by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given January 6, 2008

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning! 

Come into this circle of love and justice

Come into this community of mercy, holiness, and health.

Come in just as you are, whoever you are,

You are welcome among us--

The “promised land”—what does that mean?   For some people, it refers to heaven, where all our earthly troubles will be over.  Or an ideal way of life projected in literature, starting with Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, written in 1515--or those utopian communities, like Brookfarm—some started by Unitarians--that flourished in the 19^th century in this country.  The promised land is used in fact to refer to America itself, or ideals of freedom and democracy that our country represented and still represents to many peoples of the world.  Our special calling as a nation was articulated powerfully in a sermon by John Winthrop, the first leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, on board ship, even before landing in the new world.  He said “. . . wee must Consider that wee thall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us . . . .”  And the American West, of course, has always been the outlying frontier of this American “promised land,” where the Dream is most alive, and here in the Northwest is where the edge of newness and experimentation is found.

The term originated in the Book of Exodus, in the Hebrew scripture.  Many of you remember the story--the Israelites had fallen on hard times and were enslaved in Egypt. Moses was chosen by God—God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, as you recall—and told him he was to lead his people out of Egypt, into the promised land.  So God makes a covenant with his people and promises to bring them out of slavery, into a land flowing with milk and honey, but there is one caveat—Moses himself will not be allowed to enter the promised land. 

Let me tell you about a couple of individuals who changed our lives and changed our nation—but, like Moses, never got to the promised land. 

The first is Susan B. Anthony, who led the women’s suffrage movement in the 19^th century.  When little Susan was 6 years old, she was sent to a local school district in New York, where a teacher refused to teach her long division because of her gender.  So her father took her out of school and taught her himself.  She attended the Rochester women’s rights convention in 1848, two weeks after the historic Seneca Falls Convention, and she plunged headlong into activism. 

Once a Quaker, she became a Unitarian, and began to work in the temperance movement and the anti-slavery movement.  In 1851, she was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was to remain a close colleague and friend for all of her life.  It was around this time that she began to gain notoriety as a powerful public speaker on women’s rights.  In 1856, Anthony attempted to unify the African-American and the women’s rights movements, but was opposed by her friend Frederick Douglass, and the Equal Rights Association voted to support the 15^th Amendment to the Constitution granting suffrage to black men, but not women. 

For casting a vote in the presidential election held on November 5, 1872, Anthony was arrested.  She pled not guilty, saying that the 14^th amendment entitled her to vote, for it provides that all persons born in the US shall not be denied the privileges of citizenship.  She was defended by a female lawyer, who claimed that it was the United States that was truly on trial, not Anthony.  At this trial she made a most amazing speech.  In part, she stated: “To <women> this government is not a democracy.  It is not a republic.  It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor.  . . . .  This oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarches over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household, which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.”[1]

The judge delivered an opinion of “guilty,” which he had written before the trial had even begun, and sentenced Anthony to pay $100.  She responded, “May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.”  She never paid the fine, and the government never pursued her for non-payment.  They didn’t want to risk hearing another speech.

So no, Susan B. Anthony didn’t get to the promised land.  She died 14 years, 5 months and 5 days before passage of the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote.  That was in 1920.  And things have changed.  Now, in January of 2008, we have a woman who is a viable candidate for President of the United States.  Yes, things change.    Or maybe I should say, people change things.  And more change will be coming for women.  One thing that I have learned is that anything human takes time. 

And then the second story I will tell is perhaps more familiar.  Again, it is the story of someone who had a cause and because of his faith and commitment and passion, our country took a great leap—but he never got to the promised land.  I speak of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.  His father was a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his mother was a schoolteacher.  The civil rights movement began for him when he was six years old.  When two of his little friends did not show up to play ball, he decided to go looking for them.  When he arrived at the home of one of them, the boy’s mother met him at the door and told him that her son would not be coming out to play with him that day or any other day because her son was white and he was black.  Years later, King admitted that those cruel words changed the direction of his life. 

King went through high school with great distinction, skipping both the 9^th and the 12^th grades.  He entered Morehouse College at the age of 15, graduating at 19, and then went on to seminary, one of only 6 black students at Crozer Theological.  He was the highest ranking student in his class and won a fellowship to Boston University School of Theology, where he worked on his Ph.D.  It was there that he heard about Gandhi and his approach to nonviolent protest.  In 1954, he accepted a call to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  Then something happened which changed his life forever.

On one cold winter night in December of 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress, boarded a bus to go home from downtown Montgomery, where she worked.  She sat in the back with the other black passengers.  A few stops along the way, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger who had just boarded, and she repeatedly refused.  The driver called the police, and Parks was arrested.  In response, the town’s black leaders called for a boycott on the city’s bus system, and they elected young Martin, only 26, as their leader.  This was the first of many civil rights battles for the young black preacher.  A key event was a freedom march aimed to end segregation in January of 1963 in Birmingham.  Unarmed marchers were attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, while the whole nation watched on television.  This incident caused a national outrage and laid the way for civil rights legislation to be passed at the national level. 

By mid-October 1964, King had given 350 speeches and traveled 275,000 miles across the country, often working 20 hours a day.  In the hospital, collapsed with exhaustion, King learned that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize.  On April 1, 1968, he traveled to Memphis, to support a strike by the sanitation workers there.  On April 4, he was shot and killed as he stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, to speak with Andrew Young.  Later, Young would remember that King always said, look, normal people don’t challenge the law of the land.  He said you got to be strong enough to be “creatively maladjusted.”  Yes, King was not “normal.”  Normal people adjust, accept.  Normal people don’t give their lives to change the conscience of a nation.[2]

King knew he was going to be killed—he voiced that sentiment more than once.  He said, encouraging his followers, “I might not get there with you, I might not get to the promised land.”  But like Moses of the scripture, he was available to do his part to get his people there.  Not that we are there, where we want to be with race relations—far from it.  But Barack Obama, a black man with a Muslim name, is a viable candidate for President of the United States.  Yes, things change.  People change things.

So what about us?  If ever a people were called to not adjust, to not accept, to not be “normal,” let it be Unitarian Universalists.  There is so much that needs changing.  The whole American Dream, as it has evolved, needs to change.  Let’s deconstruct that dream for a minute.  The dream of personal prosperity is tied to virtue.  Even our spirituality is tied to material reward.  Work hard, and God will reward you.  That’s the Protestant ethic.  What a myth that is!  Actually, the people who are working the hardest are getting the least reward, materially speaking.  Americans are not a reflective people, by and large—but practical and resourceful.  History is lost on us.  We believe in more and in bigger—in our houses, cars, and soft drinks.  We do not value the arts so much—we rather put the emphasis on science and technology.  We think they will save us.  We are wrong.  We need a story to live by.  We need a vision.

So our revolution must first of all be spiritual.  We must become very maladjusted to this culture.  We must move from getting to sharing, from dominance to partnership, from “what’s in it for me?” to “what’s good for the community?” 

And how do we begin this radical revolution?  Well, I have great faith in the power of the human imagination.  We need to imagine the kind of world we wish to live in, and then go ahead and move towards it—trying with all our might to effect policy change, but not waiting for policy change. 

Some examples of maladjusted people:  Parke Burgess is a musician who plays Bach suites for cello on city streets.  He says playing music on the street, even snooty music like he plays, calls us to feel what we feel.  Vicki Robbins, from Seattle, started conversations in cafes—strangers in cafes talking together about things that matter to them.  Now it’s a movement.  In Bremerton, Washington, Jean Schanen and Glenn Huff grow enough produce to feed themselves and to stock their stall at the local farmers’ market.  Their acreage?   A city lot, plus the roof space on their garage, carport, and house.[3]

I love Paul Goodman’s suggestion.  He said:  “Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about.  Suppose your side won, and you had the kind of society you wanted.  How would you live, you personally, in that society?  Start living that way now!  When you run up against obstacles . . . that won’t let you live that way, then begin to think about how to get over or around or under that obstacle . . . and your politics will be concrete and practical.”  Think about it—living our values together, in community, moving towards the promised land.

Let me tell you a story.  I call it “My Little Christmas Miracle.”  I was having some sad feelings during the Christmas season, as generally happens each year.  I was far away from my children and little grandson, and I was wishing they were near.  A friend suggested that I put up a Christmas tree, to raise my spirits.  Now I hadn’t had a tree for years, since the boys stopped coming all the way out here from Kentucky for Christmas.  But I thought, yes, that’s a good idea.  So a friend and I went for a tree.  But then I realized, “I don’t have any lights or any ornaments for my tree!”  So I decided to have a spontaneous tree-trimming party.  So a couple of days before the event, I starting calling a few people, telling them to come over for cookies and cider and to bring an ornament for my tree.  But some people were busy—it was right in the middle of the holiday season.  So about an hour before the party, I went through the neighborhood with leaflets, inviting people, stuffing leaflets into mailboxes, through mail slots.  I just knew that no one would come to my party, and I would be sitting there with that naked tree, and then I would feel even more wretched.  Plus I burned the cookies I made, burned them to a crisp. 

But that’s when the miracle began to happen.  A neighbor brought over lights and put them on the tree, and then people began arriving from all over—lots of people, and they brought lots of ornaments—large vintage ornaments, a butterfly, a blown-glass bird.  A friend brought more cookies.  Children strung popcorn and cranberries.  Three boys from another family got into my tin foil and made a precarious star to put on top of my tree.  And all at once, there it was, a beautiful tree, with twinkling lights, full of the most gorgeous ornaments you could ever want to see.  And lots of good conversation and warm smiles and hugs, all around. 

And so what I learned that day was this.  We can feel alone or scared or confused or any number of bad things, and if we imagine a different way to be, and ask others to help, magic happens.  People think of ways you wouldn’t imagine alone—like that star, the guiding star.  Help comes that you didn’t even ask for, like those cookies.  And the universe turns out to have an abundance that is astounding.  If we ask, and if we dare to imagine.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, help us have the courage to be maladjusted to what to what is unjust, to be unwilling to adapt to what brings harm to ourselves or to others or to the earth.  Let us imagine new ways of being, and let us move toward those new ways with confidence, in community.  In this New Year, may we move with integrity and purpose, and always, with love.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

As you go into this New Year, expect nothing less than a miracle—because magic really does happen.  Go in love and go in peace.

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Copyright 2008, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell. All rights reserved.