The Transformational Power of Love, Part IV

Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
February 12, 2006

First Reading:
from The Beloved Community by Josiah Royce

The future task of religion is the task of inventing and applying arts which shall win all over to unity, and which shall overcome their original hatefulness by the gracious love, not of mere individuality but of communities. Judge every social device, every proposed reform, every national and every local enterprise, by the one test: does this help towards the coming of the universal community?

Second Reading:
from The Beloved Community by Charles Marsh

A man or woman gets a notion to love as God has loved the world. Everyday people, African American and Caucasian, Latino and Asian American, women and men, read the Gospels—

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God…

--or the Hebrew prophets—

O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

--[or another sacred text, ancient or modern]

--and they resolve to turn their lives into parables of divine mercy. It may happen in a sudden decision to change one’s life, through some trick of grace, or in a slow turning [over a long period of time]. There is a call that no one but the called can discern, and there is in the acceptance a first step, which changes everything. Some hear the call in mass meetings, lecture halls, hikes in the mountains, watching the evening news, or sitting at the kitchen table at midnight. The call does not promise happiness, prosperity, or that your territory will increase. It may invite the greatest complications and cannot be successfully analyzed. The call comes with no formula or guidebook, but when one accepts it, the world will never again look quite the same.

Third Reading:
from Peter Raible, my colleague and friend who died this past year, his paraphrase based on Deuteronomy 6:10-12

We build on foundations we did not lay.
We warm ourselves at fires we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.
We drink from wells we did not dig.
We profit from persons we did not know.
We are ever bound in community.

Sermon:

 

During the final days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, just weeks after the Supreme Court assured black organizers the victory in their yearlong protest of the city’s segregation laws, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed his supporters. Although a boycott was necessary to end the discriminatory laws, King urged his followers to remember that a boycott and what it achieves do not in themselves represent the goal. He said, “The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community.” Throughout his ministry, King referred to the Beloved Community as the ultimate aim of people of faith.

The phrase, “the beloved community,” was first coined by American philosopher Josiah Royce at the beginning of the twentieth century. Royce was deeply concerned with how individualism had run amok at the end of the nineteenth century. As many of our forbears extolled the virtues of freeing oneself from conformity and to experience oneself as unique and special apart from others, Royce warned that human beings were at risk of becoming adrift in the world and thus prone to losing a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. Royce summed up his position in one sentence: “My life means nothing, either theoretically or practically, unless I am a member of a community.” He persuasively asserted that loyalty to a community doesn’t diminish an individual but instead makes people more whole. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this with profound clarity, and the Beloved Community became the foundation of his vision. It is important to note that for King, the beloved community is not the same as the Kingdom of God, where the lion and the lamb mingle together in harmony. King was looking for a universal salvation in human history. As he says, “I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end or that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community.” Throughout his ministry, King referred to the Beloved Community as the universal community that we as human beings can bring about if we but live in the light of love, agape love.

This is the fourth and final sermon in my series on the transformational power of love. The thread of the previous three sermons have been:
1) Love, active love, is a vehicle to transcendence because this type of love calls us to sacrifice;
2) We are free to love; indeed we are created to love; and
3) Love takes practice. That is, even though we are created to love, we are not natural lovers of self, others, world, or God.

In this last sermon, I want to reflect on how these three threads weave through living in community and why I believe our religious task collectively is to grow in love and commitment. 

Although I was raised in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I felt like I grew up with no religious identity, let alone a faith worthy of the devotion of my life. I was raised in a small fellowship that had no minister and no director of religious education. No one ever spoke of God or prayer without contempt. The congregation was a group of well-intentioned people who gathered for a lecture and discussion with coffee in between. The congregation prioritized intellectual stimulation over all other reasons to gather in community. It gave me a strong sense of critical inquiry, but it didn’t provide me with language or concepts with which to interpret my longing to devote myself to a broader vision. I felt compelled to explore. I pursued a degree in religion, worked with abused children, spent eight months in India, and desperately wished to figure out to what to devote my life. At one point I remember saying to myself, “Well, I guess I am going to give up on my religious quest and go back to Unitarian Universalism.” To be honest about my motivation—I was lonely. I was in an unfamiliar city with no close friends.

At the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, I was in for a surprise. I unexpectedly found inspiring ministers and a devoted community that brought together a depth spirituality with a commitment to social justice. In that congregation, I was transformed for I had found a religious community that strived to embody the transformational power of love. It wasn’t easy: the congregation had to navigate conflicts, individuals had to do their own spiritual work, and a shared ministry developed that inspired people to live more courageously and compassionately in a hurting world.  I was transformed. I was transformed! And I can testify that the ministry there touched dozens upon dozens (and likely hundreds upon hundreds) of lives as it did mine. And thus awoke in me a calling to serve Unitarian Universalist congregations to move closer to the transforming source of love.

The first time I visited the UU church in Oakland, I had several blocks to walk because that congregation has a distinct similarity with ours—there’s no parking lot. Worse, there are no nearby parking garages. Most people park several blocks away as I did that morning. As I walked, an older man who also was on his way to the church greeted me. I learned his name was Willard. As we walked, he said, “That’s a lovely red shirt you’re wearing.” The simple comment put me at ease. It’s the only thing I remember of our conversation, and I remember he gladly welcomed me to sit with him during worship and introduced me to others. I then sat with him when I returned the next few times, for I was shy and, believe it or not was intimidated by approaching others. Now I didn’t experience transformation at first, but the seeds were dropped those first few visits—and they were a part of the reason I returned. The one thing I haven’t mentioned in this story was that during this time I was spiritually lost. My life was adrift. I was pursuing medical school even though I have never been able to stand the sight of blood. At that time, I was navigating my life by fear and was in need of community. I will never forget Willard. Tears come to my eyes and I smile when I think about the lovely man whose kindness and genuine interest in me had helped me realize that I had finally found a faith community where I could belong, ironically in the same tradition in which I was raised.

Sometimes people are transformed in worship. I’d bet at least as many are transformed by their interactions with others, often in small groups that gather with the intention of fostering a level of authentic conversation. I was transformed by both the preaching at Oakland and a young adult group that served the East Bay and connected to another church. Our young adult group met every Wednesday night. We did something counter-cultural. We really listened to each other. We shared with one another what concerned us most about our lives, our world, our future.

When the congregation was looking for new ministers, a member of the search committee came to meet with our young adult group to learn our hopes for new ministerial leadership. The older woman who visited us had been an active member of the church for over twenty years. She sat with us through our check-in during which a couple members shared real life struggles. The elder visitor appeared awkward hearing such pain and struggle, as if she didn’t know what to say in the presence of common suffering. When she began the discussion about what we wanted in a minister, she asked whether we typically reached that level of sharing. We assured her that we did. And then she said something that I won’t ever forget. She said, “I’ve been so active in the church for over twenty years, and I don’t remember ever sitting down and actively listening among a group as you are doing where people share what is really going on in their lives.” I appreciated her honesty as she said, “I have never set aside the time to do that. There is simply too much to do in the church.” Yesterday, Mike Durall shared with us words from Loren Mead, “Stewardship is having life-transforming conversations with each other.”

When Betsy Davis, the music director here, attended General Assembly, she attended a workshop which considered religious education as a lifespan concern. In her report to the congregation, she writes, “We were asked in small groups to devise definitions of religious growth and learning that could be meaningful for UU’s of all ages. My group of five struggled mightily and at times heatedly to put something on paper that we could all go along with. The lengthy, cumbersome paragraph we produced satisfied no one. But a woman in another group wrote a single sentence that stunned me at first and seems more profound and inclusive the longer I ponder it. She wrote:
     ‘If growing physically means becoming taller, and
     growing intellectually means becoming smarter, then
     growing religiously means becoming more loving.’”

Growing religiously means becoming more loving. Where are we capable of growing more loving? Given we are not naturals at loving, where can we practice the art of genuine loving? Here in the context of community, a genuine community, the beloved community. Our relationships provide us the opportunities in which to grow. This community, this congregation is one such committed relationship. This community provides a unique crucible in which to not only reflect on how to become more loving but to practice how to do so, knowing full well that mistakes will be made. That is what genuine communities provide, for love cannot be practiced in solitude. When we approach each other with forgiving hearts then we provide the space to be real and if we offend or hurt another, the ensuing conflict need not tear us apart but provide an opportunity to do the hard work of engaging each other honestly and creatively, to deepen in relationship, to learn more of what truly loving really is about. 

When Irene Thomas joined Beacon Unitarian Church, she tells me that she was painfully shy. She hated to initiate conversations with others. In fact, as hard as it is to believe today, Irene was one to stay in a corner and simply observe, for she grew up with a hearing loss that led her family to treat her as less than human. Irene tells me “I came to life in this church, because I felt safe to do so.” And it started when she promised herself to greet people for a month. It was uncomfortable for her, but she persisted. On the first Sunday, she greeted a young man, learned his name was Eric, and talked with him briefly. He did not return the next Sunday, but two weeks later he did. And Irene welcomed him with a smile and said, “Welcome back Eric, it is good to see you.” Irene told me that Eric’s jaw dropped in surprise that she had remembered his name, and she could see in his face how important it was to him to be known. Irene tells me this was a transforming experience for her, for she had suddenly found her call. She uses this language—it has become her calling to welcome people warmly to the spiritual community that has transformed her life. She works at it behind the scenes, the Sunday morning activity being just the tip of the iceberg of her work. Ever since, she has been a greeter. Irene, there are many people in this congregation for whom you did for them what Willard did for me.

If we are free to love, indeed created to love, if growing religiously is to become more loving, then as your minister, I call upon our shared ministry to be more than simply providing a place for people to have a quiet moment of reflection or intellectual stimulation, as important as they are. I call upon you to consider how the great adventure we are on as a congregation has the aim of cultivating the Beloved Community, and how this work transforms lives and transforms the wider community, how we as a congregation are so much more than a group of like-minded individuals. I call upon you to consider how we as human beings are called to encounter, engage, and embody the transformational power of love.

I challenge you to deepen your own calling. Your calling may be to engage the faith development of children or to found a social mission project that serves people in need beyond our walls. Your calling may very well take you beyond this congregation and re-chart your life work, moving you to resist injustice and evil in our culture or build bridges among people who are different from one another. As Charles Marsh notes from today’s reading, “The call does not promise happiness, prosperity, or that your territory will increase. It may invite the greatest complications and cannot be successfully analyzed. The call comes with no formula or guidebook, but when one accepts it, the world will never again look quite the same.” His book entitled The Beloved Community has its subtitle, “How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today.” As a faith community matures, the calling among its members moves to outside its walls to strive for the beloved community.

So many people are adrift in our world, even here in Oak Park. At least once a year, I listen to the Beatles’ song, “Eleanor Rigby.” I suspect most of you know it: “All the lonely people, where do they all come from; all the lonely people, where do they all belong.” My answer is, they belong here, if they long for liberal religious community that seeks to live out love rather than adhere to a specific dogma, if they share our values, if what we’ve got would help them to live more courageously and compassionately then we can be of service to our fellow sisters and brothers who long for beloved community where deeds are more important than creeds, where every human being is valued and every person challenged to live out his or her calling.

Love frees us from the paralyzing shackles of fear, the closed-hearted pettiness of hatred, and the lonely isolation of deception. Love is the vehicle to self-transcendence that calls each of us to ask: for what are we willing to sacrifice? Remember the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community. What are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of community beyond your family and close friends?

There will be no canvass sermon this year. Instead, I hope my words today and the last three sermons in this series will suffice in providing a call to turn our hearts to the transformational power of love. And instead, I am sharing with you a personal testimonial.

Because I believe in this power, I have dedicated my life to the UU ministry. In the last three months, I have met with the four graders, the sixth graders and the high school youth. Each time I was asked whether I have another job in addition to this one. No, I typically work over sixty hours a week. Last week, I didn’t have to preach, and still I topped fifty hours. This work is truly a labor of love.

As for financially contributing, I am called to tithe, to give 10% of my income away to charitable giving, and at least 5% to the church. But I must confess that my wife and I were not able to reach that goal these first couple of years, as we bought a house and have needed to get settled. We simply couldn’t figure out how to give 10% of our income away. Now, after considerable conversation and figuring out how we are going to do it, my wife and I have budgeted $3,300 to this congregation for the coming fiscal year. That’s five percent of our income. What we give for special collections, UTRF, and the winter appeal is on top of that. Pledging at 5% to this congregation is a stretch for us, but I tell you it truly feels like the right thing to do. And it makes me feel in my body that I am in right relationship with my people. Truly, the transformational power of love draws me into a place of gratitude, toward my center. I breathe more deeply and clarity replaces my anxiety, not all in one fell swoop but over time as I practice love.

Active love is our vehicle for transcendence. However, active love isn’t easy or comfortable. As Marge Piercy writes, “Loving leaves stretch marks.” I call upon you to identify your contributions of time and money to this congregation as acts of love, not mere dues, not as an obligation as much as what you are called to do. I urge you to practice love. In a couple weeks, you will receive pledge packets. I urge you to join me in pledging to the point of stretching, stretching to the point you feel good about being in healthy relationship with your people—it is a good way of practicing love as is to wrestle with the moral imperative of giving away a portion of one’s own wealth for the sake of others. As the gospel says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In this final sermon on the power of love, I must take the opportunity and say I love you, I really do. I know it sounds sappy but truly my love for you and the work we do together continues to deepen. I am touched, tickled, and transformed by the faithfulness of so many here. I want to hear from even more of you how your involvement in this congregation has changed your life.

Today’s second hymn reminds us we are not alone in our quest for truth, justice, and the power to love. We are in solidarity with the women and men who have come before us, both those who identify themselves as Unitarian Universalist as well as those who have sought to bring forth the beloved community. Listen to the words of Carl Seaburg who penned the hymn we sang:

Ours the years memorial store, honored days and names we reckon, days of comrades gone before, lives that speak and deeds that beckon. From the dreaming of the night to the labors of the day, shines their everlasting light, guiding us upon our way.

Though the path be hard and long still we strive in expectation; join we now their ageless song, one with them in aspiration. One in name, in honor one, guard we well the crown they won; what they dreamed be ours to do, hope their hopes, and seal them true.

Let us be about the work of creating a beloved community,
a community whose purpose is to help people live lives of integrity, service, and joy,
a community that reaches out to those who are in need,
a community that has ever growing numbers of small groups where people engage with what is truly important,
a community that cultivates the transformational power of love.

This vision doesn’t call you to be perfect, or great. This vision calls you to practice love, to be faithful to our values, to be generous, to be loyal in your relationships, to seek reconciliation when you are not, and to strive to be ever more loving people.

May it be so.

© Copyright 2006 Rev. Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.