There is one thing you need to know about me, and it probably should've been said earlier in my ministry here-earlier as in before my ministry began. Too late now. If you haven't figured it out already, when it comes to justice-making, I am a meddler, or at least an aspiring meddler. Meddler? That doesn't sound very nice. Meddling is sticking your nose into the affairs of others, interrupting, interfering, tampering, being a busy-body. Ministers are supposed to be kind and gentle-pastoral. Meddling isn't kind, gentle, or pastoral. I don't want a meddling minister! I don't want kibitzing clergy, prying preachers, or a pushy pastors. I don't want nosey nuns, presumptuous priests, or divisive deacons. Don't want 'em.

I'm reminded of the story of the minister who decides to preach a series of sermons on sin. Each sermon deals with a different sin. There is one, particularly cantankerous parishioner who always has some complaint about every sermon. But after the first sermon he comes through he line saying, "Pastor, I loved that sermon. You hit the nail on the head. People in this congregation really needed to hear it. You know, Mrs. Jones was doing exactly that just the other day, and Mr. Phillip's kid. Are you going to say anything about that?" And so on. It happened again after the next sermon. "Another great sermon, Pastor; very illuminating. This congregation really needed to hear it, especially Ms. Smith. You know what they've been saying about her?" This went on for the next few weeks. "Great sermon. This congregation needed to hear it." And this or that person was always guilty of this or that sin, and was the minister aware of what was going on with the flock. The final sermon was about the sin of gossip. The cantankerous parishioner came through the line looking profoundly displeased. "Pastor," he said, "now you're meddling!"

That's not the kind of meddling I'm talking about. The Rev. Dr. Ibrahim Abdurraham Farajaje informs me about good meddling. If you're familiar with him at all, you may know him by his previous name, Elias Farajaje-Jones. He taught religion at Howard University and currently serves as Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Cultural Studies and Islamic Studies at Starr-King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, CA. He is an inspiring and provocative person, a wonderful spiritual seeker. He is kind, gentle, and pastoral. He is also a meddler. He might say "interrupter." He once gave a talk called "Interrupting the Conversation" in which he describes interrupting as a spiritual practice. He doesn't mean interrupting just for the sake of interrupting. He means interrupting when truth needs to be told; interrupting when freedom is undermined; interrupting when justice is denied; interrupting when love is lacking; interrupting when we forget every person has worth and dignity. He talks about interrupting the discourses of power and oppression in our nation: interrupting racism; interrupting sexism; interrupting classism, imperialism, colonialism, homophobia and heterosexism; interrupting any discourse or exercise of power that seeks to subjugate people.

I find this a helpful way to think about justice-making. We live in the presence of a conversation about healthcare that has resulted in tens of millions of uninsured people in the United States. We live in the presence of a conversation about housing that has resulted in millions of homeless people. We live in the presence of a conversation about education that has resulted in a nationwide academic achievement gap between white students and students of color. We live in the presence of a conversation about our environment that has resulted in global warming and potential environmental catastrophe. We live in the presence of a conversation about sexual orientation that has resulted in the denial of civil rights to gay and lesbian families. In our region we live in the presence of a conversation about race, ethnicity, and culture, that has resulted in profound racial segregation. We live in the presence of a conversation about criminal justice that seems ever more likely to result in a state-sponsored execution in Connecticut on January 26th. We live in the presence of these conversations, and whatever energy anyone has been able to marshal to stem their tide, the results are the results. These conversations have resulted in injustices. These conversations need interruption.

But I wasn't born knowing how to interrupt. Well, as the father of an almost three-year-old, maybe we are born knowing how to interrupt successfully. But somewhere along the way most of us develop inhibitions about interrupting, about speaking our deepest truths, about taking risks in the public arena. I know I did. I needed to learn. I still need to learn. It gives me comfort that our Unitarian Universalist principles guide this learning. Our principles name as sacred the "words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love." Our principles call us to pay close attention to people who've effectively interrupted conversations.

The first great interrupters in the western religious tradition were the Hebrew prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and many others; prophets who constantly called on Israel to take care of the poor, to feed the hungry, to liberate the oppressed-often doing so at great cost to themselves. Jesus was deeply grounded in the prophetic books. I return again and again to the beginning of his ministry in the Book of Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 16 where he walks into the synagogue in Nazareth and reads from the scroll of Isaiah-the first words of his ministry: "I have come to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free." I have come to interrupt the conversation!

I've always admired Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" to eight local clergy who, while claiming to support his goals, called his actions "unwise and untimely." King interrupts the conversation, saying he has the right to engage in civil disobedience in Birmingham. He turns their conversation on its head: "You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham," he writes. "But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations…. It is unfortunate…demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but …even more unfortunate…the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative." That's meddling: naming the real problem, taking the focus off himself, putting it on the systemic racism so blatant in the country at that time.

King's response to the request that he wait for the appropriate time powerfully interrupts the conversation. He shatters the notion anyone should be asked to wait for social justice. It reminds me of another great interrupter of conversations who passed away last week, Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress, the first African American woman, in 1972, to run for a major party nomination for president, and a founder of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Organization for Women. She used to say, "I ran because somebody had to do it first. I ran because most people thought the country was not ready for a black candidate. Someday, [they said]. It was time in 1972 to make that someday come." Time to interrupt the conversation.

I call myself an aspiring meddler. I try to interrupt when I witness injustice. I push, I prod, I offer alternatives. I do it as gently and as compassionately as possible. I try to make it fun, even humorous. I try to ask questions rather than make accusations. I'm committed. Wherever I am, if there's something that doesn't seem quite right-especially if there seems to be an injustice in our midst, I'm going to meddle. I'm going to raise my hand and say, "excuse me? Can we examine this more closely?" I'm going to say, "I like what you have to say . . . but." And whatever comes after the but-that's where the meddling begins. If you ask me why I am committed in this way, my answer-on my good days-is that it comes from a place of caring and a passion for justice grounded in a deep love for humanity, a deep love for all that is sacred, a deep love for all Creation. On the bad days… well, let's just say we all struggle with being our best selves; there's a fine line between humbly interrupting a conversation for the sake of truth-telling, and arrogantly interrupting a conversation to hear oneself talk. I strive to know the difference.

The difference is emotional. If it's real, genuine interrupting for the sake of justice, if there's something at stake, if I'm taking a risk, I get anxious. I get butterflies in the tummy, quickening pulse, dry mouth, tense-that ancient fight or flight response welling up inside. It happens when I'm about to speak my truth; when I'm angry at injustice and feel compelled to speak out; when I witness oppression and cannot let it continue unnamed. A decade ago that anxiety was so powerful I couldn't say anything. I stayed silent. I think this is a common experience.

Where does this anxiety come from? We've all heard the cliché, "don't rock the boat." For anyone who learned at some point in their childhood, for whatever reason, that it is dangerous to rock the boat, dangerous to say provocative things, to interrupt, to name problems, it is emotionally difficult to interrupt the conversation. Growing up in a family with alcoholism, I've had this experience. For anyone who learned not to rock the boat, anxuety in the presence of injustice is understandable. For anyone who learned not to rock the boat and still struggles with that learning, silencing one's inner voice, and thus silencing one's outer voice, is an understandable response to injustice. Engaging effectively in any type of justice-making requires us to make waves.

I also experience anxiety because as a Unitarian Universalist young person, I learned to value togetherness, getting along, peace-making. But interrupting and meddling create breaches, drive wedges, cause conflict. In the deep places in me I flee from conflict. Many of us do. We invest so much emotional and intellectual energy in our sense of unity that interrupting is scary. I have to remind myself, sometimes our unity is an illusion. In the presence of injustice we don't have true unity. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. We are often divided but refuse to acknowledge it, and until someone interrupts saying, "look, there's something wrong here," it is often easier to go on believing in the illusion of our togetherness. We face a dilemma. Do I keep silent for the sake of our unity; or do I say what needs to be said and risk conflict? Sometimes the illusion of unity and our desire to preserve it is the greatest barrier to justice-making.

My anxiety is also related to something that is often hard to admit, but something I believe to be true: somebody like me, a middle-class, heterosexual, white man benefits from these conversations that need interrupting. I've got healthcare. I've got work I love and am well compensated for it. I've got a good home in a good neighborhood. I've had an excellent education. The injustices don't impact me or people like me. They impact someone else. And if I interrupt these conversations, am I not likely to upset other people like me. Am I not likely to anger some powerful people? And if I lose favor with powerful people, is it not possible I may begin to lose some of the benefits I derive from these conversations? I want powerful people to like me. I don't want them mad at me. But that fear, which lies beneath the anxiety-that fear of not being liked or accepted, of losing favor, losing whatever modicum of power we may have-is what keeps the conversation from changing. If I allow that fear to guide me, if we allow that fear to guide us, then the conversation continues with the same results, the same injustices. We've grown so used to this fear we don't even realize it conspires to keep us silent. I call interrupting the conversation a spiritual practice because it requires us to discern and overcome our fears, to make our principles real in the world, to speak truth to power, and to cultivate a reliable faith that all of us will benefit as we interrupt conversations that perpetuate injustice.

Another fear, one that often leads to apathy: if I interrupt, will anyone notice? Will I be heard? Will I become, like so many people who live with injustice every day of their lives, invisible? I want my interrupting to mean something. I want weight behind it. I want to be powerful enough to make real, substantive change. It is critical, therefore, that we learn to interrupt in groups, across lines of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. As part of a group it's harder to ignore me. As 264 Unitarian Universalists and our children, UUS:E has much more power than any single one of us. As a member of the Greater Hartford Interfaith Coalition for Equity and Justice, whose 45 congregations boast well over 20,000 parishioners, we have significant power to interrupt effectively for the sake of justice in our region. As participants in Love Makes a Family's efforts to build a pro-gay and lesbian civil rights majority in Connecticut, we have power to bring the Unitarian Universalist principle of justice, equity, and compassion to bear in the public arena. There's not just safety in numbers. There's power as well!

The truth is out. You have a meddling minister. I have one caution. Our fears are not entirely unfounded. Interrupting will create breaches. Meddling will cause conflict. But remember: creating breaches is not the goal of this spiritual practice. Conflict is not the goal. Dividing the human family is not the goal. Conflict is only a tool to make progress against the high tide of injustice. It is not the goal. As we overcome anxiety and fear, as we overcome our inhibitions about conflict and learn to interrupt with integrity and conviction, we move closer to that 'someday' when our unity with the entire human family and the earth will no longer be an illusion, but the solid, reliable ground upon which we live our lives. Adapting the words of the late Shirley Chisholm, may someday be today.

Amen. Blessed Be.