Your Heart Will Live Forever

April 8, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

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PRAYER

Mystery of many names and Mystery beyond all naming, we gather here today to celebrate the resurrection of life. What this resurrection means can be, and is, as varied as the people who go to make up this community. But encompassing them all is the notion that what was dead and useless has been sloughed off and a rebirth has begun. Let us be gentle with ourselves when we are rebirthing, bringing forth that which is new and different from ourselves. Let us find the wisdom to treat ourselves in these moments as we would treat a newborn child. Holding our newness gently let us rock back and forth and sing lullabies – songs that sooth the soul. And help us, Great Spirit within, to recognize when others are so engaged, when others are bringing forth from themselves a new way of being, a new way to amplify the glory of the Light that surrounds us all.

Some of us have figuratively been entombed in the rock hardness of our hearts. May that hardness melt away and may we emerge from our self-made tombs renewed with no sense of remorse, or regret. The harden-hearts of our past are past. We are new creatures in this moment and in this moment we celebrate the quite human ability to take to flights of fancy and return to earth changed creatures.

Bless all those here with the ability to see themselves new again. Give us all the willingness to let go of others so that they may change and grow, and above all forgive us for thinking that we’ve had it figured out years ago.

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

SERMON: Your Heart Will Live Forever

A Resurrection Twist

There is a Shinto temple in the southern end of Honshu Island – the biggest of the islands that go to make up Japan. Legend has it that it was first built in 4 BC, but probably the 7th Century is more like it. I say “first” built because when ever it was first built over 2000 years ago, or 1400 years ago it has been rebuilt every 20 years since that time. They don’t tear down the 20 year old shrine and build another one, they ritualistically dismantle it, then on an adjacent site it is rebuilt from entirely new materials, but following exactly the same ancient plans.

Is it the same shrine – the Ise Shrine or more commonly know in Japan as Jingu – “The Shrine” – is it the same shrine that exists today first built in the 7th Century? Or is it only a reproduction of the long-lost original building – oh, an exact reproduction no doubt – last rebuilt in 1993 – but still a reproduction?

In a similar manner each and every cell in our bodies is replaced every seven years. If you’re 49 years old – you’ve inhabited 7 totally different bodies, oh, each was an exact reproduction, but each was still a reproduction.

If at the age of 49 you’re fortunate enough to have your grandmother around like my wife, Viv, did when she was 49, then what exactly is it about you that your grandmother loves? In other words, what is it that’s stayed constant during those seven reproductions?

For the people of Japan the soul of the Ise Shrine centers around the fact that each time the Shrine is rebuilt it is built and used as a Shinto Shrine, the Shrine – Jingu!

No rich person bought it and lived in it, held dinner parties in it, raised children in it, died in it.

It was never used as a stable for a nobleman’s horses.

It was never used as an amusement park centering on the quaint past.

It is a shrine, a holy temple, and it always has been.

And what makes it a shrine is that Shinto priests maintain it, hold Shinto rites in it, clean it, protect it, and every 20 years lovingly dismantle it and build it anew; fresh, raw, pristine. Trees grown in the generation of its parent temple – trees nourished on rain that fell on the former temple, nourished by sunshine that also graced the former temple – these trees are used to rebuild the shrine. And then, somewhere between the dismantling and the completed reconstruction the soul of Ise, Jingu, is passed on.

So – what is it that your grandmother loved in you? What is it that makes you lovable? It’s probably not because you tripped grandma at the escalator, or took the biggest piece of her birthday cake, or kicked her cat.

Yes, you were grandma’s little girl, but even genes can’t force someone to love a brat!

You were grandma’s nice little girl.

When I was Pastor at the First Christian Church in Big Sandy, Texas for two years I attended a spring birthday party at the city park.

Lois Davis was there. She was my eldest parishioner at 86. When I was leaving the party she was sitting at a picnic table with a young lady in her mid-twenties. Lois introduced me to this young lady like she was the Queen of England – the young lady, not Lois. I could see the love that Lois held for her granddaughter and I could see the concern, love and affection that were coming from the granddaughter.

Buddhists do no believe in a permanent self. They see the apparition we call self as the mere resemblance of outward form recognized by memory.

The Buddhists see themselves as the Ise Shrine, rebuilt moment to moment.

Each time we identify with the appearance of self and turn inward as if there were a boundary between us and them – each occurrence of that diminishes our opportunities to join the stream of life that never ceases to flow and change around us.

Our clutching is like the desperate flailing of a drowning victim – demonstration of self – true!, but totally ineffective.

For the Buddhists making a splash is not what it’s all about. What matters is noiselessly entering the stream and being in flow.

This reminds me of a story that is told by Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen in her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. This is the story.

As an adolescent, I had a summer job working as a volunteer companion in a nursing home for the aged. The job began with a two-week intensive training about communication with the elderly. There seemed to be a great deal to remember and what had begun as a rather heartfelt way to spend a teenage summer quickly became a regimented set of techniques and skills for which I would be evaluated by the nursing staff. By the first day of actual contact, I was very anxious.

My first assignment was to visit a ninety-six-year-old woman who had not spoken for more than a year. A psychiatrist had diagnosed her as having senile dementia, but she had not responded to medication. The nurses doubted that she would talk to me, but hoped I could engage her in a mutual activity. I was given a large basket with glass beads of every imaginable size and color. We would string beads together. I was to report back to the nursing station in an hour.

I did not want to see this patient. Her great age frightened me and the words “senile dementia” suggested that not only was she older by far than anyone I had ever met, she was crazy, too. Filled with foreboding, I knocked on the closed door of her room. There was no answer. Opening the door, I found myself in a small room lit by a single window, which faced the morning sun. Two chairs had been placed in front of the window; in one sat a very old lady, looking out. The other was empty. I stood just inside the door for a time, but she did not acknowledge my presence in any way. Uncertain of what to do next, I went to the empty chair and sat down, the basket of beads on my lap. She did not seem to notice that I had come.

For a while I tried to find some way to open a conversation. I was painfully shy at this time, which was one of the reasons my parents had suggested I take this job, and I would have had a hard time even in less difficult circumstances. The silence in the room was absolute. Somehow it almost seemed rude to speak; yet I desperately wanted to succeed in my task. I considered and discarded all the ways of making conversation suggested in the training. None of them seemed possible. The old woman continued to look toward the window, her face half hidden from me, barely breathing. Finally, I simply gave up and sat with the basket of glass beads in my lap for the full hour. It was quite peaceful.

The silence was broken at last by the little bell, which signified the end of the morning activity. Taking hold of the basket again, I prepared to leave. But I was only fourteen and curiosity overcame me. Turning to the old woman, I asked, “What are you looking at?” I immediately flushed. Prying into the lives of the residents was strictly forbidden. Perhaps she had not heard. But she had. Slowly she turned toward me and I could see her face for the first time. It was radiant. In a voice filled with joy she said, “Why, child, I am looking at the Light.”

Many years later, as a pediatrician, I would watch newborns look at the light with that same rapt expression, almost as if they were listening for something.

A ninety-six-year-old woman may stop speaking because arterioscloerosius has damaged her brain, or she has become psychotic and she is not longer able to speak. But she may also have withdrawn into a space between the worlds, to contemplate what is next, to spread her sails and patiently wait to catch the light.

The heart that can catch the Light and live forever is equal to the soul of the Ise Shrine.

But it must be practiced. The shrine never stops being a shrine because it is filled with shrine activities.

The heart that never dies is the heart that is turned outward not towards the other as opposed to one’s self, but toward the other as one’s self.

In the 2nd Century AD the Catholic Church almost elected Valentinus as Pope. He came in second. Too bad, the Catholic Church and perhaps the face of Christianity itself would have been changed forever if the Gnostic Valentinus had filled the shoes of the fisherman.

Valentinus believed in resurrection from the dead, but it was a resurrection from the death of self-interest, selfishness, egoism. Those grasping around us – thieves, robbers, politicians, generals, presidents – they are the dead. They gather around themselves wealth, power and imagine that, that will keep death or anonymity at arm’s length or ease somehow the pain of their eventual disappearance.

How much better would it be to simply disappear each moment – disappear into breath, disappear into watchfulness, disappear into the non-anxious presence, disappear and be reborn as passers-by, reborn with the heart that never dies.

How can one fear a thing that will change nothing? How can death take from us that which we have already surrendered?

In the movie, The Last Samurai, Ken Watanabe plays a samurai who teaches a Union Officer, played by Tom Cruise, what Bushido – the way of the samurai warrior – is all about.

The movie is worth the ending of the film alone.

Watanabe is mortally wounded and dying on the battlefield. As he slumps into Tom Cruise’s arms he sees his life as one perfect moment after another perfect moment, fully lived, fully realized – the scene switches to cherry blossoms blowing from an orchard and the dying samurai whispers, “Each moment perfect – it’s – all – perfect.”

The 20th Century’s greatest Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, summed up all his theology in one statement, “Ultimately, everything’s okay.”

The apostle Paul echoes similar thoughts when he says,

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me – (Galatians 2:20a)

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1st Corinthians 15:55 KJV)

So why did your grandmother love you? Yeah, she saw a nice kid there, but also she saw herself there in you – the rebuilt temple – the home of the heart that never dies.