3002 Saturday Morning Worship
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Rev. Rob Eller Isaacs

Rev. Rob Eller Isaacs Addresses Need for "Intimate Justice" at GA Saturday Worship

"Justice which isn't intimate isn't just. When I begin to avoid direct communication in the name of expediency, I always stop to calculate the cost."

(June 22, 2002 - Quebec City, QUE) At 8 AM on a beautiful sun-filled morning high above the old walled city of Quebec, attendees at the UUA General Assembly filed into the Centre des Congres for morning worship led by the Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs, co-minister of Unity Unitarian Church of St. Paul, MN.

Following the Prelude played by pianist Drew Massicot of First Unitarian Church of San Diego, CA, Lily Bevis, worship associate of Unity Unitarian Church issued the call to worship. The congregation sang the opening hymn, "One More Step," by Canadian Unitarian composer Joyce Poley.

Ms. Bevis invited the congregation to "Take a moment to think about someone who has inspired you to work toward justice; think about how you can inspire others." Ending the silence, Eller-Isaacs offered this Minister's Prayer:

Holy One, Source of radiance and reason
Giver of life, and also of death
Light and darkness, evil and good,
One and indivisible:
We acknowledge thy presence within and among and beyond us this day.
Save us, we pray, from all cynicism
Help us to recover the spirit of a child
Help us to kindle anew that naïve courage
which causes us to turn and turn again
To neighbors we have never know.
Come out and play - let's get to know each other.
Save us from all cynicism.
Help us to meet -- for in that meeting, love is born.
May this be our promise, and our prayer.
Amen.

After a musical interlude, Bevis and Eller-Isaacs led a Responsive Reading, "Universal Ministry," adapted from the words of Isaiah. Another musical interlude followed, and the Homily, "Intimate Justice," followed.

The service closed with the hymn, "Hail the Glorious Golden City."

Order of Service

Prelude

Call to Worship
Lily Bevis

Opening Hymn: One More Step #168

Silence

Minister's Prayer: Rob Eller-Isaacs

Interlude

Responsive Reading: Universal Ministry #571

Interlude

Homily: Intimate Justice, Rob Eller-Isaacs

In the spring of nineteen forty-eight the members of the Women's Alliance of the First Unitarian Society of Chicago did a most peculiar thing. They placed an advertisement in the Chicago Daily News announcing they were fed up with segregation and inviting people-of-color who shared their liberal values and were looking for a church home to consider becoming part of a newly integrating congregation. How utterly naïve! How charming! Looking back we can hardly imagine how they could have been so unaware of the social and cultural complexities which made success unlikely if not impossible.

Chicago was then, as it still is now, like most American cities, largely segregated. But by dint of liberal democratic politics, inspired by the firm, abiding example of Eleanor Roosevelt and compelled to action by the theological mandate to live out the unity of God by seeking unity on earth, the Alliance women set aside their doubts and fears. They simply tried to do what they thought was right.

Knowing what we now know, we must assume their plan was doomed to failure. The truth, however, is, they succeeded. It turned out there were, and I can guarantee you there still are, those whose spiritual seeking and intellectual curiosity had led them to leave their childhood churches. No doubt, as it was for so many of you, that severing of ties, however liberating, was also painful. We know how it feels to be cut off, cast adrift without a rock to cling to. The invitation in the Daily News must have seemed like some bright candle burning or a soft bell sounding in the night. Hesitant but curious they followed the glow of the candle. Full of longing and understandable suspicion they came to the sound of the bell. They arrived to find a congregation primed to greet them not as saviors but as neighbors, not as symbols but as friends.

That church remains today one of only a handful of liberal congregations which are genuinely interracial. We pride ourselves on openness. We have every reason to celebrate the growing vibrancy and spiritual strength of Unitarian Universalism. And yet, I sense among us and among liberal congregations in general, an underlying sadness, a deep sense of impoverishment at the degree to which we don't reflect the full diversity of the cities we seek to serve.
Our social realities are not in keeping with our theological understanding. We're far too sophisticated to take out an ad. We are so self-conscious, so suspicious of our own internal motivations, so fearful of diluting or, worse yet, actually losing the sweet blessings that we've found here, we don't even want to open up these questions. Yet the scourge of racism is America's original wound. As people of faith we have no right to turn away. What's broken must be mended. What's bleeding must be stanched and cleaned and stitched up well for healing. Lord knows, we're tired. Lord knows, we've tried. We don't want to open all this up again.

These are the words of the Irish Noble Laureate, Seamus Heaney from his "Chorus from the Cure of Troy":

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.

My meager words cannot begin to hold the weight of all our failure. No poem or play or song or even sermon can begin to right the wrong of racial disparity. Nor can we deny the interconnectedness of all the ways we categorize, divide, disparage and thereby torture one another. Racism, like every face of prejudice, is a form of what psychologists call, repression and projection. We see magnified in others those aspects of ourselves with which we are least comfortable.

Each time we're asked to get involved we find ourselves wondering who needs us most. Is racism the most serious problem? Or should we start with homophobia, or economic injustice, educational disparity or prejudice against the old or the young or those who live with disabilities? "Whose lot is worse" is just another game we play to distance ourselves from the theological demand that we enter into authentic, committed relationships across all lines of race and creed and economic circumstance. This is not some progressive rhetorical flourish. This is the ultimate agenda of the church.
We are called and compelled by who we claim to be to heal what is broken in ourselves and to bind up the wounds of the nation. I believe our ministry is to be lived out at the intersection of spiritual development and social justice. This morning, as we gather to remember and acknowledge and take up again the our obligation to embrace and to heel the world, its not nostalgia that inspires us but the promise of a better day.

Seamus Heaney continues:

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.

We cannot begin this work again without confessing our despair. "History says don't hope on this side of the grave." Every year at this Assembly we listen to hopeful reports of our progress. But we are still more mindful of martyrdom than of ministry, still more aware of the deferment of the dream than of the dream itself.

When a Unitarian Universalist minister enters the search process he or she is asked to provide a written profile to help present him or herself to congregational search teams. The profile asks candidates to describe a mistake they've made over the course of their ministry and discuss what they might have learned from it. I wrote the following:

I worked for five years to establish a non-profit housing development corporation to build subsidized, service-enriched housing for homeless families. The organization was founded with the understanding that it would be led by homeless and formerly homeless people and that the professional organizers were there in a support role. As board president I found myself living in the tension between that mandate and the demands of actually building housing. Once the money began to flow, the funders, the contractors and the consultants wanted to avoid dealing directly with homeless people. It was just too difficult. The professionals simply didn't have time to deal with the incredible inefficiency. Meetings never started on time. Every detail had to be explained and then explained again. The homeless activists had no experience to prepare them for the challenges of housing development. They became suspicious. The gaps of experience and education between us, the well-meaning liberals and the homeless members of the board caused us to begin to meet separately and in secret. Racial tensions drove us further apart. We made every effort to address the difficulties. But finally, I opted to build the housing in spite of the suspicions and resistance of the homeless majority. Two buildings were built. Forty-eight units of transitional housing for homeless families are up and running but the organization has never recovered from our betrayal of the original vision. How have I addressed this failure? It's a complex question. I continue to carefully monitor my own assumptions. I no longer make decisions on the basis of political ideology. I've come to believe that justice, which isn't intimate, isn't truly just. When I find myself beginning to avoid direct communication in the name of expediency I always stop to calculate the cost.

When asked to describe a mistake in my ministry I spoke of my own racism. I told how a breach began in an organization I helped build and how I couldn't bridge it because I was afraid to try to tell the truth. I was unwilling to hold my partners, who were black and poor, to the standards to which I try to hold myself, for fear I'd be accused of racism. As you can see, I was committing the very sin I was afraid I would commit. So the chasm grew until it was so wide we walked away in hopelessness.

I've not yet healed enough to step back into the fray but when I do I pray I'll find the strength to tell the truth, keeping in mind Cromwell's vivid admonition, "By the bowels of Christ remember, you could be wrong." Heaney goes on:

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

We cannot simply set aside the agonies of the past. Nor can we allow past agonies to paralyze the present. We still have work to do, work that begins with confession. The daily practice, which makes change possible we call, community, beloved community. It's a discipline. It's a way of being in the world, which calls for honesty and compassion and most of all for interpersonal courage. Its in how we take care of ourselves and of each other that the possibility of peace begins.

Plan, as we will, pray as we might, march as we must, by ourselves we lack the power, let alone the wisdom, to bring in the reign of justice. For that strength, for that wisdom, we will need to find new partners, we'll need to make new friends, we'll need to turn and turn and turn again 'til "hope and history rhyme."

We know not the day nor the hour when the tidal wave of justice might rise up but we can still prepare ourselves. We can still grow strong by daily practice. We can live out the covenant for intimacy we claim here by trying to tell one another the truth, by helping and healing and honing one another through, honest, open conversation, through loving confrontation. We can hold each other and we can hold ourselves accountable to the self-same values we publicly proclaim. And yes, we can open our hearts and the doors to this house of the spirit to all who seek its solace and its inspiration.

Heaney concludes his Cure of Troy with a reminder of the inseparable connection between intimacy and justice:

Call miracle self-healing,
The utter self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
And lightning and storm
And a God speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

So, this morning I honor the radical, naïve hospitality of the Women's Alliance. I don't know how we'll get there but thanks to them and thanks, I'm sure to many of you, we've had a glimpse of where we're bound. In spite of failure, pain and yes, despair and hopelessness, we cannot turn away. So work and plan and pray with me today that we might be prepared the next time "hope and history rhyme."

So be it and Amen.

Closing Hymn: Hail the Glorious Golden City #140

Benediction

Reporter Deborah Weiner; Editor Jone Johnson Lewis; Web Designer Julie Albanese

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