THE EMPEROR & THE SLAVE
A Reflection on Civil Marriages & Simple Justice

8 February 2004
James Ishmael Ford

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yates

In the last month or so I’ve had the privilege of meeting with Judy and Gayle, with Sue and Arlene and with Karen and Maryanne. Each of these meetings was about their upcoming weddings. Except for just one person who belongs to another faith community, I know all these people well. They are active members, several currently holding crucial leadership positions within our Society. I can’t adequately describe the range of emotions that washed over me during these encounters, how special and new and fragile this whole thing really is.

Of course I’ve done hundreds of weddings now. And I’ve developed some patter over the years, well worn phrases that tend to be useful. One is that even though you (the couple planning their wedding) probably have been living together for a while, and that you may well have said to each other, perhaps on more than one occasion “we’re already married and this ceremony is just for…”

Put in your favorite reason, mom’s seventieth birthday, you want an excuse for a holiday, it’s finally time, whatever; the simple truth is you’re wrong. After this ceremony, you’re married. Before, you’re not. My point is to underscore the significance of the vows, of that mysterious heart of a marriage where someone swears before the sacred that they will love and care for and cherish another for a lifetime. And it is given the weight of a civil contract, with more rights and obligations than you probably can list.

But even as my familiar language tumbled from my lips I could sense my words weren’t quite right. Here were people who had indeed said such things to each other before. But before now they lacked the means of making it legal. They weren’t just putting it off. These were people who until now were barred by law from a basic civil right. And, as everyone in this room knows, there is an immanent threat it will soon be snatched away. Today we need to talk about that.

When I first came up with the title for today’s sermon, “the Emperor and the slave,” I wanted to talk about Stoicism, the ancient philosophy I believe is in fact at the core of our most authentic western spiritual way. I had a great set-up. I was going to bring up that line Mark Belletini, one of my professors in seminary, said in summary of Buddhist teachings, “so grow up already;” and suggest how in Stoicism we have our own western approach to what that growing up might actually look like. However, today issues are pressing. Turns out we need to deal with that grown up spirituality concretely and intimately right now.

We’re caught up on the front lines of the culture wars. The half-time show at last Monday’s Super Bowl may come to mind. But, I suggest based upon what I’ve read and heard most commentators are actually pointing in the wrong direction. Some have correctly pointed out it really isn’t about an exposed breast on family television. Pretty much the whole evening was a travesty. Farting horses and crotch-biting dogs were all part of an orgy that someone observed would do Osama Bin Ladin proud. Much of what happened was disgraceful.

And have no doubt there are those who would throw the issues of so-called gay marriage together with the moral morass of Super Bowl excesses as ever more evidence of the moral decline of the nation. The specter of gay sex hangs heavy in the air. And for some commentators it flows together smoothly in a litany that includes child abuse and murder. Listen to someone from Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition, sometime.

Let me be clear here. Yes, there is a moral crisis in our nation. We are too self-indulgent. We are obsessed with immediate gratification. Increasingly we separate ourselves from one another. Life in our culture is too often reduced to bare contracts, lacking heart or care. I get this. You get that. Unless, of course, we can knock someone else down and snatch, what where they, the Frito Lay’s, first. We seem to be spinning out, ever farther from each other. The center doesn’t appear able to hold. Things are bad.

And people are stepping forward to offer us solutions. We have more potential ayatollahs in this country than can be counted in Iran and Iraq together. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and have no doubt there is a new generation typified by Franklin Graham, all telling us the seed of moral decay lies with our straying from the Fundamentalist faith of our fathers. They have a ready ear in the White House, and on our nation’s Supreme Court. They are helping to write legislation. And today, this very day, they’re whispering their solutions to all society’s ills, real and imagined, in the halls of our Commonwealth’s legislature. Dressed up fancy; but ultimately the same old blandishments. The devil’s bargain, give me the power and I’ll take care of the problem.

This is where we come in. I suggest the liberal religious way offers another perspective, one that desperately needs to be heard. I suggest the perspective of liberal religion is more truly a part of the deep intuition of what makes this nation than are those of the religious right, of those who would divide us one from another.

Our shared intuition as Unitarian Universalists that each individual is born into this world precious and unique, but at the same time woven entirely out of the world itself, that we are all children of the same mother, is not only true but profound in its consequence. What this intuition suggests is that while we all have our individual name, I am James, another is Anne, another Suzanne, and another Allan; at the same time we all have one family name. And that name is precious, is goodness, is love. There is something very important in this realization. This understanding provides a moral compass. If we pay attention to the twin truths of our uniqueness and our commonality, forgetting neither, we can almost always find the way through any moral dilemma.

Our spiritual path is called a way of salvation by character. That is we follow an educative spirituality. We know we can learn. We can be better than we were. That’s why the cornerstone of this Society is life-span religious education. Here we find the arc of our spiritual practices. We constantly inform our children and ourselves of the best ways to think clearly and how to be fully present. And at the very same time we seek the best information out of which to make decisions of import.

Of course like everything in the world of choice, this way itself has shadows. Our way inclines us to constantly find the other hand. I know I myself have more hands than Tevye. I always can see another side. While this is good, it also means I and we, sometimes delay, or hesitate, or equivocate, when there is a need for immediate action.

As William Butler Yates so eloquently wrote, here we are in danger being “the best (who) lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity. There is much passion out there. Fundamentalist Christian Ayatollahs, as well as many who think or at least say they’re speaking of traditional secular values but who have bought into those Fundamentalist pronouncements about what is what, are calling us to a great persecution. Nothing less.

Right now we have a small moment of justice manifesting. But there are those who would deny it, selling us lies about ourselves, about real people sitting in these pews. They are telling lies about us. There really are people trying to cause hurt in the name of good; who raise the specter of collapsing civilization, and say they know the cause, those people who are not like us, who do not share the family name.

They’re talking about our sons and daughters, our cousins, our beloved relatives. They’re talking about Gayle and Judy, about Sue and Arlene, about Karen and Maryanne. They’re talking about us. There are those who say granting some among us fundamental human rights, like the right to be married, will cause the collapse of what is good. They are lying. I’m sure they’re lying to themselves ever as much as they’re lying to us. But this just makes it more dangerous. Have no doubt it is a lie, a gigantic lie.

What they’re trying to do is to separate us one from another, goats and sheep. Once the goats are gone, I suppose the sheep will be ripe for sheering or slaughter, whatever. But it’s really a bad metaphor. The truth is we’re not goats and sheep. We are family. Each one of us in this room, we are family. And we are connected to everyone else, including mysteriously and wondrously, the would-be ayatollahs. That’s the difficulty and at the same time contains our possible way through. As they said in my childhood Fundamentalist church, hate the sin but love the sinner.

Let me tell you, in case you’re confused, homosexuality isn’t the sin. The sin is inhospitableness; the sin is cutting us off from one another. Every bit of filth at the Super Bowl is about that, cutting ourselves off. And access to civil weddings for gay couples is not. We need to notice here what is and what is not. And our way has shown the path through, compassion and responsibility, knowing our uniqueness and our mutuality.

Now the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has actually concurred in this view. And this has thrown the political scene into turmoil. Those Democrats who aspire to national office are desperately wishing this would just go away. And have no doubt this is going to be a major wedge issue in the presidential election. But the question for us in this room must be so what? The question must be with whom will we stand? The question must be what do we do at this moment of moral crisis?

So, amazingly, I find we are actually caught up in the questions I originally hoped to address. An ancient emperor and his teacher a slave pointed something of the way. Grow up, already. Pay attention to what is, and act with honor. Ask the questions. What does it mean to grow up spiritually? What does it mean to be informed by a moral philosophy, a religious view that says the individual is precious beyond naming, and births and lives and dies completely within the embrace of the world, each of us in the arms of one another?

Ask the questions, learn, and then act. Now this, my friends, is the time to act. It time to stand with Judy and Gayle, with Arlene and Sue, with Maryanne and Karen. That insert in your order of service shows how to contact your legislators. It also lists some rallies, one today, another on Tuesday. I implore you at least to make one phone call or to write one note saying in the name of the most precious truth, we stand with our sisters and brothers in their just claim for the right to civil marriage.

I’ll be going to these demonstrations today and on Tuesday. Perhaps you’d like to, as well. This is a matter of simple justice. And it is the way of the good and the holy, mysterious reality constantly unfolding, constantly revealing itself and our possibility. Yours, mine, ours. I thank God engaging this directly with our whole being, reflecting and acting, truly is our way.

Amen.