Post Mortem
Sermon by Rev. Jim Nelson
November 7, 2004

For more than two decades I have stood in front of groups like this and tried to make greater sense of the world. Most Sundays are like other Sundays-what a minister says could as easily be said the week before or the week after. And, as all preachers know, a sermon is a dialogue, a conversation. A sermon is only as good as the listener, and many times, I know, you will bring much more to a sermon than is in the sermon itself.

But some weeks stand out-some Sundays are tied to events in our world that call out for comment if not for understanding. In my time there have been the two wars with Iraq, quite different wars to be sure. There were the riots following the beating of Rodney King, the war in Kosovo, the massacre and tragedy at Columbine, Rwanda and Burundi, and, above all, September 11, 2001. How do we respond when tragedy or evil strikes into our lives? How can we understand ourselves and the world and how can we move forward? Faith has always had a deep component of hope in it and so to what or where can we look for hope? Where do we find courage?

These are questions, of course, that we all ask in our individual lives. My guess is that everyone here has experienced deep sorrow and tragedy in their lives; my guess is that we have all walked close to the rim of the craters of being and peered into the abyss. And we ask why and now what? This is the most human of responses.

And though history will finally judge, I think that this past Tuesday is one of those days and one of those events. Not dramatic like Columbine or September 11th, but momentous, perhaps, in its own way.

This week I got a number of emails from you about the election-emails expressing despair and emails expressing hope, anger, and frustration, disappointment, and worry. I feel all those things too. I am very angry and deeply disappointed; I am frustrated and above all I am worried-worried about the direction this country has been taking for some time now and worried about what it means for my daughters, and their daughters and sons. It is their world we are now creating.

Like many of you, I am a bit depressed and ask: Why and now what? I know that some of you may have voted for Mr. Bush, though I am sure that the great majority voted for Mr. Kerry, and that my biases, like most of yours, are liberal rather than conservative. I want these remarks to be understood as not too partisan, but it seems to me that we have reelected the most radical administration in my lifetime. Its connection with the traditional Republican Party seems tenuous at best, and it is a radicalism that has been growing for the past 30 plus years. It is based on a narrow view of right and wrong, one that is judgmental and punitive, and on a serious attempt to redistribute wealth upwards in this country. It practices the politics of fear.

I happen to think that the war in Iraq-as wrong and immoral as I believe it to be-is secondary to other efforts of this administration to change our society, and, in a way, that makes me wonder if we are not on the eve of fascism in the U.S. I do not say that lightly, but the elements for fascism are all here: the emphasis on fear and the willingness to compromise freedom for security (the Patriot Act is the prime example of this), the shift of power from individuals to corporations, the emphasis on national pride (my country right or wrong), and finally the use of scapegoats to blame for all the ills. In the current case it is liberals and gays-the liberal agenda or the gay agenda.

Now, I don't believe this is a plot, but is somewhat accidental-an unwitting response to the world, which has become more complex and, more importantly, more intertwined. I happen to think our current leaders are more wrong than they are evil; on the whole I believe they love this country and are mostly good people. But danger signs are there: the demonization of the other, the fear of losing what we have rather than the desire to move forward.

We are a nation divided. It is frightening that many of those elected this past Tuesday are far to the right of Mr. Bush. One new senator has expressed the belief that gays should not be allowed to teach in schools; another has said that abortion should be outlawed with no exceptions, even when the life of the mother is endangered. I remember the days when being liberal was a compliment. Now it is an epithet.

A nation divided. Public conversation is more and more rare; political parties are moving away from each other rather than towards each other to find what is of mutual concern; we focus more on what separates us than what unites us. We are no longer a great nation, but instead merely a powerful one.

So, what do we do? I suppose in some way it is obvious. We continue doing what we have been doing all along: we continue affirming a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; we affirm justice and equity and compassion in human relations; we affirm the goal of peace and freedom and community, respect for this world and its inhabitants, an acceptance of each other. We keep on doing what we have been doing: worshipping freely, welcoming all who come with an open heart and an open mind. We do what we have always been doing: educating our children to a liberal and open way of having faith, compassion, and a thirst for justice.

We keep on doing what we have always been doing: believing in justice and sending people to Tijuana to work on housing; feeding the homeless at Union Station; registering people to vote; supporting programs that provide medical services to those without insurance. We keep on celebrating commitments that people make to each other regardless of sexual orientation. We keep on doing those things.
We keep on caring for each other. Carl Sandburg once said that the church is the last great hope of humankind. He became a Unitarian Universalist in his later years and left a legacy to his church. He is right-the last great hope for humankind. And so we are a great hope for humankind-this community, this collection of communities. The world needs us, perhaps now more than ever.

Forrest Church wrote:
There may in fact be too little true religion in politics, not too much. Too little of the religion prescribed by the prophet Micah: "to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God." Too little of the religion taught by Rabbi Jesus, who summed up all the law and the prophets in two great commandments: "to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself." Too little of the religion as defined by Thomas Jefferson, who said, "It is in our lives and not in our words that our religion must be read."

A couple of years ago, Kathe and I were watching a Bill Moyers interview with the African American actor Ossie Davis on TV. For some time they reminisced about Davis's groundbreaking work in theater and film, his partnership with Ruby Dee, and about the Civil Rights activities of the sixties. Davis is an articulate and passionate man, filled with wisdom and with humor.

He said, at one point, "We knew then [in the 60s] what our moral assignment was. It was to combat segregation and the openly pernicious expressions of racism. We knew that economic injustice was at the heart of racial injustice. We knew then that the laws had to be changed."

Moyers, who was also active in Civil Rights work, looked at Davis and asked, "What is our moral assignment now?" Davis hesitated and then gave an answer, but it was vague, and clearly he was not satisfied with what he said. Moyers seemed unsure as well.

That question has been with me since then: what is our moral assignment now? What is our moral assignment? I don't think that Moyers meant, nor did Ossie Davis intend, to tell each of us what we should do or take as our moral assignment, though that clearly matters. But what is "our" moral assignment now? What are we as a people to do?

For some clue to an answer I went back to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from the Birmingham Jail." I want to urge all of you to read it again, or for the first time if you have never read it. This is a document that belongs in our national consciousness; it ought to be taught in our schools. King was a superb stylist; he should be required reading for civics and American history and literature. Not since Lincoln have we had a figure of such moral courage and superb intellect and stylistic ability. Read the letter.

It is long and it was written in response to criticism from local Birmingham clergy about the non-violent protests King led in that town, which, as you remember, resulted in terrible violence. Birmingham was where three small black girls were killed when a church was bombed. King's letter was written in a jail cell. He had no books with him, no notes, and he wrote it on scraps of paper torn from newspapers and magazines. It is a remarkable piece of work.

The clergy were Protestant and Catholic and Jewish, and they counseled moderation; they counseled King that this was a problem for the citizens of Birmingham and not for others.

King's reply is, I think, stunning in its moral courage and clarity. He said first of all that injustice belongs to us all, that we share a common bond with all humanity. We cannot sit comfortably in Pasadena while people in Africa suffer or while human rights are abused in Israel or in Egypt, while war rages in Iraq, while the homeless sleep on our streets-or here in the bushes of this property-while more and more people go without health care in the U.S., while the gap between rich and poor widens, while the environment is degraded at an increasing pace. No, we cannot sit idly by while marriage rights are reserved just for one group, while our public schools suffer, and our civic freedoms are threatened.

King wrote: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

We are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. We have enshrined that in our 7th principle, "respect for the independent web of existence of which we are a part." And while this is most often seen in terms of our relation to the natural world, it is also as true of our relation to the social and political and moral world.

So, part of our moral assignment is to realize deep in our bones, not just in our head, that we are a part of this web of life, that we cannot be passive or inattentive or sit on the sidelines. We are tied in a single garment of destiny.

No, we cannot sit on the sidelines. The call to moral action never ends, and at each moment in our lives we are called to act morally. This is always the question we should ask ourselves: Am I doing the right thing? This is the question we should always ask: Are we doing the right thing?

And where do we look for that? In part we look within ourselves, but we must also look outwardly, to something larger than ourselves and our own self-interest. This is where our moral assignment will be found, in that image of something larger than ourselves. Something larger than ourselves. We need to recover the language of transcendence.

King claimed that William Ellery Channing had been a great influence on him, and especially Channing's great sermon, "Likeness to God." In that sermon, Channing says that the true end in religion is to help us become a reflection of God, that in all of us rests divinity, and that we are to be the hands of God, the face of God, the voice of God in the world. Channing argued that Jesus, far from being divine, was instead fully human; that he was who we should be, and that in living such a life, we would indeed have the likeness to God.

And what did Jesus say? The great commandment: "to love God with your heart, your soul and your mind, and your neighbor as your self." He said to not judge others, to be righteous and humble, to comfort the sick, and visit the imprisoned, to clothe the naked and to house the homeless. He said to give all we have to the poor, to be very quick to forgive and slow to judge; but also to point out injustice and cast it out of the house of God, which is the world.

The likeness of God-this is what King sought in the 60s, and that is the short answer to the question of our moral assignment: to live as the likeness of God, and this God is named love and justice, equity and compassion, and peace and forgiveness.

What is our moral assignment? Two things: the first, I believe, is to understand that we are bound together in a mutual web of destiny, and that we live that out by thinking of others first, that the individualism of our time is a worship of the self and an idolatry and it is keeping us from our best selves. The second is that the pursuit of pleasure and fun must take its place behind the pursuit of justice and equity and peace. We are here to serve, not to be served. The pursuit of happiness enshrined in our Bill or Rights means not fun or pleasure but meaningfulness and virtue, and that if it is denied anyone, it is denied us all.

This means that anything we do, anything any one of you does to help strengthen this congregation- anything-from helping to educate our children, to being in small groups, to singing in the choir, to welcoming new comers, to supporting the church financially-anything that strengthens this community adds to the measure of right in the world. Raising your children well, teaching them the values we hold dear, living within the means of the world, being kind to others-these are all part of our moral assignment. Not all of us have to be on the barricades or pamphlet the streets. Creating good families and children with a respect for others and a belief in freedom also matter as much. Why do you think the "right" won? It was because of churches. They have stronger ones.

This nation needs us. Edward Abbey said that a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. And so we must. This is a call to arms. This nation needs us-it needs the voice of freedom and tolerance.

Our moral assignment? Do we have one? If we do not, then we are lost. If we cannot dedicate ourselves to serve, we are lost. If we cannot see the likeness of God in a vision of justice and of equity, of compassion and of peace, then we are lost. If we cannot recapture the language of transcendence, then we are lost.

Do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
Amen.

Readings:
"The Low Road." by Marge Piercy
"Church Going," by Phillip Larkin