In Search of Redemption
by Rev. Colin Bossen, March 8, 2009
"I have done questionable things." These words are uttered by the replicant Roy in the movie Blade Runner. Replicants are bio-engineered humanoids and Roy offers the words as a confession to Eldon Tyrell, the scientist who created him, right before Roy murders his creator.
These words rattle about the cage of my skull every now and again. We have all done questionable things. Each of our lives is imperfect. Often we struggle with our regrets--the unkindness we have offered others, the ill-choices and all of the mistakes we have made.
These regrets can haunt us. They can become debilitating and serve as oppressive weights. One reasons we gather each Sunday morning is to seek relief from the oppressive weights in our lives. We come together because we know that our pain can be lessened in community. A burden shared is less of a burden.
At their best our Unitarian Universalist congregations are places of healing. They are communities that, in the words of the Unitarian Universalist theologian Rebecca Parker, offer "hospitality for the frightened, harbor for the distressed, shelter for the unjustly persecuted and pursued." Our Unitarian Universalist faith preaches that all are welcome in our communities. No matter the mistakes you have made or the imperfections you contain you are welcome here. If you seek succor we hope you will find it. If you need healing we will try to offer it. We understand that redemption is possible and that it lies within our human power to achieve.
I have been thinking about redemption ever since I visited a member of our congregation who expressed dissatisfaction with Unitarian Universalism. Like Roy, our friend has done questionable things in her life. When we spoke, she was troubled with regrets and found Unitarian Universalism to be too cold to offer her the comfort she needed.
As I remember our conservation, which she gave her permission for me to share, our friend described herself as a theist and said that she found Unitarian Universalist understandings of God to be too abstract. Many of us reject a personal God in favor of God as universal life force, God as clockmaker or God as metaphor. Some of us do not even find the idea of God to be useful. Our friend told me that she needed a personal God, a God whom she could ask for forgiveness from and who would give it. She confessed that she sometimes found this God by attending Christian churches in her neighborhood.
I admit that Unitarian Universalism cannot be all things to all people. While we are a non-creedal faith there are some beliefs that are probably incompatible with membership in a Unitarian Universalist faith community. I suspect that one could not be a Nazi and be part of a movement that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of all people. However, a personal God that offers forgiveness does have her place here. She can be found among the teachings of our Universalist ancestors who believed in an all loving God. Those ancestors of ours characterized themselves, in the words of one 19th century minister, as "the church of God's love unlimited." If there was one thing that their God did it was forgive. Their God offered universal salvation and lifted every person--no matter how wicked or unwilling--into heaven.
That aside, I believe that contemporary Unitarian Universalist thought has something to teach us about redemption that does not rely on the supernatural. Redemption is the act of repairing a past wrong. It is an attempt to achieve healing or to set things right again. It begins with forgiveness and continues with a change from past behavior. As our responsive reading this morning suggested, redemption is about forgiving ourselves and each other and then beginning again in love.
We probably all have some need to forgive ourselves and others for the wrongs that we have done and suffered. On some level all of us have experienced violence. Violence, Rebecca Parker writes, "disregards self and other as distinct." It occurs when we transgress the boundaries that exist between people--whether they are physical, spiritual or emotional. Violence can be verbal and it can be physical. It occurs whenever one person treats another as an object or denies their shared humanity.
Parker believes that "we can resist and redress violence by acting for justice and being present: present to one another, present to beauty, present to fire at the heart of things, the spirit that gives breath to life." When we are present we can offer each other healing and learn to resist the temptation to act violently. Our religious community should be a place where we practice presence and learn how to be present with each other.
In the book "Proverbs of Ashes," which Parker co-wrote with Rita Nakashima Brock, Parker shares a story about how transformative and redemptive presence can be. She writes about Lyle and his sister Maxine. Lyle returned from World War II to his home town in Iowa a shattered man. Of all of the young men from that town who left to fight only Lyle survived.
When Lyle returned home he was like a ghost. He did not seem to recognize anyone. Lyle's family did not know what to do with him. So, as Parker describes it: "Maxine...decided to keep her brother company. Whenever she could she'd sit in the parlor with him and talk. She'd tell him the news from the hardware store in town, or about the potluck at church, who was there, which dress each young woman wore. She'd tell him the clean laundry had blown off the line and into the tomatoes... When she ran out of things to say, she'd just sit with him quietly, snapping beans or mending socks. Lyle was like a stone. No expression on his face. Rocking.
It went on like this for...months. Then one night, late, after everyone else had gone to bed, Maxine was sitting with Lyle, quietly knitting, when the eyes in Lyle's still face filled with tears. The tears spilled over and began to run down his face. Maxine noticed. She got up and put her arms around her brother. Held in his sister's embrace, Lyle began to cry full force, great gusts of sobbing, and Maxine held him. Then he began to talk. He talked of the noise, the cold, the smoke, the death of his buddies. And then he spoke of the camps, the mass graves, the smell. He talked all night. Maxine listened.
When the morning light came across the fields, she went to the kitchen and cooked him breakfast. He ate. Then he went out and did the morning chores."
Over the next decades Lyle became a staunch humanitarian. He worked with farm workers in California and traveled to Mexico to help ensure that the farm workers families had the basics: food, shelter and clothing.
The lesson that Parker draws from this story is that "A traumatized human being was able to return to feeling, to speaking, and to the ordinary tasks of life because another person offered him her presence and was able to remain present to the account of terror and grief without turning away." This is how, in Parker's mind, we humans can help each other achieve redemption. It is an example of how we forgive ourselves and each other and begin again in love.
Elwin Wilson's recent apology to U.S. Representative John Lewis provides another example of redemption and forgiveness. You may have heard about how the former member of the Klu Klux Klan appeared on national television and offered Lewis a sincere apology for beating him during the Civil Rights movement.
As a young man Wilson was a member of the KKK in Rocky Hill, South Carolina. John Lewis was a Freedom Rider, part of a group of young black and white women and men who took public transit across the South in an effort to call attention to Jim Crow laws. When Lewis arrived at the Rocky Hill bus station he tried to enter a waiting area designated whites only. As he walked into the room he was attacked by a group of white men led by Wilson. Lewis was beaten to the ground but met the violence he experienced with non-violent resistance.
Such experiences were not unusual for Lewis and his fellow Freedom Riders. During their ride across the South they were threatened with jail and violence. But their actions helped to draw attention to the monstrous system of segregation operative throughout a large part of the country. They provided an important spark that helped end legalized segregation.
For Lewis it was also the start of a career of public service. He was only 21 years old when he served as a Freedom Rider. Over the next several years he became a major voice in the Civil Rights movement. And in 1987 he was elected as a U.S. Representative for Georgia, only the second African American to serve in this position since Reconstruction. Shortly after his inauguration, President Obama presented Lewis with a signed photo that read "Because of You."
Wilson remained in Rocky Hill and for many years lived a life filled with hate. At home he kept a black baby doll suspended from a tree by a rope around its neck. When blacks tried to enter a segregated diner and eat at the lunch counter Wilson pelted them with eggs.
Almost fifty years after the incident Wilson went on national television and apologized to Lewis. On "Good Morning America" he said "I'm so sorry about what happened back then." Lewis responded by saying "It's OK. I forgive you."
Since then Wilson has been inspired to apologize around the town of Rocky Hill for his past behavior. He has apologized at the diner where he threw eggs and he has sought out other people that he intimated or harmed. He wishes it to be know that he wants "to love people regardless of color."
Lewis has stated that Wilson is the first person to apologize to him for violently opposing the Civil Rights movement. He can't quite believe that someone who held such racist views in the past has changed. In Lewis words "it's amazing."
When asked why he apologized Wilson revealed that he had been carrying around the burden of his hate for decades. He stated that hate weighed on his conscience. He did not want to die with it still inside him. The only way to get rid of the hate was to take action and apologize for his past behavior. He now hopes that he will be an inspiration for others to come forward and apologize for their past racist behavior.
Reflecting on their exchange, Lewis said "It says something about the power of love, the power of grace and the power of people to say I'm sorry." Later he continued "Hate is too heavy a burden to bear."
Since apologizing to Lewis Wilson has received harassing phone calls. During an interview on CNN he recounted one in which the caller told him he was a "scummy blackened dog" and had reneged on the oath he took as a member of the KKK. Wilson's apology, according to the caller, undermined white people.
Wilson responded to the caller by saying "One day, I hope that you get the hatred out of yourself."
Lewis and Wilson's story, and Wilson's response to his hate filled caller, suggests how the burden of hate can be lifted with an apology or a gesture that seeks forgiveness. It suggests that transformation is always a possibility. After many years Wilson was able to leave his hate behind. His story demonstrates our human power to seek and gain redemption.
I suspect that like Wilson we have all done questionable things in our lives. Now, I doubt that many of us are weighed with the burdens of old hatreds in quite the same way. Still, there's probably at least one thing in each of our lives that we need to forgive ourselves for. Most of us could probably forgive someone else for their actions as well. If we did we might be able to begin again in love.
What beginning again in love looks like for each of us will look different. It might mean calling a friend who you have not spoken in years because you feel that that friend wronged you. It might mean forgiving your parents for not quite being who you wanted them to be or our children for not turning out the way you had hoped. Whatever it looks like, beginning again in love starts with this act of forgiveness and, as it did with Lyle and Elwin Wilson, continues with a change in behavior. It is not enough to just seek forgiveness. For true redemption we need to change.
I like to think that the final scenes of the movie Blade Runner contain a moment of redemption. If you have seen the movie you know that it focuses on Deckard, a detective in the Los Angeles of the near future who specializes in tracking down errant replicants. Deckard is on the trail of four replicants who have escaped to Earth after serving essentially as slaves in outer space. Roy is the leader of these replicants and he is on Earth trying to get an extension of his life span. When they were created replicants were only designed to live for four years.
Roy kills Tyrell and another scientist when Tyrell refuses to extend the life span of the replicants. Meanwhile, Deckard tracks down and kills two of the four fugitive replicants. Deckard finds the replicants hiding place and kills the third replicant, Roy's lover Pris, shortly before Roy returns.
The mood of the movie is bleak. The scenery a mixture of high tech glitz and post-industrial collapse. The replicant's hide out is a near derelict wreck and Roy chases Deckard through it as the two struggle, each trying to kill the other. Roy breaks one of Deckard's hands and takes away his gun. Deckard retreats to a roof top and then in the cold grey sludge of the Los Angeles rain tries to leap across to the next building.
He fails and only escapes a fatal fall by clinging to a ledge. Rather than deliver the coup-de-grace Roy lifts Deckard to safety. Deckard collapses and stares up at Roy as, his four year life span concluded, begins to shut down. As he dies Roy offers a final soliloquy: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die..
."
Roy saves Deckard because in his last moments of life he realizes that life is a precious gift. No matter the hatred he feels, it is better to forgive and preserve life than to take it. All of life is destined to be lost "like tears...in rain." Before we come to our ends we are each faced with the question of whether or not we will our hatreds and our mistakes with us. Or if we will choose, like Whitter in the poem from earlier today, to recognize our common humanity and realize that "all human love and hate / Find one sad level; and how, soon or late, / wronged and wrongdoer, each with meekened face, / And cold hands folded over a still heart, / Pass the green threshold of our common grave..."
Such a recognition might cause us to seek and give forgiveness where we might find it and, with our human hands and hearts, look for and create redemption where we must.
May it be so. Amen and Blessed Be.