Liberation Stories: Freedom at the Heart of Faith

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, April 1, 2007

I stand before you as a woman in a traditional male profession. In some parts of the country and within some religious traditions, I am still called a "Woman Minister". I don’t know a man anywhere who is called a "Man Minister".

I stand before you as a university educated person, earning enough, along with my husband, to put four kids through college. I come from a working class family, and many of my family still live from paycheck to paycheck.

I stand before you as a person committed to changing the world- changing the social structure, changing the economic structure, changing the structures of oppression and violence upon which our country casts its lot.

I stand before you as a woman who has raised four children in a non-traditional marriage, and a non-traditional religion, with non-traditional family values.

It might not surprise you to know that I have liberation stories to tell.

I think we all have liberation stories to tell. My thesis this morning is that liberation stories are at the heart of all faith traditions…and at the heart of all of our lives.

Keeping silence about these profound and transformative stories, causes despair, denial, hardening of hearts, and numbing of body and spirit.

Keeping silence about when and how we were liberated, or how we are working toward liberation…keeping silence makes us think we are alone, we are the only ones. Keeping silence keeps us ashamed, envious, angry. Keeping silence separates us from new beginnings, new possibilities.

We all have liberation stories to tell.

I remember a story about a young man, just out of college. He was raised in a conservative Christian atmosphere. He had just told his parents that he was gay. They were concerned, but supportive. But his church was sure to have a different response, there was no way he could come out and remain in the embrace of his beloved religious community.

One day he was walking in a large metropolitan city, when he passed a church that had a huge rainbow banner hanging above the door. The banner had these words written across; “We are a Welcoming Congregation”…he returned to that congregation Sunday after Sunday, and his joy was boundless, he was found…he was accepted, he was home!

We all have liberation stories to tell.

I knew a man, he was Jewish. His grandfather had fled Nazi Germany, his father had been pursued by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee of the McCarthy era in the 1950s, he had never been part of organized religion. But there was small Unitarian church on the edge of a poverty stricken urban neighborhood, this Humanist church was relentless in its work for justice for all. The patron saint of this UU church was Paul Robeson, an African American singer and actor and speaker who was blacklisted as a Communist . The children of this church knew more of Robeson and Thomas Paine, than they knew of Emerson and Thoreau.

We all have liberation stories to tell.

I knew of a woman who was in a bad marriage. Her husband was often violent and abusive to her. She was raised in a faith tradition that was critical of divorce. After her divorce, she stopped taking her children to her parish church. A few years later, when she wanted to remarry, she found her way to a Unitarian minister, who was happy to officiate and celebrate her new marriage covenant. She began to bring her children to that church and they became an active family for many years.

Liberation stories depend on truth-telling, on facing harsh realities, on grieving the death of something in our lives, on confronting limitations and overcoming barriers.

I asked George Leonard to share his story of liberation. He took my request quite literally. He was among the American troops who liberated Mauthausen Concentration Camp in May 1945 in Austria. The SS were fleeing, and the Combat Command B of Patton’s 11th armored Div. Entered with one tank and on foot.

George (the Company Runner) was up on the tank alongside Captain Kirkebo.

"The gates had been forced open. Chaos, confusion, anarchy, screams, sign of carnage and bad stenches…humans ailing from starvation and beatings staggered about. Those in better health cheered at seeing us, but many continued in inter-group quarrels. Russian prisoners of war tried to dominate. Several prisoners died in view of us and many kept on dying every day.

The captain ordered by radio for additional medical and kitchen units. Squads of men went out to bring back prisoners who had wandered away. The soldiers and able bodied civilians dug mass graves.

I was sent to find a billet for the captain for the night and came across a house with five women, one a teenager …who had fled the camp. One of the women had sworn to keep the young girl alive, throughout the ordeal, no matter what. We put a sign on this house and ordered that food be sent twice a day.

Six weeks later, we were all moved by the sight of the Russian prisoners marching down the hill to trucks taking them to repatriation…as they marched they sang the Marseillaise.”

Blessed are those who mourn. No liberation is experienced without weeping and moaning. No true liberation occurs without deep grief.

Today liberation stories are being written in Iraq and Afganistan, in Abu Grabe, along the border of Mexico and Texas, in hospitals where wounded troops are putting their lives back together…in places where women are finding their public voices for the first time…within the transgender community where people are coming out about their true identity…and in all the places in this country where racial and cultural prejudice is being challenged and challenged and challenged again.

Blessed are those who mourn and who cry out against injustice!

Liberal religion is fundamentally change-oriented. The liberal church is called to be counter-cultural…we are called to be change-agents…in our places of work, in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our souls.

We are called to a prophetic ministry that requires us to become an alternative community. To stand over against the dominant culture. We must be self-critical as a religious movement, as a congregation- to be sure that we remain on the edges of the dominant culture so that we can engage in prophetic ministry. We must tell and retell our liberation stories.

We must extend and extend justice.

We come to our prophetic call through the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Judeo-Christian story is a liberation story in two parts. The first part is the story of Exodus…the story told at this season of Passover.

The Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt over 3000 yrs ago. They were under the rule of the Pharaoh. It was the reluctant, but prophetic leadership of Moses that led the Hebrews out of slavery. “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell ol Pharaoh, Let my people go.”

Moses led in the creation of an alternative community…that existed as Israel for over 250 years. The rule of the Pharaohs was a rule of triumphalism And the politics of oppression and exploitation. The gods of Egypt were immovable lords of order. In Egypt there were no revolutions, no breaks for freedom. There were only the necessary political and economic arrangements to provide order as defined by the pharaoh. The religion of Egypt served and supported the interests of the people in charge. Kings prospered.

Moses introduced a new God and a new politics of justice. He did it by evoking the liberation story…by creating a space for weeping and grieving the injustice of slavery. He did it by calling on the God who does not stand on the side of the Kings. He did it by offering his people the possibility of a new reality…the reality of freedom.

Liberal religion is needed to challenge the pharaohs of today. To challenge the prevailing order that relies on fear. To create an alternative to a social order that supports the haves and those in power. Liberal religion is needed to name the oppressions that still hold groups of people in slavery…to name the oppressions that hold all of us in slavery.

Walter Brueggemann suggests that the biggest lie, the most powerful dominating influence is the idea…the perception, that things cannot change…that the oppressions and inequalities of today will always be. He defines prophetic ministry largely in terms of perception and alternative visions. After mourning, after weeping…comes something new…something different…a beginning.

Prophetic ministry offers a vision of a new order…a new way, a new community.

Exodus itself has become the metaphor of the new community. At the end of the Passover Seder, we say ….next year in Jerusalem.

This doesn’t mean a return to the past. This doesn’t mean the community that once was…no, it means a new Jerusalem….a new way of being in community. A way of right and equal relationship. A way that gives to each according to his need. A way that puts children first. A way the offers liberation to all and to each.

This past week Deborah and I attended a workshop for UU ministers and DRE’s at Cedar Lane. The presenter was, Paula Cole Jones, a wonderful woman who grew up in the All Souls church…in the years when it lived as an alternative community.

We were considering issues of liberation and assessing where our churches are on a continuum toward transformation ….toward alternative community. How are we doing in standing against the dominant culture?

We looked at three issues, the welcoming of gays and lesbians and transgendered people in our congregations, the marriage equality issue, and the anti-racism/multi-cultural issue. We were given three post-its, each a different color, we were asked to write the name of our congregation on each one. Each color of post-it represented one of the three issue areas…on the wall there was a long piece of paper representing a continuum from status quo to transformation….there were six or eight places along the continuum including adapting, re-tooling, re-visioning,- we each put our post-it where we thought our congregation was on the spectrum for each issue.

Then we stepped back to see where the colors clustered. There were 40 or so religious professionals participated ….so there were over one hundred post-its…the purple ones…for welcoming congregation were the furthest along toward transformation and the anti-racism/multiculturalism were much closer to the status quo side.

Our facilitator emphasized that it was not so much where each individual congregation was, but the trends represented. It was clear that as a movement we have done well on being welcoming congregations…we have not done so well on anti-racism/multi-culturalism.

Each post-it represented a liberation story within a congregation. And clearly our anti-racism story is un-finished.

The UU congregations within the Baltimore/Washington region have a tremendous opportunity to affect the spectrum of our UU movement. We are located in an area of the country that is diverse is so many ways. Much of the success of A.Powell Davies ministry had to do with location. And as our region grows ever more diverse…even in the suburbs of Rockville, Gatithersburgh and Germantown, we have tremendous opportunities to create new liberation stories. We have tremendous opportunities to create prophetic communities, places where liberation stories can be told and heard…congregations where freedom of thought and belief and diversities of all kinds are at the core of who we are.

Today is Palm Sunday in the Christian calendar…another liberation story was told as Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey….as people lined the streets to welcome one who preached against the status quo, and offered parables and symbols of transformation.

May we never be a mainstream religion, may we never be a religion of status and empire…may we always be holding ourselves accountable to a vision of liberating inclusion.

May our own stories of liberation and exodus and time in the wilderness…be shared and give us the strength and promise of new beginnings. May we here at UUCR, create, out of our grief and truth-telling, with passion and compassion…a prophetic ministry…a ministry that transforms lives.

Amen/Blessed Be/Shalom