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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 15, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
What can we say about miracles? Are they supernatural interferences with the laws of nature? Are they proofs of divine power? Are they everyday beauties and interactions we can see if we have an eye for miracles?
Chalice Lighting
As we await the return of the light, we kindle the flame of Compassion, the third of the five values of our congregation. May the light of Compassion brighten our own spark of the divine, guiding us to treat ourselves and others with deep love.
Call to Worship
Albert Einstein (attributed)
There are only two ways to live your life. One is a though nothing is a miracle, the other is a though everything is a miracle.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Meditation Reading
MIRACLES
Walt WhitmanWhy, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with anyone I love,
Or sleep in the bed at night with anyone I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown,
Or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.
Sermon
PERFECT MIRACLES
The choir this morning is singing about the conversation Mary had with the angel, when he brought her God’s message that she was to be the mother of the divine baby. In the faith story, this is a miracle. In my mind the bigger amazement is that in that time when women were seen almost as property, the angel, and God, waited for her to say yes. The church, as it evolved, made the miracle of Jesus’ birth a centerpiece of the faith. In most religions of that time, a miraculous birth was part of the story of their prophet, or their divinity. The Roman Christian church didn’t cement it in time, though, because the gospel of Matthew begins with the list of the ancestors of Jesus, and the lineage goes back through his father Joseph. You may not want to point this out to Uncle Hollister at Christmas unless you want to start a fight.
The Transcendentalists, our Unitarian forbears in the 19th century, were scornful of the thought that the Divine would have to show their power by miracles. Most people think of miracles as events where God disrupts the laws of nature for the purpose of helping, healing, or showing power. Ralph Waldo Emerson saw it as almost insulting of God, that the creator of this wondrous world with all of its laws and patterns, with falling rain and crashing waves, with buds that bloom and then make seeds, with the Fibonacci series, with our bodies, and most of all our minds, would have to interrupt those laws in order to show the people, whom they created, their power.
If we don’t retain our sense of wonder and awe at all of these things around us, we could get into an overly dry and linear place where we say “there is no such thing as a miracle. Everything is chemistry and physics and everything is understandable.” Or we might stubbornly hold on to a desire to live in a world where monks can levitate and make themselves warm sitting in the snow on the mountain. People flock to evangelical and Pentecostal churches where the Spirit is called down for healing and guidance. The miracles advertised by these churches are like the ones in all religions, faith stories, up to and including people being raised from the dead. My suspicion is that most of that is fake, or it’s the placebo effect (which I take to mean “great! You are healed for some reason we don,t understand. That’s wonderful. Your mind/spirit/body did that.”) Any scientist, any person working in medicine, will tell you there are factors in healing and sickness that can surprise and astonish everyone involved. There are mysteries. Most of us, if you get us in a talkative and trusting mood, will talk about something inexplicable in our lives that could be considered magic, or a miracle. The poets, the mystics of all religions remind us that there are things beyond our ken. Almost any traveler will tell you how their minds were opened, broadened.
I live in the tension between what I can believe and what I experience. I don’t believe in Reiki, but I have experienced it and it has been helpful, and when I do it for others they sometimes find it helpful. When I say I don’t believe in something what I mean is I can’t find a rational scientific way to understand it, and that it works sometimes and not other times. I don’t believe that there are Saints who can help us find things, but, as I confessed to you a couple of years ago, I sometimes pray to St. Anthony to help me find something I’ve lost. I was not raised with saints, but when he seems to agree to work with a UU, who am I to argue?
I saw a medicine man from Surinam offer to show a group of us how he could walk in fire. “Oh yeah, I thought. He’ll be like those folks who walk fast across coals, and the distribution of their weight and the speed at which they move keeps their skin from burning.” He left to meditate for fifteen minutes. Walking back to us, he said “There are many of you, so I will choose a burning log and hold it to my foot as I move around the circle.” I was disappointed, as I pictured him holding it to his foot for a second, then moving on. Then I watched him go choose a log. By which I mean he walked into the fire and stood there as he picked up first one log then another to find just the right one.
I saw a man who teaches mentalism at the New School in NYC bend keys at my father’s wedding reception. He didn’t touch the spoons himself, he asked us all to hold one of our own keys in our hand. Then we were to concentrate on them and try to make them bend with our minds. I wanted mine to bend, but it didn’t. When he asked the assembled crowd to open our hands, my Uncle Rob, a conservative Episcopalian Pathologist from Squirrel Hill and his daughter who was teaching English in China gasped in a chorus of two. Their keys, as they held them up, were nearly bent in half. We were astonished, even as Gabe the mentalist said “Please let me remind you that this is an illusion.”
I also saw a fortune teller in India run up to a friend of mine on the street, and say “your mother’s name was Ruth and your father’s name is Greg. Your mother died when you were 38. If you want to know more, come into my shop for a reading.” My friend, a Franciscan friar in his brown robe with its white cord, lost all the color in his face. “That was right! How did he know!” We were both – what’s a word – nonplussed.
My Aunt Ruth, who was with us on that trip, a medical doctor as well as a doctor of divinity, said “Of course. He was reading the Akashic record in your aura.”
What I think as a neo-Transcendentalist is that just because there is no current scientific understanding of all of those mysteries doesn’t mean they are supernatural. What a bunch of arrogance, to draw the trajectory of human scientific understanding as if we were at the pinnacle. If anyone were to give it more than a moment’s thought, they would know that we are somewhere on the trajectory, but nowhere near its peak. Here is what I think. Surprising things happen. The rules of nature as we currently understand them may be disrupted, and that just means there are things in nature we don’t yet understand.
And speaking of miracles Mary’ s Magnificat says
The Magnificat
My soul magnifies the Lord…
He hath showed might with His arm: He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the lowly.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.
May this world she dreamt of come to pass. May the heavy-footed be thrown down, their scepters broken, their hearts healed. May the proud, conceited and heavy-footed within each of us also be scattered and our hearts healed. This would be a miracle indeed.
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