Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, April 6, 2025.
At their heart, religion and spiritual practice are meant to free us. Any faith worthy of the name is here to open us up to a clearer and more expansive view—of our lives, and the lives of others, and of our world. To help us be in touch with both the light and the shadow of life, its joys and its sorrows. The nun Elaine Prevalent, in an essay on minding one’s call, wrote,
“For most, the call has a particular container—a marriage, a church community, a mission site. At the deepest level, the call frees us. It enables us to see what really matters, to focus our love, to dedicate ourselves to something/Someone larger than ourselves, and so to enter consciously into that continual stream of losing and finding ourselves that is the mystery of life.”
This is what we are about, isn’t it? Being conscious, being away to the ebb and flow of life; opened up by love and beauty as well as by heartbreak and loss, able to see that it’s all a gift, and a wondrous mystery. That for a short time we get these lives, and these companions; this opportunity to help and to be helped, to give and to receive. Like Louis Armstrong sang, “And I say to myself, what a wonderful world.”
Our worship theme this month is “Equity,” which is one of our newly articulated UU values. In lifting up and valuing equity, we’re saying that people are good and worthy and deserve to be treated fairly; everyone should have the opportunity to live a good and fruitful life. Equity coheres with our Universalist faith, which says “nobody left behind.”
Equity isn’t the same as equality; which assumes our needs are the same, and everyone should be treated equally. Some parents try to do this, to treat their children all the same. But children come into the world as different from one another; some need more comfort and cuddling and others need to be free to go out and explore. How can you treat them the same?
This is why, over the years, our nation developed programs to help people—like Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which worked to address the unfairness and imbalance between rich and poor in our country. Believing that lifting people up is the right thing to do, and is good for everyone in the long run. Affirmative action is just that: positive efforts to try and correct for and reduce the longterm effects of the wrongs of the past.
Back when I was a new minister I preached a sermon in which I said I wished that our seven UU principles were less general and more theological—to me they sounded kind of like “truth, justice, and the American way.” I do wish that our new UU values were a little more religious-sounding, but they’re all good and important and needed: justice, generosity, interdependence, equity, pluralism, and transformation, all centered around and grounded in Love.
I understand that some people don’t like affirmative action; they want to hold on to their privileged place, or would rather not acknowledge that they are privileged at all. But I never imagined that “Equity,” would be so controversial—I never would have thought that our own government would attack and outlaw equity, of all things.
But our current President says the previous administration “forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs” into the Federal Government. We can disagree about policies and methods, but “illegal and immoral”—seriously? Unless it’s now illegal and immoral to remind America of its racist history. Unless it’s now illegal and immoral to try to make amends for the sins of the past. Unless it’s now illegal and immoral to help people.
I thought almost everyone believed that variety and fairness and welcoming were good things; that these are cherished and commonly held values in our society. Isn’t this what most people want? You know, diversity, equity, and inclusion—aren’t these core values, that we Americans claim, and aspire to, and want to work towards?
I want to make the case that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not just good things, but that they are religious values, which you find articulated in the teachings of Jesus and the early Christians, and in the Hebrew scriptures that preceded them. Humanistic teachings like “love your neighbor,” and “welcome the stranger” and “remember that you were slaves in Egypt.”
And I wonder, how have we lost our way? How has the religion that grew up around a humble teacher and healer who hung out with the wrong people, become so powerful and self-centered that it allies itself with oppressive power? That too often it is about exclusion and right belief, rather then celebrating inclusion and good works.
As one who identifies as a Universalist Christian, and sees in Jesus an example for how to live a ife serving others, seeking the common good, trusting that we are all part of God’s family, I’m stunned that some Christians see things so differently.
At their core, Unitarian Universalism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all expect and encourage their followers to welcome the foreigner and extend hospitality to strangers, to be generous and not judgmental; to be caring and kind; to be humble and to do no harm. As a Passover Haggadah puts it, “to help and not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to serve you, Spirit of freedom.”
It’s not that complicated, is it? Easier said than done, but isn’t this how we are meant to live? Loving the great Spirit of live, loving our neighbors and even our enemies.
But people can lose their way. Extremism in any form leads to destruction. There are strains of western Protestantism that have perverted the Gospel, making it about individual needs rather than the common good, prosperity over service and justice. Which leads to the Christo-fascism we are seeing these days, when church is a servant of the state rather than speaking truth to power and calling its leaders to account.
Have you heard about liberation theology? It developed in Central America among poor Catholics, common people, who started to reflect theologically on what they were hearing in church. Like our reading from Luke today. When they heard “Blessed are you who are poor,” they took this seriously, asking, “What if Jesus was talking about us? Are we, the forgotten, neglected ones, precious in the sight of God? Are we really the salt of the Earth?”
As liberation theology developed, it came to understand that God has a preferential option for the poor, and that we should too. That this is clear in the stories Jesus told, and what he said about the nature of God; that the poor and marginalized have the clearest view of what’s going on, because their perspective isn’t obscured by privilege or power.
If you read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, you have to conclude that God has a soft spot for the marginalized and the suffering, the exiled and the alien. Like what we heard earlier from Luke’s gospel:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh (Luke 6:20-21).
Archbishop Desmond Tutu believed this. That in the fullness of time things would be set right. Back in the darkest days of apartheid, he would tell the South African government, “We live in a moral universe. you have already lost. Come over and join us on the winning side.”
In this tradition, don’t we hold these truths to be self evident: that diversity, equity, and inclusion are sacred values? That there are times to make a choice and take a stand, and we are committed to standing on the side of love. That we have to trust that these values, as threatened as they may seem right now, are eternal and everlasting ones.
And so isn’t our work is to use our power and our privilege and our presence to rise up against injustice to help lift others up. To listen to and learn from people at the margins. To praise and practice what I used to think was an uncontroversial concept: equity in human relations. To take comfort that what the great Unitarian minister Theodore Parker preached in a sermon back in 1853 is still true. He 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 experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”
Dear companions, let this be our faith, and our sustenance, and our strength; that we still live in a moral universe, and that it does bend toward justice. Now and always,
Amen.