Local to Global: The Goal of World Community
Sermon by Steve Edington
May 4, 2008
We've had a real mosaic of a service this morning. With our children present earlier we heard a song - some beautifully sung by Cynthia - that recognized the children we know and love and care about here in our congregation; and then brought us to the need to know, love, and care about the children of our world. Both our children's and our adult choirs have once again inspired us with their gifts of music - thanks in large measure to Jed's wonderful leadership. Hearing the singing of our two choirs recalled for me a line from a song our former Music Director, Sandra Neumann, once (maybe it was more than once) had the choir sing that ended with the words, "music made together will someday save mankind." We celebrated the relationship that Amy and Svetlana have found for themselves, as they bring together two cultures and two languages into the home they are building. By extension the relationship we celebrate and affirm for them is also an affirmation of the relationships we each have with those we know and love most deeply.
We learned of yet another of the many human needs in our local community that we try to address by way of our Outreach Collections - this time for persons who are struggling with the crippling effects of an addiction and who are looking to place their lives in a more peaceful and grounded place. This comes after a series of collections we took up over the past several Sundays for the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund to make having an affordable home a greater possibility for a greater number of persons and families in our state. And we're not done yet. Before our service for today is over you'll be asked to take part in a brief exercise that will help our Social Justice Committee for their, and your, ideas of what a just health care plan for our society would look like.
In the midst of this mosaic - which in its many and varied ways says a lot about who we are and about what we strive to be as a liberal religious community - I'm supposed to offer a few thoughts on the theme of world community, as stated in our sixth Unitarian Universalist principle, that says we covenant to affirm and promote "the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." Of our seven foundational UU Principles, this may well be the one that could render us most prone to cynicism; or if not cynicism, then one that makes us most painfully aware of one of the more perplexing and maddening paradoxes we face on a global level right now; which is just this: At no point in human history have the peoples of this earth been so close to one another, and so much apart from one another, all at the same time, than right now.
Global communications technology has made us aware of people and events in all parts of the world; people of whom our ancestors of just a generation or two earlier scarcely knew existed. The onset of economic globalization has connected the well-being and job security of many of our citizens to some of the tasks and jobs that other people in other parts of the world are carrying out. These two realities alone are the topics for sermons all by themselves; and they are sermons that will have to wait for other times, for other Sundays. For it is this very closeness - in a tragically ironic way - that has also bred fear, and mistrust, and misunderstanding, and hatreds that separate and divide us as a human family even as other forces are bringing us together. This is the global paradox in which we live at the moment, and probably will for many years to come.
I do not have any kind of an off-the-shelf solution to this paradox. All I'll do this morning is offer a few thoughts on how we can best live in the midst of it. Given the fullness and the richness of our service already, I'll be keeping it a little shorter than usual. I'm going to suggest that we take that oft quoted axiom about "Think globally and act locally" and give it a twist: Let your local actions, let the place where you stand and live out your values shape and inform your vision of the world in which you wish to live.
The one caveat I would add to that is to be aware that your vision, like all the knowledge you possess, is finite and limited, and constantly needs to be reformed and reshaped as you gain ever greater awareness of the complexities and mysteries of this planet we inhabit with some 4-5 billion other human beings. That said, let your life - in the place where you've been given to live it in this global community - shape and define your vision for that community.
On this point, recall again the elements of this service we're sharing in together right now, and the values those elements have expressed: A safe and secure place for children into come to adulthood; the freedom to carry forth those relationships that give our lives their deepest meaning and joy; the call to bring broken lives to greater levels of wholeness; the security of good health and good shelter. All these things, and many more, speak to the kind of world in which we wish to live and which we are called upon to create. Live out that vision in whatever piece of the world you've been given to live for whatever length of time you're to live in it, and you just might save at least one small part of that world.
This gets me to the one other point I want to offer you on this subject. Take heed and take heart from some very wise words from Mahatma Gandhi: "Everything you do may seem insignificant, but it's very important that you do it anyway." I've got a story for this one. It's one I told a few days ago, and for which I'm going to ask the indulgence of those here who may have heard it a few days ago. Some of us in this congregation are among those who have been taking part in a community forum on the place and role of religion in civic life being sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities Council. This past Thursday - which was our wrap up session - we got into a conversation about what can happen the how the rule of civil law comes into an encounter with the rule of conscience and with those who feel an allegiance to principles greater than civil law - call it the Law of God, the Call of a Higher Allegiance, call it what you will.
The discussion recalled for me a nearly forgotten incident from some 25 years ago when I did not get arrested in front of the South African Embassy to the United Nations in New York. Following a chapter meeting of the UU ministers in the New York area, we made an arrangement with an anti-apartheid group to go stand in front of the South African Embassy to protest the white-only government and policies of that country. At the time Nelson Mandela was still in jail for what looked like would be the rest of his life.
We divided ourselves into two groups. Those who wished to commit civil disobedience and be arrested were to stand in front of the door; those of us who wished to maintain a moral witness, but not be taken downtown for an arraignment stood in another place. I jokingly remarked that I had a commitment for later that day back on Long Island where I was living and didn't have time to get arrested, arraigned and - as by prior arrangement - released on recognizance for trial later. It all went off as planned. We, all - those who engaged in civil disobedience and those who did not - made our statement by our presence and went on our ways.
The incident slipped into the recesses of my memory - and was nearly forgotten - until the day that Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. It was then that I remembered that cold day in New York City standing in front of a building, hardly noticed by the busy passers-by.
It wasn't that I thought my presence, or the presence of my other UU ministerial colleagues on that one occasion, had anything to do with how the events in South Africa eventually played out. If it did at all it was only in the most minutely miniscule of ways. But the point is that we stood there in the face of seemingly impossible odds still believing that we were on the right side of history and on the right side of justice. Then we let history and we let what Rev. Theodore Parker called the moral arc of the universe take their course; and they did. Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is very important that you do it anyway.
One of the ministers, whom I believe was at that event, was an up-and-coming rising star in our movement, and who was then in the early stages of his ministry at the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, was the Rev. Forrest Church. Forrest is now approaching his 60th birthday and tragically is in the near final stages of esophageal cancer. I've been checking in with the All Souls website for the updates they offer on his condition. Doing this has also led me to browse among his sermons that are posted on his church's website just as mine are here. I found some lines in a couple of them with which I'll close these thoughts today.
The first one I'll cite was given in May of 2004 titled "Choose Your Enemies Carefully". Towards the end of it Forrest recounts a recent trip to Holland where he attended a dinner with persons from Israel and Palestine who were seeking the seemingly maddeningly elusive ways of peace in that part of the world. I commend the whole sermon to you and will share with you these closing words to it:
"Be a complete human being. Not, that is, first and foremost a Jew or a Palestinian. Not a Christian or Muslim first. Or an American first, but a complete human being: Seeing our own tears in one another's eyes; recognizing that we have so much more in common than could ever possibly divide us. We are all mysteriously born, fated to die, the mortar of mortality binding us fast to one another, the same sun setting on each of our horizons. We all want and need love, and security and freedom and acceptance. We need each other's forgiveness and understanding. We ache in the same way; we bleed in the same way. At times we all feel awkward and unworthy and inadequate. We all fail at times to hearken to the better angels of our nature."
Those last few words are Forrest's citing of Abraham Lincoln who was fond of invoking the phrase "The better angels of our nature." I'm not sure where Lincoln got it from or if it's original with him. Forrest used the phrase again in a sermon he gave on the first anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. This one in September of 2002:
"When you say a prayer or light a candle, pray not only to God but to the better angel of your nature. Pray to live in such a way that your very life might itself be the answer to your prayer."
I like that: Pray to the better angel of your nature that your very life might itself be the answer to your prayer. Whether you believe in any kind of a God or not, I would hope that we each and all can believe in what Abraham Lincoln and Rev. Church call "the better angel of our nature." That is to say I hope we can each and all believe in our peace loving self, our justice loving self, in that part of us that yearns to live in a reconciled world.
Think on what your prayer, or your petition, or your urging would be to that "better angel" part of yourself. And then think on what it would mean for you to be the answer to that prayer, petition, or urging - and live your life accordingly. And from that one little spot on the globe that you occupy, that moral arc of the universe just might bend a few more degrees in the direction of justice and peace.
Stephen D. Edington
May 4, 2008
