a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008
READING: Luke 24: 13-35. -- “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?”
***
Some years ago now, when I was still relatively new to the ministry, and serving the Unitarian congregation in Midland, Texas, there was a child in our Sunday School whose parents were recently divorced, so every other Sunday she attended our church with her father, and then on the alternating Sundays she went to the Baptist church with her mother and grandparents. And naturally, this was a little confusing for her. One Sunday she’d go to the Baptist Church and hear about how God created the world in seven days. The next week she’d come to our church and learn about the dinosaurs. The next week she’d be back over at the Baptist church hearing about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and Original Sin. And then the following week she’d be back with us, and the teacher would have brought an actual snake into the classroom, and would be explaining about “The Interdependent Web of All Existence, of Which We are a Part.”
Now as it so happened, the Sunday School teacher at the Baptist Church actually started to get kind of curious about Unitarianism as well, so she decided to try to find out more by asking Sherry about something that a young child was likely to know, which turned out to be the holidays.
“What do the Unitarians believe about Thanksgiving?” the Sunday School teacher asked.
“Thanksgiving is when remember the Pilgrims, who came to America in search of religious freedom, and survived the first winter with the help of their friends, the Indians.”
“And what do the Unitarians believe about Christmas?”
“Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, and the coming of light into the world at the darkest time of the year.”
“And what do the Unitarians believe about Easter?”
No response. So the teacher began to give some hints.
“You know, Jesus dies on the cross, and is buried in the tomb....”
Still no response.
“And he’s buried in the Tomb for three days.... And at the end of three days, he rolls away the rock, and comes out of the tomb....”
Suddenly Sherry’s eyes lit up. “And if he sees his shadow he goes back in and there’s six more weeks of winter!”
Now let me tell you a true story. A generation ago, when I was a child growing up in the Unitarian Church, it was still not uncommon for our Sunday School students to perform full-scale Easter pageants at this time of year. And when my mentor, Peter Raible, who is now the minister emeritus at University Unitarian Church in Seattle (where I attended Sunday School as a child), was himself new to our ministry, he was in charge of organizing the Easter Pageant at our church in Providence, Rhode Island, which the children were to perform before the entire congregation as part of the Sunday service. Everything went smoothly until the dramatic climax, when the child who was playing the part of Saint Peter rushed onstage to announce the Good News. At the top of his lungs, he shouted his discovery to the congregation: "The Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away!" There was silence, followed by a nervous titter which soon gave way to uproarious laughter, bringing the pageant to an abrupt and early close. For from the innocent mouth of a child, a profound commentary on our faith had sprung forth. What is the meaning of Easter here in the Unitarian church? Perhaps it is nothing more than this: the Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away.
This is a tough time of year to be a Unitarian Minister. It's not like Christmas; we call all pretty much get into the Spirit of Christmas without worrying too much about whether or not it truly was a Virgin Birth, or if the angels really did speak to the shepherds. Thanksgiving is essentially OUR holiday: a tiny group of pilgrims who come to a new world in search of religious freedom, and who survive against all odds and in the face of terrible hardship; and if you ever happen to find yourself in Plymouth some Sunday morning, and decide to worship in the church that the Pilgrims started, you will find other Unitarians there to greet you.
But Easter is different. No matter how eloquently we may speak of the rebirth of new life in Spring, or of other Ancient Near Eastern traditions of dying and rising gods, Easter remains the story of an empty tomb, the Resurrection of the Christ, a corpse that got up and "stood again." It's a story, quite frankly, which I don't believe; which is why it's so tough to be a Unitarian minister on Easter Sunday. What do you say after you've said "Sorry, I don't buy it. Not a word of it. It's nothing but fiction, a metaphor, a lot of make believe...."? That's not exactly the sort of message designed to inspire a great outpouring of renewed commitment and religious faith. And yet this is precisely what Easter is all about: the renewal of trust, the renewal of hope: the rebirth of a commitment rooted in faith, even in the face of death and disappointment.
As I said last week, our Unitarian Universalist religious heritage is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. The free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice -- it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But curiosity alone, even a "responsible" curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere, an understanding that Truth really matters: that this is not just some abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The life of faith is not just a commitment to know the truth, but also a willingness to be "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness. It is only through our commitment to something which is larger than our self, larger than our personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it -- that we grow beyond our present limitations as religious beings, whatever they may be, and bring our potential to fruition. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned, willing to grow beyond what we already are to what we potentially might become. And I called this commitment the Call of Discipleship: the challenge of becoming a disciplined religious learner, enjoying Fellowship with other learners, sharing the Stewardship of a religious heritage and institution, providing Leadership for others who would join us on our way, and who likewise seek to grow beyond themselves.
You see, Easter is the story of an Empty Tomb. But it is also many other stories as well. It is the story of a martyrdom: of one individual's faithful witness to the integrity of his beliefs, and of the price which he paid for maintaining that integrity. It is a story of failure, and temptation, and betrayal; and of the opportunity for a different kind of relationship with the divine, a "New Covenant" which is open to us even in midst of our human weaknesses and shortcomings, and still inspires us to become more than we now are. And above all, I think, it is a story of survival in the aftermath of tragedy, and of that hidden strength which exists within each of us, and which rises to the surface when we need it most.
Consider the story of Simon Peter, or "Rocky" as one of the more contemporary translations of the New Testament calls him, in an attempt to render the effect of the Greek pun on his nickname Petros or "rock." He was the first of the disciples to answer the call of Jesus, a simple working man who caught fish for a living on the Sea of Galilee, and lived at home with his wife and his mother and his brother -- always the most faithful and loyal of the disciples, and yet also (it's always seemed to me) a little thick-headed, as though he really didn't grasp or understand the full significance of everything that was going on around him at the time. Yet it was upon this "rock" that Jesus chose to build his church, his community of people who had been "called out" to learn the Good News of the New Covenant. And the Story of Easter is as much the story of disciple Peter as it is of Rabbi Jesus: what does the "learner" do when the "teacher" is suddenly taken from him, and the full significance of it all finally begins to grow clear?
This, in a nutshell, is what it means to become a Disciple. It means the recognition that when you answer the call to become a religious learner, and commit yourself to the discipline which that entails, you are also accepting the responsibility of becoming a religious teacher: of communicating by example what you have learned through imitation. You become an "apostle" -- one who is "sent out" -- one whose faith has not only taken root in the discipline of religious life, but which has also taken wing so that it can be spread to others. This is the quality that separates the Disciple from the dilettante, from someone who merely dabbles in spriritual learning for their own amusement, pretending to a wisdom greater than they possess. The disciple may recognize that his or her knowledge is incomplete, may even shy away from the challenge of sharing it with others. But ultimately the true disciple will rise to the challenge; and it is through this process: learners teaching learners teaching learners teaching learners, that the community endures, surviving even the execution of the teacher who first gathered it.
Jesus himself was a disciple once. In the second chapter of Luke we read of an episode in his life, when he was the age of twelve, in which he remained behind in the city of Jerusalem following the Feast of Passover, and was missing from his family for three days. They eventually found him sitting in the temple, listening to the rabbis and asking them questions, and surprised that his parents should have been so worried about his whereabouts. And eighteen years later, following his baptism by John in the river Jordan, it was only after forty days of fasting in the wilderness that Jesus came to the decision to answer the call to ministry, to gather disciples to him, and to preach good news to the poor. The challenge of an authentic religious faith entails making that step from study to service, to move forward from learning to actively doing the Good and the True.
In the case of Simon Peter, the challenge came upon him suddenly. At the moment Jesus was arrested Peter's first impulse was to resist, to fight back; and afterwards, in those dark hours before dawn, as he followed the members of this paramilitary "Death Squad" who had kidnapped his teacher back to the house of the High Priest himself, and then sat in the courtyard -- frightened, helpless, and confused -- three times he denied that he even knew Jesus, no doubt hoping to avoid a similar fate himself. And when he realized what he had done, he wept for the shame of it.
And then a very strange thing happened. For in the ensuing hours and days that immediately followed the crucifixion, it was the Apostle Peter -- the Rock -- who "stood again" in the place of the departed Jesus, who gathered the disciples together in the Upper Room to observe the Sabbath while they waited for the opportunity to anoint the body of their executed teacher. There was as yet no talk of any "resurrection," no one had been to visit the tomb, no one had claimed to have seen the Risen Lord. But the miracle of Easter had already begun; the teacher was dead, but the teaching lived on: the disciples, the learners, were becoming teachers in their own right, and the community which they formed would survive.
Recall for a moment the passage I read this morning from the Gospel According to Luke, the story of the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus. I read that passage not because I think that it's an accurate account of something that actually happened, but because it is a story that is personally meaningful to me. Imagine this, if you will. Two disciples, two "learners," are returning home after having witnessed the crucifixion of their teacher and master. They meet a stranger on the road, invite him to share their company and hospitality; and in the familiar action of the breaking of the bread, they see again the face of their rabbi, Jesus. And the message of this story, for me, is not so much that Christ still lives, but that Christ Lives On: that everything that Jesus had come to stand for in the lives of these two students was just as valid after the crucifixion as it had been before.
It has always struck me as ironic, with all the heated arguments I've heard about the nature of the resurrection: whether or not it occurred at all; whether the tomb was empty or Christ simply "appeared;" what, if anything, it should mean to us today anyway, that more often than not, whenever the Apostle Paul (whose epistles represent the earliest documents of what we now call the "New Testament") speaks of the "risen body of Christ," he is speaking metaphorically of the early Christian church, with its "body" of believers, its "many members." For Paul, the empty tomb was never an issue; he saw the Risen Christ every time he saw another Christian, every time they broke bread together. Paul himself never met the living Jesus -- of this even the most conservative Biblical scholars agree. And yet tradition records that he was struck blind on the road to Damascus, and emerged from that experience a different human being: not just a disciple, but an apostle of Christ, with a new vision of his role as a religious learner, and a teacher. The Greek word anastasis, which we translate as Resurrection, literally means "to rise" or "to stand again." And it happens not once in history for all time, but continually for each of us who encounters the Rabbi on the road to Emmaus, or Damascus, or Wherever, and who "rises up" to "take a stand" for a higher principle, for a different way.
Once Jesus had died upon the cross, it was the Apostles who held the church together during its early years: Peter who provided the leadership, the continuity, the solid root from which the community of faith would take wing; Paul who carried the good news to the Gentiles, who spent a good portion of his ministry in prison, and whose letters are now regarded by the church to have the authority of Scripture. Peter went on to become the Bishop of Rome, the first Pope; and was likewise crucified for his beliefs there in that city during the reign of the emperor Nero. Tradition says that Peter asked to be crucified up-side-down, with his head toward the ground and his feet in the air, because he did not feel himself worthy to be executed in the same manner as Jesus. He had answered the call, and then risen to the challenge; he had truly become a "fisher of men," just as the Rabbi had promised when he had said to him "follow me."
The challenges we face in finding our own wings may not be so dramatic as those faced by Peter and Paul. But the thrust of it all is still very much the same: to grow beyond our fears, to rise to the challenge, to use the things which we have learned in the service of others, to become the solid rocks upon which a community can be built. When we rise to this challenge, it is the miracle of Easter all over again: the renewal of faith, the renewal of hope, the resurrection of the spirit of truth and love and fellowship. Through the willingness to serve, to become teachers as well as learners, to act as witnesses to the truth of our beliefs and our ideals, we become active participants in the process of “saving” the world: a world in which evil and falsehood retreat before the power of the Truth plainly spoken, and no challenge is too great for the community of those who faithfully seek it.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Call to Discipleship
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine
Palm Sunday March 16, 2008
***
[extemporaneous introduction about the significance of New Members Sunday]
Despite our reputation as a religion for intellectuals, in its essence the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice; ultimately, it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But the triumph of Truth doesn't always happen quickly or easily. That typically requires both a long season of seeking, and an even longer season of speaking "The Truth"...but I thought that today, on Palm Sunday, I would simply speak a little bit about the notion of Discipleship; which is to say, on what it means to be a dedicated, disciplined religious "learner" (which is what that word "disciple" really means).
This seems to me a particularly appropriate topic for this particular Sunday, simply because of the nature of the events which the Christian tradition has historically commemorated during Holy Week. It's the great irony of the Gospels, that one cannot really appreciate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, accompanied by a chorus of Hosanas and a sea of waving Palm fronds, without looking ahead to his rejection by that same crowd later in the week, and his painful execution alongside two common criminals on a Roman cross at "the Hill of Skulls."
And likewise, one cannot really make sense of the Crucifixion without looking ahead to the events of Easter, and the anastasis -- the "standing again" of the departed teacher in the transformed lives of his surviving students. The popular acceptance of the truth of an idea ebbs and flows with the whims of the world. But Truth itself is not so easily put to death so long as there are those who continue to live to learn it. And this choice, this willingness to dedicate oneself to learning and living "the Truth," is what I like to think of as the “Call to Discipleship.” Not a blind obedience to an easy truth which never seeks to move beyond itself. But rather, a curious, questioning, probing truth, which constantly challenges existing assumptions in the effort to achieve a greater understanding.
As I mentioned earlier, the word disciple literally means "learner." But one can also easily see in it the root of yet another familiar English word: the word discipline, which is an essential component of the idea of Discipleship. I don't know what life was like growing up in your household, but “discipline” was and remains one of my own father’s favorite words, even though it wasn’t exactly the most popular concept in my own mind when I was a kid. Basically, to my young ears, be disciplined meant to be punished -- it was something that I tried to avoid as much as possible. And as I grew older, and my father began to preach to me about the virtues of "self-discipline," I figured that he must be crazy: why would anyone go out of their way to punish themselves when there are so many other folks out there who are willing to do that for you?
Now, if my father had explained to me way back then that all he was really trying to do was simply to encourage my brothers and me to cultivate the quality of being lifelong, committed, dedicated, self-motivated learners, he might have had a lot more success getting his point across; as things worked out, it was not until after I started college that I finally started to figure out for myself what he had been talking about all those years. I think it was Mark Twain who once observed that when he was fourteen he couldn’t believe how ignorant his father was, but by the time he’d turned twenty-one he was equally astonished at how much smarter the old man had gotten in just seven years. That was basically my experience when it came to learning about “discipline.” It wasn’t the sort of lesson easily learned by lecture alone. I kind of needed to figure it out for myself, by trial and error in the laboratory of my life.
I think it was also Twain who quipped that he tried never to let schooling interfere with his education (which, when you’ve spent as many years in school as I have, takes on a particular poignancy). It's a clever remark, but behind it lies yet another very important truth about “The Truth:” the insight that serious learners tend to learn for the love of learning, and not merely because they are motivated either by the fear of punishment, or the promise of external rewards like good grades, or praise, or the expectation of a better paying job. A passionate curiosity is the first characteristic of the Call to Discipleship: a curiosity which must then become disciplined through the commitment to an organized, methodical, self-challenging learning process in order to achieve its full potential.
But curiosity alone, even a disciplined curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere in one’s character, an understanding that The Truth really matters: that this is not just some sort of abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The Call to Discipleship is not just an invitation to know the truth, but also the imperative of being "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness.
It is on this level, I believe, that we can see most clearly why Discipleship truly is a "religious" discipline: it represents a profound commitment to something which is larger than the self, larger than one's personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned. Yet the willingness to change -- and by this I mean not only a willingness to accept change, but also to seek out and to embrace change -- is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. We seek greater knowledge in order to be able to change the world, but the most significant thing that we can ever learn to change is our own selves. Self-discipline not only requires self-understanding, it also creates it. And this in turn is what ultimately empowers us to change the world around us as well.
For my own part, when I first felt the "call" to ministry, it was precisely because of my commitment to Social Justice. Very quickly though after beginning my theological studies at Harvard, I started to develop an interest in the more contemplative aspects of religious life. I was looking for a language with which to express my own mystical sense of who I was in this vast Universe we inhabit; and I discovered that as I learned, this new knowledge helped both to shape and to expand my understanding. It not only gave form to what I already felt, but it also drew me out beyond it: the "discipline" of Discipleship became in itself a vehicle for personal religious transformation, the source of a new understanding which grew upon itself rather than merely reorganizing what it found. And likewise, this same process ultimately brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the Church as an institution: not merely a potential springboard for social change, nor even a convenient forum for intellectual stimulation, but also a dynamic institution in its own right: an institution built on a very human scale, unlike the huge banks, and corporations, and governmental entities which exert so much control over the way we live our lives.
Indeed, over the years more and more of my own personal understanding of what it means to be a "disciple" has come to center around my relationship to a church community -- and not merely as a minister, as the so-called "professional" Unitarian -- but even more significantly simply as a "fellow traveler," a learner who seeks a deeper knowledge of himself and the meaning and purpose of his life, and who finds that it is only in community, in the often-times extremely difficult challenge of collaborating with other people and creating some kind of a common life together, that the really important lessons are to be learned.
I’m sure you’ve all heard it said that knowledge is power, and also that power corrupts, which naturally leads some to the logical conclusion that we must therefore disempower the knowledgeable in order to prevent them from corrupting the integrity of our democratic process. But this twisted syllogism becomes true only when the power of knowledge is allowed to remain in the possession of only a few, select individuals, when information is hoarded rather than shared, and knowledgeable “insiders” are allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of others by keeping them in the dark and manipulating events from behind the scenes.
It’s an insidious temptation for even the most wise. Think of how easy it would be simply to remain confident in one’s own enlightenment, scoffing at the foibles of the fools around us, and taking advantage of our “superior” understanding to get our own way (or at least to insulate ourselves from the demands of the outside world). But within a community of disciples, a community of committed learners, the discipline of the group keeps us constantly on our toes, while the challenge of collaboration, of sharing our knowledge for the good of all, helps to draw us away from our smug complacency to a place of humble and well-intentioned openness.
The Call to Discipleship is a challenge to seek a wisdom beyond ourselves, and to use it in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. It is a call to remain curious, to cultivate discipline, to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation as we endeavor to live our lives according to the lessons we have learned. Ultimately, I believe, it finds its fullest expression within the context of a community, in the give and take of attempting to create a common life together. It is the fundamental vehicle for our religious fulfillment. But there is also a price to be paid, a challenge to be met, and it is to this challenge that we will turn our attention next week, when we gather once again as a community of faith, to celebrate Easter Sunday -- Unitarian Universalist style....
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine
Palm Sunday March 16, 2008
***
[extemporaneous introduction about the significance of New Members Sunday]
Despite our reputation as a religion for intellectuals, in its essence the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice; ultimately, it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But the triumph of Truth doesn't always happen quickly or easily. That typically requires both a long season of seeking, and an even longer season of speaking "The Truth"...but I thought that today, on Palm Sunday, I would simply speak a little bit about the notion of Discipleship; which is to say, on what it means to be a dedicated, disciplined religious "learner" (which is what that word "disciple" really means).
This seems to me a particularly appropriate topic for this particular Sunday, simply because of the nature of the events which the Christian tradition has historically commemorated during Holy Week. It's the great irony of the Gospels, that one cannot really appreciate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, accompanied by a chorus of Hosanas and a sea of waving Palm fronds, without looking ahead to his rejection by that same crowd later in the week, and his painful execution alongside two common criminals on a Roman cross at "the Hill of Skulls."
And likewise, one cannot really make sense of the Crucifixion without looking ahead to the events of Easter, and the anastasis -- the "standing again" of the departed teacher in the transformed lives of his surviving students. The popular acceptance of the truth of an idea ebbs and flows with the whims of the world. But Truth itself is not so easily put to death so long as there are those who continue to live to learn it. And this choice, this willingness to dedicate oneself to learning and living "the Truth," is what I like to think of as the “Call to Discipleship.” Not a blind obedience to an easy truth which never seeks to move beyond itself. But rather, a curious, questioning, probing truth, which constantly challenges existing assumptions in the effort to achieve a greater understanding.
As I mentioned earlier, the word disciple literally means "learner." But one can also easily see in it the root of yet another familiar English word: the word discipline, which is an essential component of the idea of Discipleship. I don't know what life was like growing up in your household, but “discipline” was and remains one of my own father’s favorite words, even though it wasn’t exactly the most popular concept in my own mind when I was a kid. Basically, to my young ears, be disciplined meant to be punished -- it was something that I tried to avoid as much as possible. And as I grew older, and my father began to preach to me about the virtues of "self-discipline," I figured that he must be crazy: why would anyone go out of their way to punish themselves when there are so many other folks out there who are willing to do that for you?
Now, if my father had explained to me way back then that all he was really trying to do was simply to encourage my brothers and me to cultivate the quality of being lifelong, committed, dedicated, self-motivated learners, he might have had a lot more success getting his point across; as things worked out, it was not until after I started college that I finally started to figure out for myself what he had been talking about all those years. I think it was Mark Twain who once observed that when he was fourteen he couldn’t believe how ignorant his father was, but by the time he’d turned twenty-one he was equally astonished at how much smarter the old man had gotten in just seven years. That was basically my experience when it came to learning about “discipline.” It wasn’t the sort of lesson easily learned by lecture alone. I kind of needed to figure it out for myself, by trial and error in the laboratory of my life.
I think it was also Twain who quipped that he tried never to let schooling interfere with his education (which, when you’ve spent as many years in school as I have, takes on a particular poignancy). It's a clever remark, but behind it lies yet another very important truth about “The Truth:” the insight that serious learners tend to learn for the love of learning, and not merely because they are motivated either by the fear of punishment, or the promise of external rewards like good grades, or praise, or the expectation of a better paying job. A passionate curiosity is the first characteristic of the Call to Discipleship: a curiosity which must then become disciplined through the commitment to an organized, methodical, self-challenging learning process in order to achieve its full potential.
But curiosity alone, even a disciplined curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere in one’s character, an understanding that The Truth really matters: that this is not just some sort of abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The Call to Discipleship is not just an invitation to know the truth, but also the imperative of being "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness.
It is on this level, I believe, that we can see most clearly why Discipleship truly is a "religious" discipline: it represents a profound commitment to something which is larger than the self, larger than one's personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned. Yet the willingness to change -- and by this I mean not only a willingness to accept change, but also to seek out and to embrace change -- is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. We seek greater knowledge in order to be able to change the world, but the most significant thing that we can ever learn to change is our own selves. Self-discipline not only requires self-understanding, it also creates it. And this in turn is what ultimately empowers us to change the world around us as well.
For my own part, when I first felt the "call" to ministry, it was precisely because of my commitment to Social Justice. Very quickly though after beginning my theological studies at Harvard, I started to develop an interest in the more contemplative aspects of religious life. I was looking for a language with which to express my own mystical sense of who I was in this vast Universe we inhabit; and I discovered that as I learned, this new knowledge helped both to shape and to expand my understanding. It not only gave form to what I already felt, but it also drew me out beyond it: the "discipline" of Discipleship became in itself a vehicle for personal religious transformation, the source of a new understanding which grew upon itself rather than merely reorganizing what it found. And likewise, this same process ultimately brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the Church as an institution: not merely a potential springboard for social change, nor even a convenient forum for intellectual stimulation, but also a dynamic institution in its own right: an institution built on a very human scale, unlike the huge banks, and corporations, and governmental entities which exert so much control over the way we live our lives.
Indeed, over the years more and more of my own personal understanding of what it means to be a "disciple" has come to center around my relationship to a church community -- and not merely as a minister, as the so-called "professional" Unitarian -- but even more significantly simply as a "fellow traveler," a learner who seeks a deeper knowledge of himself and the meaning and purpose of his life, and who finds that it is only in community, in the often-times extremely difficult challenge of collaborating with other people and creating some kind of a common life together, that the really important lessons are to be learned.
I’m sure you’ve all heard it said that knowledge is power, and also that power corrupts, which naturally leads some to the logical conclusion that we must therefore disempower the knowledgeable in order to prevent them from corrupting the integrity of our democratic process. But this twisted syllogism becomes true only when the power of knowledge is allowed to remain in the possession of only a few, select individuals, when information is hoarded rather than shared, and knowledgeable “insiders” are allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of others by keeping them in the dark and manipulating events from behind the scenes.
It’s an insidious temptation for even the most wise. Think of how easy it would be simply to remain confident in one’s own enlightenment, scoffing at the foibles of the fools around us, and taking advantage of our “superior” understanding to get our own way (or at least to insulate ourselves from the demands of the outside world). But within a community of disciples, a community of committed learners, the discipline of the group keeps us constantly on our toes, while the challenge of collaboration, of sharing our knowledge for the good of all, helps to draw us away from our smug complacency to a place of humble and well-intentioned openness.
The Call to Discipleship is a challenge to seek a wisdom beyond ourselves, and to use it in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. It is a call to remain curious, to cultivate discipline, to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation as we endeavor to live our lives according to the lessons we have learned. Ultimately, I believe, it finds its fullest expression within the context of a community, in the give and take of attempting to create a common life together. It is the fundamental vehicle for our religious fulfillment. But there is also a price to be paid, a challenge to be met, and it is to this challenge that we will turn our attention next week, when we gather once again as a community of faith, to celebrate Easter Sunday -- Unitarian Universalist style....
Sunday, March 9, 2008
INTERDEPENDENCE
a sermon preached by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 9, 2008
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed” -- G. K. Chesterton
***
I thought I’d start out today by talking about something we don’t talk about very often here at the Unitarian Church. “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All.” That’s how they used to teach children their ABCs, back in the olden days, but it’s a doctrine that has never really made that much sense to me, especially as a kid.
You all know the story, right? Adam and Eve are living in the Garden of Eden, happy as clams, not a care in the world...all of their needs are taken care of, and there is basically only one rule: don’t eat of the fruit of the Trees planted in the center of the garden. Everything else is permitted to you; but that particular fruit is forbidden.
So naturally, being human, they’re curious; and with a little encouragement from a friendly serpent, they decide -- what the heck -- and take a little taste of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And, of course, once they have eaten, they immediately realize that not only what they’ve done is wrong, but also that they’re not wearing any clothing...so they immediately do what I’m sure any one of us would do if we found ourselves in a similar situation. They covered up, by sewing together fig tree leaves, and making themselves breeches.
But here’s the part I just didn’t get as a kid. Until Adam and Eve had actually eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, how were they supposed to know that what they were doing was wrong? I mean sure, God had told them not to do it. But without a working knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, how were they supposed to understand what that really meant?
Now the cover-up: that’s an entirely different story, because at that point they really did know better, and rather than simply ‘fessing up to what they’d done, they chose to try to keep it a secret instead. But more to the point (and this was the part that REALLY bothered me as a kid) what did any of this have to do with me? -- especially considering the fact that I hadn't even been born whan all of this supposedly happened, and that none of it ever really happened anyway; it was all just a myth, a fairy tale intended to frighten small children and teach them an important lesson about who they are and why they are the way they are, and the consequences of disobedience, and the importance of telling the truth. But viewed in that light, it’s probably a GOOD thing that our mythical ancestors tasted the forbidden fruit...so that the rest of us now CAN understand the difference between right and wrong.
It really wasn’t until I became a parent myself that I began to understand that there are even more layers to this story. We are all born into this world naked and helpless, completely unaware of anything other than the power of our own appetites: our need to eat and drink, our desire to be held and kept safe and warm -- and completely dependent upon others for our care. And fortunately (at least for those of us who survive), there always seems to be someone right there to take care of those needs: our parents, or maybe some other relative; a nurse; a neighbor; some other grown-up who can provide for us the nurture and the nourishment, the protection and the affection we all need to grow into grown-ups ourselves.
And admittedly, some of us are obviously a lot more fortunate than others. But how do we make this miraculous transformation: from helpless, naked infants who know only how to scream at the top of our lungs when we are hungry or thirsty or cold or tired... into caring, competent, compassionate adults capable of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, providing shelter for the homeless, and offering hospitality to those less fortunate than ourselves?
I used to think that the principal challenge of parenthood was raising children who are self-reliant and capable of taking care of themselves -- helping them to make that important transition from a condition of dependency to one of “Independence,” when they flex their wings and fly the coop, and leave their parents alone in an empty nest. And of course I always anticipated a little adolescent “counter-dependence” along the way: a period of rebellious “limit-testing” when young people naturally want to explore their own boundaries and experience the extent of their own freedom and competence, perhaps even to taste the sweet flavor of forbidden fruit with their own lips.
But over the years I’ve come to realize that the value of independence is highly overrated. None of us are ever truly or completely self-reliant, and we all depend on one another every day simply to make it through safely to the next one, even about things so simple as counting on other people to stop at red lights, and to keep their cars safely on their side of the white line. The limitations imposed upon our freedoms are not random or arbitrary; they emerge out of the limitations inherent in our own humanity, and we ignore them at our peril.
Rather than discovering and exploring our Independence, as adults it is far more essential that we learn instead to recognize and honor our Interdependence: the network of mutual trust and care and concern which allows us to transcend the so-called “law of the jungle,” and live our lives as members of a society where the fundamental safety and well-being of everyone is the mutual concern of us all.
There’s nothing especially original about a couple of people who make a mistake, do something that they shouldn’t, and then try to cover it up in order to avoid accountability for their actions. You can read about that kind of behavior every day. The truly inspiring stories are about people who make amazing sacrifices for the well-being of others: who risk their own lives and fortunes and personal comfort and safety in order to make the world a better, safer and more comfortable place for us all. They recognize that their own self-interest resides in the common interest (at least over the long haul), and with concern for the safety and comfort of our children, and our children’s children.
When I was a child, I was accustomed to thinking of sin as bad behavior: something that I shouldn’t do because God had forbidden it, and would punish me for if I disobeyed. But mostly I didn’t think about sin very much at all, because I was a Unitarian and didn’t have to worry about confessing my sins every week, like all my Catholic neighbors. My parents tried to teach me instead that there were natural consequences to every choice that I made, and that I should try to anticipate those consequences before simply going along with what all the other kids were doing, and that I should always tell the truth, and take responsibility for my own actions rather, than trying to cover up or shift the blame to others.
As an adult (although, admittedly, a young adult) at the Harvard Divinity School, I also learned that the word “sin” actually means “to be off target” -- to be misguided, misdirected, or (in one translation) living in a state of “aimlessness” -- in other words, to stray away from the straight and narrow path that leads to God. And the so-called “wages of sin” are not just death: they also include estrangement, alienation, isolation and abandonment...a state of existence where we truly are left alone to our own devices, and have no one to rely on but ourselves.
I also learned at Divinity School that the alternative to a misdirected and aimless Life of Sin is the so-called Life of Faith: not faith in the sense of “a belief in things we know aren’t true,” but rather an attitude of hopeful and optimistic confident trust even in the face of uncertainty, even in the midst of doubt, even in the presence of ambiguity and the unknown and the ultimately mysterious and unknowable. Not “belief without evidence,” but “faith [hope/trust] seeking understanding” -- a willingness to take that first step into the darkness even though you don’t really know what awaits you on the other side of the door, and can’t even see clearly all the way to the end of the first staircase.
Hope, Trust, Confidence, Optimism... letting go of the need for certainty, letting go of the need for control, expressing a willingness to take things one step at a time, believing in our own ability to take things in stride, and with faith that those who are walking with us will stand beside us when the going gets tough....
Interdependence.
The simple recognition that we are all in this together and that none of us can do it alone; that we need one another in ways we can never fully anticipate or understand, and that others need us (and are relying on us) too.
I do want to pause for just a moment to say a brief word about the difference between Interdependence and Co-Dependence, which can sometimes be confusing if you’re not paying close attention. Co-Dependence might be thought of as a mutually reinforcing pattern of dysfunctional behaviors which enable one another, but also prevent any of the participants in the relationship from changing their self-destructive behavior and making more healthy choices. In many ways, Co-Dependence is all about maintaining the illusion of certainty and control, and this is really where it differs from the Interdependent Life of Faith, which recognizes both that each of us is special and that none of us is perfect, and accepts the limitations of our own human nature without feeling limited by them. Interdependence connects us to a Higher Power, through an act of trusting surrender which recognizes our own fundamental powerlessness to control every little detail of our lives, and acknowledges our need for something more.
The Interdependent Life of Faith is grounded in four basic values which many of us have been taught since childhood, and yet which often seem so easily forgotten. The first of these is Gratitude: the ability to be truly thankful for the many blessings that life has given us. And it doesn’t really matter whether we’ve been blessed a little or blessed a lot -- the ability to say “thank you” and really mean it makes all the difference...it truly is the “magic word.”
I’m sure many of you have encountered people who seem to have everything they could possibly wish for, and yet it just doesn’t seem to be enough -- they still aren’t satisfied, they still want more, they somehow feel as though life has cheated them. And some of us have also been blessed to have met folks who actually seem to have very little, yet their sense of gratitude for what they do have is contagious, and makes us feel better just to be around them.
A sincere sense of Gratitude leads in turn to an attitude of Generosity -- the heartfelt desire to share one’s blessings with others, in order to see them multiply. That’s what it means to be generous: to generate new life, new hope, new energy. It’s all about the importance of Sharing: another fundamental value we try to teach our children at a very early age. Our capacity for Generosity, for Creativity, is the one palpable way in which the human spirit might honestly be said to have been created in the image of God. It’s the thing that makes us most authentically human, and also which orients and connects us most directly toward the divine, generation after generation, after generation.
Of course, along with Generosity is the value of Humility: which is an ability to see ourselves as we truly are, for all our flaws and limitations, and still feel good about ourselves. Nowadays we often talk about this value in the language of “self-esteem,” which is fine as far as it goes, especially considering the tendency of our secular culture to confuse humility with humiliation. But to my mind, the biggest difference between authentic humility and mere “high self-esteem” is the ability of the former to deal with failure and disappointment. Too often our self-esteem is dependent upon the perception of achievement and the receipt of external praise; there are no “losers,” everyone’s a winner. But the humble soul is a resilient soul, which recognizes that there are indeed both winners and losers in this life, yet that each has inherent worth and dignity in the eyes of God, and is worthy of respect on that basis, and on that basis alone. Authentic Humility grounds us in the earth. It reinforces our sense of connectedness to something larger than ourselves, and also reminds us of both our origins and our destiny: from dust we have come, and to dust we shall return.
Finally, the Interdependent Life of Faith is ultimately a Life devoted to Service: a committed expression of our empathy and compassion for others, in humble gratitude for the gift of life itself, and through the generous manifestation of that same life-force in the world. It is through Service that we realize just how alive we truly are, and the kind of difference our lives can make in the lives of others. But we don’t necessarily see this right from the beginning. Because a life devoted to the service of others is also a profound act of faith -- a willingness to trust that our actions do indeed have meaning, and the confidence that our purpose here is a worthy one.
The plain truth of the matter is that none of us can never know for certain what the future may bring. We can try to anticipate, we can try to plan...but mostly we just need to cultivate the confidence and the courage to move forward in what we believe to be the right direction, trusting that over time we will encounter both what our ancestors would have called the ‘benevolent and afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence,” and that we will somehow take them each in stride. And perhaps the most important thing is our commitment to walking together, not aimless, misguided, and alone...but optimistically side by side in the direction we hope and believe will lead us all into greater Harmony with the Divine....
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 9, 2008
“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed” -- G. K. Chesterton
***
I thought I’d start out today by talking about something we don’t talk about very often here at the Unitarian Church. “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All.” That’s how they used to teach children their ABCs, back in the olden days, but it’s a doctrine that has never really made that much sense to me, especially as a kid.
You all know the story, right? Adam and Eve are living in the Garden of Eden, happy as clams, not a care in the world...all of their needs are taken care of, and there is basically only one rule: don’t eat of the fruit of the Trees planted in the center of the garden. Everything else is permitted to you; but that particular fruit is forbidden.
So naturally, being human, they’re curious; and with a little encouragement from a friendly serpent, they decide -- what the heck -- and take a little taste of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And, of course, once they have eaten, they immediately realize that not only what they’ve done is wrong, but also that they’re not wearing any clothing...so they immediately do what I’m sure any one of us would do if we found ourselves in a similar situation. They covered up, by sewing together fig tree leaves, and making themselves breeches.
But here’s the part I just didn’t get as a kid. Until Adam and Eve had actually eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, how were they supposed to know that what they were doing was wrong? I mean sure, God had told them not to do it. But without a working knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, how were they supposed to understand what that really meant?
Now the cover-up: that’s an entirely different story, because at that point they really did know better, and rather than simply ‘fessing up to what they’d done, they chose to try to keep it a secret instead. But more to the point (and this was the part that REALLY bothered me as a kid) what did any of this have to do with me? -- especially considering the fact that I hadn't even been born whan all of this supposedly happened, and that none of it ever really happened anyway; it was all just a myth, a fairy tale intended to frighten small children and teach them an important lesson about who they are and why they are the way they are, and the consequences of disobedience, and the importance of telling the truth. But viewed in that light, it’s probably a GOOD thing that our mythical ancestors tasted the forbidden fruit...so that the rest of us now CAN understand the difference between right and wrong.
It really wasn’t until I became a parent myself that I began to understand that there are even more layers to this story. We are all born into this world naked and helpless, completely unaware of anything other than the power of our own appetites: our need to eat and drink, our desire to be held and kept safe and warm -- and completely dependent upon others for our care. And fortunately (at least for those of us who survive), there always seems to be someone right there to take care of those needs: our parents, or maybe some other relative; a nurse; a neighbor; some other grown-up who can provide for us the nurture and the nourishment, the protection and the affection we all need to grow into grown-ups ourselves.
And admittedly, some of us are obviously a lot more fortunate than others. But how do we make this miraculous transformation: from helpless, naked infants who know only how to scream at the top of our lungs when we are hungry or thirsty or cold or tired... into caring, competent, compassionate adults capable of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, providing shelter for the homeless, and offering hospitality to those less fortunate than ourselves?
I used to think that the principal challenge of parenthood was raising children who are self-reliant and capable of taking care of themselves -- helping them to make that important transition from a condition of dependency to one of “Independence,” when they flex their wings and fly the coop, and leave their parents alone in an empty nest. And of course I always anticipated a little adolescent “counter-dependence” along the way: a period of rebellious “limit-testing” when young people naturally want to explore their own boundaries and experience the extent of their own freedom and competence, perhaps even to taste the sweet flavor of forbidden fruit with their own lips.
But over the years I’ve come to realize that the value of independence is highly overrated. None of us are ever truly or completely self-reliant, and we all depend on one another every day simply to make it through safely to the next one, even about things so simple as counting on other people to stop at red lights, and to keep their cars safely on their side of the white line. The limitations imposed upon our freedoms are not random or arbitrary; they emerge out of the limitations inherent in our own humanity, and we ignore them at our peril.
Rather than discovering and exploring our Independence, as adults it is far more essential that we learn instead to recognize and honor our Interdependence: the network of mutual trust and care and concern which allows us to transcend the so-called “law of the jungle,” and live our lives as members of a society where the fundamental safety and well-being of everyone is the mutual concern of us all.
There’s nothing especially original about a couple of people who make a mistake, do something that they shouldn’t, and then try to cover it up in order to avoid accountability for their actions. You can read about that kind of behavior every day. The truly inspiring stories are about people who make amazing sacrifices for the well-being of others: who risk their own lives and fortunes and personal comfort and safety in order to make the world a better, safer and more comfortable place for us all. They recognize that their own self-interest resides in the common interest (at least over the long haul), and with concern for the safety and comfort of our children, and our children’s children.
When I was a child, I was accustomed to thinking of sin as bad behavior: something that I shouldn’t do because God had forbidden it, and would punish me for if I disobeyed. But mostly I didn’t think about sin very much at all, because I was a Unitarian and didn’t have to worry about confessing my sins every week, like all my Catholic neighbors. My parents tried to teach me instead that there were natural consequences to every choice that I made, and that I should try to anticipate those consequences before simply going along with what all the other kids were doing, and that I should always tell the truth, and take responsibility for my own actions rather, than trying to cover up or shift the blame to others.
As an adult (although, admittedly, a young adult) at the Harvard Divinity School, I also learned that the word “sin” actually means “to be off target” -- to be misguided, misdirected, or (in one translation) living in a state of “aimlessness” -- in other words, to stray away from the straight and narrow path that leads to God. And the so-called “wages of sin” are not just death: they also include estrangement, alienation, isolation and abandonment...a state of existence where we truly are left alone to our own devices, and have no one to rely on but ourselves.
I also learned at Divinity School that the alternative to a misdirected and aimless Life of Sin is the so-called Life of Faith: not faith in the sense of “a belief in things we know aren’t true,” but rather an attitude of hopeful and optimistic confident trust even in the face of uncertainty, even in the midst of doubt, even in the presence of ambiguity and the unknown and the ultimately mysterious and unknowable. Not “belief without evidence,” but “faith [hope/trust] seeking understanding” -- a willingness to take that first step into the darkness even though you don’t really know what awaits you on the other side of the door, and can’t even see clearly all the way to the end of the first staircase.
Hope, Trust, Confidence, Optimism... letting go of the need for certainty, letting go of the need for control, expressing a willingness to take things one step at a time, believing in our own ability to take things in stride, and with faith that those who are walking with us will stand beside us when the going gets tough....
Interdependence.
The simple recognition that we are all in this together and that none of us can do it alone; that we need one another in ways we can never fully anticipate or understand, and that others need us (and are relying on us) too.
I do want to pause for just a moment to say a brief word about the difference between Interdependence and Co-Dependence, which can sometimes be confusing if you’re not paying close attention. Co-Dependence might be thought of as a mutually reinforcing pattern of dysfunctional behaviors which enable one another, but also prevent any of the participants in the relationship from changing their self-destructive behavior and making more healthy choices. In many ways, Co-Dependence is all about maintaining the illusion of certainty and control, and this is really where it differs from the Interdependent Life of Faith, which recognizes both that each of us is special and that none of us is perfect, and accepts the limitations of our own human nature without feeling limited by them. Interdependence connects us to a Higher Power, through an act of trusting surrender which recognizes our own fundamental powerlessness to control every little detail of our lives, and acknowledges our need for something more.
The Interdependent Life of Faith is grounded in four basic values which many of us have been taught since childhood, and yet which often seem so easily forgotten. The first of these is Gratitude: the ability to be truly thankful for the many blessings that life has given us. And it doesn’t really matter whether we’ve been blessed a little or blessed a lot -- the ability to say “thank you” and really mean it makes all the difference...it truly is the “magic word.”
I’m sure many of you have encountered people who seem to have everything they could possibly wish for, and yet it just doesn’t seem to be enough -- they still aren’t satisfied, they still want more, they somehow feel as though life has cheated them. And some of us have also been blessed to have met folks who actually seem to have very little, yet their sense of gratitude for what they do have is contagious, and makes us feel better just to be around them.
A sincere sense of Gratitude leads in turn to an attitude of Generosity -- the heartfelt desire to share one’s blessings with others, in order to see them multiply. That’s what it means to be generous: to generate new life, new hope, new energy. It’s all about the importance of Sharing: another fundamental value we try to teach our children at a very early age. Our capacity for Generosity, for Creativity, is the one palpable way in which the human spirit might honestly be said to have been created in the image of God. It’s the thing that makes us most authentically human, and also which orients and connects us most directly toward the divine, generation after generation, after generation.
Of course, along with Generosity is the value of Humility: which is an ability to see ourselves as we truly are, for all our flaws and limitations, and still feel good about ourselves. Nowadays we often talk about this value in the language of “self-esteem,” which is fine as far as it goes, especially considering the tendency of our secular culture to confuse humility with humiliation. But to my mind, the biggest difference between authentic humility and mere “high self-esteem” is the ability of the former to deal with failure and disappointment. Too often our self-esteem is dependent upon the perception of achievement and the receipt of external praise; there are no “losers,” everyone’s a winner. But the humble soul is a resilient soul, which recognizes that there are indeed both winners and losers in this life, yet that each has inherent worth and dignity in the eyes of God, and is worthy of respect on that basis, and on that basis alone. Authentic Humility grounds us in the earth. It reinforces our sense of connectedness to something larger than ourselves, and also reminds us of both our origins and our destiny: from dust we have come, and to dust we shall return.
Finally, the Interdependent Life of Faith is ultimately a Life devoted to Service: a committed expression of our empathy and compassion for others, in humble gratitude for the gift of life itself, and through the generous manifestation of that same life-force in the world. It is through Service that we realize just how alive we truly are, and the kind of difference our lives can make in the lives of others. But we don’t necessarily see this right from the beginning. Because a life devoted to the service of others is also a profound act of faith -- a willingness to trust that our actions do indeed have meaning, and the confidence that our purpose here is a worthy one.
The plain truth of the matter is that none of us can never know for certain what the future may bring. We can try to anticipate, we can try to plan...but mostly we just need to cultivate the confidence and the courage to move forward in what we believe to be the right direction, trusting that over time we will encounter both what our ancestors would have called the ‘benevolent and afflictive dispensations of Divine Providence,” and that we will somehow take them each in stride. And perhaps the most important thing is our commitment to walking together, not aimless, misguided, and alone...but optimistically side by side in the direction we hope and believe will lead us all into greater Harmony with the Divine....
Sunday, March 2, 2008
RAINBOWS
a homily by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
delivered at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 2nd, 2008
***
Why ARE there so many songs about Rainbows, and what’s on the other side? Kermit the Frog and I certainly can’t be the only ones to wonder about such a curious phenomenon. Songwriter Paul Williams assures us that “rainbows are visions, but only illusions; and rainbows have nothing to hide.” But some of us -- the lovers, the dreamers -- simply know that there’s got to be more to a rainbow than meets the eye.
Maybe not exactly a pot of gold, or an imaginary land “where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops.”
But something magical, something golden and dreamy which takes away the harsh contrasts and gray shadows we so often encounter in our daily living, and instead illuminates all life in a bright explosion of brilliant color.
For those of you who have been following along for the past month, the larger theme today in this informal series we’ve been presenting during Lent here at First Parish is “The goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” It’s a beautiful vison, but talk about a utopian dream! It almost sounds like something out of a comic book, rather than anything we could ever hope to achieve in real life.
And yet there it is, in black and white. Peace, Liberty, and Justice for everyone throughout the world. Now there’s a community anyone could be proud to be a member of. In a very real sense, it is a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Not somewhere over the rainbow, but right here...someday...with God’s help and through our own devotion, commitment, and hard work.
Before Jackie told me that our specific theme today was going to be “Over the Rainbow,” my working title for this homily was “New Wine, Sour Grapes, and a Raisin in the Sun.” The image of New Wine, of course, comes directly from the New Testament, specifically in the fifth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus
[36] ...told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. [37] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. [38] No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. [39] And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "
And then later on in the book of Acts, this same author Luke again mentions New Wine in connection with the events of Pentecost... when the Spirit poured out into the assembled disciples and they all began to speak in tongues, while out in the street all of the foreigners passing by suddenly began to hear the Good News about “the Wonderful Works of God” in their own native languages. Luke writes “And all were amazed and troubled, saying ‘What is the meaning of this?’ But others, mocking them, said ‘these fellows have been filled with new wine.’“
This metaphor of New Wine can stand for a lot of things: for the Kingdom of Heaven, or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the world; or simply the spirit of change and innovation, and a visionary utopian dream of a new and better tomorrow. But all these things share some of the same qualities -- that feeling of being carried away, of feeling “ecstatic” and “standing outside of oneself.” And then there are the puzzled, even mocking remarks of those who just don’t “get it,” and of course, the perennial need for fresh content to find new and appropriate forms of expression, rather than trying to make do with the containers of the past.
But the part that I like best is verse 39: “and no one, after drinking the old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘the old is better.’” It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the old wine; it’s just that they’re not making it any more of it, and it’s not going to last forever. It’s natural to grow accustomed to the familiar taste of the once-new wine we grew up and grew old with. But if we want there to be enough to go around, if we want everyone to be able to have, not just a taste, but an overflowing cup, then each generation is not only entitled to create its own vintage, it’s also required to.
This brings us to the part about the sour grapes, which also comes from Scripture (although I suspect at least some of you may have thought it might be from a Longfellow poem)...And specifically, from the 18th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, where it is written: “Why is this proverb still repeated in the land of Israel, that the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” The prophet goes on to say (and I’m cutting and editing and paraphrasing rather freely here, since Ezekiel tends to get a little long-winded)
As I live, saith the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used in the land of Israel. Behold, All Souls are mine; the souls of the parents and the souls of the children, and [only] the soul that sins shall die. But if one be just, and does what is lawful and right...and has not spoiled any by violence, [and] has given bread to the hungry, and covered the naked with a garment, [and] walked in my ordinances, and kept my judgments to deal truly; they are just, [and] shall surely live.... Therefore I will judge you...every one according to your ways....Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby you have [turned away], and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit.... For I have no pleasure in the death of any that die, saith the Lord God. Turn yourselves around and live.
The thing I like best about this passage is that it is such a solid and classical statement both of the doctrine of Universal Salvation, and also the old Unitarian ideas of Self-Culture and Salvation by Character. “Behold, All Souls are Mine. Make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit....for I have no pleasure in the death of any....” And I especially love the image with which it begins: the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
Obviously, who we become as adults depends a great deal upon the way we were brought up as children, and especially the values with we are raised. But our tastes and our choices should not be dictated solely by the experiences of our parents. Ultimately, we all need to be free to choose our own way, and to make our own decisions and to dream our own dreams, because to do otherwise leads to death. It’s not just the way it should be. It’s the way it HAS to be. The bitterness of the past must be left behind if we are to discover the sweetness of the fresh fruit that is both our destiny and our birthright.
Which brings us in turn to a raisin in the sun. Not the famous stage play by Lorraine Hansberry, but the line from the Langston Hughes poem from which the play takes its title:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore --
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
It’s not enough just to be free to dream big dreams. One also needs to have the opportunity to pursue them. And this is what separates mere fantasy and wishful thinking from the visionary power of imagination to to see the things that others do not, and to inspire people into taking those first tentative steps towards making that vision real. I think this is why I personally have always been so fond of that passage from Walden, which I now seem to quote at every opportunity: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Because lets face it: dreaming is the easy part. It’s the hard, hands-on work of grounding our dreams in the good, solid earth that makes the real difference between fulfillment and disappointment.
Which brings us back at last to the end of the rainbow. When I was in college, there was a very popular poster called “Building a Rainbow,” which basically consisted of hundreds and hundreds of tiny workers with ropes and cranes and scaffolding and even little helicopters erecting a half-constructed rainbow -- bringing together the different segments of color one-at-a-time and assembling them peice-by-peice in an arc across the sky. And if this were one of those new high-tech 21st century churches with multi-media high-definition Power Point capability I might even have been able to show you a picture of this poster, but instead I’m afraid you’re just going to have to use your imaginations (which I’m sure will work just fine).
But one of the things I always liked about this poster was the contrast between the scale and the color and the elegant simplicity of the rainbow itself, and the bustle and busy-ness of the workers who are assembling it. As I said, there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of them (because I never bothered to try to count them all), all of them scurrying about, each doing their specific task, while cooperating with their fellow workers, and coordinating all of the aspects of the job according to one great master plan.
Individually they are dwarfed by the enormity of their undertaking.
But together, they are also getting it done.
One brilliant segment at a time....
delivered at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 2nd, 2008
***
Why ARE there so many songs about Rainbows, and what’s on the other side? Kermit the Frog and I certainly can’t be the only ones to wonder about such a curious phenomenon. Songwriter Paul Williams assures us that “rainbows are visions, but only illusions; and rainbows have nothing to hide.” But some of us -- the lovers, the dreamers -- simply know that there’s got to be more to a rainbow than meets the eye.
Maybe not exactly a pot of gold, or an imaginary land “where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops.”
But something magical, something golden and dreamy which takes away the harsh contrasts and gray shadows we so often encounter in our daily living, and instead illuminates all life in a bright explosion of brilliant color.
For those of you who have been following along for the past month, the larger theme today in this informal series we’ve been presenting during Lent here at First Parish is “The goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” It’s a beautiful vison, but talk about a utopian dream! It almost sounds like something out of a comic book, rather than anything we could ever hope to achieve in real life.
And yet there it is, in black and white. Peace, Liberty, and Justice for everyone throughout the world. Now there’s a community anyone could be proud to be a member of. In a very real sense, it is a vision of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Not somewhere over the rainbow, but right here...someday...with God’s help and through our own devotion, commitment, and hard work.
Before Jackie told me that our specific theme today was going to be “Over the Rainbow,” my working title for this homily was “New Wine, Sour Grapes, and a Raisin in the Sun.” The image of New Wine, of course, comes directly from the New Testament, specifically in the fifth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus
[36] ...told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. [37] And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. [38] No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. [39] And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "
And then later on in the book of Acts, this same author Luke again mentions New Wine in connection with the events of Pentecost... when the Spirit poured out into the assembled disciples and they all began to speak in tongues, while out in the street all of the foreigners passing by suddenly began to hear the Good News about “the Wonderful Works of God” in their own native languages. Luke writes “And all were amazed and troubled, saying ‘What is the meaning of this?’ But others, mocking them, said ‘these fellows have been filled with new wine.’“
This metaphor of New Wine can stand for a lot of things: for the Kingdom of Heaven, or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the world; or simply the spirit of change and innovation, and a visionary utopian dream of a new and better tomorrow. But all these things share some of the same qualities -- that feeling of being carried away, of feeling “ecstatic” and “standing outside of oneself.” And then there are the puzzled, even mocking remarks of those who just don’t “get it,” and of course, the perennial need for fresh content to find new and appropriate forms of expression, rather than trying to make do with the containers of the past.
But the part that I like best is verse 39: “and no one, after drinking the old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘the old is better.’” It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the old wine; it’s just that they’re not making it any more of it, and it’s not going to last forever. It’s natural to grow accustomed to the familiar taste of the once-new wine we grew up and grew old with. But if we want there to be enough to go around, if we want everyone to be able to have, not just a taste, but an overflowing cup, then each generation is not only entitled to create its own vintage, it’s also required to.
This brings us to the part about the sour grapes, which also comes from Scripture (although I suspect at least some of you may have thought it might be from a Longfellow poem)...And specifically, from the 18th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, where it is written: “Why is this proverb still repeated in the land of Israel, that the parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” The prophet goes on to say (and I’m cutting and editing and paraphrasing rather freely here, since Ezekiel tends to get a little long-winded)
As I live, saith the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used in the land of Israel. Behold, All Souls are mine; the souls of the parents and the souls of the children, and [only] the soul that sins shall die. But if one be just, and does what is lawful and right...and has not spoiled any by violence, [and] has given bread to the hungry, and covered the naked with a garment, [and] walked in my ordinances, and kept my judgments to deal truly; they are just, [and] shall surely live.... Therefore I will judge you...every one according to your ways....Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby you have [turned away], and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit.... For I have no pleasure in the death of any that die, saith the Lord God. Turn yourselves around and live.
The thing I like best about this passage is that it is such a solid and classical statement both of the doctrine of Universal Salvation, and also the old Unitarian ideas of Self-Culture and Salvation by Character. “Behold, All Souls are Mine. Make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit....for I have no pleasure in the death of any....” And I especially love the image with which it begins: the parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
Obviously, who we become as adults depends a great deal upon the way we were brought up as children, and especially the values with we are raised. But our tastes and our choices should not be dictated solely by the experiences of our parents. Ultimately, we all need to be free to choose our own way, and to make our own decisions and to dream our own dreams, because to do otherwise leads to death. It’s not just the way it should be. It’s the way it HAS to be. The bitterness of the past must be left behind if we are to discover the sweetness of the fresh fruit that is both our destiny and our birthright.
Which brings us in turn to a raisin in the sun. Not the famous stage play by Lorraine Hansberry, but the line from the Langston Hughes poem from which the play takes its title:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore --
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
It’s not enough just to be free to dream big dreams. One also needs to have the opportunity to pursue them. And this is what separates mere fantasy and wishful thinking from the visionary power of imagination to to see the things that others do not, and to inspire people into taking those first tentative steps towards making that vision real. I think this is why I personally have always been so fond of that passage from Walden, which I now seem to quote at every opportunity: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Because lets face it: dreaming is the easy part. It’s the hard, hands-on work of grounding our dreams in the good, solid earth that makes the real difference between fulfillment and disappointment.
Which brings us back at last to the end of the rainbow. When I was in college, there was a very popular poster called “Building a Rainbow,” which basically consisted of hundreds and hundreds of tiny workers with ropes and cranes and scaffolding and even little helicopters erecting a half-constructed rainbow -- bringing together the different segments of color one-at-a-time and assembling them peice-by-peice in an arc across the sky. And if this were one of those new high-tech 21st century churches with multi-media high-definition Power Point capability I might even have been able to show you a picture of this poster, but instead I’m afraid you’re just going to have to use your imaginations (which I’m sure will work just fine).
But one of the things I always liked about this poster was the contrast between the scale and the color and the elegant simplicity of the rainbow itself, and the bustle and busy-ness of the workers who are assembling it. As I said, there are hundreds, possibly even thousands of them (because I never bothered to try to count them all), all of them scurrying about, each doing their specific task, while cooperating with their fellow workers, and coordinating all of the aspects of the job according to one great master plan.
Individually they are dwarfed by the enormity of their undertaking.
But together, they are also getting it done.
One brilliant segment at a time....
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