“Take My Hand”
A Sermon by
Rev. Robert M. Hardies
All Souls Church, Unitarian
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, 13 September 2009
It has been said many times already today, but let me say to you too, welcome home on this homecoming Sunday. Welcome back to this, the beginning of the 188th year in the life of this congregation. For me, homecoming Sunday is not only a chance for us to reconnect with one another and with our church community. It’s also a chance for us to remind ourselves why we’re here in the first place, to remind ourselves what exactly a church is for. I don’t know about you but I was struck this morning, listening to Shana’s long litany of prayers and concerns. A child three-week-old who’s struggling for life in intensive care. Not one, not two but three couples getting married in the church, celebrating new love yet at least one of these weddings tinged by the grief of the recent death of the groom’s mother. Unspoken prayers too: a longtime member celebrates his 96th birthday; one woman copes with a cancer diagnosis while another breathes a sigh of relief that a biopsy came back negative. A lost job, an addiction that won’t let go, a new year of school starting up. Joy and sorrow; life and death. Seasons beginning and seasons ending. These are our lives. And church is the place where we accompany one another on this journey of life, caring for each other in our living and in our dying. And, along the way, along the way when we discover something sacred, church is the place where we pause and we celebrate it and we call it holy. That’s what Sunday morning is for: an opportunity for us to give thanks for this gift of life, to stretch our hearts and to stretch our souls, to free ourselves from all that constrains us, to free ourselves from all that holds us back from more life and more love. That’s what church is for.
And so, if you’re feeling like you’re in need of some of that this morning, then let me say again, welcome. Whether this is your 55th homecoming Sunday or your first. Whether you are five years old or 85 years young, welcome to this church for all souls.
I’m also aware, as we start this new year, that there is a lot going on outside the walls of this church, a lot going on in the culture out there. Our spiritual ancestors broke with tradition and built their meeting house without stained glass windows, to let in the light of truth and also to recognize the connection between what happens outside in the world and what happens within these walls. There’s a lot going on outside the walls right now. Our country remains mired in a recession that has cost many people their jobs, including many in this congregation. And, as if the economy didn’t make us anxious enough, our country is also embroiled in a momentous conversation about an issue that affects each of us in a very personal way – the issue of access to affordable, quality health care. Here in D.C., our City Council will take up legislation this fall that seeks to legalize marriage here in the nation’s capital for same-sex couples. And, as if all of this weren’t enough, there’s debate on climate change, there’s debate on immigration reform and, lest we not forget, two wars we are fighting. All of these issues, each with profoundly moral and ethical implications, will play out over the course of the church year that we begin today.
And so, my question for us this morning is this: Where do we stand? In the midst of the contentious conversations and the debates that swirl around us, where do we stand? How do we ground ourselves spiritually and theologically for our ministry to one another and to the larger world? How does our faith speak to us in this place and at this time?
Not long ago, our staff got together and asked ourselves that very question. We asked ourselves what unique message does a church that has the audacity to call itself “All Souls,” what unique message does that church have to offer the world. We shared lots of stories and ideas with one another and, in the end, we came up with a gospel that contains three simple sentences. Three sentences that on the face of themselves may seem fairly straightforward and perhaps even simple, but woven together these affirmations form the foundation for a challenging and prophetic ethic that can ground us for the work ahead. And those affirmations are: We are many; we are one; and we are beloved.
We are many. We are one. And we are beloved.
We are many: An affirmation of the diversity and the complexity of the human family. We live in a world that is simultaneously becoming more complex and more connected by the day. And this affirmation therefore seems a necessary starting place for any adequate ethic. We are many; Jew and Arab, black and white, indigena e mestizo, Serb and Croat, red America and blue America. And sometimes, we just don’t know how to get along. Now I will confess that just yesterday I had my own encounter with the complexity of the human family. I happened to be walking around downtown yesterday, minding my own business, when I suddenly found myself in the midst of a bunch of folks with placards and signs and banners. And I knew this wasn’t a typical D.C. crowd when I bumped into a man wearing a T-shirt that said, “Just another bitter white man clinging to his guns and his bible.” And then I remembered that there was a march yesterday in Washington of tax protestors and those who oppose health care reform.
We are many. We are a diverse and a complex people, and your minister had to wrestle with that yesterday afternoon, on the streets of Washington, D.C. Our diversity and complexity is sometimes the source of mistrust and strife, violence and warfare. It is also, however, the source of great creativity and excitement and of our hard-won moments of communion.
We are many. And we are one. And here’s where things start to get a little more interesting. For this second statement, an affirmation of the unity of the human family, appears at first to contradict the first statement. And it is in this paradox, this dual affirmation, that our theology begins to take on complexity and weight, that our faith begins to challenge us. Because for most of us, most of the time, what separates us is a lot more apparent than what unites us. I found myself yesterday engaged in a meditation of trying to imagine, what do I have in common with the man I bumped into on the street?
Yet the truth that we are one is a lesson that religion has always taught. Look at the creation story of just about any world tradition, or the story of evolution for that matter, and you’ll find a narrative that traces our vast complexity back to one speck of dust, one mound of dirt or of clay, one rib bone, a speck of stardust. But we don’t need to take anyone else’s word for it; deep down we know this truth ourselves, don’t we? For who among us hasn’t experienced the shock of recognition when we look into the face of the other, or of the stranger, and we see there our own image? We are many. And we are one. Both affirmations are important. To forget that we are many is to whitewash our differences and our marvelous particularities and to embrace a blithe affect of, “Can’t we all just get along?” But to forget that we are one is even more dangerous. It is to write off parts of the human family as other, as subhuman, as we’ve done so often in the last century. The work of reconciling the world begins in the tension between these dual affirmations. We are many, and we are one.
We are many. We are one. And we are beloved. If the Unitarian-Universalist tradition stands for anything, it stands for this: that at the center of the universe there is a love – and I call that love, “God” – there is a love that beholds each of us in our worth and dignity and calls us beloved. “I will call them my children who were not my children,” it is written in the Book of Romans, “and her beloved who was not beloved.” This affirmation, of all the others, is hardest for us to fathom. Most of us subscribe, whether we admit it or not, to the myth of the scarcity of love, either because we constantly fail ourselves, as we all do, to love abundantly, or because we have felt, ourselves, the scarcity of love. But friends, this affirmation is at the heart of our faith. Our ancestors, in this church, knew that it was so important that they had to remind themselves of it every Sunday, so they took the words out of the Hebrew bible and they carved them on our altar table, the words “All souls are mine,” all souls, not some. One of our favorite hymns at church, the hymn that we will close with today, is the old spiritual, “There is More Love Somewhere.” It is one of the favorite hymns of this congregation and we love it so much because we need to be reminded of it all the time. There is more love somewhere, which is to say, we are beloved.
And let me just say who I mean exactly when I say “we” are beloved, in case it’s not clear. I mean, you are beloved. I am beloved. The bitter white man clinging to his guns and bible is beloved. The transgender person who was murdered on the streets of Washington, D.C. two weeks ago is beloved, as is the person who killed her. We are many. We are one. And we are beloved.
Taken together, these three statements that form one of the gospels of our faith and our church lead me then to one final statement. And that is, the impulse to reach out and to say “Take my hand.” Because all of these three statements form the basis of an ethic that is a spiritual practice of solidarity. You know, in Washington, D.C., we often think of solidarity as kind of a crude political strategy. It’s strange bedfellows getting together to accomplish shared political ends. But I’m talking about solidarity as a spiritual practice, a reaching out to one another from the recognition that we are many and we are one. And that reaching out is expressed in the phrase, “Take my hand.”
So, as we look forward to the work that we share together this year, as we think about caring for one another in this church family, let us set aside the myth of our self-sufficiency and let us reach out to one another and say “Take my hand.” As we go forward in the debate over health care, let us not take the attitude of, well, I’m going to make sure I get mine and the rest be damned. Let us go into it together and say “Take my hand,” and let us have health care for all. As we go forward and we debate the issue of whether or not same-sex couples will be able to marry in our nation’s capital, let us set aside our fear of the other, our fear of difference and say “Take my hand, brother and sister.” Take my hand. In these difficult economic times, those of us who are doing better must set aside our own fears of scarcity and reach out to those who are suffering and say “Take my hand.”
And to the man I bumped into yesterday downtown, I want to say, I will loosen my grip on my defenses if you can loosen your grip on your bible and your gun, and, friend, take my hand. Solidarity as a spiritual practice. Dr. King said it is not what we stand for in times of comfort where we show our mettle; it’s what we stand for in times of struggle. This is such a time. During this time of struggle and anxiety, we must stand for and with one another.
We are many. We are one. We are beloved. Take my hand.
Amen.