I was both surprised and inspired by the first Coming of Age service I ever saw. If you have experienced one of these services - either as a congregant or a youth in the program - I imagine you know what I mean. Before going into church that Sunday, I had no idea or expectations about what “Coming of Age” meant in our tradition, or why it got its own service. But that service captivated me as I saw youth after youth share what they had learned in that year of faith formation. They shared how they came to understand the world in that moment, what matters most in life, and what it means to be Unitarian Universalist adult in the world. Their thoughtfulness was moving, and so was the variety of beliefs they shared. There were youths that shared their belief in God, or no god, or whether there would be a life after this one or not. And some found these questions themselves much less interesting than the relationships we build together in community.
Together, they reflected so clearly what it is to be Unitarian Universalists. After all, we “need not think alike to love alike.” But if that’s the case, what holds us together? If we can be so varied in our thoughts about the Divine or the afterlife, how do we build and stay in community with each other? There was an NBC sitcom a few years ago that can help us answer these questions. It’s not about Unitarian Universalism, or even a survey of world religions. It is, however, about what keeps us together.
The Good Place was one of those shows I knew I would love before I had even watched it. From bits and pieces I saw beforehand, I thought it would be some kind of sleuth-y, mystery-solving comedy set in a realm of the afterlife. And while that’s not exactly the storyline, it isn’t too far off, either. It is in fact a show about the afterlife, with hefty doses of comedy at times packaged in a whodunnit fashion. But more centrally, it is a show about the value of community relationships. While its setting is in a mostly supernatural realm, its themes and characters are incredibly humanistic. It illuminates our human capacity to not only mess each other up, but ultimately to achieve and create goodness. It offers its viewers plenty to chew on, and has a few important ideas for our Unitarian Universalist tradition. One of those is the moral foundation of what we owe each other. In our creedless tradition, when few other things unite us, our shared values convey what we aim to give one another, and expect to receive from one another. This spring, we are exploring what we teach our children in their faith formation classes. Considering what we owe each other, even when we’re different, is a key foundation of our formation.
For those of you who haven’t seen The Good Place, and are still wondering what it has to do with us, here’s a quick run-down. Eleanor Shellstrop wakes up one day to find that she has died, leaving behind a life marred with selfish decisions. Throughout her life, her self-centeredness has harmed many people around her and herself. But after she dies, she’s told she has gone to the Good Place, an afterlife realm for everyone who racked up enough Good Points during their time on earth. Taking a panic-stricken look back over the life she led, she realizes that someone has made a mistake in letting her into the Good Place. But as she and her new friends in the afterlife quickly discover, not everything is as good as it seems in the Good Place. Pretty quickly, they realize a few things about this afterlife. First, despite appearances, they are in fact in the Bad Place, a realm of eternal torment. Secondly, the cosmic Points System that determines your destination in the afterlife is so outdated and lacking in nuance that no-one has gotten to the Good Place in five hundred years. Finally, this group of friends thinks there has got to be a better solution than just scrapping the entire universe and starting over from scratch.
It is a show of truly cosmic proportions. Its story is light-hearted and profound at the same time. Its characters tell a story about our human capacity to do good and become better, despite our capacity to harm and hinder one another. Which is why I find it so affirming as a Unitarian Universalist. Here, morality is depicted neither as something essential to the human condition, nor as something externally bestowed. We can’t take it for granted. Goodness isn’t some kernel in every human heart which we must excavate through our solitary endeavors. Nor is it something we ascend to through divine grace. Instead, throughout this story we see that the people around us and our relationships with them are both the source and destination of our morality . We reach out with goodness to care for the people in our lives, and are touched with goodness in turn.
This is the organizing principle of our faith. How we want to treat each other, the good we want to create together, is what unites us. This is what we mean when we say our faith is covenantal. We make covenants, agreements about how we want to treat each other, and this is what unites us. Not statements of faith about God or no god, afterlife or no afterlife, but agreements about how we will live with each other. Our common values - whether they are seven principles, or eight, or shared values with love at the center - these are all expressions of this desire. In coming together as a community under these values, we express two things simultaneously. One is what we want for ourselves from each other. The other is what we deem important to commit to each other.
What I think is less explicit is what lies in the space between our own needs and those of others. We are not independent agents imparting goodness upon the world. Instead, we know that our lives are interdependent. We create goodness through our work and love and living together. While each of us has the capacity to be a blessing in this world, our individual capacity is so much smaller than what we can create together. This is another idea in The Good Place that I see reflected in our community, and one that matters especially in our world today.
In The Good Place’s first season, and throughout the show, morality doesn’t come from within people or outside of them, but from between them. There is a scene early on where the character Chidi Anagonye, a philosophy professor with a chronic case of moral anxiety, gives Eleanor an ethics lesson. The key moral concept of this lesson is that an action is wrong if we can’t morally justify it to the people it will impact. This perspective on morality hinges on the implicit and explicit agreements we have with each other, about what we need from and owe each other. This idea and the ways the show’s characters live it out point to a morality that grows out of our relationships with each other, rather than the authority of gods or laws we have inherited. That seems like a needed reframing for our American moral perspective. In an article about the show from the New York Times, Sam Anderson writes:
“[This idea] is, in a way, deeply un-American — an affront to our central mythology of individual rights, self-interest and the sanctity of the free market. As an over-the-top avatar of all our worst impulses, Eleanor is severely allergic to any notion of community. And yet her salvation will turn out to depend on the people around her, all of whom will in turn depend on her. What makes us good, Chidi tells her, [are] “our bonds to other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity.”
“What makes us good are…our bonds to other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity.” What a Unitarian Universalist thing to say. And yet, this notion of interpersonal morality is a reframe that we also need. You may have recently heard the adage circulating that “Community is the antidote to despair.” I imagine that’s why many of us are here this morning. But the reality is that being in community is often messy, uncomfortable, and even painful. We come face to face with disagreements, unintended hurts, and the vulnerability of encountering one another, even when we’re not at our best.
This messiness underscores the need for explicit agreements with one another. When my spouse and I got married last year, instead of writing vows to one another, we wrote a covenant together. We were clear about the values we wanted to build into our relationship, such as patience, curiosity, and trust. But we were also clear about what we would do when things go sideways and we find ourselves in conflict. We covenanted to “address issues before disaster, take 5 when needed, and call one another into our principles.” We did this because we know that real relationships are messy, and we can be thoughtful about how we approach this reality. We knew that goodness isn’t something to take for granted, but something that we have to create together.
Covenant shows up in the life of First Universalist as well. Of course, we begin our services with James Vila Blake’s covenant “to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.” It makes no claim or command that we share the same beliefs, but guides us to imagine how we want to be with each other - in peace, in love, in helpfulness. These broad appeals invite us into a worshipful time together, whatever our beliefs. But sometimes we need more specificity in our covenants’ appeals. When great things are at stake, like the future direction of our church, emotions can run high. It’s times like these when we need some more structured agreements.
If you joined us for last week’s annual meeting, you may have noticed the covenant that began our time together. With it, we committed to “be with other members in love, respect, and care,” to “listen deeply and compassionately,” and to “offer grace and reconciliation when needed.” We agreed on how we wanted to be with each other, and to return to the conversation through “grace and reconciliation” when we break our promises to one another. Community can be messy, especially when we are discussing things which matter deeply to us. Community also invites us to be intentional with one another, and the good we create between us.
We practice a cooperative approach to goodness and morality. In Unitarian Universalism, we come together through shared values which can lead to principled living. We are together because of how we want to be together. Which in turn, is a matter of what we owe each other. All other sources of meaning and purpose aside, our values are things we can all agree on. But what underscores these values? What grounds us across generations, even as our tradition asks us to restate our values with each generation? What the Principles and the Shared Values have in common is covenant. They ask us to choose how we want to build the world we dream about together.
With some mindfulness and attention, this perspective can show us a vision of heaven or hell we can agree upon as Unitarian Universalists, whatever our own beliefs. Despite strong ties these words have with reward and punishment, we can find a gentler understanding for them here. The philosopher T.M. Scanlon, a major inspiration for The Good Place, once shared that
In my view, you could say hell is other people, that is to say, hell is the relationship with other people that you create by treating them badly. My idea of The Bad Place is the place that you’re in where you’ve spoiled your relations with the other people you’re living with, and you can’t be friends or trust each other, or do any of the things that you’re supposed to do when you interact with friends or even strangers.
So then, perhaps The Good Place is the one where we have nurtured our relationships with one another through mutual care and consideration. Perhaps getting to the Good Place is about getting to the best possible community we can build together, and for each other. So as we prepare to leave this place, I invite you to consider the promises you make in your life, within and beyond these walls. What world do we dream of, that we’re building together? “It will be hard, we know, and the road will be muddy and rough. But we’ll get there, heaven knows how we will get there, but we know we will.”
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