Reading: Hope, by Robert F. Kennedy

It is from numberless, diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man or a woman or child stands up for an ideal, Or acts to improve the lot of others, Or strikes out against injustice, they send out a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other, From a million different centers of energy and daring..... Those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance

Meditation - composed by The Rev Andrew Backus [with lines from A. MacLeish and K. Gibran]

We are called, you and I -- sisters and brothers. We are called by Life.

We are called to fulfill a destiny: to cast light into dark places; to bring warmth where there is cold.

We are called to serve a dream: to discover the deeper meanings; to celebrate the greater love.

In us there burns an ember -- it glows red, deep inside, and never dies.

It was kindled when the Universe was born -- the great cosmic fireball, casting forth its Life Force, which permeates all that was, and is.

Blow now, on the coal of the heart.

In the name of human dignity, for the sake of justice -- blow on the coal of the heart.

In us there leaps a flame -- it shines a bright orange, deep inside, and never dies.

It came to life in blazing primordial fires of our infancy, as people gathered to do together what no one could do alone.

Blow now, on the coal of the heart.

In the name of redeeming love, for the sake of truth.

In us there burns a flame -- white hot, deep inside, which never dies.

We are called, my friends -- called by Mystery, itself.

Make us, we pray, food for the burning flame.

Make us, we pray, fuel for the sacred fire.

Homily: Spiritual Justice

Over the last few years we have watched our country and the world disintegrate into a frightening and chaotic pit. There have been other times in our history when the world seemed out of control: Some of us experienced the Great Depression, or the Second World War. Some of us remember the revelation of the Holocaust and the unbelievable torture and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Some of us remember the McCarthy Era and the “witch hunts” destroying lives by innuendo and guilt by association. Many of us remember the Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation. Some of us remember the Civil Rights Marches and both the violence and the non-violence involved. Some of us remember the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, all so close together. No era is trouble free, but recently it feels as though the world has gone mad. We read of genocide in Darfur, escalation of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and hundreds of American soldiers lost. We learn that our government is spying on us without court order, and that corporations are cheerfully turning over their records of what we thought was our private information. Pensions are disappearing. Health Insurance is hard to find. Education is not what it used to be, and now our President has not only redefined the Geneva Conventions, but can imprison anyone he likes by calling them terrorists and, without judicial oversight, throw away the key. To add insult to injury the Religious Right seems to be trying to make our country over into a particular kind of Christian State. If I believed in Hell, I would think we were all going there in a hand-basket!

In the face of such chaos it feels as though we have two choices, to raise our fists in anger or hang our heads in despair, or perhaps we can heed the old wisdom, “If you want peace, work for justice."

Last Spring, Dennis and I attended the Spiritual Justice Workshop held at All Souls in downtown DC. 1200 people attended, a number comparable to the 1400, who attended a similar workshop in California last year. The Spiritual Justice Workshops are the creation of Rabbi Michael Lerner, who is the editor of Tikkun magazine and author of the book, The Left Hand of God. Rabbi Lerner is pulling together an interfaith coalition, which he calls the Network of Spiritual Progressives. This network is dedicated to bringing progressive moral values to life in our culture. Lerner’s network is not the only interfaith coalition speaking out against the so-called moral values expressed by the religious and political right. Many progressive and main line religionists are appalled by the way religion has been used and distorted for political purposes.

Evangelicals, under the leadership of Jim Wallis are speaking out in favor of the poor and for ecological justice. The Interfaith Alliance, the Industrial Areas Foundation, and numerous denominational entities are crying foul. Many Christians are claiming that the far right has stolen their religion and ignored the teachings of Jesus. Many of these coalitions are seeking ways to work for justice with a strong spiritual and moral grounding as their base.

Rabbi Lerner’s Network of Spiritual Progressives is a truly interfaith organization. Besides Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, Muslims, Unitarian Universalists, Humanists and Atheists were all included in the workshop last spring. Rabbi Lerner attempts to use the Scriptures of all world religions as well as the values of those he calls the “spiritual but not religious” as grounding for the common moral values which he uses to call the religious right to account.

Lerner writes, “We need a whole new world view – a view that values love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, compassion, the ability to see others as embodiments of the sacred, and the ability to respond to the universe with gratitude, awe, and wonder.”

Rabbi Lerner maintains that we all have a deep and abiding need for a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, and that we yearn for a sense of awe and wonder. He further contends that we live in a world today that is ruled by a materialistic bottom line; meaning and purpose have been replaced by rampant materialism. We have been trained to satisfy our deepest needs by buying more and more. We buy goods and services and when they do not fulfill our needs for relationship, meaning or purpose, we buy even more trying to fill the emptiness inside. Lerner writes, “In the United States this process has reached its fullest development in the form of a bottom-line mentality that judges every activity, every institution, every social practice as rational, productive, or efficient only to the extent that it produces money or power.”

The lust for money and power are at the root of the world’s chaos today.

The genius of the religious right, he says, is their recognition of our overwhelming need “to find some way to unite our lives with a higher meaning and purpose.” And the genius of the neo-conservatives (who I maintain are not normal conservatives for whom I have respect) is that they have used the religious right for their own political purposes.

Lerner writes, “It is the search for meaning in a despiritualized world that leads many people to right wing religious communities, because these groups seem to be in touch with the sacred dimensions of life. Many secularists imagine that people drawn to the Right are there solely because of some ethical or psychological malfunction. What they miss is that there are many very decent Americans who get attracted to the religious right, because it is the only voice that they encounter that is willing to challenge the despiritualization of daily life, to a call for a life that is driven by higher purpose than money, and to provide actual experiences of supportive community for those whose daily life is suffused with alienation and spiritual loneliness.”

Lerner goes on to say, “Many Americans have a powerful desire for loving connection, kindness, generosity, awe and wonder, and joyous celebration of the universe. These desires are frustrated by the way we organize our society today. A progressive movement... that speaks to these desires in a genuine and spiritually deep way, could win the popular support it needs to create a world of peace, social justice, ecological sanity, and human rights.” Essentially what Lerner and other liberal Christian, Jewish and Interfaith groups are telling us is that if we want to stop the insanity that has taken over our country and threatens the world by destroying the balance of nature, threatening our basic rights to due process, privacy, and human dignity, and by diminishing our opportunities for education, health care, a living wage, strong and loving families, and reasonable security in the future, we need to stand together and speak from our deepest values.

If we want peace we must work for justice and we must do so by articulating our deepest moral values as the core of social change.

So what are our basic values?

Our Seven Principles remind us that we have agreed to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person; Justice equity and compassion in human relations; acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth; a free and responsible search for truth and meaning; the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process; the goal of world community with peace liberty and justice for all; and respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

What do our principles mean to us in terms of how we live our lives?

If we agree to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we are agreeing to treat everyone as we would wish to be treated. We are agreeing to recognize at some level that everyone has worth simply by being born and that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, even those we dislike or fear, which means we do not support torture, and we do work for justice, fairness and compassion in all human relations. It means that we treat each other with respect and caring whether we are at home, in the board room, on the highway, or in the halls of congress.

Working for justice, equity and compassion in human relations means that we seek to create a society that treats everyone fairly, a society that puts people and families first, before the “bottom line.” It means that we seek for everyone a living wage, a decent education, health care, a place to live, and the opportunity to form and sustain loving and caring relationships no matter what their orientation. It means we speak for those who have no voice, whether they are immigrants waiting on a street corner trying to get a job, children on welfare, or prisoners in Guantanamo. If we want peace we work for justice.

When we agree to accept one another and encourage spiritual growth, it means that we recognize that other people have a right to their religious values even when we do not understand them. It means that we do not denigrate other people’s beliefs. But it does not mean that we keep our own beliefs and values under a bushel, for our values also need to be heard; a responsible search for truth and meaning requires respectful dialogue and sharing of experience, both here in this room between ourselves, and in the larger community between denominations and faiths of the world. Some values are just too important to be left unspoken, especially when we see people around us being hurt or destroyed. Our belief in justice requires us to speak up for the principles we hold in our hearts..

Today the reality of one world community is rapidly approaching, and our sixth principle reminds us that we have covenanted to work to make that community one of peace, liberty and justice for all, in all its diversity. Fairness and justice do not stop at home or at our borders. Soon there will be no borders and if we want peace we must work for justice everywhere.

Our Seventh Principle tells us that we are an integral part of the matrix of the Universe just as all that surrounds us is an integral part of that same Universe and that everything that we do or don’t do has impact on the world we live in. Therefore, we walk gently on the earth, treating all of nature with respect and care. Justice does not apply to the human race alone. We are all related and what we do to other living things we do also to ourselves.

These are our values, as we have stated them in our Seven Principles. Rabbi Lerner has listed eight principles, which while stated in different language are remarkably like our own. He holds these values in the light: love, caring, kindness, generosity, compassion, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, our capacity to see other people as embodiments of the sacred and not just as useful to our own ends, our capacity to look at nature (the physical universe) with gratitude, awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of creation.

Lerner proposes that these values be used in assessing all walks of life, including the world of work, corporations, government policies, legislation and anything else which we tend to assess such as support communities, families, and individual endeavors. Success would be measured not only in terms of money or power, but to the degree love, caring, kindness, generosity, compassion, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and our capacity to see other people as embodiments of the sacred (that is to respect their worth and dignity), and our capacity to look at nature with gratitude, awe, and wonder are all encouraged. When we begin to hold these values more dear, or at least equal to money and power, we begin to draw a new bottom line. And we begin to change the world.

Blow now, on the coal of the heart. In the name of human dignity, for the sake of justice -- blow on the coal of the heart. . .

In us there burns a flame -- white hot, deep inside, which never dies. . .

Blow on the coal of the heart.