The Eclectic Cleric FPC

CLERIC-2 ACTUAL OUT

2009-05-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

a farewell sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Memorial Day Weekend, Sunday May 24, 2009

OPENING WORDS: “At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border” by William Stafford

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

****

[Extemporaneous Introduction] -- I’ve been thinking for months (and in some ways maybe even decades) about what I wanted to say this morning in my last sermon from this high pulpit, but it wasn’t really until this past week that I figured out where to begin. [details of Walter’s arrest].

My own reaction to all this was actually a lot easier than you might think. All I did was ask myself what I would do if it had been my brother Erik arrested in the alley behind my church after a 12 hour drinking binge, and then went forward from there.

But in many ways this situation with Walter is emblematic of my ministry here. This is the first time, in thirty years, that I have ever had occasion to visit one of my own people in jail, even though it is one of the duties specifically mentioned in the New Testament. My ministry to Walter is something that I’m not going to be able to finish before I leave here; maybe even something that I never should have taken on in the first place. Who’s to say?

But maybe this is also in some small way a part of what my own illness and my own disability are trying to teach: that it doesn’t really matter how capable you are, or how intelligent or talented, or even how organized and hard-working...there will ALWAYS be more than you can do alone, more than you can finish by yourself; and there are times, LOTS of times, when we just need to let go and turn it over to somebody else. Preachers and teachers come and go, but somehow the sermons keep on being preached, and the teaching endures; somebody new takes on the duties and the responsibility, picks up the work and carries it forward, often in directions we ourselves might never have dreamed of....

Back in 1984 the widely-respected church consultant Lyle Schaller published a book called Looking in the Mirror: Self-Appraisal in the Local Church, which was widely-read within our denomination (as these things often are) during its brief season of popularity among us. Schaller was one of the first consultants (at least of my era) to talk about church culture as a function of congregational size. What we today would call the Family, Pastoral, Program and Corporate-sized churches, Schaller vividly labeled as “Cats, Collies, Gardens and Ranches,” emphasizing not only the very different styles of leadership appropriate to each of these vastly different congregational cultures, but also that the smaller two types of congregation (the Family-Cat and the Pastoral-Collie) really do function mostly as organisms, while the larger two (the Program-Garden and the Corporate-Ranch) are true organizations, and demand a very different kind of ministry.

Schaller’s main point though was that a church is NOT a business, and that religious institutions of all sizes can lead themselves deeply astray if they look too eagerly in that direction. In fact, Schaller was also one of the first (along with Peter Drucker) to notice the exact opposite trend in our society: that businesses are looking more and more to faith-based institutions to try to figure out how they can generate the kind of loyalty, devotion and faithfulness (both among their customers and their employees) that churches seem to take for granted.

And in a handful of pages buried just beyond the place where you were most likely to have stopped reading out of boredom, but not so far that you would notice if you skipped ahead to the end, Schaller presented an even more provocative idea which has stuck in my mind now for 25 years. Rather than looking to business for models, Schaller suggested that the military would be a better option, and then went on to list (mostly for skeptical clergy) 44 different parallels (Schaller is very fond of the number 44) 44 different parallels between ordained ministers and commissioned military officers which he believed were worthy of attention.

Among these were the fact that these are both seen as distinctive “offices” set aside from secular/civilian society, and marked by attendance at special schools and the tradition of a special commissioning or ordination ceremony (which includes the taking of an oath or vow); along with the use of special titles and rank, and special clothing reflecting that rank.

“In both vocations” Schaller noted, “the handicap of a comparatively low salary was offset by perquisites of office, womb-like care from entrance to death, the mutual support of the brotherhood, the feeling that one was responding to a calling rather than simply ‘making a living,’ a sense of service to the public and a pension following retirement.”

Likewise, both are professions where “the practitioner, at an early age, had many firsthand encounters with death” and where the mission comes first and the needs of the cause or the institution far outrank the preferences of the individual. And likewise both are deeply vulnerable to what Schaller called “the blight of ‘careerism,’ of placing the future career and well being of the individual ahead of the cause.”

Schaller’s observations had a great deal of impact on me 25 years ago, both because they were at once deeply insightful and well outside the box, but also because they connected so directly with the ancient archetypes of the hunter and the shaman, the warrior and the priest. It’s much more complicated than mere life and death, or the contrast between killing and healing, between violence and peace. There is also here a fundamental principle of leadership, around the necessity for leaders in effect to put their own lives on the line in order to bring the group together. The leader’s personal ambitions and desires, and at times in many ways even their personal safety, are all “sacrificed” for the success of the group. The soldier must learn to lead “from the front;” the preacher must teach “by both precept and example.” To do otherwise is to lead the mission to failure, to mislead the community into hypocrisy and shame.

The core mission of churches doesn’t really change that much from place to place or from generation to generation, or even from denomination to denomination. It begins, of course, with Worship: a time of inspiration and devotion, solemn contemplation and community solidarity, during which the members of the congregation recommit themselves to the values, traditions, and prophetic vision of the church. This word “prophecy” can seem a little intimidating, but all it really means is “to speak for another” -- that is, to speak for God in behalf of the voiceless: the widows, the orphans, the strangers, the prisoners, and others on the margins of society who need someone to speak up for them.

Then there is the mission of Education, a process by which spiritual wisdom and values are both learned and taught, and passed down from generation to generation. The mission of Fellowship (in Greek, koinonia) seems simple enough, but creating an authentic and shared common life by which People of Faith become a true “Faith Community” can be more complicated than it seems. Yet it begins with simplicity itself, and our natural human desire to be together. There’s an old Viking poem which the Unitarian Church in Denmark sometimes uses as a chalice lighting, and it goes like this:

Overvæld ingen med flotte gaver.
Små ting får ofte megen ros.
Med et brød til deling
og en kop sendt rundt
fandt jeg venskab.

[Overload no one with lavish gifts.
A small thing often finds much favor.
With a little sliced bread
and a cup shared ‘round
I found friendship.]
—From the Hávamál (Sayings of the Vikings)
[Submitted by the Danish Unitarian Church]

Hospitality likewise follows on in this same spirit: “open the windows and the doors, and receive whomsoever is sent” Yet hospitality alone is pretty lame without some form of effective Outreach, or what more traditional churches might call “Evangelism” -- effective methods for proclaiming OUR Good News to all who are hungry to hear it. Effective Pastoral Care returns us once again to the essential healing mission of the archetypal shaman.; in fact, the entire mission of the church might easily be summed up as taking people who are hurt and helping them become whole, then taking people who are whole and helping them become wise. And often it is as basic as simply showing up: what seminary professors call “the Ministry of Presence” -- showing up when others can’t or won’t as a reminder that God and a whole community of people who care are still out there even though you can’t see them, and eager to help you any way they can.

And then at last there is the mission of Social Justice, and working to build a better world -- in essence, creating a taste of the Kingdom of God on Earth, where basic fairness is found (or perhaps created) at the balance point between accountability and compassion. “He has shown you, O Mortal One, what is good; and what does THE LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercifully, and to walk humbly with your God?”

That’s the mission, more or less, and it’s pretty much the same wherever you go. But how we put this Mission into Practice here in THIS Time and THIS Place, with the people (and the resources) of this community, for the larger community out there, is entirely up for grabs. It’s a matter of context and execution: what are we prepared to do, and how effectively are we able to make it happen?

During my brief tenure here, and even beforehand, we at First Parish have essentially organized our understanding of Mission around three overlapping themes.

The first of these is that we are Portland’s Original Faith Community, gathered in 1674. [There are several different dates for this floating around, depending on what you mean by “gathered” “organized” or “established” -- loved to have been the one to research all that, had “nature and nature’s God” been willing to grant me the time to do so]. I’ve always been attracted to this motto because it works two ways: yes, we were here first (and that is never going to change), but I also like to think that we are committed to being the most innovative, and thus the most “original” faith community as well, especially when it comes to finding new ways of expressing and promoting the fundamental wisdom and values of our liberal faith tradition, and passing them on to yet another generation of devoted Unitarians and Universalists.

The term “Heart(h)fire” is a concept that the leadership team of this congregation came up with at their annual retreat the year before I arrived here. Here’s the definition that was written at the time: “A source of positive energy, the heart(h)fire is fed, and as it grows, we get back warmth and light that spills beyond our borders and draws in those passing by.” It too is a wonderful image, and as I said two years ago when I first arrived here, the quality that makes it all possible is represented by that central letter “H” within the parentheses. That “H” stands for “Hospitality” -- for the willingness to open up our circle and invite those who have been attracted by the beacon of our fire to join us around the glowing hearth, and be warmed there alongside us, as we learn to share our lives with one another, heart to heart. But it can also represent Hope, Health, Honor and Honesty, and above all else, the simple willingness to be Helpful to neighbors and strangers alike.

And then finally there is the slogan I rode in on, “A Warm & Welcoming Place in the Heart of the City.” I like this turn of phrase for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because it embodies yet another challenge I heard articulated within the first few weeks of my arriving here, the challenge of “becoming the kind of church people expect us to be.” Which brings us back again to the question of size, and the challenge of evolving from an aging yet still friendly, furry, and very frisky dog into a tranquil, productive, and sustainable garden. It’s perhaps the most difficult challenge a minister and a congregation can face, especially when the temptation is always there just to get another puppy.

But growing a congregation from a hundred or so regular worshipers to one where attendance is routinely in the 350-500 person range, along with all of the accompanying changes in staffing and governance, program offerings, even congregational culture itself, begins with a willingness simply to see things through different eyes, and the desire to continue to innovate, to continue to improve, while remaining grounded in the solid foundation that has sustained this congregation for centuries now.

It’s not so much about new ideas for new times, or a desire to change simply for the sake of change. Rather, it’s about the willingness to commit to the RIGHT ideas, and to practice and refine them until they become second nature. How do we best worship together? How do we enjoy one another’s company, and educate our children and newcomers to our faith? How do we reach out to strangers and invite them to be our neighbors; how do we take care of one another, while still working together to make the world a better place?

The answer, of course, is Leadership. Leadership, Leadership, and still more Leadership. The military seems to understand this in a way that the Church (or at least a liberal church like ours) perhaps never will. Of course, there is a world of difference between leading a platoon of 45 soldiers, and a company of 200. (not to mention a battalion of 600 or brigade of 3000), just as there are differences between ministering to family, pastoral, program and corporate-sized churches. But in the army, every third or fourth soldier is some kind of leader -- a squad leader or team leader, a sergeant or some other kind of non-commissioned officer who is responsible for training and leading their small unit of soldiers in the fulfillment of their mission.

Army training now, especially at this hands-on level, is oriented around the model of “Be*Know*Do.” And it really is just as simple as it sounds. Obviously, a leader needs to know what they are doing -- expertise is an important part of any job. And the ultimate measure of success is performance: can the team actually get the job done? But it begins with the character of the leaders themselves: who they are as human beings, and those inner qualities of courage, duty, loyalty and respect, honor, integrity and selfless service that we’ve been considering all morning.

If character is important in a military leader, it is even more essential in a religious leader, at every level from Committee Chair or Covenant Group facilitator to the Grand Dali Poobah of the UUA itself. And it begins not just with courage, but also profound humility, and deep gratitude for the great gift that is life itself. We learn to express this gratitude through generosity and service...not just as a spiritual discipline, but as a sign of our religious discipleship, our devotion and fidelity to the principles and values of our liberal faith tradition, and the important work it calls us to.

And so we too follow the Great Commandment to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (and all that other stuff), and love thy neighbor as thyself;” to “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and perhaps to “Judge not, lest ye be judged” just for good measure.

And then finally there is my message from two weeks ago: not so much a commandment as simply a reminder, that “Wir Alles sind Gotts Kinder” -- We are ALL God’s Children -- and thus brothers and sisters to one another, even when (as with our more traditional family siblings) we didn’t really ASK for them to be born, and we didn’t really get to choose them either, but we’re still stuck with them through ties of blood and DNA...just as we are, I suppose, with the whole human family of which we are a part.

[Extemporaneous Conclusion] First introduction to public speaking, sophomore in High School: “tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” For two years it has been my honor and my privilege to serve as the minister of this parish, and the minister to the members of this congregation...who in so many ways have ministered to me far better than I was able to minister to all of you....

***
“May Thy whole truth be spoken here
Thy Gospel light forever shine
Thy perfect love cast out all fear
and human life become divine.”
[Our final hymn is number 35, “Unto Thy Temple, Lord, We Come”]

WIR ALLES SIND GOTTS KINDER

2009-05-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

`
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine
Mothers Day Sunday May 10th, 2009

[extemp intro: Theodore Parker d. May 10, 1860 in Florence, Italy. “The Great American Preacher” and author of my customary benediction; Scholar and Theologian, Abolitionist and Social Activist - all subsequent Unitarian ministers have felt that they "must at least attempt what Theodore Parker achieved."]

I also thought that you all ought to know now that for the rest of my life now (however much longer that may turn out to be), I will always associate Mother’s Day with this congregation, and with the two years that I’ve been privileged to serve here as your minister. It was two years ago on this Mother’s Day Sunday that I first appeared in this pulpit as a candidate to become the called and settled minister of this Parish. The title of my sermon that morning was “A Warm & Welcoming Place in the Heart of the City,” a phrase I THOUGHT I’d cribbed from Jeff Logan’s letter of welcome in your congregational search packet, but now I can’t find it there, so maybe I actually did make it up all by myself after all. But I certainly wasn’t alone in taking that slogan (and the vision it articulated) and making it a living reality here at the head of Temple Street. That was something you took to heart and that we all did together, by embracing this ministry of radical hospitality to neighbor and stranger alike.

And what none of us knew at the time was that my own mother was in the hospital that Sunday out in Seattle, with a metastatic reoccurrence of her own earlier breast cancer (that would eventually take her life in a matter of only a few months), but that she had deliberately kept that information secret from me until after I had spoken here, because she didn’t want me to be distracted on what she know was a very important day -- not just in my life, but for all of us. Talk about selfless Motherly sacrifice!

And then last year, I was the one who was in and out of the hospital, fighting my own battle against cancer.

The previous week I had at last been formally installed as the Parish Minister here, in a very inspiring ceremony that included receiving the key to the city from then-mayor of Portland Ed Suslovic, and extensive greetings from State Representative Herb Adams; music from the Traveling Ensemble of the Maine Gay Men’s Chorus, and from our own First Parish Choir, including an original hymn by our Minister of Music Charlie Grindle. There were bagpipes and a bassoon; as well as messages from other local clergy: the Reverend Jennifer Emrich of Yarmouth, the Rev Lee Devoe in Augusta, and First Parish’s own “native daughter,” the Rev Barbara McKusick Liscord, who now serves our congregation in Milford New Hampshire.

And of course it was all topped off by a very inspiring sermon by my good friend the Rev. Ted Anderson of Nantucket, and the actual Act of Installation itself, in which we pledged “to walk together in all the ways of faith known or to be made know to us,” as we worked together at this sacred task of ministry.

And I was a little surprised to hear rumors, (sometime afterwards, thankfully), that there were actually a few folks who wondered why we were even bothering to hold an Installation at all, given the tenuous state of my health; or (worse) that it was all just something that was done to indulge and humor me, and to lift my spirits as I struggled with my disease.

And I hope those attitudes weren’t TOO widespread, because to my mind the Installation was NEVER really about me at all -- it was about all of us, and a reminder that the work we do together IS sacred -- and that no matter what challenges or adversity may confront us, no matter how difficult the work may seem, we are not going to give up and we are not going to give in, we’re not going to quit, or surrender, or throw in the towel, but instead we are going to come together as a community of faith and fight back -- survive, persist, endure, and (with God’s help) ultimately triumph. Don’t just “hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” Rather, make the best PLAN you can to make “the BEST” happen, then do what you must to minimize the potential downside if the plan doesn’t quite work out the way you’d planned it would
.
These are the kinds of values that my own mom tried to teach me when she was still alive, and which I’ve also tried to take to heart and teach to my own children and the children I am called to minister to here, and basically to everyone I come in contact with, regardless of their age. And they are values I have certainly seen demonstrated again and again in the past two years, as we have walked together through adversity after adversity that none of us could have envisioned two years ago.

Yet as powerful and important as my memories of these past two years are, my FAVORITE memory of Mother’s Day is from another time, from the semester that I spent abroad as a visiting Doctoral Fellow at Aalborg University in Denmark, almost a decade ago now.

Mother’s Day Y2K.

My mom had come over to visit and travel with me for a few weeks, so to celebrate Mother’s Day I took her for dinner at a silly little restaurant called “the Frigate” located on the decks of a model replica of an 18th century sailing vessel which floats on a small lake in the tiny but venerable Tivoli amusement park in central Copenhagen, situated on a 15 acre site right between the historic City Hall and the main train station.

And like a lot of things Danish, the Frigate was kind of surprising -- because the food there is FANTASTIC. We both had a lamb shank slow-cooked in an herb broth with various kinds of shellfish and other seafood, just the kind of “locovore” slow-food meal that really makes one want to linger at table in the refreshing, warm night air, sipping wine and watching the fireworks in a quaint, cozy, postage-stamp-sized and TRULY magical kingdom right in the heart of one of Europe’s most sophisticated capital cities.

That meal wasn’t exactly inexpensive either, although fortunately the bill came in kroner, which helped me to persuade my mom that all those zeros didn’t REALLY add up to as much money as she thought they did. But how else might you express your gratitude to someone who carried you around inside her body for nine months, and who fed you from the same? -- who washed you and clothed you and taught you how to walk and how to speak, how to brush your own teeth and tie your own shoes, not to mention (at some point along the way, one hopes) the difference between right and wrong?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course; there are LOTS of different things we can do to show our mothers, and our grandmothers, and our stepmothers and those who have been LIKE mothers to us just how much we love them and appreciate all that they have given to us. A fantastic meal is just the LEAST that I could have done; I only wish now that I still had the opportunity to do it again and again, not just on Mother’s Day, but every chance that I can find.

Not long after that my Mom returned home from Denmark, and I packed up my own things in preparation for an extra month of travel at the end of the semester through France, Italy, and Germany. Basically, the same summer trip that a lot of college students get to make in their 20’s, I finally had a chance to take in my 40’s -- and I’ll tell you this in all honesty, having waited twenty years only made it all the better.

And as you might imagine, I visited a lot of churches while I was there. Notre Dame and Sacre Couer in Paris; the Cathedral at Chartes; Mont. St. Michel (what an amazing place THAT is!); Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, along with countless other smaller and less famous places too numerous to recall.

Mostly I was going to see the art and the architecture, but I also rarely failed to at least light a candle, or to offer up a little prayer about whatever happened to be in my heart at the moment. And I also climbed an awful lot of steeples, each time swearing that this one was the last one, and that I would never be doing THAT again
.
But it was in Germany, during my visit to the famous UNESCO World Heritage Site Cologne Cathedral, that something very small and unexpected happened which gave me an entirely new perspective and insight into what I was really doing there and why. Because of some poor planning on my part, I only had about an hour between trains to visit the cathedral, which is located only a few hundred yards from the train station -- but still, I had all my luggage with me and was feeling the pressure about missing my connection -- and then when I arrived at the church I was disappointed to discover that (except for the Narthex), everything was closed to tourists because there was a worship service going on!

Now under ordinary circumstances this wouldn’t have been a problem for me; I would have just gone on in and joined in the worship, and then done my sightseeing afterwards. But as it was, I had all this baggage with me, and I had this train to catch, so that option didn’t really seem appropriate. And at that moment, as I was standing outside the sanctuary under the statue of Saint Christopher trying to decide what to do, I overheard a sentence from the homily, as clearly as if someone standing next to me had spoken directly into my ear -- “Wir Alles sind Gotts Kinder” -- We ALL are God’s Children” -- a five-word sermon I have preached myself many times in the past thirty years, and which pretty much sums up the essence of everything I’ve had to say in three decades of ministry.

Wir Alles sind Gotts Kinder....

Ordinarily, I like to explore some of the other aspects of this message when I preach it, such as the part that we are also all brothers and sisters to one another -- it’s a lot more tangible and down to earth, plus it avoids the problem that not all of us enjoyed especially good relationships with our own parents, which tends to get in the way of exploring a similar kind of relationship with a Deity we may or may not actually believe in....

But today I just want you all to know that the Eternal Spirit of Life, which Scripture tells us created the Universe and everything in it, loves each and every one of us just as deeply, just as fiercely, just as PROFOUNDLY, as a mother loves her child. And once you have FELT that love yourself, if only just once, if only for a moment, you will know the truth of it in your heart in a way that transcends all need for any kind of rational “proof” or “evidence.”

Because Faith is not an irrational belief in things we know aren’t true. Rather, it is the CONFIDENCE to TRUST the non-rational experience of God’s profound love for us, and to respond to that love by loving our own neighbors (and strangers) as if they were our brothers and sisters. Which, in fact, they are, at least in some sort of abstract, metaphorical, metaphysical way.

Now as I mentioned earlier, I know that not everyone has enjoyed a perfect relationship with their own parents...in fact, I wonder whether any of us really have. And not all of us will be fortunate enough to experience the power of God’s extraordinary love for us firsthand either. But when we act in faith to love our neighbors, we also make it possible for them to experience God’s love through us! We become “Angels of the Gospel” -- or in plain English, messengers of God’s Good News that God is Love, that we are all loved by God, and that we should express this love by loving one another. So simple, and yet so profound. So why does it seem like we need to remind ourselves so frequently of these very basic truths?

Remember, those Truths that are universally and absolutely true are going to continue to be true regardless of whether or not we choose to believe them. And likewise, none of us is ever going to know “the Absolute Truth” perfectly and completely. It’s just more than any mortal being can handle. And it’s a long and often difficult journey from cradle to grave, with plenty of opportunities for our own ignorance to trip us up; we need the help of others to guide us on that journey, and at times will also be pressed into service as guides to others, who need to benefit from the hard-earned lessons we have already learned on our own.

The goal and purpose of life-long learning is a search for Wisdom; not just for more knowledge or information, or even “truth and meaning,” but for the maturity and good judgment and perhaps even the courage to use the things that we have learned wisely, both for our own benefit and for the benefit of those who will follow after us.

And even if by some good fortune one of us should come to know and understand everything there is to know and understand, in a matter of years...perhaps a few decades at most...they will have passed away, and the process will continue all over again.

With each new birth and with each rising generation we face the same challenge that has been faced by all humanity since time immemorial. And thanks to churches like this one, we successfully meet it, generation after generation after generation.

"...the things that are God's."

2009-04-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

***

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Palm Sunday, April 5th, 2009

When I was a child, growing up in a Unitarian family, and attending a Unitarian Universalist Sunday School, I don’t recall the Bible being a very big part of my day to day experience. I know I knew something about Noah and the Ark, because I can remember building a big Ark out of my wooden blocks, and then lining up all the plastic animals I could find, two by two if possible, but there were also some unusual combinations (just to make certain everyone got paired up): jungle animals, farm animals, dinosaurs and domestic house pets alike, all together in one big jumble. And I also must have known a little about the Christmas nativity story for much the same reason: my mother liked to collect Crèches, and there was one in particular that I liked to play with in season (although my mom wouldn’t let me put those animals on my Ark).

And I also recall that whenever we went to see the pediatrician, there was one of those big, illustrated Children’s Bibles in the waiting room; and I always enjoyed glancing at that to distract myself from whatever scheduled injections awaited me inside. I remember in particular there was an illustration of 2 Samuel 18:9, David’s rebellious son Absalom caught fast by his hair under the thick branches of a great oak, “hanging between heaven and earth.” I don’t know why that picture made such a strong impression on me, but it did, even though I didn’t actually read the story itself until I was a Divinity Student at Harvard.

I didn’t actually get a Bible of my own though until I was a sophomore in High School, on a Debate Trip to a tournament in Bellingham Washington, where we were staying at the Leopold Hotel. And I decided to keep the red Gideon Bible that I found there in the drawer of my bedside table, and take it home with me. The King James version, of course. My ambitious plan was to read the whole thing cover to cover, so that I could have some ammunition when debating with the Born-Again Christians who accosted me every day in the High School lunchroom. Or maybe I was the one accosting them....

At least I had the good sense to begin with the New Testament. The Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel According to Matthew blew me away: three whole chapters, and every word highlighted in green. And John’s Gospel was in some ways even more amazing, with all its mystical teachings about the Holy Spirit, even though the events John describes rarely match up with those recorded in the other three. Luke (and its companion book, the Acts of the Apostles) eventually became my favorite for a variety of reasons, but it was actually Mark’s gospel which initially made the strongest impression.

For starters, it’s the shortest of the four canonical Gospels, and scholars also believe it was the earliest, written only about 40 years after the events which it describes. Matthew and Luke both appear to have used Mark as a primary source for their own gospels (that’s right, they copied him), along with a collection of the Sayings of Jesus now lost to history, and known to scholars by the initial “Q.” And Jesus doesn’t really say a lot in Mark’s gospel either; instead the story begins with Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordon, his temptation in the Wilderness, the calling of his initial disciples, and the proclamation of his original message: “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand, Repent and Believe the Good News.” And then it is pretty much one miracle after another (with an occasional parable thrown in) until Jesus and his followers finally reach Jerusalem for the beginning of Passover and what Christians will eventually come to know as “Holy Week.”

The miracles themselves (as I was later taught in seminary) basically come in four flavors: healings, exorcisms, feedings, and control of the weather. And like all good Unitarians I quickly learned to give them rational, plausible, “naturalistic” explanations. The healings were easy: it says right there in the text, they were all caused by faith. If you had enough you were healed, and if you didn’t you weren’t. I don’t really care much for the theology, frankly; but at least it moved healings from the category of supernaturally miraculous to something along the lines of “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

The exorcisms were even easier: if you didn’t believe that demons were real in the first place, why should you have any problem with Jesus casting them out? Clearly there was something psychological going on there, but after so many centuries it’s hard to say exactly what.

The feedings were and remain my favorite, simply because they can be explained on so many levels, both literally and metaphorically. In each instance, a large crowd of people has assembled to listen to Jesus teach. And when the time comes around for them to eat, the disciples want to send them away to obtain food elsewhere. But instead, Jesus asks how much food the disciples have with them (in both cases, just a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish), and in language evocative of the Last Supper, Jesus takes the bread and blesses it, and then after giving thanks, breaks the bread and distributes it to the Disciples, who in turn distribute it to the crowd. And then when they send around the baskets to pick up the leftovers, more food comes back than was sent out to begin with.

Well it’s pretty obvious to me what’s going on here. What kind of idiot (other than maybe a disciple) would go out into the desert to listen to a holy man speak without bringing along a little something to sustain themselves on the journey?

What Jesus DOES create is the kind of trusting community atmosphere where it is safe to share with others. And since there was always enough food to go around, nobody has to go hungry. Because “the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.” [Mt 13:33].

And as for the weather miracles, well, it was never really clear to me from reading whether Jesus actually calmed the storm, or simply calmed the nervous sailors until the storm blew over on its own. I’ve been with nervous sailors before; I’ve even been one myself. The waves always look a lot more threatening than they are.

But the thing I liked most about Mark was the drama and suspense of Holy Week, which takes up approximately half of the pages in Mark’s gospel. It’s so dramatic that a few scholars have even suggested that Mark’s gospel was originally written to be performed as a play. And contributing to the dramatic suspense is a uniquely Markian theme known as “the Messianic Secret.” Because you see, unlike just about every other Christian before or since, Mark never actually comes out and tells you who he thinks Jesus is. Rather, he has Jesus ask “Who do men SAY that I am?” only to rebuke Peter for offering the suggestion that Jesus is actually the long-awaited Messiah. As readers we are certainly led in that direction, although for most twenty-first century readers the subtle first century distinctions between Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, or even Prophet, Teacher and Rabbi are so nuanced as to be lost on us.

Likewise, there are no Resurrection appearances in Mark. The last we see of Jesus is when Joseph of Arimathea has the body removed from the cross and wrapped in linen, then placed in a rock-hewn tomb with a heavy stone rolled in front of the entrance. Then nothing happens until a few days later, when the women go to anoint the body with oil, and discover that the stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty.

They speak with an angel (well, a young man in a white robe) who tells them to look for Jesus in Galilee, but the women flee from the tomb “trembling and bewildered,” and “said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” [Mk 16:8] Which may simply be Mark’s way of explaining why no one had heard the story of the empty tomb until Mark finally wrote it down 40 years later.

But the most dramatic part of the story (especially for a 16-year-old boy reading this material for the first time) comes in-between. On Palm Sunday Jesus and his disciples arrive in Jerusalem for the Passover, with Jesus making a triumphal riding on a colt (or in Matthew’s version, a colt AND a donkey) while his disciples cut palm fronds as a sign of honor (and to keep down the dust on the roadway), and the assembled crowd sings “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the Highest Heaven.” When the people of the city ask the crowd what is going on, the crowd replies “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” [Mt 21:11]

There probably weren’t nearly as many people watching this demonstration as later Christians would like to believe. But there is an almost cynical irony to the act itself, since it seems intended to mimic (or maybe even parody) the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate’s earlier entry into Jerusalem at the head of a column of mercenary cavalry and marching Roman legionaires, who had come to reinforce the local garrison at what was always one of the most turbulent and potentially volatile times of the year. It doesn’t take much to turn a crowd into a mob. So already the dramatic contrast between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar is being spelled out in public view.

The next day, Jesus and his followers go up to the Temple Mount itself, where Jesus does something that to my mind is the most amazing thing in his entire ministry. Using a knotted cord as a whip, he overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and basically brings the business of the temple to a complete halt. “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations,’ ” he says. “But you have made it a den of brigands.” [leston] For the next few days he teaches openly in the Court of the Gentiles, protected by the crowd from the grasp of the temple authorities, who would like nothing more than to kill him then and there.

This is the part of the story that appealed to me most when I first read the story 40 years ago, the back and forth debate between Jesus and his antagonists, who try again and again to trick Jesus into saying something that will either turn the crowd against him, or draw the attention of the Romans. But he always seems to have just the right response.

And so the Chief Priests and the Scribes and the Pharisees turn to bribery and treachery instead. They somehow manage to find and convince one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, to betray his teacher by guiding the authorities to a place where he can be easily captured, away from the protective eyes of the crowd.

So as Jesus and his loyal disciples celebrate the Passover meal, their “Last Supper” together, Judas leaves to make arrangements for the temple guards to arrest Jesus later that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, outside the city walls. Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss; the guards swoop in from the shadows to make their arrest, and after a brief scuffle the disciples all disappear disorganized and confused into the night.

Only Peter and an unnamed young man wearing nothing but a linen cloth attempt to follow, but the guards catch hold of the latter, and he flees naked into the night, leaving the linen cloth behind. [Mk 14:51] Peter has a little better luck; he gets all the way to the courtyard of the house where Jesus is being interrogated before he is recognized as one of the disciples. Denying that he even knows Jesus, Peter also betrays his teacher, then weeps for the shame of it as the cock crows the coming dawn, and he realizes what he has done.

Jesus, meanwhile, eventually ends up later that night in the hands of the Romans, who interrogate him further, beat him up a little (just because they can), and eventually take him up to Golgatha -- the Hill of Skulls -- where he is crucified alongside two other brigands/robbers/revolutionary insurgents [lestas] who just so happened to be on the morning execution list. Roman Imperial Power has just put down another threat to its hegemony; the Pax Romana (eventually with Christian assistance) is still destined to bring “peace” and order to the Mediterranean world for another few centuries at least.

But let’s go back to the original question about taxes to Rome, and these competing ideas of the Kingdom of Caesar and the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) which were so important to first century Christianity.

Taxation was everywhere in the ancient world; it was the way that the wealthy and powerful few used their power to increase their wealth at the expense of the vast, impoverished peasantry...who were basically left with barely enough to keep body and soul together, thanks to an oppressive system which combined land foreclosures, debt peonage, and exploitive taxation to keep the masses firmly under the control of their Lords and Masters.

The Romans actually outsourced their taxation to local contractors; the highest bidder won the right to collect the tax, and anything they could get over and above that was theirs to keep (which explains why tax collectors are so especially vilified in the Bible).

Even the temple was in on the racket. First, by insisting that all sacrifices of a certain kind could ONLY take place at the temple in Jerusalem, they forced people who wanted to offer those sacrifices often to travel a great distance and at great hardship just to get there.

And once the people had arrived, they still needed to purchase the animal they wished to sacrifice locally in Jerusalem, using a special temple coinage free from any “graven images” (such as a portrait of the Emperor, just to give one example).

So when Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers, it’s not just the practice of temple sacrifice he was condemning, but the entire partnership of the temple priesthood with the local Roman-led “domination system” which kept the majority of the population in great poverty.

Likewise, when Jesus asked the Pharisees to show him a denarius, he’d already tricked them into revealing to the crowd whose payroll THEY were on. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. God does business in an entirely different currency altogether.

As I’ve mentioned from this pulpit on several other occasions, the word “sacrifice” means literally “to make sacred,” and the size of the sacrifice -- how much you actually give up (especially in proportion to your wealth) -- is only one of the considerations. In the ancient world ideas about sacrifice originated in ideas about hospitality itself. If you want to make friends with a stranger (even someone as strange as God) there are basically two ways to go about it. First, you can offer them a gift. And second, you can share with them a meal.

In first century Palestine, ideas of sacrifice still embodied both of these notions. Some of the sacrificial animal was destroyed completely, as a so-called “burnt offering.” That was the “gift” portion of the sacrifice.

But more important was the meal you shared with your neighbors: an expression of gratitude for the ways that God has blessed you made manifest in an act of generosity toward others. From gratitude to service: this is how we make our lives sacred, by sacrificing a portion of our own comfort and affluence in order that others might have an easier time of it as well.

“The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom is at hand, Repent and Believe the Good News.” Repent: metanoeite = “transform your mind;” Believe: pisteuete = “trust/be confident.” The Kingdom is right here, all around us, and all we need to do to become citizens of God’s Empire (rather than subjects of Rome) is to follow God’s leadership rather than Caesars’s.

This part of the story is told in Mark 12: 28-34 right after the passage about taxes to Caesar, but before the story of the Widow’s Mite. A scribe has been listening carefully to this entire exchange, and comes near to Jesus to ask him a familiar question: “What is the Greatest Commandment of All?” And Jesus answers as so many others have both before and since:

“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength...[and] you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

And the scribe responds “to love one’s neighbor as oneself, - this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” To which Jesus, seeing that the scribe has answered wisely, adds the final word: “you are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And after that, the Scripture tells us, no one dared to ask him any more questions.

“Repent and Believe” Change your attitude, and Trust the folks around you. And the funny thing is, you don’t even have to believe in God in order to feel confident about the trustworthiness of the Good News, and to benefit from this wisdom about how best to live our lives. All you really need to do is BEHAVE like a good person, a “Godly” person, an authentic person of Faith.

Humble.

Grateful.

Generous.

Compassionate....

NOT Selfish.

.NOT Arrogant.

NOT Small-minded.

NOT a Jerk.

`Is that really so much for any of us to ask or to expect? That we should at least behave as well as we would desire to be treated ourselves, with honesty, integrity, honor and respect? These are the things that belong to God, and to every other person of devoted Good Will who walks upon this planet, regardless of their beliefs.

It’s no great sacrifice to practice them every day.

And at the end of the day, this is really all that God (and our neighbors) expects of any of us anyway....

***
READING: Luke 20: 19-26 (Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Gospel)

Now the seminary professors and denominational executives tried to lay hands on him right then and there, but were afraid of their constituency. For they knew full well that he had aimed this Comparison at them. So they played it cool by hiring some detectives to pose as Christians and collect evidence from his preaching, so he could be arrested and turned over to the House Subversive Activities Committee. These detectives asked him, “Doctor, we know when you speak and teach you shoot straight, regardless of who’s listening. We know too that without any doubt you are teaching God’s Way. Now, is it right to pay Federal taxes or not?”

Catching on to their trick, he said, “Show me a dollar. Whose picture and insignia are on it?”

They said, “The President’s.”

He replied, “All right, then, give government things to the government, and God’s things to God.”

So they were not successful in trapping him in anything he said in public, and his answer so astonished them that they shut up.

The Widow's Might

2009-03-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

A homily delivered by the Rev Dr Tim W Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 29th, 2009 (Stewardship Sunday)

It’s a familiar enough story, one I’m certain almost all of us have heard at some point or another in our lives (although far fewer of us, I suspect, have really given it the thought it deserves). It’s the Tuesday before Passover, and Jesus is teaching openly in the Courtyard of the Gentiles outside the Temple in Jerusalem, protected from arrest by the large crowd of people who have thronged around him to listen to him debate with the Scribes and the Pharisees, the Lawyers and the Scholars who represent the interests of the wealthy temple elites. And he’s just said one of the single most-memorable things attributed to him in the Gospels, responding to a question about whether or not it is lawful for a faithful Jew to pay taxes to Rome by asking to see a Roman coin and then asking whose image was on it. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s.” And then while his adversaries looked on in speechless amazement,

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people put in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. For they all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on.” [Mark 12: 41-44; cf Luke 21: 1-4]

I’ve never been quite certain how best to interpret this passage. The fact that Jesus is talking only with his disciples makes me think that this is primarily a private object lesson in the virtues of generosity, sacrifice, and commitment: a foreshadowing, perhaps, of the ultimate sacrifice Jesus is about to make himself. But I also can’t help but think that it is also an implicit criticism of the wealthy givers, who may contribute much more in absolute terms, but are still contributing out of their abundance, as well as a condemnation of the entire temple system itself, which demanded such donations even from the most vulnerable members of society. The wealthy still have plenty left over after they have made their contribution. But the widow holds back nothing. Two copper lepta, two “mites” in the King James Version, and she throws them both in, not even holding back one for herself. Her faith, her trust, her confidence that somehow this day she will be given her daily bread (and perhaps even forgiven her debts), is without reservation. Her own love of God and love of neighbor inspire that confidence, and that trust, and guides her away from the kinds of temptation that ultimately lead to evil.

In the letter I wrote to be sent out with the other Stewardship materials, I mentioned that in times of financial uncertainty such as these, none of us can really feel secure in our position, but that the need people have for the church itself is at the same time greater than ever. And those of us who are still fortunate enough to be able to give out of our abundance have a special responsibility to our neighbors, because even though none of us are unaffected by the downturn, we still have the ability to make a difference in meeting this greater need. And in doing so, not only do we make it possible for our less-fortunate neighbors to benefit from our generosity, we also find fulfillment personally. We are empowered to act as agents of compassion and generosity and creativity and gratitude; we become messengers (angeloi = angels) -- of God’s Good News.

But what about those of us on the other side of the coin? Those of us who have lost our jobs, or are living on fixed (or even declining) incomes, and who are personally feeling the effects of the downturn as a week-to-week struggle just to keep body and soul together? How are we supposed to respond? And I’d like to suggest that our response is no different than anyone else’s; and that with trust and compassion and generosity and creativity and gratitude, we too can become empowered and fulfilled, despite our precarious financial situations.

Throughout this Stewardship campaign, and really over the entire course of my brief tenure here, I’ve spoken about the “three T’s” of Time, Talent, and Treasure as the foundation upon which a healthy church community must be built. Time is perhaps the easiest, and the most important of the three. For better or worse, when you become unemployed Time is suddenly something you have a lot more of in your life. And you need to use it wisely; but one very excellent use of Time is to spend it in church on Sunday mornings. Just showing up makes a huge difference in the quality of EVERYONE’S experience here -- it increases the energy, it increases the intensity, it increases the vitality of the entire Act and activity of Worship. And it costs you next to nothing; a couple of hours out of your day, and a little gasoline for your car, unless you live close enough to walk, or can arrange (like I do) to catch a ride with a neighbor. So even when times are tough economically, the gift of YOUR time can have a huge impact, and makes a big difference in the quality of our collective lives.

And the same is true of your Talent. You may not be working full time for a paycheck, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still be productive, or contribute to the prosperity of our community in other ways. And I’m not just talking now about the church community either. The larger Portland community can also no doubt benefit from your talents, while getting out of the house and out among the people begins that all-important process of networking and connection-building that generally leads both to finding another job, and also to making new friends who perhaps share many of your same interests and values, and might even make fine additions to THIS community.

And then finally there is the Treasure. This year in particular it is important that EVERYONE make some sort of pledge to the church, simply so we can use that information in the budgeting process, rather than simply relying on historical guesstimates based on past performance and future expectations, as we have in years past.

But the most important pledge you make is the one you make to yourself. When you sit down and think about your priorities, and what you honestly feel you can afford to do, what does that add up to, and are you willing to PROMISE YOURSELF that you will make that contribution happen?

Suppose, for example, you were to commit to yourself to attending EVERY Sunday Service next year, and that every Sunday morning you will drop a twenty dollar bill in the collection plate. Your annual contribution would add up to over a thousand dollars, which is approximately the same amount as our current average pledge.

But suppose twenty dollars is too much. Suppose you can only commit to ten, or to five. These are still pretty significant
contributions, when you start to add them up over dozens and dozens of contributors.

Even in the best of times, approximately two-thirds of the money contributed to First Parish comes from fewer than one-third of the contributors. And when times become tough that ratio becomes even more pronounced. But whether you are a major donor or simply a small contributor, it requires everyone’s participation in order for us to fulfill our mission as Portland’s Original Faith Community, providing a Warm & Welcoming Place here in the Heart of the City.

Again, as I said in my letter, for over three centuries now, through Wars and Fires and Panics and Recessions and a Great Depression, the People of First Parish have come together to sustain that vision, and to fulfill that mission. Rich or poor, working or looking for work, retired or just setting out on a career, we ALL need to set a good example for one another, and for the larger Portland community, by generously contributing what we can. The responsibility is now in OUR hands. And frankly, I can’t think of anyone I would trust with it more.

MR JEFFERSON’S LEGACY

2009-03-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

***

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 15th, 2009

OPENING WORDS: “Question with boldness even the existence of God, because, if there is one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear....” -- Thomas Jefferson
***

How many of you saw in the news last week, that Northern New England has now officially surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the “least churched” region of the country? Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest myself (as well as serving the majority of my ministerial career there), I was immediately struck by two closely-related thoughts. The first was a memory of something that was said about me during a celebratory farewell “roast” at the conclusion of my first settled ministry in Midland, Texas, where the new search committee had already started to survey the church membership regarding their prevailing theological views, and had discovered that after four years of my preaching there, I had managed to DOUBLE the number of atheists in the congregation!

My second thought was that even though I have now served here in New England for twice the time I was in West Texas (two years on Nantucket, four years in Carlisle Massachusetts, and now two years here in Portland), I can hardly claim to take credit for this current change of affairs. But I do feel a little like that proverbial gentleman who moved from Texas to New England, and lowered the average IQ in both regions. And the real irony, of course, is that for most of American history: certainly through the colonial period, and continuing on through the early national period and into the Irish and Italian immigrations, New England has been one of the most heavily-churched regions of the nation, and the underlying reasons for these changes are at heart of the topic I have chosen for today.

As most of you MUST know by now, this past winter I’ve been preaching a series of sermons on a topic I’ve been calling “UU-DNA” -- those things about our faith tradition that are so basic and fundamental about who we are and how we got to be this way that they might as well be part of our institutional genetic code. So far I’ve spoken about the importance of Congregational Polity and Local Control, the essential role of personal experience in determining what we believe, and the always-troublesome Problem of Evil: why do bad things happen to good people? And finally this month I’m finishing up with a two-parter on “Mr Jefferson’s Prophecy” and “Mr Jefferson’s Legacy” -- our third President’s erroneous 1823 prediction that “there is not a young many alive today who will not die a Unitarian,” and what we actually got instead: a “Wall of Separation” between church and state which delineated a radically new religious landscape for a new, young nation here in the new world, as well as creating the circumstances for the evolution of the dramatically different religious environment in which we live today.

Frankly, I’m not sure that ANYONE living at the end of the 18th century could have accurately predicted the kind of religious environment we now live in at the beginning of the 21st. Those two hundred and more years -- beginning with the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (and covering a lot more history than I suspect anyone wants to hear this morning) -- have resulted in the creation of an explicitly secular civil society that is also, without a doubt among the most fervently-devoted religious cultures in the world. And how this happened is to a large degree the direct result of a bitter political confrontation between two Unitarian Presidents two centuries ago, and the very different roles which they saw religion playing both in their own lives and in society as a whole.

America’s first President, George Washington, was a soldier and a farmer, a Deist and a Freemason -- first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen -- but hardly a great intellectual or philosopher when it came to matters of religion. He was, however, extremely sensitive to the role that precedent and public ritual would play in the formation of this new nation’s identity, and absolutely opposed to linking that identity too closely to any particular faith or sectarian denomination.

So instead it was Washington’s two Unitarian successors -- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- who actually framed the terms of the subsequent public debate. The personal relationship between Adams and Jefferson was a complicated one, as well as something that has fascinated me since I was just a child. In 1776 they worked closely together to draft the Declaration of Independence and shepherd it through the Continental Congress, thus setting the 13 colonies out together on the road to revolution. A quarter of a century later they were bitter political rivals, whose conflicting values in both religion and politics provide the background for the story I want to tell today. And then, after nearly another quarter-century of retirement from public life, during which they attempted to explain themselves to one another though a long and in many ways intimate correspondence, their lives and names became locked together for eternity in the annuls of American History by the shared date of their respective deaths: July 4th, 1826 -- the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration.

But it’s the election of 1800 -- an election that in many ways was even MORE pivotal than the election last fall -- that provides the background and the context for the subsequent tale. The issue of the separation of church and state was hardly new in 1800, and even dates back to well before the 1st Amendment and the creation of a national Constitution which enshrined it as a principle of Federal law. And yet even now it is easy to overlook that the question actually has two parts in addition to two sides, which we can see very clearly in the language of the amendment itself: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

It’s the so-called “Establishment Clause” with its intent of keeping the Church out of the business of government, that we generally think of today when we think of the purpose of the amendment nowadays. But in many ways the “Free Exercise” clause has been even more important. This is the part of Federal law, which prohibits the state from getting involved in the business of the church, that has for most church leaders (historically, at least) been a much greater concern than whether or not they may someday get a chance to dictate the policies of government. The Free Exercise clause not only assures that individual churches will be left free to attend to matters of faith as they see fit, it also guarantees that every individual will be free to pick and choose their own church (including NO church) as suits their own conscience and temperament. In other words (as I’m sure you’ve heard it said before), freedom OF religion also includes freedom FROM religion, or at least after you’ve reached the age when your parents can no longer compel you to attend.

None of this debate, by the way, either then or now, has ever assumed a separation of Religion and Politics. If Politics is basically the practice of living together in civil society (and is sometimes defined as the “art of the possible”), while Religion reflects our best and highest values, morals, and principles (as well as an occasional belief in miracles), they NEED one another in order bring out the best of the “body politic,” and help us to understand that we are all one people in the same boat together. James Madison once famously observed that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” and the same could easily be said of churches. And yet, to be reminded from time to time that there are indeed angels out there, and that we need to be attentive to their messages, can often do a great deal to bring people together, even though it sometimes also runs the risk of driving them apart also runs the risk of driving them apart.

It was just this sort of impasse that brought Adams and Jefferson (and their respective supporters) to such bitter loggerheads in 1800. Jefferson was in private a deeply religious man, but he was also a deeply private man, who liked to keep his religious views to himself, and shared them only with his closest and most trusted friends. His Unitarian beliefs that God is One, a Providential Spirit who set all things in motion at the creation of the Universe, and who likewise endowed all human beings with certain “natural” and “inalienable” rights; together with his deeply-held conviction that Jesus was a man and a great moral teacher whose teachings can be summed up by the Golden Rule, were in essence identical to those of his political rival. But unlike Jefferson (who tended to believe that the solution to everything was “more liberty”), Adams also believed that MOST human beings NEEDED some sort of moral instruction (as well as some form of consistent, external social constraint) if they were to be kept on the “straight and narrow.”

Had the stakes seemed smaller, these two once and future friends might have reconciled their differences through honest and open dialogue, which of course is exactly what they attempted to do in retirement. But at the time, it seemed instead that the election of 1800 represented a critical watershed in the brief history of the young American republic. Would its future be found in a return to the “tyrannical” aristocratic practices of Great Britain, and its established Anglican church? Or would it follow the slippery slope of the French Revolution, which had guillotined both priests and princes in its brutal “Reign of Terror?” Jefferson and his followers of course most feared the former, while the supporters of Adams (the New England Standing Order clergy chief among them) attempted to portray Jefferson as a potential “Infidel in Chief,” who wanted nothing more that to confiscate every Bible in the land, and bring an end to religion altogether.

Jefferson won that bitterly-contested election, and of course neither side’s worst fears were realized. Instead, the next quarter-century of small-”d” small “r” “democratic-republican government subsequently became known as “the Era of Good Feelings,” at least when it came to politics. On the religious front, Jefferson’s election was accompanied by something neither he nor Adams could have really predicted: the beginning of the so-called “Second Great Awakening,” a period of frontier revivals and camp meetings, which would sometimes go on for weeks at a time. What was true in American politics also became true for American religion; each and every individual soul now enjoyed the liberty to decide for themselves what their faith would be, although that faith often bore very little resemblance to the more sophisticated beliefs of someone like Jefferson, whose ultimate faith in liberty had helped make freedom of belief a reality.

This same period in our history also saw the beginning of the disestablishment of the tax-supported Standing Order here in New England. Maine put an end to tax-supported religion in 1820, right here on this spot, with the drafting of its original state constitution. Stubborn Massachusetts (still dominated by Unitarians, but not for much longer) was the last to give in, in the mid-1830’s, opting instead for universal, tax-supported public education as a means for inculturating the immigrant classes with American values (while at the same time leaving them to worship in their own churches on Sunday mornings, and to complain about the burden of double taxation, just as the Baptists had, when they set out to create their own system of parochial schools).

And of course the greatest irony of all is that once freed from their obligation to be all things to all people, churches instead became free to seek out their own natural constituencies, and to shape their message in precisely the terms they needed to in order to appeal most strongly to their target audience. For Catholic churches this generally took place in ethnic terms, with an emphasis on holding on to their own. But for Protestant churches, ethnicity (at least among immigrant populations) was simply one element of ever-shrinking significance, when compared to factors like education and social class, theological doctrine, worship style, even geographic proximity and the personality (or reputation) of the minister. Over the course of the past 200 years, the American church has become an enterprise, which has in that time marketed itself more or less aggressively depending upon the tenor of the times and its own level of institutional energy.

Denominations like ours, with a long history of seeing ourselves as a “public” church attempting to live up to Jefferson’s Prophecy, have often been slow to adopt this “entrepreneurial” approach to religion. And in many cases we’ve been able to afford not to; our deep roots and broad social networks have allowed us to preserve our self-image as “America’s Real Religion,” along with the elusive goal of winning everyone over to our way of thinking. But thanks to Mr. Jefferson’s legacy, I can comfortably predict that this is never going to happen. We may someday become slightly more numerous than one in a thousand, but even to achieve that we need to look very carefully at who we are and where we come from, and the essence of our mission to the communities we choose to serve. We need to be honest, forthright, and unashamed about our beliefs, our values, our goals, our principles, and our practices...and we need to lift them up high, so that all may see and that those who agree can easily find us here. We need to invite our friends, and support this church with our time, and our talent, and yes our treasure...even when times are tough, and we are nervous ourselves about whether or not we will even have a job a year from now. And above all, we must all hang together, because if we fail to do so (to paraphrase Mr Franklin at the signing of the Declaration) we will all most certainly be left to hang separately, and alone -- from a metaphorical , if not a literal, noose of our own making.

READING:

To Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge and Others A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in the State of Connecticut

January 1, 1802

Gentlemen,

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist Association, give me the highest satisfaction. My duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, and in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association, assurances of my high respect and esteem.

Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States

MR JEFFERSON’S PROPHECY

2009-03-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

***
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday March 1st, 2009

OPENING WORDS: “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.... Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion by bringing every false one to their tribunal.” --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia.

***

“ I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian....”

These words may be new to you, but we are coming up now on the 187th anniversary of their composition, and I personally have been living with their haunting irony for most of my adult lifetime. They stand before me like a taunting challenge from a heckler in the back of the room: if you’re so smart, why ain’t your rich? If you’re so famous, why haven’t I heard of you? And if your religion is so great, why aren’t there a lot more of Unitarian Universalists?

There are a little over 300 million Americans alive today, approximately half of whom are, have been, or will be young men. On the other hand, there are only about 250 thousand Unitarian Universalists living in the United States, and only 39% of those are male. Of course, I’m talking about certified members now. If you look instead at census and polling data, those numbers improve a litte; according to Gallop and the Pew Charitable Trust, approximately three to six-tenths of one per cent of Americans consider themselves to be Unitarians, Universalists, or some combination thereof. Even so, the basic reality is that to be a Unitarian Universalist is to be one in a thousand. Or to put it another way, if you were going to mingle in a random group of people [obviously not here, but maybe at the mall], your chances of running into another Unitarian there would be approximately 250 times WORSE than my chances of surviving cancer for the next five years!

This Winter I’ve been preaching a series of sermons on something I call “UU DNA” -- the things about “our liberal movement in theology” which are so distinct and ubiquitous that they might be thought of as part of our “genetic make-up.” So far I’ve spoken about the “promiscuous” nature of our unique version of Congregational Polity, about the importance of Personal Religious Experience as the principal source of religious authority, and also about Unitarian Universalist responses to the Problem of Evil: “why bad things happen to good people.” And those sermons can now all be found on our church website; [I believe you can get to them by clicking on my face at the firstparishportland.org homepage}. And now today and again in a couple of weeks we come to the conclusion of this series, by examining this lingering and sometimes haunting sense of challenge and expectation -- as well as missed opportunity and squandered potential -- that still sometimes colors our image of ourselves two centuries after Jefferson made his prediction. If we’re so great, why aren’t there more of us? In fact, why have so many people never even heard of us at all?

But before we tackle those questions, I’d first like to look a little more closely at Jefferson’s own Unitarian credentials. Denominational historians generally consider Jefferson to be one of five Unitarian or Universalist presidents. But unlike the other four: John and John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft -- all of whom have tangible records of church membership and denominational involvement -- Jefferson considered himself “content to be a Unitarian by myself,” and was never formally affiliated with any Unitarian church or organization.

Part of this is simply a matter of geography and historical timing. Jefferson was born in 1743, and died at his home at Montecello in Virginia on July 4th, 1826 [the same day John Adams died at his home in Massachussets]. For approximately two/thirds of his life, Liberal Christianity (at least in America) would have been known simply as that; it was not until after 1805 (and the election of Henry Ware Sr. as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, at the beginning of Jefferson’s second term as President) that the term “Unitarian” began to come into use to describe the liberals, and it was really not until a decade later, at William Ellery Channing’s 1819 sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore (Unitarianism’s southernmost congregation at that time) that the label “Unitarian Christianity” was publicly used by the liberals themselves, to describe the doctrines they felt defined their faith.

By that time there were already one hundred or more congregations who were Unitarian in all be name [including this one here in Portland], but they were mostly here in New England; only Joseph Priestly’s church in Philadelphia, an offshoot of British Unitarianism, was an exception to this rule. It was not until 1825 -- a mere 13 months (actually, a year, a month, a week and a day) before Jefferson and Adams’s deaths, that the American Unitarian Association was formally organized in Boston.

Jefferson was a great admirer and supporter of Priestly, and probably even attended services at Priestly’s church in Philadelphia while living and serving in the Government there; he was certainly familiar with Priestly’s writings, which were an inspiration for his own infamous “Jefferson Bible.” But as a public figure whose religious opinions were already controversial, Jefferson was reluctant to have his name invoked in theological disputes, and therefore tended to keep his personal faith a private matter, to be discussed only among close friends and those who shared his views. Yet despite having been born too soon to enjoy what some have called “the Golden Age of Unitariansim, “ there is certainly no doubt in my own mind, as a historian, that when Jefferson died as an old man of 83, he died a Unitarian.

But just exactly what did being a Unitarian mean in Jefferson’s day? A good portion of Jefferson’s creed we heard in this morning’s reading: that God is One, and that Jesus was a great spiritual teacher, who taught that our highest duty in life is to Love God with all our hearts, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Beyond that though, Jefferson’s personal faith embodied three additional features typical of Unitarianism then and now. The Unitarian historian Earl Morse Wilbur has described these qualities as “Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance,” and in many ways they still characterize the continuity in liberal religion from Jefferson’s day until our own.

By Freedom is meant the very idea of religious liberty or “liberalism” itself: the Freedom of Conscience which entitles (and obligates!) the seeker to believe whatever their Reason and their Experience tell them to be true. Reason, in turn, places its trust in what was then sometimes called “Natural Theology” rather than revelation-- a belief in “Nature and Nature’s God” whose eternal truths are self-evident, and best discerned and understood through scientific observation and logical inquiry, rather than through some sort of supernatural revelation. Jefferson’s co-revolutionary Benjamin Franklin once quipped that “so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” But in more serious moments, the distinction between “rationality” and “rationalization” is easily discerned by “reasonable” human beings.

It’s the question of Tolerance that more frequently causes stumbling. The value of Freedom dictates a broad latitude of belief and opinion, since each is free to follow their own conscience. The value of Reason, on the other hand, is constantly asking that nagging question: “How far can we open our minds before our brains fall out?” Jefferson’s notion of a “marketplace” of religious ideas, where each religion is brought before the tribunal of Reason and Free Inquiry, proved itself somewhat naive and ineffective in the context of a complete separation of Church and State, where mere “toleration” gave way to an environment of diversity and pluralism where the mere idea of a dominant “true religion” seems absurd.

In his book Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America’s Founding Fathers, my friend and Divinity School classmate Gary Kowalski describes what happened next:

**By defining the individual as a spiritual free agent within an unregulated religious marketplace, the founders opened the field to revivalists vying to save souls by whatever means possible -- promises of heaven or threats of hell packaged in terms the roughest pioneers could comprehend.

**A changing theology propelled America’s conversion. An earlier generation held that only God could deliver sinners into a state of grace. There was little human beings could do to hasten or prevent a dynamic of redemption that was entirely in the hands of the Almighty. But evangelists in the nineteenth century agreed that a more popular, extemporaneous preaching style might help ready the reprobate to receive the divine influx. Droning sermons gave way to more dramatic altar calls. Showmanship entered the pulpit. The two former presidents [Adams and Jefferson], with their high-minded, philosophic discourse were at a persuasive disadvantage. [p 190]**

Unlike Jefferson, John Adams believed that there was a place for an established church in the new United States, and had his views prevailed that church would have no doubt resembled some form of Unitarianism. But with the First Amendment and Jefferson’s “wall of separation,” future generations faced a very different landscape than the one their ancestors had known. [But this is territory we will explore next time, when we examine “Mr Jefferson’s Legacy.” ]

***

READING: letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, June 26, 1822

To Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse

Monticello, June 26, 1822

Dear Sir, -- I have received and read with thankfulness and pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet, however sound in its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. You will find it as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the sensualities of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy to learn from you that the latter, at least, is making progress, and the more rapidly in proportion as our Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself; is the sum of religion.

These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.

Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.

But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers, who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, schismatize about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense, suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of feature, to impair the love of their brethren. Be this the wisdom of Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor! I conclude my sermon with sincere assurances of my friendly esteem and respect.

MYSTICS, SKEPTICS AND DYSPEPTICS

2009-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

***

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 8th, 2009

OPENING WORDS: The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.... --Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles”

***

A Unitarian from California went up to a hot dog vender in New York’s Central Park and said “Gimmie a Zen Dog.”

“A Zen Dog?” said the New Yorker. “Never heard of it.”

“You know,” said the Californian. “Make me one with everything....”

Today's Sermon is the third in a series of five sermons I’m preaching between now and Easter entitled “UU-DNA,” because they deal with topics which are so basic and ubiquitous about who we are that they can almost be thought of as part of our genome, or genetic make-up. Today’s topic in particular resides right at the heart of our identity as people of faith, and is even listed in the hymnbook at the First Source of our shared “Living Tradition:” “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” These particular words were drafted by a committee over the course of a four-year period between 1981 and 1985, when they were formally adopted by the General Assembly , along with the rest of the statement to which they belong, as part of the preamble to the by-laws of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

On the other hand, the title that I’ve chosen for my sermon today, “Mystics, Skeptics, and Dyspeptics,” has a somewhat different history. This particular phrase belongs to the Rev. John Gorham Palfrey, who served as the Dean of the Harvard Divinity School from 1831-1840, and who used these words to describe the students who attended that institution during what was doubtlessly one of the most tumultuous decades in its history, since it corresponded with both the publication of “Nature” and Emerson’s “Divinity School Address,” Theodore Parker’s famous “South Boston” sermon, and the “explosion” of Transcendentalism as both a literary and a religious movement in New England.

“Mystics, Skeptics, and Dyspeptics.” I don’t think it was intended as a compliment. And yet, in many ways, Palfrey had (and still has) it exactly right. The mystical part is easy. We don’t typically think of Unitarian Universalism as a “mystical” faith -- we are much more likely to describe it as a “Rational” Religion, a religion based on Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance; even a “scientific” faith which has for centuries placed it’s trust in “natural theology” (which is to say, observation of the physical universe) rather than revelation, and where science trumps scripture practically every time...at least on points of material “Fact.”

But “truth” is often something more than just the facts. The REAL source of religious authority in Unitarian Universalism is neither science or revelation, but rather personal experience, which leads us to several interesting insights about who we are. To begin with, Unitarian Universalists are NOT people who are free to believe whatever we wish. We are people who are COMPELLED to believe what our Reason and our Experience tell us to be true. Second, because we are only human, none of us are ever going to know the truth perfectly -- we are always developing in our understanding, as our experience grows and our wisdom and understanding grow along with it. And finally (at least for now) what is true for us as individuals is true for us as a society and as a species as well. It’s not that “truth” itself is relative; the TRUTH (in bold, capital letters), is what it is, and is going to be true whether we choose to believe it or not. But again, our UNDERSTANDING of the Truth grows and evolves over time as we ourselves grow and evolve, and it will continue to do so until that as yet unimaginable day when we too, like the God of Christian Theology, are Omniscient/All-Knowing. That is, assuming our minds are even equal to the task. It’s certainly not something I see happening any time soon.

But not all of our knowledge is rational and analytical. Some of it is emotional, some of it intuitive, and a great deal of it (especially when it comes to matters of spirituality) comes in the form of what Scientists often label as “Peak Experiences” -- well-documented episodes of mystical insight in which individuals typically feel in a very profound and visceral way that we are very, very small creatures in a vastly large Universe, whole within ourselves, yet intimately connected to ALL THAT IS, to everyone and everything that ever was, or is, or ever will be. It’s the kind of powerful insight that we associate with great truths like “God is One” (yet more mysterious than we will ever fully understand), and that all human beings are both children of the Creator, and brothers and sisters to one another.

Peak Experiences (at least in our culture) are often associated with nature (like Emerson’s transformation into Transparent Eyeball), yet they are also often associated with other spiritual disciplines like meditation or fasting, and sometimes even happen spontaneously and without much warning. We see examples in things like Jesus’s baptism in the River Jordon and subsequent 40 day fast in the wilderness, or in the Buddha’s prolonged, pre-enlightenment meditation beneath the Bo Tree. And yes, they can also sometimes seem a little silly or even ridiculous to the outsider. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller is said to have once proclaimed in a moment of mystical insight “I Accept the Universe,” to which the poet Thomas Carlyle responded when he heard “Gad, She’d better.” And Transcendentalist bookseller Elizabeth Peabody was briefly the laughing stock of Boston when, while walking across the Boston Common deep in contemplation, she walked head-first into a tree. “Didn’t you see it?” one of her companions asked? “I saw it,” Peabody replied, “but I did not realize it” -- in other words, the mental act of noticing the tree had not quite made its way all the way into her conscious awareness.

The insights of mystics can often seem silly or obvious in this way. But they also provide the foundation for some of the most profoundly important eternal truths which exist at the heart of every authentic religious tradition. The logic of doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, and loving our neighbors as ourselves, may seem obvious enough in the abstract, despite the constant temptation to ignore the other guy and look out first for number one. But things like the Golden Rule take on a far more compelling importance when you have actually FELT that experience of common humanity and universal connectedness in a way so powerful that you can’t quite put it into words.

And yet, it is this same compelling power of the Peak Experience that also brings us to the “Skeptical” part of our formula. I mean, let’s face facts: we can’t always believe everything God tells us. That little voice one might sometimes hear whispering in their ear, telling them to shave their head, tattoo their body from head to toe, and to move to Borneo to enlighten the few surviving headhunters there about the dangers of global warming and the benefits of a Vegan diet may well belong to one of God’s angels, but before you go on-line to start shopping for cheap airfares it probably couldn’t hurt to go through a fairly rigorous period of critical discernment. Even our most cherished beliefs must be able to stand the test of this kind of scrutiny, to be spread out in all their detail under the cold, harsh light of Skeptical examination., and still hold enough water to at least quench our thirst afterwards.

Covenant Groups, like the ones we’re gearing up to launch again in the next month or so, are the perfect kind of forum for this sort of dialog to happen. A Covenant Group is such a simple program it hardly needs explaining, but let me go ahead and describe one anyway. Optimally consisting of between 8 to 12 people, Covenant Groups meet either once or twice a month, typically in somebody’s home, for a minimum of an hour and a half. There are no refreshments served, or anything like that...although sometimes the host will have available a little something to nosh on AFTER the group is over. But the focus is on being together intentionally, WITHOUT the distractions of a typical social gathering.

The meeting begins with the participants sitting in a circle, facing one another around a chalice (which is why they are sometimes called “Chalice Circles”). There’s an opening reading, and somebody lights the chalice, ushering the group into sacred space. The next thing that happens is the “Check-in” -- not the relatively brief and perfunctory check-ins we sometimes experience at the beginning of our board and committee meetings, but a “deep Check-in” of perhaps five to ten minutes per person, during which each participant has the opportunity to share in a profound and authentic way what is happening in their lives. Of course, it takes time to build up the level of trust in which that depth of sharing can truly happen. But this is also part of the on-going Covenant Group experience, of meeting together with the same group of people over a period of months or even years.

Following the Check-in comes the topical discussion, which usually consists of a series of open-ended questions and perhaps another reading or two. Ideally, the discussion is lead by a trained group facilitator, who is both familiar with the process and the content of the session, and who understands how to draw the group out and help them engage in the discussion. In groups that only meet once a month, these topics are often selected by the team of facilitators in advance, so that every Covenant Group in the church has the opportunity to discuss the same topic, not only among themselves but informally with the members of other groups; in fact, they may even hear a sermon on the topic as well. Groups that meet twice a month will typically choose the second topic themselves, either out of the literally thousands of prepared sessions that are now available, or else one or two people writing up the session themselves. Finally, the group ends with a brief “Check-out” of likes and wishes -- one sentence each about what you thought went well, and what you would have like to have seen go differently, regarding the session just completed. A few closing words to extinguish the Chalice, and the session is over...at least until the next time.

And that is a Covenant Group: simplicity itself. But where does the Covenant part come in? First, in the commitment to regular attendance. The entire group depends upon the participation of each of its members in order for the group to function. We all have times when we can’t make it to an obligation. But don’t sign up for a Covenant Group unless its at a time when you know you can attend, and you fully intend to attend each and every session offered.

The second commitment is obviously one of confidentiality. It’s OK to talk about the topic outside of the group; in fact, it’s encouraged. But don’t gossip about the confidential things that people share during Check-in, or even about individual opinions (other than your own) regarding the topic of the group discussion. Like I said earlier, it takes time to build up a level of trust that will allow the group to function at it’s optimal level, and that trust can quickly be destroyed by just a few careless remarks. So Confidentiality is a second element of the covenant, perhaps even a more important one than the Commitment to Attend.

And then finally, in many churches there is typically an annual service component, as a group, both within the congregation and beyond it. This is important simply as a reminder that each group is indeed connected to the larger church community, and to the community beyond that which we serve as well.

So, Mysticism, Skepticism, and now the one you’ve all been waiting for: Dyspepsia. This may seem a little tongue in cheek, but lets face it: there are just some things most Unitarian Universalists simply can’t swallow. We don’t like things being force-fed to us (much less being shoved down our throats); and there are lots of things as well that leave a bad taste in our mouths, or maybe even leave us feeling a little sick to our stomachs. And if this makes us “Dyspeptics,” why is that such a bad thing? The fact that we are sometimes willing to trust our gut feelings, both in terms of what we like and what we don’t like, is a powerful compliment both to our occasionally TOO rigorous intellectual skepticism, and the kind of deep and profound mystical wonder that resides at the heart of our faith tradition, no matter how well we may try to hide it.

Humility, Awe, Gratitude, Compassion, Fascination, Curiosity, Devotion, Love... Unitarian Universalists certainly don’t have a monopoly on these qualities; in fact, just the opposite; it is our willing recognition that these are Universal qualities that Transcend the boundaries of culture and tradition, that make us almost unique among the major faith traditions of the world. We are proud of our Living Tradition, because it is a Growing Tradition, which allows us to look beyond it for additional sources of Hope, Encouragement, and Inspiration, without ever diminishing the power of its original insights or underlying principles.

“Praise the source of faith and learning, that has sparked and stoked the mind, with a passion for discerning how the world has been designed. Let the sense of wonder flowing from the wonders we survey, keep our faith forever growing, and renew our need to pray....”

Our closing hymn is number 158 - “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning....”

READING: from Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836) [adapted]

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the [adult], but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is [one] whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of [adulthood]. [Their] intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of [their] daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through [them], in spite of real sorrows.... Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, [one] casts off [their] years, as the snake [its skin], and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how [they] should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, [one] beholds somewhat as beautiful as [their] own nature.

AFFLICTIVE DISPENSATIONS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

2009-02-01T21:21:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday February 1st, 2009

OPENING WORDS: from "Of Justice and Conscience” by Theodore Parker

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

***
It’s nice to be back in the pulpit again though, especially after having to ask Will to fill in for me last Sunday, but cause I’d been afflicted earlier in the week with a particularly nasty case of the, the type of which one immediately begins to suppress ones memory of all of the symptoms in hopes of never having to experience them again. And even though I was feeling a lot better by the time Sunday finally rolled around, it still felt reassuring to know that I could call on Will, and still have the opportunity to worship along with everyone else as a member of the congregation, and to hear his thoughts on a topic that has also been of interest to me for a long, long time.

It was particularly interesting to me because of the way Will chose to introduce it. In 1978, shortly after arriving on the East Coast to begin my theological studies at the Harvard Divinity School, I got a part-time job as a Field Education Student Intern at the First and Second Church in Boston’s Back Bay. There were actually several of us student interns at First and Second, not only from Harvard but from other Divinity Schools in the Boston area, and it wasn’t long before we were looking around for a nice, quiet place there in the neighborhood where we might stop and get a drink before catching the subway back to Cambridge, or to Newton Centre or wherever else we might happen to be going. And we eventually settled on a place called “the Bull and Finch,” right there on Beacon Street at the foot of Beacon Hill, and for the next three years that was pretty much our regular hangout whenever we wanted a cold bear at the end of a long day (or maybe a hot Irish Coffee at the end of a very COLD day)....

So imagine my astonishment in 1982, having moved back to Seattle only a year after my graduation and ordination, to discover that my sleepy little neighborhood bar was suddenly the setting of the most popular television program in America! And it only gets stranger. Because ten years later “Cheers” spun-off another series about one of its regular characters, Dr. Frazier Crane, who moves from Boston back to his hometown of Seattle in order to begin a new career as a radio talk-show personality. Frazier and his brother Niles like to meet up at a place called the Cafe Nervosa, a place which looks suspiciously like the basement espresso bar at the Elliott Bay bookstore in Pioneer square, which is one of my favorite SEATTLE hangouts!

Thankfully, they’ve done a little bit better job at avoiding the temptation to try to cash in than the Bull and Finch people did. Still, it’s a little eerie to feel like you’re being stalked cross-country by a Hollywood location scout, especially given the coincidence that one of the OTHER most popular television programs in America that season, “Northern Exposure,” was also being filmed in the Pacific Northwest, in the small town of Roslyn Washington, home of the “Brick” -- Washington State’s oldest continuously operating saloon (they’ve been pouring beer there since 1889), which features a very unique footrail and flowing water spittoon that is actually listed as a tributary of the Cle Elum river.

So even though the program supposedly took place in Alaska, those of us who actually knew Roslyn and the Brick knew better; while my personal experience of watching the program was further complicated by the fact that one of the regular characters on the show (General Store owner and operator Ruth-Anne Miller) was played by actress Peg Phillips, who was the mother of Unitarian Universalist minister Elizabeth Greene.

But here’s the point I want to make. The Bull and Finch, the Elliott Bay Bookstore Cafe, and even (or perhaps I should say especially) the Brick are all real places; while “Cheers” and the “Cafe Nervosa” and the quirky little town of Cicely Alaska are not. We know all of THEIR names: Sam, Diane, Frazier, Fleischman -- even though they’re not really real people -- while our own experience of being part of that anonymous, mass-culture audience is essentially one of gathering around the water cooler at work (when the programs are first broadcast) to talk about what we each watched alone in our homes the night before; and then (if we are so inclined) slipping into a subculture of fandom which continues to watch these programs in syndication or on DVD, while collecting ever greater amounts of trivial minutia regarding our chosen virtual communities.

There are in fact REAL Great, Good Places all around us, “Third places” other than home or work where we can enjoy the benefits of an informal public life confident in the knowledge that even if everyone DOESN’T know our names, a few folks might at least recognize our faces. And it makes me feel good that churches, and this church in particular, can sometimes place that role on people’s lives, and connect us to one another in significant, meaningful ways.

But in order to fulfill our FULL potential as authentic communities of faith, churches must also aspire to do much, much more. Local churches are embodiments of the Church Universal, small manifestations of the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth, participants in the Divine Commonwealth, expressions of “the Beloved Community.” Churches are “communities of memory and hope,” which “revere the past but trust the dawning future more,” and where often generations of faithful souls have congregated publicly to pray to God and to worship together, to take care of one another, and to grow deeper in faith over time....

Today’s message is the second in a series of sermons I plan to preach between now on Easter about “UU DNA” -- those things that are so basic and essential to who we are that they might be thought of as part of our genetic make-up. And today's topic in particular -- Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People? -- is often considered one of the most perplexing problems in Western theology, not only for Christianity, but for Judaism and Islam as well. If God is Good, and All-Powerful and All-Knowing, how can he possibly allow the innocent to suffer? Is suffering somehow punishment of our bad behavior -- perhaps bad behavior were weren’t even fully aware of? -- or are we instead somehow pawns in struggle between the powers of good and the powers of evil, and our suffering less “punishment” for some evil act than merely “collateral damage” in a contest that is ultimately beyond our means to know or understand?

These questions pose challenges for all fundamentally monotheistic faiths, but in many ways they are especially problematic for a faith like ours, which takes its name explicitly from the doctrines that God is One and that All Souls are destined for heaven, and where we sometimes tend to spell “God” with two “O’s” and “devil” without a “D,” (think about that one for a second) and where evil itself is often dismissed as merely an absence of good, rather than a real force in its own right. Hence, “Afflictive Dispensations of Divine Providence” -- it’s not that the dispensations themselves were bad, it’s just that we experienced them in an afflictive way.

And I suppose it almost goes without saying that if you DON’T believe in a Good, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God in the first place, this problem is a lot less perplexing than if you do. Who’s to say that life is fair, or that the Universe is fundamentally benevolent in its make-up. Suppose the Universe is actually neutral, or even basically hostile and malevolent: what does that say about the problem of evil then? Buddhism tells us that human suffering is the result of our “thirst” for the things of this world that “come into being and pass away,” our attachment to things that are impermanent in nature, and therefore not ours to keep. The only way to escape this attachment is to recognize that it is the source of all our suffering, and to follow the Nobel Eight-Fold path, basically a combination of Right Knowledge, Right Behavior, and Right Mindfulness which allows practitioners to overcome their thirst and thus relieve their suffering, but living an enlightened lifestyle that is “in the world, but not of it.”

And yet, it seems to me, there’s at least one more piece to this puzzle that needs to be looked at. Because even if the Universe isn’t fair, we WANT it to be...or at least somehow expect that it really ought to be fairer than it seems. And this may say as much about us as it does about the Universe itself. Some of it may reflect lessons we’ve learned as members of this society: do unto others as you would have others do unto you, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. It may be even simpler than that -- basic childhood lessons about sharing our toys and taking turns, so that everyone gets a chance and no one is left out.

Or suppose that the scientists like Carl Sagan are correct: that we ARE the part of of the Universe that is becoming conscious of itself, and that the ethical standards we create for ourselves do indeed reflect the long “moral arc of the universe,” bending every so slightly toward justice as we, in our growing self-awareness, bend it that way. We may not always get the result we want every time. But by working for justice, we slowly yet consistently make our society a little more fair, even if it doesn’t always live up to the standards we would set for it ourselves.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, not quite a year ago now, i could have spent an awful lot of time asking myself “Why Me?” And there are all sorts of reasons I could have pointed to, including stupid decisions I made about smoking when I was younger, and a general failure to keep up with good, healthy habits as I grew older and more susceptible to illness. But even thought I could come up with all sorts of good reasons for why I HAD cancer, I couldn’t really explain why I’d “gotten” it -- what (if anything) I had done to “deserve” this disease at this particular moment in my lifetime. And seeing this, I decided not to waste a lot of time worrying about it either. Cancer is something that happened to me, and since I can’t go back and fix that or change it, I’m just going to have to go forward and live with it as best I can, thankfully with a lot of help and support from caring people I have met along the way.

And likewise now, as I look out over this congregation and listen to your joys and concerns, see so many people who are also struggling with issues in your own lives -- perhaps health issues, or financial problems brought about by the current economy, and I just have to hope that you will find here in this community the things you are looking for: the knowledge that it isn’t fair and it’s not your fault, that you shouldn’t take the blame for things that are out of your control, that there are others here to help you, and that you too can still be a help to others even when you’re feeling beaten down yourself. Because you and I are the eyes, and ears, and hands of God, doing God’s good work here in this world as best we can, for as long as we can. And it doesn’t really matter whether anybody knows our name or not....

READING: “Job” from Wishful Thinking: a Seeker’s ABC by Frederick Buechner.

Job is a good man and knows it, as does everybody else, including God. Then one day his cattle are stolen, his servants are killed, and the wind blows down the house where his children happen to be whooping it up at the time, and not one of them lives to tell what it was they thought they had to whoop it up about. But being a good man he says only, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Even when he comes down with a bad case of boils and his wife advises him t curse God and die, he manages to bite his tongue and say nothing. It’s his friends who finally break the camel’s back. They come to offer their condolences and hang around a full week. When Job finds them still there at the start of the second week, he curses the day he was born. He never quite takes his wife’s advice and curses God, but he comes very close to it. He asks some unpleasant questions:

If God is all he’s cracked up to be, how come houses blow down on innocent people? Why does a good woman die of cancer in her prime while an old man who can’t remember his name or hold his water goes on in a nursing home forever? Why are there so many crooks riding around in Cadillacs and so many children going to bed hungry at night? Jobs friends offer an assortment of theological explanations, but God doesn’t offer one.

God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam. He also, incidentally, gets off some of the greatest poetry in the Old Testament. “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Hast thou given the horse strength and clothed his neck with thunder?”

Maybe the reason God doesn’t explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn’t an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils Job would have his explanation.

And then what?

Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse’s mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn.

God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn’t show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee.” Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf.

At least for the moment.

A PROMISCUOUS ASSEMBLY OF BELIEVERS AND SEEKERS

2009-01-11T19:12:00.001-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday January 11th, 2009

***

[extemporaneous introduction]

I thought I'd start out today by saying a few words about my title, and also about the larger theme of this loosely-defined series of sermons I’m planning to preach between now and Easter. The theme of the larger series might best be thought of as “UU DNA” -- those things about “Our Liberal Movement in Theology” which are so basic and ubiquitous and essential about understanding who we are and how we got to be this way that they might be thought of as part our our genetic (or, in this case, our “memetic”) code.

The topics themselves: “What does it mean to be part of a community of faith?” The problem of evil, the nature of spirituality and religious experience, and the twin burdens of future expectation and past heritage (who are we and what is our purpose and destiny?) -- These are issues that ANY faith community worth its salt might profitably choose to examine. But the titles I’ve chosen are unusual phrases or aphorisms that have stuck in my mind over my thirty-some years of reading and talking about materials that (in some cases) date back thousands of years before that.

I’m going to try to keep those a surprise, of course, for a little longer if if can. But think about it for a moment. What does it say about our faith, in its essence, that we should choose do define ourselves as a “promiscuous” (which is to say, a “casual, indiscriminate mingling” of both those who have strong Faith convictions, and those who are exploring some?

We tend to talk an awful lot these days about “UU Identity” -- what does it mean to a member of a community living under a covenant of mutual accountability and support, rather than a defined set of beliefs. And we also talk a lot about “UUism” and “What does it mean to be a UU?” as though if we could just find the answer to that question printed somewhere in a book (or on a blog!) people could go the the on-line “test your faith” quiz at Belief.net and plug in the right answer all the time.
.
Personally though, I think these kinds of conversations often do us a lot more harm than good. The point is that there are probably as many different ways of being Unitarian Universalist as there are Unitarian Universalsits (and we are thinking up new ones all the time). But people don’t come here to be transformed into something other than what they are. They come here to DISCOVER the person they were already meant to be, and then -- through the relationships they create and develop with the people they meet and discover here -- to grow and deepen that faith identity and their devotion to those beliefs -- through study, through conversation, through service -- until they have also truly become deeply spiritual people of faith.

It’s those OTHER GUYS who want to transform other people into something just like them: who require absolute agreement in a few “essential” beliefs, (and then a few more, and then a few more)...until not only does everyone think alike: they dress alike, they act alike, they vote alike, and they don’t spend much time after hours hanging out with those who dress and think and vote differently than they do.

And I hope I haven’t oversimplified the difference between being a Christian and being a UU by suggesting that Christians are mostly interested in making you just like them, while the Unitarian Universalist church is much more interested in helping YOU discover and become precisely the person you are intended to be {and see how the use of the passive voice in theology -- I might also have said “the person you were meant to become” -- helps us to steer clear of arguing over a lot of meaningless metaphysical details?]. We want you to become the person you were meant to be, just as we all want to become the people WE were meant to be...and whether that involves one “U” or both “UUs” or maybe some sort of hyphenated “UU-this,” or “UU-that,” or maybe even no “U’s” whatsoever...it really doesn’t matter, because just as the map is not the territory, the “label” is not the product...and I for one would just as soon not be labeled anyway....;

On the other hand, Unitarian Universalism does indeed have the power to improve our lives in profound and life-transforming ways...but ONLY if we are willing to open ourselves up to the power of that transformation and risk the uncertainty of being changed. I mean, what if it turns out that we’re NOT the people we thought we were all along? What if our wise and comfortably opinions simply don’t translate as we make that transformation from “seeking” to Service, and from skeptical doubting to confident trust?

As seekers we are free to go anywhere and everywhere we wish: to ask any question, to challenge every answer, to test each truth in the crucible of our own experience. But as Believers it is kind of expected that we will KNOW what we BELIEVE and that we will know where we BELONG; that we are no longer here only to explore, but also to improve ourselves, to improve the things around us, and to leave the world a better place than it was when we first encountered it.

It has also been my experience as a Unitarian Universalist minister that very few people actually show up in church with a fully-formed plan for how to fix the world neatly tucked away in one of their inside pockets, and that those who do often end up tapping the dust (or maybe we should say the slush) from their shoes as they leave the sanctuary. Of course, this was also Jesus’s experience in the Synagogue at Nazareth, where he too learned that a prophet is not without honor except in their own hometown.

Generally though, people have much more practical concerns. “Teach me how to raise my children.” “I want to be part of something larger than myself, and more than just a member of a sophisticated audience.” “Help me to learn how to die.” And in the midst of all this conversation the potential for transformation begins to take seed. Because the goal isn’t really to figure out the WHOLE Elephant. The goal is to understand enough about the elephant, and enough about ourselves, that we understand whether or not we need a tree, or a snake, or a wall or a spear or a rope or a fan... or maybe something entirely different altogether.

The goal is to know what we want, and to know where we can find it, and that also know that we can count on the company and the encouragement and the cooperation and the support of the people whom we have met upon the way -- the people who have offered us Hospitality, and to whom we too have have been hosts and hostesses as they have made their journeys thorough life. The goal is to understand that the world is NOT filled with Strangers, but with friendly neighbors, whom we can trust because they have proven themselves trustworthy over time.

A Seeker is a pilgrim, a soujourner, a traveler in search of enlightenment. But Believers tend to put down roots, to make commitments, to be folks you can rely on to leave the lights on when times are tough, and the weather turns nasty....

[extemporaneous conclusion]

READING:

The Blind Men and the Elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant~(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation~Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side, ~ At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant ~ Is very like a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! what have we here?
So very round and smooth and sharp? ~ To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant ~ Is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands, ~ Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant ~ Is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like ~ Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant ~ Is very like a tree!"

The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most; ~ Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant ~ Is very like a fan!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail ~ That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant ~ Is very like a rope!

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion ~ Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right ~ And all were in the wrong!

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
--John Godfrey Saxe

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS

2008-12-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

a homily delivered by
The Rev Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2008

...and having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road....

We’re all familiar with the story, we’ve heard it many times; in fact, we just heard it again only a moment ago. But unfortunately, the story doesn’t actually end there, does it?

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what was said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” [Hosea 11:1]

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.” [Jeremiah 31:15]

The First Christmas begins with the birth of an innocent child: a child of humble origins, but with magnificent future potential. But it doesn’t end there; it continues with the slaughter of dozens (and perhaps hundreds or even thousands) of innocent children, because a tyrant feels threatened by a dream. From a child’s contagious laughter to the inconsolable weeping of the mothers of murdered infants...such is the REAL story of the First Christmas, so many centuries ago.

Speaking strictly as an historian, the Truth is that we actually know very little about the details of the birth of Jesus, other than that it probably wasn’t anything like the story the way it has been handed down by Scripture. And even there, we have two very different versions, which are easily harmonized since they don’t really overlap one another at all. Some of the small contradictory details -- for example, that the shepherds find the baby sleeping in a stable, but by the time the Magi arrive (traditionally, twelve days later) the family has apparently moved into a house -- can simply be ignored or rationalized away -- why would anyone remain in a stable any longer than they had to, once a house became available? But other historical discrepancies are not so easily overlooked.

Take something so basic as the actual date of this miraculous event. Luke records that Jesus was born during the census of Quirinius, which we know from external Roman sources took place in the Year 6 of the Common Era. But Matthew’s Magi are said to have spoken with Herod the Great, who we also know from independent sources died a decade earlier, in the year 4 BCE. Knowing that the Magi have traditionally been thought of as astrologers, some scholars have attempted to clarify these discrepancies by linking the birth of Jesus to an appropriately significant astrological event, such as the conjunction between Saturn and a retrograde Jupiter in the sign of Pisces in the 7th year Before the Common Era, or approximately three years prior to Herod’s death. And this would be where most contemporary scholars would date the event as well, the assumption being that Luke was simply mistaken in his information, and therefore dated things incorrectly himself. But we will never really know for certain, which simply adds to the mystery of this already mysterious, miraculous story.

When we begin to look at the events recorded in the Gospels under the cold light of modern historical scholarship, an entirely new set of issues emerge. The question is not so much “what do we know and what will we never know;” rather, the REAL question becomes: Why were these stories written the way they were, and what “Truths” were they intended to preserve?

Personally, I’ve always been particularly interested in the story of the Magi, which has actually evolved considerably from the few simple sentences recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. All Matthew tells us is that they were indeed Magi (whatever that means) and that they came from the East, that they saw a star in the sky, and brought with them precious gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. He doesn’t tell us how many there were, although because there were three gifts it was generally assumed there were (at least) three Magi as well. He doesn’t tell us their names either, although they quickly acquired some: Melchior, Balthasar, and Gasper (who is sometimes also known as Casper or even Jasper). Their promotion from Magi to Kings also takes place sometime during the first four centuries of the Common Era. According to one tradition, the Three Kings are also brothers: Gaspar is the King of Arabia, Melchior the King of Persia, and Balthasar the King of India. According to other traditions, they represent the three continents and the three ages of Humanity. Casper, the youngest king, represents Europe, and his gift of Gold represents worldly wealth and power. Balthasar, the oldest king, is the ruler of Ethiopia and represents Africa; his gift of Frankincense (a resinous perfume that can also be burned as incense) represents the priestly function, and is symbolic of prayer and also of sacrifice. Melchior is the middle-aged king and represents Asia -- perhaps Persia, perhaps India, perhaps even China according to at least one tradition. His gift of Myrrh is the most precious gift of all: an unctuous oil worth its weight in Gold (and six times more expensive than Frankincense), it is symbolic of death and the last rites, when we are anointed with oil and wrapped in a clean shroud of cloth, in preparation for at last meeting our Creator face-to-face.

It’s from the symbolism of the three gifts that all these other details have been extrapolated and made part of the tradition. None of it is historical, strictly-speaking; it is simply the elaboration of a story over time, a story which becomes more interesting with each retelling. The shepherds bring their gifts as well, but they are simple gifts appropriate to shepherds, and are intended to emphasize the humble aspects of Jesus’s origins. Born in a stable, he is destined to rule the world in fulfillment of prophecy. But he will not rule the world in the usual way, through violence and domination, like the Romans. Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Reign of God, represents a very different view of the world, a world in which:

The earth will belong equally to all, undivided by walls or fences. It will then bear more abundant fruits spontaneously. Lives will be in common and wealth will have no division. For there will be no poor man there, no rich, and no tyrant, no slave. Further, no one will be either great or small anymore. No kings, no leaders. All will be on a par together... [Sibylline Oracles, 2.319-24]

Here we have a very different vision of World Peace: a peace unlike the Pax Romana, which was the product of Roman Imperial domination, kept in place for two hundred years by military power, economic exploitation and political hegemony, along with the underlying threat of violence which accompanies these realities. Rather, it is a vision which is grounded in a different kind of ideology, and inspired by ideals of Justice and Compassion. It represents a different kind of relationship to politics and the economy, as well as a society where the swords have been beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. These are the prophecies pointed to in the Gospel narratives of the birth of Jesus. And though they may seem naive in the dangerous and sophisticated world in which we live today, they form the context of the Christmas story as we have come to know it: the final (and as yet unwritten) chapter following the Slaughter of the Innocents.

In their book The First Christmas: what the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Birth, New Testament Scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write:

One final point. It is not accurate to distinguish the imperial kingdom of Rome from the eschatological kingdom of God by claiming one is earthly the other heavenly, one is evil the other holy, or one is demonic the other sublime. That is simply name-calling. Both come to us with divine credentials for the good of humanity. They are two alternative transcendental visions. Empire promises peace through violent force. Eschaton promises peace through nonviolent justice. Each requires programs and processes, strategies and tactics, wisdom and patience. If you consider that peace through victory has been a highly successful vision across recorded history, why would you abandon it now? But whether you think it has been successful or not, you should at least know there has always been present an alternative options -- peace through justice.

“That clash of visionary programs for our earth,” Borg and Crossan continue, “is the content and matrix for those Christmas stories, and they proclaim God’s peace through justice over against Rome’s peace through victory...” But from where we sit today, two-thousand-some years after these events probably never took place, the challenges which confront us remain remarkably unchanged. Having now seen the star, having heard the angels sing on high, to which of these competing visions will we now bring our treasured gifts, be they simple (like those of the peasant shepherds), or Royal, like the gifts of the Magi?...

NAUGHTY OR NICE?

2008-12-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday December 7th, 2008

***

“You’d better watch out,
You’d better not cry,
You’d better not pout,
I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He’s making a list.
He’s checking it twice.
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice?
Santa Claus is coming to town....”

I suspect that pretty much everyone here as heard this song, and recognize the words; it’s not really a Carol, and it’s certainly not a Hymn.... I suppose it’s best thought of as a Christmas “standard” -- one of those annoyingly repetitive tunes that we will hear over and over again for the next several weeks, until we think that we will never want to hear it again...and then suddenly it will disappear entirely for the next eleven months, only to re-emerge once again at the beginning of a NEW holiday season, to begin the cycle all over again.

But what does it really mean, and where did it come from -- this notion that some semi-mythical, vaguely-super natural, quasi-historical/legendary creature (who lives at the North Pole, of all places) is keeping track of ALL of our behavior (but especially that of little girls and boys) and will in the course of a single evening in the dead of winter visit all of our homes in order to reward or punish each and every one of us, not so much on the basis of whether or not we are good or bad, but rather whether we’ve been “naughty “ or “nice.”

The first part of the legend is about the Turkish Saint Nicholas of Myra, and the gift of gold he left in the stockings of the three beautiful but impoverished daughters.:

Once upon a time there was a father with three beautiful daughters. Although the daughters were kind and strong, the father despaired of them ever making good marriages, because he didn't have enough money to pay their dowries.

One day, Saint Nicholas of Myra was passing through their village and heard the locals discussing the plight of these poor girls. Saint Nicholas knew the father would be too proud to accept an outright gift. So he waited until dark, snuck to the man's house, and dropped three bags of gold coins down the chimney.

The daughters had spent the evening washing clothes, and had hung their stockings by the fireplace to dry. The gold coins dropped into the stockings, one bag for each daughter. In the morning, they awoke to find enough money to make them each a generous dowry, and in time all married well and happily.

As word of Saint Nicholas's generosity spread, others began to hang their stockings by the fireplace, hoping for a similar gift....

Nowadays in place of gold we often see instead a much more affordable and practical gift: fresh oranges, pushed deep down into the toe of the stocking -- a refreshing taste of bright citrus sunshine to be savored in the midst of the midwinter darkness.

But what about the other half of the legend? -- the gift of coal to children who have been naughty. This part of the story seems to have originated in Sicily, in the tale of the so-called “Christmas Witch” La Befana, who according to tradition travels the world on her broomstick for the Feast of the Epiphany or Twelfth Night, searching for the Christ Child and leaving gifts of candy and toys (and sometimes coal) in the homes of every child she visits.

As the legend is told, La Befana was a widow living in a cottage on the outskirts of Bethlehem on the original Christmas Eve, where twelve days later a caravan led by three Kings from the East passed by and asked for directions into the city. They invited Befana to join them, but she begged off, claiming she had too much housework to do. But almost as soon as they had left she began to regret her decision. So later that evening she packed a bag with a few things that had belonged to her own child (for gifts), and set out to follow the Wise Men from the East.

But try as she might she could not find them, or the baby of whom they had spoken. And so for centuries she has wandered the world in pursuit of this elusive goal. And then one year, she noticed inside of a church, right there on the altar, a stable filled with all sorts of animals, and standing nearby were the Kings and some shepherds and angels, and then there in the center a young mother and her husband looking down in adoration at a manger made up into a child’s crib. But as she moved in closer to get a better look, Befana suddenly realized that the crib was empty, and that the figures she had been admiring were all simply statues. And so she sat down right there on the steps of the church and began to weep. The story continues:

[and] when she looked up again the church was empty. She thought she heard the figures laughing, but laughing so kindly that she didn't feel a bit hurt, and the old King beckoned her to approach. Then the man who was nearest to the Mother and Child, he whom the shepherds had seen watching the entrance to the cave, turned toward her. "Poor old Befana," he said, "you have been searching for a very long while but you are just a little mistaken. You want to find the Bambino Gesu as He was that night in Bethlehem when the angels sang in the sky, but that cannot be. The Christ Child cannot now be found in one human child, but in all children; He is in each one to whom you give your gifts, for the One dwells in the many, and the searching never ends nor does the finding. Your place is not here, but among all living children." And the laughter ceased, Saint Joseph and the King fell back into their fixed positions and La Befana hurried away quite happily for she remembered how many children were still waiting for her.... [http://santasletterbox.net/befana.html]

So this explains another part of the legend. But why the coal, and how does she know about who to give it to in the first place? It’s not as if she’s keeping a list, like Santa Claus himself, or his British counterpart Father Christmas. And it may well be that we have misread this portion of the legend. La Befana is said to have a preferential bias toward the poor, and that the greater the level of poverty she encounters, the more compassion she feels, and the more she leaves in the way of gifts. In this context, “Nice” children typically want for nothing: a little fruit, some sweets, a small toy and they are satisfied. It is only the “naughty” children -- those children whose families have nothing and who are therefore in need of everything -- who might appreciate a gift of coal as well as food, so that there might at least be a fire in the hearth, even when there are no stockings to hang by the chimney with care....

Strictly speaking, “Naughty” does not really mean “bad” at all. And “nice” does not necessarily mean “good” either. There are plenty of supposedly “nice” people who are capable of performing great evil when left to their own devices, whereas “naughty” means most precisely having “nought” or nothing. Strictly speaking, naughty children are children who are a little mischievous or disobedient, who push the boundaries of “acceptable “ behavior because “when you ain’t got nuthin’ ya ain’t got nuthin’ ta lose.” Naughty adults are typically those whose attitudes and activities might be considered a little improper, indecent, or even “immoral” by more polite society, whose appreciation of the nicer things in life sometimes trumps every other consideration.

But even more importantly, it’s not just which list you’re on, but WHOSE list that really matters. There are lots of different lists floating around out there, on some of which it is a privilege to be listed, while others you want to try to avoid so far as is humanly possible. Take, for example, the simple difference between being on a “no call” list and a “no fly” list. One of those is going to protect you from a lot of unwanted and intrusive telephone solicitations. The other is almost certain to disrupt your plans or (at the very least) ruin your vacation at a time when you can least afford the hassle.

Furthermore, many times it is impossible for us to know that we are even on a list at all, yet our powerful, computerized list-keeping technology now makes it possible to keep track of almost everything and every one: from the kinds of books we buy or the breakfast cereals we eat to who we gave money to in the last election, and how much. For those of us who are unaccustomed to such high levels of scrutiny, the mere existence of these lists alone can feel very intimidating. And even those of us who have come to accept the reality of these lists as part of the price of 21st century living can feel a little uncomfortable about who is keeping track of our personal information, and whether or not they can really be trusted with such a list.

And then finally, there are the lists we keep ourselves, and the judgments they imply regarding our own opinions of Naughty or Nice. We all keep lists like this somewhere, either formally or somewhere in the back of our head. What we like, and what we dislike; what we value, who we can trust, the things we would like to accomplish in our lives before our lives are over -- the so-called “Bucket List -- or simply a good list of the things we would like To Do today. Sometimes these lists can grow as elaborate as the tasks themselves, while some of the most important lists I have ever made were scribbled down on a paper napkin, or the back of a used envelope. Our lists reflect our values but they also reflect our prejudices -- the things we have made judgments about in advance, and yet hopefully remain curious enough about that we might find the ability to change our minds if the circumstances warrant it. Some things might not be as naughty as at first we thought. They might actually turn out to be kind of nice.

But I hope that sometime in these next few weeks between now and the beginning of the New Year, in between our shopping lists and our “To Do” lists and whatever other lists we may feel the need to keep in this season, that we will each take a moment or two to make a list of the things we truly value: those things that are inherently worthy of our attention, and devotion, and support, and to which we are willing to contribute a significant portion of our “life energy.” It doesn’t have to be an elaborate list. You can write it on an envelope, or a napkin, or even somewhere here on your Order of Service if you can find the room!). But do write it down -- and then contemplate it routinely, until it time it becomes as well a list written upon your heart....

A Living Faith

2008-11-16T18:35:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine,
Sunday November 16, 2008

I thought I’d start out this morning by sharing one of my favorite stories from Divinity School, which I noticed that Barack Obama was also telling this past summer out on the Campaign trail.

A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street one morning when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.”

The chicken says to the pig, “you know, you and I should get together and do something like this ourselves.”

And the pig replies “that’s easy for you to say. For you, it’s just a donation. For me it’s a life commitment.”

OK, here’s another variation. A chicken and a pig were out walking down the street when they came to a diner with a sign in the window that said “Breakfast Anytime.” So they went inside and ordered French Toast...in the Renaissance.... [Get it? Anytime... In the Renaissance....]

I feel very strongly that laughter is an essential element of a healthy human spirituality. We all need to be reminded from time to time not to take ourselves too seriously, to keep our grandiose pretensions in balance, and to remember that sometimes the universe surprises us in ways we can’t avoid or control, and which make a mockery of all our attempts to do so. And this is true even when (and maybe even especially when) the world doesn’t seem to give us much to laugh about. Wars and riots and earthquakes and hurricanes, a stock-market crisis and the threat of an economic depression.... So much suffering, and so little we seem to be able to do about it. Our contributions seem like only a drop in the bucket, and even if we were to commit our entire lives to the cause, it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough. Nor do we really have the option of simply walking through an open door and emerging in in a better place and time, no matter how much we may daydream about enjoying French Toast in the Renaissance.

Yet the temptation of attempting to to seal ourselves off from the unwelcome intrusions of the wider world is almost as overwhelming as the events themselves, especially in moments like this, when the entire foundation on which our society has been built no longer seems trustworthy. At times it seems to me as if our entire social economy these days is built around this seductive fantasy: that if we could just somehow acquire enough power, if we could just somehow acquire enough wealth and status and worldly “success,” we might also somehow insulate ourselves behind high walls and locked gates from all life’s suffering and the misery of the world.

Personally, I’ve never been wealthy or powerful enough to know firsthand whether or not this is true, but I kind of doubt it, and everything I’ve ever read on the subject tends to make me skeptical. Wealth (and more to the point, the power that comes with it) can obviously buy a certain degree of physical comfort and security, and perhaps even a measure of envy and respect from one’s less-fortunate neighbors (emotions which unfortunately lead just as often to resentment as they do to admiration). But the obsessive urge to acquire more and more beyond a certain level of safety and comfort might easily be considered a form of mental illness, especially if it done at the expense of the more fundamental social relationships with friends, family, and neighbors which ultimately make life itself both rewarding and meaningful.

Figuring out “how much is enough” is one of those problems that everyone should have. Yet I don’t want to make light of it either. The challenge of balancing our ambitions for worldly success with the spiritual wisdom that teaches us simply “to be the change we hope to see,” and to LIVE our faith rather than merely “believing” it, is a difficult one. It’s more than just an inability to distinguish between our “wants” and our “needs.”’ Rather, this challenge reflects a need to differentiate between our natural but often unhealthy desires to achieve, to acquire, and even to dominate, and the equally-powerful human aspirations to create, to understand, to love and be loved, to achieve inner peace, and perhaps even leave a lasting and meaningful legacy that will endure beyond our lifetimes.

These are the qualities that mark the difference between a life that is only self-serving, and life devoted to the service of others. It’s not just a matter of choosing between selfishness and selflessness. Rather, it’s the recognition that our own happiness is ultimately best served through a life that looks beyond ourselves alone to the safety and prosperity and happiness of others as well. It really is just that simple. And yet how quickly and easily we come to forget it when events in the world around us make us feel anxious and afraid, and our individual efforts to change things for the better seem futile and hopeless.

The subject of altruism -- an unselfish concern for the welfare of others -- is something of interest not only to ethicists and theologians, but also biologists. One of the reasons that 19th century evangelical Christians like William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) were so opposed to the teaching of evolution in schools was their belief that the philosophy of Social Darwinism, with its soulless doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” tended to undermine more traditional religious teachings about compassion for the poor. Ironic when you pause to think about how these respective ideologies have evolved in our own day, especially in terms of the blind faith so many prominent evangelical Christians now seem to place in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market.

When I was a freshman at the University of Washington, I had a biology teacher who was determined to convince us that, in the natural world, so-called examples of real altruism were merely myths, and that animals always instinctively act in their own genetic self-interest. I especially remember him explaining how one of the classical examples of animal altruism from the ancient world, the famous stories about dolphins who rescued shipwrecked mariners from drowning by keeping them afloat and assisting them to shore, was actually just an anthropomorphic misinterpretation of the natural playfulness of these intelligent marine mammals. “We’ll never really know,” he told our class one morning, “how many shipwrecked Greek sailors were almost safely to the beach when a group of dolphins swam along and pushed them out to sea again.”

But it turns out that my freshman biology professor didn’t have it entirely correct either. Many intelligent social animals -- not just dolphins, but also apes, and dogs, and even rats, for example -- demonstrate a fairly well-developed sense of empathy, and at times behave in ways that might even be considered compassionate. Yet these same abilities also make them capable of organized and premeditated violent aggression, as well as acting with both self-sacrificing courage, and self-centered cowardice. “Intelligent” animals can be both generous and duplicitous, both kind and cruel. So it would appear that the so-called “Natural” world is actually a lot more complicated than perhaps at first we thought. And the great insight of biology for theology and social ethics is not so much that human are no different than other animals in our struggle for survival, but rather that, in many ways some animals (at least) are little different from us.

But returning for a moment to the realm of human ethics, Altruism might best be described as coming in at least three distinct “flavors.” The first of these is generally characterized as Enlightened Self-Interest, in which our generous good works also contribute to a greater good from which either we or those close to us also benefit. The second consists of the proverbial “Random Acts of Kindness” where our good deeds may not necessarily benefit us directly, but they don’t really cost us much either. And the third is the genuinely self-sacrificial, that “last full measure of devotion” which we praise so profoundly as a society at times like Veterans Day, and for which we reserve our highest public praise and honor. Biologists may be skeptical, but community, society, even civilization itself, all depend upon a certain degree of altruism -- a spirit of public service in which individuals do not merely seek to serve their own self-interests (whether enlightened or merely avaricious,) but also commit themselves to serving the greater good as well. True Community is built upon a foundation of reciprocal obligation and mutual trust, and without these basic principles of altruistic behavior- “do unto others as you would have others do unto you - Civil Society truly does DE-volve into the law of the jungle, and a Hobbesean war of all against all.

The Ideals of public service and nobless oblige are deeply rooted in both the Universalist and the Unitarian traditions. The Scripture teaches that “from everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded;” and back in the 19th century both Universalist farmers and Unitarian merchants and mill owners took these prescriptions very much to heart. Yet “Christian Charity” was not considered merely an activity for the well-to-do. The “genteel poverty” of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with its family values of service, duty, sacrifice, and love of neighbor, reflects an understanding of “a Living Faith” which places our ability to do good for others squarely at the center of our own self-worth, regardless of our family’s net worth. But my favorite statement of this 19th century “commandment” that faith must be lived in order to become real is the motto of Edward Everett Hale’s “Lend a Hand” Club (which we read to open the service this morning). “I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
These notions of service and usefulness were also intimately connected to the idea of Character, and to the traditional religious doctrine of Vocation. The belief that every individual not only has a general but also a specific “calling” from God -- a potential, a destiny, which is uniquely our own and which it is our duty to fulfill -- is a persistent theme in American religious life, from the days of the Puritans down to our own. Yet sometimes this encouragement to “follow our bliss” becomes disconnected from the more basic responsibilities of love of God and love of neighbor. People find their identity as much in their relationship to a community as they do from the introspective examination of their own souls. Who we are and what we do not only reflect one another, they also shape and define one another, as we grow over time into the individuals our Creator intends for us to be.

In its most basic form, a “Living Faith” is one that expresses our most fundamental beliefs, values, principles and aspirations in every little thing we say and do. It sounds simple, and in many ways, it is. But it is also a challenge that can occupy an entire lifetime....

***
READING: [by Anonymous]

If you can start the day without caffeine;
If you can always be cheerful,
ignoring aches and pains.
If you can resist complaining,
and boring people with your troubles.
If you can eat the same food every day
and still be grateful for it.

If you can understand when your loved ones
are too busy to give you any time.
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
And overlook those times when those you love
take it out on you when,
through no fault of yours,
something goes amiss.

If you can ignore a friend's limited education
and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend
better than a poor one,
If you can face the world
without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension
without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can honestly say that deep in your heart
you harbor no prejudice
against creed, color, religion or politics....

Then, my friend, you are almost as good a person as your dog!

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

2008-10-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 19th, 20008

OPENING WORDS:
“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

All my life, ever since I was a little boy and for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by maps. I’m not sure how or why I became so fascinated, but I suspect it had something to do with the large, free-standing globe next to my grandfather’s chair in the front room of their modest Seattle bungalow, and the hundreds of National Geographic magazines that were carefully shelved in chronological order behind it. A good map is an amazing thing (and even bad ones have their uses). They can take us anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. They can take us back in history to show us how other people lived their lives in times before us; or into the future, say, to predict the outcome of an upcoming election. Electronic maps like Mapquest or Google Earth can give us turn-by-turn driving directions to any location in the database, or show us satellite photographs of virtually any location in the world, in what seems like real-time. Maps can even take us to other worlds: to places like Middle Earth, or Treasure Island, or “over the rainbow” to Oz. It’s no wonder that I should have become so fascinated with them when I was younger, and that this fascination has continued now well into middle age.

Yet those of us who love maps most also quickly discover that “the map is not the territory.” And this is particularly true as we begin to map out the course of our own lives. It’s nice to know the geography of where we’ve been, and the road to where we want to go: which turns to take and how long it’s going to take us to get there traveling at a certain speed over a certain distance. But nothing in real life is ever quite that certain. Perhaps you’re familiar with the old saying: if you want to hear God laugh, tell her your plans. If you actually want to get from where you are now to whatever destination you’ve chosen for yourself, you have to fold up the map, put it in your pocket, get up out of your chair and go. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our maps can guide us; they can even inspire us, and give us hope and confidence. But the map can’t make the journey for us. We can trace the route with our finger, but we have to walk it with our feet.

Of course, my favorite maps of all are still generally of places where “you can’t get there from here.” These maps are often beautifully illuminated, and contain interesting illustrations and legends around the margins: annotations like Terra Incognita and “Here There Be Dragons” -- the unknown territory where mythical, magical creatures dwell, magnificent creatures who challenge us to explore beyond the same limits of the familiar landscape.

I’ve never seen a real dragon, but I’ve certainly read a lot about them, and seen plenty of pictures of dragons from every corner of the globe. There are some who say that dragons are simply a superstition left over from times when human beings weren’t as knowledgeable as we are today. Others say that they are mythological creatures, who represent metaphorically our collective fear of the unknown, that uncharted territory where no one has ever gone before, and unknown dangers may well await us around every turn.

But I sometimes wonder whether Dragons might just be more real than we think -- and that just because they are figments of our imagination doesn’t necessarily make them any less interesting...or less dangerous.

There are legends about dragons in just about every human culture and society we know of. Perhaps the earliest is the dragon Tiamat from the Babylonian Creation Epic the Eunuma Elish, who was slain by the culture hero Marduk and then reshaped to form the world we know today. Or from the other side of the world, the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl and turquoise “fire serpent” Xiuhcoatl of the Aztecs.

A little closer to home (at least culturally), we have the Draca Wyrm (who both slew and was slain by Beowulf), and Fafnir the evil and avaricious dwarf turned dragon through his own acquisitive greed, slain first by Sigurd in the Volsung Saga, and then twice later on by Siegfried in “Das Nibelungenlied” and “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” Not to mention the unnamed dragon slain by Saint George on his way home from the Crusades, and of course many, many others of both legend and literature.

Even Satan makes a cameo appearance as a Great Red Dragon in the book of Revelation, (although there are some who would say that he was also a Dragon in the Garden of Eden, before God took away his legs and made him crawl upon his belly in the dust). And the Chinese have more dragons than they know what to do with: creatures virtually identical in physical appearance to the dragons we know here in the West, but with VERY different personalities.

But if dragons really are just “Make Believe,” how do we explain the cultural ubiquity of dragons in societies which until relatively recent times have had very little knowledge of one another? Why would the Babylonians, the Aztecs, the Chinese and those old Norse Vikings all imagine the same flying, fire-breathing, rapacious snake-like predator, whose razor-sharp claws are capable of slicing through human flesh as if it were so much lunch meat, and whose armor-like scales make them all but impervious to most pre-industrial human weaponry?

There have been lots of theories put forward, including challenges to the premise that dragons are really all that cross-culturally ubiquitous in the first place. But one of the most interesting is a hypothesis suggested by anthropologist David E. Jones in his book An Instinct for Dragons, in which he claims that dragons represent a residual, instinctive fear, hardwired into our limbic system, of the principal predators (namely snakes, hawks, and big cats) who fed upon our distant biological ancestors as we were evolving as a species: a fear which goes back not only to before the start of human history, but before the beginning of “humanity” itself.

Combining the wings and talons of an eagle with the claws and teeth of a leopard and the tail of a python, dragons represent and symbolize our subconscious, non-rational, instinctive fear of becoming someone’s lunch -- as well as the essential feelings of helplessness and powerlessness which accompany that precognitive sense of vulnerability and victimization. Dragons represent and symbolize our visceral fear of a malevolent power which is both beyond our control and can strike us down at any time without warning. And thus (at least here in the West) they have come to represent not only great power and great danger, but also great appetite: greed, avarice, the insatiable desire to acquire and hoard more and more, without any real sense of need or limitation.

Here’s a little more dragon lore. It is natural, at least in our culture, for us to associate dragons with fire; they do, after all, breath the stuff, and thus fire can be seen as a perfect metaphorical manifestation of a dragon’s reckless and indiscriminate power to destroy. But in many other cultures, dragons have generally been more closely associated with water, and with the destructive power of the ocean, and of storms. And when we toss in their ability to fly, and their penchant for gold, and gems, and other precious stones and metals, it becomes clear that dragons actually embody all four of the ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. What makes Dragons dangerous is not so much the source of their power as its completely random unpredictability. Dragons are chaos incarnate. They represent not only our fear of the unknown, but of the unknowable -- those elements of our human experience which can neither be predicted nor controlled.

A little earlier this morning I mentioned that Chinese dragons look an awful lot like their European cousins, but they actually have very different personalities. Chinese dragons still symbolize great wealth and great power. But they embody as well a sense of prosperity, abundance, and good fortune. Chinese Dragons can be vain, but they are also wise -- as well as bold, heroic, noble, energetic, decisive, optimistic and intelligent creatures, whose ambitions and appetites are far more sophisticated than those of their European counterparts. In Chinese folklore Dragons are closely associated with the Imperial House, and those born in the Year of the Dragon are thought to enjoy superior health, wealth, and long life. Chinese dragons are still capable of great destruction. But they prefer to use their powers to protect and bless those who honor and respect them....

Here There Be Dragons....

“He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?...”

“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord....”

There will always be unexplored territory around the margins of our lives, where dragons and other imaginary creatures make their homes and frighten us with the threat of the unknown, and ultimately unknowable. The question is not so much whether we will ever master those dangers: Dragons have no masters. The question is whether we can master our own fear of being eaten alive long enough to learn from the wisdom of Dragons, whose avarice and cruelty have made them hunted monsters in the folklore of the West, but whose kindness and generosity have inspired human beings to worship them as deities in the Far East....

Here There Be Dragons....

It helps to have a good map before setting out on any journey. It helps to know your destination, and to be aware of what lies upon your way, and to have a good inventory of the equipment you bring with you. But ultimately, the most important discoveries that await us in our traveling never show up on any map, and it is impossible to prepare for every contingency. So we need to learn how to trust our own inner resources, and to rely upon the help of both neighbors and strangers alike; to find our bearings again when we stray off course, and to read that “inner compass” which keeps us true to our own best selves....

Here There Be Dragons....

Ultimately, the most important place we discover on our journey through life is not a place “out there.” It is rather a place “in here” -- that special place “where our own deep yearning meets the world’s great need,” and our desire for personal achievement, and our ability to be of use, come together in often unexpected and even magical sorts of ways. And then we know, in our heart of hearts, that we have become the kind of people our creator intends for us to be, and that our journey, and our destination, are the same....

READING:

[In her novel The Tombs of Atuan, the second in her award-winning “Earthsea” series, fantasy writer Ursula K. LeGuin tells the story of the Wizard “Sparrowhawk,” the Archmage of Roke, who travels to the island of Atuan in order to steal the lost half of the broken amulet of Erreth-Akbe from the underground labyrinth there. But his powers fail him, and he becomes a prisoner of the Priestess of the Labyrinth, a teenaged girl known only as Arha or “the Eaten One,” who secretly keeps him alive in defiance of her superiors in order to learn more about the world beyond the walls of the temple, which in fact now imprison them both.]

“Who was Erreth-Akbe?” she said, sly.

He looked up at her. He said nothing, but he grinned a little. Then as if on second thoughts he said, “it’s true you would know little of him here. Nothing beyond his coming to the Kargish lands, perhaps. And how much of that tale do you know?”

“That he lost his sorcerer’s staff and his amulet and his power -- like you,” she answered. He escaped from the High Priest and fled into the west, and dragons killed him. But if he’d come here to the Tombs, there had been no need of dragons.”

“True enough,” said her prisoner.

She wanted no more talk of Erreth-Akbe, sensing a danger in the subject. “He was a dragonlord, they say. And you say you’re one. Tell me, what is a dragonlord?”

Her tone was always jeering, his answers direct and plain, as if he took her questions in good faith.

“One whom the dragons will speak with,” he said, “that is a dragonlord, or at least that is the center of the matter. It’s not a trick of mastering the dragons, as most people think. Dragons have no masters. The question is always the same, with a dragon: will he talk with you or will he eat you? If you can count upon his doing the former, and not doing the latter, why then you’re a dragonlord.”

“Dragons can speak?”

“Surely! In the Eldest Tongue, the language we men learn so hard and use so brokenly, to make our spells of magic and of patterning. No man knows all that language, or a tenth of it. He has not time to learn it. But dragons live a thousand years.... They are worth talking to, as you might guess....”

“TO CROSS THE WIDE, WILD OCEAN”

2008-10-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Sunday October 12, 2008

****
OPENING WORDS:

I am standing on the sea shore,

A ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.

She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her Till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says: “She is gone.”

Gone! Where?

Gone from my sight - that is all.

She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her.

And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.

The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone,” there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout: “There she comes”

-- and that is dying.

An horizon and just the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further. --Bishop Charles Henry Brent 1862 - 1926

************

I know this may come as a surprise to many of you given everything I’ve just read, but I never really cared that much for dogs when I was younger. I always saw myself as more of a cat person. In fact, when I was a teenager, I figured that you could pretty much divide up the entire world according to these two categories. Cat people were graceful and free and independent, while dog people were sort of dull and stupid and noisy. Cat people went on to become artists and poets and musicians and (of course) sailors, while dog people owned “stinkpots,” and became cops and used car salesmen and Junior High School Vice Principals. Cat people liked to do their own thing, and go their own way, and mind their own business; while dog people were always sniffing around (and sticking their noses in where they really didn’t belong), digging things up, barking for attention, slobbering EVERYWHERE, and generally hounding us cat people up a tree.

My father was a dog person. As those of you who have met him may already know, when I was growing up my father worked as a regional sales manager for a large pharmaceutical company; and then later in his career became a sales trainer and process improvement consultant for several different large, multinational corporations. He knew how to sit up and fetch and roll over and shake hands, and qualities like loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience were very important to him. I didn't really appreciate that when I was a teenager. I just thought it was rather ridiculous of him to try to get a cat like me to wear a leash like his.

Of course, now that I am older (and have been the parent of two teenaged children of my own), I understand these things a lot better. And my estimation of cats has fallen considerably in that time. They say that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but in my experience you can't teach a cat of any age much of anything at all, except maybe when to eat and where to excrete, two things that most dogs learn far more quickly than do human children. The reason that curiosity killed the cat was that the cat was too stupid to get out of harm's way. No dog that I've ever known has managed to get itself stuck up a tree and out on a limb, unable to get down of its own volition!

Dogs are courageous where cats are cowardly; dogs are affectionate where cats are aloof; dogs come when they're called and stay where they're told and only very rarely bite the hand that feeds them. There are some archeologists who estimate that dogs have been part of human society for as long as 25,000 years, and all 400-plus breeds you see today are still members of a single species. A cat may occasionally catch a bothersome rodent and deposit it in your bed where you'll be sure to find it and appreciate it most first thing in the morning; but dogs can be trained to bring you your slippers and your newspaper, to protect your home from intruders, to guide the blind, herd sheep, hunt ducks, and do hundreds of other useful jobs in exchange for their bed and board.

Of course, I'm speaking of dogs in general now; not all dogs live up to the promise of their species. And unlike my good friend and Harvard classmate Gary Kowalski, I'm not quite ready yet to ordain dogs to the ministry, whatever their virtues as spiritual advisors. "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine" saith the Scripture. I don’t know about you, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable about going for counseling to a therapist who growled, barked, whimpered and whined for a fifty-minute hour, and then licked my face when the session was over. A dog may well be "a man's best friend," but somebody has got to draw the line somewhere!

Actually, my dog, The Adorable Parker, although named for a famous 19th-century Unitarian theologian, possessed very few of the spiritual qualities enumerated by Gary. But compared to her predecessors, Calvin and Luther, she was a saint! Those two “Big Dawgs” certainly had healthy enough appetites, liked to exercise, and got at least eight hours of sleep a day (usually on the couch); but they lived for junk food (pizza was their favorite), and one Christmas they stole a 20 pound turkey out of our kitchen where it was thawing overnight. Of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, anger, dejection, avarice, gluttony, and lust — I knew them to be relatively free only of the last, and that due to a surgical procedure performed by the veterinarian when they were still puppies, and not because of any special piety on their part.

Over the years, my dogs have proven amiable enough companions: loyal, friendly, and reasonably obedient if I'm there to keep an eye on them; but they were hardly saints, and even Parker loved nothing better than to tear through the garbage in search of a tasty tidbit the moment I let her out of my sight.

Martin Luther once wished that he "could only pray the way this dog looks at meat;" while the 17th century English metaphysical poet George Herbert insightfully noted that "He who lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas." Samuel Butler observed that "The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too."

Yet perhaps no one learned more about life from dogs than the "dog philosopher" himself, Diogenes of Sinope, the original Cynic, whose philosophy of cynicism takes its name from the Greek word for dog. Diogenes believed that one could obtain spiritual liberation by minimizing one's physical needs and freeing oneself from the foolish pleasures and conventions of society. In this respect, he was very much like Henry David Thoreau, who in his day was sometimes called the “Diogenes of Concord,” and who learned to measure his own wealth by the things he could afford to do without.

But Diogenes went far beyond Thoreau in his effort to achieve self-realization through the rejection of the "artificial" values of human society. He literally lived like a dog in a tub on the outskirts of Corinth, where his acerbic criticism of pretense and vanity soon gained him quite a reputation throughout Greece. It is said that Diogenes was once visited by the Epicurean philosopher Aristippus, who through his skill at flattery had earned himself a comfortable place at the court of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. Seeing Diogenes preparing a meager meal of lentils, Aristippus told him "if you would only learn to [pay a] compliment, you wouldn't have to live on lentils." "And if you would only learn to live on lentils, you wouldn't have to flatter Dionysius," retorted the Cynic.

Alexander the Great likewise sought out Diogenes, and found him sunning himself, just as a dog might, there near his tub on the outskirts of town. When Alexander asked whether there was any way which he, the conqueror of the known world, might serve the philosopher, Diogenes asked him to "Stand out of my sun." But when Alexander's entourage began to ridicule the Cynic, Alexander reportedly silenced them with the comment "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

In yet another story, Alexander comes upon Diogenes examining a heap of human bones. "What are you looking for?" the king inquires. "I am looking for the bones of your father," replies the Cynic, "but I cannot distinguish them from those of his slaves."

Nowadays we think of Cynicism as that attitude which sees the worst in every situation, which questions the sincerity of people's motives, sneers at the hint of goodness or compassion, and assumes that most folks act out of their own narrow self-interest, with little concern for the happiness or well-being of those around them. To the cynic all politicians are liars, all businessmen are crooks, (I hesitate to repeat the things they say about the clergy); and anyone who believes otherwise is a fool, deserving of whatever injustice they may suffer.

Yet dogs, as a rule, are loyal, honest, trusting creatures, eager to please and devoted to a fault, whatever cynical motives we may attribute to them. I can't really blame them for preferring Pizza to Purina or the the living room couch to a crate in the garage; I suspect I'd feel exactly the same way if the choice were left to me. What is truly amazing about dogs is their capacity for near-unconditional love, an instinctive affection for human kind engraved upon their souls by ten thousand years of breeding and training. A dog WANTS to love its owner, more than anything else in the world, and will often do so in defiance of its own best interests.

Calvin came into our household as a death camp survivor, literally rescued from the Midland County Pound seconds before he was scheduled to be euthanized. An AKC registered Weimaraner who had been badly abused by its previous owners, and then abandoned when they moved away, he was a good twenty to thirty pounds underweight when he came to live with us -- his ribs were clearly visible beneath his flesh, and a mere movement of the hand was enough to send him cowering in a corner. He barked all night, he peed in the house, he chewed up everything he could get his teeth on; but his one great fear was the fear of being abandoned again, and once that fear was set at ease, as we fattened him up with scraps from our table and allowed him to sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed, he became as devoted a house pet as anyone could ask for.

Luther had a slightly different story. Luther was what you might call a "puppy of a lesser dog" — a congenitally deaf Dalmatian who somehow managed to turn his head at precisely the moment the veterinarian snapped his fingers, and thus escaped the fate which ordinarily awaits "defective" purebred dogs. It's tempting, I suppose, to feel pity for Luther, living as he did in a silent world all his own. But being deaf wasn’t something that Luther generally lost any sleep over; as far as he was concerned, he was just another dog, who didn’t know or care much about what he might have been missing. And he didn’t miss much, at least not in the way of trouble: he could bark and chew and dig and strew garbage with the best of them. Moreover, sirens, thunderstorms, and Fourth of July firecrackers were no big deal for that hearing-impaired canine; and I swear he could smell the Pizza truck coming up the street long before Calvin heard it pull into our driveway.

Parker was, is, and in many ways shall always be my “forever dog." A “pet-quality” Boston Terrier (although we sometimes refered to her as a Boston Terroist), whose non-standard markings imperfect gait had likewise caused her to be rejected by her original owners, in many ways she represented to us the best of all possible worlds: a cat-sized critter with the heart and personality of a full-sized Canis Lupus Familiaris. For over thirteen years she was my near-constant companion: we slept in the same bed, often ate from the same plate (only after I was FINISHED, of course), and for many years pretty much spent every waking moment together (which sounds a lot more impressive than it was, considering the amount of time she slept). I loved her as a puppy; learned to appreciate her more fully as a fully-grown dog; and in her final days she taught me once again the essential truth of Forrest Church’s definition of religion as ‘our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.”

She reminded me as well of Forrest’s more trenchant theological observation (which I have quoted now at practically every Memorial Service I have conducted since I first read it more than a decade ago), that “knowing that we are going to die not only places an acknowledged limit on our lives, it also lends a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love. The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love the more we risk losing. Love’s power comes in part from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: spouses, children, parents, dear and cherished friends, [of course, dogs...] even life itself. It also comes from the faith required to sustain that courage, the faith that life, howsoever limited and mysterious, contains at its margins, often at their very edges, a meaning that is redemptive.”

Proverbs 26:11 reads "Like a dog that returns to his own vomit is the fool that repeats his folly." Yet as unappetizing as it may sound, this is precisely the genius of dogs: their eagerness to please, the tenacity of their love, their willingness to try again and again to do what is asked them in exchange for the smallest token of our affection. The cynics may find this a foolish virtue, but within it, perhaps, lies a lesson for the spirit: a lesson in loyalty, discipline, tenacity and obedience which leads to a larger liberty of the soul, a tolerance for difference and diversity, the courage to devote ourselves to that which is not ours to keep, and a reward of unconditional acceptance that transcends the limits of our understanding, yet still awakens deep within us our own capacity for love.

READING(S)

[I’ve known Gary Kowalski for about 30 years now; he was a classmate of mine at the Harvard Divinity School, and currently serves as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington Vermont. He is without a doubt one of the smartest people I’ve ever known; in fact, I sometimes like to joke that I have only had three good ideas in my lifetime, and that two of them started out as Gary’s. In addition to his work as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Gary has also developed a whole second career as an author and an animal rights activist. Two of his books in particular touch on my topic for today: Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet is the 7th-best selling book in its catagory at Amazon this week, while his earlier book The Souls of Animals is now in a second edition, and contains a widely-quoted passage about the virtues of dogs as spiritual advisors which has always been a particular favorite of mine. But even before Gary published that book, I’d seen (and saved) an earlier draft of that particular passage from one of his church newsletter columns, and since we have a little extra time today, I thought I’d read them both....]

CLICK HERE TO LINK TO GARY'S BLOG, "REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS"

from The Souls of Animals by Gary Kowalski

My dog has deep knowledge to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn’t hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired. He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that human beings would do well to emulate.

Chinook does have his failings, of course. He’s afraid of firecrackers and hides in the clothes closet whenever we run the vacuum cleaner, but unlike me he’s not afraid of what other people think of him or anxious about his public image. He barks at the mail carrier and the newsboy, but in contrast with some people I know he never growls at the children or barks at his wife.

So my dog is a sort of guru. When I become too serious and preoccupied, he reminds me of the importance of frolicking and play. When I get too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds me of the importance of exercising and caring for my body. On his own canine level, he shows me that it might be possible to live without inner conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine, and glad to be alive.

“FROM THE STUDY” by Gary Kowalski

My dog is my therapist and my spiritual advisor. He models healthy values for me. He has a sound appetite, gets plenty of exercise, and sleeps at least eight hours a day. He doesn't drink or smoke. He makes friends easily, doesn't carry a grudge, and has a healthy and uninhibited expression of sexual needs. He doesn't eat junk food. He doesn't worry excessively or hang on to regrets, but pretty much takes each day as it comes. He doesn't know the meaning of life, but he enjoys almost every minute of it.

I believe the essentials required for happiness are not too complicated: nutritious food, fresh air, going for walks, and someone to pat us on the tail when we go to sleep at night. These basics are within the reach of most people. If you're seeking a fulfillment that eludes you consider: contentment may be a bone buried in your own back yard.

SALVATION BY...BIBLIOGRAPHY?

2008-09-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 28th, 2008

Opening Words: from the Tao Te Ching

Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.

***
[Extemporaneous Introduction]

As I mentioned a little earlier, this is Banned Books Week, which is always a good time to check in to see how I’m doing. On the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most Frequently Challenged Books of the 90’s, I’ve sad to say I’ve only read a total of 40 -- although my total would probably be a lot higher if I still had school-aged children around the house, or was a bigger fan of Stephen King’s. I do a little better with the Pelham Public Library’s Fahrenheit 451 Banned Book Club Reading list for 2008 -- 81 out of 175. But when I finally got around to that classic list of the Standard Sixty-Five Banned Books of All Time (you know, the one that starts out with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and finishes up with Ulysses Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Wrinkle in Time) I found I had read all or part of all but seven.

Which I guess just goes to show that not all banned books are really worthy of being read. Some of these titles remind me a lot of a review written by Dorothy Parker about a now long- (and probably well-) forgotten volume: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.” But the quality of the literature itself is really a secondary consideration when compared to the more fundamental “right to read” in the first place. When the act of reading itself is placed under suspicion through the use of tactics like book challenges and attempts to characterize whole catagories of literature (like Harry Potter, for instance) as “anti-religious,” then it is time for religious liberals like ourselves to step up and tell the other side of the story....

***
I also want to say just a word or two about the title of my sermon this morning -- “Salvation by Bibliography.” This is actually a turn of phrase that was first shared with me by a more-experiencced, senior colleague when I was still young and relatively new to the ministry, in an attempt to explain to me why so many UU ministers have such huge personal libraries, and why whenever someone comes to us with a problem, more often than not one of the very first things we do is recommend a book about it. It was a tongue-in-cheek remark (with a sharp edge of tooth about it), all based on an attempt to communicate to me the plain and simple truth that none of us in this line of work really feels like we are smart enough to do the job the way it really ought to be done.

And so we surround ourselves with the wisdom of the ages, hoping that perhaps some of it will rub off and sink in. Among the many other things it is, Parish Ministry is in many ways a lifetime Spiritual Discipline of Reading & Reflection, Prayerful Meditation, and Thoughtful, Contemplative Composition and Action. It is a weekly engagement, as Emerson put it, with “Life -- Life passed through the Fire of Thought;” and the DISCIPLINE of doing it every week -- or even every other week -- quickly begins to define everything else preachers say or do as living human beings.

During his own lifetime, Theodore Parker (the 19th century Unitarian minister for whom my dog is named) had a private library of some fifteen thousand volumes -- it was the largest library of its type anywhere in North America at the time, or (just for purposes of comparison) about five times as large as mine, which (as some of you know) is already overflowing the available shelf space I have to devote to it. Bibliomania is an obsession not only tolerated, but actively encouraged among Unitarian Universalist ministers, “...an innocent habit” the Rev. John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography I Speak for Myself, “to be indulged, I believe, to the limit of ambition.”

My library proliferated like a biological organism. It grew into hundreds, then into thousands of books. Each new volume, like a newborn infant, was classified and then placed upon the shelves, there to produce a little library of its own, in its own proud field of learning. Just to look at this collection of books, lined up like soldiers at drill, was to be instructed, inspired, uplifted by the discipline of imagination and order. To handle them by taking them one after another haphazardly from the shelves, if only to caress their handsome bindings, and consult afresh their learned indices, is to feel the gates of wisdom swing wide to our approach. Then there are the first editions to be sought out once again, the authors’ inscriptions and signatures to be re-examined, the classics to be consulted for fresh study and delight. “Have you read all these books, Grandpa?” asked a skeptical young miss on a certain day of intimate disclosure. “No, my dear,” was my reply, “I don’t believe I have read half of them. But I know what’s in them all, and why they are here.” I count this the real justification of the private library. To have the great books on hand, and the current books as they pass by, to be used when needed or desired!

I can also still remember the first time I ever read that passage, shortly after receiving a copy of Holmes’ autobiography as a gift from the personal library of the retired Universalist minister Tracy Pullman, when I was still a divinity student at Harvard. Tracy actually gave me two huge paper grocery sacks full of books, which I had to carry home with me on the Red Line in the dead of winter. But when I was finally able to unpack them and put them up on the shelves of my snug little room in Divinity Hall, they warmed the place better than even a fire in the grate, and made me feel cozy and at home. It was more than just a gift of paper. It was an intellectual legacy being passed down from generation to generation: an act of faith and trust that I would use those books to help me carry on the good work which Tracy had done for an entire lifetime.

It used to be that “erudition and personal piety” were the two principal criteria on which aspiring ministers were examined prior to being approbated for ordination. Nowadays we’ve changed the labels somewhat, but the baseline qualifications are still pretty much the same: an appropriate academic credential, plus good “people skills” and a somewhat vaguely-defined quality known as “ministerial presence” (which, as best I can tell, is a delicate balance of gravitas and levity which allows good clergy to take their work seriously without necessarily taking themselves TOO seriously).

Good ministers need to be sensitive, but not thin-skinned; smart but not arrogant; confident, but also humble. And since none of these combinations really comes naturally to a normal human being, it takes lots of practice and a lot of self-discipline just to get them kind of close to right. The very best ministers I know have all learned how to lead by listening, which is also why the clergy I respect the most consider it such an honor and a blessing to serve generous, tolerant, and forgiving congregations, especially early in our careers.

Like any seriously devoted religious or spiritual lifestyle, Ministry is a form of Discipleship: a specialized kind of apprenticeship, or disciplined learning, where the learner/apprentice/disciple is not only expected to master a particular body of knowledge and set of professional skills and techniques, but also to develop certain insights, personal beliefs, and ethical values to accompany those skills, as well as a profound and deeply-internalized sense of principled moral integrity -- qualities which educate the Soul as well as the Mind. Discipleship is about both Doing and Being: not just how well we perform, but who we ARE and how well we express that identity in every other aspect of our lives.

Our 19th century Unitarian and Universalist ancestors used to talk about this process of educating one’s conscience in terms of two closely related ideas. The first was the notion of “Self-Culture.” And the second was a doctrine known as “Salvation by Character.” Both of these beliefs shared the understanding that the human soul was something organic, like a flowering plant, which if properly cultivated (or “cultured”) would blossom into something at once both beautiful and useful.

The “fruit” of this process of cultivation was Character: a distinctive and essential pattern of personal attributes which embodied moral strength, self-discipline, and the various other exemplary characteristics of a principled and virtuous life. By educating the moral sentiment, through (for example) “exposure to uplifting works of literature;” and by exercising their moral fiber through acts of charity and the performance of other good works, our liberal religious forebearers attempted to transform their lives into living testaments of their religious values.

Of course, sensitivity, intelligence, confidence, humility, a thick skin and an open-minded, non-defensive attitude are not merely attractive qualities for ministers only. Together they also describe a style of spiritual wisdom which represents an important asset for any person of faith. And it’s not necessarily something that can be learned exclusively from books. Academic scholars in this field often differentiate between formal theology and what is known as “lived religion” -- the kinds of spiritual beliefs and practices which shape and inform the everyday experiences of ordinary people’s lives.

The two are obviously related, but they can also be quite distinct. You don’t need to have a graduate degree in theology in order to live an ethical and meaningful life. Most of the values by which we live our day to day lives we learned from our parents, or from our peers...from friends, family, mentors, colleagues, teachers, coaches, neighbors, perhaps even ministers...and certainly our Sunday school instructors!

These lessons may have started out in books, but now they have made their way into the very fabric of our lives and our society. Be honest. Tell the truth, and be as good as your word. Don’t take advantage of those who are weaker than you, but do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Think for a moment about what other lessons like this you have learned. Where did you learn them? And why does “reality” sometimes tempt us to compromise our “childish” or naive beliefs about right and wrong? We all know that life isn’t always fair, and that often the experience of frustration, disappointment or betrayal can leave us feeling wounded, bitter and cynical. Often we may feel that our innocence makes us vulnerable, and that we need to protect ourselves by acting in ways that we know under “normal” circumstances wouldn’t be right. But it’s EXACTLY at times like those when it takes a lot of moral courage to refrain from doing something we just know deep down in our hearts is wrong, even though we can rationalize it in our minds as necessary and justified.

For most traditional Christians, of course, discipleship is ultimately about following and imitating Jesus, and the list of uplifting books begins with the Bible. Character is formed by overcoming adversity and resisting temptation, as we grow to spiritual maturity transformed by the knowledge of the Truth that sets us Free. The 19th-century Unitarians and Universalists who practiced Self-Culture would have agreed with all of this. But they also looked for inspiration beyond just the Christian tradition, to the scriptures and sacred writings of the world’s other great faith traditions, such as the passage I read earlier this morning to open our service from the Tao Te Ching:

Cultivated in the individual,
Character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family,
Character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village,
Character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state,
Character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world,
Character will become universal.

And just as frequently, they looked within themselves, and created their own Scripture from the Law they found there written upon their hearts. Here’s one of my favorites: a brief credo written by the Reverend William Henry Channing (nephew of the much more well-known William Ellery Channing), which he titled simply “My Symphony:”

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never;
To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

And writing at roughly the same time, the then much-less-renown Henry David Thoreau composed these two lines of verse: “My Life has been the poem I would have writ/But I could not both live and utter it.”

[extemporaneous conclusion]

Flaming Chalice Images

2008-09-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

My job during the worship service this morning was to lead our "Moment for All Ages," during which each Sunday School class was presented with a new ceramic "Flaming Chalice" commissioned from a local artist. This seemed like a great opportunity both to talk a little bit about the symbolism of the Chalice, as well as share some of the history behind it. With all of the various forms and examples this symbol of our movement has taken on over the years, I'm still a sucker for this "classic" version: the off-center stylized cross with flame, bounded by two circles. The flame represents the dynamic spirit of our community, as well as the element of Fire; the chalice itself the element of Earth, and the historical traditions and institutions which ground our community and contain it in the here and now. The two circles represent the Unitarian and Universalist traditions, as well as the Arc of the Heavens and the Great Circle of the Horizon, and more specifically the remaining two elements of Air and Water respectively.

This new Chalice design, introduced just within the last few years as the official logo of the UUA, is supposed to give the symbol a little more "pop" than the earlier version, because of its simplified designs and sunburst motif. Sorry -- call me anachronistic, but I'm still a sucker for the older one.

The flaming chalice was originally commissioned by the Unitarian Service Committee during the Second World War, to assist them in their work of resettling refugees out of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Czech artist Hans Deutsch is said to have taken his inspiration from the martyrdom of the Bohemian Heretic Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415. This particular version of the flaming chalice has been the logo of the UUSC for as long as I can remember, and is one of the most familiar flaming chalice icons.

What organization do you suppose this chalice on a red maple leaf represents?

[The Canadian Unitarian Council]

I like this one -- it reminds me of a dancing person....

This Yin and Yang is also very nice.

The chalice incorporated into a peace sign...

From the UK -- Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance are indeed core values of our movement

A pink-triangle, rainbow theme chalice

Another clever chalice designed by Peter Bowden (the creator of "Alice the Chalice")

This is actually a photograph of a wrought iron chalice similar to the one used at General Assembly (or perhaps even the self-same item), and hanging on the wall behind it is a banner which, when photographed from this angle, creates the impression of an actual flame. Clever AND impressive....

A stained-glass window with a world religions theme similar to the decorations behind the pulpit at First Parish

A cake....

Or if that's too much, cookies....(You can actually purchase these cookie cutters HERE)

Two bumper stickers. One from the Church of the Larger Fellowship

And another from the UUCF. Notice how the helping hands have been added into the overall design?

The Original Hans Deutsch design

PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION

2008-09-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday September 14th, 2008

INVOCATION: Matthew 5: 43-48

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

***
[Extemporaneous Introduction] -- I just want to reassure everyone that that didn’t hurt nearly as much as it probably looked, but it still hurt a whole more than I would have liked. And I’ve been telling myself all this past week that once people had seen me climb those stairs, it wouldn’t really matter much what I had to say -- I would have made my point, and all that will be left would be to share a few folksy illustrations. Which is probably a good thing, since I think I left my manuscript down there on the table! (no, no -- I’m just kidding! )

But now that I’m up here and getting settled in, I thought I’d also draw your attention for a moment to the patch here in the ceiling to your left. Awhile back, we had leak in the slate roof which covers the Meetinghouse, which resulted in water getting down into the plaster and causing it to collapse. It’s one of those unexpected things that no one really thinks will ever happen to them, until it does happen -- and last spring the Trustees generously offered to juggle some funds around in order to have it repaired before my formal installation....

So I thought about it for awhile, and I asked them to wait. I thought it might be a good idea instead to leave the patch in place for awhile, as a visible, tangible sign, a little like the intentional flaw that is woven into every Navajo rug -- something that we might look at every week, that would remind us that despite our proud heritage and all of the history and traditions that are associated with this congregation, and the important role we have played for centuries here on the Peninsula and in the larger Portland community; and notwithstanding all of our many strengths and resources (not the least of which is all of you), we’re still not “there” yet, and we’re probably not going to be “there” any time soon.

We ARE going to repair the roof, by the way, so that it doesn’t leak again. But at the same time, I think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that in spite of all the wonderful things that DO happen here, First Parish still isn’t Perfect, not by a long ways. We also have our flaws and our shortcomings; we have many, MANY things we aspire to that are still beyond our grasp. And this will doubtlessly still be true no matter how much progress we may make toward achieving the ambitious goals we set for ourselves each year.

I also want to say just a word specifically about the title of today’s sermon. This motto, “Progress, not Perfection” was something one of my oncology nurses wrote on the white board in my room on my first day as a patient at the Gibson Center, so I basically looked out at it and reflected on it several times a day, every day, for more than a month. And in that time, I came to appreciate the wisdom of this motto in ways that are often difficult to articulate. In a very real sense, I’ve ended up trying to live this motto for the past six months, and whatever progress I’ve been able to make in that time has been grounded in the understanding that it’s NOT going to be perfect again right away...but that those little baby steps add up over time, provided one keeps on moving in the right direction.

This certainly wasn’t the first time I’d been exposed to this concept, although it is probably the most intense. And there’s even a French proverb from Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique that expresses almost the exact same sentiment: "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." A literal translation would be "The best is the enemy of good," but we might also take advantage of the vast lexicon of twenty-five cent words available to us in the English language and translate it a little more loosely as "Perfection is the Antagonist of Excellence." Or “opponent” or “adversary” or even “enemy” if your prefer... the meaning is still clear, and sometimes it cuts both ways.

Before my illness, the last time I really had to wrestle with this idea, at least in a serious way, was when I was writing my doctoral dissertation, and coming to grips with the realization that I was never going to write the PERFECT dissertation I had imagined myself writing when I had first started out, but that the BEST dissertation I could write under the circumstances (as my faculty advisor kept reminding me) was the one that could be approved if only I would turn it in.

But this was also one of those situations where the proverb was also working in the opposite direction: where “good enough” becomes the enemy of one’s own best work. Why should any of us be willing to settle for anything LESS than perfection, or at the very least the very best of which we are capable in the moment? Isn’t that kind of what the Scripture is calling us to do, when it tells us “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect?”

I’m pretty certain that just about everyone here today has struggled with these same issues in your own lives, on some level or another. When does our desire for perfection get in the way of our doing the best work we are capable of doing RIGHT NOW? When does Pride become a sin rather than an incentive to improve? How do the virtues of humility and forgiveness help us to accept not only the flaws and shortcomings of others, but our own as well?

I think it’s in this context that we need to take a little closer look at that word, “perfection,” just so that we might have a little better grasp on what it does and does not mean. One of the most common connotations of the word, for example, is “flawless.” Something is “perfect” when there is absolutely nothing wrong about it, and absolutely nothing that can be improved about it either. It’s complete; it’s “perfect.”

And yet in many ways this narrow view of perfection actually limits our understanding and can be improved upon a great deal. Short of our imaginations, where do we find ANYTHING in this world that is truly “flawless?” Or at least that cannot somehow be improved? In fact, the Greek word teleios (which we translate as “perfect”) has exactly this opposite connotation: it refers to something which is mature and therefore fulfilled, because it has reached fruition (and thus its “perfection”) only at the end of a long process of growth and maturity.

In much this same vein, the philosopher Socrates knew that he knew nothing, and that this knowledge alone made him the wisest man in Athens. Awareness of one’s own ignorance is a very precious knowledge indeed, which is no doubt why Socrates himself was also so committed to the principle “Know thyself.” And in the passage I read a moment ago from the writings of James Freeman Clarke, this notion of “perfection” becomes transmuted into an idea of Progress, or “the Continuity of Human Development” onward and upward forever.

Clarke went on to write:

The divine word, revealed in creation, embodied in Christ, immanent in the human soul, is a fuller fountain than has been believed. No creed can exhaust its meaning, no metaphysics can measure its possibility. The teaching of Jesus is not something to be outgrown; for it is not a definite system, but an ever unfolding principle. It is a germ of growth, and therefore has no finality in any of its past forms. "Of its fulness," says John, " we have all received, and grace added to grace." The Apostle Paul regarded his own knowledge of Christianity as imperfect and partial. "We know in part," said he, "and we teach in part." Christianity in the past has always had a childlike faith, which was beautiful and true. But its knowledge has also been that of a child. It has spoken as a child, it has understood as a child, it has thought as a child. This was all well while it was a child. The prattle of an infant is sweet, but in a youth or [an adult] it is an anachronism. Let us have a childlike faith, but a [mature] intelligence.... Let us endeavor to see God and nature face to face, confident that whoever is honestly seeking the truth, though [they] may err for a time, can never go wholly wrong.

Perhaps the hardest lesson I have EVER had to learn is very closely related to this insight...and it was something that I had to do wrong dozens, if not hundreds of times, before I finally figured out that “Success” is generally something that one discovers atop a heaping MOUNTAIN of Failure, and that you simply HAVE to do it wrong a few times before you are finally going to get it right.

How does the saying go? -- “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” Because unless you are willing to take the risk of failure -- of doing something less than perfectly in order to make progress to toward your goal -- you are never going to move forward at all. Perfection is merely the target on the horizon. Excellence is the Objective, and the real Goal is simply Progress -- to do it a little bit better today than you did the day before.

I can still remember how it felt a year ago now to climb into this high pulpit for the FIRST time as your regularly called and settled minister, and all of the emotions of hope and expectation that were here in this room that day as we began together a new ministry here at First Parish: a ministry both to one another, and to the larger community in which we dwell. Of course, things were a little different that day too. (I recall, for instance, that there was a huge gaping hole in the ceiling over here where the plaster had gotten wet and fallen in...) and also how impressed I was with the banners that are still hanging here along the gallery: “Open the Windows + the Doors” “And Receive Whosoever is Sent.”

This still is the mission of this church, you know. It’s a place where we come to make our own lives better, and to help out others it times of crisis or challenge, to greet both neighbors and strangers alike, and to slowly improve the world where we live, often one human soul at a time. And at the time I observed that: “This Meeting House is indeed a sacred place, a safe and welcoming ‘sanctuary’ in the heart of this city, which we make Holy through our presence here, and by filling it with our warmth, and our love for one another, our hospitality to strangers, and our devotion and commitment to the values and principles of our shared Unitarian and Universalist faith traditions. We come from many different places, we travel many different paths. But in this place, we mingle our lives together like the waters of many rivers flowing to the ocean, perhaps in time rising as fog, falling as rain, even freezing as ice, but always, always flowing back once more into the sea from whence we all have come.”

So was it then; and so may it be again today....

***
READING: “The Five points of Calvinism and the Five Points of the New Theology” from Vexed Questions in Theology by James Freeman Clarke (Boston: 1886) [LINK to complete text of Clarke's essay]

The fifth point of doctrine in the new theology will, as I believe, be the Continuity of Human Development in all worlds, or the Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.

Progress is the outward heaven, corresponding to the inward heaven of character. The hope of progress is one of the chief motives to action. Men [and women] are contented, not matter how poor their lot, so long as they can hope for something better. And...[they] are discontented, no matter how fortunate their condition, when they have nothing more to look forward to. The greatest sufferer who hopes may have nothing, but ...possesses all things; the most prosperous soul who is deprived of hope may have all things, but...possesses nothing....

If hope abides, there is always something to look forward to, -- some higher attainment, some larger usefulness, some nearer communion with God. And this accords with all we see and know: with the long processes of geologic development by which the earth became fitted to be the home of [human beings]; with the slow ascent of organized beings from humbler to fuller life; with the progress of society from age to age; with the gradual diffusion of knowledge, advancement of civilization, growth of free institutions, and ever higher conceptions of God and of religious truth. The one fact which is written on nature and human life is the fact of progress, and this must be accepted as the purpose of the Creator....

Ingathering Water Ceremony

2008-09-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

***
OPENING WORDS: “Going to Walden” by Mary Oliver

It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by night fall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

***

FROM THE BANKS OF THE RIVER JORDAN

TO THE SHEEP POOL AT BETHESDA,

GOD’S GONNA TROUBLE THE WATER

a homily delivered by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen

at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine

Ingathering Sunday September 7th, 2008

***
[extemp intro] VACATION -- Latin vacare -- “to make empty” Vacant, Vacuum, Vacuous... a time when we attempt to clear our calendars of obligations and responsibilities in order to “re-create” ourselves and return to our day to day lives refreshed and rejuvenated.

Of course, the Great Irony of a vacation like this is that often times we work so hard at trying to squeeze in as much leisure as we can into our so-called “free” time that we return to our ordinary lives more exhausted than when we left!

Yet at other times, unstructured emptiness isn’t really something we would choose either. This past six months, for instance, I’ve had a lot of free time pretty much imposed on me -- it’s not something I would have chosen for myself, but rather merely another unavoidable consequence of my illness, which at times has reduced the size of my world to the four walls of a hospital room.

Trying to fill that emptiness in a meaningful way has been a real challenge: books, friends, television...and, of course, the Internet.... Especially the Internet, which can put all three of the others right at your fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Yet even 24/7 Always Online Real-Time Access (AORTA) can feel pretty empty when compared to something so simple as spending a day at the beach slumbering in the sun, and gazing out over a vast ocean.

One thing I did discover this summer though was a website called biblos.com, which is basically nothing but a vast array of on-line Bible-study tools: GOOD Bible-study tools, of the sort designed to cultivate Biblical literacy rather than reinforcing Biblical literalism. So while many of you spent your summer vacations traveling to exotic destinations near and far, my summer was taken up by more of an inward journey... and in particular revisiting a couple of passages of Scripture that had been very important to me when I was still a seminarian, and which I discovered continue to reveal to me new insights even three decades later.

The first passage (or pericope as we were taught to call them) comes from the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, and was actually the topic of the very first term paper I ever wrote at the Harvard Divinity School. I can't for the life of me recall today what I had to say back then, but I do remember thinking to myself at the time how impressed academia would be now that I had FINALLY written the definitive interpretation of this text, ...and what a rude awakening it was to receive back my paper with a big red "B-minus" scribbled on the cover, just below the color xerox of Paul Gaugin’s “Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” I’d discovered during my research and used as a frontispiece.

Jacob, as you may or may not recall from your days in Sunday School, was the younger of twin brothers, born “grasping at his brother’s heel,” yet destined by biology and tradition in that culture always to take the second place. But Jacob wasn’t satisfied with that destiny -- so he tricks both his brother Esau and his father Issac into giving him the blessing that would have ordinarily been the birthright of the firstborn. But this also didn't sit too well with his "family of origin," and compelled him to leave behind the land of his birth and live in exile with his mother’s brother Laban, in order to avoid any additional conflicts with his own.

And Jacob did quite well for himself working for his uncle and (eventually) father-in-law -- so well, in fact, that his cousins became jealous of him, and determined to take back the wealth they believed rightly belonged to them. And so once more Jacob was forced to flee from potential danger, only this time, instead of fleeing alone into the night carrying only a staff, he had an entire family of his own to think of: two wives, two maids, and (nearly) a dozen (male) children. Plus all of the flocks and herds and servants and retainers and various other hangers-on who would have made up his extended household.

And the only place he has to go is back to the land now ruled by his brother, whom he hasn’t seen in decades, and who Jacob fears may still harbor resentments over their last encounter, and greet him with hostility rather than hospitality. In fact, Jacob was so worried about this that he paused at the banks of the River Jordan, and divided his family into two companies, thinking that if Easu should find and attack the first company, the other might hear of it and escape.

And the Scripture tells us:

[22] [And Jacob] arose that same night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. [23] He took them and sent them across the stream. And he sent across whatever he had.[24] So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. [25] When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. [26] Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me. [27] The man asked him, "What is your name" "Jacob," he answered. [28] Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed." [29] Jacob said, "Please tell me your name." But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there. [30] So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." [31] The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip....

It’s a common theme in much of the world’s folklore that to safely cross a body of water, one must somehow appease the local deity: water nymphs, or river imps, or the troll beneath the bridge. To learn their true name is to gain power over them, and thus permission to cross over their domain. But there is obviously a lot more going on here than that. A thousand years before Julius Caesar, Jacob is crossing his own version of the Rubicon. The opponent he wrestles with is none other than his own Creator, and the "true name" he learns is not God's, but his own.

And I remember at the time being struck by the heroic quality of it all: to have struggled with both men and with God, and have prevailed. But as the years have gone by I’ve come to learn the other half of this lesson: that when we wrestle with God, the BEST we can hope for is a stalemate, to see God face to face and live. And yes, we can still extort our blessing, by refusing to let go. Yet the struggle itself often leaves us crippled, and limping into the sunrise...undefeated, but hardly victorious.

[And of course it has to be the hip. Sciatica. How could I have possibly known at the time just how painfully crippling sciatica can be?]

The second passage comes from the 5th chapter of John’s Gospel; and despite its familiarity, it’s not one that I’d spent a lot of time studying before or since. But it was a favorite of my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, who directed my acute care hospital chaplaincy internship the summer following my first year of Divinity School, and so I heard it a lot that summer, and was frequently reminded of it this past summer as well as I sat waiting for a shower in my own hospital room. [Bethesda, by the way, means literally “the House of Kindness;” so you can see why it would be a popular name for a hospital, and why this would be such a popular passage of Scripture for a hospital chaplain.]

[2]Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. [3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. [5] And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. [6] When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? [7] The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no [one], when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. [8] Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. [9] And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked....

Then, of course, then there’s a big controversy (since it’s the Sabbath) about the legitimacy of Jesus performing miracles on that day, or whether or not it constitutes “work” to take up one’s bed and walk. And I’ve never really quite known what to make of all this myself either-- it always seemed like just another faith-healing story to me, a naive evocation of the power of positive thinking in the face of the reality of profound affliction.

But recently it dawned on me that this story isn’t really about faith healing at all. I mean, it’s not as if the man leaves his bed behind and gets down into the pool, which is what he originally hoped for in the first place. Instead Jesus asks him, “theleis (h)ugies genesthai -- “Wilt Thou be Made Whole?” -- do you wish, will you allow yourself, to be recreated -- to recognize and embody your own inescapable wholeness? Then "wake up, pick up your pallet, and walk!"

It’s not really something you believe: you either do it or you don’t. How are we to understand the relationship between the question and the command? What is the connection between the Wish and the Will? How much of our healing is a product of our own effort, and how much is simply an openness to being and seeing ourselves as healed, as healthy, as whole?

You see, there’s that pesky root again: genesthai/to be made, to be created = Genesis, Generate, Generosity.

Seems like that word pops up a lot in my life these days.

It’s a miracle of a different order: not a belief that makes you something that you aren’t, but the recognition of who you truly are, and the essential integrity and wholeness that holds us together even in the face of profound brokenness as well.

And when we awaken to that wholeness, we discover as well our ability to walk again.

Even if it is with a pretty painful limp, and carrying our own bed....

***

THE SHARING OF THE WATERS
(adapted from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, Washington)

This Water Ceremony is a uniquely Unitarian Universalist ritual. It symbolizes our coming together again at the close of the summer to bring our gifts and talents to the wider church community.

Summer is a season of rest and renewal. It is a time of travel. For some of us the travel was physical: going to a new area, experiencing new things. For others the travel was symbolic, or metaphorical: journeys inward toward landscapes unseen except in the mind’s eye. For some of us the Summer was a time of active Doing; for others it was time of reflective Being. Today we come together from our various journeys, walking our different paths alone together and together alone.

Each direction from which we may come has a metaphorical meaning. The East is the direction of Air: it is the place of sunlight, new beginnings, the spirit which like air stirs; it is Spring. The South is the direction of Fire: it denotes inspiration, passion and compassion as fire consumes and burns with zeal; it is Summer. The West is the direction of Water. Water heals: it denotes the calmness and the turbulence of the emotions. The West is the place of the sunset. It is Autumn. Finally, the North is the direction of Earth. It represents snow, darkness, and death: the completion of a cycle of life. It is the Winter.

Where are you coming from? What gifts of the journey do you bring back to our beloved community?

As we hear our readers once again describe each direction, I invite each of us to look within and decide from which direction we have come, and to line up accordingly here along the side aisle. Each of us will have an opportunity to pour our water into the large bowl symbolizing the pooling of our gifts, and the experience of our journeys. We will begin with the East and end with the North. And if you did not bring any water today, do not despair: there is another bowl from which you may take water to add to the larger bowl.

{READERS}

The East is the direction of the sunrise, of illumination, morning, springtime, new beginnings, new adventures, the hope that springs eternal. Will those who are symbolically coming from the East please come forward.

The South is the direction of the blazing sun, of fire, the tropics. It is the direction of the hustle and bustle of life itself, new ideas blossoming into fruition. Will those who are symbolically coming from the South please come forward.

The West is the direction of the sunset, of the fading of light, evening, the quieting of the senses. It is the direction of endings, finishing, getting affairs in order and completion. Will those who are symbolically coming from the West, please come forward.

The North is the direction of darkness, ice, cold, the Arctic. It is the winter of our souls. It is the direction of death, but not permanence, for death is part of the cycle of life. Will those who are symbolically coming from the North, please come forward.

Water is purity and water is life. Water is constantly moving: it is change, it is flux. Water is both many and it is one. The ocean is made up of infinite drops of water that alone do very little and together are invincible. And yet the invincibility of water can only be achieved through the conjoining of the individual drops.

This water is like our congregation. Each of us brings our individual gifts and hopes and joys, which alone are enough, but together are magnified and enhanced.

This water is a metaphor of our individual journeys joined together for the larger task of building a beloved community. Our directions are brought together in our axis mundi: the Center from which we gather the strength to act. The gifts we bring touch our hearts, stimulate our minds, and move us closer to the wholeness we seek in this life.

May the Waters of Life cleanse our Spirits and fill us with Hope and Vitality.

Amen, and Blessed Be....

"ROOTS AND FRUITS" (Rebecca Hinds, DRE)

2008-06-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

a sermon preached by Rebecca Hinds,
Director of Religious Education, at
the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday June 1, 2008

This morning we have so much to be joyful for. This community, this sacred space, is blessed today with the presence and energy of our children and youth. We have rejoiced in our recognition of the dedication and commitment of our fine RE teachers and volunteers. This is truly a day for celebration.

For those of you who may not have young children or who may be new to First Parish, this business of “RE” probably sounds a bit confusing. You may not be the only one asking yourself, what does RE stand for? Well, today we speak about Religious Education.

Sometimes I feel like the Alphabet Soup of Unitarian Universalism is no where more prevalent than it is in the world of Religious Education. In the last few months as my friends and family have asked me what exactly this new job I have is, it usually takes at least a few minutes to explain precisely what my position as “DRE of a UU church” is all about. When I first began connecting with other local DREs you can imagine my surprise (and delight) upon discovering that not only am I part of a community of DREs, but I am also part of a network of Y.A.D.R.E.s. That is Young Adult Directors of Religious Education. We call ourselves YADREs.

So, what is Religious Education and why does it matter?

It is my belief that everything we do here at First Parish — everything — is Religious Education.

I speak from the perspective of someone who was raised in a UU church.

I speak remembering how difficult it was to explain my religious identity to other children on my block and in my school.

I speak as a former youth group leader and young adult who remained active in her church during the years when most Young Adults drop out of the movement.

And I speak this morning as a DRE who yearns for the kind of education and exploration that will light our spirits on fire.

Throughout this hour together the members of the RE Community and I will be sharing and articulating different visions of Religious Education, allow me to share one with you one that I am particularly fond of. The Rev. Sylvia Stocker once said, “Within a covenantal community, Unitarian Universalist religious education provides tools for individuals of all ages to touch and deepen their inner spirits, to access a sense of awe in the face of mystery and grace beyond human understanding, and to discover and serve the world beyond the church doors. Our goal is to help people grow into their best selves. We learn from direct experience of the world, from world religions, from the stories of wise people, both within our tradition and outside it, and from establishing and living into covenants with one another. ”

Our goal is to help people grow into their best selves.

To that end, RE cannot simply happen during that activity called “Sunday School.” Other denominations may reduce Sunday School and education to book learning and memorization, but as UUs we dare to believe in the radical idea that RE is a lifelong process of growth and a yearning for spiritual depth.

As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a UU church. I regularly attended Sunday School as a child. In Jr. High and High School I looked forward to Youth Group every week. I have often reflected on my experiences as a young UUer. What was it about the church that kept me going, even in those later years when my parents decided that going to church was no longer important? Was it an intellectual passion for the UU history we studied? Was it the sense of tradition I encountered? Was it the sense of awe and appreciation I developed for the outdoors as we explored the natural world? Maybe it was merely the fun I had with other, like-minded kids. The strongest case, I used to imagine, was that I loved the feeling of being able to make a difference as my church engaged in social action and justice making activities within the larger community. In my experience, being raised a UU provided me with an understanding of activism and the critical need for a liberal religious voice promoting peace and justice in the world. I wanted to change the world and the church gave me a voice.

All of those truly awesome components of my UU background held me in the movement.

But my point is this. At its most basic level, Religious Education and the programming that kept me and will keep all of our young people involved at First Parish is not the curriculum, the teaching method or even the message itself. RE is about community. It is about finding support in our most vulnerable endeavors, those of the spirit.

In my childhood church I felt profoundly held by a loving community.

I felt safe at church.

I knew that the adults deeply cared about me.

And most importantly, I felt supported during the intense joys and sorrows of adolescents.

Of course I will never forget all of the fun my friends and I had. The camping trips, the music we made, the games we played, the anti-war group we formed at school. All of these playful, joyful aspects of Religious community are essential. But UU communities really thrive when children and adults feel safe enough to fully explore their identities and spiritual, religious beliefs.

Religious Education, therefore is not just about what happens on Sunday morning — in this sanctuary, or upstairs in our RE classrooms. Religious education happens, for all of us, everyday. Everything we do at First Parish and as a community is fertile ground for learning. Religious Education occurs in that liminal space between each of us as we create a safety-net for Religious Exploration.

In her essay Doorway to the Sacred, Makanah Elizabeth Morriss writes, “religious education is all about unlocking people…unlocking doors of creative possibilities, unlocking minds with new ideas and the permission to think for oneself, unlocking hearts that may have been hurt by life’s experiences so that healing may occur and joy and compassion may be experienced more fully.”

On this passage Rev. Stocker responds, “I believe that kind of unlocking can only occur when people feel safe. Perhaps one of our growing edges as a denomination is to learn how to build for adults the kinds of safe havens we expect for our children. Because, after all doesn’t everyone deserve to feel held and nurtured? Doesn’t everyone deserve to become his or her best self? If we learn how to be a community that nurtures its members and helps them to blossom, isn’t that one of the ultimate goals of religious education? If we can harness the nurture and love of our community to grow our souls, isn’t that one of the ultimate goals of religious education?”

In our Religious Education programming for children and youth, our young people grow accustomed to talking about theology. This is what kept me going to church as I young person. I needed a place and a community with whom I could discusses matters of spirit and religion. I welcomed the opportunity to debate deep theological issues.

Here at First Parish, children are likewise encouraged to ask questions — to think about and explore their own personal beliefs and theology. RE class is a safe space for children to play, learn, and grow.

Over the years I’ve noticed that many adult Unitarian Universalists appear uncomfortable and shy away from discussions of theology. To be sure, each adult who has made it through our doors has a story to tell about the spiritual journey that brought them here. Many members have stories of exodus and pain from past religious experiences. To those people, our congregation offers support and love. We offer an ear to listen to your story, and a safe haven to create a new spiritual story.

But where, then, is our common ground? At what point do we stop talking about where we have been and what we are not, and begin a discussion about who we are and what we have in common?

As a child, I distinctly remember explaining to my Catholic and Christian friends that I was a UU because I did not believe in whatever issue it was that they were pressing me on. Of course no child may be able to articulate the complex theology and history of Unitarian Universalism, but to any child or adult out there who struggles with the question “what do UUs believe in?” You can always say this. Unitarian Universalists believe in YOU.

Likewise, this church believes in you. Each one of you. Each and every child and teenager and adult in this sanctuary has a beloved community behind them encouraging them to religious exploration and spiritual depth.

How do we grow into our best selves? We continue learning. We push forward. Our religious identity and experience is constantly evolving. We are on this journey together and when we need it, we have one another.

If Religious Education is all about unlocking people, let’s make that happen at First Parish. Let us engage together in the risky business of opening our hearts and discovering the content of our souls.

In each of our encounters, at all of our committee meetings, music rehearsals, pancake breakfasts, and every other activity, may we be held in beloved community, with permission to ask the tough questions and talk about theology.

May this be a church where children, youth, and adults are supported, minds are inspired and opportunities for growth never cease. May we be cradled in the safety-net of community in our never-ending journey of religious education.

EASTER, AGAIN?

2008-03-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

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.

The Call to Discipleship

2008-03-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

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....

INTERDEPENDENCE

2008-03-09T17:57:00.000-07:00

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....

RAINBOWS

2008-03-02T15:31:00.000-08:00

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....

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Conscience and Unenforceable Obligations

2008-02-26T14:01:00.000-08:00

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.

RESPONSIBILITY

2008-02-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

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....

COMPASSION

2008-02-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

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.

DIGNITY

2008-01-27T14:38:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday January 27, 2008

OPENING WORDS: “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius” -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, b. Jan 27, 1756

***

My message this morning is a simple one: so simple, in fact, I can summarize it in three words. "People are Precious." I wish I could say that I thought that up myself, but I didn't — it was originally the motto of the Reverend Robert “Daddy Bob” Raible, who was for many years the minister of the First Unitarian Church in Dallas, and whose son Peter Raible was one of my early mentors in ministry at University Unitarian Church in Seattle. But it's still a good motto, and I'm not above stealing it; and I put it before you this morning not so much as a proposition of fact, but rather as a proposition of faith.

If I were to stick strictly to the facts, I think I would have an awfully tough time proving this proposition. What is the inherent worth of a human being anyway? A couple of dollars in chemicals, the value of which is doubtlessly less than the cost of their extraction? Or perhaps a few dollars an hour, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year — even less if you happen to have been born somewhere in the so-called “developing” world. And I suppose in some way it’s always been this way. “The poor ye shall always have with you,” and perhaps the best first thing we really can do to remedy that situation is to work hard not to become one of them ourselves. It’s not the whole solution, but it’s a start.

Of course, having grown up in Seattle, I was born into a community that is generally considered one of the major beneficiaries of globalization. And, of course, over the many years I lived in the Pacific Northwest, I also eventually became something of a coffee-snob.

It’s true; one of my greatest “small pleasures” in life is brewing and drinking freshly ground whole-bean coffee. These days, I generally try to seek out shade-grown, Fair Trade beans when I can find them (and they’re becoming much easier to find all the time); they cost a few dollars more; but I can afford it, and it’s worth it to me...not because the quality of the coffee itself is any better, but for the difference I’d like to HOPE it makes in the quality of other peoples lives.

Fair trade or not, the Colombian peasant who handpicked those coffee beans (Juan Valdez, or one of his neighbors) was probably only paid pennies for his labor: the average wage of a Latin American coffee picker is still only a couple of dollars a day.

The part-time barista who sells me the coffee is probably doing a little bit better, possibly earning slightly more than the minimum wage: still not enough to support a family above the official US government poverty line, but a fortune to someone like Juan Valdez.

And would anyone even care to hazard a guess at the net worth and gross annual income of Howard Schultz, the founder, former, and now once again Chief Executive Officer of Starbucks?

If I were to ask each of you, individually, "what are you worth?" what would you tell me? The amount of money you earn? The size of your investment portfolio? The appraised value of your home minus the outstanding balance of your mortgage? As I said, if I were to present it to you as a proposition of fact, I would have a difficult time proving my case.

So instead I put it before you as a proposition of faith. "People are Precious" — every human being has an inherent worth and dignity which we must honor and respect as people of faith. Starbucks is generally considered a pretty progressive company, but we all know in our heart of hearts that Howard Schultz is not inherently a more worthy person than Juan Valdez simply because his annual income is several hundred thousand times as great.

Nor do corporate CEO's have some kind of God-given right to dictate policies that deliberately (or even unintentionally) undermine the worth and dignity of third-world people simply because the impersonal nature of the global economy and international commodities markets allows them that power.

Actions like these are on some fundamental level both immoral and unjust — and one of our principle responsibilities as a faith community is to educate ourselves about these things, to try to understand them in all their complexity, to confront them, and then to learn how best to change them -- first in our own lives, and then in the larger society where we live.

Yet I also realize at times these issues and these responsibilities are difficult even for reasonably sensitive and political aware individuals to see and fully comprehend, preoccupied as we so often are by our own economic circumstances, and the outrageous price of heating oil, and sneakers, and whole-bean coffee.

Worth is one thing. Dignity is something else. To dignify something is to honor it, whether it is truly worthy or not, which is why diplomats treat even the most notoriously odious “official” dignitaries as honored and respected guests: to do otherwise would be undignified.

An indignity, on the other hand, is a source of insult and humiliation, to which it often seems the only appropriate response is one of righteous indignation. An ability to maintain one’s own sense of dignity even in the midst of the most undignifying and embarrassing circumstances is a wonderful skill; it allows us to retain a feeling of self-respect and self-confidence even when all the evidence would seem to be pointing in the opposite direction. In my experience, the secret to this skill is really very simple: it is merely the cultivation of a humble willingness to appear foolish for a worthy cause.

And likewise, the willingness to treat others with dignity and respect, regardless of their particular circumstances or perceived “worthiness,” is a magnificent gift: a small act of generosity and kindness in what is often a cruel and unforgiving world.

And this is why it is so appropriate that we begin with the proposition that "People Are Precious." Because an important early step in every spiritual journey is the humble recognition and acknowledgment of our own inherent worth and dignity: the realization that despite our own apparent unworthiness, that we are unique, that we are special, that we have been given a great gift thin the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity simply to be alive -- a give we didn’t really ask for, and don’t really deserve, and for which our only appropriate response is one of gratitude and generosity.

And this in turn is followed by a great leap of faith, in the form of a devoted commitment to treat others with the same respect and dignity and integrity we believe we are worthy of receiving ourselves.

"Love your neighbor as yourself, " "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" — the Golden Rule, the fundamental moral teaching of every great religion known to humankind. It's a simple rule: most of us have known it by heart since childhood. So why, then, is the Golden Rule so difficult a principle to take to heart?

I can think of at least three common factors which contribute to our inhibitions to live up to this ideal. And the first is simply the common human tendency to be suspicious: to anticipate the worst out of a given situation rather than making a special effort to have it turn out for the best. I have no doubts some of you may have also heard that well-known parody of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others before they get the chance to do it unto you."

In a society as mobile and transient as ours, where anonymity is often the rule rather than the exception, and we must frequently interact with total strangers, trust can become a very precious commodity. Sometimes it can seem as though an open and trusting attitude merely extends an open invitation for others to take advantage of us; we’ve all heard those proverbs as well: "a fool and his money are soon parted," "never give a sucker an even break."

Yet although a certain degree of caution and skepticism may well be an unavoidable necessity in preventing our own exploitation by the unscrupulous, this does not grant us a license to be callous or manipulative in our own behavior. The Golden Rule does not call us to do unto others as we are afraid they might do unto us. It demands a standard somewhat higher than our minimum expectations. It calls us to maintain an ideal which exceeds what we might reasonably expect of others, to act the way we might wish to be treated, respecting the worth and dignity of strangers even when they have done nothing in particular to deserve it, simply because by doing so we affirm our own worth and dignity as well.

It calls for us to be trustworthy even when those we deal with may not be completely worthy of our trust. It calls for us to be honest even when we fear we are being cheated. It calls for us to be truthful even when we know we are being lied to. It calls for us to be forgiving, and generous of spirit, simply because that is the right way to be. It does not, I believe, require that we become fools or suckers. It merely insists that we refrain from exploiting the weakness and naiveté of others, even when it lies within our power to do so.

This brings us to a second source of inhibition: that sinking feeling many of us experience deep down inside us that maybe we don't really deserve to be treated as well as we are. Popular psychology even has a name for this experience — it's called "The Impostor Syndrome," and it's dangerous because it tempts us to believe that we can't afford to be kind and generous of spirit; that deep down inside we're really just fakes, and if we allow ourselves to be too forgiving, we run the risk of being found out as something less than we appear.

Of course, the great irony of this affliction (which I suspect is far more common than most of us would imagine) is that what it truly reflects is the tendency of many sincere human beings to judge themselves by standards far more strict and demanding than those by which they would ordinarily be evaluated by their peers. Knowing those deep, dark secrets which only we can know about ourselves, we become our own worst critics; and thus it appears to us far less threatening simply to withdraw from a profound and authentic engagement with the world, than it would be to do unto others as harshly as we ourselves do unto ourselves.

Until we are willing honestly to take responsibility for our triumphs, and forgive ourselves our failures, we stand little chance of doing likewise for those with whom we interact. When our own sense of worth and dignity is so tenuous, so fragile, we simply become incapable of recognizing that everyone else is in exactly the same boat. How can we put ourselves in the other guy's shoes when our own seem too large for us to fill?

Perhaps the Impostor Syndrome would be more easily overcome were it not for the third inhibition I perceive to the ideal: the tendency of our society to set up false and artificially objectified categories of worth and privilege, which undermine our appreciation of the inherent worth and dignity which is all of our birthrights. "Whosoever has the Gold makes the rules" — a man is only worth the value of his productive labor, and a woman 67% of that.

The absurdity of it all is apparent on its face; and yet its pervasive cultural influence remains undiminished. There are winners and there are losers, the elect and the reprobate, the sheep and the goats, the sharks and the minnows. Our dignity is dependent solely upon our worth; our worth dependent exclusively upon our wealth; and those who have nothing deserve nothing better.

This philosophy, which sometimes goes by the name of Social Darwinism, takes an instrumental view of humankind — life is cheap, people are playthings. The means and the ability to impose one's will upon the world becomes the ultimate standard of moral authority; might makes right, and is its own justification.

Yet any ideology which takes an exclusively economic view of human worth is ultimately both soul-crushing and spiritually bankrupts; we become our jobs, we are reduced to our paychecks, we are left pre-disposed to live and die as nothing more than replaceable parts in the gigantic industrial engine which drives our throw-away civilization.

As I said when we started this morning, a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person is fundamentally a proposition of faith. This odd notion that "People are Precious" in and of themselves is a dangerous one, because it requires us at times to make a radical response to the world we see around us.

Yet it also stands at the center of our religious tradition, and indeed, at the center of the broader Faith traditions out of which we have come. Ultimately, I believe, it is the source of our capacity for compassion, for altruism, for the recognition of our common humanity beyond differences of race, culture, gender, or any of the other superficial things which distance and separate us one from another.

And yes it is also essential to our own personal spiritual growth and development, and perhaps even to our survival as a species upon this planet.

But for the moment perhaps we can be content simply to do unto others as we would have others do unto us, in kindness and in generosity, in forgiveness and in love, as we struggle to make habits of what we most value and believe, and learn to trust the wisdom of those things we know in our heart of hearts must be true....

THE STRENGTH TO LOVE

2008-01-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine,
Sunday January 20th, 2008

OPENING WORDS: from “A Knock at Midnight” by Martin Luther King Jr.

“Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When [some]one believes this, [they] know that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. They can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for the good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.”

***

I’ve been thinking an awful lot this past week about the idea of martyrdom, especially after hearing our preacher last Sunday, Marta Valentin, paraphrase a sentiment I’ve so often heard attributed to Martin Luther King, that a person who doesn’t have something worth dying for has nothing worth living for. It sounds so logical in its grammatical structure, and yet one thing that has always bothered me about this sentiment is that it also seems such a short leap of logic (or maybe you could call it “faith”) from having something worth dying for to having something worth killing for; or at least the willingness to take the lives of other people as your sacrifice your own to whatever noble purpose you’ve chosen to die for. Personally, I’d just as soon leave the dying and killing part out all together, and reframe the question in a different way. How do we determine what things in life are truly worthy of our devoting our entire lives to them?

About fifteen minutes research on the internet and you will find that the original form of this quotation was: “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” And apparently it’s something that Dr. King plagiarized from one of his most important intellectual and inspirational role models, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi. Some years ago I happened to see an interview with the actor Ben Kingsley, who observed that the secret to his successful characterization of Gandhi in the renown Richard Attenbourgh film of the same name, was his realization that Gandhi was not so much a saint who "stooped" to participate in politics as he was a politician struggling to become a saint.

I've thought an awful lot about that apparently offhand remark as well since first hearing it, especially at times like this, in the midst of a prolonged and hotly-contested political campaign. Why is it that professional politicians are so universally held in such low esteem, so much so that even honest-to-God “saintly” individuals (like, say, Jimmy Carter or even Al Gore) invariably appear "compromised" in the public eye when they attempt to participate in the political process? I can’t help but be reminded of yet another story I once heard about the syndicated advice columnist Ann Landers, who was approached one evening by a member of the Senate at an Embassy Reception in Washington D.C.

"So you're Ann Landers," the Senator remarked. "Say something clever."

To which Ms Landers immediately responded "So you're a politician. Tell me a lie."

Political activity is the lifeblood of a democratic society; it is the means by which the will of the people becomes the law of the land. Yet for some reason we find it all too easy to believe that those who choose to practice politics as a vocation are motivated principally by their own personal ambition -- that they are avaricious, deceitful, with only their own personal advancement in mind, rather than motivated by a heartfelt devotion to public service and the best interests of their constituents and fellow citizens. It’s as though we believe that “true” saints must somehow be "above politics" -- unsullied by the strange bedfellows encountered in smoke-filled cloakrooms. Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread; and Saints, of course, are expected to behave like angels. Politicians on the other hand, remain free to behave like fools.

But what about that rare politician, like a Mohandas Gandhi, who struggles to become a saint -- who seeks to express through his or her political convictions the high ethical and humanitarian principles of a profound and deeply authentic religious faith? Actually, I suspect that this sort of politician is far more common than we suspect, and that our appreciation of their efforts depends considerably upon the degree to which our own political opinions are in agreement with theirs. The road to sainthood is long and arduous, and the dividing line between “saint” and “fanatic” is typically razor-thin; many are called but few are chosen; ultimately only history will decide whether or not the struggle was fruitful. Sainthood and the Aspiration to Sainthood are hardly one and the same. Indeed, so rarefied is our view of the former that often merely the appearance of the ambition to attain it is enough to taint its purity in our eyes.

Yet it would be equally misleading to assume that only those who do not seek it -- who have their greatness thrust upon them -- are somehow deserving of the mantle of our praise. The essential inner quality of sainthood is a peculiar combination of humility and arrogance: the arrogance to believe that one's deeply held principles and convictions are important enough to make a difference, and the humility to recognize that this challenge cannot be met by aspiration and personal strength of will alone.

Martin Luther King Jr. was only 26 years old when he was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, an ad hoc black community group which had been organized to oversee the now famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. As best I can tell, judging from everything I have read, he probably didn't even want the job. At the time, King had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church for less than two years, and had only completed the final requirements for his Ph.D. at Boston University that previous spring.

Furthermore, his selection as President of the M.I.A. was an overtly political choice. As a relative newcomer to the city of Montgomery, King had yet to become too strongly identified with any particular element within the black community, and thus it was felt that perhaps he could provide precisely the kind of neutral leadership that would allow all of the rival factions within that community to come together in this one common purpose. There was a downside consideration to his nomination as well. Should the boycott fail (as many of the more experienced black community leaders believed it might), this young preacher could easily be sacrificed without endangering these more established leaders' hard-earned credibility with both the white establishment, and their own constituencies.

Knowing this side of the story, one might easily say that Martin Luther King did indeed have his greatness thrust upon him, and with the unanimous consent of older, wiser, and more politically savvy colleagues at that. But this would be only part of the tale. More importantly, there was an inner quality to this young preacher, a “seed” of saintliness if you will, which, once exposed to the light, blossomed forth into a strength which enabled him to endure receiving dozens of threatening letters and telephone calls each day; to survive slander and harassment by police and other government authorities; to have the front of his parsonage blown off by dynamite while his wife and few-month-old child huddled in the kitchen...to experience all of the doubts and fears and pressures to which the human soul is vulnerable, and still not lose sight of the larger aspiration: a goal which in its very rightness and importance dwarfed both his abilities, and his frailties, as a human being.

To be sure, in many ways Martin Luther King Jr. simply happened to be in the right place, at the right time. But the reason we honor him with a national holiday on his birthday is because he also happened to be the right PERSON to be there in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. Yes, there was an inner quality of greatness to him. But more importantly, he did not shy from his responsibilities when the need to express that greatness presented itself before him.

From Montgomery, as we all know, King went on to face new challenges and achieve new triumphs: in Birmingham and Selma, in Washington D.C. and Oslo, Norway, where he became the youngest man ever to receive a Nobel Peace prize. Yet I've often wondered whether or not King's greatest challenge and achievement might not have been related to the conflicts which he faced within his own soul, such as the temptation to "retire" as it were from the Civil Rights movement, and accept a lucrative post somewhere in academia, or to spend more time with his wife and his children, away from the death threats and the FBI wiretaps; to grow old in the bosom of the liberal white establishment, lecturing to wide-eyed admiring freshmen about Socrates and Jesus, Gandhi and Thoreau, while writing best-selling books for Harper and Row.

And don’t kid yourselves, these options were certainly made available to him many times. And yet he chose instead to continue in the role which destiny had thrust upon him there in Montgomery in 1955; and this, to me, seems a far more telling mark of King's true "saintly greatness" than any of his other achievements or laurels. It is not merely because King achieved great things that we celebrate his birth as a National holiday. It is also the price he was willing to pay in order to achieve these things -- not for his own personal benefit, but for the benefit of an entire society.

It is difficult for those of us who lack this inner quality of saintliness, this peculiar combination of humility and arrogance, to fully understand what was at stake in Martin Luther King Jr's decision to continue along the path that destiny had chosen for him, a path which eventually led to his death on a motel balcony in Memphis. There have been those who have suggested that King was, in fact, a megalomaniac, or that he suffered from a "martyr complex;" that his ego was such that he simply could not step out of the national limelight once he had tasted the sweetness of being Time magazine's "Man of the Year."

Nothing, I think, could be further from the truth.

King himself knew better than anyone what was at stake in the drama that was being played out in his frail, mortal human existence. And he spoke of it simply in terms of "The Strength to Love:" the power of God's own overflowing, passionate, creative love for human kind manifesting itself in a single human life. Perhaps it was a form of megalomania, a delusion of grandeur of the most grandiose proportions. But it was also an ultimate act of personal surrender, a martyrdom of the self in the truest sense of that word, as witness to a creative power for justice far greater than one's own power or creativity.

In the final analysis we must recognize that it was not delusion, but vision, which animated King's career as a civil rights reformer. Commentator Garry Wills has noted that the changes which Martin Luther King Jr. brought to American society were "so large as to be almost invisible." In a few short years, King and those who worked with him swept away an entire system of American apartheid which had existed in the South for nearly a century. Men and women of my generation have had no experience of "whites only" lunch counters, restrooms, and drinking fountains; we have been educated in integrated schools, voted for and elected black politicians, patronized black-owned businesses; and, for the most part, we have done so without giving it second thought.

I think it’s even fair to say that many Americans now even understand that the whole idea of “race” itself is simply a figment of our imaginations: a social convention and shared fiction with no real basis in biological science, which we have taught ourselves to see, generation after generation after generation. Yet even though the idea of Race may have no basis in reality, the ideology and historical legacy of Racism are still very real. The Ku Klux Klan and its many imitators are still alive and kicking; access to jobs, housing, justice, and educational opportunity is still not completely color blind. In many ways racism has become much more subtle, even sophisticated, in the 21st century; it has replaced its white sheets with pinstriped suits, and is fueled as much by the ignorance of the well-intentioned, who wish that the problem would simply "go away," as it is by the malice of those few kooks who would just as soon trot Jim Crow back out of the closet, if they thought they could get away with it.

In contemporary America, skin color has in many ways become a symbolic marker of social class. Successful Americans of African heritage: Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington, and many others I’m sure we all could name, are perceived by dominant “mainstream” society as merely a little darker shade of white; while the essential “blackness” of the hip-hop inner-city urban youth underclass is so well-established that even a highly-respected community leader like Bill Cosby can be sharply criticized for his “political incorrectness” in suggesting that “it’s not what [white people are] doing to us. It’s what we’re NOT doing [for our own children].” And how many of your can remember the recent kerfufle over whether or not Barack Obama (with apologies to Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Alan Keyes and Carol Moseley Braun) was really “black” enough to serve as America’s first “serious” African American Presidential candidate?

Yet underlying this ongoing and complicated societal conversation regarding skin color, social class, and competing cultural identities, Dr. King's vision of a truly pluralistic, inclusive, and democratic society, in which individuals are judged by the quality of their characters and not the color of their skins, remains a vivid beacon of our future, untarnished in the half-century which has now elapsed since the bus boycott in Montgomery first brought this amazing man to our national attention.

It’s a little known fact (and one that typically doesn’t show up on my resume), but my former wife and I spent our honeymoon in Atlanta. It’s kind of a long story: she was living in Seattle, I was living in West Texas, and our minister lived in Boston -- but it just so happened that we could all get together during the third week in June at the UUA General Assembly, so I wrote to the Fulton County clerk and got a license and we tied the knot at midnight on the longest day of the year. It was the only time either of us had ever been to that city; but while we were there we had the opportunity to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, which is located just up the street from the Ebenezer Baptist Church, "Daddy" King's church, in the neighborhood where young M.L. King spent his childhood. It was really the only "touristy" thing we did while we were in Atlanta (we were much too busy being newlyweds to bother with such foolishness as plenary sessions or the Coca-Cola museum), but we made the most of it; we even bought each other T-shirts at the gift shop. And we were also able to spend an hour or so in the small museum there, which is filled with memorabilia of the Civil Rights Movement, and Dr. King's ministry.

The one exhibit I found most fascinating was that of Dr. King's preaching robe, a robe not so different from the one I'm wearing now. It surprised me to discover that he was actually a rather short man; I had always envisioned him as some sort of giant, yet I doubt the man whom I imagined could have ever squeezed into the tiny robe I saw hanging there in that glass case. Nor would he have had to. For I realized in that moment, standing there in awe before that tiny robe, that stature is not always a function of physical size.

Nor is the significance of a life extinguished by death, when all which that life stood for still burns within the hearts of others. There is a vitality to all that Martin Luther King Jr stood for, an immortality if you will, which still lives today beyond the grave.

It is a vitality which grows from the capacity for self-sacrifice, from the willingness to stand faithfully in the presence of evil, and surrender one’s ego to the truth of a higher principle.

It is an immortality born of our Strength to Love....

***

READING: from The Kennedy Imprisonment by Garry Wills

The 1960’s was a period obsessed with power – the power of the American system, or power to be sought by working outside it; the power of insurgency, or of counterinsurgency; the power of rhetoric and “image” and charisma and technology. The attempt to fashion power solely out of resource and will led to the celebration of power as destruction – as assassination of leaders, the sabotage of rival economies, the poising of opponent missiles.

The equation of real power with power to destroy reached its unheard refutation in the death of our charismatic leader, [John Fitzgerald Kennedy]. As children can wreck TV sets, so Oswalds can shoot Kennedys. The need to believe in some conspiracy behind the assassination is understandable in an age of charismatic pretensions. The “graced” [leader] validates [their] power by success, by luck. Oswald, by canceling the luck, struck at the very principle of government, and it was hard to admit that he was not asserting (or being used by) some alternative principle of rule. Oswald was a brutal restatement of the idea of power as the combination of resource with will. Put at its simplest, this became the combination of a [mail order] Mannlicher-Carcano [rifle] with one man’s mad assertiveness. Power as the power to conquer was totally separated, at last, from the ability to control.

Robert Kennedy’s assassination gave lesser scope to conspiracy theorists – no one knew, beforehand, his route through the kitchen. With him, the effect of sheer chaos was easier to acknowledge (though some still do not acknowledge it – they think purposive will rules everything). What was lost with Robert Kennedy was not so much a legacy of power asserted as a glimpse of a deeper understanding, the beginnings of a belief in power as surrender of the will. He died, after all, opposing the caricatures of power enacted in our wars and official violence.

But another man was killed in the 1960’s who did not offer mere promise of performance. He was even younger than the Kennedys – thirty-nine when he was shot, in the year of Robert’s death at forty-three. There were many links between the Kennedys and Martin Luther King – links admirably traced in Harris Woffords book on the three men. Together, they summed up much of the nobler purpose in American life during the 1960’s. Yet there was opposition too – Dr. King, more radical in his push for racial justice, was far more peaceful in his methods. Robert Kennedy, however reluctantly, used the police powers of John F. Kennedy’s state to spy on Dr. King, to put in official hands the instruments of slander. King was a critic of the space program and war expenditures. King, though more revolutionary in some people’s eyes, was not “charismatic” in the sense of replacing traditional and legal power with his personal will. He relied on the deep traditions of his church, on the preaching power of a Baptist minister; and he appealed to the rational order of the liberal state for peaceful adjustment of claims advanced by the wronged. His death, at tragic as Kennedy’s, did not leave so large an absence. His work has outlasted him; more than any single person he changed the way Americans lived with each other in the sixties. His power was real, because it was not mere assertion – it was a persuasive yielding of private will through nonviolent advocacy.

Since he relied less on power as mere assertiveness of will, mere assertiveness of will could not entirely erase what he accomplished. He had already surrendered his life to bring about large social changes, constructive, not destructive. He forged ties of friendship and social affection. He did not want to force change by violence or stealth, by manipulation or technological tricks. His power was the power to suffer, and his killer only increased that power.

The speeches of John F. Kennedy are studied, now, by people who trace their unintended effects in Vietnam and elsewhere. The speeches of Martin Luther King are memorized at schools as living documents – my son could recite them in high school. “Flexible response” and “counterinsurgency” are tragicomic episodes of our history. But the Gandhian nonviolence preached by Dr. King is a doctrine that still inspires Americans. My children cannot believe that I grew up in a society where blacks could not drink at public water fountains, eat in “white” restaurants, get their hair cut in white barber shops, sit in white theaters, play on white football teams. The changes King wrought are so large as to be almost invisible.

He was helped, of course – he was not a single mover of the charismatic sort. And he was helped not so much by talented aides as by his fellow martyrs, by all those who died or risked dying for their children or their fellow citizens. While Washington’s “best and brightest” worked us into Vietnam, an obscure army of virtue arose in the South and took the longer spiritual trip inside a public bathroom or toward the front of a bus. King rallied the strength of broken men [and women], transmuting an imposed squalor into the beauty of chosen suffering. No one did it for [their] followers. They did it for themselves. Yet, in helping them, he exercised real power, achieved changes that dwarf the moon shot as an American achievement. The “Kennedy era” was really the age of Dr. King.

The famous antitheses and alliterations of John Kennedy’s rhetoric sound tinny now. But King’s eloquence endures, drawn as it was from ancient sources – the Bible, the spirituals, the hymns and folks songs. He was young at his death, younger than either Kennedy; but he had traveled farther. He did fewer things; but those things last. A mule team drew his coffin in a rough cart; not the sleek military horses and the artillery caisson. He has no eternal flame – and no wonder. He is not dead.

AND A HAPPY NEW ERA

2008-01-06T04:43:00.000-08:00

a homily delivered by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday January 5th, 2008

OPENING WORDS: A New Year's Prayer for 2008 by the Rev. Chuck Currie.

Loving Creator,

Long ago you brought life from cosmic chaos.

For over 4.5 billion years your creation has evolved.

Along the way humanity has stumbled as we have matured.

Yet you have never abandoned us.

A New Year has dawned.

Help us to make this the year we take our stewardship over creation seriously.

Guide us to protect your forests and oceans.

Give us the wisdom to look after all life (even the “creeping things”.)

Help us to recognize the interconnectedness we humans share with the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the deserts.

Help us to recognize the interconnectedness we humans share with other humans though we may worship differently.

Bestow on us the courage of the Prophets of old so that we may speak truth to power in your Holy name.

Another year, O God.

Another year to do justice.

Another year to love kindness.

Another year to walk humbly with you (Micah 6:8).

Praise be to God!

Amen.

***

How many of you have ever had the pleasure of discovering a really great new restaurant? Not one of those fancy, formulaic, heavily-advertised chain restaurants coming soon to a mall parking lot near you. But a quiet little neighborhood place, with great food and friendly service -- maybe you're walking by one evening and poke your nose in just to see what it’s like, then you go back again and bring a friend, and the next thing you know, you’re one of the regulars. All the servers know you by name (and probably know what you’re going to order before you can even open your mouth); you’re friends with the chef, and you’re eating there maybe two or three times a month (or if you’re like me, two or three times a week).

The only problem is, if it’s REALLY a good restaurant, other people are going to find out about it too. Then the place gets reviewed, and the next thing you know it’s hard to get a table, and the service starts to seem a little sloppy and less personal, and the food’s not quite as good as you remember it...and, of course, the prices are higher too. So maybe you stop going quite as often as you used to, because it’s just not the same as it used to be, although it’s hard not to feel happy for the owners, since after all you are a regular and they are your friends and this is exactly what they were hoping for all along. Yet as nostalgic as we may feel for the good old days, I think it’s also important to remember that every new person who discovers “our” restaurant is just as thrilled about their discovery as we were the first time we sat down and opened up the menu. Because they don’t remember how it used to be; for them the excitement is in the here and now.

Attending a new church for the first time can sometimes feel a little like discovering a new restaurant. After all, both institutions are basically in the “hospitality industry;” we're both essentially in the business of making sure that people are nourished, either physically or spiritually, we try to feed them, body and soul. And as I look out over the Meetinghouse each week from way up here in this high pulpit, I certainly sense a lot of energy and excitement in the room...lots of expectation, but lots of change too. We have a new Minister, we have a new Administrator, we now have a new Director of Religious Education, and pretty soon we’re going to have to start looking for a new Music Director too...and, of course, come this spring I suspect there’ll be lots of new members as well.

And sure, the clocks still aren’t working, and we have a leak in the roof and the ceiling is falling in...but we’re repairing those things, and remodeling the kitchen, and the bathrooms, and getting everything spiffed up again. It really does feel like the start of a Whole New Era here at First Parish: one of many that this congregation has been through in its 333 year history. And it doesn’t really matter whether you are here today for the first time this Sunday, or your family has been attending this church for generations: you are all part of it. This is your time now (if you want it to be); so seize the day, savor the moment, and enjoy the thrill and the excitement of discovering something new, and making it your own.

The beginning of a new calendar year is a natural time to be thinking about fresh starts and new beginnings. But have you ever wondered who decided to begin the new year in January? It hasn’t always been that way; and if you’ve ever studied Latin (or one of the other Romance languages) you may even have noticed that September is supposed to be the seventh month, October and November eight and nine, which of course makes December month number ten. So why is January 1st suddently one-one-whatever, when a little simple arithmetic tells us that there are actually thirteen 28 day lunar months in a 365 day solar year, with a day left over for good measure?

Apparently back in the days when human beings were first learning how to tell time from the heavens, the New Year actually began in the spring, with the first new moon following the vernal equinox, when the days at last had become longer than the nights. It was important that early farmers learn how to keep track of the time so that they would know when to plant and harvest their crops; but apparently, once they got to ten they simply stopped counting for the winter, because it didn’t really matter any more; they simply hunkered down by the fire until the food was gone, and hoped that spring would arrive before then. The Romans inherited this calendar, but of course, being civilized, they made it year-round; and with the exception of two pretty significant tweaks by Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory the XIII, it is still pretty much the same calendar we use today.

But it was also the Romans who decided to move the start of the New Year to the middle of winter, and named the month for their two-faced God Janus, who looks both forward and backward. Because the start of a new year is not just about change and transition; it is as much about retrospection as it is anticipation, a taking stock of the past before moving forward into the future. I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20, but let me assure you as a historian that it is simply not true. We can second-guess our past just as easily as we can second-guess the future. The only REAL difference is that we can’t really DO anything about the past, because it’s over, it’s history. The future, however, is always open to endless possibility, and limited only by the limitations of our imaginations. A Fresh Start. A New Beginning. It’s a cliché because it’s true: today really is the first day of the rest of your life. And every tomorrow gives us yet another opportunity to give ourselves a second chance, or a third chance, or however many chances we need in order to get it right, to get it just the way we want it.

But just because we have another chance to make a fresh start doesn’t mean that we have to start from scratch. The beginning of a New Year, or a New Era, also offers us an opportunity to renew ourselves and reconnect to our heritage, to build upon the solid foundations of our past, and to draw inspiration and encouragement not only from our own experience, but from the example and the experiences of those who have gone before us. But before we can ever truly be free to stand on the shoulders of giants, we must also learn to let go of those regrets from our past that hold us back, and keep us from achieving the full potential we can imagine...for ourselves, for our community, and for the world.

[introduce Burning Ritual]

A NEW-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS

2007-12-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Sunday December 23rd, 2007

I have to confess, I always cry during the final scene of Frank Capra's classic Christmas film "It's a Wonderful Life." In fact, I've done it so often now, I'm beginning to feel a little like Pavlov's Dog: Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed embrace, and tears begin to form in the corners of my eyes. It's not as if I don't know what's coming; I must have seen the movie dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of times. But it still hasn't lost its power to affect me; I still turn on the waterworks every time it airs.

For those of you who are still not familiar with the story, in the movie Jimmy Stewart plays a character named George Bailey, the good-hearted, self-sacrificing President of the Bailey Building and Loan in the sleepy little town of Bedford Falls. The only other financial institution in town is a bank owned by a greedy, unethical man named Potter, who would like nothing more than to put the Building and Loan out of business. Then one Christmas, in the excitement of season, George's absent-minded Uncle Billy misplaces an $8000 bank deposit. Potter finds it, but keeps it for himself, knowing that the Building and Loan is about to be audited. George discovers the shortfall on Christmas eve, and, anticipating scandal and ruin, contemplates suicide in the belief that his life insurance policy makes him worth more dead than alive.

So Clarence Oddbody, a rather bumbling Angel Second Class, is sent to earth to earn his wings by showing Jimmy Stewart what life would have been like in the town of "Pottersville" had George Bailey never been born. The climactic final scene, the one that always brings tears to my eyes, is when the citizens of Bedford Falls rise up in support of George, pledging their personal savings in order to make up the $8000 deficit. And maybe it is a corny story: honesty and virtue triumph over greed and opportunism, Clarence earns his wings, and everyone in Bedford Falls lives happily ever after, with the possible exception of Potter the banker. But corny or not, it still makes me cry, every time; in fact, sometimes just thinking about it is enough to start me sniffling with sentimentality.

A cynical Divinity School classmate of mine once insinuated that the real reason I always cry at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life" is because I wish that my Church Annual Budget Drives would be so serendipitously successful. I thought that rather a cheap shot, actually; there I was, all choked up, daubing my red eyes with my shirt sleeve, while my classmate sat comfortably in an overstuffed chair, swilling egg nog and impugning my sincerity. And I honestly don't know why "It's a Wonderful Life" always effects me the way it does. I often cry at the end of movies -- the first time I see them -- but I no longer weep at the end of "Terms of Endearment," and it’s all I can do now to keep from snickering out loud when Ali McGraw dies at the end of "Love Story."

But "It’s a Wonderful Life" gets me every time. So maybe it is just the corny plot. Because I want very much to believe that virtue triumphs over greed, that honesty triumphs over opportunism; that the life of one truly good-hearted, self-sacrificing individual human being really does make a difference in the world, and is appreciated by those who have benefited from that difference. And maybe I also want to become a little bit more like George Bailey myself, want to be able to look back at it all someday and say "It truly was a Wonderful Life!"

The plain fact of the matter though, is that over the years a lot of the “Joy” has started to evaporate out of Christmas for me. Oh, I'm sure the holiday will have its moments --Christmas generally surprises me that way at some point in the season-- but on the whole, to my way of thinking, the best thing about this Christmas will be December 26th, when the hassle of the holiday will finally over and there are 364 days before I have to go through it again.

My problem is not so much with the holiday itself, as it is with the expectations we set for it. Every year I start out with such good intentions, and every year it seems as though I can’t get my Christmas letter finished on time, or I'm still shopping at the very last minute, and of course I invariably end up feeling a little awkward and embarrassed about receiving presents I don't really want or need.

I generally enjoy giving gifts, but I resent trying to find something "perfect" for everyone I know; I would much rather shop thoughtfully for one or two people than worry about forgetting someone who hasn't forgotten me. I’m also not that keen on red and green; they are OK by themselves, but together they are incredibly garish colors, particularly for a necktie. Not that my personal favorites, Purple and Crimson, would look any better. But at least no one is going to be heartbroken if I decide its not the sort of thing I want to wear to church on Sunday morning.

At least I don't really fret that much any more about the "commercialization" of Christmas. Nowadays I find that sort of thing relatively easy to ignore. What I can't ignore is that nagging feeling that somehow I ought to be enjoying myself more than I am, that it's somehow all my fault if everyone around me isn't full of the holiday spirit, or that I have some sort of serious, pathological personality disorder because I'm saying "Merry Christmas" and feeling "Bah, Humbug." We do expect an awful lot out of ourselves this time of year. It's no wonder that so many of us come to feel disappointed, or even depressed, in this supposed season of Peace and Good Will.

Personally, I find far more joy in the memories of Christmas Past than I do in the anticipation of Christmas Yet to Come. Memory is thankfully a selective thing, a fact which can in itself make memory a double edged sword. Were those old fashioned Christmases really as good as we remember them to be? The more fondly we recall them, the more pressure we put upon ourselves to make this year's Christmas "the best Christmas ever" -- to out-do years of accumulated recollections in one huge orgy of holiday merriment.

Or, in some cases, to make up for them. For although it is in the nature of things to remember best the good times while gradually forgetting the bad, there are certain times that are just so terrible there's no forgetting them, no matter how hard one tries. Every one of us, I suspect, harbors memories of both kinds: the Christmas we endeavor to recreate, and the one we hope we'll never see again. And both influence our expectations of the current holiday season, the Spirit of Christmas Present.

And then, just beyond our personal holiday ghosts, lurk our cultural Christmas traditions: sleigh bells and mistletoe, stockings hung by the chimney with care, Jack Frost nipping at your nose -- things which make perfect sense if you lived here in Maine, or in rural Vermont or upstate New York a century ago, but which can be awfully confusing for a small child growing up in a condominium in Southern California. Over the Freeway and to the Beach to Grandmother's house we go? Throw another Yule log on the hibachi?

The first year I lived in Texas I received a card from my brother asking me whether I was going to decorate a cactus for Christmas. But it didn’t take me too long to appreciate the advantages of being able to draw upon Mexican Christmas traditions as well as those of Northern Europe. To my way of thinking, Piñatas filled with candy and candle-lit Luminarios lining the sidewalk beat the heck out of having to shovel a foot of snow just to get to the firewood. I love looking at pictures of a one-horse open sleigh dashing through the snow dragging a freshly-cut Christmas tree back to grandmother’s house, but it’s not really something I feel compelled to do personally.

There is, of course, a symbolic quality to tradition as well, in that tradition often points to meanings which lie beyond itself. But traditions also tend to take on meanings all their own, through repetition if nothing else, as our personal experiences intersect with it and are shaped and influenced by it. A child who has grown up with an expectation of a "White Christmas" is going to be disappointed if it doesn't snow, just as children who have always smashed a piñata won't feel as though Christmas is really Christmas unless they go home with a pocket full of candy.

But whatever traditions we chose to observe, the one thing we must never allow ourselves to forget is that this is a religious holiday we celebrate here in the shadow of the winter solstice. And the thing we celebrate is not so much the miraculous birth of a special infant some 2000 years ago, as it is the knowledge that, indeed, the life of one good-hearted, self-sacrificing, honest, virtuous, compassionate individual can make a difference, has made a difference, and still continues to make a difference, here in the here and now; and that this difference is appreciated by those of us who have benefited from it, who still believe in Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. Call him George Bailey of Bedford Falls; call him Y'shua ben Joseph of Nazareth, the Annointed Messiah, King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Christ Child: call it whatever you like, It's a Wonderful Life. It's the life we celebrate at Christmas, the miracle of a new light come into the world.

A living tradition can be a bridge to our appreciation of that miracle, while empty traditions are often barriers to our ever experiencing it for ourselves. And we bring our traditions to life not through the futile attempt to resurrect the Spirit of Christmas Past, but by our openness to life in the here and now, our willingness to let honesty and virtue, good-heartedness and self-sacrifice, live within us, take vitality from our laughter, and courage from our tears.

I used to feel kind of embarrassed about always crying at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life." After all, it's not a very manly thing to do -- you'd think I was still a small child or something. Lately I find that I don't worry about that kind of thing too much, at least not among my friends. Because Christmas truly is a holiday for the child within us all. For those still young enough to believe in Santa, still naive enough to believe that the world can be saved by a child, and for all of us who want to believe in people like George Bailey, and in Clarence, an Angel Second Class, who is counting on help from the likes of us to help him earn his wings.

***

READINGS: Two Christmas poems by Ursula Askham Fanthorpe

BC : AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect.
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

What The Donkey Saw

No room in the inn, of course,
And not that much in the stable
What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,
Joseph, the heavenly host -
Not to mention the baby
Using our manger as a cot.
You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in
For love or money.

Still, in spite of the overcrowding,
I did my best to make them feel wanted.
I could see the baby and I
Would be going places together.

WHEN CHRISTMAS WAS A CRIME

2007-12-16T00:33:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish in Portland, Maine
Sunday December 16th, 2007

Early before dawn on the morning of December 26th, 1776, the Continental Army under the command of General George Washington ferried across the partially frozen Delaware river and attacked a garrison of Hessian mercenaries occupying the town of Trenton, New Jersey. Surprise was complete; most of the Germans were still sleeping off the riotous Christmas celebration they had tied on the night before. One American soldier described the battle in his diary this way: "Hessian population of Trenton at eight am: 1,408 men and 39 officers; Hessian population at nine am: zero." Over 900 of the German troops were killed or captured, at the cost of only two American lives. On the body of Colonel Ralls, the German commander, the Americans found a letter from a British loyalist warning of Washington's attack. The letter was unopened. Ralls had been a victim of his own preconceptions: no "Christian" army would launch an attack on Christmas Day!

But these were not Catholics, nor Lutherans, nor even Anglicans that the German mercenaries were up against. They were, for the most part, New England Congregationalists, inheritors of that Puritan legacy in which the celebration of Christmas was seen as a "Popish superstition," a "wanton, Bacchanalian feast," and in some jursidictions here in what was then still part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a criminal offense punishable by a fine of five shillings and confinement in the stocks.

These New Englanders had little care for Yule logs and Mistletoe, wassail and Carols and Christmas pudding. Their's was a tradition of "pure" Christianity, stripped of the trappings of Druidic witchcraft and Roman syncretism. When they wanted to feast, they declared a Day of Thanksgiving and ate Turkey and Cranberries. There was plenty of thanks being given on the day the captured Hessian prisoners were paraded through the streets of Philadelphia. The dwindling Patriot army had finally won an important victory, and Congress voted to allow Washington to continue his command.

Although attitudes had moderated somewhat by the time of George Washington, the underlying sentiments of 17th century Puritanism were still quite influential in Revolutionary New England. Puritan religion was based on three simple precepts: a deeply abiding sense of original sin and the total depravity of human kind; a personal awareness of the regenerative power of God's grace through His predestined election of a few unworthy souls for salvation; and a compelling notion of service and religious duty in thanks for God's gift of unconditional election. They saw themselves embarked upon an errand into the wilderness, an errand to create a "City upon a Hill," a beacon to all the world which would shine as an example of the ideal Christian community, ruled and regulated according to God's Holy Ordinances as revealed in Scripture.

They took themselves and their mission seriously, yet they were also fine scholars, who were well aware of the pagan origins of most Christmas traditions, and who believed that God would turn His back upon their community should they stray from their stern covenant into the festive merriment of the Yuletide holiday. The frivolous actions of just a few might easily bring down God's wrath upon the entire colony. Thus the magistrates were empowered to arrest and punish blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, and anyone else whose ideas or actions might endanger the stability of their perfect Christian community, including those who celebrated Christmas, whether by feasting, or abstaining from labor, or in any other way marking the occasion as something special or out of the ordinary. For the Puritans, Christmas was a day like any other day; to observe otherwise was not only to risk the wrath of God, but to place oneself in danger of criminal prosecution as well.

The Puritan attitude towards Christmas may seem a bit extreme to us today. But then, the Puritans never did have much of a reputation as a fun-loving bunch. Nowadays, while we might complain about the "commercialization" of Christmas, or the emotional stress of entertaining our friends and families, few of us give much thought to the essentially pagan origins of the holiday, nor, I suspect, would we be particularly concerned about them if we did. The evolution of an obscure 4th century Turkish Bishop, St. Nicholas, into a rotund, white bearded "jolly old elf," who dresses in red, owns a herd of flying reindeer, and lives at the North Pole raises few eyebrows; nor are we troubled by the amazing coincidence that December 25th also happens to be the birthday of the Greek God Adonis, the Egyptian God Horus, and the Iranian God Mithra, all of whom were well entrenched on the winter solstice long before a virgin gave birth to a savior in Bethlehem, and laid him in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Instead, we trim our trees and adorn our homes with holly and mistletoe much as the Celts did centuries ago; we exchange cards and brightly wrapped gifts; bake pies and cookies and cakes; we sing of miracles, of peace on earth, good will to all; and hang our stockings by the chimney with care. We tell ourselves, with a wink, that "Christmas is for Children," all the time knowing that the best parts of Christmas are really for adults, and are often completely lost upon the avaricious little monsters, who scoff at movies like "It's a Wonderful Life," write letters to "Santa" that require extra postage, ransack our closets behind our backs, and just don't seem to quite understand what the whole thing's really all about. Adults tolerate children at Christmas, I think, because we remember that we were once children ourselves. Indeed, if in any sense "Christmas is for Children," it is for the inner children who live within us still, and are now finally old enough to truly understand the message of peace, hope and innocence embodied in this season.

In my household when my kids were young, we had a tradition of only celebrating Christmas every other year. This unorthodox practice dates back to my former wife’s first divorce, and an agreement she had with her ex-husband that the kids would spend every other Christmas with him. This worked out pretty well for Margie, because she had never really been that big a “Christmas person;” she associates this time of year with a couple of very unpleasant memories: the untimely death of her mother, when Margie, was only 21, and also the death of her own second-born child from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome a few years later. So she always kind of appreciated having a built-in excuse to take it kind of easy this time of year.

But after Margie, and I were married, I think the kids both assumed that, because I was a minister, I HAD to celebrate Christmas every year. So when I announced that we would continue the tradition, at first they didn't take me seriously. But after a couple of weeks, when there wasn't any tree, and there weren't any lights, and there weren't any mysterious packages from the Mall hidden in any of our closets, they began to get a little worried. I think they'd both sorta been looking forward to really cleaning up that year, on having two Christmases, with twice the usual amount of candy, and twice the usual number of presents: a real orgy of "ripping," as they so delicately described it, with all the attendant excitement and attention. And I can understand that wish, I guess; in many ways, it's every kid's dream: a Christmas that never ends.

I don't know how many of you have ever faced this situation of sharing children with a former spouse over the holidays, but it's a fairly common thing these days, and it can be kind of tricky, both logistically and emotionally. There's a real temptation to over-react, to set yourself up in competition with the other person to see who can provide the "better" Christmas, which all too often boils down to who has the deepest pockets.

Kids know this, of course, and they play it up for all its worth: not maliciously, I think, but rather because they're not really old enough to know any better. Children have very tangible minds: they like things that they can see and touch. Money is no object with children, because they don't really understand it, although this has its advantages too; the most popular Christmas gift I ever purchased for my children was a 99 cent Nerf football, which I bought one Christmas Eve as an afterthought while browsing through the local drug store on another last-minute errand.

Yet it is this very quality we find so endearing in children which convinces me that Christmas is wasted upon them. Until one develops the capacity to appreciate the intangibles of Christmas, the holiday remains merely a celebration of consumption: shallow, superficial, and ultimately disappointing. We might as well imitate the Puritans and eliminate it all together, for it adds nothing to the quality of our lives, it simply distracts us from the things that are ultimately important.

The delighted squeal of children on Christmas morning is a transitory thing; it passes away and is soon forgotten: the adults tend to remember it far longer than the kids do. The cries of hungry children who do not have enough to eat are far more persistent, yet even when we pause long enough to hear them cry, it often seems as though there is realistically very little any one of us can hope to do in order to meet that urgent need. Perhaps, if we are conscientious, we try to do our share, and hope that with the help of others, it will be enough. But it never really is enough.

Yet it is between these two contrasting extremes that the real meaning of Christmas, the real Spirit of Christmas, can be found. It is found the story of a baby born in a stable because there was no room at the inn, born far from home, on the longest night of the year, to bring a light into the world; incarnating, if you will, the very real possibility that both greed and poverty can be transcended through the simple expedient of profound human relationship, to one another and to the divine, uniting kings and shepherds, animals and angels, in common service to a sovereign mystery, to the appearance of a new star in the sky. And perhaps it never really happened; perhaps it is nothing but a myth. But the possibility still exists, in the power of the story to help us see beyond the tangible, to reach out to the things we can not touch, and hold them firmly in our hearts all the same.

THE FLAME THAT WOULDN'T DIE

2007-12-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church of Portland, Maine
Sunday December 9th, 2007

READING: 1 Maccabees 4: 34-59

***
When I was a child, growing up in a Unitarian Universalist Sunday School, I always had a lot of fun when we were given the opportunity to celebrate Hanukkah as part of our Sunday School curriculum. We lit the candles in the Menorah, we played with Dreidels, we heard the story of the lamp that burned for eight straight days, when there was only a one day supply of oil. In the predominately Catholic neighborhood where we lived, "The Feast of Lights" seemed like our Unitarian-Universalist answer to Advent — not only did it avoid a lot of problematic issues like the Virgin Birth, but it also introduced us to the whole idea of cross-cultural celebrations of the Winter Solstice: the coming of Light into the world, in the season where nights are long and darkness reigns, and it had the added advantage of eight straight days of presents. (In our house that particular tradition only lasted one year, by the way).

I always had a little trouble, though, understanding this business about the lamp that burned for eight days in the temple. After all, a one-day supply of oil is a one-day supply of oil; if the lamp burned for eight days, obviously that was an eight-day supply: someone simply must have made a mistake when they were doing the inventory. I just didn't see what all the fuss was about. Maybe there was a clever priest (or more likely, a sexton), who was somehow able to adjust the flame and stretch the supply, make the oil last longer than it should have. Or maybe they just asked around, and everybody pitched in what they had. I mean, isn’t that what people do in times of crisis?

But there was nothing particularly miraculous about that; my mom used to do that sort of thing all the time. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” You don’t have to be a native Mainer to appreciate the importance of a little old-fashioned frugality, combined with a generous helping of Yankee ingenuity. I guess I always just had a very strong humanist streak from a very early age, because it was years before I was able to understand that the flame of the Menorah was only a symbol of the real miracle. The temple had been defiled, but the faith had endured, and triumphed. This is the real miracle of the Feast of Dedication.

Let me share with you a little more of the history behind the the story of Hanukkah. In 167 BC the Selucid emperor Antiochus IV ordered the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem to the worship of Zeus. The Selucids were one of three dynasties which had emerged from the remnants of Alexander the Great's empire following his death a century and a half earlier. Based primarily in what is now Syria, the Selucids were almost constantly at war with a second post-Alexandrian dynasty, the Ptolemies, who were based in Egypt. Even in that day, there were already significant Jewish communities in both Babylonia (which was controlled by the Selucids) and Alexandria (the capital of the Ptolemies); life in the diaspora had already begun; while Judaea, the original home of the Jewish people, served as something of a strategic buffer between these two Great Powers of the ancient world, and was constantly buffeted by the ebb and flow of their political and military ambitions.

Controlled by the Ptolemies until the start of the second century BC, Judea eventually came under the hegemony of the Selucids following their decisive victory over the Ptolemies at the Battle of Banyas, which took place near the headwaters of the Jordan River. To a significant degree, this development was welcomed by many of the Jewish inhabitants of Judaea, because the Ptolemies had been great Hellenizers, which is to say they were fond of introducing Greek customs and practices into the cultures they ruled. The Jewish community in Alexandria, for example, had been deeply influenced by Greek philosophy; and it was their Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the Septuagint, that would eventually become a key factor in the rapid spread of Christianity among the Greek-speaking Gentiles of the Roman Empire.

Selucid rule, on the other hand, appeared to promise the practice of a more authentically Hebrew Judaism, such as existed in Babylonia. But this expectation was not to be borne out. Roman influence in the Eastern Mediterranean was growing; in order to pay for his increasingly expensive military adventures, as well as shield his empire from the threat of Rome, Antiochus IV greatly increased the level of taxation in Judaea, plundering the treasury of the temple in Jerusalem, and also cracking down on dissident Jewish groups who resented the burdens imposed by their Greek-speaking rulers, and who sought the freedom to manage their own affairs. In order to pacify the region, Antiochus IV accelerated the Hellenization of Judaea, siding with those Jews who were sympathetic to Greek ideas and culture, and doing everything within his power to eliminate the practice of Judaism as a distinctive religious faith.

This is the background of the Maccabean revolt. The Maccabees were insurgent guerrilla fighters who took to the hills in order to resist these changes. Their leader was initially a priest named Mattathias Maccabaeus, who not only refused to offer pagan sacrifice in the Jewish temple where he served, but also reportedly killed the first Jewish apostate who had attempted to do so. When Mattathias himself later died, leadership of the guerrilla army fell upon the shoulders of his oldest son, Judas Maccabaeus, who was eventually able to drive the Selucids out of the city of Jerusalem, and re-dedicate the temple there to the worship of the Hebrew God Yahweh, as we heard in the passage from the First Book of Maccabees I read earlier this morning. This is the origin of Hanukkah — the Festival of Dedication — the only major festival in Judaism not explicitly rooted in the Torah.

There are some major ironies contained within the story of Hanukkah. The Maccabean revolt was a war fought for the purpose of religious liberty — the only such revolt of its kind recorded in ancient history — yet the Maccabees themselves were hardly the religious liberals of their day. They were more akin, perhaps, to modern religious fundamentalists in their attitudes and practices; and I suppose if you were Antiochus IV, you might even have called them terrorists. Likewise, the only records of their achievements which have survived were written in Greek, most likely by members of their rival Jewish community in Alexandria. Although the Maccabees were able to defeat the Selucids at Jerusalem, their position there was anything but secure; thus, a few years later, they entered into a military alliance with the Romans — an act which was virtually to ensure the eventual subjugation of the Jewish people, and the loss of a national Jewish homeland for 2000 years. By the time of Christ, it was Rome who ruled in Judaea; in 70 AD Roman soldiers demolished the temple which Judas Maccabaeus had fought so hard to reconsecrate — only a portion of a single wall, now known as the "Wailing Wall," was left standing.

Yet the flame of the Maccabees still burns. And the ironies, tragic ironies, still continue. Deep down in my heart of hearts, I have always been something of a closet Zionist. Perhaps this stems, in part, from having had a Jewish grandfather (on my mother’s side), but whatever the source, I’ve always taken pride in the independence of the modern state of Israel, and in the contributions of Judaism in general to Western thought, culture, and civilization. The flame of the Hanukkah Menorah symbolizes the light of that contribution, as well as the persistent struggle of the Jewish people to preserve their religious faith and practice in the face of 2000 years of almost constant anti-semitic persecution and oppression. Zionism reflects the burning aspiration of Jews for a nation of their own, a place to call home.

But there is also a shadow cast by Zionism: a shadow which those of us who consider ourselves friends of Israel are sometimes reluctant to explore. Hanukkah is a celebration of Light and Hope, Joy and Compassion — in many ways it represents the very best of what religion has to offer us here in this world. Even (or perhaps especially) in the context of a “global war on terror,” there are no doubt still many Jews, many people of faith all the world over, who are deeply troubled by the Israeli government's recent history and policies regarding the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, and who continue to hope for a permanent and lasting peace based on mutual tolerance, reasonable accommodation, and sympathetic understanding. The role of Oppressor does not come naturally to the Jewish spirit; and this too, is a lingering irony of the legacy of the Maccabees, whose military victories ultimately brought ruin to their nation.

In his Hanukkah story "The Power of Light," Isaac Bashevis Singer tells of two Jewish children, David and Rebecca, hiding in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto following its destruction by the Nazis during the Second World War. On the first night of Hanukkah, David finds some matches and a candle while foraging in the rubble, and returns to their hiding place to share his discovery. Singer writes:

...Now David pronounced the benediction over the Hanukkah candle, and Rebecca said "Amen." They had both lost their families, and they had good reason to be angry with God for sending them so many afflictions, but the light of the candle brought peace into their souls. That glimmer of light, surrounded by so many shadows, seemed to say without words: Evil has not yet taken complete dominion. A spark of hope is still left.

For some time David and Rebecca had thought about escaping from Warsaw. But how? The ghetto was watched by the Nazis day and night. Each step was dangerous. Rebecca kept delaying their departure. It would be easier in the summer, she often said, but David knew that in their predicament they had little chance of lasting until then. Somewhere in the forest there were young men and women called partisans who fought the Nazi invaders. David wanted to reach them. Now, by the light of the Hanukkah candle, Rebecca suddenly felt renewed courage. She said, "David, let's leave."

"When?" [David asked.]

"When you think it's the right time," she answered.

"The right time is now," David said. "I have a plan."

For a long time David explained the details of his plan to Rebecca. It was more than risky. The Nazis had enclosed the ghetto with barbed wire and posted guards armed with machine guns on the surrounding roofs. At night searchlights lit up all possible exits from the destroyed ghetto. But in his wanderings through the ruins, David had found an opening to a sewer which he thought might lead to the other side. David told Rebecca that their chances of remaining alive were slim. They could drown in the dirty water or freeze to death. Also, the sewers were full of hungry rats. But Rebecca agreed to take the risk; to remain in the cellar for the winter would mean certain death.

When the Hanukkah light began to sputter and flicker before going out, David and Rebecca gathered their few belongings. She packed the remaining food in a kerchief, and David took his matches and a piece of lead pipe for a weapon.

In moments of great danger people become unusually courageous. David and Rebecca were soon on their way through the ruins. They came to passages so narrow they had to crawl on hands and knees. But the food they had eaten, and the joy the Hanukkah candles had awakened in them, gave them the courage to continue. After some time David found the entrance to the sewer. Luckily, the sewage had frozen, and it seemed that the rats had left because of the extreme cold. From time to time David and Rebecca stopped to rest and to listen. After a while they crawled on, slowly and carefully. Suddenly they stopped in their tracks. From above they could hear the clanging of a trolley car. They had reached the other side of the ghetto. All they needed now was to find a way to get out of the sewer and to leave the city as quickly as possible.

Many miracles seemed to happen that Hanukkah night. Because the Nazis were afraid of enemy planes, they had ordered a complete blackout. Because of the bitter cold, there were fewer Gestapo guards. David and Rebecca managed to leave the sewer and steal out of the city without being caught. At dawn they reached a forest where they were able to rest and have a bite to eat....

After a week of hiding by day and traveling at night, David and Rebecca met up with a group of Jewish partisans hiding in the forest. It was now the final night of Hanukkah, and the children played dreidel on the stump of an oak tree while others kept watch. More and more refugees joined them, and slowly they made their way to Israel, assisted by the Haganah: an organization which worked to smuggle Jewish refugees out of Nazi-occupied Europe and into the Holy Land. They finished school, married, and found a small house with a garden in a suburb of Tel Aviv. Singer concludes his story by writing:

...I know all this because David and Rebecca told me their story on a Hanukkah evening in their house in Ramat Gan about eight years later. The Hanukkah candles were burning, and Rebecca was frying potato pancakes served with applesauce for all of us. David and I were playing dreidel with their little son, Menahem Eliezer, named after both of his grandfathers. David told me that this large wooden dreidel was the same one the partisans had played with on that Hanukkah evening in the forest in Poland. Rebecca said to me: "If it had not been for that little candle David brought to our hiding place, we wouldn't be sitting here today. That glimmer of light awakened in us a hope and strength we didn't know we possessed. We'll give the dreidel to Menahem Eliezer when he is old enough to understand what we went through and how miraculously we were saved...."

I’ve always liked to thing that this child, Menahem Eliezer, would be about my age this Hanukkah. No doubt he has long since learned the story of his parents' escape and rescue; no doubt by now he has children, and perhaps even grandchildren, of his own, with whom he has also shared the dreidal, with its four Hebrew letters: nun, gimel, he, shin -- "a great miracle happened there." And this holiday season, may we as well share in the miracle of the Flame that wouldn't die, recalling even in this season of darkness our essential connectedness to the whole of humankind, and our renewed dedication to the timeless principles which allow our faith to endure.