Through the Looking Glass

September 24, 2006

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names and mystery beyond all naming, this Sunday we are contemplating the world – both the world of this church and the world that surrounds this blue marble of our planet.

When we see the devastation of war and the complexities of a world that is supposedly going global in its economics we are struck by the fact that it seems no matter how many countries we get involved in commerce it is nearly always the poor and the disenfranchised that suffer.

China is moving into the foreground of those countries where jobs are being outsourced and their factories are surrounded by razor wire and have armed guards posted twenty-four hours a day.

The workers are told that the wire and guards are there to protect them, but there is a sense in which these wage-slaves are being held captive by the simple fact that their children – like all children everywhere – cry when they are hungry.

Help us to remember these crying children when we go to places that sell cheap because the manufacturing has been cheap. Cheap products are one thing, but life itself should never be sold short, and if cheap means suffering for men, women and children 10,000 miles away perhaps we should reconsidered the purchase.

It’s inescapable that during this Social Action Sunday that we remember the Serenity Prayer used by so many twelve-step programs.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

May the words of our mouths be written on our hearts and may our hearts lead us to clothe the poor, feed the hungry and give succor to those who are in need.

This morning, too, we remember how blessed we are. Before we complain this week about anything may we search our hearts and see that even though we may be in pain, there are roofs over our heads, food on our tables, and hot water in our baths.

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

Amen.

READINGS

The Parable of the Great Banquet,

Luke 14:16-24 (NIV)

from Through the Looking Glass,

Lewis Carroll

“Oh Kitty! How nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! Such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through.” And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist. In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. “So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room, – thought Alice: “warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!”

SERMON

Introduction:

This morning we have readings from the New Testament and a children’s story by Lewis Carroll. Both are children’s stories in that the Bible comes from a time when Humankind looked upon the world as if it’s author stood afar in heaven and after having created everything looked down upon us. We may no longer believe that there is an old man with a white bread whom we might know as God beneficently looking down and gauging how the world is going any more than we believe that it is possible to walk through a mirror and be in the room that is reflected there in the mirror. Nevertheless, both are parables – both are short fictitious narratives from which morals or spiritual truths can be derived.

When my daughter, Isabelle was little she used to walk through the house with a good-sized mirror in her hand. I would see her stepping over the lentils above the doors as she made her way into the different rooms of the house. I had not realized up until the time I’m writing this sermon that my daughter was doing something that probably all children have done since the invention of the mirror. Her world was not literally through the looking glass but it was interpreted through the looking glass as she navigated our house as if it had been turned upside down. The floors were now the ceilings and the ceiling was now the floor.

It must be gratifying for a child to turn the adult world upside down. To take that which they do not completely understand, a world that they do not make the rules for, and do not control and flip it so that the new world, the one they have created, is known only to them and they are the only ones who know that one should step around the light fixture on the ceiling.

As Alice put it, “Oh what fun it’ll be , when they see me through the glass in here, and can’t get at me!”

Today we will be turning worlds inside out and upside down so that we might glimpse through a rearrangement of life the possibilities that may have escaped us – escaped us because we have grown too accustomed to the manner in which our world is arranged – so accustomed, in fact, that we now take this arrangement as the status quo, or the state in which everything has always been.

Today is Social Action Sunday, and that doesn’t mean we’re going to take to the streets with banners and bullhorns, it also doesn’t mean that today you put two cans of tuna in the Caritas baskets instead of your usual one.

It’s interesting, to say the least, that during times of great economic boon people are less likely to get involved in social action projects. In fact, it was during the great depression of the 1930’s that the per capita charitable giving was at its highest in these United States of America. Think on that. During times of great economic boon – charitable giving reaches all time lows.

There’s an analogy going around about churches. In this analogy it’s stated that churches either have windows through which the parishioners can see and engage with the world, or there’s the flip side – churches whose windows are more like mirrors where the parishioners mainly see themselves and the focus is on their needs. We have windows, don’t we? But they look out on a peaceful garden with a gurgling fountain – not every much like the real, is it?

It has also been said that social action is the true measure of a congregation. Based on its social action agenda what sort of grade do you think this congregation deserves?

In a recent newsletter that I received from my home church, 1st Church Dallas they had two boxes separated in the newsletter from all the other articles. In one of those boxes it proclaimed – “The Power of Commitment – 1st Church Dallas raised $138,952 in 2005 to aid the survivors of Katrina, Rita and the Asian tsunami.” In the other box further on into the newsletter it proclaimed – “The Power of Commitment – 1st Church Dallas inspired over 100 volunteers to adopt 21 families during the Katrina evacuation.” Yes, 1st Church Dallas is larger than we are. To be exact they have precisely 1,067 members.

But it isn’t the numbers that put them ahead of us. It’s the level of commitment. It’s been said that in any given congregation less than 10% (Raising Money for Social Action, Michael Durall, 1999) may be truly interested in social action. Again, it’s not the numbers that are as significant as the level of commitment within those numbered.

So what are the benefits of a church that has a high level of commitment within the social action area?

When I was a member of 1st Presbyterian Church of Dallas I traveled with a group of 35-40 people who went down from several different churches to Cuidad Juarez. We had a sister church – also Presbyterian – down in Juarez and we stayed in their community center. A Community Center that was built with monies from donations from many churches in Texas, and also built with the labor of many Texas Christian Churches. The accommodations were minimal – there was a men’s dormitory and a woman’s dormitory – bunk beds in each – with dormitory style shared bathrooms, and a communal dining hall. The food was incredible. We paid the Mexican woman who cooked for the community center to go out and buy groceries and we ate Mexican style the whole time we were there! Yum!

The projects varied, but first and foremost was the building of a new house for a destitute family. Now, when I say house, I mean a square about 40 feet by 40 feet with two small bedrooms and a kitchen half walled off from a very small living room. There was electricity and running water, but no bathroom. The community in which we built this home shared outhouses that were scattered throughout the community.

We gather on the first morning of our project with the family – all except the father who was at work – we made a sacred circle, prayed with the family, and then dedicated the project and our work to the greater glory of God. You can think what you like about that – suffice it to say that we made a conscious choice to be deliberative about what we were doing. We built that home in less than four days, and then the majority of the workers went on to other projects while the skilled carpenters, and the electricians finished out the inside of the house.

Toward the end of the week we gathered once again with the family and the father was there this time. There they were, father, mother, and three children, two girls and a little boy. Once again we circled the house, prayed, and then we planted a tree in the front yard in hopes that their lives like this tree would take root there and that they would prosper and grow. I don? t think there was a dry eye when we got through.

The point isn’t about what we did for that Mexican couple and their children. No, the point is that by working together as a congregation, through the sweat and tears that we shed on that project something strange happened to all of us. We didn’t exactly know what it was that happened until the first Sunday after we had returned to Dallas.

That morning all those who had participated in the Cuidad Juarez project were asked to sit down front and before the sermon was given we were asked to stand. There was thunderous applause as all those in the congregation leapt to their feet to congratulate the congregation at large for 1) putting together the resources necessary for such a project to happen and 2) to recognize that within that congregation there were those – about 10% who were willing to go out and get their hands dirty doing the work.

But the real payoff occurred on another level. You see those 15-20 of us who were on that project from First Church Dallas; we never saw each other quite in the same way ever again. Running into each other in the hallways we didn’t simply say hello, we stopped and hugged and genuinely inquired into each other’s lives.

You see we thought that we had gone down to Mexico to help them build up their community, but in truth it was our community that had been enlarged and built up.

There’s a short story written by Albert Camus entitled, The Artist at Work. In this short story, which is more like a novella, Jonas, is one of those people who grows up believing in his star. That’s a metaphorical way of saying he believed that something good was always on the horizon for him, and all he had to do was wait and it would arrive.

In the story he goes from working in his father’s publishing house to painting. He falls into painting really and before he knows it he’s married has several kids and art critics all over the world are vying for the right to say that they discovered him. The problem with Jonas is, like the Biblical character he’s named after, Jonah, the fame that comes to him swallows him much like the whale swallowed Jonah in the biblical narrative. Jonas has no boundaries and before he knows it the fame and the money has filled his house with admirers and well-wishers to the extent that fairly soon, he can no longer find a private place to paint. But never being one of those people who despair of their situation, Jonas makes the most of being swallowed by fame. He builds in one corner of a large room with enormously tall ceilings he builds a cubicle where he can climb up to and paint in peace.

Jonas begins staying up in his cubicle in the corner of that immense room longer and longer. Pretty soon there are parties going on below him well into the night, and at meal times his dinner is passed up to him on a hoist while those down below sing his praises and enjoy the food that his painting has brought in.

Finally, one night Jonas collapses and falls from his loft. And this is how the story ends.

“It’s nothing,” the doctor they had called declared a little later. “He is working too much. In a week he will be on his feet again.” “You are sure he will get well?” asked his wife Louise with distorted face. “He will get well,” said the doctor. In the other room, his old friend, Rateau, was looking at the canvas Jonas had been working on in the loft. It was completely blank, but in the center of it Jonas had written in very small letters a word that could be made out, but without any certainty as to whether it should be read solitary or solidary.

Conclusion:

It is suggested in the article I read that churches either have all windows or all mirrors. In other words, the author of that article fell into the commonplace error of seeing things either one way or the other way. The final word in the above story – the word that could not quite be deciphered – it’s either solitary (as in solitude) or solidary (the root for solidarity). I used to think when I was younger that there was an obvious answer to this quandary. It had to be solidarity.

Camus was conveying that people had to stick together and without this cohesiveness society would degenerate into the chaos of narcissism. But I am older now. And now I see that there must be time alone, and time together, and to be exclusive in either is to be sick in one-way or another. A church with only windows – a church which is constantly reaching out to the world and not taking care of its own is a church that is co-dependent upon reaching out to the world. A church that only has mirrors is obviously a social club and what they need to raise money for is a golf course, and a clubhouse.

Real churches like real people use both windows and mirrors. Yes, we must reach out to the world at large, but we must also be self-reflective on how we do this. Are we doing this in consideration for those that are being helped? Are those being helped actually being reduced to children and are we playing the patron? Social Action can degenerate into noblesse oblige. And noblesse oblige is nothing more than social Darwinism. We reach out to help others because obviously our cultural, our way of life is so superior that these poor, ignorant bastards would be nowhere without us.

Yet, too much self-reflection can put us in the same situation that Alice found herself in. In the looking-glass house everything was backwards.

There is a tale told about an off Broadway revival of The Anne Frank Story. Now here is a play that if done right will elicit sympathy for the Jews during the Holocaust. But there were troubles within this production, as a matter of fact, the actress that was playing Anne simply wasn’t up to snuff. When the Gestapo showed up at the house in which Anne was hiding, someone from the balcony yelled out, “She’s in the attic!”

There are times in which social action work done poorly is worse than no social action work done at all.

Real churches have both windows and mirrors. Real churches look out upon the world and realize that they must step into the fray and help. Real churches are able through their self-reflective abilities to judge how best to help those who are in need. In these situations so-called victims become survivors and one’s position in a class structure does not determine the genuine quality of one’s life.

The banquet alluded to in the passage in Luke this morning points out the fact that there is a feast taking place on this earth. This feast is open to all, but there are some who are invited that have an opportunity to serve the others. Within this feast, we have the blessing of having enough that we might actually share what we have with those who have not been sufficiently blessed. The point of Jesus? parable is that if we don’t share, if we don’t partake there will come a time when even the bread on our table will lose its taste, life itself will lose its zest and when that happens then we know we have been essentially excluded from the banquet.

On this social action Sunday let us covenant together that we will be that church that has both windows and mirrors. Let us covenant together that we will reach out when there are those in need, that we will write that extra large check when disasters strike, that we will investigate our motives and our intentions so that as caring, loving and responsible sentient beings we can make a church where we will be proud of the action we take in the world and equally proud of the reflection that, that action makes upon this church.