All That Ends, Must Begin Anew
This is the text of both of today’s Reflections from worship. Audio will follow tomorrow.
— — —
Hey. Wanna know a secret?
Like, one of those top-shelf ultra-secure gotta-know-the-right-secret-handshake-sequence secrets? Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as the Men In Black with the flashy blinky red light type secrets?
Yeah?
Ready?
Interns write, and rewrite, this very sermon, their first last sermon dozens of times during their time in the actual internship. It’s supposed to be for the practice of writing the sermon, of processing the emotions involved in saying good-bye, of getting to and moving through closure.
Folks always remember the last sermon a minister gives, and the intern wants to go out on the best note. So they write, and rewrite, their first last sermon over and over until they finally deliver it. They find and stash little bits of poetry and prose, turns of phrase artfully crafted in flashes of inspiration and tucked into a journal safely ensconced on a shelf until now.
None of us expected a global pandemic.
It changed everything.
It is changing everything.
Change is everything.
Today is the fifth Sunday in May. It is the fiftieth day since Easter Sunday. It is also the Jewish holiday of Shauvot, commemorating the giving of the Law on Sinai. For Western Christians, it is Pentecost Sunday, celebrating the arrival of the Holy Spirit as told in the second chapter of Acts.
Pentecost Sunday was always a big deal in the evangelical Methodist church of my youth. Red vestments would come out into the sanctuary, we’d sing old hymns- usually photocopies out of the few surviving pre-merger hymnals — and the sermons would be prophetic in the Southern hellfire sort of way.
…and it took me until seminary to learn, or unlearn as it were, that the story of Acts 2, the prophetic words and deeds of my own Methodist, Universalist, and Unitarian traditions, were never supposed to be reactionary and regressive, always promised to be revolutionary and progressive. The Spirit of G-d comes for every G-d-blessed one of us.
Pentecost is the coming down of a sacred spirit of prophetic fire, a holy truth-telling, manifested when the faithful witness injustice and are overcome long enough to get out of their own way.
That is a big statement. Let me give you an example.
In January of 2017, I was in Chicago for a performance when Trump’s Muslim travel ban broke across the news. Outrage. Pain. Then, a whisper from some friends — “We need to do something.”
So we did.
Under the leadership of the Muslim activist groups already on the ground, we shut down the international terminal at O’hare Airport for four days, inside and out. There were lawyers in the terminal, helping with arrangements. Food chains, transportation runs, liaisons with Chicago Police, we covered everything. In the end, we bought enough time for the Supreme Court to do their thing, ICE foiled, and nobody was arrested.
Those few days in January was Pentecost.
But for every Terminal 5, there are ten Minneapolises. Ten times that my heart weeps for every one time it celebrates success. Having, and maintaining, hope is the challenge of the activist.
Minneapolis cries out this morning, cries out in that same prophetic tongue of our own ancestors in Selma, of our ancestors here in Davenport[1] and in Moline, and it begs us to help. To come forward, get dirty, put our bodies on the line.
Three days ago, the first day after the protests and riots in Minneapolis, a wave of generational grief and rage washed over my soul. The words of Psalmist were ripped from my lips in the shower, “How long, Holy One, how long? How long must we wait, how long must we weep?”
And I wept.
I wept under falling water, connected to earth and sky.
I wept for a future not yet born,
For a future struggle to be born,
For a future in need of the midwife.
The Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale was a Unitarian minister and United States Senate chaplain, one of two Unitarians hold that position, his successor being the second. Rev. Dr. Hale, when writing of the midwife,
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Rev. Dr. Hale’s words drove me to Terminal Five in January 2017 and they drive the work I have been doing since, work that always strives to promote the cause of justice safely, sustainably, and faithfully.
If that is running flats of water for protestors, we do it.
If that is organized the virtual safe spaces for organizers to talk, we do it.
If that is getting your caucus groups together and having intentional discussions about current events, we do it.
If that is holding space for beloveds to talk food and recharge, we do it.
Whatever you can do is important.
What is more important is the doing.
That is the most important — the doing.
Because we cannot do everything,
We will not refuse to do the something that we can do.
This is the lesson of Pentecost.
This is the lesson of change.
This is the lesson of faith.
My second Reflection starts with a reading from one of those books you read because enough people tell you that you should, and then, as you read it, you find yourself holding back a flood of tears in a Chile’s restaurant out of a healthy respect for “Iowa Nice”:
If I have learned anything in this journey, it’s that Sunday morning sneaks up on us, like dawn, like resurrection, like the sun that rises a ribbon at a time. We expect a trumpet and a triumphant entry, but as always, the Divine shows up in ordinary things: in bread, in wine, in water, in words, in sickness, in healing, in death, in a manger, in a mother’s womb, in the darkness of a tomb. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground, G-d is here.
—Epilogue, “searching for sunday”, Rachel Held Evans
Holy Ground. Chapter five of the book of Joshua in the Hebrew scriptures has three verses, thirteen through fifteen, that I found challenging. Verse fifteen is the toughest for me: “The angel replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground.” And Joshua did.
Can you picture Joshua’s face in that split second? “Hey, holy ground”, says the angel. “oh RIGHT”, says Joshua.
I wish I had the artistic talent to turn that passage into a meme, simply to print out and tape to my desktop at home. Holy ground, Andrea. Oh, RIGHT. Sandals off.
I talked about “Jonas & Ezekiel” by the Indigo Girls in the Land Dedication this morning, and how that awareness that everywhere we look, there have been those tribal feet, running free. Everywhere we go, holy ground.
Sandals off.
The time between my last visit to a UU church and my first visit in the Chicago area was just shy of twenty years. The setting was different — idyllic barn church in the far suburbs versus military base. The theology, at its core, similar — welcome all, treat everyone well, care for the earth. I liked it both times.
Except something grabbed me this time that didn’t then — covenant.
A way to be without being tied a theology.
I was hooked.
When people ask me “Why are you a UU?” I respond, “Because of covenant.”
My colleague, the soon-to-be Reverend Viola Abbot, writes in her piece “Towards a Place of Wholeness”:
“We are brought here today by the fact that Unitarian Universalism has fallen short of the image that was presented to the world, and to many of those who embraced this religion.
But we are also brought here today by the truth that Unitarian Universalism has shifted course to move toward a place of wholeness: a place that perhaps never existed for us as a denomination.
It has been a long, and sometimes unforgiving road to today. But we are here today because we are mindful of that past, and because we have hope for the future. We want the practice of this faith to be a fulfilling manifestation of its promise.”
Covenant is the manifestation of the promise of this faith, and covenant is what allows us to form a coherent whole of our disparate parts. Covenant is holy ground.
When Pentecost happened all those millenia ago, and the Spirit of the Divine allowed men and women to speak in each other’s languages, languages they did not know prior to that event, and that ground became holy. Partially because of the miracle angle, yes, but more because of the relationships that were formed, the memories, the relationships are what made it sacred, made it holy. Covenant makes Pentecost holy ground.
If I understand the Shauvot story correctly, covenant, the handing down of the law at Sinai to Moses by G-d is relationship. My people, my rules, says the Holy One. Okay, we got that, say Their people — that’s covenant. Covenant makes wherever they go holy ground.
The indigenous folks who have much more valid claims to these lands than we do remind us that we are faithbound by covenant to honor them and make amends where and when possible. That’s covenant, and this is holy ground.
The grief and outrage and calls to action we all hear and answer from George Floyd, that makes everywhere we go holy ground. Riots, to me and my theologies, are the sum totals of our failures, of our sins against all we hold sacred, for riots would be not be a term we knew if we were collectively doing our work. The Eighth Principle makes this holy ground, makes wherever we go in support of justice and equity for our siblings and cousins of color acts of covenantal love. Black Lives Matter is holy ground.
Friends, the road is long. Our work is not yet done. And as we put shoulder to the yoke once more, hand to the tiller, pen to the page and spoon to the pot, we go together, as one, linked by an indomitable spirit, bound and woven together by Spirit into something beautiful and fierce, and power of righteous love, set forth of emboldened purpose.
Let’s get at it, shall we?
[1] Rev. Nathaniel Seaver, first settled minister of Unitarian Church of Davenport, was a Civil War veteran (Virginia militia, natch) and a graduate of HDS). Davenport was settled as a “northern seaport” on the Mississippi to connect the so-called “great market” in the South with the needs of western settlers.
