"We Have a Dream, Too"

Today we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Many Americans—especially those born after Dr. King’s assassination 38 years ago, see him only in the oversimplified terms of race. This is too bad, though not unusual. Canonization tends to remove a person’s scars and imperfections when, in fact, it is just such scars and imperfections out of which human authenticity and memorable public lives emerge.

Moreover, reducing the Martin Luther King story to one of race alone ignores the deeper issues he struggled with and spoke to: what it means to be civilized; how one confronts evil without creating more evil, division, and enmity; the industrial-military complex; class; and the proper role of religion in politics. In an era of attack ads and spin control, we are wise to remember what King told the Freedom Riders in 1960: “Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.”

King’s public life and public ministry began when he was called to the Dexter Ave. Baptist Church in Montgomery. In short order, Rosa Parks was jailed for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person. The 25-year old King was elected chair of a group calling for a boycott of public transit, a boycott that ended up lasting 382 days. The situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was vilified and arrested, and yet throughout he practiced and extolled non-violence. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on all public transport. In 1964, as a result of those efforts, he became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

By that time, however, Martin Luther King was focusing on economic justice issues. Then, in 1967, he began speaking out against the Viet Nam war—and within a year, he was dead. At the time of his murder, Martin King was perhaps the most dangerous man in America: the one public figure, much revered, who could potentially unify in his person and through the power of his moral authority the civil rights, labor, and antiwar movements. It was not to be. He did not leave us unified. What he did leave us with, however, was a dream. He never entered the Promised Land, but he saw it and he wrote elegantly about what it looked like; and the name of that land he called “beloved community.”

I am asked to come up with these sermon titles weeks in advance, when ideas are only beginning to percolate. Maybe, I’ve recently been asking myself, I should have titled it with a question: “Have We a Dream, Too?” I do. And as the person asked by you to lead the congregation for a short time, I want to share that dream with you today; a dream strongly influenced by Martin Luther King, and by our Unitarian Universalist tradition.

I got to talking a few years ago, with one of my congregants about one of his covenant group meetings. The evening’s topic was what each member considered holy. As a humanist and an agnostic, he thought about this long and hard, he told me. And what he came up with was Beloved Community.

Was he talking about a Unitarian Universalist congregation? Well, yes, in a way (he’d been a member of several); at least he was talking about an ideal—at our best—that we strive to attain. Beloved Community is a transcendent symbol that has evocative power to rally our spirits and energies to the cause of justice, celebration, healing, education, uplift, and support. It includes humanists and theists, as well as others of different theological persuasions—sort of our highest common denominator, and hence an apt symbol for UUs and for people everywhere; one that can inspire hope, and the courage to reach out and to change.

It is curious that in his writings Dr. King, coming from the Baptist tradition, did not use the traditional Kingdom of God instead of Beloved Community. But then, King was always a “small ‘c’ Christian”—by their fruits shall ye know them—and more of a humanist than many realize. Of the men who most influenced his thinking, one was Mahatma Gandhi—a devout Hindu. “Christ furnished the spirit…,” wrote King, “while Gandhi furnished the method.” Another seminal influence was the humanist Erich Fromm, whose book The Art of Loving provided the intellectual framework for King’s spiritual awareness of love as a divine force uniting all life.

A couple of years ago I attended a Conference at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, keynoted by the Reverend Michael Schuler, Senior Minister of the 1400+ member Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. In his twenty-two years as Minister, the Madison church has tripled in size—and Michael’s address focused on why. He began by pointing out some of the benefits Madison enjoys: a seat of government with a well-educated, socially progressive population. But plenty of UU congregations in similar communities and with similar potential have floundered. Why? Because “even when conditions are favorable for the growth of progressive, inclusive faith communities, a real effort needs to be made to get people’s attention and elicit their commitment.”

Congregational growth, Schuler maintains—and I agree with him—is about more than meeting our personal spiritual and emotional needs. Though that will undoubtedly follow, it cannot be the church’s raison d’etre. “The primary purpose of the church,” writes UU consultant Michael Duvall, “is to create a community of compassion…calling members to lead lives of dedication and commitment—lives not just of success, but also of service and, when called upon, sacrifice.”

It’s not that meeting one’s deep personal needs is not also worthwhile, it’s just that it will never galvanize the kind of passion and commitment that transform lives, and through those lives, communities, even nations.

A recent issue of the Sunday New York Times Magazine had a lengthy article on “positive psychology”—a growing movement in academia. One of author D.T. Max’s key points was the distinction between feeling good, which according to positive psychologists only creates a hunger for more pleasure — they call this syndrome the hedonic treadmill — and doing good, which can lead to lasting happiness. Or, as the Unitarian Albert Schweitzer put it near the end of his life: “I know one thing: those of you who do not learn how to serve, will not find happiness.”

Beloved Community is not pseudo-community, where we make nice, try to please everybody, and avoid anything “touchy.” Being all things to all people is a favorite UU trap—that never works. Rather, suggests Reverend Schuler, figure out what you do well and strive to do it even better.

Okay; what does UUCCSM do well? Several things, it seems to me, especially worship and religious education. Historically, you have also been a generous congregation, and financially responsible: two more wonderful traditions. Worship and music go together. They are the heart of what we do as a community: celebrate life, and all that gives life meaning. Joys & Sorrows, beautiful art, growing children, inspiring ideas and values—all these we celebrate without dogma and with the informal ambiance of the West that drew so many of us to this part of America. It’s good, but in my dream, it could be even better, with lay Worship Associates—a dozen or so members committed to making our services more inclusive, and involving more people. Our music program is highly regarded across west L.A. Many have told me that that is why they joined. Yet our Choir has had to cut its budget. With all the connoisseurs of beautiful music we have among us, I dream of more.

Generosity? We have been a UU Honor society for many years since the 1950s. We’ve dug deep when we had to, building and expanding and now completely refurbishing this building, buying and making beautiful the cottage next door and paying off these expenses quickly.

Putting up Forbes Hall was in order to build a Sunday school—a real leap of faith at a time when we had very few children. But we built it, and they came. And because of a commitment to excellent RE you have hired a series of really great RE Directors who has gone on to slowly build the program up and draw more and more young families into the Unitarian Universalist fold.

What about Outreach? After all, this is Martin Luther King weekend, and Beloved Community as King understood and practiced it puts a high priority on working for justice. Here is another way in which the church’s record is also pretty strong. In support of direct services, education, and advocacy, you have done a lot in support of LBGT rights and in support for the homeless and battered. You have also have given many thousands of dollars over the years to the UU Service Committee, to tsunami and Katrina relief, and to numerous local organizations and service projects. Many of you are deeply, skillfully involved in legislative advocacy. But we can do more. Direct services, education, and advocacy can be augmented with collective work for truly systemic change—like your efforts as a sanctuary church back in the 1980s and sending your then-minister Ernie Pipes to march with Dr. King in Selma. Recapturing that energy is a dream that inspires me and many others among us this morning.

Some perceive a tension between social action and inner reflection—as though we had to choose either one or the other. But it’s not an either/or situation; it’s both/and. Worship and social action go together. Dana McLean Greeley was the first president of the newly merged Unitarians and Universalists when, in early March 1963, he received a telegram from Martin Luther King asking him to come to Selma, Alabama. He then proceeded to call other ministers in the UUA, enjoining him or her to join him and Dr. King at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. A third of our number did. Dana Greeley gets high marks as an activist, but he more than an activist only; he believed that worship and social action informed each other. Fueled each other. Made each other stronger. “I want a church,” he wrote, “that knows what worship means, on the one hand, and what social action means, on the other hand, and that is tied together by bonds of love in such a fashion that the worship is truly communal and that the social action can be contained and non-divisive.”

Beloved Community is non-divisive and healing. It welcomes us in all our humanness, and brokenness and struggle; helps us acknowledge our humanness and brokenness and helps us re-collect our wholeness as part of something bigger: love, soul-force (Gandhi’s Satyagraha), God, the community of life—however you conceive it. It does not matter what you call it, it’s at the heart of Beloved Community because it’s at the heart of life: the force that through the green stem drives the flower (to use Dylan Thomas’ poetic phraseology). Worship helps us get in touch with that force. Social Action helps us serve it. The two go hand and hand. As Denise Levertov put it in this morning’s second reading,

…We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

Including each of us. And this congregation. The whole world. So much is in bud. So much is unfolding—creatively unfolding—when we lend our energy to it. Like King did. Fearlessly.

I know times are difficult; we have a precarious economy; we have climate change; political impasse; terrorism; war profiteering—not to mention gangs and dope and pop culture vulgarity. But we have hope, too. And we have imagination. And the models of good, creative, loving people—like Martin Luther King—to remind us how much we can do when we put differences aside and join our hearts and heads in a shared and noble task.

Perhaps we cannot all be Martin Luther Kings, but we can all get in touch with the energy that inspired him: love. We can all be drum majors—as King encouraged us to be—for love. We can all endeavor to do even better the things we’re doing well; and make best faith efforts at nurturing Beloved Community among us, here and now. So may it be. Amen. And shalom.