Sermon: The Audience of the Future

The story broke a couple weeks ago and by now everybody’s heard: Jon Stewart is leaving the daily show. I remember early that evening all the newsfeed alerts on everybody’s phones suddenly began beeping and chiming with the news. I happened to be within watching range of a TV at the time, so we turned it on and it seemed like every channel was running the story. Jon Stewart leaving the daily show. Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart. They were running clips from the early days of the show, retrospectives, pundits pontificating about the impact on the industry. It was a whole thing. And then it came time for the Daily Show itself. The one where he was going to make this announcement. Or, rather, the one where he had already made this announcement to the live studio audience several hours earlier.  

That live studio audience had spread the news after the taping, the networks had picked it up, and by the time the show actually aired, the entire TV-watching public already knew. Now Jon Stewart, being the media-savvy fellow that he is, guessed in advance that this would happen. And so when The Daily Show began that day, he looked into the camera and said to the TV audience, “You guys already know some stuff that these folks here in the studio don’t know yet. But we’ll get to it, we’ll get there.”

Maybe if I were a regular TV watcher I wouldn’t have found this as completely mind blowing as I did. But as it is, I think I still haven’t quite recovered. Jon Stewart was speaking to an audience of the future — one that didn’t exist yet — one that would know something and be affected by something that, at the moment he said those words in the present tense, nobody knew and nobody was affected by. At that moment, there was no TV audience that already knew “some stuff that these folks here in the studio” didn’t. But he knew that they would know and so he was addressing them in their future state. And he said, “We’ll get to it. We’ll get there.”

When you think about it, that’s really how time and life work. We have the live studio audience right here, right now, you and me in this room. And then we have the much, much larger TV audience of the future: our children, our grandchildren, our great-great-great grandchildren; the members of this congregation in the year 2100; the entirety of the human and natural worlds of the future that will all be affected, however slightly, by what happens and how we live our lives here and now. Not to make anybody paranoid, but we are being watched by the TV audience of the future.

If you think they’re not watching, if you think they don’t care about what we do here and now in the live studio, think again. We change the world just by breathing. Our cells create electricity. Our waste winds up in distant oceans. Everything we do ripples outward and affects everything and everyone else, for better and for worse. And that’s when we’re not even trying. Imagine how much we change the world when we actually get together and try to do something. Getting together and trying to do something is exactly what we’re about at First U. This show that is First U has been airing for 182 years now and for 182 years this congregation has been a dynamic space where religious liberals find each other, nurture each other, and work together to change the world.

Here’s a quick montage of highlights of some of the things we’ve gotten together and done: In the 19th century, members and clergy here spoke out loudly for abolitionism and women’s suffrage. During the Vietnam War, we declared this church a sanctuary for draft resisters. We hosted a Vietnamese monk in the Chapel of All Faiths for a three month meditation fast to protest the war. During the Civil Rights Movement, this congregation was one of the few allies of the Black Affairs Council, advocating for greater power in our denomination. The group gave us the carving of the Maasai warrior that stands in our chapel to thank us for what they called “combating institutional racism.” We were one of the early congregations performing same-sex weddings and welcoming LGBT people at a time when such welcome was rare and desperately needed. And just this year, if you remember, we sent 200 people from our front steps to the People’s Climate March to advocate for action on global warming.

I say “we” in each of these cases even though I and most of us in this live studio weren’t around for most of it, because this is our heritage as a congregation. The actors change but the show goes on. We are the future they were looking into the camera and addressing back then. We are the future that they were building towards and working for. And now it’s our turn. It’s up to us to carry that heritage forward. This fall, the board appointed a team of people that we called Forward First Brooklyn to help define and charge up our sense of purpose. To ask: Why are we here? What kind of difference are we trying to make? What is the “show” that is First U in 2015 about?

To answer that question, we had big group conversations, small group conversations, individual conversations. Through these conversations, we learned a few things that won’t be a surprise to anyone who spends any time around here: We learned that we’re passionate about cultivating a nurturing, safe, spiritual home here where people can come and feel accepted and loved exactly as they are. We learned that we’re passionate about growing our voice and power out in the world, becoming a greater force for social and environmental justice. We learned that we love worship and we love music and that joy is important to us. So the Forward group strove to integrate all this and capture our sense of purpose in words. Here’s a sneak preview of what we came up with, and you’ll hear more about this at our meeting later. Our purpose is “to inspire and empower people, through the embrace of a loving, joyful religious community, to work for justice in the human and natural worlds.” 

In my mind, this mission is a promise made to the audience of the future. It’s a promise that we are going to work together and give, not only to make our own lives richer, but also to make their world – the future world – a healthy, just, and joyful one.

We’re making a promise to the teacher in the year 2062 who will say, [congregant #1 reads:] “My two mothers met and got married at First U back in 2018 and they always talked about how incredible it was back in those days to be somewhere that completely supported them, not only as lesbian parents, but just as parents – where they got support around all the ordinary struggles of parenting as people of faith. I know I benefited enormously from their conscious, spiritual approach to life and they always credited you. I carry this with me into the classroom every day.” We’re making a promise to that guy.

We’re making a promise to the African-American Supreme Court justice whose speech at her retirement gala in 2085 includes these words — [congregant #2 reads:] “My views on justice, fairness, and responsibility were not easily won. I was born into a world where my chances of thriving were slim. We didn’t have a lot of money, my parents were trying to raise us on minimum wage jobs, and public schools in New York City were failing. There was a lot of police violence against people of color. I got involved in social justice work, and on one of our marches, I met other young people from a church group that was working on reconciliation and reform. Our groups joined forces, and I found that I was drawn to that faith community. There, in that collaborative work, I found a leadership role. That community helped me develop the skills and confidence I needed to become a change maker, to help bring communities together. They listened to me and I learned from them. They told me to keep believing in myself, and showed me that the world needed me. Thank you First U.”  We’re making a promise to that woman.

We are making a promise to the 4^th grade girl in Vancouver in the year 2200 whose history textbook reads, [congregant #3 reads:] “In the early part of the 21^st century our planet was on the verge of an ecological holocaust. Politicians were refusing to take meaningful action. The impasse was finally broken by an American Unitarian congregation in Brooklyn, New York – an 800-member powerhouse that formed an interfaith alliance with religious groups as far reaching as the Mormon Church and the Vatican. This alliance, through mass publicity efforts and smart use of the media of the time (then known as “the Internet”), was able to change the public discourse. Healing the planet now became widely seen as an urgent moral, religious, and spiritual imperative. This shift in public consciousness led to a cascade of environmental legislation and widespread embrace of sustainable consumer practices. The members of the Unitarian congregation themselves became a model for sustainable living to which all subsequent generations have aspired.”

This may seem far-fetched but it is far from impossible. If we don’t do this, who will? I’m thinking of the famous Margaret Meade quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, (say it with me if you know it) it’s the only thing that ever has.” We are a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens here in this live studio and I believe that we can change the world. But it’s going to take all our thoughtfulness and all our commitment. It’s going to take our time volunteering here and with organizations beyond these walls. It’s going to take our willingness to learn, even when we think we know it all. It’s going to require taking in hard truths that make us re-evaluate how we live. It’s going to take courage to stand a little bit outside of the mainstream culture; to be told repeatedly that we’re really going overboard and we need to just chill out, just like the abolitionists and the suffragists and the early gay marriage leaders were told.

It’s going to take all these things and it’s going to take money. No TV show and no congregation can do anything for any audience of any future without money. This is the first day of the stewardship campaign where we are all effectively looking into the camera and speaking to the audience of the future. We’re telling the future what resources we can give to it; how we plan to make its world better. Our financial pledges are not only about keeping the lights on and the show going here for us in the live studio – they are that, to be sure. But they are also about placing ourselves – our lives – into the stream of history, having faith that we collectively can make a difference to a much larger audience long after we individual actors are gone. When you are filling out a pledge form at your kitchen table or at a stewardship party over the next few weeks, I ask you to do it as an expression of this faith.

The day after the big Jon Stewart announcement, my husband and I took our four-year-old kids cross-country skiing for the first time. They had a great time, fell a lot, and proved once and for all that kids really are made of rubber. Later, when we were talking about the day, my daughter Miriam asked, “Can we go cross-country skiing more times while I’m still four years old?” I said, “Yeah, probably, but why while you’re still four-years-old?” And she said, “Because when I grow up and my kids are four years old, I want to take them cross-country skiing, and I want to tell them that when I was four, I went cross-country skiing a lot, and I want that to be true.”

It’s the wisdom of Jon Stewart and the wisdom of Miriam Levy-Lyons: begin with the narrative you want to be able to tell the future about yourself and work backwards from there to figure out the kind of life you need to live to make that narrative true. Speak in the present tense through your actions to an audience that doesn’t exist yet, but that will. In Miriam’s case, she imagined being watched by her future kids. In all cases, we are being watched by the audience of some future we can’t even imagine.  What do we want them to see when they watch this show that is us? What do we want to be able say to them? They know some stuff that we here in the live studio don’t know yet. But we’ll get to it. We’ll get there. With our pledge, with our promise, we’ll get there.