A Prophet's Authority

July 6, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

I’ll begin somewhat unusually for a Unitarian Universalist service today with a reading from 1 Kings:

“And He said: ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.’ And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”

On July 17th of 2006, I found myself on the 11th floor of Massachusetts General Hospital, sitting on the ground, in the dark, testing out my broken Spanish with a patient for the very first time.

J. was an elderly man, a Spanish speaker, and a victim of a very serious recent stroke. J. could barely speak, and the little I could hear I strained to understand. My religious and medical vocabulary is almost non-existent in Spanish, and I have trouble speaking in anything but the present tense. J and I had communication problems, to say the least. But there was one thing J said to me that I know I understood.

Jesus was in the room.

His head jerked back, yelling as he called out to God, I watched J slowly move his finger in the air as he pointed to the space above his bed. This UU seminarian asked, “Is Jesus here in the room with us?” He gripped my hand and pointed right above our heads. “Yes, there.”

My visit with J was part of a ten week unit of training in ministry called “Clinical Pastoral Education” that I completed a few summers ago at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A frequent issue that arose there for me and my fellow students was one of spiritual authority. I asked and heard this question many times, “What gives me the right to say anything here?”

Now, I shared my story about J with my other student colleagues as part of a “verbatim.” Basically, a verbatim as a weekly assignment, in which you record one of your more memorable patient visits as accurately as you can. You then take this into something like a small group setting, and you read them aloud and reflect on this in your CPE group. In my CPE group, we had one woman from the United Church of Christ, one Reformed Jew, three Catholics, and one UU. It sounds like one of those jokes where everyone walks into a bar together, but it was every day of my life for a summer.

After recounting this visit in my verbatim, one of my colleagues, a devout Catholic seminarian preparing to be a missionary, asked me if I really believed that the man I spoke to saw Jesus in the room. Now, from what he knew of me as a Unitarian Universalist, I think he expected me to say “no.”

But there was something more to my experience here, and so I told my friend “yes.” I could tell he was a little surprised. He then asked me if I saw God in the room that day. This is where my natural “Aaron defines Unitarian Universalism” self began to step in. I was about to explain how that word “God” means many things to UU’s and how what I say can’t represent everyone. But before I could get my usual anxiety-filled routine going where I apologize for my faith, I simply said, “Well – yeah, I mean, we were already talking in translation.?

After our weeks together, I think that my colleagues expected me to do my normal shuffle around such questions. And they were completely right for doing so. For the longest time, I tried to provide informational facts about our church or make statements I thought would represent every UU. In a setting where my job was to make sense out of my religious experiences with others, I had yet to be honest about any of them with my colleagues, or myself for that matter. I had been so worried about my inability to say something entirely true about my experience of the Divine, that I said nothing at all.

Lately, this question of religious expression has been at the front of my mind, and its manifesting itself in one common word: prophesy. When I say “prophesy,” like many UU’s, I don’t mean the ability to foretell what will happen in the future. For me, prophesy means the courage give expression to my experiences of the world, of the Holy, no matter how imperfect my expressions may be. People sometimes call it ‘speaking truth to power.? At its most authentic, prophesy is a radical act.

The late Unitarian Universalist ethicist, James Luther Adams, spoke much about what he called the “prophethood of all believers.” Adams wanted to extend Luther’s call for the priesthood of all to extend to our prophetic witness as well. “The prophethood of all believers.” This is a phrase that has stuck with me since I first heard it, and it is crucial to my understanding of Universalism. All human beings, simply by the fact of being alive, have some access to the ground of our being, from which we can speak.

Now, our age in society makes us well aware of the dangers that can arise in assuming a voice of prophesy. Just turn on the television or read a newspaper and you can see that prophets don’t always do well for the world. What we see of fundamentalism, the post-modern condition, our training in schools, and the liberal nature of our own churches often caution us against assumptions that lead to simple grand statements about the world, and rightly so. Yet I cannot help but think that as people of the spirit, we have a place from which to speak. In our prophetic voice, should our inability to say everything keep us from saying something?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the biblical prophet, Amos. Amos was a people’s prophet. He came not from the stock of politicians, but from farmers, and raised his voice loudly against a government that would not care for the poorest of its people. Not surprisingly, Unitarian Universalists have historically taken a liking to Amos. We sing his words in our Hymn, “We’ll Build a Land,” when we talk about creating a society in which “justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like and ever-flowing stream.” In a decadent society crashing down around him, Amos, the text says, was visited by God in the form of visions which served as the start of his ministries.

I don’t know about you, but I have to say that I am very different from Amos in this regard. I’ve yet to have a vision, and more often than not, my religious inspiration resembles the ‘still small voice? of Elijah that I read about at the beginning of the sermon. Elijah is portrayed on a mountainside amid storms, earthquakes, and fire, none of which contain the word of God. When all is settled, he strains to hear the message in a ‘still, small voice? that passes by. (1 Kings 19:12). I love this image, a still, small voice.

The 20th century musician and Zen Buddhist, John Cage, had his own experience of hearing something amazing when he visited Harvard some years back and stepped into what’s called an anechoic chamber, a room without echoes.

Here is what Cage says about the experience:

“I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.”

I feel something similar with respect to religion. Again, this for me is Universalism. It is the conviction that there is some reality within the world that all human beings have access to, not just a chosen group, a chosen time, not just those who have the grace of god and on and on. Our Universalist ancestors put forth the catalyst for a theology which affirms that all human beings, simply by the fact of being alive, can have connection with that which sustains all the web of life, with a spirit of community and love. Until we die, I believe there will be for every human being the sounds of the Divine, that still, small, astonishingly inescapable whisper of the sacred.

I can, of course, speak only for myself. But it is in these experiences of awe of the world around me, of feeling a force greater than myself surge through my veins, that I find my inspiration to speak to my greatest values. It is not always the source of my beliefs, but it is always the energy from which I speak about them. What happens, though? Why do I fall into the role of politician instead of prophet? Why is it so easy for us to shy away from being honest with our friends, family, and strangers about some of the most important experiences of our existence?

We are worthy to speak. Each and every one of us. Despite what others might have said; despite the constant messages we hear in our culture that we must become something different than who we are before we can give ourselves and our voices to the world, despite the dominant religious voice we hear in the American religious landscape ? in the face of all these things, you, me, and all those who will join us, our voices are worthy of being considered prophetic.

But why don’t we always use them? Often for me, it is fear. Fear of ridicule mostly, or not being understood. But I don’t think I’m the only one. Looking to the Hebrew Scriptures, even Moses was afraid to speak prophetically. He was a stutterer and didn’t think people would listen.

Sometimes I stutter spiritually. Sometimes my best efforts at giving voice to my religious life, even in times where like-minded people surround me, they just fall short. I find that often when I voice the earlier question I mentioned from the hospital – “what right do I have to speak?” – what I mean most of the time is “I’m so afraid that you won’t believe me.” But we remain called to speak.

There is a great story about the 18th century minister John Murray preaching in Boston. At the time, his notion of Universalism was even more radical than it is today, and it was not always well received. During one of his sermons, a rock came flying through a window and landed by his pulpit. Almost as if it were planned, Murray reached down and picked up the rock, saying: “This argument is solid and weighty, but it is neither reasonable nor convincing – not all the stones in Boston, except they stop my breath, shall shut my mouth.”

In our speaking as prophets of liberal religion in this world, there will be stones, my friends, but which ones will shut our mouths? Which ones are shutting our mouths right now? Real prophesy is a radical act. We hear the stories and see the images of those speaking truth to power facing death or violence, and many times meeting it.

The truth of the matter here, I think, is that most of us won’t face physical death for expressing our faith. I’m worried that we as prophets die spiritual deaths, because we did not hear the voice within us, or did not feel worthy to speak it when we did.

Our voice of liberal religion has something to offer this world. At this point, we have not only the right to speak, it is our duty. On this week of July 4th, we take time to celebrate the greatest principles of our nation. And yet the news speaks also this week of increased secret plans for war with Iran, of a despicable widening gap between the richest of our citizens and those who starve daily in this country. In yet another election cycle, I find myself being told to hate my neighbor, to fear the foreigner and the immigrant, to feel God’s love for my country over all others in the world.

Our history, our vision for a world made fair has so much potential. My friends, we have not been marginalized as a community, but we have been on the margins ? we have been too silent.

It is time for a different religious voice to make itself heard in our society, for a different religious voice to be the one featured on the news. It is time for us.

Our messages of tolerance, of peace, our dedication to individual freedom of conscience and equal voice for all in religion. Our religious commitment to the rights and dignity of every human being, of all the world around us – I cannot keep these messages to myself anymore.

There are things to be said. Let us say them. What would it look like if just the people in our congregations ? in just this room – really took their religious voice, their prophesy seriously? I think that it would be life changing. We will not always be right, and each one of us cannot know the truth alone. This is why we join together in community. This is why we have one another.

My friends, my prayer for us is that we may live fully the sometime terrifying task of the religious life, which challenges us to speak clearly and unashamedly our most intimate religious experiences, with the knowledge that we are not alone. We are not alone. May we, as if for the very first time, take seriously the voice within each of us, and the voice that this community of faith has to offer – not only in our places of worship, but with our family and friends, in our whole lives.

Like Elijah atop the mountain, may we strain to hear that still, small voice ? on hospital floors, in classrooms, in nature, in subway cars, and indeed within our very hearts; and may we have the courage to say with all of our breath, I hear you. It is waiting to be heard. What better time than now?

Amen