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printer friendly version So my original working title for this sermon was Personal Responsibility and Sacred Sex. It might have brought a few more people in our doors this morning, but as I got into it, this spiritual covenant isn’t really about sacred sex. It is about treating our sexuality as sacred – but really sexuality is just one aspect of our lives, and this covenant is about treating all of our lives as sacred, and taking responsibility for our own lives. Easier said than done. One thing I love about our tradition is that we are in the world – we get involved in the world, in politics, in business. It’s no coincident that our congregations are full of civil servants and nurses, professors and social workers – we are those who, when faced with choices, tend to choose careers that help make the world a better place. We live our religion every day of the week. A danger, however, is that sometimes we lose sight of the difference between the religious realm and the secular world in which we live. Sometimes, we can get so caught up in the world, that we accidentally slip into value systems which, with some time for reflection, we otherwise might reject as dangerous, and in fact, we fail to live up to our own highest values, or put another way, stop living our religion on a daily basis. It’s a slippery slope. Consumerism, elitism, workaholism, alcoholism – lots of ways we can get out of balance and quit living our religion well. I think our path of Unitarian Universalism can be a very difficult choice. When recently three members of our congregation died, and I was planning memorial services for all – all very different services, I was trying to explain to someone outside of our tradition how it’s done for Unitarian Universalists – which is to say, however the families want it done. In contrast, in many other religious traditions, including the Jewish community with which I’m most familiar with, there is a structure dictated by tradition – and issues of when services are held or what is read at the service or how the body is handled after death – none of that has to be decided, because it’s tradition. Of course, the danger is, it makes it harder to respect individual preferences – if someone doesn’t want to do it that way, it can be difficult on family, friends and the community. However, one of the benefits is that at the point at which you’re grieving, you are faced with fewer decisions to make. There can be comfort in that structure, if it’s one you fully embrace. Because our tradition celebrates such diversity – the people that surround you in this community may or may not share your particular beliefs or practices. Since we are relational beings, and influenced by those around us, it may mean that it can be harder to stay grounded in your particular beliefs and practices. Last time I preached on the Spiritual Covenant with America, on October 8, I dealt with the first covenant, Loving and Caring Relationships and Families. This was shortly after Representative Mark Foley resigned as content of inappropriate emails to house pages was uncovered, and five Amish schoolgirls had been killed in their school. I mentioned the Foley incident as it related to my topic, but not the Amish killings, though from talking to you during the reception line, I know that it was very much on your hearts and minds. The reason I don’t more often talk about such tragic events in church is related to this second covenant of personal responsibility. Most news events – many news events – especially the ones about personal tragedies –individuals who are kidnapped and tortured or killed, domestic violence among the rich and famous – many of those news stories are sensationalized tragedies about the personal lives of people we don’t know and can’t do much about. I think media attention on tragedies that have already taken place is designed to pull at our heart strings, serve as entertainment, and winds up taking our attention away from events within our locus of control – things we can take personal responsibility for, things we can do. Sometimes, very appropriately, some media outlet will do a better story about underlying causes and prevention strategies, but quite often, such as the Jon Binet Ramsey story which has gone on for so many years now, serves as pure, sick, entertainment. And when we allow our attention to focus on these events – for which we cannot take personal responsibility, we are also therefore choosing not to focus on other things for which we might take personal responsibility. Church, I think, needs to be different. Church should be a place where we can learn to focus and channel our energies on the possible. Not tune out and check out and grieve over events that we cannot change. Rather, our traditions calls us to check in – check in to our lives, and focus on the possible, get involved in the political, do what we can do. Shape a purpose-driven life connected to our highest values, in the language of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. This is where the Amish come in, from my perspective. A few of you mentioned to me in passing, that you either admired the fact that the Amish reached out to the family of the killer, some of you expressed your concern that you might not personally be able to do so, and others even wondered why – or if that was even the right response. I don’t know if I could do it either – I’m not there. It sounds to me like the right thing to do. It sounds to me like the 32-year-old milk-tanker driver who killed himself at the end of the shooting spree was suffering and disintegrating – and pushed his pain outward causing the suffering, disintegration, and death of others. That the Amish responded by comforting his family seems right to me. And I’m glad that my colleague, Joel Miller, who served the Columbine UU Church in Littleton, CO, reached out to the families of all the youth killed at the High school in 1999, including those who killed themselves and all the others. I’m glad that such spiritual discipline as expressed by the Amish in this latest tragedy was also expressed by members of our UU community in Colorado seven years ago. It gives me hope for humanity that we humans are capable of connecting, forgiving, and healing – even in the face of such disconnection, disintegration and destruction. At the General Assembly – the annual meeting of our member congregations - following the massacre at Columbine, Rev. Joel Miller, commented that his sadness was complicated as he was aware that all the attention on the massacre in the town he lived was attention turned away from ongoing, continual and systemic violence in black neighborhoods and violence in Hispanic neighborhoods – and I’ll just add, violence in poor neighborhoods. Are we so shocked such events can happen in a middle class high school or a one-room Amish school house, because we have accepted as normal violence in poor neighborhoods and poor countries so completely? I sure hope not. But if we allow our attention to follow the voice of the media and entertainment industry, without some very careful discernment, I am afraid it begins to seem as if that is so. It takes spiritual discipline to enter into that careful discernment. It takes spiritual discipline to experience the world as it is, and not get distracted by presentation, loud voices, or a culture whose values that are in sharp contrast with our own. I believe the words of Lao-Tzu– that if there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the heart. as he was to have written in Chapter 79 of the Tao Te Ching Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others. The Amish know, just as the Unitarian Universalists of Littleton, CO, knew, that there was nothing they could do to undo the tragedy that had taken place, and so they responded with something they could do. Something that took them closer to all that pain, rather than fleeing from it. But also something that, in the long run, might just help to heal. "The master fulfills her own obligations... She does what she needs to do," writes the Chinese master in the translation by Stephen Mitchell. This is taking personal responsibility for our actions. I think the discussion points on this second covenant about personal responsibility is interesting – that the liberal political agenda does not highlight personal responsibility because they eschew legislation about such personal issues – legislation that would restrict your rights if you want to marry someone of the same gender,or make a difficult choice to end a pregnancy. I absolutely agree that legislation should not determine how we take responsibility for our lives and it should protect our liberties, but I also agree that there is something worth keeping in the conservative discussion of personal responsibility. After all, personal responsibility is at the core of such political change movements as the civil rights movement, the disability rights movement, LGBTQQ rights – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and questioning… The name itself is central to this notion of taking personal responsibility. Whenever a new human rights movement gets going, one of the significant moves is that the disenfranchised group seeking rights, name themselves. The negro becomes black and then African American. The Hispanic is latino or chicano or Cuban American depending on their origin and location and politics. This is taking personal responsibility. Unitarians even did it in the 19th century. The term unitarian was an insult thrown at Christians to denigrate a particular belief system within Christianity. But when William Ellery Channing titled his 1819 sermon, Unitarian Christianity, he did what other disenfranchised groups do at the moment they decide to take personal responsibility for their situation and challenge the powers that be. He took up the name Unitarian proudly and no longer accepted it as an insult. It became so acceptable, that you may not have even known it was at one time widely an insult… though you might have been surprised at some point when you encountered someone who still thinks of it and uses unitarian as an insult… Such change movements don’t take hold and work, until the individual leaders and members of those groups begin to take personal responsibility for their lives and in doing so, quite possibly change their circumstance. But often, such as in the civil rights movement, it has been up to the religious leaders to remind us of that, because the political leaders on the left don’t talk about personal responsibility that much…. Personal responsibility should not be an excuse to avoid civic responsibility either, leaving the poor and disenfranchised to fend for themselves without support from society or a safety net – especially when wealth in the society is so unjustly distributed that some people come into the world so initially disadvantaged that no level of personal responsibility will provide opportunity that simply isn’t there. And of course, it’s a hard balance, where to draw that line in the political arena. Because the political sphere is so difficult and hard to discern, all the more reason for individuals entering political life, to create and sustain a spiritually grounded life. Political decisions impact personal lives, and so we’d better be very careful to make the best possible political decisions, as we will be living with them for some time to come. I bet you hardly thought A Spiritually Grounded Life title would lend itself to a get-out-the-vote sermon, did you? But of course, it does, in large part, because of the tradition we share. Unitarian Universalism. We are a religion that gets involved in the world, in politics, in business. When faced with choices, tend to choose careers that help make the world a better place. We live our religion every day of the week and that means we vote. I’m sure you’ve heard the joke about the Unitarian Universalist child at school, being approached by her classmates talking about their religion… "Our family is Catholic," says one child, "and we believe in the father, son, and holy ghost." "We’re Jewish," says another, "and we believe that God is one, and that we’re the chosen people." They turn to the UU child and ask, what are you? Her reply, in this joke, is "I’m not sure, but I think we’re League of Women Voters." Though it’s lovely, that our fictional UU child probably knows her civic responsibility, it’s a sad commentary on our tradition, that she doesn’t know as well the ground of her spiritual life. I’m guessing our fictional child isn’t from that congregation in Littleton, CO that reached out to families after the shooting at the high school, and I sure hope, she’s not from our congregation. I do hope she votes when she gets older, but I also hope she discovers the name of her family’s faith, and "shapes a purpose driven life connected to her highest values. I hope she builds an inner spiritual live, devoting time and energy to caring for each other as well as to self-development, affirming pleasure and humor and joyfulness. I hope she celebrates the grandeur of the universe and the mystery of being, and recognizes that government cannot replace her own efforts to build a spiritually grounded life." Where does the sex come in, I hear some of you asking? What about sacred sexuality? This second covenant with America from the Network of Spiritual Progressives begins "We will take personal responsibility for ethical behavior by reviving the sacred element in sexuality, then, shaping a purpose-driven life, and all the rest I just mentioned above. Reviving the sacred element in sexuality comes first, however. It comes first, in part, because our society is so messed up around issues of sexuality. Sex has been so exploited and denigrated and used in our society – it has become this thing to be bought and sold, rather than a sacred expression of intimate and mutual relationships. I need only mention again the killing of Jon Binet Ramsey or the five girls at the Amish school house, to remember why this is at the top of our list. Our society is extremely messed up when it comes to sex. And it is clear that many, many people in our society have lost touch with sanctity of sex. This brokenness around sexuality leads to both a homophobia that drives some people to dictate for others what kind of sex is good, and extreme violence such as I’ve already mentioned. The antidote? Personal responsibility. If a man tells me that he’s not sure homosexuality is right, my response is, "then it sounds like you shouldn’t have sex with men." Take responsibility for your own sexual life. If you want to be outraged or to outlaw something, how about violence toward women, rape, and poverty? But I know, just as much as you do, that homophobic individuals get their fears from a broken society that has lost touch with the sacred element in sexuality. I was able to get close enough to a man once who was homophobic and learn that he was the survivor of childhood incest by his uncle. I wonder how much homophobia is driven by that experience and thought processes around the issue of homosexuality gets distorted by such experiences of violence, or stories of violence associated with sexual acts – it destroys connections, it destroys lives. This brokenness around issues of sexuality is one reason we in this church teach sexuality education to our youth. We try to provide really good information so that as young people grow up to be sexually active, they can make really good choices. And we provide it in a framework of values that say one need take personal responsibility for sexual behavior, to make ethical choices, and to respect the sacred element of sexuality. Sex is basic to life, and many have lost touch with the sacred element of life. That’s why our story for all ages this morning was the experience of eating an orange. Learning to eat an orange mindfully can help us revive the sacred in that experience. We can learn to revive the sacred in many of our experiences. If we are in touch with the sacred in our lives – and by sacred, I just mean the grandeur of the universe and the mystery of being – if we can acknowledge that and hold on to that, I think it can go a long way to healing the brokenness in our lives and in our world. But we have to take personal responsibility for reviving the sacred in our lives, for our own ethical behavior, for determining what it is we truly believe, and living up to those beliefs. It’s hard to make good choices when you’re off balance – ask any classroom teacher the day after Halloween. That kids eat too much candy the night before can effect how they behave the next day. And so we must learn to figure out how to eat an orange mindfully, to revive the sacred element of life, build an inner spiritual life. I believe all of that is essential to creating a political environment that is healthy, progressive, far-reaching, and caring. Because I don’t want my government telling me how to be religious, or what religion is right, I have the responsibility of building my own spiritually grounded life. I need to spend some of my time caring for others, and developing myself. I think it’s a personal responsibility, and I hope this is a community where you can find some support for doing just that. We may not all do it the same, we may not all believe the same things, but in the words of Francis David, the court preacher to John Sigismund, the only Unitarian King in history, "we need not think alike, to love alike." May you find your grounding this week, and for the sake of our country, for the sake of our world, please vote.
* Sermons are meant to be spoken and not written. I have not edited this homily to written form. This sermon is the second in a series of eight on A Spiritual Covenant with America from the Network of Spiritual Progressives. For more information, read the book The Left Hand of God by Rabbi Michael Lerner, or go to the website www.spiritualprogressives.org Unitarian Universalist
Church of Greater Lansing
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