First Parish Bedford UU

Audio

“Would You Go to Heaven with a Prostitute?” or
“Unitarian Exceptionalism” or
“Radical Hospitality Revisited”
A sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons
delivered on Sunday, April 3, 2011
at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

Reading
From “Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalist History” by Mark W. Harris

We have long promoted ourselves as a democratic faith with a central belief that all people are welcome. From the beginning in Massachusetts, liberal Congregationalists said all have the right of private judgment in matters of faith, while they continued to affirm the need for a state church, which by its nature was grounded in coercion and privilege. They wanted a democratic society, but they believed they were the ones who were best equipped to lead that society and should determine its parameters. The ways in which we desire to improve the human race or increase individual control over our own destinies has resulted in projecting our vision of the good life onto others. Therefore, our ability to be compassionate toward marginalized people is limited. We want a democratic faith that embraces all, but in our efforts to extend this liberal religion, we frequently embrace only those who are like us.


Sermon

I am told that this was originally written anonymously by a gay high school student. It’s titled, “Mattering”:

My father asked if I am gay. I asked, Does it matter? He said, No not really. I said, Yes. He said get out of my life. I guess it mattered.

My friend asked why I talk about race so much? I asked, Does it matter? He said, No not really. I told him, Yes, because it’s important. He said, You need to get that chip off your shoulder. I guess it mattered.

My neighbor asked why I put that ramp up to my front door. I said, Does it matter? He said, No not really. I told him because it made my life easier. He said, Is there a way to make it less obvious? I guess it mattered.

A member of my church asked why I like gospel music. I asked, Does it matter? She said, No, not really. I told her that it connects me to my southern, Christian childhood. She said, I think you’re in denial about your oppression. I guess it mattered.

My God asked me, Do you love yourself? I said, Does it matter? She said, YES! I said, How can I love myself? I am gay, Latino, disabled, and a Christian in a hostile climate. She said that is the way I made you. Nothing will ever matter again.

This morning we celebrate a milestone in our effort to make First Parish more accessible to all people because, if we are to attain that beloved community where all of our various identities do not matter, well, we first have to acknowledge that our various identities do matter and all are valued. I’ll get around to talking about our elevator and windows and all the rest, but these physical things are but the tip of the accessibility iceberg. Bear with me as I start with some history.

Accessibility, you know, is the reason why Bedford exists. Once a part of Concord and Billerica, the earliest white inhabitants were required by law to attend church in one or the other of those towns, no matter the heat or cold, the rain, snow, ice or mud. And thus they petitioned the Great and General Court in Boston, bemoaning: “Behold the Sabbath: Oh what a weariness it is.” They wanted a meetinghouse that was closer and more accessible.

This was accomplished in 1729 (I tell the 3rd graders who visit here that the way to remember this is by the Bedford ZIP code which is 01730, which is kinda sorta somewhat close to 1729.)

For a long time thereafter, though, this was a one-size-fits-all meetinghouse. There was no place anywhere near this place that was anything like this place and therefore this was the place. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving; doctor, lawyer, Indian chief; race, class, creed, theology, politics, identity, orientation; whatever was working or not working in your life…everybody paid taxes to support the one Harvard-educated Protestant Congregational and eventually Unitarian guardian of public morals and minister here.

First Parish was part of what was known as the Standing Order of Congregational Churches: this town wasn’t big enough but for one cleric and that cleric worked here. And for a long time this system worked just fine. My predecessors – did I mention they went to Harvard? – were educated, worldly, reasoned (they weren’t like that George Whitefield and his Great Awakening hullaballooers, attracting a great bawling unwashed mob). No, the theology preached here was high-minded, reasoned, all-encompassing, Olympian. In fact, it was suggested that the earliest Unitarians imagined a heaven that was rather like the campus at – you guessed it – Harvard! A reasonable place of Greek and Latin, rarefied ideas, books, a minuet or two, maybe an occasional tumbler of Madera.
 
Unlike Mark Twain who, of heaven and hell, said that he’d take heaven for the climate but hell for the company, the early Unitarians – if they thought much of heaven – thought heaven likeliest to be populated by genteel types of their own kind.

They would not have wanted to share heaven in the company of prostitutes or drunkards or the lower elements of society. So, one size fits all, we were the only religious show in town for a long time. We banished those who didn’t fit in like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson to Rhode Island or, if necessary, we hung them on the Boston Common where, for example, we relieved the Quaker Mary Dyer of her worldly suffering.

Much as Henry Ford used to say that his Model T’s came in any color so long as that color was black, it used to be that you could have access to any church you cared to attend, so long as that church was this church.

As I say this system worked rather nicely, that is, until disputation arose within the Standing Order between the conservatives (who ended up moving down the street) and the liberals (who stayed right here). And the conservatives then established Andover Seminary to counter-act the influence of the World’s Greatest University over in Cambridge. And, anyway, pretty soon around here you started having Anglicans move into town (we’d come a long way to get away from them) and, even worse, there then appeared gritty day-laborer sorts of superstitious candle-burning papist Catholics (who drank, not Madera but Chianti), and tub-thumping Methodists and probably – give us a break – some Jews and foreigners and, well, by 1833 there was no choice but to have disestablishment.

The Standing Order was broken up like the antique religious cartel or monopoly it was, and it was then – and not a day sooner – that we Unitarians became the world’s biggest believers in the separation of church and state! If we couldn’t be in charge, we wanted to make darn sure that nobody else was in charge!

In those early years, by the way, the Unitarians didn’t think much of the Universalists who were, by comparison, more rural, less well educated, more working class and more emotional. The greatest Unitarian preacher in Boston in the early 1800’s was William Ellery Channing; the greatest Universalist was Hosea Ballou; their churches were a few blocks from one another; and there’s no evidence they ever spoke to one another! And besides, what were Universalists but believers in the doctrine of universal salvation: no damnation, and they actually looked forward to going to heaven with prostitutes, and Catholics, and probably Mohammedans, for God’s sake. And a lot of the Universalists didn’t drink anything stronger than sarsaparilla.

This morning we celebrate a milestone in our –Bility campaign. Remember we’re doing all this work around here for reasons of accessibility, hospitability, stability, possibility, sustainability, durability, inhabitability, inflammability – well maybe not that (just checking to see if you’re listening) but probably a few –bilities we haven’t thought of yet. I want us to thank one another and congratulate one another and savor what is being accomplished day by day. Do go for a joy ride on the elevator. Take a look at what’s taking shape upstairs. But I also want to place this work in a context of accessibility issues of which we have but scratched the surface.

The history I’ve been telling is illuminating because, while this town and church were gathered in 1729 so as to be more accessible to the locals, our subsequent history – while noble in many ways – has also been elitist and classist and racist and sexist and unwelcoming is a whole lot of ways, and while it is so good now to redress our sins of ableism, we’ve still got a mountain to climb – in our wheelchair. And it matters.

I’ll return to this downer rant in a moment, but in honor of our new elevator I will say something uplifting.

Here is a great story:
Today I expect that we’ll be visited by a fellow named Bob Madden. Bob’s a disabled veteran; he lives in Billerica and he uses a wheelchair. On the evening of August 27, 2009 Bob came here because we were hosting a meeting concerning veterans’ issues – on our second floor. Bob came in the Elm Street entrance and tried to use our old elevator but his wheelchair wouldn’t fit and, even if he could have squeezed in, Bob was apprehensive because he and his chair weigh 800 pounds! It just so happened that that same evening First Parish was appearing before Bedford’s Zoning Board of Appeals to get approval for the plans for our proposed elevator. Unable to go to the meeting here, Bob chose – unasked – to go to the ZBA meeting at Town Hall where he then testified on our behalf. What we were doing mattered to him. Bob is among those we want to thank today.

It is wonderful, as well, that for the first time since 1891we are able to throw up the sashes on all these windows. We’ve still got a lot of work to do to furnish that space, equip and make functional our new kitchenette so that, again, what we do here will be more accessible to more people. When we’re finished upstairs that space will be so much more accessible to sunlight, too, and already I’ve heard that the musical acoustics are much improved.
 
And, while I’m at it, I should say that you may rest more comfortably in your pews knowing that the floor beneath you is more secure and you are less likely to unexpectedly plunge to the cellar floor now that 19 steel lally columns and a lot of concrete have stabilized our foundation – and when it is insulated in another week or so, you may even be a little bit warmer in the wintertime. We’re trying to be more accessible to those suffering from basophobia, fear of falling into the basement, and frigophobia, the fear of cold. Meredith McCulloch and Abby Hafer, by the way, have suggested that we have a small fund-raiser in which, for a certain sum, you could write your name on one of the lally columns and thus be an official pillar of the church!

One of the things done in planning these projects was to consult with the Institute for Human Centered Design, including an architect named Josh Safdie who, coincidentally, grew up at First Parish. Their ideal world is one where there is no need for special “handicapped accessible” decals because everything is designed – not in a one-size fits all fashion – but in a way that acknowledges that everyone is differently sized, shaped, oriented and abled. No special accommodation; universal accommodation!

I, like you, want First Parish to be a more accessible church. Physically accessible, of course, but so much more. In a variety of ways, I think that Megan’s ministry helps us to be more accessible. (She went to Andover-Newton and has no crimson envy.) I think we are becoming more religiously and spiritually accessible. I noticed this week, by the way, that one of our largest churches in Washington D.C. – aptly named All Souls Church – has called a UCC minister as its associate minister. For a while, Arlington Street Church in Boston had a rabbi-in-residence. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma – the largest church in our Association – an entire black Baptist congregation recently merged with the UU congregation when their pastor, Bishop Carleton Pearson, decided that he was actually a universalist and that he’d go to heaven with all sorts of people, even Unitarian Universalists.

The hottest news of late among evangelical Christians, you may have noticed, is that one of their mega-preachers, a boy wonder named Rob Bell, has also – in his new book Love Wins – confessed to a kind of universalism. To hell with hell he says, eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins. This is what we preach and, folks, this is what hurting, hoping people here and everywhere need to hear.

This is why we need to stay focused on accessibility. If, as the Universalists believe, heaven is accessible to all, well, we should keep up with St. Peter.

In the fall, remember, we heard Mark Morrison-Reed preach about our faith as one that would drag everyone kicking and screaming into heaven. Mark spoke also of black pioneers in this denomination and asked, How open the door? That’s an accessibility question. There is fresh attention to issues of classism among us as well. You may recall that our parishioner Doug Muder wrote a feature article in the UU World magazine about UU’s and the working class. Our message, Doug said, must be a “wisdom big enough for all people,” lest we become a boutique religion that surrenders the working class to the religious right.

I’ve just finished reading Elite, Uncovering Classism in UU History by my colleague Mark Harris, our minister in Watertown. He observes that there used to be lots of UU churches in working class communities like Watertown, and Stoneham and Woburn and Wakefield and Lowell, but many of those have closed while those that thrive are in more affluent suburbs. Mark is a historian and he finds hard truths. If you visit our church in Brewster there are drawings of great sailing ships in their sanctuary for those who built that church were the sea captains. And what was their cargo? Significantly, slaves.

Early in this century Unitarians were among the foremost advocates of birth control and still we take great pride in comprehensive sexuality education. Less well remembered is that our advocacy was part of the eugenics movement that sought racial, intellectual and physical purity by selective breeding to eliminate defectives, morons and imbeciles. We were among those who started the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youth, later known as the Fernald School. Theirs was a well-intentioned paternalistic motive, but the subtext was elitist.

Our churches, too, were elitist. Even our New England tradition of closing in the summertime has its roots in mama taking the kids to the Cape or to Maine while papa would join them by train on the weekends.
 
When it came to establishing new Unitarian churches, some of our executives on Beacon Street (some of the same ones that laughed ministers of color out of their offices, saying that no white congregation would ever put up with a black minister) also knew where our prospects were brightest. We’d stay away from places that had too many Negroes and Catholics, obviously, but look for “areas with a large number of separate family houses of the upper middle class” and populations with plenty of “natural scientists, social scientists, architects and engineers, social workers, and modern educators.” Nassau County and Long Island looked promising, and “communities in which are located liberal arts colleges.” Indeed, some of our most thriving congregations were planted in those rich and fertile fields.

Mark mentions that, in a course he teaches, a student once commented to him that the only “poor person who might fit in would be a downwardly mobile but college-educated ex-hippie (!) – while the financially comfortable, pest control officer, who has no college education and several children, would not feel welcome. Where (Mark asks) is the hospitality toward the second person? Can we cross the class divide?” Here and now I announce our affirmative action program for pest control officers!

While Mark Harris unblinkingly documents our elitism, the concluding paragraph of his book is this: “Yet many of them remained concerned about how they could enact their religious message of one world, one common spirit uniting all people. They longed for true relationships with those from who they were separated. They wanted to heal some of those class divisions. Historically that was sometimes done in a paternalistic manner, but the longing for oneness remained, so when our spiritual founder William Ellery Channing said, ‘I am a leveler,’ he was aware that our class separations must be bridged. Perhaps we need to broaden our understanding of who belongs among us. Maybe we are a thinking person’s faith, but people in all classes think deeply and broadly. May our history teach us to live our faith in the world, so that each of us might come to say, ‘I am a leveler.’”
 
The progress of our accessibility work will help level this our praying field but I challenge us to consider how else we may be more accessible to the diversities we not merely claim to welcome but truly need to welcome if we are to have true relationships with those from whom we are separated.

We have made a very good start. And if and when I go to heaven, if there is a heaven, I look forward to seeing all of you there as well, and I hope we will be joined by a good many more of the friends we have yet to meet.
 

Antiphonal Reading
by Sylvia Stocker

East: I was an unemployed, single mom, struggling to pay the bills and to make my life work. You welcomed me, listened to me, helped me financially, and made my children feel at home here.
West: I was diagnosed with a debilitating illness. You gave me friendship, care, and hope for the future. As I grew closer to death, you lovingly companioned me.
East: My partner died last year. You kept me company when I felt devastated and hopeless. You wrapped your arms around me and let me weep.
West: I was struggling to raise an exceptionally difficult child.
You befriended both of us and treated us with compassion and understanding.
East: I was diagnosed with a mental illness. You provided loving witness to me. You found out how best to support me and reached out to include me in the community.
West: I was an executive who was given the task of laying off dozens of workers. You witnessed my grief and despair without judging me.
East: I felt as though I was living on a treadmill, and I could find no relief. You helped me to relax, to laugh again, and to find my way back to my own heart.
West: When I grew frail, you found ways to include me in community activities. You treated me with respect and helped me maintain my dignity.
East: I was lonely and you comforted me, frightened and you soothed my fears. When my heart was broken, you opened your heart to me. May I, too, reach out in love when someone needs me.
West: I felt lost and you reached your hand out to me, isolated and you befriended me. When my heart was broken, you opened your heart to me. May I, too, reach out in love when someone needs me.
John: May it be so; may it be so; and may it always be so.