First Parish of Watertown

“Religious Naturalism” by Mark W. Harris

First Parish of Watertown - November 27, 2005

Opening Words - from William Ellery Channing

The heavens, the earth, the plant, the human frame, now that they are explored by science, speak of God as they never did before. Handwriting is brought out where former ages saw but a blank. Our nature is perpetually developing new senses for the perception and enjoyment of God. The human race, as it advances does not leave religion behind it, as it leaves the shelter of caves and forests; does not outgrow faith, does not see it fading like the mist before its rising intelligence. On the contrary, religion opens before the improved mind in new grandeur. The soul in proportion as it enlarges its faculties and refines its affections, possesses and discerns within itself a more and more glorious type of the divinity -- learns spirituality in its own spiritual powers, and offers a profounder and more inward worship.

Sermon -

Dinosaurs have long been a passion of mine. My favorite book as a child was called The Enormous Egg. It is the story of a boy who discovers an oversized egg, which eventually hatches. Defying all evolutionary odds, the baby hatchling is a Triceratops. Of course no egg from an extinct species could just be hanging around to mess up our understanding of how species are born, evolve over time and eventually die out. Many children, especially boys are fascinated by dinosaurs. Whether this fascination emanates from the gargantuan size of some of them, or the fancy names, or the simple astonishment that creatures such as these once walked the earth, I don’t know. I loved the idea of digging up fossils and discovering something that old. There were lots of astounding statistics associated with them , too. Many of you also know that dinosaurs played a key role in my rejection of the fundamentalist Christianity of my childhood and its assertion in BIblical creation as a scientific explanation for the origins of earth and the development of life. At that time I felt like I was being forced to choose science or religion. As I saw it then, one offered fascinating explorations of the wonders of life, and the other offered closed minded fairy tales.
I still read news articles on dinosaurs when I see them, and am quite fascinated with all the theories of how some dinosaurs managed to survive and evolve into our present day birds. Dinosaurs are not my topic today, but their evolution into birds is relevant to a controversy that has divided people in our country ever since the time of Charles Darwin. You would have thought that the Scopes Monkey trial might have resolved it. Clarence Darrow fought in that Tennessee court room so that the teacher might tell his students about natural selection. Today school boards are still fighting in court rooms over the teaching of evolution in our schools. The scientific creationists of a few years ago have reemerged in the guise of Intelligent Design or ID. They wants us to believe there are holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution. And into these holes - which are gaps in the scientific data - they want to place the designer, or God, but they can’t say the word, and so they imply it, or maybe whisper “God did it.” If someone posits that Intelligent Design is not science, but religion, the IDers say, you have a closed mind. Liberals are supposed to present all sides of an argument, so people can make informed decisions. They say we should be open to all schools of thought, just as President Bush echoed, when he weighed in on the subject last summer.
The problem is there is nothing informed about Intelligent Design. Over the past few months I have saved a large pile of magazine articles and newspaper editorials on this subject. The controversy has generated much discussion, but I can see no reason on God’s green earth to teach Intelligent Design in a science classroom. It is simply not science. Intelligent Design is a perfectly valid “religious” viewpoint on the origins of life. Even if we may not agree, we can understand that many people want to believe or are moved to testify that there is a divine power at work in creation. Some like deists say that God created a system of natural laws and left this universe to evolve on its own. Those who are involved in intelligent design may even believe in parts of evolution, but say certain gaps in knowledge lead them to believe in an outside creative force which is not part and parcel of the randomness of natural selection. There is something more than an accident. They say a divine power must be directing things. Religion exists to offer an explanation as to why we are here, such as this is the way God wants it. God created light from dark. God saw it was good. We are created in a divine image. There is no scientific proof for any of these religious statements about what human life or the universe means. This is why the divine intelligence portrayed in the book of Genesis belongs in a religion class, and not Biology 101.
Unitarian Universalists have seemingly always been quick to affirm the scientific point of view. As you saw with Channing’s words that began this service, we have long felt that scientific explorations will open us to greater depths in our religious knowledge. In the late 19th century the Universalist Marion Shutter said that with science, validated truths replaced invented truths and evidence superseded dogma and superstition. In searching for a partnership between religion and science, Shutter said that religion had gained much from science. First, there was a quickened sense of truth, the right method of discovery. Second, there was the value of evidence rather than unsubstantiated claims. Finally, science taught religion about using methods of reasoning. That partnership has continued ever since. The problem is that religion has usually lost to the wonders of science - the space ship cosmonaut does not see God in space and the suffering person does not need a devil’s exorcism but a diagnosis of mental illness. Any number of whys have disappeared under scientific examination. Unitarian Universalism is an unusual religion because we want more scientific knowledge yielding more amazing truths about how things happen, but sometimes along the way we have been overly concerned with the endless pursuit of truth, and have lost our ability to remember the whys of religion under the weight of the hows of science.
The problem for those 19th century liberals is that they learned in the 20th century that science did not give them all the answers. Science could not tell them what was good, or what was God, but could only provide verifiable data. While understanding nature and the reasons how things happen is profoundly important, it gives no insight into moral choices, emotional support, or even the ultimate mystery behind creation. Too often the liberal response to poetic or theological understandings of the mystery behind life have been attempts to ridicule those who believe in a creator, and so we have applauded satire like the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), who created the universe. FSM is the six month old religion, created in response to the Kansas board of education’s attempt to place ID in the curriculum. While ID is not science, and should not be taught as such, the pasta whose appendage dabbles in human affairs reflects the kind of ridicule we have sometimes seen from literal rationalists who reject any religious beliefs, and this can also be a weakness in the humanist perspective within Unitarian Universalism. We have placed ourselves at the center of the universe with everything revolving around us and our needs. While we should be quick to reject religion when it is portrayed as science, we shouldn’t use our scientific evidence and rationalism to portray religious beliefs as inane or stupid. Sometimes our science has informed our religion so completely, we have ended up fearing and despising those who espouse religious beliefs. As Blaise Pascal once wrote, “There are two equally dangerous extremes, to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.” This is why the Unitarian Universalist spiritual path called religious naturalism may be a worthy choice for those who find some limits in the humanist perspective, especially when it overly extols our own virtues at the expense of the rest of the creation we are part of.
In a text book battle in Pennsylvania, it appeared a local school board was going to implement a mandate that students be informed that evolution was only a theory and cannot be construed as fact, and that ID is an alternative explanation for the origins of life that differs from Darwin. Most of us would argue that this is a scientific absurdity. Science does not work in absolute proofs, and in fact, evolution is much more than a theory that might or might not be true. Evolution is the very foundation of modern biology and medicine, and there is absolutely no evidence that disproves it in any way. It is about as close to fact as you can get. Naturally we would argue that ID as an alternative theory should not be classified with scientific explanations. But what do we do with religious explanations? Liberals typically say any subject can be taught in school except religion, and we would not only not want a creation story taught in science, we would also want to keep it out of all the curriculum. This is why you end up with history text books of Puritans coming to America, but there are no apparent religious reasons for doing so. This wasn’t a fishing expedition. As the historian Martin Marty puts out, we cannot understand a speech of Lincoln’s or a play of Shakespeare’s unless we know religion.
The fundamentalists are upset at how secular the schools are, and the more they talk about it, the more rigid liberals become about not teaching religion. So the vast majority of the schools in America teach nothing about religion. The religious right may want the Bible creation to be told, but what if we had a religion class, not a science class, but a religion class where the students learned many creation stories. They would then understand a little more about history and culture, and why human beings are the way they are. If you teach the Cherokee creation story or what it means to be a Hindu, you are not likely to be converted to that viewpoint , but you are likely to be broadened in your perspective. So Intelligent Design surely does not belong in science, but why not in social science? When we are tone deaf to religious discussions, we let the religious right take the high ground. I believe we should advocate for teaching religion in the schools.
Part of this discussion about teaching religion is to recognize its important place in life. The role of religion is to bind us together as one. Religious Naturalism like humanism , finds its sources of meaning within the natural world, but rather than emphasizing humans to the detriment of other creatures, religious naturalism sees us especially as emergent from , and hence part of nature. Charles Darwin said that “animals, our fellow brethren . . may partake of our origin in one common ancestor -- we may all be netted together.” The emphasis in religious naturalism is how we are connected to all of life and must learn to see our place among other animals and life forms rather than over them. Kenneth Miller, who is a believer in what he calls, Darwin’s God says, Our species, homo sapiens, has not triumphed in the evolutionary struggle any more than has a squirrel, a dandelion, or a mosquito. We are all here, now, and that’s what matters. We have all followed different pathways to find ourselves in the present. We are all winners in the game of natural selection. Current winners, we should be careful to say.”
At the UU General Assembly this year, I heard Ursula Goodenough speak about religious naturalism. Through her work as a biologist she has come to deeply feel a natural connection with all of life, as expressed in today’s reading. She writes, “ We share a common ancestor; . . We share genes; . . We share evolutionary constraints and possibilities. We are connected all the way down.” As a historian I always feel a profound sense of connection when I am in a forest and have a chance to count the rings from a felled tree, whether the Muir Woods of redwoods outside San Francisco or the Pisgah Forest in North Carolina, where we were last summer. Exhibits in those places both show giant old trees which have succumbed to age, and in the rings of those trees dates of history are marked - decades, even centuries back in time. I always imagine these ancients trees literally seeing the historical events that have transpired in their time. They are witnesses to it all, part and parcel of life. One also gains this sense of connection to passage and continuity by watching the popular film, The March of the Penguins, even Jay Leno has joked how Penguins will march 70 miles to mate with other penguins. What is remarkable is to see their perseverance to maintain their species - back and forth from the sea to mate, eat, give birth, protect, eat, huddle together to survive. Think of the incredible awareness in their very being, of what their genes are calling them to do. What is calling to them?
Evolution or our connectedness with everything, Goodenough implies can help gives us a religious understanding of creation that does not need to be anthropomorphized into the seven day creator with the long beard. What does it mean to be religious? Surely even the penguins give us some clue here. They seemingly do not have relationship in a conscious way as we do, but it is quite remarkable to see them huddle against the coldest temperatures on earth, to know their mates, their children, to see their great pain at times of loss. What kind of comfort do they need? As Charles Wesley once wrote in a hymn - “hide me, till the storm of life is past, . . . leave me not alone.” Critics of Darwinism have often called his science a vehicle for atheism and materialism, but in fact Darwin was a deeply religious man. Much of what the Penguins do is explainable, and we find it in the science of how. The workings of life are not mysterious at all. Yet seeing what these penguins do also moves us all to ask why?
The question of why gives us religious formulations. Many people, including me, would love to have an answer to the whys of the universe. Intelligent Designs proponents would have some God directing it all like a stage manager from beyond, but I am not sure this gives us much sense of mystery or freedom. This says the universe has to correspond to my needs, and if it doesn’t I am going to feel sorry for myself. It seems to me that the religious naturalist must feel some kind of acceptance for the whys of the universe. We simply do not know, and all of our explanations will not offer any scientific proof, but only reveal natural religious longings. It is truly a mystery beyond mystery that we need to celebrate and accept. As the Tao te Ching tells us: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao, The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.” If there be a deity, there are only clouds before it, and we cannot see. It is a mystery of why these laws or why is there anything at all? Some want to name the mystery God, and others do not. Those who do must feel humble before what they never will know. Those who do not must feel humble before what they never will know. And even if it is designed, it is not designed at our whim. The world we have inherited is not one that is predictable. It is built on freedom, and not manipulation. It is built on trial and error, and not control. Whether it is the great mystery or the great God, it is a creation built upon evolution. Evolution makes us the creatures we are - “free beings in a world of authentic and meaningful moral and spiritual choices.” That freedom for believers might bring them closer to God, and that freedom might bring others closer to each other, and to the earth that has brought us forth. And perhaps they are the same thing. And perhaps they are the same thing, each touching the creative energy within every form of life - every object, every animal, every human. Every human finding those great things that bind us together - freedom, freedom to love, freedom to build community, freedom to be thankful for the life we have now.

Closing Words - from Elizabeth Rogers - Through the earth I am aware

I am a part of the earth,
I am a part of the solid, unshakable,
Immutable rock
Of the mountain;
A part of the stark, rainwashed slabs of slate,
A part of the walls of wet and weathering gritstone,
A part of the crumbling granite of shining boulders.
I am part of what makes
The green rounded hill
With its splendors of laughing yellow gorse.


Through the earth I am aware
of what I am:
All that is firmly fixed and endures forever,
All that is shifting imperceptibly,
Being gently folded and unfolded,
All that holds the possibility
Of shattering violence of eruption;
All that is contained in
Is, and Was, and Shall Be.

For such awareness, coming from the earth,
I give my thanks today
For the earth, and my part in it.

October 2, 2005 - “Seth Goes Home”

First Parish of Watertown - Mark W. Harris

Opening Words - from Wendell Berry (Unison)

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Sermon
In July we traveled to Maine for our usual summer vacation at our cottage in Owl’s Head, near Rockland. We had not been there since April, and it was clear from the moment we arrived that a few spring storms had passed through with their winds and rain. Lawn and deck furniture were strewn about, and the whereabouts of our trash barrel became an unsolved mystery. Being on the water, it is not unusual to see the harsh effects of weather on landscapes and dwelling places. We experience nature’s beauty, but also its fury. But the real shock awaited us when we climbed down the cliffside stairs which are made from cement blocks dug into the precipice leading to the rock strewn beach. As we neared the beach on our first descent we noticed that the land which narrowly fronts the lower portion of the stairway had disappeared. Some construction debris from projects of prior owners remained behind - pieces of wood, roof shingles, even legs from an old metal chair protruded from the collapsed embankment, but all the rocks and soil had washed away victim to the eroding tides. In the intervening months between April and July we had a lost a portion of our ocean front property forever.
I reflected upon this loss while we were there, especially when I went down to the beach and tossed loose stones and tree limbs into the hole, somehow projecting my hope that we could stem nature’s ravishing ways of changing the land. Praying to a God unknown, perhaps, “oh please don’t let my property be washed away.” For a minister it was a kind of object lesson in how transient everything is. Over on the other side of town, Andrea’s cousin was hauling stones to restore the beach that had washed away in this same storm, an even more dramatic change than ours. Those stairways and domiciles and playgrounds we occupy for a season can change rapidly, even be destroyed in one outburst from nature. What we claim as ours is precarious - our property, and indeed our very lives. Having once been tossed about by a rogue wave, you might think I would remember how natural forces can destroy us very quickly, especially when we fail to remember that we do not control nature.
I have thought of this small experience of mine, as we all reflect on what has occurred in the South over the last month or so. What is it like to have a terrible storm simply destroy your home or your community, in fact, your whole way of life? Terrible storms and other natural disasters have always threatened places of human habitat. Even as our communities or way of life may be damaged or destroyed, people are usually resilient and move on to defy the forces of nature by rebuilding, or by moving to some place they perceive as safer. One of my predecessors in the ministry here in Watertown had his family’s way of life threatened when he was a mere infant. It was long ago, but not so far away in the town of Wells, Maine, and it was not nature’s forces that threatened him but human forces.
Not long after I witnessed the erosion of our embankment this summer, I visited the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine. This was a visit with a purpose. I wanted to see the portrait of the Rev. Seth Storer, minister of the First Parish of Watertown from 1723-1773, the longest pastorate in our history. As most of you know by now, we sold this portrait because we felt it could be taken care of better in a museum, and with an exact copy we could still see what Seth looked like, to satisfy the historically curious. Well, I saw our old Seth, the portrait that once hanged over my desk, now displayed on the museum walls. As I have stated elsewhere, the museum is interested in the history of art in Maine, and this painting instantly became their oldest painting, and what they believe is the oldest known painting of a native of Maine. Yet this was much more than a story of a boy who came out of the wilderness to live in the city long ago, it turned out to be that he fled for his life in an era of constant danger and rampant terrorism.
Seth Storer was the ninth child of Colonel Joseph and Hannah Storer of Wells, Maine. He was probably born on May 27, 1702 in either Wells or Saco, although my research tells me there were only three settlements that remained inhabited between 1689 and 1713 - Wells, Kittery and York. Why do I say “remained inhabited?” In 1675 the first of the so called French and Indian Wars began, King Philip’s War, the bloodiest conflict per capita of any war in our history. From that date and over the next forty years there were no settlements from Pemaquid to Hampton that remained untouched by raiders. Storer was born into a battleground, and even of the three places that remained settled, sporadic raids continued to take lives. You can tell by his father’s title that he was a military commander, and their house was a garrison, the place where everyone fled when an attack came or was feared. Farmhouses far from the garrison had been abandoned, and most people, if they valued their lives, lived in temporary huts just outside the main house. The danger of attack was nearly constant.
Finally in 1703, there was a direct attack on Wells. During this raid, Seth’s sister, Mary was taken captive, and like so many at that time throughout New England, she was led on a forced march to Canada. Some like the famous Mary Rowlandson who you heard from in the reading, were redeemed and returned to the English colonies. Others like Mary Storer remained in French Canada, married a native, and converted to Catholicism, a fate many Puritans considered worse than death. Every person in Maine experienced some devastating effect of war upon their family, their finances, their social institutions. The war was so all consuming it occupied an overwhelming share of attention in their lives. Farming was literally uprooted, trade was minimal and people were displaced by the war. In fact many refugees whose homes were burned, family members killed or captured, or crops destroyed made their way to Boston adding to the town’s poor. Northern New England became impoverished as a result of these devastating times, directly impacting its future development. We might ask what was the long term psychological effect of living in a state of constant siege? What was it like for Seth Storer, who remained in Wells until he was eleven years old, and then was sent to Cambridge to board with a family and attend the Latin School. Did he feel a sense of constant anxiety that could not be assuaged by a hope that God was good? Did he feel punished by an angry God because he or his family were not faithful enough? Why was life so chaotic and dangerous, and how could they find peace and tranquility? Did he feel a kind of murderous revenge for what he believed were savages trying to destroy civilization, or was there a effort to understand native people and ponder how they might all live in harmony? What was he thinking as he lived in times of chaos and danger, terrorism and disaster, as he headed for Cambridge and then Watertown. What do these kind of times do to our faith and approach to life?
I have been struck by the parallel between the times of fear of terrorism and natural peril that we live in, and those that Storer grew up in. One thing that is true about both terrorist acts and natural disasters, especially ones of this size, is that we clearly do not expect them to happen in America. There is a sense here of almost adolescent invulnerability to such danger. Perhaps we think of ourselves as so powerful and so controlling that nothing can hurt us. In New Orleans the mere fact of massive vulnerability was exposed. Some were more vulnerable than others due to poverty and race, but on balance the entire community was disrupted. With such massive destruction, returning to normal routines is much more difficult. One thing that was evident in the wake of the terrorist train attack in London was that commuters and others wanted to return to their usual life as soon as possible. With people who have living memories of bombings in World War II, and the legacy of IRA terrorism, the British are more used to being exposed to feelings of vulnerability then we are. Because these attacks were on a train system that we rode daily only a couple of years ago, I felt somewhat like it was happening to my old home, and as a result, it became personally disturbing. Most of us here in New England have not felt threatened by the recent natural disasters or terrorist attacks, but these small connections - trains lines I once rode, crumbling sea shore, violent winds just this week - give us a sense of how we might prepare our hearts and minds for living in such vulnerable times.
The other day I was walking home from work, and saw a child had drawn hopscotch squares on the sidewalk. It began with home, ran through the numbers for the use of one foot and and then two, came to what was marked end, and then the player turned, of course, and headed back home. It almost seemed like a metaphor for a life that confronts such anxious times . Home leads to an end. If our community is torn asunder in some way, then we must turn and find another way home. On the UUA’s web site a UU social worker named Annette Marquis talks about her experience of working on the Gulf Coast. “I must admit my eyes have grown tired - tired of seeing people in despair and recognizing that there is only so much that outsiders can do. We can give emotional support, we can offer money, we can even provide physical resources, but in the end, it is up to the residents to rebuild their communities, to re-establish routines . .. and to recreate places to rest their eyes. This region is a long way from rebuilding and an even longer way from routine.” We turn from a difficult end we have encountered and begin again to create a journey home.
I think I was struck first by the idea of recreating places where people can rest their eyes. One can imagine the devastation that people in New Orleans have felt upon seeing their homes and communities destroyed. So too, Seth Storer had seen much death and destruction in his homeland. He was sent to a new place to provide a new, more restful vision for his eyes. As a boy he boarded with the family of the steward of Harvard College, and after the Latin School, he attended Harvard. Sometimes his board or school fees were paid by butter, procured on the farm in Wells which became safer and more productive with each passing year. After graduating in 1720 he taught school in Portsmouth, and then returned to Cambridge to read theology and preach in the local churches. This activity resulted in the call to the vacant pulpit here in Watertown, and his ministry began in the church which stood at the top of Common Street (our 4th meetinghouse), and ended in the successor building at the bottom of Common Street (our 5th). This ministry of fifty years is the most remarkable in terms of length and steadiness in our history. While Puritans ministers were hopefully settled for life, one could almost speculate that Storer made sure he was, by living a life that was later characterized as constant, steady, and showing fidelity in his Lord’s work. Not knowing much rest or comfort in the home of his childhood, he created it here. This was probably not easy in a church and town that was known for its conflict, he knew none and created none. In response to the anxiety of his youth, he lived a life of routine, and restfulness. He perhaps would counsel us to find places of comfort, and places to rest our eyes in response to hysteria we see or feel around us. Like William Blake he would stop and see the world in a grain of sand, and hold heaven in a wild flower, infinity in the palm of our hands, and eternity in an hour. Rest your eyes and live in the beauty you find close at hand.
If Storer’s life reminds us to find places of comfort for our eyes and mind in difficult times, we also know that Storer matured to advocate a rational religion that eventually led this church down the path to Unitarianism. Not long after Storer’s ministry began New England was torn by the greatest religious revival in our history, the Great Awakening. Our origins as a church begin with a negative response to the revival. Revivals, such as this one often started in certain locations because of things such as earthquakes, or widespread illness, which was true of two instance of revival outbreak in New England. Preachers often spread the word by their use of fear, as in God is angry with us and thus is speaking through the thunder of earth. This is a sign that you must repent. This approach to religion played on people’s fears. The underlying supposition is that there is evil in the world, and we must stop it with our one and only truth. Storer was among those who realized that using hysteria in response to fear was not a religious response that was going to be helpful.
The other part of revival fervor that Storer probably found repugnant was that there were often severe personal attacks on others. As a person Storer was characterized as pious, prudent, blameless, and exemplary in his conversation. He was a good person who was loved by the people and his colleagues. He never castigated others for not being worthy in the faith. In fact when the great revivalist George Whitefield came to Watertown, Storer publicly refused to invite him to the church. He would have none of this name calling or divisiveness in his church, and he thus managed to keep the peace. His quiet years of faithfulness to the church meant that the congregation developed in a broad and inclusive way, and thus was prepared to embrace the more tolerant ways of Unitarianism than a narrow exclusive Calvinism. During the first decade of his ministry he married Mary Coney of Boston, but they never had any children. The parsonage at that time sat where St. John’s Methodist Church is today. His only public complaint came in 1747, about the time when Robert Feke painted the portrait. At this time he petitioned the court saying that for several years past, the congregation had not been paying him enough.
Can we say that the chaos of his youth led to a life long desire for quiet and understanding? We don’t really know why he became the unobtrusive and faithful soul he apparently was, but his living does provide a helpful balm to times of chaos and clamor - a calming routine filled with restful and thoughtful moments does help us defend our frayed psyches from the fears of life being out of control.
If Seth Storer lost a sense of community in Wells, he helped create one here. If life was disrupted and chaotic, he worked to make it calm and steady. If the loudest religious leaders advocated a faith that seemed hysterical and mean spirited, he wanted to live a life that was rational and well balanced. He wanted to regain a measure of control in a world that had spun out of control. It is said that some people who are close to the New Orleans disaster are suffering from compassion fatigue. How do people continue to find ways to keep feeling compassion for others? In the reading from Mary Rowlandson, she seems to say that she had not received much affliction in her life, and then was nearly overwhelmed with it. She calls it good, just as a contemporary might say that suffering produces understanding and wisdom. Ultimately, Rowlandson advises us to stand still and know our dependence upon something greater than our own goodness - our dependence upon the earth, and each other, that which, the scripture says has “made of one blood all nations.” While Rowlandson uses the traditional language of her time, she says she must look deeper than her present affliction, and her own vanity and assuredness of being right and good. This was an interesting challenge for Storer because his sister who had been taken captive and converted to Catholicism once returned and Storer tried unsuccessfully to reconvert her to his Congregational/ Puritan faith. In Sibley’s Harvard Graduates it says he was at a disadvantage because he believed that being a Catholic was not a bar to salvation for her, but she knew backtracking to the Puritan heresy of her youth was grounds for damnation for her. I would like to believe that his faith was beginning to help him see that he could live a life where he was beginning to be able to see the world through another’s eyes, walk in another’s shoes.
We live in a time where it is easy to think of the enemy as evil and ourselves as good. So did Storer. Native Americans were the great evil, and eventually their culture and way of life was destroyed. But Storer had to live knowing that his own sister had become the evil other, and as much as he might have wanted her to return to be like him, his faith had become broad enough to see the reasons for that kind of mutual terrorism, the good and evil in both sides, that existed in the battle between English culture and the Native Americans they encountered. This might help us see what enables terrorism to get stronger in our own times. We have not even begun to see the evil enemy as our sibling. Morality as we envision it must begin with understanding others so we can feel what they feel. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was imprisoned by Hitler, and known for his resistance to the Third Reich.. In his Letters from Prison he asked, “We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms., . . . experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?” Then he answers: What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain , honest straightforward men and women. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?” It sounds like a call for people like Storer in times where truth is hard to find - people who are strong, and competent and honest and good. They value community and understanding others. They value beauty and reason and quiet calm. Gandhi once said; Be the change you want.” Yes, we live in chaotic and dangerous times. But we can remember how one who came before responded to those same life conditions. Here together we may build a community of comfort and peace. Here we may build lives of compassion and understanding. Here we may begin to be, the change we want.


Closing Words -

“Love” by Czeslaw Milosz

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills --
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

“Cheat, Cheat Never Beat” Mark W. Harris

October 16, 2005 - First Parish of Watertown

Opening Words - from Genesis 27

Come near and kiss me, my son.” So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said, “See the smell of my son is as the smell of the field which the Lord has blessed! May God give you the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you, Be lord over your brothers (and sisters), and may your mother’s sons (and daughters) bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!”

Sermon - “Cheat, Cheat Never Beat”


When my son Joel, now 26, was in middle school, he was quite a good basketball player. He was on traveling teams that frequently participated in tournament play. One Saturday he was playing in a game in Milton, where we lived, and the scorekeepers failed to show up. I was recruited as a seemingly non-partisan parent to help out at the scorers table. As the game progressed it proved to be very close, and Joel was playing an important role. However, as the end of the game neared the number of fouls he had accumulated reached four, one shy of the number a player is allowed before fouling out. As the scorekeeper I realized this grievous situation, but it seemed no one else did, as this was not exactly national television with the jumbotron score board giving out every last bit of informational minutiae. My nervousness about his precarious situation proved accurate when he tried to dribble past someone, had physical contact with them and was whistled for an offensive foul. My initial reaction was outrage as I felt this particular foul call was unfair, and then I instantly realized it was the fatal fifth foul. Thoughts raced through my mind, “he’s finished.” Finally, someone asked, and I, in my distraught state blurted out, “four fouls.” In that moment I could not bring myself to say, five. The words “four” had escaped from my lips, and I instantly realized that I was cheating. No one noticed. I got away with it.
I am not sure I have ever told this story to anyone until now. Over the years I have remembered the moment vividly, even though I do not recall the outcome of the game. Did they win or lose? I have replayed the event and given myself excuses. As a parent, I say to myself, I should never have been put in such an awkward situation. It was unfair to me. As a a human being, I say to myself, it was just some silly little basketball game that meant nothing. It was insignificant. It not like cheating on your taxes about the amount of income you made. Or money laundering like certain elected representatives of the people. It was not like cheating on your spouse by entering an intimate relationship with another. These are acts people generally keep hidden, thereby giving credence to their clandestine character. These are serious moral transgressions that are patently unfair to your faithful spouse, honest financial transactions others make, and all other tax payers. Yet no matter how I characterize it or rate its relative importance in the scheme of things, it was still cheating. I can say he was treated unfairly by the referee all I want, or I only did it in the heat of the moment to protect and affirm my son, but nevertheless, I must still admit I kept quiet after I lied, and thus broke the rules. Perhaps that is why the story has remained in my heart all these years. I still feel badly that it happened. That is true for all of us, we have all done things in our lives that we feel badly about and regret doing even years after. And they stay in our hearts.
Back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, our Universalist forebears were subject to all kinds of verbal and written assaults from other religious groups on the basis that the idea of universal salvation gave people permission to cheat, lie, steal and kill all they wanted because they were assured of ultimate salvation in heaven. If this scheme of salvation were true, opponents said, there would be no incentive for good behavior. People must have the threat of hell hanging over their heads in order to be good. Hosea Ballou, the great 19th century Universalist leader felt otherwise. He said once if we have cheated or lied the moral stain of that act stays with us, and we don’t need the threat of hell, because the transgression or the pain of committing such an act remains, and we are in fact punished in this life with the guilt or remorse. This is true, even if it appears that the adulterer, the money launderer or even the sports score cheater gets away with their lie. They suffer because the memory of the deed cannot be erased from their book of life. So even if we think we get away with fooling our spouse or the tax man, the fact that we know we have done this deed remains in our conscience to haunt us.
I don’t know if you agree with Ballou or not. Sometimes it seems certain people blithely go through life cheating and lying all the time because they feel that life itself has cheated them out of what they deserve. And they never get caught! Because they feel like they have been treated unfairly, it provides a lifelong excuse for doing what they want so that greater rewards or benefits come their way. It is ok for me to cheat, they say, I am entitled to what my neighbor or friend has. Even still Ballou would argue that those who continue to cheat, will suffer because while they may appear to gain what they think they deserve, their ability to love or be loved or to have honest, meaningful human relationships will be lessened. Maude Parker, a well known writer from the mid 20th century, wrote a poem to her daughters called, “Legacy” which ended: “Know this: inscribe it as a truth: The irreparable loss is to the betrayer, Never to the betrayed; The one who deals the mortal blow Receives the mortal wound.”
Our opening words today from Genesis taken out of context sound like a wonderful blessing bestowed from parent to child. In fact it is the blessing Jacob received from his father Isaac that should have gone to Esau. Jacob covets this superior blessing that the older child, Esau would have normally been entitled to, and thanks to his mother Rebekah, he discovers a way to trick old Isaac who cannot see much anymore. Isaac knows Esau as the hunter, and instructs him to cook fresh game he has shot, and bring it to him. Jacob pretends to be Esau and brings the game, and wears animal skins to make him seem to have hairy arms like Esau. Jacob thus receives his father’s blessing and cheats his brother out of what he should have received. Symbolically speaking this is a story of the settler/farmers, what Jacob was, superseding the wandering hunters, what Esau was. At first Esau wants to kill his brother because he has been cheated out of what is rightfully his. This is a scene repeated in many families where siblings fight over the inheritance, and may part ways because they did not receive what they perceive as their fair share. Can there be reconciliation where such cheating occurs?
This week the Jewish Community has celebrated Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, when Jews and others seek forgiveness for all the sins they have committed. The book of Leviticus discusses the rituals associated with the holiday. Aaron takes a live goat and symbolically places all the transgressions upon its head, thus being able to purge the community of its guilt over whatever it has done to cheat or lie or steal by sending the goat off into the wilderness. Over the centuries, communities of one kind or another have often created scapegoats to bear the brunt of the sins or problems which confront them. Jews themselves have often become the scapegoat, as they were in ancient times when they were accused in Christianity, of cheating the Christians out of their savior by murdering him, even unto the rise of the Nazis in Germany who depicted the Jews among other things, as the reason for national failures with an international monetary conspiracy, cheating the people of their money and livelihoods. Scapegoats, who are often completely innocent, have often been victims of larger evils who have escaped blame.
One such example is timely, as baseball fans begin to contemplate the start of the World Series. A potential participant this year is a franchise known as the Chicago White Sox. It has sometimes been said that one team in this sport that might be the victim of a bigger curse than the alleged one our own beloved Red Sox ended last year is these same White Sox. The reason is the infamous Black Sox scandal when it was said eight White Sox conspired in 1919 to throw the World Series at the behest of gamblers. Now there is no question that there was a conspiracy, and that some players received some money to swing their bats wildly at air and throw balls widely to wrong bases, but the question remains as to the role of one player in this event, Shoeless Joe Jackson. Without belaboring you with details, the facts are that Jackson, one of the game’s great players was seemingly framed. He did not cheat. It was others who cheated him. When asked to throw games, he said no, and played marvelously. When asked to attend meetings he did not. But his famous name lent appeal, and so one of the true conspirators said he was there when he was not. They threw money at him. He tried to give it back. He told the owner, but the owner wanting nothing shameful associated with his team, and said it cannot be true. Finally, this honest man was convinced by the team owner’s lawyer that he must tell the grand jury he was part of the conspiracy because no one would believe the truth, when the lawyer simply wanted to save the owner who was told of this conspiracy by Jackson, but said keep it quiet.
Joe Jackson became baseball’s scapegoat, but he was seemingly innocent, cheated of his livelihood, and his fame, all because he was a person of simple integrity who trusted that doing the right thing would result in his being treated fairly. For those who have seen the movie Field of Dreams, it is Joe Jackson, the man who acquired his name because a new pair of spikes was too tight, and played a game without them, who comes out of the cornfield in Iowa and reconciles father and son and all those who are seemingly alienated from each other bringing them together. During Jackson’s lifetime the owners continued to be able to maintain the veneer of the community of baseball, but at the cost of unethical owners banishing innocent players.
While the real cheat seems to be the owner and his lawyer, it is Jackson who maintains his integrity, and is seen in retrospect today as the one who spoke the truth over against the newspapers who pursued the juicier story of Joe the cheat with the famous but erroneous story of the little boy looking up at his hero, and repeating, “Say it ain’t so Joe.” Well, it wasn't’ so. In baseball today there are real cheats who used steroids to enhance their performance. There is great pressure to perform at very high levels, and it is hard to know who the real cheats are beyond test results. Reflecting back on the Black Sox scandal one wonders if the owners today really want to uncover the true depth of the cheating, or is their investment, as was true in 1919, more important than the truth and integrity of the game, and their own lives.
It becomes clear that we often see human beings cheating when their is an opportunity to serve your own cause, to win or get ahead. Those who are cheating often feel cheated themselves. I felt Joel was unfairly whistled for a foul, and White Sox players toiled for a mean spirited skinflint. They felt they deserved better. Yet once cheaters are caught, they are reviled like the Black Sox, or recent Olympians. It is said that sports and cheating go hand in hand. Everyone cheats in small ways to gain any advantage they can to win. The authors of Freakonomics say just about everyone cheats. Is that true? Look at those tax payers who had the paper children who disappeared from tax returns once they were required to provide social security numbers. And what about the teacher, the authors asks. Consider the governor;’s recent proposal to give pay incentives, bonuses to those teachers whose students score the best on the MCAS tests. What a temptation to cheat. All you have to do is give them the answers, or change their answers yourself using an unpredictable pattern. Who would know?
The authors seem to conclude that it is the economic realities of the world that produce cheating, and not our immoral nature. We cheat when we want a reward that cannot seemingly be ours unless we commit some nefarious act to receive it. Is it then a moral ideal not to cheat, and a less than moral reality that affirms that everyone does it? While there may be some truth there, there is a still higher truth that I ascribe to our human strivings. I want to use the example of the recent propensity of most drivers to run through red lights. I am not sure when this trend became so wide spread, but you, like me, have probably noticed that that most drivers these days cheat as the light turns red. In fact many people seem to feel that it is their right to keep on going even after the light has changed and there is plenty of time for them to stop. So now we have to wait a few moments, or look the other way to make sure the no one is going to speed through and flatten us. Of course the problem with this behavior is that if everyone keeps breaking the rule of red light means stop the fabric of the community and the safety of the other drivers and the pedestrians is broken.
Reflecting on my own experience of cheating helps me understand the flaws in human character, and why we cheat in the first place. I am not perfect, and thus was once able to quickly cheat to help my child win. I know one of the reasons I am part of a church community is that I am reminded that I fall below my own standards, and those standards that make a more loving community. I have cheated for my own benefit, and I want to do better. I want to be brought back from the cheating I do to a higher level of truth than personal gain or success. Of course it is not about me getting through the red light as fast as I can, and to hell with everyone else. It is about everyone getting through the red in an orderly and safe manner. And so my own conscience needs to be reminded that though I am capable of cheating, I am also capable of being a more responsible and loving person in the world. Church reminds me not only that I am among a larger group of people of whom none is perfect, but also that we are a called to be our best selves in the world in order to create that greater community of trust and help.
We see this in the story of Esau and Jacob. First, later in Genesis, after the cheating of the birthright, Esau and Jacob are reconciled. From the murderous feeling of revenge in the wake of the terrible stolen inheritance, Esau comes to meet his brother. What will happen? Fearing the worst, Jacob bows down before him and offers him some of his bounty. Jacob says I want to find favor with you. Esau responds by saying that is not necessary. He can see that Jacob has suffered the most, as Hosea Ballou and Maude Parker stipulate, it is the betrayer, the cheater, who feels the greatest pain in the end. Esau says that he has enough, and Jacob can keep what he has. But Jacob goes on to say that seeing Esau’s face is like seeing the face of God. The one who he had cheated has returned to him with open arms. There is forgiveness and thankfulness for what they both possess. We often wonder if we can find the higher sense of reconciliation in families or communities where some feel cheated, and cannot be reconciled to the others. Perhaps that is because they continue to focus on what they didn’t get, and can only reflect on how cheated they are by others. That deeper sense of reconciliation comes out of the desire for a broader connection to others; the desire to create the beloved community. Esau realized he couldn’t feel the love again until he let go of feeling cheated, and acknowledged the bounty of the life he had. As a child, if I tried to take a move in a board game out of turn, or look in the back of the book for homework answers, my parents always said, “Cheat, cheat, never beat.” I remembered that when I wanted to copy from others work to make it easier for me, and even after I gave my son an extra foul. In our frailties as people, we can and do cheat on each other, but the great calling we have is in the love we owe each other to make it a better world for all. When we cheat, it ultimately hurts us all because it breaks the fabric of the community, and that community is us, and the possibilities for love we possess together.











Closing Words - anonymous

Lead us from death to life,
from falsehood to truth.
Lead us form despair to hope,
from fear to trust.
Let peace fill our hearts,
our world, our universe.
Let us dream together,
pray together,
work together,
to build one world
of peace and justice for all.