Building the Beloved Community: Telling Our Stories

February 5, 2012
Robin Bartlett Barraza
First Parish in Brookline
Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of quipping that the most segregated hour of the week was
Sunday morning at 11, and that Sunday schools were the most segregated schools in the country.
Decades after his death, decades after the civil rights movement ended in this country, decades
after desegregation in public schools in the South and decades after busing here in Boston, and
four years into the Obama era no less, this Sunday morning phenomenon remains just as true as
in the early 1960s. In fact, right around the time Obama was running for president, in 2008, a
Pew Forum report came out saying that just seven percent of this countrys churches are
considered racially integrated. SEVEN PERCENT.
In fact, one of Obamas biggest campaign hurdles -- do you remember this? -- was his church.
His segregated church. People used this famously influential, liberal Christian, unapologetically
black Chicago church of his to try and illustrate the ways in which Barack Obama was a black
separatist; someone not like us.
This notion of Obama as a black separatist as evidenced by his church was more than a little
unfair considering 93% of the population of church-going United States of America inhabits
separatist churches. The fact is, almost all of us who go to church, go to church with people we
perceive to be just like us.
This church separatism has created vastly different cultural ways of worshipdifferent ways of
worship that are deeply special and meaningful to the participantsincluding our own! And this
separatism and the socio-political reasons behind it have created vastly different theological
understandings of Gods word. And this separatism has affected our need for answers and
salvation and life after death.
And we remain so separate from one another on Sunday morning that we dont even know about
the differences in each others churches. Most of us havent been inside the mono-cultural church
of another ethnic group, or even another class. And this lack of knowledge of one another makes
a big difference.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obamas extremely influential and brilliant pastor and mentor and
liberation theologian, almost cost Obama the election -- so unfamiliar was white America with
the ways in which black America worships on Sunday morning. So unfamiliar was white
America with the liberation theology of Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse
Jackson. So unfamiliar was white America with the fiery preaching tradition of the black church
the tradition that interprets Gods word through the lens of the book of Exodus in the Hebrew

BibleGods command to Let my people go! And even liberal white religionists like we
Unitarian Universalists-- used to staid, tolerant, dont-make-waves churches afraid to take strong
stands on theological matters or, you know, clap or movewe were unfamiliar with this tradition
as well, so alien it is to our own. We are SO SEPARATE FROM ONE ANOTHER. We dont
even get one another.
And unfortunately for all of us, Unitarian Universalism has the added problem of being a
predominantly white denomination. In 2008, a survey completed by the Unitarian Universalist
Association determined that the percentage of people in our congregations who identified as
European American or white was 89 percent. The percentage of people who identified as white
in the U.S. census was 65.6 percent. In other words, our entire religious tradition as a whole falls
far short of reflecting the population of our country in diversity.
So I dont need to tell you that our church is classified as part of the 93 percent of American
churches that remain predominantly mono-cultural, though this church has made great strides to
change this fact. We are certainly not unique in the goal of wanting to more fully reflect the
world we dream about and stumbling on the hill we climb. We arent unique, my friends. We are
just human. We are just human and it isnt our fault that we were born into a broken world in
need of our constant tending and mending. And it isnt our fault that we dont always have the
energy and courage to tend and mend all the time. Its hard.
And there are many peoplepeople of all races and classes and cultures (and maybe some or all
of us if were being honest)--who think this mono-cultural church thing is not actually a problem
that needs fixingat least not by way of a culture change.
People come to church, after all, to be comforted. To find people who believe the same things,
and talk the same way, and worship the same way, and like the same music. People who have the
same level of education, who vote for the same guy, people who think the same thing about
politics; people who make us feel safe. And this is all powerfully needed, particularly for those of
us who have been traditionally marginalized.
And churches are keepers of traditions. Churches are perpetuators of mono-cultures by virtue of
being ancestral and traditional and ritualistic. So this isnt a bad desirethis desire to maintain a
culture. It is truly a human desire. It helps us feel organized. Safe. Part of an ancestry.
But. But but but. We have this higher calling. We do. We are called not only to maintain a
culture, but to shake a culture up; to counter-culture. We dont just come to church to fulfill our
every human desire for safety and comfort. We come to church primarily to risk transformation,
so that we might transform the world. And our ancestral theological tradition reminds us of that.
Our Unitarian tradition reminds us that we are here because we are created from the same source,
and that this source unites us in spiritual sibilinghood. Our Universalist tradition reminds us that
we are fated to the same destinationthat we return to love and that we cannot return without

one anothers help. We arent just keepers of culture; we are upholders of deeper theological
truths.
Thank God for those deeper theological truths because they offer us a way forward. And I want
to talk to you about a way forward because I want to suggest that while there are all kinds of
reasons for having a homogenized, people-like-us, comfortable church cultureand not all of
them are bad! -- I want to suggest that to maintain a culture that doesnt actively and
intentionally attempt to change to reflect the world we dream about is at best failing to live out
the churchs mission in the world.
At worst it is quite simply un-Godly. At worst, it is not what Jesus would do. At worst, it is not
living up to our higher Buddha nature. At worst, it is failing the human species.
The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. coined the term beloved community during the
civil rights movement to talk about this higher call for humanity. I hear this term thrown around
all the time in Unitarian Universalist circles. Its kind of a buzz phrase I got sick of after awhile,
actually, in that way that phrases lose their meaning if they are tossed around too much to mean
too many different things. I hear UU churches themselves described as beloved community a
lot -- that it should be our goal to create a beloved community here in church.
I want to suggest that this should not be our goal at all. I want to suggest that if this is our goal,
we dont fully get what this term beloved community means. So lets talk about what it means,
and then lets talk about what a churchs role might be in helping to realize it in the world.
Behind Kings conception of the beloved community lay his assumption that human existence is
social in nature. "The solidarity of the human family" is a phrase he frequently used to express
this idea. "We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality," he said in one of his addresses. This was a way of affirming that human beings are
dependent upon each other. Whatever a person is or possesses he owes to others who have
preceded him.
As King wrote: "Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally in the red." Recognition
of ones indebtedness to past generations should inhibit the sense of self-sufficiency and promote
awareness that personal growth cannot take place apart from meaningful relationships with other
persons.
Therefore, practicing the ethics of building beloved community means treating oneselfand
each and every person one meets -- as though they are precious and beloved, worthy of respect
and dignity, containers for God. If we treat people not just with polite distance but as though we
know how much each person we encounter mattersthat no matter how foreign, how
Republican, how rich, how poor, how different than us, each person matters and is beloved, we
will be practicing the ethic of beloved community. The ethic Jesus commanded us to follow
when he said to love your neighbor as yourself.

We can start practicing this ethic here and nowtoday. Thats the good news. We can practice
this here and now because every time two people are in the room, you have diversity, friends.
And we are going to practice the ethic of building beloved community immediately following
this worship service.
We are going to talk about the courage it takes to build beloved community in the world. We are
going to talk about your tender listening, your willingness to find yourself in others stories and
the humility it takes for you to allow yourself to be transformed by these stories. We are going to
talk about why this courage and humility and tenderness is already practicing the ethics of
building beloved community.
We are going to talk about the diversity already among us -- this beautiful fabric of diverse
human beings here in this room -- and about why each of us has a story to tell about who we are
that is capable of transforming who WE are. And were going to tell little snippets of those
stories. We are so lucky that we can start practicing now.
We are so lucky that we know that this battle is uphill because nothing worth doing isnt uphill.
We are so lucky that we have a theological tradition that informs us of this inescapable web of
mutuality that looks a lot like love, and that assures us of forgiveness when we fail (because we
will fail). We are so lucky to be part of a tradition that is livingthat can be transformed in the
interest of those who inhabit our churches now, and those who have not yet come through our
doors.
We are so lucky to be part of a tradition that allows us to change the liturgy to reflect who we
want to be and arent yet. We are so lucky to be part of a tradition that allows us to change the
music to reflect who we want to be and arent yet. We are so lucky to be part of a tradition that
allows us to change who stands in front of us; who tells us their stories. And yes, we are so lucky
that we have each other.
But if we are only practicing this ethic here at church, we are missing the point. The churchs end
goal cannot be simply to build beloved community within these walls. No. The church must be a
microcosm of the outside world itself. A microcosm that reflects the diversity of the human
species. And it must be a microcosm not so we can all hang out in Utopia on Sunday mornings.
Our churches must reflect the world we live in so that we mightas effectively as humanly
possible -- practice the ethics of beloved community here for use OUTSIDE THESE WALLS.
For use in the grocery store. For use in the picket lines. For use in the strawberry fields and the
libraries and the schools and the town hall meetings and the voting booths and the urban ghettos
and for use in the public discourse and for use on the highway and for use in the hospitals and
workplaces and subways and for use in our travel to countries were we dont speak the language.
For use in our families. For use in our government; God we pray.

We are here to practicenot to hide. We are here to re-imagine ourselves as saints ready to bless
the world -- not to be saints ready to bless only one another.
Our church should reflect the world we dream about. The world needs us to practice. Dear God,
may Sunday morning become the place where your beloved community is represented, ready to
do your work of love in the world. Amen.