Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, October 22, 2023.
We just sang about being free, which is the promise of liberal religion; that’s what that word “liberal” means—free. Free to think for yourself, and to go where the Spirit leads; open to new ideas and new ways of being. I’m talking about liberal religion, not about politics. They’re not the same. Though there could be some overlap between your spiritual leanings and how you engage with the world, right?
I love our free faith, and am grateful for it, because it gave me me a way back to a faith I thought I’d given up on. Reflecting on this journey, a few days ago I dug out the sermon my friend Curtis preached at my ordination, back in 2005. Curtis is an Episcopal monk, and I want you to hear what he said to the congregation about our UU tradition:
“What we all have in common is this thing called love: our experience of love being present and love being absent. I would say, most all of us are very much the same, with very much the same needs, and very much the same eternal longings. One of the great hallmarks of Unitarian Universalism is your commitment to inclusivity and pluralism. You have been historically and convincingly committed, not to making people become more like you, but of helping people become more themselves, the real persons God has created them to be. You are a guarantor of that. That’s your tradition. And it’s beautiful. And it’s crucial these days as we see in our world and in our nation the rampant indignity of racism, class polarization, militarism, and the dehumanizing aspects of globalization. What does God’s love look like? It looks like you.”
We rightfully have plenty to be proud of in this tradition. We have lots to live up to. And, you know, everything has a shadow. Carl Jung taught us this; there’s a part of our selves that we don’t want to look at or acknowledge, because we’re ashamed of it or afraid of it.
The trouble with an unacknowledged shadow is you tend to project onto others. But if we look into our shadows, we will find parts of ourselves that want to come out, want to be engaged with; and doing this inner work will help round out our lives, will heal us and set us free.
Nations and institutions have shadows too. Robert Bly wrote about this in A Little Book on the Human Shadow, a classic that’s worth reading. Today I want us to look critically at our faith tradition and religious liberalism.
Those of us who were part of the Transforming Hearts transgender inclusion class last winter touched on some of the shadows of our UU tradition. Our tendency to be dismissive of our Jewish and Christian roots. Our difficulty in seeing how our tradition is rooted in a system and culture of white supremacy. The difficulty of any kind of culture change.
But the shadow of religious liberalism I want to explore with you today is our sunny optimism; our faith in humankind. And I have some historical evidence of this fact.
Some years ago Valerie Osborne brought this framed poster to me; a neighbor of hers had found it and Valerie rescued it from the trash. It quotes a 19th century Unitarian minister, James Freeman Clarke, and it reads:
Our Faith
The Fatherhood of God
The Brotherhood of Man
The Leadership of Jesus
Salvation by Character
The Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward Forever
I apologize for the patriarchal and exclusively masculine language of these statements. It’s kind of embarrassing now, isn’t it? But this is our history, on the Unitarian side at least. But what I really want to question is the belief that we are saved by our character, and we humans are so good that our journey will be all progress, onward and upward, forever.
These posters were popular in Unitarian churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But then came the First World War, and the Second World War, and the Holocaust. I wonder if church folks started taking these down from their walls. I doubt it!
Do you know that Martin Luther King, Jr. saw himself as a religious liberal? He cherished the freedom, the use of reason, the potential for change found in a free faith. Before he was a drum major for justice, he was a student of philosophy and theology. He wrote, “There is one phase of liberalism that I hope to cherish always: its devotion to the search for truth, its insistence on an open and analytical mind, its refusal to abandon the best light of reason.”
But, Rev. Dr. King said, “It was mainly the liberal doctrine of man that I began to question. The more I observed the tragedies of history and man's shameful inclination to choose the low road, the more I came to see the depths and strength of sin… I came to recognize the complexity of man's social involvement and the glaring reality of collective evil. I came to feel that liberalism had been all too sentimental concerning human nature and that it leaned toward a false idealism.”
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less optimistic about our human condition. Less naive, you could say. Because I’ve experienced people doing bad things, hurtful things. selfish things. To say nothing of the injustice and atrocities in our world, that we bear witness to, day in and day out.
What do we do about these things? How are we to live here in the 21st century, when our world is so connected, and so troubled? How do you get out of bed in the morning if you think people are terrible and our world is going down the tubes?
We have to remember that those painful headlines and the inhuman, and yes, evil things we do to one another, they are, thankfully, not the whole story. As we heard in our reading this morning, “It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.”
It also helps to be mindful of our own failings, our own complicity, our own inadequacy. To acknowledge and confess our faults. You may think, “But if I do this, it will only make me feel worse!” Maybe, at the start. But if we are going to grow in heart and soul, we have to tell the truth. We have to look at things as they are. To acknowledge there is no one blameless on the earth; there are no clean hands. And as we do, we will come down to earth, where we ought to be, and will feel the good and solid ground under our feet.
If I was flying a bit high on the day I was ordained to the ministry, my friend Curtis brought me back down to earth. At the end of his sermon he said it was wonderful that I wanted to be a minister, to put my gifts to use in this way. And then he said:
“There’s something else that comes to my mind on this day, Frank. You are inadequate. Despite so much good that has come from your life and family and preparation, you simply do not possess everything you will need to be our minister. And you will know it before we will. The grace in this—what could seem like a negative—is that your own sense of inadequacy will keep you belonging to us, because you will need us as much as we need you. Your are called to be a minister, not a messiah. Your own sense of inadequacy, of absence, will keep you on your knees, in a right posture before God, who is always More.”
These words have never been far from me. But lately, I have been increasingly aware of my own inadequacy. That for our church to meet the needs of this moment, and to thrive in the days ahead, the ministry here must be shared, more and more widely. We need one another, and I need your help.
I know you feel inadequate too. But can you see, that this which could feel like something to hide away, or be ashamed of, is not that at all? That none of us are complete. That none of us have everything we need. And certainly none of should go it alone.
The invitation of inadequacy is to let down your guard, and ask for help. The grace in this is that we will be drawn into deep and real connections with one another. That our own sense of absence will help us to be more present to our broken and hurting world. And traveling the way together, we will see that we are part of something beautiful and good. And yes, imperfect. “We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.”
My spiritual companions, we are builders of that city; that city which prophets have dreamed of, where people do justice, and love mercy, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8). And in our building, we will do this imperfectly and inadequately, “oft with bleeding hands and tears.” And this is where grace comes in, and asks us to have faith: that we are part of something larger, and lasting; that will continue on, and shine on, even when are gone.
Amen.