The Legitimate Heir to God

by Posted in Audio available, Davidson Loehr, Former Ministers, Sermons

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© Davidson Loehr

28 November 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

In thinking about this service, which deals with learning how to express our beliefs in ordinary language rather than the language owned by religions, I thought back to the first time I had to do this.

It was over 20 years ago, during my ministerial internship at a vibrant and exciting Christian church in south Chicago. My first turn to preach was coming up (the church had three interns, so we each got to preach only twice a year). The minister said I was responsible for writing not only a sermon, but also a prayer.

I’d never written a prayer, and tried to get out of it. “No,” he said, “and this will be tougher for you than for the others, since you’re a Unitarian. You have to offer a prayer on behalf of this Christian congregation, to connect them with their own spiritual depths, and the source of life – by whatever name you call it. And it must have the integrity of coming from an honest place within you, as well.”

It was a tough assignment, and the first prayer I ever wrote. This sermon topic reminded me of it, so now I offer it to you, twenty-odd years after it was first written:

Prayer

We pray not to something, but from something, to which we must give voice;

not to escape from our life, but to focus it;

not to relinquish our mind, but to replenish our soul.

We pray that we may live with honesty:

that we can accept who we are,

and admit who we are not;

that we don’t become so deafened by pride and fear

that we ignore the still small voices within us,

that could lead us out of darkness.

We pray that we can live with trust and openness:

to those people, those experiences, and those transformations

that can save us from narrowness and despair.

And we pray on behalf of these hopes

with an open heart, an honest soul,

and a grateful reverence for the life which has been given to us.

AMEN.

SERMON: The Legitimate Heir to Christianity

The Buddhists tell a wonderful story which they say goes all the way back to the Buddha. It sounds simple, even funny, like a child’s tale. But it’s one of the most revolutionary stories ever told. You’ve probably heard it before:

A man was on a small island when a flash flood came up, surrounding him with a deadly rushing river on all sides. He might have drowned or starved, but was lucky enough to find a raft left there by someone else. He found a long pole, and rode the raft to safety on the other side. He was so grateful to the raft for saving him that he put it on his back and carried it there for the rest of his life. The Buddha asked whether that is the right way to use a raft, and said No.

The raft worked once, now put it down and go on your way. Because your next passage may not need a raft at all, but a vehicle of a very different kind. And we must be prepared to change vehicles – including our beliefs about ourselves, about relationships, about work, about our nation, or about God – if we are going to use beliefs wisely rather than foolishly. For beliefs are only useful if they help us through the transitions we are facing, not if we are carrying them on our backs, or sticking with them because they were prescribed by someone authoritative.

This is really one of the most radical and empowering stories ever written. It encourages heresy; it sanctions experimentation, and it endorses change. It trusts us more than our religions, trusts us to know what kind of a vehicle we might need at any point, trusts us to change vehicles – and grants us the authority to do so.

When you apply this to religion, it could get you burned at the stake in most times and places. But it’s profound and wise. Sometimes even our religions become like rafts that must be put down as we search for their legitimate heir. A legitimate heir is one that can carry us through tough transitions with integrity and hope.

For instance, the more our current administration claims it’s being guided by God, the more warlike, greedy and imperialistic it becomes. If you take them at their word, they are Christians – or at least people who believe in God, since they mention God a lot more than they mention Jesus. And if that is how the word “God” is being defined and used in our society, then we need a different way of talking about what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. We need a legitimate heir to it, and fast!

This topic came up from a couple directions. The first is just looking around at the way the very worst kind of religion has now gained a potentially dangerous degree of political power. Also, I am trying to write a new nine-hour program on this question to teach at SUUSI, the large Unitarian summer camp in Blacksburg, Virginia next July. So I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and this sermon is the first result – there will be more as the year goes on.

Still: why would anyone suggest such a thing as the legitimate heir to Christianity or God? On the surface, it just sounds rude. While America was never founded as a Christian nation, Christianity has still been the dominant religion here since we began. So whether we are Christians or not, our whole society is shot through with the symbols and myths of that religion, for both good and bad.

The words to the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” that we sang this morning were a protest song, and part of the message was that whatever was carrying our notions of decency, civility, and peaceful behavior – whatever the vehicles of our nobler aspirations were, they were failing. We needed a legitimate heir to the culture that said yes to an immoral war and no to decent treatment of even our own people. That’s really the message this morning as well.

Cultures look to their religions, when they are healthy, to carry deep and healthy assessments of the human condition. Religions, at their best, have produced some of our species’ finest outcries against the injustices of the powerful against the powerless, those who control money over those who earn it and the rest. When people like MLK Jr. refer to their religion as an aid in unjust times, those are the passages they refer to, not the other, inhumane, even murderous and embarrassing passages.

History shows us that all gods die, though the great ones die more slowly, and can linger in a moribund state for centuries. They can die in several ways. They can die when the cosmology supporting them collapses. They can die when they no longer inspire passion or affection in people’s hearts. — And they can die when their stories and symbols are more easily hijacked by preachers and politicians of low and mean purpose than by those of high and noble purpose.

And all these things have happened during the past couple centuries to the primary God of our American culture.

But back to my question: Why does the God of Western religions need an heir, and what does it mean to be a “legitimate” heir?

One measure is political: the degree to which only the very lowest forms of Christianity have attracted and been attracted to the political and military power in our time. Pat Robertson has said that a democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind of Christians – the kind that will not tax the rich, will not support social services, welfare or public education, and so on. And the Rev. Jerry Falwell said during a television interview a couple weeks ago that we should hunt down terrorists and blow them away in the name of the Lord.

Jesus would detest these men. Don’t be shocked, that’s not a bit overstated. Heck, Jesus called Peter Satan, and that was just because Peter didn’t understand him! Peter wasn’t even offering to blow people away in the name of God. Jesus would detest these men, and the low and hateful religion they sell.

The God of people like Robertson and Falwell – and a growing number of other bad preachers – is not a God worth serving, and has nothing to do with the far higher teachings of a Jesus who instructed people to love one another and not to judge one another, and who said that whatever we did to the least among us we did to him. The God Jerry Falwell worships is little more than his own bigotries, writ large and nasty. And ironically, the fact that he can proudly chant such hateful and murderous advice while holding a bible shows that he doesn’t really believe in the God of Jesus for one second, and knows that nothing will happen to him for insulting the very idea of God with his smallness. That’s the measure of a religion whose God has died. And when gods die, their corpses almost always become hand puppets for the worst kind of charlatans and demagogues. Conversely, and importantly, when a God can become the hand puppet of low-level charlatans and demagogues like these men, it is a sign that that God is dying.

This has happened before. When Franco (Francisco Franco Bahamonde, 1892-1975) established his fascist dictatorship in Spain, he brought the Catholic Church into power with him – but, again, just the low and mean parts that oppressed women, the poor and the different. But when Franco’s reign finally ended, so did the power of the Church. People had seen that it became the willing toady of the worst kind of people all too eagerly, and they didn’t trust it with their hearts or minds. In some ways, Spain now has a more liberal set of abortion laws than our own country does. When a court grants permission for a third trimester abortion, for instance, the country pays for it. That’s a sign of the Church losing authority in people’s minds and hearts, and it happened because the religion seemed like far too natural a bedmate for fascism.

Now in our own country, the phrase “Christo-fascism” is beginning to appear in more and more places — Google it, and you’ll find an increasing number of hits, over 300 now. Some feel it is happening here. I’m one of them. And once again, the religion seems more available as a tool for the rich, greedy, powerful and mean than for the poor, for whom Jesus spoke. Jesus didn’t think rich people could even get in to heaven. Now they own it, and the tickets so expensive the poor can’t afford them. You can hardly betray Jesus more fundamentally than that!

A second reason the raft won’t float is scientific. It’s that the symbols and myths of Christianity lost their footing in the real world more than two centuries ago, as the best Christian thinkers have pointed out for at least that long.

Western religions were grounded on the idea of a male God who was a being. He walked, talked, saw and heard, planned, rewarded and punished. To do these things, he had to live somewhere, and eventually they assigned him to heaven, which they believed was right above the sky.

But during the past couple centuries; we have realized there is nothing above the sky but endless space. God lost a place to live. And that means – though few people want to take it this far – that we lost the kind of God who could do human-type things like seeing, hearing, or loving. We haven’t seen through this revolution yet, but it is a profound one.

If somebody tells you that God wants you to do something, you should be asking how you could check that out for yourself, independently. If there is not a way – and it’s not clear how there could be a way – then the command doesn’t come from God. It’s the command of those who have turned the corpse of this God into their hand puppet to serve their agenda – often at your expense.

Now, we could go on listing all the logical or scientific or common-sense reasons that the myths and symbols of Christianity are anachronistic, but it wouldn’t achieve much. Because religions aren’t primarily vehicles of truth about the world. Primarily, they are like the rafts in that Buddhist story. Rafts to carry us across certain kinds of human dilemmas, with honest insights into the human condition and wisdom to help us live wisely and well.

It’s true that once we’ve been helped by a religion we tend to carry that raft around on our backs from then on, whether it’s the right vehicle for us or not. But it’s more true that we need some kind of a vehicle for our hopes, dreams, yearnings and tender mercies. And the very best stories and teachings of Christianity honor those, even if its loudest and most powerful preachers and adherents do not.

So it isn’t enough to set the raft down. A legitimate heir to God would have to carry our yearnings and help us to live more wisely and well.

Religions, like their gods, lose their roots in the hearts and minds of people when they are no longer seen as having the power to resist being dragged down by the lowest kind of preachers, politicians and media. But neither morality nor ethics rely on religion as their vehicles – and that’s good news. Across Europe, for instance, religion has lost its power of persuasion. Only about one or two percent of the English and French attend church, and it’s only a few points higher in Germany. And as a nation, Japan is officially secular. Even closer to home, so is Canada, whose ties with Catholicism are little more than ornamental. Yet these cultures have moral standards at least as high as ours, both as individuals and as society.

To take just a couple examples, they all have lower infant mortality rates and higher educational standards than we do. They all have far fewer citizens without basic health insurance than we do, and they all have higher standards of living for their citizens over age 65 than we do. And in Germany and the Netherlands, all citizens who want it are given a free college education, because the government believes that informed citizens able to think are preferable to ignorant citizens who just obey.

Don’t think of these as merely “political” values. These are profoundly religious values. They show the souls of these nations. They show how these nations regard others, how they treat their own weakest members, whether their “pro-life” stance is dishonest rhetoric or healthy governmental programs to serve the life of their people throughout their lives. These are religious values, nothing less. If the tree is known by its fruits, as Jesus said, than America is the least religious and compassionate country in the developed world!

So. We look outward to a world of countries that are more moral and ethical than we are, though far less religious. Some say this means that religion is bad. I don’t agree, but I say it means that bad religion should be dropped like a hot raft.

I want us, both individually and collectively, to develop a more adequate religion, and a more adequate sense of compassion and responsibility toward others that our national policies show us to have. It can happen within Christianity or any other religion if that religion can be raised to its higher levels of aspiration rather than sinking to its lower ones. It can also be done without any organized religion. Well, that’s a good thing, because nobody has a more disorganized religion than Unitarians.

But however it is done and wherever it is done, it needs to inspire us, and needs to inspire our nation to change its direction from a greedy, selfish, imperialistic nation that is now disliked or detested by most other countries in the world.

Here are seven things the legitimate heir to God will have to have, I think:

1. It must be reality-based, consistent with the findings of our best contemporary sciences. Pretending the Grand Canyon is only six thousand years old is an insult to the intelligence of an attentive twelve-year-old, and not worthy of us. If you can’t serve truth, you can’t serve God. And ignorant ideology does not trump truth, except under fascism.

2. The legitimate heir to God must be inclusive and expansive. The Greeks made the best picture of this that I know. They pictured the completed human being as a series of concentric circles. In the center was just the individual. Next were the relationships that expanded the individual’s awareness, compassion and responsibility. Next, the relations with other friends, other citizens, and society. Then the world, all of history, and all the high ideals often associated with gods, but which the Greeks of 2400 years ago associated with our own fuller humanity.

3. Liberals may not like this next one: the legitimate heir to God must be compelling, even commanding. Conservative Christians speak of the need to feel “convicted” before we can see the light, and this is true. We must not only hear of higher possibilities, but also be awakened, “convicted” and converted by them.

4. It must be – in Origen’s wonderful 3rd century phrase – both “useful to us, and worthy of God.” “God,” here, means the highest set of demands we can articulate, the highest ideals, the most inclusive attitude, and the most demanding kind of life. The way, as Jesus and many others have said, is very narrow, and not many enter it.

5. It must be the biggest, most inclusive, most compassionate framework we can imagine – otherwise, it wouldn’t be worthy of the name “God,” let alone God’s legitimate heir. And it must be both more accepting and more demanding of us than psychology, politics, religion or nationalism can be. Why must it be bigger? Because in a pluralistic world where people hold many conflicting beliefs, you either need a larger God, or a larger army. The path of nationalism and imperialism is always to go for the army; the path of honest religion is always to try and articulate a larger concept of God – by whatever name it’s called forth.

6. But it must give us life. That’s the mark of a God. The basic covenant people make with their gods is always the same, and it’s very simple. We say, “I’ll serve you heart, mind and body, I’ll give my life into your service.” Then whatever we have made into our God must give us a life worth living. If it can’t do that, it isn’t a real god, but a phony, or a hand puppet.

7. We need a bigger vehicle than the raft our society is offering us under the banner of approved Christianity or the God sanctioned by our loudest and worst preachers, politicians and media. We need a larger vehicle for the wisdom which has helped the great religions to endure in the hearts and minds of countless generations of people who are trying to grow into their full humanity, trying to grow into children of God, to realize their Buddha nature, to understand that atman really is one with Brahman, to incarnate the rhythms and rules of the Tao, and act out of that infinite and eternal identity rather than something lesser.

All of these are saying about the same thing, in the jargon of their individual religions. In a pluralistic world, however, jargon just separates us. We need to be brought together, and that means we need to be able to say what we actually believe, in ordinary language so people in other religions can understand us, and can realize that we’re not so different after all.

And the more we can put these things in ordinary language, the easier it will be to communicate with people of good character, no matter what their religion is. Because these are the goals of all decent religion. So this rebirth can happen within any existing religion. But it can also happen in ordinary language, without any religious beliefs attached at all.

I’m buying something for the church through my Minister’s Discretionary Fund that I hope will help us begin generating discussions of the things we believe, and help us create a church culture where high ideals are felt to be commanding to us.

I solicited some people I don’t think we’ve solicited for special donations before, in order to raise a little over two thousand dollars. We have enough promised, have collected almost all of it, and this week we’ll be ordering a new and powerful projector that can project VHS, DVD or from a computer, and a large screen.

I have a series of videotapes of the six-hour program Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers did almost twenty years ago, and have bought the DVD of the movie “The Corporation” for showing here and in other churches.

But I hope we will have Friday movie nights here, as many Fridays as we can get groups to organize. Movies on the economy, social criticism; anti-war movies, but also contemporary movies with powerful human themes that are worth exploring, as well as family movies meant to include children, but with themes that are uplifting and educational.

That’s enough for now. The subject of finding the next step, the legitimate heir to what was once called God, is one of the biggest and most important steps people can take. And it is taken, like so many things, step, by step, by step.

But spend some time with this, will you? Spend some time asking what you really believe, what beliefs you think might guide you better than the pronouncements about God you’re hearing – and will be hearing more of from our worst preachers, politicians and pundits.

We say we’re all in this together. But first, we must all be in this search for beliefs worth living by that we can live with. It’s your move. It’s our move. Like always.

Thanksgiving

by Posted in Audio available, Davidson Loehr, Former Ministers, Sermons, Vicki Rao

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Vicki Rao

Davidson Loehr

Cuileann McKenzie

21 November 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH: “A Step Back”

(Cuileann McKenzie)

By celebrating Thanksgiving, our culture has chosen to reserve a day to reflect and to be grateful. Most of the time, for many of us, finding thankfulness may seem effortless. However, each of us will experience losses and disappointments at various times in our lives; some will be visible to others, and some will be seen by only ourselves. How can we be grateful at times when the difficulties seem to block the blessings from view? We can choose to take a step back, to look at the big picture with a fresh perspective.

For me, the process of stepping back has included remembering the grading policy of one of my high school teachers. He told the class that if anyone wanted to complain about the mark he gave for a particular test answer, he might also re-evaluate his marking on the rest of the test. There was less grumbling in that course as students who felt entitled to more marks for one answer were also amazed by the teacher’s generosity in other sections. He ensured that we all paused to look at the big picture before complaining. Though he may have been just trying to reduce the number of disgruntled students he’d have to face, he offered me a life lesson that would guide me when, many years later, I’d have to accept the diagnosis and effects of multiple sclerosis.

Perhaps the key to feeling thankful instead of grumbling is to move beyond our sense of entitlement, or at least to re-examine it. Fine, I didn’t deserve to get M.S. Illness is never fair. But was I anymore entitled to be born into my fabulous family, or to complete university while still being able to scurry frantically between my classes? And how could I complain much when I recognized the gift of being trained as a writer (a profession that actually requires a lot of sitting down)? And what about the blessing of being married to my wonderful husband? Overall, my M.S. could be seen as just one bad card in the otherwise stellar hand that I’ve been dealt. Getting M.S. was disappointing, but I would never want to submit my whole life for re-evaluation. I’ve received my share of grace. I’m thankful.

Michael J. Fox described Parkinson’s Disease as “the gift that keeps on taking,” and I feel the same could be said of M.S.. For through all it takes, it offers back opportunities for personal growth, and lessons on recognizing and appreciating the blessings that you do have, finding joy in what is often taken for granted. For instance, about twelve years ago, when a doctor first suggested that I might have some very early signs of M.S., I was offered an intense appreciation of walking, dancing, moving, if I chose to recognize those gifts – I did. When I wanted a real treat, I’d get a coffee and go for a long walk. The feeling of my legs moving easily and rhythmically was no different than all the times that I had taken my ability for granted, but suddenly I could see the gift of it. I chose to see the wonder.

Now my walking involves a lot more effort for a lot less speed. But I am thankful for continuing to do it. I’m also excited by the rapid advancements in research, leading to constant improvements in medications and steady advancements towards a cure. I follow the progress carefully and am confident that I will walk with ease again. When that time comes, I may not want to do anything but walk, or better yet, run! I might have to take occasional breaks to eat or sleep, but I’ll make Forrest Gump look like a couch potato!

The joy I found in walking years ago is only one example of finding miracles in the seemingly mundane. When you drink your next cup of coffee, really taste it (okay, only do this if it’s good coffee). Enjoy tonight’s bedtime story even more than the kids do. At the start of your next flight, find the thrill of speed. Let the runway release you, and at take-off, let your spirit soar at least as high as the plane.

There is also much joy to be found right here, right now. We’ve all chosen to come together, in celebration, in this sacred place. Recognize this experience as the gift that it is and stay a little longer to chat with others, or linger a while in the sanctuary for some peaceful reflection. Later, on Thanksgiving Day, whether celebrating with family and friends, or on your own, do something special. Perhaps go for a walk, if you’re able, or a spin in your wheelchair, to enjoy the cooler, fall air. Listen to your favorite songs or read from a beloved book. And tell someone special about the impact they’ve had on your life, just as I’ll be sending this text along to my high school teacher with a note of sincere thanks. Whatever you choose to do, take a step back, find your joy, and be grateful. Happy Thanksgiving!

PRAYER: “Let Us Give Thanks,”

by Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and, though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks:

For generous friends, with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we’ve had them.

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you throughout the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;

And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these, we give thanks.

HOMILY: Thanksgiving

Victoria Shepherd Rao

Sometimes it can be difficult to feel thankful when we are filled with other feelings. Maybe you are coming here and feeling discouraged at the politics of the day and disheartened at the social horizon. Maybe you are feeling afraid for your civil rights and maybe you are feeling sad or numb at the killing which is going on in the name of America’s well-being. Maybe you are angry at the lies and half truths that wisp over the television screens and radio waves.

One way to overcome moods and to build up an attitude of gratitude is to do a little mental exercise I am sure most of you are familiar with if not habituated to: it’s called “counting your blessings”. You just ignore your current funk and start to review all the things about your life you appreciate, you remember everything that is going right, progressing smoothly, thriving silently like a potted geranium brought in from the summer porch, and living out its perennial life, giving you a shot of bright coral red just for looking that way.

When you place in your mind all these considerations, and just keep counting your blessings, you experience some level of transformation and a crack of light appears in your dark mood. If this is not a practice for you already, I suggest picking it up soon. Ask around here this morning, I am sure you’ll find many friends here who can coach you along, and give witness to this practice.

The times we are living in are bleak and the time of year suitably gloomy. Darkness is setting in. The days are noticeably shorter. Makes you feel like you’ve just got to get home and get into your pajamas. The rainstorms we have been having here in central Texas have added to the dreariness, so even though the temperature has been mild, the pull towards seeking shelter inside has still been strong. And it feels like there is much to shelter from in the political climate as well. Newspaper headlines appear as writing on the wall as the renewed administration seizes and scopes out the next four years. And then theres the whole array of feelings I was talking about earlier. Fear, anger, confusion, depression.

It is very hard to celebrate the abundance of life when we know of the utter devastation and poverty which is being created on the fields of war. Not fields, but city streets of Fallujah, of Mosel. How can we separate our keen sorrow and despair at the brutal killing, at the material and spiritual destruction? How can we when we come around the heavy-laden feast table with family and friends all around? Do we try to forget? Do we have a few drinks to help? Do we try to talk about our feelings, take the risk to talk about divisive issues? Do we just try to get through the holiday and hope everyone can act normal and decent with each other? Well, what approach do we take? It’s not so much a question about coping with the Thanksgiving holiday as it is about how we connect with revitalizing truths.

Here are a couple of suggestions. First, try to connect with the reality of the abundance of the earth, the bounty of life. Not in the bogglingly overladen shelves of HEB but outside. The sky and the air are great gifts to us horizon-seeking air-breathers. Breathe the fresh air in deliberately. Realize that it is shared by all living creatures of all time. Let go of the illusion that you are separate from the earth. Keep letting that idea go and see how that feels. How do you feel in that state of reckoning? Can you sense a thankfulness there in that moment.

Second, try to connect with someone. How can we bring a sense of the real into the Thanksgiving celebration? Try to widen the circle of inclusion around your table and more importantly around your heart and in your thinking. Whatever makes us more inclusive and widens our notion of the boundaries of the human community serves God or serves the Good. It is practicing liberal religion.

Now, I am sure you know all about hospitality and do your mightiest to be with family and to make an inviting feast for your family and friends. Try to imagine an expanded circle of kinship which includes all people, all living beings, the earth and the unknown. Imagine an expanded feeling of kinship with people who believe very different things about life and death than you do and imagine what that would do to your point of view. For instance, if you felt such a kinship, you would never feel alone, and separate from others because of ideas. You might allow your curiousity to mix with your acceptance of others and begin to give voice to questions which are earnest and satisfying. It is hard to imagine but we can start together, here, with each other. We can do this together here in this community, accept each other and encourage each other towards spiritual growth.

If that is to happen we need to take the time to be with one another and to build a trust of one another strong enough to bear both self-revelation and the risky process of seeking understanding of one another. The Listening Ministers can vouch for that I bet. Cultivating this practice give us practice in experiencing a truly accepting and inclusive attitude as individuals and as a religious community. The covenant groups which are small groups of the members and friends of this congregation are a great chance to grow in these ways, and there are new groups starting now if you have not yet become involved in this ministry.

It is hard to love someone when you are confronted with all the complexities of their religious beliefs and all the confusions of their unarticulated certainties. But it is amazing how we all can help others to come to clarity for themselves just by listening to them and trying to understand them using their own terms. It is a learned skill and it can be difficult at times but it is real and it is life-giving and it creates powerfully real relationships. Sacred connections.

And such are the gifts which are “blessings to be counted”. May there be such bounty among us. May it spread out from each of us and touch all we know.

HOMILY: Thanksgiving

Davidson Loehr

Holidays are like second chances that keep coming back to us. They are anniversaries of certain themes worth revisiting every year, maybe even every week. And this year, two normally unrelated anniversaries need to be combined. The first one is the American Thanksgiving tradition, which evolved four centuries ago out of the English Harvest Home festival.

Thanksgiving is a holiday for people who have suffered painful losses and need to know how to get past them. If everything in your life is just swell, and it has been just swell for as far back as you want to remember, Thanksgiving will just be another swell day, with turkey.

But if you have lost something this year, you need to lay claim to this holiday, because it is for you. I mean hard, painful losses: a parent, a partner, a child, a beloved relative, even a pet you loved. Or a more abstract pain: a loss of innocence, a loss of faith. Or the loss of a job, or the loss of confidence, optimism and hope.

It was so long ago, that first Thanksgiving, it’s hard to imagine it could still be such a big thing. It took place 383 years ago. Bach wouldn’t be born for 64 more years. The founders of the United States – Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Washington – wouldn’t be born for another century or more. The United States itself wouldn’t exist for another 155 years. Charles Darwin was 200 years in the future, and the new world he would help establish wasn’t even imaginable back in 1621 at the first Thanksgiving.

But one of the most enduring and life-affirming stories in our history was being lived out back then, in real time.

The year before, 102 Pilgrims had left to make their way to the New World. They started out in two ships, but one wasn’t seaworthy, so they came over in just the one ship, the Mayflower. The trip took 66 days, they arrived on November 11, 1620.

They were greeted, after a harrowing trip across the Atlantic, by a brutal and deadly Massachusettes winter. Of the one hundred and two who left to come here; by the following summer, only 55 were left alive. Nearly half of them died.

Imagine this! 102 people leave their homes, say farewell to families and friends, say goodbye to a whole way of life, a whole world. They arrive as strangers in a strange land, and the land knows them not. It is cold, indifferent and deadly, and they spend a lonely and fearful winter freezing, starving, and dying. They bury nearly half of their number: one half of these Pilgrims buries the other half, and in the spring they plant crops and hunt for food.

They had the amazing good luck to land near a village where the famous Indian named Squanto lived. Squanto probably spoke more English than any Indian on the continent, and he helped them survive and plant crops. Without him, they might all have died.

The crop is good. There is food here after all, there can be life here. I cannot imagine how they might have felt: the combinations of life and death, tragedy and joy, famine and feast. It was like all of life, compressed into one year. And by late summer, when they could at last celebrate a good crop, half of those with whom they had hoped to celebrate were dead.

The first Thanksgiving lasted for three days. There was much eating, drinking, and merriment between the surviving Pilgrims and Chief Massasoit and ninety of his people. The menu for the feast was venison stew cooked over an outdoor fire; spit-roasted wild turkeys stuffed with corn bread; oysters baked in their shells; sweet corn baked in its husks; and pumpkin baked in a bag and flavored with maple syrup. The food was served on large wooden serving platters, and everyone ate their fill.

After dinner, legend has it that Chief Massasoit’s brother disappeared into the woods and returned with a bushel of popped popcorn, which the Pilgrims had never tasted before.

These are the bare bones of the story of the first Thanksgiving: we don’t know many other details. It was the story of a small group of people who seemed to have both the character and the courage necessary to transform hell into heaven.

By all rights, all 102 of them should have been dead by spring. But they were not dead, and they proved it in a way that still beckons to us by its courage, its audacity, and its sheer magnificence of spirit. After the harvest, in the midst of a field dotted with the markers of almost four dozen graves, graves of wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters-in the midst of this field, they threw a party of thanksgiving. They invited over some new friends, they put on a sumptuous feast, they said some prayers to honor the still-warm memory of those they had lost, and then they did a simple thing so powerful that it freed them from despair, a simple thing so powerful that it may do the same for us: they gave thanks.

The scene reminds me of something the historian Will Durant said. Durant, you may know, wrote about a huge fourteen-volume, small-print “History of Civilization” which only seven people – and no one knows who they are – have ever read. Then he wrote a one-hundred page summary of the whole thing called The Lessons of History which many more of us have read. After that, he was once asked to sum up civilization in a half hour. He did it in less than a minute. Civilization, he said, is a river with banks. The river “is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, dying, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues.

“The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.”

The American Thanksgiving is like that. In the river, in the background of the first Thanksgiving, were the graves of 47 friends and family, nearly half their number. On the banks, the 55 who survived invited some new friends over and threw a three-day party to give thanks.

They gave thanks because they knew that this life, even as it is punctuated with occasional pain, suffering, loss of life and loss of love, is still pure miracle, the greatest gift we will ever receive.

Now this year, the Thanksgiving anniversary is more complex. Because yesterday was another anniversary, too. It’s one I have never thought of in conjunction with Thanksgiving before. It gives a bolder and more stark picture of that river than even the first Thanksgiving story does. Yesterday was the anniversary of November 20, 1945, the day the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials began. Twenty Germans were put on trial, as they were told, not for losing the war, but for starting it. Among the twenty were two editors of German newspapers, who published the government’s propaganda so unflinchingly that they were seen as co-conspirators in the murderous war crimes that propaganda enabled. I read the original story as it appeared on that date in the New York Times, and want to read you just the opening paragraph:

Nuremberg, Germany, Nov. 20–Four of the world’s great powers sit in judgment today on twenty top Germans whom the democratic nations charge with major responsibility for plunging the world into World War II. The twenty-first defendant, tacitly although not specifically named in the indictment, is the German nation that raised them to power and gloried in their might. (By Kathleen McLaughlin)

That last sentence is the one that stopped me cold: The twenty-first defendant, tacitly although not specifically named in the indictment, is the German nation that raised them to power and gloried in their might.

These were the obedient citizens known since then as the “Good Germans”: those who their country applauded for being good citizens because they did not question the actions of their government.

They stayed on the banks and ignored the bloody river which they, through their leaders, were creating, and history will never forgive them for it. They celebrated, had their parties, gave thanks, and their lives went on. But in that place, at that time, that was not sufficient. History believes, as I also do, that they had a moral duty to do what was within their power to stop the blood pouring into the river beside them. With the anniversary of Thanksgiving and the start of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials coming at the same time, it raises the challenge of Thanksgiving, and of living life on the banks, to a whole new level. It doesn’t change the fundamental challenge; it just complexifies it.

But it does say, as both the Nuremburg trials and the verdict of history have said, that living well on the banks of that bloody river does not mean we may ignore what’s going down the river. In fact, we may be held accountable for it. The German leaders were held accountable legally. The German people were convicted by the opinion of nearly everyone in the world after Hitler claimed the right to a pre-emptive invasion of Poland in 1939. That was the crime which began WWII.

And we may not ignore the fact – we are morally compelled to acknowledge the fact – that the next significant pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation happened last year, when President Bush claimed the right to invade Iraq, a country which had nothing at all to do with 9-11 and posed no threat of any kind to us. Nor did we “liberate” anything in Iraq except its oil and its money. Fifty-nine years ago, we made it clear to Germany that these were war crimes punishable by death.

Every Thanksgiving has its version of those graves in the background, in the bloody river next to the banks on which we build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. When the deaths are visited upon us, we are challenged to grieve them without letting them poison our lives, or take away our gratitude and hope. That’s why it’s so important to remember that life is always the ultimate gift, and learn the art of giving thanks.

But when we visit the deaths on others, if history is a guide, we must not only grieve them, but do our best to stop them. For if life is the ultimate gift, then the willful and unprovoked destruction of others’ lives is among the greatest of all crimes against humanity. We cannot afford the moral cost of being Good Americans if it means failing to question the kinds of actions that we once prosecuted another nation for as war crimes. If we do, the phrase “Good Americans” may take on the same ironic meaning we gave to the phrase “Good Germans” six decades ago.

So our challenge this Thanksgiving is twofold. First, we must see what is in that bloody river, ask how it got there, and decide whether we have the moral obligation to try and stop all the killing, all the deaths.

And second, we must not let rage, vengeance or angry determination poison our souls and rob our own lives of their nuance and their balance.

It is a spiritual balancing act worth the best that is in us. We must give heed to the moral actions of our nation, for which history will hold us accountable. And we must not let it blind us to the fact that, as bloody as the river is, the lives we enjoy on our banks are still precious, and still worth giving thanks for.

Holidays are like second chances that keep coming back to us. At this most complex Thanksgiving, may we seek that delicate and necessary balance between the moral awareness of our contributions to that bloody river, and our spiritual appreciation for the great gift of life, both here and abroad. May we give a rest to our habits of complaining that the gift is not perfect, long enough to recognize that the gift is miraculous, precious, terribly fragile, and fleeting. Let’s not let it pass us by without stopping to give thanks. And may our actions also make it more likely that others whose lives our armies and corporations touch may also be able to give thanks for their own lives.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

This is one of thirty-four ancient poems, all addresses to and praising to the individual gods or goddesses of the Greek pantheon. They were ascribed to Homer in antiquity but are of unknown authorship.

To Earth the Mother of All

I will sing of the well-founded Earth,

mother of all, eldest of all beings.

She feeds all creatures that are in the world,

all that go upon the goodly land,

all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;

all these are fed of her store.

Through you, O Queen, we are blessed

In our children, and in our harvest

and to you we owe our lives.

Happy are we who you delight to honor!

We have all things abundantly:

our houses are filled with good things,

our cities are orderly,

our sons exult with feverish delight.

(May they take no delight in war)

Our daughters with flower-laden hands

play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.

(May they seek peace for all peoples)

Thus it is for those whom you honor,

O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!

Hail Earth, mother of the gods,

freely bestow upon us for this our song

that cheers and soothes the heart!

(May we seek peace for all peoples

of the well-founded earth)

Homeric Hymn XXX, adapted by Elizabeth Roberts, and by Vicki for FUUCA

Devali Service

by Posted in Audio available, Former Ministers, Sermons, Vicki Rao

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

© Victoria Shepherd Rao

Rema Undavia and Atul Rao

14 November 2004

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

For this service the front of the sanctuary was decorated with images of Hindu deities: Ganesh, the elephant headed God; Lakshmi, the Goddess of prosperity; Krishna, the flute-playing incarnation of the God Vishnu; and the characters from The Ramayana story which is at the center of the Devali celebration – Rama, Sita, Laxman, and Hanuman. Elements of a typical Hindu worship ritual or puja, were arranged on a table in front of the deities: flowers, fruit, sweets, water, fire – all good gifts which are offered to the deities for their blessings.

An Introduction to Devali:

Rema Undavia

Devali is the Hindu Festival of Light. The celebration is in honor of the return of Rama and Sita to their kingdom after fourteen years of exile, a story from the beloved Indian epic, The Ramayana. It is also a celebration of light over darkness. During Devali people offer prayers to the Goddess Lakshmi and place rows of lights called diyas to welcome her into every home. The name Devali means lights. Devali marks the new year so people pay off debts, get new clothes, clean their houses, and make beautiful patterns with colored powders on the ground at their door, called rangoli, to receive the blessings of Lakshmi. Many times there are fireworks and parties and people give sweets for the new year to everyone.

PRAYER: Gayatri Mantra

O God,

thou art the giver of life,

the remover of pain and sorrow,

the bestower of happiness;

O Creator of the Universe,

may we receive your supreme,

sin-destroying light;

may you guide our intellect

in the right direction.

Amen

SERMON: Reflections on Devali

by Victoria Shepherd Rao

As you may already know, I lived in India for almost two years before coming to Austin. We lived in the extreme south of the subcontinent on the western shores in a small state called Kerala. Kerala is semi-tropical. Its a coastline state on the Arabian Sea. Very very verdant, there are coconut trees everywhere. Its a beautiful, hot, humid place to be. It is one of the most densely populated areas of India. This sari that I am wearing today is from Kerala and is typical of their traditional wear for the women – the very fine, unbleached cotton with gold threads woven through. This one was given to me by friends in Kerala and it has the motif of the lotus flower woven into it with the gold thread.

So, today I wanted to talk a little about how we can recognize God, sometimes even in the very foreign ways of other cultures, and also why we might consider joining in on the celebration of Devali this year, even if it is just to send our blessings along to our merrymaking neighbors.

I was very happy that I was invited by one of the book discussion groups in the last little while to visit with them as they read a book by Diana Eck, called Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras. Eck is a professor of Comparative Religion at Harvard University and I highly recommend this book. In it she talks about her experience of pluralism – that is this experience of recognizing God in the rituals and ways of others’ religions, and so by extension, recognizing the legitimacy and the validity of these other religions as paths to the numinous.

Eck was studying Indian pilgrimage when she went to the place where we lived in India, a city called Trivandrum, or Tiruvananthapuram. There is a major temple there, very very old, called Padmanabhaswamy Temple. I couldn’t pronounce it at all the whole time we were there. She went to this temple and she writes about it in this book. As a preface to that, I’ll just say that she is asserting that recognizing God is not an easy task, “It is not the simple affirmation that all these visions of God are the same. They are not.” Eck admits as a Christian that there are lots of places where she does not recognize God. But what I am going to read you now is about her visit to this temple where she attended a puja ceremony in the inner sanctum where the main deity is installed – in this case, an eighteen foot long statue of the God Vishnu reclining on a multi-headed snake. There are three doorways that open up from the inner sanctum and offer partial views to this long figure of the God. These are Eck’s words:

I lined up with the other women at the north door of the central shrine as the time approached for the arati, the evening offering of oil lamps. The drums began to beat and the bells clang; the reedy nadaswaram so typical of South Indian temples began to whine. The attendant drew back the bar and we all seemed to move en masse, propelled by the surge of a wave of bodies, into the inner sanctum. As the bells rang with an increasing sense of crescendo, suddenly the central pair of doors to Vishnu’s chamber were flung open to reveal part of the huge reclining image. Then the pair of doors to the left were flung open, revealing the upper portion of Vishnu; then the doors to the right, revealing his feet.

I could not see the image very well at all, but as the many different multi-wicked lamps of arati were waved to honor Vishnu, I could see the suggestion of his presence there. It was a sense of enormous presence, dimly seen, illumined for a moment by oil lamps and by the intermediary grace of the priest who moved the soft light before the long body of the Lord.

Seeing that tryptich in the temple in Trivandrum, with its three glimpses of a God larger than one could fully comprehend, was a moment of recognition for me, and the experience of God’s presence there was describable only as worship. My experience as a Christian was surely different from that of the Hindus pressed against me on either side. But we shared the sense of delight and revelation as the doors were opened, and perhaps some sense of both the majesty and mystery of the Divine. — Pg. 77,79 Encountering God

When I was in India and visiting many beautiful temples, I learned that my own way of worship is quite “western.” I have a strong preference for coming into a place where order prevails, where I can choose a seat, and I can sit still, and I can have some privacy in that sitting still. And I can have this privacy to pray or worship in the way that I need to and I can be happy because I have friends and familiar faces around me and they are doing the same thing too. At least I think they are. So, I had a hard time settling down when I went to visit temples and worship was very difficult for me to settle into there. But I still loved observing it.

Now this morning, you’ve seen pictures of the deities and all these elements of the puja. You’ve had sort of a smorgasbord, or a sampler of Hindu worship, and I just wanted to address the question you may be sitting on’ which is why?

How does foreign festival follow fascism? Who was here last week and heard Davidson preach on fascism? A lot of people. So, last week you heard your minister had a very heavy prophetic message for all of us. The times do seem bleak. This time after the election has half the country ebullient and half the country quite depressed. I have heard people say that they have felt hatred when they have seen bumper stickers for “the other guys” and there is a sense of worry, wondering how its going to be in another four years.

Veterans’ Day was also difficult. My son’s school had a whole week of celebration and it was a glorification of the armed services if not war. My son and all the kids in that school listened as their principal told them that all these armed services folk were “over there” fighting for their freedom. I hope, for the sake of all the people who have died, and had their lives torn apart, Iraqis and Americans, I hope there is some element of truth in that assertion. But the heaviness is real and the gloom is felt. So why are we celebrating Devali?

Devali is a new year celebration. It is a new year based on a lunar calendar, an ancient Indian calendar that is still used for worship, but we know about celebrating new years and maybe we need to be reminded of it. New years- its about hope. It is about letting go of those things you need to let go of from the last period of time and starting over. Celebrating with raised spirits or celebrating because we need to raise our spirits and be reminded of our highest aspirations. Right now, I think we all need some of that.

Devali is about light- candlelight, lamplight. The lights we put out to guide our loved ones home. The lights we put out to give cheer. We know about this too. It is Christmas lights- especially when they came out just once a year. They raise our spirits, don’t they?

Devali is also about the celebration of light over darkness. I think we could all use some stories about how that happens. In fact, I think we should all collect such stories and tell them to each other whenever we meet. The story of Rama and Sita, as it is told in the Ramayana, is the story of good overcoming evil but it is also a story that is filled with tragedy. So, even as we celebrate the light, let us not forget that tragedy is a part of life, and let’s try to not be too afraid of it.

In the Ramayana, Rama slays this terrible and powerful demon who has robbed the world, and beyond!, of all the riches and has enslaved countless people, besides kidnapping Rama’s wife, Sita. So Rama is up against a very formidable foe. He is terrifying and masterful and poor Rama is at his lowest point. He has a broken heart from missing his beloved wife and he’s sick with worry over her. But he has righteousness going for him, and he also has some very loyal friends. Fine possessions, really. His army is almost dead from the battles, but as it ends up, Rama’s arrow kills the demon and rescues the whole world from the darkness and enslavement which were mere reflections of this demon’s reign. It all disappears at once. Now, isn’t that a good story for us right now? It is a good story and it has been a good story for people to hear for all time and that’s why it has been told since at least the 4th century BCE all over India in every conceivable form of art.

Rama is the model being. He is dutiful to his parents, devoted to his brother, in love with his wife. He is not a fearless leader but he is a true leader. That is, he has the love and the trust of his followers. Don’t we need such a vision of leadership to capture the popular imagination of this world, this nation? It is not our story but it is a good story and maybe we could find some sustenance in it. I recommend the retelling of the Ramayana by R.K. Narayan for any who are undaunted by a five hundred page read.

Finally, when we lived in India, there was one small religious ritual that always touched me very deeply every time I saw it. We had a whole series of drivers when we were living there. They were all Hindu and they were all natives of Kerala. Some of them would have little deities on the dashboards of their cars and they would adorn them with flowers and sandlewood paste. And on many days, they would show that they had been to the temple with the sandlewood paste markings on their foreheads and necks. But the thing that would always touch me though was that when they were driving and we would go by a temple, no matter how big or how small, and some of the roadside shrines were very small, they would always keep what they were doing, keep watching the road, keep in conversation, but they would always touch their heart. They would very lightly take their hand and touch the tips of their fingers to their chests and this moved me. This moved me because what I saw was that there was always a part of their consciousness that stayed steadily on God, and remained with her or remembered to return to her. And that was more impressive to me than almost anything else. Just that gesture, that small private gesture, connecting the person to the source of all creation.

When we, whenever we, remember that we are connected to all living creation, we are. There may be no physical change caused by our remembering, there may be no metaphysical change. It is just a realization of connection that can reorient us. And we must remember to remember that we are connected, constantly, “prayer without ceasing” as St. Paul said. Every time we pass a temple, or a church, or the Town Lake, or a tree, let us remember to remember.

So let me draw the ends together. We seek to recognize God, or our highest truths, and we have our own familiar ways to do that. And when we see the different ways of others, sometimes we may find our own Gods, our own high truths, there in the ritual and worship of another tradition or culture. Staying open to this as a possibility is adopting a genuinely pluralistic attitude. Devali, with its affirmation of the power of goodness to prevail against great odds, is a celebration of a universal theme – the eternal hope in the capacity of the human soul to stand against tyranny. It is a theme that is relevant for us today. And so there is a good reason for us to devote our worship today to join Hindus in India, all over the world, and especially in our midst, in this celebration of light. So, Happy Devali.

Rema offers us this Sanskrit prayer as our benediction:

May God protect us.

May God nourish us.

May we work together with great vigor.

May we acquire brilliance from our study.

May we not hate each other.

Let there be peace.

Let there be peace, peace, peace.

Amen