First UU Austin, TX

March 30, 2008

Sermons from the Third Act

Nathan L. Stone, Ph.D., minister

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Invocation

Here we sit ————- waiting for what?

Waiting for some divine inspiration?

Waiting for a sense of calm to wash over us?

Waiting for church to be over so we can get on to lunch or watch Houston and San Antonio play basketball on television?

Here we sing ———– singing for what?

Singing for a moment of inspiration?

Singing because it’s good therapy?

Here we hope ———– hoping for what?

Hoping to learn some new thing that will make life easier?

Hoping that something magical will take away that resentment that is devouring us?

Hoping to find a key to that elusive happiness?

Hoping to make a connection and to find some genuine expression of love to carry us through another week?

Spirit of Life and Love?

Sit with us.

Sing with us.

Hope with us.

Amen.

Morning Prayer

And now we pray. Not because we must — but because we may.

We pray as a way of thinking out loud.

We pray as a way of organizing our thoughts.

We pray — hoping that something beyond us and other — just might be listening.

We pray — hoping that if enough people are thinking out loud at the same time and longing for the same things — maybe — some things could possibly begin to change for the better.

We pray — hoping that maybe such a bizarre ritual might make some changes inside of ME.

We pray — hoping that such an act might widen and stretch our worldview to make us visionaries of some sort.

We pray — having no clue as to why we’re doing it — in fact, feeling a bit foolish for doing it.

But — at least when we pray we’re not fighting or arguing or harming one another. At least when we pray we’re doing something together in harmony — and that IS a good thing.

Some of us refuse to pray — believing that prayer is an archaic practice of magical thinking and superstition.

Most of us pray — just to play it safe.

But whatever it is we’re doing — at least we’re trying.

AMEN.

The Sermon

In my time (over 40 years of parish ministry) — I’ve seen my share of dying. It goes with the job and it is never, ever easy to be with or to watch.

In an earlier and different life — when I was the senior pastor of the Manor Baptist Church in San Antonio . . . in a single year (1986) . . . I did 53 funerals. One per week. That’s when I decided to try being a full-time counselor for awhile . . . and take a sabbatical from being a parish minister. I had been the minister there for 13 years. I needed a break. Too much death.

When I was the chaplain for Family Hospice in Temple in 1996 all I did everyday was to help people to die. It was during that time that I began to realize that everybody needs to somehow learn how to die.

Believe it or not there is actually a book that describes what it’s like to die of a particular illness. Sherwin B. Nuland is the author of a book, “How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter” (Alfred A. Knopf: New York; 1993). Dr. Nuland, who teaches surgery and the history of medicine at Yale, explains the process of dying of heart disease, AIDS, stroke, drowning, suicide, and by euthanasia. Maybe more information than most people want!

What I want to talk about has nothing to do with Dr. Nuland’s approach. It is my contention that we learn how to die by learning how to live — and live well.

The same thing applies to getting old. I don’t think you learn how to be old. I am convinced that you get old just like you’re getting old. Grouchy people now are grouch-ier in the nursing home. People who are negative now are even more so in old age. Gentle, engaged, interested people now are gentle, engaging, and interesting even in the nursing home.

And, by the way, I know that sometimes dementia and Alzheimer’s can set in and literally change personalities, but that is a different story. That is always a sad and painful story. (Recommend “Away From Her” - Canadian film: about a couple married for about 40 years as they deal with the progressive arrival of Alzheimer’s; a tender but powerful movie.)

You learn to be old by learning to live well when you’re younger.

You learn to die by learning how to live — and live well.

There’s a Hasidic story that explains this quite well. A rabbi is dying and his wife sits at his bedside crying. “But why are you crying?” he says. “My whole life was only that I might learn how to die. This is a time to applaud my good work!”

I could swear that the late, great, Johnny Cash sang these words but I can’t get the web or anybody else to confirm it for me. Doesn’t matter who sang or wrote it — the words are still so true: “When I’m old enough to really live I’ll be old enough to die.”

It has been said that everybody ought to ask at least 3 questions when it’s time to die. Three questions that should be routinely asked as we move toward that inevitable adventure of dying.

[I am indebted to my UU colleague, Fred Muir, who has been the minister of the UU Church of Annapolis since 1984 --- for introducing me to these 3 vital questions. (see Heretics' Faith: Vocabulary for Religious Liberals; 2001; pp.46ff)]

Question #1 - Will people know what I meant by my life?

That is, when you die would people know how you would want to be remembered? And, of course, the answer to that is that you have to live what you mean. Albert Schweitzer said — make your life your argument: “My life — my argument.”

For many, many years now — whenever I am asked to do a funeral — it is my custom (whether I know the dead person or not) — it is my custom to ask the family to write the eulogy. That is, write down how it is this person will be remembered. Tell me stories. Just write and I will edit. I like this because the eulogy then belongs to the family not the minister. It ends up being the center of what I do — funeral-wise. It is very real and very personal.

Usually I get more that I could ever use. People send pages and pages of information and inevitably there is one person who shoves about six pages in my face just at the moment of the service.

Occasionally I will get very little. One family wrote on a little shred of torn paper: “Mama loved to party. It was nice that we were able to sneak in a Budweiser to her hospital room before she died!” “Is there any more you’d like to say?” I asked. “Nope! That says it all! That was mama!”

I had to get real creative with that eulogy talking about how mama really loved life and on and on.

Party on, Budweiser. If that’s what she meant by her life then that was a good life.

And maybe it was. Maybe that’s exactly what she meant by her life.

Isn’t it an odd thing to think that everyday you live and all that you do is a statement about the meaning of life for you?

Think of everyday as an entry into the diary of your life. And someday . . . somebody will read that diary out loud. Think of every day of your living as another entry into your own eulogy.

Wanna learn how to die? Then learn how to live your meaning.

Suicide is tough at any age. My stepson hung himself at age 19 — he would have been 21 earlier this month. And so — his suicide (on Mother’s Day!) haunts us with questions, not so much about the way he chose to die — but what, in fact, did he mean by his life? So we’re left scouring every word he wrote, every doodle he made, looking for any note he may have left in a book he was reading. What in the world did Alex mean by his life?

Question #2 - Did my life make a difference in this world?

Now I know that some will write books and some will build buildings, invent stuff, create some memorable piece of art or write a popular song. I think we all dream that somehow we might do some visible, lasting thing.

But the older I get and the more I watch people come and go and live and die the more I think that the real difference is made in the seemingly little and ordinary ways.

I know that I am always thinking that I will write a famous book or craft some incredible and unforgettable sermon. But some time ago I got a reality check. I was talking to a couple I was about to marry. She was 12-years-old when she first met me. I was a youth camp speaker. She said to me, “I’ll never forget something you said.” And I was waiting to hear some great and profound thing that I had said. “All the campers were watching a sunset in Colorado. And you got up to do the sermon. And, silently, you looked at the sunset with us for awhile and then you said . . . “Wow!” And then you sat down. “That was the sermon,” you told us later. “Never compete with a sunset,” you told us later.

She went on to say that now she has twin girls who are 12-years-old. “Recently,” she said, “they were griping and arguing over something very trivial and I said to them, “Do either of you guys know how to say ‘Wow!’ to a sunset?”

“You taught me that, Nathan,” she said.

Tears came to my eyes. What a humbling moment that was for me.

I say it again. The older I get and the more I watch people come and go and live and die the more I think that the real difference is made in the seemingly little and ordinary ways.

I still love the saying that I have taped to the lamp on my desk. The more I read it the more right it sounds:

People won’t remember what you say.

They won’t even remember what you do.

They will remember how you made them feel.

Richard Sutton was only 4-years-old when he died. His liver was broken and no transplants were available. And when one finally came it was too little too late.

Did Richard Sutton make a difference? Oh man, you better believe it. He had a smile that wouldn’t quit . . . and incredible courage. Rarely do I see a 4-year-old but that I don’t think of Richard. Awhile back, I went to my four-year-old grandson’s birthday party and I thought of Richard. Did he make a difference? Absolutely. Just by being. And by being real. He lived only four short years but he persistently smiled his way into my heart . . . and brought his parents, Eric and Sharon, into my life. They are among my very best friends. Thanks, Richard!

Only 4 years to make a difference!

Harold Kushner tells this story that speaks volumes to me:

I was sitting on a beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sand castle by the water’s edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and sat down to build another castle. I realized that they had taught me an important lesson. All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh. (“When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” in “Heretics’ Faith” by F.J. Muir; p.48)

Really making a difference is about touching people and connecting with people: holding hands, laughing, crying, singing, drinking, eating, touching, and dancing together.

Making a difference is about being rich in people.

When my mother was actively dying in 1990 she made us laugh and she made us think. Hospice was giving her morphine to keep her comfortable which made her even more unpredictable. When she was alert she’d tell us — are you ready for this? — funeral jokes in her weak and scratchy voice. Think of it: the dying lady telling funeral jokes. “Don’t you kids get it?” she would say. “FUN as in funeral — get it?” she would say.

“Did you hear the one about the Jewish man that died and as he lay in his casket it was their family custom for people to place money in the casket as a sign of their love — money that would be buried with the loved one — a little something to get him started in the next life. Toward the end of the service when there was quite a bit of cash in place a stranger walked in and began to take the money, count it, and put it in his pockets. The funeral director was aghast and asked him what he was doing. “All this money seems like so much trouble,” the man said. “I’m getting ready to add a little bit and then write a check for the full amount!”

Oh she thought that was so funny.

“Why do you tell us that story, Mom?” we would say. “Don’t you get it?” she said. “Life is not about money. It’s about people. And she’d reach out and hold our hands. Then she’d nod off. And in a little while, in a weak voice she’d whisper, “I’m poor in stuff — but I’m rich in people.”

Margaret Elizabeth Woolsey Stone lived a life that made a huge difference. And that made all the difference in her dying.

Question #3 - Did I leave things in order?

Of course part of that really does mean leaving clear instructions, an up-to-date will, estate arrangements, and burial requests. As a hospice chaplain and a minister I cannot begin to tell you how many people will die without any of this in place. For some dying persons and/or their families it’s like if they don’t make plans then death won’t happen or it’ll hold off until you get organized. Not a good way of thinking.

And, of course, it doesn’t work that way.

Here’s the deal — when people die it usually invites chaos — in the best of circumstances. And — worst of all — if there is any tension or unfinished business in the family . . . it all rears its ugly head when death comes. I swear I’ve seen more nastiness at funerals and weddings: a time and a place where everybody is forced to be together and all the closet skeletons come out and will walk around — and all the things you never wanted to talk about now get talked about.

As much as possible leave things in order: paperwork and legal stuff.

But more importantly — live your life in such a way that relationships and connections are clean and in order. AA and Al-Anon have it right. And, yes, I am a friend of Bill W.

Step 8 - “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 9 - “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Step 10 - “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

Keeping the slate clean!

Wanna die well? Live well by tending to unfinished business.

My father and I had a strained relationship at best. He was physically and emotionally abusive and I took it. Then I took it into myself and went off to college and seminary. And he took it and stayed in Hawaii . . . and then dropped dead at a young age in what appeared to be a very healthy body.

It took me many long years of therapy to repair our relationship. It takes that long when you’ve allowed resentment and fear and hatred to get into your bones. It takes even longer when that other person is dead.

Wanna die well? Live well by tending to unfinished business.

I encourage you and me and us to take a long walk in the woods and ask ourselves these three questions about life that will help us to die — well:

• Will people know what I meant by my life?
• Did my life make a difference in this world?
• Did I leave things in order?

Not long ago the computer gods or fairies (not sure who to blame!) sent me these perfect words that seem to say it all:

When you were born you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die — you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying!

Or, I’d say — maybe even applauding for your good life!

Amen and may it be so.

Benediction

Hear now the benediction — the bene diction — the good word:

As you go back out into your world full of babies being born and obituaries.

As you go back out into your world full of love songs and reports of war.

May you and I be good students — open to learning to live AND learning to die.

AND — until the time comes when we really MUST die — may we cling to the words of that modern prophet, Woody Allen:

I don’t mind dying — I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

GO IN PEACE.

AMEN.

Rev. Eric Posa
March 16, 2008

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Patti Henry
February 17, 2008

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Rev. Diana Heath
January 20, 2008

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Rev. Michael Dowd
January 13, 2008

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Rev. Susan Smith
District Executive, 
Southwest Unitarian Universalist Conference
September 9, 2007

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Yew Grove CUUPS
August 12, 2007

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Jimmy Stanley
August 5, 2007

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Jack Harris-Bonham
July 15, 2007
Guest speakers:

Lawrence Foster, Sr., Lloyd Foster,
Kenneth Foster, Sr., and Nydesha Foster 

 

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Prayer

          Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, anyone can be happy when things are going right, when blue skies and broad horizons lay before them. But it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end.           I received a letter recently from Kenneth Foster, Jr. The tone of the letter was confident and upbeat. I received a letter from Kenneth Foster, Jr., a man who is scheduled to die of lethal injection on the 30^th of August. In this letter Kenneth thanked me for my concern about his case, he told me how blessed he felt that there are those on the outside of the machinery of death who care and are responding to his cause. He also explained about the bureaucracy behind the death machine to me, ten years of experience has taught him well. He blessed me in his letter not so much by the things he said but more by the tone in which they were said. Even though I am an older man than he in years, his years of being condemned have lent him a mantle of experience and age that comes from so many dark nights of the soul – one right after the other, after the other, after the other.           Kenneth and I will meet next month when the letter from our Board of Trustees of this church reaches the Warden, and I am given clearance. The meeting will be as all those meetings are between death row inmates and visitors. Kenneth will be behind glass like some specimen that has been separated from society so as not to increase the risk of infection. We will have all the visuals of people who meet, people who meet on opposite sides of thick glass, people who are forbidden to greet each other with a touch or even a holy kiss. We will meet and when we do, Kenneth says, “I hope that we can meet, so that you can hear my testimony personally – and I don’t mean legal wise. I mean me as the person I am.”           And this kind of talk just makes me think of the old time religion in which someone from the pulpit shouts, “Can I have a witness!?”          You see the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. faces isn’t what he fears, the past ten years has been a mighty teacher – as Martin Luther wrote so many years ago a mighty fortress is our God,– no, the death that Kenneth Foster, Jr. fears is the death of recognition. He doesn’t mind going down, but he does mind going down with no one paying attention.Can I have a witness?          The bread and circuses that this country has created in its out of control consumerism – the bread and circuses that keeps us occupied, but distracted, the 150 cable channels, the I-pods, and I-phones, personal computers, the gadgetry of modernity has kept us all informed, updated, and in the grove, but ultimately hanging out with ourselves. The community of humankind has been diminished in the process of our being entertained. The community of humankind cries out for more than food and juggling. The community of humankind awaits the new awakening of the human heart, the time when as Kenneth told me in his letter; people can look each other in the eyes and see that the other is ultimately themselves. Yes, as Kenneth says this looking does weigh heavily upon the human heart, but it springs from a place of truth and as Kenneth’s Master said 2000 years ago, ye shall know the truth and that truth shall make you free.           Kenneth may be locked behind the intricacies of multiple locks, sealed hermetically behind thick glass, family and friends may not be able to physically touch him, but there are Kenneth’s eyes into which we may gaze, and entering there we come away with only one feeling. Although the state may be about to murder this man, this man knows a truth and that truth is that from within him has sprung a fountainhead – he has bread that we do not know of, he has water from the living spring, he knows the truth of the Master’s words, lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.           At the beginning of this prayer I said that it takes a special kind of person, a special kind of people to stay focused and on task in spite of the storm that looms on the horizon, in spite of the threats that bear down upon them, in spite of daily reminders that their lives are scheduled to end. I would remind us all that we, too, are under such a sentence of death – the only difference between Kenneth and ourselves is that within our deaths the method and time are unknown – the certainty, however, is still there. 

We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is precisely everything, Amen.

Foster Child

Jack R. Harris-Bonham15 July 2007FUUCANow at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. So when they had gathered Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?” … And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified.” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified.”  So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.”
 And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”(Matthew 27:15-17;21-26)The Hanging of the MouseAn allegorybyElizabeth Bishop          Early, early in the morning, even before five o’clock, the mouse …was led in by two enormous brown beetles in the traditional picturesque armor of an earlier day. They came onto the square through the small black door and marched between the lines of soldiers standing at attention: straight ahead, to the right, around two sides of the hollow square, to the left, and out into the middle where the gallows stood. Before each turn the beetle on the right glanced quickly at the beetle on the left; their traditional long, long antennae swerved sharply in the direction they were to turn and they did it to perfection. The mouse, of course, who had had no military training and who, at the moment, was crying so hard he could scarcely see where he was going, rather spoiled the precision and snap of the beetles. At each corner he fell slightly forward, and when he was jerked in the right direction his feet became tangled together. The beetles, however, without even looking at him, each time lifted him quickly into the air for a second until his feet were untangled.           A large praying mantis was in charge of the religious ceremonies. He hurried up on t he stage after the mouse and his escorts but once there a fit of nerves seemed to seize him. He seemed to feel ill at ease with the low characters around him: the beetles, the hangman, and the criminal mouse. At last he made a great effort to pull himself together and, approaching the mouse, said a few words in a high, incomprehensible voice. The mouse jumped from nervousness, and cried harder than ever.          A raccoon, wearing the traditional mask, was the executioner. He was very fastidious and did everything just so. One of his young sons, also wearing a black mask, waited on him with a small basin and a pitcher of water. First he washed his hands and rinsed them carefully, then he washed the rope and rinsed it. At the last minute he again washed his hands and drew on a pair of elegant black kid gloves.          With the help of some pushes and pinches from the beetles, the executioner got the mouse into position. The rope was tied exquisitely behind one of his little round ears. The mouse raised a hand and wiped his nose with it, and most of the crowd interpreted this gesture as a farewell wave and spoke of it for weeks afterwards. The hangman’s young son, at a signal from his father, sprang the trap.          “Squee-eek! Squee-eek!” went the mouse.          His whiskers rowed hopelessly round and round in the air a few times and his feet flew up and curled into little balls like young fern plants.          It was all so touching that a cat, who had brought her child in her mouth, shed several large tears. They rolled down on to the child’s back and he began to squirm and shriek, so that the mother thought that the sight of the hanging had perhaps been too much for him, but an excellent moral lesson, nevertheless. 

Introduction: In Cormac McCarthy’s novel in dramatic form, The Sunset Limited he has the black man say, You want to help people that’s in trouble, you pretty much got to go where the trouble is at. You ain’t got a lot of choice.          The trouble seems to be everywhere. Pick up the newspaper, turn on the news. If it bleeds it leads. But sometimes you don’t have to go to where the trouble is at; sometimes the trouble comes to you. Such is the case today.           Consider, if you will, Kenneth Foster, Jr. who, ten years ago at the age of 19, was driving around with his friends. They were holding up people on the street and taking their handbags and wallets. There were three others in the car with Kenneth. He knew they were robbing people, but what he didn’t know was that one Mauricio Brown would exit Kenneth’s parked car walk eighty feet to talk to a woman who was seemingly flagging them down, and within a few minutes Mauricio Brown would kill the woman’s white boyfriend in what he claimed to be self-defense.           Consider now that Mauricio Brown has already been executed by the state of Texas – something the state of

Texas has little trouble doing in these troubled times, but also, now consider that Kenneth Foster awaits a similar execution at the end of August.           Kenneth’s been prosecuted under the Law of Parties rule which means that Kenneth would have to have had prior knowledge that Mauricio Brown was about to commit Capital Murder when Mauricio Brown approached a woman standing by a car and even Mauricio Brown had no prior knowledge of that the woman’s boyfriend, one Michael LaHood, a prominent San Antonio lawyer’s only son, was even in the car.          Yes, it does seem like something from the Twilight Zone, a bizarre tale of medieval justice right here in 21^st Century 

America.           But it’s not a new pilot about a condemned man that continually escapes from jail, nor is it some farfetched novel about justice gone awry.          Kenneth Foster is 29 years old. He came from parents who neglected him as they both had their own drug habits to deal with. Kenneth’s father readily admitted that he was in jail when he found out that his son had been arrested for murder. Kenneth Jr.’s grandparents raised him, but Kenneth fell in with the wrong crowd. He lived outside the law, and now he is caught in the mechanism of the law itself as it inexorably keeps time on his deathwatch.           I’m not here today to convince you that Kenneth Foster is innocent of anything. For after all like 80% of those on death row Kenneth Foster, Jr. is guilty of being black. But, I’m here today to say that I’ve picked up many a hitch hiker, and I’d hate to think that I was somehow responsible for what they’d done before they got into my car. If that same misuse of the Law of Parties that was applied to Kenneth Foster was applied to us we would be responsible for whatever anyone, hitchhiker or friend, had done before they entered our cars.          Yes, Kenneth Foster drove the car that was riding around robbing people. But when that shot was fired it was Kenneth who started to pull away, and it was Kenneth that had to be convinced by one of the other riders to stay and wait for Mauricio Brown.           The moratorium on the death penalty was instigated by the ruling of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of the 

United States that ruled the practice of capital punishment was unconstitutional. Three men condemned to death by the states of Georgia and 

Texas appealed their sentences, arguing that their 8th Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. The Court voted 5–4 to invalidate their sentences, ruling that the death penalty not only violated the 8th Amendment but the 14th as well, since it was meted out unequally to the ‘poor and despised.’          But that moratorium vanished when the Supreme Court overturned its ruling in Furman and executions resumed in the state of 

Florida in 1976 under Governor Bob Graham. Old Bloody Bob as we called him signed the death warrant for John Spenkelink. Spenkelink became the first person to be executed under the new statutes. There’s a bumper sticker that are the last words of John Spenkelink as he was strapped into the electric chair. “Capital Punishment – Those without the capital get the punishment.”           I was living in 

Tallahassee, Florida in 1979, and my then wife and I marched in the protest march around the state capital. I remember the end of the moratorium, and was up and awake on May 25^th 1979 when they pulled the switch on Old Sparkie. That’s what they call the electric chair down 

Florida way – Old Sparkie. Inmates made it of Live Oak in 1923 and it belongs back in those horse and buggy times. It’s as appropriate today as carrying extra horse shoes in the trunk of your car in case you get a flat.           Cleaning up after an execution is something that’s rarely thought about. Those being electrocuted lose whatever control they had over their bodies. After Spenkelink’s execution it was revealed that guards had stuffed wads of cotton up John Spenkelink’s rectum to keep the inevitable from happening in the presence of Old Sparkie. I mean what’s more important keeping the execution chamber clean or maintaining the dignity of a condemned man?          The truth is the varying states administer the death penalty in a racially biased manner. There are a disproportionate numbers of African Americans on death row. In fact, the race of the victim provides a statistically clear indicator of whether or not a defendant receives a sentence of death or imprisonment. Thus, although nearly 50 percent of all murder victims in the 

United States are nonwhite, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed for the murders of whites.          In Albert Camus’ book, Reflections on the Guillotine he boils Capital Punishment down to this. People murder other people - true. But how many murderers tell their victims exactly when they will murder them?  Even after the first announced date of their murder has passed and it looks like these folks have escaped their fate, they get yet another call from the murderer advising them of a new date of death. Finally, the day arrives and the murderer is escorted to the victim’s house where no one tries to stop them, and everyone watches as they take the victim to a place where they have always committed these crimes, and there in the light of day, in full knowledge of the informed public they put their victims to death. There is only one murderer who does it this way and that is the state. The same state within which we live, move and have our being.           Albert Camus was born and raised in French Algiers. His father was French and his mother was Algerian. Shortly before the First World War there was a particularly gruesome crime in 

Algeria in which a man had killed a farmer and his entire family – even the children. Camus’ father was extremely upset by the killing of the children. He followed the trial and when the day of execution came, Albert Camus’ father got up extra early because the place of execution was across town. But when he arrived back home he said nothing to anyone about the execution, and went immediately to bed where he vomited. The thoughts of the murdered children had been displaced by the sight of the murderer’s quivering body as it was placed upon the killing board and slid into position on the guillotine.          Camus argues that if revulsion is the response of a good citizen at the execution of a notorious murderer, then how is this act of execution supposed to bring more peace and order into the fabric of a society that needs healing?          There does seem however to be an argument here for using this repulsive act of stately murder to repel future murderers from taking up the ax, the poison or the gun. Yet, executions are no longer public. They are now secret affairs in which you have to have an invitation. How is an act committed in privacy supposed to make an example if, in fact, this example cannot be seen? Yes, we get stories in the newspapers, and the 10 o’clock news might say someone is to be executed shortly, but what the people are really waiting for is the latest weather update for the weekend.          In the narratives we have about Jesus – in the four Gospels – we have the story of a man who was conscious of the fact that the way in which he lived, moved and had his being was in direct contradiction to the Roman State. Eventually, charges were brought against him. They were fabricated, but witnesses were called and enough lying was done, sufficient at least, to get him the death penalty – crucifixion – essentially death by suffocation and a common form of capital punishment between the 6th century BC and 4th century AD.           I’m thinking now about the traditional verses in Second Isaiah that Christians say are prophecies that point to the coming death of Jesus on the cross. You’ve probably heard them a thousand times, but listen now and think not of prophesy concerning Jesus, but rather think how these lines could refer to any condemned person.           He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. How many people here hold Kenneth Foster Jr. in high esteem, how many people here before this morning even knew who Kenneth Foster Jr. is?          Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did not esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. We must think now of the ancient practice of scapegoating. A tribe would take a goat and all the sins of that tribe would be placed upon the goat and that goat driven into the wilderness to die. This is the way ancient cultures cleansed their societies. But are we any different from them? Ask yourself, What is the difference between what we are doing to those on death row, and especially Kenneth Foster, Jr. when we put them to death? Are we really punishing them for the wrongs that they have done, or are we using them as scapegoats for a society that is plagued with remorse, full of regret, and simply not living up to the standards that we have set ourselves? We put other people to death so that we may keep alive the idea that we are without sin, without wrongs, without judgment ourselves. But this is the 21^st Century, and surely no one would think that a goat could take away the sins of a society, so why is it that we continue with this ancient practice of scapegoating by using human beings? How can the death of Kenneth Foster, Jr. bring peace to any one? How does a democratic society, which purports to believe in the inalienable rights of all humans, believe that killing someone can even a score, heal a wound, or bring about peace?

 

          My reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s allegory, The Hanging of the Mouse, might have disturbed some people. An allegory is a work in which the characters and events are to be understood as representing other things and symbolically expressing a deeper spiritual, moral, or political meaning. I think all three are there in Bishop’s allegory.Elizabeth Bishop is using mice, insects, raccoons and cats to cast the events of capital punishment in a new and startling light. The precision of the military beetles seems ludicrous when compared to the sniveling mouse and his entangled legs. The scene approaches comic absurdity at several points – the praying mantis, lost for words, and made uncomfortable by being with the condemned. Yet, the absurdity hits home when it’s the cat – the natural enemy of the mouse – who cries as the mouse is hung. Yes, it is ludicrous what the animals and insects are doing to the poor mouse, but no more ludicrous than what we are doing to Kenneth Foster, Jr.            I was told the story of a tribe in

Africa that literally puts the condemned person in the same boat as the family of the murdered person. They row out into the middle of the lake where weights are placed on the legs of the murderer. The murderer is then pushed overboard, but as he struggles to live if one of the family of the murder victim wants to jump in and save him they can, and … they often do.           Once the humanity of the murderer is witnessed thoughts of revenge are replaced with thoughts of compassion.           The following is from Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s Dissent on the death penalty. From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death … I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed … The basic question—does the system accurately and consistently determine which defendants ‘deserve’ to die?—cannot be answered in the affirmative. The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.          On the 21^st of July – this coming Saturday – at 5PM on the front steps of the Texas State Capital there will be a rally for Kenneth Foster, Jr. and his family. Perhaps this will change nothing, but when thousands upon thousands of people show up who knows what effect this will have on the heart of Governor Rick Perry?           And now on behalf of the family of Kenneth Foster Jr., I’d like to thank you for being here, for listening with open minds and open hearts, for being the good people you are. Today you witnessed the suffering of his father, Kenneth Foster, Sr., his daughter, Nydesha Foster, his grandfather, Lawrence Foster and his great uncle, Lloyd Foster. Seeing that suffering I know that you will do what you can to alleviate it. This UU tribe is in the habit of suiting up and showing up, and sometimes that’s all that’s needed. Let us along with Justice Blackmun say that From this day forward, (we) no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.          In one of today’s readings Pilate solved the problem of what to do with the condemned man, Jesus. He was a great believer in symbolism - Pilate. He had a basin of water brought out to the judgment seat and in front of the crowd he washed his hands. The executioner Raccoon likewise washed his hands.           There’s a washbasin and towel down front. Right there. What’s it doing there? That’s a question that you should be asking yourself. And rightfully, that’s a question that you should also be answering.            

 

 

Eric Posa,
Interim Minister,
1st Unitarian Universalist Church of San Antonio
July 1, 2007

 

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