Stealing Home
The Reverend Dr. Jim Nelson
May 3, 2004

Just about two weeks ago, Kathe and I went down town Washington DC for a surprise birthday party for one of our very best friends. Her husband had planned this for her and we were to meet at the Jazz Café at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum where he is a paleobotanist.

We took the Metro down and got off at the Smithsonian stop on the Mall. At the top of the escalators was a group of police - they had armored vests on and were carrying some serious weaponry - a reminder of the world we now live in.

It was a beautiful evening - close to 70 degrees, a deep blue sky, and the flowering trees of a Washington spring were all around - cherries and crab apples, pear trees - it is an awfully lovely place on a beautiful spring evening.

Looking down the mall one way we could see the Capital and the other way the Washington Monument. It is quite a view. I remembered other times I had been there - the 1972 March on Washington protesting the Viet Nam war; a Fourth of July with spectacular fireworks; various folk life festivals and demonstrations, knowing Kathe and the girls were there for the Million Mom March: my 17 year old Hannah there today in the March for Women's Lives, or my brother being there for the Promise Keepers.

It's quite a place - and I was struck by that broad expanse of American soil - the nation's Mall - and how, in a way I can too easily forget, it is dedicated to some absolutely wonderful and transcendent ideals - freedom and justice, perhaps above all. Democracy and the integrity of individual, liberty, equity . The deliberations of a free people. I don't very often feel like a patriot but I did that night.

It was a reminder to me of why we gather here in these congregations of our free faith, and why we matter to the world. Because those ideals are ours as well - ideals of justice and freedom and deliberation. In these days, when those liberties are threatened and when we toy around with our freedoms; when justice still is out of the reach for so many - well, we are needed more than ever. There is a line from Seamus Heaney - the Irish poet and Nobel Laureate that goes - when justice and history rhyme ' Nice, eh? - when justice and history rhyme. Well, they do and they don't these days. Perhaps our job is to help them rhyme more often.

But, I digress - here's the real start -

There's a famous picture from the 1936 Olympics, of the 200 meter race. Jesse Owens won the race of course and the photo shows him leaning forward to just beat another runner at the finish line. The other runner is looking over at Owens, and it was probably that last minute glance that allowed Owens to win and so earn four gold medals.

The second place finisher, also an African American, who could of or should have taken first was Mack Robinson, a local boy from here in Pasadena, and, as you may know, the older brother of Pasadena's most famous native, Jackie Robinson.

It is a danger, I suppose, in a UU congregation, and on such a decidedly important occasion as the first sermon of candidating week, to talk about sports. UUs are not particularly well represented in professional sports - does anybody know of a pro athlete who is a UU - I don't - and my guess is that most of you do not go first to the sports page in the newspaper. My other guess is that there are more sports fans than we are ready to admit [maybe like theists - jocks are the hidden and silent group in UUism]. But don't worry - I don't expect I'll use sports a lot as a metaphor for things - you'll hear, if you should call me, more about Melville than baseball. But when I remembered that Jackie Robinson was from Pasadena, and since he was a hero of mine - it seemed like a natural ….

This is a beginning of a vision for Neighborhood church as a liberal religious community dedicated to saving lives - it is just a beginning, and if I am called, I would hope we would spend this next year in dialogue and in building a relationship out of which a deeper vision could emerge.

The Robinsons moved here from Georgia - a single Mother with children - in search of a better life. They settled, after a few years, in a house on Pepper St - she worked as a domestic and the kids ran the streets - the Pepper Street gang they were called. While not as segregated as the deep South, Pasadena was by no means a friendly place for African Americans in the 1920s and 30s. Jackie's sister would later claim that he developed such a good throwing arm from throwing rocks back at the white kids who threw rocks at him.

He was a phenomenal athlete. First at Pasadena City College then at UCLA, he lettered in four sports. At UCLA, he was the leading scorer in the conference in basketball for two years; he was an all-American in football; he held the US record for the broad jump and the first time he played ping pong, he won a city-wide tournament. Baseball was his weakest sport.

Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers who was determined to break the color line in baseball. took a gamble on Robinson - he was not the best player in the old Negro leagues and Robinson was known for his temper. But Rickey saw something - a kind of character, a sense of courage and discipline, and, as Robinson himself said later, a belief that a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

And, so on April 15, 1947 - I was not quite two months old - Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues. He was heaped with abuse; people spit on him, called him all kinds of names, threatened him and his family. Players on other teams refused to play against him.

He was a hero of mine - he brought a wild and free style to baseball - his intensity at the plate and his free-spirited base running. In some ways I like to think of him as a model for my ministry. When I played baseball, Robinson and Willie Mays were my heroes. In fact, the high point of my life came in the 8th grade when I was scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies, and I imagined myself playing in the majors like them [now that I think of it, maybe I was supposed to be the first UU to play in the majors - break the liberal line - we'll never know I guess!]

In spite of the abuse, Jackie Robinson excelled. Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player. The first of a long line of minority players.

His trademark - if there is one - was stealing home. If you are not a baseball player or fan, stealing home is rare - Jackie Robinson did it 19 times - once against the Yankees in the World Series. It is audacious and difficult. A matter of excellence and courage.

Stealing home - think about it as a metaphor. I get the sense in reading about Robinson that he never quite felt he had arrived home - he tied his life to the lives of others, to his African American brothers and sisters, and he knew how much work had to be done to combat the deep racism in this country. He understood that what he did in 1947 was to strike a blow for justice - a justice still not completed.

He played baseball that way - as if justice depended on it. He would steal home as if in anger and in pride - as if he said 'here, world, this is mine too, watch me take it. I am your equal. This home - this place of opportunity and freedom, this place of rest and peace - this should be mine - should be ours, too.' His stealing home was saying something very basic - it was a cry for freedom and a shout of courage.

Well - I don't want to push this too far because my point is, I believe, a rather simple one. We are all like Jackie Robinson - each one of us, and all of us together. Our lives are measured by the impact we have on others - just as his was. It is in what we do, I believe, that we are judged - how well we love, how well we stand up for those transcendent ideals we hold.

After all, our home - UU home I mean - is a firm faith in freedom, and tolerance, in reason. In affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person, of justice and equity and compassion in our relations. This is our home - that complex of wonderful and holy and transcendent values. And sometimes we need to steal it back. We need to take it back from a world too ready to ignore them. This faith of ours -to me it's a lot like the way Robinson played - a little wild at times, pushing the edges, but full-hearted and joyful, and disciplined. And about right and justice and freedom.

This week we will talk a lot with each other and listen a lot to each other to make a decision about whether we want to enter a covenant of ministry together. This is a sacred task, because we will be asking the very best of one another - that we work together to form a community of faith - one that is risky and bold, steals home when that is needed and hopeful of our place in history.

We will decide whether to form more deeply what was once called a beloved community. The specifics will take time, but my vision of that is one of a dedication to justice and equity and compassion, to freedom and reason and tolerance. It would be to strengthen the already deep bonds here, build on the good work you have already done, continue the terrific history of ministry you have - this is a terrific congregation after all.

One of the reasons Unitarians and Universalists broke away from the orthodoxies of their time was their belief that the orthodox were stingy with both love and belief. The old saw is that Puritans were those people who feared that someone, somewhere was having a good time and it was their duty to root it out. Jerry Lee Lewis said that being a Baptist - or Puritan - didn't keep you from sinning; it just kept you from having a good time doing it.

But the essence of religion is abundance, and the early Unitarians and Universalists knew this. It was John Murray, the Universalist who said 'Give them not hell, but hope and courage.' They broke out of doctrinal constraints, proclaiming that God was love rather than judgment, insisting - as Emerson and Whitman and Dickinson and Branch Rickey claimed - that the holy was in the world.

Emerson told us to feel the fullness of life and see the sacred in everything. He said that faith is about abundance; it is about hope; it is about those moments in life that break in with unutterable beauty and joy. It is about throwing ourselves into living. If we see the glass as half empty, we will miss those moments and despair and bitterness will be our companions.

Emerson said that our faith is to help us to live fully and with passion. He wanted us to steal home - for justice, for equity, for our own soul. What if Jackie Robinson had been timid? Emerson wanted our lives to be larger. Isn't he right? Isn't that the vision we need? Does anyone here want help in living a smaller life, in being more timid, in believing less, in hoping less, in living more fearfully? Who here would like to be a spiritual miser?

Our faith is about abundance - intellectual abundance, social abundance, abundance in music, in art, in relationships, abundance in service, spiritual abundance. Here is a place where we take out what we have - our beliefs, our hopes, our dreams and ideals. This is a place where life, not death, should rule, where hope, not despair, should live; where courage not fear should rule. This is the essence of faith - it is about life, about abundant life. It is about the open heart and the open hand. It is about hearing the song of your own heart. It's about stealing home!

This is what my Hospice patients tell me over and over again - live, take some chances! Don't die before your time, they tell me. Not all of them, to be sure - there are some who are bitter and angry, who want to get it over because they never really liked being alive anyway. But they are few, very few. Most of my Hospice patients talk about how wonderful life is and how much they will miss it.

Not one of them regrets the chances they took; instead, they wish - as that reading goes - when I am old I shall wear more purple - they wish they had risked more. This is the lesson of Jackie Robinson's stealing home. He was out a lot at home, but every now and then he made it. He made it because he risked something; he made it because he knew his skills; he made it because he was dedicated to something larger than himself. He was great!

So can we be great here ? Why not? So, a vision for Neighborhood? - well, let's start with a little base running, taking some chances, working as a team, living to have an impact on others. We'll work out the details a little later, but for now:

Give them not hell, but hope and courage.

Amen