This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on November 3, 2002, by Rev. Dr. Judith Campbell.

Justice, Equity and Compassion in Human Relations

This is my second in what will be an irregular series of sermons on our seven principles.  Idon’t think any of us have any difficulty with the definitions of these individual words, or in understanding the concept of the second principle, …we affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations.  And we do it.  We do it in our congregational polity, which is how we intend to do everything from creating by-laws and choosing a minister, to making policy, and establishing working committees.  We do it in our religious education programming,  where we try to listen to one another and create for ourselves what we would have as an educational program our children and ourselves.  We are doing it as part of our newly created social action initiative, where we will look outside of ourselves and these walls, and see where there are inequities that we might address.  And we do it….or we try to do it, outside of the committees and beyond the pulpit, in the way we interact with and relate to one another.

This second principle would mostly appear to address our work and our relationship with others – the word relationship by its definition involves a connection with another person or persons.  But as I pointed out in my earlier sermon on the worth and dignity of living things…. worth and dignity must first begin with a healthy concept of self before we can go about genuinely seeing it and respecting it in others.  The same is true here. If we are not gentle and honest with ourselves…we might find it hard not to be judgmental of others values and lifestyles.

But sometimes….as much as we try to be fair and equitable and to see that justice prevails, sometimes….life just “ain’t” fair…and there is nothing ..and I mean nothing… we can do about it….and maybe that is where the compassion and its near relation…empathy comes in.  

The reality is, we are not born equal.  From birth, we are differently abled.  We are born with greater or lesser intelligence, physical attributes and abilities, talents, energy and/or the lack thereof.  We are born richer or poorer, sickly or healthy, tall, short, pretty, handsome or some or none of the above.  Some things can be changed or altered and some can not.  “Life ain’t always fair” or even sometimes fair…and I believe our work should begin at the point of inequity wherever we find it.  The kid that is never picked for the team (I know I was that kid) needs to have an advocate, or a compassionate person to intervene.  The person in a chair needs to have someone offer to hold a door, even if the offer is refused.  Marginalized people need to be invited into the mainstream….but not mindlessly.  People on the fringes, of society, of a church community, of a certain lifestyle - immigrants, the elderly - need those of us who are in the mainstream to open the doors to them…by being welcoming congregations  …by having new member orientation programs, or “buddy” programs.  We can help with English as a second language programs, tutoring programs, and rehabilitation programs for offenders…and do it in such a way that shows respect for an individual or a group and their own values…and not trying to impose our own.  This is easier said than done.  (Because, underneath genuine good will, we need to look hard at what also might be our own unconscious classism and elitism.)

Equity, Justice and Compassion in human relations.

Let’s start with Equity.

If you will accept that we are not born with equal abilities and opportunities, then I would offer that the best work we can do is to help to level the playing field.  Equal opportunity does not imply equal ability but the opportunities for each and every one of us to have a reasonable standard of living, housing, education and employment should be in place….and the means to access those opportunities with comparative ease and dignity.  Let me give you an example of something that sounded great….but turned out to be monumental in its ineffectiveness.

When I was a professor at Lesley University, over the years I had a number of  “welfare” mothers as students. Even the term is so pejorative, and conjures up so much negativity. These were women with one or more children, who were trying to make a better life for themselves and for their children by getting an education. The programs were in place and there was money available if you knew how to work the system.  Women could start at a two year “community” college and, with good grades, could transfer into Lesley, a highly regarded private women’s college.  We had counseling services for them, tutorial programs for them, even special ethnic support groups in place for these women.  We had everything except child care….in a women’s college whose primary focus is the education of children…and who had a day care management program!!!!  (Equity here???…No!!!) So these women struggled with the balancing act that many of us with young children have experienced.... but without a car and without a dependable man in the picture.  They struggled,... using cranky public transportation often in nasty New England weather, depending on already over-burdened relatives,  trying to get meals and do laundry, often working part time, and trying, when it was available, to get their kids to a state-funded day care program for such women.  I agonized for them, but cheered them on as they literally fought and scraped to make a better life for themselves…and what was the first thing the state cut in one of the many recent budget balancing acts????   Of course, state-funded day care for working poor or student moms!  Where was the equity, the justice and the compassion there? And why didn’t Lesley pick up the deficit….Why??? because it wasn’t cost effective!

It doesn’t work if we provide a so-called “opportunity”  and then make it so impossible to access that it becomes merely another stumbling block or stone wall, a “look but don’t touch “ tease that is consciously or unconsciously designed to maintain the status quo and keep the poor and disadvantaged…poor and disadvantaged. 

What I saw underneath the public display of so called “help” for these women, was a much deeper disregard and antipathy for women who had children out of wedlock, and who were regarded as immoral “welfare” sponges who had babies so they could get free food and an education. I don’t think so.  What is true, is that in some cultures having a child without benefit of a legal “husband” is not seen as anything to be ashamed of.  And among some of us it has become positively fashionable!  

But the fact is….it really is hard to come up smack against a different value system and maintain our own equilibrium and be accepting and even compassionate.

In the seventies, when I was a single mom myself, and my kids were in primary school...and I was doing the crazy balance dance…I had the world’s most wonderful day care provider.  She had a bunch of her own kids, many of whom had left or dropped out of high school, but whose house was a big happy house full of good smells, foster kids, grand kids, my kids, and more than enough laps and hugs to go around.  She had a daughter who was still in High school, and who wanted to go to the Prom.  This woman, who was too proud to go and get government surplus food…she qualified….because she too proud to be seen in a line with poor people, (I went and got the food for her), spent over $200…of the money I paid her….to outfit her daughter for the prom.  She bought a NEW rabbit fur cape to go over the turquoise tulle and sequined dress…also new.  As you can imagine, this wasp wannabee was aghast.  I mentally thought of the books, dentistry, and heating oil that that money would have bought….and I wanted to scream  “but…but…but….”…but I didn’t….mercifully, something stopped me, and on one of the few occasions that I managed it…I kept my mouth shut!  (not an easy task).

Her daughter went to the prom decked out like a Bloomingdales’ Christmas tree…and I bit my tongue…and took pictures of her, because they didn’t have a camera.

Our money handling practices were polar opposites of each other…and she needed to outfit her daughter in the grand manner as much as I needed to salt away even $1 a week in my children’s savings accounts for college.  It was only years later I realized how very much I learned from that woman about justice, equity and compassion.  She really did love all those kids in her home equally and she really saw their different needs and attended to each of them compassionately and without judgment and she was just as happy for me when I received my Master’s degree as she was to hear that that same daughter who went to the prom, was getting married at the age of seventeen.

It’s harder than we think to be non-judgmental, but if we are going to really try to be just, equitable and compassionate in our relations with one another and as part of an institution, we must continually be checking in with ourselves and reviewing our own agendas and motivations as we do our work and live our lives.

In this society, white, tall, pretty and male people have more of an advantage than short, ugly people of any color and fat people of any color are at a tremendous and humiliating disadvantage.  And loud, pushy people get more done than quiet, retiring people.

I recently asked a friend, a very portly friend, if she had seen a certain movie.  She looked at me at first angrily, and then sadly, and said, “Judy, I don’t go to movies…I can’t fit into the seats”.  I had been anything but compassionate, and I felt terrible, and then I remembered the time when I was 40+ pounds heavier, that I had to ask for a seat belt extender one day on Cape Air….after lying about my real weight, and fearing that I would undoubtedly sink the plane…I remembered my own humiliation, and I felt even worse…But maybe that’s what It took…I had to have been there too to really understand her pain and frustration.  That’s where the com-passion comes in…”com”…with, …”passion”…., or deep caring, …being there with-love and deep caring! 

There’s that word again…love. 

But we don’t have to be fat, or homeless, or ugly to know that there are people of all sizes and abilities and flavors who have needs that can be helped by our understanding and motivation…and compassion.

If we do our justice and equity work compassionately…if we do it with do it with love, the chances are we will do it well.  If we seek to level the playing field lovingly and understandingly and not for our own gain we will be doing the work that we are intended to do and that we convenanted to do when we signed the book as Unitarian Universalists. 

Promoting justice and equity in human relations can only be done with the kind of love that embraces and respects all living things.  If I need only one sweater to keep warm, and you need two.  Giving us each one and one half sweaters and insisting that that is an equal distribution will make one of us too warm, and leave one still cold.  That’s the difference between equity and equal. 

The parent who steals food to feed the family would not be forced to do that if our national wealth were more equitably distributed.  And is justice done if he/she is punished for that “crime”?

This is part of our  work locally, to find food for the needy, and decent affordable housing for families and individuals, and globally to speak and to act and to write letters and to support those initiatives which will level the playing field for all people wherever the need and hurt exists. 

“I was naked and you clothed me, hungry and you fed me, in prison and you visited me.”  

I am not the first person to think about this….nor will I be the last…

Amen.