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Prelude Variations on "Siyahamba" Karl
Osterland
Introit "Kum Ba Yah" Traditional
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| The children's music group MusicTree performs
"Kum Ba Yah" with vocals and Orff instruments. |
MusicTree
JoAnn Brinkerman, conducting (children's choir and Orff instruments)
Call to Worship Dr. Sewell
Hymn #113 (STLT) "Where is Our Holy Church?"
Responsive Reading #588 "To Loose the Fetters
of Injustice" - Isaiah 58
Is not this the fast that I choose:
To loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see them naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
You shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.
Doxology #123 "Spirit of Life"
Chalice Lighting
May we have eyes that see, hearts that love,
And hands that are ready to serve
Story "The Dog at the Well" from
Islam
Lynne Bacon, storyteller
Lynne Bacon, the storyteller, began by talking about bias against
Arabs, Mulims, and Sikhs in the wake of the events of September 11.
She told the children about the sign that First Unitarian Church of
Portland had put up in support of those communities and of their continuing
need for support. This theme, of supporting all people, introduced
the story:
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| Lynne Bacon told the children's
story, "The Dog at the Well," from the Islam tradition
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There was a man who set out on a long journey and the
day that he set out was very hot, and the sun was blazing down, and
it wasn't long before he began to feel hot. He said, I must find some
water. And before long he came to a well. He ran over to the well,
but the well was dry. Now he felt more thirsty than ever, the sun
blazed down, and he continued on and said, hopefully I will find another
well. And before long there was another well, but it too was dry.
He was getting worried, and he was getting weak. He knew that if he
didn't find water soon, in this dry parched land, he would die. He
continued on, and before long, he found another well. And he looked
down it, and way down, he saw the sparkle of water. Allah b e praised,
he said. And he looked for a bucket and rope to lower down. There
was only one way to get there. He climbed into the well, and he began
to inch himself down, down, deep into the well. Finally he felt the
cool of water, and cupped one hand, and drank and drank and drank
till his thirst was quenched. And he thanked Allah for the life-giving
liquid. So then he began his trip up the well, and it was inch by
inch by inch. And he climbed out and prepared to continue on his journey.
He heard a soft whining sound, and there was the most miserable looking
creature. It was a dog, and he was panting with thirst. The traveler
looked down at the dog.
(Let me tell you about dogs. We think they are wonderful:
they eat their meals in our home, some might sleep in or on your bed.
But that isn't the way all people have looked at dogs.) This was a
disgusting animal - it was said that an angel would not enter a home
where there was a dog. So what was he to do?)
He thought, if I don't do something, this dog is going
to die. So he said to the dog, stay here, I will get you some water.
He climbed into the well, and began the long descent into the well,
down, down. And he reached the water. How was he going to get the
water back up to the dog? He took off a boot, filled it with water,
and put it between his teeth, and then did it with the other boot.
So he puts his hands on the side of the well and began the trip back
up. And at one point, he slipped. Up, up, he went and reached the
top. And the dog drank and drank, and drank till he had drunk all
the water in the boots. And he wagged his tail, and said, "now
neither of us will die of thirst!"
Allah was so pleased by the man's kindness that he forgave
all his sins. Mohammad's followers asked, "does that mean Allah
looks kindly on those who are kind to animals?", and Mohammad said,
"No, Allah looks kindly on all living things."
With that, the children and teachers left to meet in their
learning communities, singing "Go Now in Peace."
Greetings and Announcements
Wendy Rankin, member of the Board of Trustees of First Unitarian Church
of Portland
Offertory "There is a Happy Land" George
Shearing
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| The Rev. William Sinkford and the
Rev. Marilyn Sewell during the service at First Unitarian Church
in Portland |
Parish Concerns and Pastoral Prayer Dr. Sewell
Living God, we ask your blessings today on all who suffer,
whether at home or in far away lands.
These are hard times for us in addition to the communal pain of our
world.
We need hope, we need faith, in hope that healing will come.
Help us to be truly present with those we encounter each day.
And help us to be kind and large of heart,
for truly now, we need one another.
Amen.
Reading "The Cure of Troy" Seamus
Heaney
Human beings suffer.
They torture one another.
They get hurt, and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyeard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightening and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and birth cry
Of new life at its term.
It means that once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
Silent Meditation
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The choir of First Unitarian
Church of Portland performs the spiritual "Sit Down Servant"
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Anthem "Sit Down Servant" Spiritual
Chalice Choir arr. Linda Turner
Mia Savage, conducting
Sermon "Where
Race and Class Unite" Rev. William G. Sinkford
First, let me bring you greetings from the larger family
of faith of which you are a part. The Unitarian Universalist Association
is the coming together of, now, 1055 free, liberal religious congregations
in North America. We come together for common purpose, to support one
another and to proclaim the Good News of this liberal faith in this
hurting world. And our faith community is growing, not only in numbers,
but in our willingness to witness outside our walls.
The interest in our faith has been extraordinary these
last four months, but the interest in my person was something I was
not prepared for. "First Black leader of a traditionally white
denomination." "Black pastor, white flock" was the sound
bite. Literally hundred of newspaper articles, led by the New York Times,
saw in my election the possibility of reconciliation across the divide
from race. How different would the headline have been if the it had
said, "Unitarian Universalists elect seventh Harvard educated president."?
Race and class, oppression and privilege are woven tightly together
in our consciousness.
Then came Sept. 11, and it changed the landscape in which
we minister in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. I
am deeply proud of our congregations. They, you, have provided comfort
and caring for your members and your community. You have reached out
the Muslim and Sikh and Arab communities with the simple words that
you will stand with them. The UUA staff and I have worked hard to provide
as much support for you as we could. It seems a strange world in which
young African American men are no longer the scariest people around.
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| The Rev. William Sinkford during
the benediction for the service at First Unitarian Church in Portland.
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September 11 has, for many of us, changed everything.
But for those on the bottom of the economic ladder, little has changed,
except that there are more of their number.
I promised to talk with you about our faith community
and race and class. They are such big words. Talking about either is
sensitive enough at any time. But the fear and anxiety in which we now
live makes this preacher's task difficult. Perhaps one of the blessings
of Sept. 11 is that enough of the illusion of safety has been striped
away to make us more open and available for some honesty.
But this is a sermon I don't want to preach. I'll have
to tell too much truth, not just to you but to myself as well. The pastor
in me would rather comfort you, applaud your ministry. I would rather
tell you that it will be easy for us to be a force for good. I'd rather
tell you that we live our theology enough to see us through, that there
is reason for hope.
But the only sermon I have for you this morning will ask
you to know who you are, and who we are. Because unless we are willing
to do the hardest work, that of knowing ourselves; unless we are willing
to hold in check our natural inclination to jump to solutions, we are
at great spiritual risk as we approach the reality of race and class,
and the making of justice in our world.
Both of my parents were light skinned African Americans.
That means that through both love and violence, my lineage is at least
as much from European Americans as from African. You don't get to be
this color without intimacy across the divide of race.
My father was born into a family of relative comfort,
clearly middle class in income. Father Sinkford, as he was known, owned
a successful funeral home in Bluefield, West Virginia. He provided well
for his children. Dad, my father, was beautifully educated, another
Harvard man, who spoke seven languages with some fluency. Words were
his passion. But when he met my mother, in his early forties, he was
driving a cab on the streets of Detroit. The jobs for which his training
prepared him, were simply not available to him at that time. For persons
of color, class always needs to be seen in the context of race.
I spent my youth in Cincinnati Ohio, as my father had
died when I was young. My mother had little formal education. What money
there was in her family had gone into educating the only son, her brother.
We lived very modestly. Mother took the work she could find, as a clerk
in shops…she sold encyclopedias door to door for a while. We were
working class at best. But she gave me a love of learning and I excelled
at school. We joined the Unitarian Church, and our minister badgered
a judge he knew until finally my mother was given a professional job
in the juvenile court system. We became middle class.
I went on to Harvard, and some success in business. I
remember the Personnel Director of the first company for which I worked
sitting me down and showing me the Affirmative Action chart. There was
my name, proving that a person of color could be in management. I had
become a token.
In my life, though I have many scars from the operation
of racism in this culture, it can be argued that I have benefited at
least as much as a result of my race as much as I had been punished.
My education, my income, my acceptability to the white community, had
isolated me from the racism of others. Race needs always to be viewed
through the lens of class.
Unitarian Universalism, through several actions of the
General Assembly, has committed itself to becoming an anti oppressive,
multi cultural faith. Our work here, as all human work, has been imperfect,
but work we have done. A good part of that work has made it acceptable
to talk about race in this company and to begin the development of a
common language that makes that possible.
And we are about to embark on a concerted effort to address
issues of justice, of class. To be honest, I expect that this will be
our most difficult work, the work we want to avoid. We are mostly privileged,
and we know how fragile our privilege is. We have tales of triumph,
but we must also tell the story of injustice.
There are those who want to argue about which of these
issues -- race or class -- should be addressed first. This argument
reminds me as nothing so much as the disagreement among friends of my
teenage daughter about who is right, as if we could think our way into
heaven without knowing who we are and with precious little experience
to ground our thoughts.
This is not an idle argument. Persons of color know a
kind of paranoia when our issues are treated second. Our fear is that
our issues will not be treated at all. But I, and we, are willing to
commit to a broader conversation about the making of justice.
Who are we? Can we know and share that with one another?
What do we bring to the issues of justice making? What impels us to
this work and will support us in the areas where we do not want to go?
Forrest Church, writing in the current issue of the UU
WORLD, says: "We Unitarian Universalists have inherited a magnificent
theological legacy. In a sweeping answer to creeds that divide the human
family, Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from one source; Universalism,
that we share a common destiny.
"Given our commitment to pluralism, UUism should
represent the perfect laboratory for modeling amity in a world rife
with passions that stem from differences of belief. Too often, however,
we muster more passion for that which divides than we do for all that
unites us.
"Everything (I say) has implications for our commitment
to justice. Unless we put it into practice Universalism (and Unitarian
Universalism) is frivolous, self denying, and moot."
I know this faith community I love has Good News - our
religious pluralism in a world in which religious difference leads to
war -- we live it every week. We know about empowering the marginalized,
at least some of them. Our work on gender justice is far ahead of most
institutions, and we affirm gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender
persons in an environment where sometimes they are killed for who they
love. We know that distance need not divide, and it is powerful good
news.
We hold that vision of a world where every child is fed
and clothed and has decent medical care -- who here does not hold that
vision -- a world where differences are not curses but blessings; a
world that would make real the vision that each of us is a child of
God. Our calling is to make that vision real:
"To loose the bonds of injustice,
To let the oppressed go free."
Who are we and what spiritual disciplines do we need to
cultivate to allow the oppressed to go free? This is a time in our land
when humor is risky and satire, I suppose, even riskier. Yet the satire
which appeared in a web magazine called "The Long Point National,"
following my election in Cleveland, illustrates the point that with
satire, one is torn between outrage and amusement. And with this, the
uncomfortable shred of truth comes just a little too close.
"God is in the details," was the headline.
"The Unitarian Universalist Association, a fuzzy
sorta Christian consortium of PBS donors, nonprofit staffers and other
people smarter and nobler than you, elected (its first black) president
on Saturday with all of the spirited resolution of drafting a pledge
to condemn global hunger.
"Following his victory, Sinkford (that would be me)
was given a biodegradable ticker tape parade down the main streets of
Cleveland, leading a procession of Volvos, Toyotas and the occasional
Subaru."
Now, I've edited out the really biting parts, but you
see what I mean? It does skewer us. It's just a little too true. And
it goes right to the soft spot, "People smarter and nobler than
you." And then the "earnest cars."
Perhaps our greatest spiritual danger is our smugness
and our unwillingness to know who we are. Most of us are middle and
upper middle class white folks with degrees from really good schools
(the average education in our pews is at the Master's level), children
well above average, and not a shred of political incorrectness among
us.
To engage in the work of justice, we need to cultivate
an attitude of humility, not arrogance. To claim this, we need to know
that what comfort we have is claimed at the disempowerment and oppression
of so many. Pogo said, "we have seen the enemy and it is us."
We are not evil people. Our intentions are good. We are
participants in a system that we did not create, but that binds us together.
So let us cultivate gratitude together. Let us strive
for humility as we work for justice. We will need to develop some new
language for this work. Dick Gilbert talks about 'distributive justice,'
for equitable justice, but I prefer the language of 'restorative justice.'
As a religious community, we are called to restore our relationships.
As we struggle, I pray we will not invest all our energy in argument.
We can argue about our work on race, on economic justice. Our work is
not to debate, although debate we need to do, or about resolutions,
although that too we will need to do. Our work is to help the universe
bend toward justice, and there is not only one way to do that.
My favorite hymn is "Twelve Gates to the City,"
for although there are twelve gates to the city, there is one way to
approach it. Let us promise us that our first words will be affirmation
for one another, not argument.
Do we need to change ourselves, do we have to become something
different to make a difference, do we need to attract more persons of
color or more of the truly poor into our pews?
My answer is no.
It's OK to be who we are, and even to know who we are
and our place in this system.
Who we are is not the question, the question is what we
are called to do. How will we show up? As allies. If we work for justice,
some other people will join us. But that is not the objective.
Our task it to know a religious life, a spiritual life,
which always combines our personal search for God and our rich life
within this community, with a commitment to make the Kingdom of God
real in our world. Either one without the other is incomplete.
The Poet, Annie Dillard, paraphrasing the prophet, asks:
"Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord?
Who shall walk on that holy ground?
We are the only ones. There is no one but us.
We bring all of ourselves.
Unfinished and incomplete.
Hurt and broken ourselves.
We come fearful of the task, our power too puny and our vision too small.
Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord?
We also bring our experience of hope and possibility.
We bring our intellects and our passions
And our deep knowledge that there is a universal love
Which has never broken faith with us and never will."
We weave our lives into a tapestry made up of countless
stories, where the warp and the woof hold both human triumph and human
tragedy. It is our faith that we weave into a tapestry of countless
stories and that will bind us together and allow us to see pattern of
community which can sustain us all.
We search for a time, and a way, to let hope and history
rhyme.
Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord? Who shall
walk on that holy ground?
We are the only ones. There is no else. There never has
been.
Amen.
Please join with me in prayer:
Gracious Spirit of creation
Dear God.
Be with us in these troubled times.
The way is often hard.
Our fears are too much with us.
The path to justice is never clear,
And the stakes are very high.
Help us find that ground of love
Which can support and nurture us.
Help us find that ground
On which we can stand
To help make hope and history rhyme.
Help us to know
That while we are the only ones,
We are not alone.
Amen.
Hymn #407 "We're Gonna Sit at the Welcome
Table"
Benediction
May the spirit of life
Go with you as you leave this place,
May it nurture and support you,
And may that spirit be here
To welcome you when you return.
Go now in peace.
Postlude Fugue in G Minor J.S. Bach
Reported for the web by Deborah Weiner; formatted for
the web by Julie Albanese.
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