We Are Groot

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We Are Groot

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We Are Groot

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When I was initially working on this sermon, as evidenced by the description of the worship service from January, I thought the focus should be more on our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. But the more I’ve worked through it, the more I’ve found this story to be about the seventh principle — the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

That’s quite a mouthful. You’d think it could be shorter, you know, maybe just “the interdependent web”. But humans sometimes aren’t that good at recognizing the bigger story, especially when we’re in pain, or mad, or afraid. And us Unitarian Universalists in particular, sometimes we like to believe that we’re exceptional to the point of being set apart from others, removed from the things that we think we’ve rejected or left behind as our tradition has progressed. So we need this big mouthful of a reminder that we are deeply, deeply set into this web of existence, whether it’s moving us to joy or to sorrow.

The interdependent web of all existence. Even the pieces we don’t like.

The interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We are intimately, inextricably connected to the people we dislike. Dare I say it, we are inextricable from those we hate.

We are a part of those who we try to shut out and disown as not being us.

This brings me to the reading, often titled “The Faith of the Canaanite woman”. I think it should have a subtitle: “In Which Jesus Is Wrong.”

I love this story. It’s one of the best stories for a perfectionist, overfunctioning person like me who’s spent years learning that mistakes are inevitable, that we are flawed beings always learning how to be better to each other.

And there’s lots of different interpretations of this story in Christian exegesis, and lots of different ways of working the text so that Jesus is still perfect. Perhaps those versions of the story speak to you, and that’s perfectly ok. One of the things I love most about Unitarian Universalism is that not only do we embrace different stories, we embrace different sides of the same story. We say, “Yes, and.”

So this morning, we’re focusing on the idea that Jesus was wrong. He gets called out on it, and instead of doubling down in his wrongness, throwing a tantrum, or any other deflecting behavior, he says, “Oh my gosh, you’re right.” And then he makes amends.

Think about the power dynamics here. A desperate women from an oppressed, systematically maligned population shows up asking for help for her child from a healer. This healer, who knows he could ease this child’s suffering, says, “No, I don’t think so. You’re not the right kind of people. In fact, I’m not sure you’re even a person. You’re like a dog.” (Which, I just want to point out, I know for many in this congregation, is not an insult. But apparently it was for Jesus. That’s another sermon).

And this woman, who has already made herself vulnerable just by showing up and begging for help, doesn’t back down. She says, “Even dogs get scraps from the table.” Even dogs are part of the household.

Even if I’m willing to debase myself to agree with your assessment of me as less than you, I’m still a part of the interdependent web and you should respect that.

I am willing to believe in you and your power to save my child. Why won’t you believe in me?

And there it is. Jesus realizes that he actually knows nothing about her life, or what difficult choices she had to make to survive. He has judged her worth solely on her identity as a Canaanite. He reacts like a bigot.

Now, this is not to say that the Canaanite woman is perfect. We don’t know anything about her, or her past behavior. She could be toxic in any number of ways– but not just because she’s a Canaanite.

And that’s the point of the story — that in this moment, it doesn’t matter. In this moment, right here, she is asking for help for someone she loves from someone she knows can help at no risk or loss to himself. Whatever she may have said or done in her past is irrelevant.

So how does this tie in to Guardians of the Galaxy?

I love genre stories, because they help us get understanding about our own lives by removing us from it. When Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on the original Star Trek series, was considering leaving the show, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked her to stay on. He told her how important it was for black people, especially young black children, to see themselves on television as something other than a servant. Star Wars tells us a story about the search for identity and resisting imperialism. Superheroes awe us with their powers while teaching us how to process the power of our emotions and actions in the world.

And sometimes, those heroes are anti-heros. The Guardians of the Galaxy are our Canaanites, and unlike the Canaanite woman from our others story, we know all about the history of this motley crew of criminals.

Peter Quill, con man and thief. He was kidnapped from earth as a young boy, after the death of his mother, and maintains emotional distance from those around him as a protection.

Gamora, thief, assassin for hire. Her family was killed in front of her when she was a child, and she was “adopted” by the man who did it. He turned her into a living weapon. She is fighting to both survive and find a way out.

Drax, a man consumed by a need for violent revenge after the slaughter of his family. He solves problems with brute force.

Rocket. He’s a freak, a mistake made from the progress of science without the temper of ethics. He is, more than any of the rest of them, alone in the universe, carrying memories of torture and abuse and living with the constant ridicule and mocking of those around him every day. He is cruel, and angry.

All created by the systems in which they existed. All have had to live for most of their lives with no one validating their inherent worth and dignity, so they are forced to carve it out for themselves, often resorting to brutality, fear, and avoidance rather than right relationship.

And yet, when push comes to shove, when they realize that they can contribute in a meaningful way to the larger community, to the survival of the very people who malign and oppress them, they rise to the occasion.

And then there’s Groot, the giant tree-being. Groot enters this story as Rocket’s muscle, giving him physical and emotional support in a world that created him and then abandoned him. While Groot can only vocalize the words “I am Groot,” he understands everything said to him. Groot becomes the force binding them together, the one among them who can create beauty amongst ugliness.

All of this is important for the moment that made this movie worth a sermon. You have to know how awfully these people have been treated to understand how huge it was for them to join the fight to save the world that had abused them. You have to know how criminal their choices have been to understand the risk they took by contacting the NovaCorps, the military and police forces of the first planet to be attacked.

You have to know how little they think of themselves, how little expect from their lives to understand how shocking it was that Groot sacrificed himself to save them. In that moment, when Groot uses “we” for the first time, he is using his power to heal those he cares about. He is telling them, you showed up, and so you are worth saving.

So where do you find yourself in this story?

Maybe you’re one of this mercenary crew, asking for someone to believe in you, to believe that you can change the world even as it’s trying to tear you down. Maybe you’re one of the NovaCorps, having to decide whether or not to give these people a chance despite their history.

And yes, I know that there are people, that there are relationships, that are so toxic we must, one-on-one, break those ties, for our safety and for the safety of others in our care. I’ve had to do this myself. There are people I will never let back into my life. One person cannot take down a Ronan, bent on destroying everything them just because they can. And people like this do exist.

But these toxic, destructive people remain part of our interdependent web. Even if we can’t be in direct relationship with them, we will always be in indirect relationship with them, and so by pouring love and and kindness out into that interdependent web of all existence, we can support them from a distance. Intimacy is not always required to provide care.

A large, healthy system, like the one this congregation has worked so hard to become, is strong enough to take a risk as a community when the risk is too great for one single person to bear. Like the criminal protagonists and the NovaCorps, we are stronger when we work together to fight a common enemy for the good of all. Like Jesus, we have the power to heal those who come to us, who willingly join with us.

And here’s the really difficult part of the story for us to bring into our daily lives. After the Guardians defeat Ronan, after they save the planet, and stop the spread of destruction to the rest of the universe, NovaCorps erases their criminal records. Builds them a ship to replace the one they lost in the battle. And then lets them go free.

They are given a clean slate, and the chance for a new beginning. The past is forgiven, but not forgotten — there is an understanding that if they break this new covenant, there will be repercussions. But until that happens, they will be treated like any other member of the community. I love this, because it’s not a magical panacea that erases everything about their lives and personalities.

Your past is always a part of who you are. Their personalities have not changed, but now? Now they have a vision of the future in which they are empowered to make better choices, despite the systems of oppression that have formed them. The sequel hasn’t come out yet, so I’m sure we’re going to see some bad choices yet to come. They’re flawed. We’re flawed.

But as the story of the Canaanite woman tells us, even Jesus was flawed. Groot was flawed. We can be flawed and still be powerful beings co-creating the universe, one choice at a time. We can still recognize the respect the ways in which we are connected to one another, from our closest friends and family to strangers on the other side of the globe.

We are Groot.

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The Revelator

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The Book of Revelation. It’s a letter written by a person who called themselves John, meant for seven communities in Asia that had gathered around a belief in Jesus Christ. Unlike today, when Christian identity is linked with power and empire, Christian communities (even before they were calling themselves Christians) were subversive, anti-establishment groups fighting just to survive, much less thrive. Living in the shadow of the Roman Empire, which required imperial religious devotion in all aspects of life, including commerce and livelihood, many resorted to hiding in plain sight. They kept their beliefs about Jesus internal, while their actions supported the divinity of the Roman emperor and his authority over all because it kept them alive.

Enter John, the Revelator. Not the same John to whom the fourth Gospel is attributed, or the Johannine letters. A different John. He’s a Palestinian Jew, living among the Jesus communities in Asia, and he is so angry at his people for their collaboration with the empire that persecutes them, and so afraid that the message of Jesus, his messiah, will be erased, that he cannot truly express how he feels in everyday, conversational language. He is so overwhelmed he cannot even rely on traditional rhetoric like what Paul used in his letters. John can only communicate the depth and agony of his truth through manifesting visceral gut reactions to his fantastical and often grotesque imagery. The four horsemen of the apocalypse. The beast rising from the sea. The dragon sweeping stars from the sky with a flick of its tail. The woman clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet.

The imagery of John’s epistle is so powerful it has moved past Christian culture and entered the consciousness of the American secular experience. It’s the basis of numerous pop culture endeavors, like television shows, and referenced in many more. I would argue that it’s used as a founding cosmology in the creation of our art more than it’s used as a Christian sacred texts in modern churches. Many mainline Christian pastors are afraid of trying to exegete it, like English majors tiptoeing around James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s powerful at an emotional, reactive level. And one of the hardest things to deal with about Revelation is its violence.

Miroslav Wolf, a Bible scholar and survivor of the genocide in the Balkan peninsula claims that: “In the worldview of Revelation, there is no power great enough to stop the beasts from wanting to be beasts.” There is no power great enough to stop the beasts from wanting to be beasts. What do we do with that as Unitarian Universalists?

I think we have to go back to King, the authentic King, the one who understood that non-violent action does not mean it is not disruptive. Non-violent action, civil disobedience, must be disruptive, must make Rome agitate, for it have any effect. But King’s call to non-violence is also deeply rooted in Universalism, in demonstrating that those who hold the power in an oppressive system are just as much victims of that toxic environment as those who are oppressed. That we are called to love even the beasts who want to be beasts. That love is how we show beasts that they do not have to be beasts to belong. As UU Rev. Anita Farber-Robertson says: “My Universalism is fierce. It has no patience with a theology of scarcity.”

King also lays out for us a historical record of what he calls “creative extremists”. And it’s important to note that these leaders of change were not themselves perfect, nor were their messages always perfect. John’s resistance to religious imperialism did not intersect with resistance to patriarchy — his fantastical visions rely on caricatures of the historically oppressive roles of women — mother or whore. Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal” but left out the white women, the black lives that kept his household, and the economy of the Southern United States, running on slavery of human beings. That historical erasure of the humanity of black lives affected all people of colour as this nation formed its identity. It’s a legacy with which we are all still struggling today. Revelation is resistance.

To resist, we must acknowledge that our pasts are imperfect, and we are imperfect, and that’s okay as long as we are willing to keep learning. It is incumbent on us to learn from the mistakes and misunderstandings of our histories so that we can always be evolving into the people the visionary future needs to create itself. We will always be imperfect, because we will always be creating something new. We make each other better by learning from each other and the diversity of our experiences and our belief. We covenant together to more than the sum of our parts in building the future.

Revelation is resistance to the status quo. Revelation asks us to consider how we navigate questions of fidelity to covenanted communities of mutual love and support, leading to action on justice issues, when we live in a culture that demands unquestioning fidelity to imperial projects. In modern times, that becomes how do we navigate a covenanted agreement to make our seven principles, statements of hope and vision, the reality in this world that demands we agree to private prison industrial complex, the oppression of black lives, Muslim lives, Latinx lives, queer lives, and so many more. There are, right now, thousands of people supporting the First Nations protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, protesting for the sake of the future of clean water for our children and grandchildren. Those thousands of people are being ignored by the mainstream media while they report about a gas panic due to — wait for it — a broken gas pipeline polluting everything around it. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. Revelation 13:4: “They worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

We are, all of us, under the thumb of New Rome, my beloveds. And Revelation is resistance. Our seven principles are resistance.

I’m a huge fan of Nadia Bolz-Weber. She’s a Lutheran pastor who also happens to write some really good books. And it turns out that once upon a time, she tried to be a Unitarian Universalist. She decided it wasn’t for her because, for her, we UUs “have a higher opinion of human beings than I have ever felt comfortable claiming, as someone who both reads the paper and knows the condition of my own heart.” She claims that we rely too much on “hopefulness and positive thinking.” And this not a claim unique to her.

I offer to you today that we should not ignore or dismiss such judgements about us, but rather use them to fuel our drive to make our vision reality. I am willing to claim that hopefulness and positive thinking are central to our Unitarian Universalist identities, but they are not how we get things done. The hope is why we work for a better world. Love is why we work for a better world. The how is always changing. Revelation is resistance.

Our seven principles are not belief statements. They are statements of vision and mission around which we, as members and congregations, covenant to preserve where they exist and to make a reality where they are not. It is often very, very hard work, and more about confronting our own flaws of perception than is it about our own “awesomeness”.

Take, for example, our first principle: we covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. From a belief standpoint, we can recognize all around us, every day, how people are not shown, nor demonstrate, inherent worth and dignity. The difference, however, is that as UUs we are also willing to learn about, and then recognize, the systems of oppression that teach people to fear and hate each other. And, as we learned from the trolls in Frozen, “people make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed.” When the systems keep people from having access to food, to shelter, to health care, they live in fear, and they make choices based on fear. I’m not sure those decisions can be called choices at all.

The covenant of our seven principles is about recognizing the divinity of others. And only when we have done that can we truly recognize the divinity in ourselves. That we are worthy of love simply because we exist. That each of us is enough, just as we are. That living into the worth and dignity of every person includes living into the fullness of our own individual potential as we help others live into theirs. Revelation is resistance, resistance to the old order, resistance to the empire, resistance to systems of oppression that harm all of us with their poisonous ways.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous image of the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice is, in fact, paraphrased from the writings of Unitarian Theodore Parker. King understood that that moral arc bends towards justice because people bend it. That moral arc requires our thoughts and prayers and our actions. And this community is a perfect example of how necessary a faith in hopefulness and positive thinking is to how we hold together as a congregation, as a larger denomination, despite our multitude of differences. Our sources of faith are numerous, but we share a vision that we can make people’s lives better, including our own; that we can ease suffering, including our own. That vision relies on our covenant to work, to love, together. Our differences make us stronger because they encourage us to learn from each other.

The Book of Revelation shows us a world of anger and fear, where violence is inevitable and divine retribution is the only escape into New Jerusalem, into the new world order. And if all we do is wait for someone better than us to change it, that’s what the world is and will continue to be. Because there is no one better than you, right here, right now, as part of this community. There is no one better to change the world.

In the words of Black Elk, sung by our choir today, “I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children.”

We are the revelators. We are the creative extremists that King said the world needs.

Throw off the fear. Throw off the hate. Bring on the New Jerusalem.

Revelation is resistance.

May it be so.

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Good Friday

This the text of a homily given at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison on March 25th, 2016.

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The supreme irony of the whole crucifixion scene is this: He who was everything had everything taken away from Him. He who was perfect was totally misjudged as “sin” itself (Romans 8:3-4). The crucified Jesus forever tells power and authority, and all of us, how utterly wrong we can be about who is in the right and who is sinful (John 16:8). All human solidarity and sympathy was taken away from Him and He finally had to walk the journey alone, in darkness, in not-knowing, as most humans finally have to do.

Jesus hung in total solidarity with the pain of the world and the far too many lives on this planet that have been “nasty, lonely, brutish, and short.” After the cross, we know that God is not watching human pain, nor apparently always stopping human pain, as much as God is found hanging with us alongside all human pain. Jesus forever tells us that God is found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the beginning of time. I wonder if we even like that. There are no games of moral superiority left. Yet this is exactly the kind of Lover and the universal Love that humanity needs.

What else could possibly give us a cosmic and final hope? This is exactly how Jesus redeemed the world “by the blood of the cross.” It was not some kind of heavenly transaction, or “paying a price” to God, as much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered. If he was paying any price it was for the hard and resistant skin around our souls. — Richard Rohr

For many years, I didn’t understand Easter as a Christian holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jesus. Christmas was easy for me to understand. But to a much younger version of me, Easter as a holiday that celebrated the death and resurrection of someone I believed to be a man with a message, well, I found it corruptive. I blamed Easter for so much of Christianity manifesting as a death cult of personality and of miracles that no longer happen in our world, as opposed to a religion that should be speaking truth to power and easing suffering wherever it might be found.

And then I went to a Christian seminary. I made dear friends, whom I respect, and who love Easter. So I listened.

They taught me about the rituals of their churches, leading up to Good Friday. How they empty their altars of artifacts and symbols until only the Spirit remains. How that emptiness in a place of worship and community leads them to lament — He’s leaving. He’s leaving. He’s leaving. They taught me that this day is not the holy day of a death cult, but is part of the larger story about how people, and communities, learn to cope with and to live with profound grief and loss.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus confronts the reality of what he knows will come to pass — his execution. He had a moment of choice in his past, when his dear friend John the Baptist was killed — a choice to continue their work of resistance to empire and fighting oppression, or to walk away, and be safe. It is at this moment that Jesus knows, if continues down this path, he will die, because what he asks of people with power and influence is not something they are willing to hear. What matters is how much change he can manifest in the world before they kill him to shut him up.

And so, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he despairs that he has no more time. He does not want the burden of death, nor does he want to abandon his work or the people who follow him. Even in this time and place, so near to the end, his disciples cannot stay awake for him when asks. “Father,” he pleads, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He is willing to die, has been willing to die on this path, but it is in this moment that he fears for a future without him to lead the way. His disciples continue to fail, unable to stay awake, unable to wait with him and pray, And they are us.

The first time I realized that, I was heartbroken. No one wants to imagine themselves as the sidekick, always paling in comparison to the hero of the story. And yet, Jesus is the hero because, ultimately, he believes that despite our brokenness, despite our failures… we are just as good, and as worthy, as he is. “If this cannot pass unless I drink it, “ he says, “your will be done.” We cannot stay awake, and yet the care and justice of the world is passed into our hands by someone who believes we can, who believes we will stay awake.

My Christian colleagues taught me that the lessons of Easter are about forgiving the most unforgivable of sins — not because Jesus sacrificed his life as some kind of payment for all time, but because each of us has failed time and time again. And despite our brokenness, Jesus took up that cross because he knows we can be better. He asks us to be better, relentlessly, for our entire lives.

Because I believe what he learned, as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, is that he wasn’t enough by himself. His disciples were followers, not teammates. He died because one person, alone, is not enough to tear down the oppressions of empire and corruption. His death was not about sacrificing himself for some cruel sense of atonement, a bargain of blood with a hateful God. He died because he could go no further, and he died with hope that his disciples, now apostles, would resurrect him not in body, but in word and deed. Jesus’s death teaches us that the Kingdom of God, in which all are free from suffering, is found in building sustainable communities that work for a better world.

No matter how many times we fail, we must always find the strength, somehow, to pick up the pieces and try again — not for our sakes, but for the sakes of others. Jesus died with his mission unfulfilled. His resurrection happens not just on Easter, but on every day that we are willing to reach out our hands, without expectation, without judgement — with just loving intention and strength of will — to learn, to create, and to listen.

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Dec. 29th FUUN Weekly Email

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So come, Christmas, most needed of seasons.
Come with the reminder that love does not depend on
Perfection but on willingness to risk connection.
Come into the unready manger of our hearts
That we may feel the warmth of new life
And give flesh to the promise of hope
That cries to bring healing into our world.

— from “Come Christmas” by Maureen Killoran

Today is the fifth day of Christmas. In the mythic storytelling that we do in both our services on Christmas Eve, we include the part about the magi travelling across the land, following a star. What’s glossed over in our pageantry is that it doesn’t happen the same night that Mary gives birth; they arrive twelve days later, giving us the twelve days of Christmas and the celebration of Epiphany in early January.

On this, the fifth day, the major players are in states of liminality, both in the stable and on the roads. Mary is still recovering from giving birth, and learning her new role as mother. Jesus is getting a crash course in what it means to be out of the womb, where there’s things like hunger, and cold. Joseph is figuring out his place in this family that has grown from two to three. The magi put their faith in their learning, risking days of travel entirely on the appearance of a star in the sky. They encounter Herod, and are wary enough of his abuse of institutional power and privilege to return home “by another road.” They are changed by this experience as much as the holy family in Bethlehem.

What, then, does this time of year offer us as Unitarian Universalists? I would offer up the twelve days of Christmas as a time for us to experience the stable and the roads. In the stable, we can contemplate ourselves, our roles in our families and communities, our fears and anxieties. On the roads, we can turn ourselves outward, to take stock of where our reason and values intersect with the work of justice. We can reach out to those for whom the holiday season is anything but joyous — be it for grief or injustice or any reason — and let them know that they are supported.

In faith,

Meghann

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Divine Mercy Sunday

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“Divine Mercy Sunday”, given on April 27, 2014 at United Church of the Valley in Murrieta, CA

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