THE ROLE OF RELIGION:
TO COMFORT THE AFFLICTED? OR AFFLICT THE COMFORTABLE?
November 10, 2002The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
Just one day before I was to leave the UU Church in Mission Viejo last July, a very well-loved member of the church died suddenly and very unexpectedly. I was at the church that afternoon, as was her husband and some other members, when we learned that Claire was on her way to a nearby ER with intense abdominal pains.
To tell you the truth, I wasn't too worried about it. Claire was only my age, with an incredible amount of energy and good health. It just didn't occur to me that the pains could be life-threatening. So I waited a little while before following her husband to the hospital.
Once there, I was directed to the Emergency Room, where I found Claire writhing in pain, surrounded by nurses and her husband, Tom. Tests had discovered internal bleeding, but they hadn't yet found the source of that bleeding. I stood at the bedside, trying to calm Claire who was screaming to us that she was dying; I don't know when I've seen such fear in a person's eyes. After about an hour, she suddenly became quiet, and we realized her heart had stopped beating; Tom and I left the area as they rushed Claire into surgery.
I stayed with Tom in the surgical waiting room for what seemed like hours. Around 8:30 I phoned our Board president and asked him to begin alerting people; I felt it important that Tom and Claire's friends at church know the situation, and have an opportunity to send healing thoughts and/or prayers.
A while later, two doctors came out and informed us that Claire was dead. I sat quietly with my arm around Tom's shoulders, as he struggled to absorb this stunning news. Finally, about 10 p.m. - only five hours after Claire had entered the hospital - Tom and I began to leave.
Before we reached the front door of the hospital, members of the church came trickling in, wanting to know how Claire was, and sharing their grief with Tom upon hearing the answer. When I finally arrived home, there were messages on my Voice Mail from more people, inquiring about Claire, and asking how they could help. And of course, in the days and weeks that followed, these same people reached out to Tom, bringing him food, sitting with him, and mostly sharing their stories of love for Claire. But what surprised us all was that every Sunday after her death, Tom showed up at church; he knew that that was where he needed to be; he knew he needed his religious home.
Some of you can have had similar experiences in your life - moments of grief or fear - or just plain bewilderment from the occasional cruelties of life. It is important that we have companions at such times - people who will walk alongside us, holding our hand when we're afraid, reminding us of our strength and wisdom, and letting our tears fall in silence. It is important that we have a community of acceptance and hope; that is what our church is called to be.
Unitarian Universalist minister Jack Mendelsohn has said, "Every person who joins a religious community is acknowledging vulnerability." And so we come here, seeing both comfort and courage; a place where we can not only feel safe to share our tears, but to risk change and growth as well. We seek a religious community to find companions as we mourn our sorrows, celebrate our triumphs, and gather strength for the journey ahead.
It was my UU religious community where my husband - who almost never attended church with me - said he needed to be the Sunday after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. As we entered the church and heard the taped voice of Dr. King coming over the loudspeaker, we both felt a calmness; we had needed comfort and hope, and this was where we knew we could find it.
It was to that same religious community I went the night I discovered my marriage was falling apart. When arms held me as I wept, I knew I was in a safe harbor. As my life seemed to unravel over the following months, it was my minister and friends there who comforted and challenged me - holding up a mirror and introducing me to myself - demons and all.
A little over a year ago, on September 11th, it was to our churches that Unitarian Universalists across the country turned - lighting candles, sharing reflections, singing songs of peace, and keeping silent vigils of grief, hope and love.
And just this past Friday, many of you gathered here in this Sanctuary to share your sorrow at the death of Bob and Lois Atz; you offered one another comfort and hope in the midst of that sorrow. This is what we are called to do as people of faith.
But offering comfort and hope isn't the only ministry of a religious community. When I was in Seminary, I learned that the role of the minister is not only "to comfort the afflicted," but also "to afflict the comfortable;" and I have applied that adage not only to my role as minister, but to the role of the church as well. "To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" - to bring comfort to those in sorrow, but to discomfort those who's lives are so comfortable that they may be tempted to forget the needs of the world. That is the other ministry we are called to do.
It isn't an "either/or" issue, for we are all both the afflicted and the comfortable. We all suffer sorrows, and need the comfort of our religious community. We all face times when we need the compassion and support of our church to help us move through challenging situations.
And, at the same time, we Unitarian Universalists are the "comfortable" in this world. In spite of the personal sorrows we may encounter, or the financial crises that sometimes may plague us individually, we Unitarian Universalists are some of the best educated and most affluent people in the country, which automatically puts us in a privileged position. We benefit, in a myriad of ways, from a political and economic system which allows - indeed, encourages - the widening gap between rich and poor, between white and non-white, native and foreign-born. Such a system invests those of us who are white, English-speaking, and middle-class, with power, whether we feel that power or not. Prophets - both ancient and modern - have admonished us to risk ourselves and our comfort; to put ourselves out for the sake of justice, and in turn to bring others on to that path as well.
Yet surely, this isn't always what we want to do. Our lives are so busy and complex, that it is much easier to simply decide to savor the world, and forget the need to save it.
When I left the UU Fellowship of San Dieguito, they gave me a beautiful stained glass flaming chalice; it now sits in a bag waiting to be hung in one of the windows of my office here at Emerson.
Its first home, however, was the window of my office at the Fellowship in San Luis Obispo. One of the members there, Kent Taylor, agreed to hang it for me, as it might never have stayed up had I tried to do the job! But I had trouble deciding in exactly what spot it should hang, as I was trying to find a point where one would see nothing behind it but blue sky, or perhaps a few trees. So Kent would hold it in one spot in front of the window, and then another, waiting patiently for me to make up my mind.
Finally, I located a spot I thought was perfect - a place where, as I walked into the room, I would see no unsightly telephone poles or utility wires or overgrown weeds behind my beautiful UU symbol. Unfortunately, after Kent positioned the hooks and hung this piece of beauty, I realized with dismay that someone my size or shorter would see only sky behind the glass; but for most people, there would be no way to avoid the ugly stuff beyond the office window.
Yet, isn't that perfect after all? Because the whole point of our Flaming Chalice isn't to obliterate the messiness of the world; the point is to call us into that messiness; to guide us by way of the very Principles on which we build our faith. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition is full of beauty, but if that beauty allows us to hide form the unbeautiful in the world, then it becomes an empty, one-dimensional faith; and we and the world will be the less for it.
Unitarian Universalism contends, according to former UUA President William Schulz, that the purpose of religion is to "do more than be in the world, but to stand over against the world and judge it on religious and ethical terms."
Indeed, the religions out of which Unitarian Universalism evolved have a long history of "standing over against the world and judging it." Judaism had its ancient prophets Isaiah, Amos and Jeremiah, who never minced words as they harshly condemned the religious and governmental powers for ignoring the poor and disenfranchised.
Jesus may have been a bit gentler in his admonitions to do justice, but nevertheless carried forth the prophetic tradition of his Jewish faith. He made it clear that it was the duty of those with the resources to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and set free the oppressed.
American Unitarians and Universalists took their cues from these early prophets. They believed in social reform, challenging the powers when those powers acted unjustly; it was a part of their religious identity. Emerson asked, "what are we born for but to be reformers, renouncers of lies, restorers of truth and good?" Theodore Parker hid runaway slaves in the basement of his church, even protecting them if necessary with a gun kept hidden in his desk.
Dorothea Dix stood in front of the state legislature and persuaded them to take the mentally ill out of prisons. Olympia Brown sued for being refused the right to vote; and Susan B. Anthony went to jail for that right.
For years now, UUs have carried forward this tradition of activism by taking courageous stands on controversial issues - long before any other faith group, and often at the risk of losing our own members. Many UUs, both laypeople and clergy, were involved in the Civil Rights movements of the '60s and '70s; a couple of them lost their lives for it. We provided counseling for draft resisters during the Vietnam War; we were pro-choice on the abortion issue before the Roe-v-Wade decision; we've stood in favor of assisted suicide, and against the Death Penalty; we began supporting the ordination of gay men and lesbians, as well as same sex Holy Unions, long before the most liberal Christian churches; this church joined others in providing Sanctuary to Central American refugees; and UUs have always worked alongside Quakers and other religious liberals in calls for world peace.
Yet despite this heritage, most of my colleagues and I have felt a tension between the need to "comfort the afflicted" and to "afflict the comfortable" - a tension often framed by church members in language of "spirituality" vs. "politics." "I come to church for 'spiritual nourishment,'" I'm often told, "not to hear about the problem of the world."
But if spirituality is about anything, it is about our connections with the world; that's essentially what the word means. All the prayer and meditation in the world won't help us one whit, if it doesn't bring us closer to the understanding that we are connected to every living thing, and that therefore we are responsible for the well-being of every living thing.
The other argument against addressing political or social issues in the church is that it risks alienating people, and even splitting the congregation. Many of you have painful memories of splits that occurred either in this church, or in others throughout the country, during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, or the Sanctuary movement in the '80s. But I believe those splits didn't occur simply because controversial stands were taken, but because the process used wasn't one that helped all voices be heard and respected.
A couple of summers ago I delivered a sermon at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena against the Death Penalty, in which I shared why I and our Unitarian Universalist Association are against it. After the service, one man approached me and said that while he agreed with my position, he was offended that I'd spoken about such a controversial subject in church. He questioned how someone might have felt who didn't agree with my position; would they have felt included in the church? He wanted "spiritual" sermons, he said; not sermons that spoke of social issues. I left wondering if I'd just lost Neighborhood Church one of its members!
But what good am I, as a religious leader, if I only offer sermons that make you "feel good" - that don't challenge you, but only support you in what you want to hear? That doesn't seem to me to be leadership; it seems to me to be protection for the minister, as well as for the status quo of the institution - and I don't think that that's what Amos, or Jesus, or Parker, or Emerson, had in mind.
And actually, I don't think it's what this congregation has had in mind. Not only do you have a rich history of social activism, but in the Congregational Survey conducted as part of the search process, a large majority of you indicated that you wanted a minister who would preach on the social and ethical issues of the day. And while you are involved in several projects and events that serve the larger community - not the least of which is the Preschool, one of the laments I've heard since being here is that there has not been much in the way of "public witness" on issues of peace and justice for several years now.
This is a pivotal time for the religious community. A new nationalism has emerged since the events of 9/11, which threatens some of our most cherished Constitutional rights, and has called into question the patriotic loyalty of those who hold minority opinions. The gap between the rich and poor is ever-widening; health care for even the middle class is becoming unaffordable; and we are about to go to war for reasons that are unclear to many of us. Will we simply go about our business as usual? Or will we risk our comfort, and become once again the moral and ethical voice which challenges those who are making the decisions, and reminds them that our country also stands for peace and justice?
I know my answer to that question. I will speak from time to time from this pulpit on specific social issues which I feel hold moral or ethical imperatives. I will do so from my understanding of our Unitarian Universalist Principles, and always with the acknowledgement that it is only my truth that I am speaking, and that some of you may have differing truths. But I will also be speaking in the hopes of changing minds - or at the very least, opening up a dialogue; why else would I speak?! And my intention will always be to hold a "Reflection Group" after the service, to allow for the expression of all perspectives; for just as I have the right and duty to speak my truth, so do you.
The ministry of the church is to provide comfort and courage to all who come seeking refuge from personal pain or fear or despair; each of us experiences such brokenness. But let that comfort not shield us from the other equally important ministry of the church: To help us face the brokenness in the world beyond these walls, and the strength to work together towards our vision of healing that brokenness.
Marge Piercy says it well in her poem titled, "The Low Road:"
Alone you can fight;
You can refuse, you can take what revenge you can;
But they can roll over you.
But two people can keep each other Sane,
Can give support, conviction,
Love, massage, hope.
Three people are a delegation,
A committee, a wedge. With four,
You can play bridge and start an organization.
With six you can rent a whole house,
And hold a fundraising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter….
It goes on one at a time,
It starts when you care to act,
It starts when you do it again after they said no.
It starts when you say We, and know who you mean;
And each day you mean one more.
*****
May we never forget our commitment to care for one another; and may we never forget our commitment to care for the world. May we walk the journey together.
Amen.
© 2002 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
