 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically intimate by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing, and air-conditioned environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation and proud owner of a new haircut, and it is my pleasure to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know that you'll find it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn a little more about our special buildings, we conduct guided tours after the service. Just gather over by the windows after the service, and we will take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be the perfect time to silence those electronic devices that have nothing to do with today's service unless they interrupt us. So please, silence those devices now. Thank you very much. And while you're doing that, I'll mention that today's service is brought to us as it is every weekend by a team of wonderful volunteers whose names you're about to hear. And we announce these names so you can thank them later, go up to them, give them a hug, shake their hand, invite them to dinner at your house, and put them in your will. The sound system today is operated by Marine Friend. Our greeter upstairs was Kyle Kern, our ushers, Ron Cook and Vivian Littlefield. Our lay minister is Ann Smiley, and the purveyors of coffee and hospitality after the service are Sharon Stratish and Jeannie Hills. And Richard Miller will be conducting the tour after the service. I don't have any announcements except one very special announcement. And that is, we are so pleased to welcome, as our guest speaker today, Reverend Megan Lloyd Joiner. You're going to hear from her a little bit later. Megan has served as a parish minister in Connecticut, a pediatric chaplain in New York City, and a liberal religious advocate in Washington, D.C. She was recently called as minister to the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Connecticut. Megan received her BA in religious studies from Wesleyan University, a very lovely campus, by the way, in Middletown, Connecticut, and her master of divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She's a member of the illustrious Lloyd Jones family. She's been coming home to this area, specifically Spring Green and the Unity Chapel. You'll hear more about that in a moment. For as long as she can remember. She now lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband, Anthony, and her daughter, Arden, who is sitting right over there. Hi, Arden. OK. Arden's very talkative this morning. Speaking of Arden and other youngsters, if you're accompanied by a youngster today, and you would like a more private space from which to enjoy the service, we offer a couple options, our child Haven in the back corner, and some comfortable seating out in the commons. So ended the announcements. I heard the nine o'clock service special. So sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning's service. I know that it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. So we come. Each of us carrying a light, burning strong. We gather now to shelter our flames, to feed them, so that they will illumine the paths we walk together. So that they may light the way to a future we can only imagine. So that they will shine boldly everywhere we go. Come, let us worship together. We rise in body or in spirit as we light the flame that is the symbol of our Unitarian Universalist tradition with words from Karl Sieberg printed in your order of service. Let there be joy in our coming together. Let there be truth heard in the words we speak and the songs we sing. Let there be help and healing for our disharmony and despair. Let there be silence for the voice within us and beyond us. Let there be joy in our coming together. And let there be joy in our coming together as we turn to our neighbors and offer them a friendly greeting. We're from Sam's perspective. Tell you a little bit about Sam to go to church two or three times. Oh, yes, come on. Well, we missed you. Glad you're here. Thanks for coming, dude. So anyway, Sam once overheard his mom telling someone that he rarely wanted to go. This was not true because Sam never wanted to go. Usually when he was trying to convince his mom to let him stay home on Sunday morning, she reminded him that once he got there, he didn't have such a bad time. The music was pretty great. He had to admit that. And he guessed that all the people there were pretty nice. He had to admit that too. He could tell that they really cared about him and they really loved his mom. That was important to Sam. There was one older lady, Mrs. Williams, who would every so often give Sam's mom a Ziploc baggie full of dimes. And every time it happened, Sam's mom's eyes would fill with tears. Now, Sam thought that this was rather odd. So he asked his mom one morning. He said, why does Mrs. Williams do that? And why does it make you cry? Sam's mom told him that Mrs. Williams had been giving her dimes since before he was born. When everyone was so excited that he was coming, but she was alone. She didn't have nearly any money at all. So Mrs. Williams saved those dimes and brought them to her. And she's tried to tell her that now that Sam is older, she has a good job and they're doing fine. But Mrs. Williams still brings those baggies. And sometimes it makes Sam's mom's heart so full that it spills over into tears. Sam nodded. That was nice, he thought. That was nice. But still, he was the only kid he knew who had to go to church. So one morning, he asked his mom. He said, Mom, why do you make me go to church? And she said, well, Sam, because I can. I outweigh you by nearly 75 pounds. Sam shot her a look. You know the look I'm talking about, the mom look? Well, she said, the main reason is that I want to give you what I have found in the world, which is to say a path and a little light to see by. Most of the people I know, Sam, who have what I want, which is to say purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, and joy, they are mostly people with a deep sense of spirituality. They are people who live in community, who pray or practice their faith, whatever it may be. They are people banding together to work on themselves and for human rights. Sam, she said, they follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle. They are part of something beautiful. And that is what I want for you. Sam thought about this for a long time. He thought about all those baggies full of dimes. He thought about the times when the people from his church of all different colors and all different ages had marched for equality and for civil rights, about the times when they had held signs that said love makes a family and black lives matter and he had been proud to stand with them. And he thought about the time that he and his mom went to a vigil for peace and he had gotten his very own candle and he had lifted it high. And all of a sudden it seemed so much brighter because everyone else was lifting their candles too. Okay, he said. Okay, said Sam's mom. Yep, said Sam. Let's go to church. That's the end of our story. And we are all here in the congregation this morning and so if some of the children would like to make their way to summer fun, we are gonna sing a rousing song that you might wanna stay for one verse and sing with us this little light of mine and you're not gonna need your hymnals because Kim and Reggie are gonna lead us along the way. So please rise and body and spirit. Take out one hand, warm that hand up. Warm your shoulders up a little bit, okay. And let's get a little bit of a beat going. It shines on me and it shines on you. Shows what I've missed there. Yet it was not consumed. And then Moses said, I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why this bush is not burned up. When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see God called him out of that bush, Moses. Moses and he said, here I am. Then God said, come no closer. Remove the sandals from your feet for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Then God said, I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me. I have seen how the Egyptians oppressed them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go? God said, I will be with you. But Moses said to God, if I come to the Israelites and say to them, the God of Mary ancestors has sent me to you and they say, well, what is his name? What should I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. Tell them, I am has sent me to you. Thus you shall say to the Israelites, I am has sent me. God also said to Moses, you shall also say Yahweh, the God of your ancestors has sent me to you. This is my name forever, my title for all generations. So ends the reading. I love studying the Bible with Unitarian Universalists in part because they are tougher than any Bible class. I look at the story where Moses learns God's name. A bush burns. Moses removes his sandals. His God calls to him telling him to go to Egypt to free his people. And like any good prophet, Moses evades the call. Adventure to guess that most, if not all of us, have had this kind of Moses moment. You want me to do what? Moses eventually accepts the challenge. Okay, he says to God, I'll go, but I've got some questions. Namely, if my people ask me what your name is, what do I say? God says, I am who I am. Tell them I am has sent me to you. This phrase, I am who I am is often written in Hebrew as a yeh, a shair, a yeh. I will become becoming powerful conception of God, God who moves, who changes, who evolves. And then God tells Moses another name. The name we now pronounce as Yahweh is, in fact, some mystical Jewish scholars claim an unpronounceable conflation of all of the tenses of the verb to be. And that it is probably best translated as was, is, will be. That gets awkward to say again and again, so being with a capital B becomes shorthand. What was, what is, what will be. This expansive sort of deity was a radical notion in ancient Palestine. This was being itself, calling for justice, calling for freedom, calling Moses and his people into the fulfillment of their being. This was a name of God too holy to be spoken. So early Jews used a substitute in their prayers. Adonai from the word for sovereign, meaning my Lord. So there we have it, the answer to the question. Adonai, Rabbi Arthur Green writes, is not an easy word for moderns to say. This is as true for Unitarian Universalists as it is for modern Jews. Many of us have rejected this Lord. We don't want anyone to lord over us, and I get that. But what if we could regain some of what was lost in translation? Because I hear in this passage that we are invited to join our being, our I am, with ultimate being, the great I am, if you will. All that was, all that is, all that will be. I hear this passage and I see the signs of Memphis garbage workers on strike in 1968. Signs that were beacons of a holy truth. I am, they said, I am a man. And now I hear a new rallying cry to justice and a country just beginning to live into its promise. I hear black lives matter. I hear, hear a call to each of us to live into the fulfillment of our being, to move, to change, to evolve, to become who we are becoming. I hear a call to us as individuals and as a faith, an invitation to follow a brighter light than the glimmer of our own candles, an invitation to be a part of something beautiful. I am who I am becoming. What do you hear? When I think of becoming, I cannot help, but think of Arden, my daughter who is now almost two years old, becoming who she is before our very eyes. My husband Anthony and I are humbled every single day by the pure joy and the awesome responsibility of raising a walking, talking sponge who is learning constantly, taking in everything we say, everything we do. I wonder what kind of light we can hold out for her to see by in this confounding, broken, beautiful world of ours. What paths can we offer? As a mother and of course as a minister I have also been thinking about what if anything our congregations have to do with any of this about why we should make or invite or encourage or cajole our children individually and collectively to come to a faith community such as this one and frankly why any of us should come to gather in community to, as Anne Lamont says, band together to work on ourselves and for human rights. So this morning I invite you to join me as we journey together as we carry with us that ancient I am as we think together about what makes a place holy and explore what was, what is, and what will be. One of the holiest places I know lies about 45 minutes west of here near a bend in the Wisconsin River where 55 years ago my great-grandmother Rebecca sat weeping in a rickety chair in the middle of a tiny country church. The floor was rotting. The rain came in through holes in the roof. This was her spiritual home, the Unitarian Chapel of her childhood abandoned, derelict. It had once been a monument to free faith. My ancestors, ten siblings from an immigrant family had found themselves unwelcome in most of the local churches. So in 1886 they pooled their resources and consecrated a portion of family farmland as holy ground. They gathered there with other independent thinkers to worship a God of their understanding, a God whose love was exemplified in the life of Jesus. But for inspiration and insight they looked also to those they called the saints and sages of all the world's religions. Their God called for action and justice so they accepted the challenge and they worked each in his or her own way for the betterment of humankind. In the little graveyard they buried their dead and as they died and their children and grandchildren moved away the paint began to peel and the roof to leak. And so Rebecca wept. Her sons tried to comfort her and her granddaughter, my mother, wondered why they couldn't. Rebecca told them only take care of this place. A few years later a call went out to the descendants to gather from their modern diaspora and in the year of my birth they pledged to formally and in perpetuity take care of the place. So Unity Chapel's bell peels again each summer and calls us home. Kindred spirits fill the little building once more with word and song. Your senior minister Michael Shuler is leading worship there this morning. In fact there's a hymn in our order of service that we are not singing but they are singing at Unity Chapel to say you know. Number 90. It was last weekend that nearly 200 Lloyd-Jones descendants answered the call home. We remembered our dead. We welcomed the next generation. We touched down on that holy ground that place where our past, our present and our future converge. We remembered that all of us are a part of what was, what is and what will be. It's hard to believe but it's now for the past 10 years that I have been delivering the sermon at the chapel on the second Sunday in July. This year though as I prepared to address hundreds of my cousins many of whom I have never met I found that my heart was full to overflowing. That I was overwhelmed in the wake of a year in which so many black lives have been taken in hatred and fear and racism. Like so many of you this year I have wept for the dead in Charleston and Baltimore, Ferguson and Cleveland Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Hartford, New Haven, Brooklyn and Staten Island. This year my ears rang with black lives matter hands up don't shoot and I can't breathe. I was fresh off our national gathering as well our General Assembly where passionate advocates, activists of every hue and every faith had implored Unitarian Universalists to join them in the fight for freedom. So this year I came to the cornfields in Wisconsin and to the hallowed ground of the chapel pondering my commitment to justice. What was I called to do? And wondering exactly what I should say to my people. Lloyd Jones's and Unitarian Universalists alike. Last week I took off my shoes and I felt that familiar black earth under my feet once again. I breathed in the musty air of that little country church. I heard in my mind the call of five women of color who serve our Unitarian Universalist Association. The call that they sent out this past spring in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. I'll name them to Queen of Boston, Alicia Roxanne Ford, Janice Marie Johnson, Elizabeth Ann Terry and Jessica York. These wise women called the Selma Anniversary our Sankofa moment. As Unitarian Universalists prepared to return to Selma many in body and many more of us in spirit and women told us that the Ashanti proverb Sankofa means go back and fetch it and that it expresses the wisdom of bringing forward from the past that which allows us to be agents of transformation right now. We bring forward from the past that which allows us to be agents of transformation right now. So this spring they encouraged us to return to the place where black men and women and children marched for freedom and white police beat them down the place where thousands of people answered the call to join in what Martin Luther King called the struggle for the soul of our nation. And Unitarian Universalists came along with so many others to stand, to march, to die for freedom. They encouraged us to remember the lessons our spiritual ancestors taught us there. How to respond to the call for justice. How to show up faithfully. How to live our faith and our values and most importantly how to follow the leadership of communities of color in confronting injustice. A bridge in Selma named for a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan an unlikely place to be transformed into holy ground and yet past, present and future converged there. And we were all invited to be a part of something beautiful. We were all called anew into the fulfillment of our being. Sankofa, what was, what is, what will be. For our family, the annual trip to the chapel is always a visit to the past but this year with Sankofa ringing in my mind I came with a mission to see what wisdom I could bring forward. So I returned once again to the diary of a young man who set out from that bend in the Wisconsin River to fight as he saw it. For the humanity of his fellow human beings for their freedom and his freedom for the soul of our country. Long before he became a revered Unitarian minister and even long before he became my great-grandmother's uncle Jenkins Lloyd-Jones became a Union soldier. He loathed fighting but he joined his comrades and during Green he marched through Madison and on south he would write later answering the call of his own conscience. He set out to live the values he had inherited from his parents who had come to America because it was a land that promised freedom. In our family, Jenkins wrote freedom was a word to conjure by. It's a turn of phrase to strike us as odd today. Maybe he meant that freedom for the Lloyd-Jones was a magic word, a word that made it possible to create something out of nothing. Courage, perhaps. An older meaning of the word conjure is to implore someone to do something. And maybe this is what Jenkins meant. In our family, freedom implores. Freedom compels. You want me to do what? Jenkins came home from the Civil War a changed man. His experience in that war would direct his lifelong dedication to radical pacifism, to prophetic ministry, to working for social and economic justice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in partnership with people of color. So he is yet another spiritual ancestor who teaches us how to respond to the call to justice, how to show up faithfully, how to live our faith and our values, and how to follow the leadership of communities of color in confronting injustice. And his words, freedom is a word to conjure by seemed to me just the wisdom I was looking for. And then, as synchronicity would have it, as I was reading Jenkins Civil War Diary online, a literal call to action popped up in my inbox. An email from Lena K. Gardner, a Unitarian Universalist from Minneapolis, an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement who wrote, this moment in history is calling us. Will you fight with us? Will you fight against oppression of your human brothers and sisters? Will you fight for human dignity? Yes, I thought. Of course I will. But I have some questions. How can we make real change? What exactly should we say? What's the plan? And who's in charge? What happens if we fail? But I read on. And Lena's words might well have been prefaced with, hey, Megan! Because she wrote, will you stop waiting for a perfect master plan with the perfect talking points? Will you join the messy fray to transform our own hearts and our own worlds and move deeper into love? Where will you conjure the courage? She wrote. What will you do to make Black Lives Matter as they never have before in America? Where will you conjure the courage? What will you do? Friends, we live in tumultuous times and we are called to be agents of transformation right now. Change is coming and we are all called to move, to change, to evolve. Black Lives Matter movement is the freedom struggle of our time, a fight once again for the very soul of our nation. So let us teach our children that freedom is a word to conjure by. That freedom is what gives us the courage to act. That like our ancestors before us, we are a gentle, angry people whose work is the liberation of all people because we know that my freedom is tied up in yours and yours in mine and in Tony Robinson's and Mike Brown's and Sandra Bland's. We respond to the call for justice. We show up faithfully. We live our faith in our values. We follow the leadership of communities of color in confronting injustice. This is who we have been. This is who we are. This is who we are becoming. And this is why we come. This is why we gather here. We are truly part of something beautiful and the light is burning strong. This is holy ground. Perhaps we should take off our shoes. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and our hearts toward one another and seeking to bring into our circle of concern all this week we hold in our hearts the families and the friends of those killed in the shooting in Chattanooga. Our hearts are heavy with the continued violence in our nation and we pray for change. We also send our thoughts and our prayers to the family and friends of Matthew Court. Matthew was an 11-year-old boy who attended Shorewood Hills Elementary He was killed this past Monday in a bike accident. We grieve with his family and we send our prayers of healing and support. We also hold all those cares that are too tender to share that live in the fullness of our hearts. May we remember that we are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity, one with all the universe. May we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care, to remember and to love. And if you will please rise in body or spirit for our closing hymn, number 1028. Has begun.