Guest Post: ‘Who Do I Say I Am?’ Sermon by Shige Sakurai
Shige Sakurai (they/them) serves as Director of Equity, Belonging, and Change at the Unitarian Universalist Association, a progressive religious denomination with over 1,000 congregations.
Shige is a Unitarian Universalist with atheist, Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian heritages, and involvement in Druidry. They are a Deacon in a nature spirituality church and have a Health Minister Certificate from Wesley Theological Seminary.
Shige founded International Pronouns Day, authored MyPronouns.org, and is the first person in the U.S. to receive an officially nonbinary, X-marker driver’s license. They have received awards from Diversity Abroad, the National LGBTQ Task Force, and the Mayor of Washington, DC during the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Celebration.
The below sermon was delivered by Shige Sakurai (they/them) during the Sunday, March 27th, service at All Souls Unitarian Universalist congregation in Washington, DC. The theme of the service was “Who Do I Say I Am?”
“All of us carry multiple identities. Some of those identities are by chance, others by choice and still others are ones that change and evolve over time. This sermon and this service will reflect on what it means to be committed to an identity; and what happens when we decide to change that identity, as well as the spiritual tools needed to sustain joy with the identities we claim.”
My name is Shige Sakurai, and I go by they/them pronouns. I am a nonbinary, transgender, and queer mixed race person of color of Japanese and European descent. I am wearing a blue shirt with a floral motif, a gold flaming chalice pendant, and a stole with mathematical symbols representing both the rationalism in Unitarianism and my atheist family. I also have ancestry in Shinto, Buddhism, and Christianity. I am Unitarian Universalist and a Deacon in a nature-based Druid tradition.
Throughout my life, I have traversed both the pain and the power of vulnerability when it comes to naming and expressing myself. I have faced the uncertainty about selfhood that oppression creates through erasures and danger… All the while, I still seek to survive, even to thrive, because of an abiding faith that it doesn’t have to be this way.
For over three decades I have tried to understand and befriend my ADHD neurodivergence, and in the last couple years I’ve begun to understand how trauma has impacted my brain and health. I have for decades navigated naming and claiming my sexual and gender identities. I have sought to understand my racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious heritages. To place myself in my history, ancestors, and roots.
While sometimes I find myself with proud identity labels, other times my labels fray at the edges or fall apart entirely. But the labels themselves are not who I am, they are powerful tools I deploy for activism, for finding or building community, for survival. Who we are can also make us targets.
At my Catholic high school in the late 1990’s, my Jesuit religion teacher asked our class a hypothetical question: What would you do if you know a gay person and the authorities came knocking on your door asking who you know who is gay? In this scenario, either the gay person you know is going to prison, or you are going to prison for attempting to subvert the authorities. What do you do? And, I would add--what does what you do say about who you are?
My teacher was trying to get us to consider the role of regular people in moral scenarios—such as the Holocaust, and generally the spread of Nazism in World War II.
There is a long history and ongoing reality of criminalization and imprisonment of queer and trans folks. Now we are in a situation where some U.S. state governments are seeking to imprison not only trans people but also allies of trans youth, and to try to take trans children away from supportive families.
What is Unitarian Universalist identity? And how does that help us to think about who we are when responding to marginalization?
In 2018, the President of our Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray, gave a sermon addressing the resurgence of organized white supremacist and neo-Nazi efforts in the U.S., where she said, quote:
“This is no time for a casual faith or a casual commitment to your values, your community, your congregation, your soul, and your faith. No time for casual faith… As Unitarian Universalists, we are first and foremost religious communities that practice love as our foundation. We are living in times of heartbreak, violence, and pain, and in this time we need communities that remind us of our humanity.”
The very symbol of our faith that a profound love in action wins is the flaming chalice. The flaming chalice symbol was designed by a Jewish refugee during World War II for the Unitarian Service Committee. The symbol was a reference to ancient Greek and Roman pagan altars, and the flaming chalice was used to promote resistance to and refuge from Nazi persecution, as the Unitarian Service Committee helped people to escape.
That resistance was not a hypothetical question from a religion teacher. It was material resistance to oppression. But resistance can take many forms, and for many of us, when our identities are marginalized, shifting, nuanced, complex--
Survival is resistance. Existence is resistance. Breathing is resistance. Finding yourself, taking seriously your spiritual calling, naming yourself, even if only to yourself – is resistance.
And, putting material resources towards and taking actions against the oppression of marginalized groups... That is resistance.
May we ask ourselves: "Who Do I Say That I Am?" each and every time we light and extinguish our Unitarian Universalist flaming chalice, our symbolic reminder of resistance and refuge.
