Our martyrs died so we could be
a church where every mind is free1.
These words from our opening song sum up how we value freedom in our faith. What a rich and fraught virtue to explore. Our faith is full of noble stories of individuals pursuing and attaining freedom in spite of great odds. Our national imagination is full of these stories as well. We have ample opportunity to reflect on this value as people of faith. Among them, there is one question I keep returning to in particular: What does our freedom allow us to do? With great freedom comes great responsibility, but what does that mean for us as a people of faith? As a people of this faith? These questions reminded me of something I experienced a few years ago.
It was late July in Iowa. My friends and I raced down the hill as the band played its opening chords, calling everyone down to the hollow in front of the stage. I hadn’t heard this performer before, and never had much interest in country music despite growing up where I did. But this was a weekend of saying yes to new things. Over the crowd, Jason Isbell’s steady voice flowed across the humid summer air. The lights on the stage glowed blue and pink above us. I felt transcendent, like this evening freed me from everything that had weighed down my heart that year. The crowd cheered and hollered and sang along as the music flowed – until it stopped suddenly. Isbell called out firmly and gently for some help – someone near the stage had passed out, and needed medical attention. For that moment, everything else was suspended as he opened up space for care and attention. He did what any responsible person might do in his position, but still it surprised me. That moment sticks with me, even to this day.
During that set, Isbell played the song we heard in our Interlude, “Something More Than Free”. It’s words and melody stir something deep in me, and like many of Isbell’s songs it’s one I catch running through my head. Like many poems and songs, it has that special power to communicate more than the sum of its parts. It’s not just the words themselves, but something that they evoke for me that I remember. Let’s consider the lyrics again. This is a song about the dignity of work that keeps the narrator out of trouble. It’s also about the divine reward of work well done. There is something deeply individual running through it. As the song begins, the singer lists the things he does because no one else cares and no one else is watching.
He sings, “We’ll go bust up something beautiful / we’ll have to build again,” and “I’ll leave my clothes inside the front door cause nobody’s home to know2.”
He sings of a freedom to break and rebuild what you want, when you want. How that impacts others gets left somewhere out of view. But near the end, the singer dreams of something greater than freedom. We can imagine it’s freedom from work that comes after finally leaving the mortal coil. Or perhaps its reunion with the holy that most people find on Sundays when the singer’s too tired to join them. But the song doesn’t exactly answer this question. After it’s over, it leaves its listeners this gift: it invites us to ask ourselves, “What’s greater than our individual freedom?”
Now, divine reward in the hereafter isn’t something I connect with, and it isn’t something we’re very interested in as UUs. But as I listen to this song, I have heard something else here as well. In the arc of the song between its beginning and its end, I hear a reflection on purpose and responsibility. Are these things greater than freedom? This reflection gives us an opportunity to consider our own responsibilities. It also invites us to reflect on our own freedom and its greater purpose.
Our faith tells us that we an active role in it. It calls us to search for truth and meaning freely and responsibly. It reminds us that we have the richest experience of this while learning from each other and the diversity among us. We are each responsible for making meaning of the world, just as much as we are free to do so. This faith won’t tell us what to believe about the world, only the values that guide us through it. But what else are we free to do, and responsible for doing? Like the lyrics of Isbell’s song, our call to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning inspires more than the sum of its parts.
We are free in our faith to do many more things that make meaning of our lives. We are responsible for much more as well. But there’s something we have to consider here first. In practice, freedom – especially personal freedom – has often eclipsed the responsibility we have with one another. We have often styled ourselves as a faith of free-thinkers, people free to do and believe whatever we want. And when deep conflict occurs, some of us hear requests for accountability as constrictions on our personal liberties. In spite of the feelings stirring in our hearts, our freedom does not save us from the consequences of our actions. We are not free from the ability to hurt or offend, to exclude or other. Even when we mean well we can cause hurt. Calling each other to be accountable to the hurt we cause is how we help each other learn to do better. It’s a way we love each other, foibles and all.
Our opening song points us to this as well. In its third verse, it follows a reflection on the free mind with one on the loving heart:
“A heart that's kind, a heart whose search / makes Love the spirit of our church.”3
These two guides – free mind and loving heart – balance each other. The free mind leads us to act act with conscience and conviction, as so many of our ancestors have. The loving heart reminds us that being part of a church puts us in relationships we have a responsibility to care for. That our relationships give us the power to support each other in using our gifts well.
We are also free to help and heal and include. But in order to do that we have to take responsibility for our role in tending the relationships of our lives, and creating their communities. Our free faith is covenantal, built on the promises we make with each other. It is one that calls us to act responsibly in our relationships. To remember our ability to create heaven or hell on earth, and to strive for what is best for us all.
The responsibility our faith calls us into takes on many forms. In our story this morning, we heard about young Sally McCabe4, and how she took responsibility for all of the hurt she saw around her. What she did was as small as she was, but the impact was enormous. She called on people to make changes in their relationships to heal some of the hurt between them. She didn’t have to do that. But her sense of what is right, and her care for the people in her life, compelled her to do what was within her power. In the story I shared from my own life, Jason Isbell felt the responsibility of his position to stop the music and call attention to something urgent. He was certainly free to continue playing as though nothing happened. Instead, he used his very literal platform to call our attention to something more important than the freedom his own position gave him. There was something he could do in that moment, and he chose the caring thing to do.
Singular moments like that leave little question for what has to be done. At other times, what we can and should do isn’t always obvious. It’s easy to get caught in the rush of trying to do something, anything! And when we rush, we can lose sight of our gifts. While we know we are responsible for making this world a better place, we must also take time to consider what is in our power to change. This is another way we take responsibility in our lives. We are responsible for owning what is ours, what our gifts and resources can affect, and how best to use them.
This morning’s reading has something to teach us about that. In her interview5, Maggie Rogers reflects deeply on the responsibility that comes with the freedom of her role as a performer. She knows the kind of power she has because she hears her fans’ expectations, who want things from her she is not really prepared to give. Presented with this problem, she can respond in a couple of ways. People assume she has some great wisdom and authority because she’s a public figure. She could choose to blow that off and ignore it. She could also lean entirely into her fans’ expectations and take responsibility for answering their existential questions – whether she was equipped to do so or not. I imagine I’m not the only one here who has felt the pressure to do something, anything, to feel like I’m making a difference – whether that actually will help or not.
Rogers’ audience was calling her to minister to them – to give some certainty in an uncertain world. Instead of running away from that call or head-on into it, she chose something different. Rather than making either of these choices, she chose to truly own her gifts, her own strengths and limitations. She chose to build frameworks to help her make ethical choices, and boundaries to keep her from overstepping her own limitations.
She made a loving and realistic choice. Asking herself, “How do I use the work that I love to do the most good in the world6?” she considered the gifts she already had, and how best to share them. This is a question of balance, about being true to herself while recognizing that there is a certain level of responsibility that comes with the height of her profile. She wisely decided that she cannot be all things to all people, and doesn’t have to be.
This is an important lesson to remember when we use our gifts responsibly. We cannot be all things to all people – we cannot do everything ourselves. And the beauty of being in community is that we don’t have to. We don’t have to have all the skills and all the answers to belong. It’s responsible of us to recognize that. In this room and online, there are people with the gifts to teach, or to organize, or make connections, or tend a garden. There are people whose gifts take them to the front line and the front stage, and people whose gifts find their purpose in all of the things that happen behind the scenes. All these gifts, when used wisely together, help our community realize its greatest potential.
This is a freeing realization, that we don’t have to do it all ourselves. Look at the abundance all around us. Because we have so many diverse gifts to share, none of us are responsible for doing it all. We are free to make the best of the gifts we have. And in that freedom, we have a responsibility to encourage each other to use our gifts to their fullest potential. That is a freedom greater than our own individual liberties. It is a freedom to truly help each other learn, and grow, and change. To live life and community to their fullest. These two virtues, freedom and responsibility, grow together in our care. As we look to the days and weeks ahead of us, I ask you this:
How will we each use our freedom responsibly?
I preached Version 1 of this sermon at Columbine Unitarian Universalist Congregation on 08 June 2025.
1. Alicia S. Carpenter, "With Heart and Mind," in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston, MA: The Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993), #300.
2. Jason Isbel, "Something More Than Free," recorded March 2015, track 7 on Something More Than Free, Southeastern Records, compact disc.
3. Carpenter.
4. Justin Roberts, writer, and Christian Robinson, illustrator, The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2014).
5. Maggie Rogers and Sam Briger, "Maggie Rogers (Extended Version)," May 22, 2024, in Fresh Air, produced by WHYY, podcast, MP3 audio, 55:07, https://www.npr.org/2024/05/22/1197967642/maggie-rogers
6. Ibid., 32:20.