 and welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Crocker, and I am one of the ministers here. Today, I am joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Aspreuth Jackson, and by the worship team of Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Drew Collins, Daniel Karns, and Stephen Gregorius. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. It is a great joy to be able to connect with you virtually this morning. We hope you will be able to join us for our virtual coffee hour immediately following the service. The information for joining can be found on the home page of our website, fussmattison.org, as well as on the slide that will be seen again after the postlude. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after today's service, and we encourage you to take a moment and learn about upcoming programs and activities. And I invite you now into a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. What does it mean to bless? To bless does not mean saying magical words, changing the mind of God, or altering the course of the cosmos. To bless does mean reminding each other of our gifts, remembering the wisdom that is within us, and recalling our common purpose. The choices we make and the work we do are how we bless each other and the world. May the words we say and the songs we sing name the wholeness we are and still yet seek. And if you will join together now in the words of affirmation as we light our chalice, as we come together in worship, we kindle this flame, beacon of tomorrow's, lamp of yesterday's, crucible of this moment. May it guide us through the tempest of hours and years, awake in us the passions of our ancestors, and reveal to us the dreams they could not dream. Let's sing together hymn number 368. Now let us sing. Let's sing again, but to the power of the hope within. Now let us sing. Let's sing to the power of the love within. Here we go, now let us sing. Last chance we're gonna sing to the power of the joy. Now let us sing. Here's a story then from the Buddhist tradition. Takes place many, many years ago where there was a small school where a certain master taught a small number of students. And one day this master gathered all of his students around him, such as they were. And he explained to them in very grave tones. I am sad to say that our school has fallen on very hard times. I do not know how we'll be able to continue, except if we take very drastic action. So I am going to need each of you to go out into the village, find whatever you can of value and steal it. Bring it back here. Now of course, the students of the master were very perplexed by this instruction. Eventually someone raised their hand and said, master, you have always taught us that it is very wrong to steal. Master said, yes, I taught you that you should not be ever seen by anyone to be stealing. That is why it is very important that you not get caught. I cannot stress this enough. Make sure that you move quietly. Don't let anyone see you no matter what you do. Still very troubled, but obedient. Most of the students left and went out to fulfill the instructions. But there was one, the youngest one, who continued to sit on the mat, almost trembling, but not leaving, not carrying out the master's instruction to steal. Eventually the master went over to the student and asked, why have you not gone and done what I told you to do just as all of your compatriots have? The student looked up at the master and said, you taught us never to steal. You told us not to let anyone see us doing it, but no matter what I did, where I went, no matter how quiet I was, no matter how stealthy I was, no matter if I did it in the very dead of night, I would still see myself doing it. There's no escaping that. This the master smiled. He said, you have passed the test. You alone among your compatriots. This was exactly what I wanted, at least one of you to say. Now hurry, go and find them and stop them from stealing before they get into any trouble. So friends, let us keep in mind, no matter where we go, no matter what we do, no matter who we are with, no matter why we are doing it, there is nothing we can do that we ourselves will not at least know that we are doing. I invite you now into a time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains our community here and also supports the work of our outreach offering recipient. This week, our offering is shared with mentoring positives who provide support services for underserved youth in Dane County. Through their work, they seek to bolster social skills, self-confidence, and prepare youth for their post-education career. You will see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will see our text to give information there as well. And we thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. In the gospel, according to Matthew, near the midpoint of the Sermon on the Mount, we find the teacher Jesus instructing his audience on the correct way to do good deeds. Be careful not to practice righteousness in front of others, he declares. Instead, when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret. This teaching, by the way, is one of many points of agreement between Jesus' philosophy and the counsel of the ancient rabbis. Jewish ethics for charitable giving hold that it is better to be anonymous, if you can be, when giving to someone in need. And that the highest form of generosity is actually double-blind. When the person receiving it doesn't know from whom it came, and the person giving it doesn't know who will receive it beyond the expectation that it will serve some real need. Returning to the Sermon on the Mount, though. Jesus goes on to list other things that should be done in secret, so as to be known only by you and by God. This includes fasting for religious purposes, that is, and prayer itself. All three of these things were laudable and even obligatory in the society of Jesus' place and time. Yet, he instructs his followers to actively avoid being seen doing them, going so far as to wash their face and anoint their head with oil so that people won't see how hungry they are when they're fasting. His justification seems to be that others do these things loudly and visibly so that those who see and hear will take notice and think well of them. But Jesus is never concerned with being held in high esteem by others anywhere in the gospels. And here, he actively rejects it. Trying to chase the opinion of anyone else is a distraction. Only God's all-knowing judgment matters. It has been said by more than one person in more than one way that character is who we are when nobody's watching. When there is nothing to prove or perform and no one to catch us. How we act when we feel free from the threat of public shame or legal accountability or any other sort of exterior consequence of our actions, this is who we are at our most honest and least mediated. The question is really one of intention. Do you act with kindness or with honesty or with courage because you want to be thought of by others as kind or honest or courageous? Or do you do these things simply because they are the right thing to do? In the Christian tradition, there is a long standing debate that actually plays out back and forth in the Christian Bible in several places over salvation by faith versus salvation by acts. Basically whether the goodness of a life is determined by their belief in God and other elements of Christian doctrine or whether goodness is a matter of what a person does, both acts of religious worship and acts of human service. In our history as Unitarian Universalists, we have sometimes been known for a third option, salvation by character. And the emphasis from the beginning of the phrase and only more so over the many years that have followed is on character more than salvation since our forebearers were generally unconcerned about getting into heaven and much more preoccupied with how to heal and nurture this world and us in it. One of the chief functions of religion in the understanding of our theological ancestors and in my own understanding as well is to improve our character, to help us become more virtuous in how we think and feel and in the choices we make in living our lives. The influential and notoriously wordy Unitarian ethicists, James Luther Adams, in one of his rare moments of easy quotability said church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human. But if character is what our guiding intentions truly are, not moment to moment but in a lasting way over the course of our lives, then we face the challenge not only of setting good intentions and following through on them, but even just of knowing our own intentions to begin with. Modern neuroscience argues more and more that we are not safe in assuming we truly know our own intentions privately. The decisions we make seem often to be emotional or instinctual and is really only after we've already made them that our brains devise for us an explanation based on conscious weighing of the options, which makes judging a decision by the intention behind or person behind that decision even harder to pin down. The story is told of Hosea Baloo, the great universalist preacher of the 19th century, that he once found himself sharing a carriage with the minister from another denomination, someone who believed very much in hell and damnation. Midway through their ride, the fellow asked him, could it be that you are Hosea Baloo, the infamous universalist preacher? Hosea admitted with pride to being who he was, and this other minister began to question him about his beliefs. So you do not believe in the existence of hell? No, not even for the punishment of truly heinous crimes. No, not even when you imagine that you yourself could be the victim of such a crime. Can you not conceive of a space in hell for someone who harmed you personally? I cannot conceive of a place in hell friend because it does not exist. Finally, exasperated and upset, the man asked Hosea, am I to understand that if I were a universalist, there would be nothing to stop me from killing you and the driver and making off into the night with the carriage? And Hosea replied, no, sir, if you were a universalist, the thought of doing so would not have occurred to you. Now that's a quality zinger, sort of bizarro Oscar Wildeism, if that's a good bit more wholesome than the author was generally renowned for. But as pithy as it sounds, I don't know that it reflects reality, so well, I don't believe that any religious system, including our own, can simply do away with the all too human capacity to imagine doing wrong. For my own part, I have been a Unitarian universalist the whole of my life, and it has offered me no perfect freedom from the thoughts of which I am not proud. Rather than expect myself or anyone else to avoid even thinking of the possibility of doing something wrong, the more relevant moral challenge is to have the whole great flurry of thoughts that most people have in the course of a day and to choose to follow the thoughts from among them that lead us into doing right. The story comes from West Africa about a blind man who lived in the house of his sister and his brother-in-law. The blind man was very wise and very clever and people often came to him for advice, but his brother-in-law only laughed when he saw someone waiting at the door of their house. What use is a man who has no eyes in his head, he would say. Now the brother-in-law was a great hunter and the blind man often asked if he could come along with him into the forest and learn about hunting. One day he finally gave in and said yes. So the blind man and the hunter set out into the forest, the one leading the other by the hand, and the hunter found a place that looked right and he laid a trap there. He taught his blind brother-in-law how to lay another trap nearby and the two of them went home. The next day they went back to the forest to check their traps. The blind man did not need to be led this time, he knew the way now. And they came to the place where their two traps were and the hunter saw at once that they had each caught something. In his own trap there was a little gray bird, but in the blind man's trap there was a great and beautiful bird. It had gold and green feathers, it was lovely. And the hunter thought, what will he know? If I keep this one for myself. And he said, brother, we are both in luck. And he gave his brother-in-law the little gray bird. On the way back home the hunter felt proud of himself for having outsmarted his brother-in-law. So he asked the blind man, tell me, if you're so wise, why is it that there is so much anger and hate and pain in the world? And the blind man said, because the world is full of people like you, brother, who take things that are not theirs. And the hunter's heart broke. And he said, I am sorry. And he took the little gray bird back and he gave his brother the great beautiful bird that was his. They walked together a while longer until the hunter with his broken heart asked another question, tell me, if you're so wise, why is it that there is still love and kindness and compassion in this world? And the blind man said, because the world is full of people like you, brother, who learn from their mistakes. This is, as far as I am concerned, what we need spiritual community for. Because the world is full of people like us. People who take and people who give. People who do what is wrong and people who try to do what is right. People who make mistakes and people who learn from them. People with broken hearts and people who are wiser and stronger and kinder because their hearts have been broken. Whether or not we believe that our character can save us, it can most certainly be improved by being in relationship with each other, learning together, struggling together, holding each other accountable and holding each other up when we fall is among the most deeply ingrained values of our tradition, not to define human beings. Whether others or ourselves, as a species or as individuals, solely by the worst things that they have ever done. For this reason, the cause of a humane system of justice, replacing our current legal systems grounding in punishment, is a natural impulse from our theology. It's on that note that I wanna give you some particular information and offer you a particular opportunity. This past fall, the sentencing project, the Criminal Justice Research and Advocacy Organization in Washington, D.C., released a major report on the racial disparities in state prison systems. The details of it are sobering. Black and Latinx folks make up a disproportional amount of the incarcerated population in every single state in the country as compared to white folks. There is no prison system in the U.S. that comes off looking equitable in this analysis. But the particular injustice for us to consider is that the state with the highest rate of incarceration for black folks in the United States is the state of Wisconsin. 6% of people living in Wisconsin are black, but the black prison population of our state is 42%. The degree to which black folks are sucked into our state prison system and locked away is so grotesquely disproportionate that one out of every 36 Wisconsinites who are black are currently incarcerated. Now, I've been involved in criminal justice reform campaigns before and I like to think of myself as inured to the scale of the brokenness in our system. But that figure is shocking even for me. One out of every 36. There can be no credible explanation for such a gargantuan disproportionality other than an enormous bias at every level from our system of policing through the court system to prisons themselves. Like any other great miscarriage of justice, any other wrong of this scale, the vast ratio between black and white inmates in Wisconsin prisons is made possible because relatively few people are watching. The deep seated effects of racism on our courts does not go unobserved as this study obviously shows, but it does go badly under reported and so under considered by a sizable majority of folks in our state and in our country. The solution can't end at just raising awareness of this disparity, but any repair will require that as an initial step. If you're looking to learn more and build strength with others to take action for change on this issue, I wanna lift up an opportunity being offered by Wisdom, the faith-based justice-making network to which we belong through its local affiliate. They will be holding an online training for activists, both new and experienced, who are moving to move to challenge this unconscionable status quo beginning this Thursday night. More information, including how to register, can be found in the latest edition of The Red Floors. There's one more story I wanna share from a long time ago in India. A very wise woman, an impetuous boy who wanted to prove that he could outsmart her. He caught a bird, you see, and he held it tightly behind his back as he approached her, asking, if you're so wise, what am I holding behind my back? The elder woman could hear the muffled beating of the animal's wings and correctly guess that the boy was holding a bird. Ah, he said, but if you're so wise, you must be able to tell me without seeing it, is the bird living or dead? At this, the woman paused. She recognized that the boy was determined to make her look foolish. If she said the bird was dead, he would certainly show it alive to prove he had outsmarted her. But if she said that it was alive, that she could hear that for the moment it was, surely he would crush it in his fist so as to show the dead bird in that way prove he had outsmarted her. Caught between those two choices, she created a third for herself. She told the boy, the answer to your question is in your hands. By this, the boy recognized his power over life and death for the poor animal and felt ashamed of his misuse of it. And so, you let the bird fly free. Within us, we have the capacity to do right or to do wrong, or at least to intend to do right or wrong. That capacity to choose is bound up with our being human. And it is how we choose that determines what sort of humans we choose to become, most especially when we will be the only ones who know. Each week we gather, bringing with us the hurts and the hopes of recent days. We share these cares here in community, knowing they are held in love. A retired teacher and parent asks us to light a candle of deep gratitude and appreciation for our teachers and all the staff in our schools with a deep recognition and respect for all the new skills required to constantly innovate in ways that support and nurture all of our children. We light a candle of joy for Adeline Elise Ziering who turned one on Christmas day. Parents Creel Ziering and Matthew Doyle Olson share their gratitude for all the support they have received from this community in those early days after she was born. It is very hard to believe that it has already been over a year since her birth and a very happy belated birthday Addy. Lori Schwartz asks us to light a candle of gratitude for lay ministers Gail Bliss, Ros Woodward and Anne Smiley, along with Lorna Aronson, Mary Lee Nelson, Tim Corden, Reverend Kelly C, who have supported her over the past two years and created a large circle of support around her and her family. For all of this, she's incredibly grateful. And may I say, Lori, we are all deeply honored to be a part of your life and grateful that you trust us to support you in this way. We light a candle of encouragement, support and hope for Misty Larson who was recently hospitalized after a fall. We send our love and our prayers for her recovery and healing and hope that she is on her way to better health and much more strength in the days to come. And we light a candle of deep sorrow and remembrance for Lillian Tong, who passed away early last Sunday morning. We send our love to her husband, Tom, and their daughter, Laura, as they travel this journey of grief and memory. Lillian was a remarkable person with a creative spark, a brilliant mind, and a compassionate soul, and she is deeply missed. And we light a candle of sorrow and gratitude for the life of the monk and teacher, Tich Nhat Hanh, who passed away on Friday. May we join together now in a moment of remembrance as we hear his words. This body is not me. I am not limited by this body. I am life without boundaries. I have never been born and I have never died. Look at the infinite oceans and skies filled with stars, manifestations from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time, I have been free. Birth and death are only doors through which we pass, sacred thresholds on our journey. Birth and death are a game of hide and seek. So laugh with me, hold my hand, let us say goodbye, say goodbye to meet again soon. We meet today, we will meet again tomorrow. We will meet at the source every moment. We meet each other in all forms on the myriad paths of life. There is a law. I'll let us sing together hymn number 292. If I can stop one heart from breaking. Of history run. Let us keep the channels open and free so not to obstruct purposes greater than our own. Let us keep our minds set upon the high goals that here bind us into one sharing fellowship of loving hearts, blessed be and go in peace.