by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together this day

To be reminded of the best that is within us;

To know that we are not isolated beings,

But are connected by our values and

Our commitment to the good—

To one another,

To this community,

And to the larger world.

This country has just been engaged in a huge exercise of power.  Power has been used, and it has been misused.  The upside to this election is that never have I seen so many people so passionately engaged in our political life.  Never has our vote seemed so precious.  Never have so many of us sent money to candidates and organizations supporting our views.  I count all this as a great positive influence.

And yet so many of us in this congregation were devastated—yes, that is the word I heard most often—devastated—by the results of the election.  So many of us worked so hard in this election, to support those values that we deeply believe in, and we lost.  We lost the Presidential election.  And we lost on Ballot Measure 36, as well, which now defines marriage in this state as between a man and a woman.  We registered voters, we held educational events and lectures, we went to peace rallies and marches, we put our banner across the front of our church proclaiming our support of the right of everyone to marry.  We never carried on partisan activities, because that would have been illegal, but we did work for our values—I’m thinking of the values articulated in our Purposes and Principles—the first one being “We believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”  Every person.  Not just people of wealth.  Not just Americans.  Not just people with white skin.  Every person.  The second principle is “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”  In a society in which economic inequity is so great that some people have so much money they don’t know what to do with it, while others are sending their children hungry to school, we were crying out in this election for compassion, for every person to have the basic necessities of life.  And then I think of our seventh principle, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” and I know how many of you are working to save this green earth—we are surrounded with such beauty here in the Northwest—we are reminded each day of the preciousness of this earth, and we know how environmental laws have been rolled back and scientific fact ignored and long-term destruction courted for short-term gain. 

Yes, we fought hard for these values, and we lost this election.  But as I reflect upon this event and your efforts, I say that we did not lose.  I say this because, in a spiritual context, winning is never judged, as I said last Sunday, by the fruits of your efforts, but only by the integrity with which you pursued those efforts, and the values that drove your work.  As I observed your work, I see only winners here.  Let me give you an analogy.  There is a film I saw some weeks ago that is still playing here in town I believe—it is called Friday Night Lights, and it’s about small-town football.  It’s set in Texas.  I know about small-town football in the South.  I’m from a small town in Louisiana, and I was in the marching band in high school, as was everyone else who wasn’t in the pep squad or on the football team.  The stadium was by far the largest gathering place in our town.  And the pressure was on the football coach to win—you better believe it. 

Anyway, in this film, the boys on this team are trying to win state.  Their coach wants their best effort, and insists upon it.  He tells them, “Be perfect.  I want you to be perfect.”  They try, oh do they try.  And they lose their first game.  And then they win and they win and they win.  Finally they are in the finals for the state championship, and they are playing these huge, hulking players who have little regard for the rules.  They play dirty, trying to hurt our heroes.  In the end our boys, so much smaller but fighting so hard, are way behind, but then they catch up, they get the ball just before the game is over, and they head for the goal line, and they almost beat the clock.  They almost beat it, but they don’t.  They lose by inches.  They are, well, devastated.  This is a true story.  I find it fascinating that somebody in this country made a movie about a team that loses.  But you see, these boys weren’t losers.  They had lost their star player with an injury, and they just didn’t have the power to go those final few inches.  But as human beings, they won.  Before they went in for that last play, their coach, played by the inimitable Billy Bob Thorton, tells them, “You know I’ve been telling you guys to be perfect—do you know what that means?  It doesn’t mean winning this ball game.  It means doing the very best you can, not holding back anything.  When you look people in the eye tomorrow, you want to be proud that you gave it everything you had.  That’s what it means to be perfect.”

And so my friends, I look at you this morning, and I say to you, “You are perfect.  You are just beautiful.  And I don’t know when I’ve loved you more than at this very moment.”

This election was frustrating and disheartening, yes, and we need to be able to say that, we need to be able to vent our anger and to cry our tears.  We need to grieve, and we need to mourn.  But in no way should we be without hope.  Not at all.  Remember that we almost won this election, and this is not the last election that will take place—it is one along the way.  We must take the long view.  Remember that social change takes a long time.  It starts small.  It typically starts with a few people around a kitchen table, maybe with a bottle of not-so-great red wine, saying to one another, “You know, that’s just wrong.  That needs to be changed.  We’re just not going to put up with it.”  And they begin to worry at the problem, to think, to plan, to enlist others.  When these folks tell others, they are often ridiculed—whether the issue is abolition, or the right of women to vote, or gays and lesbians to marry—people will say, “Oh, that’s just crazy—it’s always been this way.”  But these change agents continue to talk, and educational forums are held, and books are written, and sermons are preached, and so on and so forth, and new elections are held.  People change so slowly, and so there is much failure along the way, but one day, because a thing is right, change comes, freedom comes to a people who have been oppressed.  It always takes longer than we think it should.  Always.  And sometimes those changes do not come in the lifetime of the people who fought hardest for them.  Susan B. Anthony never was able to cast a single ballot in any election.  Did she think of herself as a failure?  She attended her last women’s suffrage convention in Baltimore in February of 1906.  She died a month later at the age of 86.  Her words to that final convention?  She told them, “Failure is impossible.”

I want to share with you now some words that have been important to me in this long fight for our values.  They are from one of my heroes, Howard Zinn, from his essay entitled “The Optimism of Uncertainty”:  (Incidentally, if you have never read his book A People’s History of the United States, I highly recommend it—it is one of those books that changed my life, for sure.)  He writes:  “Note that throughout history people have felt powerless before authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing, acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to change the world around them, even if a little.  That is the history of the labor movement, the women’s movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the disabled persons’ movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the movement of black people in the South.  Remember that those who have power and seem invulnerable are in fact quite vulnerable.  Their power depends on the obedience of others, and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile. . . That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, <and> patience."

And do you know the story of Vaclav Havel, poet and past President of Czechoslovakia, and the so-called “Velvet Revolution” that brought down the Soviet occupation?  People began publishing and distributing independent periodicals; song writers and bands began to do nonconformist music; there was an awakening of religious life among young people in reaction to the spiritual vacuity of communism; and then Havel and other writers circulated a petition to free a group of people imprisoned for their dissent.  People made fun of them at the time, said they would only annoy the government.  And in one sense they failed completely.  Their initial efforts didn’t free a single political prisoner.  Soon after, Havel himself was imprisoned for four years, and many of his compatriots as well.  But the Revolution came about, through what Nelson Mandela called “the multiplication of courage.”

And speaking of Nelson Mandela, he spent 27 long years in prison, sometimes pounding rocks, sometimes feeling the cold in his very bones, as he put it.  At one point Mandela was becoming a political liability and was told he could go free—he answered that he would not leave prison until his people were freed from the scourge of apartheid.  Can you imagine—he set the conditions for his release, refusing to leave prison until his demands were met.

And where do we get this kind of determination, this kind of radical hope?  Vaclav Havel calls it “an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.”  He says, “It transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . .It is something we get from ‘elsewhere.’”  Elsewhere—he means the world of the spirit.  This is where our strength is renewed.  There can be no giving up when we remember why we were put on this earth and whom we serve.

My friends, we simply don’t have the luxury to despair—there is just too much work to do.  This election that we’ve just been through is a blip on the screen of human progress, and we are the force that’s moving inexorably, in hope, in faith, toward a world of peace and justice.  We might not get to the mountain top, to the promised land, but we’ll take steps along the way, we’ll do our part, and then we’ll pass the torch on to the next generation, to those hundreds of thousands of young progressive voters who turned out to vote this time.

Now if you’re sitting there thinking, that yes, I want to do my part, but what do I do?  What comes next?  Then I have an invitation for you.  This afternoon at 1:15 in our parish hall, Fuller Hall, just downstairs, we are having a potluck gathering with just that title, “What’s Next?”  You are welcome to attend, and if you didn’t bring any food this morning, you have plenty of time to go pick up some chicken or potato salad or whatever, or if you don’t have time to do that, come ahead anyway, because we’ll have plenty of food.  Also, a more immediate opportunity: during the coffee hour right after the service, downstairs in the same place, in Fuller Hall, you can visit the tables with information about our social justice task forces—there are several groups, including EJAG, our Economic Justice Action Group, and the Seventh Principle, our environmental group, just to give you an idea.  You can find out about their activities and sign up for whatever looks interesting or compelling to you.

I know you people pretty well.  I know how sad and disappointed you were on Tuesday night—but I also know that you are people of great courage and patience and endurance.  I know that you do what you do because you believe it to be right, and for no other reason.  We are Unitarian Universalists, after all.  We have a long history of persecution—and you know what?  We never, never give up.  And I believe with all my heart that justice and truth will prevail.  Let us do our part to make our country what it should be: yes, a powerful country, but a country that uses power well, a country that is a moral force, a justice seeker, a peace maker.  Let us keep the vision before us, and one day, it will be so.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Mother God, we need your comfort just now.  We need to be held, that we might rise to go on yet another day.  Give us faith, give us hope.  And Father God, we need your strength and resolute purpose as we regroup and turn our energies to new days and new times.  Help us through it all to be faithful to what we know is right, in thought, word, and deed, that we might live lives of integrity and courage.  Amen.