Share and Share Alike
- Details
- Created on Sunday, 25 April 2010 01:00
- Written by Gary E. Smith
Reflection
Dylan Awalt-Conley
{player 2010-04-25-9am-reflection.mp3}
I am a Unitarian Universalist. What’s another name for Unitarian Universalists? Agnostics that had children. Most people refer to it as a meaningless religion: the religion that follows no creed or dogma. It is truly meaningless, as any Unitarian Universalist will tell you. Just ask Michael Servetus, a converted Spanish Catholic arrested twice for rejecting the Trinity, a man that professed his love for God even as John Calvin lit a fatal fire beneath his feet. Ask the Unitarian Francis Davíd, the Transylvanian minister that convinced his country to establish the world’s first system of free religion, and, four years later, was sent to die for his radical acceptance. Ask the Unitarian Universalist James Reeb, a white American minister, who marched on Selma with Dr. King, who was beaten to death there for his tolerant convictions, who’s death inspired the UU Civil Rights movement, who’s followers cried and marched on the city hall. And ask the riot police that blocked their path, and ask the enraged crowd that turned the other cheek, and ask Martin Luther King, who gave the eulogy, and ask the black ministers and the gay ministers and the president and the churches and ask me, oh please, ask me, and listen as I tell you our story, and then don’t you ever call us meaningless again.
I am a part of this community and a member of the historical congregation right here in Concord. But my personal beliefs are separate: the children of such a community. It was freshman year, and these thoughts, these ponderings, swam about my head like little tadpoles. Our church drove up north to the woods and set us loose to trip, fall, and scramble our way up the leafy hill of revelation. Let us go with just a book, a pencil, and a goal to master our beliefs, to capture our little tadpoles and put them in order. I found my way up to a large mossy rock in a grove of slim birch trees, a place where I would spend seven hours writing, drumming, and meditating. Sure enough, my little tadpoles became steadfast conclusions. I owe their growth and maturity to the church and the Unitarian Universalist community, but their design is entirely my own. I can say what I—and only I—believe.
We are realizing a new type of morality, proclaiming “thou shall” in place of “thou shall not.” And we proclaim “thou shall love.” For what is utopia but a society based on ethics and mutual love. We must all love every aspect of the world, beautiful and ugly, knowing that our love shall enhance the beautiful and weaken the ugly. We must love every aspect of a friend, stranger, or enemy. With every neighbor loving his neighbor, we bring humanity together. We move away from the violence and chaos of a past ruled by primal desires. Had an Eden existed, these desires would not have been necessary, but we would not have developed, not learned, not cared, not tasted the fruit cold as winter ice. Perhaps we would not have loved.
Sermon
{player 2010-04-25-9am-sermon.mp3}
“After three days and nights of rich food,” writes the poet Jane Kenyon, “and late talk in overheated rooms, of walks between mounds of garbage and human forms bedded down for the night under rags, I come back to my dooryard, to my own wooden step.
“The last red leaves fall to the ground and frost has blackened the herbs and asters that grew beside the porch. The air is still and cool, and the withered grass lies flat in the field. A nuthatch spirals down the rough trunk of the tree.
“At the Cloisters I indulged in piety while gazing at a painted lindenwood Pietà - Mary holding her pierced and desiccated son across her knees; but when a man stepped close under the tassled awning of the hotel, asking for ‘a quarter for someone down on his luck,’ I quickly turned my back.
“Now I hear tiny bits of bark and moss break off under the bird’s beak and claw, and fall unto already-fallen leaves. ‘Do you love me’ said Christ to his disciple. ‘Lord, you know that I love you.’ ‘Then feed my sheep.’”
Shall we move this week from those other Sundays in which we have tried to comfort the afflicted, and God knows, the afflicted need comforting. There is pain in this room, no doubt, sadness, anger, guilt, loneliness; you name it, and you probably COULD name it. I am not saying there is not happiness here, too, and joy, and satisfaction. Those things are here, as well. There are times I wish I could connect some of you with one another: the ones who need comforting with those who know how to comfort. How many times have I sat with one of you, greatly troubled, and you will say to me, I’m all alone here. You tell me that you look around at First Parish and everyone seems so happy. These people have new cars. The children are so well dressed. They’re not like me, you say. People in Concord and Acton and Carlisle and Lincoln and Bedford, they’ve got it made. They’re happy.
Well, not exactly. People in these towns, you and I, we DO have it made. But we’re not all necessarily happy. Real life slips over the threshold from time to time, and we realize that money doesn’t buy it all. But I am thinking to myself today [and now the sermon slips into the “afflict the comfortable” mode], I am thinking, by any standards of comparison with the rest of the world, we are rich, filthy rich, and, given the choice, wouldn’t we rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy?
I’m not being flippant here. “Given the choice” is the key. Some people don’t have the choice about being rich or poor. Did you ever think when you were little about the chance of your birth? I used to wonder about all the people that are born on a given day, were born on the day I was born, all these little souls coming into being, and here I am, born into this particular family, in this particular country, in these particular circumstances. I mean to say, wasn’t I incredibly lucky? Weren’t most of us incredibly lucky?
We’re now right on the head of the pin on which theologians used to dance. Are we justified, that is, are we saved by grace or by works? Are we counted in or out because of something we are or something we do? Now, instead of the theologians, the politicians do this dance. The same dance. How shall we count people as being in or out: by who they are or by what they do? The sad answer, in this political climate, is that we are counted in or out by what we do.
Another word for this theological term of “justification” is proving ourselves. We need to prove to each other that we’re worthy: What is the label on your clothing? What kind of car do you drive? How big is your house? How many hours a week do you work? What preschool/prep school/college does your child attend? What preschool/prep school/college did you attend? Where do you go on vacation? The phrase “rat race” is no accident. It’s a frantic race, and it’s as frantic here in Concord and Acton and wherever you live as it is anywhere. And, my friends, it’s a race you can’t win.
But we born and bred New Englanders, in particular, have been brought up to run this race anyway. “Pull yourself up by your own boot straps,” we were taught. “It’s everyone for him or her self. We get what we deserve. God helps those who help themselves. I worked hard for these things - I deserve them.” Oh, no! It’s the cry of the Tea Party!!
Pam told the story to the children this morning of David fighting the Amalekites, a story from the Hebrew Bible, from the Book of Samuel: the two hundred who can’t go on, the four hundred who do, and David, when all is said or done, making the rule on the spot of “share and share alike.” The two hundred who couldn’t go on COULDN’T GO ON, but they get a share anyway because it wasn’t a matter of one group deserving the loot more than the other.
“They didn’t go with us,” the four hundred cry out. “We’re not giving them anything.” And couldn’t these words be right off the pages of the debate about health care and financial reform and immigration today? Glen Beck and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, entertainers all, hear them: “We’ve got our health care. Let the rest pay for their own.” Listen to some of the rhetoric coming from the Tea Party Express. “We’re in!! They’re out!!”
If it wasn’t so ludicrous, it would be pathetically sad. There are still homeless on the streets. Homes are still being foreclosed. The Open Table food kitchen downstairs has plenty of clients every Thursday. The Silent Poor Fund in this town and the Hugh Cargill Fund have more demands than we can fill. And all these: the families losing jobs and homes, the children eating supper downstairs on a Thursday night, the elderly woman whose heating bill a town fund pays, they all have faces, human faces, human stories. These are not statistics. This is not a Democratic and a Republican thing. This is a matter of justice.
Those who went with King David say, “these people didn’t go with us. They don’t get anything.” And what does David say? “That you shall never do,” he says. “Look what you’ve been given. It fell into your hands. You’ve been kept safe. You have been given blessings. Those who stayed shall have the same share as those who went into battle. Share and share alike.” Share and share alike. Thank God David didn’t have to be elected every two or four years. He never would have been reelected with a campaign slogan, “share and share alike.” His opponent would have shown a television commercial just before the election with one of the two hundred who were left behind driving a big fat Cadillac.
***
What does all this have to do with us? I am asking you to please rethink a theology on which you might have been raised, primarily an American theology in which God shines down on us, we the deserving who receive the blessings. Please rethink a theology that allows us to hum “God Bless America” while strolling across our manicured lawns, a God who has rewarded our hard work. I suggest we rethink this kind of God because what does this say to the homeless and the hungry and the down and out and the ones who must figure out how many meals a box of macaroni and cheese can last, that God’s blessings missed you this time, that there is one God for those who are in, and another for those who are out?
The story of David and the two hundred and the four hundred and the rule of “share and share alike” comes early in the Hebrew Bible, with little by way of editorial. The Books of the Prophets come more toward the end, Amos and Jeremiah and Isaiah, hotheaded firebrands, radicals, angry preachers, railing against the powers of the day. Isaiah watches the righteous fasting for a day and then going right back to their old ways. Here is the fast I choose, he says:
“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,” he says,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see them naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?“… then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly…“ …If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted…“…You shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.”
Or Desmond Tutu, a prophet of our own day:
“Liberation is costly,” he writes. “Even after the Lord had delivered the Israelites from Egypt, they had to cross through the desert. They had to bear the responsibilities and difficulties of freedom. There was starvation and thirst and they kept complaining. They complained that their diet was monotonous. Many of them preferred the days of bondage and the fleshpots of Egypt. We must remember that liberation is costly. It needs unity. We must hold hands and refuse to be divided… Let us be united, let us be filled with hope, let us be those who respect one another.”
“We must hold hands and refuse to be divided.” If, in order to be elected to public office in this country, one must pit the rich against the poor, we are misusing our democracy. We are voting for division, and it is a false division. It is temporary. I was talking with someone recently, and he reminded me of the gated communities we see here and there around the country, the places people live where they must pass through a gate and be inspected by a security officer in order to get in. He said Concord sometimes felt like that to him, a walled community, a gated community, a community of “we” and “them”.
We are better than that. We are a people of faith. In our benediction, we say we stand for something: strengthening the fainthearted, supporting the weak, helping the suffering, honoring all beings, honoring all persons. We are a people of faith, in the words of Isaiah, “offering food to the hungry, satisfying the needs of the afflicted, covering the naked.” “’Do you love me?’ said Christ to his disciple. ‘Lord, you know that I love you.’ ‘Then feed my sheep.’”
Listen to what the politicians are saying. Are they appealing to your worst or to your best, to your fears or to your hopes? Together, with coalitions, as individuals and as First Parish, we have power. There are decision-makers and people with clout in this congregation. In this room, there are business owners and movers and shakers and people with lots of money. Thanks to all of you who work for justice. Thanks to the Jericho Road Board and staff and volunteers who are helping to make “share and share alike” come alive in Lowell and Lawrence and Worcester and Pasadena and new places to come. Thanks to our Social Action Council and the performance of the recent play “Still Life” and those who work with Urban Ministry, thanks to all of you who work for justice. I don’t have all the answers to these issues any more than you would want me to tell you answers. But “what is fair?” is a big and complex question. What is tragic is that so few people are asking it.