“Radical Kinship” – June 4th, 2023

“Radical Kinship”

READING:

The reading today was written by UU minister and celebrated activist Rev. Theresa Soto and was published in her 2019 book, “Spilling the Light: Meditations on Hope and Resilience.”

“The Spark Between”

There must be fuel.
There must be a spark,
and there must be oxygen.

We have principles and ethics.
The fuel of the fire we would light.

The spark is what passes between us,
along with our aliveness, our possibility.
Spirit moving in us is our clear invitation—
embossed, addressed, sealed with wax, tied
with ribbon. The spark is a seed of fire that
must be treasured and tended that it may
bring the light.

We have passion. The air without which
nothing thrives, least of all the blaze
of covenant, justice, and kindness we would
illuminate, both with who we are and what
we do.

All of these an invitation to bring to life
the blaze of liberation that is meant to light our
way and to dispel the fog of cruelty and grief.
It brings us instead to a hearth around which
we gather to be nourished, energized, and
warmed and where we get ready to disperse,
enlivened.

SERMON:

These past weeks, as I reflected on Rev. Theresa Soto’s beautiful words, the spark is what passes between us, along with our aliveness, our possibility, and our month’s theme of Delight, and this day–the 1-year anniversary of this church adopting the 8^th Principle–a story came to mind.

It’s a story about the Dolores Mission Church, the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles, located in an area called Boyle Heights. This church is nestled between two of the largest public housing complexes in the city. There are about eight active gangs living in this little postage-stamp-size area, the highest concentration of gang activity in the entire city. Mostly Latino. This is also an area where an extremely high number of undocumented Mexican and Central American people settle. And homelessness is rampant.

And in 1984 a young Jesuit priest was placed at this church. And it was his first placement.

Just three years into this young priest’s ministry at Dolores Mission Church, in 1987, having experienced first-hand the adverse effects of immigration law, the congregation joined the Sanctuary Movement, declaring itself a ‘sanctuary church.’ And they were thrilled. YAY US! And they weren’t just going to host one family. Many of the homeless shelters in Boyle Heights at this time were full, as were the streets, so they decided to open their church doors and allow families, all people, anyone without housing, to sleep there at night. All week.

‘YAY US!’ they proclaimed. And communications abounded about how Dolores Mission Church was “putting their faith into action.” They quoted scripture and preened their Catholic feathers…

But come Sunday morning the evidence of this “faith in action” was ever present in the sanctuary. And it started out as some scrunched noses. And then, a few Sundays in, the people began to show up with potpourri and incense. Or secretly pulled out I Love My Carpet from their handbags and foo foo-ed it here and there. But you need to know that as the weeks passed, and word spread nearly 100 people were sleeping there night after night. The lingering, smell became pervasive and wasn’t going anywhere. Sunday mornings slowly turned into a time of grumbling and complaint. And then folks began saying things like, “unless this place is better cleaned up, I might have to go somewhere else for Mass.” This young priest recalls many beginning to spend social hour waxing poetic about “what it used to be like.”

And this priest decided that enough was enough–he was going to feature all the hushes and whispers and secret lemon-scented spritzes in Sunday morning’s homily.

“What’s the church smell like?” he shouted, as his first words. And the people, he said, “were mortified, eye contact ceased and women,” he said, “began searching inside their purses for they knew not what.” Dead silence.

“Come on now” he said, “what’s the church smell like?”

Finally, one bold older member: “It smells like feet.”

“Excellent,” said the young priest. “But WHY does it smell like feet?”

“Because a bunch of homeless people slept here last night?” someone else said.

“Well, why do we let that happen here?” said the priest.

“Because we committed to do it?”

“Yes…but WHY? Why in the world would we commit to do this?”

“Because that’s what Jesus would do?”

“Well, okay then!” said the young priest. “So, what’s the church smell like now?”

“Love!” said someone. “Compassion,” said someone else. “Welcome,” another person shouted.

Everyone began to cheer.

“Delight!” more cheers.

“Roses! It smells like roses!” And the packed church roared with laughter.

This priest always closes this story, this true story that he has told many times, with this reflection: “The stink in the church hadn’t changed, only the people who smelled it did…they had to see it differently. They had to embrace the odor, as their own–bring people in towards themselves.” Breath them in. Be altered by them. As they were altering the lives of the people sleeping there. He calls this kind of mutual altering, kinship. Radical kinship.

This young Jesuit priest serves this church still. He is no longer young. His name is Father Greg Boyle. And he has written books, offered talks all around the country. He preaches the gospel of what he calls, Radical Kinship. And he learned about this from the young people he pastors to. Mainly those who are in and out of gangs in that area of Boyle Heights. He is the founder of Homeboy Industries, maybe some of you have heard of it, he writes about it in one of his famous books Tattoos on the Heart. Homeboy Industries is a youth program that rehabilitates, employs, and supports formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people. Homeboy Industries started out as a tiny grassroots support system, and now has an annual budget of over 14 million dollars. Every year over 10,000 gang members across Los Angeles come through their doors.

But, this is important: Father Greg isn’t about serving these populations or, God forbid, saving these populations–oh we can get into that mindset right? Particularly as well-intentioned white people. He says, “I am not a delivery system.” This kind of orientation to justice work, he says, “keeps us at arm’s length.” The consequence of this armed-lengthedness is that we can unintentionally allow “the smell” to be our compass, rather than the kinship. The smell is a symbol for our discomfort; the kind of discomfort that gets us waxing poetic about what things USED to be like. Or wanting to deodorize hard things.

Radical kinship, he says, is all about “being restored to humanity;” rehabilitating one’s self, not just someone else; getting close enough to those who are suffering to know, in our bones, as Mother Teresa says, “that we belong to each other.”

And here’s the thing. If ever you are able to listen to Father Greg Boyle and his ‘homies,’ that’s what he and they call one another–an expression of we belong to one another–when you hear them tell stories, they are imbued with joy and laughter. Utter DELIGHT–which is our theme this month. Father Boyle says that true kinship is “where the place of delight is” in fact “it’s a delighting that enters us into full kinship with each other.”

What he means is that when it comes to human beings, the trying to love one another, truly love one another, and the finding of one’s self in another, all of this trying for belonging to one another, WITH-NESS, kinship, is delightful. You know this to be true, right? Please get that this delight doesn’t erase the horror of how people have been forced to live in our communities and world, but you know this–when you start cultivating relationships with people, listening to stories, and are changed by your fellows, truly, it IS delightful.

It’s God. That precious thing that happens between us humans.

Look, the food we deliver, the services we offer, the justice we fight for, the learning we acquire, the banners, the marching, the principles we adopt–all of these commitments and actions are vital and important. And I get, we don’t live in Boyle Heights. We are a predominantly white community in a highly segregated country. But we still must ask ourselves, as Father Boyle did from the pulpit: why are we doing this? Really. Why? What keeps us as proximate as we possibly can be. What is the fuel to our fire?

I would say, for Unitarian Universalists, it’s LOVE! The inherent worth and dignity of all people, our interdependent web of existence, building Beloved Community, spiritual wholeness…It’s all about believing, believing, believing that we belong to one another! Radical Kinship!

There’s your spark! There’s your delight. And, friends, there’s your hope.

We don’t do this to service people. Or to be good. We are trying for this because our lives, our humanity and spiritual wholeness depend on it! This is why we are trying to BE welcome, not just say it, this is why we are saying come, step in from the margins, step into the center, there is room here, tell us who you are, we love you. I am here to be altered by you, not the other way around.

Radical Kinship gets us there my friends.

It’s been one year since we adopted the 8^th Principle. And we have all been trying to figure out how to be accountable to it. Because, like all of our principles, it was just a beginning and it will never end: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.

Now, some of you are in a learning place–a place of study and deep introspection; some of you have taken workshops and courses with others; or attended talks or worship led by those holding marginalized identities; others are showing up at or organizing rallies, protests, marches; some of you are tracing your family histories and tracing the histories of the people who once stewarded this land, and trying to piece it all together; some have begun to research how this church’s history played a part in these stories–benefitted from inequity and oppression; some of you are re-thinking the structures of this church, how we govern, lead, function, run meetings, communicate with one another, stay in right relationship with one another–call people in, or how you are unintentionally leaving people out; some of you are focused on what this building says about welcome–whose stories are we telling and why, whose stories aren’t we telling and why. Some are readying themselves to guide us through a process to remove some of these portraits, words, and symbols, so that we might own our whole history, not just proclaim or worship one piece of it. And more. And more.

The key is that none of us, including myself, none of us keep ourselves at arm’s length from this. Or become I Love My Carpet sprinklers.

Father Boyle tells a story in his book Tattoos on the Heart that goes like this: “In scripture, Jesus is in a house so packed that no one can come through the door anymore. So the people, they open the roof, and they lower a man who is paralyzed down through it so that Jesus can heal him. The focus of the story is the healing of this man. But Father Doyle says there’s something more significant than that happening here: they are ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in.”

They are ripping the roof off the place, and those outside are being let in. May THAT be the continued mission of this church and our faith. For we will all be saved and served by this.

Let’s close by listening to Rev. Theresa Soto’s words again.

“The Spark Between”

There must be fuel.
There must be a spark,
and there must be oxygen.

We have principles and ethics.
The fuel of the fire we would light.

The spark is what passes between us,
along with our aliveness, our possibility.
Spirit moving in us is our clear invitation—
embossed, addressed, sealed with wax, tied
with ribbon. The spark is a seed of fire that
must be treasured and tended that it may
bring the light.

We have passion. The air without which
nothing thrives, least of all the blaze
of covenant, justice, and kindness we would
illuminate, both with who we are and what
we do.

All of these an invitation to bring to life
the blaze of liberation that is meant to light our
way and to dispel the fog of cruelty and grief.
It brings us instead to a hearth around which
we gather to be nourished, energized, and
warmed and where we get ready to disperse,
enlivened.

All of these an invitation to bring to life
the blaze of liberation that is meant to light our
way.

Amen. And may it be so.

Let’s sing. We’ll Build a Land #121