I had no idea what to expect from a lay-lead service when I showed up on that particular Sunday. Much less, what could I expect from a bunch of youths and their teachers? Would they stumble over their words, nervously flipping through the pages of their script? Would they wow us with the insights of a rising generation? When I came away though, I was surprised and inspired by what I had just experienced. Sure there was fumbling, but we had more than enough love to hold people trying something new. These youths also blessed us with brilliant, thoughtful insight.
If you have experienced a Coming of Age service - either as an adult or a youth yourself - you know what I’m talking about. Before that Sunday, I had only foggy ideas about what “Coming of Age” meant in our tradition, or why it got its own service. But I was captivated witnessing these youths share what they had learned in that year of faith formation. They shared how they tackled some hefty questions. What matters most in life? What happens after death? What does Unitarian Universalism ask of us in the world? Their thoughtfulness was moving. And so was the breadth of beliefs they shared. There were youths that shared their belief in God, or no god. Some believed there would be a life after this one. Others weren’t so sure. And many found these questions much less interesting than the relationships we build together in community.
Together, they reflected so clearly what it is to be Unitarian Universalists. No matter how old or young, our faith is rich in its theological diversity. 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 how we know the world, 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. That’s not exactly the storyline, but it isn’t too far off, either. It is in fact a show about the afterlife, equally deep and hilarious. More importantly, it is a show about the value of relationships. While its setting is in a mostly supernatural realm, its lessons are incredibly humanistic. It shines a light 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. This summer, I’m joining you to explore our value of Interdependence. Considering what we owe each other, even when we’re different, is at this value’s heart.
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. No longer alive in the sunny state of Arizona, she realizes she left behind a life marred with selfish decisions. Her self-centeredness harmed many people, including herself. So imagine her shock when she finds out has gone to the Good Place, an afterlife realm for everyone who racked up enough Good Points during their time on earth. Someone must have made a mistake sending her here after her untimely death. But as she and her newfound friends 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. Second, the cosmic Points System that determines your afterlife is so outdated and unnuanced that no-one has gotten to the Good Place in five hundred years. Finally, they think 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, light-hearted and profound. 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, human isn’t something we can take for granted. Goodness isn’t something we’re guaranteed, which we must dig out as rugged individuals. And it’s not something we ascend to through divine grace. Instead, 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. We are touched with goodness in return. Goodness is reciprocal.
This is what our faith is all about. 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. Not statements of faith about God or no god, afterlife or no afterlife, but agreements about how we will live with each other. Our shared values with love at the center express this truth. When we come together as a community under these values, we say two things at once. 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 show’s first season, and all throughout, 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 the most. This perspective on morality hinges on the implicit and explicit agreements we have with each other. What we need from and owe each other. This points to a morality that grows out of our relationships with each other, rather than the authority of gods or laws we have inherited. That’s a timely reframing for our American moral perspective. Reflecting on the show for the New York Times, Sam Anderson wrote this:
“[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 dignity1.”
“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 living with 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, like 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.
This was a way we made our wedding particularly Unitarian Universalist. As a faith, we practice a cooperative approach to goodness and morality. 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 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 this world 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 the strong ties these words have with divine reward and punishment, we can find a gentler, more human understanding for them here. The philosopher T.M. Scanlon, a major inspiration for The Good Place, once shared this:
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 strangers2.
If “Hell is other people,” then Heaven, too, is other people. If “hell is the relationship with other people that you create by treating them badly,” then Heaven is an experience 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? As our opening song reminds us, "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 will3.”
Since I built this sermon on both humanistic and covenental theologies, it's one I like to bring out for guest preaching. I preached Version 1 at First Unitarian Church of Des Moines on 26 January 2019, and Version 2 First Universalist Church of Denver on 23 February 2025.
1. Sam Anderson, “The Ultimate Sitcom,” The New York Times, October 4, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/04/magazine/good-place-michael-schur-philosophy.html
2. Maliya V. Ellis & Woojin Lim, “Asking Philosopher T.M. Scanlon ‘What We Owe Each Other’”, The Crimson, October 10, 2019, https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/10/scanlon-and-the-good-place/
3. Loughty Amoa et al., “Woyaya,” in Singing the Journey: A Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition (Boston, MA: Unitarian Universalist Association, 2005), #1020.