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Sermon Index

OUTSIDERS

by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 4th of June 2000

My sister Julie had rheumatic fever when she was young. She recovered, but she was always skinny as a child, uncoordinated. Her gift, her great intelligence, only marked her more. The kids in school teased her. One time they threatened to beat her up. They wrote a jingle about her.

Hubbell, Hubbell, blew a bubble,

got in trouble, now its double.

But the sad thing about being an outsider is that it doesnt take much. Julie might as easily have been ridiculed had she been fat instead of thin, slow instead of bright. It doesnt take much. The new kid who comes to school after term begins. The Catholic in a heavily Protestant region. A boy who acts like a girl. And sometimes it takes nothing at all. The most popular kid in class decides to pick on you simply because its Tuesday. Sometimes it starts with nothing at all.

For those of us who are sensitiveand we are everywhereit often doesnt take much to make us feel that we are outsiders. How many here have on occasion felt excluded, rejected, out of the mainstream? I still remember that I was always one of the last to be chosen for volleyball teams. Im sorry to tell those of you under the age of 18 that rejections dont stop when were adults. Sometimes it is just people who have been together a long time, or who have similar interests, forgetting to include others. Sometimes it takes nastier forms like racial prejudice or homophobia.

Vivian Gussin Paley is a teacher who saw the hurt felt by rejected children in her classroom.

In her book, You Cant Say You Cant Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), she writes:

[Clara spoke to the teacher:] "Cynthia and Lisa builded a house for their puppies and I said can I play and they said no because I dont have a puppy only I have a kitty. ... They said Im not their friend."

"We said if she brings a Pound Puppy she can play," Lisa explains

Paley notices these rejections happening all the time. Nearly all the children are excluded at one time or another, but several of them are excluded nearly all the time. "You cant sit by me." "Go away." "You can only play if you play the bad guy." Such behavior would never be accepted in the faculty room. Why then, she thinks, should teachers allow it in their classrooms? Paley knows a woman who shares a common backyard with several buildings. All the children there follow the rule that everyone can play. When someone new comes out, the children invite the child to join in. Why wouldnt that rule work in school?

Paley asks her class whether it would be fair to have a new rule, "You cant say, you cant play." The conversation this idea stirs up is lively.

Ben: If you cry people should let you in.

Teacher: What if someone is not crying but feels sad? Should the teacher force the children to say yes?

Many voices: No, no ...

Angelo: Let anybody play if someone asks.

Lisa: But then whats the whole point of playing?

Nelson: You just want Cynthia.

Lisa: I could play alone. Why cant Clara play alone?

Angelo: I think thats pretty sad. People that is alone they has water in their eyes.

Lisa: Im more sad if someone comes that I dont want to play with.

Teacher: Who is sadder, the one who isnt allowed to play or the one who has to play with someone he or she doesnt want to play with?

Clara: Its more sadder if you cant play.

Lisa: The other one is the same sadder.

Angela: It has to be Clara because she puts herself away in her cubby. And Lisa can still play every time.

Lisa: I cant play every time if Im sad.

Paley spends months talking with the children about this proposed rule. She goes to the children in the older classrooms and asks their opinions. For the most part, they think its a fair rule but wouldnt work. Several suggest that the rule needs to be started in kindergarten before bad habits set in. They struggle between their desire for private friendships and their desire not to make other children sad. The children seem not to have forgotten a single rejection they have felt. Some are rejected year after year. Cant the classroom be nicer than the outside world? Cant the classroom, which is a public place, set patterns that can last a lifetime?

Should a church be nicer than the outside world? Isnt this the place where we come to remember the best that we can be? Yet is it wrong to want to be with people who are like ourselves? People whom we like? But Paley reminds us that it is often in playing together that we learn to like one another. I would add, in sharing our stories, in working for justice, even in cleaning up after a party, we develop relationships that we might never have considered in looking around for a potential friend in Fellowship Hall.

Here, we do a pretty good job of greeting newcomers. We offer them food. I hear that, with the occasional exception, we introduce ourselves at coffee hour. We invite them to sing in the choir. But even so, we are often more likely to chat with the person who looks like us. Even so, when that initial introduction is over, it is so much easier to turn back to our friend of 20 years, or even to the new visitor who is our age, our sex, our (fill in the blank), than to risk learning how to be friends with someone who challenges us, someone who at first may not like us, someone we may not like at first.

After months of talking, months of fears, Paley institutes the new rule. Amazingly, the transition is smooth. Paley writes: "When the children are reminded of the rule, they comply so readily that it is as if theyve been rescued. From what? Perhaps from the ordeal of deciding whether or not someone can play..." The children want to be kind. Paley senses that they are relieved that adults now expect them to follow their better natures.

Several years later, Paley runs into Lisa and her mother. Lisas mother tells her that Lisa still tries to follow that rule. "Yes, I do," Lisa agreed. "Sometimes I forget, and sometimes its hard, but I try."

What if everyone said to everyone, "Come play with me. Be my friend?"

Even here in church, we will never be perfect. Never be kind to everyone. But maybe here we can try.

Come, come, whoever, you are

Here you can play.

Welcome.