Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, October 16, 2022

When our children were in elementary school, they had this teacher who would occasionally get exasperated with her class, as all teachers must, at times. And when she was at the end of her rope, she’d say to them, “This class is going down the tubes!” 

Do you ever feel like that? Like throwing up your hands, throwing in the towel, because it seems like everything is going to hell and what’s the use of even trying? I expect most of us experience that from time to time—frustration and anguish at the state of a relationship, or the state of our nation, or our world. The news can be overwhelming, I know. It’s a lot. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, I encourage you to do something about that. You can change your diet—consume less of the news and take in something that will be more nourishing and sustaining for you.

Wendell Berry wrote a poem that begins with these lines:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be…

You know the feeling, don’t you? These days I find myself wondering about our world, sometimes fearing for what our lives and our children’s lives might be. We’ve been though a lot, and the future is uncertain. A question I’m wresting with these days is this: is our world going down the tubes? Should I lower my expectations? Or is there some reason for hope?

There’s a framed poster in my office that Valerie Osborne gave me; she got it from a neighbor. It’s an affirmation of faith that was common among Unitarians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it ends with the line, “the progress of mankind, onward and upward forever.” 

This optimistic view was disproven by World War I, when millions killed in the trenches, and then, by a Second World War, with the gas chambers that killed six million Jews and millions of others. We still live amidst the scourge of war and violence—will we ever learn? We live in a time of terrorism, foreign and domestic; ongoing racism and white supremacy. Plus the increasing urgency of climate change. And a global pandemic! 

It’s a lot, isn’t it? So if you feel some despair for the world, and you worry for what your children’s lives may be, take heart. You’re not alone. It’s clear that human progress is not a given. Does it get better? Is the best we can hope for two steps forward, one step back?

In this month when we’re reflecting on lineage and ancestors, I find myself thinking about my family. On my father’s side, I come from a line of lawyers and judges. My great-grandfather sat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, and he was a white supremacist. Apparently he was an overbearing father—even when his son was a grown man and a lawyer, he’d boss his son around, calling him “boy.” My grandfather, whom I’m named for, had a sweeter disposition. He became a judge too, and part of his legacy is that he helped start a YMCA in a part of Charlotte where it could serve people of color, the first of its kind there. I like to think he was trying to atone for some of the sins of his father. My grandpa is someone who left the world better than he found it, and is certainly part of my cloud of witnesses. Plus, he bequeathed to me his love for fly fishing and sweets, which I’ve been happy to inherit.

My father also became a lawyer, and as a boy I idolized him, and wanted to be like him. But my dad got into trouble, and didn’t know how to ask for help. He embezzled money from his clients and served time in prison. He was never the same after that, getting into trouble again, and fleeing the country, living his last years down in Central America. 

When I was preparing for the ministry, a counselor said to me, “I wonder if you are doing this to atone for the sins of your father.” I don’t know—maybe? What I do know is that our actions have consequences, for good and for bad. That each of us, in our lives, has some agency and some influence, probably more than we know. I want to heal, and not to harm, and I know you do too. And this gives me hope.

About a decade ago, the “It Gets Better” campaign was created, with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth, who were being bullied and dying by suicide in growing numbers. People, some of them famous, recorded moving and inspiring videos telling their own stories, and promising, “It gets better.” 

Last Tuesday was National Coming Out Day, a wonderful celebration and affirmation of the courage to be who you are. It’s also a reminder of one way we have made some progress. If you ask any of our older gay folks here, I suspect they would tell you that things have gotten better. 

Theodore Parker was a Unitarian minister in Boston, a transcendentalist and a fierce abolitionist. In 1853 he preached a sermon which included a line that Martin Luther King, Jr. adopted a hundred years later. In that sermon Parker said,

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Tori and I were talking about this the other day, and she said “I don’t see this bending toward justice as something that is naturally bound to happen, but rather, as something that happens only with our efforts.”

There is a hunger in the human heart for liberation and for justice, that will not be denied. You see this in the courage and resilience of the people of Ukraine, fighting and often winning against the bully that is the Russian military. You see this in the fleeing of Russian men from their country, because they don’t want to fight. It’s heartbreaking isn’t it—the pain and suffering that war always causes?

You see the longing for healing and wholeness in liberation movements in every age. If you consider the longer arc of history, we are getting better. There is more freedom for more people than there used to be. Is our world still a mess? Sure. Are there big problems, and is there so much that’s beyond our control? Of course. But do you remember what happened after George Floyd was murdered? How our nation came alive with protests two summers ago? How a new awareness grew among white people that we do have a race problem in this country, and this is our problem to address. I don’t think there’s any going back from that. Just like there’s no going back on gay marriage or on civil rights, even though there will be battles ahead.

These are trying times we’re living in. But we’re not going down the tubes. Not by a long shot. And we need to take courage, and breathe in hope, and fortify ourselves so we can help build the future we long for. So we can be the kind of ancestors that those who follow us will be glad to claim. 

There’s a hymn that expresses this faith, that echoes the call of prophets through the ages, that we are here to build a better world than what has been. It says, 

“We are builders of that city, all our joys and all our groans,
Help to rear its shining ramparts, all our lives are building stones.”

Think of that—your life’s efforts as solid and as lasting as a building stone. What might your legacy be? What good will you leave behind? 

Let us take heart, my spiritual companions. Life is a struggle, and sometimes the best we can do is two steps forward, one step back. But it does get better. With our efforts, and with God’s help. It gets better.

We’re about to sing:

“And the work that we have builded, oft with bleeding hands and tears, 
oft in error, oft in anguish, will not perish with our years.”

This is my faith, and I hope it is yours too—that our efforts, imperfect as they may be, are needed, and helping us more forward. Today, tomorrow, and always,

Amen.