a sermon preached by the Rev Richard S. Gilbert
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 24, 2008
[it was a real pleasure to be able to invite Dick into the pulpit last Sunday, who was here in Portland because his wife Joyce was performing with the Longfellow Chorus later that afternoon. Unfortunately, Dick's footnotes for this sermon did not attach to the attachment, and therefore I was unable to include them with this post....twj]
There is a story of the Maine couple, who after a good night’s sleep, rose early to prepare for a new day. The wife proceeded to the kitchen to make breakfast, and the husband went outdoors to savor the beautiful morning. The sky was clear and blue, and the sun shone brightly. It was Maine weather at its best. Shortly, the husband returned to the kitchen and said to his wife: “Well, Mary, we are really going to have to pay for this.”
This story reminds me of the pathetic fallacy in literature, which attributes a kind of moral character to impersonal nature, as if the great natural order balances good and evil in human life, quite apart from our deserving. The apparent price for enjoying a good day was the inevitability that we would be somehow punished. This rather intriguing view of things is a fitting introduction to a consideration of the late Rev. William Sloan Coffin’s provocative words, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Do a good deed daily” was a mantra drummed into me during my Boy Scout days. It was not a bad slogan in a way; we ought to do good deeds. One of the dangers, however, was that I might think if I did one good deed early in the morning, I’d be off the hook for the rest of the day. Or it might suggest that virtue is somehow a matter of accumulating a certain number of good deeds, like merit badges. I recall the story of two Boy Scouts walking down the street, presumably looking for someone to help. One says to the other, “I can think of at least a half-dozen good deeds we could do if we got paid for them.”
How, then, should we understand Coffin’s cynical mantra, “No good deed goes unpunished.” What did he mean by that? Is it simply a corollary of the famous epigram: “Nice guys finish last” ? Is it merely hyperbole? After all, some good deeds are rewarded.
I think Coffin was doing battle with a biblical dogma that still has much currency in our land – the belief that there is a direct correlation between virtue and reward, vice and punishment. Conventional wisdom assumes that virtue will be rewarded and vice punished. People who work hard will flourish and those who don’t will fail. It is part and parcel of the Protestant work ethic, now simply the work ethic, stripped of religious meaning.
That ethic dates back to the Hebrew biblical tradition. I recall my bible professor’s lecture on the Pentateuch – the first five books of the bible. He summarized a set of ethical laws – the Deuteronomic Code – with the words, “do good and prosper.” This was the message from the religious leaders of the time to keep their followers in line. Prosperity automatically follows goodness. Honesty is the best policy. Why? Because honesty pays.
The “do good and prosper” motto and the “no good deed goes unpunished” slogan constantly do battle in religious thinking. It is hard to imagine Jesus saying: "Take up your cross and follow me - it'll make you feel good – you’ll be rich and happy.” And yet much of the “pop Christianity” of our time sends exactly this message. Belief in Jesus will enable you to prosper in the marketplace; to win on the football field; to triumph in the election. That theology is called “the prosperity gospel,” a dramatic contrast to the Jesus ethic in which it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. What is it about those words that these preachers and presidents don’t understand?
When the word "sacrifice" is used call us to moral account, the number of altruists drops off precipitously. The language of sacrifice drops out of our vocabulary and is replaced by that of success. It won’t cost much to be a Christian – or a Unitarian Universalist. No sacrifices required. Nothing but blessings. The lessons of Jesus of Nazareth are easily forgotten.
One of the most gripping scenes in literature is the encounter of Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Doestoevski's novel The Brothers Karamazov. Set in the 15th century Spanish Inquisition, Jesus has reappeared, and is outraged at what he observes being said and done in his name. He tells the Grand Inquisitor that he intends to go out among the people and set the record straight. “Not so fast!” warns the Grand Inquisitor. “No way will I let you do that to these well-meaning people. They’ve grown up with their version of Christianity, as their parents and parents’ parents did before them. Their religious convictions provide meaning in their lives. Think how crushed they’d be if you told them that their beliefs were all wrong. . . . It would be like pulling the life jacket from a drowning man. You would deprive them of all hope. How dare you! Their religious beliefs work for them. Leave them alone.”
Dogma and authority are pitted against the hard teachings of a sacrificial ethic. As the story concludes, the Grand Inquisitor condemns Jesus to death as a heretic: “I shall burn Thee for coming to hinder us. For if any one has ever deserved our fires, it is Thou. Tomorrow I shall burn thee.” As in fiction, so in history. For a lifetime of good deeds Jesus was punished by death on the cross – a sobering rebuke to the Deuteronomic school’s mantra “do good and prosper.” Doestoevski understands the “lesson” of Jesus very well.
A look at history reveal that while many have been martyred for not assenting to the creeds, no one has ever been executed for not following the Golden Rule.
A more contemporary fictional illustration of how good deeds may be punished is found in Peter Sellers' film, "Heavens Above." Sellers plays the Reverend John E. Smallwood, who becomes vicar of a church in a contented English village. “The village enjoys the benevolence of the wealthy Despard family and the success of the pill it manufactures - sedative, pepper-upper and laxative combined, a perfect trinity. The vicar persuades Lady Despard to ‘Go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor,’ as the Bible advises, and she freely distributes food, driving butcher, baker and candle-stick maker out of business. And when Smallwood pronounces that the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost is more efficacious than the triple-actioned pill, sales go down, unemployment goes up and mob violence ensues.” The film ends with the good vicar being sent rocketing into outer space where he thinks he will be missionary to whomever might live there.
Smallwood wanted to do good in the worst way, and he did - in the worst way. Without taking account of the risks inherent in his action, he blundered ahead with a literal New Testament morality which evidently doesn’t work in a modern capitalistic society. He innocently produced results that were nearly catastrophic for the very people he sought to help. We learn that it is not easy to apply the high-minded ethics of the first century to the complicated world of today. And we also learn that often, despite our best intentions, we are punished for our good deeds.
Here we have a distinction between an "ethics of conscience" and an "ethics of responsibility." Smallwood acted out of an ethics of conscience: he affirmed a moral principle and adhered to it at all costs. We admire the Smallwoods of the world, yet despair of the harm they sometimes create. They do the wrong thing for the right reason, failing to take into account a moral analysis of the real world situation – the ethics of responsibility.
Recently I read of an ethical dilemma that is much more real than the amazing and amusing “Heavens Above” fictional drama. Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, California, proudly proclaims on a marquee outside and a banner inside, “All are welcome.” Its website reads: “An Open and Affirming, Inclusive Church with a Progressive Theology and a Commitment to Social Justice.” It is much like our Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation program. But in January of 2007, Mark Pliska, 53, came to church and told the congregation he had just been released from prison for molesting children, but that he sought a place to worship. He requested membership, thus throwing that liberal congregation into an ethical tailspin. Congregants wondered just how welcoming they really were. By accepting this apparently repentant man, were their children safe? The Pilgrim Church conscience would surely accept this man – “all are welcome.” But the Pilgrim Church sense of responsibility must consider the safety of its children. A true dilemma.
Pilgrim’s minister, The Rev. Madison Shockley, said: “I think what we have been through is a loss of innocence. . . . The scariest moment was when I got the feeling in the congregation about whether Mark could attend or not, and we needed more time, yet people were saying ‘If he stays, I leave,’ or ‘If he leaves, I leave.’”
A mother in the church who attends with her three sons was conflicted. Her oldest son, Sebastian, 9, reminded her, “I’d feel uncomfortable, but we’re supposed to let everybody come.” In the meantime, publicity over his arrival at Pilgrim led to Mr. Pliska’s eviction from his apartment and the loss of his job. He was homeless and unemployed. Yet he said he did not regret being open with the church after spending years hiding who he was. As one Unitarian Universalist minister, whose congregation dealt with two known sex offenders, said, “You can’t be all things to all people.”
How would we handle that dilemma, we the people who “covenant to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”? Hopefully, we would struggle with our conscience and share our dreams and doubts with one another. We would experience the tough tension between an ethic of conscience and an ethic of responsibility, and maybe even pray a little.
It is in the utter messiness of the human condition that we discover what our values really are. I won’t presume to resolve the dilemma of Pilgrim Church, and I don’t know how it came out. I merely raise the issue as an example of “no good deed goes unpunished;” to remind us of the strenuous quality of the ethical life. That life is far more complex than simply following any absolutist rules – obeying the Ten Commandments – doing good and automatically prospering.
It is for good reason that we affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” Once more we discover the inherent dialogue of individual and community. The right of conscience enables us to decide matters of importance without external coercion. Our inner integrity cannot be violated. At the same time we are always in relationship with our community, which we help shape and which in turn helps shape us.
I recall one summer evening many years ago when a Roman Catholic visitor, learning I was a minister, asked about my religion. When he learned that I neither feared hell nor sought heaven, but believed in "the importance of being good - for nothing," he was incredulous. He said that if he didn't fear eternal punishment or seek eternal reward there would be no telling what he would do.
He was bound to the Great Enforcer, not the moral power of “unenforceable obligations,” those inner tugs of conscience toward doing what we believe is right no matter what the outcome.
Why do we honor our marriage covenant even when we are at times unhappy? Why do we sacrifice to raise children when that seems hopelessly frustrating? Why do we keep promises even when we could get away with breaking them? Why do we obey the law even when there is little danger of being caught? Why do we involve ourselves in community service and social action when no one seems to notice and we often fail? And why have people done these things for centuries?
No external power is forcing us to meet these obligations; we are truly on our own, not coerced by the "cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example," in Boris Pasternak's words. Character is what we are when no one is looking. Character is when we act though it will not do us any particular good. Character is when we respond to our unenforceable obligations to our neighbors. Character is when we struggle with the creative tension between an ethic of conscience and an ethic of responsibility.
What do I conclude from all this? Of course, not every good deed is punished – the phrase is rhetorical to make a point.
Doing good is not about keeping score. I believe our mandate is to do good for its own sake; to learn the importance of being good for nothing. When we are honest with ourselves we know that life is not necessarily fair – there is no eternal law written in the nature of things that renders prosperity for goodness or poverty for evil. This understanding is not really cynicism but simply a frank recognition of the “sheer randomness of our fortunes."
Lest we become discouraged by this hard reality, I think of a man of heroic proportions who illustrates the courage-to-be even knowing that his good deed would be punished – Pastor Martin Niemoeller, a German U-boat commander in World War I who became a pacifist in World War II. He led the Confessing Church in its resistance to Nazism while many of his colleagues collaborated.
His death in 1984 was especially poignant to me since I had spent a treasured few hours with him during my 1978 sabbatical in Germany. To him are attributed these familiar, but disturbing words: "In Germany the Nazis first came for the Communists and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me - by that time there was no one to speak up for anyone."
Not all of us are called to be heroes or heroines. Many of our decisions to do good are clear – we know what we need to do. But on another level are actions we must take for which we will not be paid. We may be required by conscience to say and do that for which we may very well be punished. It is a hard truth, but one well worth pondering in an age of ethical weakness and easy morality.
In my Building Your Own Theology program I invite participants to write their own Ten Commandments. I do likewise. Here are ten of my considered convictions, or should we say habits to be learned by highly ethical people:
1. Walk gently upon the earth as you would be a good guest in a neighbor's house. The cosmos does not make junk. Creation is fundamentally good.
2. Be gentle with your neighbor - none of us knows what it is like to be another. People are precious. Walk a mile in their moccasins.
3. Be gentle with yourself - aspire to be more than you are - but accept your finitude. You have a right to be here.
4. Love people, use things. Treat people as ends, not means.
5. Affirm the importance of being good for nothing. Do good for its own sake. Doing good is not about keeping score.
6. Be honest with yourself. Let the inner and the outer person be the same.
7. So act that your behavior speaks louder than your words. Deeds are more important than creeds.
8. Share with your neighbors so that everyone has enough, no one has too much and we share with maximum freedom and minimum coercion. This world is a neighborhood. All people are our neighbors.
9. And to show a little more humor than the Ten Commandments: Always be a little kinder than necessary. "Do unto others 20% better than you would have them do unto you - 20% to correct for subjective error."
10. Be humble and realize that loving your neighbor will require all the strength you have to give. Remember that we are all toddlers in moral as in spiritual matters.
“Love is the doctrine of this church, and service is its prayer.
This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace;
To seek the truth in freedom, And to help one another.” Amen.
***
READING: THE LESSON - Author unknown
Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathered them around him.
He taught them, saying:
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven;
Blessed are the meek;
Blessed are they that mourn;
Blessed are the merciful;
Blessed are they who thirst for justice;
Blessed are you when persecuted;
Blessed are you when you suffer;
Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven,
And remember what I am telling you.
Then Simon Peter said: "Do we have to write this down?"
And Andrew said: "Are we supposed to know this?"
And James said: "Will we have a test on this?
And Phillip said: "What if we don't know it?"
And Bartholomew said: "Do we have to turn this in?"
And John said: "The other disciples didn't have to learn this."
And Matthew said: "When do we get out of here?"
And Judas said: "What does this have to do with real life?"
And the other disciples likewise.
Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus' lesson plan, and inquired of Jesus of his terminal objectives in the cognitive domain...
And Jesus wept.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
RESPONSIBILITY
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 17th, 2008
I know some of you have noticed something a little different about my face this morning, so I thought I’d better explain. Last Sunday as I was sitting down front here listening to Jim Scott, I heard him say that he never really believed in “a Bearded Old Man in the Sky.” And I got to thinking, I’m not that old...but I’m not getting any younger. And this pulpit isn’t really “Sky-High,” but it is pretty far up off the ground. So maybe I ought to shave off my whiskers, just to avoid any confusion. Because I don’t want you to mistake me for somebody else. And I really do want to be believed....
Jim also made mention last week of the fact that he knew he was “Preaching to the Convicted” -- in other words, that he was talking to people who already shared his attitudes and core beliefs about environmental issues, along with a strong conviction that it is important that we work together to do something about it. But having just read an interesting article about church growth by my friend and Divinity School classmate Dan Hotchkiss (who now works as a senior consultant for the prestigious Alban Institute), I couldn’t help hearing those words in a slightly different context.
Dan wrote: "With the possible exception of rich, repentant criminals, nobody visits a church in the hope of being asked to pay some of its bills.” And having just seen our heating oil bill for the month of January, I also couldn’ help thinking that maybe we could use just a few more convicted felons around here. I’m not really sure what kind of criminal would really fit in best at a Unitarian Church, since in my experience I find that most of the really “high-profile” criminals tend to prefer more conservative, Fundamentalist, “Bible-believing” churches anyway. But whatta they got that we ain’t got? Except, of course, more money....
Dan goes on to point out that lots of people DO visit churches with ”vague hopes of friendship, intimacy, spiritual [growth and healing], and support in living a more useful life...." And this (as I’ve been telling the folks who have been attending our New UU Explorer classes this month), is also our most basic mission here at First Parish: to bring out the best in the people who come here, and to empower them to do good in the world.
We have plenty of proven, time-tested techniques for accomplishing this task; methods that go back hundreds and even thousands of years. But they all begin here in this hour on Sunday morning, when we take time out of our busy lives to congregate together for worship and fellowship: to share with one another the substance of our lives, and to seek inspiration for the week ahead.
And yes, it can be expensive to heat a big old building like this all winter, which is one of the reasons that the congregation has just formed a new committee to lead us through the “Green Sanctuary” program that Jim mentioned last week. But somehow, thanks to each of us generously doing what we can, we always seem to manage to pay the oil bill, and the electric bill, and the telephone bill...(not to mention the salaries of our small, yet yet deeply-committed five-person staff, which are far and away the most expensive line item of all).
And someday, if we stick with it, we may even to be able to afford to do some of the things so many of you tell me you DREAM of doing here at First Parish, if only we can figure out a way to pay for it....
We have now reached the midpoint in this informal series of sermons I’ve been preaching during Lent on key themes from our current denominational statement of Principles and Purposes. And if you think of that statement as a stone arch, grounded on one side in “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and on the other in “respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part,” then “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” is like the keystone: it’s that big, heavy thing right over our heads that holds everything in place, and gives the entire structure its integrity.
And often when we talk about the Fourth Principle, we speak almost exclusively in terms of “the free search for truth” -- that unencumbered intellectual quest for consistency and certainty grounded in a disciplined use of human reason, and the free inquiry of the unfettered mind. But today I’d like to take a little bit different turn, and talk instead about “the responsible search for meaning,” which in very many ways is a very different thing.
Because you see, no matter how hard we may try, none of us is ever going to know “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Rather, what we know (or think we know) tends to be a constantly evolving amalgam of insights, partial truths, and principled convictions -- things we WANT to be true despite widespread evidence to the contrary, simply because it seems so right to us that they should be that way.
For example, I WANT to believe that even though the moral arc of the Universe is long, it bends towards justice; and that deep down in our heart of hearts, human beings are more good than evil; that God is One and the same for everybody (no matter how they may choose to understand that ultimately mysterious “spiritual” reality) and also fundamentally benevolent and providential in nature; and that ultimately all souls will be reconciled both to one another, and to their Creator.
These are basically the central theological convictions that have been at the heart of the Unitarian and Universalist faith traditions for hundreds of years; but they are indeed statements of “faith” -- you don’t have to look very hard to find all kinds of evidence to contradict them. Still, we WANT them to be true because it just seems so wrong that they should be otherwise.
And many of us have chosen to devote our entire lives to making that vision more real, to making our dream come true. And this is why it is so much more useful to talk about “meaning” rather than truth, and to talk about “responsibility” rather than simply freedom. Meaning is ultimately about purpose and value. It’s about the things we FIND worthy of devoting our lives to, whether we can actually “prove” them.
And believe it or not, this was the principal reason, historically, that 19th century Unitarians in particular could enjoy such broad freedom of belief -- it’s because they understood, on some deep level, that it doesn’t really matter WHAT you believe so long as your heart is in the right place, and you are willing to back it up through your actions. They called this doctrine “Salvation by Character,” and along with the notion of “Self-Culture” -- (basically the belief that it is the responsibility of every human being to cultivate within ourselves the higher, more spiritual parts of our personalities) -- this is still the source of our unique theological diversity even today.
Reflect for a moment about the definition of the word “Responsibility.” Basically, all that word means is “the ability to respond.” I know that my own parents worked very hard to instill a strong sense of responsibility within their first born male child; I sometimes wonder whether maybe they did their job just a little too well, since there was a long period in my life when I basically felt responsible for fixing everything that was wrong with the Universe. But now I pretty much try to limit myself to things I may actually have some ability to influence.
Management consultants often define “ability” as a combination of “skill and will” -- the tools, the talent, and the DESIRE to get something done. We all have different abilities (obviously), but (with a few exceptions) we ALL have some ability to respond -- to react, to reply, to “give back.” That’s what responsibility really is: simply the ability to give back -- or in this particular context, to give back in a meaningful, worthwhile way.
Of course, here in America it is hard to speak of Responsibility without also speaking about our Rights. Rights and Responsibilities go hand in hand in our culture, in no small part because unless we take responsibility for defending our rights, there is a very good likelihood that we will lose them. Most of us know that we have the right to remain silent, and also the right to be represented by an attorney (which is one of the reasons we have so many of them), and even the right, if we can not afford one, to have an attorney provided for us. We have rights to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness (although not necessarily its attainment); and plenty of other rights as well -- not the least of which are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of assembly and to the free exercise of religion.
The reason we Americans enjoy so many rights is in no small part thanks to the efforts of Unitarians like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in order to secure these rights for themselves and their posterity, and to begin this great experiment in the responsibilities of democratic self government which continues to this day. And lest we forget, these values were not important to men and women like Adams and Jefferson simply because they were Unitarians. Rather, I suspect it’s probably more accurate to say just the opposite: that Adams and Jefferson and others like them were Unitarian BECAUSE these values of duty, of service, of liberty itself, were so important, and meaningful, in their lives.
I want to wrap up this morning by talking just a little bit more about the importance and MEANING of what we are doing right now. Freedom of the Pulpit is perhaps the most distinctive (and I might also say the most envied) aspect of the Unitarian Universalist church, but it is also perhaps one of the most misunderstood elements of our spiritual practice. A lot of folks seem to believe that freedom of the pulpit means that anyone who wants to has a right to climb these stairs and say whatever they please, and that all of us have a responsibility to listen politely and respectfully. And as nice as that may sound to some of you (and believe me, it certainly sounds good to me), it’s simply not true. The place where people have a right to stand up in public and say whatever they like is called a “soapbox,” and it happens out there across the street, in the public square.
Freedom of the Pulpit refers specifically to the right of a covenanted Faith Community such as this one to choose its own minister, rather than having someone appointed over them by a king or a bishop. And with that right comes the duty of making that selection in a responsible manner, as well as the responsibility of supporting their minister in really a shared ministry to the larger community-- not just financially, but by regular attendance, and active participation, and in whatever other manner they are able to respond in service and as faithful witnesses to the truth and meaning of our heritage of faith.
And likewise, being chosen and “ordained” to serve as the minister of a particular faith community does not necessarily confer upon the minister any special rights. Rather, it ENTITLES them (which is why they call us by the title “Reverend”) to both the privilege and the obligation of stepping into this pulpit this week to “Preach the Truth in Love” -- not to say whatever we feel like saying, but to share to the best of our ability the things that our Reason and our Experience, our Education and our own ongoing contemplative spiritual practice, tell us to be true, and which are most meaningful in our own lives.
Some people like to talk about Freedom of the Pulpit in connection with something they call “freedom of the pew,” which is actually a much less complicated idea, although certainly no less profound. But for more than a century now, most Unitarian and Universalist churches have operated according to something called the “Voluntary System,” which means that this church no longer receives any support from public tax revenues (as it did back before Maine became a state in 1820), and none of these individually numbered pews with their tiny little doors are owned by specific “proprietors” any more. All the seats are free, and anyone who wants to is welcome to come in and sit down and listen without being charged a dime.
Likewise (with the possible exception of a handful of teenagers) nobody is obligated to stay: folks are pretty much free to come and go as they please, and no one will come and arrest them and compel them to attend services (as they did in colonial times).
And finally (and this is perhaps the most important thing of all) nobody is obligated to believe a single thing I have to say. Even though it may seem like I’m doing all the talking, this is actually a dialogue and not a lecture: we are here to “talk things through,” rather than simply creating a time for all of you sitting out there to listen to the person standing up here read you the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, Chapter and Verse....
The purpose of this weekly exercise is a simple one. We congregate here, for an hour on Sunday morning, to deepen our insights, to round out our knowledge and our understanding, and to strengthen our convictions, in open and honest conversation and fellowship with one another, and with teachers of our own choosing, as together we pursue that elusive yet essential “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
And by doing so, we also endeavor to bring out the best within ourselves, and to empower one another to do good in the world....
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 17th, 2008
I know some of you have noticed something a little different about my face this morning, so I thought I’d better explain. Last Sunday as I was sitting down front here listening to Jim Scott, I heard him say that he never really believed in “a Bearded Old Man in the Sky.” And I got to thinking, I’m not that old...but I’m not getting any younger. And this pulpit isn’t really “Sky-High,” but it is pretty far up off the ground. So maybe I ought to shave off my whiskers, just to avoid any confusion. Because I don’t want you to mistake me for somebody else. And I really do want to be believed....
Jim also made mention last week of the fact that he knew he was “Preaching to the Convicted” -- in other words, that he was talking to people who already shared his attitudes and core beliefs about environmental issues, along with a strong conviction that it is important that we work together to do something about it. But having just read an interesting article about church growth by my friend and Divinity School classmate Dan Hotchkiss (who now works as a senior consultant for the prestigious Alban Institute), I couldn’t help hearing those words in a slightly different context.
Dan wrote: "With the possible exception of rich, repentant criminals, nobody visits a church in the hope of being asked to pay some of its bills.” And having just seen our heating oil bill for the month of January, I also couldn’ help thinking that maybe we could use just a few more convicted felons around here. I’m not really sure what kind of criminal would really fit in best at a Unitarian Church, since in my experience I find that most of the really “high-profile” criminals tend to prefer more conservative, Fundamentalist, “Bible-believing” churches anyway. But whatta they got that we ain’t got? Except, of course, more money....
Dan goes on to point out that lots of people DO visit churches with ”vague hopes of friendship, intimacy, spiritual [growth and healing], and support in living a more useful life...." And this (as I’ve been telling the folks who have been attending our New UU Explorer classes this month), is also our most basic mission here at First Parish: to bring out the best in the people who come here, and to empower them to do good in the world.
We have plenty of proven, time-tested techniques for accomplishing this task; methods that go back hundreds and even thousands of years. But they all begin here in this hour on Sunday morning, when we take time out of our busy lives to congregate together for worship and fellowship: to share with one another the substance of our lives, and to seek inspiration for the week ahead.
And yes, it can be expensive to heat a big old building like this all winter, which is one of the reasons that the congregation has just formed a new committee to lead us through the “Green Sanctuary” program that Jim mentioned last week. But somehow, thanks to each of us generously doing what we can, we always seem to manage to pay the oil bill, and the electric bill, and the telephone bill...(not to mention the salaries of our small, yet yet deeply-committed five-person staff, which are far and away the most expensive line item of all).
And someday, if we stick with it, we may even to be able to afford to do some of the things so many of you tell me you DREAM of doing here at First Parish, if only we can figure out a way to pay for it....
We have now reached the midpoint in this informal series of sermons I’ve been preaching during Lent on key themes from our current denominational statement of Principles and Purposes. And if you think of that statement as a stone arch, grounded on one side in “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and on the other in “respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part,” then “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” is like the keystone: it’s that big, heavy thing right over our heads that holds everything in place, and gives the entire structure its integrity.
And often when we talk about the Fourth Principle, we speak almost exclusively in terms of “the free search for truth” -- that unencumbered intellectual quest for consistency and certainty grounded in a disciplined use of human reason, and the free inquiry of the unfettered mind. But today I’d like to take a little bit different turn, and talk instead about “the responsible search for meaning,” which in very many ways is a very different thing.
Because you see, no matter how hard we may try, none of us is ever going to know “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Rather, what we know (or think we know) tends to be a constantly evolving amalgam of insights, partial truths, and principled convictions -- things we WANT to be true despite widespread evidence to the contrary, simply because it seems so right to us that they should be that way.
For example, I WANT to believe that even though the moral arc of the Universe is long, it bends towards justice; and that deep down in our heart of hearts, human beings are more good than evil; that God is One and the same for everybody (no matter how they may choose to understand that ultimately mysterious “spiritual” reality) and also fundamentally benevolent and providential in nature; and that ultimately all souls will be reconciled both to one another, and to their Creator.
These are basically the central theological convictions that have been at the heart of the Unitarian and Universalist faith traditions for hundreds of years; but they are indeed statements of “faith” -- you don’t have to look very hard to find all kinds of evidence to contradict them. Still, we WANT them to be true because it just seems so wrong that they should be otherwise.
And many of us have chosen to devote our entire lives to making that vision more real, to making our dream come true. And this is why it is so much more useful to talk about “meaning” rather than truth, and to talk about “responsibility” rather than simply freedom. Meaning is ultimately about purpose and value. It’s about the things we FIND worthy of devoting our lives to, whether we can actually “prove” them.
And believe it or not, this was the principal reason, historically, that 19th century Unitarians in particular could enjoy such broad freedom of belief -- it’s because they understood, on some deep level, that it doesn’t really matter WHAT you believe so long as your heart is in the right place, and you are willing to back it up through your actions. They called this doctrine “Salvation by Character,” and along with the notion of “Self-Culture” -- (basically the belief that it is the responsibility of every human being to cultivate within ourselves the higher, more spiritual parts of our personalities) -- this is still the source of our unique theological diversity even today.
Reflect for a moment about the definition of the word “Responsibility.” Basically, all that word means is “the ability to respond.” I know that my own parents worked very hard to instill a strong sense of responsibility within their first born male child; I sometimes wonder whether maybe they did their job just a little too well, since there was a long period in my life when I basically felt responsible for fixing everything that was wrong with the Universe. But now I pretty much try to limit myself to things I may actually have some ability to influence.
Management consultants often define “ability” as a combination of “skill and will” -- the tools, the talent, and the DESIRE to get something done. We all have different abilities (obviously), but (with a few exceptions) we ALL have some ability to respond -- to react, to reply, to “give back.” That’s what responsibility really is: simply the ability to give back -- or in this particular context, to give back in a meaningful, worthwhile way.
Of course, here in America it is hard to speak of Responsibility without also speaking about our Rights. Rights and Responsibilities go hand in hand in our culture, in no small part because unless we take responsibility for defending our rights, there is a very good likelihood that we will lose them. Most of us know that we have the right to remain silent, and also the right to be represented by an attorney (which is one of the reasons we have so many of them), and even the right, if we can not afford one, to have an attorney provided for us. We have rights to life, liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness (although not necessarily its attainment); and plenty of other rights as well -- not the least of which are freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of assembly and to the free exercise of religion.
The reason we Americans enjoy so many rights is in no small part thanks to the efforts of Unitarians like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in order to secure these rights for themselves and their posterity, and to begin this great experiment in the responsibilities of democratic self government which continues to this day. And lest we forget, these values were not important to men and women like Adams and Jefferson simply because they were Unitarians. Rather, I suspect it’s probably more accurate to say just the opposite: that Adams and Jefferson and others like them were Unitarian BECAUSE these values of duty, of service, of liberty itself, were so important, and meaningful, in their lives.
I want to wrap up this morning by talking just a little bit more about the importance and MEANING of what we are doing right now. Freedom of the Pulpit is perhaps the most distinctive (and I might also say the most envied) aspect of the Unitarian Universalist church, but it is also perhaps one of the most misunderstood elements of our spiritual practice. A lot of folks seem to believe that freedom of the pulpit means that anyone who wants to has a right to climb these stairs and say whatever they please, and that all of us have a responsibility to listen politely and respectfully. And as nice as that may sound to some of you (and believe me, it certainly sounds good to me), it’s simply not true. The place where people have a right to stand up in public and say whatever they like is called a “soapbox,” and it happens out there across the street, in the public square.
Freedom of the Pulpit refers specifically to the right of a covenanted Faith Community such as this one to choose its own minister, rather than having someone appointed over them by a king or a bishop. And with that right comes the duty of making that selection in a responsible manner, as well as the responsibility of supporting their minister in really a shared ministry to the larger community-- not just financially, but by regular attendance, and active participation, and in whatever other manner they are able to respond in service and as faithful witnesses to the truth and meaning of our heritage of faith.
And likewise, being chosen and “ordained” to serve as the minister of a particular faith community does not necessarily confer upon the minister any special rights. Rather, it ENTITLES them (which is why they call us by the title “Reverend”) to both the privilege and the obligation of stepping into this pulpit this week to “Preach the Truth in Love” -- not to say whatever we feel like saying, but to share to the best of our ability the things that our Reason and our Experience, our Education and our own ongoing contemplative spiritual practice, tell us to be true, and which are most meaningful in our own lives.
Some people like to talk about Freedom of the Pulpit in connection with something they call “freedom of the pew,” which is actually a much less complicated idea, although certainly no less profound. But for more than a century now, most Unitarian and Universalist churches have operated according to something called the “Voluntary System,” which means that this church no longer receives any support from public tax revenues (as it did back before Maine became a state in 1820), and none of these individually numbered pews with their tiny little doors are owned by specific “proprietors” any more. All the seats are free, and anyone who wants to is welcome to come in and sit down and listen without being charged a dime.
Likewise (with the possible exception of a handful of teenagers) nobody is obligated to stay: folks are pretty much free to come and go as they please, and no one will come and arrest them and compel them to attend services (as they did in colonial times).
And finally (and this is perhaps the most important thing of all) nobody is obligated to believe a single thing I have to say. Even though it may seem like I’m doing all the talking, this is actually a dialogue and not a lecture: we are here to “talk things through,” rather than simply creating a time for all of you sitting out there to listen to the person standing up here read you the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, Chapter and Verse....
The purpose of this weekly exercise is a simple one. We congregate here, for an hour on Sunday morning, to deepen our insights, to round out our knowledge and our understanding, and to strengthen our convictions, in open and honest conversation and fellowship with one another, and with teachers of our own choosing, as together we pursue that elusive yet essential “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”
And by doing so, we also endeavor to bring out the best within ourselves, and to empower one another to do good in the world....
Sunday, February 3, 2008
COMPASSION
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 3rd, 2008
"Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception." --Sharon Salzberg
***
I feel like I’d be shirking my duties just a little bit if I didn’t say just a word or two about this afternoon’s sporting event. “Super Sunday” is in many ways a uniquely American spectacle, to which the game itself is almost incidental. It represents a “high holy day” in America’s Civil Religion: an unapologetic celebration of the values of excellence, competition, over-the-top consumer spending and free market capitalism, with a good measure of (dare I say it?) fanatical Patriotism thrown in...all ritualized in a form of mock warfare which dwarfs the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome in its scope and scale.
Actual tickets for the game itself run into the thousands of dollars apiece (that is, if you can find them at all, since these days most are distributed through corporate sponsors, sophisticated high-end scalpers, or by a lottery for a few lucky season ticket holders of the two representative teams). The vast majority of “ordinary” people -- some 90 million of us -- will be watching the game on TV, often at some sort of “Super Bowl party” hosted in someone’s home or at a local “public house.” Sales of big screen, high-definition television sets are always especially brisk the week or two before the big game, and the owner of my favorite little sports dining establishment told me this past week that he is preparing 900 pounds of Buffalo-style chicken wings in order to meet just his catering orders for this afternoon’s game.
And then there are the commercials, which are an event unto themselves. The average price of a 30 second advertising spot this year is $2.7 million. Yet this is nothing compared to the nearly TEN BILLION dollars that experts estimate will be wagered on this game, $100 million of which will actually be bet legally in Las Vegas, where the bookmakers now have the Patriots as 12 point favorites.
But my favorite Super Sunday human interest story this year is about Buddy, a three year old Black Labrador Retriever who discovered the Express Courier envelope containing his owner’s two $900 apiece Super Bowl tickets, and chewed it to pieces. That’s right, the dog ate his tickets. Fortunately, the taste of two $900 apiece Super Bowl tickets apparently didn’t really agree with Buddy, who left them merely covered with teeth marks and dog slobber rather than swallowing them, which means that his owner is going to be able to attend the game after all, rather than drowning his sorrows in Budweiser, and gorging himself with BBQ dog while watching the game at home on TV.
And then, with only a day between to sleep it off, comes Super Tuesday, when a quarter of the nation will be voting to help determine the two major party nominees for next November’s Presidential election. Most of the media attention now is on the Democratic side, where the party faithful are attempting to decide whether to nominate history’s first “significant” woman candidate, or the first African American one. And there’s even some talk now of a so-called “dream-ticket” which would contain them both, if only they could agree about who gets to be on top.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are also flirting with history by exploring the possibility of nominating America’s first major party Mormon Presidential candidate. And even that old warhorse John McCain may have a surprise or two up his sleeve, if he manages to win the nomination, and decides to reach out across the aisle (as John Kerry did to him in 2004) to now-independent Senator and former Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Leiberman to round out his ticket.
But that’s all still months away. With the Patriots only one win away from a perfect season (and their fourth Super Bowl Championship in eight years); and the Celtics now boasting the best record in the NBA, it’s easy to forget that just last October the Red Sox were winning their second World Series in this century, having gone the better part of a century since having won their last one. So it’s a good time to be a sports fan in New England. And politics can wait for another day.
You may not have actually noticed, since I really didn’t make an especially big deal about it, but last week I stared a rather loosely-structured series of sermons on the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. We started with the theme of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and today I want to continue by talking about “Compassion,” or more specifically Justice, Equity and Compassion in human relations. As principles go, this is certainly a very fine one but achieving it in actual practice is hardly a walk in the park.
In the real world, Justice is never entirely blind or completely impartial (even with instant replay) -- it’s really more of an abstract goal and an aspiration than something we can count on to work perfectly all the time in each and every situation. Widespread injustice is a fact of life; and there are lots and lots of people who have a vested interest in keeping it that way, just as there are lots and lots of other people who go out every day and devote their lives to making injustice a little LESS widespread than it was the day before.
And if Justice itself is just an abstraction, then Equity is even more so. It’s an article of faith in this country, articulated by Thomas Jefferson right in the Declaration of Independence way back in 1776, and confirmed by Abraham Lincoln four score and seven years later, that “all men are created equal.” But if you just look around you’ll notices rather quickly that this proposition is hardly confirmed by the evidence of our own eyes.
Human beings basically have only three things in common: each of us is unique, none of us is perfect, and all of us are going to die. These three qualities may well make us equal in the eyes of Nature and Nature’s God, but that’s pretty much where it ends as well. Inequality is such a fundamental fact of life that we settle instead for the principle of “equity” -- all people may not be the same, but at least we’re going to try to treat them that way.
Yet even this basic principle of even-handed fairness is a difficult and challenging standard to achieve. We lift up the ideals of Justice and Equity as goals to guide our own behavior and interactions with one another, knowing in our heart of hearts that life isn’t fair and probably never will be, no matter how hard we may try.
But Compassion, it seems to me, is fundamentally different from these other two ideals. The ability to be compassionate comes from within us, and is thus always close at hand, always within our own power to express. Compassion is more than mere sympathy or empathy, although both of these qualities are clearly components of its character. Compassion goes beyond our natural human emotional tendency to feel pity for souls less fortunate than ourselves, or to act mercifully toward those within our power to help; it is more than mere charity as well, either in the narrow sense of personal philanthropy, or in the more profound sense of caritas or “benevolent love.”
In its essence, compassion means “to suffer with” -- it means opening our hearts to other people in a radically vulnerable way, in empathy and solidarity, in generosity and benevolence, realizing not only do we hope to change their lives by our involvement with them, but with a willingness to risk allowing that relationship to change OUR lives in the bargain. Compassion is the attempt to understand the lived experience of another human being in all its dignity and complexity, and then making that understanding an intimate and authentic part of our own lived experience as well.
In the Buddhist tradition, Compassion or karuna is one of the four immeasurable “sublime attitudes,” along with metta or “loving kindness; mudita or “sympathetic joy;” and upeksha, which is generally translated as “Equanimity.” Loving-Kindness is a wish for the happiness of others, while Compassion is a wish for others to be free from suffering. Sympathetic Joy is the ability to be happy because of the happiness of others, while Equanimity is “a detached, clear-minded state of tranquility which unconditionally accepts all sentient beings as equal.”
These four immeasurables can’t really be understood independently apart from one another, and are linked together through a meditative practice which attempts to cultivate a state of mindfulness which recognizes on some deep level that the happiness of any one of us is dependent upon the happiness of us all, and likewise injured by the suffering of any. Through meditation on these sublime attitudes, practitioners attempt to diminish (and ultimately eliminate) emotions of ill-will, cruelty, jealousy and personal desire, while at the same time expanding their awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all self-aware creatures...breaking down the separations brought about by our self-consciousness, and binding us together in relationships of mutual support and concern.
Or to put it perhaps in more familiar terms, meditation on the four immeasurables help to reinforce the insight that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Yet even when we know this in our heads, we still need to figure out how to take it to heart, and then to try to change things in our own lives, and in the larger community where we live.
The legendary compassion of the Buddha, grounded in the unselfish wish to remove suffering and give joy, and the ability to take joy in the joy of others, while accepting everyone just as they are without preference or distinction, is perhaps the essence of “enlightenment” itself. It begins with the insight that no matter how different we each may seem, we all have a lot more in common than we think, and that by building on these commonalities while seeking to understand one another in all the complexity of our differences, we create a deeper sense of mutual connection and commitment that allows us to experience both the joys and the sorrows of other individuals as if they were our own. And by doing so, we enrich our own life experience in ways that are impossible to measure.
There’s a classic Buddhist story about a young mother named Kisa Gotami, who became desperate with grief after the death of her only child. Carrying the body of her dead son with her, she asked everyone she met for a medicine that might restore him to life, and was eventually directed to the Buddha, who told her that he would more than happy to do as she asked. All he required, he told the distraught mother, was that she bring him a few mustard seeds from a house that had never known death.
“Overjoyed at the prospect of having her son restored to life,” the story continues, “Kisa Gotami ran from house to house, begging for some mustard seeds. Everyone was willing to help but she could not find a single home where death had not occurred. The people were only too willing to part with their mustard seeds, but they could not claim to have not lost a dear one in death. As the day dragged on, she realized hers was not the only family that had faced death and that there were more people dead than living. As soon as she realized this, her attitude towards her dead son changed; she was no longer attached to the dead body of her son and she realized how simply the Buddha had taught her a most important lesson: that everything that is born must eventually die.”
And so Kisa Gotomi buried her dead son, and returned to the Buddha to tell him what she had learned. Eventually she became one of his most devoted and accomplished followers. The Buddha eased Kisa Gotami’s suffering, not by restoring life to the dead, but by connecting her grief to the grief and suffering of so many others. And by this simple act of Compassion, the burden of her grief became less unbearable, and she was able to let go of her attachment to something precious that ultimately was not hers to keep.
Some of you may remember when I preached here in July for the first time after arriving as your called and settled Parish minister, I described “an ethic of compassion,” along with the “value of community” and the “wisdom of common sense” as one of the three fundamental criteria by which I measure the validity of any religious belief. And in my own mind, these three criteria all come together in a very simple and straightforward way around yet another “C” word: the word “Companionship.” A companion is literally someone with whom we share bread. Companionship embodies the ideals of hospitality and generosity, equity and equality, mutual concern, joint interests, and common purpose. It implies shared hardships and shared joys, all grounded in the basic human necessity of eating life-sustaining food, and eating it together.
We may not be able to establish Justice and Equity in human relations in our lifetimes. We may not always be able to practice Compassion as faithfully as we would like. But we can become companions to one another, and work to expand that circle of companionship wider and wider, as we share our lives with the lives of others, and allow ourselves to be changed by that experience in ways we can never fully anticipate, but must instead learn simply to trust. Each of us is unique. None of us is perfect. And all of us are someday going to die. But in the meantime, is it too much to expect that we learn to treat each other fairly, that we understand our differences as something that we all have in common, and that, on occasion at least, we break bread together while gathered round to watch the big game on TV?...
READINGS:
THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
By Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
***
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS
by Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.
But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 3rd, 2008
"Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception." --Sharon Salzberg
***
I feel like I’d be shirking my duties just a little bit if I didn’t say just a word or two about this afternoon’s sporting event. “Super Sunday” is in many ways a uniquely American spectacle, to which the game itself is almost incidental. It represents a “high holy day” in America’s Civil Religion: an unapologetic celebration of the values of excellence, competition, over-the-top consumer spending and free market capitalism, with a good measure of (dare I say it?) fanatical Patriotism thrown in...all ritualized in a form of mock warfare which dwarfs the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome in its scope and scale.
Actual tickets for the game itself run into the thousands of dollars apiece (that is, if you can find them at all, since these days most are distributed through corporate sponsors, sophisticated high-end scalpers, or by a lottery for a few lucky season ticket holders of the two representative teams). The vast majority of “ordinary” people -- some 90 million of us -- will be watching the game on TV, often at some sort of “Super Bowl party” hosted in someone’s home or at a local “public house.” Sales of big screen, high-definition television sets are always especially brisk the week or two before the big game, and the owner of my favorite little sports dining establishment told me this past week that he is preparing 900 pounds of Buffalo-style chicken wings in order to meet just his catering orders for this afternoon’s game.
And then there are the commercials, which are an event unto themselves. The average price of a 30 second advertising spot this year is $2.7 million. Yet this is nothing compared to the nearly TEN BILLION dollars that experts estimate will be wagered on this game, $100 million of which will actually be bet legally in Las Vegas, where the bookmakers now have the Patriots as 12 point favorites.
But my favorite Super Sunday human interest story this year is about Buddy, a three year old Black Labrador Retriever who discovered the Express Courier envelope containing his owner’s two $900 apiece Super Bowl tickets, and chewed it to pieces. That’s right, the dog ate his tickets. Fortunately, the taste of two $900 apiece Super Bowl tickets apparently didn’t really agree with Buddy, who left them merely covered with teeth marks and dog slobber rather than swallowing them, which means that his owner is going to be able to attend the game after all, rather than drowning his sorrows in Budweiser, and gorging himself with BBQ dog while watching the game at home on TV.
And then, with only a day between to sleep it off, comes Super Tuesday, when a quarter of the nation will be voting to help determine the two major party nominees for next November’s Presidential election. Most of the media attention now is on the Democratic side, where the party faithful are attempting to decide whether to nominate history’s first “significant” woman candidate, or the first African American one. And there’s even some talk now of a so-called “dream-ticket” which would contain them both, if only they could agree about who gets to be on top.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are also flirting with history by exploring the possibility of nominating America’s first major party Mormon Presidential candidate. And even that old warhorse John McCain may have a surprise or two up his sleeve, if he manages to win the nomination, and decides to reach out across the aisle (as John Kerry did to him in 2004) to now-independent Senator and former Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Leiberman to round out his ticket.
But that’s all still months away. With the Patriots only one win away from a perfect season (and their fourth Super Bowl Championship in eight years); and the Celtics now boasting the best record in the NBA, it’s easy to forget that just last October the Red Sox were winning their second World Series in this century, having gone the better part of a century since having won their last one. So it’s a good time to be a sports fan in New England. And politics can wait for another day.
You may not have actually noticed, since I really didn’t make an especially big deal about it, but last week I stared a rather loosely-structured series of sermons on the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism. We started with the theme of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and today I want to continue by talking about “Compassion,” or more specifically Justice, Equity and Compassion in human relations. As principles go, this is certainly a very fine one but achieving it in actual practice is hardly a walk in the park.
In the real world, Justice is never entirely blind or completely impartial (even with instant replay) -- it’s really more of an abstract goal and an aspiration than something we can count on to work perfectly all the time in each and every situation. Widespread injustice is a fact of life; and there are lots and lots of people who have a vested interest in keeping it that way, just as there are lots and lots of other people who go out every day and devote their lives to making injustice a little LESS widespread than it was the day before.
And if Justice itself is just an abstraction, then Equity is even more so. It’s an article of faith in this country, articulated by Thomas Jefferson right in the Declaration of Independence way back in 1776, and confirmed by Abraham Lincoln four score and seven years later, that “all men are created equal.” But if you just look around you’ll notices rather quickly that this proposition is hardly confirmed by the evidence of our own eyes.
Human beings basically have only three things in common: each of us is unique, none of us is perfect, and all of us are going to die. These three qualities may well make us equal in the eyes of Nature and Nature’s God, but that’s pretty much where it ends as well. Inequality is such a fundamental fact of life that we settle instead for the principle of “equity” -- all people may not be the same, but at least we’re going to try to treat them that way.
Yet even this basic principle of even-handed fairness is a difficult and challenging standard to achieve. We lift up the ideals of Justice and Equity as goals to guide our own behavior and interactions with one another, knowing in our heart of hearts that life isn’t fair and probably never will be, no matter how hard we may try.
But Compassion, it seems to me, is fundamentally different from these other two ideals. The ability to be compassionate comes from within us, and is thus always close at hand, always within our own power to express. Compassion is more than mere sympathy or empathy, although both of these qualities are clearly components of its character. Compassion goes beyond our natural human emotional tendency to feel pity for souls less fortunate than ourselves, or to act mercifully toward those within our power to help; it is more than mere charity as well, either in the narrow sense of personal philanthropy, or in the more profound sense of caritas or “benevolent love.”
In its essence, compassion means “to suffer with” -- it means opening our hearts to other people in a radically vulnerable way, in empathy and solidarity, in generosity and benevolence, realizing not only do we hope to change their lives by our involvement with them, but with a willingness to risk allowing that relationship to change OUR lives in the bargain. Compassion is the attempt to understand the lived experience of another human being in all its dignity and complexity, and then making that understanding an intimate and authentic part of our own lived experience as well.
In the Buddhist tradition, Compassion or karuna is one of the four immeasurable “sublime attitudes,” along with metta or “loving kindness; mudita or “sympathetic joy;” and upeksha, which is generally translated as “Equanimity.” Loving-Kindness is a wish for the happiness of others, while Compassion is a wish for others to be free from suffering. Sympathetic Joy is the ability to be happy because of the happiness of others, while Equanimity is “a detached, clear-minded state of tranquility which unconditionally accepts all sentient beings as equal.”
These four immeasurables can’t really be understood independently apart from one another, and are linked together through a meditative practice which attempts to cultivate a state of mindfulness which recognizes on some deep level that the happiness of any one of us is dependent upon the happiness of us all, and likewise injured by the suffering of any. Through meditation on these sublime attitudes, practitioners attempt to diminish (and ultimately eliminate) emotions of ill-will, cruelty, jealousy and personal desire, while at the same time expanding their awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all self-aware creatures...breaking down the separations brought about by our self-consciousness, and binding us together in relationships of mutual support and concern.
Or to put it perhaps in more familiar terms, meditation on the four immeasurables help to reinforce the insight that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Yet even when we know this in our heads, we still need to figure out how to take it to heart, and then to try to change things in our own lives, and in the larger community where we live.
The legendary compassion of the Buddha, grounded in the unselfish wish to remove suffering and give joy, and the ability to take joy in the joy of others, while accepting everyone just as they are without preference or distinction, is perhaps the essence of “enlightenment” itself. It begins with the insight that no matter how different we each may seem, we all have a lot more in common than we think, and that by building on these commonalities while seeking to understand one another in all the complexity of our differences, we create a deeper sense of mutual connection and commitment that allows us to experience both the joys and the sorrows of other individuals as if they were our own. And by doing so, we enrich our own life experience in ways that are impossible to measure.
There’s a classic Buddhist story about a young mother named Kisa Gotami, who became desperate with grief after the death of her only child. Carrying the body of her dead son with her, she asked everyone she met for a medicine that might restore him to life, and was eventually directed to the Buddha, who told her that he would more than happy to do as she asked. All he required, he told the distraught mother, was that she bring him a few mustard seeds from a house that had never known death.
“Overjoyed at the prospect of having her son restored to life,” the story continues, “Kisa Gotami ran from house to house, begging for some mustard seeds. Everyone was willing to help but she could not find a single home where death had not occurred. The people were only too willing to part with their mustard seeds, but they could not claim to have not lost a dear one in death. As the day dragged on, she realized hers was not the only family that had faced death and that there were more people dead than living. As soon as she realized this, her attitude towards her dead son changed; she was no longer attached to the dead body of her son and she realized how simply the Buddha had taught her a most important lesson: that everything that is born must eventually die.”
And so Kisa Gotomi buried her dead son, and returned to the Buddha to tell him what she had learned. Eventually she became one of his most devoted and accomplished followers. The Buddha eased Kisa Gotami’s suffering, not by restoring life to the dead, but by connecting her grief to the grief and suffering of so many others. And by this simple act of Compassion, the burden of her grief became less unbearable, and she was able to let go of her attachment to something precious that ultimately was not hers to keep.
Some of you may remember when I preached here in July for the first time after arriving as your called and settled Parish minister, I described “an ethic of compassion,” along with the “value of community” and the “wisdom of common sense” as one of the three fundamental criteria by which I measure the validity of any religious belief. And in my own mind, these three criteria all come together in a very simple and straightforward way around yet another “C” word: the word “Companionship.” A companion is literally someone with whom we share bread. Companionship embodies the ideals of hospitality and generosity, equity and equality, mutual concern, joint interests, and common purpose. It implies shared hardships and shared joys, all grounded in the basic human necessity of eating life-sustaining food, and eating it together.
We may not be able to establish Justice and Equity in human relations in our lifetimes. We may not always be able to practice Compassion as faithfully as we would like. But we can become companions to one another, and work to expand that circle of companionship wider and wider, as we share our lives with the lives of others, and allow ourselves to be changed by that experience in ways we can never fully anticipate, but must instead learn simply to trust. Each of us is unique. None of us is perfect. And all of us are someday going to die. But in the meantime, is it too much to expect that we learn to treat each other fairly, that we understand our differences as something that we all have in common, and that, on occasion at least, we break bread together while gathered round to watch the big game on TV?...
READINGS:
THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
By Langston Hughes
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
***
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS
by Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream
Till the current ends and dips his wing
In the orange suns rays
And dares to claim the sky.
But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage
Can seldom see through his bars of rage
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
Of things unknown but longed for still
And his tune is heard on the distant hill for
The caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
And the trade winds soft through
The sighing trees
And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright
Lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams
His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
His wings are clipped and his feet are tied
So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
