Quaker Worship (Part 6): A Leading to Act(ivism)
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 31, 2021
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning we are on our 6th installment of the Quaker Worship Series. Our text for today is Isaiah 42: 1-4 from the Message:
42 1-4 “Take a good look at my servant.
I’m backing him to the hilt.
He’s the one I chose,
and I couldn’t be more pleased with him.
I’ve bathed him with my Spirit, my life.
He’ll set everything right among the nations.
He won’t call attention to what he does
with loud speeches or gaudy parades.
He won’t brush aside the bruised and the hurt
and he won’t disregard the small and insignificant,
but he’ll steadily and firmly set things right.
He won’t tire out and quit. He won’t be stopped
until he’s finished his work—to set things right on earth.
Far-flung ocean islands
wait expectantly for his teaching.”
A couple years ago, I met Friend Dwight Wilson at our Yearly Meeting Sessions. He was sharing his testimony as well as his passion for social justice and the psalms he wrote to highlight issues of peace and justice in our world. I had a long talk with Dwight after I presented on Quaker Civil Rights activists, Bayard Rustin, and Barrington Dunbar during a panel discussion. Our conversation that day began a distant friendship that has continued to develop over these last two years.
This past Wednesday evening, I received a short Facebook Messenger Message from Dwight. It said simply, “I hope autumn is treating you well, Bob.” In the ensuing correspondence, I found that Dwight was writing from a hospital bed.
After telling him of the slow arriving of autumn here in Indiana, I took a moment to thank him for his friendship, the psalms he has written, and his weekly posts on jazz music albums that have both impacted his and my life. After thanking me, he shared that just a few hours before sending me the message he was told he was going to need emergency surgery. Dwight made it clear this was not going to be a routine surgery – actually, later I found out he is suffering from bladder cancer. I ask you all to hold Dwight in the Light as he takes this difficult journey. Just yesterday, I heard that Dwight was at home but with a long recovery ahead.
I was hoping last year to have Dwight come to First Friends and share two of his unique calls to action – one being holding babies at the local hospital and second his prophetic psalms for peace and justice. Yet with the pandemic and now his diagnosis, it may be a while before we have the privilege to hear from him in person.
As I was preparing for this 6th installment of the Quaker Worship series, I wanted to begin with something Dwight actually wrote about the history of Quaker Social Action. Just listen as Dwight lays a foundation for what he labels a “Social Justice Testimony”:
George Fox, who is often considered “the founder” of the Religious Society of Friends, said with certainty, “There is one, Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition.” Contemporary Quakers often refer to this inward and eternal One as “that of God in everyone.” All Quaker testimonies spring from this belief in the sacredness of the whole of creation.
Despite the above, many people in the 21st Century are only familiar with the Quaker peace testimony. In the first centuries of Quakerism such a view would have been impossible. There are numerous Quaker testimonies including in alphabetical order, anti-racism, community building, equality, integrity, love, optimism, peacemaking and social justice.
They are as interrelated as the ecological system of an orchard. One can describe such an orchard by beginning on either side, but arbitrary choice should not lift the value of west above east or north above south. Each testimony deserves its own serious contemplation.
Quakerism values Jesus’ reported summation of the Law of Moses, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
In 1661, more than five years before he allegedly told William Penn to “carry your sword as long as you can” and only nine years after his personal search had become a movement, [George] Fox wrote an essay entitled, “The Line of Righteousness and Justice Stretched Forth Over All Merchants and Others.” The theme throughout, based on Jesus’ dicta, was to treat each person justly. In this essay Fox stated an oft echoed theme, “Do rightly, justly, truly, holily, equally, to all people in all things.”
The first century of the Religious Society of Friends’ existence, in both England and the Americas, saw hundreds of early Quakers beaten, imprisoned and, in some cases executed for their beliefs. The long-standing commitment to social justice has not waned. The pursuit of social justice is a requirement in and out of season; during true peace or when violence is as far away as Afghanistan or as near as our next-door neighbor’s bedroom.
Personal perspectives on justice have been known to change with one’s degree of comfort. In response to this phenomenon, the 18th century Quaker, John Woolman offered guidance when he said,
“Oppression in the extreme appears terrible, but oppression in more refined appearances remains oppression, and where the smallest degree of it is cherished, it grows stronger and more extensive.” Without social justice there is no peace.
As Dwight points out, from the beginning of our faith, Friends have been guided by our beliefs known as our “testimonies” of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship (or what some like to call our S.P.I.C.E.S.)
The belief that everyone is equal, alone, has often put us at the forefront of social justice initiatives, such as the abolition movement, the women’s rights movement, the desire to make education and healthcare available to all, prison reform, Civil Rights, and much, much, more.
Today, Quakers and groups founded by Quakers, continue to work for social, political, economic, and environmental change as much as their ancestors did. We see it within our own meeting with Right Sharing of World Resources and our stamps program, Indiana Friends Committee on Legislation and its lobbying work at the State Level, Friends Committee on National Legislation at the federal level, Quaker Earth Care for the environment, Quaker Voluntary Service at the community level, and then there is Recycle Force, Mid-North Food Pantry, working with refugees, and I could go on and on.
But sometimes when we start ripping off that list of organizations, we quickly just assume someone else is acting and there is no need for us to get involved. This is where I believe we need to connect our activism and social justice work to our worship.
As most of us know, the Quaker Faith has always been known as a “quiet faith,” by many people, but it also comes with a practice of acting with conviction, and a belief in being open to the Spirit’s leading as I have already highlighted in this series.
Christine Duncan-Tessmer, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s General Secretary, points out that Quakerism represents a ‘both/and’ outlook.
She notes there “are prayerful worship spaces in the Quaker Faith, where reflection will feed action, that can represent an infinity loop between action and doing, and stillness and centering. They both need each other.”
There are “so many ways of being in alignment with God…at times like this, when there is so much stress and strife and concern…that space of being in worship and being able to connect to the…flow of all life among us is a really important part of being whole…”
This is what we mean when we state that Quaker worship is about reconnecting to the whole – not just a part. Friend Noah Baker Merrill has been teaching for some time on “Reclaiming the Ministry of the Whole.” Noah says this tension to act and engage must be shaped within the worshipping community. He says,
“There’s something about the dynamic tension, as the lion of my fierce inward leading meets the lamb of my meeting’s genuine engagement. I surrender to the sense of the meeting, and the meeting surrenders to its responsibility to help me grow in faithfulness…There’s an Iraqi saying about community that it’s not the finger that matters most, but the hand and the arm behind it. It takes a meeting to raise a ministry.”
It takes a local meeting, like First Friends to raise up people who will act on where the Spirit is leading, yet as a society or community, we just don’t send people out on their own. We must also build a framework for their support and ongoing encouragement, clearness committees to help them discern, and the gathering of new opportunities for us to serve and advocate for our neighbors in the present moment.
Did you know that part of the early Quaker Movement was a committee that was solely established to care for Friends in this manner? It was called The Meeting for Sufferings.
Even though it has evolved overtime, it was established to provide for the time-sensitive needs of imprisoned Friends and the activists who arose from the local meetings who suffered for the Truth. Since activism and social justice were so foundational among early Friends, early Quakers often found themselves imprisoned for being vocal for how the Spirit was leading.
Early Quakers knew the toll this work would take on their movement and its individual activists as they worked to make significant change in the world. The Meeting for Suffering was a place to gather as a worshipping community for the specific purpose of empowering Friends to respond quickly, meaningfully, and effectively to their world. It provided support, feedback, and a learning environment for the entire community to become adaptive and swift in their work.
WOW! It seems almost unreal in our day to read that last statement. If there is one huge struggle among Quakers today – it is with responding quickly and becoming adaptive and swift in our business and activist work.
I wonder what would happen if we dedicated one Sunday each quarter as a “Meeting for Suffering” at First Friends. Where we could hear from the activists in our midst. Where we could support them, hear their stories, be empowered by them, and be educated on the challenges they face. As well, where we could place them and their work humbly before the Divine for transformation, teaching, love, hope, and freedom. And where we could discern with them on how together we can make a difference in our community, state, nation, and world as a society of Friends.
To close this 6th installment on Quaker Worship, I want to return to something I have been pondering for the last several years.
Quaker Activist George Lakey paints a familiar picture to our current day when talking about the founding days of Quakerism. He says the Quaker Faith was “born in the middle of a civil war” in the mid 1600’s.
He even described a period of revolution–with the English wars and the beheading of Charles I – against which he says the Quaker faith grew. Friends were “politically active but not in a partisan way. We had social change goals, social justice goals, that we were pursuing in the midst of a very chaotic situation.”
Well, we could easily say that our county currently is in the middle of a modern civil war and a quite chaotic situation. Some would even describe our day as a period of revolution. Our wars may be different, but we must continue to seek the leading of the Spirit and help raise up activists, supporters, and encouragers for social change, social justice, and better world.
I think it is clear – if we were birthed in this type of environment and now are living within it, again – well folks, this is our time! We got this! We just need to return to our roots and activate!
Green Street Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, went as far as to develop testimonies for Social Justice and Activism which they use within their Meeting and gathered worship to help remind them of their purpose. I would love to see First Friends adapt these as a commitment to our own work for social justice and activism. Let me just read these as we close:
Quakers aid the non-violent efforts of the exploited to attain self-determination and social, political, and economic justice. This mission often requires persuading exploiters, some of whom may be Quakers, to change their ways, not only for the sake of the exploited, but also to strengthen their own goodness.
We seek both to bring to light and to counteract or expunge structures, institutions, language and thought processes that subtly support discrimination and exploitation.
We examine our own attitudes and practices to test whether we contribute as much as we ought to social, political, and economic justice.
We encourage others to adopt consensus decision-making that is Spirit-led.
Now, as we enter waiting worship, let us humbly present ourselves before the Divine for transformation, teaching, love, hope, freedom, and the nudging of the Spirit to act. To help you process, I offer you the following queries:
- How am I embracing a “both/and” outlook of worship and activism?
- In what ways do I need to “reconnect to the whole” and be proactive in creating a supportive community at First Friends, that encourages those led by the Spirit to act?
Dia de los Muertos/ Day of the Dead Prayer
Spirit of Life, whom we know best in our own loving and being loved, hold us as we remember those we have loved, and those who have loved us. May our gratitude sparkle in our lives, may our tears lubricate our souls. Help us to know that we are not alone in our grieving, and help us also to come to that peaceful place in which we can take what we learned from those who have gone before us into our own lives. Remind us that we, too, are mortal; and that the only enduring legacy we leave is the love that shines through our lives.
Amen.
Benediction
Grant us, Lord God, a vision of your world as your love would have it:
a world where the weak are protected, and none go hungry or poor;
a world where the riches of creation are shared, and everyone can enjoy them;
a world where different races and cultures live in harmony and mutual respect;
a world where peace is built with justice, and justice is guided by love.
Give us the inspiration and courage to build it, Amen.