Reading II: We Are Called Natalie Fenimore In Voices from the Margins: An Anthology of Medita6ons Skinner House Books, 2012

Transcription

1 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 1 Jus$ce, Kindness, Humility The Rev. Ian W. Riddell Unitarian Universalist Congrega6on of Las Vegas October 28, 2012 Reading I: Micah - Chapter 6 [NRSV] Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring founda6ons of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. 3 O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from ShiXm to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord. 6 With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt- offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do jus6ce, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Reading II: We Are Called Natalie Fenimore In Voices from the Margins: An Anthology of Medita6ons Skinner House Books, 2012

2 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 2 Sermon: I m sure you ve seen it on posters and t- shirts and baseball caps at protests and on church signs and even on the face of football players. Three numbers and a punctua6on mark. 3 - colon Ofen preceded by the name John. For evangelical Chris6ans of all stripes and for many other Chris6ans, these numbers point to what they hold as the center of their faith and their reality a certain gif that brings them comfort and inspires their life. For them, of all of the verses in the Bible from the In the beginning of Genesis to the Amen of Revela6on this verse verse 16 of chapter 3 of the Gospel According to John is central and crucial and ul6mate. As the King James Version reports, Jesus said For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begohen Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlas6ng life. 1 Now, the Bible doesn t occupy the same place in our tradi6on as it used to nor the same place as it does in even mainline Chris6an tradi6ons to this day. For many of us, it is a repressive document that we d rather see ignored. We point to passages like the stories of conquest and destruc6on in Genesis and Joshua or what we see as misogynis6c, repressive axtudes and say We ll have none of that. But for many of us even those of us like myself who claim humanism or religious naturalism or some other form of non- theism as our metaphor and lens on the world even for us the biblical voices can also offer some powerful perspec6ve. For me, I see biblical narra6ves as the record of groups and individuals grappling with understanding the facts that we are alive and that we must die (as Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church said). And as a record of human beings ahempt to grapple with their encounters with each other and with the reali6es of the world beyond themselves with the divine with wonder with anguish and suffering with the bohle, the needle, the powder, the pill, the game, the bet, the need, the want, the pain, the cure, the love, the hope, the dream 2 with the mystery. And so, I think there are many verses and passages and stories contained in the Hebrew and Chris6an scriptures that can have deep meaning for me, for us which offer us new (and yet very old) ways to see the paherns of our lives and our rela6onships from the teachings of 1 [John 3:16, KJV] 2 [Fenimore, We are called ]

3 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 3 Jesus calling us to love our enemy to the Psalm writer s anguish at not being able to speak against injus6ce despite an inward fire. But if you asked me which verse I d like us to hold up on a sign or wear on a hat or paint on our faces at spor6ng events what piece of biblical wisdom might best represent my highest aspira6ons for myself and for our communi6es I would tell you Micah 6:8 - the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of the wri6ng ahributed to the Hebrew prophet named Micah. He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do jus6ce, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? 3 General scholarly consensus is that the prophet Micah was ac6ve during the late 8th century BCE in Judea. From a small town named Moresheth outside of Jerusalem, Micah lived and worked in a 6me of great anxiety and fear for the Hebrew people. Afer the fall of the Davidic dynasty, the kingdom of Israel split into two parts: the northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital at Samaria, and the southern kingdom of Judea with its capital at Jerusalem. These kingdoms were surrounded by constantly expanding hos6le powers, and in 722 BCE the northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians and the southern kingdom avoided destruc6on for a 6me by paying homage to the Assyrian empire. Tradi6ons were crumbling and being corrupted by the need to assimilate the kingdom was economically devastated by tribute paid to the Assyrians and the brunt of the economic impact was being felt by the poorest in society. 4 Micah s wri6ng ahributes this destruc6on to corrupt leadership. Hear this, he writes, Her rulers judge for gifs, her priests give rulings for a fee, and her prophets divine for pay. [Micah 3:11, JPS] All this corrup6on this deser6on of the ways of jus6ce and the will of Yaweh has brought destruc6on on the na6on. Micah alternates between doom- saying and presen6ng glimpses of hope to come. He envisions a 6me of peace in some of the most remembered and beloved words in Hebrew literature: And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Na6on shall not take up sword against na6on; They shall never again know war; But every [one] shall sit under the grapevine or fig tree with none to disturb. 5 As we heard in the earlier reading, Micah sets up the sixth chapter as a trial. The mountains and the founda6ons of the earth are to judge between Yahweh and his corrupted, errant people. But how are we to achieve this bliss you ve described? the people cry through Micah. What 3 [Micah 6:8, NRSV] 4 [Simundson, New Interpreter s Bible, 534] 5 [Micah 4:3b- 4a, JPS]

4 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 4 can we do to appease Yahweh? Do we make great sacrifices give of our riches, our livestock, our oil our first born sons? Micah s response rejects their sugges6on and says (in the Jewish Publishing Society s transla6on): He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does Lord requires of you: Only to do jus6ce, and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God 6 No sacrifice, no ritual, no groveling will fix this devasta6on rebuild this rela6onship once and for all. Daniel Simundson in his commentary on Micah s prophecy says that Micah is in good company with other prophets when he clearly states that God is more interested in the way people live their everyday lives than in their religious prac6ces. 7 What is clearly required is nothing more than a commitment to a way of life a way of living: doing jus6ce not just complaining about injus6ce; kindness or mercy or a more accurate transla6on of the Hebrew word hesed steadfast faithfulness to covenant and community and Yahweh; and walking humbly in the companionship of the holy. These ways of being are what will restore the shahered na6on and allow the rela6onship between the Judeans and their divine sovereign to be rekindled. And almost 2,800 years later? What might these brief words of an ancient prophet mean to us? We who don t hold the text in which they are found as uniquely sacred; we who feel we understand so much more about the way the world works; we who see ourselves as guided by principles of freedom and individuality? Personally, this text has travelled with me since I was a teenager. It is inextricably entwined with my path toward ministry. During my high school summers, I worked as a counselor at a camp run by the United Church of Canada. We counselors kept our camper- wards safe and fed, we guided them through games and swimming and canoeing and camping under the stars. We led them in discussions of big, theological ques6ons, like Who is my neighbor? And we sang we sang a lot in the dining hall, in our cabins, around campfires, during chapel. And one of the songs we sang was a round, wrihen by Jim Strathdee based on the text of Micah 6:8. [SING] Other songs from that 6me have lef my mind but that one stuck, stuck so deep that despite my theological wanderings it became and s6ll is a guiding text for my life s journey and my path to ministry that, in many ways, began at that campground with those kids. 6 [Micah 6:8, JPS] 7 [Simundson, New Interpreter s Bible, 580]

5 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 5 Well, that s nice, Ian. Very sweet. But that s your story. What about the rest of us? Why should we care about what Micah said? Don t we also live in an anxious world where we feel our leaders corrupted by greed and graf and massive pressures of money? Where our ears and eyes are inundated with the pronouncements of pundits paid to push poli6cal and social agenda? Do we not also mourn for cultures eroded by assimila6on and global power? Do we not also live in a system that rou6nely and inten6onally inflicts the burdens of economic unrest on the most vulnerable among us? Do we not also hear the call of commihed covenantal rela6onships? Do we not also seek to build the beloved community here in this life? Are we not also called to the work of jus6ce? I don t think that 2,800 years has changed the need for Micah s words one bit, to be honest. So what might it look like to see our own situa6on our own commitments and choices through the lens of the prophet from Morsheth? I think the key is to realize something fundamental about Micah s pronouncement. Look at the words: jus6ce, faithfulness, humility. These are not words that have any meaning to individuals isolated in pursuit of self- focused needs. These are rela6onal words. They are about how we are in our friendships and marriages and neighborhoods and communi6es. They call us to judge each moment through the eyes of covenant and community the interrelated web is the star7ng place for this way of being. I think that the deepest learning we can do by seeing the world and our responses to it though the lens of Micah is to commit to seeing and responding as if we exist and thrive only in rela6onship. Each of Micah s three admoni6ons manifests this commitment to rela6onship in a different way. Throughout my life with this text, I ve felt drawn to each of these in turn remember last 6me I spoke with you I talked about kindness and steadfast faithfulness the second admoni6on and today I will concentrate on the third one. But don t forget the first two I hope you re encouraged enough to spark your own reflec6on and pondering on doing jus6ce and on steadfast faithfulness. Humility, though, is a core issue for our na6on, for our individual rela6onships, and for our denomina6on. It s easy for us to demand that others be humble, that they admit their fallibility, that they acknowledge that other perspec6ves are valid. We Unitarian Universalists are ofen prehy good at poin6ng out how wonderful we are how excep6onal our way of being is how wrong others are. We point at the Catholic Church stumbling over issues of sexuality and health, and admit it we feel quite smug that we ve got all that figured out forgexng our long, bumpy history to get to the place we are now and the work we s6ll have to do to truly embrace all of our kin in the breadth and depth and richness of their embodied selves. And forgexng, more importantly, that those we are poin6ng our fingers at and being so smug about are our companions in this world.

6 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 6 When discussing his own tradi6on s grappling with issues of sexuality, Scoh D. Anderson, a Presbyterian, shared his reflec6ons on the conversa6on: "It took lots of 6me, energy, commitment and courage for the members of our task force to leave the self- assuredness of our well- honed posi6ons and acknowledge a measure of faithfulness in the views of those with whom we disagree. Such humility is a rare commodity these days, par6cularly when it comes to hot- buhon issues like sex." 8 How ofen are we willing to honor the faithfulness in the views of those we see as poli6cal or theological opponents? Recent events have come to mind that have brought me to a different and deeper understanding of the commitment to walk humbly. They are connected to our denomina6on s recent Jus6ce General Assembly in Phoenix, Arizona. For those of you who don t know, General Assembly is the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists from across this country. We gather to do the business of our associa6on and to engage in learning and service opportuni6es and to hear moving speakers and honor many of the life passages of our fellow travelers: ministers beginning and ending careers, youth bridging into young adulthood. General Assembly regularly includes an event where we Unitarian Universalists make a public witness about an injus6ce that we see in the world and, specifically, in the community in which we re gathered. Years ago, the 2012 General Assembly was scheduled to happen in Phoenix and then Arizona passed SB 1070 a law that many Unitarian Universalists found racist and discriminatory and abusive and dangerous. And so there was great debate over whether we should go to Arizona or not with heat and light on all sides. Shouldn t we boycoh and avoid spending our money in Arizona to make a point? Shouldn t we go and show support for the people figh6ng this culture of fear and hatred? We heard many voices. Some of the voices were those of Unitarian Universalists ministers and lay people in the congrega6ons in Arizona who said, Please come. Look. These are the people who we have been partnering with to fight this law and this culture in our state people like the organiza6on Puente. They are asking us to come. But and it was a big But we don t want us to do business as usual. We want this to be a different kind of GA. And we want to let our partners in Arizona take the lead in helping us figure out what we can do. You see, those of us with privilege and power and, yes, money, ofen look at a social problem and decide This has to change. This is what I will do to help. I ve decided. The local partners of the congrega6ons in Arizona, in essence, said to us, But that s not what we need. Here s what we need you to do. 8 [Anderson, Walking Humbly, on the Chris6an Century blog, Blogging Toward Sunday, Jan 24, 2011]

7 Riddell Justice, Kindness, Humility UUCLV 10/28/12 7 And so, it was decided that we would go to Arizona, but that we would not do business as usual. All the workshops would be focused on immigra6on reform and indigenous issues, all the ac6ons of witness and service would be guided by the local community. We would discuss and vote to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery. Because that s what our partners the people actually suffering and working to change that suffering asked us to do. To me, that was a profound act of humility on our part. It is a profound and necessary act of humility to realize that our social jus6ce work can be guided by the actual needs and voices of the communi6es we seek to help. To understand that when we walk beside one another, we don t always need to be the one leading. Here I am. What do you need from me? How can I walk with you? instead of Here I am, here s what I m going to do for you. It was imperfect it will always be imperfect but it was a step on a different kind of jus6ce journey, one informed by humility and steadfast faithfulness with our companions. The blessing of a text like this the way in which it becomes scripture to us is that it lives with us and offers us new insight and vision as we and our environment change. What Micah 6:8 meant to me as a teenager singing around a campfire is not what it means now or, rather, what it meant then has been profoundly deepened and altered and enriched as my life has given me opportunity to see my journey through Micah s lens. Daily we awake and ask ourselves the ques6on what does this life require of me? How we answer that ques6on what we choose shapes our every encounter: with our environment, with our loved ones, with our co- workers and neighbors, and with the mystery that binds reality together, whatever we name it. Whatever we choose, wherever we travel, whoever we encounter, may we always remember that we are not alone, that we walk the journey of life with guides and companions, with those who see reality in the way we do and with those who do not. We are always and ever in rela6on. May we build our rela6onships with our kin near and far, known and unknown, with jus6ce ever in our minds. May we respond to each other in each situa6on with steadfast faithfulness, kindness, and mercy where we grow forgiven and forgiving. And may we always remember that we do not walk alone and we do not each have the only way of seeing and knowing. We are, afer all, in this together, kin with all of life. Now, let s sing together.