Where We See Everyone’s Face

Reverend Janet Parsons

Gloucester UU Church

February 7, 2021

It’s hard to talk about Beloved Community these days.  It’s hard to imagine it, to summon its ideals, its grace, and its promise of unconditional love.

It’s hard to consider Beloved Community because one month ago yesterday insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol building, to try to force the Congress to overturn our presidential election results, and to keep the loser of that election in office.

It’s hard to talk about love and reconciliation, when the images are still so fresh in our minds: enraged people battering down doors, attacking police officers, and shouting about trying to locate and harm our elected leaders.  In preparing myself to write this, I sat and watched video of the attack, and it is even more disturbing and disheartening than it was one month ago, when we watched it unfold before our eyes.  Where would we find common ground?

Our theme this month is Beloved Community: always a rich topic, with many facets, and many definitions.  But right now, it’s challenging to think about its lofty language, with its call to reconciliation, to relationship, to trust. How achievable is it? How much do we even want that right now? 

The truth is, though, it doesn’t profit us much to talk about easy topics. It was President Kennedy who said that we do things, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” (speech in Houston, Sept. 12, 1962.). As humans, we are called to challenge ourselves, to grow, and to learn.  And discussing Beloved Community here in the midst of societal turmoil is important.

As we heard in our first reading, the concept of Beloved Community was often discussed by Dr. Martin Luther King.  He defined it as a type of love – often called agape – that encourages us toward good will, toward relationship, and toward the creation of community.  He called it ‘the love of God working in the lives of people.”  (Martin Luther King, Jr., from “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation’s Chief Moral Dilemma,” 1957)

In many Christian religious traditions, the concept of Beloved Community is thought of as the Kingdom of God.  Trying to define the Kingdom of God is equally as challenging as trying to describe the Beloved Community.  Many people simply think of it as heaven; that place where the righteous, the deserving, go to spend eternity after death.  But then, we encounter Jesus’ descriptions in the Gospels.  The story goes that “Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!”  For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-21)  In other words, the kingdom, or the realm, as progressives often call it these days, is already present, already right here.  It is up to us to find it, by seeking within ourselves, or among our communities.

This notion is often not explored by Unitarian Universalists, and yet it speaks authentically to our theology.  First, many of us are not focused on an afterlife, on heaven. We don’t try to define it, and we state honestly that we don’t know what an afterlife might be like.  In the words of the Reverend Marilyn Sewell, no one has returned to report back.  Our focus is on this life, on the here and now, and on trying to establish the relationships and the community based on love that will create a better world.  We believe that it is possible to create heaven, and hell, here on earth, through our human actions.  We are saved in this life by the love we help to foster. And, we suffer the consequences of wrongdoing, or evil decisions, during our lifetimes.  (see “The Theology of Unitarian Universalists,” Marilyn Sewell, Huffington Post, June 5, 2011. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/unitarian-universalist-theology_b_870528?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABHakWTPBklJb89XE5sTPQ5bLOxbQCBVImO21lDQnTUvq0iugRoaOP1UeVhyoG5Kg4H2gQk2-z0DV3Qw_WhMr_vVCKMJeg5AGtzjEk0Yo_-gOJXoriVfBdqIeszfxIhuKD2KLfuTXIr3zvVv0ICEizFIOK5WtpN9DIiTDxb_tTON

The work we are called to do is not to live good lives so that we as individuals can be eternally rewarded.  Our work is to create the realm, the Beloved Community, right here and now. We do this out of our Universalist belief that since all will be saved, since there is redemption for everyone, therefore, all deserve to be treated equally, and with love; that everyone has a seat at the welcome table. 

Universalists have been offering this message for a long time, as we well know, since the 1700’s.  Back in the 1930’s, there was an influential Universalist minister named Clarence Skinner.  In one of his books, The Social Implications of Universalism, he wrote that the chief question before us was “how to transform this whole earth into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Universalism, he continued, “is the cosmic religion that is “as lofty as the love of God and as ample as the needs of man.” Universalism would help to transform the world.  Modern religion, Skinner continued, must “glorify, spiritualize, and sanctify the world.  It must speed those readjustments which will make life here and now justify our hopes.  (Religion) must no longer invite men to the kingdom but, in the words of Jesus, we must invite the kingdom to come to us.” 

We must invite the realm, the kingdom to come to us; invite it to enter us, to surround us.  In other words, we must open ourselves to love, and commit to the work that love calls us to do.

At the beginning, I talked about how hard it is right now to think about Martin Luther King’s stated ends of reconciliation and redemption. Do we want to be reconciled with white supremacists?  Well, our readings remind us that the Beloved Community is not about eliminating conflict.  The goal is to remain in relationship even during times of conflict.  But of  course that, right now, is extremely difficult to do. In reality, we are unlikely to find common ground with the people who stormed the Capitol, those who issue death threats against elected officials and others.  We are repelled by their violence, and their hatred. We are living in a time in this country where we might not be able to change minds, or hearts, to find ourselves ‘like-hearted’, as our second reading suggested.

But Clarence Skinner offered us a path forward.  Our work is to carry on trying to create heaven on earth; to create the realm within us and among us.  We must invite the realm to come to us; we must open our hearts.

I don’t advocate that we spend our time trying to resolve our conflicts with white supremacists.  The gulf is too wide.  Rather, I hope we can focus on a return to our religious beliefs, as expressed in our UU principles.  There, we can find answers; both a foundation for our own lives, and a road map for how to help create heaven on earth.  We believe, as I said at the beginning, as our first principle states, in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.  That is hard work, because we say every person, including the furry guy with the horns standing in the Capitol.  That for me is a stretch. But we can work to make sure that every person has enough to eat, and has shelter, and has, even in prison, humane treatment.

How about the fifth principle: the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process?  We can work for fair elections, for passage of a new Voting Rights Act, work to stop voter suppression once and for all. 

Then there’s our second principle:  Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.  How do we work to become anti-racist, to fight white supremacy?  In this time of hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic, how do we keep our hearts open to the suffering of our fellow humans? 

There are those that would tell us that it’s easy to be a Unitarian Universalist.  After all, they say, we can believe whatever we want.  But look at what we do profess to believe in, and think about how hard it is to live into those principles, to follow them as a guide, a path, every day of our lives.

What is being asked of us, of all Unitarian Universalists, is nothing less than opening our hearts to the kingdom, to help create heaven on earth, to help foster the Beloved Community, where we will be able to truly see everyone’s face. We don’t do these things because they are easy, but because they are hard.

When I began to conceive of this sermon, I was stuck on the question of how we would make peace with supporters of the insurrectionists that tried to violently overturn our election. I’m the first to say that I don’t want to.  But I framed the question too narrowly.  As I have confronted my own feelings, I have come to see that there are many paths to the Beloved Community; many ways forward.  Perhaps it is not our work in this moment to focus on reconciliation with those who feel and express such hatred.  Maybe that will come later. Perhaps our work right now is to seek out others who are acting in love, and join them in efforts to foster the love in the world.  We try to grow the love, so that those who hate can someday be invited in.

As liberal religious people, we must not allow our work to stop.  Let’s remember the words said often in the African American community: “make a way out of no way.”  But let all that we do be in service to the goal of Beloved Community: good will, agape – love for the sake of love alone.  As Dr. King stated, “It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. It is love seeking to preserve and create community.  It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.”

May all that we do be in service to that greater love.

Blessed be,

Amen.