Friday, May 19, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
"Small Change" by Mark W. Harris - May 14, 2006
May 14, 2006 - First Parish of Watertown
Sermon - “Small Change” Mark W. Harris
Opening Words - “Give Us the Child” by Sara Moores Campbell
Give us the spirit of the child
Give us the child who lives within --
the child who trusts,
the child who imagines,
the child who sings,
the child who receives without reservation,
the child who gives without judgment.
Give us a child’s eyes, that we may receive the beauty and freshness of this day like a sunrise;
Give us a child’s ears, that we may hear the music of mythical times;
Give us a child’s heart, that we may be filled with wonder and delight;
Give us a child’s faith, that we may be cured of our cynicism;
Give us the spirit of the child, who is not afraid to need; who is not afraid to love.
Reading
Juggler by Richard Wilbur
A ball will bounce; but less and less. It's not
A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience.
Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls
So in our hearts from brilliance,
Settles and is forgot.
It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls
To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air
The balls roll around, wheel on his wheeling hands,
Learning the ways of lightness, alter to spheres
Grazing his finger ends,
Cling to their courses there,
Swinging a small heaven about his ears.
But a heaven is easier made of nothing at all
Than the earth regained, and still and sole within
The spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble
He reels that heaven in,
Landing it ball by ball,
And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table.
Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom's
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls
On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry:
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye.
Sermon
Tomorrow, May 15th is the anniversary. What, you say you don’t know what anniversary? Well, it is the day when Horton the Elephant was in the Jungle of Nool, and he heard a small speck of dust talking to him. You may remember that this piece of dust is actually a tiny planet, where there is a city called "Who-ville", where the most miniscule creatures live. Even Horton cannot see these little creatures , but he can hear them due to this wonderful ears. They proceed to ask him to protect them from harm, and Horton agrees. Thereafter Horton develops a repeating mantra "a person's a person, no matter how small". His respect for and protection of these small creatures leads to his being ridiculed by the other animals, because he believes in something that they are unable to see or hear. Horton tells the Whos that they needed to make themselves heard to the other animals, or they will become part of "beezlenut stew." We could draw lots of meaning from this story. Every small world needs to be listened to and respected lest it be swallowed. A small voice can be heard, and it will make a difference in the world, but it is up to us who have small voices or who hear small voices to demand that they be listened to.
Someone once speculated that Horton Hears a Who was Dr. Seuss’ protest against the atom bomb. I remember seeing pictures of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, and I recall it was nicknamed “big boy.” We often have had a problem with size, assuming in our culture that bigger is better, including church size and house size so that we define ourselves as a small church meaning insignificant or lucky to be alive, and yet we are a vibrant institution. With houses there is a trend to build McMansions on postage stamp size plots of land without regard for efficiency or need, but apparently simply to show off that big is more important or prestigious. Suddenly there is a panic in our culture over super sizing all the fatty foods we consumed because everyone is overweight. This has especially been noted in the obesity rate for children. Many years ago E.F. Schumacher tried to convince us that Small is Beautiful, but small cars were soon replaced by SUVs, and children ended up expanding their smallness because they ate too much, and never got enough exercise.
As many of you have heard before, I was overweight as a child, and had poor balance and was not very coordinated. I learned to ride a bicycle when I was 18. This made physical feats performed by circus artists especially magical to me. When I tried to swing on a high bar or juggle balls it felt like I was carrying the weight of the world with the one and watching falling spheres with the other. How could anyone watch one while catching the other, while the third was in the air? It seemed impossible, and yet my eyes convinced me of this truth. Richard Wilbur in “The Juggler” reminds us that the balls want to fall, and it takes a juggler to shake our gravity up. They did seem a small heaven against the sky, in perfect synch, and continuously in motion. “Oh if only I could do this, I thought. And then it was over, and he took the heaven back into himself to go on to the next magic trick. It was a small heaven of perfection around his ears, almost like a universe in motion. It looked like one of those solar system models. Whoville was also that small universe in motion. The juggler reminds us that things tend to fall to earth unless we hold them up in a juggle. And Dr. Seuss reminds us that tiny things in this universe go unseen, and can be easily swamped in neglect or abuse by those who are more powerful, and so may we never forget “a person’s a person no matter how small.”
My youngest son has been having a problem with recurring warts on his feet. We often have a negative notion of warts, and so when we talk about a family member we say we love or accept them warts and all, meaning all of their faults or negative characteristics. I had a problem with warts when I was small, and remembering my dermatologist using liquid nitrogen to try to get rid of them. My older son Joel had wart problems, too. The science writer Lewis Thomas says that warts are wonderful structures. Now we usually think of them as small annoying growths that we find hideous, and want to rid ourselves of. These tough, impenetrable mounds are actually the elaborate reproductive apparatus of a virus. The wart, Thomas says, is what the virus truly wants; it can flourish only in cells undergoing this kind of overgrowth. I have heard all kinds of cures for warts, including gasoline and recently we tried duct tape. The thing about warts is that they tend to go away. In fact, they come to the end of their lives and disappear. They are also open to suggestion. Thomas says that tests results show that we can be hypnotized, and rid ourselves of warts. As bizarre as this sounds, Thomas confirms that the unconscious can figure out how to manipulate the mechanisms needed to get around the virus, and for deploying the various cells needed for tissue rejection. I know that shutting off the blood supply to an area will kill off unwanted tissue. Lewis says that this suggests that there is a super intelligence in each of us, that can help us deal with the nature of certain diseases, but we simply don’t understand it. This control of reproducing viruses in us might be a key to health and wholeness.
What is intriguing about this to someone who struggled with the annoyance of warts is that something this small and revolting to us, might be a key to how we could understand and manage certain diseases in us. It is a small and complex heaven inside of us. Religiously speaking, cultures have often imagined God as the large God who is the ruler of the world. In the Hebrew scriptures the revelation of God to Elijah in I Kings comes with the expectation that God will be revealed in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the end God comes as the still, small voice. This is the small, quiet voice of God that we must stop and listen to you. What child of my generation can forget that Walt Disney imagined the guide of our conscience to be Jiminy Cricket, that small creature who told us to look within to see what was the right thing to do in difficult circumstances. When the Puritans feared that God was angry with them, they thought it was expressed through some large scale disease that struck the whole colony or a terrible storm. God was a big, powerful voice when he expressed displeasure with human sinfulness.
This distinction between a large God and a small God is what the novelist Arundhati Roy refers to in The God of Small Things. For her the big God howls like a hot wind or demands our allegiance in prostrate submissive form. We bow before this big God. Theologically, we would mostly argue that the big God that ancient cultures conceived of as running the universe no longer exists. It is Roy’s small God who is cozy and contained, and private and limited that seems more approachable to us. This cozy God is with us in the every day embracing of our children, or in the trial of quiet sitting with a pain or illness and finding the inner resources to deal with it through talking with our friends, or finding a diversion through working or the like. The small God must skip to the beat of the music, and juggle balls in a small heaven, and find little things to enjoy like the bursting of a flower in bud, or the rhythmic motion of digging in the dirt to till the garden. The small God knows there is a universe in motion out there, and it wants us to notice every small part, even the warts, because they all play a part in the reproductive generations that look to the future. The small God helps us realize that even when there are tragedies all around us there is much beauty in life that we can grasp hold of and experience. So when we find joy in the small heaven of juggling, we can get through tragic moments, and know these small events give us the promise of life and joy. It is akin to Jesus saying the last shall be first, or see the power in a mustard seed. The most insignificant thing holds all the beauty of the universe in its life giving potential. The acorn becomes the giant tree in nature, or the smallest thing holds the potential for the greatest spiritual depth. While the small Gods may be our personal issues and daily life, they are truly the stuff that will make it possible to see a big God, not in the traditional sense of creator and controller, but in our connectedness with all of life. We cannot understand the big God unless we see and listen to the Whos. God or the divine is in the details: in the plant we place in the wet ground that it might grow, in the ice that cools our hot tongues in summer to melt to refreshment, in the smile and glowing eyes we impart to the stranger that says yes, we can know one another.
In a practical sense this also helps us reflect on the role of children in our culture. Today we have dedicated two lives to the care of this church, and have charged their parents with the awesome responsibility of bringing up these young lives to reference all of life, and develop their own ability to love and understand others. “A person’s a person no matter how small” is a vital lesson here as well. Children play an odd role in our culture. Modern life has made being a child very difficult because too often we take childhood away from our kids and give them a complicated schedule to fill up every minute of their lives, when they and we could spend much more time just being together playing games and taking walks on the beach while collecting rocks and shells. One thing we could do for our small charges on this day when we reflect on families a great deal is to give them more time to just enjoy their lives and not plan on what might bring success, but what might bring joy. I also think we share too much of adult conversation with children, and make them into confidants of too much pressure and information that is better left in the adult world. As with the fun times we often deprive them of, I think when it comes to information as well, let kids be kids. The third thing that concerns me is that we rarely listen to children. Yes, we give kids a lot of things, and we may even spend a lot of time with them, but how often do we truly listen to what they have to say. There is a small God to be discovered in a conversation with a child. Just yesterday we saw the new movie, “Hoot,” with our kids. It tells the story of endangered, burrowing owls whose habitat is threatened by a developer of a pancake house. Three teenagers make their small voices heard in a variety of clandestine ways to protect the even smaller voices of the owls.
There is a cosmos within each of us waiting to be discovered. It is not that gigantic thing out there in space. It is that small universe of life waiting to be born in us, or small discoveries we make on a daily basis. For the past couple of months there has been a Wayside pulpit quotation out front that I just love. It us by James Freeman Clarke and it says, “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.“ Most of us have come to realize that there is no great God providing overriding meaning to our existence. Life is made of fits and starts and bits of meaning here and there, and now and then. We would like that big God, but he is not going to suddenly appear. I remember quoting Rosa Parks on MLK Day, that she just wanted a seat on the bus because she was tired from work. Of course it was more than that, but that small thing did start a great big revolution. It was her standing up for herself, it was her compassion for others, these are the every day small Gods that will help us build a big God.
Remembering all the mothers of all the generations doing small things in a great way is fitting on Mother’s Day. May we listen. May we guide. May we embrace. May we teach. All these small things done with love and understanding make their own earthquake when we find the divine within the ordinary. Our former intern, Sue Kingman shared the following poem called Song of Small Wonders by Carole Fontaine in a recent newsletter from Sanford, Maine. It is more about the cumulative effect of small acts of justice and mercy, like bringing bread to the hungry, or visiting the sick. It also tells us that all small things build to make a whole. The child who is listened to, and given time and attention will know a larger wholeness in his/her family life. The Whos down in Whoville represent all the small people of the world who demand to be seen and heard. The other day Asher and I were walking home, and he said, I know that spring has returned because the birds are in the trees singing to us again. The small things that we listen for and do are the things that truly connect us to each other and the larger whole.
We say it doesn’t matter;
We think it can not matter;
Our miniscule acts of justice
Trickling into a bucket of grief.
Such little works, so dispersed,
Only one tiny resistance,
Then another and another;
Is this the way a flood begins?
Bit by bit, we stack our deeds,
Like bags of seed or lifesaving grain,
With determination that will follow,
Providing more. again. again.
We make of them a bulwark of caring
A seawall when tragedy seems to sway
Our fragile bridges with awesome waves.
We view to cross them anyway.
It doesn't seem like it can matter.
That we could bend such global pain,
Until we note the sound of thunder
Followed by drop after drop of rain.
The rivers flow, but the sea does not fill;
Yet tides of love swell repeatedly,
And sweep their knowledge to our shore’
Justice grows from you, from me.
From all of us together,
Undeterred by compassion’s drought,
Undaunted by the size of tasks,
Unabashed by deluge of doubt.
We admit to no futility --
One drop can color the whole wide sea.
Closing Words - from I Kings 19
And behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”
Sermon - “Small Change” Mark W. Harris
Opening Words - “Give Us the Child” by Sara Moores Campbell
Give us the spirit of the child
Give us the child who lives within --
the child who trusts,
the child who imagines,
the child who sings,
the child who receives without reservation,
the child who gives without judgment.
Give us a child’s eyes, that we may receive the beauty and freshness of this day like a sunrise;
Give us a child’s ears, that we may hear the music of mythical times;
Give us a child’s heart, that we may be filled with wonder and delight;
Give us a child’s faith, that we may be cured of our cynicism;
Give us the spirit of the child, who is not afraid to need; who is not afraid to love.
Reading
Juggler by Richard Wilbur
A ball will bounce; but less and less. It's not
A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience.
Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls
So in our hearts from brilliance,
Settles and is forgot.
It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls
To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air
The balls roll around, wheel on his wheeling hands,
Learning the ways of lightness, alter to spheres
Grazing his finger ends,
Cling to their courses there,
Swinging a small heaven about his ears.
But a heaven is easier made of nothing at all
Than the earth regained, and still and sole within
The spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble
He reels that heaven in,
Landing it ball by ball,
And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table.
Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom's
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls
On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry:
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye.
Sermon
Tomorrow, May 15th is the anniversary. What, you say you don’t know what anniversary? Well, it is the day when Horton the Elephant was in the Jungle of Nool, and he heard a small speck of dust talking to him. You may remember that this piece of dust is actually a tiny planet, where there is a city called "Who-ville", where the most miniscule creatures live. Even Horton cannot see these little creatures , but he can hear them due to this wonderful ears. They proceed to ask him to protect them from harm, and Horton agrees. Thereafter Horton develops a repeating mantra "a person's a person, no matter how small". His respect for and protection of these small creatures leads to his being ridiculed by the other animals, because he believes in something that they are unable to see or hear. Horton tells the Whos that they needed to make themselves heard to the other animals, or they will become part of "beezlenut stew." We could draw lots of meaning from this story. Every small world needs to be listened to and respected lest it be swallowed. A small voice can be heard, and it will make a difference in the world, but it is up to us who have small voices or who hear small voices to demand that they be listened to.
Someone once speculated that Horton Hears a Who was Dr. Seuss’ protest against the atom bomb. I remember seeing pictures of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, and I recall it was nicknamed “big boy.” We often have had a problem with size, assuming in our culture that bigger is better, including church size and house size so that we define ourselves as a small church meaning insignificant or lucky to be alive, and yet we are a vibrant institution. With houses there is a trend to build McMansions on postage stamp size plots of land without regard for efficiency or need, but apparently simply to show off that big is more important or prestigious. Suddenly there is a panic in our culture over super sizing all the fatty foods we consumed because everyone is overweight. This has especially been noted in the obesity rate for children. Many years ago E.F. Schumacher tried to convince us that Small is Beautiful, but small cars were soon replaced by SUVs, and children ended up expanding their smallness because they ate too much, and never got enough exercise.
As many of you have heard before, I was overweight as a child, and had poor balance and was not very coordinated. I learned to ride a bicycle when I was 18. This made physical feats performed by circus artists especially magical to me. When I tried to swing on a high bar or juggle balls it felt like I was carrying the weight of the world with the one and watching falling spheres with the other. How could anyone watch one while catching the other, while the third was in the air? It seemed impossible, and yet my eyes convinced me of this truth. Richard Wilbur in “The Juggler” reminds us that the balls want to fall, and it takes a juggler to shake our gravity up. They did seem a small heaven against the sky, in perfect synch, and continuously in motion. “Oh if only I could do this, I thought. And then it was over, and he took the heaven back into himself to go on to the next magic trick. It was a small heaven of perfection around his ears, almost like a universe in motion. It looked like one of those solar system models. Whoville was also that small universe in motion. The juggler reminds us that things tend to fall to earth unless we hold them up in a juggle. And Dr. Seuss reminds us that tiny things in this universe go unseen, and can be easily swamped in neglect or abuse by those who are more powerful, and so may we never forget “a person’s a person no matter how small.”
My youngest son has been having a problem with recurring warts on his feet. We often have a negative notion of warts, and so when we talk about a family member we say we love or accept them warts and all, meaning all of their faults or negative characteristics. I had a problem with warts when I was small, and remembering my dermatologist using liquid nitrogen to try to get rid of them. My older son Joel had wart problems, too. The science writer Lewis Thomas says that warts are wonderful structures. Now we usually think of them as small annoying growths that we find hideous, and want to rid ourselves of. These tough, impenetrable mounds are actually the elaborate reproductive apparatus of a virus. The wart, Thomas says, is what the virus truly wants; it can flourish only in cells undergoing this kind of overgrowth. I have heard all kinds of cures for warts, including gasoline and recently we tried duct tape. The thing about warts is that they tend to go away. In fact, they come to the end of their lives and disappear. They are also open to suggestion. Thomas says that tests results show that we can be hypnotized, and rid ourselves of warts. As bizarre as this sounds, Thomas confirms that the unconscious can figure out how to manipulate the mechanisms needed to get around the virus, and for deploying the various cells needed for tissue rejection. I know that shutting off the blood supply to an area will kill off unwanted tissue. Lewis says that this suggests that there is a super intelligence in each of us, that can help us deal with the nature of certain diseases, but we simply don’t understand it. This control of reproducing viruses in us might be a key to health and wholeness.
What is intriguing about this to someone who struggled with the annoyance of warts is that something this small and revolting to us, might be a key to how we could understand and manage certain diseases in us. It is a small and complex heaven inside of us. Religiously speaking, cultures have often imagined God as the large God who is the ruler of the world. In the Hebrew scriptures the revelation of God to Elijah in I Kings comes with the expectation that God will be revealed in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the end God comes as the still, small voice. This is the small, quiet voice of God that we must stop and listen to you. What child of my generation can forget that Walt Disney imagined the guide of our conscience to be Jiminy Cricket, that small creature who told us to look within to see what was the right thing to do in difficult circumstances. When the Puritans feared that God was angry with them, they thought it was expressed through some large scale disease that struck the whole colony or a terrible storm. God was a big, powerful voice when he expressed displeasure with human sinfulness.
This distinction between a large God and a small God is what the novelist Arundhati Roy refers to in The God of Small Things. For her the big God howls like a hot wind or demands our allegiance in prostrate submissive form. We bow before this big God. Theologically, we would mostly argue that the big God that ancient cultures conceived of as running the universe no longer exists. It is Roy’s small God who is cozy and contained, and private and limited that seems more approachable to us. This cozy God is with us in the every day embracing of our children, or in the trial of quiet sitting with a pain or illness and finding the inner resources to deal with it through talking with our friends, or finding a diversion through working or the like. The small God must skip to the beat of the music, and juggle balls in a small heaven, and find little things to enjoy like the bursting of a flower in bud, or the rhythmic motion of digging in the dirt to till the garden. The small God knows there is a universe in motion out there, and it wants us to notice every small part, even the warts, because they all play a part in the reproductive generations that look to the future. The small God helps us realize that even when there are tragedies all around us there is much beauty in life that we can grasp hold of and experience. So when we find joy in the small heaven of juggling, we can get through tragic moments, and know these small events give us the promise of life and joy. It is akin to Jesus saying the last shall be first, or see the power in a mustard seed. The most insignificant thing holds all the beauty of the universe in its life giving potential. The acorn becomes the giant tree in nature, or the smallest thing holds the potential for the greatest spiritual depth. While the small Gods may be our personal issues and daily life, they are truly the stuff that will make it possible to see a big God, not in the traditional sense of creator and controller, but in our connectedness with all of life. We cannot understand the big God unless we see and listen to the Whos. God or the divine is in the details: in the plant we place in the wet ground that it might grow, in the ice that cools our hot tongues in summer to melt to refreshment, in the smile and glowing eyes we impart to the stranger that says yes, we can know one another.
In a practical sense this also helps us reflect on the role of children in our culture. Today we have dedicated two lives to the care of this church, and have charged their parents with the awesome responsibility of bringing up these young lives to reference all of life, and develop their own ability to love and understand others. “A person’s a person no matter how small” is a vital lesson here as well. Children play an odd role in our culture. Modern life has made being a child very difficult because too often we take childhood away from our kids and give them a complicated schedule to fill up every minute of their lives, when they and we could spend much more time just being together playing games and taking walks on the beach while collecting rocks and shells. One thing we could do for our small charges on this day when we reflect on families a great deal is to give them more time to just enjoy their lives and not plan on what might bring success, but what might bring joy. I also think we share too much of adult conversation with children, and make them into confidants of too much pressure and information that is better left in the adult world. As with the fun times we often deprive them of, I think when it comes to information as well, let kids be kids. The third thing that concerns me is that we rarely listen to children. Yes, we give kids a lot of things, and we may even spend a lot of time with them, but how often do we truly listen to what they have to say. There is a small God to be discovered in a conversation with a child. Just yesterday we saw the new movie, “Hoot,” with our kids. It tells the story of endangered, burrowing owls whose habitat is threatened by a developer of a pancake house. Three teenagers make their small voices heard in a variety of clandestine ways to protect the even smaller voices of the owls.
There is a cosmos within each of us waiting to be discovered. It is not that gigantic thing out there in space. It is that small universe of life waiting to be born in us, or small discoveries we make on a daily basis. For the past couple of months there has been a Wayside pulpit quotation out front that I just love. It us by James Freeman Clarke and it says, “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.“ Most of us have come to realize that there is no great God providing overriding meaning to our existence. Life is made of fits and starts and bits of meaning here and there, and now and then. We would like that big God, but he is not going to suddenly appear. I remember quoting Rosa Parks on MLK Day, that she just wanted a seat on the bus because she was tired from work. Of course it was more than that, but that small thing did start a great big revolution. It was her standing up for herself, it was her compassion for others, these are the every day small Gods that will help us build a big God.
Remembering all the mothers of all the generations doing small things in a great way is fitting on Mother’s Day. May we listen. May we guide. May we embrace. May we teach. All these small things done with love and understanding make their own earthquake when we find the divine within the ordinary. Our former intern, Sue Kingman shared the following poem called Song of Small Wonders by Carole Fontaine in a recent newsletter from Sanford, Maine. It is more about the cumulative effect of small acts of justice and mercy, like bringing bread to the hungry, or visiting the sick. It also tells us that all small things build to make a whole. The child who is listened to, and given time and attention will know a larger wholeness in his/her family life. The Whos down in Whoville represent all the small people of the world who demand to be seen and heard. The other day Asher and I were walking home, and he said, I know that spring has returned because the birds are in the trees singing to us again. The small things that we listen for and do are the things that truly connect us to each other and the larger whole.
We say it doesn’t matter;
We think it can not matter;
Our miniscule acts of justice
Trickling into a bucket of grief.
Such little works, so dispersed,
Only one tiny resistance,
Then another and another;
Is this the way a flood begins?
Bit by bit, we stack our deeds,
Like bags of seed or lifesaving grain,
With determination that will follow,
Providing more. again. again.
We make of them a bulwark of caring
A seawall when tragedy seems to sway
Our fragile bridges with awesome waves.
We view to cross them anyway.
It doesn't seem like it can matter.
That we could bend such global pain,
Until we note the sound of thunder
Followed by drop after drop of rain.
The rivers flow, but the sea does not fill;
Yet tides of love swell repeatedly,
And sweep their knowledge to our shore’
Justice grows from you, from me.
From all of us together,
Undeterred by compassion’s drought,
Undaunted by the size of tasks,
Unabashed by deluge of doubt.
We admit to no futility --
One drop can color the whole wide sea.
Closing Words - from I Kings 19
And behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”
"A Faith for a Few? by Mark W. Harris - May 7, 2006
“A Faith for a Few” by Mark W. Harris
May 7, 2006 First Parish of Watertown
Opening Words - from Mark Nepo
I think each comfort we manage --
each holding in the night, each opening
of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
fever sponged, each dear thing given
to someone in greater need -- each
passes on the kindnesses we’ve known.
For the human sea is made of waves
that mount and merge till the way a
nurse rocks a child is the way that child
all grown rocks the wounded, and how
the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
strangers who in their pain
don’t seem so strange.
Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
is how we pray and suffer by turns,
and if someone were to watch us
from inside the lake of time, they
wouldn’t be able to tell if we are
dying or being born.
Chalice lighting - form Calvin Dame
May our time together renew our hope
May the stories we share refresh our courage
May the songs we sing lift our spirits
May the words we speak invigorate us
May the touch of hands, the sound of laughter,
the sight of faces new and familiar, restore us in faith.
Sermon
This past Thursday and Friday I was in Syracuse, New York for a meeting of the St. Lawrence Foundation Board. This board gives out grants to theological schools and students on an annual basis, and I was a newcomer to the deliberations. As we were leaving the meeting Friday afternoon I strolled towards my car chatting with another member of the board. He looked around the parking lot and said, “it looks like there are a lot of Prius’ here. That must mean there are quite a few UUs staying at our hotel.” He was logically associating the hybrid environmentally friendly car with our commonly applied UU value of caring for the earth. He proceeded to point out the location of his own Subaru, but then went on to say, “We once had a truck, and we drove into a UU parking lot. That was not good.” My colleague was implying that we UUs commonly associate pickup trucks with common laborers or red necked bigots with shotgun racks and drinking problems. We assume that no one who drove a pick up truck would ever drive into the highly educated, culturally sophisticated Unitarian Universalist church. It reminds me of a story Andrea tells about one of her brothers who once went to church in Northampton, and told the person he was talking to that he was a carpenter. The person automatically assumed he was not college educated, which he is, and then directly asked him why he would ever come to a Unitarian Universalist church since he was obviously not the right type of person, that is well educated upper middle class liberal, and obviously he was an uneducated, coarse, narrow minded ruffian who pounded nails all day.
What assumptions were made about Andrea’s brother? This gets to the basic question of what kind of people are attracted to our Unitarian Universalist faith? Many years ago the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Using sociological evidence Niebuhr said that we tend to choose our faith based on social status or class. There has long been a stereotype that Unitarianism especially, has attracted those people who are wealthy and educated or what Sprio Agnew once called, “effete , intellectual snobs.” First there is always truth in any stereotype, and with faith choices it is historically accurate that those who are more comfortable in this life will be less concerned about salvation and what will befall them in the next life. Those who have little in the way of material comforts or stand at the bottom of the perceived success ladder often find a faith that will give them solace that, even though they have been denied monetary pleasures in this life, they will be rewarded by God in the end, and have ultimate victory.
Second, we commonly say that Unitarian Universalism is a thinking person’s faith, that is one where the adherents question received truths about religion, and typically will not accept statements about faith without a measure of doubt, and therefore typically test them in light of their own lived experience. I think most of us would agree that it is a good thing to wonder about and question what it all means. One of our Universalist founders, Hosea Ballou, said that beginning as a boy, he was “remarkably inquisitive about doctrines.” I could say the same thing about myself. Just like the orthodox we are people who are desperate to make sense of the world we live in. While they may see a separation between the spiritual world and the material world, we see them as integrated, and so we attempt to find spiritual truths in all that we find around us. But our inquiring minds that want to know can lead to the exclusion of others when it comes to those who don’t follow the UU stereotype. We can make the assumption that you must be well educated or you are narrow minded. Or we may believe that if you are poor, then you blindly follow authority. While we may think we are free of these assumptions, we could all ponder how we approach a typical conversation with a newcomer. Common questions we might ask a stranger include, What do you do? Where did you go to school? Once we know these answers we might wonder if someone fits our profile. Clearly with Andrea’s brother and the guy who drives the pick up we might say, no. We don’t want to mix with them.
The question we might ask is, who do we mix with, and what happens to this UU cocktail that is shaken, not stirred. Samuel Eliot Morison, the great historian was once president of the American Historical Association, but he rarely attended its meetings. Jill Lepore says that when he did show up, he walked through a crowded hotel mezzanine, and dazed academics parted before him like the Red Sea. Reaching the end of the room, he turned around, and walked back, and then back and forth again. A friend came up to him and asked, “Sam, what are you doing?” “Doing?” Morison replied, “Doing!” Why what do you think I’m doing? Mixing!”
I think that style of mixing fits a few of us. We feel obligated to be somewhere, but we don’t want to talk to anybody. A couple of years ago I wrote the most popular newsletter column I have ever written. While it may not have been the best written, the topic, a story about being an introvert, brought the most response I have ever encountered to one of these monthly missives. Every introvert in the church came out of the closet.
In that column I mentioned the annual Christmas party at Andover Newton Theological School. I decided to attend so I could meet people where I taught. I knew no one. On the appointed day I arrived at Andover Newton. I checked my box to see if any papers had arrived. I used the rest room. Now I could no longer procrastinate. Nothing could prevent me form entering the party. I made my way downstairs, and entered the room. I quickly noticed there were o other UU adjunct faculty present. In fact no one noticed my presence, and no one was wearing name tags. They all seemed to be having a good time talking to each other, and I am sure they are all wonderful people. But I panicked. I asked myself quickly, “Do I want to be here a week before Christmas meeting a room full of people I don’t know when I am already stressed out. The answer was no. I left. In that column I talked about the opportunity to be alone, but then went on to say that it reminded me of an important lesson about church.
It is extremely difficult to be a newcomer at church. It takes a great deal of courage to go to church, and confront a room full of people. What do I say? Will they like me? Every person who comes through our door is thinking these thoughts with some level of fear or anxiety. They want to find a community to connect to, but they need to be invited in. And if they are like me, coming in may be more painful than they are able to admit to or perform without invitation. So many of us, including your minister, are often uncomfortable speaking to newcomers. You may be an introvert like me. Now bear in mind that I was walking into a party where every person worked for an academic and religious institution. What better set up could I have had? And I still ran. Now think how if it is hard to speak to newcomers who are like us, what do we do with those who we perceive are not like us - the carpenters, the pickup truck drivers. Do we simply drive them away by telling them they don’t belong here anyway? Or do we reach inside of ourselves to live out a religious imperative to welcome the stranger, because by doing so are taking the risk that each one if us might be transformed into a more open, loving person so that we might deepen our own spiritual nature as we invite others into deeper relationship with each other and the world. May Sarton once wrote, “No one comes to this house, Who is not changed. I meet no one here who does not change me.” If we had that radical a notion of hospitality or of welcoming others, would we be a church for a few or the many? This past year Christmas, Andover Newton had its annual Christmas Party. This time, I went up to the door. I walked in, and I actually introduced myself to a stranger. I went to the party. It is time for all Unitarian Universalists to go to the party.
Today’s sermon began with ruminations about class and how friendly we are to newcomers. The question is whether we have a practice that matches our theology. This summer I am going to be leading a heritage week at Ferry Beach. The subject is Unitarian Universalists and class. I could spend an entire sermon and more discussing the class differences between Unitarians and Universalists historically, the latter having more evangelical, Baptist and working class roots, the former being labeled the Brahmin elite of Boston. In theory we might be a nice mix. It would also be easy to bash the Unitarians with their privileged position of wealth and culture in the world by recalling Emerson’s label of corpse cold liberals from Brattle Street. Emerson was concerned about class issues, as he was one who was poor as a child, especially after his father died when he was five. But as an adult he aspired to be a Concord rich man. Some of our fear of evangelicalism stems from heritage, so much so that on average the typical Unitarian Universalist invites a friend to church once every 27 years. We have bring a friend Sundays to improve that time lag, at least a little. People sometimes go to a Unitarian Universalist church and say, no one spoke to me. Even in a friendly church such as ours, there is problem with wanting to speak to your friends or at least the people you already know rather than reaching out to a newcomer.
What’s interesting about class is that it is a subject that everyone seems to want to avoid. In their advertising for heritage week, the Ferry Beach description says that we are being gutsy for taking on the one topic UUs don’t want to talk about. I learned this first hand when I spoke to my colleague Terry Burke at the district annual meeting. He said that a few years ago he was asked to be part of a panel that was gong to speak at our minister’s group. A couple of weeks before the scheduled event he was called up and told the program was gong to be changed. Class was too hot a topic. In some ways it may ask us to move beyond our comfort zone more than gender, race or sexual identity, three others areas of discrimination and bigotry that we have tried to bridge with audits, inclusive worship and welcoming practices. This is because we perceive the people who are from another class as being so different from us in values. We can accept African Americans and gays who have our same perceived liberal values, but we are reticent to embrace those we perceive as working class, uneducated or narrow minded. A colleague who ran for UUA president many years ago once told me that my first church in Palmer, Massachusetts, a small New England mill town with working class people and values, was only there for historical reasons. If we were starting a UU congregation today, he was saying, we would bypass this type of community. While there may be some reality as to what our faith offers to those who have orthodox religious needs, we are too quick to dismiss the truth that all classes have folks who are smart, inquisitive people with inquiring minds and open hearts to all kinds of people. Just the other day Andrea was telling me about a regular working mom here in Watertown, from good Catholic stock who was trying to convince her mother of the living, loving truth of same sex marriage. We should not sell our faith short when it comes to what we have to offer, and why we want others to join us.
In our reading for today Asher Lev’s mother wants her son to make pretty drawings of the world. Asher has this amazing gift for artistic expression that he wants to use with utmost integrity. His drawings don’t make people feel better, he feels, but they do express a truth that the world is not pretty. What his mother brings to the conversation is that he must not hate, but instead realize that the world is unfinished. The world is not as pretty as our liberal theology has sometimes painted it, but putting our liberal theology of loving the other no matter who they are, or from what class they belong to, into practice in this world of pain and hardship could move us forward along the road to seeing it become more finished. But it is not easy for us to overcome our liberal sense that we know what is right for the world. We often laud Olympia Brown the first woman ordained to the ministry with full denominational authority anywhere in the world. She was one of those working class Universalists from MIchigan who not only ministered in the face of prejudice, but also became a leader in the suffrage movement, and was fired from one ministry because of her political involvement. What an inspiration to us. And yet even with all these gifts to the world, hear what she said about immigrants. She wrote: “We are the first people to try the experiment of enfranchising ignorance, drunkenness, and all forms of vice, and subordinate intelligence, patriotism, religion.” So she was saying these newcomers to our country are ugly, and they will bring down our beauty. Does that sound familiar to you in 2006?
Long ago the Hebrew Bible invoked the religious imperative that the strangers who sojourn with you shall become as natives among you.” (Leviticus 19). The Hebrews knew what it was to wander among strangers. They lived it. Finding hospitality among stranger is also the story of Ruth, who offers hospitality to her mother-in-law, but then finds Boaz as her new mate. She finds love after being offered hospitality from the stranger from a different tribe. This is how we mix, the stories tell us. The Koran says, welcome the neighbors who are strangers (Sura 4) In terms of immigration reform it means to ask those who hide in the shadows to come out and build a regularized relationship with our government. Come out, and reunite families. Come out, and build safe, legal and welcoming means to bring those strangers into our midst, so that we might legally and safely acknowledge all that they do for our country.
Most of us here want our politicians to conduct the discussion of immigration reform in a civil and nondiscriminatory manner. Don’t blame them for all our ills or for terrorism, but rather finds ways to welcome them. Sister Joan Chittister says that “hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world.” Class issues and immigration reminds us that there are many barriers in the world that still need dismantling. It has sometimes been said that there are no classes in America, but that it is the land of opportunity for all. The reality of that dream is not always present, and all of us experienced some kind of class structure - because of money , education, status, place of residence. Religious affiliation has sometimes followed those class lines. Most UUs are highly educated, for instance. But a thinking person does not need a Ph.D. A thinking person needs an open mind. I think those open minds are found in all classes.
How do we overcome our reticence to welcome the stranger. At first it may seem like we are forcing ourselves to do it. But then we find people who are fascinating, who we learn from, and who ultimately make a difference in our lives. The Greek word, xenos means stranger, but also guest and host. From xenos comes the New Testament word for hospitality. This year all members and friends have been asked to be host for our social hour. This is a new change for us, but perhaps it is also a signal that the goal of our church would be to open the hearts of every member to welcome others. xenos is also the root of the word xenophobia, the fear of strangers that has often characterized anti-immigrant behavior. Like others we too fear the stranger, but our faith asks us to be open to all, and to welcome all. We must constantly ask ourselves the question how are strangers welcomed here. Henri Nouwen once said that one of the major spiritual movements in a Christian's life, and we might add, in the life of any person of faith, is to go from hostility to hospitality.
This last week there was an article in the Globe on a smile pledge that a woman was trying to achieve from 50 people in greater Boston to help the city change its image as a place of cold snobs. It begins I will smile and say hello to strangers I pass on the street. Deborah Finn believes Boston would retain more people, if it were not so unwelcoming. I am not going to pass judgment on whether we are an unsmiling lot or not. I have anecdotal evidence of people who are unwilling to look you in the eye or say their names back to you when you tell them yours. But perhaps it makes sense for us to at least make an internal church pledge. I will look for the stranger in our midst. I will welcome ALL people regardless of income, status or place in the world by speaking to them and saying how glad we are that they are here. I will wear my name tag so that the stranger will know my name. It could be we are a faith for only a few not because we are thinking person’s religion, but because we have not reached out to enough other thinking people.
In the early 19th century a young woman named Lucy Barnes, the daughter of the first Universalist minister in Maine wrote a book called The Female Christian. In that work she wrote that human relationships provide a model for understanding her relationship with divinity. One of her arguments for universal salvation was based on the emotional bonds of friendship. Sympathy, she says ties all hearts together, and of friends it makes us feel each other’s pain. As a result she said she could not know heaven’s joy while believing that millions were suffering in misery. So, too we must ask, how fully can we appreciate life’s joys today when we know that others are in distress. Welcoming the stranger and building friendships with others brings what we may know of God to true life. And our theology says this must be with all - not just the social circle we create, or the like minded liberals. It must be practiced in an ever intentional manner and in ever widening circles if we are truly to be transformed to a people who live in love, and then Asher Lev’s painful world can begin to grow in beauty day by day, and Unitarian Universalism can be more than a faith for a few.
Closing words - from J. Robert Oppenheimer
This cannot be an easy life
We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds
open and to keep them deep;
to keep our sense of beauty
and our ability to make it,
and our occasional ability to see it
in places remote and strange and unfamiliar.
We shall have a rugged time of it, all of us --
but this is the condition of life,
and in this condition we can help
because we can love one another.
May 7, 2006 First Parish of Watertown
Opening Words - from Mark Nepo
I think each comfort we manage --
each holding in the night, each opening
of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
fever sponged, each dear thing given
to someone in greater need -- each
passes on the kindnesses we’ve known.
For the human sea is made of waves
that mount and merge till the way a
nurse rocks a child is the way that child
all grown rocks the wounded, and how
the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
strangers who in their pain
don’t seem so strange.
Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
is how we pray and suffer by turns,
and if someone were to watch us
from inside the lake of time, they
wouldn’t be able to tell if we are
dying or being born.
Chalice lighting - form Calvin Dame
May our time together renew our hope
May the stories we share refresh our courage
May the songs we sing lift our spirits
May the words we speak invigorate us
May the touch of hands, the sound of laughter,
the sight of faces new and familiar, restore us in faith.
Sermon
This past Thursday and Friday I was in Syracuse, New York for a meeting of the St. Lawrence Foundation Board. This board gives out grants to theological schools and students on an annual basis, and I was a newcomer to the deliberations. As we were leaving the meeting Friday afternoon I strolled towards my car chatting with another member of the board. He looked around the parking lot and said, “it looks like there are a lot of Prius’ here. That must mean there are quite a few UUs staying at our hotel.” He was logically associating the hybrid environmentally friendly car with our commonly applied UU value of caring for the earth. He proceeded to point out the location of his own Subaru, but then went on to say, “We once had a truck, and we drove into a UU parking lot. That was not good.” My colleague was implying that we UUs commonly associate pickup trucks with common laborers or red necked bigots with shotgun racks and drinking problems. We assume that no one who drove a pick up truck would ever drive into the highly educated, culturally sophisticated Unitarian Universalist church. It reminds me of a story Andrea tells about one of her brothers who once went to church in Northampton, and told the person he was talking to that he was a carpenter. The person automatically assumed he was not college educated, which he is, and then directly asked him why he would ever come to a Unitarian Universalist church since he was obviously not the right type of person, that is well educated upper middle class liberal, and obviously he was an uneducated, coarse, narrow minded ruffian who pounded nails all day.
What assumptions were made about Andrea’s brother? This gets to the basic question of what kind of people are attracted to our Unitarian Universalist faith? Many years ago the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Using sociological evidence Niebuhr said that we tend to choose our faith based on social status or class. There has long been a stereotype that Unitarianism especially, has attracted those people who are wealthy and educated or what Sprio Agnew once called, “effete , intellectual snobs.” First there is always truth in any stereotype, and with faith choices it is historically accurate that those who are more comfortable in this life will be less concerned about salvation and what will befall them in the next life. Those who have little in the way of material comforts or stand at the bottom of the perceived success ladder often find a faith that will give them solace that, even though they have been denied monetary pleasures in this life, they will be rewarded by God in the end, and have ultimate victory.
Second, we commonly say that Unitarian Universalism is a thinking person’s faith, that is one where the adherents question received truths about religion, and typically will not accept statements about faith without a measure of doubt, and therefore typically test them in light of their own lived experience. I think most of us would agree that it is a good thing to wonder about and question what it all means. One of our Universalist founders, Hosea Ballou, said that beginning as a boy, he was “remarkably inquisitive about doctrines.” I could say the same thing about myself. Just like the orthodox we are people who are desperate to make sense of the world we live in. While they may see a separation between the spiritual world and the material world, we see them as integrated, and so we attempt to find spiritual truths in all that we find around us. But our inquiring minds that want to know can lead to the exclusion of others when it comes to those who don’t follow the UU stereotype. We can make the assumption that you must be well educated or you are narrow minded. Or we may believe that if you are poor, then you blindly follow authority. While we may think we are free of these assumptions, we could all ponder how we approach a typical conversation with a newcomer. Common questions we might ask a stranger include, What do you do? Where did you go to school? Once we know these answers we might wonder if someone fits our profile. Clearly with Andrea’s brother and the guy who drives the pick up we might say, no. We don’t want to mix with them.
The question we might ask is, who do we mix with, and what happens to this UU cocktail that is shaken, not stirred. Samuel Eliot Morison, the great historian was once president of the American Historical Association, but he rarely attended its meetings. Jill Lepore says that when he did show up, he walked through a crowded hotel mezzanine, and dazed academics parted before him like the Red Sea. Reaching the end of the room, he turned around, and walked back, and then back and forth again. A friend came up to him and asked, “Sam, what are you doing?” “Doing?” Morison replied, “Doing!” Why what do you think I’m doing? Mixing!”
I think that style of mixing fits a few of us. We feel obligated to be somewhere, but we don’t want to talk to anybody. A couple of years ago I wrote the most popular newsletter column I have ever written. While it may not have been the best written, the topic, a story about being an introvert, brought the most response I have ever encountered to one of these monthly missives. Every introvert in the church came out of the closet.
In that column I mentioned the annual Christmas party at Andover Newton Theological School. I decided to attend so I could meet people where I taught. I knew no one. On the appointed day I arrived at Andover Newton. I checked my box to see if any papers had arrived. I used the rest room. Now I could no longer procrastinate. Nothing could prevent me form entering the party. I made my way downstairs, and entered the room. I quickly noticed there were o other UU adjunct faculty present. In fact no one noticed my presence, and no one was wearing name tags. They all seemed to be having a good time talking to each other, and I am sure they are all wonderful people. But I panicked. I asked myself quickly, “Do I want to be here a week before Christmas meeting a room full of people I don’t know when I am already stressed out. The answer was no. I left. In that column I talked about the opportunity to be alone, but then went on to say that it reminded me of an important lesson about church.
It is extremely difficult to be a newcomer at church. It takes a great deal of courage to go to church, and confront a room full of people. What do I say? Will they like me? Every person who comes through our door is thinking these thoughts with some level of fear or anxiety. They want to find a community to connect to, but they need to be invited in. And if they are like me, coming in may be more painful than they are able to admit to or perform without invitation. So many of us, including your minister, are often uncomfortable speaking to newcomers. You may be an introvert like me. Now bear in mind that I was walking into a party where every person worked for an academic and religious institution. What better set up could I have had? And I still ran. Now think how if it is hard to speak to newcomers who are like us, what do we do with those who we perceive are not like us - the carpenters, the pickup truck drivers. Do we simply drive them away by telling them they don’t belong here anyway? Or do we reach inside of ourselves to live out a religious imperative to welcome the stranger, because by doing so are taking the risk that each one if us might be transformed into a more open, loving person so that we might deepen our own spiritual nature as we invite others into deeper relationship with each other and the world. May Sarton once wrote, “No one comes to this house, Who is not changed. I meet no one here who does not change me.” If we had that radical a notion of hospitality or of welcoming others, would we be a church for a few or the many? This past year Christmas, Andover Newton had its annual Christmas Party. This time, I went up to the door. I walked in, and I actually introduced myself to a stranger. I went to the party. It is time for all Unitarian Universalists to go to the party.
Today’s sermon began with ruminations about class and how friendly we are to newcomers. The question is whether we have a practice that matches our theology. This summer I am going to be leading a heritage week at Ferry Beach. The subject is Unitarian Universalists and class. I could spend an entire sermon and more discussing the class differences between Unitarians and Universalists historically, the latter having more evangelical, Baptist and working class roots, the former being labeled the Brahmin elite of Boston. In theory we might be a nice mix. It would also be easy to bash the Unitarians with their privileged position of wealth and culture in the world by recalling Emerson’s label of corpse cold liberals from Brattle Street. Emerson was concerned about class issues, as he was one who was poor as a child, especially after his father died when he was five. But as an adult he aspired to be a Concord rich man. Some of our fear of evangelicalism stems from heritage, so much so that on average the typical Unitarian Universalist invites a friend to church once every 27 years. We have bring a friend Sundays to improve that time lag, at least a little. People sometimes go to a Unitarian Universalist church and say, no one spoke to me. Even in a friendly church such as ours, there is problem with wanting to speak to your friends or at least the people you already know rather than reaching out to a newcomer.
What’s interesting about class is that it is a subject that everyone seems to want to avoid. In their advertising for heritage week, the Ferry Beach description says that we are being gutsy for taking on the one topic UUs don’t want to talk about. I learned this first hand when I spoke to my colleague Terry Burke at the district annual meeting. He said that a few years ago he was asked to be part of a panel that was gong to speak at our minister’s group. A couple of weeks before the scheduled event he was called up and told the program was gong to be changed. Class was too hot a topic. In some ways it may ask us to move beyond our comfort zone more than gender, race or sexual identity, three others areas of discrimination and bigotry that we have tried to bridge with audits, inclusive worship and welcoming practices. This is because we perceive the people who are from another class as being so different from us in values. We can accept African Americans and gays who have our same perceived liberal values, but we are reticent to embrace those we perceive as working class, uneducated or narrow minded. A colleague who ran for UUA president many years ago once told me that my first church in Palmer, Massachusetts, a small New England mill town with working class people and values, was only there for historical reasons. If we were starting a UU congregation today, he was saying, we would bypass this type of community. While there may be some reality as to what our faith offers to those who have orthodox religious needs, we are too quick to dismiss the truth that all classes have folks who are smart, inquisitive people with inquiring minds and open hearts to all kinds of people. Just the other day Andrea was telling me about a regular working mom here in Watertown, from good Catholic stock who was trying to convince her mother of the living, loving truth of same sex marriage. We should not sell our faith short when it comes to what we have to offer, and why we want others to join us.
In our reading for today Asher Lev’s mother wants her son to make pretty drawings of the world. Asher has this amazing gift for artistic expression that he wants to use with utmost integrity. His drawings don’t make people feel better, he feels, but they do express a truth that the world is not pretty. What his mother brings to the conversation is that he must not hate, but instead realize that the world is unfinished. The world is not as pretty as our liberal theology has sometimes painted it, but putting our liberal theology of loving the other no matter who they are, or from what class they belong to, into practice in this world of pain and hardship could move us forward along the road to seeing it become more finished. But it is not easy for us to overcome our liberal sense that we know what is right for the world. We often laud Olympia Brown the first woman ordained to the ministry with full denominational authority anywhere in the world. She was one of those working class Universalists from MIchigan who not only ministered in the face of prejudice, but also became a leader in the suffrage movement, and was fired from one ministry because of her political involvement. What an inspiration to us. And yet even with all these gifts to the world, hear what she said about immigrants. She wrote: “We are the first people to try the experiment of enfranchising ignorance, drunkenness, and all forms of vice, and subordinate intelligence, patriotism, religion.” So she was saying these newcomers to our country are ugly, and they will bring down our beauty. Does that sound familiar to you in 2006?
Long ago the Hebrew Bible invoked the religious imperative that the strangers who sojourn with you shall become as natives among you.” (Leviticus 19). The Hebrews knew what it was to wander among strangers. They lived it. Finding hospitality among stranger is also the story of Ruth, who offers hospitality to her mother-in-law, but then finds Boaz as her new mate. She finds love after being offered hospitality from the stranger from a different tribe. This is how we mix, the stories tell us. The Koran says, welcome the neighbors who are strangers (Sura 4) In terms of immigration reform it means to ask those who hide in the shadows to come out and build a regularized relationship with our government. Come out, and reunite families. Come out, and build safe, legal and welcoming means to bring those strangers into our midst, so that we might legally and safely acknowledge all that they do for our country.
Most of us here want our politicians to conduct the discussion of immigration reform in a civil and nondiscriminatory manner. Don’t blame them for all our ills or for terrorism, but rather finds ways to welcome them. Sister Joan Chittister says that “hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world.” Class issues and immigration reminds us that there are many barriers in the world that still need dismantling. It has sometimes been said that there are no classes in America, but that it is the land of opportunity for all. The reality of that dream is not always present, and all of us experienced some kind of class structure - because of money , education, status, place of residence. Religious affiliation has sometimes followed those class lines. Most UUs are highly educated, for instance. But a thinking person does not need a Ph.D. A thinking person needs an open mind. I think those open minds are found in all classes.
How do we overcome our reticence to welcome the stranger. At first it may seem like we are forcing ourselves to do it. But then we find people who are fascinating, who we learn from, and who ultimately make a difference in our lives. The Greek word, xenos means stranger, but also guest and host. From xenos comes the New Testament word for hospitality. This year all members and friends have been asked to be host for our social hour. This is a new change for us, but perhaps it is also a signal that the goal of our church would be to open the hearts of every member to welcome others. xenos is also the root of the word xenophobia, the fear of strangers that has often characterized anti-immigrant behavior. Like others we too fear the stranger, but our faith asks us to be open to all, and to welcome all. We must constantly ask ourselves the question how are strangers welcomed here. Henri Nouwen once said that one of the major spiritual movements in a Christian's life, and we might add, in the life of any person of faith, is to go from hostility to hospitality.
This last week there was an article in the Globe on a smile pledge that a woman was trying to achieve from 50 people in greater Boston to help the city change its image as a place of cold snobs. It begins I will smile and say hello to strangers I pass on the street. Deborah Finn believes Boston would retain more people, if it were not so unwelcoming. I am not going to pass judgment on whether we are an unsmiling lot or not. I have anecdotal evidence of people who are unwilling to look you in the eye or say their names back to you when you tell them yours. But perhaps it makes sense for us to at least make an internal church pledge. I will look for the stranger in our midst. I will welcome ALL people regardless of income, status or place in the world by speaking to them and saying how glad we are that they are here. I will wear my name tag so that the stranger will know my name. It could be we are a faith for only a few not because we are thinking person’s religion, but because we have not reached out to enough other thinking people.
In the early 19th century a young woman named Lucy Barnes, the daughter of the first Universalist minister in Maine wrote a book called The Female Christian. In that work she wrote that human relationships provide a model for understanding her relationship with divinity. One of her arguments for universal salvation was based on the emotional bonds of friendship. Sympathy, she says ties all hearts together, and of friends it makes us feel each other’s pain. As a result she said she could not know heaven’s joy while believing that millions were suffering in misery. So, too we must ask, how fully can we appreciate life’s joys today when we know that others are in distress. Welcoming the stranger and building friendships with others brings what we may know of God to true life. And our theology says this must be with all - not just the social circle we create, or the like minded liberals. It must be practiced in an ever intentional manner and in ever widening circles if we are truly to be transformed to a people who live in love, and then Asher Lev’s painful world can begin to grow in beauty day by day, and Unitarian Universalism can be more than a faith for a few.
Closing words - from J. Robert Oppenheimer
This cannot be an easy life
We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds
open and to keep them deep;
to keep our sense of beauty
and our ability to make it,
and our occasional ability to see it
in places remote and strange and unfamiliar.
We shall have a rugged time of it, all of us --
but this is the condition of life,
and in this condition we can help
because we can love one another.