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]
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Flaming Chalice Images
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
Sunday, September 14, 2008
PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION
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....
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....
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Ingathering Water Ceremony
***
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
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.
***
[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....
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....
Sunday, June 1, 2008
"ROOTS AND FRUITS" (Rebecca Hinds, DRE)
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.
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.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
EASTER, AGAIN?
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.
at the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine
Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008
READING: Luke 24: 13-35. -- “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?”
***
Some years ago now, when I was still relatively new to the ministry, and serving the Unitarian congregation in Midland, Texas, there was a child in our Sunday School whose parents were recently divorced, so every other Sunday she attended our church with her father, and then on the alternating Sundays she went to the Baptist church with her mother and grandparents. And naturally, this was a little confusing for her. One Sunday she’d go to the Baptist Church and hear about how God created the world in seven days. The next week she’d come to our church and learn about the dinosaurs. The next week she’d be back over at the Baptist church hearing about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and Original Sin. And then the following week she’d be back with us, and the teacher would have brought an actual snake into the classroom, and would be explaining about “The Interdependent Web of All Existence, of Which We are a Part.”
Now as it so happened, the Sunday School teacher at the Baptist Church actually started to get kind of curious about Unitarianism as well, so she decided to try to find out more by asking Sherry about something that a young child was likely to know, which turned out to be the holidays.
“What do the Unitarians believe about Thanksgiving?” the Sunday School teacher asked.
“Thanksgiving is when remember the Pilgrims, who came to America in search of religious freedom, and survived the first winter with the help of their friends, the Indians.”
“And what do the Unitarians believe about Christmas?”
“Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, and the coming of light into the world at the darkest time of the year.”
“And what do the Unitarians believe about Easter?”
No response. So the teacher began to give some hints.
“You know, Jesus dies on the cross, and is buried in the tomb....”
Still no response.
“And he’s buried in the Tomb for three days.... And at the end of three days, he rolls away the rock, and comes out of the tomb....”
Suddenly Sherry’s eyes lit up. “And if he sees his shadow he goes back in and there’s six more weeks of winter!”
Now let me tell you a true story. A generation ago, when I was a child growing up in the Unitarian Church, it was still not uncommon for our Sunday School students to perform full-scale Easter pageants at this time of year. And when my mentor, Peter Raible, who is now the minister emeritus at University Unitarian Church in Seattle (where I attended Sunday School as a child), was himself new to our ministry, he was in charge of organizing the Easter Pageant at our church in Providence, Rhode Island, which the children were to perform before the entire congregation as part of the Sunday service. Everything went smoothly until the dramatic climax, when the child who was playing the part of Saint Peter rushed onstage to announce the Good News. At the top of his lungs, he shouted his discovery to the congregation: "The Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away!" There was silence, followed by a nervous titter which soon gave way to uproarious laughter, bringing the pageant to an abrupt and early close. For from the innocent mouth of a child, a profound commentary on our faith had sprung forth. What is the meaning of Easter here in the Unitarian church? Perhaps it is nothing more than this: the Rock has risen, Christ has rolled away.
This is a tough time of year to be a Unitarian Minister. It's not like Christmas; we call all pretty much get into the Spirit of Christmas without worrying too much about whether or not it truly was a Virgin Birth, or if the angels really did speak to the shepherds. Thanksgiving is essentially OUR holiday: a tiny group of pilgrims who come to a new world in search of religious freedom, and who survive against all odds and in the face of terrible hardship; and if you ever happen to find yourself in Plymouth some Sunday morning, and decide to worship in the church that the Pilgrims started, you will find other Unitarians there to greet you.
But Easter is different. No matter how eloquently we may speak of the rebirth of new life in Spring, or of other Ancient Near Eastern traditions of dying and rising gods, Easter remains the story of an empty tomb, the Resurrection of the Christ, a corpse that got up and "stood again." It's a story, quite frankly, which I don't believe; which is why it's so tough to be a Unitarian minister on Easter Sunday. What do you say after you've said "Sorry, I don't buy it. Not a word of it. It's nothing but fiction, a metaphor, a lot of make believe...."? That's not exactly the sort of message designed to inspire a great outpouring of renewed commitment and religious faith. And yet this is precisely what Easter is all about: the renewal of trust, the renewal of hope: the rebirth of a commitment rooted in faith, even in the face of death and disappointment.
As I said last week, our Unitarian Universalist religious heritage is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. The free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice -- it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But curiosity alone, even a "responsible" curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere, an understanding that Truth really matters: that this is not just some abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The life of faith is not just a commitment to know the truth, but also a willingness to be "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness. It is only through our commitment to something which is larger than our self, larger than our personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it -- that we grow beyond our present limitations as religious beings, whatever they may be, and bring our potential to fruition. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned, willing to grow beyond what we already are to what we potentially might become. And I called this commitment the Call of Discipleship: the challenge of becoming a disciplined religious learner, enjoying Fellowship with other learners, sharing the Stewardship of a religious heritage and institution, providing Leadership for others who would join us on our way, and who likewise seek to grow beyond themselves.
You see, Easter is the story of an Empty Tomb. But it is also many other stories as well. It is the story of a martyrdom: of one individual's faithful witness to the integrity of his beliefs, and of the price which he paid for maintaining that integrity. It is a story of failure, and temptation, and betrayal; and of the opportunity for a different kind of relationship with the divine, a "New Covenant" which is open to us even in midst of our human weaknesses and shortcomings, and still inspires us to become more than we now are. And above all, I think, it is a story of survival in the aftermath of tragedy, and of that hidden strength which exists within each of us, and which rises to the surface when we need it most.
Consider the story of Simon Peter, or "Rocky" as one of the more contemporary translations of the New Testament calls him, in an attempt to render the effect of the Greek pun on his nickname Petros or "rock." He was the first of the disciples to answer the call of Jesus, a simple working man who caught fish for a living on the Sea of Galilee, and lived at home with his wife and his mother and his brother -- always the most faithful and loyal of the disciples, and yet also (it's always seemed to me) a little thick-headed, as though he really didn't grasp or understand the full significance of everything that was going on around him at the time. Yet it was upon this "rock" that Jesus chose to build his church, his community of people who had been "called out" to learn the Good News of the New Covenant. And the Story of Easter is as much the story of disciple Peter as it is of Rabbi Jesus: what does the "learner" do when the "teacher" is suddenly taken from him, and the full significance of it all finally begins to grow clear?
This, in a nutshell, is what it means to become a Disciple. It means the recognition that when you answer the call to become a religious learner, and commit yourself to the discipline which that entails, you are also accepting the responsibility of becoming a religious teacher: of communicating by example what you have learned through imitation. You become an "apostle" -- one who is "sent out" -- one whose faith has not only taken root in the discipline of religious life, but which has also taken wing so that it can be spread to others. This is the quality that separates the Disciple from the dilettante, from someone who merely dabbles in spriritual learning for their own amusement, pretending to a wisdom greater than they possess. The disciple may recognize that his or her knowledge is incomplete, may even shy away from the challenge of sharing it with others. But ultimately the true disciple will rise to the challenge; and it is through this process: learners teaching learners teaching learners teaching learners, that the community endures, surviving even the execution of the teacher who first gathered it.
Jesus himself was a disciple once. In the second chapter of Luke we read of an episode in his life, when he was the age of twelve, in which he remained behind in the city of Jerusalem following the Feast of Passover, and was missing from his family for three days. They eventually found him sitting in the temple, listening to the rabbis and asking them questions, and surprised that his parents should have been so worried about his whereabouts. And eighteen years later, following his baptism by John in the river Jordan, it was only after forty days of fasting in the wilderness that Jesus came to the decision to answer the call to ministry, to gather disciples to him, and to preach good news to the poor. The challenge of an authentic religious faith entails making that step from study to service, to move forward from learning to actively doing the Good and the True.
In the case of Simon Peter, the challenge came upon him suddenly. At the moment Jesus was arrested Peter's first impulse was to resist, to fight back; and afterwards, in those dark hours before dawn, as he followed the members of this paramilitary "Death Squad" who had kidnapped his teacher back to the house of the High Priest himself, and then sat in the courtyard -- frightened, helpless, and confused -- three times he denied that he even knew Jesus, no doubt hoping to avoid a similar fate himself. And when he realized what he had done, he wept for the shame of it.
And then a very strange thing happened. For in the ensuing hours and days that immediately followed the crucifixion, it was the Apostle Peter -- the Rock -- who "stood again" in the place of the departed Jesus, who gathered the disciples together in the Upper Room to observe the Sabbath while they waited for the opportunity to anoint the body of their executed teacher. There was as yet no talk of any "resurrection," no one had been to visit the tomb, no one had claimed to have seen the Risen Lord. But the miracle of Easter had already begun; the teacher was dead, but the teaching lived on: the disciples, the learners, were becoming teachers in their own right, and the community which they formed would survive.
Recall for a moment the passage I read this morning from the Gospel According to Luke, the story of the resurrection appearance on the road to Emmaus. I read that passage not because I think that it's an accurate account of something that actually happened, but because it is a story that is personally meaningful to me. Imagine this, if you will. Two disciples, two "learners," are returning home after having witnessed the crucifixion of their teacher and master. They meet a stranger on the road, invite him to share their company and hospitality; and in the familiar action of the breaking of the bread, they see again the face of their rabbi, Jesus. And the message of this story, for me, is not so much that Christ still lives, but that Christ Lives On: that everything that Jesus had come to stand for in the lives of these two students was just as valid after the crucifixion as it had been before.
It has always struck me as ironic, with all the heated arguments I've heard about the nature of the resurrection: whether or not it occurred at all; whether the tomb was empty or Christ simply "appeared;" what, if anything, it should mean to us today anyway, that more often than not, whenever the Apostle Paul (whose epistles represent the earliest documents of what we now call the "New Testament") speaks of the "risen body of Christ," he is speaking metaphorically of the early Christian church, with its "body" of believers, its "many members." For Paul, the empty tomb was never an issue; he saw the Risen Christ every time he saw another Christian, every time they broke bread together. Paul himself never met the living Jesus -- of this even the most conservative Biblical scholars agree. And yet tradition records that he was struck blind on the road to Damascus, and emerged from that experience a different human being: not just a disciple, but an apostle of Christ, with a new vision of his role as a religious learner, and a teacher. The Greek word anastasis, which we translate as Resurrection, literally means "to rise" or "to stand again." And it happens not once in history for all time, but continually for each of us who encounters the Rabbi on the road to Emmaus, or Damascus, or Wherever, and who "rises up" to "take a stand" for a higher principle, for a different way.
Once Jesus had died upon the cross, it was the Apostles who held the church together during its early years: Peter who provided the leadership, the continuity, the solid root from which the community of faith would take wing; Paul who carried the good news to the Gentiles, who spent a good portion of his ministry in prison, and whose letters are now regarded by the church to have the authority of Scripture. Peter went on to become the Bishop of Rome, the first Pope; and was likewise crucified for his beliefs there in that city during the reign of the emperor Nero. Tradition says that Peter asked to be crucified up-side-down, with his head toward the ground and his feet in the air, because he did not feel himself worthy to be executed in the same manner as Jesus. He had answered the call, and then risen to the challenge; he had truly become a "fisher of men," just as the Rabbi had promised when he had said to him "follow me."
The challenges we face in finding our own wings may not be so dramatic as those faced by Peter and Paul. But the thrust of it all is still very much the same: to grow beyond our fears, to rise to the challenge, to use the things which we have learned in the service of others, to become the solid rocks upon which a community can be built. When we rise to this challenge, it is the miracle of Easter all over again: the renewal of faith, the renewal of hope, the resurrection of the spirit of truth and love and fellowship. Through the willingness to serve, to become teachers as well as learners, to act as witnesses to the truth of our beliefs and our ideals, we become active participants in the process of “saving” the world: a world in which evil and falsehood retreat before the power of the Truth plainly spoken, and no challenge is too great for the community of those who faithfully seek it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Call to Discipleship
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine
Palm Sunday March 16, 2008
***
[extemporaneous introduction about the significance of New Members Sunday]
Despite our reputation as a religion for intellectuals, in its essence the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice; ultimately, it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But the triumph of Truth doesn't always happen quickly or easily. That typically requires both a long season of seeking, and an even longer season of speaking "The Truth"...but I thought that today, on Palm Sunday, I would simply speak a little bit about the notion of Discipleship; which is to say, on what it means to be a dedicated, disciplined religious "learner" (which is what that word "disciple" really means).
This seems to me a particularly appropriate topic for this particular Sunday, simply because of the nature of the events which the Christian tradition has historically commemorated during Holy Week. It's the great irony of the Gospels, that one cannot really appreciate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, accompanied by a chorus of Hosanas and a sea of waving Palm fronds, without looking ahead to his rejection by that same crowd later in the week, and his painful execution alongside two common criminals on a Roman cross at "the Hill of Skulls."
And likewise, one cannot really make sense of the Crucifixion without looking ahead to the events of Easter, and the anastasis -- the "standing again" of the departed teacher in the transformed lives of his surviving students. The popular acceptance of the truth of an idea ebbs and flows with the whims of the world. But Truth itself is not so easily put to death so long as there are those who continue to live to learn it. And this choice, this willingness to dedicate oneself to learning and living "the Truth," is what I like to think of as the “Call to Discipleship.” Not a blind obedience to an easy truth which never seeks to move beyond itself. But rather, a curious, questioning, probing truth, which constantly challenges existing assumptions in the effort to achieve a greater understanding.
As I mentioned earlier, the word disciple literally means "learner." But one can also easily see in it the root of yet another familiar English word: the word discipline, which is an essential component of the idea of Discipleship. I don't know what life was like growing up in your household, but “discipline” was and remains one of my own father’s favorite words, even though it wasn’t exactly the most popular concept in my own mind when I was a kid. Basically, to my young ears, be disciplined meant to be punished -- it was something that I tried to avoid as much as possible. And as I grew older, and my father began to preach to me about the virtues of "self-discipline," I figured that he must be crazy: why would anyone go out of their way to punish themselves when there are so many other folks out there who are willing to do that for you?
Now, if my father had explained to me way back then that all he was really trying to do was simply to encourage my brothers and me to cultivate the quality of being lifelong, committed, dedicated, self-motivated learners, he might have had a lot more success getting his point across; as things worked out, it was not until after I started college that I finally started to figure out for myself what he had been talking about all those years. I think it was Mark Twain who once observed that when he was fourteen he couldn’t believe how ignorant his father was, but by the time he’d turned twenty-one he was equally astonished at how much smarter the old man had gotten in just seven years. That was basically my experience when it came to learning about “discipline.” It wasn’t the sort of lesson easily learned by lecture alone. I kind of needed to figure it out for myself, by trial and error in the laboratory of my life.
I think it was also Twain who quipped that he tried never to let schooling interfere with his education (which, when you’ve spent as many years in school as I have, takes on a particular poignancy). It's a clever remark, but behind it lies yet another very important truth about “The Truth:” the insight that serious learners tend to learn for the love of learning, and not merely because they are motivated either by the fear of punishment, or the promise of external rewards like good grades, or praise, or the expectation of a better paying job. A passionate curiosity is the first characteristic of the Call to Discipleship: a curiosity which must then become disciplined through the commitment to an organized, methodical, self-challenging learning process in order to achieve its full potential.
But curiosity alone, even a disciplined curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere in one’s character, an understanding that The Truth really matters: that this is not just some sort of abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The Call to Discipleship is not just an invitation to know the truth, but also the imperative of being "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness.
It is on this level, I believe, that we can see most clearly why Discipleship truly is a "religious" discipline: it represents a profound commitment to something which is larger than the self, larger than one's personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned. Yet the willingness to change -- and by this I mean not only a willingness to accept change, but also to seek out and to embrace change -- is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. We seek greater knowledge in order to be able to change the world, but the most significant thing that we can ever learn to change is our own selves. Self-discipline not only requires self-understanding, it also creates it. And this in turn is what ultimately empowers us to change the world around us as well.
For my own part, when I first felt the "call" to ministry, it was precisely because of my commitment to Social Justice. Very quickly though after beginning my theological studies at Harvard, I started to develop an interest in the more contemplative aspects of religious life. I was looking for a language with which to express my own mystical sense of who I was in this vast Universe we inhabit; and I discovered that as I learned, this new knowledge helped both to shape and to expand my understanding. It not only gave form to what I already felt, but it also drew me out beyond it: the "discipline" of Discipleship became in itself a vehicle for personal religious transformation, the source of a new understanding which grew upon itself rather than merely reorganizing what it found. And likewise, this same process ultimately brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the Church as an institution: not merely a potential springboard for social change, nor even a convenient forum for intellectual stimulation, but also a dynamic institution in its own right: an institution built on a very human scale, unlike the huge banks, and corporations, and governmental entities which exert so much control over the way we live our lives.
Indeed, over the years more and more of my own personal understanding of what it means to be a "disciple" has come to center around my relationship to a church community -- and not merely as a minister, as the so-called "professional" Unitarian -- but even more significantly simply as a "fellow traveler," a learner who seeks a deeper knowledge of himself and the meaning and purpose of his life, and who finds that it is only in community, in the often-times extremely difficult challenge of collaborating with other people and creating some kind of a common life together, that the really important lessons are to be learned.
I’m sure you’ve all heard it said that knowledge is power, and also that power corrupts, which naturally leads some to the logical conclusion that we must therefore disempower the knowledgeable in order to prevent them from corrupting the integrity of our democratic process. But this twisted syllogism becomes true only when the power of knowledge is allowed to remain in the possession of only a few, select individuals, when information is hoarded rather than shared, and knowledgeable “insiders” are allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of others by keeping them in the dark and manipulating events from behind the scenes.
It’s an insidious temptation for even the most wise. Think of how easy it would be simply to remain confident in one’s own enlightenment, scoffing at the foibles of the fools around us, and taking advantage of our “superior” understanding to get our own way (or at least to insulate ourselves from the demands of the outside world). But within a community of disciples, a community of committed learners, the discipline of the group keeps us constantly on our toes, while the challenge of collaboration, of sharing our knowledge for the good of all, helps to draw us away from our smug complacency to a place of humble and well-intentioned openness.
The Call to Discipleship is a challenge to seek a wisdom beyond ourselves, and to use it in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. It is a call to remain curious, to cultivate discipline, to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation as we endeavor to live our lives according to the lessons we have learned. Ultimately, I believe, it finds its fullest expression within the context of a community, in the give and take of attempting to create a common life together. It is the fundamental vehicle for our religious fulfillment. But there is also a price to be paid, a challenge to be met, and it is to this challenge that we will turn our attention next week, when we gather once again as a community of faith, to celebrate Easter Sunday -- Unitarian Universalist style....
at the First Parish Church in Portland Maine
Palm Sunday March 16, 2008
***
[extemporaneous introduction about the significance of New Members Sunday]
Despite our reputation as a religion for intellectuals, in its essence the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition is based on a very simple premise: the premise that Truth, vigorously sought and plainly spoken, will win out over falsehood every time. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning is the keystone of our religious practice; ultimately, it's the reason that free churches like ours endure. But the triumph of Truth doesn't always happen quickly or easily. That typically requires both a long season of seeking, and an even longer season of speaking "The Truth"...but I thought that today, on Palm Sunday, I would simply speak a little bit about the notion of Discipleship; which is to say, on what it means to be a dedicated, disciplined religious "learner" (which is what that word "disciple" really means).
This seems to me a particularly appropriate topic for this particular Sunday, simply because of the nature of the events which the Christian tradition has historically commemorated during Holy Week. It's the great irony of the Gospels, that one cannot really appreciate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, accompanied by a chorus of Hosanas and a sea of waving Palm fronds, without looking ahead to his rejection by that same crowd later in the week, and his painful execution alongside two common criminals on a Roman cross at "the Hill of Skulls."
And likewise, one cannot really make sense of the Crucifixion without looking ahead to the events of Easter, and the anastasis -- the "standing again" of the departed teacher in the transformed lives of his surviving students. The popular acceptance of the truth of an idea ebbs and flows with the whims of the world. But Truth itself is not so easily put to death so long as there are those who continue to live to learn it. And this choice, this willingness to dedicate oneself to learning and living "the Truth," is what I like to think of as the “Call to Discipleship.” Not a blind obedience to an easy truth which never seeks to move beyond itself. But rather, a curious, questioning, probing truth, which constantly challenges existing assumptions in the effort to achieve a greater understanding.
As I mentioned earlier, the word disciple literally means "learner." But one can also easily see in it the root of yet another familiar English word: the word discipline, which is an essential component of the idea of Discipleship. I don't know what life was like growing up in your household, but “discipline” was and remains one of my own father’s favorite words, even though it wasn’t exactly the most popular concept in my own mind when I was a kid. Basically, to my young ears, be disciplined meant to be punished -- it was something that I tried to avoid as much as possible. And as I grew older, and my father began to preach to me about the virtues of "self-discipline," I figured that he must be crazy: why would anyone go out of their way to punish themselves when there are so many other folks out there who are willing to do that for you?
Now, if my father had explained to me way back then that all he was really trying to do was simply to encourage my brothers and me to cultivate the quality of being lifelong, committed, dedicated, self-motivated learners, he might have had a lot more success getting his point across; as things worked out, it was not until after I started college that I finally started to figure out for myself what he had been talking about all those years. I think it was Mark Twain who once observed that when he was fourteen he couldn’t believe how ignorant his father was, but by the time he’d turned twenty-one he was equally astonished at how much smarter the old man had gotten in just seven years. That was basically my experience when it came to learning about “discipline.” It wasn’t the sort of lesson easily learned by lecture alone. I kind of needed to figure it out for myself, by trial and error in the laboratory of my life.
I think it was also Twain who quipped that he tried never to let schooling interfere with his education (which, when you’ve spent as many years in school as I have, takes on a particular poignancy). It's a clever remark, but behind it lies yet another very important truth about “The Truth:” the insight that serious learners tend to learn for the love of learning, and not merely because they are motivated either by the fear of punishment, or the promise of external rewards like good grades, or praise, or the expectation of a better paying job. A passionate curiosity is the first characteristic of the Call to Discipleship: a curiosity which must then become disciplined through the commitment to an organized, methodical, self-challenging learning process in order to achieve its full potential.
But curiosity alone, even a disciplined curiosity, is not enough. There also needs to be, somewhere in one’s character, an understanding that The Truth really matters: that this is not just some sort of abstract, intellectual exercise we are engaged in, but rather potentially an activity of life-transforming significance. The Call to Discipleship is not just an invitation to know the truth, but also the imperative of being "set free" by the truth: a willingness to live, truly, by what one has learned, to come into the light rather than skulking in the darkness.
It is on this level, I believe, that we can see most clearly why Discipleship truly is a "religious" discipline: it represents a profound commitment to something which is larger than the self, larger than one's personal preferences and desires -- a commitment which is open to the possibility of surrender, of losing one's self in order to find it. Knowledge becomes transformative only when one is willing to be changed by what one has learned. Yet the willingness to change -- and by this I mean not only a willingness to accept change, but also to seek out and to embrace change -- is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. We seek greater knowledge in order to be able to change the world, but the most significant thing that we can ever learn to change is our own selves. Self-discipline not only requires self-understanding, it also creates it. And this in turn is what ultimately empowers us to change the world around us as well.
For my own part, when I first felt the "call" to ministry, it was precisely because of my commitment to Social Justice. Very quickly though after beginning my theological studies at Harvard, I started to develop an interest in the more contemplative aspects of religious life. I was looking for a language with which to express my own mystical sense of who I was in this vast Universe we inhabit; and I discovered that as I learned, this new knowledge helped both to shape and to expand my understanding. It not only gave form to what I already felt, but it also drew me out beyond it: the "discipline" of Discipleship became in itself a vehicle for personal religious transformation, the source of a new understanding which grew upon itself rather than merely reorganizing what it found. And likewise, this same process ultimately brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the Church as an institution: not merely a potential springboard for social change, nor even a convenient forum for intellectual stimulation, but also a dynamic institution in its own right: an institution built on a very human scale, unlike the huge banks, and corporations, and governmental entities which exert so much control over the way we live our lives.
Indeed, over the years more and more of my own personal understanding of what it means to be a "disciple" has come to center around my relationship to a church community -- and not merely as a minister, as the so-called "professional" Unitarian -- but even more significantly simply as a "fellow traveler," a learner who seeks a deeper knowledge of himself and the meaning and purpose of his life, and who finds that it is only in community, in the often-times extremely difficult challenge of collaborating with other people and creating some kind of a common life together, that the really important lessons are to be learned.
I’m sure you’ve all heard it said that knowledge is power, and also that power corrupts, which naturally leads some to the logical conclusion that we must therefore disempower the knowledgeable in order to prevent them from corrupting the integrity of our democratic process. But this twisted syllogism becomes true only when the power of knowledge is allowed to remain in the possession of only a few, select individuals, when information is hoarded rather than shared, and knowledgeable “insiders” are allowed to take advantage of the ignorance of others by keeping them in the dark and manipulating events from behind the scenes.
It’s an insidious temptation for even the most wise. Think of how easy it would be simply to remain confident in one’s own enlightenment, scoffing at the foibles of the fools around us, and taking advantage of our “superior” understanding to get our own way (or at least to insulate ourselves from the demands of the outside world). But within a community of disciples, a community of committed learners, the discipline of the group keeps us constantly on our toes, while the challenge of collaboration, of sharing our knowledge for the good of all, helps to draw us away from our smug complacency to a place of humble and well-intentioned openness.
The Call to Discipleship is a challenge to seek a wisdom beyond ourselves, and to use it in the service of a purpose larger than ourselves. It is a call to remain curious, to cultivate discipline, to open ourselves to the possibility of transformation as we endeavor to live our lives according to the lessons we have learned. Ultimately, I believe, it finds its fullest expression within the context of a community, in the give and take of attempting to create a common life together. It is the fundamental vehicle for our religious fulfillment. But there is also a price to be paid, a challenge to be met, and it is to this challenge that we will turn our attention next week, when we gather once again as a community of faith, to celebrate Easter Sunday -- Unitarian Universalist style....
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