I had an experience awhile ago that reminded me of how different it can be in a religious community than in the larger culture. Chris and I had gone to a big wedding. The perfectly nice couple had invited people from across the whole spectrum of their lives—family, friends, colleagues from work, community groups, schools. It was an interesting gathering, not an especially fancy social event, the kind where we usually enjoy meeting other people, having interesting conversations.

However, despite our repeated efforts, as we circulated we found that our exchange with most people really didn’t go anywhere; it was actually kind of difficult to sustain even mildly pleasant social conversation. We noticed that many people were just standing around, not really making connections either. Later I realized that despite all the grown up clothes, hair and make up, what this wedding reception reminded me of most was a high school dance where everyone just stood around looking at each other across the loneliness of their own innermost social misery and boredom.

Chris and I agreed later, that wedding experience was very different from most of our other social experiences. Most of the time we’re friendly and people are friendly, engaged, or at least pleasant in return. But we also realized that a majority of our experiences take place in congregations or faith based groups—or we’re invited to parties and celebrations by friends we met long ago through church. That wedding was a reminder of how different the climate is in here from out there—or at least how I hope it’s different. The loneliness and disconnection of that wedding experience contrasted markedly with the real presence and deep connection I often feel with people from church.

The philosopher Josiah Royce pointed this out when he wrote about “Beloved Community”. Royce wrote: “Since the office of religion is to aim towards the creation on earth of the Beloved Community, the future task of religion is the task of inventing and applying arts which shall win all over to unity, and which shall overcome their original hatefulness by the gracious love, not of mere individuals but of communities.” In other words, religion he said, had to be about the business of transforming our hearts, minds, and lives from cold, aching places into loving, generous, gracious places. Life can be nasty, brutish and short—but it doesn’t have to be. We can change our behavior and change the world around us. And this work, this practice isn’t just for individuals, it’s also for whole communities.

Royce’s ideas were inspired by the written accounts from the early Christian intentional communities. These small communities had been formed in contrast to the world of the Ancient Near East. The majority of Jewish men and women who lived then under Roman occupation had little social value and few political rights. In contrast, we know from written accounts, in their intentional communities, all were equals. The distinction between slave and master, Jew and Greek, male and female didn’t apply; no social distinctions or divisions held sway among them. This was in sharp contrast with the larger culture that was strictly hierarchical and divided. But in the first Christian communities, property was held in common; people of different classes, genders, and occupations ate together, studied together, and spoke freely with one another, and they shared religious rituals together.

In doing this, they were putting into practice what Jesus had taught. In his brief public ministry he had said over and over, “the Kingdom of God is within you; the Kingdom is already among you.” Heaven is not in some far off future; heaven is now; it’s present in how you treat one another. The early Christians were putting his teaching into practice; they were seeking to live so that the kingdom could be present among them on earth.

This idea has come down into Unitarian Universalist religious tradition directly from Christianity. We teach our kids that heaven isn’t a place in the sky and hell isn’t a place in the ground; heaven and hell are states of mind and heart and how we choose to act creates heaven and hell in our community. Unitarian Universalists often speak of Beloved Community.

The longing for beloved community of course isn’t something that ended in the first century of the common era or is now only known to UU’s. Starhawk, a leader of contemporary feminist, progressive communities that organize for social change writes, “Community. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins with our strength to do work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.” Her experience comes out of communities of resistance that acted for social change, but she also speaks to a longing that we each have to be known, respected and valued.

Starhawk knows what every other participant in intentional community has known from ancient times: when it works it feels great at very deep levels of your whole being. And getting intentional religious community to work is hard work. It asks us to be open to one another at levels that go much farther than social politeness. Religious community asks us to be both rigorously honest, and kind at the same time.

The modern Christian writer, Megan McKenna says that we begin by “being honest and taking responsibility for our behavior, our actions, our failures, and our lack of tolerance for others. Asking forgiveness is good, but taking responsibility and then…doing restitution for the harm we have done, is the more crucial. Stop blaming others and start a practice of never reacting, but learning to stop, to reflect, and then to respond to others as human beings, as all children of the same family in the same house.

“Honor the prophets, the truth-tellers, and refuse to take as “truth” what immediately serves your own ends, your agenda, and your existing biases and desires. In fact, be reluctant to only listen to those who agree with you and back you up. And never ever use the words of Jesus or the Scriptures against anyone — we are only allowed to use them on ourselves, calling us to a deeper practice of our religion.”

In our religious community we have spoken and listened together in small groups. We discovered that our deepest collective values are love, justice, freedom, reason, truth, compassion, respect, openness, diversity and an active tolerance that goes far beyond mere politeness. When it works, our life together in this religious community helps us hone these qualities until they shine and become strong within us and among us. What makes it work however isn’t niceness; it’s doing the hard work of love by means of truth telling and accountability. And this means dealing with conflict.

Tom Owen Towle says that we need to learn to argue more effectively in our UU religious communities. He says that right relationships are fostered when people learn to embrace “conflict as inevitable, even desirable. Every viable organization—and a church is no exception—both yearns for stability and pushes for achievement…change causes anxiety, and anxiety precipitates conflict. But conflict is not only unavoidable, it’s beneficial. Hearty turmoil elicits new ideas and understandings. It’s the fire in which a vibrant parish is tempered. As one person said to an adversary in a church fight, ‘Thank you for being such a pain. You’ve come to me as a teacher.’”

He goes on to say that a lack of visible conflict is often only a sign that conflict is being swept under the rug or stored in closets. Healthy congregations, he says, help members learn to manage conflicts and “fight fairly, not cruelly; for impact, not injury.”

People with longing for real community see deeply and far. But how do we get from yearning for connection to the real promised land of living in right relationship, in beloved community? Owen Towle points out that one important way is by traveling with respect, which literally means, “to look again.” Buddhists talk about “seeing with unfurnished eyes”—eyes that are empty of prearranged patterns and designs. When we see with respect we see things and people as they are, not as we suppose or assume or imagine or want them to be. Respect helps us start with what really is, with what and how we really are, with what and how others really are. Respect helps us see the gaps in our community’s practices without judging; respect helps us notice and name what’s really going on so we can take the action that’s needed to help our shared life become the way we agree it should be.

Sometimes though we find ourselves trying to glide past a sticking point, the speed bumps that come up when we discover that what we had expected isn’t happening, that we’re not in accord with what we had a shared, intentional agreement about. I suspect we do this thinking that it’s just easier to let it go, that doing so is even sometimes a kindness. While it may be easier in the short run, letting things slide is not kind; it’s actually disrespectful to both the other and the larger community.

Sometimes when we do this it’s because we have a hidden assumption that the other person is weak and incapable of succeeding. And instead of asking if this is true, instead of asking how we can help the other succeed at the original agreement we let things pass without comment. Yet at other times when we do this it’s because we fear that the other will become angry and hurt or shame us. We’d rather crush ourselves into a corner than face being diminished or humiliated—especially publicly. So shame can be a powerful way of keeping people and organizations in order, even when we’re unconscious about doing this. But we can best deal with shame by calling it out into the open; it tends to deflate or dissolve in sunlight and fresh air.

Real respect helps us hold ourselves and one another accountable, because when we look again beyond our habitual assumptions we might see not just weakness and brokenness, but also strength and health. When we call on strength and health, that’s what gets activated in us and in the community. When we take the time to look at what really exists among us and between us, and we ask questions about it, when we invite strength and health into action, we are being respectful, and also loving and kind. The editors at the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation write that, “Kindness is the secret password whereby we recognize our connection to one another. Kindness is the vehicle for all positive interaction, and the absence of kindness, [is] the opportunity for all our crimes.”

Our honesty and respect is kind, and our kindness in turn seems to activate the really strong bond that can grow between us and others. Our kindness helps us feel the bonds that unite us with others in a web of deep interconnection. Kindness is a source of real, true peace.

I believe this is at the heart of Beloved Community: underneath all the normal human feelings of anger, fear and disappointment is the truth that’s been told by each of the world’s great religions—we are deeply interconnected by the bonds of love. This kind of love is more than a feeling; it’s more like a force field of goodness that holds us with the best of intentions and won’t let us go. It holds us in relationship, right relationship, with all the others around us. When we put ourselves right with love, we experience our oneness and unity with all that is. And we know in our bones that what happens to one of us affects us all. This may be what Hosea Ballou knew when he told the first Universalists at the beginning of the 19th century: “Let neighborly love continue. If we have love, no disagreement can do us any harm; but if we have not love, no agreement can do us any good.” None of this is easy. In addition to love it requires honesty and patience, and a sense of the right time and place. Humor helps; commitment is essential.

“They happen in churches when you’re lucky; …Long haul people upon whose shoulders…a church is built...and more important maintained….For long haul people bless a church with a very special blessing.” Perhaps what long haul people do is show up with pumps and wet vacs and rakes and casseroles and all the rest that we come to church hoping to find, seeking to give, all the a church really can’t function without. But at the bottom of it all, what I believe long haul people have at the very bottom-est bottom of their checkbooks, their overstuffed briefcases, their wheelbarrows and tool boxes, their minds and hearts and hands, is love.

And when they touch or call on that deepest, truest love in their conversations and interactions with others, it’s not always immediately comforting, or expected, or nice. But their love shines a light, and in that light we can catch a glimpse of truth, a glimpse of what’s really real. And in the company of deep love and real truth we are able to catch a fuller breath; we are able to see an opening and a way where there was previously no way.

The Beloved Community is like the Once and Future Kingdom. We can see it historically when we read ancient texts; we can catch a glimpse of it when a visionary leader describes a longed for future. And yet the Beloved Community is also heaven on earth Now whenever we are present to one another with truth and love.

May love and truth guide us and sustain us this day, every day. And may the blessings of love be abundant in this community. Amen.

Sources used in this sermon:

Tom Owen Towle, Growing a Beloved Community, Skinner House Books, Boston, 2004. This is also the source for the quotes of Rudy Nemser and Josiah Royce.

Editors of Random Acts of Kindness, The Community of Kindness: Reconnecting to Friends, Family and the World through the Power of Kindness, Conari Press, 1999.

Megan McKenna was quoted from an interview with Frederic Brussat.