Why It Matters

Rev. Amy Russell - 2009-11-08

I wonder how many of you remember the first time you had an experience with seeing people who did not live like you. An eye opening, awakening experience when you saw that not everyone had a nice place to live, a meal on the table at dinner time, or a person that they could trust to take care of them? What was your experience like? And how did it change you?

My experience came through a junior high school youth group. We had a wonderful young youth leader, Jack, who decided that the teenagers who came to church every Sunday from their nice little Maryland suburban homes should find out that people who lived in other parts of the Washington DC area didn’t live the way that they did. Our youth group leader was determined to shock us out of our complacent, safe childhood. The first thing he did was arrange for us to have dinner with a family who lived in Anacostia. We went to a housing project where an African American family with six kids invited us in to share dinner with them. We sat around the sparsely furnished living room and ate hot dogs and beans on paper plates and talked to the kids as best as we knew how about their world. We heard that there were sometimes in the night they heard gun shots. And sometimes they would see druggies shooting up in their hallways. They didn’t have bicycles and their parents didn’t own a car. But they were a pretty happy, normal family. We joked and laughed and found some things in common like the TV shows we liked. But it was the first time that I learned that the world around me was very different than the one I lived in every day.
Later, Jack took us to an inner city hospital’s emergency room on Saturday night. We just sat in the waiting room and watched the parade go by. We saw people coming in with stab wounds and gun shots. We saw people who were too drunk to stand up, and people who had overdosed on drugs.


These experiences had the kind of effect on me that Jack had hoped for. I saw what kind of world we were truly living in, and I realized I was a part of this world. In other words, I had a relationship to people who were unlike me, just because I was a human being in the world. I had a responsibility to others, that came just from my own human-ness.

Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, wrote about the I –Thou relationship as a personal dialogue that defined the nature of reality. Buber believed that our human existence is defined by the way we engage in dialogue with each other, the world, and with the Universe or God. An I-Thou relationship is one where we are aware of our own what he calls “unity of being”. Our whole humanity and our mutual relationship with other’s humanity. We are in relationship of subjects to subjects. An I-It relationship is a relationship of yourself with things which leaves one isolated and detached from others. That is a relationship of subjects to objects.

Being in an I-Thou relationship with others, with the world, and with the Universe doesn’t allow you to turn your head when you see other’s suffering. It means that other’s suffering becomes your suffering. Other’s problems are the mutual problem of everyone in the world.

When we realize within our own beings that we are in mutual relationship with the rest of the world, we no longer can remain detached and separate. We can no longer turn our heads.

UU theologian, James Luther Adams, describes the human process of “covenant-making”. He says that humans are the promise makers, the commitment makers. He believed that because we are aware of our own humanity, we enter into commitments with the rest of the world. We enter into commitments that are for our own benefit and for the benefit of the collective. Covenant, a promise, is a way that we come out of our separateness and into relationship with the world. We make promises about how we are going to be in the world. These covenants involve our whole being, our whole humanity.

Adams said that often these covenants involve those in the world who are “deprived” as he described it. This is because the covenants of the society have huge gaps where some are left out. And that’s where those who are aware of their humanity, their interdependence with others, make covenants to close some of those gaps. This is our responsibility, but it is also our gift. It is because of the human and divine love that “will not let us go” that we live in covenant. This, Adams says, is the basis for theological accountability. Love holds us together and makes us accountable to one another.

How many of you have had that feeling that you felt compelled to do something for others? You met someone who asked you to do something, work on a hunger march, help build houses for Habitat, or cook food for St. Vincents- and you felt it was something that you had to do? Not because you felt guilty, but because it was what you needed in your life. Maybe you needed to do it because you wanted to connect to others, or maybe you did it because you felt an obligation to who was asking you- but something inside wanted you to do something simply because it was the right thing to do. It was the human thing to do. And often when you found yourself in this project, you learned about the people who you were helping and you learned they were just people, like you, who needed some help. Just like you need help sometimes. People helping people. People in relationship with the world.

When I was working as a chaplain on a university campus as a part of my seminary training, I invited the students in my youth group to come with me to do tutoring in an inner city school. There were about five students who joined me in doing this. One of them was a young man, Don, who I learned was a pre-med student. The two boys that he was assigned to at the school would greet him when we arrived by taking a running leap and jumping into his arms. They practically knocked him down. They were always so anxious and excited to see him every week. He developed a relationship with these boys that not only helped them with their homework, but provided them with a caring adult in their lives. Don told me at the end of the year that this experience had changed him. He had decided to become a pediatrician and to work in an inner city hospital. He realized that in his relationship with these boys, it filled a deep human need he had to be needed and to be able to relate to others in a very human real way. Don had been much changed by this experience. Changed in understanding that being in relationship with others in a way that helps the world to be a better place was important to him.

As Unitarian Universalists, we affirm the principle of inherent worth and dignity. In affirming this respect for each other, we create a relationship with those we meet in our own church community which compels us to work together, to worship together, to create community together. But this principle demands more. It demands that our respect for each other extend out to the broader world in which we live. Our principle of working for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations also calls us to a broader covenant, a covenant to seek a better world for others outside our immediate community. Forrest Church says that we believe in the “ethical application of religion” and that we find completion in our work in society.

So, our I –Thou relationship is not just about how we relate to people in our family, in our own community, at our jobs. It’s also about how we relate to people we don’t know, people who falling in those gaps in society where covenants aren’t working.

So, for me part of my faith, says that I have a responsibility to take care of myself, to be in relationship with those I care about, and to be in relationship to the wider world, even if I don’t know them. It’s not something I feel guilt about- it’s something that I need to fulfill. As Jack Mendelsohn says in our reading, in order to gain serenity we need to make difficult choices “not just alone, but in the disciplined company of others”.

When I meet UU’s I often sense they also have this inner drive to work for others. There’s this sense of fairness and unfairness inside most UU’s that drive us to need to create a more just society.

Many of you have heard of Karen Armstrong, the former nun, who writes about the history of religion. Ms. Armstrong won the “TED” prize last year. Ted is a small non-profit group which awards prizes to people who are demonstrate “ideas worth spreading”. Each recipient is asked to articulate a “wish” when they win the prize. Karen Armstrong asked that a multi-faith, multi-national council of thinkers and leaders be comprised who would write a “Charter of Compassion” based on the Golden Rule. For the past year, this council has been meeting to discuss how to describe such a charter. They are looking for a return to the central religious principle echoed in so many religions worldwide of the Golden Rule, or using “moral imagination” to put ourselves in other’s shoes. The Golden Rule asks us to act towards others as we would want people to act toward us. It reminds us that we should carry out actions at all times that will help others, not harm others. On Nov. 12th of this coming week, the Charter of Compassion will be unveiled.

The Golden Rule is an implicit part of our UU values and principles. With a deep sense of others’ worth and dignity, we pledge to work toward justice and equity for all. This sense of fairness that is inherent in our principles carries over into our work, our families, and our commitment to working to make our society a better and more fair place to live.

So individually, we as Unitarian Universalists commit to living our values. Doing social justice work matters to us as individuals. So what about doing social justice work as a part of our congregational life. Why does that matter?

In our community life together, we try to embody the same values of fairness with each other. Our communities are based around the democratic principle- everyone gets a say. We try to practice what we preach in our way of being together. So, then why does it matter if our congregation gets involved in our larger community to do social justice work? Historically, this congregation has taken social justice work very seriously. We now have small groups of people within the congregation who decide to work on projects in the community. These projects may be launched from the social justice committee or they may be sponsored by RE, or small groups who decide something is important who just do it. Do we need to be doing this work as a congregation? Do we need to vote to decide which projects are sponsored by the entire congregation?

These are questions which have been raised and that we’ve been discussing. I do not have an answer and will not promote one way of doing this. Whether this congregation will ever vote to agree to sponsor one particular project is something that remains to be seen.

What is important is that our community remains committed to the process of seeking out our role in the larger society. That we raise issues together, examine them, decide what we want to do individually and as a group. When there are pressing issues that some agree on, then we should support those individuals to find out how they can act.. What is important is that we are in community with one another taking responsibility to lift our voices with each other, and lift our voices in our society about issues of justice. That we raise our liberal religious values as beacons in a lost and confused world. We share values about equal rights for all people, we share values about our desire for peace in the world, we share values about our responsibility for creating a sustainable environment, and we share values about democratic principles. That doesn’t mean we will all agree about individual social issues. But it means that we care about the justice within our larger society. When there’s a group who wants to work on one issue or another, I think we should support that group’s work. They are not representing us as a congregation, but they are representing us in the sense that they show that UU’s care enough to show up. People who stand up for what they believe demonstrate the importance of our values to our lives. And if there is an overwhelming majority that wants the congregation to vote on standing up as a congregation, then we should vote on that issue.

James Luther Adams said that creating covenants or commitments mean that we come out of our separateness and into relationship with the rest of the world. As a religious community, as we discuss and decide to get involved in community and world issues, we come out of our separateness and into relationship. We cannot stand alone in the world, just telling each other what we think is right and how the rest of the world is wrong. We can stay here in our church and discuss and discuss what we think. And talk about how the rest of the world is wrong - if they would only listen to us. But if we’re not out there telling the world about our belief in everyone’s inherent worth and dignity. Standing out there shouting out that every person in this world should have the right to marry the partner of their choice. If we’re not out there shouting that every person should have access to some kind of health care. If we’re not out there yelling about the need for a clean and sustainable environment. If we don’t take our sense of fairness and put it into action, then our faith is flawed. Then we are not truly walking the walk. We are just talking the talk.

James Reeb was a white Unitarian Universalist minister who started his ministry at All Souls’ Unitarian in Washington DC. All Souls is in an inner city poor neighborhood, mostly African American. Reeb’s ministry at All Souls within this neighborhood affected the direction his ministry would take. He moved to Boston where he and his family lived in poor neighborhoods and Reeb devoted himself to working within these neighborhoods to develop low cost housing. Reeb had become involved in the civil rights movement because he was a part of the black communities in which he was working. In 1965, Reeb went to Selma to participate in the Civil Rights march. There he was murdered by four white men wielding baseball bats who beat Reeb and his two companions. It was the publicity of his murder that gave much national attention to the civil rights movement.

At Reeb’s memorial service, Martin Luther King spoke. “Who killed Jim Reeb?”, he asked. He answered: “A few ignorant men.” He then asked, “What killed Jim Reeb?” and he answered: “An irrelevant church, an indifferent clergy, an irresponsible political system, and a corrupt law enforcement hierarchy…”

Martin Luther King often referred to his concept of Beloved Community. His concept of Beloved Community described not just the community of the church where you worshipped, but the larger community of the world. His vision was that the world could become a Beloved Community if we all worked together for that end. In his words:
Our goal is to create a beloved community and
this will require a qualitative change in our souls
as well as a quantitative change in our lives.
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.