This sermon is an extension of his recent keynote titled Prophetic Purpose for the annual meeting of the Central Midwest District of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Agenda Setters is a democratic strategy designed to mobilize people throughout the United States to participate in creating laws. An internet town hall forum will feature applicants’ ideas, which will be voted on by residents in their Congressional districts. The top proposals will be featured in the national television series Agenda Setters.

It’s like American Idol but for democracy!

Each episode will feature the top ten ideas in a related area, such as education or justice. Just like in a television game show, people throughout the country will elect the winners. This will give a platform to the next generation of national agenda setters and their elected officials the political capital to turn their ideas into law.

Special thanks to Jai Rice for converting the PowerPoint presentation into the movie file.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States. Professor Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University calls him “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation.” In 2010, Tim was named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader. Tim has spoken in all 50 states of the U.S., on over 800 college and high school campuses, and to community groups across the nation, including last year at General Assembly of Unitarian Universalists. Tim has also lectured internationally in Canada and Bermuda on issues of comparative racism, race and education, racism and religion, and racism in the labor market.

He spoke at the First Unitarian Church on May 6, 2012 as part of the 200th Birthday of Dr. Martin R. Delany. Martin R. Delany lived an extraordinarily life as a social activist and reformer, black nationalist, abolitionist, physician, reporter and editor, explorer, jurist, realtor, politician, publisher, educator, army officer, ethnographer, novelist, and political and legal theorist.

Born on May 6, 1812, free, in the slave state of Virginia, Martin Delany’s response to white supremacy was to create an Africanist vision of Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. A pivotal person of the mid-nineteenth century, he is not well known today. He published Mystery, one of the first African-American newspapers, in Pittsburgh in 1843, and co-edited North Star with Frederick Douglass in 1847. He attended Harvard Medical School in 1850, but was expelled by Oliver Wendell Holmes, then president of Harvard, in response to white student’s refusal to attend class with a “colored.” Delany organized a number of “emigration” conventions to organize a “back to Africa” movement in the United States and Canada in1850’s. He did not just talk about emigration, in 1959 he led an expedition to the Niger Valley, where he negotiated a treaty with the kings of the Yoruba for African-Americans to emigrate. His novel, Blake or the Huts of America, published as a serial in The Anglo-African Magazine in 1859 is one of the first presentations of an African American hero in literature and perhaps the first novel by an African American male. Delany became a recruiter for the Union Army in1863 and after meeting with President Lincoln was appointed the first African American officer, a Major, in the Union Army in1865. He worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina during Reconstruction and then stayed in Charleston, South Carolina until 1884. During this period he became involved in Charleston real estate and politics, becoming a judge in 1875. Martin R. Delany died in Wilberforce, Ohio on January 24, 1885.

“We, as one strong body, are required to lead by being. When we feel the impulse to be the interrogator we must choose to be the generator of visions larger than ourselves. When we feel the impulse to be enraged we must accept the invitation to be empathetic and no longer make people the object of our aggression. When we feel the impulse to be furious we must be curious. When we feel the impulse to be righteous we must transform our soapbox into a music box. Let us dare to be powerfully playful.”

“What does justice-making look like, feel like, when we receive hostile communication? Are we hostile in return? Or is something else required of us? What we choose to do is a reflection of who we believe ourselves to be. It all depends on our beliefs about power. I once believed it to be powerful to condemn wrongdoers. I believed it right to tear down another’s unexamined assumptions and vaporize those whose presence was not worthy of my attention. I believed that others were the cause of my aggression: others were to blame for my feelings of despair, disappointment and righteousness indignation. Rather than anger being used as a signal it became the solution to all my problems. I felt good to fuel the addiction of righteousness. I was doing justice. I was doing justice. But! I was being an asshole. I am merely five years into my ministry and have long since mastered the art of being an asshole. I have spent far too much energy using the public forum as a battlefield, annihilating those perceived to be my enemy. I have armed myself with faithful friends, so that each time we walked into a room, those present would shade their gaze and whisper in dread, ‘The UUs have arrived.’ I used to believe that being feared was powerful. I used to believe it was my duty to free the oppressed, but when reacting with righteous anger, guess who became the oppressor? Thich Nhat Hahn says, “I came to set the prisoner free only to realize the prisoner was me.”

“We, as seekers of freedom, are required to make justice not simply a product but a process: just actions are the means by which to achieve a justice society. When we observe oppression let us develop strategies that free not only the oppressed but also the oppressor. Those who use their power to deny freedom to others are also imprisoned and are also worthy of care. Do not let their unjust actions inspire us to justify employing cruel means, or else we’ll soon become what we set out against. The challenge is this: take up the miseducation of justice making by stripping your conscience of images of equity that claim to manifest through condemnation, through humiliation, through shame and blame and righteousness indignation. No. The craft of justice making begins by marrying a just thought with a just action, inspiring us to collective action: daring to free both the oppressed and the oppressor, for which know what it’s been like to be both. Don’t get me wrong, stand we must; stand strong and bold, but rather than shoving our foot on the oppressor’s neck let us instead reach out a hand, and show them, and even ourselves, a new way of leading by being. I do not know what this new way looks like, yet. But hopefully together we can figure it out.”

The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia: www.PhilaUU.org

Click to watch: http://youtu.be/OneRqB1LJy4

“We are saved when we stop giving new answers to old questions,” says Reverend Nate Walker of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. “The question is not ‘what happens when we die,” but ‘what happens when we kill?’” In this bold and provocative sermon, Reverend Nate calls Unitarian Universalism to be a truly progressive and prophetic faith by saving us from participating in systems of oppression and violence. Full text at: http://bit.ly/aSavingFaith

Click here to watch: http://youtu.be/x25aGvrkgGU

Click here to watch the video or press play below.

Click here to read full text with footnotes.

~ Reverend Nate is indebted to the insightful comments of those who responded to my request for feedback: Natalie Aydin, Reverend Paul Beedle, Justine Blau, Jeff Frankl, Ed Greenlee, Reverend Alex Holt, Eric Isaacson, Dan Johnson, Stephen Kramer, Linda Lord, Kate Luhr, Anne Slater, Mary Stomquist, and Dan Widyono.

Click here to read or press the play button below to listen or click here for the YouTube video.

Tripping over one another three grieving clowns stumbled up the hillside.

The first clown wailed and bemoaned and used his glistening trophies to collect his tears. “Look at my pain,” he’d cry. “I’ve earned so many trophies of tears.” He blubbered, “I’m the King of Despair.” The trophies hung from the bar that spread over the back of his neck, as if he was a nineteenth century farm boy delivering milk. Every once in a while he’d clumsily fall and the tears would spill from the trophies. In those moments, he would verbosely lament, “My trophies, my trophies must hold more tears: proof of my pain!”

The second clown, a ballerina, stoically faced the horizon. Not even the warm light reflecting off the amber clouds could reveal her invisible tears. The inconspicuous water could not be seen running down her cheek, nor down the lacy ruffles; by the time they reached her ankle the tears began to collect in her pointe shoes made of glass. Even though trying to appear weightless, the legs of the ballerina clown moved like stilts. The only sign of her grief was found in her pristine slippers that were overflowing with salty water, leaving a trail of tears.

The third clown, with many colorful orbs hovering around her, had the deepest of frowns. As a tear would fall down her cheek she’d catch it with her tongue and blow the tear into the air while making a wish. The tear would transform into an expansive luminescent sphere. It floated among the others while memories of her delightful past danced within each orb. These images tickled her frown. Soon enough her grin lifted each side of her lips while her eyes gleamed with the joy of remembering.

What’s the moral of this story?

The first clown with trophies of tears mistook his pain for pride and therefore collected his pain as if mourning was a prize worthy of boasting.

The second clown with invisible tears mistook her grief for stoicism and therefore denied her sorrow as if bereavement was an errand and not an art form.

The third clown, however, knew her true nature: she was a clown – clowns have the innate gift of transforming sorrow into silliness, the past into the present, and mourning into memories.

What kind of clown are you?

For more information about the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia visit www.PhilaUU.org.