Today's Sermon: Superhero Values
(Usually I post my sermons on Tumblr, but I thought my LJ friends would appreciate this one.)
As election season draws to a close and we reach out to bridge the divisions that have become visible over the last few months, I am wondering about role models. It seems to me that mythology, fiction, and maybe even history can supply us with examples of values we can agree on, values such as commitment and sacrifice. Stories that have captured our imaginations in the past may remind us of the people we hope to become.
When I was a kid, Batman was the lead character in some of those stories. He showed up in comic books and Pez dispensers, but the most influential form of Batman from my childhood was the Adam West character on television. When I was six or seven years old, the other kids who went to my babysitter and I used to run around the yard chasing super villains, pretending the basement steps were the Bat Cave, and generally doing our part for the good of Gotham City. I was always Bat Girl, of course, while the boys traded roles as Batman, Robin, and the various arch-nemeses. Whenever they tried to tell a story about Bat Girl being held as a captive victim, I escaped into my secret Barbara Gordon identity, then went off to pretend to go grocery shopping or whatever else I imagined non-superheroes did.
I learned a couple of things from Batman. I learned that superheroes have remarkable origin stories, events that changed the direction of their lives. You might not be able to tell from looking at them, especially in their secret identities, but every superhero has a past.* Batman also taught me that superheroes struggle with power. Whether the super skills come from hard work, cool gadgets, or another planet, heroes have to figure out the most effective and responsible way to use those skills. Finally, I learned that superheroes form coalitions. Batman worked with Robin and Bat Girl, not to mention Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara. Even an independent vigilante needs other people for the toughest problems.
Come to think of it, those same three things are true for all of us. Each of us has to decide how to respond to the past. Individually and as a group, we are faced with questions of power and responsibility. Teaming up with other people is a source of strength, in spite of and perhaps because of our differences. I think these characteristics of superheroes call attention to our future as a spiritual community.
*(I will note here for my online readers that, yes, the 1960s TV show didn’t go into detail about Batman’s origins, but there was a hint that there was something about Bruce Wayne that led him to put on a mask. At the very least, being rich meant that he had the means and opportunity to become the hero of Gotham City.)
Heroes Have Origins
First, superheroes have origin stories. Some event from the past sparked the character’s discovery of talents and passions, leading to a new sense of identity and purpose. Those events might be associated with death or separation from a loved one, or with the loss of the character’s pre-heroic dreams.
Mysterious orphans and refugees from extraordinary civilizations comprise some of those origin stories. Superman’s powers come from his extra-planetary birth family, but his ideas about truth, justice, and the American way come from Martha and Jonathan Kent. There is some speculation that Superman’s creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) modeled him after Moses, a baby whose people faced destruction, and was carried in a small vessel to a land where his birth identity had to be concealed.
Some superheroes arise because they volunteer, like Captain America, although the transformation may be more than they imagined. Some start off with an unlikely accident, like Peter Parker’s radioactive spider bite to become Spiderman.
Characters may have tragic and yet transformative events happen to them through no action of their own, or else they make choices with unintended consequences. Whatever the story, most extra-human comic book characters have faced a life-changing event that seems to isolate them from other people. Often, the character will acquire or discover a gift during that experience-an ability they didn’t have before. Picking up these pieces of loss, loneliness, and strength, the character eventually forges a new sense of purpose.
Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto) is someone from Unitarian history whose story follows this pattern a bit. He wasn’t always brave, and he wasn’t known for being kind, but he did set himself apart and commit his life to the truth as he saw it. When he read the Bible for himself for the first time as a young student in the 1520s, he was shocked to discover no evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1531, he published a tract, De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity), seemingly convinced that people would see it his way if only they would listen. That’s not what happened. He was run out of town, his books were confiscated, and the Supreme Council of the Inquisition started looking for him.
This is where the secret identity comes in. Servetus fled to Paris and assumed the name of Michel de Villeneuve. He had a varied career as de Villeneuve, first as an editor and publisher, then as a doctor. He worked on a seven-volume edition of the Bible, adding insightful footnotes. He was the first to publish about the link between the pulmonary and respiratory systems, which was an important point in a discussion about the Virgin birth. During his time as the personal physician for the Archbishop of Vienne, he secretly worked on his next theological treatise, Christianismi Restitutio (The Restoration of Christianity). He also struck up a correspondence with his old classmate, John Calvin. Servetus was not diplomatic in his criticisms of Calvin’s writing, and Calvin broke off correspondence. Servetus seemed to think that their exchange was illuminating, because he included copies of the letters when he sent an advance copy of the Restitutio to Geneva.
The publication of the Restitutio in 1553 marked the end of Servetus’ secret identity. Both Protestant and Catholic authorities pursued him as a dangerous heretic. He was burned at the stake on October 27, 1553, by the order of The Council of Geneva. Reportedly, he maintained his beliefs until the end, shouting heretical prayers from the flames. The Catholic Inquisition in France burned Servetus in effigy a few months later. There were a lot of people who didn’t want his ideas to be heard. Luckily for us, a few copies of his books were preserved, and went on to generate new ideas among religious reformers for over 450 years.
Now, I’m not saying Michael Servetus was a superhero, or even that Unitarian Universalists today would agree with most of what he wrote, but I do think we can see how a turning point in someone’s life can bring isolation, energy, purpose, abilities, and vulnerabilities, all at the same time. His origins were more like Spiderman than Superman: Being in the right place at the right time, Servetus was bitten by the theology bug. He had to adopt an alter ego, but the bug also afforded him the drive and the insight to make great contributions to religious scholarship and religious freedom.
How often is it the same for those of us who are regular folks? The events that make us who we are may bring loss or a sense of being alone in the world. These same events may bring a chance for us to develop new talents, or personal connection to the work we aspire to do. Passion and vulnerability can come from a single point in time. The Universalist side of our heritage teaches us that we-whole people with flaws and past mistakes and experiences that leave us broken-we human beings are welcome in the universe just as we are. Our movement is inclusive, not because we believe that everyone is perfect, but because we have faith that the qualities that make us human also open doors for greater love and compassion.
The thing that sets a superhero origin story apart from a villain origin story is how the character translates their past into a future of meaning and purpose. We can’t control our origin stories. Even if our own choices led to the turning points in our lives, they are in the past now. What we can do is bring our values to the way we understand those turning points, and to our decisions about what to do with the gifts we have now.
Heroes Come to Terms with Power
Another lesson from comic books that I think is relevant for our faith is that heroes struggle to come to terms with power. When a character gains some extraordinary ability, there is always a way it can be misused, or a way the character’s enemies can trick her or him into using that power for ill. It’s nearly mandatory that each comic book protagonist face a choice to rescue someone in situation A OR situation B.
One of the scenes I most vividly remember from the 1966 Batman movie is the caped crusader running around the waterfront with a bomb about to go off. Everywhere he turns, he finds someone or something he has to protect: nuns, a baby carriage, ducklings. He muses, “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” That, to me, illustrates a theme that any good comic book or science fiction story is bound to explore: every action or inaction can harm or help, and sometimes those overlap. How do you make choices about the time and place to use your power or to allow destruction?
Going back to Spiderman for a moment, the very first appearance of the character in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962 saw the teenage Peter Parker misusing his new powers, only to have his negligence contribute to the death of his Uncle Ben, one of his adoptive parents. His realization that “With great power there must also come-great responsibility!” shaped his character from then on.
Peter Parker’s realization might just as easily come from the Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams. Adams had a great deal to say about power and what that meant for the responsibilities of the liberal church.
As a minister between 1927 and the late 1930s, Adams made several trips to Germany, a country that was renowned for theological scholarship. He spoke with church and intellectual leaders, was detained for questioning by the Gestapo, and developed a sense of urgency about the political, cultural, moral, and spiritual crisis that went along with the rise of the Nazi party. While Adams developed great respect for the anti-Nazi Confessing Church movement, he noticed that Germany’s churches as a whole were not pushing back against the crisis. He later wrote:
Let me put it autobiographically and say that in Nazi Germany I soon came to the question, "What is it in my preaching and my political action that would stop this?" . . . It is a liberal attitude to say that we keep ourselves informed and read the best papers on these matters, and perhaps join a voluntary association now and then. But to be involved with other people so that it costs and so that one exposes the evils of society . . . requires something like conversion, something more than an attitude. It requires a sense that there's something wrong and I must be different from the way I have been.
Under Adams’ theology, individual and organized spirituality should be “examined.” There must be a path for critique, self-correction, and development. In his essay, “A Faith for the Free,” Adams wrote, “the achievement of freedom in community requires the power of organization and the organization of power.” In Adams’ view, it is our responsibility to practice our spiritual thought and discipline on purpose, consciously, and with others.
If we were a congregation of superheroes, we would need to struggle in thought and in prayer with what our UU principles call us to do with our capacities to fly, dodge bullets, force truthful confessions, lift trucks by hand, and so on. But just because our skills are of the earthly variety doesn’t mean we are powerless. (I think today’s Time for All Ages story speaks to this.) We have among us a great deal of energy, expertise, and love. Among us we have the power to make amazing soup, to lead freedom songs, to solve differential equations in a single bound, to balance the checkbook, to heal the mind and body, to create adaptive equipment, to reach out in friendship, to write letters to the editor … just to name a few. These are tremendous gifts. What does our faith ask us to do with them? How will the events of our time, added to these powers, added to our shared sense of purpose lead to our transformation?
We’ve largely directed the organization of our power against poverty in Harford County. (The Sharing Table sign-up sheet is in the foyer, by the way.) That’s the crisis that means the most to us, perhaps because of personal connections, perhaps because it’s an issue that speaks to us so clearly from a spiritual perspective. Our adult education class last winter brought some philosophy and theology to the mix. I’m wondering what is yet to come in our ongoing religious conversion as we struggle with this issue. I think there are untapped avenues in spiritual practice, ways we can find meaning for our mission in prayer and meditation as well as the music we do so well. It seems to me that the faith we practice in our social responsibility mission is still working on us. Maybe or most dramatic stories have yet to take place.
Heroes Form Coalitions
I get the impression from Adams that organization doesn’t just mean people together, it means people together on purpose, with a method and a discipline to move forward. Paraphrasing Jesus, Adams is quoted as saying, “By their groups you shall know them.” For voluntary groups to be a significant force, they need to include diverse members. That is easier said than done.
In fiction, superheroes seem to gravitate to one another. From the X-Men to the Avengers to the Super Friends, collections of lead characters become ensembles. They have very different abilities and outlooks. Characters in these coalitions are depicted as having strong personalities. As I said, their origin stories often lead them to separate from others rather than to develop relationship skills. Household squabbles may become epic battles if super abilities get out of hand. When they combine their specialized strengths in the same direction, they can tackle complex problems that none of them would be able to handle alone.
This is why we form coalitions, too. Our congregation is a microcosm, with atheists, theists, polytheists, agnostics, and everybody else handing in the hymnals together at the end of the service. Out in the community, we don’t worry too much about political or theological differences when we’re working with other groups to feed and house our neighbors. It does happen, though, that we forget, or we retreat into what we think is a bubble of sameness, or we narrow our scope of what seems possible.
My colleague Meg Riley, who is the Senior Minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, talked about this in her newsletter column last May. She reflected on being invited to a retreat with a group of Unitarian Universalist ministers who work with a population that is “mostly young, disproportionately people of color, from a broad span of religions. Many of those they serve suffer from mental illness or trauma, struggle to make it financially, struggle to keep their families from falling apart, struggle to find jobs.” Riley reveals a few sentences later that the retreat was for UU Military Chaplains.
It seems to me that, if the UU Military Chaplains can build strong bridges across divisions of class, religion, race, service branch, and geography, the rest of us in the UU faith movement can aspire to follow their example. Here in Fallston, we can expand our awareness of what we’re already doing. There may be partners in our community that we have yet to meet. There may be institutes for exceptional heroes, or halls of justice, that we have to overcome our internalized hurdles of classism and racism before we can join.
At the very least, we can ensure that we’re making the most of our super team here at UUF. We have had some conversations about the cultural, moral, and spiritual crises we’re facing other than poverty; let’s get back to them, even if we disagree. Let’s talk about domestic violence, immigration, and transgender civil rights. I am willing to bet that we have some diverse, informed, and strong opinions among us about access to physical and mental health care. Let’s talk about that. All of these issues have an impact on poverty in Harford County. Like the superheroes and the chaplains, we can do more and support each other when we come together.
Conclusion
There is a lot that our congregation has in common with an assembly of superheroes. Each one of us has an origin story, a set of events that shaped our talents, passions, and vulnerabilities. Each one of us has the opportunity to shape that story into a life of meaning and purpose. Like superheroes, it is incumbent on us to come to terms with power. Our collective abilities and assets make us a force to be reckoned with, and it is up to us to do the moral and religious discernment to make sure we’re doing a good job wielding that power. Our honesty with each other in this room and our other spiritual practices will help. Like the best superheroes, we form alliances. Within the congregation, we share our specialized powers and support one another to accomplish goals none of us could handle alone. In our coalitions with other groups, we build bridges that support compassion. May all that has been divided be made whole.
Maybe all that’s left is to come up superhero names and costumes. The Avengers is taken, and doesn’t sound like us. The Reconcilers? The Uncommon U-Folks? The Fantastic Fellowship?
I’ve heard from some UU friends who have consistently showed up for human rights in immigration reform, marriage equality, and economic equality that the non-UU’s in their coalitions have started to recognize them by their bright yellow shirts with red hearts. They’ve been nicknamed “the Love People.” Sounds super to me. I hope it sticks, and I hope we stick with it.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
As election season draws to a close and we reach out to bridge the divisions that have become visible over the last few months, I am wondering about role models. It seems to me that mythology, fiction, and maybe even history can supply us with examples of values we can agree on, values such as commitment and sacrifice. Stories that have captured our imaginations in the past may remind us of the people we hope to become.
When I was a kid, Batman was the lead character in some of those stories. He showed up in comic books and Pez dispensers, but the most influential form of Batman from my childhood was the Adam West character on television. When I was six or seven years old, the other kids who went to my babysitter and I used to run around the yard chasing super villains, pretending the basement steps were the Bat Cave, and generally doing our part for the good of Gotham City. I was always Bat Girl, of course, while the boys traded roles as Batman, Robin, and the various arch-nemeses. Whenever they tried to tell a story about Bat Girl being held as a captive victim, I escaped into my secret Barbara Gordon identity, then went off to pretend to go grocery shopping or whatever else I imagined non-superheroes did.
I learned a couple of things from Batman. I learned that superheroes have remarkable origin stories, events that changed the direction of their lives. You might not be able to tell from looking at them, especially in their secret identities, but every superhero has a past.* Batman also taught me that superheroes struggle with power. Whether the super skills come from hard work, cool gadgets, or another planet, heroes have to figure out the most effective and responsible way to use those skills. Finally, I learned that superheroes form coalitions. Batman worked with Robin and Bat Girl, not to mention Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara. Even an independent vigilante needs other people for the toughest problems.
Come to think of it, those same three things are true for all of us. Each of us has to decide how to respond to the past. Individually and as a group, we are faced with questions of power and responsibility. Teaming up with other people is a source of strength, in spite of and perhaps because of our differences. I think these characteristics of superheroes call attention to our future as a spiritual community.
*(I will note here for my online readers that, yes, the 1960s TV show didn’t go into detail about Batman’s origins, but there was a hint that there was something about Bruce Wayne that led him to put on a mask. At the very least, being rich meant that he had the means and opportunity to become the hero of Gotham City.)
Heroes Have Origins
First, superheroes have origin stories. Some event from the past sparked the character’s discovery of talents and passions, leading to a new sense of identity and purpose. Those events might be associated with death or separation from a loved one, or with the loss of the character’s pre-heroic dreams.
Mysterious orphans and refugees from extraordinary civilizations comprise some of those origin stories. Superman’s powers come from his extra-planetary birth family, but his ideas about truth, justice, and the American way come from Martha and Jonathan Kent. There is some speculation that Superman’s creators (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) modeled him after Moses, a baby whose people faced destruction, and was carried in a small vessel to a land where his birth identity had to be concealed.
Some superheroes arise because they volunteer, like Captain America, although the transformation may be more than they imagined. Some start off with an unlikely accident, like Peter Parker’s radioactive spider bite to become Spiderman.
Characters may have tragic and yet transformative events happen to them through no action of their own, or else they make choices with unintended consequences. Whatever the story, most extra-human comic book characters have faced a life-changing event that seems to isolate them from other people. Often, the character will acquire or discover a gift during that experience-an ability they didn’t have before. Picking up these pieces of loss, loneliness, and strength, the character eventually forges a new sense of purpose.
Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto) is someone from Unitarian history whose story follows this pattern a bit. He wasn’t always brave, and he wasn’t known for being kind, but he did set himself apart and commit his life to the truth as he saw it. When he read the Bible for himself for the first time as a young student in the 1520s, he was shocked to discover no evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1531, he published a tract, De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity), seemingly convinced that people would see it his way if only they would listen. That’s not what happened. He was run out of town, his books were confiscated, and the Supreme Council of the Inquisition started looking for him.
This is where the secret identity comes in. Servetus fled to Paris and assumed the name of Michel de Villeneuve. He had a varied career as de Villeneuve, first as an editor and publisher, then as a doctor. He worked on a seven-volume edition of the Bible, adding insightful footnotes. He was the first to publish about the link between the pulmonary and respiratory systems, which was an important point in a discussion about the Virgin birth. During his time as the personal physician for the Archbishop of Vienne, he secretly worked on his next theological treatise, Christianismi Restitutio (The Restoration of Christianity). He also struck up a correspondence with his old classmate, John Calvin. Servetus was not diplomatic in his criticisms of Calvin’s writing, and Calvin broke off correspondence. Servetus seemed to think that their exchange was illuminating, because he included copies of the letters when he sent an advance copy of the Restitutio to Geneva.
The publication of the Restitutio in 1553 marked the end of Servetus’ secret identity. Both Protestant and Catholic authorities pursued him as a dangerous heretic. He was burned at the stake on October 27, 1553, by the order of The Council of Geneva. Reportedly, he maintained his beliefs until the end, shouting heretical prayers from the flames. The Catholic Inquisition in France burned Servetus in effigy a few months later. There were a lot of people who didn’t want his ideas to be heard. Luckily for us, a few copies of his books were preserved, and went on to generate new ideas among religious reformers for over 450 years.
Now, I’m not saying Michael Servetus was a superhero, or even that Unitarian Universalists today would agree with most of what he wrote, but I do think we can see how a turning point in someone’s life can bring isolation, energy, purpose, abilities, and vulnerabilities, all at the same time. His origins were more like Spiderman than Superman: Being in the right place at the right time, Servetus was bitten by the theology bug. He had to adopt an alter ego, but the bug also afforded him the drive and the insight to make great contributions to religious scholarship and religious freedom.
How often is it the same for those of us who are regular folks? The events that make us who we are may bring loss or a sense of being alone in the world. These same events may bring a chance for us to develop new talents, or personal connection to the work we aspire to do. Passion and vulnerability can come from a single point in time. The Universalist side of our heritage teaches us that we-whole people with flaws and past mistakes and experiences that leave us broken-we human beings are welcome in the universe just as we are. Our movement is inclusive, not because we believe that everyone is perfect, but because we have faith that the qualities that make us human also open doors for greater love and compassion.
The thing that sets a superhero origin story apart from a villain origin story is how the character translates their past into a future of meaning and purpose. We can’t control our origin stories. Even if our own choices led to the turning points in our lives, they are in the past now. What we can do is bring our values to the way we understand those turning points, and to our decisions about what to do with the gifts we have now.
Heroes Come to Terms with Power
Another lesson from comic books that I think is relevant for our faith is that heroes struggle to come to terms with power. When a character gains some extraordinary ability, there is always a way it can be misused, or a way the character’s enemies can trick her or him into using that power for ill. It’s nearly mandatory that each comic book protagonist face a choice to rescue someone in situation A OR situation B.
One of the scenes I most vividly remember from the 1966 Batman movie is the caped crusader running around the waterfront with a bomb about to go off. Everywhere he turns, he finds someone or something he has to protect: nuns, a baby carriage, ducklings. He muses, “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” That, to me, illustrates a theme that any good comic book or science fiction story is bound to explore: every action or inaction can harm or help, and sometimes those overlap. How do you make choices about the time and place to use your power or to allow destruction?
Going back to Spiderman for a moment, the very first appearance of the character in Amazing Fantasy #15 in 1962 saw the teenage Peter Parker misusing his new powers, only to have his negligence contribute to the death of his Uncle Ben, one of his adoptive parents. His realization that “With great power there must also come-great responsibility!” shaped his character from then on.
Peter Parker’s realization might just as easily come from the Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams. Adams had a great deal to say about power and what that meant for the responsibilities of the liberal church.
As a minister between 1927 and the late 1930s, Adams made several trips to Germany, a country that was renowned for theological scholarship. He spoke with church and intellectual leaders, was detained for questioning by the Gestapo, and developed a sense of urgency about the political, cultural, moral, and spiritual crisis that went along with the rise of the Nazi party. While Adams developed great respect for the anti-Nazi Confessing Church movement, he noticed that Germany’s churches as a whole were not pushing back against the crisis. He later wrote:
Let me put it autobiographically and say that in Nazi Germany I soon came to the question, "What is it in my preaching and my political action that would stop this?" . . . It is a liberal attitude to say that we keep ourselves informed and read the best papers on these matters, and perhaps join a voluntary association now and then. But to be involved with other people so that it costs and so that one exposes the evils of society . . . requires something like conversion, something more than an attitude. It requires a sense that there's something wrong and I must be different from the way I have been.
Under Adams’ theology, individual and organized spirituality should be “examined.” There must be a path for critique, self-correction, and development. In his essay, “A Faith for the Free,” Adams wrote, “the achievement of freedom in community requires the power of organization and the organization of power.” In Adams’ view, it is our responsibility to practice our spiritual thought and discipline on purpose, consciously, and with others.
If we were a congregation of superheroes, we would need to struggle in thought and in prayer with what our UU principles call us to do with our capacities to fly, dodge bullets, force truthful confessions, lift trucks by hand, and so on. But just because our skills are of the earthly variety doesn’t mean we are powerless. (I think today’s Time for All Ages story speaks to this.) We have among us a great deal of energy, expertise, and love. Among us we have the power to make amazing soup, to lead freedom songs, to solve differential equations in a single bound, to balance the checkbook, to heal the mind and body, to create adaptive equipment, to reach out in friendship, to write letters to the editor … just to name a few. These are tremendous gifts. What does our faith ask us to do with them? How will the events of our time, added to these powers, added to our shared sense of purpose lead to our transformation?
We’ve largely directed the organization of our power against poverty in Harford County. (The Sharing Table sign-up sheet is in the foyer, by the way.) That’s the crisis that means the most to us, perhaps because of personal connections, perhaps because it’s an issue that speaks to us so clearly from a spiritual perspective. Our adult education class last winter brought some philosophy and theology to the mix. I’m wondering what is yet to come in our ongoing religious conversion as we struggle with this issue. I think there are untapped avenues in spiritual practice, ways we can find meaning for our mission in prayer and meditation as well as the music we do so well. It seems to me that the faith we practice in our social responsibility mission is still working on us. Maybe or most dramatic stories have yet to take place.
Heroes Form Coalitions
I get the impression from Adams that organization doesn’t just mean people together, it means people together on purpose, with a method and a discipline to move forward. Paraphrasing Jesus, Adams is quoted as saying, “By their groups you shall know them.” For voluntary groups to be a significant force, they need to include diverse members. That is easier said than done.
In fiction, superheroes seem to gravitate to one another. From the X-Men to the Avengers to the Super Friends, collections of lead characters become ensembles. They have very different abilities and outlooks. Characters in these coalitions are depicted as having strong personalities. As I said, their origin stories often lead them to separate from others rather than to develop relationship skills. Household squabbles may become epic battles if super abilities get out of hand. When they combine their specialized strengths in the same direction, they can tackle complex problems that none of them would be able to handle alone.
This is why we form coalitions, too. Our congregation is a microcosm, with atheists, theists, polytheists, agnostics, and everybody else handing in the hymnals together at the end of the service. Out in the community, we don’t worry too much about political or theological differences when we’re working with other groups to feed and house our neighbors. It does happen, though, that we forget, or we retreat into what we think is a bubble of sameness, or we narrow our scope of what seems possible.
My colleague Meg Riley, who is the Senior Minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, talked about this in her newsletter column last May. She reflected on being invited to a retreat with a group of Unitarian Universalist ministers who work with a population that is “mostly young, disproportionately people of color, from a broad span of religions. Many of those they serve suffer from mental illness or trauma, struggle to make it financially, struggle to keep their families from falling apart, struggle to find jobs.” Riley reveals a few sentences later that the retreat was for UU Military Chaplains.
It seems to me that, if the UU Military Chaplains can build strong bridges across divisions of class, religion, race, service branch, and geography, the rest of us in the UU faith movement can aspire to follow their example. Here in Fallston, we can expand our awareness of what we’re already doing. There may be partners in our community that we have yet to meet. There may be institutes for exceptional heroes, or halls of justice, that we have to overcome our internalized hurdles of classism and racism before we can join.
At the very least, we can ensure that we’re making the most of our super team here at UUF. We have had some conversations about the cultural, moral, and spiritual crises we’re facing other than poverty; let’s get back to them, even if we disagree. Let’s talk about domestic violence, immigration, and transgender civil rights. I am willing to bet that we have some diverse, informed, and strong opinions among us about access to physical and mental health care. Let’s talk about that. All of these issues have an impact on poverty in Harford County. Like the superheroes and the chaplains, we can do more and support each other when we come together.
Conclusion
There is a lot that our congregation has in common with an assembly of superheroes. Each one of us has an origin story, a set of events that shaped our talents, passions, and vulnerabilities. Each one of us has the opportunity to shape that story into a life of meaning and purpose. Like superheroes, it is incumbent on us to come to terms with power. Our collective abilities and assets make us a force to be reckoned with, and it is up to us to do the moral and religious discernment to make sure we’re doing a good job wielding that power. Our honesty with each other in this room and our other spiritual practices will help. Like the best superheroes, we form alliances. Within the congregation, we share our specialized powers and support one another to accomplish goals none of us could handle alone. In our coalitions with other groups, we build bridges that support compassion. May all that has been divided be made whole.
Maybe all that’s left is to come up superhero names and costumes. The Avengers is taken, and doesn’t sound like us. The Reconcilers? The Uncommon U-Folks? The Fantastic Fellowship?
I’ve heard from some UU friends who have consistently showed up for human rights in immigration reform, marriage equality, and economic equality that the non-UU’s in their coalitions have started to recognize them by their bright yellow shirts with red hearts. They’ve been nicknamed “the Love People.” Sounds super to me. I hope it sticks, and I hope we stick with it.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.