The Year Ahead: Challenges and Promises for Religious Liberals
Sermon by Steve Edington
September 19, 2010
We first met--the four of us--43 years ago this fall as bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and pretty much half-wit seminarians; and when theological school was essentially an all male preserve. We were, and still are, Steve, Sam, Dave, and Gord (the latter not to be confused with my son); and I'm the last man standing of those of us who are still in the ministry. We stayed in, and sometimes, out of touch over the years, until seven years ago when we began a practice of spending one weekend per summer together over in North Hampton, New Hampshire where one member of this not-particularly-fearsome foursome lives. This year marked, for three of us, the arrival of our 65th birthdays--with the fourth guy soon to follow this fall.
To mark the occasion, Sam brought these birthday presents for me and Dave and Gord called "Brain Workout." It's got all these mental exercises for you to do in this book here--and there's this three minute egg timer you're supposed to use when you do each one. The idea is to see how well, or not, our minds are still functioning at this point in our lives. Here's just one exercise: "Imagine that you start with $5.00 and spend the coins listed below. How much money will you have left in each case?" And then there's this list of combinations of coins for you to do your calculations against. You flip this baby over and let your mind go to work.
I've been working my way through this thing, and I'm happy to report that so far the ol' noodle is holding up in reasonably good shape. I do have a hard time remembering, just every now and then, exactly why I've walked into a particular room; but, if this little device is any kind of indication the synapses up here still seem to be firing pretty well. So I guess I'm still good to go for writing sermons, as we move on together into yet another year in our life.
Just to be on the safe side, though, when it comes to relying on my memory--and I did this quite a few years ago actually--I keep taped to the pulpit up here the words that are spoken in practically all of our Sunday services, usually after our time of silent meditation: "The mystery is that we are connected." And it is these very familiar words I want to use to remind all of us, here at the head of our 2010-2011 church year, as to what we're about and why we are here. Last Sunday we shared our journeys of geography and spirit with symbols of water. Now that our many and varied paths have brought us together again here, we can use these words, which have become a mantra, for us to chart our course.
The mystery is that we are connected? Perhaps it's not really all that mysterious. We see evidence of our connectedness all around us. The mystery part has to do with what it is that ultimately binds us to one another as well as to our larger world and universe. But, as is the case in many of my sermons, I'm already getting ahead of myself. I would like to speak, then, about three kinds of connections these words point to for us--some of them are more mysterious than others.
The first is the most visible one: We are connected to one another. In our immediate past church year I witnessed, as I know many of you did, this kind of congregational connectedness in ways I don't believe I'd seen in all the previous years I've spent with you. I've never doubted, all along, that the connection was there, but the ways in which I saw it demonstrated over the past near 12 months was truly remarkable.
I won't replay those months in any detail now; there's no need. Many of us know of the horrible, the really horrible, untimely deaths that reached into our congregational family over that span of time. And if there was any kind of good to be extracted from such terrible losses, I saw it in the ways so many of you stood with one another in their midst. I've been proud to serve as minister of this congregation since the day my ministry with you began, but never more so than in these past several months. And we stood together in times of great joy as well, as we sent one of our members into the Unitarian Universalist ministry--and celebrated the marriages of couples to whom the benefits and responsibilities of legal marriage had previously been denied. The mystery, as well as the great joy, is that we are connected.
Of course not all of our connections are found up on the peaks or down in the valleys. Most of them, in fact, are found as celebrate and affirm our connections in many little--but hardly insignificant--ways: A conversation over coffee, sharing in a covenant group, enjoying a potluck, even doing committee work--the connections come through. Indeed it is this sense of spiritual relatedness that makes us a community. To sure, we need--we have to have--our programs and activities, we need our structures of governance, we need to care for our beautiful facility. But without that mysterious, and yet very real, human connection amongst us, all of those other necessities will not, by themselves, make us the community we are called to be. The mystery is that we are connected.
At the same time--moving to the second level of connection now--if the only mystery we celebrate is the one that connects us to each other within this wonderful place, we can very easily become institutionally ingrown. We are here for one another; but we're also and equally connected to a wider community and a wider world to which we bring our principles and our values. There are far more implications to this dimension of our connectedness that I would ever try to address in a single sermon, and I don't need to do it all at once. It's a point I'll be revisiting over the course of this upcoming year. I'll just hit on a few matters today.
I'd like to spend some time this year exploring how we, as a congregation, can strengthen our public ministry. Yes, we do that, and quite admirably so, with our outreach collections. Many of them devoted to meeting human needs here in Nashua and environs. And I'm thinking there are additional, hands-on ways we can engage in our ministry of outreach in our community. This is a matter for exploration and action in the months ahead.
Beyond the local, we Unitarian Universalists - along with many other persons of good will and good faith of many persuasions other than ours - have long stood for religious freedom and religious toleration. We are seeing this principle sorely - and in many ways frighteningly - tested in recent days. I can only speculate, but still I wonder what it's like, at this present time, to be an American citizen who practices the Moslem faith. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, I would be one of 7 million such citizens. How safe and accepted would I feel right now? I would see our national news media--at least for a time--take a crack-pot, know-nothing, self-anointed "minister" (quote/unquote) with a congregation of 50, and turn him into an international figure when he announced plans to hold a Koran burning. Thankfully, those plans did not come to fruition, but not before they unleashed similar incidents elsewhere.
I would be witnessing a not so muted whispering campaign, often by persons who clearly know better, that our President--an openly professing and avowed Christian--is really "one of them." How would it feel to see my faith being used in a cynical attempt to smear the President of my country?
I would see what could have been--and maybe still can be--a creative and constructive conversation about the various meanings of having a Moslem Center--called the Cordoba Center--in some proximity to the September 11 attacks in New York City, be politically exploited in a way that demeans and debases my faith. I would remember, wistfully perhaps, how in the immediate aftermath of those horrible attacks, then President George Bush made it a point to declare in a speech to the nation, that what happened on that terrible day was not a true expression of Islam and that Islam is a religion of peace. I would wonder what has happened in the intervening years.
Perhaps I would also be somewhat heartened by the responses of persons of good will and good faith, from many faith traditions, speaking out against these attacks on my faith. Perhaps I would take heart in some words expressed by the President of our UU Association, Rev. Peter Morales, some ten days ago as September 11, 2010 approached:
"Americans everywhere (are preparing) to honor the memories of those lost in the tragic events of this day nine years ago. We honor those victims best by reaffirming our opposition to terrorism in all its forms and recommitting to the ideals of freedom and justice that are at the heart of the American experience." Then Peter went on:
"But out of pain, fear, or cynicism, there are some among us who feel compelled to act with intolerance and violence toward our Muslim brothers and sisters. Unitarian Universalists are called to denounce all such acts of bigotry. We are called to defend our inherent right to worship as we choose, and to honor the rich tradition of America's multicultural communities. We are called to stand on the side of love...I encourage every person of conscience to speak up for diversity and freedom, no matter what your faith, and to join with us in standing on the side of love." I thank Peter for those words, spoken on behalf of our Association.
These incidents of recent days are really part of a larger mosaic, and a larger challenge, of how well, or not, we in this nation are going to deal with the rapidly changing demographic face of our nation when it comes to matters of race, religion, ethnicity, and other such factors. It is a topic I'll be returning to in the weeks and months ahead. For now, it is time to move on.
We have a connection in this congregation, in our community, and in our nation. The mystery, and the reality, is that we are connected globally as well. This coming Tuesday, September 21st, is International Peace Day; so designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1982, and endorsed by a resolution of our Unitarian Universalist Association's General Assembly in 2002. Its purpose is a simple one, but with profound implications. It does not put forth a particular political agenda, strategy, or ideology, but rather calls for "individuals, organizations, and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date." It is sobering, to say nothing of disheartening and painful, to think of the number of lives lost and shattered--along with destruction that has been wrought--in the wars that have been waged in just the 28 years since this Resolution was passed.
I would offer just a couple of reminders along this line. One is that our calling is to be faithful more than it is to be successful. With all the unfinished work, and all the daunting obstacles, that still lie before us when it comes to all members of the human family living in a safe and peace world--we have still made it thus far, because of those who held up this ideal in the face of all that would deny its full realization. Those, that is to say, who knew they were called to be faithful to their ideals, however much or little success they realized at any particular time, in seeing them realized. The other reminder is found in words by Mahatma Gandhi, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant; but it is important that you do it anyway." Armed with that message--and others like it--Gandhi and his followers successfully confronted the power of the British Empire.
Today, following our service, our act of peace--our way of reminding ourselves of the greater ideals to which we are called--will be the Dedication of our Peace Pole. It's Shirley Rayburn's gift to our congregation. In so dedicating it we become the second religious congregation in our Nashua community to set in one of these structures of hope and peace in place. (Our friends up the hill at the First Parish Congregational Church got ahead of us on this one.)
Just as our flaming chalice reminds us of our calling to pursue the light of truth, enlightenment, and justice; and just as the rainbow colored flag on our congregational sign board reminds us of our calling to be a welcoming congregation to all persons--especially when it comes to sexual orientation; it is my hope that this Peace Pole symbol will remind us of our connectedness to our greater human family, and inspire us to redouble our efforts towards that day when "earth shall be fair, and all her people one."
Immediately following our service, right after singing "Go now in peace," you are invited to come outside to the front of our church in the area between the sanctuary here and the religious education wing for the Ceremony of Dedication of our Peace Pole. And THEN, we can have some coffee! Our children and young people from the church school classes will be joining us. If you have children age 6 or younger in church school we ask that you pick them up before joining us out front. We'll start the ceremony at 11:15 or as soon thereafter as we all arrive. I hope you'll also take time to thank Shirley for her gift, and to acknowledge your appreciation as well to Amy Bucklin for arranging the ceremony.
The mystery is that we are connected. I have one more brief direction to take us with this mantra before closing for today--and this one does focus on that word "mystery." We offer a community where this mystery that connects us can be freely explored and pursued with all the unfettered energies of our mind and spirit.
Somewhere back in the misty beginnings of our species, our earliest human ancestors looked up from the immediacy of their lives and from their daily struggle for survival, and began to just vaguely comprehend that somehow, in some way, they were a part of something greater than themselves. In some rudimentary way they grasped the idea that they lived in a world and universe whose workings had something to do with the workings of their lives. They probably didn't even have a language to talk about this mystery--it was just a sensation. That moment, however and wherever it took place, was the beginning of religion, as men and women strove to find ways to comprehend and relate to whatever they felt this greater mystery that surrounded them was.
As time went on over many centuries and many millennia, these attempts to comprehend and relate to this Greater Mystery became codified into particular religious beliefs, practices, rituals, stories and teachings. This was a natural process, and one to be expected. It also, in some quarters, came to contain a serious--and at times, even a deadly--flaw. And that flaw was the idea that "the mystery that we are connected" could be captured in a single doctrine, or creed or stated set of beliefs and actions--or contained in one particular kind of scripture.
One of the greatest tragedies of human history is that countless wars have been fought and countless human beings have been sent to their deaths, and acts of terror have been perpetuated, because one group of human beings believed that their definition and their comprehension of the mystery was superior to all others--to the point that it was OK to eliminate those "others." Sadly, that mentality has never completely disappeared. Anyone, for example, who sets out to destroy the sacred texts of another faith reflects that mentality.
But it's also true--thankfully--that there are adherents in all of the world's religious traditions who know that their take on the Mystery is but one piece of a larger puzzle and picture that will never be fully grasped; and they treat it as such. I admire, I respect, and I am always happy to work with such persons towards the greater goal of all of the world faiths, which is the greater good of humanity itself and a healthy and protected planet. The basis of all true interfaith sharing and action is that we can only get a piece, a glimpse, of this Greater Mystery; and the language we use to speak of it: God, Yahweh, Allah, Atman, the Spirit of Life and many other such terms, are among the tools we use in seeking that glimpse.
In this religious community, this UU Church of Nashua, we seek, we strive to offer a place, a setting, where each member and friend pursues the meaning of the Greater Mystery for him or herself. But we also share our journeys of meaning and faith in the hope that all of our journeys, all of our explorations, will be deepened and enriched because of that sharing. In the months to come I shall, as in years past, offer some of my thoughts and my discoveries into the nature of the mystery that ultimately connects us all.
It is a joy to begin yet another journey of ministry with you as we embark upon another year in our congregational life. May we each and all be blessed by it.
Stephen Edington
September 19, 2010
