The Need to Belong

This was a sermon originally given at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Clinton, IA on 13 October 2019. You should come see us sometime.

I was just settling in to write this sermon when the news broke this past week that the United States was withdrawing from Syria and abandoning the Kurds for a likely Turkish invasion. The media was largely divided along party lines as to whether or not this was a good thing for American interests, let alone the world’s interests. Less than 72 hours later, Turkish forces attacked, killing several hundred of our Kurdish allies, and creating refugees of 1.3 million people. The Turkish army even fired on United States Special Forces stationed to train our Syrian and Kurdish allies, who were forbidden to fire back. Let us, as we move through the this day and the days to come, hold the Kurds in our thoughts and prayers, in our activism, and in our love. May we one day be worthy enough to call them friends.

On Thursday of this past week, your social media feeds (if you are a social media person) were probably full of folks living with mental illness telling their stories. I, being a social media person, saw many heartbreaking stories of love and loss from friends and acquaintances. I also saw stories of hope, of resilience, of defiance, and of a fierce self-love. I saw folks calling publicly to those who were silent, telling them they were loved. Their example was a spectacular demonstration of our Unitarian Universalist values.

The next day, on Friday, we saw different stories as the LGBTQIA community publicly declared their various and beautiful identities. Many of them did so for political reasons, others for personal or religious reasons. The one thing they all did it for was for the folks who hadn’t come out, hadn’t declared their heretical identities to the world. The community was coming out of a metaphorical closet to embrace those who were a silent part of that community, stating through their actions the essential lesson of the prophet Ezekiel, who wrote in chapter 34 verse 28: “They will no longer be plundered by the nations, nor will wild animals devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid.”

That’s the power of belonging, a desire to be safe, to be held in fierce compassionate love. It is a desire we all know, not just those of the LGBTQIA or other identity communities.

For example, how many folks are (model railroaders, golfers, musicians, artists, knitters). How does it feel to you when you are among folks who share that passion? When you speak in a language the outsider may not immediately understand? And how much do you miss it when you go back to the mundane? That is yearning to belong. We yearn, whether or not we see it, to be a part of a group that affirms our identities and amplifies the who and what of the individual — and collective — we, that spurs us on to be ever-better versions of ourselves.

I’m a Southern woman and if there is one thing we have (besides a closely guard apple pie recipe), it is stories to tell. I am going to tell you the story of a man who wanted so badly to be part of a community that he could taste it, a community that laughed in his face, and his ultimate triumph.

It was around the eighth of May in 1911 that Robert Spencer was born as one of ten children in Hazelton, Mississippi. His father was on his way to becoming a successful furniture salesman, and Mississippi being Mississippi, saw a racially-motivated conflict saw the family flee Hazelton for the relatively kinder ground of Memphis, Tennessee in 1913.

In 1929, our protagonist married and began a life as father and farmer, only to lose his new wife in childbirth. Robert Spencer began to travel the region, playing street corners and jazz clubs as a competent harmonica player and, in the words of the blues legend Son House, “an embarrassingly bad guitar player”.

Robert Spencer, who had taken his father’s surname Johnson, wanted nothing more than to be a full-time blues musician. The blues community, however, wanted nothing to do with Robert Johnson. We are at a crossroads in our story.

The best versions of ourselves require work, require effort. The Beloved Community that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr introduced into our vocabulary is the Community of our best selves, and it is the need to belong to the Beloved Community that sits at the core of our common faith.

The Unitarian minister and theologian James Luther Adams wrote that the fifth smooth stone of our faith is “We have what we need to bring about meaningful change — we can be hopeful.” This foundational idea has been updated by the Rev. Gretchen Haley as the fifth jagged stone: “We are called to be and become the Beloved Community, which we create through the practice of and partnership with the transformative power of courageous love.”

We have what we need: the transformative power of courageous love. Let’s unpack that.

We are, and always have been, a people of prophetic purpose. People find our faith daily, discover our communities, and proclaim that they have come home.

We have what they needed. My challenge to that is “what do we not yet have for those who have found us and moved on?”

We have the welcome.
We have the embrace.
We have the affirmation.
We have the promise.
We have almost everything we need. What is it that we are missing?

We, as Unitarian Universalists, will never be everything for everyone. The bigots and racists will find no comfort here, and nor should they… unless they are willing to work for redemption and change that does align with our values.

Consider the embrace given to Amber Guyger by Brandt Jean, the brother of the man she murdered. Many have declared that embrace to be cheap grace, an easy forgiveness granted to a white woman by a black man because white supremacy culture. I would argue that, in the very moment when he hugged Ms. Guyger, Brandt Jean was acting out a very core Universalist value: no human is without value, all are saved, all are worthy of the love of God.

That does not mean that Ms. Guyger does not have to work, because the debt she owes is the work of several lifetimes. The obligation put on her by Brandt Jean is the obligation to live up to his great grace- and that is work she may never complete. Redemption, the restoration of community after its loss, is work arising directly out of a need to belong.

Our faith lives and dies by its covenants. Covenants are great for bringing folks together, but how do we address the injuries caused by the folks who break that covenant? How do we address the rifts created, and the restoration of not just the covenant, but of the members who caused the harm? The single hardest bit about Universalism is that nobody is unworthy of a redemption arc. Nobody.

The atonement/redemption arc is the hard part of covenant. It is work driven by belonging, work driven by a commitment that becomes the very air we breathe, the very blood flowing through our veins. If no one is beyond redemption, then the only question becomes what the demands of the arc are, and whether or not the covenant-breaker wants to return to right relations. Is their desire, their need to belong enough to generate character change? Is our faith strong enough to allow it to happen? Those are the hard questions of this faith, and the hard work of this faith.

The closeted queer kid knows this work well. The aspiring blues musician knows this work well. The marginalized of every kind know this work well. For them, the work is not about whether they can be worthy of inclusion into the dominant culture, but whether the dominant culture is worthy of them.

Let me repeat that: the word of redemption is the work of whether or not the dominant culture changes enough to be worthy of the marginalized.

Are we?

The LGBTQIA community is home, and the promise of inclusion sits at the as-yet unknown heart of every closeted queer person. Belonging to that community is essential to our continued survival. The queer community, currently fighting for their right to exist in this week’s Supreme Court cases, is not fighting for themselves, but rather for the evolution of the dominant culture, for our evolution.

The LGBTQIA community is doing the work of redemption because society would not. Give thanks to the Sacred of your understanding, for our redemption is their liberation.

The blues musician knows this work well, for the community of musicians were not to be his equal. The mystique of his musical skill aside, he became the godfather of modern blues music, of rock and roll, and of a dozen other styles. He represents, in his short life, the very reality of Universalists ideals. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 was a watershed moment where the very community that rejected him not only welcomed him but begged his forgiveness for excluding him.

The need to belong is a strong, instinctual drive hard-coded in our DNA. It is the irresistible grasp of something larger than ourselves, something that overshadows our individuality within one question: Will we accept the invitation?

This is my question to you this morning: will we accept the invitation? Will we do the hard work of our faith, work we have already begun? Will we live our covenants, live our promises, live our potential?

I believe, unequivocably, that we can.
I believe, wholeheartedly, that we will.
I believe, without a doubt, that we are, even right now.
I believe, truthfully, that we will continue to live them.

I believe because our continued evolution is society’s collective liberation, and that, my friends, is the hard and holy work to which we are called this day and every day.

May it be so, and may we be the ones to make it so.
Selah.