Sermon Archive

I think it’s pretty safe to say that no one comes to church to be alone. Even if we are introverted and not too social, even if we have secrets we don’t want to share, even if we’re not sure we agree with what goes on here, we still come to church to worship together. And by worship I am referring to our common addressing of the deeper issues in life, our sharing of the fact that we are all in this grand adventure “together”.

This morning I am going to explore just what it means to be together, to really be together, in the most sacred of ways. I am going to call this special way of being together “Beloved Community”, a term that has been around for over 100 years, and I am going to talk a little about how we build Beloved Community and why I believe it is essential for our times.

The first person to use the term Beloved Community was the American philosopher Josiah Royce who lived from 1855 – 1916 and was founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, (of which, by the way our Rev. Fred Capaccino is a member). Royce believed that consciousness is rooted in community. He believed that the “rugged individualism” that was lived out so heartily in the United States needed to be carefully balanced with honouring and nourishing of community.

Royce believed, as I do, that our loyalty should not be to ourselves and our families alone, but to our vision of the larger, sacred community of humankind. Royce believed that “all ethics, morality, speculation, metaphysics and doctrine were secondary to the reality of human belovedness.”^¹

The term Beloved Community was revitalized by Dr. Martin Luther King, also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and one of the best loved figures in the 20^th century for his leadership in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. King, first and foremost a Christian minister, believed that God loves everyone. Therefore we as individuals need to follow God’s example and love everyone too.

This meant that as human beings, loved by God and each other, the whole human family is tightly connected.

This belief was the foundation for Dr. King’s adherence to non-violent social change and was illustrated in his memorable speeches, for example, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

King saw Beloved Community as a global vision in which all people share in the wealth of the earth. He wrote, “In a real sense all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother.”^² In his sermons, King urged people to acknowledge the direct link between treating each other with love and the health of the community at large.

The core of Dr. King’s vision of Beloved Community is love in the broadest, deepest sense. He refers to it as agape. This was the original Greek word for “love”, but which came to mean “unconditional love” to early Christians. In using it, King distinguishes agape love from romantic love, affection between friends and love of family.

The main feature of agape love is that is doesn’t distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy. It is a love which has an “understanding redeeming good will for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative.” King believed this kind of love is, “the love of God operating in the human heart.”^³

King also believed firmly that Beloved Community was built upon a love which made no distinction between friend and foe. And this is the most difficult of all loves. Think of world leaders whose actions you despise. Think of the ex-husband or ex-wife who wronged you and abandoned your children, think about the rapist, the pedophile, the murderer. Think about the boss that ridicules employees and puts them down. It is not easy to practice agape love.

In February of this year, my husband and I attended a public lecture sponsored by the Unitarian Church in Naples, Florida. The topic was “Understanding Islam” and it was given by an Iranian scholar.

At several points throughout the lecture, audience members called out jokes and comments about President George Bush and then, as the evening wore on, the comments were more about Republicans in general—some might even say the comments and jokes became nasty. Despite my own very negative feelings about the policies and actions of George Bush, I felt uncomfortable about these comments. I don’t as a rule support the public utterance of disrespectful remarks about anyone because I feel it alienates people and exacerbates conflict.

However, it was not my church nor was it my country so I didn’t feel I had the right to complain. The next day I had occasion to speak to a woman who had attended the lecture. She was from a group of Christian churches and a supporter of George Bush. She had attended the lecture and had tape recorded it so that the women’s group at her church could listen to and discuss the lecture. The way the Unitarians had behaved had clearly been hurtful for her. I was apologetic and tried to explain to her how difficult it is for religious liberals in south Florida, how the Bush administration was unpopular, not just with Unitarians etc., so maybe I was able to dilute the negative experience for her.

But what upset me most was that we missed an opportunity to demonstrate our belovedness in action. The nasty jokes and remarks were not made from a place within our community that says “We are one. We are in this together”. Nor did they pave the way for conflict to be addressed in a healthy, all-inclusive way.

Many Unitarian Universalist ministers have written and preached about Beloved Community, including Tom Owen-Towle, author of Wrestling with God, and Growing A Beloved Community. I have surveyed these and many other writings for a sense of just what characterizes a Beloved Community and here is what I’ve found.

I once attended a conference at which the leader was teaching a new way of communicating. She described it as though we are all holding hands and venturing into the dark forest together. I thought that was a great image. Isn’t it what we all want in difficult times?

At this church right now, we are going through what some might call an overwhelming period of transition. Our minister of 23 years has retired; our board has embarked upon the painstaking task of restructuring how office support services are provided; we have a new interim minister who will be here for a year and then we will have another interim minister; we have construction on our property with the building of a new day care centre; we even have a new custodian. It goes on and on.

How we treat each other in this time of change tells us if we are a beloved community or not. If we speak rudely to each other, if we lose patience with each other, if we gossip and criticize behind closed doors, if we threaten to leave because of decisions with which we are uncomfortable, we miss a huge opportunity to build beloved community—to walk through the dark forest holding hands—and the satisfaction that comes from working out our differences through the giving and receiving of love from to the other.

It is only through telling our stories that we truly gain an understanding of one another. Now, obviously the larger your community, the more difficult it is for people to share their stories. We try to do it in the portion of our worship service sometimes called “joys and concerns”, and we do it very well in the Small Group Ministry program, which at First Unitarian is called “ The Chalice Group Program”. But telling our stories can happen just as easily in craft groups, at coffee hour, sitting beside each other in the pews and many other places. It doesn’t matter how the telling happens, what matters is that it does happen. What we are trying to reveal here is the “hidden wholeness”^⁵ in every individual. And there is a hidden wholeness in all of us, no matter what the surface behaviours or appearances might be.

It doesn’t do anyone much good to tell their story unless the people who are listening really hear what is being said—not just the words but the part of the story that is beyond words—and a large part of every story is beyond words. We don’t have to fix people’s lives in order to listen deeply. We simply have to get out of our heads and listen with our hearts. We have to be a loving witness to the story— we need to be that person who says “Yes, I hear you. Yes, I get it. I get it because we are one.”

Conflict is difficult for everyone in every setting, whether it is a family, a church, a volunteer group, a political party, a place of work. We don’t handle conflict well in our world and, despite the fact that it is part of every day life, we seem to feel that if we’re doing a good job, conflict shouldn’t exist. This is completely unrealistic. Conflict is part of being human in a human community. In many cases it is the only path to growth.

Philip Lund, a Unitarian religious educator in the American mid-west says that, “Love is the structure around which healthy conflict can emerge.^⁶ He goes on to quote Hosea Ballou, considered to be one of the fathers of American Universalism, who spoke these words in 1805: “Let brotherly and sisterly love continue. If we have love, no disagreement can do us any harm; but if we have not love, no agreement can do us any good.”

One group I read about calls this notion “radical inclusivity”or “radical hospitality”. Within our denomination, the Small Group Ministry movement often takes up the practice of leaving an empty chair in the circle at each session or meeting, as it reminds us in both symbolic and concrete ways that we are only the group we are, until the next person joins us. Then we are a new group, shaped and reshaped by the new person’s story and how that story impacts our own.

Keeping the door open means that we are always aware of the guests within our midst. We are not an exclusive club with silent handshakes and secret acronyms. We are a group who speaks to our guests, who says to them in our pews, “Come have a cup of coffee with me.” This is a place where the door is always open.

And in welcoming everyone, we don’t mean just the PhD’s, the smart ones, the politically correct ones, the great social justice workers. We say “yes” to all, including the disabled with whom it may be difficult to communicate, the poor, the elderly suffering from dementia, the eccentric, the homeless, the immigrant with little English or French and so it goes. And we welcome everyone because we know on the very deepest level, we are all in this together. In essence we are of the same stuff.

What this means is that building Beloved Community starts right now right here, wherever you are—at home with your husband, wife, your in-laws, your neighbour, the clerk at the grocery store, the city councilor, your fellow church members and on and on. But how do we do this, especially when life is so busy, presents so many obstacles and challenges?

What helps me practice this way of being in the world is my belief that the ultimate source of agape love is the great mystery, part of that spark that brings life into existence. Some call it God or Allah, but it doesn’t matter to me what we call it.

We come into contact with this special oneness when we feel peace and awe on the shores of the ocean or on a mountain top, or cross country skiing in the stillness of the forest, or in a field of wild flowers, or at the sight of a newborn baby, or as we meditate in a quiet room.

I believe that the emotion we feel at these moments is a simple reminder that we have the capacity deep within ourselves to transcend our everyday problems and reach that “mind set/heart set” of agape love--if only we make it a practice to do so. And if we practice this daily, consciously, we will notice profound positive changes in our interactions and in the strength of our various communities.

What the Jewish, Christian and Muslim congregations offer their congregants is a place to strengthen and restore their connection with God. As Unitarian Universalist congregations, we must also provide a profound experience, a place in which our seekers can restore and reaffirm their capacity to love and their connection to a community in which that love, that sense of oneness, is highly prized.

In closing, I want to tell you a short story in the Sufi tradition from Turkey that to me illustrates what is at the core of Beloved Community and I am indebted to Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkley, California for it^⁸.

“Once a Dervish holy man and his student were walking down a long, quiet road. Suddenly they saw dust rising in the distance. A fine carriage approached pulled by six horses at full gallop. The men soon realized that this carriage was not going to slow down or veer to avoid them. In fact, it was coming upon them at such a speed that they had to throw themselves from the road. Suddenly the teacher got up and ran after the speeding carriage calling: ‘May all of your deepest desires be satisfied!”

The student was confused and asked, “Why do you wish something so good for those men when they just forced us into the ditch. We could have been hurt?”

“Do you really think,” replied the teacher, “that if their truest, deepest desires were satisfied, if they knew they were loved, they would behave as they do?”

Beloved Community is a grand vision to hold in our hearts. It is a grand vision to work toward. And what is so inspiring is that anyone can do it. Any one can reach into their heart and change the world, one loving thought, one loving gesture at a time. So my hope is that if we all practice Beloved Community, we may become the “tipping point”, the point at which enough agape love is present in the world, that things change for the better. In my own life I have seen the power of love accomplish more than many formal strategies and structures. I believe it is possible.

“It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they say no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.”^⁹

1 Courtney, Cathal, Meditations on Beloved Community, p.15

2 King, Martin Luther Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, pp181

3 The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King Jr., www.thekingcenter.org/prog/bc

4 Ketcham, Rev. Kit, The Beloved Community, sermon April 6, 2003 www.whidbey.com/uucwi/sermons/Community.html

5 Lin, Michelle, Beloved Communities; Deepening our Activism and Healing our Comunities, www.criticalmoment.org/issue19/lin

6 Lund, Philip, Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie, http://home.earthlink.net/~psdlund/2004.04.01_arch.html

7 Ketcham, Kit Ibid

8 Hamilton-Holway, Rev. Bill, Workshop of our Common Endeavor, Community, September 14, 2002, www.uucb.org/sermons/archive/2003-09-14.html

9 Hamilton-Halway, Rev. Bill, Ibid (From Piercy, Marge, “The Low Road” adapted, The Moon is Always Female, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1985, pp44

BUILDING BELOVED COMMUNITY