the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13,

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1 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Call to Worship Come into this place which we make holy by our presence. Come in with all of your vulnerabilities and strengths, fears and anxieties, loves and hopes. For here you need not hide, nor pretend, nor be anything other than who you are and who you are called to be. Come into this place where we can touch and be touched, heal and be healed, forgive and be forgiven. Come into this place where the ordinary is sanctified, the human is celebrated, the compassionate is expected. Come into this place, together we make it a holy place. -Rebecca Edmiston-Lange The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

2 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Reading: by Nadia Bolz-Weber The roof of the Pillar of Fire Church is crowned with the enormous call letters KPOF that lights up at night, making it look like what it is: A Pentecostal church that doubles as a radio station. We squinted to read the description on the memorial: Alma White, founder of the Pillar of Fire Church, Turning to Amy I said, Alma? That s a woman s name, isn t it? Did a woman plant a church in Denver in 1901? I didn t know of many women who had set out to start churches all by themselves, much less at the turn of the century, so, desperate as I was for someone I could place in the category hero and role model (since I too, was setting out to be a female pastor of a new church in Denver), I pulled out my phone and Googled Alma White. My excitement about discovering a hero only built as I read her Wikipedia entry: Alma Bridwell White (June 16, 1862-June 26, 1946) was the founder and a bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. (Oh my gosh, it s true!) I went on to read that in 1918 she became the first female The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

3 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, bishop in the United States. She was noted for her feminism (yes!) and her association with (wait for it ) the Ku Klux Klan. Her anti Catholicism, anti-semitism, anti-pentecostalism, racism and hostility toward immigrants. (Damn!) The next day I called my Episcopal friend Sara to tell her the story of how I thought I had a hero only to find out she was just a lousy racist. Sara s response? me her name and I ll add her to the Litany of Saints along with all the other broken people of God. (Italics the author s) 1 1 Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints, Finding God in all the Wrong People, Convergent Book, 2015 The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

4 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Thought for Contemplation: "Hope is a living understanding that there can be meaning on the other side of anything." The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish in Northborough March 13, 2016 Damaged Saints One day, when I was in Jr. High School, my mother came home from work with a bag of goodies for me and my sister. She was grinning, and we were excited when she opened it up and saw that in it were several pairs of nylon stockings for each of us. Nylons were special. They ran easily and therefore, especially for active not quite young women, had a very short shelf life. Often one wearing was it. We danced around, so pleased. Why, we asked her, why was she bringing these home to us? Oh, she said, they were on sale. It was such a good price, I could not resist. Our curiosity got the best of us and we pressed. How good a price? She told us. It was an unbelievable price, lower than could reasonably be expected or even imagined. Then my mother let the truth slip out. Sheepishly she admitted that she d crossed a picket line of workers on strike, to take advantage of this incredible sale. The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

5 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, We were aghast. We were a union family. My Dad was a shop steward. We had been raised as union kids- Choir, verse one and chorus of Union Maid. We could sing that song along with the grownups. What was she thinking?! I remember trembling as I took the precious stockings and handed them back to my mother. I won t wear them. They are scab stocking. How could you? She looked embarrassed, guilty, ashamed as well she should, I thought in my thirteen year old selfrighteousness. My sainted mother was unsainted. Now, I was thirteen. I really did not think my mother was a saint. I could have given you a laundry list of all her faults- for she had many, and I was thirteen. I polished them like worry beads in my mind. But in the areas of labor, of solidarity, of organizing for a fair shake for working folks, my mother had been in my eyes, a saint a model of virtue and courage to which I looked for inspiration and guidance. She d organized, stood on picket lines, handed out leaflets. She was, in my mind, the union maid who never was afraid. And she had crossed the picket line. I was crushed. Saints, I learned, have clay feet. The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

6 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Thirty years later I was sitting at the dinner table with my children. They had done something that had set me off- I don t know if it was one child or two, but they had done something I found unconscionable. As I was getting into the swing of my soliloquy my son jumped up from his seat, ran around the table and standing next to me where I was seated, started bowing with his arms out, bending his knees. Oh, holy one. Can you ever forgive us? I tried to still be angry, but I couldn t. He d nailed it. He had at some point come to the same conclusion about his mother that I had come to about mine. I was not always good, I was not always right and I was not always consistent. And if I was going to expect him to give me a little slack on that, I had better own up. Turns out self-righteousness doesn t suit me. I make too many bad decisions to claim that place. Michael Servetus was born in Spain in A Renaissance man, he was a theologian, a physician and a cartographer. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation. He was versed in mathematics, pharmacology, astronomy, The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

7 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, geography and jurisprudence. In short, he was very smart and highly educated. At the age of ten or eleven he entered the service of Quintana, a scholarly Augustinian monk where he studied Biblical Greek and Hebrew. He traveled much and studied much, including the original Biblical texts. Then in 1531, at the impressive age of only 20, he published his manuscript called On the Errors of the Trinity, which infuriated John Calvin who targeted and chased him thereafter. Finally, after years on the run, in October of 1553 he was burned at the stake in Geneva by Calvin on charges of heresy. The legend has it that all the way to the place of execution, when they were trying to get him to recant, he kept saying, just show me where it says it in the bible, just show me. But of course they couldn t, and so he was killed. His execution became the catalyst for the subsequent Age of Enlightenment, 2 and our first recorded Unitarian martyr. He was a martyr for our faith, not only for the proclamation of a Unitarian understanding of scripture 2 Servetus the Evangelical.com The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

8 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, and of God, but a martyr for the search for truth and meaning even when it leads to the discovery of unexpected or inconvenient truths. For that we are grateful, and for that we can place him in our gallery of Unitarian saints, such as they are. But he was not a nice person. From all I have read, he was insufferably arrogant, self-righteous, selfimportant, even haughty, an aristocrat, carrying all of the negative traits we associate with the nobility from which he had come. Does that change what he gave us? No. Does it bear on what we think of him, and how we might want to hold him up as one to emulate or not? I think so. If we expect our saints, heroes and martyrs to be perfect, we will always be disappointed, whether they are from long ago, or are our parents or teachers, role models or friends. Can we learn to cut them a little slack? Allow them to be imperfect? Extend forgiveness? Thomas Jefferson was the conceiver of a democratic body politic in an era when countries were run by monarchs and the right to rule was inherited. He penned the words we hold so dear and sacred in our American tradition We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and from that has grown The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

9 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, forth a nation that still struggles to incarnate those prophetic words and values in our laws and in our practice. His was a radical belief in the democratic process, and his was an ever expanding search for truth and meaning, going so far as to create the Jefferson bible, in which he cut out all of the passages he thought were inauthentic, as he tried to discover the real Jesus. Thomas Jefferson is one of our Unitarian saints, as well as one of our national saints (note I am using the word saint to mean an icon symbolizing a value, one held in highly elevated esteem). Thomas Jefferson who wrote our Declaration of Independence, was the primary thinker behind the creation of the democratic United States, and yet he left out the women, and he held slaves, including one, Sally Hemings, with whom we know he had several children. A contradiction? Yes. Disturbing? Yes. And yet, those disturbing truths about him do not change the fact that he was the spring board for our contemporary democratic government. Sigh It isn t simple, is it? Susan B. Anthony, primary mover, advocate and organizer for the women s suffrage movement in our The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

10 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, country was a strong determined, brave woman. With her partner in the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she shaped the conversation the men had long been avoiding. Stanton was mostly the writer in this team. Anthony spent miles and miles on the road, organizing and public speaking wherever she could gather an audience. We owe a debt of gratitude to this UU woman whose values of the inherent worth and dignity of every person and of the democratic process empowered her to speak forcefully for the rights of women, their right to vote. Until the crunch came. After the civil war, when the debates over the right to vote for African American men were cast as being in competition with the vote for women, she got sucked into the divide arguing that educated white women would be better voters than ignorant African American men. African American men became voters. And women did not. She was angry. Even though she did believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all, including African Americans, she was unable to extricate herself from the false dichotomy that structured the public debate. There are things she said in the heat of the battle of which she might be deeply ashamed today. The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

11 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Does it disturb us to know that she relinquished fighting for universal suffrage when she thought that votes for women were at stake? Probably. And yet she was a powerhouse, a woman who spoke publicly and spoke her mind when it was dangerous to do so. She gave her life to a noble cause- votes for woman. And she wasn t perfect. Neither are we. When Olga approached me about music for this Sunday, she reminded me that it was the Sunday closest to St. Patrick s Day. So? I said. What does that have to do with us? The choir wants to sing Danny Boy in honor of St. Patrick s Day, she explained. It didn t sit right with me. St. Patrick s Day is an Irish, Catholic holiday, I said. We are not Irish, and we are not Catholic. I understand that the Boston area culture is big on St. Patrick s Day, but that does not mean it belongs in Unitarian Universalist worship. I went on (See- you can already tell one of my grave faults- when I get into something, I can go on and on), and besides the big thing St. Patrick accomplished was driving all the pagans out of Ireland, or underground. I hardly want to celebrate that behavior. He was an oppressor of pagans. The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

12 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Olga went on to reassure me Danny Boy is not really about St. Patrick, and sent me the words to confirm that. Of course I already knew the tune- it is indeed beautiful, but what exactly is the value of St. Patrick we could lift up in worship- and should we? It was clear the choir wanted to sing Danny Boy. I relented and found myself thinking about the saints I ve known and known about. Each one is in some way faulty, their purported pristine image damaged. And I turned to our third principle, the UU value that is often the hardest to fulfill: The acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. They are linked- the acceptance of one another, and the encouragement to spiritual growth. Truthfully, I had not noticed that before, but it is painfully true. We cannot encourage one another in spiritual growth unless we first accept one another, accept who we are and where we are, the people sitting with us in church, the people sharing our dinner table, the people important in our lives. Yes, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, but that sounds like a lofty theory unless The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

13 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, the rubber hits the road and we actually put it into practice by accepting one another. For surely, we are all saints and sinners, as our UU songwriter Malvina Reynolds put it so clearly. Somewhere between the good and the evil, somewhere between the right and the wrong somewhere between the kind and the mean, somewhere between, is where I belong. 3 It is where I belong. Maybe it is where you belong too. And still, imperfect, disappointed, mistake ridden, it is here, held in acceptance and love, that finally we know we have found a faith and a place to belong. This faith, and this place. May it be so. Amen, and Blessed Be. Closing Hymn # 103 For All the Saints 3 Malvina Reynolds, Somewhere Between The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/

14 the Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson, First Parish UU Northborough, MA March 13, Closing Words St. Francis of Assisi Where hate rules, let us bring love; Where sorrow, joy. Let us strive more to comfort others than to be comforted, To understand others, Than to be understood, To love others more than to be loved. For it is in giving that we receive, And in pardoning that we are pardoned. Benediction Extinguishing the Chalice Postlude The Rev. Dr. Anita Farber-Robertson First Parish UU Northboro, MA 3/13/