The Larger Circle

A Sermon for After Election Day 2016

Rev. Rebecca Benefiel Bijur

UU Community Church of Santa Monica, CA

November 6, 2016

 

A difficult thing happened in the life of our congregation on Friday, which is when many of you first read a letter I wrote about my future with this congregation.

 

Here is what I said in that letter:

 

 

The church office emailed this letter at 2:21; at 2:24, your first emails back to me began arriving, full of words like “brave” and “thank you” and “I support you,” and words like “heartbroken” and “sad” and “disappointed.” Some of you said, I’m really surprised. Some of you said, Well, I’m not surprised. One of you brought me a box of chocolates and said, Difficult news is better with chocolate. You are right about this. One of you said, some people are going to do cartwheels when they hear this news. You were sitting next to someone who was weeping at the time.

 

There are famous photographs that capture the moment when we heard the news. Our side won. Their side lost. Shock on one set of faces; elation on the others. And I want to be clear with you this morning: this is not one of those moments.

 

There is a story I know about our Universalist heritage, the side of our family tree that says that love is too big to keep anyone beyond its’ reach forever. I’m doing some theological translation with my language here, but this is what I believe. I believe- ulitmately- that there is no them. There is only us. I’m not saying we’ll get there today. I know anything that happens in our church right now brings up lots of different reactions, responses, and feelings, that we’re all over the map and I’m not asking you to pretend otherwise. But I am asking you to look at one another, not just your friends, but your companions on these seasoned pews, and to feel whatever it is you’re feeling. This is part of our congregation’s story now. Someday it will be even part of your history.

 

Our theme for the month of November is Story, my spiritual companions, and our question is, what does it mean to be a community of story? In this wild and crazy year, in this presidential election year, in this extraorindary time in the life of our congrgation, which stories do we repeat, and which stories do we ignore? Which stories to we remember, and how do we decide when it is time to leave behind the stories that no longer serve us?

 

Surely every congregation is a congregation of stories – the story of your first Sunday here, the story of the person who changed your life by inviting you in, the story of the way your child was raised and loved here like no other place you know. The story of the day they broke your heart, the deep disappointments we carry, we imperfect people in our imperfect church with its perfect principles. The story of how you chose to respond to that suffering.

 

My friend and colleague Lucas Hergert, is minister to our congregation in Livermore, California, outside San Francisco, and he believes that we come into community with one another for the purpose of telling our ultimate story, the story we rely upon to name and narrate our ultimate concerns. He says,

 

 

And he says, theology

 

 

To some the word theology may need some translation. Theos, God, ology, the study of; which is why I love how Lucas expands this term to encompass a much wider story: the story of your ultimate concern, whether that includes “God” or does not. The story that can only be told in what the religious scholar Cathereine Madsen called “the language of brokenheartedness and ardor and fear.”  [ Catherine Madsen, The Bones Reassemble: Reconstituting Liturigical Speech. 2.] That’s the kind of deep story we’re talking about.

 

What is needed, vital, life-giving is to find the power and the voice to wrestle with irresitible questions, to call on the langauge of brokenheartedness and ardor and fear, and to do so in covneanted, committed, bounded and bonded community.

 

To dare to speak our stories and sing our lives into being is a powerful and a great gift for these anxious and uncertain times. A time when we are also struggling to find a common voice and a common vision for who we are as Americans, who we have been, and who we are becoming. The pundits call them narratives, which is another word for story.

 

The news, should you make the mistake of turning on or tuning in or opening up or clicking through or scrolling down through the news, the news is not good for your spirit, I have to tell you this, as your minister. The news will tell you a version of this story: that our country is engaged in a great war, a great battle, a high stakes game, and that our politics boils down to how many points each “side” is “winning,” and that everything that has ever happened in the history of time is now caught up in the outcome of this piviotal moment in our history.

 

It all hangs on this. It all comes down to Florida, or Ohio, or New Hampshire, or one county in Nebraska. Have you been hearing that? Reading that? Repeating that?

 

Now I know this is an extraordinary time. And I am expecting you all to vote and to participate in the democracy process, which is not only a right those who came before us fought and died for, but also a responsibility entrusted to us by our children, who cannot vote and ask that we do so for them, and remember them in the voting booth. And in our community, this is also a principle we covenant to affirm and promote, to support the use of the democratic process, which is our fifth principle and dear and vital for that reason.

 

But I also know that the struggle we are engaged in is for the long haul. We must remember that we are long haul people. One victorious election would not conclude it; one devastating election would not end it. So we are both Nov 8 people, deeply invested in doing our part to bend the arc toward justice right now, today, in powerful and life-giving ways; and we must also be Nov 9 people. We must also be Nov 9 peole who remember that whenever someone tells you the only options are winning or losing, we’ve all already lost.

 

Let me be clear. I hope my candidate wins on Tuesday. And I know that when I wake up Wednesday morning, my political and spiritual and theological priorities will still be what they are today and were yesterday and the day before that: I want to dismantle oppression, brick by brick, wall by wall. End police brutality that targets black and brown people. Add to the sum of love and justice in the world. I want to raise my and your children to be open, accepting, funny, and kind. Sing my imperfect life into being and walk together with imperfect communities made up of imperfect people. Because those are the only people and communities there are.

 

I want to deepen my understanding of the perspectives and life stories of other people, especially those will very different life experiences than my own, because as the Buddhist teacher Margaret Wheately told us, you don't fear people whose story you know. I have been afraid. Out in the woods alone and scared, just like Bear in our story today. Have you been there? But You don’t fear people whose story you know.

 

Whose story don’t you know - yet?

 

One of my good friends told me this, he said his father was voting for a presidential candidate he cannot support. And so he said to himself, I know my dad is not 100% wrong. And I’m willing to believe that I’m not 100% right. And he is my dad. And I am his son.

 

And one of you said, I know who he’s voting for, and he’s still my brother.

 

There’s the moment when we hear the news. And we look to see what is in the faces of the others around us. And if we are brave, we let what we are feeling show in our faces, and we will feel that. Really feel that. And then, the poet tells us,

 

We clasp the hands of those that go before us,

And the hands of those who come after us. and

We enter the little circle of each other’s arms.

 

Because it is in times like these that we know how much we belong to each other.

 

Please rise in body or in spirit and join in singing our closing hymn, #1064, Blue Boat Home. #1064.

 

When you leave this place,

When you leave this place, vote your values.

 

Not just on Nov 8 but on Nov 9 also, and Nov 10 and 11 and every day I’m asking you to

Vote your values

Canvass for courage

Phonebank for freedom

Go door to door for dignity

Check compassion

Elect equality

Mark mercy

Pick peace

Select solidarity

Bet on beauty and

Line up for love.

 

Remember that we are long haul people.

 

This story isn’t over.