One of the good things about being the minister of a Unitarian congregation is that you don't always have to lead. I like leading and do it fairly well, but sometimes the best way to lead is to follow those who are ahead of you. This morning I am going to do just that.
Unlike in many other religions, the only thing that distinguishes a Unitarian minister from a Unitarian congregant is that you pay me for what both of us are supposed to do. One of my teachers at Harvard, a brilliant and very lovely fellow, James Luther Adams, described our fellowship as the priesthood and prophethood of all believers. What you feel, think and do is no less important than what I feel, think and do. We are in this together. Part of my job is to respond to your leadership, to respond by inviting others here to follow you down the path you have already taken, so long as I believe it to be the right path. Fifty members of this congregation, following a path called the Journey toward Wholeness, have gathered to challenge us to respond to racism in our society, even in our midst. This morning, I invite you to join me in following them.
I don't think of myself as a racist -- in fact I am quite sure that I am not a racist -- but I am certainly prejudiced. All of us are prejudiced. It is important to recognize this. We are almost always spontaneously more comfortable, more easy and natural in the company of those who look like us or who think like us. Even if they don't recognize it, to one extent or another, men are prejudiced against women. Russians against Americans. Straights against Gays. Republicans against Democrats. Jews against Catholics. Whites against Blacks. Reverse each of these and the point still holds. Not always strongly. Many of us have learned that to walk across a bridge leads to the discovery of a new shore. If I have learned anything during the course of my life, it is that we are far more alike one another than we are different. Since superficial differences occlude this, bridge crossing almost always leads to enlightenment.
To put our differences in perspective, consider this. This is very cool. By the latest reckoning there are 200 billion stars in our galaxy. Think about this. 200 billion. That means that everyone alive right now on this planet, all seven billion of us, has at least 25 personal stars. That is only when we count the stars in our own little galaxy. There are 100 billion galaxies. So we each have 2.5 trillion personal stars, only counting the stars in this universe. Who knows, there may be another one.
Since the star to person ratio is 2.5 trillion to one, nothing that distinguishes us from one another on this tiny planet, race, color, religion, money, gender, sexual preference, age, comes even close to obliterating the fact that, placed in a cosmic perspective, we are far more alike in our ignorance, smallness and mortality that we differ from one another in any discernible way. Even if men are from Mars and women from Venus, both are voyagers in the same tiny solar system. As for color. Please. We are far more alike one another than apples are like oranges. And apples are more like oranges than you can possibly imagine.
By the way, if you want to explain how your Universalist theology differs from many others, start here. We are far more alike one another in our cosmic ignorance than we differ from one another in our cosmic knowledge. Most faiths stress the differences between us, citing holy books, quoting holy saviors. Our faith stresses communality. We are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of life and death, all children of one completely mysterious God.
Which makes it all the more tragic that we cause one another such pain on account of our differences. I am White and whatever the opposite of an athlete is. Does that make me want to kill Blacks and athletes? Given the events of the last week, this is not an irrelevant question. And since racism is the most common and poisonous scourge that divides us, there is absolutely nothing we could do in this church more important than to raise this very uncomfortable topic. Again, in preaching about race in the city this morning, I am not leading but following. Following and inviting the rest of you to follow those in our congregation who have taken the lead here.
To be fair, this is not a racist congregation. We may be prejudiced - how can we help it - but I have almost never encountered bigotry in this church. Bigotry is the celebration of prejudice. We don't tend to do that. We only ignore it.
To ignore something bad is better than to celebrate something bad, but only as a matter of kind, not as a matter of degree. Only five per cent of this congregation are people of color. And many people of color who worship with us have not officially joined the congregation. Before I get to the meat of this sermon, before I challenge the rest of you, let me challenge those of you who may fall into this category to risk joining us. We will never be perfect, in any way, but we will be a better, more representative congregation, if we look a little more like our ever expanding neighborhood.
Let me make this very simple, because in fact it is. If the five or ten Blacks who attend worship occasionally but have not joined each dared to join us and then further dared to invite five or ten of their friends to this church, in less than a year we would be a truly inter-racial congregation. And then their friends would be comfortable inviting other friends. It's about that simple.
For years, as we developed our many programs in East Harlem, I thought this would happen naturally, as if by osmosis. I was wrong. Even at All Souls Sunday Morning is the most segregated time of the week in this city. We want to do something about that, but we can't even begin until a few brave people of color in this congregation take action to make a difference that, however well intentioned we may be, none of the rest of us can make.
On the other hand, the rest of us can do far more than we have to make this a truly welcoming congregation. I think we have done that for the homosexuals here. If you are Gay and at All Souls, my guess is that you feel far more welcome than if you were Gay and worshiping in many other congregations in this city. But I have to admit, part of the reason for this is that Gay White people look far more like White straight people, than Black people look like White people.
By the way, White people are not White. Most of us are beige. The word black may have bad psychological connotations, but in its own way beige is no better. I think of the frigid woman making love. She stares at the ceiling and thinks beige. "I'll paint the ceiling beige."
Of all the crayons in a very large box, beige is by far the least interesting. Most of us can't do anything about our color, but if this congregation is going to become more interesting, I can promise you that a little less beige would go a long way to make it so.
But even if we fail here, which to one extent or another we surely will, how can we address, as we must, the crisis of racism in this city? The Diallo murder is for many a litmus test. Forty one bullets shot at and nineteen hitting an innocent man. This is the most brutal thing that has happened in our city in a long while.
As shaken as I was, shortly after this happened, with no penalty other than the purchase of a bit of liberal glory, when I was offered the opportunity to join many of my friends in the clergy to protest and get arrested, I turned the invitation down. Let me tell you why.
I couldn't help but think of, say, forty one other Blacks who were not killed, each by a single bullet, because, in large measure, a more vigilant police force has cut the murder rate by more than 60 per cent over the past six years. Most of those who are alive today because of this are Black and Hispanic. And our mayor, an easy target because of his occasional insensitivity, is in large measure responsible for this. Another fact that almost no one in this city is aware of. Police shootings of civilians has dropped more than fifty per cent during the same period.
Here is my fear. We respond to racism and reign in the police. And we have to do this. Even as poorer neighborhoods are becoming safer, their residents are more often harassed. For years we celebrated the former accomplishment. Diallo's murder brings the latter reality to the forefront of our consciousness.
My fear is that we will curb the police - not police harassment which must be curbed, but also police vigilance -- and that crime rates will rise. When they do, one of two things will happen. Either we will ignore this, as we did for so many years, especially those of us who live in safe neighborhoods. Or someone who makes Giulianni look like a cream puff will emerge on the scene to save us and we will bite.
` Somehow we have to leverage our understandable outrage about Diallo's murder and our sensitivity to the impact an unleashed force has on human rights in our poorer neighborhood, with a deep appreciation for what the police have done, and the many ways in which they have risked their lives, to make New York the safest large city in this country.
Given the public players and their personalities, this is far more easily said than done. Mayor Giuliani, a really quite fine statesman, is one of the worst politicians I have ever witnessed. Half of me applauds him for this. He says what he thinks, regardless of the consequences. This is rare in American politics. Rudolph Giuliani is an equal opportunity offender. Even his best friends don't get off the hook. And apart from his bedside manner, he has been an excellent mayor. I have lived in New York for twenty-one years. During the first fifteen the city got worse every year. Anyone who doesn't give the mayor credit for turning this city around is not paying attention.
On the other hand, his brusque manner feeds perhaps the greatest dilemma we face as a society, the dilemma of racism. I know he doesn't mean to. When I first met him, I told him I agreed with many of his ideas but couldn't support him for mayor against David Dinkins due to my fear of a racist backlash. In response, he came to my office, shared his own concerns about this and asked me to help him build bridges. In a few tiny ways I did, and through the process got to know him better, well enough to know that he is color blind, which turns out to be as bad a thing as it is good. If we are to address the problems of racism in this country, we can't be color blind.
The other thing our mayor has to learn, and he could learn this from his nemesis Al Sharpton - in fact both of them could learn it from one another -- is that seventy-five per cent of what we communicate is though tone of voice and body language, not words.
Let me give you an example. I ask my son Nathan to clean his room. In print, without any evidence of tone or body language, here are the words we exchange.
"Nathan, please clean up your room."
"Fine. I will."
Nothing about this exchange is anything other than congenial, right?
Wrong. For here is how the encounter actually goes.
"Nathan! Please clean up your room!"
"Fine! I will!"
Yesterday, when five hundred police officers came out in support of the cops who shot Diallo, not surprisingly Al Sharpton showed up. Here is one press account.
"Tawana! Tawana! Tawana!" the cops jeered at Sharpton, who stood waving his arm to egg them on in the bizarre, street-corner face off.
"Freddy's,! Freddy's! Freddy's!" the cops taunted. Then "Pay your taxes! Pay your taxes! Pay your taxes!"
Do you see what is wrong with this picture? Everything. Everything is wrong. Disagreement, which we have to allow, is magnified into hatred. Sharpton feeds it. The jeering cops feed it. Even the mayor, and we too, unintentionally feed it, when we lose our ability to stand in another's shoes.
To stand in another's shoes. If you want to do something here to abate racism, that is my suggestion. Try those shoes out. Feel them pinch. Imagine how you would feel if a cab passed you by or a cop frisked you for no apparent reason other than the fact that you are Black. See your tears in another person's eyes. Cash in one of your twenty-five stars. It will be worth it. You will get it back. After all, when we die, we still each have twenty-five stars. Before you die, wish on at least one of them. In fact, wish on all of them. On yours. On theirs. Wish on as many stars as you can. And then act on your wishes. If you do, our dreams will begin to come true.
So I thank the members of this congregation who art leading me on a Journey Toward Wholeness. I also thank Jan, Dick, Gordon and Galen, who have taken the ministerial lead here. Through your efforts this church cannot help but be a better place. How much better is for the rest of us to accomplish and ensure.