, we can admit that this has already become the summer of our discontent. In some ways, it may remind you of the summer of 1968. Did any of you manage to watch the Convention? Did any of you manage the even greater feat of watching both conventions? Alas, I did not. During the height of our political season, there are certain advantages to living in a place where TV reception is marginal and limited to three network channels – not including public television.

During the two weeks of the Republican and Democratic conventions, it was easy to miss much of what else might have been going in our vast and diverse country. How easily we focus on the thing in front of us and let slide into dull awareness the rest of what leaves us discontent; or, “maladjusted” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said.

San Diego, Baton Rouge, Dallas.
St. Paul, Cleveland, Orlando, San Bernardino.
Charleston. Paris. Munich. Istanbul. Kabul.

We know these cities, and many more, because they have become synonymous with tragedy; tragedy at the hands of terrorists and disturbed gunmen.
There seems to be no end to the human cycle of killing and retribution for killing that results in more killing.

Compounding the effects of physical violence and acts of terror is the weight of violent and hate-filled speech. I am so disturbed by what I hear some of our leaders and political candidates saying that I will not quote any of it here.

So what? Well, what I observe about the consequences of both the frequency of violence and the speed and duration of resulting media coverage is two-fold.

Firstly, we share a collective sense of hyper vigilance. We know that we are not safe from such violence, nor do we know how to make ourselves safe. We live with heightened awareness of our vulnerability.

Secondly, we engage in a kind of shared denial about the real impact of so much violence because we simply cannot absorb any more of it. We protect ourselves from fully comprehending these acts of violence because our frail human bodies and spirits simply cannot withstand the full impact.

There’s fear. There’s anger. There’s discouragement and discontent.
These are very real feelings and we do well to acknowledge their presence in our lives. Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, says that feeling anger is not a problem. Sometimes anger is appropriate. We suffer when we feel anger and then fail to do anything about it. So, yes, we are afraid and we are angry and we are riddled with discontent. I own it and I acknowledge it. Now, what shall we do about it?

I have a new favorite preacher. The Reverend William Barber II. Rev. Barber is from North Carolina. He is the head of the NAACP in that state and he is the leader of the Moral Monday movement that seeks to restore voting rights to ordinary people. He spoke at our Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly meeting in June. He was inspiring. And, he issued a call to action. He had the assembled mostly white, middle class and otherwise privileged people on their feet shouting cheering and clapping. I know, we’re Unitarian Universalists—but, check it out with your own delegates to GA – Kent Price and Colin Powell – they’ll tell you it was so. Rev. Barber also took the podium at the Democratic Convention. He did not specifically endorse a candidate, ’cause you all know that preachers don’t do that, right? But, he most assuredly did offer a call to action. It was the same call to action that I heard him issue in Columbus, Ohio at our GA. This is a call to embrace our deepest moral values; a call to revive the heart of our democracy.

As people of faith—a liberal religious tradition that embraces spiritual and philosophical orientations across the spectrum of humanity—we are being called to feel our fear or anger and then to respond.

Reverend Barber says that what we have in America today is a HEART problem. We have lost our heart for our neighbors and for the common good. And when a heart is weak, it can be shocked back to health. We need to shock the heart of America back into its rightful function. This is a call to bring forth from among us the values of Love, of Mercy, of Justice. And this is what we do about our anger and our discontent. We rise. We rise to Love. We rise to Mercy. We rise to Justice.

(If you want more from Rev. Barber—go to YouTube and find his address at the DNC or go to UUA.org and find his sermon at the UUA General Assembly.)

Now, some people – even some religious people – will say that the most we can or maybe even ought to do is send to the suffering our thoughts and prayers – again and again and again. But I say, Nonsense! Now, trust me, I have nothing against sending our thoughts and prayers to those who suffer. We surely ought to do that. But thoughts and prayers alone do nothing to clothe the naked or feed the hungry or heal the sick or comfort the grieving or keep military-style weapons off our streets and out of our nightclubs or to take the fear out of the hearts of young people of color and police officers everywhere who are so afraid of each other that they do insane and fatal things to each other.

There is a Balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole
There is a Balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul
That Balm is the spirit of love that lives within us

We are people of Love and Mercy. We are people of Equity and Justice. This is the heritage and the lifeblood of our faith. We are guided by the trinity of Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance. We are people whose faith is expressed more by what we do than by what we believe. We are united in love and service for justice and peace. And so, what we do in response to our anger and discontent is a measure of our faith – – – a measure that reinforces who we are and that serves as a public witness of the power of a liberal religious faith to change the world.

Where do we begin? Here are a few suggestions for your consideration.

We begin by understanding what is real so that we are not reacting to hyperbole or drama or downright lies.
We begin from a place of reason, not from a place of fear.
We focus on abundance and not on scarcity – abundance of resources; abundance of goodwill; abundance of compassion. And we share that abundance.
We begin with confidence in ourselves and each other and with a confidence that together we can make the changes that we wish to see in our world.
We begin with Hope.

Frances Moore Lappe and Adam Eichman tell us that Hope has power in this summer of our discontent. They contend that hope is essential for change. Now, hope is not sappy. It is not blind shallow confidence in a future where everything will work out. Nor is Hope an answer. Hope, they say, is a catalyst to creativity and imagination. Hope helps us pose the right questions so that we might be led to the right answers. Hope is in it for the long haul – we maintain hope in the future even as we work to create a present that is less frightening and less violent. We find hope in realizing that each small achievement along the way brings us closer to our goal and we celebrate each small victory rather than despairing over what remains to be accomplished. Did you hear that the Appeals Court just declared North Carolina’s restrictive voter ID law unconstitutional? A small but vital step toward justice and ending the particular violence of disenfranchisement.

Hope is not for wimps. It takes courage and clear rational thinking to act on our beliefs and expectations for a better and safer and more just world.
Lappe and Eichen give their us their final thought – “In all, hope means refusing to allow any setback or anyone’s cynicism to dilute our own creativity, positivity, and energy.”1

The Reverend David Breeden, senior minister of First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, is a humanist. In his blog post of July 21st “When Hope Seems Silly”2 he explains the difference between thinking that hope and prayers are a solution and the hope that guides us toward wholeness. He eschews a hope that is based in a religious expectation for some future salvation that can only be realized in the next world. This kind of hope seems, he says, silly. We are not of the next world, we are of this world and it is all we have.

People who are suffering now; people of color who live with the fact that they may be shot because the police officer who stops them is afraid of them; people who carry weapons as a sign of strength and self-defense but who are really people who feel loss and anger and fear; people who hesitate to gather with friends at a dance club or a movie theater or a train station or an open market because they may become victims of a terrorist; and people just like us do not need a silly sort of hope. They and we need a hope that is firmly rooted in the truth of our present situation and the reality of what we can and cannot do. Such a hope, he says, is based in relationships and openness to the world and the uncertainty of life. We are both fragile and beautiful. There is a hope and a certainty in the trust we place in our relationships. That trust shows up as compassion. There are no easy answers. We haven’t got a prayer. No one can save us by himself (herself or themself). Yet, compassion remains – and that is what will carry us forward.

How do we respond to the discontent brought about by violence in thought, word and deed? We begin in Love. We Hope. We Act. We stick together. We Sing.

Blessed be. Amen.

1 “Why Hope Has Power in This Gut-Wrenching Election Year” – Cynicism and despair are among democracy’s worst enemies.  Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen posted July 25, 2016 – from YES! Magazine

2 “When Hope Seems Silly” David Breeden posted July 21, 2016.