The theme of this talk comes out of discussions that were initiated in the Social Action Committee, and continued in a forum after a Sunday service last month, about the tax rebate that many of us would be receiving from the Ontario Government. (I received mine last Thursday.) There were strong opinions voiced about how this rebate might best be used by those of us who do not feel an urgent need of the whole amount we receive and may be able to spend it in a "discretionary" way.

I could easily identify with those who passionately advocated for a particular cause and who would have liked my talk today to take the form of a direct appeal to you to use your rebate, if you receive one, in a particular way. I made it clear, however, that I didn’t think it would be appropriate for your minister to even attempt to tell you what to do, and still less how to think about the Government that’s giving this rebate. Someone then suggested that it would be appropriate for me to explore with you our Unitarian Universalist Principle of "justice, equity and compassion in human relations," and I heartily agreed.

I hope that you will keep in mind, as you hear my reflections, that justice, equity and compassion are merely abstract ideas until they are brought to bear on a particular situation. The particular situation I ask you to consider today is the tax rebate, and what our UU Principles might be calling you to do with it, if you are at liberty to do so.

Let me begin with a story. Four years ago, in the Fall of 1996, I was in Montreal, sitting in the sanctuary of the new Unitarian Church of Montreal for the service dedicating the building. It was a wonderful occasion, following on from a marvellous concert on the newly-acquired, beautiful and historic Steinway grand piano. Many people had travelled to Montreal specially for the occasion, and all of us were very glad we’d done so.

As Ellen Campbell, then the Executive Director of the Canadian Unitarian Council, remarked during the dedication service, we were in the newest Unitarian Universalist building and the oldest Unitarian Universalist congregation in Canada!

What does this little vignette have to do with justice, equity and compassion? Well, for me the link is personal; it relates to another story about when I began my professional ministry, which was in Montreal in 1991. I was a ministerial intern, the same position that Beryl Baylis held here before I came to Waterloo. 1991 was only four years since the disastrous fire in 1987 which burned down the historic church on Sherbrooke Street, but it seemed as if a long time had already elapsed with no firm plans for rebuilding or moving or anything other than the quite workable arrangement of meeting in Channing Hall, the part of the building which had escaped the fire.

Long range planning meetings were held with some regularity to try to keep in everyone’s minds the importance of making a decision about which direction to go. Almost everyone agreed that to stay put, with the insurance money of well over a million dollars sitting in the bank, was an unsatisfactory arrangement, but there was very little agreement about how to proceed.

It may or may not suprise you to learn that your current Minister, even brasher and less careful then than I am now, if that’s possible, stood up in one of the planning meetings and said that if we were to take our Christian heritage seriously we would follow Jesus’ admonition to the rich young man to "sell all that thou hast and give to the poor".

I suggested that perhaps the fire was giving the members of the congregation an opportunity to live in the way that Christ intended. We could give away all that insurance money, sell the still-very-valuable property on Montreal’s "golden mile" in which we were meeting, and rent some modest quarters which would be paid for from current offerings. That way, we would be able to do some real good for Montreal’s many needy people (a couple of million dollars still isn’t chickenfeed by most of our standards) and also find out what really brings us together if we don’t have a familiar and comfortable place in which to meet. It would be a growth experience, I think I said. Justice, equity and compassion demand it, I think I also said.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that the good people of the Unitarian Church of Montreal didn’t immediately ask their treasurer to liquidate their assets and take the course that I proposed. Instead, some of them tried to help me see the excellent reasons for using their money and resources to continue the work that had been begun in 1842, wht work of being a strong, respected and viable presence of free religion in a city which continues to be a mixture of Catholic Christianity, many other religions, and a vibrant non-religious multiculturalism.

Other people at the meeting cast me in a role which I find almost too congenial, the role of naiive idealist, the eccentric who must be tolerated, and even encouraged to remind us of our principles, but not taken too seriously. In a world of injustice, inequity and uncaring, I was self-appointed to speak of justice, equity and compassion -- and a congregation of just, equitable, caring people knew that they had to remind me of the facts of life: that money is given in trust, that we have a responsibility to use it wisely, and that Jesus himself told a parable about talents and resources that must be well invested, not squandered, if we are to have a clear conscience and peace of mind.

So they didn’t do as I said, and five years later I found myself having driven from Windsor to Montreal, sitting in that new and impressive sanctuary, having seen the other new and impressive facilities, including a dishwasher into which you just slide the loaded trays of dirty coffee cups just as they are and they’re clean and dry in 90 seconds -- and I was loving every bit of it!

Had I given up on justice, equity and compassion? I hope not. Had I been converted to a new understanding of how those virtues are achieved? Not entirely. I think what was in my mind on both occasions was basically the same concern, but I recognized each time that nothing is simple, and the motivations of the best and worst of us are always mixed -- not to mention the limitations of our intelligence and ability to understand what our Principles demand and how to hold those demands together.

I don’t suppose there’s anyone here, even if you’ve never been to a Unitarian Universalist service before, who doesn’t agree with the separate virtues of justice, equity and compassion, but we may well disagree about which should have precedence in any given situation. Justice: getting what we deserve. Equity: treating everyone fairly. Compassion: feeling for and with someone in their needs. These are very different things, aren’t they? And so this second Principle, which looks almost like a cliche at first, emerges (like the first Principle) as something not self-evident, something which needs to be said, and struggled with, over and over again.

The second Principle follows from the first, I think. It’s because we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person that we commit ourselves, as congregations and individuals, to work for justice, equity and compassion. If we thought that some groups of people were without inherent worth, were disposable in fact, there wouldn’t be much incentive to work for those values which suggest fair and equal treatment for everyone.

The working out of human relations would be a much easier process if we could invoke some simple rule such as "might makes right" or "survival of the fittest". Justice and equity are much harder to understand than that, let alone to achieve. Compassion is perhaps more within our grasp . . . theoretically at least . . . on its own at least, but when you put it together with justice and equity it makes them even more complicated. How on earth do we even attempt to bring together justice, equity and compassion in our relation to a sadist or an advocate of the denial of rights to minority groups?

There’s no way, I’m afraid, that I’m going to be able to make it easier. What I want to do, as usual, is to provide more dimensions, not fewer -- more meanings for each of the words, more considerations to be kept in mind. For instance, if justice means giving everyone what they deserve or are best "fitted for", as Plato put it, how do we know what they deserve or are fitted for? Who deserves to be a millionnaire -- anyone who’s smart enough or lucky enough to make or inherit or win big money? Who deserves to be poor -- anyone who’s unfortunately not smart? Who deserves to be free, or in prison, or kept alive or allowed to die? Every one of these things is highly problematic, yet we commit ourselves to the belief that they’re resolvable when we covenant to affirm and promote justice.

And equity. We may associate it with such contemporary phenomena as pay equity or employment equity, affirmative action and the advancement of disadvantaged groups, but these are modern applications of a much older concept. "With righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity," it says in Psalm 98, showing us that the ancient Hebrews had an understanding of equity -- fairness -- as a righteous and even divine quality. To combine justice and equity seems in the Bible to have been a positively superhuman aspiration. Yet we covenant to affirm and promote a way of being in our human relations that is both just and fair, that doesn’t discriminate in any way between class, creed, ethnicity or status but sees every person as a member of our human family. We’re aiming high!

And we aim at compassion. Justice and equity are somewhat abstract and intellectual concepts, but compassion, by its very definition, involves feeling. "Compassion" means "to suffer with", to share in someone else’s experience. It seems to me very significant that we covenant to affirm and promote compassion -- that we undertake to try to feel with our sister and brother humans in their joys and sorrows, to rejoice with those that rejoice and weep with those who weep.

As psychological sophisticates we may be fond of saying (well, I’m fond of saying) that feelings can’t be commanded, feelings aren’t good or bad; they just are. And yet here we are committing ourselves to having particular feelings, feelings of empathy with and sympathy for other people, feelings that may not come naturally to us at all. If it makes any sense to talk this way, I think it’s only insofar as we commit ourselves to recognizing our universal kinship and being open to our interdependence, so that we are indeed hurt by the plight of the sick and the poor and the disadvantaged and the oppressed.

Compassion is about lessening the difference between ourselves and all the needy of the world, until I feel something of your trouble and am moved to try to lift some of it from you. It’s one of those self-fulfilling things -- if we can’t feel another’s pain or delight, but act as if we do, soon we will.

I want to share with you now three items from widely different times and places which I believe illustrate much better than anything else I could say the delicate and wonderful and inspiring nature of justice, equity and compassion when we try to hold them together in our hearts and minds and lives. The first is from an ancient source; it’s the story of the wisdom of King Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. I find it marvellous in its relating of justice and compassion, and the equity with which those of the lowest status are entitled to the highest and wisest judgment. From the First Book of Kings, chapter 3:

There came into King Solomon’s presence two women who were prostitutes and stood before him. The first said, "My lord, this woman and I share the same house, and I gave birth to a child when she was there with me. On the third day after my baby was born she too gave birth to a child. We were quite alone; no one else was with us in the house; only the two of us were there. During the night this woman’s child died because she overlaid it, and she got up in the middle of the night, took my bably from my side while I, your servant, was asleep, and laid it in her bosom, putting her dead child in mine. When I got up in the morning to feed my baby, I found him dead; but when I looked at him closely, I found that it was not the child that I had borne."

The other woman broke in. "No; the living child is mine; yours is the dead one", while the first retorted, "No; the dead child is yours; mine is the living one." So they went on arguing in the king’s presence. Then the king said, "Fetch me a sword." They brought a sword and the king gave the order: "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other." At this, the woman who was the mother of the living child, moved with love for her child, said to the king, "Oh sir! Let her have the baby; whatever you do, do not kill it." The other said, "Let neither of us have it; cut it in two." Thereupon the king gave judgement: "Give the living baby to the first woman; do not kill it. She is its mother."

And just in case you’re mystified by what on earth this old story has to do with our times, other than illustrating that King Solomon knew a thing or two, consider this: we still face a situation where the rulers of our affairs, our kingly equivalents, still respond to the conflicting demands of society, and apparently insoluble dilemmas, by proposing ever-deeper cuts, in some cases lethal cuts. Consider too that what caused King Solomon to be known for ever after for his wisdom was his compassion, his ability to recognize that what look like justice and equity may not be that at all, and to bring about a solution which calls for no cutting at all!

The second item is a piece of poetry which I learned as a child, and perhaps some of you did, too. It’s from Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, written around 400 years ago, about 2000 years after that story about the wisdom of Solomon. Here’s what Shakespeare had that great feminist role-model Portia say about justice, equity and compassion -- he leaves us in little doubt about which of the three he believes should take first place:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;
It blesses him that gives and him that takes;
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein does sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway:
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself,
And earthly power does then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, [friend],
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Render the deeds of mercy, exercise compassion -- for some of us, the Ontario Government’s tax rebate may provide an opportunity to do just that, in however small a way. The third item I want to share with you is from a recent issue of the K-W Record, and some of you may have seen it. I’ve quoted the Bible’s King Solomon, thousands of years ago, and Shakespeare’s Portia, hundreds of years ago; now let me quote a Kitchener baker, John Bergen, a Mennonite and the owner of the City Cafe Bakery, last week.

Bergen says (and remember, please, I’m quoting now, not giving you my own admonition!) that it would be good to give your rebate to the needy in the community, those who won’t receive any rebate because they didn’t earn enough to pay taxes last year, and who have been most hurt by government cuts.
"It is a statement," Bergen said about his appeal. "It is a way of making a protest. ...... The cheque is a symbol and we just want to flip it. What we want is good government, but it seems to me we are getting money back at the expense of good government."

And all I want to add to Bergen-the-baker’s plea that we do something just, equitable and compassionate with our rebates is that there may be short-term and long-term benefits we can choose. If we give the rebate to a social-service charity, we need to weigh the value of our gift against the fact we may inadvertently be undercutting good government, reinforcing the idea that poor people must rely on charity. If we give the rebate to an organization which works to change social policies, we may be contributing in the long run to the recognition that a good government is one which takes good care of its weakest citizens.

(By the way, just in case you’re wondering what I’m going to do with my rebate -- I’m giving it to the political party of my persuasion, which works hard, and very directly, to influence social policy changes for the good.)

Even if we’re not receiving a rebate, we can talk about this with our neighbours and friends. We can let the Social Action Committee know what we think, as Rhoda’s announcement requested. If we need the money for something essential, we can still voice our opinions. We all have an opportunity to say with our voices and perhaps with our cheques, these things: that we believe in justice, equity and compassion in human relations and that we have covenanted to affirm and promote them. So may it be.