Jack Harris-Bonham   January 7, 2007

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Baptism by Fire
The Trilogy
The Baptism of Jesus as seen by
John the Baptist –Talking Head on a Platter – 7 January 07
The River Jordan – Israel’s Mighty Mississipp – 4 February 07
Jesus – The Great Escape – 4 March 07

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we want to investigate the difference between what is proclaimed and the proclaimer. In ancient Greece when a messenger arrived with bad news it was not an uncommon practice to kill the messenger. There was a disconnect between the news being delivered and the one delivering the news. Television news has this same disconnect in which they think that having attractive and likeable newscasters makes it easier to hear that this culture along with nature, itself, is red in both tooth and claw. The good news – the Gospel – that was brought before the world in the person of Jesus of Nazareth – whether he was historical or not – makes no difference – the good news that the character Jesus brought to the world has been filtered through culture after culture until it resembles the child’s game of whispering one thing at the beginning of a circle and something quite unlike what was originally said is spoken at the end of the circle. Even knowing this does not keep intelligent people from dismissing a message that may be vital for today’s world simply because the version of the message that they heard offended them in some way or other. Couples run up against this same problem when after 20-30 years of marriage. They have a hard time recognizing the individual that they are married to as being anything like the person they fell in love with. That’s why wedding vows are rightfully sometimes revisited, and recommitments are made in the light of changing times. The study of religion is comparable in that to understand what was originally said, thought and communicated, it becomes necessary to reinvent a new way to look at old messages. Mark Twain once said that one should not mess up a good story by sticking to the facts. This is often heard as an excuse for lying, but narrative truths can be reclothed and reinvented so that new audiences can see the values symbolized by those narrative truths. A perfect example is the Star Wars Trilogy, which is really nothing more than a remake of the old western in which a son returns home to find that someone has slaughtered his entire family. The rest of the story plays out in a revenge motif in which the son hunts down those responsible, and familial justice is played out in a microcosm of what indeed may be a worldwide motif.

There are those who think prayers are times of requesting, pleading or begging a deity or other object of worship for something we do not have. There is no such misunderstanding in this prayer. This prayer is not to something, but from somewhere. We pray from a source that is within each of us, we pray to connect ourselves to this source, to renew contact with that which is noble, holy and true within our lives, and this morning, we pray that those assembled here will listen to old truths poured into new wine skins and that the new wine skins will not be the object of the lesson, but rather that the old truths will be successfully imbibed and slake our thirst for meaning. From that still small voice that speaks in the night when sleep is just the other side of a breath, from that place within us that knows that we arrived with everything we need and looking someplace else might be interesting, but also might just put off the inevitable. Inevitably, we are born alone and we die alone, and whatever peace we come to in this life, is born with us, and will die with us. It might seem like a burden, but it is in fact a great shout of liberation, which lifts the burdens of proof from our backs and helps us see that what we seek is as close as our next heartbeat.

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

Amen.

SERMON

Introduction: They say confession is good for the soul – if you believe in a soul. I used to wear camel’s hair and eat wild locusts and honey. No, that’s not my confession. That’s my attire during this period in my life to which I am about to confess. When your head ends up on a platter and you’re not a pig, you’ve done something that probably warranted the loss of your head.

I spoke truth to power. Big mistake. Power will put your head in a place where it can’t speak any more.

I made enemies in high places. Herod’s steward, Kooza, the man who ran Herod’s house was married to, Joanna, one of my disciples. Well, she would have been one of my disciples if that upstart Jesus hadn’t come along. He got the leavings from my table.

We were sitting around one day, eating locusts and wild honey, if you haven’t tried them don’t laugh. You’d be surprised what people will eat, when it’s the only thing you put in front of them. Anyway, the supply was nearly endless so what did I care if Joanna and the others were stuffing themselves on bugs and sweet nectar. We were down by the Jordan River washing our hands and wiping our mouths, honey’s sticky, you know, when Joanna tells me in Herod’s palace there’s dancing girls, and parties, wild nights of drinking and merry making. “Merry making” – that’s a euphemism for adultery. Okay, when it’s between consenting adults what do I care? Well, I do care. They should repeat. I was preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you can come get baptized and be forgiven your sins, that’s not what I was up to. The idea was you changed your ways, you turned your life around, you straightened up and flew right, and then you came down to the Jordan for cleansing.

And what’s all this stuff about me quoting the prophet Isaiah? “A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, and the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.” I never said that. Hey, I’m running around in a camel hair suit, with a belt made of an animal skin, eating bugs and stealing honey from the bees, and I’m supposedly quoting Second Isaiah? I don’t think so! Now that “brood of vipers part,” – that’s me! “Who warned you of the wrath to come!?” God, I loved it when the crowd was in the palm of my hand. They were there with me, hanging on every word. So what was I to tell them? How much I wished I had a wife? How much I hated living outside all the time? This prophet thing, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Okay, so in the next generation and beyond you get some press, but what about now, here and now?

So I told them repent, stop living in denial, be present in the moment, pull back from cruelty, stop wanting so much, be simpler, more open to what surrounds them. After they repent and are baptized, after it’s all said and done what do they come to hear … but the latest outrage. And me, I got my ear in the house of Herod. So … I told the people what their ruler was doing in his spare time, how his stepdaughter was dancing in scarves for his horny friends. The kingdom was being run by the whims of a voluptuous 14 year old. Besides, the man had put the Roman eagle over the entrance to the temple of the one and only God, he whose name we do not speak. When Moses asked God what his name was, God answered, “I am.” He answered in the present tense. That’s a clue, ya’ll! It’s the place where the one lives whose name we do not say, but whom Moses called “I am.”

It’s in the Gospel according to Matthew, whoever he was, in this fictitious work I am purported to have declared in hearing distance of my disciples that, “I baptize with water for repentance, But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” I never said anything like that.

Hey, just because I dress in rags and eat weird stuff doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of empowerment. It took me lots of trips into the Jordan, and you know, sometimes it’s cold outside, but when someone wants to be baptized and that’s the way you get disciples, it’s not exactly like I can tell them to come back in the spring.

Ask yourself this question, “Why would a man gather disciples about himself only to scatter them to the winds?” Or better, “Why would John the Baptist, a man of renowned reputation and weirdness, give it all up to a man from Galilee?”

You think Galilee is cool, cause that’s where Jesus came from, but back in my day and time, to say you were from Galilee was about the same as admitting you’d just fallen off the turnip truck. If there had been a place of learning in Galilee it would have been called Texas A&M.

If Jesus came to me to be baptized, who is the teacher, and who is the student? If Jesus allowed me to baptize him for the remission of sins, what were Jesus’ sins? And, if he was who they say he was, you know, the only begotten Son of God, why wasn’t he baptizing me ?! I’m glad you asked me that. I baptized him because I saw in him a chance to escape my fate.

I knew Herod had sent spies to the baptisms. One of the spies must have seen Joanna there, and known her to be the wife of Kooza, Herod’s steward. I was a marked man. Each day I went down to the Jordan with new dread in my heart. They knew where to find me, that’s for sure. I put my strength in thinking about Jacob getting ready to cross the Jordan. Jacob sending his wives and children over first, and him being the last to cross, and the angel who wrestled with him there. Mentally, I wrestled with Herod’s men every day.

I would need to be as strong as Jacob and fight. Perhaps my disciples would rise up and save me, or perhaps they would do as Jesus’ disciples eventually did – run like hell!

I thought he might be the Messiah, but when he showed up at the Jordan – to be baptized for Christ’s sake! Hey, Christ wasn’t his last name. Christos is the Greek word that means anointed one, and in Hebrew it’s Masiah . He was Jesus of Nazareth. If he was the anointed one who was it that anointed him? Me!

And here he was entering the water, wading into the Jordan, with his arms open to embrace me and that disconcerting smile on his face.

If ways are going to be made straight, if valleys are going to be filled in and if mountains are to be leveled, it isn’t going to be because of this virgin’s bastard child.

That’s when it hit me. Herod’s men were there. And here was Jesus, the idiot carpenter, the upstart with those eyes, and that charisma.

If John the Baptist was going to survive, then this carpenter’s son was going to have to be scapegoated. He’d be the patsy. I could pin it all on him. Announce in front of Herod’s men, right in front of everybody – I could explain it away to my disciples later – hell, I was turning purple and wrinkled, I’d been in the Jordan dipping repenters all day long. All I had to do was blame it on him.

There was a new prophet in town, someone you could really hate, a gullible youth, full of self-hatred from being raised a bastard, ready to take on the world that had condemned him, starving for attention, any attention. Head on a platter, head on a pike, crucifixion, whatever … he’d want the notoriety, the infamy, the … shame. Now, here is a second Isaiah that I can deal with. “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces – he was despised, and we esteemed him not”(Isaiah 53:2b – 3 NIV). Okay, so I know a little scripture – big deal!

I was doing him a favor, really, they would see … he was now the ring leader, the culprit, they’d take him away and he’d have his public suffering and be justified at last.

But the Romans were smarter than I gave them credit. They saw me baptizing him . I should have insisted He baptize me. It happened so fast. I did, however, have the presence of mind to say, “Look the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”

I gave those Romans too much credit. I should have stopped at the lamb of God bit, but “a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me?!” What was I thinking!?

Who did I think those Romans were – Greeks!? Besides the wind was blowing and the water was rushing – they probably didn’t even hear me.

So I testified after we got out of the water. Yeah, I lied, I said I saw a spirit descend from heaven as a dove and land on Jesus. Then I compounded the lie, I said God told me the one upon whom you see the spirit land and remain – that one will baptize with the Holy Spirit, that one will baptize with fire!

Herod’s men heard me. They heard me. And so did my disciples. They heard me, too. They started asking me who Jesus was, and I sent them to him, so they could see for themselves what a loser he was, but they didn’t return, and he gathered others.

This Galilean, he really took off. There were reports of miracles, feeding thousands in the fields, healing lepers, restoring sight, hearing … hell; I was small potatoes by then.

But Joanna kept me informed and in a last ditch effort to win back the crowds I lead with the most salacious story in town. “If it bleeds it leads!” Herod was sleeping with his brother’s wife, it was her daughter that he paraded before his horny friends, and I told everyone “It is not lawful for Herod to have his brother’s wife, to sleep with her!”

I probably would have gotten away with only a flogging, but the dancing nymphet, the voluptuous daughter of Philip – Philip’s own daughter listened to her insulted mother and when she refused to dance in scarves for Herod’s friends, he promised her the moon, but the only moon she wanted was my head on a platter.

The baptism of Jesus was a joke, a shame, a shifting of the blame, but he took it as an affirmation of his own daydreams. Outdone by a would-be Messiah and a dancing nymphet. The old fear death, but what they should fear is youth.

So … that’s my confession. By an act of deceit I catapulted a sleazy Galilean into the catbird seat. There’s a lesson here, oh yeah. Always tell the truth. As my mother, Elizabeth, used to say, the truth’s easy to remember – it actually happened.

The moral to the story … If you’re going to stick your neck out, be sure of two things; one, that you’re risking it all for something noble, true and holy and two; you’re willing to have it cut off!
Conclusion: So … now you know, what I tried to tell Herod’s executioner before my swift and untimely death. Jesus – the Nazarene – he wasn’t the leader, I was! But nobody listened. Nobody understood. The erroneously thought that, that band of rebels that grew around him were his disciples, that they were going to carry on his work, that they actually might be a threat to the religion of Moses, or even the Roman Empire, itself.

So … he ended up like me. We were cousins, you know. Yeah. His mother, Mary, and my mother, Elizabeth, they were blood related. There’s a wives’ tale that when Mary was pregnant with Jesus she came to visit my mother, who was pregnant with me, they say I leapt for joy inside my mother’s womb when my mother heard Mary’s voice!

So … they crucified him – the Romans. And the band of idiots that had attached themselves to him like barnacles, they ran away like the cowards they were. And feeling shamed by the whole incident they gathered together once again. Why? To honor the man that he was, the man whose heart was wide open to the world, the man who could heal your day with just one empathetic look, the man who stood for the best in Judaism – love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. The man who taught that living fully was living as if this moment were your last, because – it is!

They built up a religion around him. They tore him from his Judaic roots –monotheism – and they made him a god! And all he ever wanted was for those around him to see that separating God from the world was the same as idol making. The God whose name we do not say, but whom Moses called, “I am,” that God can only be encountered in the whirlwind of the moment – part and parcel of everything that is happening – immediately hidden, yet immediately recognizable.

A man who loved this life, this world – he came into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through his example of love. They took this worldly man and placed him at the right hand of the God whose name we do not say. They made him the Messiah, the anointed one, but with a twist.

The world has used his name to commit atrocities, to plunder native populations and torture them into Christian submission, to finance lies that keep power and money concentrated in a church called by his name, but not representing any of his initial intentions. There is a sense in which the scourge that goes under the name Christianity symbolized everything that the man Jesus stood up against. When countries go to war both praying in his name for victory what could the Jesus of love and peace do but painfully shake his head in recognition of the fact that what he came to teach has been perverted beyond recognition.

And even today in some places of worship his name cannot be said without a feeling of repulsion sweeping through the hearts of those who remained convinced that they know who he is, was, always will be.

But I am here today to tell you that if that’s the way you feel, you’ve missed the point. Remember, please remember, I lied. No dove descended. No voice of God spoke. He was my cousin, a lovely man who made you proud to be one of his kind, a living, breathing, ben adem, a living, breathing son of the earth. It’s all my fault, and my only wish this morning is that you could erase what you have done to him in the past 2000 years – stop the crucifixion it has lasted far too long and see him sitting next to you, smiling that smile of his, turning his head slightly as you speak, and if that were possible, then you would know in your heart of hearts that there is something inside you that resonates with something inside him, that something is why they followed him, why they fell at his feet, and unfortunately, why they could not abide his presence. The journey between who they might have been – the person they saw him being – and who they were, that journey was simply too great. It was easier to kill him, raise him from the dead, and put him someplace out of reach, out of touch. They would relegate him to the Holy of Holies, thinking that hiding him in God they could forget that look, that feeling of kinship that was kindled as they looked into his eyes. But who can forget when someone reaches inside you and plucks the chords of your true being?

Jack Harris-Bonham
December 10, 2006

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PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, this morning we wish to talk about the elephant in the church. The elephant’s been here for some time, and behind closed doors it’s being talked about. Some say the elephant is the senior minister’s fault. He brought the elephant into the church. It’s remembered by others that he did, as a child, bring a horse into his mother’s house, so it seems likely he would bring an elephant into the church. Others think the elephant is the figment of a collective imagination, and if they ignore it long enough, the imagined elephant will go away. Elephants traditionally work for peanuts, so it’s easy for them to stick around, they don’t leave on their own, they have to be invited to leave. But before they can be invited to leave, all those involved must note their existence. Today the elephant will be paraded, it will stand on its hind legs and curl its truck, it will balance itself on a large rubber ball. Today, the elephant will do all its tricks. It will be hard to ignore the elephant after this. Those who see it, and those who wish they didn’t see it, will have to talk about the fact that its presence has been noted among us.

Elephants aside, we do come here to worship, to find a peaceful haven from the weariness of life’s treadmill. In this hour of contemplation and celebration, help us to band together as brothers and sisters in search of consolation, and comfort. The world is a hard place, and sometimes when the world is brought into the sanctuary, we feel the sanctuary becomes a hard place. Help us to remember that we bring the world into this sacred space so that we might judge it against eternity, so that we might hold up the transient, the ephemeral, the fleeting images that we are assailed with everyday of our lives, so that we might give up on these images as producing anything in us but fear and trembling. The world is a scary place; do we really need to know all the bleeding wounds from all over the world, wrapped up into one half hour newscast?

Help us to learn to protect ourselves – to turn off that newscast, to set aside that news magazine, to be less frequent surfers on the Internet. Much of what we are exposed to we can, in no way, do anything about. If this were simply a lesson in powerlessness, that would be one thing, but as presented by the actors and actresses of news, there’s an implied responsibility in reporting these bleeding wounds, and an inferred transference of responsibility from the teller to those told. Help us remember that prayer first penned by Reinhold Neibuhr, God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Psalm 126 (Stephen Mitchell’s Adaptation)
Luke 3: 3-7 (NIV)

Introduction: The Lord of this Unitarian Universalist Church is about to return. As a matter of fact the Reverend Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr will be filling this very pulpit one week from today. When I call Davidson Lord I am relying on the archaic definition of the word as in the head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

The passage in Luke read this morning is actually from the 40 ^th Chapter of Isaiah. In that part of Isaiah the prophet foretold the day when everything that was within the land of Judah would be carried off to Babylon – nothing shall be left, said the prophet Isaiah.

We have our own prophet here at First Church Austin. He was voted the Best Minister/Spiritual Leader in Austin for 2005 – just last year. His sermon “Living Under Fascism,” delivered on the 7 ^th of November 2004, woke up a whole lot of people in this church, and within two weeks of its appearance on our Internet site it was reproduced on the Website for al jazeera in the Arabic world. It was a prophetic shot that was heard around the world. Within a year Dr. Loehr was offered a book contract. The book, America, Fascism + God – sermons from a heretical Preacher – got Dr. Loehr interviews on radio, guest speaking engagements and eventually ended up landing him a friendship with, the television producer, Norman Lear.

I’m not sure that Dr. Loehr knew that his voice and his message would reach as far as it has, as far as it continues to reach. You were, rightfully so, a proud congregation as the message of warning that Dr. Loehr was delivering to this congregation actually reached a worldwide audience. After all, you were privy to this warning – this information – long before the rest of the world and there’s something wonderful about being in with the in crowd . First UU Austin was holding its head high – damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

But prophetic preachers, like our beloved Dr. Loehr, do not rest well on their laurels. For to rest on one’s laurels means that one is content with past achievements and ceases new efforts. Nor is Dr. Loehr one to look to one’s laurels that is he is not interested in protecting his position of eminence against rivals. Why is that? Fundamentally it is because the Rev. Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr did not even wish to reap laurels . He did not write his sermon, which was soon to become the world’s sermon, Living Under Fascism , in order to receive honors and acquire glory.

He wrote it because he is an extremely religious man, in the sense that he believes in paideia, the Greek word that means honor, the word that means that you do what you must do with the idea that all those who have come before you, all those who have chosen the path of honor and truth, are watching you, seeing if, in fact, you will fold under the pressure of the dominant society, or whether you will stand up and act, speak and live in the best interests of all those living and dead who cherished the higher, holier, more noble values.

The first time I visited this church I sat out there on the bench across from the office and Paula Wiesner, from the Internship Search Committee joined me with her writing tablet and pen. When the first service was over I wandered with Paula into the foyer and Dr. Loehr was busy shaking hands, and these are the first words I heard from Dr. Loehr at this church. He was talking to a parishioner and something that parishioner had said invoked this response from Dr. Loehr. “That’s a load of crap!” or words to that effect! Dr. Loehr said those words loud. I heard them on the other side of the foyer. Dr. Loehr agrees with another noble one who said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

When I call Davidson Lord, perhaps you know that I am relying on the archaic definition of the word as in the head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

I think it’s obvious, that since Dr. Howard Davidson Loehr has been the senior and only preacher here at First Church Austin for the past six years that he is the head of this household, if you can take the leap to consider this church a household of faith. As the motto of this church says, One Church – Many beliefs. Is there any doubt that Dr. Loehr is the head of this church where there are many beliefs? I think not.

But what of his being a husband? The archaic definition of husband is to be a manager or steward. I like the word, Steward. After all we here at First Church Austin have a stewardship campaign. A steward is one who is in charge of the household affairs. This house of faith, or if you chose, this house of reason, must have someone who can articulate for this house what it means to be a part of a religious tradition – as in the Unitarian Universalist tradition – which as Dr. Loehr is apt to proclaim in his prophetic way about the UUA – “There is no there, there.” And what does Dr. Loehr mean by that? “There is no there, there.” He’s not being snide, or uppity, well, maybe he’s being a little uppity, but what he’s getting at is, if a household of faith built around this tradition is to survive there must be offered a religious center around which it can revolve, a center that is solid and firm, a conviction that the search for truth, however horrible, however upsetting, however controversial, the search for truth is, in and of itself, a noble and holy undertaking. As it says in the words for the lighting of the chalice, “To seek, to find and to share.” In this sense, then Dr. Loehr is the husband of this household who seeks, finds and, then shares.

The head of a household, a husband, a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity.

Dr. Loehr is the head of this household of faith/reason, he is the husband in the sense of being the steward who is in charge of the household affairs. These affairs right now center around the transition this church is undergoing from the smallish family style church that it once was and is fondly remembered by the older members and the newer, bigger, more outward reaching larger church that finds its concerns turned from internal maintenance to true, active involvement in the outside world with all its political and corporate messes.

But is he a man of renowned power, a man who has mastery in some field or activity?

You who have witnessed his preaching know, don’t you? And yet, some of you have lost faith because his prophetic vision, his ability to be one who speaks beforehand, his mental acumen that allows him to ingest and digest enormous amounts of materials and to see within those materials patterns that give him advanced warnings, or the anticipatory grace to see what is about to happen, or what is happening behind the smokescreens of commerce and the military/industrial complex, these prophetic powers have, to some of your thinking, put you, him and this church in the embarrassing position of being considered conspiracy nuts . “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t!”

Perhaps we really don’t know what prophets do, and how they are received in their own homeland?

Prophecy may be in words, signs, actions, ways of life, or sacrifices of life. Prophesy may be delivered by men, women, children, groups, or individuals, and in the case of Balaam’s ass by a jackass. Prophecy cannot however be delivered ex officio or in layman’s terms, prophecies cannot be authenticated in advance, since if they were they wouldn’t be prophesies, would they? All prophesies require investigation and evaluation, and if they are to be accepted, recognition by the community to which they are addressed.

The Biblical tradition represents God as commanding people to form religious institutions, and as calling individuals to criticize and challenge these religious institutions. Why are those who considered themselves Unitarian Universalists upset by Dr. Loehr’s criticism of the UUA? Prophets offer challenges so that institutions – religious or otherwise – might learn and grow in positive directions. Those who fear criticism may, in fact, be in lock step with those that both the Unitarians and the Universalists fought against as they were branded heretics, non-believers and unorthodox. You can’t be a member of a rebellious religious institution and decry rebellion in the ranks. It simply doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work.

It is true that the religious institution may try to silence the prophet – why is it, you suppose that the UUA magazine refuses to publish Dr. Loehr’s articles? Can you say “gag order?”

However, if the prophet wins, then the religious institution will incorporate the prophet’s message within its system and, more importantly, come to represent the prophetic tradition within its functioning. Who are the prophets within the UUA? Has the UUA come to represent the prophetic tradition within its functioning? Or has the UUA simply unearthed the mess of two thousand years of heresy and sat back to admire an edifice it did not erect, but only uncovered, forgetting in the process that the job of internal criticism continues, especially once a denomination has become established?

In a sermon by another prophetic preacher here in Austin, Rev. Tom VandeStadt, of the Congregational Church of Austin, he explores the book of Revelation and says, “In the Book of Revelation, a man named John, has a series of visions … In his climatic vision, he witnesses the fall of Babylon and the heavenly city of Jerusalem descending from heaven.

“In Revelation Babylon refers specifically to Rome. John envisions the fall of Rome and the manifestation of God’s heavenly realm on earth. But Babylon refers to more than Rome. After the Jewish exile, Babylon came to symbolize all empires. Babylon symbolizes all concentrations of political, economic, and military power organized for the express purpose of making one group of people dominant over (another). Babylon(s have always) existed for the express purpose of maintaining the ascendancy of some people over other people.

“In the Book of Revelation, the counterpoint to Babylon is Jerusalem. These two realities – Babylon and Jerusalem – are opposing realities. They are realities that contradict one another. They are realities that, to use apocalyptic imagery, are engaged in a spiritual battle with one another for the hearts, and souls, and very lives of human beings … they are realities that existed simultaneously when Revelation was written and they are realities that exist simultaneously today … in this reading (of Revelation) we don’t simply wait for Jerusalem to arrive from some heavenly, otherworldly realm in the future, (no), we undergo a transformation of mind, heart and lifestyle and enter into and begin to manifest the Jerusalem reality in our own lives.”

Rev. Tom VandeStadt is a prophetic preacher of the Christian tradition. Does his congregation agree with him totally? No. Yet, they have chosen to remember that what counts is not the opposition within their religious community, but the greater opposition that they pose as they face the empires of Babylon. They have chosen to remember that they are in covenant with Rev. Tom VandeStadt and that covenant allows each to both err and be corrected through love. Their adherence to what Rev. Tom has to say, may vacillate between complete agreement to utter disbelief, but they honor his noble position as prophet. They cherish his occupation as one who is the head of a household of faith, a husband or steward who is in charge of the affairs of that household of faith, and as a man of renowned power, and a man who has mastery in his field. They give Rev. Tom the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of his long vision, the benefit of, if nothing else, being simply an interesting point of departure in a discussion centering on covenant.

Conclusion: I want to read something that Carl Jung wrote in 1954.

The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing … He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths … There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the choice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. “You are no different from anybody else,” they will chorus, or, “there’s no such thing,” and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as “morbid.” … He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. “His own law!” everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law … the only meaningful life that strives for the individual Realization – absolute and unconditional – of its own particular law … To the extent that man is untrue to the law of his being … he has failed to realize his life’s meaning.”

So … this morning I am that voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way for Lord Davidson, make straight paths for him, every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low, The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.

And you, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the coming wrath? I think you know who warned you. Now, it is up to you to set yourselves free. When you are free then your mouths will be filled of laughter and your tongues with singing. And even though you may have sowed in tears you shall reap in joy. For those who go forth weeping with precious seeds shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing with them the sheaves of harvest.

The weather report on television isn’t always right, but it doesn’t hurt to have that umbrella with you, does it? Do you stop watching the weather report when the sun shines all day long and you’ve had to tote around that old umbrella, or do you simply put the umbrella back in the closet and tune in to see what the predicted weather will be tomorrow?

Is there a prophet in the house?

You purport to be Unitarian Universalists. You think for yourselves. Well, guess what? Even if the good Reverend Doctor is prophetically wrong half of the time, he’s still batting 500. That puts Dr. Loehr at least 134 points ahead of the lifetime batting averages of Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. Hey, either give the man a break or step up to the plate.

Perhaps someday many years from now you will be sitting around with friends after dinner and you will remember the famous … the infamous … Dr. Loehr. And faces will light up and stories will be told and finally someone beaming a big smile will tell how one day after church Dr. Loehr told them personally, right to their face, that what they had just said was “a load of crap!”

Amen.

Jack Harris-Bonham
November 26, 2006

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PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we come here after our individual and some our communal thanksgiving day celebrations. Lots of food, lots of football. We may, in fact, be suffering from a Thanksgiving hangover. Those of us who braved shopping malls, and department stores the day after Thanksgiving may literally be suffering from shopping wounds. Calm us now as we contemplate life without all this abundance, restore us to a state in which we drink only when thirsty and eat only when hungry. May our hearts be havens for the fullness of life that includes those who suffer, not simply from lack of our obvious abundance, but suffer unto death, suffer through torture, suffer through the separations of families and the untimely death of children in war-ravaged lands. Raise in us righteous indignation at the prospect that a good deal of the terror occurring in this world is probably directly and indirectly sponsored by the United States of America.

Let us remember the words of Lao Tzu’s;

When the great Tao is abandoned,
charity and righteousness appear.
When intellectualism arises,
hypocrisy is close behind.

When there is strife in the family unit,
people talk about ‘brotherly love’.

When the country falls into chaos,
politicians talk about ‘patriotism’.

As this holiday season continues help us to not be distracted by the bread and circuses. Let us return to simplicity finding there a part of ourselves that we thought we had abandoned. Happy in the moment, confident in the journey, let us be the peace that the world is searching for, let us give the love that would save a life,  let us participate in what life offers, not what we imagine we might desire.

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

Amen

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

(Mark Twain apparently dictated this prayer around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine’s anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed.)

Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory–*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”

SERMON

Introduction: When the forefathers and foremothers of this country began looking at models to use, paradigms to facilitate the wording of the constitution, they had two negative examples of paradigms that they did not want to use when it came to the practice of religion.

          In New England they had the example of the Massachusetts colony in which one could not be a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts without also being a member of the Puritan faith.

          It didn’t make sense, but the Pilgrims who had fled religious persecution in England and Holland came to this country and immediately made laws that guaranteed that the very prejudices that they had suffered under would be perpetrated in the names of the Pilgrims in their new land – New England.

          In the southern colonies they had the negative example of the Church of England, the church of Great Britain, the church of their overlords.

          In an effort not to commit either of these crimes of prejudice the forefathers and foremothers looked to the middle colonies. And what did they find?

          They found sandwiched between the southern most colonies and those of New England three distinct, yet similar colonies – colonies organized by men who sought nothing more than to worship in the manner in which they saw fit, compelling no other men or women to worship as they worshipped.

          Roger Williams founded one of the colonies so designated. He had been educated at Cambridge and become a Chaplain to a rich family, but shortly before 1630 decided he could no longer labor under the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he arrived in Boston he was asked to replace the Pastor that was going back to England. He declined the offer because he saw no separation of church and state in the Massachusetts colony. That was the first of Roger Williams emancipating ideas. The second was what he called soul-liberty, he believed people should have the freedom to choose and practice their own religion. Roger Williams was quite a linguist and learned the native tongues around the colonies. He was called on often to mediate troubles between the colonies and the Native Americans. He thought that the Indians should be treated equally as men, and this feeling alone won him great respect among the native populations. He also felt that any lands settled by Europeans should be bought from the Indians at a fair price.

          These views got him in trouble with the rulers of the colonies so he secured lands from the natives, which occupied what is now Providence, Rhode Island. At this colony Williams established, with the help of the others who moved there, a government unique to its day – a government that provided religious liberty and a true separation of church and state.

          And as Gomer Pyle used to say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!” Roger Williams was a Baptist.

          Rhode Island became a haven for those who were persecuted for their beliefs – Jews, Quakers and Baptists worshipped their own way in harmony with one another.

          The second colony, which served as an example for our forefathers and mothers, was the colony of Maryland founded by Lord Baltimore. Lord Baltimore was an Anglican but came under the influence of the Catholic Church and converted. In an effort to find a place where he and his family could worship in the Catholic manner, he obtained from King James a colony. King James died before the colony could be named, and when Lord Baltimore asked King Charles what he wished to call the colony King Charles suggested Terra Maria – Mary Land in honor of Queen Henrietta Mary. Lord Baltimore agreed not unhappy, I’m sure; that another queen named Mary played an important part in the Catholic worship of God. Maryland was conceived as a land where there was religious freedom and a separation of church and state.

          The third colony that influenced the writers of the Constitution was Pennsylvania – founded by William Penn. William Penn had been born an Anglican but joined the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, when he was 22 years old. Penn was a personal friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers and accompanied Fox throughout Europe and England convincing many that they should obey their inner light which came directly from God, and that they should neither take their hats off, nor differ, to any man nor take up arms against any men.

          At one point William Penn was jailed for publishing his beliefs, which attacked the idea of the Trinity – Unitarians are you listening?

          The persecution of the Quakers became so volatile that finally Penn decided it would be better if the Quakers established a new, freer Quaker settlement in the New World. Some Quakers had already moved to New England, but they received the same prejudicial treatment from the Puritans as they did from the people back in England.  

          Penn and the Quakers chance came for a freer settlement in the New World when a group of prominent Quakers were granted what is now the western half of New Jersey.

          Penn immediately went to work on the charter for that colony guaranteeing free and fair trials by jury, freedom of religion and freedom from unjust imprisonments and free elections.

          Penn’s father had been owed a large sum of money from the monarchy of England and that debt was settled by giving William Penn an even larger area west and south of New Jersey. Penn called the area Sylvania – Latin for woods – but King Charles, wanting to honor William Penn’s father, named it Pennsylvania.

Conclusion: So … when the constitution was drawn up the shining examples of religious freedom offered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island, Lord Baltimore of Mary Land, and William Penn of Pennsylvania outweighed the noxious and fettered examples of the commingling of church and state and the suppression of religious freedom offered by our Puritan forbearers and similar examples offered by the Church of England loyalists to the south.

          Modern examples of the confluence of church and state abound. Think back to Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship and Hitler’s Chancellorship and the silence of the Catholic Church. In the contrary, modern day examples are evident when liberation theology literally invaded Central and South America. The Catholic Church was deploring the lack of priests in the small towns and villages of Central and South America and they made the quite obvious mistake of teaching the poor to read the Gospels. Hello? Jesus’ message is, if anything, a contraindication to Fascism and Despotism and when those peasants and the disenfranchised read what Jesus had said and how he stood up to the Roman Empire, well, enter Archbishop Oscar Romero and thousands of other priests who sided with the people over the state.

          What we have witnessed in this country in the past two elections and perhaps beyond is also a confluence of church and state. It hasn’t gotten to the point where one must be a Christian and a Republican in order to be a citizen of this country, but voter fraud and intimidation by a strong central government have left some like Nom Chomsky saying that any centralized state is a violent proposition which necessarily sides with special interest groups as opposed to representing those who elected the officials of that same state.

          Unitarians Universalists are in a unique position to be watchdogs for the rest of society. I would plead with you not to let your guard down, and to question authority before it questions you!

          And finally, to those who have fled religious traditions that were constricting and/or despotic, I would warn all Unitarian Universalists not to follow the example of the Puritans. Just because a religious group persecuted you personally does not give you permission to turn the persecution around. Religious tolerance is precisely that – the tolerance of all religions.

          Let us never forget that the paradigm for religious freedom granted in our Constitution comes from the Quakers, the Catholics and the Baptists.

          Remember what it says in, The Book of Tea, “The secret to the mundane drama of life is to hold your position while allowing others to hold theirs.”

Jack Harris-Bonham
November 12, 2006

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PRAYER

          Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming we are here, and wondering where happiness has gotten off to? Most of us can remember moments in our lives that we consider happy, yet each time to try to reproduce those moments the reproductions are faded replicas of the original. As we chase after happiness it seems only glimpses of it are managed as we race through our hectic schedules. We see it and it’s gone! Thoughts of happiness and sadness are images that arise in the mind and attaching to, or rejecting those images has contrary effects. Attaching to happiness pushes happiness out so fast, we’re not even sure that’s what we were feeling. Rejecting sadness brings sadness closer with every push.

          This morning our prayer is to finally let go of the idea of happiness. It’s time to stop eating the menu and start enjoying the meal. It’s time to let go and let it be – whatever it is! Time to stop and watch.

          We remember those this morning that because of war, famine, pestilence or circumstances are thrown into situations not of their own making, and are not allowed the luxury of watching their lives. May we attempt in however a halting manner to reach out to them, if not physically, then may we reach out in our thoughts – sometimes referred to as our prayers.

          May the peace that surpasses all understanding find in our hearts a place to rest? May we realize that this peaceful happiness is a guest, temporary, but still to be honored.

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

          Amen.

SERMON

Behold, we count them happy which endure.   (James 5:11a (KJV))

Suddenly people were stripped before one another and behold! as we looked on, we all made a great discovery: we were beautiful. Naked and helpless and sensitive as a snake after skinning, but far more human than that shining nightmare that had stood creaking in previous parade rest. We were alive and life was us. We joined hands and danced barefoot amongst the rubble. We had been cleansed, liberated! We would never don the old armors again.   (Ken Kesey, Garage Sale)

You must know beyond any doubt that if a teacher tells you that he or she has something to give you, it is time to run for your life. You’re dealing with a charlatan. The truth is that you lack nothing. Everything you seek you were born with and you’ll go to your grave with. En route, you may realize it or you may not, but the fact remains – it’s with you.   (John Daido Loori, Abbot, Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper, New York)

          Introduction: There was a man who loved animals. He traveled to Alaska every summer and hung out with the grizzly bears in remote areas. He took miles of videos of those bears and when he wasn’t with the bears he was traveling to schools and sharing his videos and his knowledge of grizzlies with children of all ages. Perhaps you saw the Werner Herzog documentary concerning Timothy Treadwell entitled, Grizzly Man. 

          As we humans have a tendency to do this man pushed the envelope with the grizzlies and toward the end of one summer a rogue grizzly ate him and his girlfriend. Still we must imagine Timothy Treadwell happy. He kept trying to erase the distance between himself and the bears and the final margin was eradicated by the bears themselves.

          But how can a man who is eaten by a grizzly bear be considered happy?

          Not too long ago I preached a sermon that centered on Sisyphus. Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to roll a rather large rock to the top of the hill, and of it own weight it rolled back down again, and then Sisyphus would descend the hill in contemplation and begin his efforts all over again. And as Albert Camus writes  – we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

          If these two statements are true, if Timothy Treadwell and Sisyphus are both to be considered happy, what is there about happiness that allows this to be said, or better yet, if these two statements are true – Sisyphus is happy – Timothy Treadwell is happy, then perhaps we need to think twice about whether happiness is something we’d like to let in the front door?

          In all the Dracula movies there is a particular way a vampire is allowed to enter your home. You must in fact invite the vampire inside.

          Have you been having some problems in your life? Are things cropping up that seem to be difficulties you didn’t ask for? Are there annoyances that simply seem to be a part of every day?

          Then, consider this – perhaps you have inadvertently invited happiness into your life?

          I loved Cub Scouts. In Cub Scouts you had a den mother, and the process of getting badges was arranged around the family, the mother, the home. Cub Scouts was an extension of family life. Then, came the Boy Scouts. The meetings were arranged around the men, not the families. I remember my first Boy Scout meeting. There must have been 150 of us there my first night. We were to be initiated into the Boy Scouts. Up on the stage in front of everyone fifteen of us bowing and chanting three words, foreign words – of course – “Owa,” “Tagu,” and “Siam.”  Owa – Tagu – Siam! Owa – Tagu –Siam!

          The other Scouts laughed like hyenas, pointing at the stage, holding their bellies, they really letting it out.

          We were to chant until we understood. One by one we got up laughing and joined the older Scouts.

          What we were saying was, “Oh what a goose I am! Oh what a goose I am! Oh what a goose I am!”

          And one other thing I couldn’t understand – why was it bad or funny to be a goose?

          Speaking of birds, when it comes time for their fledglings to fly Mother birds bring their customary worm to the nest, but sit too far from the nest for the fledglings to reach the worm. She sits there dangling the worm as if she didn’t have a heart. They screech and cry, they chirp and wail, but to no avail, the mother comes no closer, she sits there out of reach dangling that worm. Then a strange thing happens. The tiny little birds that have been totally dependent reach a fever pitch of excitement and leap to their deaths. Voila! Flight happens. And they didn’t even know they had wings! And they didn’t even know they had wings!

          Does this mean that grace is a lie? That the universe never gives you anything? No, I don’t think it means that. I think it means that grace is what’s dangling in front of you – grace is what you’ve been hoping for, wishing for, grace is the possibility that you may, in fact, deserve happiness.

          But the grace of happiness is like that damned worm, dangling there on television every night, the sex is there, the food is there, the cars and girls and guys are there, the clothes are there, the money is there, it’s all there dangling!

          The problem may be that happiness is not what we expect it to be – we’re thinking Owa – Tagu – Siam! when in reality it’s Oh what a goose I am!

          Zen Master Soen was meeting a group of students at Kennedy International Airport. All the students were there except one! The last student showed up late, harried, sweating and not at all at peace.  Soen Roshi said to him, “Oh it’s too bad you’re late you missed the Tea Ceremony.”  “Tea Ceremony,” replied the student, “here at Kennedy Airport?”

          “Well,” continued Soen Roshi, “perhaps you’re not too late.” Taking the student by the arm Soen Roshi pulled him into a nearby doorway. People were rushing by dragging their heavy suitcases; couples were embracing fond goodbyes, or fond helloes. Soen Roshi took a small porcelain container from the flowing sleeve of his robe, and opened it. Inside there was powdered green tea. Producing a small bamboo spoon, Soen scooped some powdered tea up and placed it into the student’s mouth. “Now,” said the Zen Master, as he closed the student’s gaping jaw, “make water!”

          In the Regular Army and undergoing Basic Training we were taken to the firing range at sunset. They passed out clips of ammunition. The senior drill sergeant locked and loaded and for the first time we saw in person tracer bullets – beautiful arcs of light flying into the Carolina night.

          What we learned there that night was how to shoot someone when it’s dark. Well, you know the enemy doesn’t always attack in the daytime.

          The retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The rods are more numerous and sensitive than the cones. However, they cannot see color. The cones provide the eye’s color and are concentrated in the center – the spot known as the macula. To see something at night one must look to the side of what one wishes to see.

          A more common way to experience this is when you’ve let your black dog out at night and she’s running around the yard the only time you see her is when she runs out of the center field of your vision, and the minute you turn your head she disappears.

          Happiness is the night vision of our souls. Happiness isn’t direct. It’s the Medusa of feelings; jealous, protective and perhaps not immediately discernable; not a product – nearly always a process.

          Happiness the by-product of behaviors. That’s why Timothy Treadwell and Sisyphus must be imagined as happy. That’s why George and Martha, the characters of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf  - the characters in our Sunday short must be imagined as happy.

          The Great Way is gateless, yet –

          There are a thousand roads to it.

          The shakuhachi playing Zen Master, Doso, came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery. The shakuhachi is the traditional Japanese bamboo flute. Loori Roshi writes;

          “When Watazumi Doso came to visit Zen Mountain Monastery, I gave him a tour of the grounds. We came upon a plumber who was working on our new bathhouse. Cast-iron piping lay outside the building. Doso playfully picked up a three-foot-long piece and began to play it as though it was a shakuhachi flute. Although the pipe had not holes in it, he was able to create a surprisingly wide range of sounds and haunting melodies.

          At another time Doso gave a concert at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and soon after the performance started, a LAPD helicopter flew into the area and hovered overhead. TUM! TUM! TUM! TUM! Doso’s flute immediately picked up the rhythm and developed a counterpoint. An infant cried. Doso’s flute responded. A car drove by at high speed. The flute whizzed with it. Doso’s concert included the totality of all the sounds that were happening around us. He blended, merged, answered everything he heard, incorporating it into his experience and expression, rather than being distracted by it.”

          Conclusion: We are on the launch pad. Our vehicle of happiness fueled and ready to go. The count down began years ago. Will we die on the launch pad, gussied up in our earth suits, not sure we can fly? Or will we allow ourselves to enter the way, to travel the path!

          Take time to show who you are. Don’t worry that you won’t be liked, or that people will run away when you unmask. That fear is nothing more than our own heart’s racing with the possibility of our own freedom. Do the world and yourself a favor and show us who you really are! That feeling you have when you’re real, when you show and tell others what makes you tick, when you own it and tell your story – that feeling … it’s happiness.

          Owa! Tagu! Siam!

          Amen.

Jack Harris-Bonham
November 5, 2006

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PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this morning we remember the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, “Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.” Too often we make grandiose plans about how our lives would/could or will be. We map strategies, we enlist the help of others, we ignore warning signs and push ahead with our plans. There’s an old saying, updated a bit which runs when human beings makes plans, God, the ground of our Being, the mystery beyond all mysteries laughs out loud. No one likes the idea of their plans not working out, but if laughter is added to disappointment it is possible to engender scorn. Fritz Pearl, the famous Gestalt therapist had a book entitled, Don’t Push the River.” The problem is we sometimes forget there is a river whose streams make glad the city of humankind. We forget that we are not separate from the Cosmos that surrounds us that as surely as flowers follow the sun, we rise each morning following that same life-giving light. We seek more consciousness, more awareness. If a man in a rowboat sees another empty row boat drifting toward him he takes an oar and gently pushes the empty rowboat aside. But if the rowboat drifting toward him is occupied, voices are raised, shouts of warning arise and before we know it two men are battling each other in the middle of the stream. Let us be empty rowboats as we go through our hectic days. Let us see other as empty rowboats, also. Let us feel the currents of life and flow with them – remembering that rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat our ultimate destination is universally the same.

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

Amen.

SERMON: Fortunate Blessings

Introduction: A Chinese farmer came out one morning to find a fine stallion grazing in his pasture. His neighbors came by and congratulated him on his good luck. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          Shortly thereafter the horse ran off. The neighbors gave their sympathy for losing such a fine horse. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The following week, the stallion returned and brought with him four wild and beautiful horses. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on his extraordinary good luck. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The farmer’s only son was good with horses. He had three of them trained when he was bucked off the fourth. He landed on his leg and it broke at both the hip and the knee. He would walk with a terrible limp the rest of his life. The neighbors brought food and sympathy. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          The War Lords of the region were fighting the War Lords of another region. They traveled throughout the region conscripting the young men. All the young men from the farmer’s village were taken except the farmer’s son who was unfit for military service. The neighbors came over to sympathize. The farmer replied, “Could be good news, could be bad news.”

          In the War all the young men of the farmer’s village were killed. No one came to the farmer’s house to commiserate or congratulate.

          I recently spent two days and three nights in the Berkshires. The foliage was at its peak. This section of the Berkshires is known as the lung of Connecticut. The majority of the wooded hills and meadows belong to the people of Connecticut and are held in trust. No one can cut the timber, plow up the undergrowth or otherwise disturb these nearly pristine forests.

          I was there to visit with William Spear. I’m not surprised that you haven’t heard of Bill Spear, but he’s a mover and a shaker in the world of disaster relief – especially disaster relief for children. Back when I was studying at the Yale School of Drama in 1990, Bill called me from Chelyabinsk, Russia. There was a great need for blood since the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor and Bill had made arrangements with the Yale/New Haven Hospital for blood. He called me to transport the blood from the Yale/New Haven Hospital to the New Haven airport where it would be flown to Chelyabinsk in the Ural Mountains of Siberia, considered, at the time, to be the most polluted and ravaged city on the planet. Bill went there to work with thousands of children dying from leukemia. He went without a visa (it was then a closed city) and was the first American to enter the city. There he spoke with hundreds of physicians and nurses throughout the region and established an extraordinary program, still in existence today, which feeds and supports 300 people a day, all through volunteer work. He was received by the Mayor of Chelyabinsk and given a key to the city as well as being acknowledged as an honorary staff member of the hospital where the program takes place. To this day Bill continues to work with the medical staff that attends to thousands of children dying from leukemia and the effects of radiation poisoning.

          I had gone to the Berkshires to see Bill to convince him that he should come to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin and be our Distinguished Speaker for the spring of 2008.  I am here to report that he has agreed to come – as he put it in an email to me – “I’m happy to have you back in my life and as for spring of 2008, sure — I’m in.  I’ll just change that appointment I had to get my teeth cleaned, and we’re all set. Bill”

          The man is not only a great humanitarian but also has a droll sense of humor.

          While I was there I went ahead and had Bill Spear, the health expert, give me a check up.

          I had been concerned when I went to see Bill that there were life-threatening issues and there weren’t. That’s good. Bill was surprised to hear from me after 15 years and he said, people didn’t usually drop back into his life unless they were in a crisis situation in their lives. So … if my crisis wasn’t physical, then it must be spiritual, right?

          Bill Spear is the head of the Fortunate Blessings Foundation.
The term “fortunate blessings” is associated with the symbol for “wind” in the Asian art of feng shui, based on the I Ching, the ancient oracle. The I Ching identifies the primal qualities present in the universe and all beings; the quality of “wind” signifies the blossoming of energy, prosperity, expansiveness and potential transformation. In the name of Bill’s organization, “fortunate blessings” symbolizes an openness to the experience of gratitude for whatever life brings. (Repeat this line)

          Bill was with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross when she was dying. Opra did a program on the famous psychologist and innovator in the field of death and dying. The television crew traveled to Elizabeth’s house and many people were on the program to thank her for all the work she had done in the area of our mortality.

          Bill said that when the program was over and the lights had been taken down, and the television personalities had departed and it was just he sitting there by her deathbed she looked around the room and said, “I failed.”

          Bill looked at her and asked what she could possibly mean by that statement?

          She replied that there were two courses in death and dying – one was the course on how to help people through their impending deaths, that course she had designed and completed with an A+. The other course was on being able to receive the love and affection of those who wished to help you when you were dying. In that course, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had failed miserably.

          This isn’t surprising. People who give are giving because that’s what they know how to do, but this doesn’t mean that they are also able to receive.

          I’m a person that has trouble receiving. Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Jesus knew.

          What I want is to tell you a story. It’s one of Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen’s stories and it’s called “The Final Lesson.”

          “When I first met Thomas, he was over seventy, a family-practice physician who had been in solo practice for almost fifty years. Whole families, from grandparents to grandchildren, looked to him for help in their trouble, counted on his counsel, and called him their friend. He looked the part too, gray-headed, kindly, his body as spare and gnarled as an ancient oak tree.

          At the time that we met, he proposed that we open a series of conversations about his life. He had done some reflection in recent years but felt that sharing the process at this point might be helpful in readying himself for death.

          Thomas felt death to be an unqualified ending to life. Raised a Catholic, he had left the church early and embraced science as a way to bring order to the chaos of life. It had not failed him.

          It surprised me that a man this altruistic, compassionate and reverent toward the life in others, this man awed by the beauty of anatomy and physiology, held no religious or spiritual beliefs. Curious, I asked him about the circumstances under which he had decided to leave the church. Open and frank about other details of his long life, he was reticent in the extreme about this. He had left at sixteen over a specific happening. I never found out what it was.

          Very early on in our discussions, I asked him how he saw his relationship to his patients. Looking at a small figurine of a shepherd with his flock that a patient of mine had given me, he smiled and said, “Like that.” The shepherd was a steward of the life in the flock, he protected them from danger, helped them to find nurture and fulfill themselves. He delivered their young. He found strays and brought them back to the others.

          Thomas told me many stories of his shepherding and the life of his flock. We examined these stories together, sharing our thoughts and perspectives. In the telling and the reflection, he seemed to be unfolding a much deeper sense of what his life had meant to others and what he had stood for. In these discussions, he often used the odd Victorian word: they “sheltered” with him. He was their safety, their support, their friend. He was there for them, constant, vigilant, and trustworthy. The person of a shepherd emerged as a symbol for wholeness.

          Who did he shelter with, who was the shepherd’s shepherd? “No one,” he said, the words holding more pain than he had expressed before. It became clear that he did not believe that there was a place of sheltering for himself. Shepherd though he was professionally, personally he had become separated from the flock, a nonparticipant, a lost person. He seemed unwilling to go much further with this.

          Puzzled, I asked him to make up a story about a lost lamb, and haltingly he described a lamb that had been lost for so long that he could not even remember there was a flock. He had learned to survive by himself, to eat what was available, to hide from predators. “Does this lamb know that his shepherd is looking for him?” I asked. “No,” he said, “the lamb had done something very bad and the shepherd had forgotten him.”

          “As a shepherd yourself, would you look for a lost lamb who had done something bad?” He seemed puzzled. I reminded him of the young patient from the projects he had told me about, the one he had taken on as a guardian from the juvenile courts, the girl who eventually went on to college. I asked him why he had gone after her and brought her home. “Why,” he said, “she was one of mine.”   On Christmas Eve I received a call from his hospice nurse. Thomas had been in a coma all day. Would I come? As soon as I saw Thomas, I realized that he was dying. His breathing, always labored, had become shallow and intermittent. The nurse with him was young and seemed a little uncertain and so I invited her to stay as I talked to him. He did not respond in any way. We changed his sheets and made him more comfortable. Then we sat down together to wait. Gradually the space between his breaths lengthened and after a while his breathing stopped.

          There seemed nothing more to do. I stood for a time at the foot of Thomas’ bed, thinking about him and wishing him well. Then I left.

          It was dark and cold Christmas Eve night. Holding my keys in my pocket, I huddled into my coat and walked a little faster. I had almost reached my car when church bells throughout the city began ringing. For a moment I stopped, confused. Could the bells be ringing for Thomas? And then I remembered. It was midnight. The Shepherd had come.”

          On the website for Fortunate Blessings.org there is a quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It reads, “Should we shield the canyons from the windstorms, we would never see the beauty of their carvings.”

          Life has a way of carving us into shapes that are appropriate for who we are and the pressures that were put under.

          As some of you know I traveled to Washington, DC recently to have a meeting with the Regional Subcommittee of Candidacy. I wasn’t worried about this meeting. Don’t forget I’ve been before Grace Presbytery when I was a Presbyterian and Grace Presbytery’s name is ironic to say the least. Those people were just about anything but full of grace. Yet, I had passed that committee and began the process of becoming a Minister of Word and Scrament. Then, when I had switched to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I had had three meetings with folks from the Brazos Region. True, the head of the region committed suicide a month after I had my meeting with him, but since I don’t suffer from magical thinking I was sure that our meeting had had nothing to do with his demise. My two other meetings with committees from the Brazos Region had produced no more suicides and as a matter of fact, I had rather enjoyed those committees. They had always given me good feedback as to what my strengths seemed to be, and areas of weakness that I might work on. When I decided to come over to the UUA I had only one meeting with the Brazos Region left – my ordination interview.

          So on my way to Washington DC I wasn’t as worried about the subcommittee on candidacy as I was about flying on Friday the 13^th. Yeah, I’m a little superstitious.

          I got to All Souls Church in Washington DC early. I knew I didn’t want to rush into a meeting out of breath and harried. I sat in the Thomas Jefferson bench in the main sanctuary at All Souls and wrote my thoughts about what questions are – if you were here last week you heard those thoughts. I had so much time I practiced my Tai Chi for 20 minutes. Believe me when I tell you that when I entered that meeting room my feet were grounded and I was not afraid. They asked me if I’d like to say some words before they lit the chalice. I did. I quoted something from The Death of Empedocles by Holderlin.

          And openly I pledged my heart to the grave and suffering land, and often in the consecrated night I promised to love her faithfully, until death unafraid. With her heavy burden of fatality and never to despise a single one of her enigmas, thus did I join myself to her with a mortal chord.

          The committee started out by asking me two questions about someone who wasn’t in the meeting. I thought this strange, but decided to answer. The questioning continued and I thought all in all it was going rather well. At one point someone asked me something I didn’t know, so I simply said, “I don’t know.” I figured honesty was better than BSing my way through a non-answer.

          When they called me back into the room I was shocked to find out that they were not going to offer me candidacy. They considered me inauthentic, poetical and seething with an undercurrent of anger. I looked around the room, not sure who in the room they might be talking about.

          The odd thing about these declarations was the fact that only two people out of ten at the table were looking at me while they were being read. The man who was reading them to me, he was looking at me, and a young black woman two seats from my left was able to make contact with me from time to time. The others sat with their eyes cast into their laps. They honestly seemed ashamed.

          When the meeting was over I walked around and shook each person’s hand. I thanked the two who had been able to look me in the eyes for being able to do that, and yes, I thanked them loud enough for the others to hear.

          The upshot of all this is much to my surprise the Regional Subcommittee on Candidacy had handed me a fortunate blessing in disguise. “Could be good news, could be bad news.” And like Jacob in the Hebrew Bible lesson this morning, I have wrestled with men, I have wrestled with God, I have wrestled with Satan, also known as my shadow self, and in the process I have been mightily blessed.

          They recommended a year’s worth of counseling and told me that I needed to get an authentic view of the UUA since, obviously my view had been tainted by – and these are their words – by being paid more than over half the members of the RSCC had ever been paid and by serving the third largest congregation in our region – a congregation larger than most of them had ever served.

          My mother told me that when God closes a door he opens a window. My mom had a tendency to get those sayings confused. But I knew what she meant. The window that’s been opened for me will be gently stepped through rather than jumped out of.

          It is a privilege to serve this congregation as your shepherd and it looks very much like I will return to more familiar pastures where the majority of the sheep look to the great Shepherd.  And, you know what, that’s just fine by me.

Jack Harris-Bonham
October 29, 2006

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PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, today we bring with us thoughts of those who have come before us. In dealing with the dead the first thing that’s obvious is they sure are a lot easier to get along with than the living. The living have a tendency to protest when you say something negative about them, while the dead seem just fine with whatever is said. Perhaps the dead are grateful for the release from taking things personally? Perhaps, it’s time to start living our lives with the same sort of abandon that’s enjoyed by those who have passed on? There are many ways in which we honor the dead in this society but forgetting about their shadow sides isn’t one of them. We must remember that those who have gone before us are no nobler than we are, nor are they less human for simply being dead. We can learn some lessons from the dead. One, we could start taking things a bit less personally ourselves, we could even imagine that we are already dead and see how that feels, if it changes the way we live, if it lessens our burdens, if it allows us a certain freedom that we wouldn’t have when we thought we were going to live forever.

Lastly, we hope that those who brought memorabilia and pictures of their dearly departed ones for the Day of the Dead Altar will be comforted by their act. Simply putting my mom and dad’s picture up there on that altar made a difference for me and moved me strangely. I also put a picture of Hawthorne my best dog friend up there. I wear his dog tag around my neck even today. The sound of it makes me think of him bouncing up beside me, his toothy grin and the way he twisted his body when he had a strong wag on. We need to remember those sentient beings that have gone before, that have offered us comfort, that have offered us pain, that were there for us to the best of their abilities, but then we must turn back out to life, to living, to love because that’s what’s demanded of us by life itself. We must return the compliment of life by living fully in the moment, giving regardless of what’s returned, stepping out when the moment presents itself, never fearing, or at least not letting fear stop us, always ready to go that extra mile, and own all that comes our way.

We give thanks this morning that death is there for us, that we carry our own deaths with us, and we would hope that death will be the good companion, the friend that never lies, the friend that never leaves, the lover who will embrace us even and most especially when we appear unembraceable.

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

Amen.

Cocooned

Luke 24:1-5 (NIV)
First Lesson

Lie back, daughter, let you head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently back and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
(Phillip Booth)

Cru’ci fy – from the Latin crux, crucis for cross + figere, to fix

Responsive Reading #645

SERMON

Introduction: This will be a short sermon. Aren’t those comforting words? Perhaps in today’s society those six words may be the most comforting words you can hear in church. This will be a short sermon. Today we are to talk about different kinds of deaths, and maybe even a little resurrection. Perhaps you think speaking of a little resurrection is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Perhaps you’re right. What we want to do is inquire about death and resurrection, and to do that, we first have to ask questions.

          What are questions? A question is perhaps one of the only ways to open ourselves up. To ask questions is to reach out – to seek – to explore our environment.

          I’m thinking now of Dr. Loehr’s invocation in which he says, “Questions more profound than answers!” Why is it, questions can be more profound than answers? It has something to do with the fact that our questioning is the edge of our life – the fingers of our growth, if you will – reaching out into the world and into ourselves. What would existence be like without questions?

          Once a man entered a cave in Roquefort, France and discovered a rotten cheese that someone had obviously forgotten. There were green veins of spoilage running throughout the cheese. Anyone in his right mind – and who was not French – would have covered that cave entrance with a stone and left it there. But this man by asking a simple question, “I wonder what those green, moldy lines taste like?” – this man resurrected what was thought to be spoiled. Without this man Roquefort Cheese would never have been discovered.

          Who and what are we? These questions have baffled philosophers and theologians from the start. To ask these questions assumes that we were at one time, or can be in the future, or are right now something – some thing – an object among other objects.

          As a practicing Buddhist I do not believe in a permanent self. In other words, there is no – thing in me that can purport to be anything substantial. I am, in essence, without substance and some of you have known that for some time.

          The minute we have an answer for who we are, we have, in all probability, died. The only answer to whom or what we are is a eulogy. In the moment of death the sentence, which is each of us, can finally have a period.

          Short of a eulogy we are incomplete, in process, always flowing. Hence the importance of the moment, the only place that we existentially belong. This flowing into each moment is for me a form of enlightenment, a form of resurrection. When I am reborn into each moment my eyes see what there is to see, my ears hear what there is to be heard.

          On the 2^nd of November, El Dia de los Muertos is celebrated in Mexico and Latin America. On this auspicious day we will dedicate the oak memorial sculpture in the foyer. The memorial tokens to be placed on the oak tree will be butterflies.

          How’s your insectology – I know that’s not a word – but who here remember the stages that lead to the butterfly? The butterfly larva is called a caterpillar and it becomes a pupa and resides within the cocoon where it undergoes metamorphosis and emerges a butterfly. The reason Sterling Heraty chose this image is its use in the Mayan culture as a symbol for resurrection.      

          Scientifically, metamorphosis is considered complete when there is no suggestion of the adult in the larva stage. In other words, no caterpillar would consider itself a future butterfly.

          We human beings, we Homo sapiens, undergo a metamorphosis similar to the butterfly and the frog. For in the womb we are swimmers, not walkers on land, our lungs are dormant for we receive all our nourishment and our oxygen through the umbilical cord compliments of our host animal generally referred to as mama. One of the clues of complete metamorphosis is the habitat change between the larval and adult stages of life. Tadpoles live in water, frogs live on the land, caterpillars crawl the earth, butterflies flutter above it dining on the nectar of flowers.

          In the passage from Luke the women go to the tomb with spices and ointment to complete the burial preparation of Jesus’ body. They discover the stone has been rolled back and instead of Jesus inside there are two men dressed in shiny white garments. What these men say is in the form of a question, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

          A wise man once said, “To become free we must see all of our past as a mere preface to this present moment.” (Repeat this line)

          All our degrees, our PhD’s, our honors, our medals, our six figure salaries, our pedigrees all the way back to the Mayflower, our DNA, our IRA’s, our adventures and misadventures, all are MERE preface to this present moment.

          There are cocoons that we must break through in order to become adults. The cocoon of the family defines you in the order in which you arrived and the manner in which you reacted to and acted in the world. This cocoon of childhood is a tough nut to crack, but leaving mama, letting daddy go, dropping the hands of brothers and sisters and venturing forth into the world is the way out from the familial cocoon. It isn’t fun, it can cause problems within families of origin, and many times when we venture back into those families of origin we literally have to fight not being placed back into our childhood cocoon. How many of us have made trips home as adults and lying in that bed that we grew up in we sense something stagnant and death-like about the tombs, I mean, rooms of our youth? Ask yourself this; Does a butterfly ever hang out with caterpillars?

          Where do we belong? We create other homes, don’t we? The place where our kids are cocooned, the place that eventually they must break from if they are to be free – we create these homes. When they leave will we, then, be dusting their cocoons hoping for that weekend in which we will be pretending that the family is back together again?

          Our lives are not the glittering trail left behind us any more than the glistening trail of the snail is the snail itself. Our lives are not what has past, but rather what lies ahead – complete and total possibility. This is true when we’re ten years old. This is true when we’re ninety. 

          Another cocoon awaits us, and that is the cocoon of the community of agreement. This cocoon is cultural, societal, national.  For those who break free here there awaits a reality of our own choosing, a reality stemming from within, a reality which evolves – a reality we choose, by freely intending it.

          Freedom finally is not something we can sell to other countries, or import to other cultures. Freedom is like our dead, it haunts us, provokes us, causes us to dream dreams – dreams that reach far into the future, dreams that have us gazing with great awareness until our last breath.

          So on this Dia de los muertos Sunday – this day that we have erected an altar to the dead and placed our pictures and memorabilia there I would ask that we remember the words of the glowing strangers in Jesus’ tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Remember we’re not being rebuked for looking … we’re only asked to consider why we look there.

          In complete metamorphosis the word imago refers to an insect in its final adult, sexually mature and usually winged state. The imago of the caterpillar is the butterfly; the imago of the tadpole is the frog. The imago of human beings is the imago dei – the image of God. We are the image of God; we have projected this image into the heavens. The source of that projection is something within us. This knowledge leads us to none other than our winged state, free; free from the prejudice of others, free from our own limitations, free to dream, free to think, free to be whatever we imagine we might be … free, great God Almighty, free at last.

Jack Harris-Bonham
October 6, 2006 

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Is there any among you, who, if your child asked for bread would give a stone, or if your child ask for a fish would give a snake instead of a fish? (Luke 11:11 NRSV)

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, today we’re sitting here celebrating a man’s music and a man’s life. It’s important to remember that this man was full of human foibles and wasn’t exactly in the business of hiding them. We may not agree with his theological assumptions, or like his music, or even think that such a service is appropriate. Doesn’t matter. This morning we celebrate a man who was willing to stand up for those who have lost their ability to stand for themselves. Our jail populations keep growing each year – more and more of those who should be receiving attention for their mental health problems are ending up in our prisons, our jails, the places we put folks that we’re just not quite sure what to do with them.  In a world where notoriety leads those in the public eye to aggrandize themselves and walk on their fans we give thanks this morning that there are men and women whose fame raises up others besides themselves. No, fame does not legitimize a perspective, but whenever anyone within the public’s attention draws that attention from themselves and to those less fortunate, let us all say a silent, Amen! And just because it is Johnny Cash Sunday I want to say something for Johnny. Johnny Cash believed that Jesus Christ was his Savior, and I don’t know about you, but that’s just fine with me. As a matter of fact, it’s fine with me that a whole bunch of folks believe that same thing. As far as I’m concerned there’s simply nothing wrong with that notion. If it serves you, then by all means be served by it. If it’s minorities and those out of public favor that need to be held up, then I’m holding up all UU’s today. We’re a minority. As Dr. Loehr reminded us not four months ago, more people believe that they have been abducted by aliens then are actually members of the UUA. If we’re not in a minority, I don’t know who is. And I’m also reminded of Don Smith and what he has to say about diversity. The word diversity means what it says, various in form or quality. I challenge anyone in this congregation to find me another congregation – that is not a UU congregation – that is more diverse, more varied in form and quality than we are. We’re a bunch of people who are so unlike each other that to know one of us is certainly not to know us all. And I say, congratulations to us! I’m glad I’m not like you, and you should be thrilled you’re not like me. The thing that we do have in common is our uncommon ability to rest easy with this diversity. Easy Does It as the bumper sticker used to say. So maybe you don’t like Johnny Cash, maybe he’s Mr. Monotone to you, well, rest easy, the Mozart and the Chopin will return, in the mean time, there’s somebody on your aisle that tapping a foot and sporting a grin.

In the name of everything that is holy, and that is, precisely, everything.

Amen.

SERMON

Introduction: This is an absent Father’s Sermon. This is a sermon about parenting – both present and absent. How present can anyone be in today’s society? And then, there’s the disturbing notion that we are the only Industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t openly support parenting.

          There was a time in our culture, and the older members of this congregation can remember it, and some of the younger ones have heard stories about it, when parenting wasn’t the job of simply the mother and the father of the child. There was a time in this culture when parenting was a town’s job, a community’s job and an extended families’ job.

          But times, sadly, have changed. We are one of the most mobile societies on record. We have computers that we carry with us, phones that we carry with us, electronic appointment books, and we are on the go constantly. The Interstate Road System passed small towns by, Agricultural Mega Farms bought up small farms, churches fell to leisure time and family values have become a weapon to be wielded by politicians.

          We pretend that we are in control and that all this technology has opened up new horizons for us, while in truth we are powerless. We scream that we are the most powerful nation on this earth, but this is a scam, a sham – we are dependent, a part of a web that makes the world-wide web look like child’s play, and without one another we are lost.

          So this morning I want to tell you a story, a parable if you will. It’s important to remember that “While parables, like fables, allegories and myths, are stories with hidden significance, they are clearly distinguished from these other kinds of stories because of their peculiar characteristics.” (C.H. Dodd suggests) “At its simplest the parable is a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” So here’s my parable. I call it the “Parable of the Mismatched Deck.”

          Once upon a time there was a man who liked to take evening walks in New York City. He was a big man so he wasn’t afraid of walking while it was getting dark and late. Sometimes he’d walk for hours. He walked every day, but some days when he was troubled or thoughtful, his walk would take him into the night. His wife understood.  Before he started walking he was a worrier and at times not easy to get along with. So … she never said anything about his habit of walking, and she didn’t ask to go along. If he wanted her along surely he would have asked her. About twice a year – when the colors of fall were coming in and after the first snow fall they would take a walk around the neighborhood together.

          The first playing card he found was the three of hearts. He saw it lying there on the sidewalk and he walked passed it, but then he stopped, turned around and picked it up. Yep, it was the three of hearts that’s what it was. He put it in his left shirt pocket and thought no more about it.

          When his wife was doing the laundry she found it in his shirt pocket and placed on his dresser, right where he put his change and other stuff from his pants.

          The next morning he saw it again. There it was the three of hearts. He smiled remembering the walk he’d found it on. He picked it up and kissed it. He didn’t know why he did that. Then he placed it back in his left shirt pocket – right over his heart.

          The years went by. The man walked hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. Once he started looking for playing cards, they seemed to be everywhere. He’d memorized the ones he had and he remembered the walk he found each one on. Sometimes, he’d  see another three of hearts, but he’d smile and think about how it had started his collection of  the 52-card deck.

          When the man died his wife came home from the funeral and took the elevator to the 8^th floor. She walked down the hall to their apartment, walked in, closed and locked the door behind her. She took off her coat and hat and turned the kettle on for tea. Then, she went into their bedroom and opened the top right drawer of his dresser.

          There it was the mismatched deck of 52 that he’d found over the years. Once he’d found all 52, he shuffled the deck a couple of times and placed it in the drawer, and on the evenings after that, when he did walk, odd, even though he looked, he never saw another playing card  – not a one.

          She took the deck from the drawer, sat down on the bed, and thumbed through them. Once before he died when he was sick, he took the deck and went through each card for her, where he’d found it, what the weather was like, and where he’d walked that day.

          She opened the window that overlooked the street below. She threw the cards out with a fanning motion. Some of them caught the updraft from the street below and blew higher than the building next door; some of them went down to the street fast like they had been waiting to escape. The rest were scattered to the wind.

          She was smiling when she heard the kettle whistling. She shut the window, shuddered with the cold, put on her sweater and went into the kitchen to call a friend over to have some tea.     

          I got a letter from my son, Ian, recently. He was worried about his neighborhood. It’s pretty violent. On the day he wrote me someone was scrubbing blood off the walkway in front of where he lives.

          There are loads of police-types in the neighborhood, but it seems they are beating up on the people in the neighborhood just about as much as the so-called criminal element.

          He starts his letter with, “What’s up, Preacher?!”  He then says he hopes everything is fine with me and I know that this is a lead in to things aren’t great with him. And they aren’t. There’s also an element in his neighborhood that’s simply crazy – they maim themselves and wear their scars like metals. My son, Ian, only gets to see his daughter, Emily, once every two months. He and his common-law wife don’t live in the same city. It’s tough on him. She was three years old when this separation happened. The same age he was when I left him with his mother and the friend who wouldn’t go away.

          You see, he’s always held it against me that when he was three years old I walked out on his mom and him. He doesn’t know the stories and they weren’t his stories anyway. His story he’s got down. His father walked out of the house when he was three and he never came back. Well, he never came back to stay. His mother married a honest to God Marxist political science professor who quit his job to drive a cab, who then quit the cab business to run a bait shop. I think he was demonstrating Capitalism in reverse. It worked for me.

          The Political Science Professor wasn’t even the reason I left. His mother had fallen in love with one of my friends and she wouldn’t tell this friend to go away. It was as simple as that. My whole writing career started out by me writing a story in which I was going to kill this SOB and be done with it. That’s when I discovered the power of story and writing, how you only imagine you’re in charge and when it came time for my character to kill his character it got twisted around and my character ended up dying.

          We are dependent, a part of a web that makes the worldwide web look like child’s play, and without one another we are lost.

          In the story I tried to change it back the way I wanted it to be. Me killing him, but it didn’t read right that way. The story had its own logic and reason. The story only made sense when my character died. That’s when I realized that if a writer can’t even control his imaginary characters how in God’s name are we as fathers, mothers, sons and daughters supposed to control any of this stuff we call life.

          She opened the window that overlooked the street below. She threw the cards out with a fanning motion. So